If they need to send stuff out of house, that's what PDF is for. When was the last time they needed out-of-house Office editing??
Unfortunately many people who use Microsoft Office have a tendency to send the editable document to the (hopefully) appropriate people which can make for massive inconsistencies between the original document and any edits. The problem lies not with Microsoft Office or any Office software for that matter but with the people who are using the products.
You are correct in saying that any document should be sent out as a PDF especially if it is to people outside the company and only those who have been designated as maintainers will have change rights which also brings up another problem so mangers like to have something like "Share-point" or it's "Wiki" equivalent. In principle this is great except that over time unless you have a designated competent maintainer, you will have a mess on your hands.
No matter what software you have people need to understand what they are supposed to do and why and how to go about doing it. It is not an issue of whether the software is Linux or MS Windows based although many people with vested interests will disagree.
Actually a micro usb port has a MTBF of 10,000 insertions which if you do the arithmetic is approx 27 insertions a day over a year or for the normal user possibly 3 times a day for 9 years. You also have to keep in mind that since any type of connector that has physical contacts will eventually wear out due to constant connection and unplugging, however smart phones in the majority of cases would normally have a life of between 2 years (usually this is for a phone under a contract - at least in Australia) and 5 to 7 years for people who wish to keep their phone for a long time although IMHO why bother if you wish to continue a contract. Of course when choosing a phone you really need to determine what phone type and plan (ie. contact or pre-paid) suites you.
Without looking up statistics I think I would be fairly correct in saying that (at least in Australia) the majority of people would purchase a new phone every 2 (usually by contract) to 5 years (pre-paid) so unless you have a really shoddy micro usb in your phone you normally won't see many failures within the warranty or contact period.
How many TVs out there let you see the content of both HDMI ports simultaneously?
My HDTV will let you display picture on picture on a selected HDMI port and the TV tuner, however I actually found it pointless.
When you "snap" the TV view, it shows side by side your game so you can see both at the same time.
Honestly do you really think many people will use this?
Not many do, and if you're waiting for your game to load (xbox or ps4), you can snap and play the other while waiting. Or if you're waiting for your friend to get on and log in, no one said you can't play a quick game on the other port while waiting.
Again do you honestly think many people who own an Xbox-one and/or Xbox360 and/or PS3/4 are going to do this? While I wont comment on the Xbox360 I find my PS3 loads a game in well under a minute (usually 20~30 seconds) and that is not even enough time to play one round of Angry Birds. Not only that but the controllers are totally different so you would play one or the other but both?.
If Sony was smart, they'd put a mode that lets you see your friends on PSN that works well in "snapped" mode so you can monitor your friends list while waiting and playing something else.
Well I have not played the PS4 and not many have so who's to say Sony have not considered doing this although in my case if I am playing a game the last thing I want to do is monitor a friends list.
it depends on how it's coded. It's possible to code it in such a way that it's impossible to find by anyone but the person coding it. You gotta trust your programmer as much as you trust your doctor.
What you have said is true however it is not that difficult to actually determine what data goes in and out of a binary. Of course once the suspect flag has been raised there are many IT professionals who would take great delight in analysing that software.
but this brings another aspect - how long till users of android phones, iphones and whatever will be getting sued instead of the guy who sold the phone to them.. for many patents are not being utilized unless the phone is connected to some other network equipment.
Basically a normal smart phone user would not get sued for implementing a method that is out of the ordinary although how the so called patent holder would find out beggars the question. If just one single user of a smart phone got sued for a so called implementation method that was covered by a patent that would immediately get 10's if not 100's of millions of users against the patent holder for a start and the bad PR is not something that these people want. Of course if a company did infringe then they are fair game.
From TFA the attorney for TR Labs, George Summerfield stated:
"In fact, all of the claims and all of the patents are directed at a communications network, not the particular switching nodes that are manufactured by Cisco and the other companies that are subject of our claims,"
If you read that as is without any a deeper explanation I get the idea that TR Labs can sue anyone who has a communications network.
Again from TFA:
The patents TR Labs is asserting are U.S. Patent Numbers 4,956,835; 5,850,505; 6,377,543; 6,404,734; 6,421,349; 6,654,379; 6,914,880; and 7,260,059.
Am I going to look at those patent numbers? No ! I don't want to get get a migraine headache since many modern IT patents are written in "legalese" such that someone with a Professional Engineering (yes a real one) background who is actually conversant with the field has a hard time understanding the words. Of course the opposite applies since most legal people can understand the words but not the context.
Ok I did look at patent 4,956,835 and it was just like I thought it would be which is basically an implementation and still requires hardware which manufacturers like Cisco provide. The following is an intro:
The present invention relates, in general, to a method and apparatus for rapidly effecting, in a communications network, the restoration of communications between nodes whose interconnecting spans have failed for one reason or another.
I particularly like fig 1c which basically a stylised drawing of the USA (well worth the LOL look) - see here and click on fig "1c" of Images which is the second image from the left.
Moral of the story is, you can't help stupid people, but you can *force them to vote
In Australia you can be fined if your name is not marked off as having voted, however you don't have to put anything on the ballot papers if you don't want to or even just scribble on it. We call that the donkey vote and it is perfectly legal. Of course doing something like that is a wasted vote.
The American system is different in that voting is voluntary and not quite as complicated. Also there's not a whole host of parties with similar sounding names. If you wanted to vote properly in Australia on the weekend you had to number 110 boxes on a ballot paper about 1 metre wide. I WISH I WAS JOKING!
No! you did not have to number 110 boxes on the ballot paper, you could if you wish providing you knew all the candidates (who does?) or were a masochist, or you could just put the number "1" (above the line on the paper) for your preferred party. Of course you still had to number the senate ticket. if you could not do all this in under a minute well?
Most people in Australia vote for a party not a specific person unless they know them or of them and of course prefer them. This is why on election day all parties (well the major ones anyway) hand out "how to vote pamphlets". Is this a good thing? Well my answer to that is maybe but at least no-one points a weapon at you or some strangers come knocking at your door (well except for some Bible basher's).
Most URLS's are name.designation.country with many US URLS leaving off the "country" which should be us. So if you just see.com without the country you can be sure it is a "commercial US" URL. Now if you see.mil or.gov without a country code top level domain you could be forgiven for thinking it is a front for the NSA, although I think I would be a bit more worried about.xxx domains without a country designation.
For a list of top level domains the following site may be helpful although when they talk about the following ".edu", "gov" and ".mil" as USA top level domains this is right and wrong at the same time since other countries do use them followed by the country code top level domain and have been doing so for over 30 years.
Email has no technical privacy - it never has. Even in the beginning it was typically available to anyone who had access to the system it's on (back when people logged onto a shell account to retrieve their mail, sysadmins would have free reign over the entire firesystem).
System Admins still have full access to all file-systems under their control so you have to hope that they have enough integrity not to abuse their privilege. it is possible for a rogue System Admin to write filters to extract compromising email however if they are caught doing this then they can face a prison sentence and/or a hefty fine.
Actually pretty much all outgoing and incoming business or corporate email is actually read by virus protection software no matter if the mail server runs a Microsoft, Unix or Linux OS. The exception would be pass through mail although some companies like their virus protection software to vet this as well which can actually land the over enthusiastic company in hot water since this can be construed as reading and possibly blocking mail not destined for the said companies mail server(s).
If you have to have an admissions exam for a university, access to any university, or to secondary level education, something is wrong with the education system.
Why would you say that? You should realize that not all University/Collage applicants are people straight out of High School. There are also many who are what are classified as "Mature Aged Students" such as those who went into the workforce after leaving secondary school and later on (from approx age 20 plus) decided to further their education however it is stupid for any Tertiary education facility to just accept anyone without some screening and it is fairer to have everyone sit for admissions tests specific to the Tertiary education strand they are enrolling in.
It also must be remembered that Tertiary education can be quite a culture shock for students who have just finished High School since there can be many distractions that the new student is unprepared for and not all is academic.
Considering 2TB USB 3 external disk drives are fairly cheap you can put six times that and still carry around it in your shirt pocket. In fact you will soon be able to get 512 GB and 1TB USB thumb drives although initially they will not be cheap.
The absolute *minimum* I would in fact recommend if you're intent on making life difficult for any would-be data snooper is dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda.
You are quite correct if you wish to reuse the disk drive although that is still no 100% guarantee, however if your data is so sensitive and you wish to completely erase it then destroying the drive by shredding and burning the platter(s) are the only option. Because disk drives are fairly cheap it would be better to just use a new disk and shred the old one. Of course then you have to seriously take into account what to do with all backups if any have been performed.
I think the question that is worth asking is "Why do you think you need to actually ruthlessly reformat your disk or disks?". If there is a good enough reason then the safest is shred and burn, then remove all backups, however if they are in "The Cloud" then forget it.
I wish they could take the opportunity and do some work on the packaging system.
If you mean rpm's why would you want to install an rpm package using the rpm command unless that package is basically stand-alone? It is much easier using yum which determines all dependences and installs them.
Now that systemd has pretty much overhauled most of the user land, and Wayland will be forcing them to write the whole dependencies trees anyhow, and they already have their new installer, I'd like to see something like a cross between GNU Guix and Gentoo Portage be made for Red Hat\Fedora.
You do know that systemd is a system management daemon designed exclusively for the Linux kernel and Fedora became the first major Linux distribution to deploy systemd in May 2011.
I run Fedora 19 with KDE on my home machines. Basically I set aside about 5 to 6 hours every six months to upgrade and when I say upgrade I mean a complete re-installation of the latest Fedora from DVD. Even though I actually backup my data (over 1TB) progressively I have never had to recover my data since I use LVM to manage my disks and all I have to do is make sure the system volumes including swap and of course the/boot partition are sized properly. Actually the only time I did have to recover my data when I converted the file-system from ext3 to ext4 and IMHO the performance improvement was worth it.
I have actually found Fedora from 10 onward have been remarkably stable although I will admit when KDE 4.0 came out (I think that was with Fedora 15) I actually switched to Gnome util they fixed the stability issues, however that was not a Fedora issue.
Would I recommend Fedora for the Enterprise? Hell no! since you want any enterprise solution to be supported and in large corporations this usually means a Microsoft OS (this is changing but slowly) for the desktop and a mix of Linux (in my experience Redhat), Microsoft and Unix for the server room.
I read the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was written by Arthur C Clark a few years prior to watched the film when it came out. Personally I did like the film but If I had not read the book I would have found many parts of the film and particularly it's ending incomprehensible. To write a 22,000 work critique on the film to me is rather a waste since the best way of understanding the film is to read the book. Sill I do remember when the movie "Star Wars" (125 minutes long) came out there were many hours of TV time dedicated to how they did the special effects which to me was surprisingly entertaining.
Ok, let me get this straight... You would use Outlook in a nightclub? Really? Somehow I don't see that as a killer feature...
Well you could use Outlook in a nightclub to keep track of all those girls/guys who are sending you email:)
I actually have seen a few people use Excel and Word on their tablets whilst on a train however IMHO this is silly and definitely non productive when they could be tackling some of the more difficult levels of "Angry Birds".:)
Please don't tell me to write in emacs and process through LaTeX. I've done it and know that nobody but a few physics journals is going to accept a.tex file. Also, it's a PITA when it comes to formatting. And no, I don't want a wysiwyg TeX editor either.
Why Emacs when "vi" will do fine (ducks for cover).:)
On a more serious note. If you are in an environment where the company you work for is locked into Microsoft solutions then you have very little choice but to use Microsoft Office unless you own your own PC/Laptop like I do. In my case I use Fedora 19 (the latest) and LibreOffice as my Office suite which will pretty much read all Microsoft Office formats. I do have a Windows XP virtual machine for those rare and getting rarer MS Windows only applications which cannot be read natively (hopefully) by Linux applications.
As for using LaTeX I have not used that for a while and unless there is a need such as a scientific paper or professional documentation (there are other valid reasons as well) then I would stick to a word processor although it is interesting to see what some people using a word processor consider "Professional". Still for home use LibreOffice works extremely well on any Linux distribution as well as Microsoft Windows including "MS Windows 8" and it is free.
Exactly. Chromebooks are not anything like a PC. It is a dumb terminal connected to remote resources controlled by a third party.
While I have not done an exhaustive study on Chromebooks I find that in many ways they are very similar to a PC since they do have a disk drive (SSD), USB ports and WiFi which means you can store basic data on the drive and copy, move or read/write your data to a USB connected disk drive or another networked device (ie. Remote Services aka "the Cloud", or a PC). For people who want portability and long battery life Chromebooks are excellent however they don't have a huge amount of internal storage so you will not be able to install a large video library on them unless you put your library on a USB connected hard drive which will reduce battery life.
And yes, compared to MS Windows 8 it probably is a success.
I would not call "Windows 8" a failure although IMHO it is one of the worst GUI's I have ever seen. Basically if you purchase a new Laptop/PC you are normally going to get MS Windows 8 as the Operating System although it would be interesting to see how many MS Windows licenses were purchased by people wanting to upgrade the OS on their PC.
But compared to hardware people want, it is not.
I think you will find that the majority of people that want a portable PC like device are going to want either a tablet (PC or Apple), laptop (PC or Apple), smart-phone (Android or iOS) or a Chromebook and while a laptop may be the more flexible it normally has the worst battery life. Basically if you have an Android or even iOS phone and are happy with it but would like a larger screen with excellent battery life and a convenient application store then a tablet or Chromebook is a serious contender.
Please note I did not mention a Microsoft Smartphone since it's GUI is more in-line with MS Windows 8 which is definitely different to the Android or iOS GUI's.
No... most people run Windows because they don't know any better, and they don't want to know any better.
You are dead right. What is unfortunate is that when a person goes to buy a new PC/laptop in most first world countries that machine will come with a MS Windows OS and like you have said most people don't know (or care) that alternative operating systems exist.
It would be totally feasible to install your previous OS on your new Windows 8 machine. May not cost anything if you have the original install disc.
Lets be honest here, how many people who have purchased a PC/Laptop have the original install disk or had the machine come with an original install disk? Sorry the only way most people can downgrade MS Widows 8 to MS Windows 7 is to purchase an install copy (good luck with that) or join the "Green Parrot Brigade":)
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If they need to send stuff out of house, that's what PDF is for. When was the last time they needed out-of-house Office editing??
Unfortunately many people who use Microsoft Office have a tendency to send the editable document to the (hopefully) appropriate people which can make for massive inconsistencies between the original document and any edits. The problem lies not with Microsoft Office or any Office software for that matter but with the people who are using the products.
You are correct in saying that any document should be sent out as a PDF especially if it is to people outside the company and only those who have been designated as maintainers will have change rights which also brings up another problem so mangers like to have something like "Share-point" or it's "Wiki" equivalent. In principle this is great except that over time unless you have a designated competent maintainer, you will have a mess on your hands.
No matter what software you have people need to understand what they are supposed to do and why and how to go about doing it. It is not an issue of whether the software is Linux or MS Windows based although many people with vested interests will disagree.
Actually a micro usb port has a MTBF of 10,000 insertions which if you do the arithmetic is approx 27 insertions a day over a year or for the normal user possibly 3 times a day for 9 years. You also have to keep in mind that since any type of connector that has physical contacts will eventually wear out due to constant connection and unplugging, however smart phones in the majority of cases would normally have a life of between 2 years (usually this is for a phone under a contract - at least in Australia) and 5 to 7 years for people who wish to keep their phone for a long time although IMHO why bother if you wish to continue a contract. Of course when choosing a phone you really need to determine what phone type and plan (ie. contact or pre-paid) suites you.
Without looking up statistics I think I would be fairly correct in saying that (at least in Australia) the majority of people would purchase a new phone every 2 (usually by contract) to 5 years (pre-paid) so unless you have a really shoddy micro usb in your phone you normally won't see many failures within the warranty or contact period.
How many TVs out there let you see the content of both HDMI ports simultaneously?
My HDTV will let you display picture on picture on a selected HDMI port and the TV tuner, however I actually found it pointless.
When you "snap" the TV view, it shows side by side your game so you can see both at the same time.
Honestly do you really think many people will use this?
Not many do, and if you're waiting for your game to load (xbox or ps4), you can snap and play the other while waiting. Or if you're waiting for your friend to get on and log in, no one said you can't play a quick game on the other port while waiting.
Again do you honestly think many people who own an Xbox-one and/or Xbox360 and/or PS3/4 are going to do this? While I wont comment on the Xbox360 I find my PS3 loads a game in well under a minute (usually 20~30 seconds) and that is not even enough time to play one round of Angry Birds. Not only that but the controllers are totally different so you would play one or the other but both?.
If Sony was smart, they'd put a mode that lets you see your friends on PSN that works well in "snapped" mode so you can monitor your friends list while waiting and playing something else.
Well I have not played the PS4 and not many have so who's to say Sony have not considered doing this although in my case if I am playing a game the last thing I want to do is monitor a friends list.
it depends on how it's coded. It's possible to code it in such a way that it's impossible to find by anyone but the person coding it. You gotta trust your programmer as much as you trust your doctor.
What you have said is true however it is not that difficult to actually determine what data goes in and out of a binary. Of course once the suspect flag has been raised there are many IT professionals who would take great delight in analysing that software.
but this brings another aspect - how long till users of android phones, iphones and whatever will be getting sued instead of the guy who sold the phone to them.. for many patents are not being utilized unless the phone is connected to some other network equipment.
Basically a normal smart phone user would not get sued for implementing a method that is out of the ordinary although how the so called patent holder would find out beggars the question. If just one single user of a smart phone got sued for a so called implementation method that was covered by a patent that would immediately get 10's if not 100's of millions of users against the patent holder for a start and the bad PR is not something that these people want. Of course if a company did infringe then they are fair game.
"In fact, all of the claims and all of the patents are directed at a communications network, not the particular switching nodes that are manufactured by Cisco and the other companies that are subject of our claims,"
If you read that as is without any a deeper explanation I get the idea that TR Labs can sue anyone who has a communications network.
Again from TFA:
The patents TR Labs is asserting are U.S. Patent Numbers 4,956,835; 5,850,505; 6,377,543; 6,404,734; 6,421,349; 6,654,379; 6,914,880; and 7,260,059.
Am I going to look at those patent numbers? No ! I don't want to get get a migraine headache since many modern IT patents are written in "legalese" such that someone with a Professional Engineering (yes a real one) background who is actually conversant with the field has a hard time understanding the words. Of course the opposite applies since most legal people can understand the words but not the context.
Ok I did look at patent 4,956,835 and it was just like I thought it would be which is basically an implementation and still requires hardware which manufacturers like Cisco provide. The following is an intro:
The present invention relates, in general, to a method and apparatus for rapidly effecting, in a communications network, the restoration of communications between nodes whose interconnecting spans have failed for one reason or another.
I particularly like fig 1c which basically a stylised drawing of the USA (well worth the LOL look) - see here and click on fig "1c" of Images which is the second image from the left.
Moral of the story is, you can't help stupid people, but you can *force them to vote
In Australia you can be fined if your name is not marked off as having voted, however you don't have to put anything on the ballot papers if you don't want to or even just scribble on it. We call that the donkey vote and it is perfectly legal. Of course doing something like that is a wasted vote.
The American system is different in that voting is voluntary and not quite as complicated. Also there's not a whole host of parties with similar sounding names. If you wanted to vote properly in Australia on the weekend you had to number 110 boxes on a ballot paper about 1 metre wide. I WISH I WAS JOKING!
No! you did not have to number 110 boxes on the ballot paper, you could if you wish providing you knew all the candidates (who does?) or were a masochist, or you could just put the number "1" (above the line on the paper) for your preferred party. Of course you still had to number the senate ticket. if you could not do all this in under a minute well?
Most people in Australia vote for a party not a specific person unless they know them or of them and of course prefer them. This is why on election day all parties (well the major ones anyway) hand out "how to vote pamphlets". Is this a good thing? Well my answer to that is maybe but at least no-one points a weapon at you or some strangers come knocking at your door (well except for some Bible basher's).
The fun part is .com is now understood to be .nsa.
Most URLS's are name.designation.country with many US URLS leaving off the "country" which should be us. So if you just see .com without the country you can be sure it is a "commercial US" URL. Now if you see .mil or .gov without a country code top level domain you could be forgiven for thinking it is a front for the NSA, although I think I would be a bit more worried about .xxx domains without a country designation.
For a list of top level domains the following site may be helpful although when they talk about the following ".edu", "gov" and ".mil" as USA top level domains this is right and wrong at the same time since other countries do use them followed by the country code top level domain and have been doing so for over 30 years.
Email has no technical privacy - it never has. Even in the beginning it was typically available to anyone who had access to the system it's on (back when people logged onto a shell account to retrieve their mail, sysadmins would have free reign over the entire firesystem).
System Admins still have full access to all file-systems under their control so you have to hope that they have enough integrity not to abuse their privilege. it is possible for a rogue System Admin to write filters to extract compromising email however if they are caught doing this then they can face a prison sentence and/or a hefty fine.
Actually pretty much all outgoing and incoming business or corporate email is actually read by virus protection software no matter if the mail server runs a Microsoft, Unix or Linux OS. The exception would be pass through mail although some companies like their virus protection software to vet this as well which can actually land the over enthusiastic company in hot water since this can be construed as reading and possibly blocking mail not destined for the said companies mail server(s).
If you have to have an admissions exam for a university, access to any university, or to secondary level education, something is wrong with the education system.
Why would you say that? You should realize that not all University/Collage applicants are people straight out of High School. There are also many who are what are classified as "Mature Aged Students" such as those who went into the workforce after leaving secondary school and later on (from approx age 20 plus) decided to further their education however it is stupid for any Tertiary education facility to just accept anyone without some screening and it is fairer to have everyone sit for admissions tests specific to the Tertiary education strand they are enrolling in.
It also must be remembered that Tertiary education can be quite a culture shock for students who have just finished High School since there can be many distractions that the new student is unprepared for and not all is academic.
Linux? Same old login prompt!
Actually Unix from 1980 just called and would like it's FUD back.
3.11? How many years after Microsoft reached that milestone!
Microsoft never did reach that milestone although they did get to 3.1.1 (Windows for Workgroups) before they dumped it for a VMS wannabe. :)
300+ gig is a lot of kitten pictures.
Considering 2TB USB 3 external disk drives are fairly cheap you can put six times that and still carry around it in your shirt pocket. In fact you will soon be able to get 512 GB and 1TB USB thumb drives although initially they will not be cheap.
The absolute *minimum* I would in fact recommend if you're intent on making life difficult for any would-be data snooper is dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda.
You are quite correct if you wish to reuse the disk drive although that is still no 100% guarantee, however if your data is so sensitive and you wish to completely erase it then destroying the drive by shredding and burning the platter(s) are the only option. Because disk drives are fairly cheap it would be better to just use a new disk and shred the old one. Of course then you have to seriously take into account what to do with all backups if any have been performed.
I think the question that is worth asking is "Why do you think you need to actually ruthlessly reformat your disk or disks?". If there is a good enough reason then the safest is shred and burn, then remove all backups, however if they are in "The Cloud" then forget it.
There are regulations, policies and laws in place that prohibit that kind of abuse
Nice and very clear now please answer the following:
Worrying. But hey it can't happen in Australia ... err wait!
I wish they could take the opportunity and do some work on the packaging system.
If you mean rpm's why would you want to install an rpm package using the rpm command unless that package is basically stand-alone? It is much easier using yum which determines all dependences and installs them.
Now that systemd has pretty much overhauled most of the user land, and Wayland will be forcing them to write the whole dependencies trees anyhow, and they already have their new installer, I'd like to see something like a cross between GNU Guix and Gentoo Portage be made for Red Hat\Fedora.
You do know that systemd is a system management daemon designed exclusively for the Linux kernel and Fedora became the first major Linux distribution to deploy systemd in May 2011.
I run Fedora 19 with KDE on my home machines. Basically I set aside about 5 to 6 hours every six months to upgrade and when I say upgrade I mean a complete re-installation of the latest Fedora from DVD. Even though I actually backup my data (over 1TB) progressively I have never had to recover my data since I use LVM to manage my disks and all I have to do is make sure the system volumes including swap and of course the /boot partition are sized properly. Actually the only time I did have to recover my data when I converted the file-system from ext3 to ext4 and IMHO the performance improvement was worth it.
I have actually found Fedora from 10 onward have been remarkably stable although I will admit when KDE 4.0 came out (I think that was with Fedora 15) I actually switched to Gnome util they fixed the stability issues, however that was not a Fedora issue.
Would I recommend Fedora for the Enterprise? Hell no! since you want any enterprise solution to be supported and in large corporations this usually means a Microsoft OS (this is changing but slowly) for the desktop and a mix of Linux (in my experience Redhat), Microsoft and Unix for the server room.
By the way: they COULD call it the XBox720 soon ;)
I see what you have done here but you would have been better to have called it the XBone180 or XBox-one+179 or better yet the XBox 540 :)
I read the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was written by Arthur C Clark a few years prior to watched the film when it came out. Personally I did like the film but If I had not read the book I would have found many parts of the film and particularly it's ending incomprehensible. To write a 22,000 work critique on the film to me is rather a waste since the best way of understanding the film is to read the book. Sill I do remember when the movie "Star Wars" (125 minutes long) came out there were many hours of TV time dedicated to how they did the special effects which to me was surprisingly entertaining.
Ok, let me get this straight... You would use Outlook in a nightclub? Really? Somehow I don't see that as a killer feature...
Well you could use Outlook in a nightclub to keep track of all those girls/guys who are sending you email :)
:)
I actually have seen a few people use Excel and Word on their tablets whilst on a train however IMHO this is silly and definitely non productive when they could be tackling some of the more difficult levels of "Angry Birds".
Please don't tell me to write in emacs and process through LaTeX. I've done it and know that nobody but a few physics journals is going to accept a .tex file. Also, it's a PITA when it comes to formatting. And no, I don't want a wysiwyg TeX editor either.
Why Emacs when "vi" will do fine (ducks for cover). :)
On a more serious note. If you are in an environment where the company you work for is locked into Microsoft solutions then you have very little choice but to use Microsoft Office unless you own your own PC/Laptop like I do. In my case I use Fedora 19 (the latest) and LibreOffice as my Office suite which will pretty much read all Microsoft Office formats. I do have a Windows XP virtual machine for those rare and getting rarer MS Windows only applications which cannot be read natively (hopefully) by Linux applications.
As for using LaTeX I have not used that for a while and unless there is a need such as a scientific paper or professional documentation (there are other valid reasons as well) then I would stick to a word processor although it is interesting to see what some people using a word processor consider "Professional". Still for home use LibreOffice works extremely well on any Linux distribution as well as Microsoft Windows including "MS Windows 8" and it is free.
Exactly. Chromebooks are not anything like a PC. It is a dumb terminal connected to remote resources controlled by a third party.
While I have not done an exhaustive study on Chromebooks I find that in many ways they are very similar to a PC since they do have a disk drive (SSD), USB ports and WiFi which means you can store basic data on the drive and copy, move or read/write your data to a USB connected disk drive or another networked device (ie. Remote Services aka "the Cloud", or a PC). For people who want portability and long battery life Chromebooks are excellent however they don't have a huge amount of internal storage so you will not be able to install a large video library on them unless you put your library on a USB connected hard drive which will reduce battery life.
And yes, compared to MS Windows 8 it probably is a success.
I would not call "Windows 8" a failure although IMHO it is one of the worst GUI's I have ever seen. Basically if you purchase a new Laptop/PC you are normally going to get MS Windows 8 as the Operating System although it would be interesting to see how many MS Windows licenses were purchased by people wanting to upgrade the OS on their PC.
But compared to hardware people want, it is not.
I think you will find that the majority of people that want a portable PC like device are going to want either a tablet (PC or Apple), laptop (PC or Apple), smart-phone (Android or iOS) or a Chromebook and while a laptop may be the more flexible it normally has the worst battery life. Basically if you have an Android or even iOS phone and are happy with it but would like a larger screen with excellent battery life and a convenient application store then a tablet or Chromebook is a serious contender.
Please note I did not mention a Microsoft Smartphone since it's GUI is more in-line with MS Windows 8 which is definitely different to the Android or iOS GUI's.
No... most people run Windows because they don't know any better, and they don't want to know any better.
You are dead right. What is unfortunate is that when a person goes to buy a new PC/laptop in most first world countries that machine will come with a MS Windows OS and like you have said most people don't know (or care) that alternative operating systems exist.
It would be totally feasible to install your previous OS on your new Windows 8 machine. May not cost anything if you have the original install disc.
Lets be honest here, how many people who have purchased a PC/Laptop have the original install disk or had the machine come with an original install disk? Sorry the only way most people can downgrade MS Widows 8 to MS Windows 7 is to purchase an install copy (good luck with that) or join the "Green Parrot Brigade" :)