But isn't that EXACTLY why RIM is soon to be DOA? People don't want, even in the enterprise markets "just email" anymore. before our eyes phones are becoming a PC in your pocket, with movies, games, music, Internet, everything they can do on your average bottom of the line PC, all in their shirt pocket.
Like Palm RIM has simply missed the boat, and just like Palm their only real hope now is a buyout for the IP. They don't even have a decent OS at the end like Palm with webOS, instead trying to shoehorn the old buggy POS just like what we saw with Nokia and Symbian. Only Blackberry just doesn't have a big enough market left for someone like MSFT to come along and bail them out.
Final verdict? Rim dead in 2 years, maybe less. Until then they will bleed money and flail around while throwing shit at the wall hoping something sticks like in TFA, when compared to iOS and DroidOS they simply have nothing to offer. Even the PHBs are starting to switch to iPhones and Droids. They are going on the cart, no matter how much they sing "I feel happy" to themselves.
What "real job" do you speak of? Fast food? Can be done by automation. Hell there is nothing in your average mcJob that can't be done by assembly line robots, with a hell of a lot more accuracy and less waste, it is simply cheaper to employ a warm body NOW. But what about when gas is $7 a gallon and a bag of groceries costs $80? McDonald's is ALREADY pushing for the end of minimum wage, even though in the current climate their pay won't allow one to even put a roof over your head. Average pay for a fast food worker here? $130 a week if they are lucky and the average apt? $400 a month plus security deposit. The math just doesn't work.
This isn't about some "dot com fallacy" as you put it, this is about the simple fact that there are a few jobs at the top like engineers that simply can't be done by machines, and a whole hell of a lot of other jobs that can. The corps like McD's don't like even paying minimum wage now, what will they do when their pay won't even attract the homeless? will they raise their pay? Nope, they'll go assembly line, because you can just as easily push a button and have a burger come down a slot. You have roughly IMHO 50-60% of the population that will NEVER be engineers, or will never be trained above a C level job. As it is half the apts in my building have recently turned over, not because the people in them moved up, but because more and more can't find a job before their benefits run out and they end up on the streets.
What will you do with them? Have them arrested? Shot? Because the "dirty little secret" the MSM is covering up is we have just as many homeless if not more than under Reagan, they are just going out of their way NOT to report it. Instead they talk about what the latest Dow Jones hits as if we all have stock options. Meanwhile you have an ever growing mass that will happily follow Socialism, Fascism, ANY ISM that promises "bread and jobs". Look at Egypt, see our future if we don't get a hold of this NOW.
Maybe in YOUR area of AR, but in mine I was told flat footed "We sold the Net and VOIP to Sprint for a one time fee" (which is true, if I have a problem I'm put through to a Sprint rep) so we are ONLY getting paid for the cable. If you want JUST the cable TV fine, if you want cable + phone or plus net fine, otherwise we don't sell it period, sorry". I was told I could get business (again with TV included whether I wanted it or not, talking to several SMBs they were told the same) at TRIPLE the price, but again the same TV take it or leave it.
So if you are the western area, around Harrison? YES you can get it sans TV. If you live in the northeast, ala Searcy/Beebe/Cabot? Then NO you can not, as White County cable doesn't allow it. Hell feel free to ask them, their website is here just don't be surprised when you get the same answer.
I just GAVE you an example, it isn't my job to be your research assistant. You HAVE heard of this thing called a search engine, yes? look up "Groklaw PsyStar" and see for yourself. You can go "la la la" and stick your head in the sand if you want, doesn't make her less of a loonie.
Look I'm happy to give credit where credit is due, PJ was GREAT on the SCO case, she really was. But like BoycottNovell she became one of those that would blame the loss of the rainforest on a MSFT plot. Or do you wish to explain how PsyStar was actually a secret M$ plant to destroy the GPL?
Because THAT is the tune she was singing. Don't believe me look it up. And I LOVE how FOSSies simply mod down when their emperors and sacred cows have no clothes. Look it up, I DARE YOU, see the lunacy first hand. You WILL see if you read her post SCO posts that she began stretching more and more AND MORE trying to get the planet to fit her "M$ VS GPL" mindset, and like BoycottNovell the levels of crazy got pretty thick. Hell find more than two posts of her post SCO period where she DIDN'T find every single thing that could possibly go wrong come from M$! Did your desktop crash? IT is M$'S fault!
Don't blame the messenger if you don't like the message, look it up. Or are YOU one of those that believe Twitter and friends at BoycottNovell that everything bad in the entire universe is a M$ plot? Because PJ does.
PJ is a loonie, and if you are listening to her (if she even exists) then you might want to do a spot check on your sanity as well, because she is right up there with BoycottNovell on the "Its M$ and the Illuminati! ZOMG" loonie parade. I mean when she actually came out FOR Apple against PsyStar by saying "Its a M$ plot to kill the GPL!" WTF? She is so batshit she thinks MSFT gives a shit about Hackentosh? or that they would WANT to make it so Apple OSX is CHEAPER?
I'm sorry but Redmond isn't Mordor and Ballmer isn't Sauron. Hell he isn't even a halfway decent CEO, too damned busy chasing after the other Steve while trying to be hip and cool. Blaming this on anything other than what it is, just SOP of another East Texas troll, is just more loonie toonie talk.
Besides with the USPTO handing out patents like Snickers bars on Halloween did you actually expect that Linux DIDN'T infringe a shitload of them? Hell making anything anymore is like tap dancing blindfolded in a minefield, which is why MSFT and Intel and everyone else is buying patents for their warchests like they were going out of style. If Linux was smart they'd drop "free as in beer" and sell it for a nominal fee (even RMS sold Emacs) and use the money to buy buy buy all the patents they could. Don't say you weren't warned, those without mega patent warchests WILL be crushed under the wall of lawsuits in the future.
Hell it is pretty much all we do in America now, it isn't like we manufacture shit anymore.
I think this is something we as a people are gonna have to face, the days of trading labor for money are simply gonna come to end, and whether or not that is a pretty sight is yet to be determined.
Just the other day I read the former founder of Paypal talking about how we are in an "education bubble" where most will get nothing out of a degree but more debt, and I bet when you figure in those that simply can't be educated higher and those with bad credit who can't get the loans to jump on the education treadmill you are probably looking at something like 60%, that is around 198 million in the USA that are qualified for C and D level jobs that are quickly being erased by outsourcing and automation. What now?
We are already seeing plenty that go from graduation straight to the unemployment line, defaults on student loans have never been higher and recently we passed the mark where there is more student loan debt than CC debt. What are we gonna do with all these people? Unless you want to be like a third world hellhole where you trip over the dying in the streets to get to work you need to do SOMETHING with them, and the simple fact is not everyone can be an engineer. More and more of the remaining jobs are sent overseas or replaced by machines or advances in tech like the move online, so what now?
This is something I believe is gonna come to a head VERY soon, and whether or not we end up like Egypt will be based on what we do about it. The difference between the 1% and the bottom 99% has never been higher, the middle class is DOA. and we are all playing IQ musical chairs with jobs, with more and more becoming losers. Do we go third world and build gulags? Do we go socialist and just cut them all a check?
This is something I can see coming to a head in the next decade, as all those promised "tech jobs" the politicians promised just went to India or to a machine. For most education is now simply a way into a debt they'll never pay, and more and more jobs are disappearing only to be replaced with nothing or a McJob that won't even keep you from being homeless. I have a feeling it is gonna get nasty folks, as I don't see the 1%ers (who just got to pay the lowest taxes in history this year BTW) caring if the masses die in the streets as long as they can keep their money.
HA HA HA HA HA...you're serious? HA HA HA HA HA HA...Thanks, I needed that. in case you didn't know they tried that in the past with I believe either Quake or Q3 Arena. What happened? Those with those damned irritating console controllers got their asses handed to them on a platter by mouse users.
The simple fact is they will NEVER be able to make a thumbstick that works at the accuracy of even a 800 DPI plain jane mouse, much less the average $50 gamer mouse. Controllers are fine for stuff like Madden NOT for FPS and RTS, so if you had your wish they would either have to cripple play for the PC users (I've already seen something similar where games try to make up for latency and it suckth big time) or you'd get stomped so bad you'd feel like grandma playing football against the Broncos.
As for TFA, as a PC gamer I say take your time consoles. I like the fact that my HD4850 which cost a whole $60 plays most games on high or close to it, I like that I can build sub $500 boxes that are great for gaming, I LIKE not having to blow a couple of hundred every year just to keep a decent framerate like in the 90s. So no hurry, take your time.
Hopefully by the time whatever they've got cooking rolls out equipping a PC to beat it will cost less than $100 for the GPU and I can enjoy my nice graphics without spending a mint. So thanks consoles, keep it up!
But what do you use for Internet? Unless you are one of the lucky FIOS ones (lucky bastards) most places DSL sucks compared to cable, and I don't know about everywhere else but I know Cox will NOT sell you net without at LEAST basic included. I ended up just picking up a cheapo USB TV tuner just so I could watch the occasional documentary (I haven't watched TV since Firefly left the air) and to not feel so ripped about having to pay for basic cable that I otherwise would never ever use.
So while I like the idea of getting rid of cable, when the choices are get stuck with basic along with 2Mbit Internet, or take $100 DSL with a MAX speed of 756k and being informed they had NO intention of ever spending a dime and upgrading the lines (Thanks AT&T, you damned leeches) then "cutting the cable" quickly becomes "shooting yourself in the foot" as far as speed is concerned.
Frankly I've been saying that for awhile now. You think the Apple prediction was bad? How about royally boning the chance to wipe out Windows piracy AND boost your numbers AND being able to have a captive market to upsell AND boosting the latest IE ALL at the same time?
Talking to my fellow builders and repairmen the $50 Windows 7 HP deal was wiping out piracy. Like me they went from seeing the "Razr1911" XP and Vista Ultimate installs to Win 7 HP across the board. They were also getting many of those still sitting on the fence deciding whether to keep XP or not to upgrade. So what does he do? Raises the price to $100 and guess what happened? Now there are Windows 7 Ultimate installs all over the place. Smart Move Ballmer!
I give credit where credit is due and Jobs has made Apple THE hip upscale brand. Jobs keeps the price high because like Porsche and Ferrari it is part of the appeal. The lesser priced iDevices (even though they are still making him something like 40%+ profits) get people started on the brand like Ferrari jackets. Once you get them hooked it is easier to upsell, and I've seen many who went from one iDevice to having a Macbook and several.
That is why I still think that ancient Gates Borg icon needs to be retired, and replaced with Ballmer wearing a beanie that says "I heart Apple!" on it, since that seems to be his business strategy. Anything Apple does the sweaty monkey follows it with a lame half assed copy six months to a year down the line. Kin, Zune, how much $$$ has he blown so far just on the fails? I can just imagine him trying to rev up the troops "And with this newest device we'll be cool as Apple and people will flock to us! Yes they will! They really really will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!!!".
What they need to do is fire his ass and put one of the office guys in charge. Focus on integration, making things like having home users and SMBs be able to connect their machines no matter where they are as easy as plugging in a USB drive or using Homegroup, bring back Win 7 HP at $50 to wipe out piracy, and quit trying to play falling the bouncing Apple. Leaders win, followers suck. I think it is pretty obvious which of those categories Ballmer falls into.
That is because sports nuts are just as fanatical as any religious loonie, that's why. I know a guy that has a standing order at the Gamestop near his house so that any NASCAR and Madden games for his systems (PSP and PS3) are delivered to his house on release day, period. He doesn't care how much it costs, he doesn't care if the game is the exact same as last year (in fact he would probably prefer the same game just with a little extra gloss as it means he doesn't have to learn new controls) ALL he cares about is he has the latest rosters, period. He even changes the rosters during the year to reflect those out by injury or traded.
So yeah, I'd say judging games by whether or not Madden guys buy is like judging the general pop on what a religious far right fundamentalist would do. They are really not anything like the average mainstream gamer, as most gamers simply don't have that kind of slavish devotion like they do to their favorite sport.
XKCD can joke about it but I do it as well, and the simple fact is you can do that and have an awesome time playing great games for cheap because the market is saturated and unlike the mobile phone I don't have to have model X to play game Y.
Between Amazon and Steam I don't think I've paid more than $19.99 for a game in years and have more that I could EVER finish, there is simply so much out there. I like shooters, RTS, sandbox, and RPG, and frankly even if I stuck to a single genre I'd have to play 24/7/365 for a couple of years just to go through all the decent games released in the last 10 years. And lets be honest: Since 2003 the graphics for most AAA games have been so good they still look kick ass today. I still have customers walk into the shop and go "ohhhh..whats that?" when I'm playing "Brothers In Arms: The Hell's Highway" even though that came out in like 2004 or something (and I got it and GRAW for $9 for the two of them on Amazon) and once you're in the game you're too busy dodging bullets to watch bling bling anyway!
So while I agree that new releases are probably way too damned high, that's one of the things I like about PC gaming, in that I have tons of choices besides whatever came out this month. Hell I just finished up a nice multimedia PC that plays most games on med high or better and it cost the guy just a hair over $500, including Win 7 HP and paying me. You can get an HD4850 for like $60 if you look around, AMD quads and RAM is cheap, and between the sales on Steam and the huge amount of sub $10 games on Amazon I frankly already have something like a half a dozen games on my hard drive I haven't even had time to fire up yet.
So if they are really worried about popcap style games then they are doing it wrong. Take a lesson from steam who made something like 1100% more off of L4D at the cheap price than they did off of release. Sell it cheap and let the long tail of PC gaming keep the money rolling in. You can also add more money later with DLC if you aren't dicks about it. It has never been a better time to be a PC gamer and I'd argue if some places are hurting its because they got into ePeen back of the box graphics battles with competitors instead of listening to customers. I've talked to many who are just like me and happy to pay for a game with Far Cry 1 level graphics as long as it is fun and affordable.
But at $60? It would have to be the second coming and even then I'd probably pass. There are simply too many other affordable options, where I could get 6 or even 7 good games for the same amount of money.
The answer to that is right in front of you. What are you reading this on? A screen, and with the current HUDs there isn't ANY difference between the pilot looking at a screen while his body is being stressed by G-Forces ( I would argue this would in fact make pilots worse than drone pilots, as they are not having their brains slammed around and thus can concentrate on the data at hand) and a pilot looking at the same screen while sitting in a simulator.
Look, lets just cut the bullshit, okay? We ALL KNOW that the future is drones. you know it, I know it, anyone with common sense knows it. We are ALREADY capable of making planes that will kill the pilots before reaching their G-Force limits, and we simply can't make tougher humans ATM. With a drone you can build a Mach 3+ craft that can withstand 11+ G turns, can drive itself halfway across the planet, never gets tired, and if it gets shot down, so what? The most expensive thing will be the pilot's training, and he's safe at the base.
I'm sorry but in the end this is just more pork barrel bullshit, a waste of limited resources when we are already stretched too thin and our reps (by reps I mean representatives not republicans. I consider both groups to be two sides of the same shit stained coin) are looking to fuck the poor and disabled while not doing shit about spiraling costs. No we simply can't afford this waste, and if China wants to build an ePeen I say let them. We can field 1000 drones for every F35, and have them faster, more deadly, cheaper, and in every way BETTER than a human piloted craft. We just need to face it that like the battleship human piloted warbirds are simply past their time.
Dammit man, didn't you get the memo? You have to add synergy and integration if you want it to be an enterprise post! Here let me show you...
Both Visual Studio 2010 and NetBeans 7 allow enterprise developers to create and deploy enterprise frameworks for synergy within the enterprise, then develop enterprise software solutions with synergistic re-usable enterprise components while reading enterprise documentation, thus creating vertical integration and a full stack approach to workflow.
See? If you are gonna work in the enterprise kid you gotta speak the lingo. Don't make me go six sigma on yo ass!
Because like it or not Apple is setting the pace and their whole mantra is form over function, ala the iSliver batteries and the ultra thin designs like Air?
Just like you I would prefer a lower powered device that got insane battery life, but nobody listens nor cares about us. It is pretty obvious just looking at what is coming down the pipe the future is thin thin thinner, which means batteries so damned small you'd be lucky to get two hours out of the things.
Now if the only goal is how thin can you go, while cranking out the bling bling? AMD and Intel will have NO problems in that dept, as I said the new sub 20w Bobcats and BDs have that in the bag. Intel has shown with the Air that they too can go ultra thin, and sadly that is what the future is like it or not. It also helps the OEMs as it makes everything proprietary as hell which means their devices can be "designed for the dump" thus giving them great turnover while making it so support life on a device gets smaller and smaller. Hell most phones are lucky to get even a single update anymore, in the future they will just tell you to shitcan and get a new one.
So while I wish you were right friend, I truly do, I just ain't seeing it. What I AM seeing is device after device trying to top Apple in the "thin and sexy" dept, which means shit battery life, no ability to fix or upgrade squat, and design for the dump. Is it stupid and wasteful? Yes but as you said you take what you can get, and marketing has seen Apple's numbers and frankly don't give a shit about you or I.
Again you and the others are making a massive mistake, in assuming it is an either or prop when it could just as easily be neither. Did i say NO aircraft? No I said that drones can do it faster, cheaper, and be a better value and I stand by that statement.
As another pointed out do to all the safety and extra gear required for pilots you are looking at a 20 year from drawing board to battlefield, and with tech advancing as it is that is just ridiculous. So either we adopt the old Soviet attitude of "fuck the pilots they are replaceable" which considering how much we spend training them wouldn't be smart, or we come up with a way to get birds from drawing to battlefield MUCH quicker, and the obvious answer is drones.
With the new advances in VR and sims you could have a SINGLE pilot drive an entire fleet of drones, have them fly themselves into the mission area and then have the pilot do the actual target acquisition and prosecution. When you add in the psychological factor of being able to shoot down dozens without hurting a single American pilot, being able to make quick designs due to the fact that if it crashes because of some later found flaw you're not making someone a widow, and the fact that with drones they can perform maneuvers that would frankly turn a human body into a bag of broken bones and mush?
I'm sorry, but you and the others are making the assumption that continuing on the current path is the way to go, I say you couldn't be more wrong. Just as Pre WWII the battleship was the premier weapon yet was quickly found to be worthless in the face of air power, so too is the day of the fighter jock ending. The next gen superpower will keep their valuable pilots in trailers in the middle of nowhere, flying fleets of war machines that can cross the planet and do turns that Tom Cruise would pop like a zit if attempting.
Finally we all know that going to war with a nuclear power is suicide, so the USA going to war with Russia and China is frankly off the table unless we just want to end the world. So most likely our enemies in the future will all be in the middle east or rogue states like NK. Even if they were supplied with Russian and Chinese tech a stealth drone fleet would slaughter them while costing peanuts compared to the F35. I stand by my statement: It is pointless, it is a waste, it is nothing but pork for congress and a blank check to the MIC, nothing more. Or are we forgetting what a money sink the F22 was?
Oh Lord, and I thought I'd seen stupid when I had a client ask my opinion on the "new dynamic sales persons outfits" which looked like the Joker had thrown up! Hell they may have just named it MILFs for all the porn jokes they were gonna get!
As for why this shit happens, I've usually found it is either someone who is sleeping with the boss that comes up with a "brilliant" idea, or in the case of the Joker pukes outfits it was a middle manager female that had already played the race card once and they were giving her enough rope to hang herself with.
Needless to say after the Joker pukes outfits (they were like a puke purple and lime horror, no way you could take seriously with someone wearing this thing, they looked like a clown) they were able to fire her and when she tried playing the racism card again all it took was one showing of the joker pukes outfits with a bill on how much she spent on the things to get her charge dismissed.
So I have to wonder if someone higher up wants to fire this moron but for one reason or another can't so they are giving him the rope and letting him do the job for them. With politics and relatives and other office bullshit I've seen it is often easier to let the stupid walk in front of a bus and write off the money they waste than try to fire them before they step off the curb. Is it wasteful and dumb? Yes but sometimes it is the only way to cut loose someone with connections or problems without having to deal with more expensive wrongful termination lawsuits later.
The bigger question would be "why would they need to?" as people are expecting their phones to do more and more AND MORE which means that whole "ultra low power' thing is quickly becoming passe'.
Apple with the iSliver batteries that everybody and their dog are ripping off are training people as we speak to carry a charger with them everywhere, the EU getting the OEMs to agree to standards (mini USB I believe was the final verdict) means that if you forget your charger somebody else will have one, phones are quickly becoming full on gaming rigs in your pocket. HDMI, 3D performance, multimedia, these are the spaces AMD and Intel have ruled and there is no reason to think they both can't get in and be competitive.
Hell just at what AMD has been cooking up lately with Bulldozer and Bobcat. We are talking full dual cores with full gaming quality 3D GPUs, all in a less than 20w envelope for most of the chips. And that is just the first gen, the next gen with the new cores with specialized hyperthreading should be even better. And you can be sure with their R&D budget Intel has been cooking up equally low power integrated chips, their only weakness is GPUs (which is why I still wouldn't be surprised if Intel ends up buying Nvidia) but that can be fixed.
So the bigger question would be why would they bother. there is nothing in the ARM design that guarantees low power, especially if you are bolting more and more performance and functionality onto the chip. Remember that ARM was originally built for the ancient Acorn desktop, it was a very primitive chip that they have worked to slowly build more and more functionality onto. There is no reason, especially with the move to x64 where one can lose the old 16 bit baggage that one can't cut down X64 in the same way one built up ARM.
Did YOU even read my post? Here let me highlight the part you seemed to gloss over before I give you your WHOOSH okay? Here goes...of course with the software by lowest bidder we are less likely to have to worry about skynet than we are the military cooking up the equivalent of the ED209.
So what you seemed to have missed was that it was a comparison between software procured by lowest bid and the quality of the ED209 programming. Now here is your WHOOSH have a nice day.
On a project that is already behind and overbudget. Wonderful, especially while the reps are trying to cripple aid to the poor and handicapped.
And WTF do we need the F35 for exactly? Who the hell are we gonna fight that a well trained pilot in the F18 or even the F15-F16 won't be at the very least an even match? The Russians aren't building any new birds, the best they have is the Mg31 and those are rare, most of their is the MG 27 and SU27 which are 70s era tech. The Chinese? From the looks of their "stealth bird" it will be primitive as far as stealth and looks to be more for a national pride thing than a serious build up.
The rest of the world consists of threats of irregulars with ex Soviet hardware, most of it out of date and falling apart. hell the Brits are so desperate for targets in Libya just to give them an excuse to keep the Typhoon (their personal money hole) that they are blowing up abandoned tanks that the Libyans left rotting for lack of parts years ago just to have some footage to show the public.
This is stupid, its pointless, and it is nothing but more handouts to the top 1%ers in the MIC at a time when we can't afford it. We could have 10s of thousands of top o the line drones for less than this stupid ass plane, they would be cheaper, wouldn't risk multimillion dollar pilots, and are simple to replace. The age of fighter jocks is at an end, it is time for the government to face it and quit pissing money down a rathole.
Used to be but from what I understand once you get to quantum the universe goes "LOL Goatse' to all our steenkin rules.
On the one hand I'm all for learning about the way things work, especially if they'll have practical applications down the line, but on the other hand this stuff does scare me a little. I'm just waiting for someone to trip over how to make a quantum bomb or to find out cold fusion can be done with the average crap found in a kitchen if done in the right order, thus making it so every nutball with a cause can have a cold fusion nuke.
It always seems like we end up using science to first find really nasty ways to mess each other up and THEN figure out the non military applications for it. Look at rail gun tech, Gerald Bull wanted to use it to make cargo into space as cheap as UPS, instead it will end up making battleships that can throw bus size shells at brown people. Sigh. While I always liked the idea of us advancing to star trek style utopia one day sadly it seems we can't really be happy as a species unless we are ripping each other off or fucking each other up.
Not to mention your average 15 year old can rip DVD and DivX DVD players are like $30 at the Wally World. I know geeks here won't believe it but one of the most common things asked in a little shop like mine is "How can I copy this DVD so my kids don't scratch it?" and nowadays it is so damned easy to rip DVD even Joe Normal can pick it up after one or two tries with decent software.
Then add in the plus that with those cheapo DVD blanks ($17.99 a 100 from Amazon or $25 from me) and a DivX DVD player they can make AVI discs so that little Suzy can have three or four of her movies on one disc? You can see why DVD isn't going anywhere and BD isn't taking over like expected.
I'd also add that while ripping DVD takes almost no resources on even the low end duals and triples from what I understand BD tends to slam the HDD and CPU more during conversion so the machine can't be used. DVD is fast, it is easy, your mama can rip and convert with the new software, the discs are cheap, and for most folks standard def is MORE than "good enough" for their average eyes.
The final nail is how DVD is in EVERY home, usually multiple players plus the PC burner, so you are talking about not buying a single BD but several if more than one family member might like the movie. Then figure in how the little ones seem to be able to kill a Sherman tank with a toothbrush and BD and lots o scratches don't mix?
Just not a good format for the average Joe, and even geeks like me don't really see a need for them. I looked at them for a little while as a possible backup solution but then external drives got so cheap they aren't even worth that anymore.
Then why not sharing office? "Its Sharing office, share with your friends share with your neighbors, its okay by us!" Or Giving Office?" We give our Office software to you, please Give it to your friends and family. It always feels good to give!"
Hell pick Anything short, catchy, easy for all to pronounce and understand, and memorable. It seems like FOSS goes out of their way to be real smug douchebags when it comes to names, and frankly its uncalled for number one, and doesn't help sell your product number two. You DO want to have people use this, yes? you DO want it to be popular so that open formats can replace.doc yes?
So help your damned cause by stop being smug assholes! Names matter, which is why you are not drinking fartbreath cola and having a flaming gasbag burrito for lunch. or how about just "Free Office Suite"? Hell anything would be better than leber office. They should have to show that name to 100 random individuals in a dozen countries and see how many both pronounce it correctly AND knows WTF it means. If you don't score AT LEAST 70% then the name sucks and needs to go. Is it really so much to ask that the common man understand what your product is?
I just wonder if there are any suits in the Pentagon showing pics of the T-800 around and saying "How much can your robotics dept build THAT for?" because frankly it wouldn't surprise me.
I remember the director of Blue Thunder back in the day giving an interview where he said something like "I make this movie to show how dangerous such a craft would be, how freedom would mean nothing with a craft that can record through walls, follow you silently, and cut down anything that opposed it. so what happened? my office started getting swamped by calls from SWAT groups all over the country going "yeah yeah yeah...but how much do you want for her?" While everyone else saw the danger they saw it as a tech demo"
So I wonder if there are some brass sitting in a room going "forget the skin crap, just give me a dozen or two of those big metal bastards and I can kick some serious ass!". of course with the software by lowest bidder we are less likely to have to worry about skynet than we are the military cooking up the equivalent of the ED209. I can just picture some general going "Look, it only killed THREE kids alright? just three! We can fix the bugs, I bet we can cut it down to only one dead civilian every...ohhh...less say 500 uses. That's good numbers there!"
Funny choice, because frankly unless there only goal is to make it popular in France ShitOffice would probably be a better name than leber-office (which is how I've heard everyone pronounce it so far, followed by WTF or WTH? )
Seriously is there like a bylaw or something that says every damned FOSS app has to have a shitty/stupid/smartass name? Would you drink Fungus coffee? How about a Goatse choc bar? Maybe wash your hair with moneyshot shampoo? No? Then WTF!
Would have really been so God damned hard, would it have REALLY put you out, to simply name it something like Freedom Office? Or Sharing Office? Names matter folks and the pretentious bullshit names really don't help your cause. At least open office (which FYI NOBODY called it OO.o) gave it a nice friendly sounding name. its open, like open house. Simple, easy, smart.
So PLEASE for the love of all that is good and decent pick another damned name, or just bundle the damned thing with the Gimp and label under "shit nobody uses cause it just sounds nasty". I'd love to see FOSS guys name a soft drink, they'd probably be trying to sell ballsack cola or some shit, where the initials came out to something smug. Give me a break.
Ever see how much boy bands and other tweener stuff makes? they'll skirt to the very edge because tweeners get teh monies! just add just enough hints of sex to make the tweener boys go "Yeah!" while throwing some shirtless twilight pretty boy to get the tweener girls moist and Cha Ching baby!
hell it has ALWAYS been this way! remember the Farrah swimsuit poster in the 70s? or Garbage pail kids in the 80s? You push it to the very edge because that makes teh monies and it is ALL about the greenbacks!
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But isn't that EXACTLY why RIM is soon to be DOA? People don't want, even in the enterprise markets "just email" anymore. before our eyes phones are becoming a PC in your pocket, with movies, games, music, Internet, everything they can do on your average bottom of the line PC, all in their shirt pocket.
Like Palm RIM has simply missed the boat, and just like Palm their only real hope now is a buyout for the IP. They don't even have a decent OS at the end like Palm with webOS, instead trying to shoehorn the old buggy POS just like what we saw with Nokia and Symbian. Only Blackberry just doesn't have a big enough market left for someone like MSFT to come along and bail them out.
Final verdict? Rim dead in 2 years, maybe less. Until then they will bleed money and flail around while throwing shit at the wall hoping something sticks like in TFA, when compared to iOS and DroidOS they simply have nothing to offer. Even the PHBs are starting to switch to iPhones and Droids. They are going on the cart, no matter how much they sing "I feel happy" to themselves.
What "real job" do you speak of? Fast food? Can be done by automation. Hell there is nothing in your average mcJob that can't be done by assembly line robots, with a hell of a lot more accuracy and less waste, it is simply cheaper to employ a warm body NOW. But what about when gas is $7 a gallon and a bag of groceries costs $80? McDonald's is ALREADY pushing for the end of minimum wage, even though in the current climate their pay won't allow one to even put a roof over your head. Average pay for a fast food worker here? $130 a week if they are lucky and the average apt? $400 a month plus security deposit. The math just doesn't work.
This isn't about some "dot com fallacy" as you put it, this is about the simple fact that there are a few jobs at the top like engineers that simply can't be done by machines, and a whole hell of a lot of other jobs that can. The corps like McD's don't like even paying minimum wage now, what will they do when their pay won't even attract the homeless? will they raise their pay? Nope, they'll go assembly line, because you can just as easily push a button and have a burger come down a slot. You have roughly IMHO 50-60% of the population that will NEVER be engineers, or will never be trained above a C level job. As it is half the apts in my building have recently turned over, not because the people in them moved up, but because more and more can't find a job before their benefits run out and they end up on the streets.
What will you do with them? Have them arrested? Shot? Because the "dirty little secret" the MSM is covering up is we have just as many homeless if not more than under Reagan, they are just going out of their way NOT to report it. Instead they talk about what the latest Dow Jones hits as if we all have stock options. Meanwhile you have an ever growing mass that will happily follow Socialism, Fascism, ANY ISM that promises "bread and jobs". Look at Egypt, see our future if we don't get a hold of this NOW.
Maybe in YOUR area of AR, but in mine I was told flat footed "We sold the Net and VOIP to Sprint for a one time fee" (which is true, if I have a problem I'm put through to a Sprint rep) so we are ONLY getting paid for the cable. If you want JUST the cable TV fine, if you want cable + phone or plus net fine, otherwise we don't sell it period, sorry". I was told I could get business (again with TV included whether I wanted it or not, talking to several SMBs they were told the same) at TRIPLE the price, but again the same TV take it or leave it.
So if you are the western area, around Harrison? YES you can get it sans TV. If you live in the northeast, ala Searcy/Beebe/Cabot? Then NO you can not, as White County cable doesn't allow it. Hell feel free to ask them, their website is here just don't be surprised when you get the same answer.
I just GAVE you an example, it isn't my job to be your research assistant. You HAVE heard of this thing called a search engine, yes? look up "Groklaw PsyStar" and see for yourself. You can go "la la la" and stick your head in the sand if you want, doesn't make her less of a loonie.
Look I'm happy to give credit where credit is due, PJ was GREAT on the SCO case, she really was. But like BoycottNovell she became one of those that would blame the loss of the rainforest on a MSFT plot. Or do you wish to explain how PsyStar was actually a secret M$ plant to destroy the GPL?
Because THAT is the tune she was singing. Don't believe me look it up. And I LOVE how FOSSies simply mod down when their emperors and sacred cows have no clothes. Look it up, I DARE YOU, see the lunacy first hand. You WILL see if you read her post SCO posts that she began stretching more and more AND MORE trying to get the planet to fit her "M$ VS GPL" mindset, and like BoycottNovell the levels of crazy got pretty thick. Hell find more than two posts of her post SCO period where she DIDN'T find every single thing that could possibly go wrong come from M$! Did your desktop crash? IT is M$'S fault!
Don't blame the messenger if you don't like the message, look it up. Or are YOU one of those that believe Twitter and friends at BoycottNovell that everything bad in the entire universe is a M$ plot? Because PJ does.
PJ is a loonie, and if you are listening to her (if she even exists) then you might want to do a spot check on your sanity as well, because she is right up there with BoycottNovell on the "Its M$ and the Illuminati! ZOMG" loonie parade. I mean when she actually came out FOR Apple against PsyStar by saying "Its a M$ plot to kill the GPL!" WTF? She is so batshit she thinks MSFT gives a shit about Hackentosh? or that they would WANT to make it so Apple OSX is CHEAPER?
I'm sorry but Redmond isn't Mordor and Ballmer isn't Sauron. Hell he isn't even a halfway decent CEO, too damned busy chasing after the other Steve while trying to be hip and cool. Blaming this on anything other than what it is, just SOP of another East Texas troll, is just more loonie toonie talk.
Besides with the USPTO handing out patents like Snickers bars on Halloween did you actually expect that Linux DIDN'T infringe a shitload of them? Hell making anything anymore is like tap dancing blindfolded in a minefield, which is why MSFT and Intel and everyone else is buying patents for their warchests like they were going out of style. If Linux was smart they'd drop "free as in beer" and sell it for a nominal fee (even RMS sold Emacs) and use the money to buy buy buy all the patents they could. Don't say you weren't warned, those without mega patent warchests WILL be crushed under the wall of lawsuits in the future.
Hell it is pretty much all we do in America now, it isn't like we manufacture shit anymore.
I think this is something we as a people are gonna have to face, the days of trading labor for money are simply gonna come to end, and whether or not that is a pretty sight is yet to be determined.
Just the other day I read the former founder of Paypal talking about how we are in an "education bubble" where most will get nothing out of a degree but more debt, and I bet when you figure in those that simply can't be educated higher and those with bad credit who can't get the loans to jump on the education treadmill you are probably looking at something like 60%, that is around 198 million in the USA that are qualified for C and D level jobs that are quickly being erased by outsourcing and automation. What now?
We are already seeing plenty that go from graduation straight to the unemployment line, defaults on student loans have never been higher and recently we passed the mark where there is more student loan debt than CC debt. What are we gonna do with all these people? Unless you want to be like a third world hellhole where you trip over the dying in the streets to get to work you need to do SOMETHING with them, and the simple fact is not everyone can be an engineer. More and more of the remaining jobs are sent overseas or replaced by machines or advances in tech like the move online, so what now?
This is something I believe is gonna come to a head VERY soon, and whether or not we end up like Egypt will be based on what we do about it. The difference between the 1% and the bottom 99% has never been higher, the middle class is DOA. and we are all playing IQ musical chairs with jobs, with more and more becoming losers. Do we go third world and build gulags? Do we go socialist and just cut them all a check?
This is something I can see coming to a head in the next decade, as all those promised "tech jobs" the politicians promised just went to India or to a machine. For most education is now simply a way into a debt they'll never pay, and more and more jobs are disappearing only to be replaced with nothing or a McJob that won't even keep you from being homeless. I have a feeling it is gonna get nasty folks, as I don't see the 1%ers (who just got to pay the lowest taxes in history this year BTW) caring if the masses die in the streets as long as they can keep their money.
HA HA HA HA HA...you're serious? HA HA HA HA HA HA...Thanks, I needed that. in case you didn't know they tried that in the past with I believe either Quake or Q3 Arena. What happened? Those with those damned irritating console controllers got their asses handed to them on a platter by mouse users.
The simple fact is they will NEVER be able to make a thumbstick that works at the accuracy of even a 800 DPI plain jane mouse, much less the average $50 gamer mouse. Controllers are fine for stuff like Madden NOT for FPS and RTS, so if you had your wish they would either have to cripple play for the PC users (I've already seen something similar where games try to make up for latency and it suckth big time) or you'd get stomped so bad you'd feel like grandma playing football against the Broncos.
As for TFA, as a PC gamer I say take your time consoles. I like the fact that my HD4850 which cost a whole $60 plays most games on high or close to it, I like that I can build sub $500 boxes that are great for gaming, I LIKE not having to blow a couple of hundred every year just to keep a decent framerate like in the 90s. So no hurry, take your time.
Hopefully by the time whatever they've got cooking rolls out equipping a PC to beat it will cost less than $100 for the GPU and I can enjoy my nice graphics without spending a mint. So thanks consoles, keep it up!
But what do you use for Internet? Unless you are one of the lucky FIOS ones (lucky bastards) most places DSL sucks compared to cable, and I don't know about everywhere else but I know Cox will NOT sell you net without at LEAST basic included. I ended up just picking up a cheapo USB TV tuner just so I could watch the occasional documentary (I haven't watched TV since Firefly left the air) and to not feel so ripped about having to pay for basic cable that I otherwise would never ever use.
So while I like the idea of getting rid of cable, when the choices are get stuck with basic along with 2Mbit Internet, or take $100 DSL with a MAX speed of 756k and being informed they had NO intention of ever spending a dime and upgrading the lines (Thanks AT&T, you damned leeches) then "cutting the cable" quickly becomes "shooting yourself in the foot" as far as speed is concerned.
Frankly I've been saying that for awhile now. You think the Apple prediction was bad? How about royally boning the chance to wipe out Windows piracy AND boost your numbers AND being able to have a captive market to upsell AND boosting the latest IE ALL at the same time?
Talking to my fellow builders and repairmen the $50 Windows 7 HP deal was wiping out piracy. Like me they went from seeing the "Razr1911" XP and Vista Ultimate installs to Win 7 HP across the board. They were also getting many of those still sitting on the fence deciding whether to keep XP or not to upgrade. So what does he do? Raises the price to $100 and guess what happened? Now there are Windows 7 Ultimate installs all over the place. Smart Move Ballmer!
I give credit where credit is due and Jobs has made Apple THE hip upscale brand. Jobs keeps the price high because like Porsche and Ferrari it is part of the appeal. The lesser priced iDevices (even though they are still making him something like 40%+ profits) get people started on the brand like Ferrari jackets. Once you get them hooked it is easier to upsell, and I've seen many who went from one iDevice to having a Macbook and several.
That is why I still think that ancient Gates Borg icon needs to be retired, and replaced with Ballmer wearing a beanie that says "I heart Apple!" on it, since that seems to be his business strategy. Anything Apple does the sweaty monkey follows it with a lame half assed copy six months to a year down the line. Kin, Zune, how much $$$ has he blown so far just on the fails? I can just imagine him trying to rev up the troops "And with this newest device we'll be cool as Apple and people will flock to us! Yes they will! They really really will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!!!".
What they need to do is fire his ass and put one of the office guys in charge. Focus on integration, making things like having home users and SMBs be able to connect their machines no matter where they are as easy as plugging in a USB drive or using Homegroup, bring back Win 7 HP at $50 to wipe out piracy, and quit trying to play falling the bouncing Apple. Leaders win, followers suck. I think it is pretty obvious which of those categories Ballmer falls into.
That is because sports nuts are just as fanatical as any religious loonie, that's why. I know a guy that has a standing order at the Gamestop near his house so that any NASCAR and Madden games for his systems (PSP and PS3) are delivered to his house on release day, period. He doesn't care how much it costs, he doesn't care if the game is the exact same as last year (in fact he would probably prefer the same game just with a little extra gloss as it means he doesn't have to learn new controls) ALL he cares about is he has the latest rosters, period. He even changes the rosters during the year to reflect those out by injury or traded.
So yeah, I'd say judging games by whether or not Madden guys buy is like judging the general pop on what a religious far right fundamentalist would do. They are really not anything like the average mainstream gamer, as most gamers simply don't have that kind of slavish devotion like they do to their favorite sport.
XKCD can joke about it but I do it as well, and the simple fact is you can do that and have an awesome time playing great games for cheap because the market is saturated and unlike the mobile phone I don't have to have model X to play game Y.
Between Amazon and Steam I don't think I've paid more than $19.99 for a game in years and have more that I could EVER finish, there is simply so much out there. I like shooters, RTS, sandbox, and RPG, and frankly even if I stuck to a single genre I'd have to play 24/7/365 for a couple of years just to go through all the decent games released in the last 10 years. And lets be honest: Since 2003 the graphics for most AAA games have been so good they still look kick ass today. I still have customers walk into the shop and go "ohhhh..whats that?" when I'm playing "Brothers In Arms: The Hell's Highway" even though that came out in like 2004 or something (and I got it and GRAW for $9 for the two of them on Amazon) and once you're in the game you're too busy dodging bullets to watch bling bling anyway!
So while I agree that new releases are probably way too damned high, that's one of the things I like about PC gaming, in that I have tons of choices besides whatever came out this month. Hell I just finished up a nice multimedia PC that plays most games on med high or better and it cost the guy just a hair over $500, including Win 7 HP and paying me. You can get an HD4850 for like $60 if you look around, AMD quads and RAM is cheap, and between the sales on Steam and the huge amount of sub $10 games on Amazon I frankly already have something like a half a dozen games on my hard drive I haven't even had time to fire up yet.
So if they are really worried about popcap style games then they are doing it wrong. Take a lesson from steam who made something like 1100% more off of L4D at the cheap price than they did off of release. Sell it cheap and let the long tail of PC gaming keep the money rolling in. You can also add more money later with DLC if you aren't dicks about it. It has never been a better time to be a PC gamer and I'd argue if some places are hurting its because they got into ePeen back of the box graphics battles with competitors instead of listening to customers. I've talked to many who are just like me and happy to pay for a game with Far Cry 1 level graphics as long as it is fun and affordable.
But at $60? It would have to be the second coming and even then I'd probably pass. There are simply too many other affordable options, where I could get 6 or even 7 good games for the same amount of money.
The answer to that is right in front of you. What are you reading this on? A screen, and with the current HUDs there isn't ANY difference between the pilot looking at a screen while his body is being stressed by G-Forces ( I would argue this would in fact make pilots worse than drone pilots, as they are not having their brains slammed around and thus can concentrate on the data at hand) and a pilot looking at the same screen while sitting in a simulator.
Look, lets just cut the bullshit, okay? We ALL KNOW that the future is drones. you know it, I know it, anyone with common sense knows it. We are ALREADY capable of making planes that will kill the pilots before reaching their G-Force limits, and we simply can't make tougher humans ATM. With a drone you can build a Mach 3+ craft that can withstand 11+ G turns, can drive itself halfway across the planet, never gets tired, and if it gets shot down, so what? The most expensive thing will be the pilot's training, and he's safe at the base.
I'm sorry but in the end this is just more pork barrel bullshit, a waste of limited resources when we are already stretched too thin and our reps (by reps I mean representatives not republicans. I consider both groups to be two sides of the same shit stained coin) are looking to fuck the poor and disabled while not doing shit about spiraling costs. No we simply can't afford this waste, and if China wants to build an ePeen I say let them. We can field 1000 drones for every F35, and have them faster, more deadly, cheaper, and in every way BETTER than a human piloted craft. We just need to face it that like the battleship human piloted warbirds are simply past their time.
Dammit man, didn't you get the memo? You have to add synergy and integration if you want it to be an enterprise post! Here let me show you...
Both Visual Studio 2010 and NetBeans 7 allow enterprise developers to create and deploy enterprise frameworks for synergy within the enterprise, then develop enterprise software solutions with synergistic re-usable enterprise components while reading enterprise documentation, thus creating vertical integration and a full stack approach to workflow.
See? If you are gonna work in the enterprise kid you gotta speak the lingo. Don't make me go six sigma on yo ass!
Because like it or not Apple is setting the pace and their whole mantra is form over function, ala the iSliver batteries and the ultra thin designs like Air?
Just like you I would prefer a lower powered device that got insane battery life, but nobody listens nor cares about us. It is pretty obvious just looking at what is coming down the pipe the future is thin thin thinner, which means batteries so damned small you'd be lucky to get two hours out of the things.
Now if the only goal is how thin can you go, while cranking out the bling bling? AMD and Intel will have NO problems in that dept, as I said the new sub 20w Bobcats and BDs have that in the bag. Intel has shown with the Air that they too can go ultra thin, and sadly that is what the future is like it or not. It also helps the OEMs as it makes everything proprietary as hell which means their devices can be "designed for the dump" thus giving them great turnover while making it so support life on a device gets smaller and smaller. Hell most phones are lucky to get even a single update anymore, in the future they will just tell you to shitcan and get a new one.
So while I wish you were right friend, I truly do, I just ain't seeing it. What I AM seeing is device after device trying to top Apple in the "thin and sexy" dept, which means shit battery life, no ability to fix or upgrade squat, and design for the dump. Is it stupid and wasteful? Yes but as you said you take what you can get, and marketing has seen Apple's numbers and frankly don't give a shit about you or I.
Again you and the others are making a massive mistake, in assuming it is an either or prop when it could just as easily be neither. Did i say NO aircraft? No I said that drones can do it faster, cheaper, and be a better value and I stand by that statement.
As another pointed out do to all the safety and extra gear required for pilots you are looking at a 20 year from drawing board to battlefield, and with tech advancing as it is that is just ridiculous. So either we adopt the old Soviet attitude of "fuck the pilots they are replaceable" which considering how much we spend training them wouldn't be smart, or we come up with a way to get birds from drawing to battlefield MUCH quicker, and the obvious answer is drones.
With the new advances in VR and sims you could have a SINGLE pilot drive an entire fleet of drones, have them fly themselves into the mission area and then have the pilot do the actual target acquisition and prosecution. When you add in the psychological factor of being able to shoot down dozens without hurting a single American pilot, being able to make quick designs due to the fact that if it crashes because of some later found flaw you're not making someone a widow, and the fact that with drones they can perform maneuvers that would frankly turn a human body into a bag of broken bones and mush?
I'm sorry, but you and the others are making the assumption that continuing on the current path is the way to go, I say you couldn't be more wrong. Just as Pre WWII the battleship was the premier weapon yet was quickly found to be worthless in the face of air power, so too is the day of the fighter jock ending. The next gen superpower will keep their valuable pilots in trailers in the middle of nowhere, flying fleets of war machines that can cross the planet and do turns that Tom Cruise would pop like a zit if attempting.
Finally we all know that going to war with a nuclear power is suicide, so the USA going to war with Russia and China is frankly off the table unless we just want to end the world. So most likely our enemies in the future will all be in the middle east or rogue states like NK. Even if they were supplied with Russian and Chinese tech a stealth drone fleet would slaughter them while costing peanuts compared to the F35. I stand by my statement: It is pointless, it is a waste, it is nothing but pork for congress and a blank check to the MIC, nothing more. Or are we forgetting what a money sink the F22 was?
Oh Lord, and I thought I'd seen stupid when I had a client ask my opinion on the "new dynamic sales persons outfits" which looked like the Joker had thrown up! Hell they may have just named it MILFs for all the porn jokes they were gonna get!
As for why this shit happens, I've usually found it is either someone who is sleeping with the boss that comes up with a "brilliant" idea, or in the case of the Joker pukes outfits it was a middle manager female that had already played the race card once and they were giving her enough rope to hang herself with.
Needless to say after the Joker pukes outfits (they were like a puke purple and lime horror, no way you could take seriously with someone wearing this thing, they looked like a clown) they were able to fire her and when she tried playing the racism card again all it took was one showing of the joker pukes outfits with a bill on how much she spent on the things to get her charge dismissed.
So I have to wonder if someone higher up wants to fire this moron but for one reason or another can't so they are giving him the rope and letting him do the job for them. With politics and relatives and other office bullshit I've seen it is often easier to let the stupid walk in front of a bus and write off the money they waste than try to fire them before they step off the curb. Is it wasteful and dumb? Yes but sometimes it is the only way to cut loose someone with connections or problems without having to deal with more expensive wrongful termination lawsuits later.
The bigger question would be "why would they need to?" as people are expecting their phones to do more and more AND MORE which means that whole "ultra low power' thing is quickly becoming passe'.
Apple with the iSliver batteries that everybody and their dog are ripping off are training people as we speak to carry a charger with them everywhere, the EU getting the OEMs to agree to standards (mini USB I believe was the final verdict) means that if you forget your charger somebody else will have one, phones are quickly becoming full on gaming rigs in your pocket. HDMI, 3D performance, multimedia, these are the spaces AMD and Intel have ruled and there is no reason to think they both can't get in and be competitive.
Hell just at what AMD has been cooking up lately with Bulldozer and Bobcat. We are talking full dual cores with full gaming quality 3D GPUs, all in a less than 20w envelope for most of the chips. And that is just the first gen, the next gen with the new cores with specialized hyperthreading should be even better. And you can be sure with their R&D budget Intel has been cooking up equally low power integrated chips, their only weakness is GPUs (which is why I still wouldn't be surprised if Intel ends up buying Nvidia) but that can be fixed.
So the bigger question would be why would they bother. there is nothing in the ARM design that guarantees low power, especially if you are bolting more and more performance and functionality onto the chip. Remember that ARM was originally built for the ancient Acorn desktop, it was a very primitive chip that they have worked to slowly build more and more functionality onto. There is no reason, especially with the move to x64 where one can lose the old 16 bit baggage that one can't cut down X64 in the same way one built up ARM.
Did YOU even read my post? Here let me highlight the part you seemed to gloss over before I give you your WHOOSH okay? Here goes...of course with the software by lowest bidder we are less likely to have to worry about skynet than we are the military cooking up the equivalent of the ED209.
So what you seemed to have missed was that it was a comparison between software procured by lowest bid and the quality of the ED209 programming. Now here is your WHOOSH have a nice day.
On a project that is already behind and overbudget. Wonderful, especially while the reps are trying to cripple aid to the poor and handicapped.
And WTF do we need the F35 for exactly? Who the hell are we gonna fight that a well trained pilot in the F18 or even the F15-F16 won't be at the very least an even match? The Russians aren't building any new birds, the best they have is the Mg31 and those are rare, most of their is the MG 27 and SU27 which are 70s era tech. The Chinese? From the looks of their "stealth bird" it will be primitive as far as stealth and looks to be more for a national pride thing than a serious build up.
The rest of the world consists of threats of irregulars with ex Soviet hardware, most of it out of date and falling apart. hell the Brits are so desperate for targets in Libya just to give them an excuse to keep the Typhoon (their personal money hole) that they are blowing up abandoned tanks that the Libyans left rotting for lack of parts years ago just to have some footage to show the public.
This is stupid, its pointless, and it is nothing but more handouts to the top 1%ers in the MIC at a time when we can't afford it. We could have 10s of thousands of top o the line drones for less than this stupid ass plane, they would be cheaper, wouldn't risk multimillion dollar pilots, and are simple to replace. The age of fighter jocks is at an end, it is time for the government to face it and quit pissing money down a rathole.
Used to be but from what I understand once you get to quantum the universe goes "LOL Goatse' to all our steenkin rules.
On the one hand I'm all for learning about the way things work, especially if they'll have practical applications down the line, but on the other hand this stuff does scare me a little. I'm just waiting for someone to trip over how to make a quantum bomb or to find out cold fusion can be done with the average crap found in a kitchen if done in the right order, thus making it so every nutball with a cause can have a cold fusion nuke.
It always seems like we end up using science to first find really nasty ways to mess each other up and THEN figure out the non military applications for it. Look at rail gun tech, Gerald Bull wanted to use it to make cargo into space as cheap as UPS, instead it will end up making battleships that can throw bus size shells at brown people. Sigh. While I always liked the idea of us advancing to star trek style utopia one day sadly it seems we can't really be happy as a species unless we are ripping each other off or fucking each other up.
Not to mention your average 15 year old can rip DVD and DivX DVD players are like $30 at the Wally World. I know geeks here won't believe it but one of the most common things asked in a little shop like mine is "How can I copy this DVD so my kids don't scratch it?" and nowadays it is so damned easy to rip DVD even Joe Normal can pick it up after one or two tries with decent software.
Then add in the plus that with those cheapo DVD blanks ($17.99 a 100 from Amazon or $25 from me) and a DivX DVD player they can make AVI discs so that little Suzy can have three or four of her movies on one disc? You can see why DVD isn't going anywhere and BD isn't taking over like expected.
I'd also add that while ripping DVD takes almost no resources on even the low end duals and triples from what I understand BD tends to slam the HDD and CPU more during conversion so the machine can't be used. DVD is fast, it is easy, your mama can rip and convert with the new software, the discs are cheap, and for most folks standard def is MORE than "good enough" for their average eyes.
The final nail is how DVD is in EVERY home, usually multiple players plus the PC burner, so you are talking about not buying a single BD but several if more than one family member might like the movie. Then figure in how the little ones seem to be able to kill a Sherman tank with a toothbrush and BD and lots o scratches don't mix?
Just not a good format for the average Joe, and even geeks like me don't really see a need for them. I looked at them for a little while as a possible backup solution but then external drives got so cheap they aren't even worth that anymore.
Then why not sharing office? "Its Sharing office, share with your friends share with your neighbors, its okay by us!" Or Giving Office?" We give our Office software to you, please Give it to your friends and family. It always feels good to give!"
Hell pick Anything short, catchy, easy for all to pronounce and understand, and memorable. It seems like FOSS goes out of their way to be real smug douchebags when it comes to names, and frankly its uncalled for number one, and doesn't help sell your product number two. You DO want to have people use this, yes? you DO want it to be popular so that open formats can replace .doc yes?
So help your damned cause by stop being smug assholes! Names matter, which is why you are not drinking fartbreath cola and having a flaming gasbag burrito for lunch. or how about just "Free Office Suite"? Hell anything would be better than leber office. They should have to show that name to 100 random individuals in a dozen countries and see how many both pronounce it correctly AND knows WTF it means. If you don't score AT LEAST 70% then the name sucks and needs to go. Is it really so much to ask that the common man understand what your product is?
I just wonder if there are any suits in the Pentagon showing pics of the T-800 around and saying "How much can your robotics dept build THAT for?" because frankly it wouldn't surprise me.
I remember the director of Blue Thunder back in the day giving an interview where he said something like "I make this movie to show how dangerous such a craft would be, how freedom would mean nothing with a craft that can record through walls, follow you silently, and cut down anything that opposed it. so what happened? my office started getting swamped by calls from SWAT groups all over the country going "yeah yeah yeah...but how much do you want for her?" While everyone else saw the danger they saw it as a tech demo"
So I wonder if there are some brass sitting in a room going "forget the skin crap, just give me a dozen or two of those big metal bastards and I can kick some serious ass!". of course with the software by lowest bidder we are less likely to have to worry about skynet than we are the military cooking up the equivalent of the ED209. I can just picture some general going "Look, it only killed THREE kids alright? just three! We can fix the bugs, I bet we can cut it down to only one dead civilian every ...ohhh...less say 500 uses. That's good numbers there!"
Funny choice, because frankly unless there only goal is to make it popular in France ShitOffice would probably be a better name than leber-office (which is how I've heard everyone pronounce it so far, followed by WTF or WTH? )
Seriously is there like a bylaw or something that says every damned FOSS app has to have a shitty/stupid/smartass name? Would you drink Fungus coffee? How about a Goatse choc bar? Maybe wash your hair with moneyshot shampoo? No? Then WTF!
Would have really been so God damned hard, would it have REALLY put you out, to simply name it something like Freedom Office? Or Sharing Office? Names matter folks and the pretentious bullshit names really don't help your cause. At least open office (which FYI NOBODY called it OO.o) gave it a nice friendly sounding name. its open, like open house. Simple, easy, smart.
So PLEASE for the love of all that is good and decent pick another damned name, or just bundle the damned thing with the Gimp and label under "shit nobody uses cause it just sounds nasty". I'd love to see FOSS guys name a soft drink, they'd probably be trying to sell ballsack cola or some shit, where the initials came out to something smug. Give me a break.
Ever see how much boy bands and other tweener stuff makes? they'll skirt to the very edge because tweeners get teh monies! just add just enough hints of sex to make the tweener boys go "Yeah!" while throwing some shirtless twilight pretty boy to get the tweener girls moist and Cha Ching baby!
hell it has ALWAYS been this way! remember the Farrah swimsuit poster in the 70s? or Garbage pail kids in the 80s? You push it to the very edge because that makes teh monies and it is ALL about the greenbacks!