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Disturbing Computing Trend

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  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2013-01-06 20:34
    Frankly, I don't think it matters if it is HP, MS, or Apple; there is a heavy commitment toward 'cloud computing' that is part of an American 'national security agenda'. I suppose you could blame the NSA and Homeland Security. But the trend is disturbing.

    We have Facebook that is really a mug shot registery for the globe. We have cellular phones with mandatory GPS to locate you. We have credit cards to track your every day purchases and habits. And now computing is trying to offload our hard disk data to somewhere that the powers that be can review it without our knowledge.

    I don't really have much to hide. But the overall political trend is to shut out the average person from having a voice and to set up the infrastructure for a police state.

    This past presidential election, I could not participate in the online commentary as absolutely everything I tried to post was demanding that I first register a Facebook account. It didn't matter that the site said it would accept Yahoo or Google. That was just bait to get involved. When I tried to submit the postings, it demanded a register as a Facebook user.

    Here in Taiwan, we are now seeing the demise of our 'free press' as Mainland China is buying up all the media and the government seems to want it that way.

    The next step in the US is for Microsoft to tout its superior 'security features' and for the Department of Homeland Security to begin to force the American version of a Great Firewall around Americas on-line.

    I hope it won't come to that. But if it does, you will have to raise carrier pigeons to have private communications.
  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2013-01-06 22:01
    And WE have TrueCrypt ! and the FBI has never broken it !
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    edited 2013-01-06 22:12
    Sorry potatohead - I just don't have the time to read all your posts in detail. But I mostly have to agree with what I have skimmed.

    Since the 70's computing has been centralised, then distributed, centralised, then distributed again, and now the cloud is centralising again.

    MS and Apple cannot be compared. MS has no conscience because...
    they ripped off the compression algorith in MSDOS6 because they would not pay a fair price
    they made IE for free in Windoze to kill Netscape, then they upped the price of Windows
    they reduced the price for Office until they basically killed WordPerfect and Lotus, then they upped the price
    then there are others like their ergonomic keyboard

    I hold 5 Office 97 licences not tied to a computer. I finally bit the bullet and bought Office 2010 last year. I cannot find simple things in menus - I am not a power user - I could not find how to copy a sheet in Excel... it's not in the many menus, but right click on the tab and there it is. This is just one example. But I had to upgrade because I get docx and xlsx? files and it is a pain to have them converted.

    My friend told me the other day he upgraded his laptop to Windows 8. Notice how cheap this is compared to earlier Windows upgrades where you could almost buy a new pc/laptop (low end) for not much more than the upgrade. Once you factored in a new HDD, there was no point in upgrading, just buy a new one. Anyway, when he went to turn off the upgraded WIndows 8 pc he could not find the "off" button - at least "google" told him how to do it, and how to make it operate somewhat like Windows 7.

    Hopefully the EU will block the MS & HP practice. Meanwhile, return the pc as not fit for purpose. Maybe if this happens enough they will get the message. And hopefully Android will get better in the meantime (my xoom is Smile for posting/editting on the forum so I will be an iPad user next).



    User Name: You should visit the acer website where they mention the long term reliability of Sandy Bridge - seems the HDD interface hardware on Intel's chips gradually slow and then fail. No fix yet.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-01-06 22:19
    No worries Cluso. We have scroll bars for that purpose. I use them too, and expect others to do the same. Mostly a rant anyway.

    Really torn on the return. We kind of want to, maybe we will. Depends on the timeline to be hashed out tomorrow morning. HP did get some "quality" feed back on the survey they sent me, and if they reply to the real e-mail address I cannot repeat here, I will be highly entertained too.

    Maybe I'll put it up for a straight up vote tomorrow.
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2013-01-06 22:37
    I'm curious how my employer is going to handle Win8 and what we're telling M$. We have 150k plus deployed windows desktops and a good percentage of those are multi-screen, multi-window, multi-tasking rather technical folk. It doesn't sound like the new interface is meant for us. Of course, we're also talking about BYOD (bring your own device) policies and virtual desktops and pushing retail and field folks to tablets. Being no more than a desktop user in this environment, I fear I'm in for some unsettling times ahead......wonder when my next lease roll is scheduled?
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    edited 2013-01-07 01:12
    There is a lot of BYOD happening here in major sites too. It seems a good way to go if a tablet is all you need, but not useful if you require apps only available on the pc.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2013-01-07 01:41
    Well, all this talk about IRIX.. I've lost too many of the platforms I used to work with, but this time I did it right - I secured myself (gift from a customer, after I asked) an O2+. And at work I still have some SGI systems running. The big difference from almost everything else we run (including large HP rack servers) is that the uptime of the SGI systems are.. infinite, basically. They're only rebooted if there is an announced power break if they're not on UPS, and that almost never happens so the last time I rebooted a system it had been years since the previous time.

    -Tor
  • ZetsuZetsu Posts: 186
    edited 2013-01-07 10:34
    mindrobots wrote: »
    I'm curious how my employer is going to handle Win8 and what we're telling M$. We have 150k plus deployed windows desktops and a good percentage of those are multi-screen, multi-window, multi-tasking rather technical folk. It doesn't sound like the new interface is meant for us. Of course, we're also talking about BYOD (bring your own device) policies and virtual desktops and pushing retail and field folks to tablets. Being no more than a desktop user in this environment, I fear I'm in for some unsettling times ahead......wonder when my next lease roll is scheduled?


    were skipping it here. We just started upgrading to 7 earlier this year, and now they want to make us jump to 8 ?

    Also why does my Professional server need a metro interface ? Who wants to operate a server ( or a workstation for that matter) with a touch screen ? ;x
  • ZetsuZetsu Posts: 186
    edited 2013-01-07 10:37
    Cluso99 wrote: »
    There is a lot of BYOD happening here in major sites too. It seems a good way to go if a tablet is all you need, but not useful if you require apps only available on the pc.

    We have the same trend, and what is very annoying about it is when people want the same exact email to show up on there cell phone there ipad and there computer...

    My normal responce for this is, do you expect your bills to show up at your place of work, Your home residence , and your closest relatives house ?
    If normal 'mail' doesn't work like that, why would you expect e'mail' too.....
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2013-01-07 10:50
    Zetsu wrote: »
    ... and what is very annoying about it is when people want the same exact email to show up on there cell phone there ipad and there computer...

    They want it for the same reason I like having my multiple personal email accounts available on my iPhone, my iPad, my Mac and my not so much on my Win7 PC...because they can do it with their personal (insert favorite mail provider) email accounts. My work based Outlook account.....not so much visibility. :smile:
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2013-01-07 10:56
    Uhm, yes, if computerized mail isn't better than standard snail mail, what's the point of using computers for mail? So, of course we want the same mail to show up on every one of all of our devices. And fortunately that's not a problem at all, use imap, and you're all set. 10 new mails? read three or four on the desktop computer, go somewhere else and read the others on the phone or on a tablet, imap keeps track of what's read and what's not.
    So that's a solved problem, nothing to worry about.

    -Tor
  • ZetsuZetsu Posts: 186
    edited 2013-01-07 11:16
    mindrobots wrote: »
    They want it for the same reason I like having my multiple personal email accounts available on my iPhone, my iPad, my Mac and my not so much on my Win7 PC...because they can do it with their personal (insert favorite mail provider) email accounts. My work based Outlook account.....not so much visibility. :smile:

    Not to get super off track, but leaving copies of emails on my server for 6 months does not make me very happy.. especially when mailboxes start weighing in around a gig + . We have a bunch of salesmen that are international so they might be in the office once every 6 months... and they want all those emails.... I tell them maybe library of congress has room to store all your 6 month old emails for historical purposes.

    My general solution is to alias them.. Jon@mycompany.com => jonipad@mycompany.com etc.. etc.. etc...
    Might not be that clean but whatever...
  • ZetsuZetsu Posts: 186
    edited 2013-01-07 11:18
    Tor wrote: »
    Uhm, yes, if computerized mail isn't better than standard snail mail, what's the point of using computers for mail? So, of course we want the same mail to show up on every one of all of our devices. And fortunately that's not a problem at all, use imap, and you're all set. 10 new mails? read three or four on the desktop computer, go somewhere else and read the others on the phone or on a tablet, imap keeps track of what's read and what's not.
    So that's a solved problem, nothing to worry about.



    -Tor

    Well, lets think about the speed involved in snail mail vs email... that's an improvement... and it still becomes a space issue.. Maybe where you work they can dedicate a 1000gigs to email... We cant ;x
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-01-07 11:24
    zetsu,
    My normal response for this is, do you expect your bills to show up at your place of work, Your home residence , and your closest relatives house ?
    If normal 'mail' doesn't work like that, why would you expect e'mail' too.....
    What?
    I have been able to read my e-mail at work, at home and wherever else for decades now. It can be done via gmail, or your employers mail servers or whatever other service .
    e-mail is in no way like good old fashioned normal mail except in the name and the fact that text moves around.
    Luckily all this works without the intervention of Microsoft.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2013-01-07 11:43
    Zetsu wrote: »
    Well, lets think about the speed involved in snail mail vs email... that's an improvement... and it still becomes a space issue.. Maybe where you work they can dedicate a 1000gigs to email... We cant ;x
    Look up imap.. there's only a single server, even if you read those mails on a hundred different devices. There really isn't a problem, the solution is a true one and there's no point in limiting where you access those mails - not for space issues at least.

    -Tor
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-01-07 11:58
    Seems Zetsu has a point.
    With normal mail if someone want's to send you a huge package along with their three line message they find they have to pay a lot more.
    With email gigantic attachments go off apparently for free.
    On that server those terabytes of junk have to be stored and managed somewhere.
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2013-01-07 12:16
    There's universal, seamless access to your (timely) mail versus bulk, archival storage of your data. Two different applications with two different solutions. Like the person that uses a spreadsheet for almost everything because so much of what you do is list oriented and well, spreadsheets are pretty good at handling lists of things......

    Handle the mail delivery but charge tehm (or force them to another solution) for their historical document support. I don't think the Post Office would put up with you browsing through your delivered mail, picking out the items you want at that time and then holding the rest for you until "later".
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-01-07 14:00
    I love cloud e-mail and use and pay for Gmail storage and it's the best deal ever! I've all that e-mail and the attachments and it's available to me just about anywhere. Love it.

    Re: Storage limits.

    I'm in the disks are cheap camp and always have been and it's so far played out very nicely with disks scaling perfectly to deal with server e-mail storage.

    My policy? Delete nothing. Ever. That's the best way to do e-mail. And having that policy is cheaper than you think. A few disks here and there is a few hundred dollars. Add up all the people and the time spent futzing around with things you would normally stick in e-mail, multiply by the $100 rule and the returns on that policy are insane good! Pays off nicely every time. Delete nothing, big attachments, big disks, wash, rinse, repeat. :)

    This stuff is supposed to help us get more productive, not figure out all kinds of new ways to work less efficiently.
  • ZetsuZetsu Posts: 186
    edited 2013-01-07 19:10
    Heater. wrote: »
    zetsu,

    What?
    I have been able to read my e-mail at work, at home and wherever else for decades now. It can be done via gmail, or your employers mail servers or whatever other service .
    e-mail is in no way like good old fashioned normal mail except in the name and the fact that text moves around.
    Luckily all this works without the intervention of Microsoft.

    We had to quit allowing people to use Gmail to receive work emails because they kept forgetting to send responses back though our server, and people we skeptical of gmail replies...
  • ZetsuZetsu Posts: 186
    edited 2013-01-07 19:16
    Tor wrote: »
    Look up imap.. there's only a single server, even if you read those mails on a hundred different devices. There really isn't a problem, the solution is a true one and there's no point in limiting where you access those mails - not for space issues at least.

    -Tor

    Yeah we have Imap running in conjunction with postfix IIRC ( lucky I don't have to mess with email stuff that often.. only if a problem with certs or something in that nature ), Most of the time I am just following orders so to speak, we can't store any files longer then a few days etc.. etc.. because they don't want to invest into larger hard drives for the box containing our email server, that box is also preforming as a Proxy and an http server.


    @ potato head. The drives we would have to buy are sas drives high speed etc.. etc.. ( dont ask me, they spec stuff though some 3rd party company not me... compatibility concerns or something idk...) They come at a high premium I don't recall the exact price ( like $600 for 300gigs ) , but the solution has been just enforce limiting policy instead of expansion.

    It took me almost 2 and 1/2 years to convince my boss, that thin clients are the way to go now days over VT-100 Dumb terminals. _
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-01-07 19:36
    What we did was setup the "send as" function, which works out fairly well. Most replies go through the core server, with the odd thing coming from a phone, whatever.

    Funny too, I've either ran my own mail server, or used Gmail since '04. And I don't need the really old archives since 91 so I ditched those on the Gmail transition. I've everything since then though. Still tap it sometimes too. Anyway, the funny part is how convoluted connecting phones to mail servers generally is. Because I had mapped it all over to Gmail and that means all my addresses end up there, when I got a smart phone, it was dead simple to just connect Gmail and go. Black Berry, iPhone, Droid. All really easy. Once we saw that, we setup nearly all the mail accounts to just dump to Gmail. No hassles. All the phones work, replies work, calendars work, it all just works and it's a great backup system and it's either free, or a very small cost.

    My storage costs $5 a year right now, and I might hit the $10 in a year or two, who knows? Given that $100 rule, that is easy money per user.

    When we ran internal mail, I allowed 50Mb attachments, and it was all server side, no delete policy. Was a great move and we never had scaling issues. Maybe I would feel differently about 500 users, but 50? No worries at all.

    That has ended up too expensive to admin and I would place most of that on the increased complexity of mail server software in the Microsoft world. If we didn't need shared calendars, I would do UNIX mail in a second, script the whole thing, fat disks and check in on it a few times per year. (I wish...)

    Materials has never been an issue, but we've got better things to do than run e-mail, so it's all "cloud", and I dealt with vendors until I got a no delete, server side policy 25Mb attach size. I would really like a big bigger, but 25 works very well. Took a bit, but I found most vendors were wanting to sell storage as an extra with all sorts of limitations. Found one who gets it just like Google does. Storage scales!

    All in all, we've got the mail in two places, and once a quarter, I'll write out an archive just in case and it's painless really. BTW: Court requirements in the US are about 7 years and the burden is on the person who needs to provide e-mail. Ouch! I've seen this cost a lot of money and or impact a case due to not archiving. Not OK for us, and for sales people who make deals and contracts, we gotta keep 'em all so that remembering happens right.

    IMHO, "cloud" mail is a great use case. For bigger business, it's kind of a wash, if not extra cost, but for mid and small size, I find it very compelling. Once you've done the work, the rest is hands off more than not and having Gmail see the mail means BYOD is effortless.

    Two major benefits to us: One, SPAM control. We get a lot of spam due to what we do. Unavoidable. The other is attachment scanning and safety. Both Google and our dedicated e-mail host provide those services and they are expensive to bring in house. That alone will keep me from running local mail until the number of users exceeds 50-100 somewhere.

    RE:skeptical

    Yeah, we've a few. One thing that really helped was to include full signatures on both accounts, and the other was "send as" so that the Gmail account can send as person@companyname.com FYI.

    Re: drives

    Been there. Often people run expensive SCSI or RAID, etc... enterprise systems. For thousands of people? Yeah, I would do it. For the hundreds and below? Can't see it pay off. Ordinary drives, software mirroring, etc... are plenty fast and huge. Maybe they will see the light over time :)
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-01-10 09:19
    Coupla updates:

    1. I did get that machine all sorted out on Windows 7. HP made this as difficult as they could really. Here is what I ended up doing:

    In device manager, you browse to something that doesn't have Win 7 support. Open the properties and go to the "details" tab. In there, you will find a pull down for "hardware id" or something along those lines. You will see some cryptic strings, and are looking for "VEN_XXXX" and "DEV_XXXX" as those are the device and vendor numbers.

    Keep the rest of the strings handy, because they might be referenced in a way that gives you a clue as to what software you might need.

    Go here: http://www.pcidatabase.com/

    Look up both and get the name of the vendor, and sometimes a specific device ID.

    Visit the vendor site and note they are still providing broad support for their hardware. Seems the hardware guys just do hardware, and they offer drivers back to Win 98 and off to the side with Linux for most of their stuff. Lots of specialized computing going on out there and that appears to be the saving grace in this mess right now. (scary thought)

    Hunt through their stuff until you obtain some likely candidates and try them. I was not able to identify the hardware specifically associated with a driver, but was able to get to classes of hardware with "all in one" type drivers that worked just fine. This is probably typical more than not.

    Enjoy your locked down, POS, running in what is now known as "Classic" mode as opposed to "Secure" trusted mode, and no you aren't the one that is trusted.

    The vast majority of people out there are not going to succeed at this.

    2. Microsoft has used their leverage to basically remove Windows 7 from the retail / consumer markets. It's just gone now. For the business class / embedded / specialized markets, they will still offer it for now, because they have to, but that's it. The moment they can remove it, they will.

    3. ARM hardware associated with Windows 8 is fully locked down. You will run that, or nothing, or seriously hack like you would a cell phone, actually worse, more like a game console.

    4. Intel hardware is "allowed" to be offered with "Classic" mode, but that's an option. Nobody has to do that and they are encouraged NOT TO. HP offers it, but that's it. You have to find it and deal all on your own period. They don't want to hear about it at all.

    5. Downgrade rights have been removed from all but "Pro" or greater operating systems. "Anytime Upgrades" for OSes like Vista, now only offer Windows 8 as an option. It is illegal to run Windows 7 on a machine that was purchased with Windows 8 home. Think about that.

    6. Windows 8 is either running on trusted or not trusted hardware. Non trusted machines are for legacy compatibility purposes only and will not offer the full availability of apps and features on non-trusted hardware as the developer deems appropriate.

    7. Piracy is cited as a major reason for this. The argument is basically billions are "lost" each year to piracy. This is a lie. Entertainment dollars are largely fixed. If you have $200 for entertainment each month, you won't suddenly have $1000. Almost nobody does. They think a trusted environment will deliver a watershed of dollars to all who participate and that's been the carrot to get everybody on board. Truth is, people will just do less or seek competing alternatives that maximize their entertainment dollars, which again are fixed for the vast majority of people.

    8. At some point in the future, "legacy" may well be removed from Intel based hardware. Microsoft has not denied this and I researched it a lot.

    9. For now, business class machines are sold with Windows 7. Nothing else will be.

    10. For ARM, the ONLY authorized applications and operating systems is Microsoft. Nothing else, no Linux, nothing is permitted and that's enforced with encryption at the hardware level. Got a new Surface? It's gonna run Windows 8.

    11. Applications can come from the Microsoft App Store, after they are approved of course. If you want to roll your own, you can setup Windows server 2012 to act as an "app store' for those you allow to connect to your domain. Again ARM hardware has only ONE authorized signature embedded in it, and that signature is for Windows 8.

    12. On Intel, there are a couple of Linux kernels that have been signed allowing for secure linux boot. I would imagine that could lead to Linux support for DRM content, but only on authorized applications running in protected spaces on the OS. (nobody has done that yet, but the door is open for a locked down linux, like we used to see on PlayStation 3)

    That is a summary of what I learned over the last few, very ugly days. Again, I am not a happy camper at all. Enjoy folks, and if I were you, I would budget to make some hardware purchases this year before you really can't.
  • RDL2004RDL2004 Posts: 2,554
    edited 2013-01-10 10:53
    Apparently "Big Brother" was not just a fictional concept, he was just 30 years late arriving.
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2013-01-10 10:55
    I find it interesting to compare potatohead's observations from my own as a long-time Apple user (and occasional Windows user). I do have a Windows netbook that was a hand-me-down and now has Windows8 installed, but all the other hardware is Mac. I have Windows XP installed in a virtual machine (Parallel's Desktop) to run Parallax's and others' software occasionally and I have other old hardware with Linux installed.

    Apple has a closed ecosystem with the iPad and iPhone only running IOS and only applications approved by Apple ... very restrictive, but pretty safe. I'm of mixed feelings on the extent of this. For example, it would be nice to be able to do Propeller development on an iPad, but there's no easy way to get to a serial port other than using Telnet ... not an impossible way to go, but expensive and awkward at best. On the other hand, I depend on my iPhone and need it to just work and with a variety of conventional applications.

    The MacOS is the normal OS you'd run on Mac hardware, but you can create a dual boot system to boot into Windows or Linux. You can also run virtualizing systems like Parallels Desktop and boot that way into pretty much anything else Intel. Apple is pushing the Mac App Store for applications, but it's trivial (and supported) to override the "guardian" and install anything else you want. Most non-Mac App Store vendors are going to signed installers since that simplifies the installation process and adds some security, but there are still unsigned installers. Discussion in the developer community indicates that Apple will continue this "two tiered" application environment indefinitely since their exclusion criteria for App Store apps leaves out a large group of vital applications necessary for significant hunks of Apple's market. Ordinary, everyday users are protected while others have a "not unreasonable" out.

    Hardware is another issue ... It's no longer reasonable to build an interface to your PC now with Thunderbolt and USB 3 as the only direct connections. On the other hand, serial interfaces are still ubiquitous and USB to serial adapters are cheap and readily available.
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2013-01-10 10:58
    "May you live in interesting times!"

    YIKES!!! Quite a depressing future you have discovered!

    I wonder if along the lines of Hackintosh computers, people will start coming up with Windon'ts or some such similar kludged up hardware in order to run the last precious copy of Win7 you have....or just run it under a VM if you must.

    Of course, the next step is to introduce a new Win8 feature that invalidates all Win7 and prior software.

    "Oh, so sorry, in order to use the new version of <your favorite application here>, you'll need to upgrade to Win8!!"

    It's looking like the lightening strike that took out all our Windows boxes at home last year was a GOOD thing!! They have since been replaced with Mac and Linux except for my one laptop...which would make a SUPERB Linux laptop if push comes to shove!!
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2013-01-10 11:06
    That is a bleak picture you are painting. However:
    A certain fat, bearded and socially unacceptable guy warned us about all this decades ago. Not only that he started a movement to defend us all from it. That is Richard Stallman and the GNU foundation.
    Even before I had become aware of such a movement it always seemed nuts to me that the the entire worlds computing infrastructure was becoming dependent on a single source of supply from a money grabbing corporation which for most is out of control and in a foreign country.
    Luckily a Finnish guy sparked of a very practical incarnation of Stallman's dream. Linus Torvalds and Linux.
    Today an awful lot of youngsters are being immersed in Arduino and Raspberry Pi (A million units sold already) . As they grow up a computer that is not hackable will not be acceptable.
    The ARM itself can save us. The Raspi is only the beginning there are more and more cheap machines popping up every day and performance is improving all the time. Those manufacturers are quite happy sell an open system with no MS chains or taxes.

    All in all, I'm optimistic and just see this as MS shooting themselves in the head.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-01-10 14:33
    Mike,

    You know, you can do your own thing on your iPad. What you need to do is get a developer license. Then you can code for your iPad, but I think if you want to share it, you have to use the App Store, or send code to another developer who can build it...

    More in a few minutes. Great comments guys. I have a few reactions and frankly wouldn't mind reading this conversation as it plays out. Some good thoughts here.
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,253
    edited 2013-01-10 15:07
    @Heater: Yes. Absolutely.

    Again, the real trouble here is application and data dependencies. So many business systems are built on this ugly stack. It's a real problem. For me personally, I'm going to have to return to Linux for this stuff. I originally didn't care much and preferred to just manage my time differently. There isn't any way I'm going to boot strap my fun stuff onto this garbage. None at all. Heck, the smart thing might be to just build up a USB key version of Linux, probably Ubuntu, with all the toys I want on it and keep most of the activities largely decoupled from the hardware.

    Re: Apple.

    You know, Apple has very consistently taken a "take it or leave it" attitude to their product offerings. If people see the high value add, they are quite happy to pay what Apple asks and deal with closed environments. However, if one really wants to bail on all of that, Apple computers are great because they can be booted with other code and nobody really cares. IMHO, that's a perfectly reasonable approach.

    What gets me about this whole mess is Microsoft and friends are attempting to create the same kind of ecosystem, yet aren't doing the real work to add value like Apple always has. Say what you want about OS X, it's a great place to work, well engineered and if one drops a few bucks on the extras applications and services, darn spiffy! Like it. Always have. This mess really doesn't have the same value added, nor the engineering beyond doing those things required to force people in like cattle.

    Apple does a law of attraction kind of thing. They make it worth it to buy in and those that buy in have few issues, because it's simply worth it. End of story. Doing it the way we see MS doing it is much different. I don't see where it's worth it, and I think a very large number of my peers will see the same thing. So then it doesn't matter whether or not people buy in, it's not simply worth it, and there is no end to the (crappy) story!

    At the end of the day, Apple will continue to do what it does with few issues where this mess may well see very significant blow back and it's all about expectations and overall value added, not whatever lock in they think they can get the chumps to pay for.
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    edited 2013-01-10 20:14
    Based on what I have read in this thread I have to conclude that the Feds should be reopening the Microsoft antitrust suit but enlarging it to encompass the PC manufacturers and entertainment industry as well. How can what is happening possibly be construed as anything but collusion between those industries in an attempt to control their respective markets?
  • I grew up in an era when people said, "The customer is always right."

    In Germany we say "The customer is king, but we have abolished the monarchy."

    I have long ago solved all these Windows problems by not using it.
    If a customer insists that some software works on Windows he has to pay extra.

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