Higher-ups at Microsoft are on record saying that they completely disagree with software patents and think the patent system is entirely faulty. The problem is that Microsoft needs to hold patents to avoid being sued by nobody companies that do nothing but sit their asses on patents for 20 years then come out to sue... as a perfect example, EOLAS.
That's nothing. I recently obtained a Underwood typewriter from a local hospital. Circa 1940s. It had been sitting in their shipping/receiving room for probably 20 years in a corner and nobody had ever taken it to a dumb or anything. It's a little damaged, but the thing's worth a couple hundred at a trendy antique store.
Nice US-bashing. I guess just because we're "only" ahead of 95% of other nations instead of 100%, you see that as a horrible crime against humanity. In 40 years when China finally decides to do something about their environment, I hope you enjoy writing about how great China is for doing so.
To be fair, there were a lot of people blaming Microsoft for Gamestop (and some other retailers) only selling the 360 in bundles and not stand-alone, as if Microsoft had any say in how they decided to sell them. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a moronic argument, regardless of what the high-demand product was. Let's blame Mattel for Tickle-Me-Elmo fights, too, while we're at it.
Alternatively, think about how you would feel as a customer if you bought a product for (list of) $1200. Then two weeks later (when the next shipment comes) the list price was dropped to $800, then two weeks later the list price was dropped to $400 and stayed there for the next 2 years. How would you feel about your purchase? Would you ever buy from that company ever again?
Do you think Microsoft and Sony did that on purpose? Look at all the negative PR Sony has gotten for their price point. Why would they want MORE negative PR by selling the first couple batches of consoles for what they were actually worth? Imagine the headlines if Sony decided to sell the first US shipment at $1200, because that's what eBay says the price is. (This all applies to Microsoft as well.)
Microsoft and Sony sold every single working unit they had on launch day for list price. That's simply the best strategy to avoid alienating customers in the future.
And guess what? When the huge christmas item was Tickle-Me Elmo or Cabbage Patch Kids, there was a very limited supply and yet they all sold at list price. Why do you think that is? Do you think toy companies have already worked this all out and made the only decision that doesn't leave them in the PR crapper?
The only reason the EU is constantly suing Microsoft (and, for that matter, VISA and MasterCard) is because of their jealousy that they don't have any home-grown computer industry whatsoever. Why do you think Microsoft even has a monopoly in France? Where is France's OS? (Ditto with the major credit card companies.)
Sorry, Europeans, if you completely sleep through the 70s and 80s and don't bother to get involved in even the most basic economic development, you shouldn't be suing the companies that did. You know, Microsoft wouldn't even HAVE a monopoly right now if you'd have come up with EuroOS back in 1993 or so when the network effect was small. It's not Microsoft's fault that you were busy sitting on your ass.
If I were Microsoft, I'd just say "fine, you fine us and we stop selling Microsoft products in the EU." They'd be begging for new copies of Windows in a matter of days. (Of course the PR hit would be too huge, but wouldn't it be great if they had the balls?)
I suppose you mean at a desktop computer, because otherwise one could go endlessly about all the embedded uses of Linux.
NT can be embedded. Millions of devices use it that way. For starters, every single Xbox and Xbox 360, many cars (remember the MS-bashing article about some Lexus locking someone in when the Windows embedded car computer crashed?) So... that's that.
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name implies, is predominantly GUI oriented. A graphic interface is better for some jobs, a text interface is better for others, just like a spoon is better for eating soup and a fork is better for steak.
Criminy I hate this argument.
A GUI can do everything a CLI can do. A CLI can not do everything a GUI can do. To say any user can get their work done using only a CLI is ridiculous. To say that an OS that concentrates on the CLI has greater "ease of use" is doubly moronic when most users, most of the time, will be (and should be) using the GUI to get all of their work done.
The only task a CLI is better at are tasks that were specifically designed to run in a CLI. Basically, any process that was designed to run in Unix before decent GUIs for Unix came along. And even then, to be more efficient in those tasks in Linux (say, developing software with VI) you have to bend your mind around the way the computer interface works, spend months learning the arcane VI and MAKE syntax that have no practical application anywhere else. Honestly, I think the main reason that system is still used instead of IDEs like Visual Studio is bull-headed stubbornness: "I had to spend a year learning VI, you young guys should too!"
Linux users always cite examples like, "select every third file whose name begins with D into a new directory FOOBAR, then select every fourth file from FOOBAR into the original directory translating their name to begin with W." Yes, that's easier to do on a CLI. And no, nobody, EVER, does anything like that. Ever. Stop making contrived moronic examples of how great the CLI is.
As a last minor point, (nearly) everyone on Linux using the CLI is doing it IN a GUI, where they have multiple CLI terminals open, sometimes transparent, and might drag files from the GUI into them to get the path typed out, etc. Even the CLI benefits from the GUI.
As a last-last argument, Windows has as many tools in the CLI as Linux does, whether or not it's "GUI-oriented." The difference is that the CLI in Windows users different commands and syntax. If the Linux users who complain about it spend as much time learning Microsoft's as they do Unix's, they'd probably be just as efficient in it.
For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows?
Forgetting for the moment *why* someone would want to make their JPEG files into JPEG files (talk about a contrived example!), it would be a two-liner batch file in Windows, probably less. I'm not a CLI expert in any OS, but I'd wager Windows' CLI has a command combination to do this at least as easy as Linux's.
but the easiest way to do it in Windows that I can think of would be a VB program.
Your lack of problem solving ability/imagination does not a OS defect make.
Ironically, ease of installation, which is often cited by XP users as an advantage of Windows over Linux, seems to be one of the areas where Linux shines. I have created a standard system configuration script with twenty or so functions, one for each type of application. There are functions for DVD playing, scientific applications, office applications, graphics, development, electronic circuits design, etc. When I install a Linux system, I install the basic system and run my script, after uncommenting the function calls for the types of applications I want in that compu
They also build giant robot dragons and chemically treat criminals to turn them into docile retards. I think Clarke was thoroughly off his rocker by the time he wrote 3001.
You're missing the point. Sure killer bees have been found in the US, that's not the point. The point is that back in the day, the media, politicians, everyone, was crying out that killer bees would spread to American cities and that would basically be the end of western civilization. They would kill kids on playgrounds, you'd have to wear a full-body suit to go outside. There were experts, and special reports, and TV movies about it. (Hm... kind of reminds you of the global warming people now!)
If you think the principles we were founded on are so good, what's wrong with spreading them to a part of the world that's never been exposed to them before? That doesn't strike you as a "good thing?" Are you saying that Americans are more deserving of a representative government than Iraqis? How does that fit in with your "all men are created equal", huh? I think the liberals concentrating on how many American soldiers are killed without even recognizing that they are fighting to stop a greater evil is nothing but selfishness. Perhaps bordering on racism. According to the news, the lives of American soldiers is more important than the lives of all those civilians Saddam "disappeared." (And according to most liberals, Saddam was a saint who did nothing but build playgrounds for kids.)
Of course, your website links to a site called "traitors and cowards" and you can't even be exposed to an innocent opinion without exploding into a bitter, hostile, rant, so I'm sure posting this is pointless. But for the record, I'm as much entitled to my opinion as you are to yours... maybe if you respected my opinion as much as I respected yours, this would be a better nation for everyone involved.
For a full year, the main article on Russia claimed that there was a drastic livestock shortage in 1987. Nobody (apparently) ever detected it, and nobody ever corrected the article until a friend of mine who knew about it finally became guilty enough to fix it himself.
Kyoto just offloads pollution from one place to another for no net gain whatsoever. The most wasteful nations are exempt from it altogether. (Yes, the US produces a lot of pollution... but if you look at our GNP, you'll realize that we're pretty damned efficient as far as it goes.)
Our government is right to not sign it, at least not until it changes to be more fair and more effective.
Yeah, and a decade or two ago, the "reality" was that killer bees would migrate from Mexico into Texas and move northwards until in only a matter of decades there wouldn't be a single city in the US not infested with killer bees. There were a lot of prominent scientists promoting that viewpoint, also. I would go as far as saying it was established fact.
Of course, nothing happened. It turned out killer bees were a total non-issue.
The stuff the media/people on Slashdot declare is "reality" isn't necessarily reality.
And he has spent (not invested) tens or hundreds of billions on a wasteful and stupid war
That's an opinion I don't happen to share. I think our mission in Iraq is a noble one. And, for the record, I agree entirely with the grandparent post... whatever action we need to talk to 'fix' the environment has to be done slowly and careful, because our (humanity's) track record on this issue isn't stellar. Just look at the number of rabbits in Australia if you don't believe me.
Well, whether you played it or not, the article contains enough information for anybody who actually paid any attention to it to declare your claim that Quake 2 was the first FPS with any decent story completely and utterly wrong. No matter how obscure Marathon is, it did come out years before Quake 2. (And for the record, Marathon 2, arguably the best game in the series, was ported to Windows. So if you didn't play that one, it's nobody's fault but your own.)
Also, popularity != good, which is a major problem of lists of these kinds, and a huge pet peeve of mine... especially since it only seems to matter with games. Whether or not you've seen Battleship Potemkin, it's a great movie... it doesn't matter how many people have seen it.
On the other hand they didn't act like Halo created a First Person story, and for that I'm thankful. But how about Quake 2, the first FPS that actually had a real story. HL came later and was better, but Quake 2 deserves props.
Uh, did you not see Marathon on the list? Marathon came out ages before Quake 2, and has a story better than Half-Life's. (At least in my opinion.)
I get the impression that you didn't read the list all the way through.
Yes, but it's nothing that Marathon hadn't already done almost a decade before, and Marathon *is* on the list. Personally, I thought Metroid Prime was kind of lame, but part of that was probably the strange controls that I never could get used to.
The list did have games like that, though. Marathon and System Shock II, specifically. A little more primitive than Deux Ex's nice Unreal-based graphics, but story-wise they're great.
They mentioned A Mind Forever Voyaging, a game with a story about 3 orders of magnitude greater than Zork-anything. Sorry, but it's true... the commentary was true as well, even the INTRO to the game almost put me in tears, but the ending was so amazing that it was the only thing I could think about for weeks. A Mind Forever Voyaging is probably the greatest work in interactive fiction. (Trinity had almost the same effect on me, as well.)
But hey, the list actually mentioned Marathon although I think it should have been numbered. I mean, hell, EVERY list has Final Fantasy XII in it, let's take a break once in a lifetime and get some original games on the list.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked at Microsoft for a few months. The closest thing they have to LSD in the fridges is Mountain Dew.
Higher-ups at Microsoft are on record saying that they completely disagree with software patents and think the patent system is entirely faulty. The problem is that Microsoft needs to hold patents to avoid being sued by nobody companies that do nothing but sit their asses on patents for 20 years then come out to sue... as a perfect example, EOLAS.
That's nothing. I recently obtained a Underwood typewriter from a local hospital. Circa 1940s. It had been sitting in their shipping/receiving room for probably 20 years in a corner and nobody had ever taken it to a dumb or anything. It's a little damaged, but the thing's worth a couple hundred at a trendy antique store.
Nice US-bashing. I guess just because we're "only" ahead of 95% of other nations instead of 100%, you see that as a horrible crime against humanity. In 40 years when China finally decides to do something about their environment, I hope you enjoy writing about how great China is for doing so.
In most states, voting procedures are defined by the county and not each individual city. They might not have had a choice of voting method.
To be fair, there were a lot of people blaming Microsoft for Gamestop (and some other retailers) only selling the 360 in bundles and not stand-alone, as if Microsoft had any say in how they decided to sell them. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a moronic argument, regardless of what the high-demand product was. Let's blame Mattel for Tickle-Me-Elmo fights, too, while we're at it.
To reply to my own post...
Alternatively, think about how you would feel as a customer if you bought a product for (list of) $1200. Then two weeks later (when the next shipment comes) the list price was dropped to $800, then two weeks later the list price was dropped to $400 and stayed there for the next 2 years. How would you feel about your purchase? Would you ever buy from that company ever again?
Do you think Microsoft and Sony did that on purpose? Look at all the negative PR Sony has gotten for their price point. Why would they want MORE negative PR by selling the first couple batches of consoles for what they were actually worth? Imagine the headlines if Sony decided to sell the first US shipment at $1200, because that's what eBay says the price is. (This all applies to Microsoft as well.)
Microsoft and Sony sold every single working unit they had on launch day for list price. That's simply the best strategy to avoid alienating customers in the future.
And guess what? When the huge christmas item was Tickle-Me Elmo or Cabbage Patch Kids, there was a very limited supply and yet they all sold at list price. Why do you think that is? Do you think toy companies have already worked this all out and made the only decision that doesn't leave them in the PR crapper?
Ok, but understand that you represent perhaps 0.00001% of the computer market. So it's not really relevant in any way.
The only reason the EU is constantly suing Microsoft (and, for that matter, VISA and MasterCard) is because of their jealousy that they don't have any home-grown computer industry whatsoever. Why do you think Microsoft even has a monopoly in France? Where is France's OS? (Ditto with the major credit card companies.)
Sorry, Europeans, if you completely sleep through the 70s and 80s and don't bother to get involved in even the most basic economic development, you shouldn't be suing the companies that did. You know, Microsoft wouldn't even HAVE a monopoly right now if you'd have come up with EuroOS back in 1993 or so when the network effect was small. It's not Microsoft's fault that you were busy sitting on your ass.
If I were Microsoft, I'd just say "fine, you fine us and we stop selling Microsoft products in the EU." They'd be begging for new copies of Windows in a matter of days. (Of course the PR hit would be too huge, but wouldn't it be great if they had the balls?)
I suppose you mean at a desktop computer, because otherwise one could go endlessly about all the embedded uses of Linux.
NT can be embedded. Millions of devices use it that way. For starters, every single Xbox and Xbox 360, many cars (remember the MS-bashing article about some Lexus locking someone in when the Windows embedded car computer crashed?) So... that's that.
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name implies, is predominantly GUI oriented. A graphic interface is better for some jobs, a text interface is better for others, just like a spoon is better for eating soup and a fork is better for steak.
Criminy I hate this argument.
A GUI can do everything a CLI can do. A CLI can not do everything a GUI can do. To say any user can get their work done using only a CLI is ridiculous. To say that an OS that concentrates on the CLI has greater "ease of use" is doubly moronic when most users, most of the time, will be (and should be) using the GUI to get all of their work done.
The only task a CLI is better at are tasks that were specifically designed to run in a CLI. Basically, any process that was designed to run in Unix before decent GUIs for Unix came along. And even then, to be more efficient in those tasks in Linux (say, developing software with VI) you have to bend your mind around the way the computer interface works, spend months learning the arcane VI and MAKE syntax that have no practical application anywhere else. Honestly, I think the main reason that system is still used instead of IDEs like Visual Studio is bull-headed stubbornness: "I had to spend a year learning VI, you young guys should too!"
Linux users always cite examples like, "select every third file whose name begins with D into a new directory FOOBAR, then select every fourth file from FOOBAR into the original directory translating their name to begin with W." Yes, that's easier to do on a CLI. And no, nobody, EVER, does anything like that. Ever. Stop making contrived moronic examples of how great the CLI is.
As a last minor point, (nearly) everyone on Linux using the CLI is doing it IN a GUI, where they have multiple CLI terminals open, sometimes transparent, and might drag files from the GUI into them to get the path typed out, etc. Even the CLI benefits from the GUI.
As a last-last argument, Windows has as many tools in the CLI as Linux does, whether or not it's "GUI-oriented." The difference is that the CLI in Windows users different commands and syntax. If the Linux users who complain about it spend as much time learning Microsoft's as they do Unix's, they'd probably be just as efficient in it.
For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows?
Forgetting for the moment *why* someone would want to make their JPEG files into JPEG files (talk about a contrived example!), it would be a two-liner batch file in Windows, probably less. I'm not a CLI expert in any OS, but I'd wager Windows' CLI has a command combination to do this at least as easy as Linux's.
but the easiest way to do it in Windows that I can think of would be a VB program.
Your lack of problem solving ability/imagination does not a OS defect make.
Ironically, ease of installation, which is often cited by XP users as an advantage of Windows over Linux, seems to be one of the areas where Linux shines. I have created a standard system configuration script with twenty or so functions, one for each type of application. There are functions for DVD playing, scientific applications, office applications, graphics, development, electronic circuits design, etc. When I install a Linux system, I install the basic system and run my script, after uncommenting the function calls for the types of applications I want in that compu
They could release a 50-minute-long DVD of someone taking a dump, label it "Final Fantasy 13" and they'd sell a million copies.
Fortunately, Wikipedia keeps a detailed history so I can prove my story:
d iff=prev&oldid=9710408 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia&d iff=prev&oldid=37107477 - where it was removed, one year later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russia&
They also build giant robot dragons and chemically treat criminals to turn them into docile retards. I think Clarke was thoroughly off his rocker by the time he wrote 3001.
You're missing the point. Sure killer bees have been found in the US, that's not the point. The point is that back in the day, the media, politicians, everyone, was crying out that killer bees would spread to American cities and that would basically be the end of western civilization. They would kill kids on playgrounds, you'd have to wear a full-body suit to go outside. There were experts, and special reports, and TV movies about it. (Hm... kind of reminds you of the global warming people now!)
If you think the principles we were founded on are so good, what's wrong with spreading them to a part of the world that's never been exposed to them before? That doesn't strike you as a "good thing?" Are you saying that Americans are more deserving of a representative government than Iraqis? How does that fit in with your "all men are created equal", huh? I think the liberals concentrating on how many American soldiers are killed without even recognizing that they are fighting to stop a greater evil is nothing but selfishness. Perhaps bordering on racism. According to the news, the lives of American soldiers is more important than the lives of all those civilians Saddam "disappeared." (And according to most liberals, Saddam was a saint who did nothing but build playgrounds for kids.)
Of course, your website links to a site called "traitors and cowards" and you can't even be exposed to an innocent opinion without exploding into a bitter, hostile, rant, so I'm sure posting this is pointless. But for the record, I'm as much entitled to my opinion as you are to yours... maybe if you respected my opinion as much as I respected yours, this would be a better nation for everyone involved.
For a full year, the main article on Russia claimed that there was a drastic livestock shortage in 1987. Nobody (apparently) ever detected it, and nobody ever corrected the article until a friend of mine who knew about it finally became guilty enough to fix it himself.
I wouldn't trust anything on Wikipedia.
Kyoto just offloads pollution from one place to another for no net gain whatsoever. The most wasteful nations are exempt from it altogether. (Yes, the US produces a lot of pollution... but if you look at our GNP, you'll realize that we're pretty damned efficient as far as it goes.)
Our government is right to not sign it, at least not until it changes to be more fair and more effective.
Yeah, and a decade or two ago, the "reality" was that killer bees would migrate from Mexico into Texas and move northwards until in only a matter of decades there wouldn't be a single city in the US not infested with killer bees. There were a lot of prominent scientists promoting that viewpoint, also. I would go as far as saying it was established fact.
Of course, nothing happened. It turned out killer bees were a total non-issue.
The stuff the media/people on Slashdot declare is "reality" isn't necessarily reality.
And he has spent (not invested) tens or hundreds of billions on a wasteful and stupid war
That's an opinion I don't happen to share. I think our mission in Iraq is a noble one. And, for the record, I agree entirely with the grandparent post... whatever action we need to talk to 'fix' the environment has to be done slowly and careful, because our (humanity's) track record on this issue isn't stellar. Just look at the number of rabbits in Australia if you don't believe me.
Well, whether you played it or not, the article contains enough information for anybody who actually paid any attention to it to declare your claim that Quake 2 was the first FPS with any decent story completely and utterly wrong. No matter how obscure Marathon is, it did come out years before Quake 2. (And for the record, Marathon 2, arguably the best game in the series, was ported to Windows. So if you didn't play that one, it's nobody's fault but your own.)
Also, popularity != good, which is a major problem of lists of these kinds, and a huge pet peeve of mine... especially since it only seems to matter with games. Whether or not you've seen Battleship Potemkin, it's a great movie... it doesn't matter how many people have seen it.
On the other hand they didn't act like Halo created a First Person story, and for that I'm thankful. But how about Quake 2, the first FPS that actually had a real story. HL came later and was better, but Quake 2 deserves props.
Uh, did you not see Marathon on the list? Marathon came out ages before Quake 2, and has a story better than Half-Life's. (At least in my opinion.)
I get the impression that you didn't read the list all the way through.
Yes, but it's nothing that Marathon hadn't already done almost a decade before, and Marathon *is* on the list. Personally, I thought Metroid Prime was kind of lame, but part of that was probably the strange controls that I never could get used to.
The list did have games like that, though. Marathon and System Shock II, specifically. A little more primitive than Deux Ex's nice Unreal-based graphics, but story-wise they're great.
They mentioned A Mind Forever Voyaging, a game with a story about 3 orders of magnitude greater than Zork-anything. Sorry, but it's true... the commentary was true as well, even the INTRO to the game almost put me in tears, but the ending was so amazing that it was the only thing I could think about for weeks. A Mind Forever Voyaging is probably the greatest work in interactive fiction. (Trinity had almost the same effect on me, as well.)
But hey, the list actually mentioned Marathon although I think it should have been numbered. I mean, hell, EVERY list has Final Fantasy XII in it, let's take a break once in a lifetime and get some original games on the list.