The thing about Hitler was, that the Germans failed at logistics.
Your argument is correct, that the Gerries went so far, that they overextended their supply lines, but they â" or Hitler, rather â" probably did not expect the land mass between Eastern Europe and Moscow to be a total swamp, with all their then-high-tech land-based gear built for traversable roads, and manpower equipped alike, continuously failing.
The success of having taken Easten Europe and a number of other territories so easily most likely contributed to Hitler's overconfidence.
But here's a problem: Had Germany instead taken all of Eastern Europe except Russia, and held the line at that, then it seems difficult to me (at least) to think of what could have happened next.
One option could have been destroying or hampering all of Russia's supply lines siege-style to keep the Soviet Union weak. This would potentially have bought Nazi Germany precious time to keep up the fight well beyond 1945.
Of course, the losses of some of the populations so far extant in Europe would have been even greater (the Jews, the gays, the Gypsies, and all anti-Nazi resistance). Wernher von Braun would probably have gotten off with a German nuclear bomb. And that would have changed the geopolitical equation completely.
Another possibility is this: Were Russia proper not invaded by the Germans, Russia (aka the Soviet Union) would have been able to gather enough strength to conquer back some of the territories it had invaded and annexed in 1940. Well, it did so anyway in 1944.
OTOH, Germany's mission profile would then have been one of defense, yet its supply lines would not have been worn thin across the vastness of Russia.
I suppose, if Germany did not invade France and other countries to its west, it would have been in a better shape economically. The fight, then, would have been viewed as one between Germany and the Soviet Union, and the West would have sat and looked on. Alliances would have been different. (Unless, of course, such a West would have decided to gang-up on Germany much later into the conflict.)
The externality, though, would have been conflicts of even greater intensity on the battlefronts between Germany and the USSR. The absolute losers would have been the poor countries and peoples stuck between the two.
In many ways, it was like that in real life in WWII, but the difference would have been in greater conflict intensity concentrated across territories of overall lesser land mass.
Nothing really does change. The president can set tone, inspire and lead (or fail utterly to do it).. but the president cannot simply dictate "build a wall" or "throw 'em all out."
I think the sequence allowed the viewers to see/hear that Destiny had at first passed ~50 galaxies, but since then it's been left vague as to the total number of galaxies that Destiny traversed.
SGU was the best contemporary space-based sci-fi tv series with the kind of science fiction that had never been depicted before, and suggesting the types of species that few people up until then had ever imagined. I think only Farscape and Futurama get near.
I remember recently reading a slashdot post jokingly suggesting about life existing in stars themselves, as if it couldn't be possible because the conditions are so averse to most other life.
And though it's somehow possible to create shale oil from oil shale, then it's impractical to then use shale oil to power a power plant, instead of burning oil shale in the first place. A filthy natural resource as it may be, it's one of the few reasonably safe energy-producing natural resources that we have an abundance of. The other energy-producing resource that can be mined is not an option.
We're also striving to use more wind and solar and hydroelectricity (hydro on a smaller scale).
The safety and crash standards are EU-wide and that area is belong to Euro NCAP, which I believe has quite a bit more stringent standards than in the U.S. Euro NCAP is backed by the European Commission and seven individual EU countries, and is generally a voluntary programme, but almost any car manufacturer worth their salt will build their cars towards compliance with standards set by Euro NCAP.
What drives up the weight and cost of electric vehicles in the U.S. might be something different. Of course, I assume you don't have regulatory capture there;-)
An electric set-up that has been standard for home use is not very good for charging an electric vehicle, because recently here in Estonia one man's small barn (or shed) completely burned down along with his electric car parked there. Firemen suspected that the cables couldn't handle the amount of power that was constantly passing through when charging overnight and then something probably overheated and caught fire. Therefore, specialized home charging equipment must also be set up (not particularly cheap, AFAIK).
For those not in the know, the quick chargers that were built around Estonia will in those 30 minutes refill the batteries to approximately 80 to up to 90% of total capacity (90% is probably a stretch, but say 85%).
In 2012, the electricity was about second-or-third-cheapest in the European Union, but the country recently opened up its electricity market, after which Eesti Energia (the main electricity provider) delivered a hefty price hike to all those who did not in time choose a predetermined power plan or the energy exchange (bourse) package or another provider. And yes, the government did warn well in advance of all that. Nevertheless, customers — including those hit with the initial price hike — can change providers/plans once each month.
Estonia also offers a subsidy for the first 500 private buyers of any electric car, including those not from Mitsubishi (with which the CO2 trade was made). The subsidy covers either half the buying price of the car or up to 18,000 € of it (AFAIK). People, though, are worried about how long a car can hold a charge during winter (still down to –20C at night in March), and how reliable it is on rural roads where there might be no asphalt or just gravel roads, sometimes none at all.
Electricity in Estonia is generated from burning oil shale, which is the country's main non-renewable resource. A fair amount of that power is sold to Latvia. Estonia's own energy companies are also beginning to produce shale oil in larger quantities.
See former USSR countries where people embrace the free market by patiently waiting for the state to sort it out.
Putting this claim on North Koreans is off, because they have lots working against them.
The thing is that we (I'm from Estonia) didn't have hunger (as opposed to North Korea's March of Tribulation in mid-1990's) and there were many factors set in our favour to restore independence, including consensus throughout the nation and knowledge (we could see Finnish tv:) that change was for the better. Twenty years ago we Estonians did not patiently wait for the state to sort it out for us and our efforts paid off.
There are many things in North Korea that puts these people in a worse situation.
Very many people there (if not most) still think that things outside the country really are like they are being told by their rulers. Those that think things are better in other countries might only think that "food distribution is a little better there," meaning that "food distribution" in the U.S. works under the same principles as it does in North Korea.
People there are prohibited to do trade, neither are they allowed to leave their home areas without permission. Those caught are imprisoned and put into re-education camps with all their families, or shot. I can't tell which are the luckier ones in those cases. The common people don't have any widespread means of transport to move crowds. And even if they did, there would be problem with getting to fuel these vehicles. And I don't mean the military. Communications are really poor and electricity is off very often, if not most of the time. Lighting is off at night, except the lone beams shining at the gargantuan statue of the regime founder in the middle of some city. Television and radio sets are hardwired to only receive one channel. A 'Western' gadget, like an MP3 player or even a VCR costs the amount of six months' salary (if not more) on the black market.
wrt the former USSR, OTOH, there are countries that formerly were parts of it and which are still post-Soviet, with many of them being dictatorial (Turkmenistan and Belarus) and authoritarian. Turkmenistan even has (or had) is own cult of personality, which seems to have been drawn down somewhat.
Some of them do better (based on information off the top of my head). In terms of democracy in post-Soviet countries in Europe or closer to it, Georgia looks like the best of the bunch and can now be called formerly Soviet or even better for many years now, despite loss of territory. Maybe something that Estonia was like 20 or even 15 years ago, so they have lots of work cut out for them. Moldova is in transition (they have disputed territory), so is Georgia's landlocked neighbour Armenia, which has to tip-toe on a diplomatic and strategic tightrope between Georgia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. If Armenia really prospers in all counts (including democracy), then it could be like the Switzerland of the Caucasus (and Georgia, if its old territories reunite with it, like the Benelux). Ukraine somehow wobbles in these countries' direction, and is so a hit and miss, depending on who is at the top there, because half the country leans to the West and the other to the East (Russia), but it's not exactly like the Russia we have known for the last decade. Belarus is one of the worst; really the last dictatorship in Europe.
But what can you do? People are starving.
Which is why they are not in any position to protest. At least 10% of all people snitch, grass, and rat on one another and on the other 90% for a living. The population is also far too dispersed (which was the main reason for conclusions in a recent study about why is there not much chance for North Koreans to protest and gather in large amounts).
The Libyan uprising began with protests about growing prices for food and water, and the Arab Spring began because a young man in Tunisia wasn't allowed to trade just to
Anything pronounceable in English would be great. They could have chosen a compromise like "LiberOffice", or anything. But the name LibreOffice could only have been chosen by people with absolute zero marketing experience.
Libero (see boldface) is a brand of diapers in the Nordic region (Scandinavia and nearby countries).
I think the term reverted back to "French fries" (after 2008, methinks), or just the generic "fries" (to avoid showing party affiliation).
I am of opinion that it's okay to use the word freedom, but then it must be used in such a way that it won't sound clunky. 'OfficeLibre' is my favorite and I know there have been earlier user propositions to put that as the actual name of the split project.
Probably a timely rebranding move to OfficeLibre ahead of official iOS and Android (and I hope WebOS) readiness, consequently with a nice launch splash would allow users to become more comfortable with the new (better) name than the kludge that I still refuse to install.
Re:Let Us Remember the Chinese Workers instead
on
Steve Jobs Dead At 56
·
· Score: 1
> Reducing suicide rate by two-thirds is a pretty decent accomplishment.
The rate is reduced with suicide nets, while getting poisoned with n-hexane at work, working at $1.18/hour (which is the highest pay bracket). These people are still attempting suicides. Care to read more?
Steve Jobs is dead, but let us remember all the Chinese workers who commited suicide for not earning a living wage, having overall bad working conditions while making Apple products, and getting killed in a factory explosion.
See the Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour website for more information.
For some reason, the schemes there are more of a collective nature, where there are charities and like where one must go to and some charities only concentrate on being charitable outside UK/EU.
I don't think I have ever had swapping problems with wXP SP3 when installed properly, but this would be a very arduous process:
Apply all updates to SP2;
Back up all data (by imaging the drive or at least backing essential data up);
Update the computer's BIOS (if possible, keep the older version);
Update all drivers (if they support SP2, don't move to SP3-only drivers yet);
Check hard drive for errors with CHKDSK (conditions permitting, e.g. no rumbling traffic and small children running nearby);
Defragment hard drive;
Apply SP3. (You may want to defragment the drive again).
Apply drivers made for SP3.
I grant you that OO.o may not be as fast performance-wise as MSOffice 2007/2010 when opening and handling files, but OpenOffice.org 3.x is a much better proposition thatn OO.o 2.x, where language dictionaries can be installed now as extensions, unlike in earlier major versions (2.x and 1.x).
OO.o 2.4.3 by default installed and kept active spelling, thesaurus and hyphenation dictionaries for about 25 languages with automatic spell checking turned on (the dictionaries for most languages save three had to be deactivated, then the deactivated languages' dictionaries had to be commented out in a dictionary.lst file and dictionary files themselves moved to another (backup) directory/location and packed with 7zip for less storage footprint).
In OO.o 3.x, unnecessary dictionary modules can be easily disabled or removed in the extension manager (you may need administrative rights).
Off the top of my head, other optimizations across all OO.o versions in older hardware included turning off automatic spell checking, icons in menus, font previews at toolbars, help tips and keeping only one Java runtime in the computer (Java JRE used to and probably still does install updates of itself alongside its previous versions, not removing its older versions). There are also options to limit or disable animations.
I had the Ford Sedan compared to Windows in mind, Mr. Ellison.
And if I were Ballmer, I'd be able to remember how many legs and wheels a certain flying chair had, what was its colour and cover, texture, weight and exact throwing pitch and the precise flying trajectory from the moment of grasping the seat till it fell down and even the force of throw and fall. And numerous other minutiae.
I can't recall when was the last time I threw a chair myself (snicker). Well, it must have been many cycles ago anyway. Maybe more than ten.
Imagine some benefactor had given you a garage with all the tools and materials you could ever need. For free. Wouldn't that be cool? Think of the things you could do with it. That's Linux. Windows in comparison is a Ford sedan. You use it for travel.
-- And like any other car, it is occasionally susceptible to crashes, accidents and break-ins.
Well, I was thinking of a company or any other organisation, for which mirgating to FOSS would be too cost-prohibitive, for example, as this is possibly the first thing that the suits land their eyes on: * What are the effects of migration in terms of operations and how would the migration itself affect on-going operations, whether it slows the company down or even halts it? * Such questions could by answered by very effective planning -- Where have those people gone? The jobless pool should have a number of quality employees available... * What is the cost? Like what's the current [dreaded] total cost of ownership and what would it be in the future, post-migration? * Support contracts. What about these? Large companies want them and need them. * Are there any consultancies in the market that can faciliate migration from a number of complex proprietary deployments to FOSS deployments that deliver the same (or even better) functionality, but which is hopefully less complex and which also offers better value? What is the outgoing cost towards these? * What to do with existing hardware and software? -- No matter if the software is proprietary -- An organization has heavily invested in those and expects to gain a useful return from its investment(s), via training and such stuff. Anecdotal evidence: I've begun using the Start Menu > Recent Documents feature in Windows after about 13 years after being exposed to it. * Maybe there should be a step-by-step solution implemented to facilitate hybrid deployments to protect existing investments. * The results would be that large organisations (companies and such) are more likely to upgrade when they are about to upgrade after existing support contracts have run out. There should possibly a multiple-phase plan to weed product lock-in out of the whole structure.
I understand where you're coming from, but what this financial crisis has shown this far, is that clueless businesspeople have failed to see the long-term perspective (at all, or just with the topic of migrating to FOSS) and concentrate their attention on short-term effects, especially if they don't know whether they're going to stay in the same company or not -- with the rationale being that their concentration on shorter-term effects is motivated by their wish to keep their job, effectively creating a situation similar to living from one paycheck to the next.
So the above is my half-informed evaluation of the situation.
Oh well, IE4... Let's assume IE4 was running in Windows 98 and the computer had something like 64M of RAM (if you're lucky). Yes, IE4 will run rather quickly. But beware of Firefox 2 in such a computer. Firefox 1.0.x will run decently (beware of too new major versions of Flash plugins). K-Meleon 1.1.x, which has a fresh Gecko rendering engine on par with Firefox 2, will run decently (YMMV, depending on website and plugins).
My beef with IE4 was because it showed JavaScript errors too many times, which meant that Netscape 4.08 (up to 4.8), although inferior in rendering, was much more convenient and usable, with CSS switched off.
Moving up from IE 6 to 7 is one thing, but moving from a proprietary Intranet solution to something based on FOSS may prove to be tricky, especially if you are using proprietary databases to maintain the site. That is why moving to FOSS solutions is so much harder.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing about Hitler was, that the Germans failed at logistics.
Your argument is correct, that the Gerries went so far, that they overextended their supply lines, but they â" or Hitler, rather â" probably did not expect the land mass between Eastern Europe and Moscow to be a total swamp, with all their then-high-tech land-based gear built for traversable roads, and manpower equipped alike, continuously failing.
The success of having taken Easten Europe and a number of other territories so easily most likely contributed to Hitler's overconfidence.
But here's a problem: Had Germany instead taken all of Eastern Europe except Russia, and held the line at that, then it seems difficult to me (at least) to think of what could have happened next.
One option could have been destroying or hampering all of Russia's supply lines siege-style to keep the Soviet Union weak. This would potentially have bought Nazi Germany precious time to keep up the fight well beyond 1945.
Of course, the losses of some of the populations so far extant in Europe would have been even greater (the Jews, the gays, the Gypsies, and all anti-Nazi resistance). Wernher von Braun would probably have gotten off with a German nuclear bomb. And that would have changed the geopolitical equation completely.
Another possibility is this: Were Russia proper not invaded by the Germans, Russia (aka the Soviet Union) would have been able to gather enough strength to conquer back some of the territories it had invaded and annexed in 1940. Well, it did so anyway in 1944.
OTOH, Germany's mission profile would then have been one of defense, yet its supply lines would not have been worn thin across the vastness of Russia.
I suppose, if Germany did not invade France and other countries to its west, it would have been in a better shape economically. The fight, then, would have been viewed as one between Germany and the Soviet Union, and the West would have sat and looked on. Alliances would have been different. (Unless, of course, such a West would have decided to gang-up on Germany much later into the conflict.)
The externality, though, would have been conflicts of even greater intensity on the battlefronts between Germany and the USSR. The absolute losers would have been the poor countries and peoples stuck between the two.
In many ways, it was like that in real life in WWII, but the difference would have been in greater conflict intensity concentrated across territories of overall lesser land mass.
No, really :-)
(But I have too many flaws to be a good date in the first place, so.)
Nothing really does change. The president can set tone, inspire and lead (or fail utterly to do it).. but the president cannot simply dictate "build a wall" or "throw 'em all out."
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!!"
And all the forest planets that look far too similar to Canadian forests. Even the trees are the same shade of green.
(An episode of Stargate Universe was actually an exception.)
I'm just a huge fan.
I'm sure Star Trek (TOS) was also cancelled for "human drama" back in the day.
Oh, an SGU reference :D
I think the sequence allowed the viewers to see/hear that Destiny had at first passed ~50 galaxies, but since then it's been left vague as to the total number of galaxies that Destiny traversed.
SGU was the best contemporary space-based sci-fi tv series with the kind of science fiction that had never been depicted before, and suggesting the types of species that few people up until then had ever imagined. I think only Farscape and Futurama get near.
I remember recently reading a slashdot post jokingly suggesting about life existing in stars themselves, as if it couldn't be possible because the conditions are so averse to most other life.
And though it's somehow possible to create shale oil from oil shale, then it's impractical to then use shale oil to power a power plant, instead of burning oil shale in the first place. A filthy natural resource as it may be, it's one of the few reasonably safe energy-producing natural resources that we have an abundance of. The other energy-producing resource that can be mined is not an option.
We're also striving to use more wind and solar and hydroelectricity (hydro on a smaller scale).
The safety and crash standards are EU-wide and that area is belong to Euro NCAP, which I believe has quite a bit more stringent standards than in the U.S. Euro NCAP is backed by the European Commission and seven individual EU countries, and is generally a voluntary programme, but almost any car manufacturer worth their salt will build their cars towards compliance with standards set by Euro NCAP.
;-)
What drives up the weight and cost of electric vehicles in the U.S. might be something different. Of course, I assume you don't have regulatory capture there
An electric set-up that has been standard for home use is not very good for charging an electric vehicle, because recently here in Estonia one man's small barn (or shed) completely burned down along with his electric car parked there. Firemen suspected that the cables couldn't handle the amount of power that was constantly passing through when charging overnight and then something probably overheated and caught fire. Therefore, specialized home charging equipment must also be set up (not particularly cheap, AFAIK).
For those not in the know, the quick chargers that were built around Estonia will in those 30 minutes refill the batteries to approximately 80 to up to 90% of total capacity (90% is probably a stretch, but say 85%).
In 2012, the electricity was about second-or-third-cheapest in the European Union, but the country recently opened up its electricity market, after which Eesti Energia (the main electricity provider) delivered a hefty price hike to all those who did not in time choose a predetermined power plan or the energy exchange (bourse) package or another provider. And yes, the government did warn well in advance of all that. Nevertheless, customers — including those hit with the initial price hike — can change providers/plans once each month.
Estonia also offers a subsidy for the first 500 private buyers of any electric car, including those not from Mitsubishi (with which the CO2 trade was made). The subsidy covers either half the buying price of the car or up to 18,000 € of it (AFAIK). People, though, are worried about how long a car can hold a charge during winter (still down to –20C at night in March), and how reliable it is on rural roads where there might be no asphalt or just gravel roads, sometimes none at all.
Electricity in Estonia is generated from burning oil shale, which is the country's main non-renewable resource. A fair amount of that power is sold to Latvia. Estonia's own energy companies are also beginning to produce shale oil in larger quantities.
See former USSR countries where people embrace the free market by patiently waiting for the state to sort it out.
Putting this claim on North Koreans is off, because they have lots working against them.
The thing is that we (I'm from Estonia) didn't have hunger (as opposed to North Korea's March of Tribulation in mid-1990's) and there were many factors set in our favour to restore independence, including consensus throughout the nation and knowledge (we could see Finnish tv :) that change was for the better. Twenty years ago we Estonians did not patiently wait for the state to sort it out for us and our efforts paid off.
There are many things in North Korea that puts these people in a worse situation.
Very many people there (if not most) still think that things outside the country really are like they are being told by their rulers. Those that think things are better in other countries might only think that "food distribution is a little better there," meaning that "food distribution" in the U.S. works under the same principles as it does in North Korea.
People there are prohibited to do trade, neither are they allowed to leave their home areas without permission. Those caught are imprisoned and put into re-education camps with all their families, or shot. I can't tell which are the luckier ones in those cases. The common people don't have any widespread means of transport to move crowds. And even if they did, there would be problem with getting to fuel these vehicles. And I don't mean the military. Communications are really poor and electricity is off very often, if not most of the time. Lighting is off at night, except the lone beams shining at the gargantuan statue of the regime founder in the middle of some city. Television and radio sets are hardwired to only receive one channel. A 'Western' gadget, like an MP3 player or even a VCR costs the amount of six months' salary (if not more) on the black market.
wrt the former USSR, OTOH, there are countries that formerly were parts of it and which are still post-Soviet, with many of them being dictatorial (Turkmenistan and Belarus) and authoritarian. Turkmenistan even has (or had) is own cult of personality, which seems to have been drawn down somewhat.
Some of them do better (based on information off the top of my head). In terms of democracy in post-Soviet countries in Europe or closer to it, Georgia looks like the best of the bunch and can now be called formerly Soviet or even better for many years now, despite loss of territory. Maybe something that Estonia was like 20 or even 15 years ago, so they have lots of work cut out for them. Moldova is in transition (they have disputed territory), so is Georgia's landlocked neighbour Armenia, which has to tip-toe on a diplomatic and strategic tightrope between Georgia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. If Armenia really prospers in all counts (including democracy), then it could be like the Switzerland of the Caucasus (and Georgia, if its old territories reunite with it, like the Benelux). Ukraine somehow wobbles in these countries' direction, and is so a hit and miss, depending on who is at the top there, because half the country leans to the West and the other to the East (Russia), but it's not exactly like the Russia we have known for the last decade. Belarus is one of the worst; really the last dictatorship in Europe.
But what can you do? People are starving.
Which is why they are not in any position to protest. At least 10% of all people snitch, grass, and rat on one another and on the other 90% for a living. The population is also far too dispersed (which was the main reason for conclusions in a recent study about why is there not much chance for North Koreans to protest and gather in large amounts).
The Libyan uprising began with protests about growing prices for food and water, and the Arab Spring began because a young man in Tunisia wasn't allowed to trade just to
Anything pronounceable in English would be great. They could have chosen a compromise like "LiberOffice", or anything. But the name LibreOffice could only have been chosen by people with absolute zero marketing experience.
Libero (see boldface) is a brand of diapers in the Nordic region (Scandinavia and nearby countries).
I think the term reverted back to "French fries" (after 2008, methinks), or just the generic "fries" (to avoid showing party affiliation).
I am of opinion that it's okay to use the word freedom, but then it must be used in such a way that it won't sound clunky. 'OfficeLibre' is my favorite and I know there have been earlier user propositions to put that as the actual name of the split project.
Probably a timely rebranding move to OfficeLibre ahead of official iOS and Android (and I hope WebOS) readiness, consequently with a nice launch splash would allow users to become more comfortable with the new (better) name than the kludge that I still refuse to install.
...is better, wittier, and already a dedicated convert.
^ Which is what it should be.
See subj.
> Reducing suicide rate by two-thirds is a pretty decent accomplishment.
The rate is reduced with suicide nets, while getting poisoned with n-hexane at work, working at $1.18/hour (which is the highest pay bracket). These people are still attempting suicides. Care to read more?
Steve Jobs is dead, but let us remember all the Chinese workers who commited suicide for not earning a living wage, having overall bad working conditions while making Apple products, and getting killed in a factory explosion. See the Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour website for more information.
OTOH, I am somehow sure that people in the UK donate computers to those who can't afford anything new; I've found two sites which do just that:
www.donateapc.org.uk
itforcharities.co.uk
For some reason, the schemes there are more of a collective nature, where there are charities and like where one must go to and some charities only concentrate on being charitable outside UK/EU.
I grant you that OO.o may not be as fast performance-wise as MSOffice 2007/2010 when opening and handling files, but OpenOffice.org 3.x is a much better proposition thatn OO.o 2.x, where language dictionaries can be installed now as extensions, unlike in earlier major versions (2.x and 1.x).
OO.o 2.4.3 by default installed and kept active spelling, thesaurus and hyphenation dictionaries for about 25 languages with automatic spell checking turned on (the dictionaries for most languages save three had to be deactivated, then the deactivated languages' dictionaries had to be commented out in a dictionary.lst file and dictionary files themselves moved to another (backup) directory/location and packed with 7zip for less storage footprint).
In OO.o 3.x, unnecessary dictionary modules can be easily disabled or removed in the extension manager (you may need administrative rights).
Off the top of my head, other optimizations across all OO.o versions in older hardware included turning off automatic spell checking, icons in menus, font previews at toolbars, help tips and keeping only one Java runtime in the computer (Java JRE used to and probably still does install updates of itself alongside its previous versions, not removing its older versions). There are also options to limit or disable animations.
(well, gtg)
And if I were Ballmer, I'd be able to remember how many legs and wheels a certain flying chair had, what was its colour and cover, texture, weight and exact throwing pitch and the precise flying trajectory from the moment of grasping the seat till it fell down and even the force of throw and fall. And numerous other minutiae.
I can't recall when was the last time I threw a chair myself (snicker). Well, it must have been many cycles ago anyway. Maybe more than ten.
Imagine some benefactor had given you a garage with all the tools and materials you could ever need. For free. Wouldn't that be cool? Think of the things you could do with it. That's Linux. Windows in comparison is a Ford sedan. You use it for travel.
-- And like any other car, it is occasionally susceptible to crashes, accidents and break-ins.
List is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-_and_WebKit-based_browsers
Nothing that works in Windows, though...
Well, I was thinking of a company or any other organisation, for which mirgating to FOSS would be too cost-prohibitive, for example, as this is possibly the first thing that the suits land their eyes on:
* What are the effects of migration in terms of operations and how would the migration itself affect on-going operations, whether it slows the company down or even halts it?
* Such questions could by answered by very effective planning -- Where have those people gone? The jobless pool should have a number of quality employees available...
* What is the cost? Like what's the current [dreaded] total cost of ownership and what would it be in the future, post-migration?
* Support contracts. What about these? Large companies want them and need them.
* Are there any consultancies in the market that can faciliate migration from a number of complex proprietary deployments to FOSS deployments that deliver the same (or even better) functionality, but which is hopefully less complex and which also offers better value? What is the outgoing cost towards these?
* What to do with existing hardware and software? -- No matter if the software is proprietary -- An organization has heavily invested in those and expects to gain a useful return from its investment(s), via training and such stuff. Anecdotal evidence: I've begun using the Start Menu > Recent Documents feature in Windows after about 13 years after being exposed to it.
* Maybe there should be a step-by-step solution implemented to facilitate hybrid deployments to protect existing investments.
* The results would be that large organisations (companies and such) are more likely to upgrade when they are about to upgrade after existing support contracts have run out. There should possibly a multiple-phase plan to weed product lock-in out of the whole structure.
I understand where you're coming from, but what this financial crisis has shown this far, is that clueless businesspeople have failed to see the long-term perspective (at all, or just with the topic of migrating to FOSS) and concentrate their attention on short-term effects, especially if they don't know whether they're going to stay in the same company or not -- with the rationale being that their concentration on shorter-term effects is motivated by their wish to keep their job, effectively creating a situation similar to living from one paycheck to the next.
So the above is my half-informed evaluation of the situation.
Oh well, IE4... Let's assume IE4 was running in Windows 98 and the computer had something like 64M of RAM (if you're lucky). Yes, IE4 will run rather quickly. But beware of Firefox 2 in such a computer. Firefox 1.0.x will run decently (beware of too new major versions of Flash plugins). K-Meleon 1.1.x, which has a fresh Gecko rendering engine on par with Firefox 2, will run decently (YMMV, depending on website and plugins).
My beef with IE4 was because it showed JavaScript errors too many times, which meant that Netscape 4.08 (up to 4.8), although inferior in rendering, was much more convenient and usable, with CSS switched off.
Moving up from IE 6 to 7 is one thing, but moving from a proprietary Intranet solution to something based on FOSS may prove to be tricky, especially if you are using proprietary databases to maintain the site. That is why moving to FOSS solutions is so much harder.