And while we're at it, the recording industry should stop doing business with any known drug-law violators! In fact, I say the motion picture industry should refuse to hire actors who have a speeding ticket on their record. This new assault on illegal activity will surely result in a better world for all of us.
Your comment makes complete sense and it's obvious you're not trolling, however, it doesn't take into account the quite real possibility that MS is identifying legitimately-purchased copies of Windows as illegitimate for some reason. (I don't use Windows on my own computers, but there was an article here the other day about MS's estimate of what percentage of Windows computers are running illegal copies and a large number of the comments were personal stories about MS making just such mistakes.)
Will MS compensate businesses for the time they have to spend proving that their copies are legal?
"What you have run into at work is more likely the 'IT expert' that only has ever used Windows."
I guess my main point was just that this kind of "expert" is fairly common. That is, common enough for Vista to get a foothold in the business world. OTOH, you are 100% right that I am talking out of my ass to some degree.
Implicit in your comment is the assumption that business IT departments are significantly more savvy than Joe Schmoe computer owner. My experience is that there are plenty of IT professionals, possibly even the majority of them, who accept what Microsoft tells them about their own products and generally don't ask questions about the company's pronouncements that a new product is "better" or "more secure" or whatever.
If MS sends out the word that their new OS is a must-have, these people will only be held back by their companies' giving them the time and money to make the new upgrade. It is very unlikely that such people would EVER EVEN CONSIDER not using Vista on their new machines after it becomes the OEM OS.
That's how I perceive the situation where I work. I'm not an IT professional, I'm a librarian. We have an Integrated Library System (a.k.a., ILS, i.e., the online catalog) that runs on MS SQL Server and it crashes probably once a day on average. When I have mentioned to the IT group that there are OSS alternatives I am literally answered with blank stares. These people have no idea that OSS even exists. They will drink the Vista Kool-Aid.
I have no statistics on how many IT departments are like this, but I imagine that it is more than the average Slashdot reader might believe. Obviously, people who don't even know what OSS is are not reading Slashdot.
One advantage HD-DVD has that I haven't heard anybody mention yet is the name. Say you're an average American and not a Slashdot/Engadget/etc. reader. You haven't been following any of this news about the format wars. You've heard there's a new kind of Hi-Def Video Disc out there. You see a product called "HD-DVD"... sounds like the thing you're looking for. WTF is "BluRay"?
I know it's not enough to make all the difference but I'm sure it will be a factor in some decisions.
Projectors keep getting smaller all the time, imagine propping up your sketchpad with a blank page showing and projecting your screen onto from a device the size of a cell phone.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hands-on-with-m icrovisions-itty-bitty-projector/
The technology's not quite there yet, but it seems like this scenario is rapidly approaching reality.
I know Slashdotters love Opera, for whatever reason, but I wonder why Safari isn't considered a "major browser" according to the post. There are several different surveys here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_br owsers
and, no matter which one you believe, Safari seems to have a much larger share of the browser market than Opera. I wouldn't say this is so much offtopic as it is tangential, but do as you will and mod away as you see fit.
No, I think you're missing the point. So there. PTTTTTTTTTTTTh!
Seriously, though, I think you're wrong about most office users wanting to do extremely complex things. Most office users want to use email and create very simply-formatted text documents.
To your other point, Mr. Coward, yes, you're right. A user who is unwilling to use radio-simple controls is just as bad as a programmer who would offer a guitar when a radio is needed. My apologies for extending the metaphor.
So, for the average user, if computers aren't supposed to automate and make things quick and easy (i.e., that's just deceptive advertising), what are they supposed to do?
Okay, so you're being sarcastic, but you're also missing the point. A better analogy would be somebody who wants to listen to music and is given a guitar rather than a radio. Sure, if they put in the time and effort, they could eventually learn to play the guitar and possibly even make better music than what they could find on the radio but it's not really a reasonable answer to the person's need.
Seriously, what reason is there to upgrade right now? You don't need to have a reason NOT to upgrade. When businesses eventually need new machines and Vista is the OEM OS, then businesses, and for that matter, academic institutions, etc., will start using it. This will be true if it turns out to be the best OS ever or a complete piece of unnecessary bloatware. It's strange to me that this continues to be brought up on/., it seems so obvious.
Yeah, I probably should have qualified. I lived in the PNW for 26 years, but all of them west of the Cascades. Still, I think the population distribution is so heavily skewed that any "per capita" statistic probably reflects the behavior of the west-of-the-Cascades population.
I want to live somewhere where so many people have cool vintage stereo equipment that it actually has a measurable impact on average power consumption statistics! THAT would be a cool town.
And yet I swear that I've heard the Pacific Northwest, with its mild summers and mild winters, has the largest per-capita energy consumption of any part of the US. Must be all of those espresso makers!
Seriously, I've also heard (and I should be strung up for not citing any sources here, I'll be the first to admit) that the PNW also has the lowest electricity costs of any region in the US, so even with the higher per-capita number of environmentalists in the region, the real factor has more to do with the drain on one's bank account than anything else.
"Getting the US off of the foreign oil tit should be a national security imperative."...and, since the vast majority of known oil reserves are outside the US and, barring any imperial annexations (even if you had ten ANWRs to drill in), always will be, and given the fact that this condition means the US has, inherently, very little control over the global petroleum market (we may exercise some control over the market through our foreign policy, but not only will that era probably not last no matter what we do, but even now it it costing thousands of lives and whatever shreds of international respect we have to maintain that control), we may thus conclude that the real objective must be to dramatically reduce the US dependence on oil, period. Adding "foreign" to this diverts attention away from the real problem and allows hucksters to propose destroying pristine wilderness areas as a solution to perceived security problems rather than a way for a select few with an enormous amount of money to make even more money, which is all it would really do in the short or long run.
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Right on. And, of course, you were right to begin with in saying that I should have posted something positive rather than a snarky response. Good luck with your future technology!
Re:I was just thinking about it, and services too
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You're right about the typing. I'm sorry. That was stupid. I suck for that. It was a knee-jerk response to your "poor me" post about all the expensive stuff that you own.
On the other hand, burger flippers, day laborers and migrant farm workers "struggle to make ends meet". The other professions you name, at times, struggle to make a comfortable middle-class living and, if they live in the US, Canada, Western Europe, or a few other places, they are "rich" by most of the world's standard and, still, many of them can't afford all of the crap that you listed in your original post. As a librarian, and somebody who knows plenty of people in all of the fields you mention, I probably rank above teachers and below the other three in terms of average pay, but I don't bullshit myself about "struggling to make ends meet" and, thus, belittle the people who actually do so.
Re:I was just thinking about it, and services too
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But on the bright side, you're obviously pretty rich for a guy who can barely type!
Slashdot Mirror
And while we're at it, the recording industry should stop doing business with any known drug-law violators! In fact, I say the motion picture industry should refuse to hire actors who have a speeding ticket on their record. This new assault on illegal activity will surely result in a better world for all of us.
ILS is the type of software, not a specific product and there are tons of options at tons of pricepoints that run on non-MS operating systems.
As far as all of your other maybes go: nope.
Oh, and thanks for the "fuckwit" comment. Real cool, Ced.
Your comment makes complete sense and it's obvious you're not trolling, however, it doesn't take into account the quite real possibility that MS is identifying legitimately-purchased copies of Windows as illegitimate for some reason. (I don't use Windows on my own computers, but there was an article here the other day about MS's estimate of what percentage of Windows computers are running illegal copies and a large number of the comments were personal stories about MS making just such mistakes.)
Will MS compensate businesses for the time they have to spend proving that their copies are legal?
"What you have run into at work is more likely the 'IT expert' that only has ever used Windows." I guess my main point was just that this kind of "expert" is fairly common. That is, common enough for Vista to get a foothold in the business world. OTOH, you are 100% right that I am talking out of my ass to some degree.
"Microsoft has twenty titles in the top fifty."
The truly hilarious part: Most of them are Windows or Office. Is this twenty titles or two?
It's just the old Malibu Stacy with a new hat!
Implicit in your comment is the assumption that business IT departments are significantly more savvy than Joe Schmoe computer owner. My experience is that there are plenty of IT professionals, possibly even the majority of them, who accept what Microsoft tells them about their own products and generally don't ask questions about the company's pronouncements that a new product is "better" or "more secure" or whatever.
If MS sends out the word that their new OS is a must-have, these people will only be held back by their companies' giving them the time and money to make the new upgrade. It is very unlikely that such people would EVER EVEN CONSIDER not using Vista on their new machines after it becomes the OEM OS.
That's how I perceive the situation where I work. I'm not an IT professional, I'm a librarian. We have an Integrated Library System (a.k.a., ILS, i.e., the online catalog) that runs on MS SQL Server and it crashes probably once a day on average. When I have mentioned to the IT group that there are OSS alternatives I am literally answered with blank stares. These people have no idea that OSS even exists. They will drink the Vista Kool-Aid.
I have no statistics on how many IT departments are like this, but I imagine that it is more than the average Slashdot reader might believe. Obviously, people who don't even know what OSS is are not reading Slashdot.
One advantage HD-DVD has that I haven't heard anybody mention yet is the name. Say you're an average American and not a Slashdot/Engadget/etc. reader. You haven't been following any of this news about the format wars. You've heard there's a new kind of Hi-Def Video Disc out there. You see a product called "HD-DVD"... sounds like the thing you're looking for. WTF is "BluRay"?
I know it's not enough to make all the difference but I'm sure it will be a factor in some decisions.
Re: the monitor problem
m icrovisions-itty-bitty-projector/
Projectors keep getting smaller all the time, imagine propping up your sketchpad with a blank page showing and projecting your screen onto from a device the size of a cell phone.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hands-on-with-
The technology's not quite there yet, but it seems like this scenario is rapidly approaching reality.
I'm just stoked that I'm going to get my new 32-megajoule rail gun and my new iPhone in the same month!
I know Slashdotters love Opera, for whatever reason, but I wonder why Safari isn't considered a "major browser" according to the post. There are several different surveys here:r owsers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_b
and, no matter which one you believe, Safari seems to have a much larger share of the browser market than Opera. I wouldn't say this is so much offtopic as it is tangential, but do as you will and mod away as you see fit.
Step 5: Open it on another machine, also running MS Word and all of your formatting looks different.
Oops. Sorry. I meant to end the italics after the word "most".
No, I think you're missing the point. So there. PTTTTTTTTTTTTh! Seriously, though, I think you're wrong about most office users wanting to do extremely complex things. Most office users want to use email and create very simply-formatted text documents. To your other point, Mr. Coward, yes, you're right. A user who is unwilling to use radio-simple controls is just as bad as a programmer who would offer a guitar when a radio is needed. My apologies for extending the metaphor.
So, for the average user, if computers aren't supposed to automate and make things quick and easy (i.e., that's just deceptive advertising), what are they supposed to do?
Okay, so you're being sarcastic, but you're also missing the point. A better analogy would be somebody who wants to listen to music and is given a guitar rather than a radio. Sure, if they put in the time and effort, they could eventually learn to play the guitar and possibly even make better music than what they could find on the radio but it's not really a reasonable answer to the person's need.
Or Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo? I mean, c'mon!
Seriously, what reason is there to upgrade right now? You don't need to have a reason NOT to upgrade. When businesses eventually need new machines and Vista is the OEM OS, then businesses, and for that matter, academic institutions, etc., will start using it. This will be true if it turns out to be the best OS ever or a complete piece of unnecessary bloatware. It's strange to me that this continues to be brought up on /., it seems so obvious.
Yeah, I probably should have qualified. I lived in the PNW for 26 years, but all of them west of the Cascades. Still, I think the population distribution is so heavily skewed that any "per capita" statistic probably reflects the behavior of the west-of-the-Cascades population. I want to live somewhere where so many people have cool vintage stereo equipment that it actually has a measurable impact on average power consumption statistics! THAT would be a cool town.
And yet I swear that I've heard the Pacific Northwest, with its mild summers and mild winters, has the largest per-capita energy consumption of any part of the US. Must be all of those espresso makers! Seriously, I've also heard (and I should be strung up for not citing any sources here, I'll be the first to admit) that the PNW also has the lowest electricity costs of any region in the US, so even with the higher per-capita number of environmentalists in the region, the real factor has more to do with the drain on one's bank account than anything else.
"Getting the US off of the foreign oil tit should be a national security imperative." ...and, since the vast majority of known oil reserves are outside the US and, barring any imperial annexations (even if you had ten ANWRs to drill in), always will be, and given the fact that this condition means the US has, inherently, very little control over the global petroleum market (we may exercise some control over the market through our foreign policy, but not only will that era probably not last no matter what we do, but even now it it costing thousands of lives and whatever shreds of international respect we have to maintain that control), we may thus conclude that the real objective must be to dramatically reduce the US dependence on oil, period. Adding "foreign" to this diverts attention away from the real problem and allows hucksters to propose destroying pristine wilderness areas as a solution to perceived security problems rather than a way for a select few with an enormous amount of money to make even more money, which is all it would really do in the short or long run.
"Unices" Hee hee.
Right on. And, of course, you were right to begin with in saying that I should have posted something positive rather than a snarky response. Good luck with your future technology!
You're right about the typing. I'm sorry. That was stupid. I suck for that. It was a knee-jerk response to your "poor me" post about all the expensive stuff that you own. On the other hand, burger flippers, day laborers and migrant farm workers "struggle to make ends meet". The other professions you name, at times, struggle to make a comfortable middle-class living and, if they live in the US, Canada, Western Europe, or a few other places, they are "rich" by most of the world's standard and, still, many of them can't afford all of the crap that you listed in your original post. As a librarian, and somebody who knows plenty of people in all of the fields you mention, I probably rank above teachers and below the other three in terms of average pay, but I don't bullshit myself about "struggling to make ends meet" and, thus, belittle the people who actually do so.
But on the bright side, you're obviously pretty rich for a guy who can barely type!
Are you new here? What part of "news for nerds" don't you understand?