Great idea. Of course that assumes that we stop regulated nuclear reactors. We don't have an interstate highway system. We stop managing our airspace. You're happy with interferences from any old joe who wants to use any old piece of spectrum. You don't mind our nuclear weapons going unprotected. You don't want any satellites. You don't check the weather forecast. You don't mind millions of old people dying hungry and impoverished on the street. You don't want universities. You are happy to take a pharmaceutical company's word for the safety and efficacy of their new drug. You don't think the military should be employing these new fangled aeroplanes.
I could go on but what's the point, you seem to think a 19th century government can manage 21st century technology and reality so why bother.
If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it? It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.
Instead you have your own religion, Atheism, and you believe anyone that doesn't agree with your faith is strange and capable of violence. If only they had the same moral compass as you do... perhaps you should try and convert them? Oh wait...
Atheism isn't a religion. It's not a belief. If people were killing people in the name of the tooth fairy I would hope regardless of your orientation to God you would try change people's minds.
Atheism is as much a religion as trying to correct moon landing conspiracy theorists is a religion.
Guido can buy a $5 spy camera and force you to keep the ballot in frame the entire time.
I would rather have citizen groups which can double check that their vote is counted than a hypothetical case of bought votes which is extremely rare. I would imagine voter counting errors are far greater than bought votes.
Every solution has problems. Every solution will cause a certain percentage of error or fraud. It's about finding the least error prone system.
What is there to hack? It just needs to transmit your name. If people want to know my name they don't have to hack my phone to figure it out. They just have to say "Hi I'm, _______".
The interesting information is all at the security console.
You could do it without NFC. You could use WiFi or Bluetooth or many other technologies. Personally I think it would work even better without any of those.
The PreCheck system in airports just relies on uploading your photo ID. In fact that seems like the easiest and most secure system all around. But it would require all of the states opening up their ID photos to one database. Then when you walk up to the airport. The facial recognition could confirm that you're on the list of airline tickets registered for the day.
It would be 100x more reliable than the current system where you print off a ticket that looks authentic and hand them a driver's license which can be easily forged.
Admittedly VCRs are really hard to program. I can write an entire an entire application with developer SDK and high level interface long before I could program some VCRs.
I have a Car Stereo right now that a good 4 of us can't for the life of us figure out how to make work on a consistent basis--even with a manual.
I would wager I could teach most people basic python that could run a VCR with a well thought out Python interface faster than programming many VCRs.
It also ignores the fact that in flops per watt Intel still dominates ARM.
It's like comparing a moped to a bus and saying "see look how much more fuel efficient the moped is!"
True... but then fill a bus with people and suddenly the mpg per person goes through the roof for the bus. You could get 300mpg per person from a bus. Good luck getting that with a moped.
And like the introduction of plugin hybrids competing with even Mopeds for single occupancy MPG--you can also see RISC x86 chips out-competing ARM too on RAW watts. The next generation of Intel chips are going to be not only substantially faster but also on parity for watts.
Simply stripping down technology inevitably will come back to bite you in the ass. I think the domination of ARM in the mobile space is about to evaporate within the next year on every conceivable metric.
Only about $15 of a $200 device is the processor. And that's the iPhone. So is there really any purpose to taking shortcuts on performance when it seems that's not what is driving costs?
Yeah it seems like a misguided direction to take when software development is running slower than hardware advances. By the time Firefox OS is fully baked you'll be able to buy a Windows 8/iPhone class CPU for a couple bucks.
I can post a status update and it lets me choose from: Facebook, Twitter, Live or any other connected service.
If I want to share a photo any app can offer itself as a sharing application. Want to share a photo using picassa? The app just needs to offer a hook to accept the image.
The music app is just another app but all music apps can be controlled from the lock screen so it's up the developers to simply register themselves as a zune replacement.
You can also switch between search providers in the settings.
I agree that there are cases where I want full control. I want a private road. And at least in the case of Windows 8 you have that with the desktop environment. You can run buggy developer code that opens you up to insecurity.
But you also have the metro WinRT environment which I know is well vetted and secure. I want the ability to tinker and build a car of my own design. But I also expect the Volvo I buy to be 5 star safety tested from the store.
The car analogy isn't perfect but it's one example of a scenario where we all give up some freedom in exchange for greater freedom. You could say you're losing freedom, but are you losing 'net freedom'. Sometimes you have to trade a little freedom for more freedom. I am willing to give up a little bit of my freedom of speech in order to have the freedom of not being unnecessarily trampled. I'm willing to give up a little bit of my freedom to dump toxic waste into the gutter in order to have the freedom to safely drink water without fearing radiation.
I would argue that a walled garden perhaps as part of an open lawn, most of the time is more of a benefit to my freedom: freedom from identity fraud for instance, than it is a hindrance to my freedom.
I'm also willing to give up a little bit of freedom of choice in order for simplicity. I will probably pay a premium by using the Microsoft Store but I've paid extra for music to buy it from an ecosystem in the past that was where I bought everything else. The extra cost is worth the convenience. The ability to turn on a fresh new computer and restore all of my applications from another computer... worth the price of admission right there.
It's not pure ignorance though. I'm perfectly happy to run a walled garden 99% of the time. I'm happy to sacrifice freedom for security. Why? Because sometimes sacrificing one freedom provides you more freedom somewhere else.
Let's say for instance that you give up the freedom to drive whatever speed you want wherever you want. That's a freedom we've sacrificed--we have police who enforce rules. It's now a walled garden. But in exchange for that loss of freedom I now am far less likely to crash, I'm less likely to get hit by a car, if someone does hit me my insurance is affordable and can restore my car to a new state and I'm more likely to drive since safety is greater.
My goal is to simply get from point A to B safely and as quickly as reasonable. Ultimately the structure and rules increase traffic volume and speed so that the commons don't slow to a crawl from frequent crashes and poor right of way.
Similarly if I just want my applications to work then a lightly walled garden that ensures spyware isn't running in the background actually reduces the odds that my privacy will be compromised. Sure it might also provide a backdoor to the government if they get a warrant but that unlikely scenario is far less dangerous in my opinion to identity fraud resulting in huge financial loss and credit damage. The government can read my email I really don't care. Knock themselves out--they'll be bored to death. Not sure why they would want to. But I would be exceedingly worried if someone got my bank account info.
This! Additionally, once the decision is made to turn the "side" content into DLC, some of the experienced folk who make awesome stuff more awesome are instead assigned to head / work on the DLC team.
No that's not how it works. You're woefully ignorant to the reality of production. Here's what used to happen before DLC:
Hire 100 people. Work your ass off. Then a few months before shipping... there is a freeze on assets so that the game can actually get finished and most of the art department gets laid off and you hope you're part of the select group that continues on to the pre-production for the next project, you get moved to another game at the same studio that's already in full production or you already have another project lined up to move on to.
Studios ramp up and down their staff based on where they are in production. This is true of games and this is true of movies too. The number of employees swings wildly--it's part of a production artist's normal experience to move from project to project as needed like a seasonal farm worker.
Now what happens is instead of hiring 100 people they think they can get $XX extra out of every customer and a lot of the awesome ideas they had that were going to end up getting cut can be worked on by a smaller 10 person team. So more developers and artists are employed. And then at that point where normally you get laid off you now have something to do and a reason for them to keep you on staff longer. Furthermore once you've gotten the swing of things for one game it becomes easier and easier to crank out more of the same. Levels and quests that would have taken weeks now can be done in days. You also now can hire a separate QA team to debug the DLC. None of that would be possible in the original budget. It's easy to say "Well just put it in the game." but a game will have a very clear budget. They have expectations on what they will make, how large their audience is etc and the price for games doesn't scale based on the time put into it. If you create something like Fallout 3 with 100s of hours of gameplay you don't get 10x as much money as a shooter with 10 hours of content. So at some point you have to say "Ok, that's as much as we can afford to do." But if that judgement shifts and you think "We can probably charge $80 instead of $70, we can hire 2 more level designers and 1 more programmer + QA for the additional content." That's how the real world works. I would rather start work immediately on DLC than to get laid off near the end of the project--go on unemployment for 8 weeks and then come back and start work again just so that self entitled whiners doesn't want the game studio to work as efficiently as possible.
People mention Notch and Valve... first of all, Valve is the largest DLC whore in the industry now. Did people not notice that they now charge $1 to play on their hosted servers? And Notch? Minecraft is about 10 people working on it. But they still charge what $30? Of course they can give away free content! They're making money hand over fist! Compare that to Dragon age which probably had well over 400 people working on it (I got tired of counting while going through the credits after 300). And they're only charging twice as much! Minecraft is not selling poorly. If you want a game like Dragon Age--it's going to cost a lot of money to produce. You have to make a budget and schedule in order to successfully release a product. If people were willing to spend more for a huge expansive game like Dragon Age then yeah, they could give you DLC for "Free". But some how or another every company is going to cover their expenses. It might not be as clear as DLC but they'll find a way.
If you run a 60watt laptop all day but then ride your bike to work you'll be using far less energy than someone who commutes 60 miles and never touches a computer.
It's also not hypocritical to be resentful of your only good options. If the people in power only are willing to offer you a bad option then you can simultaneously use that *bad* option while also resenting them.
I HATED my old cable company. 200ms pings. 1mbps internet and extortionist prices. But you know what my other alternative was? Dial up. I could wish the people running my cable company would go to jail or something so that something would take their place while still using the best of the worst options available to me. Since then they have been bought out 3 times and now are great!
There is a natural monopoly in energy. It's a monopoly formed by the billions and trillions of dollars necessary to compete. If it was an area I could do something about I would definitely put my money into a 'good' and ecologically sound option--but the option isn't available to everyone. I actually can pay a premium to my energy company and get 100% carbon free energy. I'm sure the electrons reaching me are from natural gas but I'm paying for the higher cost wind turbines and solar elsewhere.
It's only hypocritical to complain about your options when you have a good option that you're not utilizing. We can sit on our high horse and demand that our leaders create policies which force good options to be made available while forcing those who cause damage to the public sphere to pay for the true cost of their product.
Amazon is winning my loyalty *because* I'm lazy. And I'm lazy because I almost never find anything cheaper somewhere else.
I was actually really surprised to find my last purchase was $10 cheaper at a Wal Mart store. But it weighed 20lbs! I bet the prime shipping was more than $10 so it made sense to me. But I still didn't care--I bought it on Prime. It showed up at my desk at work ready to go. No driving, parking, waiting in line to check out.
The only other thing I haven't bought on Amazon lately is a board game which I found at a local store. But that was a case of "I only discovered this because I was in the store, I'm not going to be a douche and then buy it for $10 cheaper online after using their store for a discovery engine."
I simply trust now that Amazon has the lowest price. And I think they know that we are lazy. And as long as they fight to stay the cheapest they know we won't bother shopping somewhere else. If they got greedy and started exploiting our laziness they would just lose more sales from people shopping around. Amazon really really really wants people to buy *everything* through them and make up any loss of profit in volume. Keeping us justifiably fat and lazy is in their best interest.
And then like you say there is the great service and return policy on top of that. One of their shipments was once listed as "Delivered" even though I didn't get it. They immediately sent another one overnight so that I would have it in case the delivery company had trouble figuring out where it ended up.
Depends on what you want to do. My dad is a PhD in philosophy. And in spite of the chuckles I hear... there are a lot of open philosophy positions. The problem is that philosophy is very much a tenure track teaching position and after leaving a tenured position due to religious politics he's having a very difficult time finding another university looking to hire a 55+ year old professor.
The way that university tenure tracks are setup they would prefer to take a fresh professor and keep actually have a tenured professor in the department before they retire almost immediately there after.
Just how do App stores pose any danger to Linux? Linux is GPL, and will always be GPL. There is no way anyone will be forced to use an App store ONLY enabled distro in the near or distant future.
How? Look at the kindle or many android distros. Linux? Yes. Locked down app store? Yes.
Sure you could run a more open version of Linux but the incentives to use a well developed and refined build that is often more locked down far outweighs the harm from a user's perspective.
Yep. The root of the problem is financing. Solar saves money in the long term but people are wary of putting up cash up front. Same with switching to LED light bulbs or insulating their attics. So many people live paycheck to paycheck that they can't afford things that will ultimately put them on a better financial track in the long term.
What we really need are low overhead government loan programs where your installer can simply send you a monthly bill courtesy of the US Treasury.
Hardly. OEMs are leaches. They put together a product that any tech savvy 12 year old can do for less. What they offered was tech support, warranties and speed.
Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Nvidia and others were the real innovators. All of the OEMs just put it in a box and labeled it.
What's replaceable is the OEM, not Microsoft. What's replaceable is the OEM not Intel. If HP were to evaporate--another would simply take its place in a day. IBM was smart enough to see this--and took a swift exit.
We're about to enter a phase I think in the PC world where the traditional desktop is going to be such a commodity that unless you offer a premium experience somehow you'll be put out of business. It's all about the experience now, not the technology. Microsoft sees that--Apple sees that, I'm sure Dell, HP and all the rest see that. HP even threatened to drop the market all together. They aren't jumping ship because the market for an OEM machine is going to evaporate. They are jumping ship because everybody and their grandmother is going to be a competitive OEM--and there is no room for a high profit margin company any longer. It's getting too easy.
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Great idea. Of course that assumes that we stop regulated nuclear reactors. We don't have an interstate highway system. We stop managing our airspace. You're happy with interferences from any old joe who wants to use any old piece of spectrum. You don't mind our nuclear weapons going unprotected. You don't want any satellites. You don't check the weather forecast. You don't mind millions of old people dying hungry and impoverished on the street. You don't want universities. You are happy to take a pharmaceutical company's word for the safety and efficacy of their new drug. You don't think the military should be employing these new fangled aeroplanes.
I could go on but what's the point, you seem to think a 19th century government can manage 21st century technology and reality so why bother.
If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it? It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.
Instead you have your own religion, Atheism, and you believe anyone that doesn't agree with your faith is strange and capable of violence. If only they had the same moral compass as you do... perhaps you should try and convert them? Oh wait...
Atheism isn't a religion. It's not a belief. If people were killing people in the name of the tooth fairy I would hope regardless of your orientation to God you would try change people's minds.
Atheism is as much a religion as trying to correct moon landing conspiracy theorists is a religion.
Guido can buy a $5 spy camera and force you to keep the ballot in frame the entire time.
I would rather have citizen groups which can double check that their vote is counted than a hypothetical case of bought votes which is extremely rare. I would imagine voter counting errors are far greater than bought votes.
Every solution has problems. Every solution will cause a certain percentage of error or fraud. It's about finding the least error prone system.
What is there to hack? It just needs to transmit your name. If people want to know my name they don't have to hack my phone to figure it out. They just have to say "Hi I'm, _______".
The interesting information is all at the security console.
You could do it without NFC. You could use WiFi or Bluetooth or many other technologies. Personally I think it would work even better without any of those.
The PreCheck system in airports just relies on uploading your photo ID. In fact that seems like the easiest and most secure system all around. But it would require all of the states opening up their ID photos to one database. Then when you walk up to the airport. The facial recognition could confirm that you're on the list of airline tickets registered for the day.
It would be 100x more reliable than the current system where you print off a ticket that looks authentic and hand them a driver's license which can be easily forged.
Admittedly VCRs are really hard to program. I can write an entire an entire application with developer SDK and high level interface long before I could program some VCRs.
I have a Car Stereo right now that a good 4 of us can't for the life of us figure out how to make work on a consistent basis--even with a manual.
I would wager I could teach most people basic python that could run a VCR with a well thought out Python interface faster than programming many VCRs.
It also ignores the fact that in flops per watt Intel still dominates ARM.
It's like comparing a moped to a bus and saying "see look how much more fuel efficient the moped is!"
True... but then fill a bus with people and suddenly the mpg per person goes through the roof for the bus. You could get 300mpg per person from a bus. Good luck getting that with a moped.
And like the introduction of plugin hybrids competing with even Mopeds for single occupancy MPG--you can also see RISC x86 chips out-competing ARM too on RAW watts. The next generation of Intel chips are going to be not only substantially faster but also on parity for watts.
Simply stripping down technology inevitably will come back to bite you in the ass. I think the domination of ARM in the mobile space is about to evaporate within the next year on every conceivable metric.
According to this teardown:
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone-4S-Carries-BOM-of-$188,-IHS-iSuppli-Teardown-Analysis-Reveals.aspx
Only about $15 of a $200 device is the processor. And that's the iPhone. So is there really any purpose to taking shortcuts on performance when it seems that's not what is driving costs?
Yeah it seems like a misguided direction to take when software development is running slower than hardware advances. By the time Firefox OS is fully baked you'll be able to buy a Windows 8/iPhone class CPU for a couple bucks.
No idea what you're talking about.
I can post a status update and it lets me choose from:
Facebook, Twitter, Live or any other connected service.
If I want to share a photo any app can offer itself as a sharing application. Want to share a photo using picassa? The app just needs to offer a hook to accept the image.
The music app is just another app but all music apps can be controlled from the lock screen so it's up the developers to simply register themselves as a zune replacement.
You can also switch between search providers in the settings.
Some message boards that have an edit button create sometimes quite confusing discussions.
Easy solution: No edits after a reply or someone has opened a 'reply session'.
I agree that there are cases where I want full control. I want a private road. And at least in the case of Windows 8 you have that with the desktop environment. You can run buggy developer code that opens you up to insecurity.
But you also have the metro WinRT environment which I know is well vetted and secure. I want the ability to tinker and build a car of my own design. But I also expect the Volvo I buy to be 5 star safety tested from the store.
The car analogy isn't perfect but it's one example of a scenario where we all give up some freedom in exchange for greater freedom. You could say you're losing freedom, but are you losing 'net freedom'. Sometimes you have to trade a little freedom for more freedom. I am willing to give up a little bit of my freedom of speech in order to have the freedom of not being unnecessarily trampled. I'm willing to give up a little bit of my freedom to dump toxic waste into the gutter in order to have the freedom to safely drink water without fearing radiation.
I would argue that a walled garden perhaps as part of an open lawn, most of the time is more of a benefit to my freedom: freedom from identity fraud for instance, than it is a hindrance to my freedom.
I'm also willing to give up a little bit of freedom of choice in order for simplicity. I will probably pay a premium by using the Microsoft Store but I've paid extra for music to buy it from an ecosystem in the past that was where I bought everything else. The extra cost is worth the convenience. The ability to turn on a fresh new computer and restore all of my applications from another computer... worth the price of admission right there.
It's not pure ignorance though. I'm perfectly happy to run a walled garden 99% of the time. I'm happy to sacrifice freedom for security. Why? Because sometimes sacrificing one freedom provides you more freedom somewhere else.
Let's say for instance that you give up the freedom to drive whatever speed you want wherever you want. That's a freedom we've sacrificed--we have police who enforce rules. It's now a walled garden. But in exchange for that loss of freedom I now am far less likely to crash, I'm less likely to get hit by a car, if someone does hit me my insurance is affordable and can restore my car to a new state and I'm more likely to drive since safety is greater.
My goal is to simply get from point A to B safely and as quickly as reasonable. Ultimately the structure and rules increase traffic volume and speed so that the commons don't slow to a crawl from frequent crashes and poor right of way.
Similarly if I just want my applications to work then a lightly walled garden that ensures spyware isn't running in the background actually reduces the odds that my privacy will be compromised. Sure it might also provide a backdoor to the government if they get a warrant but that unlikely scenario is far less dangerous in my opinion to identity fraud resulting in huge financial loss and credit damage. The government can read my email I really don't care. Knock themselves out--they'll be bored to death. Not sure why they would want to. But I would be exceedingly worried if someone got my bank account info.
This! Additionally, once the decision is made to turn the "side" content into DLC, some of the experienced folk who make awesome stuff more awesome are instead assigned to head / work on the DLC team.
No that's not how it works. You're woefully ignorant to the reality of production. Here's what used to happen before DLC:
Hire 100 people. Work your ass off. Then a few months before shipping... there is a freeze on assets so that the game can actually get finished and most of the art department gets laid off and you hope you're part of the select group that continues on to the pre-production for the next project, you get moved to another game at the same studio that's already in full production or you already have another project lined up to move on to.
Studios ramp up and down their staff based on where they are in production. This is true of games and this is true of movies too. The number of employees swings wildly--it's part of a production artist's normal experience to move from project to project as needed like a seasonal farm worker.
Now what happens is instead of hiring 100 people they think they can get $XX extra out of every customer and a lot of the awesome ideas they had that were going to end up getting cut can be worked on by a smaller 10 person team. So more developers and artists are employed. And then at that point where normally you get laid off you now have something to do and a reason for them to keep you on staff longer. Furthermore once you've gotten the swing of things for one game it becomes easier and easier to crank out more of the same. Levels and quests that would have taken weeks now can be done in days. You also now can hire a separate QA team to debug the DLC. None of that would be possible in the original budget. It's easy to say "Well just put it in the game." but a game will have a very clear budget. They have expectations on what they will make, how large their audience is etc and the price for games doesn't scale based on the time put into it. If you create something like Fallout 3 with 100s of hours of gameplay you don't get 10x as much money as a shooter with 10 hours of content. So at some point you have to say "Ok, that's as much as we can afford to do." But if that judgement shifts and you think "We can probably charge $80 instead of $70, we can hire 2 more level designers and 1 more programmer + QA for the additional content." That's how the real world works. I would rather start work immediately on DLC than to get laid off near the end of the project--go on unemployment for 8 weeks and then come back and start work again just so that self entitled whiners doesn't want the game studio to work as efficiently as possible.
People mention Notch and Valve... first of all, Valve is the largest DLC whore in the industry now. Did people not notice that they now charge $1 to play on their hosted servers? And Notch? Minecraft is about 10 people working on it. But they still charge what $30? Of course they can give away free content! They're making money hand over fist! Compare that to Dragon age which probably had well over 400 people working on it (I got tired of counting while going through the credits after 300). And they're only charging twice as much! Minecraft is not selling poorly. If you want a game like Dragon Age--it's going to cost a lot of money to produce. You have to make a budget and schedule in order to successfully release a product. If people were willing to spend more for a huge expansive game like Dragon Age then yeah, they could give you DLC for "Free". But some how or another every company is going to cover their expenses. It might not be as clear as DLC but they'll find a way.
Mann vs Machine ticket anyone?
If you run a 60watt laptop all day but then ride your bike to work you'll be using far less energy than someone who commutes 60 miles and never touches a computer.
It's also not hypocritical to be resentful of your only good options. If the people in power only are willing to offer you a bad option then you can simultaneously use that *bad* option while also resenting them.
I HATED my old cable company. 200ms pings. 1mbps internet and extortionist prices. But you know what my other alternative was? Dial up. I could wish the people running my cable company would go to jail or something so that something would take their place while still using the best of the worst options available to me. Since then they have been bought out 3 times and now are great!
There is a natural monopoly in energy. It's a monopoly formed by the billions and trillions of dollars necessary to compete. If it was an area I could do something about I would definitely put my money into a 'good' and ecologically sound option--but the option isn't available to everyone. I actually can pay a premium to my energy company and get 100% carbon free energy. I'm sure the electrons reaching me are from natural gas but I'm paying for the higher cost wind turbines and solar elsewhere.
It's only hypocritical to complain about your options when you have a good option that you're not utilizing. We can sit on our high horse and demand that our leaders create policies which force good options to be made available while forcing those who cause damage to the public sphere to pay for the true cost of their product.
This problem also adds the additional problem:
"What do you use to hold an acid that can eat anything? And said container when dissolved must not neutralize the acid or reduce its potency."
Tough enough to build a container. Doubly difficult to find something tough enough that won't contaminate the solvent.
Amazon is winning my loyalty *because* I'm lazy. And I'm lazy because I almost never find anything cheaper somewhere else.
I was actually really surprised to find my last purchase was $10 cheaper at a Wal Mart store. But it weighed 20lbs! I bet the prime shipping was more than $10 so it made sense to me. But I still didn't care--I bought it on Prime. It showed up at my desk at work ready to go. No driving, parking, waiting in line to check out.
The only other thing I haven't bought on Amazon lately is a board game which I found at a local store. But that was a case of "I only discovered this because I was in the store, I'm not going to be a douche and then buy it for $10 cheaper online after using their store for a discovery engine."
I simply trust now that Amazon has the lowest price. And I think they know that we are lazy. And as long as they fight to stay the cheapest they know we won't bother shopping somewhere else. If they got greedy and started exploiting our laziness they would just lose more sales from people shopping around. Amazon really really really wants people to buy *everything* through them and make up any loss of profit in volume. Keeping us justifiably fat and lazy is in their best interest.
And then like you say there is the great service and return policy on top of that. One of their shipments was once listed as "Delivered" even though I didn't get it. They immediately sent another one overnight so that I would have it in case the delivery company had trouble figuring out where it ended up.
With a mouse... like you always have.
Depends on what you want to do. My dad is a PhD in philosophy. And in spite of the chuckles I hear... there are a lot of open philosophy positions. The problem is that philosophy is very much a tenure track teaching position and after leaving a tenured position due to religious politics he's having a very difficult time finding another university looking to hire a 55+ year old professor.
The way that university tenure tracks are setup they would prefer to take a fresh professor and keep actually have a tenured professor in the department before they retire almost immediately there after.
Agreed. I'm in Seattle but if/when I move my list would be:
1) Wellington or Dunedin in NZ
2) Sydney
3) Vancouver, BC
4) Singapore
In windows 8 you give it a little flick and can right click as fast as you can click.
Just how do App stores pose any danger to Linux? Linux is GPL, and will always be GPL. There is no way anyone will be forced to use an App store ONLY enabled distro in the near or distant future.
How? Look at the kindle or many android distros. Linux? Yes. Locked down app store? Yes.
Sure you could run a more open version of Linux but the incentives to use a well developed and refined build that is often more locked down far outweighs the harm from a user's perspective.
Yep. The root of the problem is financing. Solar saves money in the long term but people are wary of putting up cash up front. Same with switching to LED light bulbs or insulating their attics. So many people live paycheck to paycheck that they can't afford things that will ultimately put them on a better financial track in the long term.
What we really need are low overhead government loan programs where your installer can simply send you a monthly bill courtesy of the US Treasury.
Hardly. OEMs are leaches. They put together a product that any tech savvy 12 year old can do for less. What they offered was tech support, warranties and speed.
Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Nvidia and others were the real innovators. All of the OEMs just put it in a box and labeled it.
What's replaceable is the OEM, not Microsoft. What's replaceable is the OEM not Intel. If HP were to evaporate--another would simply take its place in a day. IBM was smart enough to see this--and took a swift exit.
We're about to enter a phase I think in the PC world where the traditional desktop is going to be such a commodity that unless you offer a premium experience somehow you'll be put out of business. It's all about the experience now, not the technology. Microsoft sees that--Apple sees that, I'm sure Dell, HP and all the rest see that. HP even threatened to drop the market all together. They aren't jumping ship because the market for an OEM machine is going to evaporate. They are jumping ship because everybody and their grandmother is going to be a competitive OEM--and there is no room for a high profit margin company any longer. It's getting too easy.