Just google "SCO's not dead yet" and you'll see why, in spite of the fact that SCO is not a functioning company anymore, that doesn't stop its lawyers (with leftover Microsoft money) from still popping up and clogging the court system.
I figure the only way to truly end SCO is to bury it at a crossroads.
As for Florian, what was considered "FOSS trolling" turned out to be true. Yet, when the "screeching sycophants" are right, it's still about PJ. Go figure.
Full disclosure: I am anti software patent, anti corporation, and anti government. Am I still a shill?
"Facebook, pretending to care about privacy and the wishes of users since 2004."
"Facebook, pissing on truth since 2004."
I closed my (admittedly full of fake info...) account over 3 months ago, and I haven't missed it. I figured at some point they'd get around to seeing my profile was full of superbly bogus info (I mean, I went to Al Sharpton College Prep in New York.)
I don't think there's a "Bob's House of Pez" in Ohio either. (If there is, how 'bout that!) heh.
Ironically, some of the idiocy coming from California sounds remarkably like the rhetoric and propaganda from "dear leader"... couple that with the fact that they can't do anything right in California either... well, we're seeing distinct parallels.
The only thing missing in NK is a leader who actually believed he was abducted by aliens...
While you are correct with regards to supporting OSes in perpetuity, Microsoft has actually created an atmosphere of "perpetuity" to their OSes since cutting the cord with the command line all those many years ago. They wanted in the embedded device market... so they made XP work on o-scopes, etc. Well, those OSes need to last much longer than your grandma's computer OS, and Microsoft is increasingly aware that if they're not going to support their OS, someone will have an OS ready that will... and large, monolithic customers (the DoD for one) do not simply update their OS when Microsoft tells them to.
(Open Source has created much more secure and wonderful OSes than Microsoft could dream of creating, but that's for another post... and many folks did it while holding down a full time job.) They did it without forcing or requiring things to exist so they could invent a market, and in spite of Windows' sales numbers, there are many more Linux OSes run by the masses than ever before.... it's not your father's geek OS...:) Windows could cement their dominance by not dropping their OSes off the radar so quickly, but their hubris with regards to "the desktop" has shown many imperfections in the last few years... imperfections that are filled by other companies and their products.
Microsoft's OSes are manufactured to be compatible with each other. Windows 7 is just a better handled bug-fixed Windows Vista. For the most part, like Apple, Microsoft "obsoletes" their OSes artificially. The move to the NT-based kernel has solidified Microsoft's position with a real OS (anything before NT was a toy OS...), however with that comes the inevitable support dilemma that either helps Microsoft sell more OSes and keeps the package "fresh" so everyone will want the new OS with feature X, or it helps Microsoft maintain its existing base by supporting the OS so it won't be ditched in favor of the more plausible alternatives (more plausible and useable alternatives than we've seen in the history of computing I might add.)
While I agree that manpower is something Microsoft must contend with in their OS roadmap, I do not believe they are "hurting" by supporting two or three versions of their OS for at least bug fixes and the odd security patch. I'd be more inclined to believe that it is a substantial burden if Windows were a substantial rewrite each release... with the XP to Vista transition, far less of the OS was rewritten after many features promised were pulled (and still haven't seen the light of day... like WinFS, etc.)... but that is indeed a bigger difference than Vista to 7. But if they support Vista, they won't make any money peddling 7 (and soon to be 8...) That's not to say XP and Vista are twins... that's just to say that the underlying codebase (stuff that would benefit from bugfixes and security patches) is not as different as the boys at Redmond would have us believe.
My personal feeling is security and bugfixes shouldn't be something that gets dropped because of manpower shortages... after all bugfixes and security patches are repairs to something you already sold an unsuspecting public. Saying "well, buy 7 and that'll be fixed" is purely marketing... there is no technical reason to abandon an OS after a short time... Apple's just as guilty... requiring Lion for features that would work find for Snow Leopard. Apple's got the same problem Microsoft had with XP... it's good enough for most people. There's a realistic limit to support for an OS version, as we even see that in Linux, but Microsoft and Apple seem to be falling into the revenue grab trap... and the "sheeple" are not happy about it as they once were... even with smaller investments (with the OS costing more than most PCs that run it), people aren't keen on shelling out yet another $200 for an OS upgrade that just changes the second digit when you do "Ver" at the command line.
I don't believe the failure of Vista has caused Microsoft to "speed up" their shutdown cycle... I believe their increasing irrelevance in a changing market is pushing them to devote more and more resources to things they traditionally would've had "sewn up" in the bad old days of pre-convicted Microsoft.
Not only did he destroy hope (and change), but he expanded on many of the policies started after 9/11 by the Bush Administration. Drone attacks have skyrocketed (and Obama has the dubious honor of blowing up an American citizen with a drone attack... good resume fodder I guess), the PATRIOT Act was renewed (and Obama even called for its renewal, even though he campaigned against it and executive branch power grabs...)
So, what we've learned, (or if you watch FOX or MSNBC, haven't learned) is that it doesn't matter what party you elect... they both want to take your liberty away bit by bit. Donkey or elephant, it doesn't matter. What matters is we're still stupid enough (in the aggregate) to believe that there are differences between the parties.... I don't know how bad it has to get before people realize it.. but I hope it's not too far gone when we finally do wake up.
It was Fidonet for some of us who didn't have access to any BSD machines....Before college, I sent email through fidonet to my friends in far away places like Alaska and Texas. (I lived in Florida)... after I got into the CompSci degree at college, I experimented with the internet before the WWW was even born... archie, gopher, etc. Printing out the entire transcript of the radio version of Monty Python's Holy Grail... (on 132 column paper... heh.) Those were the days. Man, those were the days.
I couldn't afford AOL/Prodigy or that godawful aberration that was Compuserv. Thank goodness towards the end of my college years, the web was coming online (Ahhh NCSA Mosaic), and through slip/slurp we were able to be on the internet graphically (as many people take for granted) and browse the web for the 3 or 4 webpages that existed back then.:) I seem to remember, or maybe I'm remembering this wrong, that there was a camera attached to a computer pointed at a coffee pot in Berkeley that updated the GIF every 5 minutes or so... maybe that was later in the adolescence of the www. I was pretty much addicted to usenet and IRC back then anyway... having channel wars and flame-fests all within the comfort of my VT102 terminal window (using screen on HPUX....) heh.
TRADEWARS!!! God I loved that game... You forgot Solar Realms Elite, the Pit, and Risk... door games on BBSes were the bomb for no-car, no-girlfriend, no-decent-job teenagers with C-64's:)
Of course if I hadn't spent all that money on my Anchor Automation 1200baud modem, I'd probably have had a car.:) Or access to one. By the time I could afford a car and gasoline too, I was rummaging through the seat cushions of mom and Dad's car for coinage so I could either play some Gauntlet at the Putt-Putt or get a regular taco and a cup of Ice at Taco Smell.:)
Shit, my three buds and I (perfect for a tradewars corporation "Rape and Pillage Corp"!!!) Me (goattee), Chad (The Mountain of Flesh), Anthony (Mucus) and Mike (who couldn't think of a good nickname for himself because he was a pussy...) would pitch in and eat cheap tacos or pizza while trying to maximize our evil standing in three or four door games.:) I lost touch with them all when I moved out west, and to this day, I can still remember the 3x5 card ring binder we used to keep track of trade routes in our various games of Tradewars. We'd also store Dungeon Master spell combinations on the backs of the cards we put our tradewars info on... (Zo Kath Ra!):)
Ahhhhhhhh memories.:) Kids today don't know what fun that was... and here I am sounding like my dad....heheh.
I guess I am a social liberal but a fiscal conservative... I believe in a free market (if we could ever get one) and I also believe strongly in personal liberty... that is paramount. Not some religious dogma. If someone follows that dogma, as I know many do, that's fine. It just doesn't apply to my personal liberty (I am what could be described as a "rational Christian" who knows the Bible is allegory and life-lessons... meant to teach and get us closer to living properly with our fellow man... with a bunch of instructions for a group of people I don't belong to.... because I love bacon, dammit!) I agree the rhetoric is irresponsible, but I believe quite strongly in the ability to be irresponsible... things get hairy, and sticky when we decide that certain things cause others... which is what the Arizona law is attempting to glue together by attaching legitimate harassment by phone or letter to internet fuckwads. It shows one of two things. Either Arizona lawmakers are idiots and don't understand the Internet, or they are meddling busybodies with a boner for telling everyone else what to do (the "front row pew" syndrome of the old days...) Either way, Arizona's got to grow a pair and send this to the Supreme Court or every state full of assholes who think they know better than we do how to run our lives get the idea that "it's for the best!" or "It's for your own good...." (or the ever popular... "think of the children!")
I do not believe the government was or is the answer to anything but what the Constitution say it is... on that point I guess most people differ with me (who identify themselves as fiscal conservatives I mean)... Because I don't believe in the war on drugs, and I feel that our wars are a waste of money. Protect our shores and let the rest of the world do its thing (I also think the UN should get the hell out of New York, since they don't do anything but fuck up parking and cost us real estate...) It was a social experiment that passed its usefulness.:)
I guess you could call me a libertarian wacko... or "arch-libertarian". I realize some of my beliefs cannot gain traction because of the over-abundance of idiots in the country, but I will pragmatically yield some of my more anarchistic tendencies if people will also agree that the system we have had since the New Deal is not working.... (actually I go back to the end of the Civil War to find how States Rights have been eroded... not because I loved Slavery, but because I don't believe the Federal government should have nearly the power it does today.)
If only more lefty wackos and libertarian wackos would realize we're almost on the same team.:) We just need to stop the social engineering and let good ol' individuality reign for a while... we've been doing it wrong for so long, it might shock us how much it'd work itself out... after the shock of having to actually take personal responsibility and control for one's life wears off, I mean.:)
I guessed right... you're not fooled by the talking heads on either side.:) I don't know if that makes me psychic, but if it does, that opens a business opportunity in the aftermath of the demise of Dionne Warwick's Psychic Friends Network....:)
If you're dumb enough to take the term "reload" as a literal command to go shoot someone, you've got more problems than political affiliation. Time and again we've seen art blamed for this or that atrocity (remember Columbine?) and each and every time it's been upheld that personal responsibility rather than stupid sheep-think is the litmus test for these sorts of things... (well almost every time.)
I don't suspect you watch much Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Mathews, and the like... because their rhetoric is just as silly as "reload"... and often times bordering on the ludicrous to even think about it... I hold both sides to the same standard. I am not a moderate, but I'm not delusional into believing we're in a two-party system anymore. It's a corporatist vision for our country, and donkey or elephant will continue to mold that dream until we're all under someone's iron boot.
Splitting them up based on "reload" or whatever else might offend you is pointless and shows you buy into the ruse... I suspect you're better equipped than that, though.
MS and IBM were partners in the beginning... but Bill Gates got his nickers in a twist and pulled out of OS/2, taking what was to become NT with him (or at least the start of it.)
OS/2 was supposed to be the successor of Win 3.x, but for many reasons (you can google yourself)... it never happened. Ironically, OS/2 got better when Microsoft left the table.:)
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act benefits no one, and it really improves the lot of insurance conglomerates if you read the fine print. Not to mention the myriad of exemptions to requirements passed out to corporations that the Obama administration gave out like free passes to the Tilt-A-Whirl.
I wonder where it will all end? It depends on the SCOTUS ruling about making people buy insurance. (Which I find a gross overstepping of Interstate Commerce powers..)
Dodd-Frank? The Congress didn't want to hammer out the details of regulation, so they left it up to the 20 or so regulatory agencies built expressly from Dodd-Frank. You can see it may have hindered corporations a little, but it also burdened the rest of us with more and more expenses to fix a problem that would've been simple to fix had the current regulatory system done its job rather than ignoring/colluding with the perpetrators.... And Dodd-Frank is still far from being "in practice" because the regulatory agencies are having problems ironing out the "details.":) Go figure. A "responsible" law still mired in the buck-passing of Washington....
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as a whole was a disaster, throwing money away and getting no (or little) results. Even the CBO can't nail down the job numbers supposedly "created" by that act. I do not know about the HITECH Act portion of it, but in the aggregate, the morons in Washington again screwed us over for corporations and lobbyists...
That sounds plausible... a hot DVD drive spinning up with one end of the system sealed off can cook just about anything.:)
I still believe that the revisionist history from Redmond is deflecting the strange idea that the 360 was poorly designed and quite a few "features" weren't always there, but added after hearing other press releases:)
I mean, the Slim looks like the console Microsoft SHOULD have released in 2005. But then again, we'll never truly know the cause, because knowing the cause means being able to blame... and Microsoft wants to skip that little detail, hoping everyone has forgotten in time for the XBox720's launch...:)
They thought it would be better to have memory cards (a la PS2), but during the development cycle (when is unknown I suppose), they added one as a "memory card" (like the original XBox) and put it on the end of the unit... covering up much needed vent holes. I read it somewhere online (and I can't seem to find it...)
This comes from a recounting of the days before launch by a Microsoft employee. Take it with a grain of salt, but it lends credence to the ventilation problem the original 360's had (and the fact that you could buy an "arcade" version without an HDD... heck, you can even buy one now without a HDD.) I imagine the hard drive's "announcement" was in response to the PS3 including one...
Take it with a grain of salt, because it is rumor... and knowing Microsoft, it'll never see the light of day (the truth I mean.) Because that would be admitting they released a flawed design onto the public... (which they did, but they won't admit it.) The Slims all have nice ventilation on top and bottom, plus the HDD doesn't obscure an entire side of the unit...
I always heard it was the last-minute addition of the HDD unit destroying the airflow on the system slowly (or quickly depending upon who you asked) cooking the GPU and melting it off the mobo.
Microsoft's last minute addition of the HDD at the top of the unit did muck with the airflow, and I think they made a "command" decision to release it flawed (knowing it was flawed) rather than not be "first" this generation. It cost them money for sure, but in my case, it cost a ton of goodwill... I will not be an early adopter of another Microsoft console. And I'm sure I'm not alone...
What you call market forces, I call collusion. Because put simply, the price rises quickly to changes in the 'market', but fall _very_ slowly. And since there are very few oil companies in general that are players in the market, all it takes is a few agreements over a game of golf and all prices are the same, no matter who you buy from. I don't know where you buy gasoline, but in my neck of the woods, the prices don't vary by more than a few cents a gallon over hundreds of miles of freeway and back roads. Big Exxon/Mobil and BP (etc.) are all in it for the cash of course, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they (and the government through its general ineptitude) have created a market where the way to success is simply offering the product for sale. All the oil companies are slashing production to prevent a drop in prices, while at the same time manipulating the various stages of the process. (Irrespective of taxes levied of course.) What we see is just 12 years ago, oil was $25/barrel. (We all know about the huge increase in price back in 06 and 08.) In 2009, it settled to $50/barrel (on average). Yet the price of gasoline hasn't reflected that drop (going downward) as quickly as it did going up in 2006 or so when oil was flirting at $70/barrel, up to 2008 where it hit an historic high of over $140/barrel. As prices of oil go up, the price of gasoline reflects a very high spike compared to the cost of the barrel of oil (which for every gallon of gasoline was $.55 of the price in 2009.) How do we explain the rise of gas prices when demand shrunk almost 5.5% in 2008-2009 (in the US alone... not counting everywhere else)? Easy... not a complex marketplace, but collusion. Demand worldwide didn't outstrip the western world's reduction of consumption during the last recession. In fact, when there was a "glut" of gasoline, companies simply turned off the spigot and let supply shrink drastically. Yes, that is one way to keep prices up, but if, as you say, there's a complex market, why weren't there some oil companies willing to broaden market share by selling volume rather than markup? (Which would force those companies still restricting supply to keep prices high into a dilemma of re-up production or suffer market share loss and contraction of their sphere of influence...) If you plot the cost of crude oil per barrel with the cost of a gallon of gas over the last 20 years, you'll see that when oil prices go up prices rise sharply for gasoline, but when oil prices drop ($140 to $50 is quite a drop), gas prices stay relatively constant. If it were simply the market, it would come down more even as inelastic as gas demand is. Because if the marketplace was working, companies would be first to drop prices to gain market share and goodwill, forcing those unwilling to drop prices into a pricing war. That never happens anymore. It is a closed system, in spite of the international oil market, or perhaps because of it.
Ever notice that in the last 30 years or so "price wars" at the pump have gone by the wayside? Most companies, disparate as they are, have prices within $.05 of each other, with one or two stations at $.10 or so. There are none who take $.50 a gallon off or $1 off their competitors anymore... because collusion and vertical monopolies have created a market where companies get rich simply by selling. Of course selling "too much" will not get you invited to the oligarchy christmas party...
Copyright infringement is not theft. Please stop spreading that bullshit. It's 2012. However, you are ABSOLUTELY correct in saying that punishment of the *AA's requires people to stop buying. (Or buying used... if one MUST have a hobby.)
You've hit the nail on the head (so to speak) with respect to vertical monopolies. While there isn't a giant Standard Oil anymore, the fact that the oil companies control the entire lifecycle (in one way or another) from crude to finished product at the pump shows that we can have the weird market fluctuations you described. (Going quickly up, but taking its sweet time to go down in price.) The fact that gasoline isn't something that has very elastic demand because of the way it is used in every aspect of our economy lends us to the conclusion that vertical monopolies can leverage their monopoly status to keep prices artificially high in the face of real change in the marketplace.
It is funny that our refining capacity never meets the aggregate amount of oil we are pulling out of the ground. (It's more profitable to close the refineries rather than let price go down.)
We've seen the oil companies push prices up to a point, hear the outcry, then lower prices back down slowly so the average person with a busy life doesn't notice that gasoline spiked at $4/gallon up from $2.50. But they never seem to get back to $2.50... the price just stays up where it was, slightly below the heartburn level that caused the reduction in the first place.:)
When you have an item that most people depend upon (and businesses too), you can play fast and loose with the market and not fear losing customers. (I wish the electric car would put a damper on this practice, but I'm not holding my breath.)
Hell, if MS Office would have good compatibility between its own versions, I'd be happy at work.:) LibreOffice is a great alternative to the bloat, cruft, and asinine 'features' of MS Office. It's not just because it's free, either. It's because it works and works well. The only difference is the big logo and "comfort" feeling bean-counters get with MS Office (I'm guessing...)
There's a reason most people stick with a previous version of Office for so long... it's because the more recent version breaks things and adds features no one requested. That's not to say MS Office doesn't have its place in the computer canon... it's just that people seem to overlook the huge flaws in Microsoft's own compatibility.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups. And never underestimate the size of the coffers controlled by the *AA's. Couple large volumes of cash with large volumes of malignant stupidity and you've got a recipe for an anal rape of gargantuan proportions. And since the *AA's now don't have to try to legislate this, you won't get any lube.
My hunch is lots more VPN traffic, and lots more encryption for those who want to infringe. It makes me laugh when I think of all the trouble these idiots go to in order to stop something that costs them nothing in terms of losses, but immeasurable amounts of goodwill. I wonder if this new "system" will be the thing that makes Joe Sixpack sit up and say "wait, those nerds were right! I'm getting screwed here!":) Here's to hoping the Great Unwashed have a threshold of tolerance.... and I just wonder if this (like SOPA/PIPA) is the tipping point.
For those of us who don't consume their product any longer (unless it's used DVDs... I had to get Young Frankenstein on DVD... heh.), there is always the chuckles associated with fanatical devotion to a business model that's more outdated than buggy whips, wagon wheels, and 78rpm records combined.
I think we can safely say that this generation is going to be better towards the end. As the developers get more familiar with the hardware, we will see greater and greater games. Provided, of course, they don't just abandon it in preparation for the next next gen.:) Just like the good old days of the C64, we'll see much better work towards the end because the developers become extremely familiar with the ins and outs of the system.
And your experience with the 360 is definitely the exception, not the rule. My PS3 (20GB, upgraded to 500GB) has been the most rock solid console I've ever owned. Not only does it handle 6 hours straight playing Fallout 3, but it can handle 3 Blu-Ray movies in a row and not even hiccup (probably more, but I have to sleep sometime.) I can't say that about my 360, but I do enjoy playing my 360 slim (which they should've release YEARS ago, instead of cycling the old RRoD repaired 360s through the system...) It was a defective design, and Microsoft all but admitted it with their extending of the warranty, etc. (And the RRoD turning into an E74 error in subsequent board designs.) The decision to release a half-baked machine just to be first this generation was a gamble for Microsoft. They may have escaped the bulk of the problems with warranty repairs, etc, but they burned through a TON of good will doing so. We will only know if it was worth it when their next console comes out. (Remember the DVD on the original XBox was pretty shitty, prompting the "dirty disc" error fiasco.) So by the time they make a 720, I hope to hell they understand they cannot afford to release another 360-like hardware aberration.:)
I'm extremely happy for you that your launch 360 has still survived. There are very few people (besides the fanboys lying their asses off) who can say that.:)
Someone pissed in your post toasties, didn't they? Civil disobedience to the application of increasingly draconian and oppressive regulations, bought and paid for by the corporate cronyism that completely bastardizes the free market into a conglomerate oligarchy bent on making you pay for everything it deems "theft" of intellectual property is what liberty is all about. ("Intellectual property" is an oxymoron in the first place. No founding father envisioned copyright to be a property right.) Shackle that with perpetual copyright (the Constitution says: "for a limited time") and you have a system where bullies and copyright holders (not creators) have stifled the innovation and progress that the Founders envisioned copyright to foster. No one is putting back into the Public Domain (companies like Disney owe their entire existence to the Public Domain...) and everyone thinks "copyright guarantees revenue". Copyright never was meant to guarantee revenue. The copyright system is about controlling how your work is used and distributed, not how much you can make off it. (I'm not the only one who says this, and it's not a "radical" idea considering what Jefferson and Adams said about copyright in the first place.)
But if it makes you feel better, continue to think of the "free market" as a scary place, and let the government lube your ass before it fucks you, because that's what they're doing. They are keeping their donors in bed with them while you and I are stuck on the street looking at them swimming in cash. Swimming in cash not because they earned it on the free market with good ideas/products and great market stewardship, but swimming in cash because they rob the People of their money and claim it's "for the best" or "you're an evil pirate thief!" The People need representation (the EFF helps), and if civil disobedience (copyright infringement is a civil matter) fosters change... let's do it. If it pisses off Sony, Disney, CBS, Fox, and so forth in the process... Well, I'm in. Fuck 'em. And fuck everyone who still thinks "copyright is stealing." It's not.
So yes, blah blah blah, enjoy your corporate overlords backed by purchased laws and a court system willing to dismantle your rights enumerated in the Constitution because you're just a person... you don't matter anymore. Change indeed.
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Just google "SCO's not dead yet" and you'll see why, in spite of the fact that SCO is not a functioning company anymore, that doesn't stop its lawyers (with leftover Microsoft money) from still popping up and clogging the court system.
I figure the only way to truly end SCO is to bury it at a crossroads.
As for Florian, what was considered "FOSS trolling" turned out to be true. Yet, when the "screeching sycophants" are right, it's still about PJ. Go figure.
Full disclosure: I am anti software patent, anti corporation, and anti government. Am I still a shill?
I suppose a better slogan would be:
"Facebook, pretending to care about privacy and the wishes of users since 2004."
"Facebook, pissing on truth since 2004."
I closed my (admittedly full of fake info...) account over 3 months ago, and I haven't missed it. I figured at some point they'd get around to seeing my profile was full of superbly bogus info (I mean, I went to Al Sharpton College Prep in New York.)
I don't think there's a "Bob's House of Pez" in Ohio either. (If there is, how 'bout that!) heh.
Ironically, some of the idiocy coming from California sounds remarkably like the rhetoric and propaganda from "dear leader"... couple that with the fact that they can't do anything right in California either... well, we're seeing distinct parallels.
The only thing missing in NK is a leader who actually believed he was abducted by aliens...
While you are correct with regards to supporting OSes in perpetuity, Microsoft has actually created an atmosphere of "perpetuity" to their OSes since cutting the cord with the command line all those many years ago. They wanted in the embedded device market... so they made XP work on o-scopes, etc. Well, those OSes need to last much longer than your grandma's computer OS, and Microsoft is increasingly aware that if they're not going to support their OS, someone will have an OS ready that will... and large, monolithic customers (the DoD for one) do not simply update their OS when Microsoft tells them to.
(Open Source has created much more secure and wonderful OSes than Microsoft could dream of creating, but that's for another post... and many folks did it while holding down a full time job.) They did it without forcing or requiring things to exist so they could invent a market, and in spite of Windows' sales numbers, there are many more Linux OSes run by the masses than ever before.... it's not your father's geek OS... :) Windows could cement their dominance by not dropping their OSes off the radar so quickly, but their hubris with regards to "the desktop" has shown many imperfections in the last few years... imperfections that are filled by other companies and their products.
Microsoft's OSes are manufactured to be compatible with each other. Windows 7 is just a better handled bug-fixed Windows Vista. For the most part, like Apple, Microsoft "obsoletes" their OSes artificially. The move to the NT-based kernel has solidified Microsoft's position with a real OS (anything before NT was a toy OS...), however with that comes the inevitable support dilemma that either helps Microsoft sell more OSes and keeps the package "fresh" so everyone will want the new OS with feature X, or it helps Microsoft maintain its existing base by supporting the OS so it won't be ditched in favor of the more plausible alternatives (more plausible and useable alternatives than we've seen in the history of computing I might add.)
While I agree that manpower is something Microsoft must contend with in their OS roadmap, I do not believe they are "hurting" by supporting two or three versions of their OS for at least bug fixes and the odd security patch. I'd be more inclined to believe that it is a substantial burden if Windows were a substantial rewrite each release... with the XP to Vista transition, far less of the OS was rewritten after many features promised were pulled (and still haven't seen the light of day... like WinFS, etc.)... but that is indeed a bigger difference than Vista to 7. But if they support Vista, they won't make any money peddling 7 (and soon to be 8...) That's not to say XP and Vista are twins... that's just to say that the underlying codebase (stuff that would benefit from bugfixes and security patches) is not as different as the boys at Redmond would have us believe.
My personal feeling is security and bugfixes shouldn't be something that gets dropped because of manpower shortages... after all bugfixes and security patches are repairs to something you already sold an unsuspecting public. Saying "well, buy 7 and that'll be fixed" is purely marketing... there is no technical reason to abandon an OS after a short time... Apple's just as guilty... requiring Lion for features that would work find for Snow Leopard. Apple's got the same problem Microsoft had with XP... it's good enough for most people. There's a realistic limit to support for an OS version, as we even see that in Linux, but Microsoft and Apple seem to be falling into the revenue grab trap... and the "sheeple" are not happy about it as they once were... even with smaller investments (with the OS costing more than most PCs that run it), people aren't keen on shelling out yet another $200 for an OS upgrade that just changes the second digit when you do "Ver" at the command line.
I don't believe the failure of Vista has caused Microsoft to "speed up" their shutdown cycle... I believe their increasing irrelevance in a changing market is pushing them to devote more and more resources to things they traditionally would've had "sewn up" in the bad old days of pre-convicted Microsoft.
Not only did he destroy hope (and change), but he expanded on many of the policies started after 9/11 by the Bush Administration. Drone attacks have skyrocketed (and Obama has the dubious honor of blowing up an American citizen with a drone attack... good resume fodder I guess), the PATRIOT Act was renewed (and Obama even called for its renewal, even though he campaigned against it and executive branch power grabs...)
So, what we've learned, (or if you watch FOX or MSNBC, haven't learned) is that it doesn't matter what party you elect... they both want to take your liberty away bit by bit. Donkey or elephant, it doesn't matter. What matters is we're still stupid enough (in the aggregate) to believe that there are differences between the parties.... I don't know how bad it has to get before people realize it.. but I hope it's not too far gone when we finally do wake up.
It was Fidonet for some of us who didn't have access to any BSD machines....Before college, I sent email through fidonet to my friends in far away places like Alaska and Texas. (I lived in Florida)... after I got into the CompSci degree at college, I experimented with the internet before the WWW was even born... archie, gopher, etc. Printing out the entire transcript of the radio version of Monty Python's Holy Grail... (on 132 column paper... heh.) Those were the days. Man, those were the days.
I couldn't afford AOL/Prodigy or that godawful aberration that was Compuserv. Thank goodness towards the end of my college years, the web was coming online (Ahhh NCSA Mosaic), and through slip/slurp we were able to be on the internet graphically (as many people take for granted) and browse the web for the 3 or 4 webpages that existed back then. :) I seem to remember, or maybe I'm remembering this wrong, that there was a camera attached to a computer pointed at a coffee pot in Berkeley that updated the GIF every 5 minutes or so... maybe that was later in the adolescence of the www. I was pretty much addicted to usenet and IRC back then anyway... having channel wars and flame-fests all within the comfort of my VT102 terminal window (using screen on HPUX....) heh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet
TRADEWARS!!! God I loved that game... You forgot Solar Realms Elite, the Pit, and Risk... door games on BBSes were the bomb for no-car, no-girlfriend, no-decent-job teenagers with C-64's :)
Of course if I hadn't spent all that money on my Anchor Automation 1200baud modem, I'd probably have had a car. :) Or access to one. By the time I could afford a car and gasoline too, I was rummaging through the seat cushions of mom and Dad's car for coinage so I could either play some Gauntlet at the Putt-Putt or get a regular taco and a cup of Ice at Taco Smell. :)
Shit, my three buds and I (perfect for a tradewars corporation "Rape and Pillage Corp"!!!) Me (goattee), Chad (The Mountain of Flesh), Anthony (Mucus) and Mike (who couldn't think of a good nickname for himself because he was a pussy...) would pitch in and eat cheap tacos or pizza while trying to maximize our evil standing in three or four door games. :) I lost touch with them all when I moved out west, and to this day, I can still remember the 3x5 card ring binder we used to keep track of trade routes in our various games of Tradewars. We'd also store Dungeon Master spell combinations on the backs of the cards we put our tradewars info on... (Zo Kath Ra!) :)
Ahhhhhhhh memories. :) Kids today don't know what fun that was... and here I am sounding like my dad... .heheh.
I guess I am a social liberal but a fiscal conservative... I believe in a free market (if we could ever get one) and I also believe strongly in personal liberty... that is paramount. Not some religious dogma. If someone follows that dogma, as I know many do, that's fine. It just doesn't apply to my personal liberty (I am what could be described as a "rational Christian" who knows the Bible is allegory and life-lessons... meant to teach and get us closer to living properly with our fellow man... with a bunch of instructions for a group of people I don't belong to.... because I love bacon, dammit!) I agree the rhetoric is irresponsible, but I believe quite strongly in the ability to be irresponsible... things get hairy, and sticky when we decide that certain things cause others... which is what the Arizona law is attempting to glue together by attaching legitimate harassment by phone or letter to internet fuckwads. It shows one of two things. Either Arizona lawmakers are idiots and don't understand the Internet, or they are meddling busybodies with a boner for telling everyone else what to do (the "front row pew" syndrome of the old days...) Either way, Arizona's got to grow a pair and send this to the Supreme Court or every state full of assholes who think they know better than we do how to run our lives get the idea that "it's for the best!" or "It's for your own good...." (or the ever popular... "think of the children!")
I do not believe the government was or is the answer to anything but what the Constitution say it is... on that point I guess most people differ with me (who identify themselves as fiscal conservatives I mean)... Because I don't believe in the war on drugs, and I feel that our wars are a waste of money. Protect our shores and let the rest of the world do its thing (I also think the UN should get the hell out of New York, since they don't do anything but fuck up parking and cost us real estate...) It was a social experiment that passed its usefulness. :)
I guess you could call me a libertarian wacko... or "arch-libertarian". I realize some of my beliefs cannot gain traction because of the over-abundance of idiots in the country, but I will pragmatically yield some of my more anarchistic tendencies if people will also agree that the system we have had since the New Deal is not working.... (actually I go back to the end of the Civil War to find how States Rights have been eroded... not because I loved Slavery, but because I don't believe the Federal government should have nearly the power it does today.)
If only more lefty wackos and libertarian wackos would realize we're almost on the same team. :) We just need to stop the social engineering and let good ol' individuality reign for a while... we've been doing it wrong for so long, it might shock us how much it'd work itself out... after the shock of having to actually take personal responsibility and control for one's life wears off, I mean. :)
I guessed right... you're not fooled by the talking heads on either side. :) I don't know if that makes me psychic, but if it does, that opens a business opportunity in the aftermath of the demise of Dionne Warwick's Psychic Friends Network.... :)
If you're dumb enough to take the term "reload" as a literal command to go shoot someone, you've got more problems than political affiliation. Time and again we've seen art blamed for this or that atrocity (remember Columbine?) and each and every time it's been upheld that personal responsibility rather than stupid sheep-think is the litmus test for these sorts of things... (well almost every time.)
I don't suspect you watch much Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Mathews, and the like... because their rhetoric is just as silly as "reload"... and often times bordering on the ludicrous to even think about it... I hold both sides to the same standard. I am not a moderate, but I'm not delusional into believing we're in a two-party system anymore. It's a corporatist vision for our country, and donkey or elephant will continue to mold that dream until we're all under someone's iron boot.
Splitting them up based on "reload" or whatever else might offend you is pointless and shows you buy into the ruse... I suspect you're better equipped than that, though.
It makes going to the airport FUN... :-)
MS and IBM were partners in the beginning... but Bill Gates got his nickers in a twist and pulled out of OS/2, taking what was to become NT with him (or at least the start of it.)
OS/2 was supposed to be the successor of Win 3.x, but for many reasons (you can google yourself)... it never happened. Ironically, OS/2 got better when Microsoft left the table. :)
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act benefits no one, and it really improves the lot of insurance conglomerates if you read the fine print. Not to mention the myriad of exemptions to requirements passed out to corporations that the Obama administration gave out like free passes to the Tilt-A-Whirl.
I wonder where it will all end? It depends on the SCOTUS ruling about making people buy insurance. (Which I find a gross overstepping of Interstate Commerce powers..)
Dodd-Frank? The Congress didn't want to hammer out the details of regulation, so they left it up to the 20 or so regulatory agencies built expressly from Dodd-Frank. You can see it may have hindered corporations a little, but it also burdened the rest of us with more and more expenses to fix a problem that would've been simple to fix had the current regulatory system done its job rather than ignoring/colluding with the perpetrators.... And Dodd-Frank is still far from being "in practice" because the regulatory agencies are having problems ironing out the "details." :) Go figure. A "responsible" law still mired in the buck-passing of Washington....
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as a whole was a disaster, throwing money away and getting no (or little) results. Even the CBO can't nail down the job numbers supposedly "created" by that act. I do not know about the HITECH Act portion of it, but in the aggregate, the morons in Washington again screwed us over for corporations and lobbyists...
That sounds plausible... a hot DVD drive spinning up with one end of the system sealed off can cook just about anything. :)
I still believe that the revisionist history from Redmond is deflecting the strange idea that the 360 was poorly designed and quite a few "features" weren't always there, but added after hearing other press releases :)
I mean, the Slim looks like the console Microsoft SHOULD have released in 2005. But then again, we'll never truly know the cause, because knowing the cause means being able to blame... and Microsoft wants to skip that little detail, hoping everyone has forgotten in time for the XBox720's launch... :)
Sounds like a "dire prediction" land-grab for an outgoing lunatic who needed to retire MANY years sooner....
They thought it would be better to have memory cards (a la PS2), but during the development cycle (when is unknown I suppose), they added one as a "memory card" (like the original XBox) and put it on the end of the unit... covering up much needed vent holes. I read it somewhere online (and I can't seem to find it...)
This comes from a recounting of the days before launch by a Microsoft employee. Take it with a grain of salt, but it lends credence to the ventilation problem the original 360's had (and the fact that you could buy an "arcade" version without an HDD... heck, you can even buy one now without a HDD.) I imagine the hard drive's "announcement" was in response to the PS3 including one...
Take it with a grain of salt, because it is rumor... and knowing Microsoft, it'll never see the light of day (the truth I mean.) Because that would be admitting they released a flawed design onto the public... (which they did, but they won't admit it.) The Slims all have nice ventilation on top and bottom, plus the HDD doesn't obscure an entire side of the unit...
I always heard it was the last-minute addition of the HDD unit destroying the airflow on the system slowly (or quickly depending upon who you asked) cooking the GPU and melting it off the mobo.
Microsoft's last minute addition of the HDD at the top of the unit did muck with the airflow, and I think they made a "command" decision to release it flawed (knowing it was flawed) rather than not be "first" this generation. It cost them money for sure, but in my case, it cost a ton of goodwill... I will not be an early adopter of another Microsoft console. And I'm sure I'm not alone...
What you call market forces, I call collusion. Because put simply, the price rises quickly to changes in the 'market', but fall _very_ slowly. And since there are very few oil companies in general that are players in the market, all it takes is a few agreements over a game of golf and all prices are the same, no matter who you buy from. I don't know where you buy gasoline, but in my neck of the woods, the prices don't vary by more than a few cents a gallon over hundreds of miles of freeway and back roads. Big Exxon/Mobil and BP (etc.) are all in it for the cash of course, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they (and the government through its general ineptitude) have created a market where the way to success is simply offering the product for sale. All the oil companies are slashing production to prevent a drop in prices, while at the same time manipulating the various stages of the process. (Irrespective of taxes levied of course.) What we see is just 12 years ago, oil was $25/barrel. (We all know about the huge increase in price back in 06 and 08.) In 2009, it settled to $50/barrel (on average). Yet the price of gasoline hasn't reflected that drop (going downward) as quickly as it did going up in 2006 or so when oil was flirting at $70/barrel, up to 2008 where it hit an historic high of over $140/barrel. As prices of oil go up, the price of gasoline reflects a very high spike compared to the cost of the barrel of oil (which for every gallon of gasoline was $.55 of the price in 2009.) How do we explain the rise of gas prices when demand shrunk almost 5.5% in 2008-2009 (in the US alone... not counting everywhere else)? Easy... not a complex marketplace, but collusion. Demand worldwide didn't outstrip the western world's reduction of consumption during the last recession. In fact, when there was a "glut" of gasoline, companies simply turned off the spigot and let supply shrink drastically. Yes, that is one way to keep prices up, but if, as you say, there's a complex market, why weren't there some oil companies willing to broaden market share by selling volume rather than markup? (Which would force those companies still restricting supply to keep prices high into a dilemma of re-up production or suffer market share loss and contraction of their sphere of influence...) If you plot the cost of crude oil per barrel with the cost of a gallon of gas over the last 20 years, you'll see that when oil prices go up prices rise sharply for gasoline, but when oil prices drop ($140 to $50 is quite a drop), gas prices stay relatively constant. If it were simply the market, it would come down more even as inelastic as gas demand is. Because if the marketplace was working, companies would be first to drop prices to gain market share and goodwill, forcing those unwilling to drop prices into a pricing war. That never happens anymore. It is a closed system, in spite of the international oil market, or perhaps because of it.
Ever notice that in the last 30 years or so "price wars" at the pump have gone by the wayside? Most companies, disparate as they are, have prices within $.05 of each other, with one or two stations at $.10 or so. There are none who take $.50 a gallon off or $1 off their competitors anymore... because collusion and vertical monopolies have created a market where companies get rich simply by selling. Of course selling "too much" will not get you invited to the oligarchy christmas party...
Copyright infringement is not theft. Please stop spreading that bullshit. It's 2012. However, you are ABSOLUTELY correct in saying that punishment of the *AA's requires people to stop buying. (Or buying used... if one MUST have a hobby.)
You've hit the nail on the head (so to speak) with respect to vertical monopolies. While there isn't a giant Standard Oil anymore, the fact that the oil companies control the entire lifecycle (in one way or another) from crude to finished product at the pump shows that we can have the weird market fluctuations you described. (Going quickly up, but taking its sweet time to go down in price.) The fact that gasoline isn't something that has very elastic demand because of the way it is used in every aspect of our economy lends us to the conclusion that vertical monopolies can leverage their monopoly status to keep prices artificially high in the face of real change in the marketplace.
It is funny that our refining capacity never meets the aggregate amount of oil we are pulling out of the ground. (It's more profitable to close the refineries rather than let price go down.)
We've seen the oil companies push prices up to a point, hear the outcry, then lower prices back down slowly so the average person with a busy life doesn't notice that gasoline spiked at $4/gallon up from $2.50. But they never seem to get back to $2.50... the price just stays up where it was, slightly below the heartburn level that caused the reduction in the first place. :)
When you have an item that most people depend upon (and businesses too), you can play fast and loose with the market and not fear losing customers. (I wish the electric car would put a damper on this practice, but I'm not holding my breath.)
Given the trends in climate change, atheists might have to amend that belief... :)
Hell, if MS Office would have good compatibility between its own versions, I'd be happy at work. :) LibreOffice is a great alternative to the bloat, cruft, and asinine 'features' of MS Office. It's not just because it's free, either. It's because it works and works well. The only difference is the big logo and "comfort" feeling bean-counters get with MS Office (I'm guessing...)
There's a reason most people stick with a previous version of Office for so long... it's because the more recent version breaks things and adds features no one requested. That's not to say MS Office doesn't have its place in the computer canon... it's just that people seem to overlook the huge flaws in Microsoft's own compatibility.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups. And never underestimate the size of the coffers controlled by the *AA's. Couple large volumes of cash with large volumes of malignant stupidity and you've got a recipe for an anal rape of gargantuan proportions. And since the *AA's now don't have to try to legislate this, you won't get any lube.
My hunch is lots more VPN traffic, and lots more encryption for those who want to infringe. It makes me laugh when I think of all the trouble these idiots go to in order to stop something that costs them nothing in terms of losses, but immeasurable amounts of goodwill. I wonder if this new "system" will be the thing that makes Joe Sixpack sit up and say "wait, those nerds were right! I'm getting screwed here!" :) Here's to hoping the Great Unwashed have a threshold of tolerance.... and I just wonder if this (like SOPA/PIPA) is the tipping point.
For those of us who don't consume their product any longer (unless it's used DVDs... I had to get Young Frankenstein on DVD... heh.), there is always the chuckles associated with fanatical devotion to a business model that's more outdated than buggy whips, wagon wheels, and 78rpm records combined.
Yep, because anyone playing on Live can tell it's always 4:20 there. Everyone's high...
I think we can safely say that this generation is going to be better towards the end. As the developers get more familiar with the hardware, we will see greater and greater games. Provided, of course, they don't just abandon it in preparation for the next next gen. :) Just like the good old days of the C64, we'll see much better work towards the end because the developers become extremely familiar with the ins and outs of the system.
And your experience with the 360 is definitely the exception, not the rule. My PS3 (20GB, upgraded to 500GB) has been the most rock solid console I've ever owned. Not only does it handle 6 hours straight playing Fallout 3, but it can handle 3 Blu-Ray movies in a row and not even hiccup (probably more, but I have to sleep sometime.) I can't say that about my 360, but I do enjoy playing my 360 slim (which they should've release YEARS ago, instead of cycling the old RRoD repaired 360s through the system...) It was a defective design, and Microsoft all but admitted it with their extending of the warranty, etc. (And the RRoD turning into an E74 error in subsequent board designs.) The decision to release a half-baked machine just to be first this generation was a gamble for Microsoft. They may have escaped the bulk of the problems with warranty repairs, etc, but they burned through a TON of good will doing so. We will only know if it was worth it when their next console comes out. (Remember the DVD on the original XBox was pretty shitty, prompting the "dirty disc" error fiasco.) So by the time they make a 720, I hope to hell they understand they cannot afford to release another 360-like hardware aberration. :)
I'm extremely happy for you that your launch 360 has still survived. There are very few people (besides the fanboys lying their asses off) who can say that. :)
Someone pissed in your post toasties, didn't they? Civil disobedience to the application of increasingly draconian and oppressive regulations, bought and paid for by the corporate cronyism that completely bastardizes the free market into a conglomerate oligarchy bent on making you pay for everything it deems "theft" of intellectual property is what liberty is all about. ("Intellectual property" is an oxymoron in the first place. No founding father envisioned copyright to be a property right.) Shackle that with perpetual copyright (the Constitution says: "for a limited time") and you have a system where bullies and copyright holders (not creators) have stifled the innovation and progress that the Founders envisioned copyright to foster. No one is putting back into the Public Domain (companies like Disney owe their entire existence to the Public Domain...) and everyone thinks "copyright guarantees revenue". Copyright never was meant to guarantee revenue. The copyright system is about controlling how your work is used and distributed, not how much you can make off it. (I'm not the only one who says this, and it's not a "radical" idea considering what Jefferson and Adams said about copyright in the first place.)
But if it makes you feel better, continue to think of the "free market" as a scary place, and let the government lube your ass before it fucks you, because that's what they're doing. They are keeping their donors in bed with them while you and I are stuck on the street looking at them swimming in cash. Swimming in cash not because they earned it on the free market with good ideas/products and great market stewardship, but swimming in cash because they rob the People of their money and claim it's "for the best" or "you're an evil pirate thief!" The People need representation (the EFF helps), and if civil disobedience (copyright infringement is a civil matter) fosters change... let's do it. If it pisses off Sony, Disney, CBS, Fox, and so forth in the process... Well, I'm in. Fuck 'em. And fuck everyone who still thinks "copyright is stealing." It's not.
So yes, blah blah blah, enjoy your corporate overlords backed by purchased laws and a court system willing to dismantle your rights enumerated in the Constitution because you're just a person... you don't matter anymore. Change indeed.