I think games might be the key for Microsoft to increase Vista uptake.
For the home market... yes, maybe... what % of computer users are gamers? But that isn't Microsoft's main revenue stream -- they need business to adopt it eventually. Unless you are in the business of developing games, then this won't encourage you to switch.
Hardly a week goes by without Facebook users whining about something.
If only they would harness that energy and complain about something really important. There's a lot of bad things happening in the World where their incessant and perpetual vociferousness could help invoke real social change.
If they don't like Facebook, there are MANY Web-2.0-social-networkized alternatives. They should just go use them instead (and quietly). I feel really sorry for the guys who started Facebook sometimes, they have a really tough crowd to deal with.
To be fair to MS, they are only doing what most large Corporation do -- listen to their Marketing Department. Yahoo, eBay, many others, are much worse.
This is a primary failing. One that Google, miraculously, seems to have so far avoided. Full credit is due.
Marketing depts make two mistakes.
(and foremost) They ask people what they want. They convene a focus group of a cross section of people, brainstorm and come up with a list of priorities. The issues with this being that most people don't know what they want, no committee ever came up with anything minimalist, functional or streamlined, and most people in a focus group are only statistically representative -- but not representative in reality.
They have no understanding of pure Economics. They attempt to maximize revenue from everything up to the point that function is destroyed and satisfaction is lost. Thereby devaluing the product.
Apple and Google are far more successful than many other similar brands. They value function and form. This is why they are successful. This why they have fanboys. It's not rocket science, all you need to do is fire the marketing droids out of the nearest airlock.
While I don't doubt they are looking at all sorts of ways of controlling P2P traffic, this law is insanely unworkable. For a whole list of reasons, ranging from cracked WiFi, to identifying the what's illegally shared and what isn't. For the 100 millionth time, not all P2P traffic is illegal, not all movies and music are protected by copyrights.
If they do this it will open up and unworkable legal mess, tying up courts time for years sorting out what's legally downloadable and what isn't. Nope, FUD, sorry.
Has anyone here ever used the "I'm feeling lucky" button. I think I did once in 1999. Usually it's the second or third result that's the most relevant.
And increasingly so... It's one of the significant issues with Google having so much dominance. From 1997 til 2001 or so the I'm Feeling Lucky button was a useful and fun tool. These days it pretty much fails more often that not in my experience. Since Google is the number one search engine and, as far as I can see, there's been little advance in search since 1997, the scammers know how to game Google now, and it's their number one priority.
Thus, I'm Not Feeling So Lucky.
I like Google, but they really really need competition, and some new ideas where search is concerned.
As an inmate of the UK, can I suggest that those of you who live in other countries begin fighting these "advances" before they ever happen? You do not want this to be your future. In the UK we already have some of it as our present, and it is run by corrupt and incompetent politicians. What's currently happening in the UK is a warning to you all. This is no Utopia. There won't be any British flying cars.
We've been heading towards the totalitarian Peoples Democratic Republic of (formerly Great) Britain for some time now. This kind of thing is actually encouraging.
In a country where you are watched by security camera most of the day, and can be detained without charge for longer than anywhere on Earth, it is reassuring to note that the UK Government is so incredibly incompetent that there will always be a way to escape. No need for tunnels, gliders, or under the floor of a Trabant -- it should be pretty much possible to just walk through the border with a library card altered in crayon.
Not sure why anyone modded you informative, because your post is just plain wrong. The whole memory-leak-is-a-bug-is-not-a-bug-is-a-feature war of flames -- or "flamewar" as it's commonly known as -- has indeed being going on for a number of years now.
Search. Google, that's the thing. You know the thing you got your name for. The thing that still is not really good enough. Really not.
FOCUS Google! That's the thing -- forget the Web 2.0 garbage, keep it simple and keep improving search. After all, the reason most Web 2.0 crap exists is because search isn't good enough to meet people's expectations.
Better search = no need for social networking sites.
Not sure I buy that. If they really didn't want you to use it, they'd either not allow it, or do what their competitors Hotmail and Yahoo do -- allow it for a price. My guess is they they do want you not to need to use it, but through good design and features.
I pop my gmail into Thunderbird -- mainly because in the early part of beta gmail wasn't always accessible, there were more glitches than there have been for a few years.
No, sorry, but I suspect the reason Thunderbird was cut out -- and I say this as a long term Thunderbird user -- is because Thunderbird pretty much sucks. I would like that not to be the case -- however, it is. For all the great innovation Firefox has brought, Thunderbird is just a slightly secure version of Outlook Express. It would be better to simply keep Thunderbird maintained and focus development on a real email application, a new one from the ground up completely, an innovative one.
It should also have a companion option "Fill my notification area with lots of little static icons for programs I seldom use, but to the developers they were the most important thing in the world so they want them to be already started on the rare occasions I might want to use them, least I judge the developer by the 5 second delay of starting their program, on startup."
Oh yes. That is by far the single thing I hate most about Windows. Next up is applications stealing focus...
Star trek time travel plots have always been inconsistent and many times lame
To be fair to Star Trek, this isn't just a Star Trek problem. I think it is probably pretty hard to write a non-clichéd time travel script. Changing the timeline, paradox, woo, etc... if you are a hack writer there's nothing much else to say in a time travel story. You take your character(s) back to your chosen time period to create conflict -- maybe also as a social commentary blunt instrument -- and then waffle on for pages about paradoxes -- again!
Problem is, we've heard all of this a hundred times. Time travel seems to be the refuge of every word-blocked hack Sci-Fi writer.
Time travel stories should be shunned and banned until someone can come up with a story that doesn't involve the words "timeline" or "paradox".
Hmmm, though you have a point, the Temporal Prime Directive is probably a low as you can possibly go in terms of hack Sci-Fi writing. Someone could really invent a time machine, go back in time and substitute all the Star Trek time travel scripts with decent ones.
Excellent timing! The perfect time to launch this is during a writers' strike where they are trying to be justly paid for such downloadable content.
Kind of makes a mockery of the studios argument, namely: giving this stuff away free on the net is just worthless promotional material. If that's truly the case, why not just give it away free? i.e. no DRM, and no region nor software restrictions.
Um, why has someone modded the parent redundant? Actually it is a very valid point. The summary does a poor job of explaining what on earth this article is about if you are not American. My guess is that hardly anyone outside the US knew what this was about before the previous poster linked the article explaining it.
It seems on topic and valid to me to point this failing out the to the editor of the article. It is good that people remember Slashdot reaches every country everywhere (um, except N. Korea and maybe China -- it's probably secretly censored and monitored by the UK too, and archived by the Germans). Remember folks, those tubes are trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific too.
Obviously, in South Korea, only old people read Slashdot.
The difference is that at least in Germany, this type of gross invasion of privacy happened on the public record and they can react and do something about it now.
Yeah. That's the thing. This is happening everywhere in western "democracies". The problem is... where totalitarian dictatorships went wrong in the past, is that they try and shut people up. That causes trouble. There's really no need to to quieten and remove dissidents. No-one really cares.
People get all het up about changes to Facebook, what's on Reality TV, the price of gas, road traffic enforcement -- but stuff like this, stuff that really matters. Meh, forget it, nobody cares...
Are people already brainwashed? It's really impossible to imagine The American / French / Russian / etc revolution happening now. What happened? Seriously, how did this happen?
How can journalists spark a major diplomatic event?
Absolutely. I do not believe this story for one single second.
Firstly, diplomats are diplomats because they are smart and non-reactionary. They would not react like this to mails that presumably came from a domain that identified the senders as foreign journalists -- or otherwise identified the journalists as being just that.
In addition to this, (having lived in Holland myself) the Dutch are generally pretty good with the fact that few people speak Dutch. They are also used to dealing in a number of languages, and the sometimes accidental comedy that ensues. It's clear that the senders of this mail were not native speakers -- thus why would anyone overreact?
Slashdot Mirror
Ultimately, you need to really blame the brainless drones at the Box Network...
I liked it well enough, however my viewing enjoyment came with neither Blackjack nor Hookers. To my great disappointment...
Hardly a week goes by without Facebook users whining about something.
If only they would harness that energy and complain about something really important. There's a lot of bad things happening in the World where their incessant and perpetual vociferousness could help invoke real social change.
If they don't like Facebook, there are MANY Web-2.0-social-networkized alternatives. They should just go use them instead (and quietly). I feel really sorry for the guys who started Facebook sometimes, they have a really tough crowd to deal with.
This is a primary failing. One that Google, miraculously, seems to have so far avoided. Full credit is due.
Marketing depts make two mistakes.
- (and foremost) They ask people what they want. They convene a focus group of a cross section of people, brainstorm and come up with a list of priorities. The issues with this being that most people don't know what they want, no committee ever came up with anything minimalist, functional or streamlined, and most people in a focus group are only statistically representative -- but not representative in reality.
- They have no understanding of pure Economics. They attempt to maximize revenue from everything up to the point that function is destroyed and satisfaction is lost. Thereby devaluing the product.
Apple and Google are far more successful than many other similar brands. They value function and form. This is why they are successful. This why they have fanboys. It's not rocket science, all you need to do is fire the marketing droids out of the nearest airlock.This article is FUD.
While I don't doubt they are looking at all sorts of ways of controlling P2P traffic, this law is insanely unworkable. For a whole list of reasons, ranging from cracked WiFi, to identifying the what's illegally shared and what isn't. For the 100 millionth time, not all P2P traffic is illegal, not all movies and music are protected by copyrights.
If they do this it will open up and unworkable legal mess, tying up courts time for years sorting out what's legally downloadable and what isn't. Nope, FUD, sorry.
Thus, I'm Not Feeling So Lucky.
I like Google, but they really really need competition, and some new ideas where search is concerned.
We've been heading towards the totalitarian Peoples Democratic Republic of (formerly Great) Britain for some time now. This kind of thing is actually encouraging.
In a country where you are watched by security camera most of the day, and can be detained without charge for longer than anywhere on Earth, it is reassuring to note that the UK Government is so incredibly incompetent that there will always be a way to escape. No need for tunnels, gliders, or under the floor of a Trabant -- it should be pretty much possible to just walk through the border with a library card altered in crayon.
Not sure why anyone modded you informative, because your post is just plain wrong. The whole memory-leak-is-a-bug-is-not-a-bug-is-a-feature war of flames -- or "flamewar" as it's commonly known as -- has indeed being going on for a number of years now.
Hopefully it is now FINALLY over.
Yes. Can I also add...
Search. Google, that's the thing. You know the thing you got your name for. The thing that still is not really good enough. Really not.
FOCUS Google! That's the thing -- forget the Web 2.0 garbage, keep it simple and keep improving search. After all, the reason most Web 2.0 crap exists is because search isn't good enough to meet people's expectations.
Better search = no need for social networking sites.
I pop my gmail into Thunderbird -- mainly because in the early part of beta gmail wasn't always accessible, there were more glitches than there have been for a few years.
No, sorry, but I suspect the reason Thunderbird was cut out -- and I say this as a long term Thunderbird user -- is because Thunderbird pretty much sucks. I would like that not to be the case -- however, it is. For all the great innovation Firefox has brought, Thunderbird is just a slightly secure version of Outlook Express. It would be better to simply keep Thunderbird maintained and focus development on a real email application, a new one from the ground up completely, an innovative one.
Problem is, we've heard all of this a hundred times. Time travel seems to be the refuge of every word-blocked hack Sci-Fi writer.
Time travel stories should be shunned and banned until someone can come up with a story that doesn't involve the words "timeline" or "paradox".
Hmmm, though you have a point, the Temporal Prime Directive is probably a low as you can possibly go in terms of hack Sci-Fi writing. Someone could really invent a time machine, go back in time and substitute all the Star Trek time travel scripts with decent ones.
With JJ Abrams at the "helm" it won't be light years away from that anyway.
Excellent timing! The perfect time to launch this is during a writers' strike where they are trying to be justly paid for such downloadable content.
Kind of makes a mockery of the studios argument, namely: giving this stuff away free on the net is just worthless promotional material. If that's truly the case, why not just give it away free? i.e. no DRM, and no region nor software restrictions.
Or might it be that the studios are... lying?
Um, why has someone modded the parent redundant? Actually it is a very valid point. The summary does a poor job of explaining what on earth this article is about if you are not American. My guess is that hardly anyone outside the US knew what this was about before the previous poster linked the article explaining it.
It seems on topic and valid to me to point this failing out the to the editor of the article. It is good that people remember Slashdot reaches every country everywhere (um, except N. Korea and maybe China -- it's probably secretly censored and monitored by the UK too, and archived by the Germans). Remember folks, those tubes are trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific too.
Obviously, in South Korea, only old people read Slashdot.
...but they do have the biggest fireworks!
People get all het up about changes to Facebook, what's on Reality TV, the price of gas, road traffic enforcement -- but stuff like this, stuff that really matters. Meh, forget it, nobody cares...
Are people already brainwashed? It's really impossible to imagine The American / French / Russian / etc revolution happening now. What happened? Seriously, how did this happen?
Firstly, diplomats are diplomats because they are smart and non-reactionary. They would not react like this to mails that presumably came from a domain that identified the senders as foreign journalists -- or otherwise identified the journalists as being just that.
In addition to this, (having lived in Holland myself) the Dutch are generally pretty good with the fact that few people speak Dutch. They are also used to dealing in a number of languages, and the sometimes accidental comedy that ensues. It's clear that the senders of this mail were not native speakers -- thus why would anyone overreact?
Truth is -- they wouldn't.
I call Bullshit.