Microsoft still made much more profit than Apple last year. MS made $14bn, whilst Apple made $8bn. Also, Microsoft has $77bn of assets with Apple holding only $47bn.
This should demonstrate why market cap is a stupid thing to extrapolate fantasies about Microsoft's destruction from. Effectively all the market cap tells us is that Apple is perceived to be a better investment opportunity than Microsoft, it tells us nothing about Microsoft's strength of existence, nor Apple's because in fact Apple is actually much more vulnerable than Microsoft due to having much fewer assets, and making less profit.
At best market cap tells us the perception of investors, and that does mean Apple has more room to play, but if with that extra room it's not manage to boost it's profits to the level of MS then that cap will quickly drop. Effectively all the market cap means is that Apple has now been given a chance to grow to the size of Microsoft, but it's not going to be easy.
For reference it's probably worth pointing out Google made $6.5 billion of profit, and has $40bn in assets, so in this respect Google is actually far closer to passing Apple, than Apple is to passing Microsoft in terms of cold hard, company strength and longer term viability. Just to give some other figures for comparison, HP made $9bn profit, and has $52bn in assets, whilst Dell made a mere $1.4bn in income and has $33bn in assets.
It's these figures that really matter in telling us how a company is doing- as you can see, the only real company that's at risk in the longer term right now is Dell, the other 4 are still raking in the profits. At a decreased rate for MS and HP compared to previous years for sure, but still at a faster rate than Apple and Google.
There's a fair bit more to do than that though, just implementing syntax highlighting and configuring an external compiler is merely the start of it. You're right this is easy, you can use the Visual Studio Shells (Integrated and Isolated) for this sort of thing too.
The issue comes with the rest of it though, because Visual Studio is more than just a syntax highlighting app, debugging would perhaps be the most prominent example, you're either going to have to have a Mac/iPhone emulator developed for Windows, or you're going to have to find a way of executing the binaries natively. You're then going to have to hook into whichever method to be able to debug it. Is there even a Windows based compiler for Mac Apple's binary formats? that's another job. Then there's question of support for WYSIWYG editing of Apple's Mac OS and iPhone OS interfaces- creating a new GUI designer for that seems quite a stretch.
I simply can't see Microsoft doing a half-assed implementation, if you look how selective they are with other languages, like F# took a fair while to finally bring in in Visual Studio 2010, whilst J# has faded away. Microsoft don't seem to just bundle any old language in for the sake of supporting it, it tends to be done with the goal of making sure each language makes best use of the tools in Visual Studio as possible (debugging, refactoring, modelling, testing, code analysis, TFS integration.), and that takes a lot of work.
Make no mistake, if the news is in fact true, Microsoft will have had to spend millions upon millions getting this done, so there'll have to be some pretty interesting underlying reason why they'd make that investment, and whatever that reason is it's not something based on existing business goals, because in the context of those it doesn't make any real sense. It'd likely mean accepting a loss of their stranglehold on the desktop operating system market and that seems highly counterproductive when they're trying to expand outwards with the likes of Bing and Windows Mobile.
Yeah, unfortunately following through the links it seems to be entirely unfounded, and little more than a guess that Ballmer is going to turn up, followed by a guess it'll be about Visual Studio 2010.
The wording also says "Chowdhry says the new version of VS will allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS.". Which we know is false because VS2010 is already out and has no such support, unless he's suggesting they'll follow it up with some downloadable addon.
If Microsoft are turning up I'd wager it's more likely going to be about an Apple/Bing tie-in after Apple fell out with Google, or perhaps something about Microsoft's new web based version of Office being compatible with the iPad or something dull.
It seems unlikely they'd invest time doing something in Visual Studio that would require a lot of work (new language support, new binary format support/emulator required, new compiler support etc.), and doesn't really benefit them or their customers whatsoever. I just don't really see what they'd gained by it, particularly at a time when Apple has been killing off 3rd party development environments, and is facing potential court cases over it to boot.
"The last foray of MS into this trying to sell games to "casual gamers" was in holidays 2008 IIRC, and it was such a huge failure everybody in the game industry just do as if it never happened."
What exactly are you referring too here? About the only real serious foray into casual gaming Microsoft has made so far with the XBox was with the 1 vs 100 release which was a resounding success with millions of unique players having played and over 100,000 people in a single game. There have been a few casual games released, but they were never done as part of any full blown casual gaming strategy. The major interface change the console saw might be seen as a step towards the casual market I suppose, but again it only ever seemed intended to lay the groundwork for future attempts at pulling in casuals (i.e. 1 vs 100).
"A killer app like Wii Fit isn't even at 50 % of Wii sold, and it's already selling at amazing levels. That's the apps Natal needs to succeed, not just say "it has this and that and can do that"."
Yet your entire argument is based on mere speculation that Microsoft doesn't have any such killer app.
The fact is, anything regarding what will/wont be a success with regards to Natal is mere speculation right now and nothing more. Again, E3 in a few weeks will be the real test for MS to show whether they actually do have something people will want or not. It's only after that point any serious discussion can be had about how worthwhile and succesful Natal may or may not be. Of course, even then the real test wont come until the post release sales figures start rolling in.
None of the high end games to be released for it have been announced yet, they're waiting for E3 for that so how can you know there'll be no killer apps for it at release?
Also, as this isn't a simple camera, and is in fact an IR camera with depth sensing technology in it, that builds in hardware a 3D map of the environment, and can track actors in that environment, then what exactly is overpriced about it? It seems quite reasonable regardless for the level of technology in it.
You really expect that kind of technology for just the price of a new game?
Even now Apple has shifted only about 50 - 60 million iPhones, do you realise how small a segment of the mobile phone market that is?
The fact is, by far the vast majority of consumers don't even touch Apple. This is really the problem with Apple fanboys and zealots- they actually grossly over-estimate Apple's reach. It's a big successful company for sure, but that money still comes from an extremely small segment of a lot of the relevant markets Apple is in- the personal music player market is about the only one where that's different, but if you look at personal entertainment devices in general (i.e. those that can do games, music, movies like the iPod has done for a few years now) then it's up against the DS and the PSP, and so still only holds a minority share of the market.
So the point is that whilst Apple unquestionably does well, for every consumer of their products, there are tens of consumers who do not care about, or do not want Apple's products. This is why the complaints about Apple very much come from the consumer market, because Apple is only succesful in a niche segment of it, albeit a highly profitable segment of course.
Dell isn't bigger than Apple, it's quite a bit smaller nowadays. In fact, Apple has enough cash sat lying around to buy it outright twice over.
People do blame Microsoft for a lack of innovation, particularly when their R&D labs produce some amazing stuff, yet that never ever reaches the marketplace. There have been a few stories this last year alone here on Slashdot discussing this.
You're absolutely right the market only has themselves to blame, but the arguments against Apple don't tend to come from a market point of view, but from a consumer perspective.
"Windows 7 tablets have been out already, just as Vista and XP tablets have also been out. What we do know, is that so far, these devices have not taken off."
You actually really just proved the GP's point, because even though I read tech and general news sites daily I wasn't aware that any Windows 7 tablets were out yet, I certainly know some were in development, but have seen nothing about any being finally released. The closest I've seen is Dell has released some Android based mini-tablet but that's about it.
In contrast, I was fully aware of the iPad being out, in fact, I know all about how there have been supposedly shortages, and how various dates have changed.
The fact is, Apple does have a massive advantage in marketing, they're far more adept at spreading the word than any other firm. They seem to have really got the ball rolling and it's just snowballed because they don't even have to do much to get every tech site on the planet to report every minute detail of their latest and greatest products. Now, I wouldn't buy an iPad because I'm not a fan of tablets, and certainly not for heavily locked down general computing devices, but if I was a general user and in the market for one and decided to get one then I'd have absolutely no fucking idea any product other than the iPad was really out there so far. I'd buy an iPad because it's all I've heard about, and heard about constantly.
If you think a massive portion of Apple's sales don't come from marketing then you've got to be pretty ignorant, marketing is far and away Apple's biggest strength.
"Now, there will be a second wave of tablets, where everyone runs out and copies the iPad, and that might change things. They will be cheaper, and not as powerful, and have longer lasting batteries."
This strikes me as a bit of an odd comment, Apple nearly always sells lower spec hardware than their competitors for a higher price, so I'd be suprised if the cheaper longer battery life competitors are less powerful, but this goes back to my point above- Apple devices certainly don't win on technical merit, they win on marketing first, and design second. Things like technical specs and so forth sit much further down the list and historically always have with Apple products. I'm not sure why they'd be copying Apple either when the tablet is hardly an Apple invention. As was pointed out on the BBC yesterday regarding Dell's new tablet, they can hardly have copied Apple because it takes much more than a few months to develop such a product, the tablets coming out now must've been in development well before the iPad was known about. I was trialling a tablet at work at least as far back as 2003, although back then it was a horrible bulky thing running Windows XP, because the hardware just wasn't small enough to match modern tablets back then.
If anything, all that's happened is that the iPad marketing campaign has made the world wake up to the fact the tablet market still exists and again, because of that campaign, of course the iPad is seen as the front runner.
Apple could sell a lump of turd and call it the iTurd, advertising it as a magical new turd and a good portion of Apple's core few million fanboys would still buy it.
That doesn't mean it's going to achieve acceptance amongst the general public though, and that's really the key test, because that's where Apple really makes it's profits. For every success such as the iPod or the iPhone, Apple have had just as many flops with pretty much no take up outside the fanatical core such as the MacBook Air or the AppleTV.
It takes quite a leap of the imagination to jump from Apple selling units to their core userbase to Windows not working well on tablets, in fact, that makes no real sense at all. Part the issue with failed Windows tablets in the past is that the technology simply wasn't up to it, last time there was a real push for tablets we simply didn't have the technology to make them thin enough, they were bulky, battery life was lower and so on. I was working in IT support for schools at the time and we were trialling them there as they were being sold as the next big thing at the time, but tablets there are very different to tablets now in terms of hardware size, weight, and performance. What's more, they were XP based and XP was never initially designed for touchscreen use whilst Windows 7 has had touchscreen usage taken into account from the start.
GP is right, their conclusion is based on entirely flawed premises, but then it's InfoWorld, we already know enough about their journalistic integrity, i.e. they have none.
It's had he hasn't been modded up and you have because you don't seem to have provided anything to counter his point that's particularly solid, merely stated that you simply don't believe what he says can possibly be true.
Here's my personal anecdote, I worked in tech support for schools some years back and had to fix printers regularly, time and time again it came down to the fact they were getting clogged up with ink from 3rd party ink cartridges. It was easy enough to fix the printers, but it was time consuming and when they were paying by the hour, it wasn't cheap for them to have us dissasemble the printer and give it a good clean off with spirits.
It's been some years since I did this, however just last week our IT department (I work in software development at a different firm outside of education now) decided to switch back to official cartridges and toners because they were facing the same issues I did those 5 or so years ago.
So if it really is easy to just copy an ink formulation, then why does 3rd party ink and toner consistently manage to break printers in ways that official ink and toners do not?
Don't get me wrong, I do agree completely ink is disgustingly overpriced, in fact, it's one of my pet annoyances in the IT world- a better example rather than arguing over the ink itself is this, why in the past has it been possible to get a new printer with cartridges included cheaper than a full set of brand new HP ink cartridges (£35 for the printer + cartridges, or £45 for new set of cartridges)? Clearly something is wrong with pricing, but despite this I don't agree that it's necessarily simple to copy the ink formula, else again, why to this day, despite the maturity of the 3rd party ink cartridge does no 3rd party ink vendor manage to provide ink and toner that doesn't consistently fuck up your printer in a shorter time span than official ink and toner?
I know this is just a personal anecdote, but one things for sure, over the years I've seen too much of this on too many printers of too many different brands where 3rd party causes problems where 1st party doesn't for this to be mere coincidence.
There is one potential explanation of course- that 3rd party ink vendors aren't willing to provide quality ink either because that in itself cuts into their bottom line, but certainly 3rd party ink doessn't ever seem to be of the same quality as 1st party ink however you cut it. Don't get me wrong, some printers manage to last out their lifetime on 3rd party ink, but many more do not- I suspect it's because as the GP says, there are so many factors in producing good ink that sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't a problem.
One things for sure though, there's no such thing as a cheap, reliable, high quality method of doing inkjet printing. You either have to pay a lot, or suffer problematic ink it seems. I would love nothing more than to be able to get the reliability of 1st party ink and printers, coupled with the cost of 3rd party consumables, but no such solution even after all these years of inkjet printing seems to exist. I suspect it's because again, as the GP says, far more R&D goes into getting ink right than many people give credit for or realise and whilst the cheap 3rd party ink may work for a while for you, inevitably over a range of environments there seems to be conditions where it just doesn't cut it whilst 1st party ink consistently does. In terms of economics though it may well work out cheaper to use 3rd party ink and replace your printer every year than use 1st party and replace it every 5 years or whatever regardless I suppose.
What? You're a game developer and you don't understand how to develop for multiple platform configurations? That's pretty damn disturbing, no wonder there's a lot of bad games out there nowadays if this is a sign of how far the industry has dropped. Perhaps it explains why there have been so many horrendous PC ports of console games in recent years though.
The PC market was more fragmented, and had lower specs 10 years ago than Android phones today, and yet it did not prevent production of many great games. What's more, it's actually easier with Android, because at least with Android a lot of stuff is abstracted away for you from the off, and you don't have to do it all yourself. Besides, your post doesn't make an awful lot of sense even because the iPhone itself has different processor and memory configurations, but also with the iPad/4G, also has different screen resolutions and so forth too so it's a problem on that platform anyway.
I have to question whether you really are a game developer if grasping the concept of dealing with abstraction layers to cope with different hardware platforms is beyond you because it's been fundamental to engine development for a long, long time now- even on consoles because you're never sure if you're going to port from say, your DirectX based XBox title to a GL based PS3 title, and perhaps even then on to the lower specced Wii with a completely different control set to boot. Very few companies are developing exclusives now with the idea that they'll never ever be ported off that single platform. The situation with Android is absolutely no different, it's just that as mobile devices have lower specifications in general, you have to scale your ambitions down somewhat, all the remaining theory is still the same though.
The only way you can avoid fragmentation is by simply never improving your hardware platform, and, well, that'd be stupid because you'd get left in the past. Android does as good a job, if not better than nearly any other platform out there right now of handling inevitable obsolescence and changing hardware platforms.
"I do like to think that the animals that are slaughtered for my food suffer as little as possible, but I am not so naive as to think that they do not feel any fear or suffering. It's part of the price paid for the convenience of eating meat."
I think it goes beyond this. Different producers treat animals differently. In the UK for example there was an uproar a year or two back about the company Bernard Mathews being caught having their staff filmed in a turkey farm throwing them up in the air and hitting them with sticks, and we're kicking them about etc. purely to get some sick pleasure out of it.
Personally I eat meat, but I'll boycott companies like that, in fact, I get my meat from trusted local farm shops which are beginning to thrive in the UK as they're popping up everywhere and expanding rapidly, so I guess I'm probably not alone in preferring to skip the supermarket middleman that imports dodgy meat from half way across the world. Many people I know at least somewhat support the vegetarian viewpoint even if they don't practice it themselves, not because they don't understand that animals must suffer somewhat if we eat meat, but because it's sometimes hard to guage the extent of the suffering. Besides, meat from farm shops always tastes nicer anyway.
There are other ethical reasons too, I wont buy chicken from the supermarket chain ASDA (part of the Walmart chain) either, because last time I did in small print it noted that the chicken was from Thailand. I had to question at this point why the fuck meat was being flown half way around the world when we still have more than enough space to produce chicken in the UK, clearly the only reason to fly it over would be to dodge either food hygiene or animal welfare standards that are set in the UK, and hence they were not trustworthy.
Boycott of some or all meat products can be quite logical far beyond the simple disagreement with an animal having to be brought up in a fairly natural manner and to be killed quickly when the time comes. The fundamental problems tend to be unnecessary suffering, knowing your food has been produced hygienically and is of good quality, and also knowing that it hasn't resulted in thousands of miles of airmiles of needless pollution to get to you, not simply the fact that animals have to die to produce meat.
As someone who played Dark Age of Camelot from it's early days, and got GM cartography on UO when it was hard. I never played EQ, but I had friends who wasted years grinding away in that too, I'd say that all MMOs nowadays, Asian or not require less grinding than Western MMOs have done in the past.
I didn't play Aion for that long admittedly, but for the time I did play it I didn't find Aion any worse for grinding than say, Warhammer online either.
"Here, in the US, ISPs had carried all of Usenet. Even the binaries. What is happening now is that the binary groups have become so large they dwarf the text groups and the bulk of the cost is for those."
But again, the UK ISPs ditched them with the same excuse years ago, when usenet was far less used for piracy because BitTorrent was at it's peak. It's a business decision based on increasing profits by dropping an unpopular service, it's really just as simple as that. No one signs up to an ISP because it does or doesn't offer usenet anymore, they haven't for years, most people don't even know what it is. It's cheaper for the ISP to just to ditch it.
"By the way, when the number of binary-carrying Usenet servers declines to just a handful of companies, expect Giganews et alia to be sued into oblivion by the media companies never to appear again."
Except usenet is already fairly well protected by legal precedent. Newzbin wasn't a Usenet provider, but was an indexer, it performed a similar role to The Pirate Bay. Besides, your assertion that Giganews advertises itself as a gateway to infringement is outright false, it does nothing of the sort, in fact, on the contrary, it states quite clearly on it's site in multiple places that copyright infringement is a breach of terms of use of their service. Usenet can fairly easily be hosted in countries with less hostile IP laws too- whilst places like Sweden were willing to stretch to attacking the likes of The Pirate Bay, it's almost a certainty that a Swedish court wouldn't rule to close down a usenet provider.
I know you're enjoying continuing your rhetoric about how pirates are to blame, but let's face it, the reality is you're just pissed off at finally losing a service that was being provided to you via subsidy from the majority of other subscribers to your ISP. Certainly your subscription alone wouldn't have covered the cost of running the usenet servers. If you don't want to pay your fair share, then tough shit, either pay up, or complain to your ISP for not being willing to use income from other users to subsidise usenet servers for you and the handful of others that use it on your ISP.
Blaming pirates though who are almost in their entirety using paid for newsgroup services instead simply because you don't want to pay for a service yourself is just comical. You really can't see the hypocrisy in that?
I don't think you can really blame the pirates, because there's not enough decent performance free usenet servers out there that actually do offer binaries.
Everyone I know personally that uses usenet to download files has an account with the likes of Giganews, certainly I don't know anyone whose managed to find a decent free usenet server that holds all binaries and provides decent download speeds.
I don't even think I've had an ISP in the UK for years now that's had binary newsgroup access, only text. I think it was about 2003 since I was last with an ISP that provided binary newsgroup access.
Really, I think as is often the case with these sorts of things, the only real blame lies with the corporate greed machine that tries to seek out every single penny of profit it can, regardless of the goodwill it costs the company.
I'm not sure what you mean about Usenet not being suited to large binary file transfer though, that doesn't make a lot of sense, because, well, it is, hence why people use it for that. It's generally far more efficient for the job than the likes of P2P in fact.
That's a very simplistic, and rather pessimistic view with quite a few holes in it.
"You still need to download data to your computer. No encryption or steganography gets around the fact that any reasonably fast download will be up on radar due to its size."
It might well show up on "radar", but it'll still be buried between the billions of large legitimate downloads and transfers that occur each day, from high quality video conferencing, to remote backups, to downloads of the latest software versions, to legitimate file transfers between people collaborating on hobbyist projects. There's simply too many large data transfers, between too many different hosts, such that if illegal file transfers are sufficiently obfuscated, it is just not viable to pick them all out.
Technology in terms of obscuring file sharing has a long way it can still go if it needs to, writing a plugin based file sharing system, where data transfers are wrapped up in other plugin-implemented protocols such as HTTP, FTP, Games protocols and so forth and where the plugins themselves are transferred via P2P isn't a massively difficult task, it's just somewhat time consuming, and simply put, there's no real need for it just yet, but you can gurantee it'll happen should the need arise. There's no reason file transfers can't be masked to look like legitimate web usage in this respect, and the amount of processing power it'd take in terms of DPI to figure out what is merely obfuscated data, and what is legitimate traffic would be well be on any ISP, possibly even beyond many governments in fact.
The issue for the industry is there's the political aspect too, and to start really stopping file sharing you have to start passively snooping on encrypted connections and so forth, which crosses an important line- it is a clear breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and if you're in Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights. You'd have to face international criticism, or like the UK when our old Labour government did just this- face the European courts if you're in the UK, or you'd have to pull out of being signatories of these declarations, which in itself will put you in the international spotlight, and lose any international political standing you may have once had. This is a line that most governments simply wont cross, even if it means upsetting the people feeding them backhanders in the music/movie industry.
It's a game of brinksmanship for sure, it's a constant battle between the industry trying to push fundamental principles on freedoms, legal rights, privacy and so forth of Western society to their limits, and the pirates creating further countermeasures that require further bending of the laws and principles to fight it.
The music/movie industry wont win, because for them to do so, would mean the abandonment of some of the fundamental principles of Western society, and pretty much every Western government recognises that although they'll go so far, abandoning the fundamental principles on which their society is built, and losing all international influence and respect as a result, is simply a step too far in protecting the industry.
Besides, even if governments do drop their principles and stoop to the level of China, or North Korea, then I suspect you'll still find kids swapping contraband on USB pen drives, or wirelessly between their mobile phones.
I don't disagree that it's technically possible for governments and the industry to defeat measures pirates come up with, you're right about that. But to ignore the expense of continuing to do so in the face of ever more advanced obfuscation, and to ignore the political lines that must be crossed to do so, is bound to result in the false conclusion you've come to that the industry can somehow win this.
Case in point, I can use a fully encrypted connection to Giganews' US servers. Giganews is protected under legal precedent, and my encrypted connection is protected from government snooping under the ECHR. Sure they can theoretically
Yeah, that was badly written, it would probably have made more sense phrased as:
It's also no coincidence that quite a few prominent members of UKIP are ex-Tory MPs.
I can't really recall how well most of them did individually in the elections though so I'm not sure how many of them made it to MEP status, or how many were candidates in the general election.
No, it's possible to have pride in your country without being a xenophobe, but being a xenophobe tends to go hand in hand with having pride in your country.
But just as always through the ages, having pride in your country can be good, it can keep up a national spirit and keep people motivated through times of trouble (the Blitz, major earthquakes etc.) but it can also be used for bad- the third reich for example played on nationalistic patriotism to build it's power base.
The difficulty is admittedly telling the difference between those who have pride in their country because they're genuinely proud of it, and those who say they have pride in their country to justify their hate for others. There is a somewhat in between category too of course- those whose pride in their country is misplaced, believing it's doing the right thing, even when it's not such that their intentions are good, but the result of their actions are bad.
So the word wont become meaningless, it's wrong to suggest the majority of politicians are xenophobic, they're not- the Lib Dems and Labour tend to have next to no xenophobia throughout them even though the Tories do, and of course, UKIP and the BNP are built entirely on xenophobia. It's little different elsewhere of course, many US politicians are no less xenophobic than some of the nationalists in South America. So in this respect, it's certainly true that xenophobia is rife among politics across the world, but I don't think it's in any way a trait held by the majority of politicians.
But for what it's worth, pride in your country in itself can be a dangerous thing, it's good to recognise Britain was a driving force in ending the slave trade, and it's good to be proud of that, but I certainly wouldn't be proud of the fact we were also one of the driving forces in starting the slave trade and carrying it through at it's peak. If you're going to say you're proud of your country regardless, be prepared to explain how you can be proud of the bad things it's done, as well as the good. Me, personally? I think I'd say in balance I'm proud of the UK, because I think in the grand scheme of things, in balance, compared to the rest of the world, we've done a lot of good, but I'd wager that's more down to great individuals rather than the nation as a whole. There's still an awful lot of British history, I can't be proud of, just as I can't be proud of the fact that even in the last few years the British government has been complicit in torture of it's own citizens, breach of our human rights, rape of civil liberties, and gross increase in surveillance.
But here's a final point, when the likes of Daniel Hannan say they're proud of Britain, it's hard to tell if they're good or bad, when they start attacking people of other ethnicities and so forth, for nothing other than the fact they're different, it's quite clear what actual category he falls into. So don't assume that because someone says they're proud of their country they're not a bad person- take a look at what else they say, their other actions, and then you can see what they're really about, and it is for this reason that I state the problem with many of the Tory old school, because I have watched and seen their actions and their words of the years to know that they're not simply proud of their country, but they are in fact xenophobes. UKIP is really a fine example too though, most of it's policies don't stack up to the real facts and figures, and really their only reasoning for UK independence when you cut away all the lies, is that they don't want anything to do with foreigners, when you really look deeply at what they're about, you'll find they're not really much different to the BNP, the difference is the BNP are made up of lower class thugs, and UKIP is made up of upper class bigots, but ultimately they're no different, and their claims of simply loving their country are just an excuse for their bigotry.
I'm certainly concerned about how the Britain first attitude could potentially have caused serious harm to the UK under a Conservative majority, most prominently with regards to their attitude towards Europe. A good example of bad policy was their grouping in the European parliament with largely far right parties- to see this extrapolated simply beyond their European parliament policy to British policy in general could be quite a tragedy.
Still, as I say though, as a counter-point, Milliband's attempts to keep the torture documents on Binyamin Mohamed secret purely because of US pressure also do the UK no good, and it really shows how at the other end of the spectrum being too subservient can also be extremely bad.
As you say, with the Lib Dems, I'd like to believe that perhaps they'll be the balancing force in this respect- not letting the Britain first ideology get too far out of hand one way or the other.
Scotland has been the most vocal in recent years with regards to independence from the rest of Britain, and I'd like to believe as you say, the fact Scotland has so many Lib Dem regions might mean that the Lib Dems being part of the coalition will be a unifying force, but who knows?
Specifically then, I think if anything will bring this coalition down, it wont be civil liberties, it wont be the economy, it wont be defence- I think it will in fact be tensions between the extremely pro-European Lib Dems, and the overly patriotic Tories. I suspect that will be the real boiling point that hurts both the government, and ultimately us too.
Of course, it's also worth pointing out that with over a third of MPs being new to the job, the whole dynamic may well have changed with regards to the union, and international cooperation, for better or worse though, who knows? I guess we'll find out in time. I'd like to think that the British empire mindset that is still strong in some of the old school Tories might well have largely gone with the 227 MPs who have now been replaced, but that might just be wishful thinking.
Perhaps the most mouthy is Daniel Hannan, other prominent examples being the likes of Philip Hollobone and Douglas Carswell, but certainly even people in the cabinet like William Hague, and Liam Fox have some quite xenophobic, and overly patriotic views, although both have been toned down under Cameron's leadership.
Oh, and 30 years? I assume you slept through the 90s, where the Tories managed to rip their entire party apart because of the division amonst the party between those who were a little more forward thinking, and those who were still living in the past with dreams of Britain not needing to be anything to do with Europe and fantasies of it being a superpower still.
It's also no coincidence that quite a few MPs in UKIP are ex-Tory.
There's certainly a movement in the Conservatives nowadays to move away from this viewpoint for sure, but to pretend there aren't still quite a lot of Tory MPs who still maintain that old fashioned viewpoint and who still wield a fair amount of influence? That takes an impressive amount of either political ignorance, or political bias coupled with perhaps a hint of xenophobia in ones self to not even be able to notice it.
But if you care to try and find a bit more about it, a good place to look nowadays tends to be in the Tory euro-sceptic circles, that's mostly where they are focussing their attention currently. If you really paid attention to British politics and really knew what you were on about, you might have encountered in the news the kind of not so pretty events that occur every now and again when the old school mindset clashes with the more progressive folk in the Conservative party:
"I rather suspect that that imbalance is what causes many people much disquiet."
Actually, I suspect it's largely patriotism. No one wants to see one of their citizens handed over to a foreign power with no worthwhile favour in return, and yet, that's exactly what the Labour government was proposing.
I'd wager this has been fed by the fact we've got some of our soldiers dying in a war, that, once you cut away the rhetoric, really had fuck all to do with us, and made us less secure in that we're not as much a target as the US- prior to that, we weren't really a target for Islamic terorism because we were so tolerant of islamic communities. It's further not helped by the fact that when the US manages to kill some of our soldiers in a friendly fire "accident" (I wouldn't call it an accident, I'd call it incompetence) they refuse to assist in the coroners investigation by witholding the gun cameras. Add to this the threats of withdrawing security cooperation with us when our courts wanted to release evidence of our secure services being complicit in torture of British citizens by US forces and you begin to see why there is such a backlash.
Probably, if the US hadn't been so difficult over so many things over the last decade, despite us giving them something that can't really have a value put on it - the blood and lives of our soldiers in support of their war - then they could've gotten away with this extradition and a lot of people wouldn't have even batted an eyelid at the case.
But no that didn't happen, and so people in the UK have simply had enough, and McKinnon has become the catalyst for which people are standing up and demanding that our government starts saying no to the US.
I think it's telling how quickly Obama jumped on the chance to congratulate David Cameron, and get Clinton to send the new foreign secretary over to the US after the coalition decision was made when taken in the context of how the Obama has treated Britain since he became president- he's basically shunned the UK, despite the old government bending over backwards for them.
I think Obama is actually concerned that the new administration will in fact stand up for itself, and recognises that the US wont get such an easy ride anymore, and so is playing the charm offensive from the off.
I believe the speed in which Obama moved to give his blessing to the new adminsitration, and to get William Hague over to the US is more telling than anything about the relationship- I'd say it's a sure sign that Britain will be much less the US' lapdog under the new government. This is probably partly to do with the fact that large parts of the main coalition party, the Conservatives, are quite xenophobic and are still living under the delusion Britain rules the world. I'm not generally a fan of that overly patriotic viewpoint, but if it means it creates pressure to keep the UK a little more independent from the US, then great.
"With notable exception of M$Office 2003/earlier and CADs, this statement relates to the reality very loosely."
I guess you just don't use that much software.
CRM software, ERP software, office software, corporate AV software, 3D modelling software, databases, development environments, audio editing software, games, accounting software, mathematics software to give a few examples- none of the FOSS options are as good as the best proprietary alternatives. Even in terms of the likes of e-mail servers and clients, where's the FOSS options that really stands up to Exchange/Outlook and Domino/Notes? they just don't exist.
I'm not saying there isn't some great FOSS software out there, sure there is, Apache is awesome and I much prefer SVN to SourceSafe (although Team Foundation Server is much better). The issue is though, for vast swathes of types of software it's just not the case, whilst sometimes FOSS is theoretically better, it often has such a poor interface it just can't compete.
"FOSS model is "egoistic development model" - everybody develops for himself."
Yes exactly, and there's your problem. What works for a developer with decades of using C/C++ doesn't work for your average joe in the street.
"And many corporation also "get it" and assign developers to FOSS projects to make the adjustments - either locally or in mainline - to accommodate their business cases"
Yes, and many more don't. It really depends on the software, whether there's a worthwhile proprietary alternative available, whether the business case works and so on, but for the majority of companies, it simply doesn't.
"Business goes for proprietary software due to long term support contracts. And that's about 75% of reasons. The remaining 25% of reasons revolve around backward compatibility."
You grossly overestimate the weight of long term contracts in decisions to go proprietary, largely because a lot of proprietary software doesn't have a need for long term support. If you think these two elements really add up to 75% and 25% of a business decision in which software package to go with, it simply demonstrates you have zero experience of actually being involved in the process of deciding what software to go with. The largest factor is far and away the software that best works for the company, and that involves allowing the users of the system to evaluate the different options, and give their opinion as to which is best- here's a hint, FOSS doesn't often win. This goes for everything from user facing software (e.g. ERP/CRM systems) to back end systems (e.g. databases)- as great as PostgreSql is, it simply doesn't hold up against Oracle and sometimes the extra investment of going with Oracle far outweights the savings of going with PostgreSql for example.
"The myth that proprietary software is somehow magically better for users is just that - myth. And was debunked many many times before."
Great, you can Google with a completely biased search term and find results to back up your theory, whilst were on the subject of Google though, where's my superior open source alternative to it by the way?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft still made much more profit than Apple last year. MS made $14bn, whilst Apple made $8bn. Also, Microsoft has $77bn of assets with Apple holding only $47bn.
This should demonstrate why market cap is a stupid thing to extrapolate fantasies about Microsoft's destruction from. Effectively all the market cap tells us is that Apple is perceived to be a better investment opportunity than Microsoft, it tells us nothing about Microsoft's strength of existence, nor Apple's because in fact Apple is actually much more vulnerable than Microsoft due to having much fewer assets, and making less profit.
At best market cap tells us the perception of investors, and that does mean Apple has more room to play, but if with that extra room it's not manage to boost it's profits to the level of MS then that cap will quickly drop. Effectively all the market cap means is that Apple has now been given a chance to grow to the size of Microsoft, but it's not going to be easy.
For reference it's probably worth pointing out Google made $6.5 billion of profit, and has $40bn in assets, so in this respect Google is actually far closer to passing Apple, than Apple is to passing Microsoft in terms of cold hard, company strength and longer term viability. Just to give some other figures for comparison, HP made $9bn profit, and has $52bn in assets, whilst Dell made a mere $1.4bn in income and has $33bn in assets.
It's these figures that really matter in telling us how a company is doing- as you can see, the only real company that's at risk in the longer term right now is Dell, the other 4 are still raking in the profits. At a decreased rate for MS and HP compared to previous years for sure, but still at a faster rate than Apple and Google.
There's a fair bit more to do than that though, just implementing syntax highlighting and configuring an external compiler is merely the start of it. You're right this is easy, you can use the Visual Studio Shells (Integrated and Isolated) for this sort of thing too.
The issue comes with the rest of it though, because Visual Studio is more than just a syntax highlighting app, debugging would perhaps be the most prominent example, you're either going to have to have a Mac/iPhone emulator developed for Windows, or you're going to have to find a way of executing the binaries natively. You're then going to have to hook into whichever method to be able to debug it. Is there even a Windows based compiler for Mac Apple's binary formats? that's another job. Then there's question of support for WYSIWYG editing of Apple's Mac OS and iPhone OS interfaces- creating a new GUI designer for that seems quite a stretch.
I simply can't see Microsoft doing a half-assed implementation, if you look how selective they are with other languages, like F# took a fair while to finally bring in in Visual Studio 2010, whilst J# has faded away. Microsoft don't seem to just bundle any old language in for the sake of supporting it, it tends to be done with the goal of making sure each language makes best use of the tools in Visual Studio as possible (debugging, refactoring, modelling, testing, code analysis, TFS integration.), and that takes a lot of work.
Make no mistake, if the news is in fact true, Microsoft will have had to spend millions upon millions getting this done, so there'll have to be some pretty interesting underlying reason why they'd make that investment, and whatever that reason is it's not something based on existing business goals, because in the context of those it doesn't make any real sense. It'd likely mean accepting a loss of their stranglehold on the desktop operating system market and that seems highly counterproductive when they're trying to expand outwards with the likes of Bing and Windows Mobile.
Yeah, unfortunately following through the links it seems to be entirely unfounded, and little more than a guess that Ballmer is going to turn up, followed by a guess it'll be about Visual Studio 2010.
The wording also says "Chowdhry says the new version of VS will allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS.". Which we know is false because VS2010 is already out and has no such support, unless he's suggesting they'll follow it up with some downloadable addon.
If Microsoft are turning up I'd wager it's more likely going to be about an Apple/Bing tie-in after Apple fell out with Google, or perhaps something about Microsoft's new web based version of Office being compatible with the iPad or something dull.
It seems unlikely they'd invest time doing something in Visual Studio that would require a lot of work (new language support, new binary format support/emulator required, new compiler support etc.), and doesn't really benefit them or their customers whatsoever. I just don't really see what they'd gained by it, particularly at a time when Apple has been killing off 3rd party development environments, and is facing potential court cases over it to boot.
"The last foray of MS into this trying to sell games to "casual gamers" was in holidays 2008 IIRC, and it was such a huge failure everybody in the game industry just do as if it never happened."
What exactly are you referring too here? About the only real serious foray into casual gaming Microsoft has made so far with the XBox was with the 1 vs 100 release which was a resounding success with millions of unique players having played and over 100,000 people in a single game. There have been a few casual games released, but they were never done as part of any full blown casual gaming strategy. The major interface change the console saw might be seen as a step towards the casual market I suppose, but again it only ever seemed intended to lay the groundwork for future attempts at pulling in casuals (i.e. 1 vs 100).
"A killer app like Wii Fit isn't even at 50 % of Wii sold, and it's already selling at amazing levels. That's the apps Natal needs to succeed, not just say "it has this and that and can do that"."
Yet your entire argument is based on mere speculation that Microsoft doesn't have any such killer app.
The fact is, anything regarding what will/wont be a success with regards to Natal is mere speculation right now and nothing more. Again, E3 in a few weeks will be the real test for MS to show whether they actually do have something people will want or not. It's only after that point any serious discussion can be had about how worthwhile and succesful Natal may or may not be. Of course, even then the real test wont come until the post release sales figures start rolling in.
What are you on about?
None of the high end games to be released for it have been announced yet, they're waiting for E3 for that so how can you know there'll be no killer apps for it at release?
Also, as this isn't a simple camera, and is in fact an IR camera with depth sensing technology in it, that builds in hardware a 3D map of the environment, and can track actors in that environment, then what exactly is overpriced about it? It seems quite reasonable regardless for the level of technology in it.
You really expect that kind of technology for just the price of a new game?
Even now Apple has shifted only about 50 - 60 million iPhones, do you realise how small a segment of the mobile phone market that is?
The fact is, by far the vast majority of consumers don't even touch Apple. This is really the problem with Apple fanboys and zealots- they actually grossly over-estimate Apple's reach. It's a big successful company for sure, but that money still comes from an extremely small segment of a lot of the relevant markets Apple is in- the personal music player market is about the only one where that's different, but if you look at personal entertainment devices in general (i.e. those that can do games, music, movies like the iPod has done for a few years now) then it's up against the DS and the PSP, and so still only holds a minority share of the market.
So the point is that whilst Apple unquestionably does well, for every consumer of their products, there are tens of consumers who do not care about, or do not want Apple's products. This is why the complaints about Apple very much come from the consumer market, because Apple is only succesful in a niche segment of it, albeit a highly profitable segment of course.
Dell isn't bigger than Apple, it's quite a bit smaller nowadays. In fact, Apple has enough cash sat lying around to buy it outright twice over.
People do blame Microsoft for a lack of innovation, particularly when their R&D labs produce some amazing stuff, yet that never ever reaches the marketplace. There have been a few stories this last year alone here on Slashdot discussing this.
You're absolutely right the market only has themselves to blame, but the arguments against Apple don't tend to come from a market point of view, but from a consumer perspective.
"Windows 7 tablets have been out already, just as Vista and XP tablets have also been out. What we do know, is that so far, these devices have not taken off."
You actually really just proved the GP's point, because even though I read tech and general news sites daily I wasn't aware that any Windows 7 tablets were out yet, I certainly know some were in development, but have seen nothing about any being finally released. The closest I've seen is Dell has released some Android based mini-tablet but that's about it.
In contrast, I was fully aware of the iPad being out, in fact, I know all about how there have been supposedly shortages, and how various dates have changed.
The fact is, Apple does have a massive advantage in marketing, they're far more adept at spreading the word than any other firm. They seem to have really got the ball rolling and it's just snowballed because they don't even have to do much to get every tech site on the planet to report every minute detail of their latest and greatest products. Now, I wouldn't buy an iPad because I'm not a fan of tablets, and certainly not for heavily locked down general computing devices, but if I was a general user and in the market for one and decided to get one then I'd have absolutely no fucking idea any product other than the iPad was really out there so far. I'd buy an iPad because it's all I've heard about, and heard about constantly.
If you think a massive portion of Apple's sales don't come from marketing then you've got to be pretty ignorant, marketing is far and away Apple's biggest strength.
"Now, there will be a second wave of tablets, where everyone runs out and copies the iPad, and that might change things. They will be cheaper, and not as powerful, and have longer lasting batteries."
This strikes me as a bit of an odd comment, Apple nearly always sells lower spec hardware than their competitors for a higher price, so I'd be suprised if the cheaper longer battery life competitors are less powerful, but this goes back to my point above- Apple devices certainly don't win on technical merit, they win on marketing first, and design second. Things like technical specs and so forth sit much further down the list and historically always have with Apple products. I'm not sure why they'd be copying Apple either when the tablet is hardly an Apple invention. As was pointed out on the BBC yesterday regarding Dell's new tablet, they can hardly have copied Apple because it takes much more than a few months to develop such a product, the tablets coming out now must've been in development well before the iPad was known about. I was trialling a tablet at work at least as far back as 2003, although back then it was a horrible bulky thing running Windows XP, because the hardware just wasn't small enough to match modern tablets back then.
If anything, all that's happened is that the iPad marketing campaign has made the world wake up to the fact the tablet market still exists and again, because of that campaign, of course the iPad is seen as the front runner.
Apple could sell a lump of turd and call it the iTurd, advertising it as a magical new turd and a good portion of Apple's core few million fanboys would still buy it.
That doesn't mean it's going to achieve acceptance amongst the general public though, and that's really the key test, because that's where Apple really makes it's profits. For every success such as the iPod or the iPhone, Apple have had just as many flops with pretty much no take up outside the fanatical core such as the MacBook Air or the AppleTV.
It takes quite a leap of the imagination to jump from Apple selling units to their core userbase to Windows not working well on tablets, in fact, that makes no real sense at all. Part the issue with failed Windows tablets in the past is that the technology simply wasn't up to it, last time there was a real push for tablets we simply didn't have the technology to make them thin enough, they were bulky, battery life was lower and so on. I was working in IT support for schools at the time and we were trialling them there as they were being sold as the next big thing at the time, but tablets there are very different to tablets now in terms of hardware size, weight, and performance. What's more, they were XP based and XP was never initially designed for touchscreen use whilst Windows 7 has had touchscreen usage taken into account from the start.
GP is right, their conclusion is based on entirely flawed premises, but then it's InfoWorld, we already know enough about their journalistic integrity, i.e. they have none.
It's had he hasn't been modded up and you have because you don't seem to have provided anything to counter his point that's particularly solid, merely stated that you simply don't believe what he says can possibly be true.
Here's my personal anecdote, I worked in tech support for schools some years back and had to fix printers regularly, time and time again it came down to the fact they were getting clogged up with ink from 3rd party ink cartridges. It was easy enough to fix the printers, but it was time consuming and when they were paying by the hour, it wasn't cheap for them to have us dissasemble the printer and give it a good clean off with spirits.
It's been some years since I did this, however just last week our IT department (I work in software development at a different firm outside of education now) decided to switch back to official cartridges and toners because they were facing the same issues I did those 5 or so years ago.
So if it really is easy to just copy an ink formulation, then why does 3rd party ink and toner consistently manage to break printers in ways that official ink and toners do not?
Don't get me wrong, I do agree completely ink is disgustingly overpriced, in fact, it's one of my pet annoyances in the IT world- a better example rather than arguing over the ink itself is this, why in the past has it been possible to get a new printer with cartridges included cheaper than a full set of brand new HP ink cartridges (£35 for the printer + cartridges, or £45 for new set of cartridges)? Clearly something is wrong with pricing, but despite this I don't agree that it's necessarily simple to copy the ink formula, else again, why to this day, despite the maturity of the 3rd party ink cartridge does no 3rd party ink vendor manage to provide ink and toner that doesn't consistently fuck up your printer in a shorter time span than official ink and toner?
I know this is just a personal anecdote, but one things for sure, over the years I've seen too much of this on too many printers of too many different brands where 3rd party causes problems where 1st party doesn't for this to be mere coincidence.
There is one potential explanation of course- that 3rd party ink vendors aren't willing to provide quality ink either because that in itself cuts into their bottom line, but certainly 3rd party ink doessn't ever seem to be of the same quality as 1st party ink however you cut it. Don't get me wrong, some printers manage to last out their lifetime on 3rd party ink, but many more do not- I suspect it's because as the GP says, there are so many factors in producing good ink that sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't a problem.
One things for sure though, there's no such thing as a cheap, reliable, high quality method of doing inkjet printing. You either have to pay a lot, or suffer problematic ink it seems. I would love nothing more than to be able to get the reliability of 1st party ink and printers, coupled with the cost of 3rd party consumables, but no such solution even after all these years of inkjet printing seems to exist. I suspect it's because again, as the GP says, far more R&D goes into getting ink right than many people give credit for or realise and whilst the cheap 3rd party ink may work for a while for you, inevitably over a range of environments there seems to be conditions where it just doesn't cut it whilst 1st party ink consistently does. In terms of economics though it may well work out cheaper to use 3rd party ink and replace your printer every year than use 1st party and replace it every 5 years or whatever regardless I suppose.
What? You're a game developer and you don't understand how to develop for multiple platform configurations? That's pretty damn disturbing, no wonder there's a lot of bad games out there nowadays if this is a sign of how far the industry has dropped. Perhaps it explains why there have been so many horrendous PC ports of console games in recent years though.
The PC market was more fragmented, and had lower specs 10 years ago than Android phones today, and yet it did not prevent production of many great games. What's more, it's actually easier with Android, because at least with Android a lot of stuff is abstracted away for you from the off, and you don't have to do it all yourself. Besides, your post doesn't make an awful lot of sense even because the iPhone itself has different processor and memory configurations, but also with the iPad/4G, also has different screen resolutions and so forth too so it's a problem on that platform anyway.
I have to question whether you really are a game developer if grasping the concept of dealing with abstraction layers to cope with different hardware platforms is beyond you because it's been fundamental to engine development for a long, long time now- even on consoles because you're never sure if you're going to port from say, your DirectX based XBox title to a GL based PS3 title, and perhaps even then on to the lower specced Wii with a completely different control set to boot. Very few companies are developing exclusives now with the idea that they'll never ever be ported off that single platform. The situation with Android is absolutely no different, it's just that as mobile devices have lower specifications in general, you have to scale your ambitions down somewhat, all the remaining theory is still the same though.
The only way you can avoid fragmentation is by simply never improving your hardware platform, and, well, that'd be stupid because you'd get left in the past. Android does as good a job, if not better than nearly any other platform out there right now of handling inevitable obsolescence and changing hardware platforms.
"I do like to think that the animals that are slaughtered for my food suffer as little as possible, but I am not so naive as to think that they do not feel any fear or suffering. It's part of the price paid for the convenience of eating meat."
I think it goes beyond this. Different producers treat animals differently. In the UK for example there was an uproar a year or two back about the company Bernard Mathews being caught having their staff filmed in a turkey farm throwing them up in the air and hitting them with sticks, and we're kicking them about etc. purely to get some sick pleasure out of it.
Personally I eat meat, but I'll boycott companies like that, in fact, I get my meat from trusted local farm shops which are beginning to thrive in the UK as they're popping up everywhere and expanding rapidly, so I guess I'm probably not alone in preferring to skip the supermarket middleman that imports dodgy meat from half way across the world. Many people I know at least somewhat support the vegetarian viewpoint even if they don't practice it themselves, not because they don't understand that animals must suffer somewhat if we eat meat, but because it's sometimes hard to guage the extent of the suffering. Besides, meat from farm shops always tastes nicer anyway.
There are other ethical reasons too, I wont buy chicken from the supermarket chain ASDA (part of the Walmart chain) either, because last time I did in small print it noted that the chicken was from Thailand. I had to question at this point why the fuck meat was being flown half way around the world when we still have more than enough space to produce chicken in the UK, clearly the only reason to fly it over would be to dodge either food hygiene or animal welfare standards that are set in the UK, and hence they were not trustworthy.
Boycott of some or all meat products can be quite logical far beyond the simple disagreement with an animal having to be brought up in a fairly natural manner and to be killed quickly when the time comes. The fundamental problems tend to be unnecessary suffering, knowing your food has been produced hygienically and is of good quality, and also knowing that it hasn't resulted in thousands of miles of airmiles of needless pollution to get to you, not simply the fact that animals have to die to produce meat.
For what it's worth, their previous game, Dark Age of Camelot was the same.
There was pretty much no high level content for about 6 months after release until they finally got it all finished and released in a patch.
To be fair, I don't think that's true.
As someone who played Dark Age of Camelot from it's early days, and got GM cartography on UO when it was hard. I never played EQ, but I had friends who wasted years grinding away in that too, I'd say that all MMOs nowadays, Asian or not require less grinding than Western MMOs have done in the past.
I didn't play Aion for that long admittedly, but for the time I did play it I didn't find Aion any worse for grinding than say, Warhammer online either.
"Here, in the US, ISPs had carried all of Usenet. Even the binaries. What is happening now is that the binary groups have become so large they dwarf the text groups and the bulk of the cost is for those."
But again, the UK ISPs ditched them with the same excuse years ago, when usenet was far less used for piracy because BitTorrent was at it's peak. It's a business decision based on increasing profits by dropping an unpopular service, it's really just as simple as that. No one signs up to an ISP because it does or doesn't offer usenet anymore, they haven't for years, most people don't even know what it is. It's cheaper for the ISP to just to ditch it.
"By the way, when the number of binary-carrying Usenet servers declines to just a handful of companies, expect Giganews et alia to be sued into oblivion by the media companies never to appear again."
Except usenet is already fairly well protected by legal precedent. Newzbin wasn't a Usenet provider, but was an indexer, it performed a similar role to The Pirate Bay. Besides, your assertion that Giganews advertises itself as a gateway to infringement is outright false, it does nothing of the sort, in fact, on the contrary, it states quite clearly on it's site in multiple places that copyright infringement is a breach of terms of use of their service. Usenet can fairly easily be hosted in countries with less hostile IP laws too- whilst places like Sweden were willing to stretch to attacking the likes of The Pirate Bay, it's almost a certainty that a Swedish court wouldn't rule to close down a usenet provider.
I know you're enjoying continuing your rhetoric about how pirates are to blame, but let's face it, the reality is you're just pissed off at finally losing a service that was being provided to you via subsidy from the majority of other subscribers to your ISP. Certainly your subscription alone wouldn't have covered the cost of running the usenet servers. If you don't want to pay your fair share, then tough shit, either pay up, or complain to your ISP for not being willing to use income from other users to subsidise usenet servers for you and the handful of others that use it on your ISP.
Blaming pirates though who are almost in their entirety using paid for newsgroup services instead simply because you don't want to pay for a service yourself is just comical. You really can't see the hypocrisy in that?
I don't think you can really blame the pirates, because there's not enough decent performance free usenet servers out there that actually do offer binaries.
Everyone I know personally that uses usenet to download files has an account with the likes of Giganews, certainly I don't know anyone whose managed to find a decent free usenet server that holds all binaries and provides decent download speeds.
I don't even think I've had an ISP in the UK for years now that's had binary newsgroup access, only text. I think it was about 2003 since I was last with an ISP that provided binary newsgroup access.
Really, I think as is often the case with these sorts of things, the only real blame lies with the corporate greed machine that tries to seek out every single penny of profit it can, regardless of the goodwill it costs the company.
I'm not sure what you mean about Usenet not being suited to large binary file transfer though, that doesn't make a lot of sense, because, well, it is, hence why people use it for that. It's generally far more efficient for the job than the likes of P2P in fact.
That's a very simplistic, and rather pessimistic view with quite a few holes in it.
"You still need to download data to your computer. No encryption or steganography gets around the fact that any reasonably fast download will be up on radar due to its size."
It might well show up on "radar", but it'll still be buried between the billions of large legitimate downloads and transfers that occur each day, from high quality video conferencing, to remote backups, to downloads of the latest software versions, to legitimate file transfers between people collaborating on hobbyist projects. There's simply too many large data transfers, between too many different hosts, such that if illegal file transfers are sufficiently obfuscated, it is just not viable to pick them all out.
Technology in terms of obscuring file sharing has a long way it can still go if it needs to, writing a plugin based file sharing system, where data transfers are wrapped up in other plugin-implemented protocols such as HTTP, FTP, Games protocols and so forth and where the plugins themselves are transferred via P2P isn't a massively difficult task, it's just somewhat time consuming, and simply put, there's no real need for it just yet, but you can gurantee it'll happen should the need arise. There's no reason file transfers can't be masked to look like legitimate web usage in this respect, and the amount of processing power it'd take in terms of DPI to figure out what is merely obfuscated data, and what is legitimate traffic would be well be on any ISP, possibly even beyond many governments in fact.
The issue for the industry is there's the political aspect too, and to start really stopping file sharing you have to start passively snooping on encrypted connections and so forth, which crosses an important line- it is a clear breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and if you're in Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights. You'd have to face international criticism, or like the UK when our old Labour government did just this- face the European courts if you're in the UK, or you'd have to pull out of being signatories of these declarations, which in itself will put you in the international spotlight, and lose any international political standing you may have once had. This is a line that most governments simply wont cross, even if it means upsetting the people feeding them backhanders in the music/movie industry.
It's a game of brinksmanship for sure, it's a constant battle between the industry trying to push fundamental principles on freedoms, legal rights, privacy and so forth of Western society to their limits, and the pirates creating further countermeasures that require further bending of the laws and principles to fight it.
The music/movie industry wont win, because for them to do so, would mean the abandonment of some of the fundamental principles of Western society, and pretty much every Western government recognises that although they'll go so far, abandoning the fundamental principles on which their society is built, and losing all international influence and respect as a result, is simply a step too far in protecting the industry.
Besides, even if governments do drop their principles and stoop to the level of China, or North Korea, then I suspect you'll still find kids swapping contraband on USB pen drives, or wirelessly between their mobile phones.
I don't disagree that it's technically possible for governments and the industry to defeat measures pirates come up with, you're right about that. But to ignore the expense of continuing to do so in the face of ever more advanced obfuscation, and to ignore the political lines that must be crossed to do so, is bound to result in the false conclusion you've come to that the industry can somehow win this.
Case in point, I can use a fully encrypted connection to Giganews' US servers. Giganews is protected under legal precedent, and my encrypted connection is protected from government snooping under the ECHR. Sure they can theoretically
Yeah, that was badly written, it would probably have made more sense phrased as:
It's also no coincidence that quite a few prominent members of UKIP are ex-Tory MPs.
I can't really recall how well most of them did individually in the elections though so I'm not sure how many of them made it to MEP status, or how many were candidates in the general election.
No, it's possible to have pride in your country without being a xenophobe, but being a xenophobe tends to go hand in hand with having pride in your country.
But just as always through the ages, having pride in your country can be good, it can keep up a national spirit and keep people motivated through times of trouble (the Blitz, major earthquakes etc.) but it can also be used for bad- the third reich for example played on nationalistic patriotism to build it's power base.
The difficulty is admittedly telling the difference between those who have pride in their country because they're genuinely proud of it, and those who say they have pride in their country to justify their hate for others. There is a somewhat in between category too of course- those whose pride in their country is misplaced, believing it's doing the right thing, even when it's not such that their intentions are good, but the result of their actions are bad.
So the word wont become meaningless, it's wrong to suggest the majority of politicians are xenophobic, they're not- the Lib Dems and Labour tend to have next to no xenophobia throughout them even though the Tories do, and of course, UKIP and the BNP are built entirely on xenophobia. It's little different elsewhere of course, many US politicians are no less xenophobic than some of the nationalists in South America. So in this respect, it's certainly true that xenophobia is rife among politics across the world, but I don't think it's in any way a trait held by the majority of politicians.
But for what it's worth, pride in your country in itself can be a dangerous thing, it's good to recognise Britain was a driving force in ending the slave trade, and it's good to be proud of that, but I certainly wouldn't be proud of the fact we were also one of the driving forces in starting the slave trade and carrying it through at it's peak. If you're going to say you're proud of your country regardless, be prepared to explain how you can be proud of the bad things it's done, as well as the good. Me, personally? I think I'd say in balance I'm proud of the UK, because I think in the grand scheme of things, in balance, compared to the rest of the world, we've done a lot of good, but I'd wager that's more down to great individuals rather than the nation as a whole. There's still an awful lot of British history, I can't be proud of, just as I can't be proud of the fact that even in the last few years the British government has been complicit in torture of it's own citizens, breach of our human rights, rape of civil liberties, and gross increase in surveillance.
But here's a final point, when the likes of Daniel Hannan say they're proud of Britain, it's hard to tell if they're good or bad, when they start attacking people of other ethnicities and so forth, for nothing other than the fact they're different, it's quite clear what actual category he falls into. So don't assume that because someone says they're proud of their country they're not a bad person- take a look at what else they say, their other actions, and then you can see what they're really about, and it is for this reason that I state the problem with many of the Tory old school, because I have watched and seen their actions and their words of the years to know that they're not simply proud of their country, but they are in fact xenophobes. UKIP is really a fine example too though, most of it's policies don't stack up to the real facts and figures, and really their only reasoning for UK independence when you cut away all the lies, is that they don't want anything to do with foreigners, when you really look deeply at what they're about, you'll find they're not really much different to the BNP, the difference is the BNP are made up of lower class thugs, and UKIP is made up of upper class bigots, but ultimately they're no different, and their claims of simply loving their country are just an excuse for their bigotry.
It's not the people who do that though, it's the same old Labour government we've just got rid of.
Yes, it's a fine line.
I'm certainly concerned about how the Britain first attitude could potentially have caused serious harm to the UK under a Conservative majority, most prominently with regards to their attitude towards Europe. A good example of bad policy was their grouping in the European parliament with largely far right parties- to see this extrapolated simply beyond their European parliament policy to British policy in general could be quite a tragedy.
Still, as I say though, as a counter-point, Milliband's attempts to keep the torture documents on Binyamin Mohamed secret purely because of US pressure also do the UK no good, and it really shows how at the other end of the spectrum being too subservient can also be extremely bad.
As you say, with the Lib Dems, I'd like to believe that perhaps they'll be the balancing force in this respect- not letting the Britain first ideology get too far out of hand one way or the other.
Scotland has been the most vocal in recent years with regards to independence from the rest of Britain, and I'd like to believe as you say, the fact Scotland has so many Lib Dem regions might mean that the Lib Dems being part of the coalition will be a unifying force, but who knows?
Specifically then, I think if anything will bring this coalition down, it wont be civil liberties, it wont be the economy, it wont be defence- I think it will in fact be tensions between the extremely pro-European Lib Dems, and the overly patriotic Tories. I suspect that will be the real boiling point that hurts both the government, and ultimately us too.
Of course, it's also worth pointing out that with over a third of MPs being new to the job, the whole dynamic may well have changed with regards to the union, and international cooperation, for better or worse though, who knows? I guess we'll find out in time. I'd like to think that the British empire mindset that is still strong in some of the old school Tories might well have largely gone with the 227 MPs who have now been replaced, but that might just be wishful thinking.
Perhaps the most mouthy is Daniel Hannan, other prominent examples being the likes of Philip Hollobone and Douglas Carswell, but certainly even people in the cabinet like William Hague, and Liam Fox have some quite xenophobic, and overly patriotic views, although both have been toned down under Cameron's leadership.
Oh, and 30 years? I assume you slept through the 90s, where the Tories managed to rip their entire party apart because of the division amonst the party between those who were a little more forward thinking, and those who were still living in the past with dreams of Britain not needing to be anything to do with Europe and fantasies of it being a superpower still.
It's also no coincidence that quite a few MPs in UKIP are ex-Tory.
There's certainly a movement in the Conservatives nowadays to move away from this viewpoint for sure, but to pretend there aren't still quite a lot of Tory MPs who still maintain that old fashioned viewpoint and who still wield a fair amount of influence? That takes an impressive amount of either political ignorance, or political bias coupled with perhaps a hint of xenophobia in ones self to not even be able to notice it.
But if you care to try and find a bit more about it, a good place to look nowadays tends to be in the Tory euro-sceptic circles, that's mostly where they are focussing their attention currently. If you really paid attention to British politics and really knew what you were on about, you might have encountered in the news the kind of not so pretty events that occur every now and again when the old school mindset clashes with the more progressive folk in the Conservative party:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/tory-mep-defiant-after-losing-expulsion-appeal-1868230.html
"I rather suspect that that imbalance is what causes many people much disquiet."
Actually, I suspect it's largely patriotism. No one wants to see one of their citizens handed over to a foreign power with no worthwhile favour in return, and yet, that's exactly what the Labour government was proposing.
I'd wager this has been fed by the fact we've got some of our soldiers dying in a war, that, once you cut away the rhetoric, really had fuck all to do with us, and made us less secure in that we're not as much a target as the US- prior to that, we weren't really a target for Islamic terorism because we were so tolerant of islamic communities. It's further not helped by the fact that when the US manages to kill some of our soldiers in a friendly fire "accident" (I wouldn't call it an accident, I'd call it incompetence) they refuse to assist in the coroners investigation by witholding the gun cameras. Add to this the threats of withdrawing security cooperation with us when our courts wanted to release evidence of our secure services being complicit in torture of British citizens by US forces and you begin to see why there is such a backlash.
Probably, if the US hadn't been so difficult over so many things over the last decade, despite us giving them something that can't really have a value put on it - the blood and lives of our soldiers in support of their war - then they could've gotten away with this extradition and a lot of people wouldn't have even batted an eyelid at the case.
But no that didn't happen, and so people in the UK have simply had enough, and McKinnon has become the catalyst for which people are standing up and demanding that our government starts saying no to the US.
I think it's telling how quickly Obama jumped on the chance to congratulate David Cameron, and get Clinton to send the new foreign secretary over to the US after the coalition decision was made when taken in the context of how the Obama has treated Britain since he became president- he's basically shunned the UK, despite the old government bending over backwards for them.
I think Obama is actually concerned that the new administration will in fact stand up for itself, and recognises that the US wont get such an easy ride anymore, and so is playing the charm offensive from the off.
I believe the speed in which Obama moved to give his blessing to the new adminsitration, and to get William Hague over to the US is more telling than anything about the relationship- I'd say it's a sure sign that Britain will be much less the US' lapdog under the new government. This is probably partly to do with the fact that large parts of the main coalition party, the Conservatives, are quite xenophobic and are still living under the delusion Britain rules the world. I'm not generally a fan of that overly patriotic viewpoint, but if it means it creates pressure to keep the UK a little more independent from the US, then great.
"With notable exception of M$Office 2003/earlier and CADs, this statement relates to the reality very loosely."
I guess you just don't use that much software.
CRM software, ERP software, office software, corporate AV software, 3D modelling software, databases, development environments, audio editing software, games, accounting software, mathematics software to give a few examples- none of the FOSS options are as good as the best proprietary alternatives. Even in terms of the likes of e-mail servers and clients, where's the FOSS options that really stands up to Exchange/Outlook and Domino/Notes? they just don't exist.
I'm not saying there isn't some great FOSS software out there, sure there is, Apache is awesome and I much prefer SVN to SourceSafe (although Team Foundation Server is much better). The issue is though, for vast swathes of types of software it's just not the case, whilst sometimes FOSS is theoretically better, it often has such a poor interface it just can't compete.
"FOSS model is "egoistic development model" - everybody develops for himself."
Yes exactly, and there's your problem. What works for a developer with decades of using C/C++ doesn't work for your average joe in the street.
"And many corporation also "get it" and assign developers to FOSS projects to make the adjustments - either locally or in mainline - to accommodate their business cases"
Yes, and many more don't. It really depends on the software, whether there's a worthwhile proprietary alternative available, whether the business case works and so on, but for the majority of companies, it simply doesn't.
"Business goes for proprietary software due to long term support contracts. And that's about 75% of reasons. The remaining 25% of reasons revolve around backward compatibility."
You grossly overestimate the weight of long term contracts in decisions to go proprietary, largely because a lot of proprietary software doesn't have a need for long term support. If you think these two elements really add up to 75% and 25% of a business decision in which software package to go with, it simply demonstrates you have zero experience of actually being involved in the process of deciding what software to go with. The largest factor is far and away the software that best works for the company, and that involves allowing the users of the system to evaluate the different options, and give their opinion as to which is best- here's a hint, FOSS doesn't often win. This goes for everything from user facing software (e.g. ERP/CRM systems) to back end systems (e.g. databases)- as great as PostgreSql is, it simply doesn't hold up against Oracle and sometimes the extra investment of going with Oracle far outweights the savings of going with PostgreSql for example.
"The myth that proprietary software is somehow magically better for users is just that - myth. And was debunked many many times before."
Great, you can Google with a completely biased search term and find results to back up your theory, whilst were on the subject of Google though, where's my superior open source alternative to it by the way?