Again, you miss the point. I assume that is because you are emotionally vested in this (swearing doesn't make you sound more forceful, just more emotional) and your emotions must be clouding any sense of consistent logic. The "it's not fair" argument works well for little kids, but this is more of an adult topic than playground teasing. It's about business, law, etc.
Apple never agreed to charge a reasonable price for the pinch and zoom patent. They applied for it, and were granted it. If you have issue with them getting that patent fine (I don't like it was granted to them either, and I agree its a stupid patent in the first place, however... that is another conversation). The fact remains is they were granted it, and it is not a patent they agreed to license at a fair price. Samsung however did agree to license certain patents at a fair price, and they are trying to charge some vendors (who compete more aggressively and charge them a lot for patents, e.g. Apple) significantly different terms than others. In other words, it would appear they are trying to "get back at apple" by abusing patents they agreed they wouldn't abuse.
It doesn't matter if Apple charges a billion dollars a phone for pinch and zoom. They never agreed to license it to anyone in the first place. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the USPTO office, but not Apple for leveraging their IP. Samsung and Google's abuse of patent essential patents risks upending all standards for everyone. If they can abuse them, why can't everyone who holds a patent essential patent. Once you open that door, who would ever develop a product using standards... you risk $$$$$$ abuse once the standard is established.
Being controlled by your emotions when making decisions can be a very reckless thing... i'd suggest you take a longer look at your miss-guided opinion.
I think you guys don't understand what “standards essential” patents are and how they came to become STANDARDS essential. You seem to think common patents = standards essential patents, and that just isn’t the case.
So for the record, Apple really isn't abusing standards essential patents like Samsung/Motorola. When a standard is being debated, and before it's agreed on by a standard body, the patent owner is consultant and (in virtually all cases where it becomes a standard) the owner agree to license that patent fairly and without discrimination (meaning to competitors). Microsoft and Apple aren't abusing their PATTENT ESSENTIAL patents. They are just making people pay up for using their other patents that happen to provide common functionality.
In other words, Apple and Microsoft aren't in the position Samsung and Google/Moto are in. They have patents on things that, while seem standard or essential, they didn't agree to license them with any "standards" body. They are just really popular things that everybody wants.
Maybe some examples will help you understand. Motorola agreed to certain wifi and video patent licensing before their patented technologies where included by the governing standards body. Microsoft agreed to ZERO licensing agreements for their proprietary product ActiveSync technology (not exactly true anymore, since the EU got involved, but that would be another debate). However, Apple didn't agree to allow pinch and zoom as a standard and the EU hasn’t forced them to license it. It’s just pinch and zoom is really cool and everyone copied them. Fast forward and Google-Motorola is pissed that Apple and Microsoft won't let them use their active sync and pinch and zoom patents for free so they are breaking their promise on the wifi/video patents and charging absurd rates for those patents. It’s not the pot calling the kettle black. You just don't understand the back story.
Apple may have cleared him. but the SEC hasn't. I suspect Apple is only clearing him because of the speculation, rumors, and falling stock.
The internet is
buzzing withspeculation that Steve Jobs may step down over reports that he profited $7.5
million in stock options by falsifying an executive board meeting. The financial
times has a good
overview of the unfolding story.
From the Article:
"Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, was handed
7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorization from the company's
board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter.
Records that purported to show a full board meeting had
taken place to approve Mr Jobs' remuneration, as required by Apple's procedures,
were later falsified. These are now among the pieces of evidence being weighed
by the Securities and Exchange Commission as it decides whether to pursue a case
against the company or any individuals over the affair, according to these
people."
To put my post's tech specs in perspective for you:
We bought 60 machines all identical, and pretty biefed up. Because of the volume (and competing vendors) we negotiated the cost of each machine without monitor down to about $1300, and the monitors were another $500. Our target was about $400 a year per machine, so we came pretty close.
They are extremely fast, but justifiable because they are REALLY all they get for the next 5 years. The only thing we plan to possibly change is the video cards if HDCP becomes an issue (the monitors support it). The machines look like this: 4gig of 800mhz ram, 256 video, sata 80gig at 10k rpm, and 2.6 duo chips with the 1066fsb and 4mb l2.
As a matter of practice we erase the images twice a year. And key user settigns like favorites, desktop, etc. are stored in a customized local user folder for scripted backups. Their documents (my documents) are pathed to a server and that is where they are told to save work. We path departments to a permission based file server for the rest of the work.
We run a pretty tight shop as far as policies go and don't allow much without authorization. Vista user control makes that super easy for us, and its already stopped about a dozen people who have tried to download random stuff off the web.
This client doesn't use us for MAC support, they use a top notch MAC group supporting the 24 mac desktops in the company (in New York). They spend almost 4 times the amount of support hours that we spend year over year. Not my numbers the CFOs (and we run the mail, dba, web, and remote access/terminal solutions as well). And before people say these guys don't know apple stuff, this company is one that the Apple stores in the area use when they can't fix a hardware problem.
The bottom line is this, if you understand the MS tech and running a standard office enviroment, you just aren't going to beat it with the competing tech today. You obviously have to understand good IT principals and able to implement solid operating procedures, but that is a given in any field... be good at what you do, duh.
I am a big fan of MS because it works really well. To the point where techs use our ticketing software to manage 4-5 (1 guy 7) approx. 50 seat offices with little redundancy between them. Lately the most frequent questions we get from these guys are (laughabley) iTunes/iPod questions.
I have a small client (75 users) and we are on a five year plan for new hardware... it was up in October. We bought new Dell's and Vista Business in November, and rolled them out last week.
In the Ad industry we have to use lots (7) of custom apps for Media, Accounting, and Shipping. We had 2 problems. 1 wasn't the program but the installer didn't detect the correct OS. It was a small app so we just copied it over with its.dlls. The other problem was solved perfectly by running the shortcut in compatibility mode.
As for the users: very happy with Vista and Office 2007. I mean, really happy. I'm sure it helps that they now have big flat screen monitors and faster computers, but we are getting lots of good feedback at the agency.
The OS: We wrote a few custom gadgets to automate a few tacks in about 10 minutes a piece, and people love them. We don't do the indexed search for network shares so people really aren't talking about that, but believe it or not, they love the animations and the "pretty" stuff. We never had a problem with XP crashing or anything so the fact that Vista is stable doesn't really change much for us.
For anyone thinking about Office 2007: It went over huge here, between the ribbon and all the visual additions (especially smart objects). Actually our Accounting department is loving the new excel, and our president is pretty excited about the toys in powerpoint. Word seems to be liked but that is the one we hear least about.
From my perspective: The Vista imaging software and new group policy is awesome. We did the rollout over the weekend, and it went off without a hitch. I'm not really giving MS credit for that, we worked on the image for a few weeks, but we are very happy so far.
anyone else find the irony here funny. Google is on the side of keeping this a closed circuit project and MS is part of the alliance trying to make it open.
Sure they "could", but they won't. At the very best they will allow some API's into their database, but then they will find a way to integrate their ads with it. Whatever the case, Google is going to be the sole owner of their project here (by the way there is nothing wrong with that either).
Google is just as "evil" as any other corporation, its just thus far they have put enough spin on what they do to skirt the label.
"Every reasonable person on the planet already knows, and has known, that every OS has bugs, vulnerabilities, and security issues, and Mac OS X is no exception. "
That is pretty ballsy to call the majority of slashdotter's unreasonable.
i guess that funny. In his defense its very common to have EXTERNAL hard drives, and even more common to find laptop owners with them... I believe he mentioned his laptop correct?
To that point. The New York Times is bias and is always going to be. Like all papers. But you certainly couldn't call the NY Times a friend to MS... they have historically and presentaly been anti MS almost as much as slashdot.
Why? Becuase that industry uses MACs. The fact they claim MS pieces are fluff is absurd, all we get from the NY Times 99% of the time is fluff pieces on MACs. Because the people who are typing the articles on, on a mac, and die hard apple fan boys. This is common knowledge... and slashdot has even covered the media's bias for apple.
"Numerous experts have said there's no practical or safe way to make a bomb from separate liquids onboard an airplane"
The problem with what you are implying is this: If you know somebody is TRYING to blow up the plane, do you let them on? Do you let them continue with their plot because they are too stupid to figure a clever way, or maybe, you are too stupid to figure out their plan.
"experts" are fleeting. There are very few that are consistently correct in any field, and at some point you have to use a little common sense. If you know person A wants to blow up a plane, is actively working on a new method to blow up the said plane, do you let them keep trying? Apparently most people on this thread think you do because he was trying to figure out how to do it with liquids.
I'm not for making everyone's life a hassle when they board a plane, I'd much rather see profiling, but if we can't use common sense because of the Politically Correct crowd, then we should at least go after KNOWN people who are plotting to blow up planes... regardless of how practical we think their method is at the moment.
MS's format is technically superior, and produces smaller file sizes because of the compression algorithms. It is also going to be more widely used because despite the best efforts the OSS community Open Office just can't compete with Office 2007 in the work place. And yes, before I get slammed as a troll, I'm not saying there are no downsides to the MS format... but it does allow for more features.
The big downside (for slashdotters) is that Open XML is a MS product and not "owned" by the Open Source community. People on this site hate it, not because it's bad or worse than ODF, but because it's MS's creation.
For you anti-ms people i have a question, a hypnotical really. If you had cancer and were on your death bed and "Satan" creates a cure for cancer, do you take it? Your only option is die or take the cure. But the devil made it... what do you do?
Many people on Slashdot have been screaming for over a year that Vista doesn't offer anything new, nothing worth upgrading for, etc. Well, it seems to me it does. I think anyone who is intellectually honest would agree... I might be on the wrong site?
This article points out 1 cool thing, a new networking stack, but it isn't the only thing. And actually he doesn't even talk about IPv6. For example, my lab at home I has 3 Vista installs, and the communicate out of the box over IPv6. In a couple of years IPv6 will be main-stream because of MS, and we all know the benefits from using the upgraded protocol.
-I think it's cool that when you browse the network people can see a picture of the person instead of the Computer Icon.
-I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista.
-For Remote Access: PNRP. Again, really cool... do a search if you don't know what it is.
-Even the average business user will benefit from little things like the snippet tool (prety cool by the way, it's in the accessories folder if you haven't tried it yet).
-I have clients that are going to love the way the Windows clock works now. They can jump around by month, year, or decade in seconds. Those little things are pretty cool. These are just random features that popped into my head, but it seems that Vista has LOTS of things other than Aero to encourage upgrading on all fronts (Security, tools, toys, looks, games, etc.).
Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc. Meanwhile Windows has had those features for years, hell, Unix has for decades!
MS may not have invented the notion of every new feature in Vista, but it's a good product, and way better than XP. A worthy upgrade. It's not one feature that makes it a good product, but the cumulative of many features. I think you anti-ms people lose a lot of credibility when you blindly bash MS and say Vista sucks and it offers no reasons to upgrade for anyone. For all users it has some pretty enticing plusses.
you write this piece as if Slashdot was "pro" Xbox/MS. That couldn't be further from the truth.
The fact of the matter we have been reading articles about the 360 for a year now. The reality is for you sony fans is that Sony appearently screwed up with the PS3. hence the management re-org in the conpany game division.
This IS NEWS, for two reasons. The re-org, and the FT anylysy of break even. Its not like the FT is a MS fanboy...
Don't be such a poor sport when you guys don't do as well.
Somewhere along the line our nation went from a Republic to an odd politically correct hybrid of socialism where the rights of the few outweigh the rights of the many. 1% of the population can now dictate and control 99% of the population. That simply isn't right.
I'm certainly not for making the life of Blind people harder, or anyone with a disability. However, the disabilities act just is abused. This is a perfect example. Look, it sucks to be blind I'm sure, but it is not your god given right to have a society bend around you to meet your needs. It is your responsibility to find a way to work in the society. I can't ride in little sports cars, because I'm too tall... does that mean the automakers are violating my "right" to drive in their cars? The disabilities act may have been passed with good intentions, but it's just another example of liberals who are short sighted (or worse).
Blind people can use a money reader, or they could use credit cards, etc. Blind and people with disabilities often have to by special equipment, and there is nothing wrong with that. Frankly they aren't the only people in society that can't do things like normal people. Hell, if you are too tall, you have to go to specialty stores to buy clothes. The Government shouldn't be able to pass a law and mandate Wal-Mart carry all Big and Tall sizes.
The truth is this isn't about Blind people. This is about some a-hole lawyer/firm trying to make a name for themselves. Even worse a bunch of liberals, the self proclaimed "knower's of what's best for everyone else" will jump on board and give this some weight. This will cost society big $$ for no good reason. I'll tell you one thing; this kind of stuff sure as hell isn't what the founding fathers had in mind when they founded the nation, that's for sure. Don't even get me started on legalized discrimination, a.k.a. Affirmative Action.
Well see fix the rebooting and this author of the article is wrong! Obviously this guy hasn't seen Microsoft's new Ribbon interface in Office 2007....
The problem with Slashdot lately is that they keeps posting these trolling articles. Computers lack so much intuitiveness its laugable to think that machines can't still increase productivity human productivity.
Last time I checked I can't open up every program, save every files, or view every website in its enitrety the millisecond I click on the icon. Maybe when computers can repsond to the word "dicate:" and it doesn't make any mistakes while I speak and then it offers better ways to word something. We can all imagine in the SHORT-TERM things that could significantly speed productivity, nevermind long-term scfi type ideas.
This article was a bad read. It wasn't though provoking, and is obviously a troll... what should have been an iignored poor attempt to get some noteriaty, slashdot has elevated to many thousands of reads. I just wish slashdot wouldn't post crap like this.
I use to primarily use this site for news, but now, well, I don't. I know people say this all the time, but its true.
Unless you are only making software in the EU then it probably doesn't matter. If you plan on selling your software outside the EU (like the US) you can't use the code.
Linux integration outside the EU jurisdiction will really make Linux corporate customers vulnerable to MS suits.
The "locks" Cell phone providers put on phones is completely legitamete. They buy the exclusive rights for the model they cell.
Cell Phone carriers OFTEN (almost always) heavily discount the phones, and its not uncommon for a phone to vary in pricing from carrier to carrier. Also some phones are only available under 1 provider, because of partnerships. Its outrageous that this guy has the power to waltz into an industry and essentially void multi-billion dollar contracts on the mis-guided notion of "fairness".
This guy is starting to tread into waters he obviously knows little about. This isn't about user choice, its about corporate investments. This decision on cell phones could easily lead to carriers NOT discounting phones and cell phones pricing to go through the roof. Or worse, cell phone carriers stop using CDMA or GSM, and they start creating their own breeds of signals... what a nightmare.
I say follow the money. I'll bet any of you this guy has ties to small phone carriers, or some lobbying group related to them...
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you miss the point. I assume that is because you are emotionally vested in this (swearing doesn't make you sound more forceful, just more emotional) and your emotions must be clouding any sense of consistent logic. The "it's not fair" argument works well for little kids, but this is more of an adult topic than playground teasing. It's about business, law, etc.
Apple never agreed to charge a reasonable price for the pinch and zoom patent. They applied for it, and were granted it. If you have issue with them getting that patent fine (I don't like it was granted to them either, and I agree its a stupid patent in the first place, however... that is another conversation). The fact remains is they were granted it, and it is not a patent they agreed to license at a fair price. Samsung however did agree to license certain patents at a fair price, and they are trying to charge some vendors (who compete more aggressively and charge them a lot for patents, e.g. Apple) significantly different terms than others. In other words, it would appear they are trying to "get back at apple" by abusing patents they agreed they wouldn't abuse.
It doesn't matter if Apple charges a billion dollars a phone for pinch and zoom. They never agreed to license it to anyone in the first place. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the USPTO office, but not Apple for leveraging their IP. Samsung and Google's abuse of patent essential patents risks upending all standards for everyone. If they can abuse them, why can't everyone who holds a patent essential patent. Once you open that door, who would ever develop a product using standards... you risk $$$$$$ abuse once the standard is established.
Being controlled by your emotions when making decisions can be a very reckless thing... i'd suggest you take a longer look at your miss-guided opinion.
I think you guys don't understand what “standards essential” patents are and how they came to become STANDARDS essential. You seem to think common patents = standards essential patents, and that just isn’t the case.
So for the record, Apple really isn't abusing standards essential patents like Samsung/Motorola. When a standard is being debated, and before it's agreed on by a standard body, the patent owner is consultant and (in virtually all cases where it becomes a standard) the owner agree to license that patent fairly and without discrimination (meaning to competitors). Microsoft and Apple aren't abusing their PATTENT ESSENTIAL patents. They are just making people pay up for using their other patents that happen to provide common functionality.
In other words, Apple and Microsoft aren't in the position Samsung and Google/Moto are in. They have patents on things that, while seem standard or essential, they didn't agree to license them with any "standards" body. They are just really popular things that everybody wants.
Maybe some examples will help you understand. Motorola agreed to certain wifi and video patent licensing before their patented technologies where included by the governing standards body. Microsoft agreed to ZERO licensing agreements for their proprietary product ActiveSync technology (not exactly true anymore, since the EU got involved, but that would be another debate). However, Apple didn't agree to allow pinch and zoom as a standard and the EU hasn’t forced them to license it. It’s just pinch and zoom is really cool and everyone copied them. Fast forward and Google-Motorola is pissed that Apple and Microsoft won't let them use their active sync and pinch and zoom patents for free so they are breaking their promise on the wifi/video patents and charging absurd rates for those patents. It’s not the pot calling the kettle black. You just don't understand the back story.
The internet is buzzing withspeculation that Steve Jobs may step down over reports that he profited $7.5 million in stock options by falsifying an executive board meeting. The financial times has a good overview of the unfolding story.
From the Article:
"Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, was handed 7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorization from the company's board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter.
Records that purported to show a full board meeting had taken place to approve Mr Jobs' remuneration, as required by Apple's procedures, were later falsified. These are now among the pieces of evidence being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as it decides whether to pursue a case against the company or any individuals over the affair, according to these people."
To put my post's tech specs in perspective for you:
We bought 60 machines all identical, and pretty biefed up. Because of the volume (and competing vendors) we negotiated the cost of each machine without monitor down to about $1300, and the monitors were another $500. Our target was about $400 a year per machine, so we came pretty close.
They are extremely fast, but justifiable because they are REALLY all they get for the next 5 years. The only thing we plan to possibly change is the video cards if HDCP becomes an issue (the monitors support it). The machines look like this: 4gig of 800mhz ram, 256 video, sata 80gig at 10k rpm, and 2.6 duo chips with the 1066fsb and 4mb l2.
As a matter of practice we erase the images twice a year. And key user settigns like favorites, desktop, etc. are stored in a customized local user folder for scripted backups. Their documents (my documents) are pathed to a server and that is where they are told to save work. We path departments to a permission based file server for the rest of the work.
We run a pretty tight shop as far as policies go and don't allow much without authorization. Vista user control makes that super easy for us, and its already stopped about a dozen people who have tried to download random stuff off the web.
This client doesn't use us for MAC support, they use a top notch MAC group supporting the 24 mac desktops in the company (in New York). They spend almost 4 times the amount of support hours that we spend year over year. Not my numbers the CFOs (and we run the mail, dba, web, and remote access/terminal solutions as well). And before people say these guys don't know apple stuff, this company is one that the Apple stores in the area use when they can't fix a hardware problem.
The bottom line is this, if you understand the MS tech and running a standard office enviroment, you just aren't going to beat it with the competing tech today. You obviously have to understand good IT principals and able to implement solid operating procedures, but that is a given in any field... be good at what you do, duh.
I am a big fan of MS because it works really well. To the point where techs use our ticketing software to manage 4-5 (1 guy 7) approx. 50 seat offices with little redundancy between them. Lately the most frequent questions we get from these guys are (laughabley) iTunes/iPod questions.
I have a small client (75 users) and we are on a five year plan for new hardware... it was up in October. We bought new Dell's and Vista Business in November, and rolled them out last week.
.dlls. The other problem was solved perfectly by running the shortcut in compatibility mode.
In the Ad industry we have to use lots (7) of custom apps for Media, Accounting, and Shipping. We had 2 problems. 1 wasn't the program but the installer didn't detect the correct OS. It was a small app so we just copied it over with its
As for the users: very happy with Vista and Office 2007. I mean, really happy. I'm sure it helps that they now have big flat screen monitors and faster computers, but we are getting lots of good feedback at the agency.
The OS: We wrote a few custom gadgets to automate a few tacks in about 10 minutes a piece, and people love them. We don't do the indexed search for network shares so people really aren't talking about that, but believe it or not, they love the animations and the "pretty" stuff. We never had a problem with XP crashing or anything so the fact that Vista is stable doesn't really change much for us.
For anyone thinking about Office 2007: It went over huge here, between the ribbon and all the visual additions (especially smart objects). Actually our Accounting department is loving the new excel, and our president is pretty excited about the toys in powerpoint. Word seems to be liked but that is the one we hear least about.
From my perspective: The Vista imaging software and new group policy is awesome. We did the rollout over the weekend, and it went off without a hitch. I'm not really giving MS credit for that, we worked on the image for a few weeks, but we are very happy so far.
Nobody can honestly believe a consolut maker would make units that freeze for time limits on use.
If they wanted to do that they would just do it in the code and have a nice message popup tellingthe peoplet heir time had expired.
The fact of the matter is that Sony kiosks are hot, and the PS3s are overheating and freezzing up. Especially durring high usage, e.g. Motorstorm.
Imagine if MS said they made Windows 98 crash on purpose... to stop trojen software from having uninterupted control over a users machine.
"The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented."
1 word.
Atlantis.
Here is just another example of how MS keeps following Apple's lead...
Oh wait. Nevermind.
FLAME AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
anyone else find the irony here funny. Google is on the side of keeping this a closed circuit project and MS is part of the alliance trying to make it open.
Its funny. Laugh.
Sure they "could", but they won't. At the very best they will allow some API's into their database, but then they will find a way to integrate their ads with it. Whatever the case, Google is going to be the sole owner of their project here (by the way there is nothing wrong with that either).
Google is just as "evil" as any other corporation, its just thus far they have put enough spin on what they do to skirt the label.
"Every reasonable person on the planet already knows, and has known, that every OS has bugs, vulnerabilities, and security issues, and Mac OS X is no exception. "
That is pretty ballsy to call the majority of slashdotter's unreasonable.
i guess that funny. In his defense its very common to have EXTERNAL hard drives, and even more common to find laptop owners with them... I believe he mentioned his laptop correct?
Here is the video:
f 34614:10f95e37a71:-21d5&fr_story=d14603c1e23e6ce37 920a8134a2e27b1405a4991&st=1166451673301&mp=WMP&cp f=true&fvn=9&fr=121806_092144_26f34614x10f95e37a71 xw21d4&rdm=78088.30855380128
http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp?nsid=b26
To that point. The New York Times is bias and is always going to be. Like all papers. But you certainly couldn't call the NY Times a friend to MS... they have historically and presentaly been anti MS almost as much as slashdot.
Why? Becuase that industry uses MACs. The fact they claim MS pieces are fluff is absurd, all we get from the NY Times 99% of the time is fluff pieces on MACs. Because the people who are typing the articles on, on a mac, and die hard apple fan boys. This is common knowledge... and slashdot has even covered the media's bias for apple.
LOL. I'm certainly no hack and found where they were being sold.
Its funny how companies try and make themselves more relevant than they really are....
You really missed the point here.
Development costs would be much cheaper and the game wouldn't have to be $60.
That said, I'm not sure you have any reason to make such a bold statement. If the game play was really good than people would buy the game...
"Numerous experts have said there's no practical or safe way to make a bomb from separate liquids onboard an airplane"
The problem with what you are implying is this: If you know somebody is TRYING to blow up the plane, do you let them on? Do you let them continue with their plot because they are too stupid to figure a clever way, or maybe, you are too stupid to figure out their plan.
"experts" are fleeting. There are very few that are consistently correct in any field, and at some point you have to use a little common sense. If you know person A wants to blow up a plane, is actively working on a new method to blow up the said plane, do you let them keep trying? Apparently most people on this thread think you do because he was trying to figure out how to do it with liquids.
I'm not for making everyone's life a hassle when they board a plane, I'd much rather see profiling, but if we can't use common sense because of the Politically Correct crowd, then we should at least go after KNOWN people who are plotting to blow up planes... regardless of how practical we think their method is at the moment.
MS's format is technically superior, and produces smaller file sizes because of the compression algorithms. It is also going to be more widely used because despite the best efforts the OSS community Open Office just can't compete with Office 2007 in the work place. And yes, before I get slammed as a troll, I'm not saying there are no downsides to the MS format... but it does allow for more features.
The big downside (for slashdotters) is that Open XML is a MS product and not "owned" by the Open Source community. People on this site hate it, not because it's bad or worse than ODF, but because it's MS's creation.
For you anti-ms people i have a question, a hypnotical really. If you had cancer and were on your death bed and "Satan" creates a cure for cancer, do you take it? Your only option is die or take the cure. But the devil made it... what do you do?
Many people on Slashdot have been screaming for over a year that Vista doesn't offer anything new, nothing worth upgrading for, etc. Well, it seems to me it does. I think anyone who is intellectually honest would agree... I might be on the wrong site?
This article points out 1 cool thing, a new networking stack, but it isn't the only thing. And actually he doesn't even talk about IPv6. For example, my lab at home I has 3 Vista installs, and the communicate out of the box over IPv6. In a couple of years IPv6 will be main-stream because of MS, and we all know the benefits from using the upgraded protocol.
-I think it's cool that when you browse the network people can see a picture of the person instead of the Computer Icon.
-I also do photography, and you use to be able to open an image file on an OSX machine and XP and it would look better on the OSX box. Not with vista.
-For Remote Access: PNRP. Again, really cool... do a search if you don't know what it is.
-Even the average business user will benefit from little things like the snippet tool (prety cool by the way, it's in the accessories folder if you haven't tried it yet).
-I have clients that are going to love the way the Windows clock works now. They can jump around by month, year, or decade in seconds. Those little things are pretty cool.
These are just random features that popped into my head, but it seems that Vista has LOTS of things other than Aero to encourage upgrading on all fronts (Security, tools, toys, looks, games, etc.).
Seriously, apple announces multiple desktops and have this site has a heart attack.... then praises Steve Jobs for being an inventor, a genius, etc. Meanwhile Windows has had those features for years, hell, Unix has for decades!
MS may not have invented the notion of every new feature in Vista, but it's a good product, and way better than XP. A worthy upgrade. It's not one feature that makes it a good product, but the cumulative of many features. I think you anti-ms people lose a lot of credibility when you blindly bash MS and say Vista sucks and it offers no reasons to upgrade for anyone. For all users it has some pretty enticing plusses.
you write this piece as if Slashdot was "pro" Xbox/MS. That couldn't be further from the truth.
The fact of the matter we have been reading articles about the 360 for a year now. The reality is for you sony fans is that Sony appearently screwed up with the PS3. hence the management re-org in the conpany game division.
This IS NEWS, for two reasons. The re-org, and the FT anylysy of break even. Its not like the FT is a MS fanboy...
Don't be such a poor sport when you guys don't do as well.
This guy wrote the piece the VERY DAY it was released!!! He has no numbers, facts, ro anything else to go by.
u lt.mspx
If you watched Steve Ballmer's keynote you would see quote a few fortune 500 companies ALREADY begining their upgrades
http://www.microsoft.com/business/launch2007/defa
Why does slashdot post this crap? Oh wait thats right. Nevermind.
Somewhere along the line our nation went from a Republic to an odd politically correct hybrid of socialism where the rights of the few outweigh the rights of the many. 1% of the population can now dictate and control 99% of the population. That simply isn't right.
I'm certainly not for making the life of Blind people harder, or anyone with a disability. However, the disabilities act just is abused. This is a perfect example. Look, it sucks to be blind I'm sure, but it is not your god given right to have a society bend around you to meet your needs. It is your responsibility to find a way to work in the society. I can't ride in little sports cars, because I'm too tall... does that mean the automakers are violating my "right" to drive in their cars? The disabilities act may have been passed with good intentions, but it's just another example of liberals who are short sighted (or worse).
Blind people can use a money reader, or they could use credit cards, etc. Blind and people with disabilities often have to by special equipment, and there is nothing wrong with that. Frankly they aren't the only people in society that can't do things like normal people. Hell, if you are too tall, you have to go to specialty stores to buy clothes. The Government shouldn't be able to pass a law and mandate Wal-Mart carry all Big and Tall sizes.
The truth is this isn't about Blind people. This is about some a-hole lawyer/firm trying to make a name for themselves. Even worse a bunch of liberals, the self proclaimed "knower's of what's best for everyone else" will jump on board and give this some weight. This will cost society big $$ for no good reason.
I'll tell you one thing; this kind of stuff sure as hell isn't what the founding fathers had in mind when they founded the nation, that's for sure. Don't even get me started on legalized discrimination, a.k.a. Affirmative Action.
Well see fix the rebooting and this author of the article is wrong! Obviously this guy hasn't seen Microsoft's new Ribbon interface in Office 2007....
The problem with Slashdot lately is that they keeps posting these trolling articles. Computers lack so much intuitiveness its laugable to think that machines can't still increase productivity human productivity.
Last time I checked I can't open up every program, save every files, or view every website in its enitrety the millisecond I click on the icon. Maybe when computers can repsond to the word "dicate:" and it doesn't make any mistakes while I speak and then it offers better ways to word something. We can all imagine in the SHORT-TERM things that could significantly speed productivity, nevermind long-term scfi type ideas.
This article was a bad read. It wasn't though provoking, and is obviously a troll... what should have been an iignored poor attempt to get some noteriaty, slashdot has elevated to many thousands of reads. I just wish slashdot wouldn't post crap like this.
I use to primarily use this site for news, but now, well, I don't. I know people say this all the time, but its true.
Unless you are only making software in the EU then it probably doesn't matter. If you plan on selling your software outside the EU (like the US) you can't use the code.
Linux integration outside the EU jurisdiction will really make Linux corporate customers vulnerable to MS suits.
The "locks" Cell phone providers put on phones is completely legitamete. They buy the exclusive rights for the model they cell.
Cell Phone carriers OFTEN (almost always) heavily discount the phones, and its not uncommon for a phone to vary in pricing from carrier to carrier. Also some phones are only available under 1 provider, because of partnerships. Its outrageous that this guy has the power to waltz into an industry and essentially void multi-billion dollar contracts on the mis-guided notion of "fairness".
This guy is starting to tread into waters he obviously knows little about. This isn't about user choice, its about corporate investments. This decision on cell phones could easily lead to carriers NOT discounting phones and cell phones pricing to go through the roof. Or worse, cell phone carriers stop using CDMA or GSM, and they start creating their own breeds of signals... what a nightmare.
I say follow the money. I'll bet any of you this guy has ties to small phone carriers, or some lobbying group related to them...