MS could always point at the OEM and claim the problem is with the hardware.
Do you blame bad drivers for the BSOD? No, you blame Windows. Do you blame Dell or Gateway for a slow machine? No, you blame Windows.
Microsoft already has the ire of the users. They have nothing to lose by setting a gold standard for others to follow. If the Asus Windows 8 tablet crashes periodically, they can point to their own and say, ours is fine. If the Dell Windows 8 tablet comes with 8 layers of crapware and runs like a 486, Microsoft can show people that's not Window 8's fault.
There's two legal concerns here: Class action lawsuits and an anti-trust lawsuit. Microsoft isn't the dominant player in the tablet market, but they are in the laptop market, and this crossover device may appear to allow them to leverage their laptop dominance to enter the tablet market. But if they played their cards right internally, and they separated the OS and hardware development properly, then this isn't a concern.
As for class action lawsuits, they've always been named in them, OEM or not. I don't think they're dumb enough to market this as a 4G tablet or put out units that are defective in some way that would draw such a lawsuit. And if they are, the product's failed already, because it would've not been able to deliver the same experience that Apple delivers with the iPad. So that probably isn't a concern for them.
As for an operational standpoint, I think the other replies have addressed it sufficiently. They already have the infrastructure to handle customer requests directly. In fact, considering they discontinued the Zune, they probably have more capacity than they need. It's then a matter of training.
If anything, people should be working towards not having to restart for all updates, even kernel patches. Instead, in the fevor to be more like iOS/OSX and Windows, Linux is regressing.
Personally, I'm more of a Logitech fan. But Microsoft is pretty good too.
The more apt comparison would be to the XBox, Zune, and other system hardware. Hardware by itself isn't terribly difficult to get right. Just look at how many companies and mom and pop shops build Windows boxen. Getting the right software and hardware combination, however, is a completely different challenge, and where Apple shines.
There's a difference between primary education and higher education, both in the material taught, and what you as a student are supposed to learn from it.
Primary education exists to teach you the basics, to build a foundation, lay the groundwork. Higher education is where you take everything you learned previously to a higher level. You apply it. You improve it. You make it fit you and the way you want your life to be.
The U.S. is failing miserably at primary education. But it excels at higher education. The latter is easier, mostly because by the time you reach higher education, you're expected to have figured out how to learn already. That this is true is both ironic, and tragic. It means that despite having one of the best higher education systems in the world, the kids at home can't even take advantage of it. It means that in 50, 100 years, the cream of the crop is not going to be here, but in other countries where the primary education remains strong.
It is for this very reason that there are more and more foreign students. If the domestic student pool was significantly better than the foreign student pool, I suspect that the other factors like the amount of money a school could charge one versus the other wouldn't nearly be as important. But as it isn't, the barrier to entry for foreign students is lower than where it should be.
It's one thing to downmod comments because they're not constructive towards the discussion. It's altogether another thing to downmod individuals completely (though it happens all the time, in the form of credibility in real life, and karma on/.).
Still, I expect even trolls have interesting things to say once in a while.
It's limited in usefulness if you were looking to deploy them in the traditional sense of leaving port and not returning to land for months. However, you could put them on a carrier like we do aircraft, and launch them from there for regular patrols, assaults, and as a way to quickly gain superiority in the water in naval battles.
You'd just need to retrofit some your smaller escort ships to each be able to launch one or two. Or build a whole new class of carriers for them, which while cool, probably isn't economically feasible.
GP probably wasn't referencing the article in the submission. GP probably was thinking of the link in the previous comment, which was in fact a PR puff piece.
For every lock that was developed, there's also a lockpick.
It's the same for this. Just need to come up with a good lockpick. Something easy and ubiquitious enough that every person probably already possesses it.
Facial recognition can be defeated easily with a hood or a brimmed hat. Fingerprints can be defeated with gloves. And if certain services become draconian, then simply vote with your wallet.
I highly doubt Microsoft will close Windows 8 completely. The entire industry would be up in arms. If there was a better way to alienate every IT department and every tech company in existence, that would be it. Nobody wants to be locked in to Microsoft. They tolerate it because of the 3rd party software, OEM, and other industries where Windows is the only supported OS. If Microsoft locked down their software to their own hardware, people would be jumping ship to Linux and Android left and right.
It would be an incredibly bad idea. I have a hard time imagining this. Of course (I just replied to a Nokia threat below), Nokia becoming Microsoft's subsidiary was unimaginable too. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if Microsoft's plan was to buy out Nokia in the first place. So maybe they are stupid enough to try to force their software on their own hardware and tie their OS to their own walled garden.
Highly doubtful that Nokia was planning their own tablet line. If that had ever been on their radar, they would've done it from day 1 when the iPad rumors first started, not just from when they became Microsoft's subsidiary. Not to mention that they would've been the first to jump on the Windows 8 RT platform were they really interested in the market.
Nokia's problem is that they don't have the leadership or the vision to go anywhere. They had the top spot for so many years that they ultimately became complacent and distracted, lost their focus, and was unable to adapt to the rise of the smartphone.
They came into the arena too little too late, but when they finally had something decent, a viable competitor to Apple and the then-rising Google, they completely blew away their years of investment and made a 90 degree direction change. It's just more indication that they don't know who they are, what they want, or where they want to go.
This doesn't seem to have changed. They've gone all-in on Microsoft for smartphones. But they haven't quite figured out what exactly they're trying to do with Windows Phone 7. All they know is that they have a few smartphones with it as the OS, and some more in the works. But they have yet to elaborate on what makes these phones different from the competition, nor why people would want to use them over the competition.
As responsible as Microsoft is in bringing Nokia down, a Microsoft tablet product is completely unrelated to this.
To be honest, the OEMs weren't exactly Microsoft's "allies". They have all released tablets running on a competing platform (Android mostly, but WebOS is too). It's not like they pledged to be Microsoft-exclusive. In fact, most OEMs have to be "convinced" to not sell other OSes.
This is a good move. You can argue about the qualities of the resulting product from this decision, but in a market where Microsoft has nothing to lose and everything to gain, where the risk is small and the rewards are great, the direction has merit.
People like to trot out the Zune as a predictive indicator of where their tablets will go. There are a few key differences here however:
1) There were no MP3 players running on Microsoft software. Sure, a bunch of them interfaced with Windows Media Player in a specific way. But that's not the same as running Microsoft-written firmware. 2) There were no legacy applications developed for a pre-existing product. There was no integration with any existing app store nor the ability to port code written for say, Windows CE, to the Zune. Zune "apps" had to be developed from more or less scratch. 3) Apple dominates the MP3 player market, completely. Even Android is not marketed as an MP3 player OS. It's a smartphone OS with the ability to play MP3s. To break into that market directly is much like Apple trying to breaking into the enterprise computer market directly: suicide.
The Zune was effectively a brand new product running on a brand new ecosystem. This tablet has the existing Windows ecosystem to back it. It is entering a market relatively with weak demand from an angle that Microsoft dominates and where demand is stronger (entering the tablet market from an ultra-thin laptops standpoint). And most importantly, Microsoft isn't trying to sell tablets; they're trying to sell tablet software. Which mean even if the device doesn't sell well, if they can push the OEMs to release better products and high-end products, and they can make Windows 8 desirable, then they'll have succeeded.
...if all this noise from Microsoft was trying to preempt all of the press that Google's announcement would generate using their own announcement. It explains why Microsoft's seemed premature.
WRT Buddhism, living effectively is hell. Death is but a way of going from one form of hell to another (sometimes worse). The only escape is spiritual enlightenment, which is as close to a concept of "heaven" as there will be in Buddhism. Only, this heaven is a state of existence.
Your list gives essentially the equivalent of "construction work" for men. As well, it also reflects that many women don't care to be the breadwinner of the household, and are only interested in taking jobs with flexible schedules. The why of that should be fairly obvious.
The other thing I want to point out is that though there may be an overall societal discrimination against women going into math and engineering fields, there's also the fact that these are relatively introverted professions. As women tend to like socializing, these jobs are not nearly as appealing to them as jobs that require (allow) talking to other, preferably different people (likewise, men who enjoy socializing also have a tendency to take the jobs in that list).
Creation has value, the only question is how much value, and how to recognize it.
By your very own logic, if creation has value, then the artist should be paid for the act of creating. Copying is not an act of creation, and therefore has a separate value (which is near 0 in the digital age).
Correct. The "artists" just want to make a quick buck. That's the same pervasive mentality that cumulated in the current recession and "financial crisis." Everybody wants to make money without actually having to do anything.
Microsoft has basically stepped up and informed the beige-box pushers of the world that they think that they don't have what it takes to build an iPad killer, even if Windows8 is the best thing since sliced kittens(to be fair, MS is probably right).
Microsoft setting the gold standard with a top-notch device means everyone else is going to just have to up the ante and do one better if they hope to play in the Windows 8 arena. Not only tablets though, because this new device actually competes with laptops as well.
There are two things that can result from this move: 1) OEMs step up and bring their A game or 2) OEMs jump ship to Google's low-cost ecosystem. I suspect it'll end up a bit of both. A lot of the bigger names will do the former. HP, Lenovo, Sony, Dell, Panasonic, Samsung, etc. will release high-end enterprise and luxury offerings that'll make this look like a child's toy. But all the low-cost, non-enterprise portable devices will be dominated by Google.
I suspect this is what Microsoft always wanted. The low end wasn't making them a whole lot of money anyway (the machines were blah and the software was usually pirated). Enterprise mobile--which Blackberry once dominated and where Microsoft has a stragglehold--and high end luxury which is Apple's current territory, is the direction Microsoft wants to push its software (and hardware) towards.
Either way, I think this is a good thing. As long as they don't screw it up that is.
No, not even that. They wouldn't be so intent on nuclear weapons if Bush hadn't named them a part of the "Axis of Evil" that included Saddam Hussein's Iraq at the time. Considering what happened to Iraq (and Afghanistan, but not to Pakistan), pursuing nuclear weapons was their only choice.
If the cooling water comes out hot enough, it can also be used to heat the building's water supply. Or at least it can be used to help out, e.g. keeping the water in the pipes warm.
This power for the President to order hits on individuals exists. Not sure where it came from, but it exists. The President has the Big Red Button (TM). This was true during the days of the Cold War. That doesn't seem to have changed.
I wouldn't necessarily blame the President for it though. If you want to blame someone, blame congress, for allowing the power to exist. Or blame congress, for not taking the power away.
We should indeed be thankful that Obama is pressing the button and not someone else, because that's what leaders do, instead of hiding behind his chief of staff. We should equally be incensed no one's taken it away yet, or even mentioned taking it away.
Little known secret about Gitmo: Terrorists voluntarily spill the beans after they're forced to analyze the Windows source code for exploits. Everybody's led to believe it's waterboarding, but that's actually the lesser evil. There's a reason they don't send drones out for the engineers-turned-terrorists.
Slashdot Mirror
MS could always point at the OEM and claim the problem is with the hardware.
Do you blame bad drivers for the BSOD? No, you blame Windows. Do you blame Dell or Gateway for a slow machine? No, you blame Windows.
Microsoft already has the ire of the users. They have nothing to lose by setting a gold standard for others to follow. If the Asus Windows 8 tablet crashes periodically, they can point to their own and say, ours is fine. If the Dell Windows 8 tablet comes with 8 layers of crapware and runs like a 486, Microsoft can show people that's not Window 8's fault.
There's two legal concerns here: Class action lawsuits and an anti-trust lawsuit. Microsoft isn't the dominant player in the tablet market, but they are in the laptop market, and this crossover device may appear to allow them to leverage their laptop dominance to enter the tablet market. But if they played their cards right internally, and they separated the OS and hardware development properly, then this isn't a concern.
As for class action lawsuits, they've always been named in them, OEM or not. I don't think they're dumb enough to market this as a 4G tablet or put out units that are defective in some way that would draw such a lawsuit. And if they are, the product's failed already, because it would've not been able to deliver the same experience that Apple delivers with the iPad. So that probably isn't a concern for them.
As for an operational standpoint, I think the other replies have addressed it sufficiently. They already have the infrastructure to handle customer requests directly. In fact, considering they discontinued the Zune, they probably have more capacity than they need. It's then a matter of training.
Next up: All the niceties of DLL hell.
If anything, people should be working towards not having to restart for all updates, even kernel patches. Instead, in the fevor to be more like iOS/OSX and Windows, Linux is regressing.
The State of Texas has yet to execute a corporation.
Personally, I'm more of a Logitech fan. But Microsoft is pretty good too.
The more apt comparison would be to the XBox, Zune, and other system hardware. Hardware by itself isn't terribly difficult to get right. Just look at how many companies and mom and pop shops build Windows boxen. Getting the right software and hardware combination, however, is a completely different challenge, and where Apple shines.
There's a difference between primary education and higher education, both in the material taught, and what you as a student are supposed to learn from it.
Primary education exists to teach you the basics, to build a foundation, lay the groundwork. Higher education is where you take everything you learned previously to a higher level. You apply it. You improve it. You make it fit you and the way you want your life to be.
The U.S. is failing miserably at primary education. But it excels at higher education. The latter is easier, mostly because by the time you reach higher education, you're expected to have figured out how to learn already. That this is true is both ironic, and tragic. It means that despite having one of the best higher education systems in the world, the kids at home can't even take advantage of it. It means that in 50, 100 years, the cream of the crop is not going to be here, but in other countries where the primary education remains strong.
It is for this very reason that there are more and more foreign students. If the domestic student pool was significantly better than the foreign student pool, I suspect that the other factors like the amount of money a school could charge one versus the other wouldn't nearly be as important. But as it isn't, the barrier to entry for foreign students is lower than where it should be.
The +4 Interesting mod on GP says otherwise.
It's one thing to downmod comments because they're not constructive towards the discussion. It's altogether another thing to downmod individuals completely (though it happens all the time, in the form of credibility in real life, and karma on /.).
Still, I expect even trolls have interesting things to say once in a while.
It's limited in usefulness if you were looking to deploy them in the traditional sense of leaving port and not returning to land for months. However, you could put them on a carrier like we do aircraft, and launch them from there for regular patrols, assaults, and as a way to quickly gain superiority in the water in naval battles.
You'd just need to retrofit some your smaller escort ships to each be able to launch one or two. Or build a whole new class of carriers for them, which while cool, probably isn't economically feasible.
GP probably wasn't referencing the article in the submission. GP probably was thinking of the link in the previous comment, which was in fact a PR puff piece.
Maybe it's a Finnish thing.
For every lock that was developed, there's also a lockpick.
It's the same for this. Just need to come up with a good lockpick. Something easy and ubiquitious enough that every person probably already possesses it.
Facial recognition can be defeated easily with a hood or a brimmed hat. Fingerprints can be defeated with gloves. And if certain services become draconian, then simply vote with your wallet.
Which brings up a good point: Does it count as cannibalism if you eat stem cell-grown human tissue?
China: All your base are belong to us!
I highly doubt Microsoft will close Windows 8 completely. The entire industry would be up in arms. If there was a better way to alienate every IT department and every tech company in existence, that would be it. Nobody wants to be locked in to Microsoft. They tolerate it because of the 3rd party software, OEM, and other industries where Windows is the only supported OS. If Microsoft locked down their software to their own hardware, people would be jumping ship to Linux and Android left and right.
It would be an incredibly bad idea. I have a hard time imagining this. Of course (I just replied to a Nokia threat below), Nokia becoming Microsoft's subsidiary was unimaginable too. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if Microsoft's plan was to buy out Nokia in the first place. So maybe they are stupid enough to try to force their software on their own hardware and tie their OS to their own walled garden.
Highly doubtful that Nokia was planning their own tablet line. If that had ever been on their radar, they would've done it from day 1 when the iPad rumors first started, not just from when they became Microsoft's subsidiary. Not to mention that they would've been the first to jump on the Windows 8 RT platform were they really interested in the market.
Nokia's problem is that they don't have the leadership or the vision to go anywhere. They had the top spot for so many years that they ultimately became complacent and distracted, lost their focus, and was unable to adapt to the rise of the smartphone.
They came into the arena too little too late, but when they finally had something decent, a viable competitor to Apple and the then-rising Google, they completely blew away their years of investment and made a 90 degree direction change. It's just more indication that they don't know who they are, what they want, or where they want to go.
This doesn't seem to have changed. They've gone all-in on Microsoft for smartphones. But they haven't quite figured out what exactly they're trying to do with Windows Phone 7. All they know is that they have a few smartphones with it as the OS, and some more in the works. But they have yet to elaborate on what makes these phones different from the competition, nor why people would want to use them over the competition.
As responsible as Microsoft is in bringing Nokia down, a Microsoft tablet product is completely unrelated to this.
To be honest, the OEMs weren't exactly Microsoft's "allies". They have all released tablets running on a competing platform (Android mostly, but WebOS is too). It's not like they pledged to be Microsoft-exclusive. In fact, most OEMs have to be "convinced" to not sell other OSes.
This is a good move. You can argue about the qualities of the resulting product from this decision, but in a market where Microsoft has nothing to lose and everything to gain, where the risk is small and the rewards are great, the direction has merit.
People like to trot out the Zune as a predictive indicator of where their tablets will go. There are a few key differences here however:
1) There were no MP3 players running on Microsoft software. Sure, a bunch of them interfaced with Windows Media Player in a specific way. But that's not the same as running Microsoft-written firmware.
2) There were no legacy applications developed for a pre-existing product. There was no integration with any existing app store nor the ability to port code written for say, Windows CE, to the Zune. Zune "apps" had to be developed from more or less scratch.
3) Apple dominates the MP3 player market, completely. Even Android is not marketed as an MP3 player OS. It's a smartphone OS with the ability to play MP3s. To break into that market directly is much like Apple trying to breaking into the enterprise computer market directly: suicide.
The Zune was effectively a brand new product running on a brand new ecosystem. This tablet has the existing Windows ecosystem to back it. It is entering a market relatively with weak demand from an angle that Microsoft dominates and where demand is stronger (entering the tablet market from an ultra-thin laptops standpoint). And most importantly, Microsoft isn't trying to sell tablets; they're trying to sell tablet software. Which mean even if the device doesn't sell well, if they can push the OEMs to release better products and high-end products, and they can make Windows 8 desirable, then they'll have succeeded.
...if all this noise from Microsoft was trying to preempt all of the press that Google's announcement would generate using their own announcement. It explains why Microsoft's seemed premature.
WRT Buddhism, living effectively is hell. Death is but a way of going from one form of hell to another (sometimes worse). The only escape is spiritual enlightenment, which is as close to a concept of "heaven" as there will be in Buddhism. Only, this heaven is a state of existence.
Your list gives essentially the equivalent of "construction work" for men. As well, it also reflects that many women don't care to be the breadwinner of the household, and are only interested in taking jobs with flexible schedules. The why of that should be fairly obvious.
The other thing I want to point out is that though there may be an overall societal discrimination against women going into math and engineering fields, there's also the fact that these are relatively introverted professions. As women tend to like socializing, these jobs are not nearly as appealing to them as jobs that require (allow) talking to other, preferably different people (likewise, men who enjoy socializing also have a tendency to take the jobs in that list).
Creation has value, the only question is how much value, and how to recognize it.
By your very own logic, if creation has value, then the artist should be paid for the act of creating. Copying is not an act of creation, and therefore has a separate value (which is near 0 in the digital age).
Correct. The "artists" just want to make a quick buck. That's the same pervasive mentality that cumulated in the current recession and "financial crisis." Everybody wants to make money without actually having to do anything.
Microsoft has basically stepped up and informed the beige-box pushers of the world that they think that they don't have what it takes to build an iPad killer, even if Windows8 is the best thing since sliced kittens(to be fair, MS is probably right).
Microsoft setting the gold standard with a top-notch device means everyone else is going to just have to up the ante and do one better if they hope to play in the Windows 8 arena. Not only tablets though, because this new device actually competes with laptops as well.
There are two things that can result from this move: 1) OEMs step up and bring their A game or 2) OEMs jump ship to Google's low-cost ecosystem. I suspect it'll end up a bit of both. A lot of the bigger names will do the former. HP, Lenovo, Sony, Dell, Panasonic, Samsung, etc. will release high-end enterprise and luxury offerings that'll make this look like a child's toy. But all the low-cost, non-enterprise portable devices will be dominated by Google.
I suspect this is what Microsoft always wanted. The low end wasn't making them a whole lot of money anyway (the machines were blah and the software was usually pirated). Enterprise mobile--which Blackberry once dominated and where Microsoft has a stragglehold--and high end luxury which is Apple's current territory, is the direction Microsoft wants to push its software (and hardware) towards.
Either way, I think this is a good thing. As long as they don't screw it up that is.
No, not even that. They wouldn't be so intent on nuclear weapons if Bush hadn't named them a part of the "Axis of Evil" that included Saddam Hussein's Iraq at the time. Considering what happened to Iraq (and Afghanistan, but not to Pakistan), pursuing nuclear weapons was their only choice.
If the cooling water comes out hot enough, it can also be used to heat the building's water supply. Or at least it can be used to help out, e.g. keeping the water in the pipes warm.
This power for the President to order hits on individuals exists. Not sure where it came from, but it exists. The President has the Big Red Button (TM). This was true during the days of the Cold War. That doesn't seem to have changed.
I wouldn't necessarily blame the President for it though. If you want to blame someone, blame congress, for allowing the power to exist. Or blame congress, for not taking the power away.
We should indeed be thankful that Obama is pressing the button and not someone else, because that's what leaders do, instead of hiding behind his chief of staff. We should equally be incensed no one's taken it away yet, or even mentioned taking it away.
Little known secret about Gitmo: Terrorists voluntarily spill the beans after they're forced to analyze the Windows source code for exploits. Everybody's led to believe it's waterboarding, but that's actually the lesser evil. There's a reason they don't send drones out for the engineers-turned-terrorists.