The "groups" feature is certainly comparable to Usenet (without the binaries groups). I think that what MySpace did was create an easy to use interface that included some of the most asked for components of a personal webpage. Specifically, people can put in information about themselves, link themselves to their friends and search for new friends. You don't have to know any HTML to get your own MySpace page going.
I have to be the only one without myspace... I'm in the demographic I mean early twenties and I have friends with them. I have other social sites etc, but myspace really has no appeal to me. Can somebody explain to me what the deal is, because nobody thus far has been able to.
The appeal isn't for you, it's for the non-computer literate crowd. It provides them something to do with the internet. It the one place on the net where it's okay to admit you use a computer. Seriously. There are "hot chicks" and "cool guys" on MySpace... the very same kinds of people who would laugh at you if you told them you use a computer to talk to your friends in IRC. But since they are talking to each other on MySpace, it's acceptable.
I had a MySpace page for about six months. I had to delete it because my girlfriend went nuts over all of the girls who sent me friends requests that I accepted. (Yes, I'm pussy whipped) The thing is, I wasn't even looking for women. The only thing I really did on MySpace was stay in touch with people from high school and talk about Taoism on the Taoism group. It was kind of cool to meet random people who shared similar interests tho.
Perhaps, you might like the geeky awkward guy who needs some work to bring him around!
Or maybe they'd just like to get fucked right the first time and leave the bringing around work to the fatties who don't have a choice but to settle for the ones who need some work.
Of course the irony is that the MS OS will fuck you right the first time, but it also needs some work.
I don't get it? You had a hardware problem and you think that WGA caused your hardware problem? You fixed the hardware problem and your software started working correctly? Whoa... lets go ahead and do a feature article on that. "Geek replaces faulty RAM, software works better, system freezes less frequently."
A real test would be to see if putting OpenOffice back on the system causes WGA to fail. If that happens, then you might be onto something.
I'm just wondering if people will realise that there *is* an alternative to Windows and its DRM and its annoying "you are a pirate" attitude. I bet no, or at least not until a long time... sad:/
Your average user won't realize it until it is the defacto standard. One of the big reasons that Windows became the defacto standard is because it was the easiest for the average user to use. By average, I mean people who are scared of the command line. Most people don't realize how far Windows has come in ease of use. I remember when I was working with Novell 3.12 servers, Windows NT 4.0 Server came out. Sure the product sucked, but it was easy to use. With Novell you had to have a server and a workstation to get the server up and running. With Windows you just put the install CD into the server and installed it... what a concept. With Novell, you actually had to know what you were doing. With Windows you could just click Next > Next > Next until the server booted up. On a Novell server you had a command line, on a Windows server you had a GUI. ON a Novell server you had to install all of your apps from a workstation with drives mapped to the server. On a Windows box, you just put the app CD in the drive. Obviously the Novell servers were more secure and fostered a better mentality. In those days you'd never have to worry about some fool using the server like it's a desktop and surfing to MySpace to pick up the latest exploit code neatly delivered through the built-in browser.
The average user will never use Linux because it is still at the hobbiest stage. Every time I see Linux guys talking about having to compile drivers and whining about how their hardware isn't supported I have a flashback to 1990 when I was editing config.sys and autoexec.bat files on my bootdisks because every game I wanted to play required a seperate configuration. Your average user won't use Linux because there are too many flavors of it. With a PC, you know what you are getting yourself into. With a Mac, you know what you are getting yourself into. With Linux you have to take distros into consideration. Is it RedHat, SlackWare, Debian, SCO, Ubuntu, etc, etc, etc
Average users aren't using Macs because you can't get them at places like Best Buy, or Circuit City, or Costco, or WalMart, or, or, or.... My girlfriend's mom is the perfect example. She wants a new computer, but she "has" to get it from Best Buy because she has a Best Buy credit card and the only way she can consider getting a computer is if she puts it on that credit card.
I would argue it's almost exclusively gamers who need to suffer Windows.
I agree. I use Windows XP at home because I play games. The argument hasn't changed since I had a 386/40 instead of a Macintosh. The good games are on the PC.
The other people who need to "suffer" Windows are those in the corporate world who don't have the luxury of having all of their applications ported to Linux, and then retraining all of their users on the new operating environment. The ROI from switching off of Windows isn't there yet. The money "saved" in licensing costs is completely obliterated in migration costs. And even though the OS itself may be free, I'm pretty sure that people aren't going to be giving away MAS90 or equivalent accounting packages for free. Those licensing costs are still going to be the same no matter what the underlying OS is.
The first game that I heard of using the Unreal 3 engine for an MMORPG was APB. It's a "cops and robbers" type of game that is the brainchild of the original creator of GTA. The game isn't due out until 2007-2008, but it looks like it will be some good stuff.
I don't know about the rest of you folks, but that is finally getting gaming to the point where I've wanted it to be since the original GTA. A completely real-time, modern day world that you can run around in from a first person point of view has some allure to it.
I just wonder, how it is possible to participate in an MMO and still do anything with their lives?
I wager that, in fact, it isn't.
I had the opportunity to get a beta copy of WoW at DefCon a few years ago and I passed on it because I didn't want to get sucked in. A couple of weeks ago I went out and bought two copies of the game so that I can play it with my girlfriend. I play for a couple of hours a week and it is something else for us to do when we want to hang out. I still manage to make it to the temple to stay ontop of my kung fu training, I still make it to work, I still hang out at the bar with my friends.
The point I'm getting at that it is possible. It's as possible as it is to do ANYTHING else if you want to. If doing things besides playing an MMO is important to you then you will find a way to do it. If you want to get lost in an MMO, you will do that. Just because most people have problems balancing their lives doesn't mean that it can't be done.
But WGA can personally identifying information to Microsoft for no reason than to validate my legitimate copy. Why should I accept spyware on my machine? There is nothing WGA can do that will benefit me, but many things it can do that will harm me. As a consumer, I should hate it. It's like Lojack being sold on every car, but the car company is constantly tracking you and you never get to use it for the supposed benefits of tracking your car if stolen. Why should I go out of my way to help the company that sold me the product to my own detriment?
If you hate it so much, don't use it. Last I checked, you don't have to have the latest version of DirectX or Windows Defender to make your computer work. Go ahead and use Linux and stop whining. Or whine about how the driver support for Linux sucks. Or how it doesn't work right with SMB. Or how you can't share documents with a client you want to work with because you insist on using something new and different.
Your LoJack analogy sucks because contrary to your statement about not getting any benefit, you do get benefit. If you install WGA then you get access to the latest enhancements like DirectX and everything else that is WGA protected.
If you're worried about your "personal information" getting sent to Microsoft, then put "Fuck you Microsoft" in the username field when you install the software. I don't think that WGA is mining your Quicken data for credit card information. That's what spyware does, not WGA.
I swear that some folks on here complain for the sake of complaining. WGA protects Microsoft's IP and serves to enforce their copyright. If you don't like the software, don't use it. Code up an alternative. The momentum is swinging in your direction. The Microsoft empire is going to crumble... or not. No one is forcing you to run XP. No one is forcing your clients to use XP, or Server 2003, or any other Microsoft product. You use it because you want interoperability with the defacto standard. It's like Coke and Pepsi. If you like the taste of Coke, you drink Coke. If you don't want Coke, drink Pepsi. But don't bitch about Pepsi not tasting like Coke.
I personally use Microsoft products because (contrary to popular opinion) the shit works well enough and gets the job done. I use Exchange. I use Outlook. I use IE. I don't have virus problems. I don't have desktops BSODing on me. I get paid well to keep things working, and with good practices and good system administration, Microsoft products work. I'm not stupid enough to argue that they're inherently as secure or as well thoughtout or applicable for multi-user environments as *nix is. However for 95% of the computing world, the Microsoft product will get the job done. And at the end of the day, that's all I care about. If Linux gains such huge momentum that the world around me turns upside down, I'll start making Linux work for people... just like I started making NT work for people after Novell fell apart.
We had a corporate version of Windows get flagged as being pirated by WGA even though it was a legitimate copy.
Can you be 100% certain that the version that got flagged doesn't also happen to be the version that some IT guy took home and gave to his friend, who then gave it to ten of his friends? I had a problem with the MSDN copy of XP we used at work. In theory we had 5 licenses for it. However one of the guys who we fired picked it up and made a bunch of copies for his friends. We contacted Microsoft and guess what... they gave us a new license code for it.
Like the poster above you said, run a legit copy of the OS, follow the licensing rules and you're OK. The people who whine about WGA are the people who have been pirating the software since DOS 5.0.
Skyguard grew out of the Tactical High Energy Laser, or THEL, designed to shield Israel's northern communities from Katyusha rockets and artillery shells.
If the technology was developed in Israel, then how come the Israeli's are whining about their towns getting hit by Palestinian fired rockets? Seems to me like the technology needs some more testing.
So home users still won't be able to see ODF documents and won't understand how to install the plugin
What about PDF files? Are home users too stupid to figure out how to go download Acrobat Reader? Over the last few years I have seen PDF become a huge standard. Even small businesses that I'd have never anticipated wanting to create PDF documents suddenly want to create them because the people that they are dealing with prefer to accept the PDF files. I don't see anyone whining about a lack of native PDF support in Office. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite. Adobe is freaking out over Microsoft wanting to natively support the PDF format.
[troll]I really think that you guys are a bunch of whiners. Microsoft can't do any good as far as you're concerned. They want to support PDF and it's bad because it's anti-competitive. They come up with a system to patch security flaws and restrict it to people who have LEGITIMATE copies of their software, and you guys whine about WGA being intrusive. They make noise about supporting ODF and it's not good enough, because... Well boo hoo hoo hoo. I think most of you are wasting time simply to be different. If ODF and OO and Linux and all of the alternatives are better alternatives, they will succeed. If not, they will sink. You guys are trying to convince people to go to the best, when they already have "good enough". Good enough is good enough for a reason. Good enough would be great if people weren't spending so much time trying to break it. Luckily good enough is what it is and therefore there is money to be made in securing it and keeping it running. And what it comes down to is there isn't anything that Linux can do that Windows can't. Sure, Linux might do it better but like I said, better isn't a reason to scrap an entire deployment, and years and years of investment in hardware, software and USER TRAINING. Better isn't a reason to completely redevelop, and to spend time STANDING STILL RECREATING WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE. Like it or not, it's often more cost effective to work with what you have, rather than rebuild it from scratch.[/troll]
Having said all of that, alternatives are good. There are people who can't afford to spend the money to get what everyone else has, so it's good to have similar functionality available at a fraction of the cost.
This is a very good point. I don't play WoW but I know a whole slew of people who do. I would call them my friends, but to be friends with someone generally implies that you hang out with each other. =) Anyway, there is one group of people that pretty much doesn't talk to another group of people because they are on different WoW servers. These two groups of people have known each other for YEARS, almost a decade actually. But now they barely even talk to each other, or play games together anymore, simply because they are invested in high level characters on particular servers, and they don't want to start over again.
If the game is so crack-like that people won't even put down a character to play the same game at a lower level with their real life friends, then there is no way people are going to leave it to play something even remotely similar. The only way people would leave WoW is if they get bored with the concept / genre and want to try something different. But these are gamer geeks we're talking about. They aren't going to get tired of the fantasy world. 24/7 D&D is what people have been craving ever since the twenty sided dice was invented. Hell, if I hadn't stumbled across kung fu, I'd probably be a WoW addict too.
You're very right. Trying to interoperate with Microsoft products will be a constant headache, and constant heartache. I still have flashbacks to 1996-1997 and working with Novell servers and Microsoft NT 4.0 clients. Every time a new service pack was released, the Novell client redirector would stop working. Then a few months later, Novell would figure out how to hack around whatever DLLs Microsoft patched and they'd release a new client. By the time SP5 came out, I made $50 by betting a co-worker who thought that SP5 wouldn't break the client, even though SP3 and SP4 both did.
Microsoft in the past did a great job of putting out conversion tools. When it was time to move away from Novell, there were all sorts of tools available to export uses out of NDS and into AD. The same with Exchange. You can pull email data out of pretty much any email program on the planet and import it into Exchange. The OSS community needs to get together and figure how to do two things. First, get user data / security permissions out of AD and into a competiting directory (which shouldn't be too hard given that AD is LDAP based). Second, come up with the Exchange killer and then develop conversion tools to grab the data from Exchange and import it into the new application. Obviously the Exchange killer needs the full functionality of Exchange.
If those two resources are already out there, please take a second to send me a message and point me to some information about them. Thanks!
The VP who left the company was in charge of one of their most important divisions. The VP who left the company was the guy who was leading the anti-Linux campaign. When a company loses an executive who is on the front lines of positioning the company to deal with the two largest trends in the software world, it is news.
To frame the example in the context of your little no name company, it would be the equivilant of the President and Head of R&D leaving. People would start to wonder what they know that you don't. Investors would start to worry about the long term outlook of the company.
On that train of thought I'm sure that there are at least a couple of analysts on Wall Street right now writing up reports about the loss of executive staff at Microsoft supports the conclusion that it's time to sell their stock short
They purchased the publisher of my favorite game series of all time (Bullfrog and the Syndicate franchise) and then let it rot. They are worse than Microsoft and Symantec when it comes to buying up the competition and then craptasticizing the product line.
Before the internet it was scandalous when parents would turn their daughters out onto the street for a few extra bucks. Now we have MySpace, where parents can ignore the fact that their daughters are whores and then attempt to sue for a whole hell of a lot more than they would ever see if they simply put their daughters out on the street.
"If it's on the Internet and it's been commended to us, we wouldn't do a full-scale investigation," Marshal's Service spokesman David Turner said. "We don't knowingly go into any source that would be illegal. We were not aware, I'm fairly certain, what technique was used by these subscriber services."
Notice his use of the qualifer. Of course he really is fairly certain that what he was doing is illegal.
People like you are why American schools are a joke in the rest of the world.
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Don't get near MY part of Texas. Physical violence may ensue.
I think you did a great job of showcasing the real problem with what happens in American schools. The sad thing is, I don't think you realize what the real problem is.
It is a great suggestion that Microsoft purchase information about their operating system from where ever it is available. It has been proven time and time again that Microsoft employees aren't capable of patching their operating system and updating their code. It has been implied that their management culture is so completely screwed up that they are never going to get anything accomplished in any sort of reasonable time frame. If I were in charge of personnel at Microsoft I would go out and recruit every user who contributes to any of the hacker sites in any sort of reasonable way, give them six figures a year, and set them loose on the source code for Windows and the various key applications. For the most part the people who are breaking Microsoft software are doing it for the thrill and challenge of it... and they aren't making much money doing it. If you were to wave six figures at some guy who can barely afford to keep his Honda Civic running and the Mountain Dew supply in the fridge stocked, he'd probably jump at the offer.
Of course, such a thing will never happen. Sooner or later the OSS community is going to catch up, they are going to come up with an Exchange killer, and they are going to come up with an accounting package to rival the likes of Platinum / Sage / AccPac for the SMB market, and then Microsoft is going to be in serious trouble. However until the OSS world gets the necessary applications to slay the dragon with, we're stuck with Microsoft for the forseeable future.
Hollywood will be teaming with the government to bring you candidates who although short on substance and integrity, are guaranteed to have voter appeal and provide a vehicle to forward the Republican party platform.
Slashdot Mirror
5'9" and 150 lbs. She's a solid 8 out of 10.
The "groups" feature is certainly comparable to Usenet (without the binaries groups). I think that what MySpace did was create an easy to use interface that included some of the most asked for components of a personal webpage. Specifically, people can put in information about themselves, link themselves to their friends and search for new friends. You don't have to know any HTML to get your own MySpace page going.
The appeal isn't for you, it's for the non-computer literate crowd. It provides them something to do with the internet. It the one place on the net where it's okay to admit you use a computer. Seriously. There are "hot chicks" and "cool guys" on MySpace... the very same kinds of people who would laugh at you if you told them you use a computer to talk to your friends in IRC. But since they are talking to each other on MySpace, it's acceptable.
I had a MySpace page for about six months. I had to delete it because my girlfriend went nuts over all of the girls who sent me friends requests that I accepted. (Yes, I'm pussy whipped) The thing is, I wasn't even looking for women. The only thing I really did on MySpace was stay in touch with people from high school and talk about Taoism on the Taoism group. It was kind of cool to meet random people who shared similar interests tho.
Or maybe they'd just like to get fucked right the first time and leave the bringing around work to the fatties who don't have a choice but to settle for the ones who need some work.
Of course the irony is that the MS OS will fuck you right the first time, but it also needs some work.
A real test would be to see if putting OpenOffice back on the system causes WGA to fail. If that happens, then you might be onto something.
Your average user won't realize it until it is the defacto standard. One of the big reasons that Windows became the defacto standard is because it was the easiest for the average user to use. By average, I mean people who are scared of the command line. Most people don't realize how far Windows has come in ease of use. I remember when I was working with Novell 3.12 servers, Windows NT 4.0 Server came out. Sure the product sucked, but it was easy to use. With Novell you had to have a server and a workstation to get the server up and running. With Windows you just put the install CD into the server and installed it... what a concept. With Novell, you actually had to know what you were doing. With Windows you could just click Next > Next > Next until the server booted up. On a Novell server you had a command line, on a Windows server you had a GUI. ON a Novell server you had to install all of your apps from a workstation with drives mapped to the server. On a Windows box, you just put the app CD in the drive. Obviously the Novell servers were more secure and fostered a better mentality. In those days you'd never have to worry about some fool using the server like it's a desktop and surfing to MySpace to pick up the latest exploit code neatly delivered through the built-in browser.
The average user will never use Linux because it is still at the hobbiest stage. Every time I see Linux guys talking about having to compile drivers and whining about how their hardware isn't supported I have a flashback to 1990 when I was editing config.sys and autoexec.bat files on my bootdisks because every game I wanted to play required a seperate configuration. Your average user won't use Linux because there are too many flavors of it. With a PC, you know what you are getting yourself into. With a Mac, you know what you are getting yourself into. With Linux you have to take distros into consideration. Is it RedHat, SlackWare, Debian, SCO, Ubuntu, etc, etc, etc
Average users aren't using Macs because you can't get them at places like Best Buy, or Circuit City, or Costco, or WalMart, or, or, or.... My girlfriend's mom is the perfect example. She wants a new computer, but she "has" to get it from Best Buy because she has a Best Buy credit card and the only way she can consider getting a computer is if she puts it on that credit card.
I agree. I use Windows XP at home because I play games. The argument hasn't changed since I had a 386/40 instead of a Macintosh. The good games are on the PC.
The other people who need to "suffer" Windows are those in the corporate world who don't have the luxury of having all of their applications ported to Linux, and then retraining all of their users on the new operating environment. The ROI from switching off of Windows isn't there yet. The money "saved" in licensing costs is completely obliterated in migration costs. And even though the OS itself may be free, I'm pretty sure that people aren't going to be giving away MAS90 or equivalent accounting packages for free. Those licensing costs are still going to be the same no matter what the underlying OS is.
I don't know about the rest of you folks, but that is finally getting gaming to the point where I've wanted it to be since the original GTA. A completely real-time, modern day world that you can run around in from a first person point of view has some allure to it.
I wager that, in fact, it isn't.
I had the opportunity to get a beta copy of WoW at DefCon a few years ago and I passed on it because I didn't want to get sucked in. A couple of weeks ago I went out and bought two copies of the game so that I can play it with my girlfriend. I play for a couple of hours a week and it is something else for us to do when we want to hang out. I still manage to make it to the temple to stay ontop of my kung fu training, I still make it to work, I still hang out at the bar with my friends.
The point I'm getting at that it is possible. It's as possible as it is to do ANYTHING else if you want to. If doing things besides playing an MMO is important to you then you will find a way to do it. If you want to get lost in an MMO, you will do that. Just because most people have problems balancing their lives doesn't mean that it can't be done.
Exactly. The WMF exploit is old news. The people who got hit by this attack are the people who are too stupid to setup automatic update.
If you hate it so much, don't use it. Last I checked, you don't have to have the latest version of DirectX or Windows Defender to make your computer work. Go ahead and use Linux and stop whining. Or whine about how the driver support for Linux sucks. Or how it doesn't work right with SMB. Or how you can't share documents with a client you want to work with because you insist on using something new and different.
Your LoJack analogy sucks because contrary to your statement about not getting any benefit, you do get benefit. If you install WGA then you get access to the latest enhancements like DirectX and everything else that is WGA protected.
If you're worried about your "personal information" getting sent to Microsoft, then put "Fuck you Microsoft" in the username field when you install the software. I don't think that WGA is mining your Quicken data for credit card information. That's what spyware does, not WGA.
I swear that some folks on here complain for the sake of complaining. WGA protects Microsoft's IP and serves to enforce their copyright. If you don't like the software, don't use it. Code up an alternative. The momentum is swinging in your direction. The Microsoft empire is going to crumble... or not. No one is forcing you to run XP. No one is forcing your clients to use XP, or Server 2003, or any other Microsoft product. You use it because you want interoperability with the defacto standard. It's like Coke and Pepsi. If you like the taste of Coke, you drink Coke. If you don't want Coke, drink Pepsi. But don't bitch about Pepsi not tasting like Coke.
I personally use Microsoft products because (contrary to popular opinion) the shit works well enough and gets the job done. I use Exchange. I use Outlook. I use IE. I don't have virus problems. I don't have desktops BSODing on me. I get paid well to keep things working, and with good practices and good system administration, Microsoft products work. I'm not stupid enough to argue that they're inherently as secure or as well thoughtout or applicable for multi-user environments as *nix is. However for 95% of the computing world, the Microsoft product will get the job done. And at the end of the day, that's all I care about. If Linux gains such huge momentum that the world around me turns upside down, I'll start making Linux work for people... just like I started making NT work for people after Novell fell apart.
Can you be 100% certain that the version that got flagged doesn't also happen to be the version that some IT guy took home and gave to his friend, who then gave it to ten of his friends? I had a problem with the MSDN copy of XP we used at work. In theory we had 5 licenses for it. However one of the guys who we fired picked it up and made a bunch of copies for his friends. We contacted Microsoft and guess what... they gave us a new license code for it.
Like the poster above you said, run a legit copy of the OS, follow the licensing rules and you're OK. The people who whine about WGA are the people who have been pirating the software since DOS 5.0.
If the technology was developed in Israel, then how come the Israeli's are whining about their towns getting hit by Palestinian fired rockets? Seems to me like the technology needs some more testing.
Somebody better tell the guys who are developing APB (Webzen?) that they're barking up the wrong tree..... Not.
What about PDF files? Are home users too stupid to figure out how to go download Acrobat Reader? Over the last few years I have seen PDF become a huge standard. Even small businesses that I'd have never anticipated wanting to create PDF documents suddenly want to create them because the people that they are dealing with prefer to accept the PDF files. I don't see anyone whining about a lack of native PDF support in Office. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite. Adobe is freaking out over Microsoft wanting to natively support the PDF format.
[troll]I really think that you guys are a bunch of whiners. Microsoft can't do any good as far as you're concerned. They want to support PDF and it's bad because it's anti-competitive. They come up with a system to patch security flaws and restrict it to people who have LEGITIMATE copies of their software, and you guys whine about WGA being intrusive. They make noise about supporting ODF and it's not good enough, because... Well boo hoo hoo hoo. I think most of you are wasting time simply to be different. If ODF and OO and Linux and all of the alternatives are better alternatives, they will succeed. If not, they will sink. You guys are trying to convince people to go to the best, when they already have "good enough". Good enough is good enough for a reason. Good enough would be great if people weren't spending so much time trying to break it. Luckily good enough is what it is and therefore there is money to be made in securing it and keeping it running. And what it comes down to is there isn't anything that Linux can do that Windows can't. Sure, Linux might do it better but like I said, better isn't a reason to scrap an entire deployment, and years and years of investment in hardware, software and USER TRAINING. Better isn't a reason to completely redevelop, and to spend time STANDING STILL RECREATING WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE. Like it or not, it's often more cost effective to work with what you have, rather than rebuild it from scratch.[/troll]
Having said all of that, alternatives are good. There are people who can't afford to spend the money to get what everyone else has, so it's good to have similar functionality available at a fraction of the cost.
This is a very good point. I don't play WoW but I know a whole slew of people who do. I would call them my friends, but to be friends with someone generally implies that you hang out with each other. =) Anyway, there is one group of people that pretty much doesn't talk to another group of people because they are on different WoW servers. These two groups of people have known each other for YEARS, almost a decade actually. But now they barely even talk to each other, or play games together anymore, simply because they are invested in high level characters on particular servers, and they don't want to start over again.
If the game is so crack-like that people won't even put down a character to play the same game at a lower level with their real life friends, then there is no way people are going to leave it to play something even remotely similar. The only way people would leave WoW is if they get bored with the concept / genre and want to try something different. But these are gamer geeks we're talking about. They aren't going to get tired of the fantasy world. 24/7 D&D is what people have been craving ever since the twenty sided dice was invented. Hell, if I hadn't stumbled across kung fu, I'd probably be a WoW addict too.
Microsoft in the past did a great job of putting out conversion tools. When it was time to move away from Novell, there were all sorts of tools available to export uses out of NDS and into AD. The same with Exchange. You can pull email data out of pretty much any email program on the planet and import it into Exchange. The OSS community needs to get together and figure how to do two things. First, get user data / security permissions out of AD and into a competiting directory (which shouldn't be too hard given that AD is LDAP based). Second, come up with the Exchange killer and then develop conversion tools to grab the data from Exchange and import it into the new application. Obviously the Exchange killer needs the full functionality of Exchange.
If those two resources are already out there, please take a second to send me a message and point me to some information about them. Thanks!
The VP who left the company was in charge of one of their most important divisions. The VP who left the company was the guy who was leading the anti-Linux campaign. When a company loses an executive who is on the front lines of positioning the company to deal with the two largest trends in the software world, it is news.
To frame the example in the context of your little no name company, it would be the equivilant of the President and Head of R&D leaving. People would start to wonder what they know that you don't. Investors would start to worry about the long term outlook of the company.
On that train of thought I'm sure that there are at least a couple of analysts on Wall Street right now writing up reports about the loss of executive staff at Microsoft supports the conclusion that it's time to sell their stock short
They purchased the publisher of my favorite game series of all time (Bullfrog and the Syndicate franchise) and then let it rot. They are worse than Microsoft and Symantec when it comes to buying up the competition and then craptasticizing the product line.
And that reason is?
Before the internet it was scandalous when parents would turn their daughters out onto the street for a few extra bucks. Now we have MySpace, where parents can ignore the fact that their daughters are whores and then attempt to sue for a whole hell of a lot more than they would ever see if they simply put their daughters out on the street.
Notice his use of the qualifer. Of course he really is fairly certain that what he was doing is illegal.
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Don't get near MY part of Texas. Physical violence may ensue.
I think you did a great job of showcasing the real problem with what happens in American schools. The sad thing is, I don't think you realize what the real problem is.
Of course, such a thing will never happen. Sooner or later the OSS community is going to catch up, they are going to come up with an Exchange killer, and they are going to come up with an accounting package to rival the likes of Platinum / Sage / AccPac for the SMB market, and then Microsoft is going to be in serious trouble. However until the OSS world gets the necessary applications to slay the dragon with, we're stuck with Microsoft for the forseeable future.
Hollywood will be teaming with the government to bring you candidates who although short on substance and integrity, are guaranteed to have voter appeal and provide a vehicle to forward the Republican party platform.