Okay, maybe I should have been a little more specific. Considering that any high def player is going to cost at least $500, considering the uncertainty of BluRay vs HD DVD (and the fact that right now there aren't too many movies in either format that I'd want to watch let alone own), considering that I thought the PS3 might be an early adopter's nightmare, and considering other PS3 issues--yes, the output of my upsampling DVD player is good enough.
I can't really remember a time when VHS or cassette tapes were good enough.
I was caught up in the hype and would have bought a PS3 at launch if I could have. Then I played one at Target for about 10 minutes and it reset twice so I figured it was unstable and if was going to get one I should wait a good long while. Then the lack of games for the PS3 struck me, then I went home and watched a DVD and realized that it looks good enough so why am I excited about BluRay? I fell out of love with the PS3 really fast. I think Sony is going to cause a lot of people to buy Wiis.
Sorry, but you think wrong. Apart from opening a book, Tivo knows when you do all of those things--change the channel, mute, turn off the TV, rewind, fast forward, pause, watch, delete, thumb up, thumb down, get a season pass. Anything you do through Tivo is recorded by Tivo--just press a button and watch for the little yellow light on the front of the Tivo. Your remote was talking to the TV, but Tivo heard it. It's really powerful data that they have access to.
I wonder if the Tivo people have figured out that my Tivo has just been sitting there doing nothing since I got an HDTV.
I got the lifetime subscription when I got Tivo 5 or 6 years ago. Through a promotion I was able to transfer it to a Series 2 box when they came out. My wife did the math one day and we probably would have been better off paying monthly. But what the lifetime subscription does is it keeps me from hating Tivo (the company, not the box) a little more every month when I pay the bill.
Maybe I'm a simpleton, but the whole Tivo service seems like kind of a money grab. I felt that $10 a month was too much for basically a TV guide with brains. Not that it should be free necessarily, but it was way overpriced from the beginning. The lifetime subscription kept me from being too cognizant of the fact that I was being gouged.
The Tivo people have said some really brutal things in relation to dropping the lifetime subscription. They said, basically, that they don't make enough money from people who buy lifetime subscriptions and that they can make $100 more out of people who use the new pricing. That may be true, but do you really want to tell your customers that? That might make them start rooting for the evil cable companies to use their monopolies to put their own PVRs into people's homes for 1/4 the price and finish Tivo off.
In short, Tivo isn't big enough or powerful enough to get away with the kind of bullshit they're trying to pull.
The actual burning is probably quicker just because it has a faster drive. The encoding is probably a bit faster, but still pretty much an "overnight" task. I haven't burned anything yet nor have I seen any iDVD benchmarks.
How do you like it? Mine's coming Thursday, gotta be faster than my 12" Powerbook at 1Ghz!
I like it a lot. Honestly it's not 100% "there" as a set top box yet, but it's a good solid 85% "there." In time when either Apple updates FrontRow or people hack FrontRow I think that it will be 100%. By biggest problem so far is that the Flip4Mac plugin is PPC only, so I can't play wmv in Quicktime (or FrontRow) yet.
The Mini is hooked to my TV, stereo, and gigabit network. So far I've had to Remote Desktop into it to do one thing or another every day, but I've only had it 3 days and I do it less every day. Mostly I just use the remote and FrontRow.
I've had Tivo since 2000 and from Day One I thought this would be a great feature that I was always surprised didn't exist. Tivo has a phone jack, so it seems reasonable from a consumer's point of view to call the Tivo and schedule a recording. When they brought out web scheduling I thought it was a step in the right direction, but it's still far from perfect (mainly because it's not instant, Tivo doesn't get it's instructions until the next time it calls in). So this should be a good thing, except that it's a bunch of bullshit.
This should be a feature of Tivo, not something that's locked to ONE cell phone provider. And to charge extra for it? That's just insulting.
Although I have a Tivo and Verizon I'm definitely not going to use this service. I've got a shiny new CoreDuo Mac Mini sitting on top of my TV and between iTunes, podcasts, and BitTorrent it's going to get harder and harder for me to find reasons to use my Tivo and cable box. Amateurs are often putting out better content than the networks, and I can control the stuff on my Mini 100% (not counting DRM obviously).
I used to love Tivo and be a big fanboy, but lately every announcement they make just causes me to hate them more.
Agreed...can we hear from a subscriber that DOESN'T copy the DVDs and still got throttled? The firsthand accounts I've seen in this thread so far involve copying.
I'm a subscriber who has non-copying throttling. About a year ago (before we knew about throttling) we noticed that when we wanted to watch movies we often didn't have any, so we actually "upgraded" to the 6 at a time plan for $35 a month. Bad idea since it made it that much clearer that there was a problem. Over the summer (I'm a teacher and had the summer off) I could easily watch 2 movies a day. I'd always return movies the day after I received them. It didn't take long to figure out that Netflix isn't unlimited. Even on the 6 at a time plan I usually didn't have movies to watch. What I learned was that the more you use Netflix, the less you get.
This is the best part. I wrote an email to Netflix saying, basically, "what kind of bullshit is this?" They wrote back saying, basically, "bullshit? sir, there is no bullshit." and then the flood gates opened--I was unthrottled. I suddenly started getting 2 day service (sent it to them on Monday, have the replacement on Wednesday) again like I did when I was a new customer. The "truly unlimited" service lasted for about a month and I probably got 30 movies out of them. When the throttling kicked in again I downgraded to 3 at a time. Currently I have 10 movies on my queue and they all have long or very long waits. I'm getting almost nothing out of Netflix at the moment. You'd think that after a period of low rental activity that you'd get off the throttling list but that doesn't appear to be the case.
They're making piracy look like a really good option. If you use Netflix you'd almost be stupid not to rip your movies and send them right back. Then you'd always have something to watch when you wanted to watch. Or you could just bypass Netflix completely and download all your movies. That's much quicker than waiting a week for Netflix to send you something.
We get everything first, what are you talking about? Word, Excel, Photoshop--all on the Mac first. Mouse, USB, floppy drive, CD Rom, Firewire--all first commonly used on the Mac.
You have to go out of your way to display this content, and then when you do get it it's just PG-13 rated dry humping. How does that equal 18+? And why exactly is this better than the 17+ rating it already had?
It makes no sense.
Nero (because Microsoft doesn't have a media burning framework).
Yes, they do. As illustrated in this example [microsoft.com]
I'm a 2-year Mac user and a 10 year pissed off Windows user before that. I never got XP to burn a CD out of the box. They hint at the ability to do so but without the likes of Adaptec, Nero, or iTunes I could never do it.
DVD Express (because Microsoft doesn't have a DVD player).
Yes, it does: Windows Media Player. However, it requires a third-party MPEG-2 codec [microsoft.com], which are freely available.
Where are the free ones? You linked to a bunch of codecs that cost money. Way back when I paid either $20 or $50 for a WMP plugin that played DVDs and ripped CDs as MP3.
As someone whose been on both sides of the fence, I think I've got a good handle on the Mac vs Windows software issue. A Mac comes with a good selection of apps and utilities. You can do basically anything on a Mac right out of the box. If you need pro apps or other specialty stuff to enhance your computer usage it's out there. On the Windows side, you have to download and buy a whole lot of stuff in an effort to make Windows merely usable.
Again, I'm not just a Mac user bashing Windows for fun. It's years of Windows use that drove me to the Mac.
Someone in the US government is reading this and saying either "shit, cutting the American citizens' contact with the outside world is going to be harder than we thought" or "grreat, let's learn from China's mistakes."
American news is worthless--it's just scenes of car chases and celebrities doing dumb things. That's our news. In America, real news only comes from 2 places--public broadcasting (NPR & PBS which the government clearly wants to kill off) and the internet. Yes, we have to go overseas to find out what's happening in our own country. Broadcast flag, National ID, Downing Street Memo--most Americans have no clue what these things are. If the US government wants to control the internet, you can bet it's so that they can control the information that we receive so that they can carry out their agenda with minimal risk of a revolution. There's no tinfoil hat here. This is right out in the open. We're pwned.
Yeah it's self-serving when the security people are telling you how insecure your computer is, but that doesn't make it less true. The average Slashdot reader probably has little to no problems with viruses or spyware. But the average users (which is most of the people using computers, and people who know what the command line is tend to forget that) don't know anything. They'll get owned in a couple minutes because they don't know how not to--they don't even know there's a risk. To them the computer is just another appliance. To them I say the MacMini starts at $499 and won't let them down.;)
Does any other democracy on earth still have them?
Probably not, but the US is a democracy in name only so you can't really look to us for what good democratic practices are. I mean, we're the last country you'd want setting up democracies in other parts of the worl...oh wait. Shit.
I think it's a stupid idea to use wiki for an opinion page. Your garden variety message board comments system is a much better way of getting everyone's opinion heard, which I assume is what their goal is. If you post a comment, it's pretty much there forever. People with differing viewpoints can discuss or argue. If you post your thoughts on a wiki someone with different thoughts can just come along and replace your message with his, leaving no trace of what you'd written. Wiki is just going to be like "King of the Mountain".
The only benefit I can see is to the LA Times if they have ads on the page. Since the content will change so often people can visit over and over and read basically a different article each time--and maybe they'll click some ads.
I just got a Motorola V710 from Verizon. I think it's Verizon's only Bluetooth phone at the moment. There's a healthy dose of good and bad here. The good is that it's a very good phone--strong signal and sound quality, it works with iSync (USB only though), I use it as a wireless modem with my PowerBook and don't have to pay any special fees (it just counts against my minutes--not super fast but faster than dialup). The bad mostly comes from Verizon's crippling of the phone with firmware. It can do a lot of things, but they are things that Verizon charges for so they crippled them (uploading ringtones, downloading pictures, bluetooth file transfer). There are ways around most of that though.
Can anyone with legal experience enlighten me on this one? Do the bastards have the right to do so, provided that one doesn't sign a document that explicitly states "you can read my email" but instead contains a fine version of "all your bases, off lunch hours, belongs to us?
I've never gotten the "sign here to allow the company to read your email" letter before, but over and over I've gotten the one that says "I understand that there is absolutely no guarantee of privacy when using company computers/networks. Company computers/networks are to be used only for company business. Personal use of company computers/networks is grounds for dismissal." I don't work for a Fortune 500 company, I work for a school district. What kind of trade secrets am I going to leak? 2+2=4? No Child Left Behind is a bad idea? But as anti-big brother as I am I think this is perfectly reasonable. While you're at work they own your ass--and they own the computer and they own the network. They have the right to do whatever they want with their property.
I was actually a juror on a wrongful termination case about a year ago. The plaintiff said she was fired because she was pregnant, but the defense was ready with all her personal emails she sent from work. Hundreds of them! Racist jokes, bullying/humiliation of coworkers, invitations to happy hour, bids sent to competing vendors (oops!), booking vacations, getting mortgage rate quotes, etc. Then they whipped out the "I understand that my email is not private at work and I can't use it for personal business and if I do I can be fired" document signed by the plaintiff and it was all over. This small company had actually fired a few people for email abuse already.
They pay you to work. If you send out the occasional personal email they probably won't give you static about it. But if you send so much personal email that they wonder when you have time to work there will be problems. There really shouldn't be any outrage about it.
Yeah, I'm passionate about Windows. After using it for 10 years I came to so passionately hate it that I stopped using it. And then I watched as all my friends and family got passionate about Windows and buy Macs. The Your Potential. Our Passion campaign has always bothered me (again, passionately) because Microsoft doesn't make any products that have anything to do with any of the things shown in their ads. They can't make you an astronaut, fashion designer, or bass player. Clearly they're just selling an image--but it's Apple's image that they're selling and they're not even doing a good job at it. If they really want to find people who love Windows they should just look for cars with Windows stickers on them. I see Apple and Tux stickers all over the place and with a million percent more market share there should be a million times more people so passionate about their OS that they celebrate it with a sticker on their car. No, I've never seen one either, but you figure they've got to exist somewhere.
The feature is only being included because IE is slipping in the browser share market.
They've slipped to a meager 90% of the market share. Woe is Microsoft.
"What, you mean we have to do a little work to maintain our monopoly? WORK? What part of "MONOPOLY" don't they understand? You don't have a monopoly so that you can do work! This sucks. Okay, give em tabbed browsing, that ought to shut them up."
Keep in mind Ford doesn't have an agreement with each and every customer that says "If it blows up or are maimed by using our product, we are not responsible"...which Microsoft does.
Nobody but Microsoft would be allowed to have such an agreement. What makes them so special?
Ford can't afford to ignore disasterous engineering failures. Microsoft can by writing it off with marketing. Lucky for us most durable goods don't come with shrink wrap licenses right?
It's very fortunate that most things we buy don't come with agreements that would have the product owning us. You'd think that in an economy where consumers have a choice they wouldn't pick that kind of license. Oh yeah--choice...never mind.
When Ford makes a car that is defective they do a "recall" and fix it so that it works the way it should have worked in the first place free of charge. What suckers! They could have just sold users the "seat belt upgrade" or "ignition switch that doesn't catch fire." The stockholders must be pissed.
You might be thinking "if a car malfunctions it's a life or death matter but who cares if a computer crashes or gets a virus?" But what if that computer is part of the air traffic control system? Windows (for some reason) is used in a lot of important environments. Sometimes it really is life or death.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, maybe I should have been a little more specific. Considering that any high def player is going to cost at least $500, considering the uncertainty of BluRay vs HD DVD (and the fact that right now there aren't too many movies in either format that I'd want to watch let alone own), considering that I thought the PS3 might be an early adopter's nightmare, and considering other PS3 issues--yes, the output of my upsampling DVD player is good enough.
I can't really remember a time when VHS or cassette tapes were good enough.
I was caught up in the hype and would have bought a PS3 at launch if I could have. Then I played one at Target for about 10 minutes and it reset twice so I figured it was unstable and if was going to get one I should wait a good long while. Then the lack of games for the PS3 struck me, then I went home and watched a DVD and realized that it looks good enough so why am I excited about BluRay? I fell out of love with the PS3 really fast. I think Sony is going to cause a lot of people to buy Wiis.
Sorry, but you think wrong. Apart from opening a book, Tivo knows when you do all of those things--change the channel, mute, turn off the TV, rewind, fast forward, pause, watch, delete, thumb up, thumb down, get a season pass. Anything you do through Tivo is recorded by Tivo--just press a button and watch for the little yellow light on the front of the Tivo. Your remote was talking to the TV, but Tivo heard it. It's really powerful data that they have access to. I wonder if the Tivo people have figured out that my Tivo has just been sitting there doing nothing since I got an HDTV.
I got the lifetime subscription when I got Tivo 5 or 6 years ago. Through a promotion I was able to transfer it to a Series 2 box when they came out. My wife did the math one day and we probably would have been better off paying monthly. But what the lifetime subscription does is it keeps me from hating Tivo (the company, not the box) a little more every month when I pay the bill.
Maybe I'm a simpleton, but the whole Tivo service seems like kind of a money grab. I felt that $10 a month was too much for basically a TV guide with brains. Not that it should be free necessarily, but it was way overpriced from the beginning. The lifetime subscription kept me from being too cognizant of the fact that I was being gouged.
The Tivo people have said some really brutal things in relation to dropping the lifetime subscription. They said, basically, that they don't make enough money from people who buy lifetime subscriptions and that they can make $100 more out of people who use the new pricing. That may be true, but do you really want to tell your customers that? That might make them start rooting for the evil cable companies to use their monopolies to put their own PVRs into people's homes for 1/4 the price and finish Tivo off.
In short, Tivo isn't big enough or powerful enough to get away with the kind of bullshit they're trying to pull.
The actual burning is probably quicker just because it has a faster drive. The encoding is probably a bit faster, but still pretty much an "overnight" task. I haven't burned anything yet nor have I seen any iDVD benchmarks.
How do you like it? Mine's coming Thursday, gotta be faster than my 12" Powerbook at 1Ghz!
I like it a lot. Honestly it's not 100% "there" as a set top box yet, but it's a good solid 85% "there." In time when either Apple updates FrontRow or people hack FrontRow I think that it will be 100%. By biggest problem so far is that the Flip4Mac plugin is PPC only, so I can't play wmv in Quicktime (or FrontRow) yet.
The Mini is hooked to my TV, stereo, and gigabit network. So far I've had to Remote Desktop into it to do one thing or another every day, but I've only had it 3 days and I do it less every day. Mostly I just use the remote and FrontRow.
I've had Tivo since 2000 and from Day One I thought this would be a great feature that I was always surprised didn't exist. Tivo has a phone jack, so it seems reasonable from a consumer's point of view to call the Tivo and schedule a recording. When they brought out web scheduling I thought it was a step in the right direction, but it's still far from perfect (mainly because it's not instant, Tivo doesn't get it's instructions until the next time it calls in). So this should be a good thing, except that it's a bunch of bullshit.
This should be a feature of Tivo, not something that's locked to ONE cell phone provider. And to charge extra for it? That's just insulting.
Although I have a Tivo and Verizon I'm definitely not going to use this service. I've got a shiny new CoreDuo Mac Mini sitting on top of my TV and between iTunes, podcasts, and BitTorrent it's going to get harder and harder for me to find reasons to use my Tivo and cable box. Amateurs are often putting out better content than the networks, and I can control the stuff on my Mini 100% (not counting DRM obviously).
I used to love Tivo and be a big fanboy, but lately every announcement they make just causes me to hate them more.
Agreed...can we hear from a subscriber that DOESN'T copy the DVDs and still got throttled? The firsthand accounts I've seen in this thread so far involve copying.
I'm a subscriber who has non-copying throttling. About a year ago (before we knew about throttling) we noticed that when we wanted to watch movies we often didn't have any, so we actually "upgraded" to the 6 at a time plan for $35 a month. Bad idea since it made it that much clearer that there was a problem. Over the summer (I'm a teacher and had the summer off) I could easily watch 2 movies a day. I'd always return movies the day after I received them. It didn't take long to figure out that Netflix isn't unlimited. Even on the 6 at a time plan I usually didn't have movies to watch. What I learned was that the more you use Netflix, the less you get.
This is the best part. I wrote an email to Netflix saying, basically, "what kind of bullshit is this?" They wrote back saying, basically, "bullshit? sir, there is no bullshit." and then the flood gates opened--I was unthrottled. I suddenly started getting 2 day service (sent it to them on Monday, have the replacement on Wednesday) again like I did when I was a new customer. The "truly unlimited" service lasted for about a month and I probably got 30 movies out of them. When the throttling kicked in again I downgraded to 3 at a time. Currently I have 10 movies on my queue and they all have long or very long waits. I'm getting almost nothing out of Netflix at the moment. You'd think that after a period of low rental activity that you'd get off the throttling list but that doesn't appear to be the case.
They're making piracy look like a really good option. If you use Netflix you'd almost be stupid not to rip your movies and send them right back. Then you'd always have something to watch when you wanted to watch. Or you could just bypass Netflix completely and download all your movies. That's much quicker than waiting a week for Netflix to send you something.
Neener, neener, we got something first for once.
We get everything first, what are you talking about? Word, Excel, Photoshop--all on the Mac first. Mouse, USB, floppy drive, CD Rom, Firewire--all first commonly used on the Mac.
You have to go out of your way to display this content, and then when you do get it it's just PG-13 rated dry humping. How does that equal 18+? And why exactly is this better than the 17+ rating it already had? It makes no sense.
But he's breaking the first 2 rules of Fight Club.
It's a feature.
Nero (because Microsoft doesn't have a media burning framework).
Yes, they do. As illustrated in this example [microsoft.com]
I'm a 2-year Mac user and a 10 year pissed off Windows user before that. I never got XP to burn a CD out of the box. They hint at the ability to do so but without the likes of Adaptec, Nero, or iTunes I could never do it.
DVD Express (because Microsoft doesn't have a DVD player).
Yes, it does: Windows Media Player. However, it requires a third-party MPEG-2 codec [microsoft.com], which are freely available.
Where are the free ones? You linked to a bunch of codecs that cost money. Way back when I paid either $20 or $50 for a WMP plugin that played DVDs and ripped CDs as MP3.
As someone whose been on both sides of the fence, I think I've got a good handle on the Mac vs Windows software issue. A Mac comes with a good selection of apps and utilities. You can do basically anything on a Mac right out of the box. If you need pro apps or other specialty stuff to enhance your computer usage it's out there. On the Windows side, you have to download and buy a whole lot of stuff in an effort to make Windows merely usable.
Again, I'm not just a Mac user bashing Windows for fun. It's years of Windows use that drove me to the Mac.
Someone in the US government is reading this and saying either "shit, cutting the American citizens' contact with the outside world is going to be harder than we thought" or "grreat, let's learn from China's mistakes."
American news is worthless--it's just scenes of car chases and celebrities doing dumb things. That's our news. In America, real news only comes from 2 places--public broadcasting (NPR & PBS which the government clearly wants to kill off) and the internet. Yes, we have to go overseas to find out what's happening in our own country. Broadcast flag, National ID, Downing Street Memo--most Americans have no clue what these things are. If the US government wants to control the internet, you can bet it's so that they can control the information that we receive so that they can carry out their agenda with minimal risk of a revolution. There's no tinfoil hat here. This is right out in the open. We're pwned.
Yeah it's self-serving when the security people are telling you how insecure your computer is, but that doesn't make it less true. The average Slashdot reader probably has little to no problems with viruses or spyware. But the average users (which is most of the people using computers, and people who know what the command line is tend to forget that) don't know anything. They'll get owned in a couple minutes because they don't know how not to--they don't even know there's a risk. To them the computer is just another appliance. To them I say the MacMini starts at $499 and won't let them down. ;)
Does any other democracy on earth still have them?
Probably not, but the US is a democracy in name only so you can't really look to us for what good democratic practices are. I mean, we're the last country you'd want setting up democracies in other parts of the worl...oh wait. Shit.
I think it's a stupid idea to use wiki for an opinion page. Your garden variety message board comments system is a much better way of getting everyone's opinion heard, which I assume is what their goal is. If you post a comment, it's pretty much there forever. People with differing viewpoints can discuss or argue. If you post your thoughts on a wiki someone with different thoughts can just come along and replace your message with his, leaving no trace of what you'd written. Wiki is just going to be like "King of the Mountain".
The only benefit I can see is to the LA Times if they have ads on the page. Since the content will change so often people can visit over and over and read basically a different article each time--and maybe they'll click some ads.
Mother: Now Microsoft, if all the other companies jumped off a bridge it doesn't mean that you have to.
Microsoft: Of course it does!
I just got a Motorola V710 from Verizon. I think it's Verizon's only Bluetooth phone at the moment. There's a healthy dose of good and bad here. The good is that it's a very good phone--strong signal and sound quality, it works with iSync (USB only though), I use it as a wireless modem with my PowerBook and don't have to pay any special fees (it just counts against my minutes--not super fast but faster than dialup). The bad mostly comes from Verizon's crippling of the phone with firmware. It can do a lot of things, but they are things that Verizon charges for so they crippled them (uploading ringtones, downloading pictures, bluetooth file transfer). There are ways around most of that though.
Can anyone with legal experience enlighten me on this one? Do the bastards have the right to do so, provided that one doesn't sign a document that explicitly states "you can read my email" but instead contains a fine version of "all your bases, off lunch hours, belongs to us?
I've never gotten the "sign here to allow the company to read your email" letter before, but over and over I've gotten the one that says "I understand that there is absolutely no guarantee of privacy when using company computers/networks. Company computers/networks are to be used only for company business. Personal use of company computers/networks is grounds for dismissal." I don't work for a Fortune 500 company, I work for a school district. What kind of trade secrets am I going to leak? 2+2=4? No Child Left Behind is a bad idea? But as anti-big brother as I am I think this is perfectly reasonable. While you're at work they own your ass--and they own the computer and they own the network. They have the right to do whatever they want with their property.
I was actually a juror on a wrongful termination case about a year ago. The plaintiff said she was fired because she was pregnant, but the defense was ready with all her personal emails she sent from work. Hundreds of them! Racist jokes, bullying/humiliation of coworkers, invitations to happy hour, bids sent to competing vendors (oops!), booking vacations, getting mortgage rate quotes, etc. Then they whipped out the "I understand that my email is not private at work and I can't use it for personal business and if I do I can be fired" document signed by the plaintiff and it was all over. This small company had actually fired a few people for email abuse already.
They pay you to work. If you send out the occasional personal email they probably won't give you static about it. But if you send so much personal email that they wonder when you have time to work there will be problems. There really shouldn't be any outrage about it.
Yeah, I'm passionate about Windows. After using it for 10 years I came to so passionately hate it that I stopped using it. And then I watched as all my friends and family got passionate about Windows and buy Macs.
The Your Potential. Our Passion campaign has always bothered me (again, passionately) because Microsoft doesn't make any products that have anything to do with any of the things shown in their ads. They can't make you an astronaut, fashion designer, or bass player. Clearly they're just selling an image--but it's Apple's image that they're selling and they're not even doing a good job at it.
If they really want to find people who love Windows they should just look for cars with Windows stickers on them. I see Apple and Tux stickers all over the place and with a million percent more market share there should be a million times more people so passionate about their OS that they celebrate it with a sticker on their car. No, I've never seen one either, but you figure they've got to exist somewhere.
The feature is only being included because IE is slipping in the browser share market.
They've slipped to a meager 90% of the market share. Woe is Microsoft.
"What, you mean we have to do a little work to maintain our monopoly? WORK? What part of "MONOPOLY" don't they understand? You don't have a monopoly so that you can do work! This sucks. Okay, give em tabbed browsing, that ought to shut them up."
Keep in mind Ford doesn't have an agreement with each and every customer that says "If it blows up or are maimed by using our product, we are not responsible"...which Microsoft does.
Nobody but Microsoft would be allowed to have such an agreement. What makes them so special?
Ford can't afford to ignore disasterous engineering failures. Microsoft can by writing it off with marketing. Lucky for us most durable goods don't come with shrink wrap licenses right?
It's very fortunate that most things we buy don't come with agreements that would have the product owning us. You'd think that in an economy where consumers have a choice they wouldn't pick that kind of license. Oh yeah--choice...never mind.
When Ford makes a car that is defective they do a "recall" and fix it so that it works the way it should have worked in the first place free of charge. What suckers! They could have just sold users the "seat belt upgrade" or "ignition switch that doesn't catch fire." The stockholders must be pissed.
You might be thinking "if a car malfunctions it's a life or death matter but who cares if a computer crashes or gets a virus?" But what if that computer is part of the air traffic control system? Windows (for some reason) is used in a lot of important environments. Sometimes it really is life or death.