Precisely this. Used to be, if you had a sizable record collection (vinyl, CD, what have you), that was a big deal and people would want to look over your stuff; your investment was around ~300 ~400 dollars US for 200 discs, and that might take a few years to build up. Now, everyone with internet access has close to, if not over, millions of choices for almost nothing. If you use ad blockers and get your music from YouTube, you don't even have to deal with a sales pitch in return for free-as-in-beer tunes.
Interesting thing though, one article points out that vinyl has outsold streaming. My 13-year-old is part of this movement back to the old-is-new.
Thank you! As the grandson, son, nephew, and cousin of many military members, past and present, officers and enlisted, it's nice to read comments like yours and know that not everyone's opinions are formed by movies.
I, like many of us, have used both companies' products, and for a while alternated with each generation from one to the other (going back to, I believe, the AMD All-in-Wonder card series). But until the three items you've laid out are addressed, I'm sad to say that my future purchases will consist exclusively of NVidia boards.
Unless they are taking my financial data, I just don't care about any of this. Let them research my use patterns, etc. Let them know if I want a Slap-Chop or visit the Pirate Bay. Don't steal my banking data, don't buy stuff online using my logins, and don't steal my identity. Otherwise, it doesn't matter to me.
Can someone convince me otherwise? Not being sarcastic here. I see a lot of "I hate this" posts, and "see, this is what they're doing," "this is how you get around it," etc., but I haven't noticed anyone (could have missed it) pointing out, other than general principle, which I do get, why I should care.
I'm by no means new to/. or to computing - maybe I'm just tired in my middle age, but I'm not just not angered by this. And you won't convince me (without actual proof) that the iPhone/Android devices we use doesn't do similar things, almost entirely in attempts to make the products we use better for us, to make our interactions with them smoother and more intuitive. Human-machine interaction is NOT an easy thing to get right, and it takes a lot (understatement there) of research and information to improve it. From everything I see, MS, Google, and the (much hated by me personally) Apple are simply doing just that - trying to make their products more intuitive so as to appeal to their user bases in an effort to gain market share. In the end, this is aimed at benefiting both us as users AND the companies who provide the devices and OSes that run them.
TLDR: I left all that shit on. My bank account is intact, and my children haven't been kidnapped.
I worked for them for 9 months in IT as a sysadmin (left for an unexpected opportunity) - the culture from an employee perspective was actually really nice. A "de-stress" room with dim lights, wall-mounted continuous waterfall, and divans / recliners for naps whenever you wanted; free beverage bar (non-alcoholic); fun management staff who were not over-the-shoulder types. Of course, I wasn't there long enough to get a fully-informed insiders opinion on every facet of the business, but I can say that I went in expecting to hate it, and was pleased to find that this wasn't the case.
This isn't the same as customer experience, I know, but mine has been similar to those who have already posted - mostly positive, with less frustration than anticipated - so I thought I'd mention what things were like on the inside, limited though my time there was.
In addition to what the others stated, you left this out: " and because it imposes disproportionate, intrusive, and punitive measures against households and businesses with no due process." So there's self interest AND disagreement on a more fundamental level, mixed together. Nothing wrong with that in my book.
Amen. My first wife wanted to get right back to work. I disagreed, but respected her decision. Fast forward 10 years: second marriage, second son - wife back in university (on line courses) and is at home with our boy, of whom we both get to see more of this way because there's no lost commute time for HIM. I earn more than I did before, but not so much that this isn't a sacrifice in some ways. But the way that it's not? My family. The time with them is worth so much more, and even the older two (she had a daughter from a previous marriage who is an amazing addition to our family as well) don't care a bit about "stuff" that they might otherwise have. Those things will come eventually, but this time will only last for a short while, and they actually get that.
I guess "stink" is the term I might not define the same way that you do. Humans certainly can't detect all the smells that many other animals can, so what makes no smell to us might have a unique "odorprint" to our pets.
According to TFA, the bomb itself was simple, but the builder's mechanical design was pretty darn ingenious. As the parent to your reply pointed out, he made it explosive-proof (dynamite did indeed defeat their attempt to destroy it with controlled C4 detonation - it exploded ). He also made it as pry-, drill-, disassembly-, and cut/slice-proof. Further, it wasn't movable without knowing the right switch combination to shut off the tilt trigger. The bomb unit couldn't cut any wires because everything was inside the steel box.
They'd hoped to get the switch configuration from the bomb builder, but that didn't happen; the thing had a timer in addition to all the other goodies, and there was no way to know when it would go off, so the final call was, again, to hope that a (relatively) small C4 charge would disable the whole thing. Pesky dynamite, undetected, blew up though, which in turn blew up the TNT. The building didn't fare too well in the aftermath, but at least no one was hurt/killed.
I've got a 2003 (first model year) Honda Pilot that I bought new in late 02. Other than a backup camera, which would have been useful in preventing a couple of small bumps, I'm happy I didn't buy any of the optional items that I could have - they'd be so old now that I'm not sure they'd be compatible with anything I now own, and for the self-contained portions, well they'd probably have broken long ago (door locks sure didn't last very long, what makes me think anything more sophisticated would).
I'm curious, genuinely, as to why all the "@#$!% Windows!" posts are being so happily upvoted, while the ones that are rationally pointing out the upside to MS's new direction are seemingly being ignored. You would think, with all the bitching that is normally done here concerning closed versus open, overly expensive software versus free or low-cost alternatives, that people might actually stop with the automatic MS-hate and consider their stance anew.
No software is EVER bug-free (own an Android phone? Enjoying all that perfection?); OSes are complex environments, and sometimes you just can not get every feature in place in a reasonable amount of time. At some point, you have to declare that you've reached a close of a phase of development. Despite our glee at the old "nah, that's a feature" joke, I don't think anyone honestly believes a company with as much money at stake as MS has really has a "screw it" attitude. They're a HUGE company, and for anyone who's ever worked in that sort of environment, you know that you actually have to marvel that any product at all EVER ships.
In part, it is because no OS is ever perfect (you Mac users take a look back, and you'll remember how bad the OS really was years ago, and admit that it too has its own unique problems even today despite being dramatically improved) that MS has moved to this model - fixes to issues can hopefully happen more quickly, new features added sooner.
Along with this new model of publishing Windows comes something else (relatively) new for MS - a new monetization method. For all the grousing about how old and lame the Redmond folks are, now that they are embracing the "freemium" model used by many mobile apps (ads for the free version, or pay to remove them) there's all the complaints for moving to the "new school" way of business. The second - and a little more understandable but I think still defensible in today's environment - complaint is privacy (mainly, the sale of your habits to merchants). First, while not easy for the newbie to do, 10 can be locked down fairly well (PC Mag has a decent article, and it's not the only one); second, if you use Facebook, Twitter, or other social platform, or any search engine, you began giving up privacy the moment your fingers touched a keyboard. If your activities are highly illegal (not just minor film/music torrenting) and you haven't been caught, you're already not worried about this issue; for the average person, yes we don't like the idea of targeted ads and trending our preferences, but to say that there's a person sitting around looking at that data and saying, "Aha! Bob Smith, I *knew* you were into midget clown rodeos!" - well, that's just silly. The only privacy I really, honestly care about is banking, taxes, and when I watch porn - my wife is cool with that last part, but I don't want my kids to type something in only to have YouPorn instead of YouTube pop up. Local browsing, then, is still hidden from other "common" users on my machine, and if I choose to do things like bank on line, I simply have to hope and trust that the certs on the HTTPS connection the bank provides haven't been compromised. That's going to be true for any platform I use to do these things.
I applaud MS for attempting to move in a new direction - it shows, finally, a willingness to change, even if there are missteps along the way. They will have issues with Windows, just as all other OSes do. They will piss people off from time to time. But to complain because they don't do something, then complain because they do? That's not proper criticism, it's just bias.
My Pops just three evenings ago asked me which version of office to get with the new machine he is going to build. I responded "LibreOffice" and showed him why. He and Mom are trying it out now (she's a teacher, so her choice will decide), and so far seems they are happy with it.
Difference is that I don't have a Facebook account, and there are very, very few sites that I can't use (with some sort of site-specific account as opposed to logging in with FB creds) as a result. YouTube, sadly, hasn't allowed that (to the best of my knowledge) in the last few years.
To be fair, I should have been clearer. I have Cox Cable in the southeastern US, and the cost for cable Internet access is about $62/month; add TV (with DVR rental) and you're looking at another $150~$200. No thanks. Between free content on Youtube, Hulu, and "broadcast" networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC), and only $8 for Netflix, I'm happy with what I get for the price point. If you like live sports that's really the only big down side.
Ultimately, it's a total of $70 for all the goodies I can consume on the Internet each month, no data limits, etc. Also, Cox has been surprisingly good as an ISP in general; our bandwidth (DL speeds) were just doubled for zero cost, and in this case it actually WAS noticeable. If the chart that was widely publicized about how ComCast dicked over its subscribers until Netflix ponied up is accurate, Cox's internet division is one of the rare almost-good guys in the USA's ISP world.
That makes sense. It's the exact reason why I use the unpaid versions of both:); why I have Netflix instead of cable; etc. etc. Thanks for the response.
I don't agree with every stance of the Church, but this is one that has been held true from my earliest recollection (I'm middle-aged). Evolution and scientific origins of the cosmos are entirely legit, and that gives me hope that in time other reasonable and logical viewpoints might be adopted.
So, you've been using computers since at least 1999. Congrats. Considering your decades... errr... years of desktop use, I hate to have to tell you this, but there are plenty of good reasons to pin apps to the task bar. Not every app is best served this way, but plenty are. Perhaps with some more time and experience you'll learn that, instead of attempting to speak for the rest of us.
Let me address this in a narrow band. It's a good user experience when we limit our discussion to the user experience on the phone itself, removing programming considerations from a developer POV, and from an "I bought an app for my PC but it doesn't run on my phone" POV. I don't think people currently expect their phones to be like their desk/laptop OS environments. You have a valid point that MS are being misleading with the naming convention, but again, user expectation probably doesn't lead to much in the way of true confusion here.
I've never owned a Mac (iPhones yes, Mac no), so I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm pretty sure the experience on one is vastly different from the other. Android, true, has some cross-formfactor success, but from phone to desktop (Android to Linux) we're looking at a new app again, so I wouldn't think people, tech-savvy or not, will be confused too much.
I hope you don't take this as argumentative - I simply like using my Windows Phone 8 / 8.1 phone, more than I liked my iPhones, more than I enjoyed using my wife's Android phone. I did state, MS' marketing strategy is crap, no doubt. I have shunned Windows 8 for the desktop so far, though I've had co-workers tell me it's fine, they just chuck the "Metro" side of things (in which case... it's Win 7 again with a few enhancements).
MS is doing so little on the consumer side right these days, let's highlight what they get right (competition drives innovation, right?) and encourage people to at least consider it as a viable option for their choice of mobile phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Precisely this. Used to be, if you had a sizable record collection (vinyl, CD, what have you), that was a big deal and people would want to look over your stuff; your investment was around ~300 ~400 dollars US for 200 discs, and that might take a few years to build up. Now, everyone with internet access has close to, if not over, millions of choices for almost nothing. If you use ad blockers and get your music from YouTube, you don't even have to deal with a sales pitch in return for free-as-in-beer tunes.
Interesting thing though, one article points out that vinyl has outsold streaming. My 13-year-old is part of this movement back to the old-is-new.
Thank you! As the grandson, son, nephew, and cousin of many military members, past and present, officers and enlisted, it's nice to read comments like yours and know that not everyone's opinions are formed by movies.
Had I but one point to give, it would go to you.
I, like many of us, have used both companies' products, and for a while alternated with each generation from one to the other (going back to, I believe, the AMD All-in-Wonder card series). But until the three items you've laid out are addressed, I'm sad to say that my future purchases will consist exclusively of NVidia boards.
Unless they are taking my financial data, I just don't care about any of this. Let them research my use patterns, etc. Let them know if I want a Slap-Chop or visit the Pirate Bay. Don't steal my banking data, don't buy stuff online using my logins, and don't steal my identity. Otherwise, it doesn't matter to me.
/. or to computing - maybe I'm just tired in my middle age, but I'm not just not angered by this. And you won't convince me (without actual proof) that the iPhone/Android devices we use doesn't do similar things, almost entirely in attempts to make the products we use better for us, to make our interactions with them smoother and more intuitive. Human-machine interaction is NOT an easy thing to get right, and it takes a lot (understatement there) of research and information to improve it. From everything I see, MS, Google, and the (much hated by me personally) Apple are simply doing just that - trying to make their products more intuitive so as to appeal to their user bases in an effort to gain market share. In the end, this is aimed at benefiting both us as users AND the companies who provide the devices and OSes that run them.
Can someone convince me otherwise? Not being sarcastic here. I see a lot of "I hate this" posts, and "see, this is what they're doing," "this is how you get around it," etc., but I haven't noticed anyone (could have missed it) pointing out, other than general principle, which I do get, why I should care.
I'm by no means new to
TLDR: I left all that shit on. My bank account is intact, and my children haven't been kidnapped.
I worked for them for 9 months in IT as a sysadmin (left for an unexpected opportunity) - the culture from an employee perspective was actually really nice. A "de-stress" room with dim lights, wall-mounted continuous waterfall, and divans / recliners for naps whenever you wanted; free beverage bar (non-alcoholic); fun management staff who were not over-the-shoulder types. Of course, I wasn't there long enough to get a fully-informed insiders opinion on every facet of the business, but I can say that I went in expecting to hate it, and was pleased to find that this wasn't the case.
This isn't the same as customer experience, I know, but mine has been similar to those who have already posted - mostly positive, with less frustration than anticipated - so I thought I'd mention what things were like on the inside, limited though my time there was.
In addition to what the others stated, you left this out: " and because it imposes disproportionate, intrusive, and punitive measures against households and businesses with no due process." So there's self interest AND disagreement on a more fundamental level, mixed together. Nothing wrong with that in my book.
Since we're on the "H" model, B-52.8
Amen. My first wife wanted to get right back to work. I disagreed, but respected her decision. Fast forward 10 years: second marriage, second son - wife back in university (on line courses) and is at home with our boy, of whom we both get to see more of this way because there's no lost commute time for HIM. I earn more than I did before, but not so much that this isn't a sacrifice in some ways. But the way that it's not? My family. The time with them is worth so much more, and even the older two (she had a daughter from a previous marriage who is an amazing addition to our family as well) don't care a bit about "stuff" that they might otherwise have. Those things will come eventually, but this time will only last for a short while, and they actually get that.
I guess "stink" is the term I might not define the same way that you do. Humans certainly can't detect all the smells that many other animals can, so what makes no smell to us might have a unique "odorprint" to our pets.
Thank you! While the particular device discussed in TFA is very interesting, it's definitely not the only way to build an explosives delivery system.
According to TFA, the bomb itself was simple, but the builder's mechanical design was pretty darn ingenious. As the parent to your reply pointed out, he made it explosive-proof (dynamite did indeed defeat their attempt to destroy it with controlled C4 detonation - it exploded ). He also made it as pry-, drill-, disassembly-, and cut/slice-proof. Further, it wasn't movable without knowing the right switch combination to shut off the tilt trigger. The bomb unit couldn't cut any wires because everything was inside the steel box.
They'd hoped to get the switch configuration from the bomb builder, but that didn't happen; the thing had a timer in addition to all the other goodies, and there was no way to know when it would go off, so the final call was, again, to hope that a (relatively) small C4 charge would disable the whole thing. Pesky dynamite, undetected, blew up though, which in turn blew up the TNT. The building didn't fare too well in the aftermath, but at least no one was hurt/killed.
Gonk droid, is that your dad?
I laughed. Sorry I'm without points.
I've got a 2003 (first model year) Honda Pilot that I bought new in late 02. Other than a backup camera, which would have been useful in preventing a couple of small bumps, I'm happy I didn't buy any of the optional items that I could have - they'd be so old now that I'm not sure they'd be compatible with anything I now own, and for the self-contained portions, well they'd probably have broken long ago (door locks sure didn't last very long, what makes me think anything more sophisticated would).
I'm curious, genuinely, as to why all the "@#$!% Windows!" posts are being so happily upvoted, while the ones that are rationally pointing out the upside to MS's new direction are seemingly being ignored. You would think, with all the bitching that is normally done here concerning closed versus open, overly expensive software versus free or low-cost alternatives, that people might actually stop with the automatic MS-hate and consider their stance anew.
No software is EVER bug-free (own an Android phone? Enjoying all that perfection?); OSes are complex environments, and sometimes you just can not get every feature in place in a reasonable amount of time. At some point, you have to declare that you've reached a close of a phase of development. Despite our glee at the old "nah, that's a feature" joke, I don't think anyone honestly believes a company with as much money at stake as MS has really has a "screw it" attitude. They're a HUGE company, and for anyone who's ever worked in that sort of environment, you know that you actually have to marvel that any product at all EVER ships.
In part, it is because no OS is ever perfect (you Mac users take a look back, and you'll remember how bad the OS really was years ago, and admit that it too has its own unique problems even today despite being dramatically improved) that MS has moved to this model - fixes to issues can hopefully happen more quickly, new features added sooner.
Along with this new model of publishing Windows comes something else (relatively) new for MS - a new monetization method. For all the grousing about how old and lame the Redmond folks are, now that they are embracing the "freemium" model used by many mobile apps (ads for the free version, or pay to remove them) there's all the complaints for moving to the "new school" way of business. The second - and a little more understandable but I think still defensible in today's environment - complaint is privacy (mainly, the sale of your habits to merchants). First, while not easy for the newbie to do, 10 can be locked down fairly well (PC Mag has a decent article, and it's not the only one); second, if you use Facebook, Twitter, or other social platform, or any search engine, you began giving up privacy the moment your fingers touched a keyboard. If your activities are highly illegal (not just minor film/music torrenting) and you haven't been caught, you're already not worried about this issue; for the average person, yes we don't like the idea of targeted ads and trending our preferences, but to say that there's a person sitting around looking at that data and saying, "Aha! Bob Smith, I *knew* you were into midget clown rodeos!" - well, that's just silly. The only privacy I really, honestly care about is banking, taxes, and when I watch porn - my wife is cool with that last part, but I don't want my kids to type something in only to have YouPorn instead of YouTube pop up. Local browsing, then, is still hidden from other "common" users on my machine, and if I choose to do things like bank on line, I simply have to hope and trust that the certs on the HTTPS connection the bank provides haven't been compromised. That's going to be true for any platform I use to do these things.
I applaud MS for attempting to move in a new direction - it shows, finally, a willingness to change, even if there are missteps along the way. They will have issues with Windows, just as all other OSes do. They will piss people off from time to time. But to complain because they don't do something, then complain because they do? That's not proper criticism, it's just bias.
My Pops just three evenings ago asked me which version of office to get with the new machine he is going to build. I responded "LibreOffice" and showed him why. He and Mom are trying it out now (she's a teacher, so her choice will decide), and so far seems they are happy with it.
Difference is that I don't have a Facebook account, and there are very, very few sites that I can't use (with some sort of site-specific account as opposed to logging in with FB creds) as a result. YouTube, sadly, hasn't allowed that (to the best of my knowledge) in the last few years.
You deserve an upvote! Sadly my points are spent...
To be fair, I should have been clearer. I have Cox Cable in the southeastern US, and the cost for cable Internet access is about $62/month; add TV (with DVR rental) and you're looking at another $150~$200. No thanks. Between free content on Youtube, Hulu, and "broadcast" networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC), and only $8 for Netflix, I'm happy with what I get for the price point. If you like live sports that's really the only big down side.
Ultimately, it's a total of $70 for all the goodies I can consume on the Internet each month, no data limits, etc. Also, Cox has been surprisingly good as an ISP in general; our bandwidth (DL speeds) were just doubled for zero cost, and in this case it actually WAS noticeable. If the chart that was widely publicized about how ComCast dicked over its subscribers until Netflix ponied up is accurate, Cox's internet division is one of the rare almost-good guys in the USA's ISP world.
That makes sense. It's the exact reason why I use the unpaid versions of both :); why I have Netflix instead of cable; etc. etc. Thanks for the response.
Honest question: Why choose Pandora over Spotify, when you can choose entire albums with Spotify? I really am curious, not criticizing your choice.
I don't agree with every stance of the Church, but this is one that has been held true from my earliest recollection (I'm middle-aged). Evolution and scientific origins of the cosmos are entirely legit, and that gives me hope that in time other reasonable and logical viewpoints might be adopted.
So, you've been using computers since at least 1999. Congrats. Considering your decades... errr... years of desktop use, I hate to have to tell you this, but there are plenty of good reasons to pin apps to the task bar. Not every app is best served this way, but plenty are. Perhaps with some more time and experience you'll learn that, instead of attempting to speak for the rest of us.
Agreed. My Lumia's poly-carbonate bodies have always been a blessing in that area. Sure, not quite as "flash" but far more resilient.
Whoa, simma! :)
Let me address this in a narrow band. It's a good user experience when we limit our discussion to the user experience on the phone itself, removing programming considerations from a developer POV, and from an "I bought an app for my PC but it doesn't run on my phone" POV. I don't think people currently expect their phones to be like their desk/laptop OS environments. You have a valid point that MS are being misleading with the naming convention, but again, user expectation probably doesn't lead to much in the way of true confusion here.
I've never owned a Mac (iPhones yes, Mac no), so I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm pretty sure the experience on one is vastly different from the other. Android, true, has some cross-formfactor success, but from phone to desktop (Android to Linux) we're looking at a new app again, so I wouldn't think people, tech-savvy or not, will be confused too much.
I hope you don't take this as argumentative - I simply like using my Windows Phone 8 / 8.1 phone, more than I liked my iPhones, more than I enjoyed using my wife's Android phone. I did state, MS' marketing strategy is crap, no doubt. I have shunned Windows 8 for the desktop so far, though I've had co-workers tell me it's fine, they just chuck the "Metro" side of things (in which case... it's Win 7 again with a few enhancements).
MS is doing so little on the consumer side right these days, let's highlight what they get right (competition drives innovation, right?) and encourage people to at least consider it as a viable option for their choice of mobile phone.
Could be because the photons are locked in place...