Microsoft prototypes can't easily be sold. I see the obvious joke that the Microsoft prototypes were not of value, but in a sense, if they can't be sold, then that is true.
Microsoft still turns a hefty profit. They've got massive market share and the company is still experiencing revenue growth, though the rate of growth is declining.
Microsoft is losing market share in key markets. There are reasons why Microsoft could stumble, but they are so diversified and have so much capital that it would take a great number of massive failures for them to really go under.
The concept of searching for extra-terrestrial life hasn't failed, but their project of just scanning radio waves basically has. If another civilization used radio for interstellar broadcasts, we'd see steady, regular broadcasts. When we blanket a spectrum from a physical direction and don't see anything, it suggests no one is broadcasting radio waves.
There may be technologically advanced life forms out there broadcasting by other means, but repeatedly checking radio waves probably won't offer any real benefit.
Someone who only knows physics might not be able to help medical research, so scientific resources aren't entirely fungible. But CPU cycles are. So contributing to one particular distributed computing project does carry an opportunistic cost of not supporting another.
Going off on a tangent here, while I echo your sentiment that people should be free to support whatever distributed computing project they want, I'm not sure people realize that SETI has basically already failed. They've covered their entire spectrum numerous times, and have been listening for decades without finding anything. The entire project operates off the assumption that interstellar communication of another intelligent life form would occur over radio waves.
If someone is contributing cycles to it, and not protein folding, then valuable medical research (that has been proven worthwhile) might be suffering literally out of ignorance. That is worth pointing out.
Microsoft is selling tablets and phones that won't run traditional Windows apps, and can only run Windows RT apps. Microsoft is encouraging developers to make RT the standard for future Windows development, but for some reason they aren't willing to promote RT apps?
Here is the problem. Most people have an Android or iOS device today. If there Android and iOS apps you really love, you probably already purchased them for those platforms (and perhaps for both if you jumped ship at some point).
How many people are jumping at the bit to buy them again for another platform?
What Microsoft really needs is killer new apps that take advantage of Windows in a unique way that aren't on Android or iOS. And I just don't see that happening. Windows RT is dead on arrival for a number of reasons (can't join a domain, can't run legacy Windows apps and doesn't offer anything new for future development).
Galaxies was maintained and owned by Sony. Bioware/EA had no control over Galaxies, though it already had a massively declining subscriber base even before SWTOR was announced.
True, but I've been running into this at work over the years with OEM hardware, and self-builds I do for myself, family and friends. Honestly, Windows 98 SE was probably the last time I did a fresh install of Windows without having to install additional drivers from the internet.
I've had really good luck with getting bugs taken care of when I open bug tickets.
I've done so for all kinds of OSS projects, big and small, including Wordpress and Drupal plugins that have a single developer. Most bugs I've filed were taken care of by someone who wasn't paid to fix the bug.
The only Windows 8 installs I've done have been in VMs. But my Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, XP x64, Server 2003, Server 2008, and Server 2008 R2 installs have all needed drivers from the internet, even for standard OEM hardware.
Unless you're an enterprise shop, Microsoft isn't taking bug reports from people. Windows 8 is a prime example of Microsoft flying directly in the face of the feedback it got from beta users.
In the OSS world, I can file a bug ticket, email a developer and get a new feature request or bug taken care of.
1. Brand new hardware will have Windows drivers. That doesn't mean it will be auto-detected and work out of the box. You may just have a PCI ID and are struggling to find what device it is and hunt down drivers online. I don't think I've had a single Windows install in the past 10+ years where all the hardware worked out of the box unless I slipstreamed the drivers myself. Conversely on Linux, new and old hardware alike usually just work out of the box. 2. A good chunk of wireless devices work out of the box with Linux, whereas I'm not sure I've once in my life had a wireless adapter work without a driver install on Windows. The primary reason certain wireless dongles don't work out of the box on Linux is that they need a proprietary binary blob that can't be legally included out of the box with most Linux distros.
You would be mistaken. It is in fact illegal. Almost every country in the world does in fact have copyright laws. And almost every country in the world has signed global copyright treaties. Azerbaijan is no exception. However, they aren't enforced.
Not enforcing the law doesn't magically make something legal. The fact that the government of Azerbaijan isn't actually protecting US interests doesn't make it legal.
Your ignorance doesn't entitle you to question my education.
This rhetoric was really popular in the late 60s and early 70s because one person made an estimate that mass starvation was inevitable in the next decade. There was no way the planet could support the "population bomb".
In reality, population even grew faster than expected, but malnutrition went down because we got more efficient in growing crops.
If someone in Azerbaijan wants to sell their singular copy of a DVD they own, they can do so.
If someone in Azerbaijan wants to pirate a movie and then sell copies of the pirated movie, then that is illegal in most countries in the world, though many don't enforce the law to protect IP owned outside of the country.
The greatest export the US has is IP. The world reads our books, watches our movies, listens to our music, plays our games and uses our software. The MPAA/RIAA/etc act like idiotic douchebags, but that doesn't mean content creators shouldn't be able to profit from their works, or that the proverbial guy in Azerbaijan is entitled to profit off stealing someone else's works.
It is more profitable to treat than cure, but the flu is serious fucking business. The media treats each new flu variant as a bigger deal than it needs to be. In most years, flu deaths will generally be young children and the elderly with poor immune systems, the same as any other year. But we never know when a given strain will be like the 1918 flu, infect 27% of the population and kill 3% of the population quickly. The next time it could be worse.
The Black Death killed a much higher 17% of the population, but it took over 2 years to do so.
For other diseases, the medical industry will still likely focus on selling drugs that treat symptoms because companies want to turn a profit. But there are organizations like the WHO that make the flu a big priority because they don't want to see millions die.
I'm not endorsing crime, nor advocating that criminals and suddenly the victims, but is the US federal government in the right to seize domains?
If the websites are breaking laws, aren't there other due processes to follow? Shouldn't we be working with foreign law enforcement agencies to go after those people rather than simply taking their domains?
A domain is property. Simply taking the property of others without due process (especially of people not in your jurisdiction) isn't exactly fair or Constitutional. I fear this behavior will add credence to the argument of the US relinquishment of key TLDs and possibly splintering the internet in the future.
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Microsoft prototypes can't easily be sold. I see the obvious joke that the Microsoft prototypes were not of value, but in a sense, if they can't be sold, then that is true.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he discovered that Apple used Windows servers almost exclusively because Apple didn't have great server offerings.
At some point you either have to make a truly competitive product, or realize you shouldn't be in that market.
Microsoft still turns a hefty profit. They've got massive market share and the company is still experiencing revenue growth, though the rate of growth is declining.
http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/revenue_growth
Microsoft is losing market share in key markets. There are reasons why Microsoft could stumble, but they are so diversified and have so much capital that it would take a great number of massive failures for them to really go under.
I wonder how much longer Ballmer will remain CEO.
The concept of searching for extra-terrestrial life hasn't failed, but their project of just scanning radio waves basically has. If another civilization used radio for interstellar broadcasts, we'd see steady, regular broadcasts. When we blanket a spectrum from a physical direction and don't see anything, it suggests no one is broadcasting radio waves.
There may be technologically advanced life forms out there broadcasting by other means, but repeatedly checking radio waves probably won't offer any real benefit.
Someone who only knows physics might not be able to help medical research, so scientific resources aren't entirely fungible. But CPU cycles are. So contributing to one particular distributed computing project does carry an opportunistic cost of not supporting another.
Going off on a tangent here, while I echo your sentiment that people should be free to support whatever distributed computing project they want, I'm not sure people realize that SETI has basically already failed. They've covered their entire spectrum numerous times, and have been listening for decades without finding anything. The entire project operates off the assumption that interstellar communication of another intelligent life form would occur over radio waves.
Requisite XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/638/
If someone is contributing cycles to it, and not protein folding, then valuable medical research (that has been proven worthwhile) might be suffering literally out of ignorance. That is worth pointing out.
Mixing an existing crime with hate speech can increase the sentence. When the WBC protests legally with hate speech, it isn't illegal.
Google was charging $300 per house for the installation, or waiving that if you pay for a two-year contract.
It does cost Google a lot to build out the infrastructure, but they'll pass some of that cost on to consumers to make it viable.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/windows-rt-faq
Microsoft is selling tablets and phones that won't run traditional Windows apps, and can only run Windows RT apps. Microsoft is encouraging developers to make RT the standard for future Windows development, but for some reason they aren't willing to promote RT apps?
Here is the problem. Most people have an Android or iOS device today. If there Android and iOS apps you really love, you probably already purchased them for those platforms (and perhaps for both if you jumped ship at some point).
How many people are jumping at the bit to buy them again for another platform?
What Microsoft really needs is killer new apps that take advantage of Windows in a unique way that aren't on Android or iOS. And I just don't see that happening. Windows RT is dead on arrival for a number of reasons (can't join a domain, can't run legacy Windows apps and doesn't offer anything new for future development).
Galaxies was maintained and owned by Sony. Bioware/EA had no control over Galaxies, though it already had a massively declining subscriber base even before SWTOR was announced.
It has a Metacritic rating of 84. All the reviews I read were quite good. And every PC game has a number of reports of "it won't work".
It was me however that impregnated their dog and murdered their daughter.
True, but I've been running into this at work over the years with OEM hardware, and self-builds I do for myself, family and friends. Honestly, Windows 98 SE was probably the last time I did a fresh install of Windows without having to install additional drivers from the internet.
I've had really good luck with getting bugs taken care of when I open bug tickets.
I've done so for all kinds of OSS projects, big and small, including Wordpress and Drupal plugins that have a single developer. Most bugs I've filed were taken care of by someone who wasn't paid to fix the bug.
The only Windows 8 installs I've done have been in VMs. But my Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, XP x64, Server 2003, Server 2008, and Server 2008 R2 installs have all needed drivers from the internet, even for standard OEM hardware.
Unless you're an enterprise shop, Microsoft isn't taking bug reports from people. Windows 8 is a prime example of Microsoft flying directly in the face of the feedback it got from beta users.
In the OSS world, I can file a bug ticket, email a developer and get a new feature request or bug taken care of.
That doesn't work out of the box with a fresh Windows install either. You have to download the proprietary Nvidia drivers in either instance.
1. Brand new hardware will have Windows drivers. That doesn't mean it will be auto-detected and work out of the box. You may just have a PCI ID and are struggling to find what device it is and hunt down drivers online. I don't think I've had a single Windows install in the past 10+ years where all the hardware worked out of the box unless I slipstreamed the drivers myself. Conversely on Linux, new and old hardware alike usually just work out of the box.
2. A good chunk of wireless devices work out of the box with Linux, whereas I'm not sure I've once in my life had a wireless adapter work without a driver install on Windows. The primary reason certain wireless dongles don't work out of the box on Linux is that they need a proprietary binary blob that can't be legally included out of the box with most Linux distros.
Do you know what also drives stock prices?
Revenue.
I know; crazy.
The actual law did change in 1996. Again, one of us is ignorant. It isn't me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Azerbaijan
You would be mistaken. It is in fact illegal. Almost every country in the world does in fact have copyright laws. And almost every country in the world has signed global copyright treaties. Azerbaijan is no exception. However, they aren't enforced.
Not enforcing the law doesn't magically make something legal. The fact that the government of Azerbaijan isn't actually protecting US interests doesn't make it legal.
Your ignorance doesn't entitle you to question my education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Azerbaijan
http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/profile.jsp?code=AZ
This rhetoric was really popular in the late 60s and early 70s because one person made an estimate that mass starvation was inevitable in the next decade. There was no way the planet could support the "population bomb".
In reality, population even grew faster than expected, but malnutrition went down because we got more efficient in growing crops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
If someone in Azerbaijan wants to sell their singular copy of a DVD they own, they can do so.
If someone in Azerbaijan wants to pirate a movie and then sell copies of the pirated movie, then that is illegal in most countries in the world, though many don't enforce the law to protect IP owned outside of the country.
The greatest export the US has is IP. The world reads our books, watches our movies, listens to our music, plays our games and uses our software. The MPAA/RIAA/etc act like idiotic douchebags, but that doesn't mean content creators shouldn't be able to profit from their works, or that the proverbial guy in Azerbaijan is entitled to profit off stealing someone else's works.
It is more profitable to treat than cure, but the flu is serious fucking business. The media treats each new flu variant as a bigger deal than it needs to be. In most years, flu deaths will generally be young children and the elderly with poor immune systems, the same as any other year. But we never know when a given strain will be like the 1918 flu, infect 27% of the population and kill 3% of the population quickly. The next time it could be worse.
The Black Death killed a much higher 17% of the population, but it took over 2 years to do so.
For other diseases, the medical industry will still likely focus on selling drugs that treat symptoms because companies want to turn a profit. But there are organizations like the WHO that make the flu a big priority because they don't want to see millions die.
I'm sorry, you're correct. Brain fart on my part.
I'm not endorsing crime, nor advocating that criminals and suddenly the victims, but is the US federal government in the right to seize domains?
If the websites are breaking laws, aren't there other due processes to follow? Shouldn't we be working with foreign law enforcement agencies to go after those people rather than simply taking their domains?
A domain is property. Simply taking the property of others without due process (especially of people not in your jurisdiction) isn't exactly fair or Constitutional. I fear this behavior will add credence to the argument of the US relinquishment of key TLDs and possibly splintering the internet in the future.