Posts by Tom 35 3040 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
""a version of Word that's only liscensed for private use"
Really? It does ring a bell, but a reference would be most welcome (for amusement purposes if nothing else)."
It was widely reported at the time...
Here you go.
https://blogs.technet.com/b/uspartner_ts2team/archive/2012/11/29/q-amp-a-how-do-i-license-office-rt-for-commercial-use.aspx?Redirected=true
No, it is a bad product. I have one, got it for free but I carry a Nexus 7 with me that I paid for.
MS thought they could be Apple (this seems to be the major problem for the last couple years) and sell direct and keep all the money. When that didn't work out (there is one of their booths in the mall next to where I work, I've never seen them sell anything) they tried to get other stores to sell them. They still didn't sell (I'm SHOCKED it tell you SHOCKED!) so now MS is going to have dedicated store in a store in Futureshop/Best Buy so they can not-sell Windows 8 stuff. If it was any good they would not have a problem getting stores to stock them.
There are no hordes of people that wanted a surface, if only they could find one.
We have "smart" electric meters, and they use them to charge you almost double when you need power. It's not as bad for the summer rates, but winter you pay peak rate when you get up for work, and get home for dinner.
http://www.torontohydro.com/sites/electricsystem/residential/yourbilloverview/Pages/TOURates.aspx
But now they have given us "smart" water meters. I don't get the idea for that as it's easy to store water so there is no advantage to shifting the time of day you flush. They were only reading the old meter about once a year, with then just sending a post card in the post to report my own reading the rest of the year. It's battery powered and they claim it's good for 15 years. The notice about installing the meter came with a nasty note about court orders if you tried to refuse the new meter.
They trying to get us to buy the new stuff they want to sell by pushing the stuff that sells under a bus.
Want to sell phones? Stuff not-metro on PCs and even servers. When people tell you it's crap, add more colours, animated backgrounds, but don't let them kill the phone interface.
Want to shift people (who keep skipping upgrades) over to pay for life 365? Cripple the licence for boxed office software.
They were hitting off shore with this app kill. Much like the US when they took the domains of poker sites, or grabbed people passing through the US who ran off shore poker sites. Expect any filter system they push through to protect people from gambling sites too.
If they can make off shore sites a bit harder to access, then they hope at least some of the money will end up being lost at local scams instead of going to over seas scams.
Maybe MS were just trying to force things.
You know the lower life forms pushing fake pills and such will ignore it anyway. Most of the rest will do their best to weasel out of it (see their definition of DNT). They will say they didn't track you... they followed you, totally different (in the same way that an "email blast" is totally different then sending a load of spam).
You just have to see who is the first to say "hell no, we are going to do it anyway".
As long as secret gag orders and the secret court still exist I have to assume that there is a new order that tells them to release a few requests that did turn out to relate to crime, and say that's all of it. Don't talk about all the big fishing trips, or direct access to networks...
Yelling Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, is not working.
"There never was any subsidy. Only installment payment."
The big Canadian providers sort of give you a subsidy. You can be sure they pay for the phone during the contract, but the price says the same after the contract. If you sign up for another contract they will give you a $50 credit or "free" voice mail for 3 months. Have your own phone? Same price. They say you might as well take the free phone because you are going to pay the same anyway.
You have to go to one of the smaller providers to get a deal if you have your own phone.
They are starting off trying to deceive.
You can get good non-Apple (or other) chargers. Like the Monoprice one. I have bought several things from them including doc cables for my iPod that were just as well made as the Apple part but FAR cheaper, not much more then the dollar store cable that fell apart taking it out of the package.
With all the BS bingo I'm not really sure what we are in for.
It seems that when we don't jump for their new (higher revenue) plans (like Office 365) they to push people, not by making the new better then the old, but by crippling the old. When Office 2013 was released they had reduced the number of installs, made it non-transferable and such tricks to make it a worse product just to make the thing they wanted you to buy look better. They had to back down some there, for now.
The same with Win8, screw it up to sell phones. Making my computer look like an over sized phone (and a pain to use) will not make me want your phone, your phone has to make me want your phone. Provide simple solid sync tools that can be extended by others.
So I'll have to wait to see how much of the changes are "new stuff I want" and how much is "kill the stuff I use so I will buy the stuff they want to sell".
Or the "free" phones that carriers are dumping with zero plans of providing any support of any kind.
Fido (Rogers dumping ground in Canada) have 3 different Ice Cream Sandwich phones and the LG OPTIMUS L3 with 2.3. They are never going to see an update. "new" phones with 2 year contracts.
"China has since made it clear that it reckons it's a bit rich of the US to be constantly accusing the Communist nation of digital espionage when it appears that the US government has been engaged in such a wide campaign of electronic snooping."
About the biggest case of pot calling kettle black ever.
One is a known corporate raider who can only be trusted to grab as much cash as possible and screw everyone else.
The other built the company and has worked to keep it a going concern for years. He could still fail to keep it going but at least that's not the plan from the start.
"everyone had upgraded to HD, freeview, digital"
And like the record companies with CD said Lets do that again!
Audio DVD and 3D TV? What? No one gives a crap.
Didn't buy Rumours on Audio DVD (I did have a DVD player that could play them), didn't pay the $5 extra for 3D bluray player, no chance I'm buying a new TV for 3D.
"There are mostly nasty plasticy things, except the very expensive ones."
Dell's home "Inspiron" stuff is total crap. They tend to cover all the check boxes of features to put on the box but will be in the recycle bin very soon after the warranty is over. The Vostro models tend to be better built but basic.
But they are no worse then the junk you find on sale at the local shop, Acer, HP and the rest all pushing plasticy laptops at the low end, and if you want to spend a little more you don't get a better laptop, you get a plasticy ultrabook.
If you have a system that's ideal for developing apps for a slow, battery powered device with a 4" screen then it's going to suck trying to develop an app for a full powered desktop with a couple of large screens. Trying to pretend it's all one big happy family by cripping desktops into over sized phones is not going to make the PC developers happy.
It's like saying that all tires have to be made to work on both a tractor or a Honda Civic.
Yes event viewer is just as dumb.
Installation failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x8924200D: Microsft.LyncMX
Click online help, get: We're sorry. There is no additional information...
So much better then "something happened".
So you are expecting every Win8 user to know how to use event viewer now? This is supposed to compete with Android and iOS?
By the way it's a royal pain in the arse to use on my surface without plugging in a mouse, and it opens online help in metro-IE not desktop IE.
Something has happened
details
error 1e79879326e884503947e804380543854037032e843984308530
Yes a better tool...
The last time I received this so useful messages was when Windows was trying to install an app update. Googling the random string on numbers results in links to so many different problems that I concluded that it really did mean "something happened".
The actual problem was that automatic update had installed some stuff, but didn't tell me it needed to reboot. The app store could not install an update until I rebooted windows, but could not tell me that.
I've had Windows 7 do something like that too, but the error message was something like "Windows needs to finish installing updates, please restart. (not that Windows 7 error messages are always that helpful, but they try).
Windows 8 is both ugly and dumb. Both by design.
"The patents are on one specific manufacturing technique, not a general one. That appears to be all the plaintiffs are claiming. Do you feel that improvements to existing technology should never be patentable?"
If the patents are on a manufacturing technique, and they are not valid where the LEDs were made, then no patent infringement has occurred. Importing them is not manufacturing them. Tough bananas for paten holder.
"Because that basically says 'fuck you' to every domestic manufacturer"
Lots of things do that. Take cheap labour, do Apple get in trouble because some of their workers don't get California minimum wage?
Out of curiosity I fired up the Surface.
Fart returns 38 apps, most with zero ratings, a few cost money like Metro Fart for $1.99
Some of the apps don't seem to fit the fart theme like Stanley Level, Math Plotter, and a Photo Shop book. Drops the total down to 26.
They must use Bing search tech, maybe there is a fantastic fart app that would make the Surface totally worth owning, but search can't find it.
Angry Birds Space $4.99 has 86 reviews, they don't tell you the number of downloads. Android $3.00 is 15.613 reviews and 500,000+ downloads.
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