No, I just hate all your pent-up anger over a media player and a video game console.
WTF are you talking about? I'm not the same guy you were replying to, you know. I didn't even mention either of those things, let alone get angry about them!
Maybe the investments will pay off, and maybe they won't, but it's far to early to call.
Thank you, that was (part of) my point! You can't just blithely assume success without a good reason, and you didn't give one.
I think it would be foolish to think it'll never pay off for Microsoft in any way.
But you just said "it's far to [sic] early to call," contradicting yourself. Which did you mean: that people should believe it's too early to call, or that people should believe it'll pay off? You have to pick one, not both!
Here's my position: both Xbox and Zune have been around long enough that they should have paid off by now. Zune is an utter failure, and Xbox is an also-ran at best. (If you want an example of what an actual success in the gaming market would have looked like, look at the Playstation 1. A successful Xbox would have relegated Sony to an also-ran and killed Nintendo in the same way that the PS1 did those things to Nintendo and Sega (respectively).
2) Rip Windows out! Up with LINUX!!! This is the Linuxvangelist option, but as usual, poorly conceived due to a need for a completely new infrastructure, vendor support and end-user training.
3) Go with another vendor of proprietary software. Who? IBM? Sun? Apple?
I realize you're probably trolling, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're merely woefully ignorant. Here's a newsflash: options 2 and 3 are the same thing, because all three of those companies -- yes, including Apple -- are vending non-proprietary systems!
No, they're "investments that haven't paid off." Period. Full stop. And that's plenty of evidence that Ballmer's doing a bad job. In contrast, you have absolutely zero evidence for that "yet!"
Yes. If your restaraunt is in the newspaper because someone died from salmonella poisoning and six more people are in the hospital, expect people to stay away in droves.
Yeah, right. There's a restaurant in Stone Mountain, GA imaginatively called "Asian Buffet" that recently got shut down for scoring about a 20 on its health inspection. This was reported in the local newspaper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). It subsequently reopened, and guess what? People are flocking to it again in droves! Obviously, nobody gives a shit (or more likely, nobody reads the newspaper).
When someone in the press catches wind of your tryst with your secretary, expect to lose the next election.
Pfft. Nobody cares about that kind of thing either. If they did, then Hillary Clinton wouldn't be a serious candidate for President because of her lack of moral fiber (and simple self-respect) for failing to divorce Bill after the press caught wind of his tryst.
It seems like they shouldn't release an unfinished product, but on the other hand I like that they actually stick to a 6-month release schedule.
They could (and should) do both: every 6 months, cut new stuff until everything left is finished and release that. Even if they had to just increment the version number on the 6-month-old code to get it out the door, that would be better than releasing a buggy product.
That's why I always wanted one of these. It was lightweight like an EEE or whatever, but it had a 10" screen, reasonable keyboard, and was really thin (if it's not thinner than the MacBook Air, it was at least close). There's a lower limit to the length and width if you want good usability, but you can always make it thinner and lighter...
Aside from the slow processor and the fact that it wasn't a Tablet PC, it was almost perfect. I wish they'd bring it back with those deficiencies removed -- even at $1000, I'd buy it in a heartbeat!
...the safety harness and roll bar/cage costs several thousand dollars together...
That's only because they're low-volume items. Mass produce them and they'd be a lot cheaper. They'd certainly be able to beat airbag systems, which are inherently expensive even when they are mass produced!
...and the cars themselves are made to literally come apart in pieces as the crash progresses in order to save the driver.
So are normal cars: between crumple zones and unibody construction, any crash severe enough to activate the airbags is also likely to total the car. Hell, if the car's more than a few years old, the mere fact that the airbags deployed is enough to total the car by itself, because they're so expensive to replace!
So, unless you want to pay for a custom made seat, five point harnesses, a roll cage...
That's not the problem. The problem is that, in addition to those things, you would also need to wear a helmet, and very few people would be willing to do that due to fashion and comfort issues.
...even a relatively minor accident rip the wheel, brake and suspension arms off your car...
Either the airbags deployed, in which the accident wasn't "relatively minor," or they didn't and you didn't need them anyway.
Also, that does happen on normal street cars: my girlfriend's brother totaled a big sedan by swerving (to avoid an oncoming driver in his lane) and hitting a curb at probably about 40 mph. The right front wheel ended up somewhere around under the front door hinge. Since this car had airbags, it obviously shouldn't have done that, right? The body of the car was hardly damaged, but the suspension was destroyed, the passenger side dash was destroyed (from the airbag going off), and the windshield was destroyed (from his head hitting it, since the driver's side air bag didn't go off).
A) Who is they? I was talking about lawmakers - do you think they decide who gets investigated? I thought that was the domain of law enforcement.
Well, you thought wrong: it's supposed to be the domain of law enforcement, but in reality the politicians, judges, and prosecutors have a "good ol' boys network" and look out for each other.
What's the difference between being exempt from a law and being exempt from the enforcement? Sounds like it's very much the same.
Exactly. The only difference is that being exempt from the law requires writing it into the law, and those pesky plebs might actually notice that (maybe).
...sounds to me like what you're describing is indeed a situation where a segment of the population is above the law - and as I said, that to me is far more dangerous than a situation where everyone is a criminal.
I don't think the situation is that much more dangerous... besides, talking about that is like arguing about whether Hitler or Stalin was the more evil dictator; it doesn't really matter because they're both so far off the end of the scale already.
Very likely bribed various national delegations so that they'd approve OOXML. In fact, quite a few third-world countries joined the standards process specifically to vote for OOXML, and then do nothing else. Bribery is the only plausible explanation, because approving OOXML otherwise goes strongly against their own self interest (because OOXML is unimplementable by anyone other than (and perhaps even including) Microsoft, and therefore they would be tying themselves to a "standard" controlled by a foreign corporation with no free implementation.
What has the ISO body done wrong?
ISO let the bribery and committee-stuffing happen, fast-tracked the process when there was no good reason to do it and many good reasons not to, completely ignored its own processes and procedures during the approval process, gave woefully too little time for comments and debate, ratified the standard despite voting irregularities in several countries, and ignored the public when they pointed all this shit out!
Either they can be found just as guilty of something, and then everyone's on the same footing - and Ayn Rand falls flat on her face. Or they are exempt from laws that affect the regular plebeians
What are you, stupid? They're not exempt from the laws; they're exempt from the enforcement. In other words, they decide who gets investigated, so they simply decide that it won't be them!
I don't think you understand the great lengths Apple goes to to make working on the computer "not a chore". It's not just about making things pretty, but about making a seamless experience where the computer becomes a working environment and you don't have to think about what's going on behind the scenes.
No, I do understand... my point was that all that stuff was already in NextSTEP! It's just that it was gray and square instead of round and colorful, had the dock on the side of the screen instead of the bottom, and used right-click context menus instead of a menubar at the top of the screen. These are not important differences (except for the menubar one, which was only important for being familiar to existing Mac users).
They've paid for each copy on the DVD. But if they preinstalled it, then there'd be an additional copy on the computer's hard drive. That's the copy that would be infringing to distribute.
Note that I don't like the idea, or think that its the way things should be. But it is apparently how copyright law currently works. (This is why people say that EULAs are valid, too: you don't need a license to use the copy of the software on the disc it came on, but you need a license to get permission to copy it to your computer (i.e. install it).
Did you look at the link I provided? If you had, you'd see that, through this simple graphical programming (that the kids don't even really realize they're doing), they can learn things like math:
Clearly, something interesting has been captured here by these 10 year olds. Going a little and turning a little over and over seems to make circles. Adults may remember something complicated about x2 + y2 = r2 and wonder why this way is so simple. It's because when looked at from the view of an ant on the rim of a circle, a circle is just a track of constant curvature. All the ant has to do is keep its moving and turning going at the same rate to trace out a perfect circle.
This way of looking at geometry is called "the differential geometry of vectors" and is the main mathematics used by science. It is used by scientists because it is simpler and more powerful than the general math taught in K-12. It is worth pondering this paradoxical irony.
I'm happy that [Twitter] pointed to Bruce Perens' good observations.
Fine! In fact, I'm happy that they were pointed out too. But just do it with your normal account instead of a damn sock puppet!
[Blah, blah, blah... ] Suck it up.
You don't get the point, so I'll try to be even more explicit than I've already been: people conciously and purposefully ignore or disregard your original post (in addition to all the sock puppet posts) because they're pissed off at your dumb-ass, sock-puppet-using self. You're hurting the very thing you're trying to help! Can't you fucking see that?!!
For the sake of the Free Software movement, please, please PLEASE knock it off!
I don't know if you noticed, but you were on my friends list once. Now you're on my foes list. Why is that? Not because I disagree with your message, but beceause I disagree with your tactics. Your underhanded and unethical sock-puppetry takes people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the Free Software movement and drives them away.
To paraphrase a famous quote: It's the software, stupid!
The OLPC is much more than a library, it's also an easy-to-learn graphical development environment. You're right: an EEE with Squeak would be almost as good (I say almost, because the OS might not be modifiable). But even the most powerful laptop in the world without Squeak would be utterly useless.
I don't see teachers in sufficient numbers being prepared to take advantage of open source. In Brazil (where I live), I see teachers that can barely teach their subject with a blackboard and white chalk.
So what? Teachers aren't required. The potential is built into the machine itself; the kids will discover it.
[Youtube link]
I don't get it; aside from the horrible translation, that looks like a successful start to me! Granted, they were only using the thing for research (as opposed to simulation and collaboration), but you can't expect them to figure that out in a week when the teacher has never used a computer before. Maybe they need to give the teachers an orientation that includes having them explore this.
What was it in that video that you object to?
Unfortunately, because ideally one would want to be able to go very, very deep. The project seems to fall short in that respect.
How so? The computers run Squeak and Linux specifically in order to enable the kids "to go very, very deep!"
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On the contrary, she "merely" abetted it. And that's quite enough.
WTF are you talking about? I'm not the same guy you were replying to, you know. I didn't even mention either of those things, let alone get angry about them!
Thank you, that was (part of) my point! You can't just blithely assume success without a good reason, and you didn't give one.
But you just said "it's far to [sic] early to call," contradicting yourself. Which did you mean: that people should believe it's too early to call, or that people should believe it'll pay off? You have to pick one, not both!
Here's my position: both Xbox and Zune have been around long enough that they should have paid off by now. Zune is an utter failure, and Xbox is an also-ran at best. (If you want an example of what an actual success in the gaming market would have looked like, look at the Playstation 1. A successful Xbox would have relegated Sony to an also-ran and killed Nintendo in the same way that the PS1 did those things to Nintendo and Sega (respectively).
I realize you're probably trolling, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're merely woefully ignorant. Here's a newsflash: options 2 and 3 are the same thing, because all three of those companies -- yes, including Apple -- are vending non-proprietary systems!
No, they're "investments that haven't paid off." Period. Full stop. And that's plenty of evidence that Ballmer's doing a bad job. In contrast, you have absolutely zero evidence for that "yet!"
I like MS Intellimice too, but I think I could make do with a Logitech or something in return for the destruction of Microsoft.
Yeah, right. There's a restaurant in Stone Mountain, GA imaginatively called "Asian Buffet" that recently got shut down for scoring about a 20 on its health inspection. This was reported in the local newspaper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). It subsequently reopened, and guess what? People are flocking to it again in droves! Obviously, nobody gives a shit (or more likely, nobody reads the newspaper).
Pfft. Nobody cares about that kind of thing either. If they did, then Hillary Clinton wouldn't be a serious candidate for President because of her lack of moral fiber (and simple self-respect) for failing to divorce Bill after the press caught wind of his tryst.
Yeah, it does.
They could (and should) do both: every 6 months, cut new stuff until everything left is finished and release that. Even if they had to just increment the version number on the 6-month-old code to get it out the door, that would be better than releasing a buggy product.
That's why I always wanted one of these. It was lightweight like an EEE or whatever, but it had a 10" screen, reasonable keyboard, and was really thin (if it's not thinner than the MacBook Air, it was at least close). There's a lower limit to the length and width if you want good usability, but you can always make it thinner and lighter...
Aside from the slow processor and the fact that it wasn't a Tablet PC, it was almost perfect. I wish they'd bring it back with those deficiencies removed -- even at $1000, I'd buy it in a heartbeat!
I hope, at least, they have the sense to open something more resembling a quick lube shop than a Toyota dealer.
That's only because they're low-volume items. Mass produce them and they'd be a lot cheaper. They'd certainly be able to beat airbag systems, which are inherently expensive even when they are mass produced!
So are normal cars: between crumple zones and unibody construction, any crash severe enough to activate the airbags is also likely to total the car. Hell, if the car's more than a few years old, the mere fact that the airbags deployed is enough to total the car by itself, because they're so expensive to replace!
That's not the problem. The problem is that, in addition to those things, you would also need to wear a helmet, and very few people would be willing to do that due to fashion and comfort issues.
Either the airbags deployed, in which the accident wasn't "relatively minor," or they didn't and you didn't need them anyway.
Also, that does happen on normal street cars: my girlfriend's brother totaled a big sedan by swerving (to avoid an oncoming driver in his lane) and hitting a curb at probably about 40 mph. The right front wheel ended up somewhere around under the front door hinge. Since this car had airbags, it obviously shouldn't have done that, right? The body of the car was hardly damaged, but the suspension was destroyed, the passenger side dash was destroyed (from the airbag going off), and the windshield was destroyed (from his head hitting it, since the driver's side air bag didn't go off).
I was under the impression that, in the form you cited, something was loosed, not lost. ; )
Well, you thought wrong: it's supposed to be the domain of law enforcement, but in reality the politicians, judges, and prosecutors have a "good ol' boys network" and look out for each other.
Exactly. The only difference is that being exempt from the law requires writing it into the law, and those pesky plebs might actually notice that (maybe).
I don't think the situation is that much more dangerous... besides, talking about that is like arguing about whether Hitler or Stalin was the more evil dictator; it doesn't really matter because they're both so far off the end of the scale already.
Very likely bribed various national delegations so that they'd approve OOXML. In fact, quite a few third-world countries joined the standards process specifically to vote for OOXML, and then do nothing else. Bribery is the only plausible explanation, because approving OOXML otherwise goes strongly against their own self interest (because OOXML is unimplementable by anyone other than (and perhaps even including) Microsoft, and therefore they would be tying themselves to a "standard" controlled by a foreign corporation with no free implementation.
ISO let the bribery and committee-stuffing happen, fast-tracked the process when there was no good reason to do it and many good reasons not to, completely ignored its own processes and procedures during the approval process, gave woefully too little time for comments and debate, ratified the standard despite voting irregularities in several countries, and ignored the public when they pointed all this shit out!
Any other silly questions?
What are you, stupid? They're not exempt from the laws; they're exempt from the enforcement. In other words, they decide who gets investigated, so they simply decide that it won't be them!
What's your point? The tone of your post makes it seem like you're trying to argue with me, but I can't figure out what you're trying to argue about.
No, I do understand... my point was that all that stuff was already in NextSTEP! It's just that it was gray and square instead of round and colorful, had the dock on the side of the screen instead of the bottom, and used right-click context menus instead of a menubar at the top of the screen. These are not important differences (except for the menubar one, which was only important for being familiar to existing Mac users).
A factor of two is the difference between 15 FPS (not usable) and 30 FPS (usable).
Actually, NextSTEP already had the GUI. All Apple did was add a legacy compatibility layer ("Carbon") and change the bitmaps.
Or, you know, iPods...
They've paid for each copy on the DVD. But if they preinstalled it, then there'd be an additional copy on the computer's hard drive. That's the copy that would be infringing to distribute.
Note that I don't like the idea, or think that its the way things should be. But it is apparently how copyright law currently works. (This is why people say that EULAs are valid, too: you don't need a license to use the copy of the software on the disc it came on, but you need a license to get permission to copy it to your computer (i.e. install it).
Did you look at the link I provided? If you had, you'd see that, through this simple graphical programming (that the kids don't even really realize they're doing), they can learn things like math:
Fine! In fact, I'm happy that they were pointed out too. But just do it with your normal account instead of a damn sock puppet!
You don't get the point, so I'll try to be even more explicit than I've already been: people conciously and purposefully ignore or disregard your original post (in addition to all the sock puppet posts) because they're pissed off at your dumb-ass, sock-puppet-using self. You're hurting the very thing you're trying to help! Can't you fucking see that?!!
For the sake of the Free Software movement, please, please PLEASE knock it off!
I don't know if you noticed, but you were on my friends list once. Now you're on my foes list. Why is that? Not because I disagree with your message, but beceause I disagree with your tactics. Your underhanded and unethical sock-puppetry takes people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the Free Software movement and drives them away.
To paraphrase a famous quote: It's the software, stupid!
The OLPC is much more than a library, it's also an easy-to-learn graphical development environment. You're right: an EEE with Squeak would be almost as good (I say almost, because the OS might not be modifiable). But even the most powerful laptop in the world without Squeak would be utterly useless.
So what? Teachers aren't required. The potential is built into the machine itself; the kids will discover it.
I don't get it; aside from the horrible translation, that looks like a successful start to me! Granted, they were only using the thing for research (as opposed to simulation and collaboration), but you can't expect them to figure that out in a week when the teacher has never used a computer before. Maybe they need to give the teachers an orientation that includes having them explore this.
What was it in that video that you object to?
How so? The computers run Squeak and Linux specifically in order to enable the kids "to go very, very deep!"