If Apple was serious about games -- the could EASILY blow Microsoft and Sony out of the water. WHERE is the gamepad??? Or the ability to use Android / PS4 gamepads?
If they were serious about games, they'd also release a desktop machine without discrete graphics and without a built-in monitor. And they'd support remotes on Macs again, and allow you to run an AppleTV-like interface, so you could use the computer as a console. Hell, they could just partner with Steam and use their gamepad and Big Picture mode.
You just drop the STL file on an SD card or upload it to a web interface hosted on the printer itself, no drivers needed.
You'd agree that's not really a good solution, though, right? Like, you have a networked printer on your company's network, but you can't simply print to it without weird crappy drivers that don't work. Instead you copy it to an SD card, walk it over to the printer, plug it in, and then try to print it? Or you log into a web interface and upload things? That's not easier.
Either way, again, that's just an example. I work in IT support and I'm constantly working around and fixing problems that don't really need to exist. And for my personal use, too, it seems that companies are constantly moving in the wrong direction. Facebook's apps keep getting worse. I find Apple's music app harder to navigate than ever. Hulu's new iOS app is awful.
Good to hear they're making a version of Windows specifically for professional use. It should then come without all the crap bloatware, ads, and telemetry, right? Right?
One of the things that frustrates me about technology companies is the general focus on adding new features, while at the same time failing to make sure their existing features work. There are so many things in computing that are simply much more difficult and unreliable than they need to be. My fallback example is printer drivers. Why are printer drivers even necessary? I can understand 3D printers still needing custom drivers, or those big industrial copiers needing specialized drivers to deal with some custom publishing feature, but why on earth does a simple B&W laser printer need special hardware instructions just to print a Word document? And considering how simple the hardware ultimately is, why am I still dealing with buggy printer drivers from major manufacturers?
I know talking about printer drivers is a bit of a tangent, but it's just an example. My point is, these tech companies keep building virtual assistants that are nearly useless, or yet another snapchat clone, but they won't fix problems like printer drivers. And why would we even trust a company to build IoT devices, having computers listen to everything we say and integrating computers into almost every object in our homes, when they can't even make a reliable universal printer driver?
Apple's not the worst offender of this kind of thing, by any means, but they at least used to be among the best at making simple things that worked without frustration, and I do think that they're slipping a bit. You're complaining about Siri, but honestly, I wouldn't complain if they ditched Siri completely, and focused instead on dealing with the real problems that users and IT people face with computers. The problems I have aren't things like, "I wish I could talk to my toaster and have it tell me the weather," but more like, "Managing a fleet of thousands of computers is still more difficult than it needs to be" and "VPN still sucks" and "managing passwords and 2FA tokens is really annoying". I could talk for hours about the problems and annyances with computing, and so far, none of them have been fixed by Alexa or Siri.
Yeah, I'm not sure how this is supposed to work with a publicly traded company. Like, ok, users buy a bunch of shares, and then what? If it looks like it's driving up the price, it's just going to encourage a bunch of speculators to buy in. The fad passes and the buying-spree ends, and the price drops again. Any of the users who bought in still don't have control, and meanwhile have probably lost money. And even that's only if a substantial number of users buy into it.
It only seems like a good deal for existing shareholders hoping to drive the price up a bit before they sell. Am I wrong? Am I missing something?
So what's the argument here? Trump didn't misunderstand, but rather he was misinformed?
Obviously he misunderstands a lot of things, and is misinformed about a lot more. But it's kind of splitting hairs, when the point was "His explanation of the research was incorrect."
Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or government advisers?
Seems kind of irrelevant. I mean, I don't think that anyone imagines Trump is actually reading scientific studies. Obviously someone is telling him these things. It could be advisors, but it seems just as likely it's something someone said on Fox and Friends. Regardless, his statements about the research were inaccurate.
Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or did the study not communicate clearly?
Not sure if English is your second language or something, but in English, if you fail to understand something because it was not communicated properly, it's still proper to say that you misunderstood.
Did the study use a lot of jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice?
I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make here. There's bound to be some scientific jargon in a scientific paper. And what does "passive voice" have to do with anything?
Did it make clear and specific projections, or was everything couched in "if this scenario and those people do that then something might change here to cause this effect"?
Did someone claim that the paper was vague? It seems like Trump was also under the impression that the paper gave specific projections, enough that he claims the environmental impact is negligible. It's just that those claims don't accurately characterize the results of the research.
Is the news article cited above just completely and totally wrong, or has it been vetted for accuracy?
Do you have any reason to think that it's totally wrong or inaccurate? Or are you just taking an absurd cynical position? For any statement, you could say, "What if that's just totally wrong?":
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth-- or maybe he wasn't! Maybe Lincoln is still alive today. Have those stories been vetted for accuracy?
Water molecules are made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Or maybe that's just totally wrong! Has anyone researched this?
The nature of the breach isn't entirely clear. It's possible that the passwords are encrypted, and that the encryption wasn't broken. There are other kinds of exploits and intrusions.
But also, since it has such a low barrier to entry, a company like Microsoft is at a bit of a disadvantage. There's no way they can be as nimble and experimental as a startup. Because of this, I think trying to chase the social networking market is a foolish move.
They'd be much smarter to use their status as a big, lumbering company that focuses on enterprise clients. Make solid, stable, reliable, efficient products that people can count on. Be forward thinking, but wait for new concepts and technologies to reach the point of being proven and predictable. Then make them stable and refined, and then integrate them.
Also, they should build in a full suite of sound effects, make any related GUI based on LCARS. Actually, I wouldn't mind having a small wireless communicator badge that, if you tap it, it connects over the Internet to talk to the computer.
... and FTL travel. That's all one of these virtual assistants needs for me to buy one. Respond to "computer" with Majel Roddenberry's voice, use a GUI based on LCARS, provide a communicator badge, and warp drives. Oh! and a holodeck.
I think the real story here is more "There's a new company that is announcing some new products that sort of look cool." It's meant to build hype for a more detailed announcement tonight.
I don't think that's likely to be the problem. With Windows 10, they have an OS that's capable of automatically switching between a phone/tablet touch-optimized UI and a desktop mouse/keyboard UI. I don't love it, but it's passable.
The real problem with MS is that they get greedy. It's not good enough to have the world's most successful OS. It also needs to spy on people, serve advertisements, force people to have an Outlook.com email address, force people to buy all their apps from the Windows App Store, force people to use Edge, ram live tiles down people's throats, push ads for OneDrive and Office 365, require Azure for authentication, and have a statement in the EULA that Steve Ballmer retains the right to sodomize you. (I know Ballmer doesn't even work there anymore. That's what makes it so weird!)
I don't know exactly what's behind Microsoft's brain damage, but they just can't let their users get away without being abused. I think part of the reason Windows Phone never took off is that a lot of people (Microsoft partners, IT decision makers, and individual users) are tired of this crap. We're often forced to tolerate it in some capacity because of vendor lock-in, but we're not eager to lock ourselves in for more.
If I were a betting man, I would put money that this gimmick for this new device is that it's optimized for Continuum, Microsoft's version of the "dock your phone and get a desktop computer" idea. It's the only thing I can think of that would lead them to think, "This time, it'll work." Their big advantage is that Windows still has a big market share on the desktop, and they may be able to leverage that fact by marketing a phone that also operates as a full Windows machine. It also makes sense of some recent talk about Windows on ARM.
The problem will be, they're probably going to try to have it only run apps from the Windows app store. That alone will cause a lot of people to dismiss it as a viable option.
I haven't heard of these Kangaroo PCs before, but I like the idea. Or, what I'd really like is something that's a mix between this and the Samsung DeX dock, or Microsoft's continuum. Plus Thunderbolt 3.
Like, take one of these Kangaroo PCs, and add a Thunderbolt port, cellular radio, and a touchscreen, and give it a UI on the embedded screen that works for a small screen. Or, if you approach it from the other direction, give a smart phone a Thunderbolt port, develop docks for it, and allow it to operate as a full computer when docked.
Of course, someone is going to ask, "Why are you talking about Thunderbolt? A lot of phones have USB-C." The nice thing about Thunderbolt is that it provides better access to the internal bus, allowing external devices to act more like internal devices. With Thunderbolt, you'd be in a better position to have docks include additional power and features. You could do things like have a discrete graphics chipset embedded into the dock, that would allow a small underpowered computer to play games with better performance when docked.
The problem is that we don't have strict laws governing the protection of user data.
I disagree. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually not a proponent of the idea of "the invisible hand", but I think the larger problem is vendor lock-in. I think there should be more laws to protect user data, but more importantly, I think we need to find ways to make sure people have real options.
For example, to this day, I can't use a non-Windows operating system for my work computer. Or at least, I need a Windows VM to run a few Windows applications for which I have no non-Windows version available. Ideally, operating systems should be able to compete on features, rather than on the applications that are available on them. To me, this is the real problem, since I don't have the option to say, "I don't like Microsoft's privacy policies, so I'll switch to a different OS.
I don't know the best way to accomplish that. Maybe Microsoft should be required to publish all of their own APIs and protocols so that systems like WINE and Samba can be perfected?
I've always been a proponent of the general idea that, in order to be eligible for copyright protection, companies should be required to submit their source code to a public organization, and the source should then be automatically submitted to the public domain after some circumstances are met (e.g. the original vendor is no longer selling, updating, or supporting it). In my mind, Windows XP should have its source released. That would allow someone other than Microsoft to provide a perfect compatibility layer, or a new OS based on the same code. It would even just allow someone else to pick up development and support of the old OS, now that Microsoft is no longer interested. If Microsoft is confident that Windows 10 is a real improvement over Windows XP, rather than just some new version that they're railroading people into for their own purposes, then releasing Windows XP code to the public domain shouldn't cause much harm to their bottom line.
What's probably hobbling this somewhat is the handset maker and wireless carrier relationship.
I wouldn't say "somewhat". That's one of the big problems here. It's not just that cell phone manufacturers want their products to be available, or that they want their products to be compatible with a given network. They can pretty much do that on their own. The real key is, they want the carriers to actively sell their products. Apple and Samsung want it so, when you go into a Verizon or T-Mobile store (whether it's brick-and-morter or a website), their phones are displayed prominently. They want carriers to put out ads promoting their products. They want the carriers to subsidize their phones so that the advertised price point is $50 instead of the $500 the phone actually costs.
Another big piece of the puzzle is Net Neutrality. If cellular carriers are allowed to prioritize their own services and charge different rates for data usage for different services, then they can control which services people use. That is, if customers aren't charged for data usage associated with their own (or their partners') voice services and entertainment services, then controlling the physical infrastructure also controls the market for all of those services. That is, unfortunately, what most ISPs want. The $50-$100 a month you pay for Internet access is all well and good, but why settle for that, when they can force you to use their voice service, their version of Spotify and Netflix, etc., all the while collecting data on everything you do? If any company can be the central point that collects all of your data, it makes them pretty powerful in this emerging data-driven world.
My point is more that, you shouldn't need to install special VoIP apps or have additional hardware. It should get to the point where, for example, an iPhone is simply an iPod Touch with a cellular data plan, and nothing else particularly special about it. Verizon and T-Mobile can offer VoIP/messaging services, but they should be sold completely independently of cell phone service, and those services should be portable to any device.
Tying the products together is simply anti-competitive behavior.
This may not be the top of my priority list, but I do think it's something that needs to happen. Increasingly, the voice services on cell networks are basically just VoIP running over the data services. The two should be decoupled. You should be able to buy a "dumb pipe" data connection without any other service. You should be able to set the default phone application to use a different VoIP account. In reality, tying phone and messaging services to your cellular data provider no longer makes any more sense than tying your email account to your ISP. Or tying your TV content to your ISP.
Wired or wireless, ISPs generally want to push you into using their services and content. It gives them power and control. Worse, it's the reason some other VoIP provider can't easily step in and offer you the services you're asking for (e.g. number spoofing prevention, spam blocking). Tying services and content to the ISP decreases competition and kills innovation.
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If Apple was serious about games -- the could EASILY blow Microsoft and Sony out of the water. WHERE is the gamepad??? Or the ability to use Android / PS4 gamepads?
If they were serious about games, they'd also release a desktop machine without discrete graphics and without a built-in monitor. And they'd support remotes on Macs again, and allow you to run an AppleTV-like interface, so you could use the computer as a console. Hell, they could just partner with Steam and use their gamepad and Big Picture mode.
They're not serious about games.
I guess they really have given up on the desktop market.
It's more that Apple has never really gone after the gaming market.
You just drop the STL file on an SD card or upload it to a web interface hosted on the printer itself, no drivers needed.
You'd agree that's not really a good solution, though, right? Like, you have a networked printer on your company's network, but you can't simply print to it without weird crappy drivers that don't work. Instead you copy it to an SD card, walk it over to the printer, plug it in, and then try to print it? Or you log into a web interface and upload things? That's not easier.
Either way, again, that's just an example. I work in IT support and I'm constantly working around and fixing problems that don't really need to exist. And for my personal use, too, it seems that companies are constantly moving in the wrong direction. Facebook's apps keep getting worse. I find Apple's music app harder to navigate than ever. Hulu's new iOS app is awful.
What got to me about that is, if it's giving you peak performance, can it do that by turning off the fricken bloat?
Good to hear they're making a version of Windows specifically for professional use. It should then come without all the crap bloatware, ads, and telemetry, right? Right?
One of the things that frustrates me about technology companies is the general focus on adding new features, while at the same time failing to make sure their existing features work. There are so many things in computing that are simply much more difficult and unreliable than they need to be. My fallback example is printer drivers. Why are printer drivers even necessary? I can understand 3D printers still needing custom drivers, or those big industrial copiers needing specialized drivers to deal with some custom publishing feature, but why on earth does a simple B&W laser printer need special hardware instructions just to print a Word document? And considering how simple the hardware ultimately is, why am I still dealing with buggy printer drivers from major manufacturers?
I know talking about printer drivers is a bit of a tangent, but it's just an example. My point is, these tech companies keep building virtual assistants that are nearly useless, or yet another snapchat clone, but they won't fix problems like printer drivers. And why would we even trust a company to build IoT devices, having computers listen to everything we say and integrating computers into almost every object in our homes, when they can't even make a reliable universal printer driver?
Apple's not the worst offender of this kind of thing, by any means, but they at least used to be among the best at making simple things that worked without frustration, and I do think that they're slipping a bit. You're complaining about Siri, but honestly, I wouldn't complain if they ditched Siri completely, and focused instead on dealing with the real problems that users and IT people face with computers. The problems I have aren't things like, "I wish I could talk to my toaster and have it tell me the weather," but more like, "Managing a fleet of thousands of computers is still more difficult than it needs to be" and "VPN still sucks" and "managing passwords and 2FA tokens is really annoying". I could talk for hours about the problems and annyances with computing, and so far, none of them have been fixed by Alexa or Siri.
Yeah, I'm not sure how this is supposed to work with a publicly traded company. Like, ok, users buy a bunch of shares, and then what? If it looks like it's driving up the price, it's just going to encourage a bunch of speculators to buy in. The fad passes and the buying-spree ends, and the price drops again. Any of the users who bought in still don't have control, and meanwhile have probably lost money. And even that's only if a substantial number of users buy into it.
It only seems like a good deal for existing shareholders hoping to drive the price up a bit before they sell. Am I wrong? Am I missing something?
So what's the argument here? Trump didn't misunderstand, but rather he was misinformed?
Obviously he misunderstands a lot of things, and is misinformed about a lot more. But it's kind of splitting hairs, when the point was "His explanation of the research was incorrect."
Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or government advisers?
Seems kind of irrelevant. I mean, I don't think that anyone imagines Trump is actually reading scientific studies. Obviously someone is telling him these things. It could be advisors, but it seems just as likely it's something someone said on Fox and Friends. Regardless, his statements about the research were inaccurate.
Was it Trump who misunderstood the study, or did the study not communicate clearly?
Not sure if English is your second language or something, but in English, if you fail to understand something because it was not communicated properly, it's still proper to say that you misunderstood.
Did the study use a lot of jargon, confusing verbiage, and passive voice?
I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make here. There's bound to be some scientific jargon in a scientific paper. And what does "passive voice" have to do with anything?
Did it make clear and specific projections, or was everything couched in "if this scenario and those people do that then something might change here to cause this effect"?
Did someone claim that the paper was vague? It seems like Trump was also under the impression that the paper gave specific projections, enough that he claims the environmental impact is negligible. It's just that those claims don't accurately characterize the results of the research.
Is the news article cited above just completely and totally wrong, or has it been vetted for accuracy?
Do you have any reason to think that it's totally wrong or inaccurate? Or are you just taking an absurd cynical position? For any statement, you could say, "What if that's just totally wrong?":
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth-- or maybe he wasn't! Maybe Lincoln is still alive today. Have those stories been vetted for accuracy?
Water molecules are made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Or maybe that's just totally wrong! Has anyone researched this?
I don't know. I'd consider "someone got ahold of all my passwords" to be a bigger problem than "someone stole my TV".
"I swear, under oath, I've given them the password," a distraught Wheeler, his hands handcuffed behind his back, told Circuit Judge Michael Rothschild
He had explained that his password was "fourwordsalluppercase"; one word, all lowercase.
The nature of the breach isn't entirely clear. It's possible that the passwords are encrypted, and that the encryption wasn't broken. There are other kinds of exploits and intrusions.
Are you saying SSO is stupid in principle, or something about OneLogin's brand of SSO is stupid in particular?
On the other hand, a simple burglar could get access to something placed on your desk. And a small fire could rob you of all your passwords.
But also, since it has such a low barrier to entry, a company like Microsoft is at a bit of a disadvantage. There's no way they can be as nimble and experimental as a startup. Because of this, I think trying to chase the social networking market is a foolish move.
They'd be much smarter to use their status as a big, lumbering company that focuses on enterprise clients. Make solid, stable, reliable, efficient products that people can count on. Be forward thinking, but wait for new concepts and technologies to reach the point of being proven and predictable. Then make them stable and refined, and then integrate them.
Also, they should build in a full suite of sound effects, make any related GUI based on LCARS. Actually, I wouldn't mind having a small wireless communicator badge that, if you tap it, it connects over the Internet to talk to the computer.
... and FTL travel. That's all one of these virtual assistants needs for me to buy one. Respond to "computer" with Majel Roddenberry's voice, use a GUI based on LCARS, provide a communicator badge, and warp drives. Oh! and a holodeck.
I think the real story here is more "There's a new company that is announcing some new products that sort of look cool." It's meant to build hype for a more detailed announcement tonight.
I don't think that's likely to be the problem. With Windows 10, they have an OS that's capable of automatically switching between a phone/tablet touch-optimized UI and a desktop mouse/keyboard UI. I don't love it, but it's passable.
The real problem with MS is that they get greedy. It's not good enough to have the world's most successful OS. It also needs to spy on people, serve advertisements, force people to have an Outlook.com email address, force people to buy all their apps from the Windows App Store, force people to use Edge, ram live tiles down people's throats, push ads for OneDrive and Office 365, require Azure for authentication, and have a statement in the EULA that Steve Ballmer retains the right to sodomize you. (I know Ballmer doesn't even work there anymore. That's what makes it so weird!)
I don't know exactly what's behind Microsoft's brain damage, but they just can't let their users get away without being abused. I think part of the reason Windows Phone never took off is that a lot of people (Microsoft partners, IT decision makers, and individual users) are tired of this crap. We're often forced to tolerate it in some capacity because of vendor lock-in, but we're not eager to lock ourselves in for more.
If I were a betting man, I would put money that this gimmick for this new device is that it's optimized for Continuum, Microsoft's version of the "dock your phone and get a desktop computer" idea. It's the only thing I can think of that would lead them to think, "This time, it'll work." Their big advantage is that Windows still has a big market share on the desktop, and they may be able to leverage that fact by marketing a phone that also operates as a full Windows machine. It also makes sense of some recent talk about Windows on ARM.
The problem will be, they're probably going to try to have it only run apps from the Windows app store. That alone will cause a lot of people to dismiss it as a viable option.
I haven't heard of these Kangaroo PCs before, but I like the idea. Or, what I'd really like is something that's a mix between this and the Samsung DeX dock, or Microsoft's continuum. Plus Thunderbolt 3.
Like, take one of these Kangaroo PCs, and add a Thunderbolt port, cellular radio, and a touchscreen, and give it a UI on the embedded screen that works for a small screen. Or, if you approach it from the other direction, give a smart phone a Thunderbolt port, develop docks for it, and allow it to operate as a full computer when docked.
Of course, someone is going to ask, "Why are you talking about Thunderbolt? A lot of phones have USB-C." The nice thing about Thunderbolt is that it provides better access to the internal bus, allowing external devices to act more like internal devices. With Thunderbolt, you'd be in a better position to have docks include additional power and features. You could do things like have a discrete graphics chipset embedded into the dock, that would allow a small underpowered computer to play games with better performance when docked.
The problem is that we don't have strict laws governing the protection of user data.
I disagree. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually not a proponent of the idea of "the invisible hand", but I think the larger problem is vendor lock-in. I think there should be more laws to protect user data, but more importantly, I think we need to find ways to make sure people have real options.
For example, to this day, I can't use a non-Windows operating system for my work computer. Or at least, I need a Windows VM to run a few Windows applications for which I have no non-Windows version available. Ideally, operating systems should be able to compete on features, rather than on the applications that are available on them. To me, this is the real problem, since I don't have the option to say, "I don't like Microsoft's privacy policies, so I'll switch to a different OS.
I don't know the best way to accomplish that. Maybe Microsoft should be required to publish all of their own APIs and protocols so that systems like WINE and Samba can be perfected?
I've always been a proponent of the general idea that, in order to be eligible for copyright protection, companies should be required to submit their source code to a public organization, and the source should then be automatically submitted to the public domain after some circumstances are met (e.g. the original vendor is no longer selling, updating, or supporting it). In my mind, Windows XP should have its source released. That would allow someone other than Microsoft to provide a perfect compatibility layer, or a new OS based on the same code. It would even just allow someone else to pick up development and support of the old OS, now that Microsoft is no longer interested. If Microsoft is confident that Windows 10 is a real improvement over Windows XP, rather than just some new version that they're railroading people into for their own purposes, then releasing Windows XP code to the public domain shouldn't cause much harm to their bottom line.
What's probably hobbling this somewhat is the handset maker and wireless carrier relationship.
I wouldn't say "somewhat". That's one of the big problems here. It's not just that cell phone manufacturers want their products to be available, or that they want their products to be compatible with a given network. They can pretty much do that on their own. The real key is, they want the carriers to actively sell their products. Apple and Samsung want it so, when you go into a Verizon or T-Mobile store (whether it's brick-and-morter or a website), their phones are displayed prominently. They want carriers to put out ads promoting their products. They want the carriers to subsidize their phones so that the advertised price point is $50 instead of the $500 the phone actually costs.
Another big piece of the puzzle is Net Neutrality. If cellular carriers are allowed to prioritize their own services and charge different rates for data usage for different services, then they can control which services people use. That is, if customers aren't charged for data usage associated with their own (or their partners') voice services and entertainment services, then controlling the physical infrastructure also controls the market for all of those services. That is, unfortunately, what most ISPs want. The $50-$100 a month you pay for Internet access is all well and good, but why settle for that, when they can force you to use their voice service, their version of Spotify and Netflix, etc., all the while collecting data on everything you do? If any company can be the central point that collects all of your data, it makes them pretty powerful in this emerging data-driven world.
My point is more that, you shouldn't need to install special VoIP apps or have additional hardware. It should get to the point where, for example, an iPhone is simply an iPod Touch with a cellular data plan, and nothing else particularly special about it. Verizon and T-Mobile can offer VoIP/messaging services, but they should be sold completely independently of cell phone service, and those services should be portable to any device.
Tying the products together is simply anti-competitive behavior.
This may not be the top of my priority list, but I do think it's something that needs to happen. Increasingly, the voice services on cell networks are basically just VoIP running over the data services. The two should be decoupled. You should be able to buy a "dumb pipe" data connection without any other service. You should be able to set the default phone application to use a different VoIP account. In reality, tying phone and messaging services to your cellular data provider no longer makes any more sense than tying your email account to your ISP. Or tying your TV content to your ISP.
Wired or wireless, ISPs generally want to push you into using their services and content. It gives them power and control. Worse, it's the reason some other VoIP provider can't easily step in and offer you the services you're asking for (e.g. number spoofing prevention, spam blocking). Tying services and content to the ISP decreases competition and kills innovation.
Actually, I remember now why I stopped using it: My ISP stopped providing a free server, and I didn't want to pay for it.