I think that WHOIS should be required to keep an accurate, legit database of domain registrants. Registrants of domains should be required to have at the least a verified mailing address and phone number, and logically an email address as well so they can communicate with the registrar.
Compare having a domain to purchasing real estate. You would never get anywhere trying to rent or purchase a retail location with a bogus name, address, phone number, email address, etc. I think domain registrants should have the same level of accountability as the brick and mortar establishment. This is where it would be advantageous to have personal domains as a separate top-level domain for which private information would be kept private.
Frankly, finding a minimized window on the Dock is much more difficult than finding one in XP/Vista, primarily because the icons are small and unlabeled until you mouse over them. Switching between multiple firefox windows that were minimized to the dock was painfully slow because I had to move the mouse over each one to determine which window I wanted to bring up. Granted, I only spend a few minutes a month on Macs, and while I get around on it I am much less familiar with it than with Windows. However, I think the Windows Taskbar (especially with Quick Launch Toolbar) is an effective application launcher and a much better switcher in a more compact format.
Note that Vista also includes support for the mouse in the Alt+Tab menu.
I'd have to agree the Dock implementation is horrible. I had the pleasure of downloading a file and burning it to CD on OSX today, and I'd have to say it was a pain just navigating between windows with the Dock. Frankly, the 'Burn to CD' Functionality is alot smoother in Vista also.
In my book, the only real downside to Vista over OSX is the UAC, which like most other people, I have partially disabled. So I also rarely see a UAC box.
I second. Most users can't even figure out how to manage one desktop.
However, MS shouldn't be developing only for the masses - most of MS office features are developed for the 1% of people who actually use more than basic Word and Excel functionality. Windows should be no different.
You probably wouldn't want to download 100GB a week on Verizon's wireless network, you'd be pulling your hair out waiting for stuff to download, legal or illegal. But every ISP oversells their bandwidth - they count on people paying $60/month who only use it occasionally, to offset the heavy users that are costing them more than they are worth. From another perspective, unlimited is not really unlimited anyway because only a certain amount of bandwidth is available to you at any given time. Wireless systems have a much smaller total bandwidth allocation at this point so the real issue as pointed out numerous times here is truth in advertising. If there's a 5GB cap, make it clear to users. It's not Verizon's job (or Comcast's job for that matter) to police the internet. I really don't think they can legally assume that someone is doing something illegal solely based on the amount of data transfer that is happening over a period of time.
I think driver signing/not signing boils down to trust of the manufacturer. Or trust of Microsoft. 80% of the aftermarket peripherals I install do not have signed drivers. Perhaps MS needs to streamline or devote more resources to getting drivers signed, or the strategy of requiring signed drivers will blow up in their face because users reject it.
If you want to go on the basis of included device drivers, Vista is far and away better than XP or any distro of Linux that I've tried. XP is hurt by the fact that MS has not updated the media since SP2 came out. Vista will eventually have the same problem. The bottom line is that, at least at this point 8 months from release, pretty much any device you can think of to put on a computer is supported by Vista out of the box. You can't say as much about Linux, and that's really the fault or choice of the device manufacturer more than it has anything to do with the OS.
I think you're right, we'll soon be going to digital distribution - however I don't think MS will charge for it, but they probably will require the silly 'Live' account to do it. Really, you should be able to input your product key, go to the download page, and get the latest ISO with all the current updates and drivers available.
Problem is that MS is probably not going to include a good many drivers because they aren't logo-certified or whatever that genuine driver crap is.
When I install XP/Vista, I don't have to research. Therein lies the problem. I don't want to research, let alone have to do "better research" just to make it work.
The O-360/IO-360 is 180hp and has a 200hp variant. It is used with excellent reliability in several dozen aircraft. The simple fact is that the water cooling system is another point of failure, which I would avoid if possible in an aircraft powerplant. I've not personally heard of stunt planes using a water cooled engine with the exception of the older biplanes with the big watercooled radials. I wouldn't put watercooled engines in the "common" category, they fall more into the "experimental" category, which happens to be the most common application to date. The aircooled variety has a proven track record and while "choice" happens to be an opinion as you pointed out, you opined that the watercooled engines were common, safe and efficient. I think the facts still back up the aircooled engine as a good choice and the watercooled variety as a poor choice. Of course you are welcome to your opinion and I wish you good luck with your plane.
Just because somebody has done it, or some people do it, does not lessen the fact that it is a poor choice. They might be cheaper, but two factors, weight and reliability, make these planes I wouldn't want to go up in.
Nearly everyone I've spoken to that has used Office 2007 has loved it. Not everyone, but nearly everyone.
I have Word 2007 open right now with a simple one page document, and it is taking up a whopping 17 megs. I don't have any of the preload junk loading on my system. It is also using 0% CPU time. Normal memory usage is from 20-80 megs depending on the size of documents loaded and how many docs I have loaded. Load time is approximately 3 seconds.
Every state does this. But you nailed it, it's not effective because noone reports it unless they are already being audited.
What needs to happen is that the selling vendor needs to report back to each state they sell to. This would be a nuisance for ebay sellers and the like, but it might possible just be enacted for sellers over a certain volume.
Yes, but 4 years from now, voters are not going to be any more likely to be in favor of paying extra tax $$'s just because they bought something on the internet.
The reason such a tax is brought up is because state and local government are losing sales tax revenue to Internet purchases. A far better solution would be to charge a fixed sales tax on all out of state purchases, whether via mail, phone, or internet. Funneling those revenues back to local communities would be a big pain in the butt for the various tax agencies, but it beats making people pay extra on everything.
That's what everyone was saying 8 months after XP came out too.
And now you give XP the title of last tolerable MS OS.
Ubuntu is fine if all someone is doing is going online (well most of the time, the poor saps who want to get on sites that use ActiveX controls are sometimes screwed over), getting email, and putting out an occasional letter. But the majority of people I recommend systems to also want to be able to play games and buy software and hardware off the shelf and install with minimal hassle. My business customers are unwilling to settle for something that does most of what they need to do, instead of everything they need to, just to save a few $$'s.
Intel has its own similar implentation and they've had it for a year now - it's called vPro. And you can do it remotely. However it's implemented, it's a great feature and I agree that every manufacturer should be building this into their boards.
Intel allows the motherboard manufacturer to determine memory support. They created the chipset to handle DDR2 or DDR3 in whatever configuration the motherboard manufacturer desires. It is my understanding that on Intel's X38 desktop board configuration, they are supporting non-ECC DDR3 only.
Isn't there some limit on validity of a patent when it is something that many others would have come up with, without any input from the patent holder?
I mean, I should have patented the PBJ sandwich years ago, now I could hold school lunches hostage until they paid me a dollar per sandwich.
My point is, someone (and probably many people) would have just as easily come up with the idea of putting those 3 ingredients together to make a lunch. And likely, many researchers would have developed the same hard disk manufacturing technology without any help from these two people who current hold this patent.
The first argument in the article deals with why regulators should pursue unbundling. In the 2rd sentence he references a court case in which he states that "an incredible 52% of a new Acer laptop was constituted by the forced-bundling of Microsoft and other Windows platform software".
Number one - his reason, and I might add the court's reason also, is fundamentally flawed, because they forced Acer to refund full retail value of Windows XP Home (E135.20), MS Works (E60), PowerDVD (E40.99), Norton Antivirus (E38.66), and NTI CDMaker (E37). We all know that Windows XP Home can be had for $89, MS Works for $39, Norton Antivirus for $19, and a DVD Player/CD burning combo package for about $7. In Euros this works out to about E109, less than the judgment price for Windows alone! Realistically the bundled software was only about 18% of the total price of the laptop, and Acer may get even better pricing than what I quoted. Not to mention they are also supporting the OEM applications provided as well, which they would not do for a Linux distro that the customer installed himself.
Number two - he argues that if Acer shipped Linux (hey I thought this was about unbundling!) they would avoid all this cost altogether. Well go back to my previous point, they would probably charge somewhere in the neighborhood of $80-100 for OS installation and support for Linux. Consider that Red Hat charges $80 for their desktop distro including one year of basic, web only support. You have to buy the $299 workstation package to even get telephone support from Red Hat. Now who sounds expensive?
Number 3 - I also disagree with his ascertainment that businesses shy away from buying white-box hardware. Recent studies put the white-box market share at about 30%, and I would venture to say that a vast majority of those sales are to businesses. So almost as many business decision makers worldwide are buying from white-box vendors as from Dell and HP combined.
Number 4 - I disagree with the assumption that since Apple is creating their own hardware and they have a smaller (6.4%) market share, they should be exempt from unbundling. I don't think you can pick and choose who to apply the rules to.
Number 5 - You can't base your argument on percentage of cost of software vs. hardware in a complete system. Sure, ten years ago the OS was only 5% of the cost, because PC's cost $2000 each. Just because hardware prices have fallen off the table, should that force software companies to do likewise? I haven't seen any other major software manufacturers follow that logic. ACT! cost $200 ten years ago - and it still costs $200 now.
Number 6 - Unbundling will most certainly add complexity, not to mention add to support costs and end user frustration. A Pre-installed OS, regardless of what OS it is, is a working OS. No hassling with configuration files and drivers on Linux. No downloading chipset and other drivers on Windows. All things that have to be done regardless of the OS because only on occasion does any version of Linux work absolutely correctly right out of the box (and we all know Windows needs some babying). Expecting the end user to choose and load software would be a service and support nightmare. I can just imagine some guy who heard he could get Linux for free so he ordered the PC with no OS, installed linux, and then calls up Acer tech support because he can't figure out how to install Halo. Disaster waiting to happen.
Finally - His suggested solution is to bundle both Windows and Linux media, and let the customer choose which to install. As many people have noted on this thread and many times in the past, you can't cover the broad range of Linux distros, which at the same time is a strength and a weakness for Linux on the desktop. You're going to have to support one or the other OS, so in this scenario you're still going to pay the piper for something. If he truly were interested in unbundling (and after reading the article, it's really not about
But then Apple would lose their entire PC hardware business, because virtually noone would pay the price premium for hardware. And if Apple had to slash their hardware prices to a HP level, they wouldn't be profitable.
How many more sales of OSX would they really get if they offered it to everyone and lost all the bundled sales? A few maybe, but it would not offset the profit in the hardware sales they would lose. They are inbetween a rock and a hard place if they went that route because (1) They don't have enough corporate share to survive as an OS-only company, and (2) They won't get the corporate share unless they become an OS-only company. I can't count the number of times a customer has come to me and said, "I started out on computers with Mac but switched to PC because Macs weren't business oriented." Unbundling OSX and Windows is not going to make that customer change from using Windows.
Have you ever considered that the reason for this is that Windows was the only OS worth installing?
Back in the 90's, what other options were there? OS/2? That died the instant Windows 95 came out. Linux wasn't even an option. In the past decade, Linux has emerged but only within the last year has it really become a viable, OEM supported alternative to Windows. And coincidentally (or not!) that is when several major OEMs started offering Linux as an option.
As far as offering a PC with no OS installed, if you were a corporate customer with licensing that was never an issue. On the SMB and consumer side, the Windows requirement was a good one because it helped offset the rampant piracy that was occuring.
I think the device OS is a niche that suits Linux perfectly, because it is (or can be) fast, secure, and stable in a controlled environment. On the desktop side, providing support for multiple GUI's, multiple distros would require almost as much in the way of resources as their existing Windows support structure, and as the parent stated, for a tiny percentage of users. Consider also that the average user of Linux on the desktop is at a level that transcends most of the support offered. Those who are in the "computer dummies" category and are also using linux, are an even tinier minority.
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I think that WHOIS should be required to keep an accurate, legit database of domain registrants. Registrants of domains should be required to have at the least a verified mailing address and phone number, and logically an email address as well so they can communicate with the registrar.
Compare having a domain to purchasing real estate. You would never get anywhere trying to rent or purchase a retail location with a bogus name, address, phone number, email address, etc. I think domain registrants should have the same level of accountability as the brick and mortar establishment. This is where it would be advantageous to have personal domains as a separate top-level domain for which private information would be kept private.
Frankly, finding a minimized window on the Dock is much more difficult than finding one in XP/Vista, primarily because the icons are small and unlabeled until you mouse over them. Switching between multiple firefox windows that were minimized to the dock was painfully slow because I had to move the mouse over each one to determine which window I wanted to bring up.
Granted, I only spend a few minutes a month on Macs, and while I get around on it I am much less familiar with it than with Windows. However, I think the Windows Taskbar (especially with Quick Launch Toolbar) is an effective application launcher and a much better switcher in a more compact format.
Note that Vista also includes support for the mouse in the Alt+Tab menu.
I'd have to agree the Dock implementation is horrible. I had the pleasure of downloading a file and burning it to CD on OSX today, and I'd have to say it was a pain just navigating between windows with the Dock. Frankly, the 'Burn to CD' Functionality is alot smoother in Vista also.
In my book, the only real downside to Vista over OSX is the UAC, which like most other people, I have partially disabled. So I also rarely see a UAC box.
I second. Most users can't even figure out how to manage one desktop.
However, MS shouldn't be developing only for the masses - most of MS office features are developed for the 1% of people who actually use more than basic Word and Excel functionality. Windows should be no different.
You probably wouldn't want to download 100GB a week on Verizon's wireless network, you'd be pulling your hair out waiting for stuff to download, legal or illegal. But every ISP oversells their bandwidth - they count on people paying $60/month who only use it occasionally, to offset the heavy users that are costing them more than they are worth.
From another perspective, unlimited is not really unlimited anyway because only a certain amount of bandwidth is available to you at any given time. Wireless systems have a much smaller total bandwidth allocation at this point so the real issue as pointed out numerous times here is truth in advertising. If there's a 5GB cap, make it clear to users. It's not Verizon's job (or Comcast's job for that matter) to police the internet. I really don't think they can legally assume that someone is doing something illegal solely based on the amount of data transfer that is happening over a period of time.
I think driver signing/not signing boils down to trust of the manufacturer. Or trust of Microsoft. 80% of the aftermarket peripherals I install do not have signed drivers. Perhaps MS needs to streamline or devote more resources to getting drivers signed, or the strategy of requiring signed drivers will blow up in their face because users reject it.
If you want to go on the basis of included device drivers, Vista is far and away better than XP or any distro of Linux that I've tried. XP is hurt by the fact that MS has not updated the media since SP2 came out. Vista will eventually have the same problem. The bottom line is that, at least at this point 8 months from release, pretty much any device you can think of to put on a computer is supported by Vista out of the box. You can't say as much about Linux, and that's really the fault or choice of the device manufacturer more than it has anything to do with the OS.
I think you're right, we'll soon be going to digital distribution - however I don't think MS will charge for it, but they probably will require the silly 'Live' account to do it. Really, you should be able to input your product key, go to the download page, and get the latest ISO with all the current updates and drivers available.
Problem is that MS is probably not going to include a good many drivers because they aren't logo-certified or whatever that genuine driver crap is.
When I install XP/Vista, I don't have to research. Therein lies the problem. I don't want to research, let alone have to do "better research" just to make it work.
The O-360/IO-360 is 180hp and has a 200hp variant. It is used with excellent reliability in several dozen aircraft. The simple fact is that the water cooling system is another point of failure, which I would avoid if possible in an aircraft powerplant. I've not personally heard of stunt planes using a water cooled engine with the exception of the older biplanes with the big watercooled radials. I wouldn't put watercooled engines in the "common" category, they fall more into the "experimental" category, which happens to be the most common application to date. The aircooled variety has a proven track record and while "choice" happens to be an opinion as you pointed out, you opined that the watercooled engines were common, safe and efficient. I think the facts still back up the aircooled engine as a good choice and the watercooled variety as a poor choice. Of course you are welcome to your opinion and I wish you good luck with your plane.
Just because somebody has done it, or some people do it, does not lessen the fact that it is a poor choice. They might be cheaper, but two factors, weight and reliability, make these planes I wouldn't want to go up in.
Nearly everyone I've spoken to that has used Office 2007 has loved it. Not everyone, but nearly everyone. I have Word 2007 open right now with a simple one page document, and it is taking up a whopping 17 megs. I don't have any of the preload junk loading on my system. It is also using 0% CPU time. Normal memory usage is from 20-80 megs depending on the size of documents loaded and how many docs I have loaded. Load time is approximately 3 seconds.
You mean the GUI doesn't have this option?
Sounds like the GUI still needs some work...
Every state does this. But you nailed it, it's not effective because noone reports it unless they are already being audited.
What needs to happen is that the selling vendor needs to report back to each state they sell to. This would be a nuisance for ebay sellers and the like, but it might possible just be enacted for sellers over a certain volume.
Yes, but 4 years from now, voters are not going to be any more likely to be in favor of paying extra tax $$'s just because they bought something on the internet.
The reason such a tax is brought up is because state and local government are losing sales tax revenue to Internet purchases. A far better solution would be to charge a fixed sales tax on all out of state purchases, whether via mail, phone, or internet. Funneling those revenues back to local communities would be a big pain in the butt for the various tax agencies, but it beats making people pay extra on everything.
That's what everyone was saying 8 months after XP came out too.
And now you give XP the title of last tolerable MS OS.
Ubuntu is fine if all someone is doing is going online (well most of the time, the poor saps who want to get on sites that use ActiveX controls are sometimes screwed over), getting email, and putting out an occasional letter. But the majority of people I recommend systems to also want to be able to play games and buy software and hardware off the shelf and install with minimal hassle. My business customers are unwilling to settle for something that does most of what they need to do, instead of everything they need to, just to save a few $$'s.
Intel has its own similar implentation and they've had it for a year now - it's called vPro. And you can do it remotely. However it's implemented, it's a great feature and I agree that every manufacturer should be building this into their boards.
Intel allows the motherboard manufacturer to determine memory support. They created the chipset to handle DDR2 or DDR3 in whatever configuration the motherboard manufacturer desires. It is my understanding that on Intel's X38 desktop board configuration, they are supporting non-ECC DDR3 only.
Too bad the camera isn't good enough to pick up the Martian sitting at the desk.
Really, if any of the landing spots have desks near them, I'd avoid them as much as possible.
Isn't there some limit on validity of a patent when it is something that many others would have come up with, without any input from the patent holder?
I mean, I should have patented the PBJ sandwich years ago, now I could hold school lunches hostage until they paid me a dollar per sandwich.
My point is, someone (and probably many people) would have just as easily come up with the idea of putting those 3 ingredients together to make a lunch. And likely, many researchers would have developed the same hard disk manufacturing technology without any help from these two people who current hold this patent.
The first argument in the article deals with why regulators should pursue unbundling. In the 2rd sentence he references a court case in which he states that "an incredible 52% of a new Acer laptop was constituted by the forced-bundling of Microsoft and other Windows platform software".
Number one - his reason, and I might add the court's reason also, is fundamentally flawed, because they forced Acer to refund full retail value of Windows XP Home (E135.20), MS Works (E60), PowerDVD (E40.99), Norton Antivirus (E38.66), and NTI CDMaker (E37). We all know that Windows XP Home can be had for $89, MS Works for $39, Norton Antivirus for $19, and a DVD Player/CD burning combo package for about $7. In Euros this works out to about E109, less than the judgment price for Windows alone! Realistically the bundled software was only about 18% of the total price of the laptop, and Acer may get even better pricing than what I quoted. Not to mention they are also supporting the OEM applications provided as well, which they would not do for a Linux distro that the customer installed himself.
Number two - he argues that if Acer shipped Linux (hey I thought this was about unbundling!) they would avoid all this cost altogether. Well go back to my previous point, they would probably charge somewhere in the neighborhood of $80-100 for OS installation and support for Linux. Consider that Red Hat charges $80 for their desktop distro including one year of basic, web only support. You have to buy the $299 workstation package to even get telephone support from Red Hat. Now who sounds expensive?
Number 3 - I also disagree with his ascertainment that businesses shy away from buying white-box hardware. Recent studies put the white-box market share at about 30%, and I would venture to say that a vast majority of those sales are to businesses. So almost as many business decision makers worldwide are buying from white-box vendors as from Dell and HP combined.
Number 4 - I disagree with the assumption that since Apple is creating their own hardware and they have a smaller (6.4%) market share, they should be exempt from unbundling. I don't think you can pick and choose who to apply the rules to.
Number 5 - You can't base your argument on percentage of cost of software vs. hardware in a complete system. Sure, ten years ago the OS was only 5% of the cost, because PC's cost $2000 each. Just because hardware prices have fallen off the table, should that force software companies to do likewise? I haven't seen any other major software manufacturers follow that logic. ACT! cost $200 ten years ago - and it still costs $200 now.
Number 6 - Unbundling will most certainly add complexity, not to mention add to support costs and end user frustration. A Pre-installed OS, regardless of what OS it is, is a working OS. No hassling with configuration files and drivers on Linux. No downloading chipset and other drivers on Windows. All things that have to be done regardless of the OS because only on occasion does any version of Linux work absolutely correctly right out of the box (and we all know Windows needs some babying). Expecting the end user to choose and load software would be a service and support nightmare. I can just imagine some guy who heard he could get Linux for free so he ordered the PC with no OS, installed linux, and then calls up Acer tech support because he can't figure out how to install Halo. Disaster waiting to happen.
Finally - His suggested solution is to bundle both Windows and Linux media, and let the customer choose which to install. As many people have noted on this thread and many times in the past, you can't cover the broad range of Linux distros, which at the same time is a strength and a weakness for Linux on the desktop. You're going to have to support one or the other OS, so in this scenario you're still going to pay the piper for something. If he truly were interested in unbundling (and after reading the article, it's really not about
But then Apple would lose their entire PC hardware business, because virtually noone would pay the price premium for hardware. And if Apple had to slash their hardware prices to a HP level, they wouldn't be profitable.
How many more sales of OSX would they really get if they offered it to everyone and lost all the bundled sales? A few maybe, but it would not offset the profit in the hardware sales they would lose. They are inbetween a rock and a hard place if they went that route because (1) They don't have enough corporate share to survive as an OS-only company, and (2) They won't get the corporate share unless they become an OS-only company. I can't count the number of times a customer has come to me and said, "I started out on computers with Mac but switched to PC because Macs weren't business oriented." Unbundling OSX and Windows is not going to make that customer change from using Windows.
Have you ever considered that the reason for this is that Windows was the only OS worth installing?
Back in the 90's, what other options were there? OS/2? That died the instant Windows 95 came out. Linux wasn't even an option. In the past decade, Linux has emerged but only within the last year has it really become a viable, OEM supported alternative to Windows. And coincidentally (or not!) that is when several major OEMs started offering Linux as an option.
As far as offering a PC with no OS installed, if you were a corporate customer with licensing that was never an issue. On the SMB and consumer side, the Windows requirement was a good one because it helped offset the rampant piracy that was occuring.
God doesn't believe in atheists; therefore, atheists do not exist.
I think the device OS is a niche that suits Linux perfectly, because it is (or can be) fast, secure, and stable in a controlled environment.
On the desktop side, providing support for multiple GUI's, multiple distros would require almost as much in the way of resources as their existing Windows support structure, and as the parent stated, for a tiny percentage of users.
Consider also that the average user of Linux on the desktop is at a level that transcends most of the support offered. Those who are in the "computer dummies" category and are also using linux, are an even tinier minority.