Umm, "monopoly law." I think you mean "antitrust law" as in the Clayton Antitrust Act. It was designed primarily to stop the abuses of colluding groups of businesses which together were breaking the free market. The point was that large companies using their large market share were undermining capitalism's benefits and it needed to stop for the good o the people. Oooh. Pedantry. Effective! Your arguments are all meaningless for a few basic reasons. First, there are provably alternative OS's available. Second, MS has no pricing power with regards to said alternative OS's. For Christ's sake, a lot of the alternatives are free.
All of your "arguments" center around some kind of dimwitted demand-side monopoly, when in fact the only real monopoly is supply based. Microsoft has no corner whatsoever on the Computer Operating System market. In fact, as has been proved repeatedly, the barrier to entry in this market is very low no matter what MS does.
In the end, your dipshit opinions are meaningless. You'll be forever bemoaning the "DOJ" or whoever you blame for Microsoft/Apple/Whoever "getting away with it", but they'll continue to "get away with it".
You've captured the gist of it. When I develop in Java I've got to glue together a bunch of tools that barely work together to get something reasonable. I'd say more like 2 years behind in the case of Java.
Haha, grandparent post scares the rabid anti-MS freaks because the arguments are directly applicable to MS, despite the feeble "but you have file format lock in!" argument (no, you don't - apps are apps, an OS is an OS). I don't care what the test is, the original intent of monopoly law was to prevent one business from controlling sole access to a resource. It's been manipulated, coerced, and corrupted over the years to basically mean anything your competitors comlain about.
You better hope Ron Paul doesn't get elected. He'll go back to old school. If there is a _free_ competitor and numerous other possible sources for a computer OS, his administration would laugh at the idea that MS is a monopoly. For the record, I'm stroked to just as many fits of hilarity and ridicule that people would claim Apple has a monopoly - the idea is just stupid.
Neither does/will this site. If the original submitter of the article wasn't a liar you'd all understand Microsoft is not redoing Microsoft.com in Silverlight. In fact, they're only redoing their download area in Silverlight. My guess is there will of course be an alternate HTML version of the download site available as well.
And of course you'll be able to use MS's page without Silverlight. Article summary is a fabrication, MS is not redesigning Microsoft.com to be a Silverlight app. Fact is they're only changing the download area. And I'll also bet you $50 that you'll still be able to use download area (alternate HTML version) without silverlight.
I scanned the replies to this, nobody has pointed out that the article is a fabrication aka lie. Microsoft is not redesigning Microsoft.com to use Silverlight. The idea is preposterous if you think about it for just a minute. Imagine the work involved in changing a site that has developed over more than a decade entirely to use Silverlight.
In fact, Microsoft is only changing their download area to use Silverlight. In other words, surprise surprise - a kdawson article that is simply false. It's amazing, I know.
The article was a fabrication, so don't worry. MS is only changing their download interface to use SilverLight. The entire MS website is not moving to SilverLight. Not sure why the original idiot posting the article is being so sensationalist.
I never thought of Silverlight as a media distribution framework, I don't understand why everybody always focused on it as a Flash competitor. I saw it more like the final realization of what Java promised for the web. Namely, I can go into VS2008 and design a GUI using nice ass WYSIWYG tools (the same ones I'd use for a console GUI app) and they will magically run on the web. No more AJAX hack shit. Write once, run anywhere, etc... To hell with HTML.
Now, I give a rats ass about Linux on the desktop, but the fact that Silverlight is available on Linux (or will be soon) is icing on the cake. If MS can pull off a coup and get Silverlight everywhere for rich web apps I'll be happy as shit.
Welcome to the computing world. Technology changes, deal with it..NET isn't going anywhere anytime soon. There is no such thing as "standard technology". Java came from Sun, not from some enlightened standards body. Perl came from one guy originally. Ruby, etc... all came from an idea. There's no such thing as "standard technology". If you want to languish with primitive tools then by all means use stuff that's been around for 10 years unchanged. If you want massive productivity and quality improvements, use newer tech.
Java is some primitive shit compared to.NET. Don't get me wrong, I use Java when I have to. Had to use it for a UNIX CLI program that talks to a.NET web service..NET/WCF has very strong Kerberos support. The Java world has shit Kerberos support, at least from a web services standpoint. Try getting a Kerberos BinarySecurityToken working from Java. Everybody talks about it coming "real soon now" but working implementations are few and very, very far between. Someone in our company ended up writing a WSS4J/Xfire extension to do it.
Regardless, Java is kind when you _have_ to have cross-platform support. I would never use Java unless I have to, it's just inferior in almost every way. Unfortunately we have a healthy UNIX environment so we have to use it in some cases but there are a lot of cases where people simply won't care about this.
Good god, this reads like a SlashDweeb "how to score mod points" manual. Are you serious here? I'll leave the simple fact that they provably don't have a monopoly aside, I've proved that several times and it's trivially easy.
I'm more interested in the fact that you seem to think they can't use any new technologies they develop even on their own webpage. I'm also interested in how you seem to think it's OK for Adobe to have a monopoly on Flash (yes, it's ridiculous to claim a company has a monopoly on intellectual property, but I'll use your "logic" against you) and would go so far as to stretch logic on MS's use of Silverlight on their webpage to protect Adobe's monopoly.
Oh, and I get it - you're too smart to use Microsoft products. All hail King Dipshit and his merry band of Penguins, using his +3 wand of dipshittery to crush the will of silly Windows users everywhere! Hail! Hail!
All joking aside, you really are an ass. Baseless arrogance is one of the more mock-worthy traits a person can have.
Huh? Now you're making veiled references to them somehow leveraging their "monopoly"? I'm confused. Their website is a product and is also one of the products over which they hold a monopoly? Now call me dopey, but that makes absolutely no sense. I'm not sure how this got moderated as insightful - I bet you would have gotten another mod point if you'd used the laughable phrase "convicted monopolist".
Absolutely, but that wasn't really my point. I'm saying that some people have the money and the inclination to spend money on "luxury" items despite the law of diminishing returns when the luxury item is compared to a less expensive item of similar functionality. So say I can get a Widget for $5. For $40 I can get a SupaDupaWidget that performs 20% better. I've paid 8x the price for 120% the performance. For some people, this is fine and they're willing to do that. Nothing stupid or wrong with that.
Creature comforts, performance, stylng, and of course the brand value. For those inclined to treat a car like an investment, they also hold their value much better but you're still probably going to lose more than the entire value of the Yaris the minute you drive it off the lot, so that's mostly a moot point.
As you mention, the added maintenance costs involved with a BMW would make the "real" price even higher. I'd love to have one, but the overall cost (purchase + maintenance) just too much. I'd stick with e.g. Lexus/Infiniti class cars instead - 90% of the benefits at a much lower overall cost, but I'm rambling.
I do agree with you, it's just a rather obvious observation. People who can afford nicer things will tend to buy them at a lower point in the perceived value/cost ratio. A few years ago I decided I could afford a nice 60" TV, and a little under a year ago I sprung for a $190 Xbox 360 HD drive because I could afford what is, as you imply, a luxury purchase. For the record, I definitely don't own a BMW as the luxury value isn't worth enough for me to spring the money.
It's kind of like the market for $500 video cards (or multiple $500 video cards on one motherboard). I sure as hell am not spending e.g. $1000 on video cards alone, but to people with the money it's apparently worth it.
In other news, a $13000 Hyundai gets me from point A to point B just as well as a $43000 BMW. Why on Earth are people buying those BMW's???! It's craziness!
It's really the same thing. They'd only use it right after a crime if the suspect fled the authorities. So note to people accused of a crime: Don't flee. If you do so, you may expose yourself to the public in many forums (these billboards, the nightly news, posters, etc...). The power to avoid being plastered up in lights rests solely in the accused's hands.
How do we keep track of anything the government does? We don't. If they were asking for warrantless wiretap power, or something else behind the scenes them I'm all with you. This, however, is fairly blatant and easy enough to monitor. It's what the media's supposed to do. If it's abused, we should hear about it.
Your argument could be used about absolutely any government power, I'd say this is a fairly benign one overall. They already have the power to chase people who have warrants, this is just an extension of that. Worry about real shit those scumbags (Dubya et al.) are trying to do.
Oh no, not the public mind! That's the worst thing ever! My god. 6 people see some slimebag murder a bank teller. FBI tries to find suspect at home, at work, etc... Not found. So FBI posts picture on big billboard - "have you seen this person". Your response is that this poor fellow has been declared guilty in the public mind? Who cares. I think you have some utopian view of these poor innocent people being posted up on America's most wanted. I'm sure Suzy HomeMaker or George BreadWinner will accidentally be put up in lights and accused of child molestation.
If a suspect doesn't want to be up in lights, the suspect can show up for trial. It seems so simple, I'm not really sure what the issue is. I'm having a hard time articulating a response because I don't grasp your point.
Right on. Your points are orthogonal to the issue at hand. Of course the government uses fear to give itself more power, it's the nature of the beast.
That, however, doesn't mean we should rage at everything they do regardless of implementation. If they use this with appropriate controls to capture people who have escaped from prison or who are evading a legal warrant for their arrest for a serious felony, then I'm all for it. As much as I hate government power, I hate violent murderous scum even more. It's not unreasonable to enlist the public in maintainint public safety from legally defined fugitives. This isn't the movies - if you're innocent of a crime, you turn yourself in and go through a trial. That's the system we have, it's not perfect but there is no such thing as a perfect system. If you flee capture, then face the consequences.
I'm absolutely not one to use the "if you didn't do nuttin' wrong, what is you 'fraid of!" argument. In fact, I laugh at people who use that argument. My point is the need to apprehend a dangerous criminal outwieghs the small possibility that they're innocent. The simple fact is that 99% of the people they put on these things would be absolutely guilty. The fact that mistakes "could" be made is implicit. Humans make mistakes. OK. We know this. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to apprehend criminals.
Don't you think the people who are wanted right now, without the bulletin boards, are already "embarassed"? Their family knows, their work knows, lots of people know. And again, the people on these photos are evading justice. They don't put their pictures up to embarass them while they're already in jail. Whether you're guilty or not, you have a social contract to follow due process and report to court. If you evade capture, society can apprehend you by whatever means necessary.
I use it. It backs up your machines automatically, so editing files it "backed up" is a non sequitur. It would be like telling Linux people Amanda is corrupting files, so don't edit files it backs up (you people still use Amanda?).
In this capacity, the problem would be with using WHS as a file server. I must say this is nail #2 in the grave of my disappointment with WHS. My first problem with it is that there is a bug in performance - reads are fine, but writing data to a WHS share is unacceptably slow. Some will claim it's Vista autotuning, or differential copy, or something else but it's demonstrably just piss-poor performance on WHS.
Overall the product is a good idea, it's just poorly implemented at present. If they fix this new bug and fix the performance issues, I'd actually be pretty happy with it.
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All of your "arguments" center around some kind of dimwitted demand-side monopoly, when in fact the only real monopoly is supply based. Microsoft has no corner whatsoever on the Computer Operating System market. In fact, as has been proved repeatedly, the barrier to entry in this market is very low no matter what MS does.
In the end, your dipshit opinions are meaningless. You'll be forever bemoaning the "DOJ" or whoever you blame for Microsoft/Apple/Whoever "getting away with it", but they'll continue to "get away with it".
You've captured the gist of it. When I develop in Java I've got to glue together a bunch of tools that barely work together to get something reasonable. I'd say more like 2 years behind in the case of Java.
You better hope Ron Paul doesn't get elected. He'll go back to old school. If there is a _free_ competitor and numerous other possible sources for a computer OS, his administration would laugh at the idea that MS is a monopoly. For the record, I'm stroked to just as many fits of hilarity and ridicule that people would claim Apple has a monopoly - the idea is just stupid.
They will provide HTML versions as well. Accessability alone would more or less dictate this.
Neither does/will this site. If the original submitter of the article wasn't a liar you'd all understand Microsoft is not redoing Microsoft.com in Silverlight. In fact, they're only redoing their download area in Silverlight. My guess is there will of course be an alternate HTML version of the download site available as well.
And of course you'll be able to use MS's page without Silverlight. Article summary is a fabrication, MS is not redesigning Microsoft.com to be a Silverlight app. Fact is they're only changing the download area. And I'll also bet you $50 that you'll still be able to use download area (alternate HTML version) without silverlight.
In fact, Microsoft is only changing their download area to use Silverlight. In other words, surprise surprise - a kdawson article that is simply false. It's amazing, I know.
The article was a fabrication, so don't worry. MS is only changing their download interface to use SilverLight. The entire MS website is not moving to SilverLight. Not sure why the original idiot posting the article is being so sensationalist.
How exactly is SilverLight sub-standard? Oh, I see - you don't know anything about it and are just trolling for mod points.
Now, I give a rats ass about Linux on the desktop, but the fact that Silverlight is available on Linux (or will be soon) is icing on the cake. If MS can pull off a coup and get Silverlight everywhere for rich web apps I'll be happy as shit.
Welcome to the computing world. Technology changes, deal with it. .NET isn't going anywhere anytime soon. There is no such thing as "standard technology". Java came from Sun, not from some enlightened standards body. Perl came from one guy originally. Ruby, etc... all came from an idea. There's no such thing as "standard technology". If you want to languish with primitive tools then by all means use stuff that's been around for 10 years unchanged. If you want massive productivity and quality improvements, use newer tech.
Regardless, Java is kind when you _have_ to have cross-platform support. I would never use Java unless I have to, it's just inferior in almost every way. Unfortunately we have a healthy UNIX environment so we have to use it in some cases but there are a lot of cases where people simply won't care about this.
I'm more interested in the fact that you seem to think they can't use any new technologies they develop even on their own webpage. I'm also interested in how you seem to think it's OK for Adobe to have a monopoly on Flash (yes, it's ridiculous to claim a company has a monopoly on intellectual property, but I'll use your "logic" against you) and would go so far as to stretch logic on MS's use of Silverlight on their webpage to protect Adobe's monopoly.
Oh, and I get it - you're too smart to use Microsoft products. All hail King Dipshit and his merry band of Penguins, using his +3 wand of dipshittery to crush the will of silly Windows users everywhere! Hail! Hail!
All joking aside, you really are an ass. Baseless arrogance is one of the more mock-worthy traits a person can have.
Huh? Now you're making veiled references to them somehow leveraging their "monopoly"? I'm confused. Their website is a product and is also one of the products over which they hold a monopoly? Now call me dopey, but that makes absolutely no sense. I'm not sure how this got moderated as insightful - I bet you would have gotten another mod point if you'd used the laughable phrase "convicted monopolist".
Absolutely, but that wasn't really my point. I'm saying that some people have the money and the inclination to spend money on "luxury" items despite the law of diminishing returns when the luxury item is compared to a less expensive item of similar functionality. So say I can get a Widget for $5. For $40 I can get a SupaDupaWidget that performs 20% better. I've paid 8x the price for 120% the performance. For some people, this is fine and they're willing to do that. Nothing stupid or wrong with that.
As you mention, the added maintenance costs involved with a BMW would make the "real" price even higher. I'd love to have one, but the overall cost (purchase + maintenance) just too much. I'd stick with e.g. Lexus/Infiniti class cars instead - 90% of the benefits at a much lower overall cost, but I'm rambling.
It's kind of like the market for $500 video cards (or multiple $500 video cards on one motherboard). I sure as hell am not spending e.g. $1000 on video cards alone, but to people with the money it's apparently worth it.
In other news, a $13000 Hyundai gets me from point A to point B just as well as a $43000 BMW. Why on Earth are people buying those BMW's???! It's craziness!
It's really the same thing. They'd only use it right after a crime if the suspect fled the authorities. So note to people accused of a crime: Don't flee. If you do so, you may expose yourself to the public in many forums (these billboards, the nightly news, posters, etc...). The power to avoid being plastered up in lights rests solely in the accused's hands.
Your argument could be used about absolutely any government power, I'd say this is a fairly benign one overall. They already have the power to chase people who have warrants, this is just an extension of that. Worry about real shit those scumbags (Dubya et al.) are trying to do.
Well, life's a bitch. Unfortunate stuff like this happens. How many poor bastards out there look like Hitler?
If a suspect doesn't want to be up in lights, the suspect can show up for trial. It seems so simple, I'm not really sure what the issue is. I'm having a hard time articulating a response because I don't grasp your point.
That, however, doesn't mean we should rage at everything they do regardless of implementation. If they use this with appropriate controls to capture people who have escaped from prison or who are evading a legal warrant for their arrest for a serious felony, then I'm all for it. As much as I hate government power, I hate violent murderous scum even more. It's not unreasonable to enlist the public in maintainint public safety from legally defined fugitives. This isn't the movies - if you're innocent of a crime, you turn yourself in and go through a trial. That's the system we have, it's not perfect but there is no such thing as a perfect system. If you flee capture, then face the consequences.
Don't you think the people who are wanted right now, without the bulletin boards, are already "embarassed"? Their family knows, their work knows, lots of people know. And again, the people on these photos are evading justice. They don't put their pictures up to embarass them while they're already in jail. Whether you're guilty or not, you have a social contract to follow due process and report to court. If you evade capture, society can apprehend you by whatever means necessary.
In this capacity, the problem would be with using WHS as a file server. I must say this is nail #2 in the grave of my disappointment with WHS. My first problem with it is that there is a bug in performance - reads are fine, but writing data to a WHS share is unacceptably slow. Some will claim it's Vista autotuning, or differential copy, or something else but it's demonstrably just piss-poor performance on WHS.
Overall the product is a good idea, it's just poorly implemented at present. If they fix this new bug and fix the performance issues, I'd actually be pretty happy with it.