Posts by Hugh_Pym

The excuse has always been...

...'We stick with MS because it is what we know'. People are willing to pay for MS Office for simple word processing and spreadsheets rather than get a free tool that easily copes for such tasks and arguably much more simply to avoid a little re-training and unfounded worry about compatible file formats. This is the FUD MS have been spreading to sell Office for years. They have trained users to fear change in order to propagate lock in on their own software.

Why are they surprised then that when they change 'what people know' i.e. the familiar interface and introduce file format worries that people don't want it.

Sounds more like...

...they are trying to take control of licensing on all software on windows machines. i.e. sign up (and pay) for our licensing or sod off and take your open source with you. They greatly envy the Apple App Store model and want to copy it for their platform.

Q: How do they know?

A: They don't. All 'estimates' of illegal downloads are a guess by definition. Also illegal download != lost revenue. The current system is set up to allow the industry to control the market for the benefit of the few at the top. Bono's millions are only a percentage of the money made on the U2 music sold. There are hundreds of other's supporting high end lifestyles on their 'middleman' jobs, jobs that downloaded music doesn't require, jobs that only a controlled market can support. No wonder then than the industry spews out such crap about 'piracy'.

P.S. I believe that work hard for my money as, I suspect, do a lot of people reading this. I'm not sure how I could work 100,000 times as hard in order to enter the pop star income bracket. Perhaps the payment received is not directly proportional to the effort expended.

Has no use?

I think the most interesting point is that devices like this show that the home computer has changed shape. ARM+Linux means that devices can be produced at a reasonable price that have no initial 'killer app' to sell them. Novelties basically. They sell enough as a novelty to fund production but If one caches the imagination like the netbook did. It sells millions and becomes a new product category of it's own. This is the nightmare that Microsoft fears the most.

Linux hasn't made much inroads into the Home PC market because basically the home PC is a Wintel platform and trying to copy it is playing Microsoft at their own game. It may be getting harder for them to move the goalposts but they can still do it and leave everyone else playing catch up. This kind of thing represents the death of the PC. Why spend money on a PC to do my facebook/twitter stuff when It's available free on my TV, phone, alarm clock, photoframe, washing machine, whatever. On the other hand If it's cheap enough you don't need a multifunction device you can have a set of cheap devices each showing an aspect of your digital life. One wireless keyboard/controller would suffice.

The PC (aka wintel platform) then becomes the niche market. If you really, really need Word or really, really need a particular ActiveX based game then swallow the cost and buy a PC otherwise use the netbook you got free with your mobile contract or the touch screen on the printer or god know what device the next generation of entrepreneurs come up with.

Just watch the MS machine go into overdrive if one of these things looks like becoming the next big thing. It will be 'What you really want is one of those with a bigger screen and a keyboard and hinge in the middle' and 'It's not worth having if cost less than £300' suddenly you will find it difficult to buy one that doesn't have an Intel processor and Windows on it.

I always worry...

... that if I watch late night TV and I get bombarded by the inevitable 'chatline' adverts aimed at the sad and lonely I have actually become part of that target audience simply by being there.

By the same token if I bought this I would become part of the group of buyers likely to be swayed by pictures of sci-fi body armoured young women on hi-tech equipment. I'm not sure which group is sadder.

@frymaster

"the patent CITES THE SUDO MANUAL. " It doesn't matter what they state in the application, Prior art is not taken into account at the issuing of the patent. A third party has to pony up to challenge the application and prior art is one of the options. Only obviousness and patentabilty count and the US patent office don't seem to look very hard at those.

This is patent poker. Microsoft have opened the bidding and the other players have to either follow or fold. That give me a thought....

SCENE - wild west saloon. A tall lean stranger is in town. He faces Microsoft across a smoky table. The other players are out of the game only these two remain. The cards have been dealt Microsoft has a huge pile of gold, dollar bills and land deeds. The stranger is down to his last few dollars. All is silent and tense.

Microsoft - I'l raise $1000

stranger - All in

Microsoft - 'read 'em and weep

stranger - You cheated!

Microsoft - That's a lie!

the gun smoke clears and Microsoft lies dead on the floor. The Stranger blows the smoke from his gun as the piano strikes up and the party gets back into the swing.

... Well we can dream can't we.

Hope you checked...

... the age of the 'model' playing the stepdaughter in your reconstruction. I know her ID (handily available on the bottom of her foot) shows 1974 but she don't look 35 to me. I would suggest she was not made before 1995. As the law stands I am now guilty of 'making copies' etc, etc. As IT professional I cannot adequately delete beyond my ability to retrieve without putting a hammer through the HD. Which i will do as soon as i have post this message.

I'm starting a class action to recover the costs.

Don't make me laugh

If the continuous monitoring of all motor vehicles in the UK is next big government IT project I really don't think we need to worry, state sponsored IT projects having such a great reputation and all.

...Still might keep some of us in work for a while.

Why BST?

It has been suggested that the reason for changing the clocks to BST is so that an hour less overtime has to be paid during the farmers busy Spring and Harvest periods to cover the dawn 'till dusk working day. This was foisted on an unsuspecting public by the land owning gentry who formed our government at the time.

All the 'evidence' that it is safer for children mysteriously melts away when researched.

Film please

or it didn't happen.

Votes Please

On which TV presenters are only 'off the wall' because they are 'off their heads'.

@ElReg!comments!Pierre

I get asked (as I assume a lot of people here do) for advice about buying computers. If they have kids I always say ' Don't let and under 16 year old have unsupervised access to the internet'. Get a nice family computer in the living room or kitchen until then, get several if you like but don't let them hide in their bedrooms. As a parent you don't have to oversee everything they do just being around is enough to keep a lid on the worst excesses.

None of them ever take my advice.

@Mosh Jahan

Don't get me wrong I'm not against spending on research in to crazy stuff: That is where the future is to be found. My only beef is with the idea that the questionable business practices that have kept Microsoft at the top of the tree for so long will transfer over to Military technology. Failure is not an option and there is no recourse to law when it doesn't do what it was supposed to.

The thinking behind ARPAnet was to create a command/control network that would survive a nuclear attack and further that if the enemy knows your command/control will survive a nuclear attack they will be less likely to launch one. The survivable network concept was openly published in scientific journals to prove to the enemy that it worked. Trust in Microsoft's products is not very high. If Microsoft are involved in the creation of the next generation command/control network the trust in it's effectiveness is diminished and so the safety of the world is diminished also.

Just got to write...

... to say that although I was sceptical at first, your hypnosis definitely affected my ability to be taken in by bullshit and I happily shelled out £40 of my hard earned for your flimsy flim-flam. I would never dreamed of doing so before I was brought on stage as part of act.

Thanks Knight Stage Hypnotist!

@Interesting..............

Would make a nice touchscreen thin client if they added a vesa mount option...........

Re: Not minimalist enough for my liking

Do I really need to be there at all?

Anybody read...

The Bell Jar? Now that is what I call proof of virginity.

A full set of playing cards!!

as opposed to what? a part set? a single suit edition? a single card to swap and collect with your friends?

cynical... but true

Of course it just another channel to be ignored. The party moguls are safe seaters, their only worry is deselection by the party not by their constituents.

If they want people to get out and vote just put a 'none of the above' category on the voting slip.

Anti-Netbook move?

Are they saying that in order to receive certification a vendor must be able to run Windows 7 on all it's products?

So if they make 64bit 'puters they must be able to run Win7 64bit and (as a completely unintended consequence) if they make netbooks they must be able to run win7 too. So any manufacturer who dares to deal in low spec or (god forbid) ARM based devices is not welcome in the Win 7 club.

Hold on a sec...

Doesn't this make the wearing of a band an offer of sex. If the kid doesn't wear the band they are exempt from the 'game'. Seems a bit like if you can catch me you can <whatever> me.