Because the kids moving the stop sign were purposefully trying to cause harm. Microsoft didn't make Windows insecure on purpose. If MS could be charged for not securing windows, the Stop sign manufacturer could be charged for not making the stop sign tamper proof.
Also, I don't think computer viruses cause all that many deaths.
I really think you're missing the guys point. Let me try and explain.
My wife is a graphic designer. She uses Photoshop at work. Now lets say that GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop, and has all the same features (which I don't believe is true, but what the hell, just for arguments sake lets pretend). It still isn't Photoshop though, so if she were to switch, she would have to learn a whole new UI. It would no doubt take her at least a month or two to become as fast and proficient with GIMP as she is with Photoshop. And that's just one app. Bear in mind that she would also have to learn how to use every single other app, as well as a whole new OS.
And at the end of all that she would gained what, exactly? All that extra effort and learning, to be able to do her job as well as she was already doing it, and no obvious advantage. And if you're going to start talking about cost savings, remember that someone has to support all this software, and you would have to factor in all those costs as well.
Now I use Linux. I'm typing this on Linux. But I do not pretend that it is right for everyone, in every situation. I certainly do not think Linux is ready to wipe MS off the desktop.
True, but if you buy the DVD and break the DRM, you get all the extras, and nice box with inlays. If you download it and break the DRM, you get none of the above, and also have to give up your bandwidth.
Added to which, we don't know what kind of DRM these things will use, but the DRM on DVDs is trivially easy to break.
Eighty percent of the market uses operating systems other than Windows XP
Wrong. I hardly ever see a desktop PC running anything else, but I hate anecdotal evidence, so lets look at some figures. Type "XP market share" into google, and one of the top hits is this:
Which give a figure of 78% for XP. Now when I said "has 80+ percent of the market" I was talking about the current version of IE, which is available for 9x, so yes, I do claim that the excluded operating systems (Mac OS, any Linux OS, or any FreeBSD OS, or NT 4 or Win 3.1. Or Amiga OS, for that matter) total less than 20 percent of the market. If you claim different, please provide some figures
Which shows XP managed oa 20% market share of web browsing machines in less than a year. This is hardly surprising, as virtually every store bought PC sold in that time period came with XP pre-installed. The same will be true of Vista. It will achieve market share very rapidly, because every new home PC sold will have it already on the hard drive.
Now, given XP has about %80 of the market, and Vista will have IE 7 pre-installed, I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. Here it comes:
Within 1 year of the release of Vista, all independent figures will show IE7 as having the largest market share of any browser.
Feel free to prove me wrong. But I'll need to see figures, sir!
Re:This browser is important
on
IE7 Leaked
·
· Score: 1
We have perfectly usable standards defined by the W3C
I would suggest IE is the de facto standard for web developers. Sure, it may not follow the w3c standards, but 80+ percent of the market uses it, so frankly it really doesn't matter what the W3C say.
my (impulsive) friend spent around 400$ on this kickass mp3 player about a year ago, he ended up buying a laptop a month later and he was like 'uh, this junk mp3 player is just going to end up another of my unused gadgets'
So he replaced his MP3 player with a laptop? Does he stick the laptop in his pocket so he can listen to music while walking round town?
Actually, windows already does normally come with bundled applications, it's just not MS who bundle them.I just bought a new laptop, and it came with DVD playing software, office software, and various other bits and pieces, all bundled by the nice people at Toshiba. Since pre-installed on a computer is how most people get their windows, it's fair to say that most home users get quite a lot of software bundled with XP.
Now, onto your main point, MS should bundle software, and include multiples of each type, ie; Realplayer, winmap, MMJB, whatever.
Problems:
1) Support. MS now has to test and support all those programs. Passing the buck to the company that made it won't cut it either. At least in the UK, I'd be entitled to a full refund if I bought a copy of XP and the preinstalled version of winamp didn't work properly.
2)Favouritism. which program opens when I double click an MP3? If i get a list asking me to pick one, which program comes top?
3)Monopoly abuse. Say they did this, and put a cut off point of 1million installed users as the required userbase for bundling. How would a new player ever break into the market now? Bad enough when MS ships media player with every copy of XP, but what chance do you have when they ship 6 other MP3 players as well?
And thats just off the top of my head. The whole thing would just be a world of pain for MS, and I can see why they don't want to get involved in it.
people will not spend money on new technology which is better than what they already have in some ways, but prevents them from doing other things that their older gear permitted.
I don't think thats why mini disc failed. Remember, mini disk launched in 92. No one had an MP3 player, because they didn't exist. No one had heard of the internet, most people didn't own computers. If you wanted to listen to music on the move, you either used a tape walkman or a huge bulky CD player. Putting music on tape was a matter of pressing paly on the CD (or vinyl) and hitting record on the tape. Putting music on mini disk was a matter of pressing play on the CD (or vinyl) and hitting record on the mini disk. same thing really.
Now, what advantage does mini disc have over tape? Slightly smaller (but not by much), sound quality is better, and, um, track select, right?
Now consider that when it launched, you could buy a really good tape walkman for about £40, and high quality blank tapes for a pound each. Mini disc players at the time cost £200 plus, and the discs were very expensive. Not to mention, they held less than a 90 minute tape. Sure, it sounded better, but did it sound that much better, especially on headphones to people who aren't audiophiles?
I would like to see XP deal with admin privileges the way Suse does... When something needs to be an Administrator, just prompt for the admin password.
Would not make one tiny little bit of difference. You know all those pop ups that say "click here to see $celebrity's tits"? Well if windows used the Suse security model, all that would happen is those pop ups would say "Insert root password to see $celeberity's tits!". And people would do it.
I know you were only joking, but I really am sick to death of hearing Mac users going on and on about how intuitive and easy to use their OS is, and how everything "just works".
My wife does desktop support for a living, and naturally, a lot of work colleagues ask her for support with their home machines. One such lady is a graphic designer who, surprise, is a longtime mac user, having been using Macs in one flavour or another since the early nineties.
Over the last 12 months or so, my wife has had to show this lady how to:
Set up her Airport wireless network
Hook up her Ipod Nano
Use Itunes
To the average joe or jane sixpack, I really don't think Mac OS is any more intuitive than windows.
If you adjust for inflation, it's not really as much as it was in previous generations. I remember when Street Fighter 2 came out for SNES. That game was $70!
Ah yes, but nearly all other consumer goods have dropped in price massively. SFII came out in 92. back then, a 21 inch TV would cost well over £400. I bought my first CD album about the same time, it cost something like £17. A video player cost £200. A video tape of a movie, £12 or more.
Nowadays, I can walk onto woolworths this afternoon and pick up a 34 inch TV for £200, a DVD player for £35, 3 DVD movies for £20, and a CD for a tenner. That's more stuff, some of it of a higher quality, and all for less than £300. That's 3 quarters of what I would have paid for an inferior TV 13 years ago.
New video games though, have barely moved in price over the same period.
Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office
Because they just don't know, and see no reason to find out. The average computer buyer thinks that to write a letter on a PC, you use word. To do your accounts you use Excel. Not a word processor or a spreadsheet, Word and Excel.
You have to understand, while you and I think this matters, most people simply don't give a flying fuck. They think MS office is all there is. If they want to write things, they don't think "Hmmm, I need a word processor, which one best suits my needs?" They think " I need word".
You want to know what the best shot OO.o has at increasing it's user base is? Not more features, not open formats, sure as hell not the evangelising of OSS fanatics. No the best shot it has is one simple thing.
Product activation.
Every person I know of who has a full copy of MS office at home has pirated it. No kidding. Every_Single_One. If MS comes up with a foolproof, uncrackable form of product activation and, crucially, if they enforce it on the corporate versions, then OO.o has a chance. Once people realise that word is going to cost them a hundred quid a pop, they might well ask if there's a viable alternative. Till then, no chance.
Look at the screenshots from the game... If that's the upper limit of the amazing tricks they can do with the Source engine
Well, I'm pretty sure this is all just a mistake on Amazons part anyway, but I can tell you why the screenshots look so bad. It's because they're all about 7 years old. I saw the same screenshots printed in PC gamer in the late 90's.
OK, well, if you can't find amule (and assuming you have searched for it) it might be because you might need to add a few extra repositories, but you can do this via Settings --> Repositories --> Add in Synaptic. Try adding the ones listed here.
With those repositories, typing "amule" into Synaptics search box brings up two hits. Not exactly a massively unwieldy list. The top hit is titled "amule".
I assume that whatever Citrix software you are trying to install is supplied as source for Linux. As I said, that really is'nt a problem with Ubuntu, and there is simply nothing anyone in the Linux community can do to force them to change how they supply their software.
Which aplications did you need the comand line to install? Seriously, I'm very curious here. You say you're still learning, maybe I can show you how to do the job in a GUI.
Any apps you want from repositories can be installed via Synaptic. Fully GUI. Now it may be that you wanted an app which is only available as source, but frankly I could write a windows app and only distribute it as source code. That wouldn't be the fault of Windows.
I haven't had the neccessity or motivation to learn Linux,
To configure Linux you have to be comfortable in its command line, and have a basic unix background so that you know what the commands are.
Your fist statement at least explains why your second is so wrong. As it happens, I do know Linux, and I hate using the command line (although I do have a Unix background too). I happen to think that everything you can do on the command line should also be possible in a GUI. I run Ubuntu. Number of times I resorted to the command line while setting up the system I'm typing this on? Zero.
I am going to continue avoiding linux until my customers start using it.
I would probably do the same in your position. Still if you do ever feel like experimenting, try the Live CD of Ubuntu. Promise you won't need a command line.
You should see how many copied tapes I have from years ago. All done at 1X speed. If your listening to it anyway, you just hit "record" at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the kids moving the stop sign were purposefully trying to cause harm. Microsoft didn't make Windows insecure on purpose. If MS could be charged for not securing windows, the Stop sign manufacturer could be charged for not making the stop sign tamper proof.
Also, I don't think computer viruses cause all that many deaths.
Does it run on Linux?
I really think you're missing the guys point. Let me try and explain.
My wife is a graphic designer. She uses Photoshop at work. Now lets say that GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop, and has all the same features (which I don't believe is true, but what the hell, just for arguments sake lets pretend). It still isn't Photoshop though, so if she were to switch, she would have to learn a whole new UI. It would no doubt take her at least a month or two to become as fast and proficient with GIMP as she is with Photoshop. And that's just one app. Bear in mind that she would also have to learn how to use every single other app, as well as a whole new OS.
And at the end of all that she would gained what, exactly? All that extra effort and learning, to be able to do her job as well as she was already doing it, and no obvious advantage. And if you're going to start talking about cost savings, remember that someone has to support all this software, and you would have to factor in all those costs as well.
Now I use Linux. I'm typing this on Linux. But I do not pretend that it is right for everyone, in every situation. I certainly do not think Linux is ready to wipe MS off the desktop.
WHy bother with MS Office? I know it is a big standard around big business
You just answered your own question.
True, but if you buy the DVD and break the DRM, you get all the extras, and nice box with inlays. If you download it and break the DRM, you get none of the above, and also have to give up your bandwidth.
Added to which, we don't know what kind of DRM these things will use, but the DRM on DVDs is trivially easy to break.
Thats right, because if it were'nt fo ndiswrapper, wireless manufacturers would all support linux, right? Just like all the other manufacturers do.
Eighty percent of the market uses operating systems other than Windows XP
= 2
e ases/view-release.html?id=160
Wrong. I hardly ever see a desktop PC running anything else, but I hate anecdotal evidence, so lets look at some figures. Type "XP market share" into google, and one of the top hits is this:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid
Which give a figure of 78% for XP. Now when I said "has 80+ percent of the market" I was talking about the current version of IE, which is available for 9x, so yes, I do claim that the excluded operating systems (Mac OS, any Linux OS, or any FreeBSD OS, or NT 4 or Win 3.1. Or Amiga OS, for that matter) total less than 20 percent of the market. If you claim different, please provide some figures
Here's an interesting article:
http://www.websidestory.com/news-events/press-rel
Which shows XP managed oa 20% market share of web browsing machines in less than a year. This is hardly surprising, as virtually every store bought PC sold in that time period came with XP pre-installed. The same will be true of Vista. It will achieve market share very rapidly, because every new home PC sold will have it already on the hard drive.
Now, given XP has about %80 of the market, and Vista will have IE 7 pre-installed, I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. Here it comes:
Within 1 year of the release of Vista, all independent figures will show IE7 as having the largest market share of any browser.
Feel free to prove me wrong. But I'll need to see figures, sir!
We have perfectly usable standards defined by the W3C
I would suggest IE is the de facto standard for web developers. Sure, it may not follow the w3c standards, but 80+ percent of the market uses it, so frankly it really doesn't matter what the W3C say.
It tells us those who want to create the future also want police protection from their slaves.
my (impulsive) friend spent around 400$ on this kickass mp3 player about a year ago, he ended up buying a laptop a month later and he was like 'uh, this junk mp3 player is just going to end up another of my unused gadgets'
So he replaced his MP3 player with a laptop? Does he stick the laptop in his pocket so he can listen to music while walking round town?
Actually, windows already does normally come with bundled applications, it's just not MS who bundle them.I just bought a new laptop, and it came with DVD playing software, office software, and various other bits and pieces, all bundled by the nice people at Toshiba. Since pre-installed on a computer is how most people get their windows, it's fair to say that most home users get quite a lot of software bundled with XP.
Now, onto your main point, MS should bundle software, and include multiples of each type, ie; Realplayer, winmap, MMJB, whatever.
Problems:
1) Support. MS now has to test and support all those programs. Passing the buck to the company that made it won't cut it either. At least in the UK, I'd be entitled to a full refund if I bought a copy of XP and the preinstalled version of winamp didn't work properly.
2)Favouritism. which program opens when I double click an MP3? If i get a list asking me to pick one, which program comes top?
3)Monopoly abuse. Say they did this, and put a cut off point of 1million installed users as the required userbase for bundling. How would a new player ever break into the market now? Bad enough when MS ships media player with every copy of XP, but what chance do you have when they ship 6 other MP3 players as well?
And thats just off the top of my head. The whole thing would just be a world of pain for MS, and I can see why they don't want to get involved in it.
No, it shows how long it will take it to catch up with photoshop.
Couldn't resist.
people will not spend money on new technology which is better than what they already have in some ways, but prevents them from doing other things that their older gear permitted.
I don't think thats why mini disc failed. Remember, mini disk launched in 92. No one had an MP3 player, because they didn't exist. No one had heard of the internet, most people didn't own computers. If you wanted to listen to music on the move, you either used a tape walkman or a huge bulky CD player. Putting music on tape was a matter of pressing paly on the CD (or vinyl) and hitting record on the tape. Putting music on mini disk was a matter of pressing play on the CD (or vinyl) and hitting record on the mini disk. same thing really.
Now, what advantage does mini disc have over tape? Slightly smaller (but not by much), sound quality is better, and, um, track select, right?
Now consider that when it launched, you could buy a really good tape walkman for about £40, and high quality blank tapes for a pound each. Mini disc players at the time cost £200 plus, and the discs were very expensive. Not to mention, they held less than a 90 minute tape. Sure, it sounded better, but did it sound that much better, especially on headphones to people who aren't audiophiles?
Interestingly enough, nintindo now do just that with the DS. You can now buy a DS with either Mario Kart or Nintendogs bundled.
I would like to see XP deal with admin privileges the way Suse does... When something needs to be an Administrator, just prompt for the admin password.
Would not make one tiny little bit of difference. You know all those pop ups that say "click here to see $celebrity's tits"? Well if windows used the Suse security model, all that would happen is those pop ups would say "Insert root password to see $celeberity's tits!". And people would do it.
I know you were only joking, but I really am sick to death of hearing Mac users going on and on about how intuitive and easy to use their OS is, and how everything "just works".
My wife does desktop support for a living, and naturally, a lot of work colleagues ask her for support with their home machines. One such lady is a graphic designer who, surprise, is a longtime mac user, having been using Macs in one flavour or another since the early nineties.
Over the last 12 months or so, my wife has had to show this lady how to:
Set up her Airport wireless network
Hook up her Ipod Nano
Use Itunes
To the average joe or jane sixpack, I really don't think Mac OS is any more intuitive than windows.
If you adjust for inflation, it's not really as much as it was in previous generations. I remember when Street Fighter 2 came out for SNES. That game was $70!
Ah yes, but nearly all other consumer goods have dropped in price massively. SFII came out in 92. back then, a 21 inch TV would cost well over £400. I bought my first CD album about the same time, it cost something like £17. A video player cost £200. A video tape of a movie, £12 or more.
Nowadays, I can walk onto woolworths this afternoon and pick up a 34 inch TV for £200, a DVD player for £35, 3 DVD movies for £20, and a CD for a tenner. That's more stuff, some of it of a higher quality, and all for less than £300. That's 3 quarters of what I would have paid for an inferior TV 13 years ago.
New video games though, have barely moved in price over the same period.
Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office
Because they just don't know, and see no reason to find out. The average computer buyer thinks that to write a letter on a PC, you use word. To do your accounts you use Excel. Not a word processor or a spreadsheet, Word and Excel.
You have to understand, while you and I think this matters, most people simply don't give a flying fuck. They think MS office is all there is. If they want to write things, they don't think "Hmmm, I need a word processor, which one best suits my needs?" They think " I need word".
You want to know what the best shot OO.o has at increasing it's user base is? Not more features, not open formats, sure as hell not the evangelising of OSS fanatics. No the best shot it has is one simple thing.
Product activation.
Every person I know of who has a full copy of MS office at home has pirated it. No kidding. Every_Single_One. If MS comes up with a foolproof, uncrackable form of product activation and, crucially, if they enforce it on the corporate versions, then OO.o has a chance. Once people realise that word is going to cost them a hundred quid a pop, they might well ask if there's a viable alternative. Till then, no chance.
I've watched all sorts of...pornographic scenes in films and you don't see me re-enacting any of that.
I was going to make a joke, but it's just too easy.
i shouldnt have to run 6 IM appz to talk to everyone ... Its a monolopy!!#
If, by your own admission, there are 6 different IMs you have to run, how can that be a monopoly?
Look at the screenshots from the game ... If that's the upper limit of the amazing tricks they can do with the Source engine
Well, I'm pretty sure this is all just a mistake on Amazons part anyway, but I can tell you why the screenshots look so bad. It's because they're all about 7 years old. I saw the same screenshots printed in PC gamer in the late 90's.
OK, well, if you can't find amule (and assuming you have searched for it) it might be because you might need to add a few extra repositories, but you can do this via Settings --> Repositories --> Add in Synaptic. Try adding the ones listed here.
With those repositories, typing "amule" into Synaptics search box brings up two hits. Not exactly a massively unwieldy list. The top hit is titled "amule".
I assume that whatever Citrix software you are trying to install is supplied as source for Linux. As I said, that really is'nt a problem with Ubuntu, and there is simply nothing anyone in the Linux community can do to force them to change how they supply their software.
Which aplications did you need the comand line to install? Seriously, I'm very curious here. You say you're still learning, maybe I can show you how to do the job in a GUI.
Any apps you want from repositories can be installed via Synaptic. Fully GUI. Now it may be that you wanted an app which is only available as source, but frankly I could write a windows app and only distribute it as source code. That wouldn't be the fault of Windows.
I haven't had the neccessity or motivation to learn Linux,
To configure Linux you have to be comfortable in its command line, and have a basic unix background so that you know what the commands are.
Your fist statement at least explains why your second is so wrong. As it happens, I do know Linux, and I hate using the command line (although I do have a Unix background too). I happen to think that everything you can do on the command line should also be possible in a GUI. I run Ubuntu. Number of times I resorted to the command line while setting up the system I'm typing this on? Zero.
I am going to continue avoiding linux until my customers start using it.
I would probably do the same in your position. Still if you do ever feel like experimenting, try the Live CD of Ubuntu. Promise you won't need a command line.
You should see how many copied tapes I have from years ago. All done at 1X speed. If your listening to it anyway, you just hit "record" at the same time.