Actually the way Joss Whedon was talking about making shows made the most sense to me. It was basically a "Buy our shit" premise, where to get money for the initial show one would sell T-Shirts, pre-orders, etc and once the shows were out whether they made more depending on whether people continued to "buy our shit" and fund production. That way a show could be as heavy or intellectual or weird as they wanted to be and as long as there were enough fans to fund production it would continue to be made.
Personally I hope he does it, as the two shows being brought up for this treatment were "Faith the Vampire Slayer" and "Spike & Dru" both of which would be better than Buffy Season 7 or Angel Season 5. It would also force the writers to actually listen to the fans for once because he would have never gotten people to buy the dreck he put out in the last two years of the above named series otherwise. Hell the fan fic at the time was better than what he was putting out, just showing that Whedon can't balance writing multiple story arcs without the writing suffering badly.
As for TFA, it just shows how short sighted most providers are IMHO. Nearly every business short of "Bob's BBQ Hut" have a web presence nowadays and more views equal more potential customers. But then again we saw with all that region coding shit most of the content makers can't find their asses with a map and GPS. I mean WTF? Yeah let's make it harder for those who wish to buy legally while giving those with BT or any P2P access before everyone else! Yeah, what could go wrong?
So why not do it in a way that you can offer the functionality and the other two can piss off? I have been saying for years the problem with NoScript is unlike ABP there is no simple GUI that makes it accessible to the masses. With Mozila throwing their weight in and making it and ABP part of the default functionality that problem can be solved. What NoScript needs is a simple "Play the video" button as dealing with customers having to play "guess which blocked thing is the video" turns them off so bad they end up turning NoScript off. With ABP there is a simple "disable on this page" which makes it easy for a normal non geek user, something similar could be done where NoScript looks for the *.flv, *.mp4, etc and has a "play the video" button.
If Mozilla was to do this along with sandboxing cookies so they ONLY work for the originating site and make this the default behavior then we would finally have a good and easy way to deal with all this tracking crap and it wouldn't depend on anybody else. Then like with ABP a site could say "We're not allowing annoying ads or tracking. Please help us by allowing ads on our site" and we could push the button if we like the site (Similar to what Ars has done) and if they break that pledge we can just push the button and block their asses again.
But as someone who deals with the Average Joe six days a week while ABP and Firefox have become a standard that I always include because it takes me less than 3 minutes to show any user how to use it with NoScript even though that extra functionality would increase their security and help quite a lot the interface is just too geek heavy. Even I have been tempted to kill the thing a time or two when I have to say "allow" three or four times just to get a video to run. If someone were to make a "play content" button that looked for the file extension it would go a long way IMHO in helping not only making the average Joe harder to track, but in cutting down all the driveby malware crap as well. If Mozilla were to throw their weight behind this then they simply wouldn't need anyone else to support it because it would be all browser based.
Kelbear, dude, first of all the first things out of their mouths is 3D which has become the turd polish of our age. Don't have any original ideas? Go "Dr Tongue's 3D house of pancakes" and cash the check. Two they pretty much took a big steaming dump on the story with the third one. Now I know a bunch hate the second one, but if they would have went with "They are still in The Matrix" at the start of the third instead of "Neo is Jesus" bullshit most would have went along with the second.
So the ONLY way I can see them saving this franchise is to have the movie start with Reeves and the dumbass brothers coming out on stage saying something like "We're sorry, we're REALLY really sorry. We don't know what the fuck we were thinking with that hard right turn into stupid land with Neo blasting shit outside The Matrix, so if you'll just bear with us we're gonna pretend those God awful second and third movies don't exist and start over, okay?"
Because there is NO way to keep going with the original story and not end up with "Batman & Robin" levels of stupid. In fact the only way I can see them continuing with the same story is to go Batman & Robin and just make the thing a giant parody of itself. Because as another poster so aptly wrote the thing by the end of the third had become a totally awful Dragonball Z ripoff that had fuck all to do with anything in the first one.
The problem with socialism in America is this: It only applies to the rich. Socialism is allowed and indeed encouraged for the rich with "too big to fail" bailouts, TARP, lowering the "burden" on the top 1% through both tax breaks and the looking the other way at tax dodges like the "double dutch". But socialism for the poor such as free or low cost medical care, ensuring that all have adequate food, shelter, and clothing, help for the indigent, these things are frowned upon and looked upon as somehow bad or evil. Personally after seeing how bad the corporatist mindset has run this country into the ground I'd be all for socialism of the second sort.
As for TFA, cops do what they want, film (and excuses) at 11. Here in the USA we have ICE and the FBI used as a private "copyright police" while being paid for by the taxpayers, we have cops that do truly heinous crimes (just look up "police abuse" on Youtube to see how prevalent it is) and walk away with a slap on the wrist if they get anything at all, and thanks to 9/11 we now have Constitution-Free Zones that cover 2/3rds of all US citizens.
News flash: All cops WILL abuse their authority if left unchecked, full stop. For every decent cop you probably have 4 "bully with a badge" types that thanks to the code of silence will be protected by their fellow cops no matter what they do. Until we demand of our elected officials and the MSM that police have to follow the constitution and laws we citizens have to abide by along with REAL punishment for those that run roughshod over peoples' rights then stories like this will sadly be all too common.
Too many have been allowed to get away with too much for too long and it is time to start reining in their power or ALL of us in the west will end up in police states.
Thanks. Hasai must be worried about his age since all he chose to read was the "old" part while ignoring the don't have the skills, haven't kept up part. I have made it a point to run the beta of any MSFT OS since Win2K simply so I can become familiar with the new OS long before it hits retail so I'm already up to speed by the time the first units hit shelves.
Sadly I've found that just like many older guys get stuck in a genre of music (most of my HS buddies listen to 80s rock while I like German techno metal and playing blues/jazz/techno/metal funk fusion live) many get into the same rut when it comes to tech as well. They get comfortable with a technology and simply refuse to take the time to learn new things. I always keep a couple of test beds in the shop just for trying new things, and I love to learn and keep up with new tech.
And as for Linux it isn't so much that I'm skeptical so much as I think FOSS advocates are putting blinders on when it comes to the real challenges when it comes to deploying it in the home/SMB sectors. On servers I think it is great, have no trouble deploying it in that capacity as even on the low end hardware support for servers is VERY good, but in the desktop space hardware changes so quickly and it is nearly impossible to tell whether you are getting rev A or Rev F which makes buying Linux compatible a fricking nightmare from hell. Then there is all the futzing around with the kernel so driver A works in kernel A but not kernel B and with no penguins on the box you have to study like the SATs just to be able to shop in Walmart makes Linux to hard to deal with in retail ATM. But I still try each new rev of Ubuntu and PCLOS in the hopes that it will get better and to keep familiar with it.
But seeing as how Hasai practically went foaming at the mouth from reading the word old I have to wonder if he is looking at a bad situation at work where the young guys are getting fast tracked while the older guys like him are getting left behind. It doesn't affect me as it ain't like I'd work for the guy, but I do feel sorry for those in that situation. Hasai if you read this maybe you might ought to think about starting your own business? Most of us won't make it rich doing it ourselves but it is certainly nice and I have less stress than I did when I was working corporate.
you just hit the nail on the head as to why this is happening, it is because as other posters have pointed out the penalty if you get caught is a joke. Make it a felony and 10 year minimum sentence and I bet you wouldn't see anyone doing this but those who actually wish to bring down a plane. Because the average douche isn't gonna risk 10 years in PMITA prison just to be an asshole on a Saturday night. Raise the time served and make it known (with ads and billboards) what time they are looking at and I bet this crap would stop real quick without having to ban squat.
The three most popular brands I see in homes by a long shot are Trendnet, Zonenet, and the bottom of the line Linksys. That is nope, nope, and....nada. You seem to think the average Joe is buying those nice Linux routers when IRL the most popular models by a fairly large margin are ones like these wireless and these wired. As a matter of fact the Trendnet TW100 you see on the wired page is one of the most popular routers in this area because it is cheap and pretty reliable. Go ahead, look up some of those under $40 routers and see how many have even gotten a SINGLE update, much less support IPV6. I think you'll find these things simply don't have the hardware capability.
You seem to be forgetting that thanks to our "corporate yay!" attitude in the USA not mandating squat it simply isn't in the companies interest to update these things when they can force you to buy a new one instead. And the average under $50 router has less than 4Mb of flash, that simply isn't large enough to update, nor is the CPU on most capable of processing IPV6 128bit addresses.
So I stand by my statement. When the switchover comes you are gonna have MASSIVE outages in most homes unless the telecos/cablecos give out modems that auto-translate IPV4>IPV6 which I haven't heard of any offering this, have you? Hell I don't even think these cheap shitty Motorola modems given out by my cableco are capable of IPV6 which means they'll have to be shitcanned as well. That is literally trainloads of eWaste that is ALL gonna be dumped on practically the same date. As unlike those old PCs that can be cleaned and re-purposed these routers and switches will be just like the old analog phones: Completely unusable in any way.
The problem is your looking at this wrong. The "crippled one" you are thinking of is STARTER and NOT Basic. Basic just doesn't have the "bling bling" like Aero and Media Center, which lets be honest those in emerging markets probably aren't buying PCs capable of all the bling anyway. If you will look at the details of the link you posted the main differences between Premium and Basic come down to bling and corporate features, neither of which would be a big deal to a home user and to a business MSFT has deals in those same markets where you can buy Business WITH Office for something like $9 USD.
But if you'll look closely at the data you posted a good 90% of those "features" that are missing simply don't apply. More than 8GB of RAM? Booting from virtual drives? Aero? Frankly you just aren't gonna need or even be able to use those features in probably 95% of the PCs sold in emerging markets. Hell I'd say a good 60% of the PCs being used here in the USA wouldn't need or use quite a large section of the missing features. If they would sell Windows 7 Basic here for $35 I'd be snatching up copies like there was no tomorrow. It has the better security of 7 without the bling bling that most XP PCs being used in homes and small businesses (which based on what I see coming into the shop are 2.2Ghz-3.2Ghz P4s with on average 1Gb of RAM, Intel 8xxx or 9xxx IGP and a 200Gb HDD) couldn't run anyway.
So I don't see how you can call it "crippled" when most of the PCs sold there wouldn't be able to run those features anyway. Not to mention a good half or more of those features can be added back with free or low cost third party software like Virtualbox for XP Mode and TrueCrypt for Bitlocker. I guarantee I could switch 7 Basic for the Home Premium I have installed for home users and most would never notice except for no see through taskbar. How many PCs sold in China do you think are capable of running Windows 7 HP with Aero anyway?
Wrapping IPV4 ain't the problem, it is the elephants in the room that have been allowed to grow too massive and are gonna be hell to deal with, if they even can on a timely basis.
One elephant in the room is the MASSIVE amount of eWaste that is gonna be generated. Hell a good 90% of the under $100 routers being sold right now don't support IPV6, and that don't count all of the routers, switches, cable and DSL modems, etc that are simply not gonna work with IPV6 and gonna have to be shitcanned. Imagine a good 85% of all the home routers thrown in the garbage at the same time, along with probably 50% or more of the cable and DSL modems. That is a serious amount of garbage that is gonna be hitting the landfills all at once.
The other elephant is thanks to corps lowballing IT for years there has been a SERIOUS brain drain with very few going into IT so you have a ton of older workers who aren't up to speed and are gonna be expected to get fluent with a totally new way of networking in...oh right about now. Thanks to the shitty hours and constantly being expected to do ever more with ever less resources many of the good IT guys I knew have already left or are looking to get out, so what you have left in many of the flyover states is the bottom of the IT barrel and problems that would take an hour or two at most with IPV4 will end up taking days or weeks with IPV6 simply because the guys you have left are old, don't have the skills, haven't kept up, and have based their troubleshooting steps on tools and techniques that simply don't work anymore.
So anyway you look at it IPV6 is gonna be a serious clusterfuck. The idiot that made IPV6 without designing backwards compatibility really needs to be shot because instead of a slow ramp up we are gonna end up in a "ZOMG we are fucked! SWITCH IT NOW!" kind of situation and we simply don't have the manpower or skillsets required to do a countrywide or even a regional switchover ATM. All the years of corporations lowballing their IT and the ISPs paying crappy money for managers and IT staff is gonna come back and bite them in the ass, and bite them HARD. Between the eWaste, the lack of manpower with the relevant skillsets, the massive understaffing at most ISPs compared to the job at hand, it is just gonna be a giant fucking mess.
Okay here you go. Windows 7 Basic is designed for "emerging markets" and last I heard the price was between $3-$5 USD. Of course you have to be considered an "emerging market" to get it, so if it isn't offered in your area your country must have "emerged" already, congrats. Sorry I couldn't find a list of countries but last I read it was for China, India, most of the poorer far east.
Didn't bother to read the link did you? Read it and see what I'm talking about which is retailers saying they have too much Android crap and the people don't want it anymore. And as for who is telling me that? customers that's who. You see the big FUBAR Google pulled with Android is this: By not putting any minimum specs for Android you have a market that is flooded with shitty droid devices. And this might surprise you but consumers don't know shit about hardware and all they know is the device they got with a little droid on the box sucks compared to their friends iPhone. Hell I've seen it with my own eyes where customers will pass up a Phenom II for a Phenom I because the Phenom I had bigger numbers and that is all they look at because they don't know shit about hardware.
But hell don't take my word for anything, read the link I posted or even do a search on "android retail backlash" and see for yourself. By not putting minimum standards Google has allowed so much garbage to carry the droid name that very quickly "Droid equals shit" is becoming a consensus in the minds of consumers. You see consumers don't give a shit about lock in, or "free as in freedom" or the right to hack, or any of that shit. What they want is a toaster with a screen, and the iDevices are just about as close to that as one can get. MSFT will pick up some share just by going "me too!" and aping everything Apple does because...well its worked in the past hasn't it? While the huge mounds of garbage Android devices (just in Walmart I'd say you're looking at an 80/20 split in complete shit to decent Android) means Android is getting a rep with the public as "the crap for those too poor for iPhone".
And finally as for why it is harder for WebM it is because the engineering work is already done for H.264 which makes it a sunk cost. All OEMs like Broadcom and ATI/NV have to do is crank the chips and cash the checks. This leaves WebM in a nasty catch-22 in that if it is easy to drop in it likely is running afoul of H.264 patents since they have virtually every step of the H.264 encode/decode process patented up the butt, and if it isn't then it will cost serious money and die space as you are having to add a codec that doesn't relate to any of the previous ones into support. But either way we shall see, I predict in less than a year WebM will be right about where FLAC and Vorbis is, with limited support and such a tiny niche nobody cares, whereas with Android I predict about another year of being the media darling followed by the fall, and in two years it'll be seen as the "cheapskate OS" that is strictly found on CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) whereas the expensive (which equals good in the mobile space) will be dominated by iDevices and either WinPhone 7 or possibly WebOS if HP plays the cards right.
But I can tell you that as a retailer the consumers are telling me horror stories about "That awful android that hangs and locks up and is NOTHING like iPhone!" and once you get a bad rep with the consumer it is damned near impossible to shake off. I probably get offered a "barely used!" Android phone twice a week because the ones being pushed now by the telecos suck ass, and the local Craigslist is so full of aPads it isn't even funny anymore. And of course all these people having horrible experiences are telling their family, their friends, their coworkers, their neighbors, etc. You just can't keep burning people like that and get away with it.
Too late you can buy the "liberation" kit for $10 that supports the removal of the funky screw with a special screwdriver. Wow, lets give props to the Chinese man they don't miss a chance at profit! And as for Apple a big Nelson "HA HA" is in order.
Nobody cares about Linux because at best you are looking at 3%, so in the big scheme of things it is right there with Amiga and OS/2 Warp, OSX users don't care because they have H.264 support which as I pointed out will be kept to keep from alienating those millions of iDevice users, and for the one that modded me down the Windows plugin calls the WMP API which means it WILL work on XP/Vista if your WMP supports H.264 (which many do, since all it takes is running into a DivX file that won't play for them to install a codec pack) so that covers a good 97% of the public when you figure in Windows + OSX+ iDevices.
So I'm sorry if it makes you unhappy, but maybe instead of yelling "free as in freedom!" and getting mad when everyone ignores you, maybe you should work on raising your numbers legitimately? Perhaps by demanding a hardware API and pushing for the community to rally behind a single distro instead of constantly reinventing the wheel? But frankly nobody cared what Apple wanted either until the iPod exploded onto the scene and now I predict with the iDevice they will make H.264 one of two standards (along with flash thanks to Google trying to start a format war) so if you want the public or manufacturers and website designers to care about your OS you REALLY need to work on your numbers friend. Hell last I checked the combo of Win98/Win2K had more users than you. With numbers that low nobody is gonna change policy simply because a codec doesn't fit your agenda, sorry.
Uhhh...Hair right? As for TFA it just shows that Apple makes MSFT look like the Care Bears. I mean geez, they are already #2 in market cap, have their fanbois trained to buy their "new" stuff every refresh (which on the PC is still usually pretty behind the curve and crazy priced) are making probably 300%+ in profit per device, and that isn't enough for them? I thought Wall Street was greedy, but this is just nuts!
Because nobody will bother as it gains them nothing since IOS doesn't support it? The future is mobile and it belongs to Apple, full stop. And this is from someone who doesn't own a single Apple device.
This is because Google shot themselves in the foot by refusing to put any standards on Android so now you have this big fragmented mess where in just my local Walmart you are looking at no less than 4 Droid versions and frankly more than 2/3rds of them are total shit. I'm already seeing the backlash working retail with people telling me how much they hate their Droid device and how they wish they got an iPhone/iPad, and it looks like I'm not the only one seeing that.
Then there is the matter of hardware acceleration which frankly just can't be "dropped in" via firmware on most devices, they just don't have the chip space for that big of a change. So you have a codec that 1.-doesn't work on IOS and probably never will, 2.-Can't have hardware support on a LARGE section of devices, whereas a combination of H.264 plus flash does and 3.-Thanks to Google torpedoing the HTML V5 tag (which was only gaining in the first place by Jobs killing flash on IOS) by pushing a niche codec that brings NOTHING to the table, not video quality nor file size nor support base, the simplest and cheapest solution for websites is to simply have a "raw" H.264 for IOS and anyone else who supports it and drop the very same file into a flash wrapper with ZERO re-encoding for those that don't (because even Linux has flash)
So I'm sorry, not gonna work, never gonna happen. Might have worked 5 years ago before everything had hardware support for the competition and folks fell in love with the iPhone,but now it has about as much chance as Vorbis taking control away from MP3. All this little stunt has done is make flash the defacto format for all those not on IOS because it is THE one thing all those not on IOS have in common. Just because a big corp pushes it doesn't mean it will get the public onboard, just ask MSFT about little things they tried like ohhhh...WMA, WMV, and Vista.
Uhhhh..maybe you didn't get the memo but H.264 works in Firefox now thanks to MSFT. And while this plugin calls the native Windows 7 codec I'm sure it won't take long before a hacked one that just calls VLC or KLite DShow filters will be released which will take care of XP and Vista.
And I'm sorry but everyone is missing that other elephant over by the snack bar, that one with the tramp stamp called PORNO!!! That's right boys and girls, teh boobies are all in H.264 and I seriously doubt you'll see teh titties in WebM anytime soon....or well ever actually. So we are right back to where we were before, with H.264 for IOS and flash for everyone else. yippie, thanks Google! I'm sure that nice fruit basket from Adobe should be arriving any day now. Hell if I was CEO of Adobe I'd declare "We luv u Google!" week and have lots of nice messages to Google posted on their website. Because make no mistake and be sure to bookmark this to watch it come true: WebM will be as big a hit as Vorbis while Google's little "Hey your remember Blu Ray VS HD-DVD? Wasn't that fun?" stunt just gave the market to Adobe.
Oh the Windows users won't care because the new Flash actually runs quite nice but even if they put out a crappy update users are used to the occasional crappy third party software crash anyway, and the Apple guys won't care because everyone will have H.264 streams to keep from alienating IOS, it will be the FOSS users stuck with the shitty flash support. Sorry guys, but in 2 years you'll be going "WTF? Thanks Google assholes!" for getting HTML V5 video tag torpedoed and sticking everyone on flash.
Not to mention Google and everyone else seems to be missing the gigantic elephant standing over by the potted plants: Hardware acceleration. Pretty much ALL consumer mobile devices support H.264, along with just about every desktop, laptop, netbook, hell I've even seen cheapo DVD players at the Wally World with H.264 support. Now figure in the amount the OEMs have invested in all those H.264 chips, along with the fact that all those consumer devices will have to be chunked (great for the environment) thanks to WebM killing the battery, along with the fact that WebM brings nothing substantial to the table, not better file sizes, not better quality, pretty much the ONLY selling point is "free as in freedom man, yeah!" and even that isn't assured since Google refuses to indemnify users of WebM which opens OEMs to patent trolling, frankly I'd say it has about as much of a chance as Vorbis does of killing MP3 at this point.
If it would have come out 5 years ago I would have given it decent odds, but it is simply too late to the party. Like Vorbis found out if you wait too long so that both momentum and device support is firmly behind a standard, proprietary or not, trying to build any support is damned near impossible. I have a feeling this is gonna be Google's Vista, where they find out that they can't just get the market to jump on board simply by having the name Google. There are simply too many chips, too many websites supporting H.264, oh and did I mention a little thing known as iPad? or iPhone? Maybe Google has heard of those. If they think folks are gonna give up their iPads and iPhones just for Youtube they are in for a RUDE awakening. With H.264 any website developer can simply leave a "raw" H.264 for iDevice users and wrap it in a flash container for everyone else! Tada! everyone is supported. With WebM you are gonna kill battery life or have to toss all the devices supporting H.264 and for what? Youtube? It isn't like there aren't a bazillion other sites out there and if Youtube kills H.264 support I'm sure there will be a dozen new ones happy to take those viewers. The ship has sailed Google, the fat lady is down the street eating a sandwich.
Before you break your arm patting yourself on the back congratulating yourself on your super security you might want to read this which shows how to write a Linux virus in just 5 easy steps that will be just as nasty as a Windows bug and then maybe you'll remember the problem isn't Windows but PEBKAC.
I should know I fix the things 6 days a week and I'd say that more than 90% of the bugs that cross my desk were installed by the user either through scare tactics or through the promise of porn or free stuff. I'd say a good 80% of the rest were infected by outdated third party software like Java, Flash and Reader which frankly nobody ever updates. The "your flash is out of date! Run 'pwnme.exe' to get the lates verson!" is quite popular at the moment, as well as "ZOMG! U got teh Viruz! Run 'Viruzfker.exe' to kill the ZOMG Viruz quick!!".
So in conclusion before the smugness chokes us out here let me say this: You better drop to your knees and thanks Linus and RMS that Linux isn't popular because if you got the huge teeming masses of unwashed rabble onto your OS it would come falling down like a house of cards by...oh I'd say 3:45PM tomorrow. Faster than you can say "Oh shit!" there would be emails with "free_titties.sh" and "Happy_Puppies_screensaver.py" with nice little instructions that the user would follow without thought and your precious security would be so much Swiss Cheese.
It is the classic dancing bunnies problem and if anyone could solve it they would be richer than Gates. I have seen an AV practically throw itself in front of a user trying to stop them only to have them completely disable it because the malware offered something they wanted. Linux won't protect from that level of stupidity sorry. Hell you can't even blame it on Windows running as admin anymore since both Vista and 7 don't allow the user to run as admin but instead use the Linux model of only elevating for install yet the users put in their password and install the bugs anyway no matter how much the AV and OS tries to do to stop them.
TLDR you can't solve social engineering with tech, just as you can't solve 419 email scams with filters. Stupid is as stupid does Forest, stupid is as stupid does.
Actually Quickbooks and TurboTax are THE big apps in my area, along with those downloadable little popcap style games which also don't run on Linux. And why would I want to go through all the trouble of setting up dual boots and dealing with devices and hardware with flaky/non existent drivers for no money or advantage to myself? The whole point of looking into Linux was the "free as in beer" would have allowed me to sell for lower than my competitors. And you must be messing with some seriously crappy hardware if a Live CD is slow for you. On modern duals and triples with 2GB+ of RAM (the minimum I sell anymore except for a few off lease) both Puppy and Xubuntu run from RAM so if anything it is faster than the HDD since the entire OS is in memory.
But again the Live CD is simply a courtesy that gives me an advantage over my competitors, just as giving them Firefox with ABP and a free Office Suite (along with several other freebies like a scheduled reg and HDD cleaner/defragger, codec pack, etc) means machines from MY shop do more OOTB than the other guy does. But I think you are seriously underestimating the ease of use of Windows when compared to FOSS. My customers can walk into ANY store in the nation, grab ANY device off the shelf, and it will "just work" thanks to every device coming with a CD that has XP, Vista, and Windows 7 drivers now. Looking at my local Walmart you are looking at less than 35% Linux support for the devices being sold and without serious research there is no way for the customer to tell and with their exchange only policy on most computer gear you are looking at burned customers on Linux.
So until I can sell a machine with Linux only and know it will 1.-Work for at least a year with upgrades/updates with ZERO driver problems and 2.- Be able to sell a Linux only PC and have a simply way for a customer to walk into Walmart and just "look for the penguin on the box" so they don't get burned then it simply isn't worth my time. It gives me NO advantage over my competitors, it irritates the customer because the PC doesn't "just turn on" without choosing or waiting for a timer to end, it takes more of my time (which I can't charge for) and doesn't drive more business to me (because geeks that have heard of Linux don't shop B&M) so there really isn't a point.
It is the same thing Walmart found out when they tried selling Linux, and those OEMs like ASUS found out when faced with higher returns on their Linux offerings VS Windows XP. While Linux as a desktop sounds good in theory in practice it raises my after sales costs while giving me no advantage over the competition with the local consumer. So if it works for you great, I'm happy for you. But from a retail standpoint Linux as an OS simply doesn't drive sales or even break even. It simply takes too much work and comes with too many hassles. Hell if it wasn't for the "free as in beer" I'd probably just use Windows Live CDs, but the price MSFT wants for WinPE licenses is just insane.
Are you running out of electrons? Is the Wiki short of electrons this month? It sure as hell better not be short of space after Wales spammed the site until he got his 15 million that's for sure! If Jimmy can't afford some HDDs after raising 15 MILLION dollars then somebody needs to be looking at the books.
And who gives a crap if it is obscure? You seem to act like search engines are from the 90s where you could type in "17th century lamp" and get bumpers for a 67 Dodge. The whole bloody point of having a search engine is it doesn't matter how big your site is I can STILL find what I'm looking for quickly and easily!
It seems like there ought to be a simple solution to this and I think there is: Old Jimmy likes to spam for money so this time he can spam for something that will end this problem once and for all. I propose Jimmy get on there and say "For 3 million dollars we will buy enough storage space to end any talk of deletionism forver." After all if Wikipedia is gonna be the "sum of human knowledge" as old Jimmy has said about a bazillion times then by its very definition its gonna have a ton of shit most are gonna consider "not notable". Otherwise all you have is "The sum of popular human knowledge" which certainly isn't what Jimmy has been pedaling when he is busking for $$$.
But ultimately everyone here knows the truth, even if most won't come out and say it: Deletionism isn't about "cleaning up the wiki" it is about power and is the exact same bullshit we have seen since the first website got the first BMFH. With Wikipedia you have cliques, you know this, I know this, it is common knowledge and the way humans have always been. A clique by its very nature is an exclusive bunch and without a way to exercise that exclusivity ceases being much of a clique. The way that exclusivity has manifested itself on wiki is by deletionism and "pet pages". Again I'm not revealing some big secret here, this is common knowledge. But if the goal is truly to have the sum of all knowledge then deletionism has to go, but that would take away power from the cliques. Which is why we are having this argument now.
Now me personally I don't give a shit, because I have seen enough hinky edits and pages on completely obscure characters in some show that are guarded like the shroud of Turin to know the policies are arbitrary and pretty much bullshit. But one thing I DO hate is hypocrisy so lets call a spade a spade, shall we? It isn't some "conspiracy" against the poor helpless mods that gave us the word deletionism, it is the very actions of those in charge. And since old Jimmy raised enough cash there had damned well better be plenty of HDD space that isn't an excuse either unless he is filling his pockets. So make up your collective minds: Is it gonna be Jimmy's "sum of human knowledge" or is it "the sum of what we the mods care about" because frankly you can't have both.
I don't have to Google squat, after dealing with those headaches I'll be HAPPY to tell you. By the way you know the difference between a FOSSie and a FOSS user? A FOSSie is just like you and think anyone whose experience isn't sunshine and roses MUST be a shill or lying, because it is NEVER the fault of FOSS, oh no. Maybe you should tell that to all the people on Ubuntu forums right now with fucked drivers. Go ahead, look for yourself, page after page after page? Are they all lying too?
The big ones I ran into were, in no particular order: AMD chipsets/GPUs, Broadcom wireless, pretty much all the AIO printers offered at Walmart, Realtek HD chips, Via sound and network was hit or miss and seriously flaky, USB wireless and capture cards (a very popular add on here) there were a couple of others that gave me a few head thumpers, such as the lovely "can't decide whether to use onboard or discrete" bug but the chips listed above were the main PITAs.
And of course being an amazing psychic I know what your answer will be "You shouldn't have bought foo, the support is terrible! You should have bought bar!" but wasting my time looking through outdated hardware lists showed me that route is pretty pointless, and trying to replace every onboard chip with a discrete because Linux wouldn't have played nice would have again made Linux more expensive than Windows and by a pretty large margin I might add.
Linux for web servers is just dandy, Linux for embedded rocks your socks, Linux for desktops frankly doesn't even make it to the level of hobbyist OS IMHO and if you thought of it objectively instead of as a fanatic you'd know why: Because the corporations paying the big bucks for developers and maintainers for Linux don't give a shit about the desktop and so simply aren't gonna waste money on an area they couldn't care less about. That is why workstation support is decent and nearly every server out there has drivers OOTB but good fucking luck on consumer level stuff, because it is frankly shit city if the hardware isn't at least 2 years old. And since I deal with a good 75% consumer level and all new that makes Linux simply unusable. As I said consumers don't pay for expensive support contracts, so when it leaves my shop it better run for at LEAST 6 months problem free. With Windows I have several machines still running virus free in SMBs and homes after more than 5 years. In Linux with the constant updates breaking shit and weird drivers that work in X but fail in X+1 I just don't get that, sorry if that makes you unhappy, but that is what I experienced.
Riiiight, because when your choices are "Rich corrupt POS corporate ass kisser" A or B you can change the system by voting. And maybe if I think really hard I can grow wings out my butt and fly south for the winter. As long as the MSM is owned by the megacorps you can pretty much give up anybody actually getting a third party elected for anything but local races because they will never get seen enough to even be a blip on the radar.
I sat out the last election, so I'll give you the choices for senate and you tell me oh wise one how voting would have changed shit. On the one hand you had Bozeman, whose entire platform is pretty much "Pro Life 4ever!" and on the other side you had Blanche Lincoln, a DINO that sucked corporate dick so much she should have had kneepads sown into her dresses. There was a green guy but he never got to debate, or run a single ad, or pretty much do anything at all so he had as much of a chance of winning as you do hitting the powerball.
So tell me oh wise one how EXACTLY is voting changing shit when you get choices like that? As long as we have a two party system we have NO voice, because it is simply too easy for the corps to simply buy both sides and call it a day. Hell look at the choices for the last 3 presidential elections, the highest office in the land. That is the BEST we could come up with? Really? There is a good reason why fewer and fewer people are voting, it is because they see the system is too corrupt to change in this manner. Trying to fix the system by voting is like saying you can win at Three Card Monty if you really keep your eyes on the lady when in actuality you are just watching a show while the guy behind you picks your pocket.
Actually I'd say there was nothing wrong with VB6 either as long as you used it correctly the problem was since it was easy to pick up many would learn just enough to be dangerous. But frankly I have seen horribly bad code written in plenty of different languages so I don't consider that a strictly VB problem. But if you used as intended, for making a RAD GUI for a database, well then it worked quite beautifully and I doubt anyone could do that particular niche job any faster or better with any other language. It just so happened having a custom GUI for a DB was a job that most small businesses could use so you ended up with demand for VB skills far outpacing supply which led to those "know enough to be dangerous" types.
But over the years I have cooked up some VB apps for clients and for that one little niche it is perfect. With VB it was trivial to have the client sit next to me and add/remove fields to their liking, whip off a prototype for them to see if they like it, for those simple little jobs it really is a great tool. It was when someone who only knew VB tried to shoehorn it into some giant rambling mess of a project that it never should have been used for that it became a POS, but I can't blame the language for a bad developer.
Well then how about personal anecdotes? I run a little retail PC shop and several times in the past (last one was Ubuntu 9.04) I have tried to offer Linux PCs alongside the Windows ones and every single time they cost me more than the price of a Windows license. How is that possible? Simple the increased support costs combined with the higher returns (which since the law says you can't sell a return as new you end up losing $$ on) made Linux a losing proposition.
You see with Linux I ran into "update foo broke my driver" more damned times than I can count, and thanks to home users refusing to buy long term support contracts (see hatred of Best Buy for an example) that means I had to either fix it on my own dime or burn the customer and ruin my rep. Even offering 90 day free support was a nightmare because about half would come back with something screwed. With a good AV and low permissions accounts set up for the kiddies the Windows machines just don't come back until/unless they want a hardware upgrade or REALLY fuck things up. Also thanks to lack of a hardware ABI (which for all the "poo poo Linux doesn't need it" bullshit I hear here and elsewhere I have yet to hear a SINGLE solution that would work without one) which makes shopping for Linux compatible devices a wonderful game of "paperweight roulette" where the customers have NO CLUE as to what works and what don't you end up with customers seriously burnt on things like AIO printers. And before anyone says "bundle" unless your last name is Dell you WILL lose money of you attempt to bundle, as you can't compete with Walmart on price.
So you see with it only taking two hours at my current price per hour to equal a copy of Windows home and the "update broke driver" problem alone averaging FOUR hours of trawling forums and jumping through hoops looking for "fixes" in the end it was simply cheaper to not offer Linux. I really wanted Linux to succeed, as lack of having to buy Windows licenses would have allowed me to have lower prices than the competition, but as myself and so many retailers found out FOSS OSes sound like a good idea but in practice are nothing but a giant headache. And finally before someone trots out Dell, Dell hides Linux at the back, Dell has enough geeks shopping online they can throw a few machines to Linux (geeks don't shop B&M) and finally if you have ever handled one you'll notice there is something...funny...about them. Specifically Dell disables the Canonical repos and run their own because otherwise thanks to Canonical's piss poor QA running straight Ubuntu BREAKS DRIVERS. Now since most places like mine can't afford to set up our own repos and pay someone to recompile and maintain for the hardware we sell that is just another sunk cost that makes Windows cheaper than Linux.
Maybe in 5 or 10 years we'll have someone come along and do for FOSS OSes what Jobs did for BSD but I doubt it. The whole thing that entices retailers is the "free as in beer" part which means any corp trying to offer desktops is gonna quickly find it a money pit, which is why I believe Canonical is pushing more and more towards servers and mobile devices and will probably be out of the desktop game in 5 years, just as those like Red Hat did before them. The margins on most PCs and software is razor thin as it is, it really don't take much to turn an operation from the black into the red and if I would have continued offering FOSS OSes that is where I would have been. I still give them FOSS software on Windows such as Open Office and Firefox as a courtesy, but I certainly won't be offering FOSS OSes anytime soon. It is just too expensive to support.
For which one? There have been already over a dozen links to the relevant laws up above you, or look up the popular "catch all" here and in many states known as "loitering" which are so damned vague just by the act of breathing you could conceivably be breaking. I had an ex cop tell me loitering is police lingo for "I don't like you" and I'd believe it.
I bet if one was to do a study it would find loitering charges were used more then 98% of the time against blacks, Mexicans, and poor whites. It is the modern version of "uppity". But by using loitering one CAN be hassled pretty much anywhere, including sitting in a coffee shop minding your own business thanks to the purposeful vagueness that is loitering laws.
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Actually the way Joss Whedon was talking about making shows made the most sense to me. It was basically a "Buy our shit" premise, where to get money for the initial show one would sell T-Shirts, pre-orders, etc and once the shows were out whether they made more depending on whether people continued to "buy our shit" and fund production. That way a show could be as heavy or intellectual or weird as they wanted to be and as long as there were enough fans to fund production it would continue to be made.
Personally I hope he does it, as the two shows being brought up for this treatment were "Faith the Vampire Slayer" and "Spike & Dru" both of which would be better than Buffy Season 7 or Angel Season 5. It would also force the writers to actually listen to the fans for once because he would have never gotten people to buy the dreck he put out in the last two years of the above named series otherwise. Hell the fan fic at the time was better than what he was putting out, just showing that Whedon can't balance writing multiple story arcs without the writing suffering badly.
As for TFA, it just shows how short sighted most providers are IMHO. Nearly every business short of "Bob's BBQ Hut" have a web presence nowadays and more views equal more potential customers. But then again we saw with all that region coding shit most of the content makers can't find their asses with a map and GPS. I mean WTF? Yeah let's make it harder for those who wish to buy legally while giving those with BT or any P2P access before everyone else! Yeah, what could go wrong?
So why not do it in a way that you can offer the functionality and the other two can piss off? I have been saying for years the problem with NoScript is unlike ABP there is no simple GUI that makes it accessible to the masses. With Mozila throwing their weight in and making it and ABP part of the default functionality that problem can be solved. What NoScript needs is a simple "Play the video" button as dealing with customers having to play "guess which blocked thing is the video" turns them off so bad they end up turning NoScript off. With ABP there is a simple "disable on this page" which makes it easy for a normal non geek user, something similar could be done where NoScript looks for the *.flv, *.mp4, etc and has a "play the video" button.
If Mozilla was to do this along with sandboxing cookies so they ONLY work for the originating site and make this the default behavior then we would finally have a good and easy way to deal with all this tracking crap and it wouldn't depend on anybody else. Then like with ABP a site could say "We're not allowing annoying ads or tracking. Please help us by allowing ads on our site" and we could push the button if we like the site (Similar to what Ars has done) and if they break that pledge we can just push the button and block their asses again.
But as someone who deals with the Average Joe six days a week while ABP and Firefox have become a standard that I always include because it takes me less than 3 minutes to show any user how to use it with NoScript even though that extra functionality would increase their security and help quite a lot the interface is just too geek heavy. Even I have been tempted to kill the thing a time or two when I have to say "allow" three or four times just to get a video to run. If someone were to make a "play content" button that looked for the file extension it would go a long way IMHO in helping not only making the average Joe harder to track, but in cutting down all the driveby malware crap as well. If Mozilla were to throw their weight behind this then they simply wouldn't need anyone else to support it because it would be all browser based.
Kelbear, dude, first of all the first things out of their mouths is 3D which has become the turd polish of our age. Don't have any original ideas? Go "Dr Tongue's 3D house of pancakes" and cash the check. Two they pretty much took a big steaming dump on the story with the third one. Now I know a bunch hate the second one, but if they would have went with "They are still in The Matrix" at the start of the third instead of "Neo is Jesus" bullshit most would have went along with the second.
So the ONLY way I can see them saving this franchise is to have the movie start with Reeves and the dumbass brothers coming out on stage saying something like "We're sorry, we're REALLY really sorry. We don't know what the fuck we were thinking with that hard right turn into stupid land with Neo blasting shit outside The Matrix, so if you'll just bear with us we're gonna pretend those God awful second and third movies don't exist and start over, okay?"
Because there is NO way to keep going with the original story and not end up with "Batman & Robin" levels of stupid. In fact the only way I can see them continuing with the same story is to go Batman & Robin and just make the thing a giant parody of itself. Because as another poster so aptly wrote the thing by the end of the third had become a totally awful Dragonball Z ripoff that had fuck all to do with anything in the first one.
The problem with socialism in America is this: It only applies to the rich. Socialism is allowed and indeed encouraged for the rich with "too big to fail" bailouts, TARP, lowering the "burden" on the top 1% through both tax breaks and the looking the other way at tax dodges like the "double dutch". But socialism for the poor such as free or low cost medical care, ensuring that all have adequate food, shelter, and clothing, help for the indigent, these things are frowned upon and looked upon as somehow bad or evil. Personally after seeing how bad the corporatist mindset has run this country into the ground I'd be all for socialism of the second sort.
As for TFA, cops do what they want, film (and excuses) at 11. Here in the USA we have ICE and the FBI used as a private "copyright police" while being paid for by the taxpayers, we have cops that do truly heinous crimes (just look up "police abuse" on Youtube to see how prevalent it is) and walk away with a slap on the wrist if they get anything at all, and thanks to 9/11 we now have Constitution-Free Zones that cover 2/3rds of all US citizens.
News flash: All cops WILL abuse their authority if left unchecked, full stop. For every decent cop you probably have 4 "bully with a badge" types that thanks to the code of silence will be protected by their fellow cops no matter what they do. Until we demand of our elected officials and the MSM that police have to follow the constitution and laws we citizens have to abide by along with REAL punishment for those that run roughshod over peoples' rights then stories like this will sadly be all too common.
Too many have been allowed to get away with too much for too long and it is time to start reining in their power or ALL of us in the west will end up in police states.
Thanks. Hasai must be worried about his age since all he chose to read was the "old" part while ignoring the don't have the skills, haven't kept up part. I have made it a point to run the beta of any MSFT OS since Win2K simply so I can become familiar with the new OS long before it hits retail so I'm already up to speed by the time the first units hit shelves.
Sadly I've found that just like many older guys get stuck in a genre of music (most of my HS buddies listen to 80s rock while I like German techno metal and playing blues/jazz/techno/metal funk fusion live) many get into the same rut when it comes to tech as well. They get comfortable with a technology and simply refuse to take the time to learn new things. I always keep a couple of test beds in the shop just for trying new things, and I love to learn and keep up with new tech.
And as for Linux it isn't so much that I'm skeptical so much as I think FOSS advocates are putting blinders on when it comes to the real challenges when it comes to deploying it in the home/SMB sectors. On servers I think it is great, have no trouble deploying it in that capacity as even on the low end hardware support for servers is VERY good, but in the desktop space hardware changes so quickly and it is nearly impossible to tell whether you are getting rev A or Rev F which makes buying Linux compatible a fricking nightmare from hell. Then there is all the futzing around with the kernel so driver A works in kernel A but not kernel B and with no penguins on the box you have to study like the SATs just to be able to shop in Walmart makes Linux to hard to deal with in retail ATM. But I still try each new rev of Ubuntu and PCLOS in the hopes that it will get better and to keep familiar with it.
But seeing as how Hasai practically went foaming at the mouth from reading the word old I have to wonder if he is looking at a bad situation at work where the young guys are getting fast tracked while the older guys like him are getting left behind. It doesn't affect me as it ain't like I'd work for the guy, but I do feel sorry for those in that situation. Hasai if you read this maybe you might ought to think about starting your own business? Most of us won't make it rich doing it ourselves but it is certainly nice and I have less stress than I did when I was working corporate.
you just hit the nail on the head as to why this is happening, it is because as other posters have pointed out the penalty if you get caught is a joke. Make it a felony and 10 year minimum sentence and I bet you wouldn't see anyone doing this but those who actually wish to bring down a plane. Because the average douche isn't gonna risk 10 years in PMITA prison just to be an asshole on a Saturday night. Raise the time served and make it known (with ads and billboards) what time they are looking at and I bet this crap would stop real quick without having to ban squat.
The three most popular brands I see in homes by a long shot are Trendnet, Zonenet, and the bottom of the line Linksys. That is nope, nope, and....nada. You seem to think the average Joe is buying those nice Linux routers when IRL the most popular models by a fairly large margin are ones like these wireless and these wired. As a matter of fact the Trendnet TW100 you see on the wired page is one of the most popular routers in this area because it is cheap and pretty reliable. Go ahead, look up some of those under $40 routers and see how many have even gotten a SINGLE update, much less support IPV6. I think you'll find these things simply don't have the hardware capability.
You seem to be forgetting that thanks to our "corporate yay!" attitude in the USA not mandating squat it simply isn't in the companies interest to update these things when they can force you to buy a new one instead. And the average under $50 router has less than 4Mb of flash, that simply isn't large enough to update, nor is the CPU on most capable of processing IPV6 128bit addresses.
So I stand by my statement. When the switchover comes you are gonna have MASSIVE outages in most homes unless the telecos/cablecos give out modems that auto-translate IPV4>IPV6 which I haven't heard of any offering this, have you? Hell I don't even think these cheap shitty Motorola modems given out by my cableco are capable of IPV6 which means they'll have to be shitcanned as well. That is literally trainloads of eWaste that is ALL gonna be dumped on practically the same date. As unlike those old PCs that can be cleaned and re-purposed these routers and switches will be just like the old analog phones: Completely unusable in any way.
The problem is your looking at this wrong. The "crippled one" you are thinking of is STARTER and NOT Basic. Basic just doesn't have the "bling bling" like Aero and Media Center, which lets be honest those in emerging markets probably aren't buying PCs capable of all the bling anyway. If you will look at the details of the link you posted the main differences between Premium and Basic come down to bling and corporate features, neither of which would be a big deal to a home user and to a business MSFT has deals in those same markets where you can buy Business WITH Office for something like $9 USD.
But if you'll look closely at the data you posted a good 90% of those "features" that are missing simply don't apply. More than 8GB of RAM? Booting from virtual drives? Aero? Frankly you just aren't gonna need or even be able to use those features in probably 95% of the PCs sold in emerging markets. Hell I'd say a good 60% of the PCs being used here in the USA wouldn't need or use quite a large section of the missing features. If they would sell Windows 7 Basic here for $35 I'd be snatching up copies like there was no tomorrow. It has the better security of 7 without the bling bling that most XP PCs being used in homes and small businesses (which based on what I see coming into the shop are 2.2Ghz-3.2Ghz P4s with on average 1Gb of RAM, Intel 8xxx or 9xxx IGP and a 200Gb HDD) couldn't run anyway.
So I don't see how you can call it "crippled" when most of the PCs sold there wouldn't be able to run those features anyway. Not to mention a good half or more of those features can be added back with free or low cost third party software like Virtualbox for XP Mode and TrueCrypt for Bitlocker. I guarantee I could switch 7 Basic for the Home Premium I have installed for home users and most would never notice except for no see through taskbar. How many PCs sold in China do you think are capable of running Windows 7 HP with Aero anyway?
Wrapping IPV4 ain't the problem, it is the elephants in the room that have been allowed to grow too massive and are gonna be hell to deal with, if they even can on a timely basis.
One elephant in the room is the MASSIVE amount of eWaste that is gonna be generated. Hell a good 90% of the under $100 routers being sold right now don't support IPV6, and that don't count all of the routers, switches, cable and DSL modems, etc that are simply not gonna work with IPV6 and gonna have to be shitcanned. Imagine a good 85% of all the home routers thrown in the garbage at the same time, along with probably 50% or more of the cable and DSL modems. That is a serious amount of garbage that is gonna be hitting the landfills all at once.
The other elephant is thanks to corps lowballing IT for years there has been a SERIOUS brain drain with very few going into IT so you have a ton of older workers who aren't up to speed and are gonna be expected to get fluent with a totally new way of networking in...oh right about now. Thanks to the shitty hours and constantly being expected to do ever more with ever less resources many of the good IT guys I knew have already left or are looking to get out, so what you have left in many of the flyover states is the bottom of the IT barrel and problems that would take an hour or two at most with IPV4 will end up taking days or weeks with IPV6 simply because the guys you have left are old, don't have the skills, haven't kept up, and have based their troubleshooting steps on tools and techniques that simply don't work anymore.
So anyway you look at it IPV6 is gonna be a serious clusterfuck. The idiot that made IPV6 without designing backwards compatibility really needs to be shot because instead of a slow ramp up we are gonna end up in a "ZOMG we are fucked! SWITCH IT NOW!" kind of situation and we simply don't have the manpower or skillsets required to do a countrywide or even a regional switchover ATM. All the years of corporations lowballing their IT and the ISPs paying crappy money for managers and IT staff is gonna come back and bite them in the ass, and bite them HARD. Between the eWaste, the lack of manpower with the relevant skillsets, the massive understaffing at most ISPs compared to the job at hand, it is just gonna be a giant fucking mess.
Okay here you go. Windows 7 Basic is designed for "emerging markets" and last I heard the price was between $3-$5 USD. Of course you have to be considered an "emerging market" to get it, so if it isn't offered in your area your country must have "emerged" already, congrats. Sorry I couldn't find a list of countries but last I read it was for China, India, most of the poorer far east.
Didn't bother to read the link did you? Read it and see what I'm talking about which is retailers saying they have too much Android crap and the people don't want it anymore. And as for who is telling me that? customers that's who. You see the big FUBAR Google pulled with Android is this: By not putting any minimum specs for Android you have a market that is flooded with shitty droid devices. And this might surprise you but consumers don't know shit about hardware and all they know is the device they got with a little droid on the box sucks compared to their friends iPhone. Hell I've seen it with my own eyes where customers will pass up a Phenom II for a Phenom I because the Phenom I had bigger numbers and that is all they look at because they don't know shit about hardware.
But hell don't take my word for anything, read the link I posted or even do a search on "android retail backlash" and see for yourself. By not putting minimum standards Google has allowed so much garbage to carry the droid name that very quickly "Droid equals shit" is becoming a consensus in the minds of consumers. You see consumers don't give a shit about lock in, or "free as in freedom" or the right to hack, or any of that shit. What they want is a toaster with a screen, and the iDevices are just about as close to that as one can get. MSFT will pick up some share just by going "me too!" and aping everything Apple does because...well its worked in the past hasn't it? While the huge mounds of garbage Android devices (just in Walmart I'd say you're looking at an 80/20 split in complete shit to decent Android) means Android is getting a rep with the public as "the crap for those too poor for iPhone".
And finally as for why it is harder for WebM it is because the engineering work is already done for H.264 which makes it a sunk cost. All OEMs like Broadcom and ATI/NV have to do is crank the chips and cash the checks. This leaves WebM in a nasty catch-22 in that if it is easy to drop in it likely is running afoul of H.264 patents since they have virtually every step of the H.264 encode/decode process patented up the butt, and if it isn't then it will cost serious money and die space as you are having to add a codec that doesn't relate to any of the previous ones into support. But either way we shall see, I predict in less than a year WebM will be right about where FLAC and Vorbis is, with limited support and such a tiny niche nobody cares, whereas with Android I predict about another year of being the media darling followed by the fall, and in two years it'll be seen as the "cheapskate OS" that is strictly found on CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) whereas the expensive (which equals good in the mobile space) will be dominated by iDevices and either WinPhone 7 or possibly WebOS if HP plays the cards right.
But I can tell you that as a retailer the consumers are telling me horror stories about "That awful android that hangs and locks up and is NOTHING like iPhone!" and once you get a bad rep with the consumer it is damned near impossible to shake off. I probably get offered a "barely used!" Android phone twice a week because the ones being pushed now by the telecos suck ass, and the local Craigslist is so full of aPads it isn't even funny anymore. And of course all these people having horrible experiences are telling their family, their friends, their coworkers, their neighbors, etc. You just can't keep burning people like that and get away with it.
Too late you can buy the "liberation" kit for $10 that supports the removal of the funky screw with a special screwdriver. Wow, lets give props to the Chinese man they don't miss a chance at profit! And as for Apple a big Nelson "HA HA" is in order.
Nobody cares about Linux because at best you are looking at 3%, so in the big scheme of things it is right there with Amiga and OS/2 Warp, OSX users don't care because they have H.264 support which as I pointed out will be kept to keep from alienating those millions of iDevice users, and for the one that modded me down the Windows plugin calls the WMP API which means it WILL work on XP/Vista if your WMP supports H.264 (which many do, since all it takes is running into a DivX file that won't play for them to install a codec pack) so that covers a good 97% of the public when you figure in Windows + OSX+ iDevices.
So I'm sorry if it makes you unhappy, but maybe instead of yelling "free as in freedom!" and getting mad when everyone ignores you, maybe you should work on raising your numbers legitimately? Perhaps by demanding a hardware API and pushing for the community to rally behind a single distro instead of constantly reinventing the wheel? But frankly nobody cared what Apple wanted either until the iPod exploded onto the scene and now I predict with the iDevice they will make H.264 one of two standards (along with flash thanks to Google trying to start a format war) so if you want the public or manufacturers and website designers to care about your OS you REALLY need to work on your numbers friend. Hell last I checked the combo of Win98/Win2K had more users than you. With numbers that low nobody is gonna change policy simply because a codec doesn't fit your agenda, sorry.
Uhhh...Hair right? As for TFA it just shows that Apple makes MSFT look like the Care Bears. I mean geez, they are already #2 in market cap, have their fanbois trained to buy their "new" stuff every refresh (which on the PC is still usually pretty behind the curve and crazy priced) are making probably 300%+ in profit per device, and that isn't enough for them? I thought Wall Street was greedy, but this is just nuts!
Because nobody will bother as it gains them nothing since IOS doesn't support it? The future is mobile and it belongs to Apple, full stop. And this is from someone who doesn't own a single Apple device.
This is because Google shot themselves in the foot by refusing to put any standards on Android so now you have this big fragmented mess where in just my local Walmart you are looking at no less than 4 Droid versions and frankly more than 2/3rds of them are total shit. I'm already seeing the backlash working retail with people telling me how much they hate their Droid device and how they wish they got an iPhone/iPad, and it looks like I'm not the only one seeing that.
Then there is the matter of hardware acceleration which frankly just can't be "dropped in" via firmware on most devices, they just don't have the chip space for that big of a change. So you have a codec that 1.-doesn't work on IOS and probably never will, 2.-Can't have hardware support on a LARGE section of devices, whereas a combination of H.264 plus flash does and 3.-Thanks to Google torpedoing the HTML V5 tag (which was only gaining in the first place by Jobs killing flash on IOS) by pushing a niche codec that brings NOTHING to the table, not video quality nor file size nor support base, the simplest and cheapest solution for websites is to simply have a "raw" H.264 for IOS and anyone else who supports it and drop the very same file into a flash wrapper with ZERO re-encoding for those that don't (because even Linux has flash)
So I'm sorry, not gonna work, never gonna happen. Might have worked 5 years ago before everything had hardware support for the competition and folks fell in love with the iPhone,but now it has about as much chance as Vorbis taking control away from MP3. All this little stunt has done is make flash the defacto format for all those not on IOS because it is THE one thing all those not on IOS have in common. Just because a big corp pushes it doesn't mean it will get the public onboard, just ask MSFT about little things they tried like ohhhh...WMA, WMV, and Vista.
Uhhhh..maybe you didn't get the memo but H.264 works in Firefox now thanks to MSFT. And while this plugin calls the native Windows 7 codec I'm sure it won't take long before a hacked one that just calls VLC or KLite DShow filters will be released which will take care of XP and Vista.
And I'm sorry but everyone is missing that other elephant over by the snack bar, that one with the tramp stamp called PORNO!!! That's right boys and girls, teh boobies are all in H.264 and I seriously doubt you'll see teh titties in WebM anytime soon....or well ever actually. So we are right back to where we were before, with H.264 for IOS and flash for everyone else. yippie, thanks Google! I'm sure that nice fruit basket from Adobe should be arriving any day now. Hell if I was CEO of Adobe I'd declare "We luv u Google!" week and have lots of nice messages to Google posted on their website. Because make no mistake and be sure to bookmark this to watch it come true: WebM will be as big a hit as Vorbis while Google's little "Hey your remember Blu Ray VS HD-DVD? Wasn't that fun?" stunt just gave the market to Adobe.
Oh the Windows users won't care because the new Flash actually runs quite nice but even if they put out a crappy update users are used to the occasional crappy third party software crash anyway, and the Apple guys won't care because everyone will have H.264 streams to keep from alienating IOS, it will be the FOSS users stuck with the shitty flash support. Sorry guys, but in 2 years you'll be going "WTF? Thanks Google assholes!" for getting HTML V5 video tag torpedoed and sticking everyone on flash.
Not to mention Google and everyone else seems to be missing the gigantic elephant standing over by the potted plants: Hardware acceleration. Pretty much ALL consumer mobile devices support H.264, along with just about every desktop, laptop, netbook, hell I've even seen cheapo DVD players at the Wally World with H.264 support. Now figure in the amount the OEMs have invested in all those H.264 chips, along with the fact that all those consumer devices will have to be chunked (great for the environment) thanks to WebM killing the battery, along with the fact that WebM brings nothing substantial to the table, not better file sizes, not better quality, pretty much the ONLY selling point is "free as in freedom man, yeah!" and even that isn't assured since Google refuses to indemnify users of WebM which opens OEMs to patent trolling, frankly I'd say it has about as much of a chance as Vorbis does of killing MP3 at this point.
If it would have come out 5 years ago I would have given it decent odds, but it is simply too late to the party. Like Vorbis found out if you wait too long so that both momentum and device support is firmly behind a standard, proprietary or not, trying to build any support is damned near impossible. I have a feeling this is gonna be Google's Vista, where they find out that they can't just get the market to jump on board simply by having the name Google. There are simply too many chips, too many websites supporting H.264, oh and did I mention a little thing known as iPad? or iPhone? Maybe Google has heard of those. If they think folks are gonna give up their iPads and iPhones just for Youtube they are in for a RUDE awakening. With H.264 any website developer can simply leave a "raw" H.264 for iDevice users and wrap it in a flash container for everyone else! Tada! everyone is supported. With WebM you are gonna kill battery life or have to toss all the devices supporting H.264 and for what? Youtube? It isn't like there aren't a bazillion other sites out there and if Youtube kills H.264 support I'm sure there will be a dozen new ones happy to take those viewers. The ship has sailed Google, the fat lady is down the street eating a sandwich.
Before you break your arm patting yourself on the back congratulating yourself on your super security you might want to read this which shows how to write a Linux virus in just 5 easy steps that will be just as nasty as a Windows bug and then maybe you'll remember the problem isn't Windows but PEBKAC.
I should know I fix the things 6 days a week and I'd say that more than 90% of the bugs that cross my desk were installed by the user either through scare tactics or through the promise of porn or free stuff. I'd say a good 80% of the rest were infected by outdated third party software like Java, Flash and Reader which frankly nobody ever updates. The "your flash is out of date! Run 'pwnme.exe' to get the lates verson!" is quite popular at the moment, as well as "ZOMG! U got teh Viruz! Run 'Viruzfker.exe' to kill the ZOMG Viruz quick!!".
So in conclusion before the smugness chokes us out here let me say this: You better drop to your knees and thanks Linus and RMS that Linux isn't popular because if you got the huge teeming masses of unwashed rabble onto your OS it would come falling down like a house of cards by...oh I'd say 3:45PM tomorrow. Faster than you can say "Oh shit!" there would be emails with "free_titties.sh" and "Happy_Puppies_screensaver.py" with nice little instructions that the user would follow without thought and your precious security would be so much Swiss Cheese.
It is the classic dancing bunnies problem and if anyone could solve it they would be richer than Gates. I have seen an AV practically throw itself in front of a user trying to stop them only to have them completely disable it because the malware offered something they wanted. Linux won't protect from that level of stupidity sorry. Hell you can't even blame it on Windows running as admin anymore since both Vista and 7 don't allow the user to run as admin but instead use the Linux model of only elevating for install yet the users put in their password and install the bugs anyway no matter how much the AV and OS tries to do to stop them.
TLDR you can't solve social engineering with tech, just as you can't solve 419 email scams with filters. Stupid is as stupid does Forest, stupid is as stupid does.
Actually Quickbooks and TurboTax are THE big apps in my area, along with those downloadable little popcap style games which also don't run on Linux. And why would I want to go through all the trouble of setting up dual boots and dealing with devices and hardware with flaky/non existent drivers for no money or advantage to myself? The whole point of looking into Linux was the "free as in beer" would have allowed me to sell for lower than my competitors. And you must be messing with some seriously crappy hardware if a Live CD is slow for you. On modern duals and triples with 2GB+ of RAM (the minimum I sell anymore except for a few off lease) both Puppy and Xubuntu run from RAM so if anything it is faster than the HDD since the entire OS is in memory.
But again the Live CD is simply a courtesy that gives me an advantage over my competitors, just as giving them Firefox with ABP and a free Office Suite (along with several other freebies like a scheduled reg and HDD cleaner/defragger, codec pack, etc) means machines from MY shop do more OOTB than the other guy does. But I think you are seriously underestimating the ease of use of Windows when compared to FOSS. My customers can walk into ANY store in the nation, grab ANY device off the shelf, and it will "just work" thanks to every device coming with a CD that has XP, Vista, and Windows 7 drivers now. Looking at my local Walmart you are looking at less than 35% Linux support for the devices being sold and without serious research there is no way for the customer to tell and with their exchange only policy on most computer gear you are looking at burned customers on Linux.
So until I can sell a machine with Linux only and know it will 1.-Work for at least a year with upgrades/updates with ZERO driver problems and 2.- Be able to sell a Linux only PC and have a simply way for a customer to walk into Walmart and just "look for the penguin on the box" so they don't get burned then it simply isn't worth my time. It gives me NO advantage over my competitors, it irritates the customer because the PC doesn't "just turn on" without choosing or waiting for a timer to end, it takes more of my time (which I can't charge for) and doesn't drive more business to me (because geeks that have heard of Linux don't shop B&M) so there really isn't a point.
It is the same thing Walmart found out when they tried selling Linux, and those OEMs like ASUS found out when faced with higher returns on their Linux offerings VS Windows XP. While Linux as a desktop sounds good in theory in practice it raises my after sales costs while giving me no advantage over the competition with the local consumer. So if it works for you great, I'm happy for you. But from a retail standpoint Linux as an OS simply doesn't drive sales or even break even. It simply takes too much work and comes with too many hassles. Hell if it wasn't for the "free as in beer" I'd probably just use Windows Live CDs, but the price MSFT wants for WinPE licenses is just insane.
Are you running out of electrons? Is the Wiki short of electrons this month? It sure as hell better not be short of space after Wales spammed the site until he got his 15 million that's for sure! If Jimmy can't afford some HDDs after raising 15 MILLION dollars then somebody needs to be looking at the books.
And who gives a crap if it is obscure? You seem to act like search engines are from the 90s where you could type in "17th century lamp" and get bumpers for a 67 Dodge. The whole bloody point of having a search engine is it doesn't matter how big your site is I can STILL find what I'm looking for quickly and easily!
It seems like there ought to be a simple solution to this and I think there is: Old Jimmy likes to spam for money so this time he can spam for something that will end this problem once and for all. I propose Jimmy get on there and say "For 3 million dollars we will buy enough storage space to end any talk of deletionism forver." After all if Wikipedia is gonna be the "sum of human knowledge" as old Jimmy has said about a bazillion times then by its very definition its gonna have a ton of shit most are gonna consider "not notable". Otherwise all you have is "The sum of popular human knowledge" which certainly isn't what Jimmy has been pedaling when he is busking for $$$.
But ultimately everyone here knows the truth, even if most won't come out and say it: Deletionism isn't about "cleaning up the wiki" it is about power and is the exact same bullshit we have seen since the first website got the first BMFH. With Wikipedia you have cliques, you know this, I know this, it is common knowledge and the way humans have always been. A clique by its very nature is an exclusive bunch and without a way to exercise that exclusivity ceases being much of a clique. The way that exclusivity has manifested itself on wiki is by deletionism and "pet pages". Again I'm not revealing some big secret here, this is common knowledge. But if the goal is truly to have the sum of all knowledge then deletionism has to go, but that would take away power from the cliques. Which is why we are having this argument now.
Now me personally I don't give a shit, because I have seen enough hinky edits and pages on completely obscure characters in some show that are guarded like the shroud of Turin to know the policies are arbitrary and pretty much bullshit. But one thing I DO hate is hypocrisy so lets call a spade a spade, shall we? It isn't some "conspiracy" against the poor helpless mods that gave us the word deletionism, it is the very actions of those in charge. And since old Jimmy raised enough cash there had damned well better be plenty of HDD space that isn't an excuse either unless he is filling his pockets. So make up your collective minds: Is it gonna be Jimmy's "sum of human knowledge" or is it "the sum of what we the mods care about" because frankly you can't have both.
I don't have to Google squat, after dealing with those headaches I'll be HAPPY to tell you. By the way you know the difference between a FOSSie and a FOSS user? A FOSSie is just like you and think anyone whose experience isn't sunshine and roses MUST be a shill or lying, because it is NEVER the fault of FOSS, oh no. Maybe you should tell that to all the people on Ubuntu forums right now with fucked drivers. Go ahead, look for yourself, page after page after page? Are they all lying too?
The big ones I ran into were, in no particular order: AMD chipsets/GPUs, Broadcom wireless, pretty much all the AIO printers offered at Walmart, Realtek HD chips, Via sound and network was hit or miss and seriously flaky, USB wireless and capture cards (a very popular add on here) there were a couple of others that gave me a few head thumpers, such as the lovely "can't decide whether to use onboard or discrete" bug but the chips listed above were the main PITAs.
And of course being an amazing psychic I know what your answer will be "You shouldn't have bought foo, the support is terrible! You should have bought bar!" but wasting my time looking through outdated hardware lists showed me that route is pretty pointless, and trying to replace every onboard chip with a discrete because Linux wouldn't have played nice would have again made Linux more expensive than Windows and by a pretty large margin I might add.
Linux for web servers is just dandy, Linux for embedded rocks your socks, Linux for desktops frankly doesn't even make it to the level of hobbyist OS IMHO and if you thought of it objectively instead of as a fanatic you'd know why: Because the corporations paying the big bucks for developers and maintainers for Linux don't give a shit about the desktop and so simply aren't gonna waste money on an area they couldn't care less about. That is why workstation support is decent and nearly every server out there has drivers OOTB but good fucking luck on consumer level stuff, because it is frankly shit city if the hardware isn't at least 2 years old. And since I deal with a good 75% consumer level and all new that makes Linux simply unusable. As I said consumers don't pay for expensive support contracts, so when it leaves my shop it better run for at LEAST 6 months problem free. With Windows I have several machines still running virus free in SMBs and homes after more than 5 years. In Linux with the constant updates breaking shit and weird drivers that work in X but fail in X+1 I just don't get that, sorry if that makes you unhappy, but that is what I experienced.
Riiiight, because when your choices are "Rich corrupt POS corporate ass kisser" A or B you can change the system by voting. And maybe if I think really hard I can grow wings out my butt and fly south for the winter. As long as the MSM is owned by the megacorps you can pretty much give up anybody actually getting a third party elected for anything but local races because they will never get seen enough to even be a blip on the radar.
I sat out the last election, so I'll give you the choices for senate and you tell me oh wise one how voting would have changed shit. On the one hand you had Bozeman, whose entire platform is pretty much "Pro Life 4ever!" and on the other side you had Blanche Lincoln, a DINO that sucked corporate dick so much she should have had kneepads sown into her dresses. There was a green guy but he never got to debate, or run a single ad, or pretty much do anything at all so he had as much of a chance of winning as you do hitting the powerball.
So tell me oh wise one how EXACTLY is voting changing shit when you get choices like that? As long as we have a two party system we have NO voice, because it is simply too easy for the corps to simply buy both sides and call it a day. Hell look at the choices for the last 3 presidential elections, the highest office in the land. That is the BEST we could come up with? Really? There is a good reason why fewer and fewer people are voting, it is because they see the system is too corrupt to change in this manner. Trying to fix the system by voting is like saying you can win at Three Card Monty if you really keep your eyes on the lady when in actuality you are just watching a show while the guy behind you picks your pocket.
Actually I'd say there was nothing wrong with VB6 either as long as you used it correctly the problem was since it was easy to pick up many would learn just enough to be dangerous. But frankly I have seen horribly bad code written in plenty of different languages so I don't consider that a strictly VB problem. But if you used as intended, for making a RAD GUI for a database, well then it worked quite beautifully and I doubt anyone could do that particular niche job any faster or better with any other language. It just so happened having a custom GUI for a DB was a job that most small businesses could use so you ended up with demand for VB skills far outpacing supply which led to those "know enough to be dangerous" types.
But over the years I have cooked up some VB apps for clients and for that one little niche it is perfect. With VB it was trivial to have the client sit next to me and add/remove fields to their liking, whip off a prototype for them to see if they like it, for those simple little jobs it really is a great tool. It was when someone who only knew VB tried to shoehorn it into some giant rambling mess of a project that it never should have been used for that it became a POS, but I can't blame the language for a bad developer.
Well then how about personal anecdotes? I run a little retail PC shop and several times in the past (last one was Ubuntu 9.04) I have tried to offer Linux PCs alongside the Windows ones and every single time they cost me more than the price of a Windows license. How is that possible? Simple the increased support costs combined with the higher returns (which since the law says you can't sell a return as new you end up losing $$ on) made Linux a losing proposition.
You see with Linux I ran into "update foo broke my driver" more damned times than I can count, and thanks to home users refusing to buy long term support contracts (see hatred of Best Buy for an example) that means I had to either fix it on my own dime or burn the customer and ruin my rep. Even offering 90 day free support was a nightmare because about half would come back with something screwed. With a good AV and low permissions accounts set up for the kiddies the Windows machines just don't come back until/unless they want a hardware upgrade or REALLY fuck things up. Also thanks to lack of a hardware ABI (which for all the "poo poo Linux doesn't need it" bullshit I hear here and elsewhere I have yet to hear a SINGLE solution that would work without one) which makes shopping for Linux compatible devices a wonderful game of "paperweight roulette" where the customers have NO CLUE as to what works and what don't you end up with customers seriously burnt on things like AIO printers. And before anyone says "bundle" unless your last name is Dell you WILL lose money of you attempt to bundle, as you can't compete with Walmart on price.
So you see with it only taking two hours at my current price per hour to equal a copy of Windows home and the "update broke driver" problem alone averaging FOUR hours of trawling forums and jumping through hoops looking for "fixes" in the end it was simply cheaper to not offer Linux. I really wanted Linux to succeed, as lack of having to buy Windows licenses would have allowed me to have lower prices than the competition, but as myself and so many retailers found out FOSS OSes sound like a good idea but in practice are nothing but a giant headache. And finally before someone trots out Dell, Dell hides Linux at the back, Dell has enough geeks shopping online they can throw a few machines to Linux (geeks don't shop B&M) and finally if you have ever handled one you'll notice there is something...funny...about them. Specifically Dell disables the Canonical repos and run their own because otherwise thanks to Canonical's piss poor QA running straight Ubuntu BREAKS DRIVERS. Now since most places like mine can't afford to set up our own repos and pay someone to recompile and maintain for the hardware we sell that is just another sunk cost that makes Windows cheaper than Linux.
Maybe in 5 or 10 years we'll have someone come along and do for FOSS OSes what Jobs did for BSD but I doubt it. The whole thing that entices retailers is the "free as in beer" part which means any corp trying to offer desktops is gonna quickly find it a money pit, which is why I believe Canonical is pushing more and more towards servers and mobile devices and will probably be out of the desktop game in 5 years, just as those like Red Hat did before them. The margins on most PCs and software is razor thin as it is, it really don't take much to turn an operation from the black into the red and if I would have continued offering FOSS OSes that is where I would have been. I still give them FOSS software on Windows such as Open Office and Firefox as a courtesy, but I certainly won't be offering FOSS OSes anytime soon. It is just too expensive to support.
For which one? There have been already over a dozen links to the relevant laws up above you, or look up the popular "catch all" here and in many states known as "loitering" which are so damned vague just by the act of breathing you could conceivably be breaking. I had an ex cop tell me loitering is police lingo for "I don't like you" and I'd believe it.
I bet if one was to do a study it would find loitering charges were used more then 98% of the time against blacks, Mexicans, and poor whites. It is the modern version of "uppity". But by using loitering one CAN be hassled pretty much anywhere, including sitting in a coffee shop minding your own business thanks to the purposeful vagueness that is loitering laws.