Seriously, shouldn't support via some flavor of VM software work perfectly well?
Yes. But it's still a Windows 8 host device. Better than some options, but still won't placate the "all screensavers must have the same timeout" crowd of Mordac's.
And shouldn't rewriting code for 'touch' or position input from legacy devices...
Rewriting legacy code? Which probably hasn't been validated for Win7, much less 8? Which works just fine now?
Sure. Doable. But is it worth doing all that because of the Surface Pro and it's assorted imitators? Eventually, maybe. In the nearer term, it's best to wait and see how Microsoft is going to handle the initial less-than-enthusiastic reception of the Surface. Will they double-down like the XBox, or bury, burn and salt like the Kin? Don't rush...
Canada and the US share a boarder, so it is somewhat ridiculous for them to charge more in Canada than in Hawaii, that's a fair complaint.
Well, sorta. Selling into the Canadian market does actually impose localizations and foreign language requirements. There are going to be some products where the manufacturer wants to recoup the costs of printing instructions, labels, packaging, and whatnot in French for Canadian distribution. Even for software, there is an "English (Canada)" localization (color => colour, etc). Then there's stuff like CSA approvals, etc.
$10000 more for a car made across the street is stupid. But even when the dollar is at parity, I can see a few cents more for cereal since they don't just crank out an extra 10% of US-marketed product and ship it north.
If users *want* a Surface, there's no reason why corporate IT would really care. It's not really hard to support it if.
If corporate IT has approved Windows 8, the Surface Pro shouldn't be hard to support.
If, on the other hand, corporate IT is still evaluating Windows 7 for large-scale roll-out (I'm pretty sure my org hasn't even started looking at 7... they're still working on the Office 2003 deployment. Not kidding), then it's not going to happen. If you work in the kind of corporate (or government) environment where they think in terms of corporate baseline systems requiring major evaluation projects to change, getting something "new" like a tablet and particularly a tablet running a new unapproved O/S release is a major headache.
Surface Pro will sell, because most businesses can simply write it off of their taxes, an put it immediately to use without having to first rewrite all of their corporate apps to run on IOS or Android, or Surface RT.
Er... is this before or after they downgrade the O/S to Windows 7, or possibly even XP?
It's running Win8, which means 90% or corporate IT shops are going to eye it with tremendous suspicion, if not outright hostility, and unless your job title is a TLA starting with "C" and end with "O", odds are you're not even going to get a Surface Pro through the door.
There are probably business users who'd find one of these things useful, but I highly doubt it'll be any with their own corporate applications.
That's all done by the conspiracy so they can say "see, if we were really an effective conspriracy wouldn't be able to suppress things like the LIBOR affair, Watergate, and the 1919 Black Sox scandal?"
I have no doubt the wine devs can make this work, but people without sooper-dooper high-res displays on their Android gadgets will be disappointed.
And those with sooper-dooper high-res displays get the fun experience of using applications designed exclusively for mouse and keyboard use on a touch display. Even if the Wine folks do a bang-up job of translating touch to mouse, there's going to be a lot of cases where it won't work (games, in particuar) and it's going to limit the set of usable applications even further.
And if that high-res display happens to be a phone, well, best of luck using an application designed for 21" at 96DPI on a 4.5" 300DPI display.
Phew. I must be getting old. It feels like it was just yesterday that computing power was measured in VIC-20's. Now days it seems iPhones are a unit of speed, weight, pixel density *and* marketshare.
If Apple seriously screws up the next iPhone and Microsoft manages to come up with something far, far better than any OS they've put on a phone ever...
... and doesn't completely fuck it over by completely screwing up the marketing (the best music player in the world couldn't overcome the image evoked by Steve Ballmer holding it while uttering the words "I want to squirt you...") or by hamhandedly welding it to other Microsoft "properties" people don't give a hoot about.
It's quite sickening and I find no way at all to view this as acceptable. This is an international attack on our constitutional values -- most notably freedom of speech.
Given some of the history of the New York Times (the Pentagon Papers, Wikileaks), I have this funny feeling that they aren't just dealing with foreign governments hacking their systems.
Most consumers still call their computer case the "CPU" and buy new computers when they don't have to because they don't realize Windows and their computer are different things.
At one time, I would have agreed with you 100%.
Vista kicked consumers in the nuts. For the first time that I can remember since Win95 shipped, I suddenly was encountering computer illiterates who actually knew what version of Windows was on their computer, and they didn't like it. Admittedly, they were blaming Vista for unrelated shit (like Office saving.docx by default), but they sure noticed the operating system...
In this post-Vista world, people actually do notice and care what's on their computers...
but they sure know that if the world switched to linux their sales would go down, for lack of artificial obsolescence represented by the OS/drivers/app upgrade cycle.
On the other hand, people might upgrade their hardware more often if they could be assured their new hardware wouldn't come with Microsoft's latest abomination and a shit-ton of bloatware.
One thing we do know is that hardware manufacturers don't have the balls to try it. Properly, at least, rather than periodic token attempts.
If you think of it as a Bluetooth remote (NFC doesn't really give enough range that "remote" has any meaning) it's not really all that unreasonable. I spent a good chunk of my morning looking for a Canadian supplier of something not entirely dissimilar... remote music control, camera shutter trigger, and since it has Real Buttons it's a little more effective to control music and whatnot while driving.
But yeah, whoever decided to market this as a phone for a phone needs their head(s) checked.
History is littered with examples of students and employees who find a serious security hole in something, make a good-faith report about it through the "proper" channels, and get thoroughly fucked.
Sometimes they even give the impression that the report was well-received before things go downhill. Something like "Wow, you're right, that's a really major problem. Thank you for your report. We're going to take this very seriously. When you have a chance, could you please come to my office and can provide more details to myself, the Dean, the President, the Director of IT Security, some representatives from the application vendor, and several members of the federal Cybersecurity response office? Thanks."
Maybe he got lucky and wouldn't have been stepped on. Or maybe he just ran his stupid security scan and pre-empted the traditional "stepping on".
The only sane way to handle this sort of thing is to assume that the default institutional response to report of a major security problem is "shoot the messenger".
That being said, running a remote security scan was pretty stupid too.
Specifically, he broke the First Law of Insiders Reporting Security Violations, which is that he let someone know who he was.
History has shown beyond a doubt that if you're reporting a security violation to some entity, the only time it's safe to do it "in the clear" is when that entity obviously has no power over you. Otherwise, you have to protect yourself.
He didn't, and everything follows from that mistake.
What nexus devices have removable covers? The Nexus 7 doesn't, dunno about the others though.
By "something similar", I was thinking device specifications and shape definitions so people could print their own perfectly-fitting cases, holsters, bumpers, docks, car mounts, wallets, etc. People already do this stuff, but having detailed specs would eliminate a lot of guess-work.
A seriously awesome move by Nokia. True innovators of the smartphone industry.
It's actually kind of a cool move for a corporation to actually recognize that some people are into making their own accessories or replacement parts.
Unfortunately for Nokia, the intersection between the kinds of people who do 3D printing of their own phone accessories and the kinds of people who buy Lumia's seems quite small.. well, compare this to this or this. Maybe this announcement will help, but I have my doubts. I could Google doing something similar with their Nexus gear, though.
The fire department exists to reduce the number of people who burn to death in fires. The fact that a person died in a fire last year does not show that fire departments are worthless. It does show they are not perfect. Nothing is.
That's a very good point.
You know when you usually see a fire department in action? When stuff is burning.
Now, fire departments are pretty nice to have when your shit is burning, but that's a narrow view of the problem. The bulk of our thinking and effort about fires, as civilized people, should be on preventing fires from starting in the first place, not just on getting the fire department somewhere faster with bigger hoses.
The problem I have with all this gun control talk is that it should be a very, very small part of the conversation and it isn't. The bulk of the debate should be around how do we not have people in our society who think it makes sense to shoot up a pile of random strangers when life gets rough, not about how to stop them once they've pulled the trigger.
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Yes. But it's still a Windows 8 host device. Better than some options, but still won't placate the "all screensavers must have the same timeout" crowd of Mordac's.
Rewriting legacy code? Which probably hasn't been validated for Win7, much less 8? Which works just fine now?
Sure. Doable. But is it worth doing all that because of the Surface Pro and it's assorted imitators? Eventually, maybe. In the nearer term, it's best to wait and see how Microsoft is going to handle the initial less-than-enthusiastic reception of the Surface. Will they double-down like the XBox, or bury, burn and salt like the Kin? Don't rush...
Just think of how much more efficient if will be when you only need to direct your rage and hatred at a handful of companies.
So, are you saying to want the terrorists to win, Mr. or Mrs. Compaqt? Please step closer to the window as you think about your answer.
Well, sorta. Selling into the Canadian market does actually impose localizations and foreign language requirements. There are going to be some products where the manufacturer wants to recoup the costs of printing instructions, labels, packaging, and whatnot in French for Canadian distribution. Even for software, there is an "English (Canada)" localization (color => colour, etc). Then there's stuff like CSA approvals, etc.
$10000 more for a car made across the street is stupid. But even when the dollar is at parity, I can see a few cents more for cereal since they don't just crank out an extra 10% of US-marketed product and ship it north.
If corporate IT has approved Windows 8, the Surface Pro shouldn't be hard to support.
If, on the other hand, corporate IT is still evaluating Windows 7 for large-scale roll-out (I'm pretty sure my org hasn't even started looking at 7... they're still working on the Office 2003 deployment. Not kidding), then it's not going to happen. If you work in the kind of corporate (or government) environment where they think in terms of corporate baseline systems requiring major evaluation projects to change, getting something "new" like a tablet and particularly a tablet running a new unapproved O/S release is a major headache.
Mordac is not entirely a fictional character.
Er... is this before or after they downgrade the O/S to Windows 7, or possibly even XP?
It's running Win8, which means 90% or corporate IT shops are going to eye it with tremendous suspicion, if not outright hostility, and unless your job title is a TLA starting with "C" and end with "O", odds are you're not even going to get a Surface Pro through the door.
There are probably business users who'd find one of these things useful, but I highly doubt it'll be any with their own corporate applications.
That's all done by the conspiracy so they can say "see, if we were really an effective conspriracy wouldn't be able to suppress things like the LIBOR affair, Watergate, and the 1919 Black Sox scandal?"
And those with sooper-dooper high-res displays get the fun experience of using applications designed exclusively for mouse and keyboard use on a touch display. Even if the Wine folks do a bang-up job of translating touch to mouse, there's going to be a lot of cases where it won't work (games, in particuar) and it's going to limit the set of usable applications even further.
And if that high-res display happens to be a phone, well, best of luck using an application designed for 21" at 96DPI on a 4.5" 300DPI display.
Nonsense. In the event of program termination, the O/S will free the rope for you.
In return, the world got some marketing incentives for shipping Windows 8 on their computers.
That's just... wow.
Phew. I must be getting old. It feels like it was just yesterday that computing power was measured in VIC-20's. Now days it seems iPhones are a unit of speed, weight, pixel density *and* marketshare.
It doesn't bode well for metrification...
Given some of the history of the New York Times (the Pentagon Papers, Wikileaks), I have this funny feeling that they aren't just dealing with foreign governments hacking their systems.
On the other hand, people might upgrade their hardware more often if they could be assured their new hardware wouldn't come with Microsoft's latest abomination and a shit-ton of bloatware.
One thing we do know is that hardware manufacturers don't have the balls to try it. Properly, at least, rather than periodic token attempts.
If you think of it as a Bluetooth remote (NFC doesn't really give enough range that "remote" has any meaning) it's not really all that unreasonable. I spent a good chunk of my morning looking for a Canadian supplier of something not entirely dissimilar... remote music control, camera shutter trigger, and since it has Real Buttons it's a little more effective to control music and whatnot while driving.
But yeah, whoever decided to market this as a phone for a phone needs their head(s) checked.
Then he got lucky.
History is littered with examples of students and employees who find a serious security hole in something, make a good-faith report about it through the "proper" channels, and get thoroughly fucked.
Sometimes they even give the impression that the report was well-received before things go downhill. Something like "Wow, you're right, that's a really major problem. Thank you for your report. We're going to take this very seriously. When you have a chance, could you please come to my office and can provide more details to myself, the Dean, the President, the Director of IT Security, some representatives from the application vendor, and several members of the federal Cybersecurity response office? Thanks."
Maybe he got lucky and wouldn't have been stepped on. Or maybe he just ran his stupid security scan and pre-empted the traditional "stepping on".
The only sane way to handle this sort of thing is to assume that the default institutional response to report of a major security problem is "shoot the messenger".
That being said, running a remote security scan was pretty stupid too.
Specifically, he broke the First Law of Insiders Reporting Security Violations, which is that he let someone know who he was.
History has shown beyond a doubt that if you're reporting a security violation to some entity, the only time it's safe to do it "in the clear" is when that entity obviously has no power over you. Otherwise, you have to protect yourself.
He didn't, and everything follows from that mistake.
Ask David Litchfield. You might also want to read up on their Unbreakable campaign a few years prior to purchasing Sun.
Yes, but a cool gimmick and one I'd like to see more companies offer.
No argument there.
Yeah, it's not going to convince me to buy anything from Nokia either.
Would I be off-topic or just not-dinosaur-enough if I said my first computer was an Apple //e?
By "something similar", I was thinking device specifications and shape definitions so people could print their own perfectly-fitting cases, holsters, bumpers, docks, car mounts, wallets, etc. People already do this stuff, but having detailed specs would eliminate a lot of guess-work.
It's actually kind of a cool move for a corporation to actually recognize that some people are into making their own accessories or replacement parts.
Unfortunately for Nokia, the intersection between the kinds of people who do 3D printing of their own phone accessories and the kinds of people who buy Lumia's seems quite small.. well, compare this to this or this. Maybe this announcement will help, but I have my doubts. I could Google doing something similar with their Nexus gear, though.
That's a very good point.
You know when you usually see a fire department in action? When stuff is burning.
Now, fire departments are pretty nice to have when your shit is burning, but that's a narrow view of the problem. The bulk of our thinking and effort about fires, as civilized people, should be on preventing fires from starting in the first place, not just on getting the fire department somewhere faster with bigger hoses.
The problem I have with all this gun control talk is that it should be a very, very small part of the conversation and it isn't. The bulk of the debate should be around how do we not have people in our society who think it makes sense to shoot up a pile of random strangers when life gets rough, not about how to stop them once they've pulled the trigger.