So the map kits they carry and distribute to thousands of pilots have to be weighted for UPS, and so forth. They know the weight, down to the sheet count, wrapper, etc.
If they know what it takes for a fleet average to carry x pounds, which is pretty easily determined, then the weight of the parcels times the pilots/copilots, and even extra pilots (ever notice that fat attache case they carry?) can be easily translated to projected carriage/fuel cost.
There are plenty of alternatives-- and most are Very Nicely Done SaaS apps. Sure, there is SharePoint, and juicy old VB scripts and lots of houses of cards out there. Change a variable or two, and ka-rumble. In days gone by, what they used was a miracle. Now it's a crater with a spot marked X.
Yeah, SQL Server, and a dash of C#, a few hot links, and it looks like only Microsoft can do *that* until you realize-- you've been walled in by the entire mess. Crack, indeed.
Some of your points are well-taken. Yet there are alternatives that fight a huge uphill battle against the entrenched set of Microsoft apps. To wit:
* LibreOffice will do 99% of what most Office users would like. * Thunderbird isn't so wonderful, but Zimbra is a great Outlook replacement * Pidgin is an easy to use IM platform that works with most IM transports. * text editors? Linux? OMG-- there are more Linux text editors than you can imagine; whether coder, web page hack, whatever, there are tons. * Every single phylum of desktop Linux has some sort of file manager; finding files with them sometimes takes luck, I'll grant you. * MS Paint is goofy. There are better apps; plentiful-- but they don't work like MS apps.
And therein is the rub. Expecting Linux desktop apps to behave like Microsoft apps is useful if you come from the Windows world. You desire stuff you know. It takes time to move your mind over to a different Window manager.
If you want Windows, stick with Windows. Windows is a paid model. Some software is free/shareware, but it's not really the open model. Linux is the name of the operating system kernel; the apps are GNU as a foundation, and plentiful other origins based on lots of fun and sweat.
Android is a fork, IMHO, controlled by Google. There are consistent models coming; Rome wasn't built in a day.
Well, first you have to go to the BPA to find out how much software is pirated. The answer: the GNP of Brazil.
Next, you have to go to the RIAA to find out about music piracy. The answer is: the GNP of Brazil times a fudge factor of 1.5.
Then, you have to go to the MPAA to get the number of how much movie theatre and rental/royalty losses that they suffer. This is the GNP of Nigeria, times a factor of 7.233.
Finally, if you're in the systems protection business, you have to talk about the losses from break-ins, data loss, user-down time due to StuxNet (they left Iran out of the figures) which is the GNP of Greece times an amazing 294.888.
Go on check my figures. Be scared. Be very scared.
Somewhere, there has to be a sense of common human rights, and what's extractable by the state-- any state. If there are no matches, then what? Is the DNA destroyed? Or is it part of a new database to vet our ostensible innocence of other crimes?
It's invasive, and therefore beyond the reach of probing with the flimsy "probable cause" of proximity, and the inherent right of people to be innocent until proven guilty. Yes, American ideals, and a boundary that's pushed across the planet.
I didn't comment on the quality of these two products, rather, their statistical popularity. Yes, there are free alternatives, and I use one, personally. Outlook/Office was a combination that worked early on, for better and worse, and made many people addicted to the platform. There are alternatives, some good with good support, and some plainly dreck.
Free is good. Works is better. Free and works is best. But TANSTAAFL, and having support mechanisms for sophisticated infrastructure is important, too.
Lots of this "depends". Microsoft has lots of SQL Server going, and owns the Exchange turf. There are lots of MS "business partners", developers, and so forth. They've come along way. No, there is no UI formerly known as Metro. They've updated lots of stuff, including Hyper-V. Is VMware an equal? VMware has egalitarian support for OS versions; MS is kinda sort trying to do better about that, but most organizations walk around Microsoft, rather than trying to make it play with other stuff.
You can script the living hell out of Windows 2012 these days, and avoid mind-numbing UI problems, although they've changed that, too. They still have their problems. So does Linux, and Solaris. Their big goal is platform synch, so you'll stick with the program. Some are fleeing, some are figuring out BYOD, some just want a path of least resistance, although Microsoft is better than that. They still need entrepreneurship and a break in the habit of preannouncing stuff.
I wonder what Windows 9 will be like. Oh, wait-- I'm sure there's a leak somewhere.
Then there's that Zero Law: 0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
Our computers already do this. The box is open. Name me a weapons system that doesn't have a microprocessor inside.
Do robots ask if the general's judgment is correct? Is this war justified?
My preference: robots aren't human, and deserve no protections. They're not sentient. They are metal and polymers and guts driven by programs written by humans and executed by individuals.
Those that wrote the code, and/or "pulled the trigger" are liable. The second you grant rights to robots, you allow your soul to be stolen by equating robots with humanity, as though you're a god. You are not.
In war, the general is responsible. He "pulled the trigger". If it's automated, then the individual endowing logic "pulls the trigger". If there's a hell, a special place is reserved for weapons makers.
In the case of Winchester, they're enablers, but under the law, aren't liable. But if Winchester builds a bot that shoots a harmless person, then it's manslaughter. If it targets, for instance, a person with a mustache, then it's murder. If it defends itself, then it's murder, because "itself" isn't a human. It's programmer is liable. Take some responsibility, rather than ceding it.
Yeah, like that's going to work. Imagine a robot making a morality judgment. We can't seem to stop killing each other, even with cool automation.
The programmers should assume the liability. Robot shoots person. Robot goes to jail? Is that threat going to stop a robot? Instead, put the programmer that wrote the code to jail, for he/she is as complicit as a human in its place.
Imagine: Windows Robots. Debian Robots. With Guns.
That would be the existentialist view. Yet, according to what you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and grok-- there you are.
I vote for missing ingredients. Stuff not found yet. Not necessarily hope, not a tasty explanation, but perhaps a formula that explains it all.
It would seem that things that work are favored, over things that don't work. Our intelligence seems to be favored in this way, a long gestation and youth allows a longer accumulation of cognizance, and fun and mirth along the way. The program that we are, starting out as 23x2, goes through a cycle favored by environment, until we start to exhaust the program, and we go away. 100% of us end up this way. Not 99.9994, or 21.2%, but 100%.
Why does this happen? We were grunts 10K years+ ago. Only recently did we learn to write, then print, to carry intergenerational intelligence. Now it's all gained lots of energy, but only the science fiction writers have guessed at the endings, or the next steps in the evolution.
Are we not here? Are part of a Matrix? Are we puppets on a quantum string? Evidence doesn't say that, and evidence is something in lieu of nothing, giving weight towards: we got here. Let's see where we go. I'm hoping it's a "good" place.
Apple markets to, and want to own consumers, and let that fact drive any business they do with the corporate world. It so far, is a successful strategy.
In the world of your "shitbox" systems is a huge sweetspot that Microsoft screwed up. Microsoft figured out the apps needed to do "right", including basic office function replacement apps, basic database, and enough systems security to cover their butts, which were up to a few years ago, dangling in the breeze of bad code.
Tablets aren't a strong data entry device, and lots of people do data entry. They don't store much. They're dependent on "cloud" resources, meaning someplace else. They don't replace desktops and notebooks for these reasons. Microsoft is doing a cross-platform drive to make stuff work together, mindless a task as that might be. Windows 8/Server 2012/Windows Phone 8, RT, are all designed to be a painful transition to the look and feel of their biggest threats: MacOS/iOS and Linux/Android.
Why did Canonical choose to back Unity? Was it because everyone would immediately love it? No. It's because they want the same business ecosystems enjoyed by their competition, hence Ubuntu One, drives to port Unity to tablets and even phones, and so forth. They're not clueless, and their model drives business to Canonical. Look at the other distros, ranging from SUSE, RedHat, even Mandriva-- all trying to keep alive by going corporate and largely avoiding the desktop (save Mandriva, which seems to be running on fumes).
If you want to look to a success, Canonical on the desktop is the most profound, internationally. What did they do? Avoided lots of problems and went their own way atop Debian. LinuxMint adds some flexibility. Both aren't ready for most enterprise uses, but are fine for civilians. Another thread made a point about long term support, and commitment to providing long term code, and this is where Gnome is also perceived to have fallen down badly-- they should have reinvented it all to have made it as seemingly branched as things are turning out. Stick a fork in it? I'm not surprised at the accusations of Microsoft skullduggery.
And for this reason, an input parser that vets a hash against the bytecode being loaded could save a lot time. Whether libs or binaries of other kinds, loading code of known MD5, SHA1, or whatever your favorite vetting method prevent this.
Many don't believe in safe networking zones, and that all machines need their own protection methods. Random or constant comparisons against vetted check methods could prevent altered code from loading or being used during compiles, and so forth. No one's going to prevent easter eggs, but ya never know.
iTunes is Apple's app delivery methodology and business ecosystem. I predict that one day in the not distant future, it'll be the only approved place that you can obtain apps for your Apple Stuff.
Sure, you can get things from other places now. Go ahead and blather about Ogg, etc. Sure, you can use other players. Today. Not 1 in 100 Apple user goes outside of iTunes as their media delivery vehicle. Ask them.
1) new kernel, graduating to the current 3.2 while it fixes a few bugs like power savings-- if you ever used them at all-- are pretty minor are what you get with 12.04-- along with Unity, the UI no one seems to love.
that leaves
2) everything else, which still works with the new kernel. IPFW still works, and really hasn't changed much. You'd update your browser separately, which is the big vector point to getting smacked, along with email. Your browser can be whatever, as it upgrades outside of kernel space. Java does, too (a whole other story). You can use LibreOffice unchanged and just get updates for it.
Really, it wasn't broken, and you didn't have to fix it just because it ran out of official support. This isn't Windows 98SE you're using. It's not like MacOS 10.3. You can update outside of Canonical and emerge just fine, without a lot of trouble.
You also have the choice of a dual-boot, provided sufficient disk space, with Grub2. Pick which one to start, should you feel a need for either, then the other partitions can be easily mounted at boot time, automatically. Your data is still there; your conf files are still there, although daemons and daemon dependencies are updated on the new boot.
Yes, this could be much easier, and yes, vendors like Canonical fail their clientele when they don't consider upgrade easiness. Consumers are different than the organizational users whose "life cycle" is a finite time spread, and are otherwise fairly controlled in their uses via policies, (hopefully tested) update rollouts, and so forth. A lesson learned from them is that you can maintain equipment for a really long time before you have to consider updates.
The basic mistake you made, IMHO, is that you fixed something that wasn't broken. You were largely up to date. I'll agree that things aren't easily interchangeable, and they should be. Canonical or any other distro maker could socketize their distribution for just this purpose, but the nature of upgrades is that people usually buy something new in a system, then do an initial install, then don't change it. We're taught to do this as hardware got much faster each few calendar quarters, but these days, that's not true. We get at best, small incremental changes then get hardening of the arteries by too many daemons running.
My argument against Apple is that you sacrifice too much to deal with iTunes as a delivery vehicle, and using MS Office is really no better for most than LibreOffice, which suits 99% of most people's document tasks-- and is largely interoperable with the formerly proprietary MS OCX format.
People are really seduced by "it just works". Several distros now fit in that category, but it's taking time for adoption. The herd likes similarity.
Slashdot Mirror
So the map kits they carry and distribute to thousands of pilots have to be weighted for UPS, and so forth. They know the weight, down to the sheet count, wrapper, etc.
If they know what it takes for a fleet average to carry x pounds, which is pretty easily determined, then the weight of the parcels times the pilots/copilots, and even extra pilots (ever notice that fat attache case they carry?) can be easily translated to projected carriage/fuel cost.
Ye gawds.
Perhaps the Rhythm of the Primes has a new conductor.
OoOOhhhhhh no.
There are plenty of alternatives-- and most are Very Nicely Done SaaS apps. Sure, there is SharePoint, and juicy old VB scripts and lots of houses of cards out there. Change a variable or two, and ka-rumble. In days gone by, what they used was a miracle. Now it's a crater with a spot marked X.
Yeah, SQL Server, and a dash of C#, a few hot links, and it looks like only Microsoft can do *that* until you realize-- you've been walled in by the entire mess. Crack, indeed.
Some of your points are well-taken. Yet there are alternatives that fight a huge uphill battle against the entrenched set of Microsoft apps. To wit:
* LibreOffice will do 99% of what most Office users would like.
* Thunderbird isn't so wonderful, but Zimbra is a great Outlook replacement
* Pidgin is an easy to use IM platform that works with most IM transports.
* text editors? Linux? OMG-- there are more Linux text editors than you can imagine; whether coder, web page hack, whatever, there are tons.
* Every single phylum of desktop Linux has some sort of file manager; finding files with them sometimes takes luck, I'll grant you.
* MS Paint is goofy. There are better apps; plentiful-- but they don't work like MS apps.
And therein is the rub. Expecting Linux desktop apps to behave like Microsoft apps is useful if you come from the Windows world. You desire stuff you know. It takes time to move your mind over to a different Window manager.
If you want Windows, stick with Windows. Windows is a paid model. Some software is free/shareware, but it's not really the open model. Linux is the name of the operating system kernel; the apps are GNU as a foundation, and plentiful other origins based on lots of fun and sweat.
Android is a fork, IMHO, controlled by Google. There are consistent models coming; Rome wasn't built in a day.
Offer one thing, deliver another.
When highly discounted, it's a second offer, not B&S.
Without a doubt. Bait-and-switch.
It's sleazy.
Whatever the math says, man. Numbers don't lie.
Except on Thursdays.
Well, first you have to go to the BPA to find out how much software is pirated. The answer: the GNP of Brazil.
Next, you have to go to the RIAA to find out about music piracy. The answer is: the GNP of Brazil times a fudge factor of 1.5.
Then, you have to go to the MPAA to get the number of how much movie theatre and rental/royalty losses that they suffer. This is the GNP of Nigeria, times a factor of 7.233.
Finally, if you're in the systems protection business, you have to talk about the losses from break-ins, data loss, user-down time due to StuxNet (they left Iran out of the figures) which is the GNP of Greece times an amazing 294.888.
Go on check my figures. Be scared. Be very scared.
Ask the French, as an example. J'accuse means you're guilty until proven innocent. This is what makes Louisiana different from the other 49 states.
Ummmm. Ok. Sure. Fine.
Data is forever. Ask Google or Amazon, etc.
I know the Dutch believe they're highly honorable. And I know that you apparently believed it. And I think you're daffy.
Bait and switch.
Google should be ashamed.
Oh, right.
Somewhere, there has to be a sense of common human rights, and what's extractable by the state-- any state. If there are no matches, then what? Is the DNA destroyed? Or is it part of a new database to vet our ostensible innocence of other crimes?
It's invasive, and therefore beyond the reach of probing with the flimsy "probable cause" of proximity, and the inherent right of people to be innocent until proven guilty. Yes, American ideals, and a boundary that's pushed across the planet.
Clean coal, man. People keep telling me it's the right stuff.
I didn't comment on the quality of these two products, rather, their statistical popularity. Yes, there are free alternatives, and I use one, personally. Outlook/Office was a combination that worked early on, for better and worse, and made many people addicted to the platform. There are alternatives, some good with good support, and some plainly dreck.
Free is good. Works is better. Free and works is best. But TANSTAAFL, and having support mechanisms for sophisticated infrastructure is important, too.
And now you have eleven posters of Tesla in your office?
Lots of this "depends". Microsoft has lots of SQL Server going, and owns the Exchange turf. There are lots of MS "business partners", developers, and so forth. They've come along way. No, there is no UI formerly known as Metro. They've updated lots of stuff, including Hyper-V. Is VMware an equal? VMware has egalitarian support for OS versions; MS is kinda sort trying to do better about that, but most organizations walk around Microsoft, rather than trying to make it play with other stuff.
You can script the living hell out of Windows 2012 these days, and avoid mind-numbing UI problems, although they've changed that, too. They still have their problems. So does Linux, and Solaris. Their big goal is platform synch, so you'll stick with the program. Some are fleeing, some are figuring out BYOD, some just want a path of least resistance, although Microsoft is better than that. They still need entrepreneurship and a break in the habit of preannouncing stuff.
I wonder what Windows 9 will be like. Oh, wait-- I'm sure there's a leak somewhere.
Then there's that Zero Law: 0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
Our computers already do this. The box is open. Name me a weapons system that doesn't have a microprocessor inside.
Do robots ask if the general's judgment is correct? Is this war justified?
My preference: robots aren't human, and deserve no protections. They're not sentient. They are metal and polymers and guts driven by programs written by humans and executed by individuals.
Those that wrote the code, and/or "pulled the trigger" are liable. The second you grant rights to robots, you allow your soul to be stolen by equating robots with humanity, as though you're a god. You are not.
In war, the general is responsible. He "pulled the trigger". If it's automated, then the individual endowing logic "pulls the trigger". If there's a hell, a special place is reserved for weapons makers.
In the case of Winchester, they're enablers, but under the law, aren't liable. But if Winchester builds a bot that shoots a harmless person, then it's manslaughter. If it targets, for instance, a person with a mustache, then it's murder. If it defends itself, then it's murder, because "itself" isn't a human. It's programmer is liable. Take some responsibility, rather than ceding it.
Yeah, like that's going to work. Imagine a robot making a morality judgment. We can't seem to stop killing each other, even with cool automation.
The programmers should assume the liability. Robot shoots person. Robot goes to jail? Is that threat going to stop a robot? Instead, put the programmer that wrote the code to jail, for he/she is as complicit as a human in its place.
Imagine: Windows Robots. Debian Robots. With Guns.
That would be the existentialist view. Yet, according to what you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and grok-- there you are.
I vote for missing ingredients. Stuff not found yet. Not necessarily hope, not a tasty explanation, but perhaps a formula that explains it all.
It would seem that things that work are favored, over things that don't work. Our intelligence seems to be favored in this way, a long gestation and youth allows a longer accumulation of cognizance, and fun and mirth along the way. The program that we are, starting out as 23x2, goes through a cycle favored by environment, until we start to exhaust the program, and we go away. 100% of us end up this way. Not 99.9994, or 21.2%, but 100%.
Why does this happen? We were grunts 10K years+ ago. Only recently did we learn to write, then print, to carry intergenerational intelligence. Now it's all gained lots of energy, but only the science fiction writers have guessed at the endings, or the next steps in the evolution.
Are we not here? Are part of a Matrix? Are we puppets on a quantum string? Evidence doesn't say that, and evidence is something in lieu of nothing, giving weight towards: we got here. Let's see where we go. I'm hoping it's a "good" place.
Apple markets to, and want to own consumers, and let that fact drive any business they do with the corporate world. It so far, is a successful strategy.
In the world of your "shitbox" systems is a huge sweetspot that Microsoft screwed up. Microsoft figured out the apps needed to do "right", including basic office function replacement apps, basic database, and enough systems security to cover their butts, which were up to a few years ago, dangling in the breeze of bad code.
Tablets aren't a strong data entry device, and lots of people do data entry. They don't store much. They're dependent on "cloud" resources, meaning someplace else. They don't replace desktops and notebooks for these reasons. Microsoft is doing a cross-platform drive to make stuff work together, mindless a task as that might be. Windows 8/Server 2012/Windows Phone 8, RT, are all designed to be a painful transition to the look and feel of their biggest threats: MacOS/iOS and Linux/Android.
Why did Canonical choose to back Unity? Was it because everyone would immediately love it? No. It's because they want the same business ecosystems enjoyed by their competition, hence Ubuntu One, drives to port Unity to tablets and even phones, and so forth. They're not clueless, and their model drives business to Canonical. Look at the other distros, ranging from SUSE, RedHat, even Mandriva-- all trying to keep alive by going corporate and largely avoiding the desktop (save Mandriva, which seems to be running on fumes).
If you want to look to a success, Canonical on the desktop is the most profound, internationally. What did they do? Avoided lots of problems and went their own way atop Debian. LinuxMint adds some flexibility. Both aren't ready for most enterprise uses, but are fine for civilians. Another thread made a point about long term support, and commitment to providing long term code, and this is where Gnome is also perceived to have fallen down badly-- they should have reinvented it all to have made it as seemingly branched as things are turning out. Stick a fork in it? I'm not surprised at the accusations of Microsoft skullduggery.
And for this reason, an input parser that vets a hash against the bytecode being loaded could save a lot time. Whether libs or binaries of other kinds, loading code of known MD5, SHA1, or whatever your favorite vetting method prevent this.
Many don't believe in safe networking zones, and that all machines need their own protection methods. Random or constant comparisons against vetted check methods could prevent altered code from loading or being used during compiles, and so forth. No one's going to prevent easter eggs, but ya never know.
iTunes is Apple's app delivery methodology and business ecosystem. I predict that one day in the not distant future, it'll be the only approved place that you can obtain apps for your Apple Stuff.
Sure, you can get things from other places now. Go ahead and blather about Ogg, etc. Sure, you can use other players. Today. Not 1 in 100 Apple user goes outside of iTunes as their media delivery vehicle. Ask them.
Let me disambiguate:
1) new kernel, graduating to the current 3.2 while it fixes a few bugs like power savings-- if you ever used them at all-- are pretty minor are what you get with 12.04-- along with Unity, the UI no one seems to love.
that leaves
2) everything else, which still works with the new kernel. IPFW still works, and really hasn't changed much. You'd update your browser separately, which is the big vector point to getting smacked, along with email. Your browser can be whatever, as it upgrades outside of kernel space. Java does, too (a whole other story). You can use LibreOffice unchanged and just get updates for it.
Really, it wasn't broken, and you didn't have to fix it just because it ran out of official support. This isn't Windows 98SE you're using. It's not like MacOS 10.3. You can update outside of Canonical and emerge just fine, without a lot of trouble.
You also have the choice of a dual-boot, provided sufficient disk space, with Grub2. Pick which one to start, should you feel a need for either, then the other partitions can be easily mounted at boot time, automatically. Your data is still there; your conf files are still there, although daemons and daemon dependencies are updated on the new boot.
Yes, this could be much easier, and yes, vendors like Canonical fail their clientele when they don't consider upgrade easiness. Consumers are different than the organizational users whose "life cycle" is a finite time spread, and are otherwise fairly controlled in their uses via policies, (hopefully tested) update rollouts, and so forth. A lesson learned from them is that you can maintain equipment for a really long time before you have to consider updates.
The basic mistake you made, IMHO, is that you fixed something that wasn't broken. You were largely up to date. I'll agree that things aren't easily interchangeable, and they should be. Canonical or any other distro maker could socketize their distribution for just this purpose, but the nature of upgrades is that people usually buy something new in a system, then do an initial install, then don't change it. We're taught to do this as hardware got much faster each few calendar quarters, but these days, that's not true. We get at best, small incremental changes then get hardening of the arteries by too many daemons running.
My argument against Apple is that you sacrifice too much to deal with iTunes as a delivery vehicle, and using MS Office is really no better for most than LibreOffice, which suits 99% of most people's document tasks-- and is largely interoperable with the formerly proprietary MS OCX format.
People are really seduced by "it just works". Several distros now fit in that category, but it's taking time for adoption. The herd likes similarity.