The problem MSFT has is it can't simply kill support to older titles and they have to give the OEMs and customers what they want NOT what MSFT wants to sell. Cases in point, Vista and most likely win 8, not to mention their recent failures to gain any share in mobile with Zune, Kin, and WinPhone 7.
Somebody at MSFT simply needs to accept that things will NEVER be as they were during the heady days of the MHz wars, where one had to toss a PC every 2 years because it would struggle to run the latest software. hell thanks to the consoles even games don't really stress the monsters we have now, my ancient HD4850 still gives me over 30FPS on modern games with plenty of bling so the drive to constantly replace just isn't there.
While they can coast for awhile what they can NOT do is piss off their partners like the AAA game houses and the OEMs because frankly without them most would be happy to stick with what they have. We may just get to see how far MSFT can push it with Win 8 but I have a feeling they are gonna get a wake up call and find out they simply can no longer lead and expect people to blindly follow. You'd have thought they'd have gotten that with Vista but I guess not.
Its bullshit and here is why: It would cost corporations billions of dollars and give MSFT a license to print money, neither of which is appealing to your average corp. There is a REASON why Linux runs the net, and its not because its a nice OS, its actually a fiddly PITA OS if you want to know the truth. No the reason is it SAVES MONEY to run the backbone on a free OS, hell even a RH license is nothing compared to the cost of MSFT CALs to a large corporation.
Have you SEEN the price MSFT plans to charge for WinARM licenses? i'm sure it would make them VERY happy for corps to actually pay them more per unit than even Apple gets but the odds? About as likely as my ass growing wings and flying south for the winter.
In the end lets call it what it is, its FUD, no different than BadVista or Win 7 Sins or MSFT's get the facts campaign, its nothing but doom scenarios and total and complete FUD. Have you looked at the figures for WinPhone 7? To even attempt to argue this would be as ridiculous as arguing that some CCC maker on ChinaMart like Apad or ViewSonic is suddenly gonna wipe out Apple and Google, its so far beyond bullshit and into unbelievable bullshit its not even funny.
Ya wanna know what's gonna happen? Just let old Hairy use his magical powers culled from decades of selling to the common man..../looks into crystal trackball/....Win 8 bombs hard, WinARM if it is LUCKY gets 10%, which it will only get by MSFT taking a billion dollar bath on the cost of the hardware by selling at a loss, the OEMs will follow HP and avoid WinARM like the clap so the only one losing billions will be MSFT AGAIN, BTW notice how good Ballmer is at that? What is he up to now? 20 billion pissed down the drain? And THAT is the guy you're afraid of? And the vast majority will go "meh who cares" and stick with HTC Droids and Apple iStuff and the majority of WinPads will end up on Woot! just like the Touchpads did when retailers couldn't move the damned things.
Seriously dude, y'all wanna be scared of somebody? Be scared of Google, who is building up enough data on everything and everyone they'd make Hoover green with envy, or Apple who are making paying too much money to play in a sandbox and hand them yet more money for the privilege a hip thing to do, but this continued "ZOMFG M$!" bullshit not only makes the community and the FSF look batshit, it makes them look so far behind the times they may as well get clothing tips from Disco Stu. MSFT is a has been company, while desktops aren't going away they'll never be top dogs again and most will only be replaced when a unit fails, worrying about the company run by a Bozo that has blown 20 billion plus on dumbass moves and bad deals? Well it is like being frightened of competition with the PHB from Dilbert. Hell you should WELCOME MSFT because if there is one company that have shown they can cock things up and turn people off its MSFT. Shit brown Zune anyone?
The problem with your line of thinking is thus: Just as it took government intervention to break up Ma Bell (which rebuilt itself like the T-1000 the second it could) so too would government intervention be required because because of the incredible barrier to entry the monumental costs of building such a thing would require and the duopolies have been running as a cartel that with removal of regulation you will NOT see competition, all you will see is collusion.
Do you think its an ACCIDENT that so many have little or no choice? Its called "cherry picking" and allows the duopolies to carve up entire regions. by simply agreeing not to compete they can charge what they want, do what they want, knowing the cost to access the backbone (which in most cases they own) will be too high to allow anybody who doesn't "play the game" to enter.
Its cute, although a little naive on your part to blindly believe that megacorps will actually spend money and compete with one another when the bottom line is fattened by simply making agreements not to. It is NO coincidence that the countries with the best broadband speeds have made it a national interest, and those that have chosen a totally laissez faire approach have some of the worst. Its simply not in a companies best interest to compete when they already own a captive audience, its much more rewarding to simply make deals not to step on each other's toes. this way they can continue to raise rates, not roll out any new lines, and pocket the profits.
I'm sorry but libertarianism has NEVER worked anywhere in the entire history of this planet, not even once. what you end up with is just what we have now, a handful of companies with so much concentrated wealth and power its simply cheaper to buy new laws to stifle competition than to actually compete. I hate to break the news to you but a free market at anything above a local level is just as much of a fantasy as a communist utopia, they simply don't exist. Inevitably the wealth WILL concentrate and with it will come corruption, all removing regulations does is allows that conclusion to arrive sooner than later.
And if it was all "big ebil government" why do those cities that try to provide their own get sued to death when they are the cause? because they are NOT the cause, its a few corps that wield almost complete control over the entire US broadband infrastructure. if we would have went your route during the building of the highway system on a few large cities would be supported and every single road no matter how shitty would have tollbooths. in the end a corp exists ONLY to make as much money as possible for the board and the stockholders, and competition simply isn't the most profitable way to accomplish that goal once a corp gets beyond a certain size. Perhaps it is time to break up the duopolies just as we broke up ma Bell, at least for awhile there we could have competition again as we did during the days of dialup.
Sorry friend but you haven't read Wickard v. Filburn which was a man growing his OWN feed for his OWN chickens on his OWN land, can't get less interstate than that and thanks to SCOTUS having a gun held to its head by FDR (which i thought should have been impeached and should have went down as being just as bad as Nixon for his threats against the SCOTUS) it made the commerce clause into "anything the POTUS wants it to be" and is only now having a teeny tiny bit of its massive power reined in.
As for TFA it is THIS, this right here, why we need to have a WPA style system to build a national broadband infrastructure and to force open the last mile to competition. We have already paid 200 billion for a national broadband infrastructure and all we got from the telecos and cablecos was a low res picture of goatse while their CEOs pocketed the cash, and in many areas your "choice" is being fucked by one company or having nothing at all. By having REAL competition like we had during the days of dialup we could have lower prices and increased competition instead of being one of the worst companies in the west for broadband speeds. i mean fricking Romania kicks our ass now!
Without competition we are doomed to be stuck on the short bus to the info superhighway while the duopoly simply adds caps and blocks and other draconian measures to insure that they don't have to spend a dime on upgrades and can continue to oversell the living hell out of the lines they do have. like the rest of our infrastructure the backbone is falling down around our ears but rather than give up a cent of profit they'll just throttle the living hell out of everyone, thus killing any innovation in media, electronic education, or entertainment. if they had their way you'd be using the same bandwidth the average granny did in 2004 and if you didn't they'd empty your wallet or just kick you off completely. With more and more private and government services increasingly becoming broadband only this shit needs to be brought to a screeching halt. sadly our congress critters are so damned bribed they might as well wear "sponsored by" shirts, good luck on anything getting better.
A lot actually, you'd be surprised how many people do their own books, hell even my ex GF used GnuCash to keep up with budgets. Then of course there is office, DVD authoring which with the rise of cheap HD cameras I've had a LOT of customers coming to me to give tutorials on basic video editing like cuts and fades because they want little Billy's first big game to look great, don't even get me started on how many wedding videos I've had to use to show people how to edit, and FB? FB has to have Flash which Metro doesn't support which has to be one of the biggest WTF moments so far with Win 8, because what female wants FB without FB games?
In the end we'll get to see this Xmas. My prediction is it will be Vista all over again, the hype will carry sales for a month or two then the bad word of mouth from all those users hating it will cause it to fall right off the charts. Like with Vista the OEMs will respond by selling Win 7 boxes with a Win 8 disc in the box so Ballmer and Sinofsky can save face and call them Win 8 sales and guys like me will end up with a pile of the worthless things, just as I have a pile of Vista discs and keys at the shop in the back somewhere.
I am GLAD you asked that, Mr/Mrs AC, here is what I would do if Bill punt kicked the sweaty monkey and said "Alright Hairy, MSFT is in your hands, fix it" and ya know what? i would.
1.-While using the same underlying codebase, thus making patches easier and cheaper, I would go back to the roots of MSFT and have the X86 Business and Consumer lines separate again. This would let you try new things with the consumer line if you wish while leaving businesses (and gamers who also tend to not want bling as it sucks framerates) with a more conservative line. Both would get 10 years of support so there wouldn't be any reason for one or the other to get shunned, and I would also make it clear that during this transition Win 7 WILL be sold so companies wouldn't feel like they didn't have choice and neither would consumers. treat the customer right would be job #1 at Hairysoft.
2.- Split off WinARM which from now on will be called Metro, they will be given their own offices in Austin so that the MS Office and Windows teams won't be bugging them. They would be given a decent amount of cash, told to hire the best and brightest they can find in the mobile field and the ONLY requirements they would have that has ANYTHING to do with Windows and Office is a "it just works" mantra must be kept with regards to easy connection between Metro, Windows, and the X360/720. I would want any consumer to be able to hook any MSFT device to any other MSFT device with as few steps as possible, I would also have a tool free number for assistance if anybody has any trouble in that regard.
3.- Finally I would probably spin off the entertainment division so we wouldn't end up with any more Zune debacles, it would be headed by the X360 guys and again their ONLY mandate would be "it just works" and the continued use of DirectX so that porting between the systems would be as simple as possible. Visual Studio leads would stay in contact with both entertainment and Metro to make sure that VS would be incredibly easy to build applications for both the new X360/720 and Metro, again with a "it just works" mantra at play. I would also have a nationwide census taken with regards to VS and Office to find out what the pulse is with regards to both and what developers and hardcore office users want and need and we would give them that. Focus on your users and make their jobs easier would be the motto of the VS and Office teams.
I believe with this strategy I could kill the NIH and PHB bullshit that is infecting MSFT like a cancer and right the ship, making the Hairyfeet MSFT a force to be watched within 5 years, probably less. Instead of focusing on the consumer we would be focusing on the USER while giving the Metro team time and space to create truly great products without being tied down by the Windows legacy, while at the same time insuring that Windows X86 stays the #1 desktop planetwide now and in the future.
While I don't use Noscript anymore (my browser is sandboxed and runs lower than a regular user thanks to low rights mode) I have to see one would have to be insane not to run ABP, and to run NS as well if they are on XP. Because I can tell you the second biggest attack vector after social engineering is infected ads, so why take the risk so some corp can show you bullshit you don't want, is gonna suck your bandwidth and irritate the hell out of you, and you aren't gonna buy from them anyway?
As for TFA this is why I don't really like to use google for anything other than a Gmail spam dump, because with them you just never know. With Google it seems like a product has to be a megahit or they pull the plug, even if there are millions using the thing. While I don't use any of TFA services i'm sure those that did probably aren't gonna be happy, but the way Google is its not like they can have an EOL date like MSFT because frankly they don't have a clue how long something is gonna last. if it becomes a hit they stay, if it becomes anything less they fold, I'd be afraid to use any new Google service until it passed the megahit stage myself.
Or they could just stick with Win 7 which is supported until 2020 and by then hopefully the sweaty monkey will have taken his golden parachute and his iPad and moved on.
I know that is what not only me but most of the SMBs in my area are doing, they've been having me crank out triple and quad desktops with plenty of upgrade potential so they can just stick with Win 7. I used some of the money I've made to build my boys a hexa and a quad while building myself a hexa so we can all just skip Win 8 completely.
Now the only "work" i'll be having to do with Win 8 is probably the same as I did with Vista, which was getting paid to remove the damned thing and put the previous version on. Its not like Win 7 is a hardship, integrated search, jumplists and breadcrumbs,Superfetch and Readyboost, supports plenty of RAM, everyone seems to be quite happy with their new Win 7 units and I can't say as i blame 'em, just skip Win 8 and call it a day.
Riiight, because I'm sure the Bioshock series, Max Payne series, CoD and MoH series, massive RTS and RPGs will ALL work great on a fricking tablet with nothing but touch. BTW since its obvious those devs are taking a trip to Fantasy Island could you have them pick me up an Alyson Hannigan Sexbot and a flying car? Thanks.
I hate to say it Alex...but I agree, there is a HELL of a big difference between posting the pics of the baby on FB and video editing, bookkeeping, multitrack mixing, working with complex spreadsheets, etc.
Metro is just a supergigantic smartphone OS which is fine if the person is just a tweeting twit or spends all their time on FB (although last I checked Metro didn't support flash and without Farmville there goes the FB users) but for those that actually WORK on their PCs? Not a chance, hell even the gamers that have tried it at the shop hated it, too much background crap constantly updating. its just not a good OS, no matter how you slice it.
That is what just blows my damned mind, if I didn't know better I would SWEAR it was somebody at MSFT trolling. I mean didn't they do ANY focus groups? Hell even take it to an average mall and let some of the people there try it?
I'd say I have to be at over 400 people now that have tried it at the shop, everything from little old ladies to kids, small business owners to working stiff and NOBODY has liked it or even been able to figure out WTF to do with the damned thing. It is the most unintuitive design I have ever seen, hell a bottom of the line Android phone is easier to use than the flagship OS of the largest desktop company on the planet! Seriously WTF MSFT?
Seriously what COULD the man say "Hey Ballmer is a dumbass but I'm not running the show anymore, sorry?" because if the guy honestly thinks the millions of people that use Windows for something other than tweeting twitting FB shitting social crap is gonna want their desktops to feel like giant smartphones he is seriously fricking stoned!
Can you imagine trying to do photoshop, quickbooks, solidworks in that damned social tweety metro crap UI? Hell even MS Office isn't going metro!
What he doesn't want to admit is what we retailers have known for years, that PCs passed "good enough" at dual cores and when quads, not to mention hexa and Octocores became affordable it went straight to insanely overpowered. The truth of the matter is even businesses don't replace units until they fail simply because, unlike the MHz wars when a 2 year old desktop would struggle to run the latest software, there just isn't a "killer app" that can stress the insane amount of power the average user has. Hell even bottom of the line netbooks like the E350 EEE I have can play L4D and Crysis, its just crazy how much power we have with X86 right now.
Whether old Bill likes it or not wintel is a mature market and nobody wants WOA so he is just gonna have to suck it up and accept his fate. PCs will still be sold by the millions, they simply won't be bought by most until their last one dies. Their retarded Win 8 strategy is gonna bomb HARD because this is what I have been seeing at the shop only with more frustration and cursing. originally i thought they were going for the teener/tweener crowd but those that played with it in the shop said "I already HAVE a cell phone, this is lame" so if that's the market he's going for it a failwhale.
Accept it Bill, MSFT will NEVER be king of the hill again. You left the sweaty monkey in charge, who sat on his ass until mobile passed you by, now you have nothing to offer that folks can't get better from Google and Apple. Maybe after Win 8 goes over like a turd in a punchbowl he'll get the clue and get Ballmer to split off the mobile division because frankly that is the only chance they have at mobile, just cut them loose from the Windows name and X86 legacy and hope they can carve a niche like the X360.
Because if Bill honestly thinks the public is gonna accept some giant icon, touch UI designed flip screening mess on their non touch desktops and laptops I have a magic bean factory he might be interested in, only $20 million Billy!
You shouldn't nor should you care when I LMAO that you spent $60+ on an ONLINE ONLY GAME that will get banned because you refuse to use the approved OS.
So if you wish to make a $60 donation for a product you can't use? Knock yourself out, stupid is as stupid does. the rest of the world will laugh and send you trollface pics while they fire up Win 7 and play without problem.
Bingo, they lost 6.2 BILLION on the deal. So can we ALL agree now that Forbes had it nailed when it called out Ballmer as being the worst CEO? i mean how many billions has he blown now on shit deals since he took over? 15 billion? 20? More? He makes the Pepsi guy at Apple look like Jobs for the love of pete!
Hopefully the abortion that is Win 8 will be the final nail in Ballmer's coffin and the board will force him to "pursue other interests" and bring back someone like Ozzie or Allchin to right the ship because they only have two cash cows, Windows and Office, and Ballmer is gonna take a steaming dump on one in Oct just so he can yet again try to rip off Apple and pretend people want a WinTab like an iPad. I mean look at this video folks which is a typical reaction to windows 8 from what I've watched here at the shop with a Win 8 CP set up for anybody who walks in to play with. its not intuitive, its not discoverable, hell it doesn't even follow cell phone conventions, instead acting like some sort of bad hybrid of Windows and some Smartphone.
I agree with Foley, this is just one of a loooong line of bad moves made since Ballmer became CEO. His "strategy" seems to be 1.-Buy or build a half assed product based on something Apple or Google already does better, 2.-Fail miserably. Yeah, great corporate direction you got there Steve, really setting the world on fire with THAT one.
That is why I've been saying for ages that just as desktops matured so too will mobile devices and at the current rate their "MHz wars' will be winding down soon simply because there is only so much power you can use before battery life becomes an issue with the whole "thin is in" design aesthetic.
I figure another 2 years, 3 tops and we'll be right back to where we are with desktops and laptops, with every device so insanely overpowered compared to what the average user does with it that folks won't get rid of one until it dies. After all there is only so much one can do on a 3.4-7 inch screen before it becomes "eyestrainovision" and not worth the trouble. So if it were me, buy cheap and be prepped to toss when like Tegra 2 they are quickly EOLed, just as many of us bought the Celerons and Durons back in the day because the chips would be out of date so damned quick it wasn't worth going cutting edge.
They won't have any problem, same as the armadillos that USED to live in TX went through AR and are halfway through OK now. As a certain line from a movie went "life finds a way" and while we here in North Central AR may be roasting under 104F temps the armadillos just packed up and moved north. At the current rate I expect Canucks to be dodging armadillos in about a decade.
These games really need to keep cheating down to a minimum. Cheaters really ruin the real money market they plan to make assloads off of for the other customers.FTFY.
Most likely that will take the form of a half ass Linux client and a much better supported but locked down hardware wise "steam box" to compete with the X360 because Ballmer pissed Gabe off with the appstore crap.
Look I'd be the first to cheer if it actually meant jack but the simple fact is Linux has several problems like bullets in the knees before the starting gun even fires. 1.-The VAST majority of games on Steam are DirectX which means they need to be completely reworked (never happen) or use some sort of Wine layer (will be buggy and/or slow as Xmas). 2.-The graphics subsystem in Linux is a big pile of suck right now, hell even Moz couldn't get it to work reliably for GPU acceleration of web pages, expecting it to work any better for games is laughable. Maybe in a couple of years when the AMD FOSS drivers become mature but even that won't help 3.-Torvalds constant kernel fiddling and the religious aversion to allowing a hardware ABI means graphics and sound is broken damned near every update.
So most likely all you will see is back ports of the Valve catalog and some indie games which you can already pick up for Linux. As much as the community likes to think of itself the big name publishers simply aren't gonna go to the hassle and expense of porting all the AAA games currently on Steam onto Linux, its just not gonna happen. if on the other hand they put out a Steam box then they need only support ONE CPU and ONE GPU and there will be better emulation of DX because there is only one GPU it has to run on so that may be doable, but most likely they'll expect console money before they will allow their games even then. If there is one thing companies like Electronic Arts and Activision has proved us its never underestimate the greed and douchebaggery of AAA game houses.
Tell me this Billy, be honest now as its off the front page so you won't have to worry about modbombing (I still don't see how you took a karma hit, but then again I avoid the Linux articles because it turns into FOSSie circle jerks so maybe that's it) now do you HONESTLY believe that this thing has a snowball's chance in hell? I mean do you seriously believe devs are gonna give up the mature and easy to use Android and iOS dev kits for some half assed thing Moz puts together?
Oh and if your doom scenario comes to pass and Win 8 manages not to bomb like Mel Gibson at a Bar Mitzvah? Then when Win 7 becomes EOLed I'll just get the pirate version of Win 9 which I'm sure will have a desktop hacked back in. While I love Win 7 and bought legit I'll be the first to admit the pirate version is better, it uses less than 512Mb of RAM and with all that Aero crap removed screams.
What you and everybody else seem to forget is that there is simply zero loyalty in the phone arena, except for those that worship the cult of Steve, all people care about are apps which just won't be on the Moz platform. So people will bounce back and forth between droid and iOS, X86 will go back to being desktops as sweaty monkey and snickerdouche see Win 8 go the way of MS Bob, and Moz will probably be banned by our corporate overlords anyway as it isn't locked down and the carriers hate that. So in the end you'll be able to use a Moz phone if you live somewhere like Paraguay and in the USA it'll be your choice of which locked down DRM in your pocket you want.
Then quit trying to use as a fricking gaming PC, how about that? Either dual boot or get yourself a console and get screwed thanks to the consoles higher prices. But I have to say I'm with the first guy that standing there and whining or begging of a company that DOESN'T WANT YOUR BUSINESS and obviously couldn't give two shits about your OS makes the whole damned community look bad.
So man up and either pick up a cheap copy of Windows to dual boot or buy yourself a console. Of course the ironic part is with the consoles the two that actually have graphics on par with a PC are....MSFT and Sony, so you are kinda screwed if you hate "the big bad M$" since Sony makes MSFT look like the care bears by comparison.
I would say YES because while i haven't gone to TVShack i have gone to others to see shows i have already paid for by paying for cable TV but simply missed because of one thing or another. I mean why the hell should i shell out money to build a fricking DVR or add extra drives so my PC can do it when i can just use the net to find a show i missed and watch it whenever?
and I thought the whole point of the Betamax ruling was if something had a non infringing use even if others used it differently it couldn't just be banned outright? or did the cartels get that one tossed when i wasn't looking?
The classic case of "doom scenarios" pushed to the extreme. The simple fact is it ALL comes down to money and the OEMs sure as hell ain't about to give up all that money when it comes to corps running old versions, not to mention the huge kit markets for the mobo makers, so I have no doubt you'll be able to find plenty of machines that you can whack and hack away to your heart's content.
In the end this is just MSFT ripping off Apple, which is all Ballmer seems to know how to do. iOS is locked? Well dammit we need that too! I'm shocked the man don't sleep with an iPad under his pillow with a Windows sticker covering the Apple logo.
I don't know about that, because i knew a LOT of folks that modded the original Xbox to make it into a kick ass SD media player. which is why I don't understand why they bitch about the older consoles instead of just leaving the modders alone once the console is EOL. I mean wouldn't you be more likely to buy a PS2 or PS3 if you knew once they quit making games you could easily unlock it and use it for something else? i know I still have my Dreamcast because you didn't have to have a modchip and there were emulators for all the older consoles so instead of having to break out my old SNES or Genesis me and the boys could blast through some General Chaos or SuperContra with the DC.
I know that even though I've switched the boys over to PC gaming (gotta love the Steam sales and I was able to get some crazy deals on AMD chips to build them some pretty powerful gamer PCs) I'd be happy to buy an X360 or PS3 if the company were to announce that when the machine was EOLed they'd release a code that would let you unlock it, or even sell you a device to plug in that would unlock it. Its a shame, these consoles are powerful enough they could make pretty kick ass entertainment centers if you could just flip a switch and unlock. maybe I'll pick one of the pre-modded X360s up off of CL, anybody know how good the emulators and homebrew is on the X360?
Big difference there friend, MSFT had all but abandoned IE (even going so far as disbanding the IE dev team) and so was simply coasting on an increasingly creaky POS browser that wasn't compliant with jack shit to begin with and which had become a haven for malware.
Compare that to the mobile OS market where you have Google spending a billion a year on development, who knows how much Apple and MSFT are spending, and you are trying to get in when both iOS and Android are both HEAVILY supported by app development and are insanely popular.
Again a more realistic comparison would be Canonical putting out Ubuntu Netbook edition when the netbook craze had already worn off and tablets were starting to get hot. you have three major competitors, all outspending you by huge amounts, and in the case of two of them you have huge markets filled with customers and an already mature SDK toolchain that takes the work out of the development of apps. Mark my words they'll get some piss poor recompiles of FOSS programs, AbiWord, VLC and the like, and most of it will be done by the Moz team themselves. This thing is gonna end up with even less support than WebOS, mark my words.
What you are missing is that unlike Nintendo both Sony and MSFT sell their consoles under the razor and blades business model which is also why Sony quit supporting OtherOS. I am surprised when that whole thing came down how nobody seemed to notice that Sony was bleeding money already and you had researchers buying 500+ PS3s at a time to make clusters. every single modded or clustered PS3 is one more system Sony takes a loss on and doesn't get squat back.
As for the FSF? Sigh, why does anybody listen to them anymore? With their whole BadVista and Win 7 "sins" (gotta love that one, acting like they are a fricking church) its obvious the only "freedom" the FSF supports is to be JUST LIKE THEM and if you don't support the FSF "way" then you are wrong and evil and a monster.
One final note and a little offtopic but does anybody else notice that it is coders and ONLY coders that RMS hates? I mean he takes money from Intel and IBM and he doesn't ever say that doctors or CEOs shouldn't get paid JUST programmers. Why is the sweat off a programmer's brow worthless, yet the sweat from a plumber isn't? I mean sure he says you can sell copies but we all know you'll sell exactly ONE and then someone will just come along and sell or give away your work and that is that. The Red Hat support model only works in a teeny tiny niche, and when anybody tries to find another way? RMS has a shitfit. Anybody remember when RMS said you could make money selling documentation? Now he rails against that and demands free docs.
Personally I'm starting to feel the whole damned community is getting trolled by old RMS. Sure he may have believed back in the day but now he seems to just think programmers are completely worthless and should just be happy with whatever scraps they get while not saying jack shit about CEOs or anybody else making a buck. maybe its like one of the head guys at Red Hat says "RMS treats his friends like his enemies" but the fact the guy seems to be on a crusade to make sure programmers make less than the guy cleaning up the puke at the Chuck E Cheese while taking checks from big corps that make tons off of programmers makes me wonder...
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The problem MSFT has is it can't simply kill support to older titles and they have to give the OEMs and customers what they want NOT what MSFT wants to sell. Cases in point, Vista and most likely win 8, not to mention their recent failures to gain any share in mobile with Zune, Kin, and WinPhone 7.
Somebody at MSFT simply needs to accept that things will NEVER be as they were during the heady days of the MHz wars, where one had to toss a PC every 2 years because it would struggle to run the latest software. hell thanks to the consoles even games don't really stress the monsters we have now, my ancient HD4850 still gives me over 30FPS on modern games with plenty of bling so the drive to constantly replace just isn't there.
While they can coast for awhile what they can NOT do is piss off their partners like the AAA game houses and the OEMs because frankly without them most would be happy to stick with what they have. We may just get to see how far MSFT can push it with Win 8 but I have a feeling they are gonna get a wake up call and find out they simply can no longer lead and expect people to blindly follow. You'd have thought they'd have gotten that with Vista but I guess not.
Its bullshit and here is why: It would cost corporations billions of dollars and give MSFT a license to print money, neither of which is appealing to your average corp. There is a REASON why Linux runs the net, and its not because its a nice OS, its actually a fiddly PITA OS if you want to know the truth. No the reason is it SAVES MONEY to run the backbone on a free OS, hell even a RH license is nothing compared to the cost of MSFT CALs to a large corporation.
Have you SEEN the price MSFT plans to charge for WinARM licenses? i'm sure it would make them VERY happy for corps to actually pay them more per unit than even Apple gets but the odds? About as likely as my ass growing wings and flying south for the winter.
In the end lets call it what it is, its FUD, no different than BadVista or Win 7 Sins or MSFT's get the facts campaign, its nothing but doom scenarios and total and complete FUD. Have you looked at the figures for WinPhone 7? To even attempt to argue this would be as ridiculous as arguing that some CCC maker on ChinaMart like Apad or ViewSonic is suddenly gonna wipe out Apple and Google, its so far beyond bullshit and into unbelievable bullshit its not even funny.
Ya wanna know what's gonna happen? Just let old Hairy use his magical powers culled from decades of selling to the common man..../looks into crystal trackball/....Win 8 bombs hard, WinARM if it is LUCKY gets 10%, which it will only get by MSFT taking a billion dollar bath on the cost of the hardware by selling at a loss, the OEMs will follow HP and avoid WinARM like the clap so the only one losing billions will be MSFT AGAIN, BTW notice how good Ballmer is at that? What is he up to now? 20 billion pissed down the drain? And THAT is the guy you're afraid of? And the vast majority will go "meh who cares" and stick with HTC Droids and Apple iStuff and the majority of WinPads will end up on Woot! just like the Touchpads did when retailers couldn't move the damned things.
Seriously dude, y'all wanna be scared of somebody? Be scared of Google, who is building up enough data on everything and everyone they'd make Hoover green with envy, or Apple who are making paying too much money to play in a sandbox and hand them yet more money for the privilege a hip thing to do, but this continued "ZOMFG M$!" bullshit not only makes the community and the FSF look batshit, it makes them look so far behind the times they may as well get clothing tips from Disco Stu. MSFT is a has been company, while desktops aren't going away they'll never be top dogs again and most will only be replaced when a unit fails, worrying about the company run by a Bozo that has blown 20 billion plus on dumbass moves and bad deals? Well it is like being frightened of competition with the PHB from Dilbert. Hell you should WELCOME MSFT because if there is one company that have shown they can cock things up and turn people off its MSFT. Shit brown Zune anyone?
The problem with your line of thinking is thus: Just as it took government intervention to break up Ma Bell (which rebuilt itself like the T-1000 the second it could) so too would government intervention be required because because of the incredible barrier to entry the monumental costs of building such a thing would require and the duopolies have been running as a cartel that with removal of regulation you will NOT see competition, all you will see is collusion.
Do you think its an ACCIDENT that so many have little or no choice? Its called "cherry picking" and allows the duopolies to carve up entire regions. by simply agreeing not to compete they can charge what they want, do what they want, knowing the cost to access the backbone (which in most cases they own) will be too high to allow anybody who doesn't "play the game" to enter.
Its cute, although a little naive on your part to blindly believe that megacorps will actually spend money and compete with one another when the bottom line is fattened by simply making agreements not to. It is NO coincidence that the countries with the best broadband speeds have made it a national interest, and those that have chosen a totally laissez faire approach have some of the worst. Its simply not in a companies best interest to compete when they already own a captive audience, its much more rewarding to simply make deals not to step on each other's toes. this way they can continue to raise rates, not roll out any new lines, and pocket the profits.
I'm sorry but libertarianism has NEVER worked anywhere in the entire history of this planet, not even once. what you end up with is just what we have now, a handful of companies with so much concentrated wealth and power its simply cheaper to buy new laws to stifle competition than to actually compete. I hate to break the news to you but a free market at anything above a local level is just as much of a fantasy as a communist utopia, they simply don't exist. Inevitably the wealth WILL concentrate and with it will come corruption, all removing regulations does is allows that conclusion to arrive sooner than later.
And if it was all "big ebil government" why do those cities that try to provide their own get sued to death when they are the cause? because they are NOT the cause, its a few corps that wield almost complete control over the entire US broadband infrastructure. if we would have went your route during the building of the highway system on a few large cities would be supported and every single road no matter how shitty would have tollbooths. in the end a corp exists ONLY to make as much money as possible for the board and the stockholders, and competition simply isn't the most profitable way to accomplish that goal once a corp gets beyond a certain size. Perhaps it is time to break up the duopolies just as we broke up ma Bell, at least for awhile there we could have competition again as we did during the days of dialup.
Sorry friend but you haven't read Wickard v. Filburn which was a man growing his OWN feed for his OWN chickens on his OWN land, can't get less interstate than that and thanks to SCOTUS having a gun held to its head by FDR (which i thought should have been impeached and should have went down as being just as bad as Nixon for his threats against the SCOTUS) it made the commerce clause into "anything the POTUS wants it to be" and is only now having a teeny tiny bit of its massive power reined in.
As for TFA it is THIS, this right here, why we need to have a WPA style system to build a national broadband infrastructure and to force open the last mile to competition. We have already paid 200 billion for a national broadband infrastructure and all we got from the telecos and cablecos was a low res picture of goatse while their CEOs pocketed the cash, and in many areas your "choice" is being fucked by one company or having nothing at all. By having REAL competition like we had during the days of dialup we could have lower prices and increased competition instead of being one of the worst companies in the west for broadband speeds. i mean fricking Romania kicks our ass now!
Without competition we are doomed to be stuck on the short bus to the info superhighway while the duopoly simply adds caps and blocks and other draconian measures to insure that they don't have to spend a dime on upgrades and can continue to oversell the living hell out of the lines they do have. like the rest of our infrastructure the backbone is falling down around our ears but rather than give up a cent of profit they'll just throttle the living hell out of everyone, thus killing any innovation in media, electronic education, or entertainment. if they had their way you'd be using the same bandwidth the average granny did in 2004 and if you didn't they'd empty your wallet or just kick you off completely. With more and more private and government services increasingly becoming broadband only this shit needs to be brought to a screeching halt. sadly our congress critters are so damned bribed they might as well wear "sponsored by" shirts, good luck on anything getting better.
A lot actually, you'd be surprised how many people do their own books, hell even my ex GF used GnuCash to keep up with budgets. Then of course there is office, DVD authoring which with the rise of cheap HD cameras I've had a LOT of customers coming to me to give tutorials on basic video editing like cuts and fades because they want little Billy's first big game to look great, don't even get me started on how many wedding videos I've had to use to show people how to edit, and FB? FB has to have Flash which Metro doesn't support which has to be one of the biggest WTF moments so far with Win 8, because what female wants FB without FB games?
In the end we'll get to see this Xmas. My prediction is it will be Vista all over again, the hype will carry sales for a month or two then the bad word of mouth from all those users hating it will cause it to fall right off the charts. Like with Vista the OEMs will respond by selling Win 7 boxes with a Win 8 disc in the box so Ballmer and Sinofsky can save face and call them Win 8 sales and guys like me will end up with a pile of the worthless things, just as I have a pile of Vista discs and keys at the shop in the back somewhere.
I am GLAD you asked that, Mr/Mrs AC, here is what I would do if Bill punt kicked the sweaty monkey and said "Alright Hairy, MSFT is in your hands, fix it" and ya know what? i would.
1.-While using the same underlying codebase, thus making patches easier and cheaper, I would go back to the roots of MSFT and have the X86 Business and Consumer lines separate again. This would let you try new things with the consumer line if you wish while leaving businesses (and gamers who also tend to not want bling as it sucks framerates) with a more conservative line. Both would get 10 years of support so there wouldn't be any reason for one or the other to get shunned, and I would also make it clear that during this transition Win 7 WILL be sold so companies wouldn't feel like they didn't have choice and neither would consumers. treat the customer right would be job #1 at Hairysoft.
2.- Split off WinARM which from now on will be called Metro, they will be given their own offices in Austin so that the MS Office and Windows teams won't be bugging them. They would be given a decent amount of cash, told to hire the best and brightest they can find in the mobile field and the ONLY requirements they would have that has ANYTHING to do with Windows and Office is a "it just works" mantra must be kept with regards to easy connection between Metro, Windows, and the X360/720. I would want any consumer to be able to hook any MSFT device to any other MSFT device with as few steps as possible, I would also have a tool free number for assistance if anybody has any trouble in that regard.
3.- Finally I would probably spin off the entertainment division so we wouldn't end up with any more Zune debacles, it would be headed by the X360 guys and again their ONLY mandate would be "it just works" and the continued use of DirectX so that porting between the systems would be as simple as possible. Visual Studio leads would stay in contact with both entertainment and Metro to make sure that VS would be incredibly easy to build applications for both the new X360/720 and Metro, again with a "it just works" mantra at play. I would also have a nationwide census taken with regards to VS and Office to find out what the pulse is with regards to both and what developers and hardcore office users want and need and we would give them that. Focus on your users and make their jobs easier would be the motto of the VS and Office teams.
I believe with this strategy I could kill the NIH and PHB bullshit that is infecting MSFT like a cancer and right the ship, making the Hairyfeet MSFT a force to be watched within 5 years, probably less. Instead of focusing on the consumer we would be focusing on the USER while giving the Metro team time and space to create truly great products without being tied down by the Windows legacy, while at the same time insuring that Windows X86 stays the #1 desktop planetwide now and in the future.
While I don't use Noscript anymore (my browser is sandboxed and runs lower than a regular user thanks to low rights mode) I have to see one would have to be insane not to run ABP, and to run NS as well if they are on XP. Because I can tell you the second biggest attack vector after social engineering is infected ads, so why take the risk so some corp can show you bullshit you don't want, is gonna suck your bandwidth and irritate the hell out of you, and you aren't gonna buy from them anyway?
As for TFA this is why I don't really like to use google for anything other than a Gmail spam dump, because with them you just never know. With Google it seems like a product has to be a megahit or they pull the plug, even if there are millions using the thing. While I don't use any of TFA services i'm sure those that did probably aren't gonna be happy, but the way Google is its not like they can have an EOL date like MSFT because frankly they don't have a clue how long something is gonna last. if it becomes a hit they stay, if it becomes anything less they fold, I'd be afraid to use any new Google service until it passed the megahit stage myself.
Or they could just stick with Win 7 which is supported until 2020 and by then hopefully the sweaty monkey will have taken his golden parachute and his iPad and moved on.
I know that is what not only me but most of the SMBs in my area are doing, they've been having me crank out triple and quad desktops with plenty of upgrade potential so they can just stick with Win 7. I used some of the money I've made to build my boys a hexa and a quad while building myself a hexa so we can all just skip Win 8 completely.
Now the only "work" i'll be having to do with Win 8 is probably the same as I did with Vista, which was getting paid to remove the damned thing and put the previous version on. Its not like Win 7 is a hardship, integrated search, jumplists and breadcrumbs,Superfetch and Readyboost, supports plenty of RAM, everyone seems to be quite happy with their new Win 7 units and I can't say as i blame 'em, just skip Win 8 and call it a day.
Riiight, because I'm sure the Bioshock series, Max Payne series, CoD and MoH series, massive RTS and RPGs will ALL work great on a fricking tablet with nothing but touch. BTW since its obvious those devs are taking a trip to Fantasy Island could you have them pick me up an Alyson Hannigan Sexbot and a flying car? Thanks.
I hate to say it Alex...but I agree, there is a HELL of a big difference between posting the pics of the baby on FB and video editing, bookkeeping, multitrack mixing, working with complex spreadsheets, etc.
Metro is just a supergigantic smartphone OS which is fine if the person is just a tweeting twit or spends all their time on FB (although last I checked Metro didn't support flash and without Farmville there goes the FB users) but for those that actually WORK on their PCs? Not a chance, hell even the gamers that have tried it at the shop hated it, too much background crap constantly updating. its just not a good OS, no matter how you slice it.
That is what just blows my damned mind, if I didn't know better I would SWEAR it was somebody at MSFT trolling. I mean didn't they do ANY focus groups? Hell even take it to an average mall and let some of the people there try it?
I'd say I have to be at over 400 people now that have tried it at the shop, everything from little old ladies to kids, small business owners to working stiff and NOBODY has liked it or even been able to figure out WTF to do with the damned thing. It is the most unintuitive design I have ever seen, hell a bottom of the line Android phone is easier to use than the flagship OS of the largest desktop company on the planet! Seriously WTF MSFT?
Seriously what COULD the man say "Hey Ballmer is a dumbass but I'm not running the show anymore, sorry?" because if the guy honestly thinks the millions of people that use Windows for something other than tweeting twitting FB shitting social crap is gonna want their desktops to feel like giant smartphones he is seriously fricking stoned! Can you imagine trying to do photoshop, quickbooks, solidworks in that damned social tweety metro crap UI? Hell even MS Office isn't going metro!
What he doesn't want to admit is what we retailers have known for years, that PCs passed "good enough" at dual cores and when quads, not to mention hexa and Octocores became affordable it went straight to insanely overpowered. The truth of the matter is even businesses don't replace units until they fail simply because, unlike the MHz wars when a 2 year old desktop would struggle to run the latest software, there just isn't a "killer app" that can stress the insane amount of power the average user has. Hell even bottom of the line netbooks like the E350 EEE I have can play L4D and Crysis, its just crazy how much power we have with X86 right now.
Whether old Bill likes it or not wintel is a mature market and nobody wants WOA so he is just gonna have to suck it up and accept his fate. PCs will still be sold by the millions, they simply won't be bought by most until their last one dies. Their retarded Win 8 strategy is gonna bomb HARD because this is what I have been seeing at the shop only with more frustration and cursing. originally i thought they were going for the teener/tweener crowd but those that played with it in the shop said "I already HAVE a cell phone, this is lame" so if that's the market he's going for it a failwhale.
Accept it Bill, MSFT will NEVER be king of the hill again. You left the sweaty monkey in charge, who sat on his ass until mobile passed you by, now you have nothing to offer that folks can't get better from Google and Apple. Maybe after Win 8 goes over like a turd in a punchbowl he'll get the clue and get Ballmer to split off the mobile division because frankly that is the only chance they have at mobile, just cut them loose from the Windows name and X86 legacy and hope they can carve a niche like the X360.
Because if Bill honestly thinks the public is gonna accept some giant icon, touch UI designed flip screening mess on their non touch desktops and laptops I have a magic bean factory he might be interested in, only $20 million Billy!
You shouldn't nor should you care when I LMAO that you spent $60+ on an ONLINE ONLY GAME that will get banned because you refuse to use the approved OS.
So if you wish to make a $60 donation for a product you can't use? Knock yourself out, stupid is as stupid does. the rest of the world will laugh and send you trollface pics while they fire up Win 7 and play without problem.
Bingo, they lost 6.2 BILLION on the deal. So can we ALL agree now that Forbes had it nailed when it called out Ballmer as being the worst CEO? i mean how many billions has he blown now on shit deals since he took over? 15 billion? 20? More? He makes the Pepsi guy at Apple look like Jobs for the love of pete!
Hopefully the abortion that is Win 8 will be the final nail in Ballmer's coffin and the board will force him to "pursue other interests" and bring back someone like Ozzie or Allchin to right the ship because they only have two cash cows, Windows and Office, and Ballmer is gonna take a steaming dump on one in Oct just so he can yet again try to rip off Apple and pretend people want a WinTab like an iPad. I mean look at this video folks which is a typical reaction to windows 8 from what I've watched here at the shop with a Win 8 CP set up for anybody who walks in to play with. its not intuitive, its not discoverable, hell it doesn't even follow cell phone conventions, instead acting like some sort of bad hybrid of Windows and some Smartphone.
I agree with Foley, this is just one of a loooong line of bad moves made since Ballmer became CEO. His "strategy" seems to be 1.-Buy or build a half assed product based on something Apple or Google already does better, 2.-Fail miserably. Yeah, great corporate direction you got there Steve, really setting the world on fire with THAT one.
That is why I've been saying for ages that just as desktops matured so too will mobile devices and at the current rate their "MHz wars' will be winding down soon simply because there is only so much power you can use before battery life becomes an issue with the whole "thin is in" design aesthetic.
I figure another 2 years, 3 tops and we'll be right back to where we are with desktops and laptops, with every device so insanely overpowered compared to what the average user does with it that folks won't get rid of one until it dies. After all there is only so much one can do on a 3.4-7 inch screen before it becomes "eyestrainovision" and not worth the trouble. So if it were me, buy cheap and be prepped to toss when like Tegra 2 they are quickly EOLed, just as many of us bought the Celerons and Durons back in the day because the chips would be out of date so damned quick it wasn't worth going cutting edge.
They won't have any problem, same as the armadillos that USED to live in TX went through AR and are halfway through OK now. As a certain line from a movie went "life finds a way" and while we here in North Central AR may be roasting under 104F temps the armadillos just packed up and moved north. At the current rate I expect Canucks to be dodging armadillos in about a decade.
These games really need to keep cheating down to a minimum. Cheaters really ruin the real money market they plan to make assloads off of for the other customers.FTFY.
Most likely that will take the form of a half ass Linux client and a much better supported but locked down hardware wise "steam box" to compete with the X360 because Ballmer pissed Gabe off with the appstore crap.
Look I'd be the first to cheer if it actually meant jack but the simple fact is Linux has several problems like bullets in the knees before the starting gun even fires. 1.-The VAST majority of games on Steam are DirectX which means they need to be completely reworked (never happen) or use some sort of Wine layer (will be buggy and/or slow as Xmas). 2.-The graphics subsystem in Linux is a big pile of suck right now, hell even Moz couldn't get it to work reliably for GPU acceleration of web pages, expecting it to work any better for games is laughable. Maybe in a couple of years when the AMD FOSS drivers become mature but even that won't help 3.-Torvalds constant kernel fiddling and the religious aversion to allowing a hardware ABI means graphics and sound is broken damned near every update.
So most likely all you will see is back ports of the Valve catalog and some indie games which you can already pick up for Linux. As much as the community likes to think of itself the big name publishers simply aren't gonna go to the hassle and expense of porting all the AAA games currently on Steam onto Linux, its just not gonna happen. if on the other hand they put out a Steam box then they need only support ONE CPU and ONE GPU and there will be better emulation of DX because there is only one GPU it has to run on so that may be doable, but most likely they'll expect console money before they will allow their games even then. If there is one thing companies like Electronic Arts and Activision has proved us its never underestimate the greed and douchebaggery of AAA game houses.
Tell me this Billy, be honest now as its off the front page so you won't have to worry about modbombing (I still don't see how you took a karma hit, but then again I avoid the Linux articles because it turns into FOSSie circle jerks so maybe that's it) now do you HONESTLY believe that this thing has a snowball's chance in hell? I mean do you seriously believe devs are gonna give up the mature and easy to use Android and iOS dev kits for some half assed thing Moz puts together?
Oh and if your doom scenario comes to pass and Win 8 manages not to bomb like Mel Gibson at a Bar Mitzvah? Then when Win 7 becomes EOLed I'll just get the pirate version of Win 9 which I'm sure will have a desktop hacked back in. While I love Win 7 and bought legit I'll be the first to admit the pirate version is better, it uses less than 512Mb of RAM and with all that Aero crap removed screams.
What you and everybody else seem to forget is that there is simply zero loyalty in the phone arena, except for those that worship the cult of Steve, all people care about are apps which just won't be on the Moz platform. So people will bounce back and forth between droid and iOS, X86 will go back to being desktops as sweaty monkey and snickerdouche see Win 8 go the way of MS Bob, and Moz will probably be banned by our corporate overlords anyway as it isn't locked down and the carriers hate that. So in the end you'll be able to use a Moz phone if you live somewhere like Paraguay and in the USA it'll be your choice of which locked down DRM in your pocket you want.
Then quit trying to use as a fricking gaming PC, how about that? Either dual boot or get yourself a console and get screwed thanks to the consoles higher prices. But I have to say I'm with the first guy that standing there and whining or begging of a company that DOESN'T WANT YOUR BUSINESS and obviously couldn't give two shits about your OS makes the whole damned community look bad.
So man up and either pick up a cheap copy of Windows to dual boot or buy yourself a console. Of course the ironic part is with the consoles the two that actually have graphics on par with a PC are....MSFT and Sony, so you are kinda screwed if you hate "the big bad M$" since Sony makes MSFT look like the care bears by comparison.
I would say YES because while i haven't gone to TVShack i have gone to others to see shows i have already paid for by paying for cable TV but simply missed because of one thing or another. I mean why the hell should i shell out money to build a fricking DVR or add extra drives so my PC can do it when i can just use the net to find a show i missed and watch it whenever?
and I thought the whole point of the Betamax ruling was if something had a non infringing use even if others used it differently it couldn't just be banned outright? or did the cartels get that one tossed when i wasn't looking?
The classic case of "doom scenarios" pushed to the extreme. The simple fact is it ALL comes down to money and the OEMs sure as hell ain't about to give up all that money when it comes to corps running old versions, not to mention the huge kit markets for the mobo makers, so I have no doubt you'll be able to find plenty of machines that you can whack and hack away to your heart's content.
In the end this is just MSFT ripping off Apple, which is all Ballmer seems to know how to do. iOS is locked? Well dammit we need that too! I'm shocked the man don't sleep with an iPad under his pillow with a Windows sticker covering the Apple logo.
I don't know about that, because i knew a LOT of folks that modded the original Xbox to make it into a kick ass SD media player. which is why I don't understand why they bitch about the older consoles instead of just leaving the modders alone once the console is EOL. I mean wouldn't you be more likely to buy a PS2 or PS3 if you knew once they quit making games you could easily unlock it and use it for something else? i know I still have my Dreamcast because you didn't have to have a modchip and there were emulators for all the older consoles so instead of having to break out my old SNES or Genesis me and the boys could blast through some General Chaos or SuperContra with the DC.
I know that even though I've switched the boys over to PC gaming (gotta love the Steam sales and I was able to get some crazy deals on AMD chips to build them some pretty powerful gamer PCs) I'd be happy to buy an X360 or PS3 if the company were to announce that when the machine was EOLed they'd release a code that would let you unlock it, or even sell you a device to plug in that would unlock it. Its a shame, these consoles are powerful enough they could make pretty kick ass entertainment centers if you could just flip a switch and unlock. maybe I'll pick one of the pre-modded X360s up off of CL, anybody know how good the emulators and homebrew is on the X360?
Big difference there friend, MSFT had all but abandoned IE (even going so far as disbanding the IE dev team) and so was simply coasting on an increasingly creaky POS browser that wasn't compliant with jack shit to begin with and which had become a haven for malware.
Compare that to the mobile OS market where you have Google spending a billion a year on development, who knows how much Apple and MSFT are spending, and you are trying to get in when both iOS and Android are both HEAVILY supported by app development and are insanely popular.
Again a more realistic comparison would be Canonical putting out Ubuntu Netbook edition when the netbook craze had already worn off and tablets were starting to get hot. you have three major competitors, all outspending you by huge amounts, and in the case of two of them you have huge markets filled with customers and an already mature SDK toolchain that takes the work out of the development of apps. Mark my words they'll get some piss poor recompiles of FOSS programs, AbiWord, VLC and the like, and most of it will be done by the Moz team themselves. This thing is gonna end up with even less support than WebOS, mark my words.
What you are missing is that unlike Nintendo both Sony and MSFT sell their consoles under the razor and blades business model which is also why Sony quit supporting OtherOS. I am surprised when that whole thing came down how nobody seemed to notice that Sony was bleeding money already and you had researchers buying 500+ PS3s at a time to make clusters. every single modded or clustered PS3 is one more system Sony takes a loss on and doesn't get squat back.
As for the FSF? Sigh, why does anybody listen to them anymore? With their whole BadVista and Win 7 "sins" (gotta love that one, acting like they are a fricking church) its obvious the only "freedom" the FSF supports is to be JUST LIKE THEM and if you don't support the FSF "way" then you are wrong and evil and a monster.
One final note and a little offtopic but does anybody else notice that it is coders and ONLY coders that RMS hates? I mean he takes money from Intel and IBM and he doesn't ever say that doctors or CEOs shouldn't get paid JUST programmers. Why is the sweat off a programmer's brow worthless, yet the sweat from a plumber isn't? I mean sure he says you can sell copies but we all know you'll sell exactly ONE and then someone will just come along and sell or give away your work and that is that. The Red Hat support model only works in a teeny tiny niche, and when anybody tries to find another way? RMS has a shitfit. Anybody remember when RMS said you could make money selling documentation? Now he rails against that and demands free docs.
Personally I'm starting to feel the whole damned community is getting trolled by old RMS. Sure he may have believed back in the day but now he seems to just think programmers are completely worthless and should just be happy with whatever scraps they get while not saying jack shit about CEOs or anybody else making a buck. maybe its like one of the head guys at Red Hat says "RMS treats his friends like his enemies" but the fact the guy seems to be on a crusade to make sure programmers make less than the guy cleaning up the puke at the Chuck E Cheese while taking checks from big corps that make tons off of programmers makes me wonder...