Because you agreed to a contract*1; it is this same category of law that Repo men use to repossess property. We are in a legal nightmare, and I really don't see anything "non-voilent" ending it:(
But ordinary people avoid tense situations, a repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.
Not to mention that you can still write games as Win32 app and ship them on Windows 8 x86 devices, either by selling disks or Steam or something - it's just the ARM devices that are locked down.
That being said, games developers are increasingly moving to consoles because consoles make piracy harder. Steam does well too - once again because it is harder to pirate Steam games than ones that come on a disk.
Now you'd think that Microsoft would have realised that the Windows Store could get some of that cash by allowing Win32 applications, even mature rated games. But it seems they haven't.
I worry about watercooler conversations. Maybe we need some sort of law that says if you're not reasonably au fait with popular TV shows you will be retired. It would be like a sort of Voight Kampff test to detect antisocial people.
I wrote that on my phone. I do recall reading an MSDN blog that XNA was not supported but checking more carefully it seems that MS have said it is on WP8 as you say.
But it's a legacy API which will not be extended. And you can't have XNA applications in the Windows Store
Since Windows 8 is built on the strong foundation of Windows 7, any app built for Windows will run in the Windows 8 desktop environment. This includes apps based on XNA, Win32,.NET, WPF, Silverlight, etc.
Windows 8 also introduces a new type of app called a Modern UI Style App for developers that wish to make their app available in the Windows 8 Store, for free or for sale. Using Visual Studio 2012, you have a language choice of C++, XAML with C#, VB or C++, or HTML5/JS to create a Metro Style App.
Using the XNA Framework is not a choice for building a Metro Style App. Official Microsoft guidance on game development is documented here. The recommended way to build highly immersive games on Windows 8 is to use HTML5/JS, XAML/C#, XAML/VB or C++ and DirectX, all great choices. But if you have been developing with XNA and have an existing code base, your only option it would seem is running as a desktop app.
This is where MonoGame comes inâ¦
Now I'm sure you going to say this still fits in your "with some tweaks" clause. I'm not sure that is good enough to be honest. Did Win32 applications need "some tweaks" in the move from NT4 to Win2k to XP to Vista to Windows 7? Up to Vista introduced UAC they did not. Even untweaked you could right click on them and Run As Administrator in Vista.
Now look at the mess they've created in mobile. Even if WP7 applications all run on WP8 - and that is not something we know yet - the fact remains that Microsoft told people to rewrite all the C++ code in C# with WP7. And now with WP8 they're heavily hinting that if you want to use the new features you should be using WinRT from C++, not C#.
Also if you look at leaks of the WP8 SDK it doesn't contain XNA.
This seems to confirm the suspicions that, with WP8, Silverlight and XNA are no longer supported for future and on-going projects. This means that WP7.1 Silverlight/XNA apps are legacy apps Microsoft wants the way of the future to be WinRT, whether it is on the desktop or the mobile.
The best you can do is to use the upgrade option, but you cannot upgrade XNA based apps just WP7 Silverlight apps. For XNA apps all you can do is to continue to work on them as WP7.1 apps. Some of the XNA framework is available for use in your brand new WP8 app, however.
So maybe the old apps will run on WP8 but only in legacy mode and the APIs will not be extended. And MS are heavily promoting Direct X and C++ as the way to write new stuff.
Maybe we need to have a national bankruptcy system. When a state folded you'd have a team of administrators sent in appointed by the IMF, World Bank, US Government etc. They'd privatise stuff, cut public spending, open up the economy to foreign capital and so on, i.e. apolitical and technocratic stuff to balance the budget.
Obviously rather in the way that pets need to be tranquillised by vets working to save their lives, a certain amount of coercion (sanctions, invasion etc) may be necessary to force states to accept procedure even though it was objectively in their best interests.
Once things stabilized they could organise elections for a new government. Though the administrators would need to appoint economic experts who would peer review the manifestos of parties running for political office to make sure that they weren't making fiscally irresponsible promises or threatening the property rights of foreign investors. In fact Iranians should be quite used to this measure - a committee of experts already vets candidates for office. The difference is that in my scheme they would be economists rather than Islamic clerics.
What you mean is that judges should be able to give lenient punishments that Guardian readers approve of and Daily Mail and Sun readers disapprove of even though there are lot more Mail and Sun readers than Guardian ones.
Maybe we should give up elections altogether and just have a government of Guardian readers.
"Managed apps are characteristically written with a XAML page or XNA Framework surface as the app interface, and Visual Basic or C# as the coding language. Existing Windows Phone apps that were written using these techniques are fully compatible with Windows Phone 8 Developer Preview. Game developers who prefer to write managed code still have XNA as an option."
Seems like a resounding yes, doesn't it? But according to developers who've read through the full SDK documentation and files said it's not quite that simple.
XNA is running in "quirks mode" with Windows Phone 8 said some developers. Those who write new games and other Windows Phone apps using XNA will be able to target Windows Phone 7.x devices, but will not be able to target Windows Phone 8-specific programming interfaces. In other words, you can write an app using XNA that will run on Windows Phone 8 because Windows Phone 7.X apps will be able to run on Windows Phone 8. But you cannot write a Windows Phone 8-specific app using XNA, developers said.
Chris Walsh, a Windows Phone developer of "Walshied" phone fame, explained the situation via Twitter this way: "XNA apps are run in a isolated mode, don't get access to new (WP8) features, but get full use of the hardware."
MS have said some some confusing things. It depends on what sort of app
XNA apps will not run. Microsoft Bloggers have recommended Mono Game.
XAML ones will need some tweaking perhaps.
New apps are supposed to be based on WinRT, and it is implied that old ones will run on a sort of quirks mode where they will not have access to new APIs.
There has been a mention of applications being processed by a 'cloud compiler' to convert them from.Net byte code to native.
It's not clear what the path is for old apps, and won't be until the SDK is released.
I think what will happen is that McKinnon will end up being sentenced to time served. Which is actually fair enough. What he did was illegal and he knew it, but it is not too serious in the grand scheme of things. Certainly shipping him off to a US prison would have been overkill.
In a statement to Parliament on Tuesday, Theresa May said that long-running extradition proceedings against the 46 year-old Asperger's Syndrome sufferer would be withdrawn on medical and human rights grounds. Psychiatrists warned that the Scot was likely to attempt suicide and was not strong enough to withstand the stress and trauma of a US trial and likely imprisonment.
May told Parliament there was "no doubt" McKinnon was seriously ill as a result of Aspergers and depression and at a "high risk of ending his life". She said that after taking careful advice from medical and legal experts she has decided withdraw extradition proceedings.
So if you can convince a doctor that you are a credible suicide risk if extradited, you will not be executed. Now this is problematic as the main target of the extradition act was Islamist terror suspects. Islamists are famously willing to kill themselves for the cause and it seems highly likely they will be able to pass the 'credible suicide risk if extradited' test that the McKinnon case seems to have set as a bar to extradition.
So is it right that McKinnon gets tried in the UK and most likely sentenced to time served? Absolutely, he is fundamentally harmless. Is it also right that the same thing happens to much more dangerous Islamists? No, not at all.
May has done the typical politician thing of solving a short term problem whilst creating a long term one which is probably more serious. It would actually better if she'd pardoned McKinnon or used some sort of discretionary power to block the extradition in a way that won't stop the extradition of people like Abu Qatada or Abu Hamza, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan. The credible risk of suicide test most likely will and I believe she will discover it was a tactical mistake to institute it.
This is a point that David Rivkin has been trying to make, though the media are too busy crowing about the UK "standing up to the US" to listen to it.
RACHAEL BROWN: US lawyer David Rivkin was a White House Counsel for presidents Reagan and Bush.
He says the Home Secretary's decision is laughable and could set a dangerous precedent.
DAVID RIVKIN: Under that argument, why do you even arrest anybody?
A person would say "If you arrest me and put me in a British prison, I'm going to kill myself."
RACHAEL BROWN: He says the extradition treaty has become a political football.
DAVID RIVKIN: We live in a world where individuals in one country can carry out crimes against another country.
We're supposed to work on this in a co-operative fashion, we're supposed to respect each other's judicial system.
RACHAEL BROWN: And the treaty could get even more complicated.
Theresa May again.
THERESA MAY: I have decided to introduce a forum bar.
MPs: Hear, hear.
THERESA MAY: This will mean that where prosecution is possible in both the UK and in another state, the British courts will be able to bar prosecution overseas if they believe it is in the interests of justice to do so.
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: It's a great day for compassion and common sense.
RACHAEL BROWN: Shami Chakrabarti directs the human rights group, Liberty.
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: It's a future where we will see discretion to consider where alleged activity took place, and where people who are accused of doing things in Great Britain get the opportunity to be tried in Great Britain.
RACHAEL BROWN: It's the same argument that was tested in the recent case of terrorism suspects Babar Ahmad and Talha
The US system of recall elections for judges is perfectly reasonable. It means that if a judge makes a decision which the majority of people disagree with he or she will lose office at the next election.
Something which - if you look at the UK press - is not exactly unknown to happen in the UK.
The other XBox precedent is tying. They bought up Bungie and Halo which was going to be Mac and PC and made it XBox exclusive at a point when Halo was likely to be smash hit and the XBox's viability was still in doubt. So Halo essentially made the XBox a viable console.
Admittedly they did release a PC version a year later, but a year old video game is like reheated lunch. Halo 2 was a Vista exclusive and was released two years after the Xbox version.
In fact this is an amusing example of how tying is self defeating. Halo 2 was tied to the XBox initially. By that point the XBox was going to be a success with or without tying. Still they kept Halo 2 XBox only for two years. Vista was at that point in serious trouble with poor reviews and low uptake. Halo 2 was then tweaked to be Direct X 10 only, which meant Vista only. But a two year old videogame (and Halo 2 was dated graphically even when it was released, so it never really needed Direct X 10) wasn't going to make Vista a success. It sold so poorly it was used as an excuse for Halo 3 to be XBox only.
So you wonder how long before Skype becomes Windows Phone only. Of course Skype has been getting worse for years so in practice all that means is that people will move to whatever Google's solution for video chatting is. And the thing is that given Windows Phone 7's poor market share and lack of support for C++, there was no chance that Skype would have supported it without being bought by Microsoft. WP8 does support native code, but it still seems like it will have poor market share and a lack of apps. That means the platform has a sort of chicken and egg problem as low market share discourages app development but a poor selection of apps discourages customers.
Now people will say that Android had the same sort of problems. That's true but Android was competing against Symbian which was already dying and iOS which was always going to be a premium and Apple exclusive brand, not a mass market one that was licensed to everyone. So HTC, Samsung et al didn't really have a choice between iOS and Android. Rather they had a choice between Symbian and Android. Google could win that. Also Google got a Native SDK out relatively quickly and that meant that cross platform stuff that uses native libraries got ported over.
WP7 never had native code and never will. WP8 will, but it completely replaces the WP7 ecosystem with an incompatible one. Announcing it means that people will drop WP7 development like a hot potato.
tl;dr - Microsoft are fucked here. Incidentally it's sort of funny that back when Vista was released I remember reading here that it would mean people would flee to Linux and I point out the reasons that would not happen. I.e. the consensus seemed to be that MS was in deep trouble. Now, curiously, when I point out that MS is in deep trouble over mobile the consensus seems to be that they are not.
Of course MS brought out Windows 7 which is as good as XP and its Vista woes subsided. And MS never really lost market share on the desktop - it has always had ~90% of the market. On mobile its market share peaked with Windows Mobile at about 12%. It has now dropped below 1%. I.e. on mobile it has Linux like market shares. Apple and Google are the ones with 90% market share. Most apps seem to launch on iOS and Android and not on Windows Phone. There is no real sign that their customers are likely to move en masse for a platform with far less applications.
Don't worry everybody. I'm just testing to see if it's a feral redditor. If it is I'll have to cut its head off and then burn the body to prevent an infestation.
The German V-1 flying bomb demonstrated a serious omission in OSRD's portfolio: guided missiles. While the OSRD had some success developing unguided rockets, it had nothing comparable to the V-1, the V-2 or the Henschel Hs 293 air-to-ship gliding guided bomb. Although the United States trailed the Germans and Japanese in several areas, this represented an entire field that had been left to the enemy. Bush did not seek the advice of Dr. Robert H. Goddard. Goddard would come to be regarded as America's pioneer of rocketry, but many contemporaries regarded him as a crank. Before the war, Bush had gone on the record as saying, "I don't understand how a serious scientist or engineer can play around with rockets", but in May 1944, he was forced to travel to London to warn General Dwight Eisenhower of the danger posed by the V-1 and V-2. Bush could only recommend that the launch sites be bombed, which was done.
Not a mistake his rather unjustly maligned namesake would have made.
It's like something out of Doctor Who really. New leader takes over and behaves in an odd, aloof way. It turns out he's preparing the way for an alien invasion and when it arrives he is obsequious to his new 'masters'. Who proceed to round up the heroes.
If you're a user you bought a phone which had a staggeringly poor selection of applications. Just when it looked like it was starting to get some traction Microsoft announced thant WP8 would be based on a new API, WinRT. WP7 Silverlight apps would run on WP8 but only in compatibility mode. What about XNA. Well some Microsoft bloggers have been talking up MonoGame but the actual details of what will happen are going to be kept secret until launch. I.e. no SDK.
So obviously at that point no one in the right mind is going to develop for WP7. If you go here
There's a graph of developer interest on WP7 on page 7. In Jan 2012 40% of developers were thinking of developing for WP7. By August when it had fallen to about 20%. The reason for that is that Microsoft had announced a new and better but incompatible platform.
This is not the first time this has happened. Development for Windows Mobile essentially stopped when people like Opera and Skype found out that WP7 would be incompatible with their WM6.5 code. Admittedly Microsoft bought Skype so sooner or later it will be an WP exclusive. But Microsoft didn't need to buy companies to make them support Windows - those companies did it because it sold well.
So if you're one of the schmucks that bought a WP7 phone what do you get? WP7.8. It's got the same start screen as WP8. but it can't run WP8 applications. People are going to develop apps for WP8 because that is the future.
So you've got a phone that looks a bit like the future until you try to install anything new on it, in which case it won't let you.
As someone who went from WM6.5 to Android it's actually funny how much of a catastrophe Windows Phone has been.
Yeah I bet non clickable links are a major problem when you're forced to work as a slave labourer underground for Kali cultists until their high priest tears your heart out in a savage ceremony.
Slashdot Mirror
Just back the files up and you'll be fine.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/
You can just strip the DRM off your Kindle purchases and then back them up.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/
Because you agreed to a contract*1; it is this same category of law that Repo men use to repossess property. We are in a legal nightmare, and I really don't see anything "non-voilent" ending it :(
But ordinary people avoid tense situations, a repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.
The problem is that many slashdotters seem to jump to conspiracy theory conclusions about *everything*, even if totally ridiculous.
How much are THEY paying you to say that?
I was being sarcastic. As far as I can see the only way keygen authors can make money is via malware.
Not to mention that you can still write games as Win32 app and ship them on Windows 8 x86 devices, either by selling disks or Steam or something - it's just the ARM devices that are locked down.
That being said, games developers are increasingly moving to consoles because consoles make piracy harder. Steam does well too - once again because it is harder to pirate Steam games than ones that come on a disk.
Now you'd think that Microsoft would have realised that the Windows Store could get some of that cash by allowing Win32 applications, even mature rated games. But it seems they haven't.
I worry about watercooler conversations. Maybe we need some sort of law that says if you're not reasonably au fait with popular TV shows you will be retired. It would be like a sort of Voight Kampff test to detect antisocial people.
Yeah, no way someone would put malicious code in Keygen or cracked executable.
I wrote that on my phone. I do recall reading an MSDN blog that XNA was not supported but checking more carefully it seems that MS have said it is on WP8 as you say.
But it's a legacy API which will not be extended. And you can't have XNA applications in the Windows Store
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/archive/2012/08/01/windows-8-xna-and-monogame-part-1-overview.aspx
Since Windows 8 is built on the strong foundation of Windows 7, any app built for Windows will run in the Windows 8 desktop environment. This includes apps based on XNA, Win32, .NET, WPF, Silverlight, etc.
Windows 8 also introduces a new type of app called a Modern UI Style App for developers that wish to make their app available in the Windows 8 Store, for free or for sale. Using Visual Studio 2012, you have a language choice of C++, XAML with C#, VB or C++, or HTML5/JS to create a Metro Style App.
Using the XNA Framework is not a choice for building a Metro Style App. Official Microsoft guidance on game development is documented here. The recommended way to build highly immersive games on Windows 8 is to use HTML5/JS, XAML/C#, XAML/VB or C++ and DirectX, all great choices. But if you have been developing with XNA and have an existing code base, your only option it would seem is running as a desktop app.
This is where MonoGame comes inâ¦
Now I'm sure you going to say this still fits in your "with some tweaks" clause. I'm not sure that is good enough to be honest. Did Win32 applications need "some tweaks" in the move from NT4 to Win2k to XP to Vista to Windows 7? Up to Vista introduced UAC they did not. Even untweaked you could right click on them and Run As Administrator in Vista.
Now look at the mess they've created in mobile. Even if WP7 applications all run on WP8 - and that is not something we know yet - the fact remains that Microsoft told people to rewrite all the C++ code in C# with WP7. And now with WP8 they're heavily hinting that if you want to use the new features you should be using WinRT from C++, not C#.
Also if you look at leaks of the WP8 SDK it doesn't contain XNA.
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/189-windows-phone/4559-windows-phone-8-sdk-leaked-no-javascript-apps.html
This seems to confirm the suspicions that, with WP8, Silverlight and XNA are no longer supported for future and on-going projects. This means that WP7.1 Silverlight/XNA apps are legacy apps Microsoft wants the way of the future to be WinRT, whether it is on the desktop or the mobile.
The best you can do is to use the upgrade option, but you cannot upgrade XNA based apps just WP7 Silverlight apps. For XNA apps all you can do is to continue to work on them as WP7.1 apps. Some of the XNA framework is available for use in your brand new WP8 app, however.
So maybe the old apps will run on WP8 but only in legacy mode and the APIs will not be extended. And MS are heavily promoting Direct X and C++ as the way to write new stuff.
It's still a mess.
Maybe we need to have a national bankruptcy system. When a state folded you'd have a team of administrators sent in appointed by the IMF, World Bank, US Government etc. They'd privatise stuff, cut public spending, open up the economy to foreign capital and so on, i.e. apolitical and technocratic stuff to balance the budget.
Obviously rather in the way that pets need to be tranquillised by vets working to save their lives, a certain amount of coercion (sanctions, invasion etc) may be necessary to force states to accept procedure even though it was objectively in their best interests.
Once things stabilized they could organise elections for a new government. Though the administrators would need to appoint economic experts who would peer review the manifestos of parties running for political office to make sure that they weren't making fiscally irresponsible promises or threatening the property rights of foreign investors. In fact Iranians should be quite used to this measure - a committee of experts already vets candidates for office. The difference is that in my scheme they would be economists rather than Islamic clerics.
Well we need to put them in the oven too as weev memorably said of bloggers, but for some reason I get modded down here whenever I say that.
What you mean is that judges should be able to give lenient punishments that Guardian readers approve of and Daily Mail and Sun readers disapprove of even though there are lot more Mail and Sun readers than Guardian ones.
Maybe we should give up elections altogether and just have a government of Guardian readers.
Wrong again - it seems XNA apps will work on WP8 in a 'legacy' mode.
Source
If you look at the article
http://www.zdnet.com/xna-support-for-windows-phone-8-is-it-there-or-isnt-it-7000001971/
"Managed apps are characteristically written with a XAML page or XNA Framework surface as the app interface, and Visual Basic or C# as the coding language. Existing Windows Phone apps that were written using these techniques are fully compatible with Windows Phone 8 Developer Preview. Game developers who prefer to write managed code still have XNA as an option."
Seems like a resounding yes, doesn't it? But according to developers who've read through the full SDK documentation and files said it's not quite that simple.
XNA is running in "quirks mode" with Windows Phone 8 said some developers. Those who write new games and other Windows Phone apps using XNA will be able to target Windows Phone 7.x devices, but will not be able to target Windows Phone 8-specific programming interfaces. In other words, you can write an app using XNA that will run on Windows Phone 8 because Windows Phone 7.X apps will be able to run on Windows Phone 8. But you cannot write a Windows Phone 8-specific app using XNA, developers said.
Chris Walsh, a Windows Phone developer of "Walshied" phone fame, explained the situation via Twitter this way: "XNA apps are run in a isolated mode, don't get access to new (WP8) features, but get full use of the hardware."
MS have said some some confusing things. It depends on what sort of app
XNA apps will not run. Microsoft Bloggers have recommended Mono Game.
XAML ones will need some tweaking perhaps.
New apps are supposed to be based on WinRT, and it is implied that old ones will run on a sort of quirks mode where they will not have access to new APIs.
There has been a mention of applications being processed by a 'cloud compiler' to convert them from .Net byte code to native.
It's not clear what the path is for old apps, and won't be until the SDK is released.
I think what will happen is that McKinnon will end up being sentenced to time served. Which is actually fair enough. What he did was illegal and he knew it, but it is not too serious in the grand scheme of things. Certainly shipping him off to a US prison would have been overkill.
I agree that McKinnon should not be sent to the US but IMO May has set a precedent which she will regret. Look what she said
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/16/mckinnon_extradition_decision/print.html
In a statement to Parliament on Tuesday, Theresa May said that long-running extradition proceedings against the 46 year-old Asperger's Syndrome sufferer would be withdrawn on medical and human rights grounds. Psychiatrists warned that the Scot was likely to attempt suicide and was not strong enough to withstand the stress and trauma of a US trial and likely imprisonment.
May told Parliament there was "no doubt" McKinnon was seriously ill as a result of Aspergers and depression and at a "high risk of ending his life". She said that after taking careful advice from medical and legal experts she has decided withdraw extradition proceedings.
So if you can convince a doctor that you are a credible suicide risk if extradited, you will not be executed. Now this is problematic as the main target of the extradition act was Islamist terror suspects. Islamists are famously willing to kill themselves for the cause and it seems highly likely they will be able to pass the 'credible suicide risk if extradited' test that the McKinnon case seems to have set as a bar to extradition.
So is it right that McKinnon gets tried in the UK and most likely sentenced to time served? Absolutely, he is fundamentally harmless. Is it also right that the same thing happens to much more dangerous Islamists? No, not at all.
May has done the typical politician thing of solving a short term problem whilst creating a long term one which is probably more serious. It would actually better if she'd pardoned McKinnon or used some sort of discretionary power to block the extradition in a way that won't stop the extradition of people like Abu Qatada or Abu Hamza, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan. The credible risk of suicide test most likely will and I believe she will discover it was a tactical mistake to institute it.
This is a point that David Rivkin has been trying to make, though the media are too busy crowing about the UK "standing up to the US" to listen to it.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3612398.htm
RACHAEL BROWN: US lawyer David Rivkin was a White House Counsel for presidents Reagan and Bush.
He says the Home Secretary's decision is laughable and could set a dangerous precedent.
DAVID RIVKIN: Under that argument, why do you even arrest anybody?
A person would say "If you arrest me and put me in a British prison, I'm going to kill myself."
RACHAEL BROWN: He says the extradition treaty has become a political football.
DAVID RIVKIN: We live in a world where individuals in one country can carry out crimes against another country.
We're supposed to work on this in a co-operative fashion, we're supposed to respect each other's judicial system.
RACHAEL BROWN: And the treaty could get even more complicated.
Theresa May again.
THERESA MAY: I have decided to introduce a forum bar.
MPs: Hear, hear.
THERESA MAY: This will mean that where prosecution is possible in both the UK and in another state, the British courts will be able to bar prosecution overseas if they believe it is in the interests of justice to do so.
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: It's a great day for compassion and common sense.
RACHAEL BROWN: Shami Chakrabarti directs the human rights group, Liberty.
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI: It's a future where we will see discretion to consider where alleged activity took place, and where people who are accused of doing things in Great Britain get the opportunity to be tried in Great Britain.
RACHAEL BROWN: It's the same argument that was tested in the recent case of terrorism suspects Babar Ahmad and Talha
The US system of recall elections for judges is perfectly reasonable. It means that if a judge makes a decision which the majority of people disagree with he or she will lose office at the next election.
Something which - if you look at the UK press - is not exactly unknown to happen in the UK.
Are you saying you wouldn't want them to be prosecuted for trespass?
Changing the subject a bit, where do you live?
As far as I know the Kill List only applies to Active X controls
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/240797
If you know a way to set a Kill Bit on a person I'd be every interested.
The other XBox precedent is tying. They bought up Bungie and Halo which was going to be Mac and PC and made it XBox exclusive at a point when Halo was likely to be smash hit and the XBox's viability was still in doubt. So Halo essentially made the XBox a viable console.
Admittedly they did release a PC version a year later, but a year old video game is like reheated lunch. Halo 2 was a Vista exclusive and was released two years after the Xbox version.
In fact this is an amusing example of how tying is self defeating. Halo 2 was tied to the XBox initially. By that point the XBox was going to be a success with or without tying. Still they kept Halo 2 XBox only for two years. Vista was at that point in serious trouble with poor reviews and low uptake. Halo 2 was then tweaked to be Direct X 10 only, which meant Vista only. But a two year old videogame (and Halo 2 was dated graphically even when it was released, so it never really needed Direct X 10) wasn't going to make Vista a success. It sold so poorly it was used as an excuse for Halo 3 to be XBox only.
So you wonder how long before Skype becomes Windows Phone only. Of course Skype has been getting worse for years so in practice all that means is that people will move to whatever Google's solution for video chatting is. And the thing is that given Windows Phone 7's poor market share and lack of support for C++, there was no chance that Skype would have supported it without being bought by Microsoft. WP8 does support native code, but it still seems like it will have poor market share and a lack of apps. That means the platform has a sort of chicken and egg problem as low market share discourages app development but a poor selection of apps discourages customers.
Now people will say that Android had the same sort of problems. That's true but Android was competing against Symbian which was already dying and iOS which was always going to be a premium and Apple exclusive brand, not a mass market one that was licensed to everyone. So HTC, Samsung et al didn't really have a choice between iOS and Android. Rather they had a choice between Symbian and Android. Google could win that. Also Google got a Native SDK out relatively quickly and that meant that cross platform stuff that uses native libraries got ported over.
WP7 never had native code and never will. WP8 will, but it completely replaces the WP7 ecosystem with an incompatible one. Announcing it means that people will drop WP7 development like a hot potato.
tl;dr - Microsoft are fucked here. Incidentally it's sort of funny that back when Vista was released I remember reading here that it would mean people would flee to Linux and I point out the reasons that would not happen. I.e. the consensus seemed to be that MS was in deep trouble. Now, curiously, when I point out that MS is in deep trouble over mobile the consensus seems to be that they are not.
Of course MS brought out Windows 7 which is as good as XP and its Vista woes subsided. And MS never really lost market share on the desktop - it has always had ~90% of the market. On mobile its market share peaked with Windows Mobile at about 12%. It has now dropped below 1%. I.e. on mobile it has Linux like market shares. Apple and Google are the ones with 90% market share. Most apps seem to launch on iOS and Android and not on Windows Phone. There is no real sign that their customers are likely to move en masse for a platform with far less applications.
"The Narwhal bacons at midnight?"
Don't worry everybody. I'm just testing to see if it's a feral redditor. If it is I'll have to cut its head off and then burn the body to prevent an infestation.
I'd keep you kids locked up inside until I give the all clear if I were you.
He failed to predict the danger of Nazi WMD though, and allowed a "missile gap" to develop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush
The German V-1 flying bomb demonstrated a serious omission in OSRD's portfolio: guided missiles. While the OSRD had some success developing unguided rockets, it had nothing comparable to the V-1, the V-2 or the Henschel Hs 293 air-to-ship gliding guided bomb. Although the United States trailed the Germans and Japanese in several areas, this represented an entire field that had been left to the enemy. Bush did not seek the advice of Dr. Robert H. Goddard. Goddard would come to be regarded as America's pioneer of rocketry, but many contemporaries regarded him as a crank. Before the war, Bush had gone on the record as saying, "I don't understand how a serious scientist or engineer can play around with rockets", but in May 1944, he was forced to travel to London to warn General Dwight Eisenhower of the danger posed by the V-1 and V-2. Bush could only recommend that the launch sites be bombed, which was done.
Not a mistake his rather unjustly maligned namesake would have made.
It's like something out of Doctor Who really. New leader takes over and behaves in an odd, aloof way. It turns out he's preparing the way for an alien invasion and when it arrives he is obsequious to his new 'masters'. Who proceed to round up the heroes.
WP7.8 is the absolute epitome of troll face.
If you're a user you bought a phone which had a staggeringly poor selection of applications. Just when it looked like it was starting to get some traction Microsoft announced thant WP8 would be based on a new API, WinRT. WP7 Silverlight apps would run on WP8 but only in compatibility mode. What about XNA. Well some Microsoft bloggers have been talking up MonoGame but the actual details of what will happen are going to be kept secret until launch. I.e. no SDK.
So obviously at that point no one in the right mind is going to develop for WP7. If you go here
http://pages.appcelerator.com/Q32012AppceleratorIDCSurveyReport.html
You don't need to give it real data, just random junk for the name, phone number and email
Or this might work
http://www.appcelerator.com.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/Appcelerator-Report-Q3-2012-final.pdf
There's a graph of developer interest on WP7 on page 7. In Jan 2012 40% of developers were thinking of developing for WP7. By August when it had fallen to about 20%. The reason for that is that Microsoft had announced a new and better but incompatible platform.
This is not the first time this has happened. Development for Windows Mobile essentially stopped when people like Opera and Skype found out that WP7 would be incompatible with their WM6.5 code. Admittedly Microsoft bought Skype so sooner or later it will be an WP exclusive. But Microsoft didn't need to buy companies to make them support Windows - those companies did it because it sold well.
So if you're one of the schmucks that bought a WP7 phone what do you get? WP7.8. It's got the same start screen as WP8. but it can't run WP8 applications. People are going to develop apps for WP8 because that is the future.
So you've got a phone that looks a bit like the future until you try to install anything new on it, in which case it won't let you.
As someone who went from WM6.5 to Android it's actually funny how much of a catastrophe Windows Phone has been.
Yeah I bet non clickable links are a major problem when you're forced to work as a slave labourer underground for Kali cultists until their high priest tears your heart out in a savage ceremony.