Totally.:) I did this last night! And let me tell you when I DJ at parties where they set up the DJ booth in the DARKEST corner possible and won't even give you a desk-lamp with a red bulb in it, the phone gets a lot more use.
You're taking me a bit literally and out of context, let me clarify. A world without the 'reporters' that I'm talking about would be good. We definitely need journalists, or people who legitimately report on world affairs in an unbiased neutral "here's what happened" form. We don't need tabloid media. Reading CNN's RSS vs CBC's is incredible (and the CBC is not the least biased medium out there either).
As for the congressman and pages, that thread follows my argument completely: A lot of the 'reports' you see about it are nothing but hearsay and spin (just what I expect from Fox News and / or CNN). A 'report' would be that the congressman in fact did this, the page is safe and sound, and that the republican party disapproves and are investigating while suspending the congressman's membership (hypothetical example). A 'report' is not speculation on what this will do to the Republican party's chances in terms of votes or what Dohickey McGregor thinks about the mother of the page putting him in harm's way or whatever other useless experts and theorists they dig up. That is a spin on the real story. Jon Stewart provides better impartial views and more honest analysis than the spinners do, and he is a self-professed gag-media outlet. "fake news."
The Iraq war falls into the same category: the media has us so confused with a constant barrage of "here's the real story," that nobody knows what to think. I don't even know if they know what they're saying in the first place! It's pretty much "if we say Bush is under fire and Iraq is difficult, we'll sell more ads."
This MS thing was not even news, that is my point about reporters and PR.
you know, I think a lot of companies in the world could do a lot better without their pr arms sometimes, and we'd do a whole lot better without reporters. MS is apologizing for a technical glitch here, but why the need for the public apology? I'm sure PR told them to do it and even wrote it. Whoever wanted to be in the meeting should just get a "uh yeah, sorry about that; we'll reschedule the sucker if we can't figure it out in a few minutes." Guess what, it happens! Then you'll get some idiot reporter who'll come around and open an article with "In an embarassing turn of events, no one could attend a seminal meeting about security in the upcoming Vista software release. Microsoft has apologized, but is it enough for the beleaguered software giant? Experts are thumbing there noses at the meager response, saying that it's an excuse to stall. MacAffee and Norton representatives (who spoke on condition of anonymity) were insensed. 'This is just another trick by MS to curtail our efforts to protect their customers. If this kind of stall tactic persists, we will have no choise but to pursue legal recourse.' MS representatives could not be reached for comment..." You get the point, it's not news, it's fabricated spin based on a technical glitch. I'm not gonna send out a press release when my phone's got no signal!
MS doesn't need to apologize for this, and it has nothing to do with Vista security (which I am not stating an opinion on, so don't call me out hehe). Apple doesn't need to blame MS for a Virus landing on the iPod. Sony doesn't need to continually baffle us with ridiculous statements about PS3 vs XBOX vs Wii. I swear, PR teams and patent lawyers suing and countersuing every day are just completely pointless, and the tech and business media is not reporting on any of it: it's a collection of "here's my opinion what's happening and of how this reflects poorly on the company involved" opinion editorials, there are no articles at all.
MS sent a bad link. It's not news, it's just unfortunate. The guy that did it will get a "nice one, dumbass" from his/her coworkers, just I like I would here if I did the same thing. I dunno. Hopefully you all see my point here.
Agreed, good observations! TV was in serious need of a revamp, reality was a temporary distraction at best. With the shows you're mentioning, it's getting a lot better. I just hope they don't do what some shows do (The Simpsons???) and go on forever long past the time when any creativity is in it (a danger in prison break... how long can they keep them running?). It's hard to get the formula right. There's something to be said for short-runs (Cowboy Bebop, shows don't HAVE to go on forever), but death before its time is also a shame (Firefly). Shows like 24 are interesting too. Yes, one central character pretty much, but a completely different story arch every season. All in all, yes: it's getting a lot better and I won't be going to see "the grudge 2".
License is as it does. M$ is free to do whatever it wants with its licenses. It's just a legal document! Guess what, by downloading xp and not paying for it and clicking thru the license when you install, you're breaking the license terms! Guess what, in Vista they're trying to make a consequence for that! Sounds fair to me: it's their company, their product, their license terms, their right to do what the heck they want with their stuff. If you didn't want to use it you'd be using Linux already.
for the "I keep a windows partition for games" crowd out there, are your games as free as your OS? Guess what, that's breaking their license rules too! Will you complain as loudly here if your favourite game's developer implements an insurmountable copy protection that negates your ability to acquire it on newsgroups or irc? How about Photoshop? Nero? Etc???
for the crowd that managed to say "ho hum" to this, congratulations! You're probably the software developer that understands not wanting your product stolen.;) If you're working for OSS and use OSS, then fine; the understanding is that you don't mind other people downloading and using, that's the point of what you're doing. You're missing the point of MS being a company, they're in business to make money. If you don't want to pay for your software, then don't buy it and get something free with a license that says it's that. Don't complain about something that prevents you from stealing it though, that'd be like complaining about the Sensomatics at the record store.
My server is a linux server, but I use Windows on my desktop. I own my Windows licence and my server is just happy being Linux. Does this arrangement make me a bad person? I thought I was just following the rules as stated by the respective software packages' licenses...
There's more to it than that. Part of it is consumer needs, but part of it is consumer desires. Apple has succeeded in creating an identity for and making the iPod desirable, even if some people that use it (of whom I know a few) don't understand what it does at all. At its core, what is it? A screen and a hard drive with a rom chip that knows how to play music files stored on the hard drive.
Do you remember when the walkman first came out? Do you realize that most people now call any portable tape player (Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer, whatever...) a Walkman even though it's the Sony brand? Sony did a remarkable job of taking a bunch of parts of a dictaphone and putting them together to create something ubiquitous. The also completely created the market for it from scratch. They packaged it in so many different forms that it became desirable to everyone. To see what I mean, check out this book. It's short but it's a really good history of a game-changing product, even if it was 'just a tape-player'.
Apple has their iPod, which is just an mp3 player. That's it (at it's core, forgive the pun there). What they have done though, is take a mp3 player (nerdy gadget) and make it desirable to the masses as an accessory, just like Sony did with the Walkman. They're even updating it like Sony did, small changes with the same base. How much different was the last walkman from the first one, really? And apple is getting flack for minor updates to a successful product. Anyways, it will be interesting to see what Zune does. Is Microsoft going to take a bite out of the market that Apple created or will gaining adoption be difficult or will it fail to create its own identity and become a Microsoft iPod (like a Panasonic Walkman)? Too many bells and whistles can take buyers away if they only really want one thing: play their music. Same problem applies to most technology. So much technology is returned because users just plain can't figure it out.
In the end I don't think it's so much about Microsoft trying to crush competition as about Microsoft trying to add a product to a successful market. It's not up to MS whether it will succeed though, in this case it will actually turn out to be a cultural decision!! (read the book, hehe).
I hate to burst yer bubble all y'all ms-haters, but if you already run Linux or own a Mac, why do you care about any of this? It's stupid and pointless and you may as well just finish the effect and start flinging dung at each other while grunting a lot.
After realizing how dumb you are, remember that ms is a business which means (unlike Linux in general) it has marketers working for it. I gave up reading responses because this is so lame. You are arguing over something produced by marketers! Worried about ms enslaving the masses? Then quit whining and 'free' some more people or something.
Another day another whine board.
DRM doesn't affect me. I don't have an iPod and I encode mp3s of my own CDs for the mp3 player in my car. I buy my dvds off the used rack at bbv and I'm happy enough with it. MS is putting in DRM yes because of business reasons... of course it makes sense for them to comply with the recording industry. With another lawsuit against another kazaa bonehead every day, you think MS wants to be one of them? Looking at the press 13-year old Jimmy gets, what would MS as a business get?
As far as Vista goes, like it or don't like it; but don't whine about it. Not a lot of new features for you? Then what do you want??? Can you tell me? I haven't seen one request in these boards besides "make it work" and "make it suck less". Helpful stuff. As for M$, they're doing the same thing every other software company does: trying to sell a new version; but they're not doing it without reason. Substantial rewrites to the underlying operation of the operating system and the driver model have happened, and yay it's delayed. May as well make it work as well as they can, eh?
As far as included features, hasn't anyone noticed that 'OS' (even where linux or mac is concerned) now emcompasses all sorts of everything? 'Operating System' is maybe outdated and now 'Operating Suite' (ahem, computing, not surgery) is the appropriate term.
I don't know if I'll go Vista right away, I don't know later. I know that the XP box I set up for my in-laws and the kids still living there has been running four months straight. Use what you use but don't slag M$ or Vista for being there when the power button is turned on. Same post I made yesterday: don't like it? Then stop recompiling your kernel and compete already!! Nobody here markets Linux, they just bash... everyone else.
(for the record, I hate the XP build on my work laptop and I love the XP build on my home compy)
"It'll come installed on new PCs so people will be forced and MS will win again!" Oh boo hoo. MS has done a trememdous job of generating hype for this OS. As far as PC manufacturers are concerned, Vista will be a selling point that will help them move more of their products. Does that make all the parts vendors and manufacturers evil too? Intel and AMD (as harsh competitors as they are) are probably high-fiving.
While I love free and OSS, this really does show the strength of a marketing department: when was the last time you saw "hype" for linux? Linux is never marketed (as well as Windows), it is only worshipped covertly. AMD had X2 come out, and Intel countered with Core 2 Duo. NVidia and ATI are back and forth as fast as a pirate ship ride. "Linux Lovers" sit in a corner and spurn M$.
I agree with the assessment that there is too much elitism in Linux. The first time I installed Red Hat many years ago to run a little server in my house, it got hacked within 20 minutes. Not only was it hacked, but when I went online for advice, I got more RTFM n00b than I did real help. If someone took the time to market and to show people "here is why you should use GNOME, look what it can do - and it's free!" and the rest of the community behaved more like that, Linux would make more strides.
You don't like M$ or Windows? Fine! Don't use it! But it's dumb to bash it too, your energy is mis-directed. M$ is focused on making their own sh1t better, not on "har har har, the new Ubuntu crashes when you push alt-f1-return-t and type 'I'm a happy gorilla.'" Instead of hating MS, compete with them. I know, create a "Linux Panorama" that's realeased the same time as "Windows Vista".
it would be great if threads like this turned into some real discussions about real pros and cons. "It runs Civ better than XP!" "The Wireless interface and support is a bit sketchy still." "Overall it's pretty good, but I had some browser issues that I didn't want to continue working with, so I rolled back to XP." Thank you. Those are real comments.
That's just great. I really enjoy when I read stuff like this. Here's what you do if you see stuff like this happening to you: buck'em for the competitor. After getting horrible lip service from Telus Mobility for years (very long story), I just up and left. They tried their bloody hardest to get me to transfer my account to someone else ("are you sure you don't know anyone that wants a cell phone?"... I told them my friends were mute), and it took me quite literally two hours to cancel the stinking account. I signed up for a competitor, Fido (now a Rogers subsidiary). After a month or so, I cancelled my Telus land-line too.
I paid less talking long distance to my fiance for over 2000 minutes a month than I did to receive three local calls on my land-line.
Telus keeps on trying to get my buddy to switch back to them (they phone him weekly). "We'll give you 4000 long distance minutes!" So tells the truth: "I don't care! I have unlimited long distance!"
The further you can stay away from the worst of the bunch the better. I am proudly a Telus-free zone. Seriously, sometimes the government stepping in is a good thing. Ya boo sucks to Verizon. I wish our government would give companies like Telus a real "suck less," instead of just a slap on the wrist. The great thing is that without a land line, they can't phone me.:D
The responses on here: Vista is junk, Ubuntu rocks, it doesn't work, I'd rather buy an apple, OSX so much safer, I'll stick with my XP blah blah blah... Completely useless. It's funny that people here seem to think it's evil of MS to go ahead and make some design suggestions for OEMs that may sell more machines for them. Those OEMs won't be selling to many of the people here, because we're all into building it our own way anyways. And if it's not quite to our liking out of the box, out comes the dremmel and the bondo! So why complain? Think of the comedy of "Mac-ing" a vista-box!
I personally don't care about any MS recommendations, because it doesn't affect me or what I will buy. I don't like bigass alien cases with glowing eyes and a mouth that opens to eject the dvd and that farts smoke when you kill your buddy while online gaming. I don't like the 90s staple beige gross looking apartment air-conditioner enamel-painted boxes (although I do miss the 'turbo' button). I also wouldn't like a 'vista-esque' case. But some people would! I do like my utilitarian aluminum Lian-Li box with easy to remove case parts and caddies so I can add, modify and replace easily as I need to. --> that's just me.
Sure sex sells, and I'm sure that someone somewhere has case-modded their pc into a blow-up doll, but all of these comments / rants / 'ms sux' comments are all completely pointless here because 99% of the readers of this site couldn't give a rat's tit about a 'vista-esque' case, you'll just build whatever you think looks the best. And guess what? Some people on this planet will think that the vista-esque case looks good and will buy it. Oh and guess what, MS will sell a lot of Vista too. Suck it up.
I want to know where the clubhouse is, I want to join! Seriously, it's like everything 'they' do makes it look more and more like there's a little club 'they' are all in and they just kind of poke their heads out the window every once in a while. I can see the 'no girlz allow'd' sign on the door now. Like pick every 5th kid who walks on the schoolyard to watch all day long. When I fly into the US they'll certainly be making full use of their resources watching me walk from my hotel to the 7-11 to buy some nachos to go with I-Robot on TBS. Whether it's true or not, everything that turns out to be true these days is just this goofy, so it fits the profile, lol. Maybe the strategy is to keep everyone guessing?
you want a funny protest? Get enough people to ring the White House and have them all just stand there and stare. Or just get 50 random people a day to do it for an hour each day. arrested!!
No problem. Ask them to email you an electronic copy of the contract for you to sign. Most people are clueless enough to send such things in an editable format such as MS Word, so just remove the bits you don't like and send it back.
This is more true than you realize. Somehow a whole bunch of my friends are lawyers (and I managed to not be one, whew!). Any time we do anything that involves a waiver agreement or sign up or some such contract dealie, they actually go through the process of reading the entire thing, and revising with pen-based annotations parts they think are unfairly biased or wrong. I have watched them physically get the person at the counter to initial each annotation before both parties sign and countersign (witness). They do it just out of principle, but it's still completely plausible. Dinks like Telus will likely not be willing to make such concessions, but it's always good to try.
I won't tell my Telus sob-story (too long), but sufficeth to say that I am officially now and forever a telus-free zone. I even made a t-shirt. I urge more people to join the movement. I have never had any problems setting things up or being charged for cancelling bundled plans from Shaw and I will never go back. My ultimate dream is to get a high-paying job from Telus and not use any of their products. Not only would they be paying me, but I'd be giving some of that money to their competitors!!
good luck fighting them, it is a giant beurocratic black hole. Telus smells.
agreed entirely. I had hand to play with one last week (outside the context of photography) and all I could think was "I wish they'd gone just an extra 10 milimeters," in my head thinking about photography. Just a little more disk space and a little more capability, and awesome!!! The form factor is fine and the screen is a great size to go through your photos on the fly.
I read this after and am not sure I made any point at all, but I had fun ranting.
In my esteemed opinion based on figures I have laboriously compiled from observing the quality of the offerings on the 3 for $20 rack (quality way up) vs the new release / top 20 - or 1 for $22.99 - rack (quality way down) at the local HMV, I estimate that I'm getting ripped off. I can think of one (maybe two) CDs that I am actually interested in purchasing in the next month.
Add to that the quality on the new release DVD rack (or even in the movie theatres!) vs the quality used rack at the video store down the street and the analagous 3 for $20 rack at the HMV, and I'm left grasping for meaning. Harry Potter 4 new for $27.99, used for $12.99, or observe Harry Potter 2 on the 3 for $20 where I could pick up a couple excellent Segal (a weakness of mine) flicks at the same time? What's your choice? Saw II for $21.99 [amazon.ca] or Die Hard or The Abyss for $6.50? What's that quality-to-dollar ratio look like there to you? They're making money off The Abyss or they wouldn't still be producing, shipping and selling for that price, so what gives? $21.99 for Saw II makes buying a crappy movie even more unappealing than seeing it in the theatre (which I won't and which I didn't)
I estimate that the oft-referred to 'consumers' (my favourite part of this word is that they're talking about us and what we will do to our faces, and themselves as well because they're bloody well comsumers too) have lost $250 billion to over-priced plastic discs with crap etched on them.
The first truth is that they haven't lost anything because they haven't gained anything. The second truth is that higher priced low-quality is certainly not going to sell more. The third truth is that this sounds about as mature as the government worker wanting a raise but lobbying against higher taxes. Everyone wants a good product for a good price. I'm not buying anything because there's nothing to buy! Conversely, I'm not downloading anything either. How long before the used rack at the BBV becomes a target for "lost revenue?"
"sorry there chucky, yer gonna have to sell that used dvd back to me so I can make sure it meets our quality standards before we can sell it back into the public. Yes that's right, the quality inspection will add a small nominal fee to the disc before you can put it back on the shelf."
as an interesting side-point, how many people do you know that have downloaded terabytes of nonsense, but have actually viewed / listened to about 10% of it while they continue to download at the same rate? Hoarders aren't losing the(ma)FIAA any money, they're just wasting bandwidth and drive space.
you hit the nail on the head, my friend. I've been complaining about this in video games (especially consoles) for a few years now. Somewhere these companies (MS&Sny) lost touch with the fact that these things had to be fun, and concentrated more on making and selling really powerful hardware!
There's bloatware in software and in hardware and this proves it; Nintendo is making something that is inexpensive (relatively, we think), not all that powerful (relatively, we think), and most importantly: FUN. Consoles shouldn't cost enough to build an Oblivion rig, that's not supposed to be the market. Super Mario 3 wasn't all that pretty, and I'm pretty sure the NES couldn't do many polygons, but it sure was FUN. That's the same reason I still pump quarters into Bubble Bobble in the arcade (yes, they still have a cabinet), and not $2 into Street Fighter vs Anchorman & Star Wars Dodgeball Virtual Action Awesome Limited Edition v3. Fun per dollar (fpd)counts for a lot and Sony and MS ain't listening.
Thanks for that. Your experience mirrors pretty much everything that anyone has ever told me about working there. I've known lots of people both interning and working there through the years, and on the whole it's seemed a positive impression.
The one thing I would add (and this goes with most software companies probably), is to your work/life balance comments. You make your own hours, but you also set the precedent for your own hours. If you show up and want to make a good impression and thusly work 14 hour days, projects will notice that and will come to expect that, and you'll be seen to be 'slacking off' when you put in a 10-hour day. Like I say though, that's true at any software company I think.
X tells us that Y is reporting that Z is suing J for using their I. The lawsuit contends that the patent - which was awarded two days ago and reads "Any method for doing something quite ordinary and sensible but this time using the internet" - is being infringed upon because J decided to open a website that has turned out to be profitable. In a prepared statement, lawyers for Z related the fact that OSS systems would "not be targeted or affected."
Come on. You don't see department stores suing each other over that whole "let's make a wedding registry" thing! They're 'online'; i.e., linked Canada-wide up here... Somone's going to sue me for putting a gift wish list on my blog that people can refer to. "Every time someone buys something off that list, you are stealing money from advertisers that pay good money to put ads on peoples' wish lists on Amazon! We invented wish lists!"
Seriously, bloody lawyers are just creating jobs for themselves, and business has become litigation instead of creating a USEFUL product that people want. These idiots talk in the press about "the consumer", and fail to realize that they are in fact a member of that species, too. They are the same dicks who stiff on the bill at the restaurant and expect you to pick up the slack. Patents are not an excuse to avoid competition.
the patent thing is rediculous, but so is the apple/ms/linux/atari 5800/c64 is better so we cheer for anything bad that happens to the ones we don't like as much argument. It's not a sports team! If you don't like it, don't use it; and the predominant population here (I think) has done just that and uses linux instead. However, the marketing dept on this floor would disagree, and the designer folks on this floor would disagree a third time. The fact that it's MS should be irrelevant; it's a cash-grab attempt. It's legalized extortion, no matter how successful the victim.
THAT would be comic gold. Seriously, this patent stuff is getting rediculous. Blackberry's surprise "hey guys, we had the idea for a portable email phone thingie first!" lawsuit is another prime example. Okay, you told someone you had this idea. Did you do anything with it besides putting the piece of paper with obtuse language and a number on it in a filing cabinet to gather dust for 12 years?
It's one thing if you had this great idea, made a product, and someone else with more money comes along and duplicates it with better marketing, putting you out. The filing cabinet approach has got to go. I patent the wheel. Your wheelbarrow supplier owes me now.
booo.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally. :) I did this last night! And let me tell you when I DJ at parties where they set up the DJ booth in the DARKEST corner possible and won't even give you a desk-lamp with a red bulb in it, the phone gets a lot more use.
You're taking me a bit literally and out of context, let me clarify. A world without the 'reporters' that I'm talking about would be good. We definitely need journalists, or people who legitimately report on world affairs in an unbiased neutral "here's what happened" form. We don't need tabloid media. Reading CNN's RSS vs CBC's is incredible (and the CBC is not the least biased medium out there either).
As for the congressman and pages, that thread follows my argument completely: A lot of the 'reports' you see about it are nothing but hearsay and spin (just what I expect from Fox News and / or CNN). A 'report' would be that the congressman in fact did this, the page is safe and sound, and that the republican party disapproves and are investigating while suspending the congressman's membership (hypothetical example). A 'report' is not speculation on what this will do to the Republican party's chances in terms of votes or what Dohickey McGregor thinks about the mother of the page putting him in harm's way or whatever other useless experts and theorists they dig up. That is a spin on the real story. Jon Stewart provides better impartial views and more honest analysis than the spinners do, and he is a self-professed gag-media outlet. "fake news."
The Iraq war falls into the same category: the media has us so confused with a constant barrage of "here's the real story," that nobody knows what to think. I don't even know if they know what they're saying in the first place! It's pretty much "if we say Bush is under fire and Iraq is difficult, we'll sell more ads."
This MS thing was not even news, that is my point about reporters and PR.
File this under 'off-topic rant'.
you know, I think a lot of companies in the world could do a lot better without their pr arms sometimes, and we'd do a whole lot better without reporters. MS is apologizing for a technical glitch here, but why the need for the public apology? I'm sure PR told them to do it and even wrote it. Whoever wanted to be in the meeting should just get a "uh yeah, sorry about that; we'll reschedule the sucker if we can't figure it out in a few minutes." Guess what, it happens! Then you'll get some idiot reporter who'll come around and open an article with "In an embarassing turn of events, no one could attend a seminal meeting about security in the upcoming Vista software release. Microsoft has apologized, but is it enough for the beleaguered software giant? Experts are thumbing there noses at the meager response, saying that it's an excuse to stall. MacAffee and Norton representatives (who spoke on condition of anonymity) were insensed. 'This is just another trick by MS to curtail our efforts to protect their customers. If this kind of stall tactic persists, we will have no choise but to pursue legal recourse.' MS representatives could not be reached for comment..." You get the point, it's not news, it's fabricated spin based on a technical glitch. I'm not gonna send out a press release when my phone's got no signal!
MS doesn't need to apologize for this, and it has nothing to do with Vista security (which I am not stating an opinion on, so don't call me out hehe). Apple doesn't need to blame MS for a Virus landing on the iPod. Sony doesn't need to continually baffle us with ridiculous statements about PS3 vs XBOX vs Wii. I swear, PR teams and patent lawyers suing and countersuing every day are just completely pointless, and the tech and business media is not reporting on any of it: it's a collection of "here's my opinion what's happening and of how this reflects poorly on the company involved" opinion editorials, there are no articles at all.
MS sent a bad link. It's not news, it's just unfortunate. The guy that did it will get a "nice one, dumbass" from his/her coworkers, just I like I would here if I did the same thing. I dunno. Hopefully you all see my point here.
[/end rant]
The sad part about Jack Thompson is that he makes more than you ever will by just being an asshat. And now he's demanding free video games too.
Agreed, good observations! TV was in serious need of a revamp, reality was a temporary distraction at best. With the shows you're mentioning, it's getting a lot better. I just hope they don't do what some shows do (The Simpsons???) and go on forever long past the time when any creativity is in it (a danger in prison break... how long can they keep them running?). It's hard to get the formula right. There's something to be said for short-runs (Cowboy Bebop, shows don't HAVE to go on forever), but death before its time is also a shame (Firefly). Shows like 24 are interesting too. Yes, one central character pretty much, but a completely different story arch every season. All in all, yes: it's getting a lot better and I won't be going to see "the grudge 2".
License is as it does. M$ is free to do whatever it wants with its licenses. It's just a legal document! Guess what, by downloading xp and not paying for it and clicking thru the license when you install, you're breaking the license terms! Guess what, in Vista they're trying to make a consequence for that! Sounds fair to me: it's their company, their product, their license terms, their right to do what the heck they want with their stuff. If you didn't want to use it you'd be using Linux already.
for the "I keep a windows partition for games" crowd out there, are your games as free as your OS? Guess what, that's breaking their license rules too! Will you complain as loudly here if your favourite game's developer implements an insurmountable copy protection that negates your ability to acquire it on newsgroups or irc? How about Photoshop? Nero? Etc???
for the crowd that managed to say "ho hum" to this, congratulations! You're probably the software developer that understands not wanting your product stolen. ;) If you're working for OSS and use OSS, then fine; the understanding is that you don't mind other people downloading and using, that's the point of what you're doing. You're missing the point of MS being a company, they're in business to make money. If you don't want to pay for your software, then don't buy it and get something free with a license that says it's that. Don't complain about something that prevents you from stealing it though, that'd be like complaining about the Sensomatics at the record store.
My server is a linux server, but I use Windows on my desktop. I own my Windows licence and my server is just happy being Linux. Does this arrangement make me a bad person? I thought I was just following the rules as stated by the respective software packages' licenses...
There's more to it than that. Part of it is consumer needs, but part of it is consumer desires. Apple has succeeded in creating an identity for and making the iPod desirable, even if some people that use it (of whom I know a few) don't understand what it does at all. At its core, what is it? A screen and a hard drive with a rom chip that knows how to play music files stored on the hard drive.
Do you remember when the walkman first came out? Do you realize that most people now call any portable tape player (Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer, whatever...) a Walkman even though it's the Sony brand? Sony did a remarkable job of taking a bunch of parts of a dictaphone and putting them together to create something ubiquitous. The also completely created the market for it from scratch. They packaged it in so many different forms that it became desirable to everyone. To see what I mean, check out this book. It's short but it's a really good history of a game-changing product, even if it was 'just a tape-player'.
Apple has their iPod, which is just an mp3 player. That's it (at it's core, forgive the pun there). What they have done though, is take a mp3 player (nerdy gadget) and make it desirable to the masses as an accessory, just like Sony did with the Walkman. They're even updating it like Sony did, small changes with the same base. How much different was the last walkman from the first one, really? And apple is getting flack for minor updates to a successful product. Anyways, it will be interesting to see what Zune does. Is Microsoft going to take a bite out of the market that Apple created or will gaining adoption be difficult or will it fail to create its own identity and become a Microsoft iPod (like a Panasonic Walkman)? Too many bells and whistles can take buyers away if they only really want one thing: play their music. Same problem applies to most technology. So much technology is returned because users just plain can't figure it out.
In the end I don't think it's so much about Microsoft trying to crush competition as about Microsoft trying to add a product to a successful market. It's not up to MS whether it will succeed though, in this case it will actually turn out to be a cultural decision!! (read the book, hehe).
I hate to burst yer bubble all y'all ms-haters, but if you already run Linux or own a Mac, why do you care about any of this? It's stupid and pointless and you may as well just finish the effect and start flinging dung at each other while grunting a lot.
After realizing how dumb you are, remember that ms is a business which means (unlike Linux in general) it has marketers working for it. I gave up reading responses because this is so lame. You are arguing over something produced by marketers! Worried about ms enslaving the masses? Then quit whining and 'free' some more people or something.
boooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Another day another whine board. DRM doesn't affect me. I don't have an iPod and I encode mp3s of my own CDs for the mp3 player in my car. I buy my dvds off the used rack at bbv and I'm happy enough with it. MS is putting in DRM yes because of business reasons... of course it makes sense for them to comply with the recording industry. With another lawsuit against another kazaa bonehead every day, you think MS wants to be one of them? Looking at the press 13-year old Jimmy gets, what would MS as a business get? As far as Vista goes, like it or don't like it; but don't whine about it. Not a lot of new features for you? Then what do you want??? Can you tell me? I haven't seen one request in these boards besides "make it work" and "make it suck less". Helpful stuff. As for M$, they're doing the same thing every other software company does: trying to sell a new version; but they're not doing it without reason. Substantial rewrites to the underlying operation of the operating system and the driver model have happened, and yay it's delayed. May as well make it work as well as they can, eh? As far as included features, hasn't anyone noticed that 'OS' (even where linux or mac is concerned) now emcompasses all sorts of everything? 'Operating System' is maybe outdated and now 'Operating Suite' (ahem, computing, not surgery) is the appropriate term. I don't know if I'll go Vista right away, I don't know later. I know that the XP box I set up for my in-laws and the kids still living there has been running four months straight. Use what you use but don't slag M$ or Vista for being there when the power button is turned on. Same post I made yesterday: don't like it? Then stop recompiling your kernel and compete already!! Nobody here markets Linux, they just bash ... everyone else.
(for the record, I hate the XP build on my work laptop and I love the XP build on my home compy)
"It'll come installed on new PCs so people will be forced and MS will win again!" Oh boo hoo. MS has done a trememdous job of generating hype for this OS. As far as PC manufacturers are concerned, Vista will be a selling point that will help them move more of their products. Does that make all the parts vendors and manufacturers evil too? Intel and AMD (as harsh competitors as they are) are probably high-fiving.
While I love free and OSS, this really does show the strength of a marketing department: when was the last time you saw "hype" for linux? Linux is never marketed (as well as Windows), it is only worshipped covertly. AMD had X2 come out, and Intel countered with Core 2 Duo. NVidia and ATI are back and forth as fast as a pirate ship ride. "Linux Lovers" sit in a corner and spurn M$.
I agree with the assessment that there is too much elitism in Linux. The first time I installed Red Hat many years ago to run a little server in my house, it got hacked within 20 minutes. Not only was it hacked, but when I went online for advice, I got more RTFM n00b than I did real help. If someone took the time to market and to show people "here is why you should use GNOME, look what it can do - and it's free!" and the rest of the community behaved more like that, Linux would make more strides.
You don't like M$ or Windows? Fine! Don't use it! But it's dumb to bash it too, your energy is mis-directed. M$ is focused on making their own sh1t better, not on "har har har, the new Ubuntu crashes when you push alt-f1-return-t and type 'I'm a happy gorilla.'" Instead of hating MS, compete with them. I know, create a "Linux Panorama" that's realeased the same time as "Windows Vista".
it would be great if threads like this turned into some real discussions about real pros and cons. "It runs Civ better than XP!" "The Wireless interface and support is a bit sketchy still." "Overall it's pretty good, but I had some browser issues that I didn't want to continue working with, so I rolled back to XP." Thank you. Those are real comments.
That's just great. I really enjoy when I read stuff like this. Here's what you do if you see stuff like this happening to you: buck'em for the competitor. After getting horrible lip service from Telus Mobility for years (very long story), I just up and left. They tried their bloody hardest to get me to transfer my account to someone else ("are you sure you don't know anyone that wants a cell phone?" ... I told them my friends were mute), and it took me quite literally two hours to cancel the stinking account. I signed up for a competitor, Fido (now a Rogers subsidiary). After a month or so, I cancelled my Telus land-line too.
I paid less talking long distance to my fiance for over 2000 minutes a month than I did to receive three local calls on my land-line.
Telus keeps on trying to get my buddy to switch back to them (they phone him weekly). "We'll give you 4000 long distance minutes!" So tells the truth: "I don't care! I have unlimited long distance!"
The further you can stay away from the worst of the bunch the better. I am proudly a Telus-free zone. Seriously, sometimes the government stepping in is a good thing. Ya boo sucks to Verizon. I wish our government would give companies like Telus a real "suck less," instead of just a slap on the wrist. The great thing is that without a land line, they can't phone me. :D
The responses on here: Vista is junk, Ubuntu rocks, it doesn't work, I'd rather buy an apple, OSX so much safer, I'll stick with my XP blah blah blah ... Completely useless. It's funny that people here seem to think it's evil of MS to go ahead and make some design suggestions for OEMs that may sell more machines for them. Those OEMs won't be selling to many of the people here, because we're all into building it our own way anyways. And if it's not quite to our liking out of the box, out comes the dremmel and the bondo! So why complain? Think of the comedy of "Mac-ing" a vista-box!
I personally don't care about any MS recommendations, because it doesn't affect me or what I will buy. I don't like bigass alien cases with glowing eyes and a mouth that opens to eject the dvd and that farts smoke when you kill your buddy while online gaming. I don't like the 90s staple beige gross looking apartment air-conditioner enamel-painted boxes (although I do miss the 'turbo' button). I also wouldn't like a 'vista-esque' case. But some people would! I do like my utilitarian aluminum Lian-Li box with easy to remove case parts and caddies so I can add, modify and replace easily as I need to. --> that's just me.
Sure sex sells, and I'm sure that someone somewhere has case-modded their pc into a blow-up doll, but all of these comments / rants / 'ms sux' comments are all completely pointless here because 99% of the readers of this site couldn't give a rat's tit about a 'vista-esque' case, you'll just build whatever you think looks the best. And guess what? Some people on this planet will think that the vista-esque case looks good and will buy it. Oh and guess what, MS will sell a lot of Vista too. Suck it up.
I want to know where the clubhouse is, I want to join! Seriously, it's like everything 'they' do makes it look more and more like there's a little club 'they' are all in and they just kind of poke their heads out the window every once in a while. I can see the 'no girlz allow'd' sign on the door now. Like pick every 5th kid who walks on the schoolyard to watch all day long. When I fly into the US they'll certainly be making full use of their resources watching me walk from my hotel to the 7-11 to buy some nachos to go with I-Robot on TBS. Whether it's true or not, everything that turns out to be true these days is just this goofy, so it fits the profile, lol. Maybe the strategy is to keep everyone guessing?
you want a funny protest? Get enough people to ring the White House and have them all just stand there and stare. Or just get 50 random people a day to do it for an hour each day. arrested!!
No problem. Ask them to email you an electronic copy of the contract for you to sign. Most people are clueless enough to send such things in an editable format such as MS Word, so just remove the bits you don't like and send it back.
This is more true than you realize. Somehow a whole bunch of my friends are lawyers (and I managed to not be one, whew!). Any time we do anything that involves a waiver agreement or sign up or some such contract dealie, they actually go through the process of reading the entire thing, and revising with pen-based annotations parts they think are unfairly biased or wrong. I have watched them physically get the person at the counter to initial each annotation before both parties sign and countersign (witness). They do it just out of principle, but it's still completely plausible. Dinks like Telus will likely not be willing to make such concessions, but it's always good to try.
I won't tell my Telus sob-story (too long), but sufficeth to say that I am officially now and forever a telus-free zone. I even made a t-shirt. I urge more people to join the movement. I have never had any problems setting things up or being charged for cancelling bundled plans from Shaw and I will never go back. My ultimate dream is to get a high-paying job from Telus and not use any of their products. Not only would they be paying me, but I'd be giving some of that money to their competitors!!
good luck fighting them, it is a giant beurocratic black hole. Telus smells.
agreed entirely. I had hand to play with one last week (outside the context of photography) and all I could think was "I wish they'd gone just an extra 10 milimeters," in my head thinking about photography. Just a little more disk space and a little more capability, and awesome!!! The form factor is fine and the screen is a great size to go through your photos on the fly.
I read this after and am not sure I made any point at all, but I had fun ranting.
In my esteemed opinion based on figures I have laboriously compiled from observing the quality of the offerings on the 3 for $20 rack (quality way up) vs the new release / top 20 - or 1 for $22.99 - rack (quality way down) at the local HMV, I estimate that I'm getting ripped off. I can think of one (maybe two) CDs that I am actually interested in purchasing in the next month.
Add to that the quality on the new release DVD rack (or even in the movie theatres!) vs the quality used rack at the video store down the street and the analagous 3 for $20 rack at the HMV, and I'm left grasping for meaning. Harry Potter 4 new for $27.99, used for $12.99, or observe Harry Potter 2 on the 3 for $20 where I could pick up a couple excellent Segal (a weakness of mine) flicks at the same time? What's your choice? Saw II for $21.99 [amazon.ca] or Die Hard or The Abyss for $6.50? What's that quality-to-dollar ratio look like there to you? They're making money off The Abyss or they wouldn't still be producing, shipping and selling for that price, so what gives? $21.99 for Saw II makes buying a crappy movie even more unappealing than seeing it in the theatre (which I won't and which I didn't)
I estimate that the oft-referred to 'consumers' (my favourite part of this word is that they're talking about us and what we will do to our faces, and themselves as well because they're bloody well comsumers too) have lost $250 billion to over-priced plastic discs with crap etched on them.
The first truth is that they haven't lost anything because they haven't gained anything. The second truth is that higher priced low-quality is certainly not going to sell more. The third truth is that this sounds about as mature as the government worker wanting a raise but lobbying against higher taxes. Everyone wants a good product for a good price. I'm not buying anything because there's nothing to buy! Conversely, I'm not downloading anything either. How long before the used rack at the BBV becomes a target for "lost revenue?"
"sorry there chucky, yer gonna have to sell that used dvd back to me so I can make sure it meets our quality standards before we can sell it back into the public. Yes that's right, the quality inspection will add a small nominal fee to the disc before you can put it back on the shelf."
as an interesting side-point, how many people do you know that have downloaded terabytes of nonsense, but have actually viewed / listened to about 10% of it while they continue to download at the same rate? Hoarders aren't losing the(ma)FIAA any money, they're just wasting bandwidth and drive space.
you hit the nail on the head, my friend. I've been complaining about this in video games (especially consoles) for a few years now. Somewhere these companies (MS&Sny) lost touch with the fact that these things had to be fun, and concentrated more on making and selling really powerful hardware!
There's bloatware in software and in hardware and this proves it; Nintendo is making something that is inexpensive (relatively, we think), not all that powerful (relatively, we think), and most importantly: FUN. Consoles shouldn't cost enough to build an Oblivion rig, that's not supposed to be the market. Super Mario 3 wasn't all that pretty, and I'm pretty sure the NES couldn't do many polygons, but it sure was FUN. That's the same reason I still pump quarters into Bubble Bobble in the arcade (yes, they still have a cabinet), and not $2 into Street Fighter vs Anchorman & Star Wars Dodgeball Virtual Action Awesome Limited Edition v3. Fun per dollar (fpd)counts for a lot and Sony and MS ain't listening.
Thanks for that. Your experience mirrors pretty much everything that anyone has ever told me about working there. I've known lots of people both interning and working there through the years, and on the whole it's seemed a positive impression.
The one thing I would add (and this goes with most software companies probably), is to your work/life balance comments. You make your own hours, but you also set the precedent for your own hours. If you show up and want to make a good impression and thusly work 14 hour days, projects will notice that and will come to expect that, and you'll be seen to be 'slacking off' when you put in a 10-hour day. Like I say though, that's true at any software company I think.
Anyways, great insight.
Don't forget the Flames, chump!! ;)
template for use on /. every day from now on:
X tells us that Y is reporting that Z is suing J for using their I. The lawsuit contends that the patent - which was awarded two days ago and reads "Any method for doing something quite ordinary and sensible but this time using the internet" - is being infringed upon because J decided to open a website that has turned out to be profitable. In a prepared statement, lawyers for Z related the fact that OSS systems would "not be targeted or affected."
The economics equations of the 21st century are:
p(rofit) = LWST(J + Z(I))
b(ankrupt) = LWST(J) + Z-I
Come on. You don't see department stores suing each other over that whole "let's make a wedding registry" thing! They're 'online'; i.e., linked Canada-wide up here... Somone's going to sue me for putting a gift wish list on my blog that people can refer to. "Every time someone buys something off that list, you are stealing money from advertisers that pay good money to put ads on peoples' wish lists on Amazon! We invented wish lists!"
Seriously, bloody lawyers are just creating jobs for themselves, and business has become litigation instead of creating a USEFUL product that people want. These idiots talk in the press about "the consumer", and fail to realize that they are in fact a member of that species, too. They are the same dicks who stiff on the bill at the restaurant and expect you to pick up the slack. Patents are not an excuse to avoid competition.
the patent thing is rediculous, but so is the apple/ms/linux/atari 5800/c64 is better so we cheer for anything bad that happens to the ones we don't like as much argument. It's not a sports team! If you don't like it, don't use it; and the predominant population here (I think) has done just that and uses linux instead. However, the marketing dept on this floor would disagree, and the designer folks on this floor would disagree a third time. The fact that it's MS should be irrelevant; it's a cash-grab attempt. It's legalized extortion, no matter how successful the victim.
THAT would be comic gold. Seriously, this patent stuff is getting rediculous. Blackberry's surprise "hey guys, we had the idea for a portable email phone thingie first!" lawsuit is another prime example. Okay, you told someone you had this idea. Did you do anything with it besides putting the piece of paper with obtuse language and a number on it in a filing cabinet to gather dust for 12 years? It's one thing if you had this great idea, made a product, and someone else with more money comes along and duplicates it with better marketing, putting you out. The filing cabinet approach has got to go. I patent the wheel. Your wheelbarrow supplier owes me now. booo.