And of course, you've never had any up-close time with MicroSoft's Outlook/Exhange product, so it's just peachy, right?
Compared to Notes, it's heaven. I don't know how "up-close" I need to be, but I'm at least ten times happier with Outlook than I ever was with Notes.
Let's see - MicroSoft took DOS (a perfectly great system which performed almost exactly as advertised) and turned it into Windows Vista. Hmmm . . . were you saying something about a track record for selling "crummy products"?
They've sold millions upon millions of copies, they must be doing something right. Personally, I like Vista... but then I'm not easily influenced by the Slashdot FUD. (Tomorrow's headline: Windows Vista kills kittens with radiation somehow!")
I personally never saw MicroSoft products "work pretty well on their own" for businesses I went to . . . that's why in 1994 I was worth $5,000.00/week as a consultant - to make those MicroSoft products work "pretty well".
Ok; but even if I concede that point, the fact that Notes costs more per-seat and has much worse productivity benefits and features... doesn't really change the thrust of my argument.
Chances are you're just a rabid anti-Notes troll, but I'll bite anyway.
I am rabidly anti-Notes, because I've been exposed to it as a user and as a helpdesk worker. Notes left such a bad impression on me that I now ask, in the interview, whether a company uses Notes or Outlook for groupware... if they say Notes, I walk.
Look, I know programmers love Notes. I'm not a programmer; I'm just a user who has a busy calendar and likes to sync my Palm, and Notes is about the worst solution for doing that.
Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange are different products: the first is a "groupware" platform that happens to do mail, the other is a mail server that might be linked to some other Microsoft platforms (notably: sharepoint).
Whatever it is, it's buggy and bloated and a royal pain in the ass to use. For some reason, IBM lovers always jump into this conversation by saying "it's not a groupware product!" despite IBM selling it as a groupware product. Somehow, this excuses Notes' bugs. Kind of like saying, "oh this program I wrote to enter text into isn't a 'word processor' even though it's sold as one, it's a text management system... therefore it's ok if it crashes every hour and loses data." But, hey, I'll let it slide; I took on that point in another thread anyway.
The Notes client can be used for accessing "databases" (which are actually a container with semi-structured data and application logic in one), for which IBM provides a "mail database" that is kinda capable of handling mail.
Thank you for being honest about Notes' mail capabilities. Saying it is "kinda capable of handling mail" is pretty accurate. Unfortunately, tons of companies use Notes as their *only* groupware product, thus subjecting their users to something that even a big Notes fan admits only "kinda" works. Not cool.
Outlook is a superb mail client that does nothing else unless you've got someone willing to create "outlook foms" that link to other MS technologies.
Great. It's a small, quick (relatively speaking) program that does one thing and does it damn well. It does less than Notes, but it also costs less than Notes. (Half as much per-seat, last I priced it out.) And your users will thank you for switching by being much more productive.
Domino is multiplatform, Notes kinda (current Linux client is barely usable)
So... Notes has good support on Windows, crummy Macintosh support and really crummy Linux support. (Yes, I've used it on a Macintosh... crummy is as generous as I'm going to be.) Meanwhile, Outlook has good support on Windows and crummy Macintosh support (via Entourage). I see no real difference here.
Security is a design fundamental in Notes/Domino. Notes has been doing private key crypto and signed code before Exchange was even conceived.
While I think some of IBM's ideas of "security" are somewhat lame-brained (like the hieroglyphics when you type your password-- WTF!?, the extremely annoying-to-admin.id files), I have to concede this point.
Domino/Notes is way better when integration company processes/workflows in your mail environment.
Huh?
Restoring backed up mails/documents/databases can be done relatively easy, and has been like that for at least 12 years.
Um, ok. Does that compensate for the emails/documents you'll lose with Notes' brain-dead filing system? I can't count the dozens of emails I lost by having the audacity to attempt to file documents neatly into folders.
The Notes UI is infamous because it is so different from Windows and counter-intuitive to some people.
It's not that it's counter-intuitive, it's that it's actually hostile to users. For instance, many users might hit F5 in an attempt to refresh their in-box. Like Outlook, Notes' shortcut for that is actually F9. Unlike Outlook, when you hit F5 in Notes, the entire UI disappears and gives no indication of how to get back to your mail. (I find most users would just clo
Ok, yes, it's not a database and it's not groupware.
It doesn't matter whether it's a groupware product, a database product, or a small off-duty Czechoslovakia traffic warden-- there's simply no excuse for the blatant and unfixed bugs Lotus Notes has! Arguing over "what it is" is pointless when, no matter what it is, it doesn't friggin' work.
Opening Notes to use it as a groupware product takes far too long and way too much RAM. Opening Notes to use it as a "distributed application and database platform" and it takes far too long and way too much RAM. There's no practical difference. Whether I'm moving a document into a folder and Notes deletes it unexpectedly, or I'm moving a... I dunno... distributed application file into a folder and Notes deletes it unexpectedly, Notes is still being buggy, crappy software.
Sorry for getting annoyed there, but even after you point out the tactic used by Notes defenders to defend its flaws, and point out why that tactic makes no sense, they just keep going on with the same tactic! It's like pounding your head against the wall.
Any company using Notes now could easily do the same work with fewer flaws, happier users, and much cheaper using a combination of Exchange/Outlook and Filemaker or Access. The only "feature" you'd be missing out on is Notes' ability to take a crummy application (and yes, the install I have experience with wasn't just for email, it had some other applications as well) and make it into a really crummy website that kind of works in IE if you have the right version of Java and pray to your personal saviour.
This is the standard response. The standard response to that response is:
1) IBM advertises and markets it as a groupware product, therefore IBM has no right to complain when people compare it to another groupware product. While you can create apps in Notes to do all sorts of things, the app it ships, and installs by default, is a groupware app. If you were handed a Notes CD out of the blue and installed it, you wouldn't know it did anything except groupware functions.
2) Regardless of what the program is, it's no excuse for:
A) Bloated performance, where opening a single email frequently takes upwards of 10 seconds. God help you if you use the calendar or attempt to sync to a Palm device... expect to spend all afternoon.
B) Blatant bugs, for instance, 'out of office' notifications taking more than an entire day to take effect, or allowing meetings that end before they begin in the calendar (which then causes crashes of the Palm syncing software.) IBM themselves publishes an app you need to use periodically to fix Notes when Notes craps all over itself, leaves zombie processes running and refuses to launch again.
C) Terrible usability design. Get an email (or any document, for the 'it's not groupware!' crowd) in one folder, drag it to another folder, then delete it from the original folder. That email is now gone FROM BOTH FOLDERS! (Turns out Notes doesn't actually copy when you drag from folder to folder, it creates a shortcut instead.) The Notes client on Macintosh looks exactly like the Notes client on Windows.
I'm sorry. If the class of "distributed database clients" includes Filemaker Pro, Microsoft Access, and Lotus Notes... Lotus Notes by far is at the bottom of the scale.
And if the class of "groupware products" includes Microsoft Outlook, Novell Groupwise (disclaimer: I haven't used it in ages), and Lotus Notes... well, Lotus Notes is by far at the bottom of the scale.
As far as I can tell, IBM's strategy is to make crummy products, sell them to gullible IT departments (or habitual ones that buy IBM just because it's IBM), then sell expensive consulting services to make their crummy products work nearly as well as the cheaper competition. Sadly, IBM seems to have a stranglehold on healthcare.
The textbook case would, of course, be Lotus Domino/Notes. Which is more expensive per-seat than Outlook/Exchange and lacks many (I would say very basic) features that Outlook gives you as part of the package. To make matters worse, it has terrible usability and runs sluggish to annoy your users. For only massive amounts of moolah, you can hire IBM consultants to halfway kind of fix these problems, maybe.
Sure, Microsoft sells consulting services as well, but the difference is that the Microsoft products at least work pretty well on their own for the majority of businesses, so only huge shops really need to involve Microsoft consultants in the process.
Ok, I know that this forum is full of Nintendo fanatics, but there's no need for the hostile tone.
Speculation ! What "there's no sense in building something if nobody would buy it" means, is that if they released one motion sensing wiimote-like, for it to be successful, several things that depends on each other would need to happen, and this is unlikely
Well, ok... but that still doesn't really change my point that the parent post had mis-interpreted what MS was saying. The specifics of what MS meant is beside the point.
Honestly, what you says seems like total BS to me. 3rd parties are ALL embracing it, all those on the Wii at least. You'll have problems finding 3rd parties that don't use the Wiimote on the Wii actually. So what you and MS say is a bunch of lies.
Saying something "seems like an accurate statement to me" isn't "bunch of lies". How could it possibly be? First of all, I'm not making any kind of factual statement... if I had typed "the Wii is made out of chocolate and has three live fish in it", then that would be a bunch of lies. See the difference? In fact, I don't think anybody's opinion could possibly be a "lie." Uninformed, perhaps, but not a lie.
Besides, MS is still far from being profitable, and they need to keep PS3 at bay while turning a profit.
I'm a consumer. Let MS worry about keeping their own books; why should any consumer give a crap which console is most "profitable?" I think this argument exists mainly so that Nintendo fans could justify the poor performance of the last few Nintendo consoles by saying, "well, at least it's profitable!" (Forgetting, of course, to explain why the hell anybody other than Nintendo's accountants should give a crap whether or not it's profitable.) Now that the Wii is doing good, maybe people will drop this moronic argument once and for all.
"I was deciding whether to buy a Mazda or a Chevy, and I went with Chevy because it's more profitable." WTF?!
If Nintendo manages to attracts most customers, all of them sold to motion sensing capability on their console
That's typed as a single sentence, but I'll have to respond in multiple parts.
Yes, Nintendo is attracting a lot of customers *right now.* The question is whether the Wii will still be as popular in two years when the console makers start planning the next generation.
, don't count on graphics difference to sell the other consoles, because that's the sole advantage the XBox360 and PS3 have this gen, and if ti doesn't help...
That's not the sole advantage the Xbox 360 and PS3 have this generation, and you know it. Now who's telling a bunch of lies?
Whether it's appealing to you or not, the Xbox 360 and PS3 both have next-generation optical disk support and HD interfaces, along with media center features. Wii doesn't have any of those advantages. I should also say that the online system on Xbox 360 and PS3 is much better than the stupid "friends code" thing that Nintendo is doing.
The fact is that the Xbox 360 and PS3 both have a lot of advantages over the Wii. A better debate would be whether the PS3 has any advantages over the Xbox 360, but that's neither here nor there.
Either he's talking about the market for motion-sensing controllers at the time the Xbox 360 was designed, then you can't blame him for thinking that nobody would buy it. Nintendo created that market were none was before, and the Xbox 360 was designed long before they would be able to change something based on Nintendo's developments for the Wii.
Or maybe he's talking about the difficulty in getting an add-on to succeed in the console world. You could count on one hand the number of console add-ons that have been successful in the past. If Microsoft did offer a motion-sensing controller, but there was very little game support, then it's quite possible that nobody would want it.
Actually, this asshat saying that technology X is not desired by the public, when one of his main competitors is currently making a killing marketing technology X is disingenuous.
You're reading it completely wrong. Saying "there's no sense in building something if nobody would buy it" doesn't imply that Nintendo is selling something that "nobody buys." That wouldn't even make sense.
He probably said it to highlight that, at the time the Xbox 360 was conceived and designed, motion-sensing controllers were considered something that nobody would buy. And, honestly, you can't blame Microsoft for thinking that. Nintendo did a great job of creating a market for motion-sensing controllers that simply did not exist two years ago.
The other statement he makes about motion-sensing controllers is that third party developers aren't embracing it. And honestly, that also seems like an accurate statement to me... so far all the 'killer apps' on the Wii are made by Nintendo. Microsoft doesn't operate the way Nintendo does; while they make first-party games, the console requires third-party games to be successful.
I agree with the grandparent that, strategically, Microsoft's already in a pretty good position. It's been shown that the "killer Cell graphics" on the PS3 aren't much better than the Xbox 360 graphics have been the entire last year, and ditching the rumble-pack for a half-functional motion-sensor was a bad move on Sony's part (IMHO.) Microsoft can afford to bide their time right now and wait for the Xbox 3 (whatever it'll be called) to introduce whatever new controller model makes the most sense.
Oh please. I know their "trick" (if you call it that) and I certainly haven't seen an actual bluescreen in far over a year. Although you are technically right, I don't think it shows that Windows is unstable.
The driver is part of the hardware, so I count BSODs due to driver issues in the same bucket as "faulty hardware." (Making exceptions for drivers that ship with the OS, of course.) Since drivers are going to be required with every modern OS, you really can't count some seedy driver from Taiwan crashing against Microsoft-- especially when Microsoft makes every effort to get companies to thoroughly test and digitally sign drivers.
The default in XP is to reboot and log the error in the Event Viewer when you get a BSOD instead of actually showing you the BSOD. Microsoft realized that since maybe 1/10,000 people actually can act on the BSOD data that shows, there's really no reason to show it to everybody else.
There's a checkbox to turn that feature off, if you want to see BSODs, in the System control panel I believe. Or just check your Event Viewer when you have a mysterious reboot.
It's a stupid concept. By definition, human rights only apply to humans.
I might agree to giving chimpanzees *some* rights, but not the full range of human rights. It would cheapen the entire concept.
Or a better reply: chimps can get rights when they get some guns, form an army, and conquer or found their own nation, Planet of the Apes 5-style. Then they can determine all the rights they want. But even in Planet of the Apes, they didn't call them "human" rights.
Not that it answers your requirement, but my 14" iBook got a solid 6 hours with the backlight on low, DVD drive empty, but wifi on, when it was new. Now it's down to about 4, or 2.5 if I play DVDs.
The wi-fi access point in the plane is the easy part. The hard part is the infrastructure required to get a low-latency, high-bandwidth connection to an object moving at several hundred miles an hour at an altitude of 42,000 feet.
And when I say "easy part", that's relatively speaking. There's still tons and tons of tests to ensure that the wireless access does nothing to interfere with the plane's instruments or communication.
Charging more for the same goods in a physical store, in a country with higher operating costs, is legal. However, having a higher price for English customers than for French customers, just because your English customers are richer, is illegal.
Wha-huh?
Customers who are "richer" (monetarily) have higher operating costs. That's the nature of the free market. The EU here is basically saying they don't want the free market to exist, instead they want a flat-across-the-board price even if it means poor people have to pay more and rich people less. I don't agree with that position and I don't see how anybody could.
Regardless of *why* they're there, the fact is they *are* EU citizens, correct? Plus they were on a UN mission, and the EU loves the UN.
One of the nicer "guarantees" about living in the US is that if you get stranded somewhere, or in a bind, the US Government will do all it can to get you out... regardless of why you were there. Whenever a revolution or violence starts up in some country, the first thing you hear about is how the US is trying to find and evacuate all US citizens to someplace more stable.
If I lived in the EU, and I found that the EU doesn't give a flying whit whether you were captured by extremists or not, I wouldn't feel very confident.
Wrong. We believe businesses should have controls. We don't believe they should have so many controls, restrictions, and laws that they can no longer do business. That's why Boeing is kicking ass while Airbus is struggling to retain their last few A380 customers. That's why nearly every computer in the world, no matter what language is spoken where it is, runs an operating system from Washington State.
2)How often do the scifi fans you know in meatspace talk about Blade Runner or Planet of the Apes?(two of the other films mentions in the grandparent)
Name a science fiction movie made in the last 10 years that hasn't basically taken most of its material from Bladerunner, Planet of the Apes, or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Alien. There aren't any, including Serenity. Including shitty films like Battlefield: Earth or Mission to Mars. Including great films like Dark City.
Before 2001 hit theaters, spaceships in movies were always rockets or UFOs that made screeching left turns in space. Even really good movies, like Destination: Moon or Forbidden Planet. 2001 changed all that.
Before Bladerunner, futuristic cities (like those depicted in Things To Come, with the possible exception of Metropolis) were all beautifully clean, designed with lots of glass and pollution-free. Bladerunner changed all that.
When a movie changes everything that comes after it, that's what we mean by "great." Birth of a Nation is a great movie, because it invents nearly every editing technique almost every film made afterwards uses, even if Birth of a Nation itself glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. Before Birth of a Nation, movies were just filmed plays, and editing hardly existed.
Now, given, comparing these films with Serenity isn't quite fair because Serenity hasn't been around long enough to be influential. In 20 years, maybe all people will compare spaceships to Serenity instead of 2001. (Unlikely, since Serenity is still using the 2001 conception of what spaceships look like, but who knows?)
1) Waaaah! We don't like Bush and his government! Waaah! We don't like the war in Iraq even though it doesn't even really have anything to do with us, except the UK! Waaah!
2) Waaaah! All these American companies are out-competing our companies! Waaah! We need to do something about it, but we can't reduce our crazy labor laws! Waah!
Either way, it strikes me as an extremely immature thing to be doing. Thus the 'waaah.'
"Price discrimination" makes no sense. Unless the EU is under the illusion that the cost of living in London is the exact same as the cost of living in, say, some small hamlet in Germany, there's no possible way that Apple could charge the same price to each customer.
what would your government do if Apple had different stores for each state, or for people of different races, each with varying music and pricing?
Apple doesn't, but most retail stores already do. The cost of living in Iowa is much different than the cost of living in the Bay Area, California. I'd expect that goods and services would be cheaper in Iowa, possibly even half the price... it makes perfect economic sense. The EU viewpoint doesn't make any sense... it punishes poor areas by raising their prices and subsidizes prices for rich urban areas.
That's a great ideal, but unfortunately for better or worse, governments like to levy tariffs and other limits on trade. To do what you propose would *require* a one-world government, and I don't know about you, but I think that's a really crummy idea.
just think of the outcry if Apple charged 57% more for iTunes for customers that live in California versus those that lived in Nevada and had a different prices for each USA state.
this is the situation in europe.
Ok... now explain what's *wrong* about it. In fact, given the increased taxation in California compared to Nevada, I'm mildly surprised that situation doesn't already exist.
I think Apple should be able to charge whatever the hell they want in whatever locale they want. Just giving a little analogy without telling me what you're arguing against isn't going to convince me otherwise. And the EU's constant harassment of American companies is getting downright ridiculous. If European companies can't compete on their own merits, they shouldn't be using the EU as their instrument to "get revenge" or whatever the hell's going on here.
Levying fines is a lot easier than the EU getting off their ass and actually, you know, rescuing those 15 EU citizens illegally captured by the Iranians. Or at least maybe talking about maybe doing something... maybe.
If you boycott any company that ever bid on a "scary" government contract, you'd live a very interesting life. Good luck without any phones, air travel, or probably transportation of any kind. The only reason you hate Oracle is that you *know* about the bid.
You cleverly cut your own complaint, but you were actually complaining about the algorithm. To quote: " And yet, even with that experience, I can easily see how horribly flawed the Linux way of handling the clipboard is."
Yes, because the algorithm prevents you from being able to paste an image from a program that is no longer running! That's the flaw I've been talking about this entire time! Your reply about X working over a network has absolutely nothing to do with that, or anything else in this conversation.
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And of course, you've never had any up-close time with MicroSoft's Outlook/Exhange product, so it's just peachy, right?
Compared to Notes, it's heaven. I don't know how "up-close" I need to be, but I'm at least ten times happier with Outlook than I ever was with Notes.
Let's see - MicroSoft took DOS (a perfectly great system which performed almost exactly as advertised) and turned it into Windows Vista. Hmmm . . . were you saying something about a track record for selling "crummy products"?
They've sold millions upon millions of copies, they must be doing something right. Personally, I like Vista... but then I'm not easily influenced by the Slashdot FUD. (Tomorrow's headline: Windows Vista kills kittens with radiation somehow!")
I personally never saw MicroSoft products "work pretty well on their own" for businesses I went to . . . that's why in 1994 I was worth $5,000.00/week as a consultant - to make those MicroSoft products work "pretty well".
Ok; but even if I concede that point, the fact that Notes costs more per-seat and has much worse productivity benefits and features... doesn't really change the thrust of my argument.
Chances are you're just a rabid anti-Notes troll, but I'll bite anyway.
.id files), I have to concede this point.
I am rabidly anti-Notes, because I've been exposed to it as a user and as a helpdesk worker. Notes left such a bad impression on me that I now ask, in the interview, whether a company uses Notes or Outlook for groupware... if they say Notes, I walk.
Look, I know programmers love Notes. I'm not a programmer; I'm just a user who has a busy calendar and likes to sync my Palm, and Notes is about the worst solution for doing that.
Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange are different products: the first is a "groupware" platform that happens to do mail, the other is a mail server that might be linked to some other Microsoft platforms (notably: sharepoint).
Whatever it is, it's buggy and bloated and a royal pain in the ass to use. For some reason, IBM lovers always jump into this conversation by saying "it's not a groupware product!" despite IBM selling it as a groupware product. Somehow, this excuses Notes' bugs. Kind of like saying, "oh this program I wrote to enter text into isn't a 'word processor' even though it's sold as one, it's a text management system... therefore it's ok if it crashes every hour and loses data." But, hey, I'll let it slide; I took on that point in another thread anyway.
The Notes client can be used for accessing "databases" (which are actually a container with semi-structured data and application logic in one), for which IBM provides a "mail database" that is kinda capable of handling mail.
Thank you for being honest about Notes' mail capabilities. Saying it is "kinda capable of handling mail" is pretty accurate. Unfortunately, tons of companies use Notes as their *only* groupware product, thus subjecting their users to something that even a big Notes fan admits only "kinda" works. Not cool.
Outlook is a superb mail client that does nothing else unless you've got someone willing to create "outlook foms" that link to other MS technologies.
Great. It's a small, quick (relatively speaking) program that does one thing and does it damn well. It does less than Notes, but it also costs less than Notes. (Half as much per-seat, last I priced it out.) And your users will thank you for switching by being much more productive.
Domino is multiplatform, Notes kinda (current Linux client is barely usable)
So... Notes has good support on Windows, crummy Macintosh support and really crummy Linux support. (Yes, I've used it on a Macintosh... crummy is as generous as I'm going to be.) Meanwhile, Outlook has good support on Windows and crummy Macintosh support (via Entourage). I see no real difference here.
Security is a design fundamental in Notes/Domino. Notes has been doing private key crypto and signed code before Exchange was even conceived.
While I think some of IBM's ideas of "security" are somewhat lame-brained (like the hieroglyphics when you type your password-- WTF!?, the extremely annoying-to-admin
Domino/Notes is way better when integration company processes/workflows in your mail environment.
Huh?
Restoring backed up mails/documents/databases can be done relatively easy, and has been like that for at least 12 years.
Um, ok. Does that compensate for the emails/documents you'll lose with Notes' brain-dead filing system? I can't count the dozens of emails I lost by having the audacity to attempt to file documents neatly into folders.
The Notes UI is infamous because it is so different from Windows and counter-intuitive to some people.
It's not that it's counter-intuitive, it's that it's actually hostile to users. For instance, many users might hit F5 in an attempt to refresh their in-box. Like Outlook, Notes' shortcut for that is actually F9. Unlike Outlook, when you hit F5 in Notes, the entire UI disappears and gives no indication of how to get back to your mail. (I find most users would just clo
No it isn't just a distributed database either. It's a distributed application and database platform. Hell it's even described in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_notes#Programmi ng
... I dunno... distributed application file into a folder and Notes deletes it unexpectedly, Notes is still being buggy, crappy software.
Ok, yes, it's not a database and it's not groupware.
It doesn't matter whether it's a groupware product, a database product, or a small off-duty Czechoslovakia traffic warden-- there's simply no excuse for the blatant and unfixed bugs Lotus Notes has! Arguing over "what it is" is pointless when, no matter what it is, it doesn't friggin' work.
Opening Notes to use it as a groupware product takes far too long and way too much RAM. Opening Notes to use it as a "distributed application and database platform" and it takes far too long and way too much RAM. There's no practical difference. Whether I'm moving a document into a folder and Notes deletes it unexpectedly, or I'm moving a
Sorry for getting annoyed there, but even after you point out the tactic used by Notes defenders to defend its flaws, and point out why that tactic makes no sense, they just keep going on with the same tactic! It's like pounding your head against the wall.
Any company using Notes now could easily do the same work with fewer flaws, happier users, and much cheaper using a combination of Exchange/Outlook and Filemaker or Access. The only "feature" you'd be missing out on is Notes' ability to take a crummy application (and yes, the install I have experience with wasn't just for email, it had some other applications as well) and make it into a really crummy website that kind of works in IE if you have the right version of Java and pray to your personal saviour.
This is the standard response. The standard response to that response is:
1) IBM advertises and markets it as a groupware product, therefore IBM has no right to complain when people compare it to another groupware product. While you can create apps in Notes to do all sorts of things, the app it ships, and installs by default, is a groupware app. If you were handed a Notes CD out of the blue and installed it, you wouldn't know it did anything except groupware functions.
2) Regardless of what the program is, it's no excuse for:
A) Bloated performance, where opening a single email frequently takes upwards of 10 seconds. God help you if you use the calendar or attempt to sync to a Palm device... expect to spend all afternoon.
B) Blatant bugs, for instance, 'out of office' notifications taking more than an entire day to take effect, or allowing meetings that end before they begin in the calendar (which then causes crashes of the Palm syncing software.) IBM themselves publishes an app you need to use periodically to fix Notes when Notes craps all over itself, leaves zombie processes running and refuses to launch again.
C) Terrible usability design. Get an email (or any document, for the 'it's not groupware!' crowd) in one folder, drag it to another folder, then delete it from the original folder. That email is now gone FROM BOTH FOLDERS! (Turns out Notes doesn't actually copy when you drag from folder to folder, it creates a shortcut instead.) The Notes client on Macintosh looks exactly like the Notes client on Windows.
I'm sorry. If the class of "distributed database clients" includes Filemaker Pro, Microsoft Access, and Lotus Notes... Lotus Notes by far is at the bottom of the scale.
And if the class of "groupware products" includes Microsoft Outlook, Novell Groupwise (disclaimer: I haven't used it in ages), and Lotus Notes... well, Lotus Notes is by far at the bottom of the scale.
It's just a crummy piece of software.
As far as I can tell, IBM's strategy is to make crummy products, sell them to gullible IT departments (or habitual ones that buy IBM just because it's IBM), then sell expensive consulting services to make their crummy products work nearly as well as the cheaper competition. Sadly, IBM seems to have a stranglehold on healthcare.
The textbook case would, of course, be Lotus Domino/Notes. Which is more expensive per-seat than Outlook/Exchange and lacks many (I would say very basic) features that Outlook gives you as part of the package. To make matters worse, it has terrible usability and runs sluggish to annoy your users. For only massive amounts of moolah, you can hire IBM consultants to halfway kind of fix these problems, maybe.
Sure, Microsoft sells consulting services as well, but the difference is that the Microsoft products at least work pretty well on their own for the majority of businesses, so only huge shops really need to involve Microsoft consultants in the process.
But, hey, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."
Ok, I know that this forum is full of Nintendo fanatics, but there's no need for the hostile tone.
Speculation ! What "there's no sense in building something if nobody would buy it" means, is that if they released one motion sensing wiimote-like, for it to be successful, several things that depends on each other would need to happen, and this is unlikely
Well, ok... but that still doesn't really change my point that the parent post had mis-interpreted what MS was saying. The specifics of what MS meant is beside the point.
Honestly, what you says seems like total BS to me. 3rd parties are ALL embracing it, all those on the Wii at least. You'll have problems finding 3rd parties that don't use the Wiimote on the Wii actually. So what you and MS say is a bunch of lies.
Saying something "seems like an accurate statement to me" isn't "bunch of lies". How could it possibly be? First of all, I'm not making any kind of factual statement... if I had typed "the Wii is made out of chocolate and has three live fish in it", then that would be a bunch of lies. See the difference? In fact, I don't think anybody's opinion could possibly be a "lie." Uninformed, perhaps, but not a lie.
Besides, MS is still far from being profitable, and they need to keep PS3 at bay while turning a profit.
I'm a consumer. Let MS worry about keeping their own books; why should any consumer give a crap which console is most "profitable?" I think this argument exists mainly so that Nintendo fans could justify the poor performance of the last few Nintendo consoles by saying, "well, at least it's profitable!" (Forgetting, of course, to explain why the hell anybody other than Nintendo's accountants should give a crap whether or not it's profitable.) Now that the Wii is doing good, maybe people will drop this moronic argument once and for all.
"I was deciding whether to buy a Mazda or a Chevy, and I went with Chevy because it's more profitable." WTF?!
If Nintendo manages to attracts most customers, all of them sold to motion sensing capability on their console
That's typed as a single sentence, but I'll have to respond in multiple parts.
Yes, Nintendo is attracting a lot of customers *right now.* The question is whether the Wii will still be as popular in two years when the console makers start planning the next generation.
, don't count on graphics difference to sell the other consoles, because that's the sole advantage the XBox360 and PS3 have this gen, and if ti doesn't help...
That's not the sole advantage the Xbox 360 and PS3 have this generation, and you know it. Now who's telling a bunch of lies?
Whether it's appealing to you or not, the Xbox 360 and PS3 both have next-generation optical disk support and HD interfaces, along with media center features. Wii doesn't have any of those advantages. I should also say that the online system on Xbox 360 and PS3 is much better than the stupid "friends code" thing that Nintendo is doing.
The fact is that the Xbox 360 and PS3 both have a lot of advantages over the Wii. A better debate would be whether the PS3 has any advantages over the Xbox 360, but that's neither here nor there.
There's two possibilities.
Either he's talking about the market for motion-sensing controllers at the time the Xbox 360 was designed, then you can't blame him for thinking that nobody would buy it. Nintendo created that market were none was before, and the Xbox 360 was designed long before they would be able to change something based on Nintendo's developments for the Wii.
Or maybe he's talking about the difficulty in getting an add-on to succeed in the console world. You could count on one hand the number of console add-ons that have been successful in the past. If Microsoft did offer a motion-sensing controller, but there was very little game support, then it's quite possible that nobody would want it.
Actually, this asshat saying that technology X is not desired by the public, when one of his main competitors is currently making a killing marketing technology X is disingenuous.
You're reading it completely wrong. Saying "there's no sense in building something if nobody would buy it" doesn't imply that Nintendo is selling something that "nobody buys." That wouldn't even make sense.
He probably said it to highlight that, at the time the Xbox 360 was conceived and designed, motion-sensing controllers were considered something that nobody would buy. And, honestly, you can't blame Microsoft for thinking that. Nintendo did a great job of creating a market for motion-sensing controllers that simply did not exist two years ago.
The other statement he makes about motion-sensing controllers is that third party developers aren't embracing it. And honestly, that also seems like an accurate statement to me... so far all the 'killer apps' on the Wii are made by Nintendo. Microsoft doesn't operate the way Nintendo does; while they make first-party games, the console requires third-party games to be successful.
I agree with the grandparent that, strategically, Microsoft's already in a pretty good position. It's been shown that the "killer Cell graphics" on the PS3 aren't much better than the Xbox 360 graphics have been the entire last year, and ditching the rumble-pack for a half-functional motion-sensor was a bad move on Sony's part (IMHO.) Microsoft can afford to bide their time right now and wait for the Xbox 3 (whatever it'll be called) to introduce whatever new controller model makes the most sense.
Oh please. I know their "trick" (if you call it that) and I certainly haven't seen an actual bluescreen in far over a year. Although you are technically right, I don't think it shows that Windows is unstable.
The driver is part of the hardware, so I count BSODs due to driver issues in the same bucket as "faulty hardware." (Making exceptions for drivers that ship with the OS, of course.) Since drivers are going to be required with every modern OS, you really can't count some seedy driver from Taiwan crashing against Microsoft-- especially when Microsoft makes every effort to get companies to thoroughly test and digitally sign drivers.
The default in XP is to reboot and log the error in the Event Viewer when you get a BSOD instead of actually showing you the BSOD. Microsoft realized that since maybe 1/10,000 people actually can act on the BSOD data that shows, there's really no reason to show it to everybody else.
There's a checkbox to turn that feature off, if you want to see BSODs, in the System control panel I believe. Or just check your Event Viewer when you have a mysterious reboot.
It's a stupid concept. By definition, human rights only apply to humans.
I might agree to giving chimpanzees *some* rights, but not the full range of human rights. It would cheapen the entire concept.
Or a better reply: chimps can get rights when they get some guns, form an army, and conquer or found their own nation, Planet of the Apes 5-style. Then they can determine all the rights they want. But even in Planet of the Apes, they didn't call them "human" rights.
Not that it answers your requirement, but my 14" iBook got a solid 6 hours with the backlight on low, DVD drive empty, but wifi on, when it was new. Now it's down to about 4, or 2.5 if I play DVDs.
The wi-fi access point in the plane is the easy part. The hard part is the infrastructure required to get a low-latency, high-bandwidth connection to an object moving at several hundred miles an hour at an altitude of 42,000 feet.
And when I say "easy part", that's relatively speaking. There's still tons and tons of tests to ensure that the wireless access does nothing to interfere with the plane's instruments or communication.
Charging more for the same goods in a physical store, in a country with higher operating costs, is legal. However, having a higher price for English customers than for French customers, just because your English customers are richer, is illegal.
Wha-huh?
Customers who are "richer" (monetarily) have higher operating costs. That's the nature of the free market. The EU here is basically saying they don't want the free market to exist, instead they want a flat-across-the-board price even if it means poor people have to pay more and rich people less. I don't agree with that position and I don't see how anybody could.
Regardless of *why* they're there, the fact is they *are* EU citizens, correct? Plus they were on a UN mission, and the EU loves the UN.
One of the nicer "guarantees" about living in the US is that if you get stranded somewhere, or in a bind, the US Government will do all it can to get you out... regardless of why you were there. Whenever a revolution or violence starts up in some country, the first thing you hear about is how the US is trying to find and evacuate all US citizens to someplace more stable.
If I lived in the EU, and I found that the EU doesn't give a flying whit whether you were captured by extremists or not, I wouldn't feel very confident.
Wrong. We believe businesses should have controls. We don't believe they should have so many controls, restrictions, and laws that they can no longer do business. That's why Boeing is kicking ass while Airbus is struggling to retain their last few A380 customers. That's why nearly every computer in the world, no matter what language is spoken where it is, runs an operating system from Washington State.
2)How often do the scifi fans you know in meatspace talk about Blade Runner or Planet of the Apes?(two of the other films mentions in the grandparent)
Name a science fiction movie made in the last 10 years that hasn't basically taken most of its material from Bladerunner, Planet of the Apes, or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Alien. There aren't any, including Serenity. Including shitty films like Battlefield: Earth or Mission to Mars. Including great films like Dark City.
Before 2001 hit theaters, spaceships in movies were always rockets or UFOs that made screeching left turns in space. Even really good movies, like Destination: Moon or Forbidden Planet. 2001 changed all that.
Before Bladerunner, futuristic cities (like those depicted in Things To Come, with the possible exception of Metropolis) were all beautifully clean, designed with lots of glass and pollution-free. Bladerunner changed all that.
When a movie changes everything that comes after it, that's what we mean by "great." Birth of a Nation is a great movie, because it invents nearly every editing technique almost every film made afterwards uses, even if Birth of a Nation itself glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. Before Birth of a Nation, movies were just filmed plays, and editing hardly existed.
Now, given, comparing these films with Serenity isn't quite fair because Serenity hasn't been around long enough to be influential. In 20 years, maybe all people will compare spaceships to Serenity instead of 2001. (Unlikely, since Serenity is still using the 2001 conception of what spaceships look like, but who knows?)
Just American corporations.
I think it's a combination of two things:
1) Waaaah! We don't like Bush and his government! Waaah! We don't like the war in Iraq even though it doesn't even really have anything to do with us, except the UK! Waaah!
2) Waaaah! All these American companies are out-competing our companies! Waaah! We need to do something about it, but we can't reduce our crazy labor laws! Waah!
Either way, it strikes me as an extremely immature thing to be doing. Thus the 'waaah.'
"Price discrimination" makes no sense. Unless the EU is under the illusion that the cost of living in London is the exact same as the cost of living in, say, some small hamlet in Germany, there's no possible way that Apple could charge the same price to each customer.
what would your government do if Apple had different stores for each state, or for people of different races, each with varying music and pricing?
Apple doesn't, but most retail stores already do. The cost of living in Iowa is much different than the cost of living in the Bay Area, California. I'd expect that goods and services would be cheaper in Iowa, possibly even half the price... it makes perfect economic sense. The EU viewpoint doesn't make any sense... it punishes poor areas by raising their prices and subsidizes prices for rich urban areas.
That's a great ideal, but unfortunately for better or worse, governments like to levy tariffs and other limits on trade. To do what you propose would *require* a one-world government, and I don't know about you, but I think that's a really crummy idea.
just think of the outcry if Apple charged 57% more for iTunes for customers that live in California versus those that lived in Nevada and had a different prices for each USA state.
this is the situation in europe.
Ok... now explain what's *wrong* about it. In fact, given the increased taxation in California compared to Nevada, I'm mildly surprised that situation doesn't already exist.
I think Apple should be able to charge whatever the hell they want in whatever locale they want. Just giving a little analogy without telling me what you're arguing against isn't going to convince me otherwise. And the EU's constant harassment of American companies is getting downright ridiculous. If European companies can't compete on their own merits, they shouldn't be using the EU as their instrument to "get revenge" or whatever the hell's going on here.
Levying fines is a lot easier than the EU getting off their ass and actually, you know, rescuing those 15 EU citizens illegally captured by the Iranians. Or at least maybe talking about maybe doing something... maybe.
If you boycott any company that ever bid on a "scary" government contract, you'd live a very interesting life. Good luck without any phones, air travel, or probably transportation of any kind. The only reason you hate Oracle is that you *know* about the bid.
You cleverly cut your own complaint, but you were actually complaining about the algorithm. To quote: " And yet, even with that experience, I can easily see how horribly flawed the Linux way of handling the clipboard is."
Yes, because the algorithm prevents you from being able to paste an image from a program that is no longer running! That's the flaw I've been talking about this entire time! Your reply about X working over a network has absolutely nothing to do with that, or anything else in this conversation.