I'm criticizing your ability to express yourself.
Well there's your problem then -- instead of arguing my points you're
attacking and criticizing their author. No WONDER you're not doing too
well at convincing me of anything here!
Of course, whether you were accusing me of hypocrisy and having
ulterior motives or just of being "unable to express myself" you were
doing so regardless.
You make understanding your arguments unnecessarily
difficult.
Me, or your lack of reading comprehension skills? I'm not convinced
I've been at all unclear in what I've written. If there's anything
causing confusion, it's the usual free as in beer or as in speech
confusion that arises because of the overloaded usages of the English
word "free". Which is hardly my fault; it goes back a long time I
suspect.
I don't live in the UK either.
This is rapidly getting into nitpicky territory now.
Factually true. Can you get a perfectly Windows-compatible OS from any
source other than Microsoft legally? Not here or in most countries.
The closest you can come that isn't from the "company store" is Linux
+ X + Wine, which is a fairly poor substitute with all kinds of
compatibility issues.
That's just one example.
Consider Firefox vs Internet Explorer, for example. I prefer Firefox.
And you no doubt sometimes run into IE-only sites. Again no perfect
substitute. For some things (including access to Windoze Update) again
you must go to the Microsoft "company store". On the other hand, IE is
not a substitute for Firefox either, especially if you value your
computer's security from spyware and other intrusions!
You are actually furnishing examples that SUPPORT my point -- that
right now there is no alternative, if you don't want to break
compatibility, to buying from the "company store" lots of the time.
My point is that the ratio of crappy games to good games is much worse
for free games than for commercial games.
No, because the bias is still there. You play a) free games, and b)
commercial games that went through extra filtering steps in 1) the
company deciding whether to release or abandon (companies will more
quickly abandon something that looks likely to be a money-loser than
freebie-making hobbyists a project that looks likely to simply be a
loser) and 2) what gets heavily marketed/promoted, including by giving
free samples to reviewers as well as by other methods.
If there's anything you're paying for with commercial games that
boosts quality, it's simply extra filtering that could as easily come
by way of organic community review processes that, on a crowdsourced
model (ala user book ratings on amazon.com) with no central reviewers
(and especially if fully p2p-architected to avoid central servers
too), could easily have a price tag of zero.
Perhaps 90% of all games are
crap, but that would be because 99% of free games are crap and 70% of
commercial games are crap, and it averages out to 90% (since there are
more free games than commercial games).
Even if this were true it wouldn't mean much. It means getting rid of
copyright and patent increases the number of crap games out there. So
what? You can still avoid the crap games, and at worst a crap game
will cost you a bit of time and bandwidth finding out it's crap, but
never serious money. Sounds like an improvement to me. Also if a few
people actually like one of the "crap" games that would have landed on
the commercial side of the fence before, and then been filtered out at
some point before they ever got to see them, they get games they like
that would otherwise have never been available to anyone!
In other words, there's something about commercial games that make
them less likely to be crappy. I suspect it's the fact that money is
involved and that you can hire talented people using money.
I think it's just filtering. There are free levels for Quake 3: Arena
that rival in quality the ones that came with the game. Nay, some are
actually superior in visuals and other respects, because experienced
players made them, and they were made with higher polygon budgets due
to Moore's Law having increased gamers' processing beef since the
initial game release, and they were made with wholly new techniques
(e.g. fancy terrain blending) enabled by community development of
upgraded game-editing tools and new assets (textures etc.).
This wouldn't have happened if "making something for free means
there's zero talent" as you so forcefully keep asserting.
There are high quality free games of all kinds -- entire games, not
just addon levels for commercial games -- so you can't claim that
somehow magically the money-costing talent of the commercial game
"leaked into" the community-made levels and get away with that
"explanation". Community-made levels that use little of the commercial
game save its engine are bad enough for your argument. Community-made
entire games, engine included, blow it out of the water. So do source
ports like Tenebrae that pretty much reimplement a commercial game
from scratch. Tenebrae + custom Quake 1 level (e.g. any one of Iikka's
blue themed levels) with all-custom assets = barely anything
originated by the commercial source remains save the QuakeC telling
the game monsters how to move and determining what damage their
weapons do. And there's a wholly-original community-made popular RTS
game with Linux ports. There's the fact that Tenebrae pulls off most
of the same new visual features Doom 3 does, and was developed wholly
independently of Doom 3, based on an older Quake engine (1 vs. 3), and
does as well, and is free.
Argue all you want. There is plenty of talented work product available
for the low, low price of $0.00, and there always has been and always
will be. Them's the bald facts. No restrictions on copying are needed
to ensure such works get created. And restrictions, particularly on
derivative works, are proven toxic to creating new works. (See
http://www.questioncopyright.org/ghost_works)
If you consider any efforts to not have the price of your products to
go down to zero to be a form of "price protection", then I think that
"price protection", under your definition, is not necessarily a "bad
thing".
Given that the marginal cost of the product in question can diminish
to zero, I don't agree.
[insult deleted]
To the extent that Unreal Tournament 2008 is not a perfect substitute
for Quake 3, you are wrong and I am right. Face it.
I think you don't know what "Strawman argument" means. A Stawman
argument would be an argument in which I had misrepresented your
arguments. It seems clear to me that you actually did claim that Windows
is indispensible (and in fact, that you are claiming it again now), so
when I portray your arguments as if you were claiming that Windows is
indispensible, this is a very accurate portrayal.
The strawman misrepresentation is that I never claimed people can't
"get through life" without Windows -- lots of people do it all the
time. I claimed that there is no 100% compatible substitute for
Windows. Exhibit one and I'll admit I was wrong there, but I find it
rather improbable that you will succeed.
I said Windows is not optional if you want to do certain things, that
logically should be possible without paying Microsoft because those
things are not themselves run by Microsoft. Your response was to
mischaracterize my argument as being that "But you can't live without
Windows!", which is classic strawman fallacy.
Try doing high-end CAD stuff with Linux or FreeBSD. Or just about
anything requiring color management and matching when printed out. Or
playing certain (non-Microsoft) games.
Why should Microsoft have to be paid for me to do these things? I see
no public-benefit rationale in society enforcing such a thing by law.
Hell, I should be able to do whatever I like without depending on any
specific vendor. I should be able to have local and long distance
service by a choice of providers, separately. I should be able to use
any of several operating systems, including various unixes (got them,
Linux, FreeBSD...) and windowses (so far there's only Microsoft
there). I should be able to use any application level software I like
on any of these. And I should be able to get any given application
software from a choice of vendors providing perfectly interchangeable
versions. I can do this with open source -- I can get perfectly
intercompatible unixes from Red Hat, SuSE, and these days I think even
Oracle, and lots of bit players. I can find ports of various open
source applications to many operating systems, generally including at
minimum Linux and Windows versions, and get them from various sources
too. But not commercial software. And I think that is wrong. The only
entity that, given a particular goal or activity, one should ever not
be able to avoid dealing with is the government, and this is
counterbalanced by the government being accountable directly to the
electorate -- at least ideally. Corporations have proven time and
again that it is difficult to hold them accountable other than by
taking one's business elsewhere.
Once upon a time countries were all unaccountable other than by taking
one's citizenship elsewhere -- you lumped it or fled as a refugee.
Then they invented democracy, and things got at least a little better.
With corporations there can be one of two "fixes" for the problem of
abuse: consumers get the ability to control a corporation they've paid
money to, in some manner -- e.g. bought anything from them within the
past 4 years or something and you get a vote, and the results of votes
are binding, and the corporation cannot change policies or pricing or
do much of anything without customer okay (customers might function as
a "lower house" and shareholders as a "senate"?) -- or (much more
likely to be workable) monopoly by anyone except government is
outright criminalized, let alone simply no longer affirmatively
enforced sometimes by government, and customers can then always take
their business elsewhere without any barriers or switching costs.
(That may also require outlawing things like termination/cancellation
fees and such, or requiring all companies offering contracts also
offer no-contract service provided on a month to month basis -- pay
for one month, get one month, or pay for N minutes, get N minutes, or
whatever, at a competitive price.)
Competitive markets. That's really all I'm asking for here, and it's
supposed to be a cornerstone of capitalist democracy (the other three
corners being rule of law, representation of the people in a general
assembly whose decisions are binding via rule of law, and due process/
freedom of speech/all those civil liberties and rights needed to
prevent misuse of law by lawmakers and law enforcers).
Again, Windows is not indispensible. Go to comp.os.linux.advocacy if
you don't believe me.
Tell me how to do exactly what I can do with Corel Draw + Windows,
including color management, without using any Microsoft or Corel
software, and I might change my mind. Until then ...
I disagree that I'm defending the state of affairs as it is now.
So you're just attacking my suggested reform then? Why? Because it
won't leave you any loopholes to wriggle a hand through to stick it in
someone's pocket without them being able to tell you to cheerfully
bugger off and get the exact same thing elsewhere for a lower price?
No loopholes by which you can charge a fat percentage above marginal
cost for a good and not have to worry about being undercut by a
competitor? Even if you make less money consider what the consequences
would be. You'd spend far far less than you do now on all sorts of
things. Even assuming your salary was lower, and salaries on average
were lower, because of lack of "IP law", you'd also:
* Pay a buck or so for a paperback book, and two or three for a
hardcover.
* Pay a dime for a CD of music or software. A whole buck for a 10-CD
boxed set of music or very big 10-installation-disc software product.
* Pay a quarter for a DVD with the latest movie. Maybe a whole buck
for an HD-DVD or Blu-ray version, or a boxed set of four DVDs.
* Pay a lot less for some online accesses and information than now.
* In the process, expose yourself to a much reduced risk of misuse of
your CC# or even be able to do without a credit card.
* Your bigger items like cars and appliances and electronics might
have as much as 20% off THEIR prices due to the removal of hidden
patent-associated "taxes" that were formerly unavoidable if you didn't
want to walk everywhere or whatever.
* Patents in agribusiness might lower your food costs by going away.
* A much richer variety of freely-samplable culture becomes available
without paying more, and you can even contribute your own riffs and
takes without fear of a lawsuit now. You can zero out your
entertainment budget just about and partake of a lot of stuff online,
more than you could under your pre-existing budget before, while
saving money.
The only people who will lose more money than they save from such a
change will be the very fatcat executives, lawyers, lobbyists, and
legislators that will fight this change with their dying breaths. It's
time for everyone else to stop fighting and band together against
these robber barons and take back our bought legislature, our
corrupted capitalist markets, and our ruined reputation on the world
stage. Throw the bums out. Every politician that represents
corporations instead of the people -- out in 2008. Everyone who can
get by without -- drop all the IP-encumbered software and other stuff
you can do without. Everyone -- copyleft or public domain everything.
Show them a world without boundaries -- a world without copyright.
When they see it coming to pass anyway they won't be able to claim
"but it's unworkable" anymore because the counterexample will be
staring them in the face. They can dismiss a seemingly niche thing
like current free software and free culture movements. They won't be
able to dismiss it when the majority of stuff is free-as-in-speech
rather than a minority. They won't be able to say "Oh, well a FEW
companies can find a niche with such a WACKO business model, but it
proves nothing" anymore once free culture and free software are
mainstream.
And the old model companies will start going bankrupt by the ones and
twos, and then by the dozens. Gone will be their corrupting campaign
contributions. The legislature will become more representative of the
people anyway, but to speed it up -- throw out all the corporate-
sponsored ones in 2008! Every last one of them...campaign donation
records are public, so this can be done if enough people decide it's
time to take back their legislature from business-interest capture.
The software can be configured in multiple ways. For example, whether
or not you had eye-candy enabled might affect the bug. As a software
developer, you should be aware of this.
If eye-candy setting variations can cause dropped files to go randomly
to different places, then that is in itself a bug. An eye-candy option
should only affect how data looks, not how it behaves semantically.
Anyway are you claiming that there is an eye candy option that makes
dropped files always appear near where the mouse pointer was, and
under which if you drop near the top of a tall list of items in say
Tiles mode, it never, ever, ever, ever puts it all the way at the
bottom (actually scrolling down to display where it went -- somewhere
you therefore can't possibly have clicked anywhere near)?
If so, which option is it?
If not, then withdraw your objection to my earlier point about there
being no reason for the bug to be system-dependent.
I think you don't know what "almost none" means. Windows XP SP2 was
released in 2004. In 1994, people were running Windows 3.1.
Ten years ago as of this writing is 1997, by which time Windows 95 had
existed for a while and had a time to receive at least one service
pack and develop some maturity. At that time Explorer was equally old
(around 2 years old) and this particular bug existed. It remains
unfixed now, a decade later. It's probably something stupid like a
race condition that would take a couple of hours to find and five
minutes to fix. Ten years is a span over forty thousand times that
long. There is absolutely no excuse.
Even "we don't know about the bug!" is no excuse. They'd have known
about it years ago if they'd followed the low-traffic comp.os.ms-
windows.misc newsgroup because I recall complaining about it (and a
lot of other Explorer bugs) there that long ago. They've since had
adequate time to fix it and roll out a Windows Update with the fix,
and have neglected to do so. Indeed, SP2 was released in the
intervening time, and did not fix it.
They ignore bugs. A competitive market would make such behavior highly
unlikely, and short-lived besides.
And then there's the triple-counter of "Forcing all information to be
free is not necessarily harmless". So there. =P
It is does far more good than harm as long as it doesn't extend to
permit (or require!) privacy invasions. Published, mass-marketed stuff
being made free does not entail privacy invasion.
You have a different definition of "deal" than I have, for example.
When I interact with a vending machine, I am not directly interacting with
any human, and yet the terms of the deal are clear: I have to put $1 into
the slot, and I get a drink or candy or whatever it is that the vending
machine is offering. The fact that you require a living sentient being
present is unecessarily restrictive.
Are there any restrictions on what you can do with the can, or is it
just a straight-up sale governed by default sale-regulating law?
If I'm not dealing with a human being representing the manufacturer,
then at most I should be bound by default sale-regulating laws (and
copyright law).
In fact, the manufacturer seems to sell the software to the retailer,
with I don't know what terms governing the sale, other than that it
doesn't seem to involve the retailer placing any conditions on sales
of the software to consumers. Regardless, consumers buy the software
from the retailer, and that deal appears governed by normal sale-
regulating laws only; the retailer doesn't require the customer agree
to any special conditions to purchase the software. It doesn't seem
that they are in breach of any contract with the manufacturer in doing
so, and even if they were that's no skin off the customer's nose.
Now the customer has a lawfully-purchased copy of a copyrighted work,
and all of the rights and privileges as well as obligations in 17 USC
sections 116-118 thus implied, including the restriction on
distributing copies and derivative works without the copyright
holder's permission and the right in 17 USC section 117(a)(1) to
install and use the software, including making whatever copies are
automatically made by such normal use of the software.
That is the state of the customer's rights and responsibilities just
before the EULA appears during installation. If they now "agree" to
it, what do they tend to get?
Nothing, that's what. A big fat nothing. Nothing 17 USC section 117(a)
(1) and other applicable law didn't say they had already.
What do they give up?
Typically a great deal, including the right to reverse engineer and
disassemble (otherwise fair use per applicable case law) among other
things.
This "contract", this "deal", is one where the customer gives
something up in exchange for *a dialog box going away*. It does not
grant them any permission they didn't already have under copyright law
or any other law. It is a troll lurking under the bridge. The only
consideration afforded is, apparently, that it's the only way to
proceed with the installation! Installation that is the user's right
under section 117 already.
It's completely bogus, pure and simple extortion of a certain sort. No
court should uphold such legal gibberish. Unfortunately, at least one
has, in the infamous Blizzard v. BnetD case -- more evidence that the
legislature and justices have been bought and are in so many silk-
lined hip pockets nowadays.
What about signing a document without a witness?
That should be the bare minimum cost to a company of having a
restrictive agreement with a customer that goes beyond what the law
provides via copyright and other applicable laws, either by further
restricting the customer or by removing their affirmative rights under
the law (e.g. to sue in small-claims court rather than go to binding
arbitration, in an all-too-common example).
The signed document should have to be produced as evidence in later
suing the customer over any alleged breach of contract.
And of course, it should only be binding if the customer gets
something that way that they don't get otherwise. So they can do
something (like distribute copies) they otherwise were legally barred
from doing, subject to a relevant restriction (like they have to make
the source code for any modifications they distribute available). Or
they only receive the goods after signing the contract (if they
already have the goods, then they are entitled by law to make whatever
use of those goods is lawful absent such a contract. In the case of
software, this includes installing and running it but not distributing
copies. It also includes disassembling and reverse engineering but not
distributing modified copies. In the case of a can opener, this
includes opening cans with it or using it as a paperweight or whatever
else, but not hitting someone over the head with it, which would be
assault.)
You keep behaving as if you are. You certainly behave as though you're
not in North America, but are where English is the dominant language.
That seems to mean if it's not the UK it's Australia, where the law is
similar again.
I never claimed otherwise.
Oh goody. Then there's no reason not to ignore what that dialog box
tells you you can or cannot do, where the law says otherwise, save
maybe if it gives you a guilty conscience. (In the case of Windoze and
other software whose makers are already rich beyond the dreams of
avarice, it most certainly does not.)
Well, you don't want the vendor finding out you exercised your full
rights under copyright law despite their wishes, perhaps. They might
decide not to ever sell anything to you again because you didn't abide
by their so-called "deal", though you ought to win any court battle if
you genuinely didn't break the law or any genuine legally-enforceable
contracts. Of course, if you buy from a retailer that buys from the
vendor, the vendor's refusing to sell to you directly ever again may
not be a big problem for you either...
No, I think maybe you're in a certain frame of mind (we might call it
"argumentative"), and your frame of mind forces tones onto the text you
read which are not present.
It's *text*. If you're associating any kind of "tone" with it at all
you're frankly hallucinating and should see a neurologist who will be
far better qualified to help you than I am.
You frequently think I'm disputing a lot of
things which I'm not actually disputing, and you think people are
insulting you, when they're not, and you think people are hacking you,
when they are not, etc.
This doesn't make sense. If I post something and you don't agree with
it, you're disputing even if you claim you're not. If you call me a
name or impugn my honor, intelligence, competence at <foo>,
capabilities, mental health, or any other attribute or ability in
public, then you are insulting me even if you claim you're not. And if
postings of mine selectively disappear/don't propagate in a content-
sensitive manner and spam filtering is highly implausible as an
explanation, then I am (almost certainly) being hacked even if you
claim I'm not.
What do you think my interest is?
Extortion, obviously. Why else oppose copyright abolition than if you
have something you sell at a 4000% mark-up over marginal cost and fear
being undercut by competition?
I did not intend to make any such accusation. Your train of thought
interests me. I hesitate to tell you why, as I suspect you'll interpret
the reason as a form of insult. I'm asking you about your motives out of
sheer curiosity.
Let's see. The OP asked how to expend extra effort in diminishing the
value of his software, and I pointed out that such a desire is
irrational and should be ignored. Then this whole debate erupted in
which people gave bogus justifications for doing such a crazy thing,
and I responded calmly to rebut the various misapprehensions being
publicly posted, for the education of all and to reduce the risk of
someone being misled that came along later and read the thread.
Subsequently I was directly attacked by some people, and calmly
rebutted the various untrie things being said about me as well, for
the same reasons.
[snip one interpretation; the one which favors Twisted's arguments, of
course]
So if it happens to favor my arguments, it's ipso facto bogus? So much
for "impartially evaluating the evidence" then. And you fancy yourself
a debater and perhaps even a scientist? Shame on you.
Perhaps if the configuration or technology used the laptop itself is
that which is valuable.
Not even then, since Alice still has this valuable technology and has
not in any way been deprived of the use of it or of the physical
possession of her laptop.
Or perhaps, the
laptop harddrive contains senstive information, such as govermental
records, and in the process of cloning the laptop, you've also cloned the
contents of the harddrive.
I never objected to laws making truly sensitive information government-
secret. I don't want the enemy to have timely knowledge of my side's
battle plans for instance. I don't want government-collected private
information leaking and enabling identity theft either. So I would
support having laws a) making certain information classified for a
short time, with automatic expiry, during wartime, expiring after a
time limit or if the war is officially ended; this should keep battle
plans secure; b) making the details on how to make WMDs secret, but
construction, preservation of an arsenal of, and use of the WMDs
subject to legislature approval; and c) making private information
(peoples' financial and health records, street address, names where
they choose to be pseudonymous online, email addresses where they
choose not to reveal them, credit card numbers, and the like) subject
to nontransferable "copyright-like" control, each piece of such
information about a particular person by that particular person. So a
company wanting, say, my street address would require my explicit opt-
in permission to tell each specific third party that address before
they are permitted by law to do so, or to publish it (e.g. in the
phone book).
I'd just like you to take note that I am not disputing the idea that a
no-lose situation is not a proper free market, nor that having a non-free
market is bad.
Actually it really depends on that gotcha-word "free" again. A totally
unrestricted market is bad, as you get dangerous products (and people
choosing a product may be accepting a risk, but are their passengers?
Bystanders they run over when the brakes fail? None of whom chose the
product for them?); you get pollution and other diffuse negative
externalities; and you even get monopolies, lots and lots of
monopolies with no trust-busting regulations in place.
The "freest" market in the "unrestricted" sense is not the "freest" in
the "consumer choice" sense due to these monopolies. The "freest" in
the "consumer choice" might still be bad -- should consumers be able
to purchase CFC-emitting inefficient refrigerators at marginal cost,
rather than at minimum getting an added surcharge for environmental
consequences? Competitive markets with some consumer-protection and
environment-protection legislation seem to make more sense if you want
to try to make things better for society.
You're falsely assuming that it takes a competitor the same amount of
effort to make the same product as the original company.
If it takes them less and they sell for less so much the better.
That's called "efficiency". If someone can make something just as high
quality for half the cost they deserve to be rewarded in the
marketplace! That's the whole point of capitalism!
For example, Microsoft makes Windows a certain way. They make some
internal design decisions which ends up with Windows having a certain set
of features, a certain specific behaviour, and so on. For a competitor to
make an competing product of Windows which behaves identically is
extremely difficult, unless they had access to the original internal
design decisions. To make a fully-substitutable product, you'd have to not
only duplicate all the features of Windows, but also duplicate all the
bugs, including the ones that Microsoft themselves don't even know about.
Only to the extent that third-party software actually depends on a
buggy behavior of Windows to work properly, and to that extent, the
buggy behavior is known and documented (at least by the third-party
software's developer).
Also since I'm in favor of tossing out any legal protections of trade
secrets too, suppose they get ahold of Windows source code, and then
start fixing the bugs (that legacy apps don't depend on)?
Yes, I do. When they fab the processors, they don't all come out
equal. For example, one processor from a batch might run fine at 3Ghz,
while another processor from the same batch might only be able to manage
2Ghz. So althought they all come from the same manufacturing process, some
processors will be (correctly) marked as an inferior product, and sold at
a lower price.
That's not a shenanigan, that's normal market forces. They're not
deliberately degrading some of them; instead they simply have
imperfect QA. There's an enormous difference there. The price
differential reflects a difference in marginal cost: suppose one in
two chips can run at the higher speed. Then the cost of the better
chip is substantially higher than the cost of the mediocre one since
to make one "better" chip requires making a two chips on average.
Making a single "better" chip thus has twice the cost of making a
single "can be mediocre" chip. On
the other hand it also produces an average of one "free" mediocre chip
as well as the "better" chip, so it can be
discounted by the mediocre chip's price. The result is that instead of
both chips being priced by the market at the marginal cost of one "can
be mediocre" chip, the mediocre one is priced a bit lower and the
better one is priced a bit higher.
Anyway, a competitive market will make the pricing rational, in
theory. It will certainly not price the chip with the higher marginal
cost lower! (Making a 486SX meant making a 486DX and then doing
additional work on it, so its marginal cost was higher than the
486DX.)
In the specific case of the 486SX, they may have found that in some of
their batches, their FPU components were naturally failing as part of the
manufacturing process, and they figured they could sell that processor at
a lower price.
That would not be a shenanigan, if true. However I'm fairly sure I
read somewhere that they intentionally crippled 486 chips destined to
be 486SX chips to make them 486SX chips and left others alone to be
486DX chips.
Then, as demand picked up for the cheaper processors, they
had to actually disable the FPU component to meet that demand.
If they could sell deliberately damaged 486DXs at the SX price point
to meet the demand and turn a profit, then they could have sold fully-
functional 486DXs at the SX price point to meet the demand and still
turned a profit. A competitive market would have forced them to,
because if they didn't a competitor would.
The same thing happens with clockspeeds in processors. Sometimes,
there's a lot of demand for a lower clockspeed (and cheaper) CPU, but it
just so happens that the manufacturers were "lucky" this time around, and
all of their batches produced very high-rated processors. So to meet the
demand, they have to actually downclock some of their processors and cell
those.
And that is illegitimate. If we could have the higher speed for the
same price why should it be held back from us? A smoothly functioning
competitive market would provide it to us. A smoothly functioning
competitive market passes cheap quality improvements and quality-
preserving savings on to the consumer. When such savings get pocketed
by a guy in a three-piece suit instead, it means that market
competition is failing. It is a classic example of what economists do
technically call "market failure".
It's exactly the same thing which happens when you buy "Extra extra
virgin olive oil" instead of "extra virgin olive oil". By paying a
premium, you increase the likelyhood that you're getting the best from the
batch. If you pay a lower price, you may still get the best from the batch
(e.g. if all items in the batch were equally good), but you run the risk
of getting something slightly worse.
The processor equivalent is to sell chips tested up to some speed for
a low price, and others tested up to a higher speed for a higher
price, but not deliberately cripple any chips. People buying at the
low price point may get errors running at clock rates people buying at
the higher price have no problems at; or they may not. They aren't
forced to use the lower speed though; it's merely a crapshoot whether
they get a higher speed or not.
Anyway if they can sell the best chips at the lowest price point and
still make a profit they have no right to charge more for them; doing
so is a privilege. A competitive market should tend not to grant that
privilege.
A perfectly competitive market should cause poor chips to sell below
marginal cost and good ones above marginal cost by similar, small
amounts. (It depends on the distribution. If one in a thousand is
really good, the mediocre ones will be very cheap and the good ones
quite expensive. If it's one in two the price difference will be
smaller. The average price of a large sample of chips will always be
just above marginal cost.)
If they get more demand for the poorer chips than they have poorer
chips, when making exactly enough chips to satisfy the good chip
demand, then their logical course of action is to change nothing
because of this. Making more chips will result in a) increased
expenses, b) unsold good chips, and c) more poor chips sold at a loss,
lowering profits. Making a smaller increased number of chips and
damaging some (or just not inspecting some) and selling these at the
poor-chip price point will result in a) increased expenses (but not as
much) and b) more chips sold at a loss (just as many), and still they
earn lower profits. Neither choice is rational given the pricing where
the average cost of a large batch of random chips is only slightly
above marginal costs. Neither choice is rational in the presence of
robust competition. So if either choice is observed, either that
company is not being rational (torpedoing one of your pet theories,
Oliver!) or the market is not sufficiently competitive for maximum
efficiency (proving my current point). Looks like you've painted
yourself into a corner, Oliver -- no-win scenario. Either alternative
and you're wrong about something. Sorry; them's the breaks.
So are you. I can deal with it. Can't you?
I'm not; I just think you're delusional or just plain naïve if you
don't believe all of the bad things said about Vista, despite these
coming from multiple independent sources with no vested interest, and
if you do believe all of the good things said about Vista, despite
these coming from a single source with an emphatically vested interest
(Microsoft).
First list what criterias you consider necessary to receive the title
of "expert".
Just name someone! Someone YOU consider an expert.
I subscribe to the C# newsgroup
AHA! He admits it! He IS a Microsoft partisan! That explains every
single bogus argument and seemingly-insane choice he's made, from
favoring copyright law and lack of market competition to favoring
Vista.
So ... how much is Microsoft paying you to endorse their party line in
cljp instead of having independent, honestly formed opinions of your
own? Or do you actually have independent, honestly formed opinions
that just happen to be 100% wrong, wrong, wrong out of some inability
to recognize when you've been logically refuted or when something
(e.g. Windows Pista) is utter shite?
Actually I suspect it's the latter. If it's the former you're probably
about to be fired, because I think you purported to prefer Firefox to
IE, which has got to be a termination offense for Microsofties, and
probably one that merits forfeiting benefits and severance pay too and
just being turfed out onto the street with a bus ticket and a "Nice
knowing you".
I've started to do that, but often times, I suspect your "premises"
are facetious. Things like "Vista objectively sucks", which I suspect no
rational or honest person would actually believe.
You are insane. Vista does objectively suck. By the objective criteria
of "can I do anything with Vista that I can't do with XP?" whose
answer is "no". Oh, right, Halo 3. Big whup. Being able to play that
at the expense of nothing else working is almost as big a dis-
improvement as simply nothing working. And Lew made a post earlier (in
this newsgroup but not in this thread) indicating that he too was
poisoned by the Vista Kool-Aid when he drank it and nothing on his
system works right.
If you STILL claim that it is not objectively confirmed that XP is
superior to Vista, then you need help that I am not qualified to
provide; but I'll give you a referral to whichever specialist you
choose if you look up "psychiatrists" in the Yellow Pages.
The problem here is that you assume I disagree with everything in your
post. I don't. I agree with a lot of it. I only disagree with a narrow
subset of paragraphs, and those are the ones which I sometimes respond to.
You respond to nearly every paragraph I write here so the "narrow
subset" is apparently about 99% of them. Curious definition of
"narrow".
So in other words, if I say I disagree with something, then I disagree
with it. If I don't say whether or not I disagree with something, then you
have no information as to whether or not I disagree with it.
If you argue instead of accepting the point then I assume (rightly)
that you disagree with it.
Note that I'm working under the assumption that you're not open to
alternatives to your beliefs
Muster some evidence and I might accept some alternative. I believe
what the evidence indicates, and it overwhelmingly supports everything
I've argued here. Also expert opinions of e.g. economists regarding
how perfectly competitive markets regulate the pricing of non-scarce
goods.
so I'm not trying to "convince" you that I
am right or anything like that. I am very interested in your beliefs,
however (in fact, I was speaking about the plausibility of a world without
intellectual property with some friends of mine last night over dinner,
and I repeated a couple of your arguments to defend the plausibility), and
I'd like to hear more about it.
In other words you just argue for the sake of arguing, taking a
position contrary to some position someone else espoused, and even
when sometimes this means arguing in favor of IP, sometimes arguing
against IP, etc.???
Well, that does explain a great deal.
This is why when you say something which really doesn't make sense to
me, I reply to it, explaining the problems I see. I tend to assume that
most people are logical or rational in most aspects, and so if they say
something irrational or illogical, I can only assume I must have
misunderstood something. I'll state what I see to be a logical
inconsistency, to give the other person (you, in this case) a chance to
clarify what was meant.
Why does it often look like a wilful misunderstanding in these cases,
then?
For example continuing to act as if I haven't sufficiently proven the
case for using XP rather than Vista, when I'm fairly certain I have,
short of citing chapter and verse. Lew's post (search for posts by Lew
on the date on this post's timestamp and it will be one of only two or
three), various entries at the Gripe Log (
http://www.gripe2ed.com),
and a lot of stuff easily found by googling "Windows Vista" will
support my hypothesis over yours. It does everything worse than XP
does, has whole new bugs and problems unique to itself, and supports
as of this writing only 1 or 2 pieces of software XP does not. And not
even third-party software; other Microsoft software. (I'm unsure if
MSOffice 2007 requires Vista. If it does, I expect OpenOffice will be
able to read its document formats soon and will still support XP, and
Linux and MacOS and..., so the only real showstopper to sticking with
XP is if you really itch to play the newest Halo game, as contended
earlier.)
So when I do that handwaving "I don't agree" thing, it means I believe
that I fully understand this portion of your belief, but I don't choose to
believe in it.
Well that's just plain silly, if I've given evidence showing that my
belief is the more accurate one.
When I give a rebuttal, it means I suspect I don't
understand your belief, and I wish for you to explain it to me in greater
detail.
So everything is "a matter of opinion" to you? Vista can do very
little XP can't do and nothing that XP can do as well as XP can do it,
and "better" remains in the eye of the beholder? 2+2 is 4 as a matter
of nearly universal opinion but not of objective fact? Copyright law
is bad or good as a matter of opinion and not as a matter of
constitutional law, public policy, and the founding principles of the
nation (including the principle that the law should serve public
benefit ends only, and the principle that competitive markets are good
things)? For that matter, competitive markets being good things
providing more stuff more cheaply and efficiently than all known
alternatives is a matter of opinion and not a proven-by-economists
fact?
Go read Social Text and come back to this software engineering
newsgroup when you've got your head screwed on right.
Continue posting this sort of factual-relativity opinions-are-all-that-
truly-are stuff here though and I'll continue to be a thorn in your
side ala Alan Sokal and Social Text.
I'll try to explain my thoughts to you more explicitly from now on, to
avoid further misunderstandings.
That might be a good idea. I'm currently trying to ascertain if it's
the first you've ever had, or just the first in this thread.
That was not what I perceived the original question to be.
The Yellow Pages can be a very useful thing. One letter before the
section with psychiatrists, you may find a section with ... you
guessed it ... optometrists!
Yes, I know. Maybe I should state explicitly that the claim "Apache is
better than IIS" is not one that I disagree with.
Apparently it's not one you agree with either, or you think it's all
relative, or something wacky like that, though.
I disagree that that was my claim (and I'm leaving it at that, because
I don't really care whether you believe me or not).
Reviewing, I think I see where you got confused.
I said MS provably can't compete in a competitive market place --
witness Linux and Apache eating Windows and IIS on the server side.
Your response was to suggest that you disbelieved me, but I now
suspect you misunderstood "can't compete" to mean literally "can't
compete -- not even and come in dead last", rather than "can't hack
it, can't win, can't even place or show, simply can't compete". I just
meant they are unable to do at all well versus genuine competition so
they try to outlaw competing with MS rather than try to improve their
ability to play the game as it was meant to be played against real
live opponents. Which I don't think you even disagree with.
What a mess. And you criticized ME for supposedly "not expressing
myself clearly"?
I'm starting to wonder if you're not as fluent in English as your
vocabulary and grammar would seem to imply. Misunderstanding common
idioms, among other things? Each side finding the other "unclear" sure
suggests a mutual language barrier rather than one side actually being
unclear, too.
So much for Australia. Where the hell are you, and what do they use
for talking there, Newspeak or something?
(Your name suggests maybe
China. Newspeak indeed, then, if the government there is having its
way.)
You've managed to "fake it" (being a native English speaker) fairly
well, but I think you've just been exposed at last ...
Or maybe you are a native English speaker but still haven't seen that
psychiatrist yet...
I'm not recommending the book to you in order to "win" this argument.
I'm recommending it to you because I am too lazy to explain why I disagree
with your claims with respect to corporations. I had suspect that maybe
you were interested in the behaviour corporations, and so I recommended
this book because I thought it might interest you.
Recommendations that include a (no-registerwalls) URL to the full text
of whatever you are recommending carry a lot more weight than "go find
it yourself!" or "you can't so much as read it without paying first"
recommendations. The first are a lot of effort to find, and may not
exist; the second are a blatant attempt to stick a hand in my pocket
given that the marginal cost of letting me read something is zilch.
I have lost the argument, and Twisted has won. Twisted
has defeated me in this thread.
Is that someone raising the white flag I see? Yes, indeed it is!
Vindicated at last...
You should really read the book if you're interested in the detailed
explanation. As I mentioned earlier, I am not particularly interested in
convincing you of my position, and for this particular topic, the
explanation is long and I am lazy. So I'll summarize the explanation as
"The emergent behaviour of many people acting together in a corporation is
not necessarily one that any individual person would agree to or support".
Again, if you want more details, read the book.
Furnish a URL to the full text (no restrictions that would stop me
just clicking and then reading away), and I may well do just that.
Notice that it was not the corporation that was embezzling money from
itself, but a few select directors. The directors were not doing what they
were supposed to be doing (maximizing shareholder profit).
Of course not. But the corporation was doing what the directors told
it to do. So the corporation was not maximizing shareholder profit. It
was not acting as a rational utilitarian. It was insane, due to some
cancerous cells in its brain (those directors that were embezzling)
hogging resources and causing the entire brain to screw up in its job
(deciding how and then causing rational utilitarian behavior on the
part of the host organism).
Insane corporations with brain tumors kind of put a crimp in your "all
corporations are rational utilitarians" hypothesis.
I suspect a more accurate analogy would be a person in good health,
wealth, etc., suddenly gets sick and dies. Their heart was not doing what
it was supposed to be doing.
Brain tumor fits better than heart attack. And brain tumors can cause
irrationality prior to killing. And the irrationality can indirectly
kill.
But even a nominally "healthy" corporation is influenced by human
feelings on the part of its directors. Often including
shortsightedness and a lust for control or power. It's powerlust in
large part that gets someone to such a position after all (combined
with sufficient ability to be deceptive and sleazy and dishonest and
do all that "politics" crap), and once the directors are stacked with
guys with powerlust, the corporation itself begins to exhibit
correlated traits such as control freakishness even at the expense of
revenues (e.g. trying to swat down unauthorized promotional use of
content by which they actually benefit).
Then again there's always the conspiracy theory -- that even if a
particular corporation is damaged by attacking unauthorized stuff that
happens to be beneficial, it helps the wider corporate cause of
achieving total lockdown and lockin and maximizes revenues on a very
long timescale. If so, this is clearly contrary to the interests of
public policy and they seriously need reining in! Not being given an
even longer leash that's easier to slip by the legislature. Unless the
intent is rather to give them enough rope to hang themselves, in which
case the "good guys" are playing a long and very subtle game too, even
to the point of looking like bought-and-paid-for bad-guy-flunkies
sometimes.
In this case, I use "better" to mean "has less inconsistencies with
reality than". I suspect this is equivalent to "makes better predictions
than", but I'm not sure about that.
It depends. You'd really need a quantitative measure. For example a
stopped clock is exactly right twice a day. A normally-working clock
is probably "wrong" 100% of the time. But its deviation averages a few
seconds instead of three hours and it's the more useful in practise.
Which is "more accurate" or makes "better predictions" of a second,
normally-working clock? You need to define that in some way to make it
give a sensible answer (not the stopped clock!).
Whose model evaluation criteria here correspond to the stopped clock?
It's unclear, though I don't think mine do.
[snip]
To recap: I said MS is unable to compete in an open market. You
claimed that ads for IIS prove that they can. I said that they seem to
be unwilling to put any effort into the quality of their product --
only into lawyers and lobbying efforts to try to outlaw competing with
them so they don't have to. (I still contend that they expend effort
on legal matters and marketing vastly more than they do on product QA,
if "QA" is even in their vocabularies.)
Your evidence doesn't support your assertion: "Compete" doesn't mean
"Win". Maybe they [Microsoft] are simply competing and losing.
They can't hack it? Proves my point, partially. (The rest is that
since they can't hack it in a fair market their whole business
strategy is based on destroying the fair marketplace so that their
woeful lack of QA becomes a nonissue.)
Question is based on false premise, and is therefore nonsensical.
You're assuming that IIS is perceived to be shoddy by everyone.
Besides being rude here you then disputed my claim that IIS was shoddy
as an attempt to dispute my claim that MS made no effort on QA when
developing IIS. (Indeed, no real effort to compete on quality or price
in any software market at all since they keep getting killed on the
server side by cheaper, superior competing products!)
I'm genuinely surprised that you think Microsoft is not trying to
compete against Apache. You think Microsft just enjoys throwing their
money away on IIS developers and marketing?
I don't think they're not trying to compete. I do think they're not
trying to compete in the marketplace by making a superior product, a
cheaper one, or both; that much is indisputable. Instead they make a
shoddier more expensive one and then try to use marketing to sucker
people into buying it (that's not competing, any more than a con
artist is competing with the genuine owners of the Brooklyn Bridge, or
a quack with the medical profession), and they try to make their
competition illegal.
So as you can see, I never said IIS was better than Apache.
You're assuming that IIS is perceived to be shoddy by everyone.
You implied there that you think that IIS is better.
Which is it? While it's technically true that you never SAID that IIS
was better than Apache, you sure as hell implied it and you definitely
disputed when I claimed that IIS was "shoddy"! Technically true or
not, I think that remark you just made is rather deceptive. You argued
against my claim that Apache was superior to IIS at least in that one
sentence from an earlier post, and now essentially claim that you
never did.
So which is it?
You're assuming that IIS is perceived to be shoddy by everyone. <implies
it's not actually shoddy, in the context of comparing Apache and IIS>
So as you can see, I never said IIS was better than Apache.
Pick one and stick with it please.
Very low magnitute, because when you have billions of dollars, you can
negotiate or bribe your way to a very comfy prison cell.
Another problem that needs fixing. Corporations that break their
covenants with individual customers/users or remorselessly steal,
break environmental laws, or similarly should see their directors do
serious jail time in a real frigging prison. Even if the directors
disavow all knowledge and the only suggestion otherwise is that their
hydro use at the main office building and every regional HQ spiked all
at once and an unusually large volume of garbage, mostly shredded
paper, was removed next garbage day from each location. The directors
being on the hook for the company's misconduct to that degree would
give them quite an incentive to a) never authorize anything of the
sort, even if they plan to destroy the evidence later, and b) keep a
close eye on the misdeeds of rank and file employees. The only get out
of jail card, free or expensive, should be to make it right. In some
cases like air pollution it's sorry -- you're going to jail. Spills
MIGHT be cleaned up and the area restored in exchange for just being
fined and court ordered to flip burgers for a living afterward.
Systematically screwing customers? Restitution is to pay them
everything you owe them and maybe some extra, in actual money NOT
store credit or any of that BS, and quit and go flip burgers...
Harsh? Making them responsible legally for things that might, once in
a while, actually not have been their fault? Ah but it is their
RESPONSIBILITY. Normally I'm against any risk of punishing the truly
innocent in law, but for rich d00ds I can make an exception. The risk
is after all an avoidable one, even if at the cost of not being able
to write your own paycheques and having to live like the rest of
humanity. With their great power, privileges, and perks there really
should come great responsibility and not a little risk. It would
certainly keep the excessively risk-averse AND the criminally-minded
out of such posts, which is probably for the better both ways.
Note that a company discovering an error or bad behavior of rank-and-
file employees and spontaneously making things right would result in
no punishment of the directorship. Only being caught at it because of
complaints to State AGs and federal prosecutors with no evidence of
any attempt to make things right by the customers affected or clean up
whatever mess, and with evidence of widespread and rampant misbehavior
affecting numerous customers or otherwise with large effects, and of
systematically bad behavior, and especially aggravated by evidence
that something was covered up (abnormally large amounts of recent
shredding, say).
I'm not. Go for it. All the more power to you. I support your cause at
the general abstract level, although I disagree with some details within
it.
Such as? And why does it seem you're attacking every bit of it if it's
only "some details"?
It is a very strongly educated guess. We have all of the following
evidence:
[snip evidence because I understand your points, I disagree with them, and
I am not interested in explaining my disagreements. So again, you win this
argument.]
That's a cop-out and you bloody know it. You either disagree with the
evidence, or you don't disagree with my points. Choose one. Either
rebut the evidence or really honestly concede the point by stopping
disagreeing with it.
I'll just mention to you that I've worked in offshore support, and
most Americans I spoke to never even realized I was offshore. Notice how
you had automatically assumed I was American, and later British, in this
thread.
You seem to fake being a competent English speaker better than most
who attempt it (and most dubious English speakers don't even TRY to
fake being non-dubious English speakers.)
Misunderstanding common metaphors and the subtle indications of a
nonetheless-insurmountable language barrier make it clear though. You
don't seem to quite mean the same things as I do when saying the same
things or reading the same things, and the result is endless
disagreements and even disagreement over whether we're disagreeing!
Some offshore support places are very effective in hiding the fact
that they are offshore.
If they still employ a bunch of know-nothings with no advice for the
user they haven't already tried (from the manual's instructions,
natch) a dozen times without success, then they're still BAD support,
whether "obviously" offshore or not, or even actually ONshore. Cheap
support, wherever located and however fluent in English the "support"
personnel, is going to be shoddy and turn off customers no matter
what. The guy can speak perfect English and even do better than you by
actually understanding and correctly interpreting everything I say,
and making sense back, and if all he can suggest is reboot the fucking
computer, and even that only after six hours on hold, then that's
still one more ex-customer for those fuckers. Where they located the
call centre won't have made a difference.
So let's change the concern from "outsourced support" to "cheap, lip-
service support wherever located".
Support that makes it plain that
their primary objective is to get the complaining customer off the
phone rather than resolve the cause of their dissatisfaction. Support
that simply hasn't a clue. Whatever.
And what claims would that be? I don't believe I've ever cited any of
the pro-IIS claims that the ad produced, because in actual fact, I don't
recall what they were.
You still advocated IIS over Apache, namely when you disputed my claim
that IIS was shoddy. The ad influenced you even if you don't remember
what it said. That kind of insidious effect belies any claims of
"immunity", and suggests you have a dangerously false sense of
security. Ad-blocking would be wise in light of these observations,
lest you eventually get ripped off.
What I do remember is this largish man crying of
joy (presumably because of all the pleasures IIS brought him?). It was an
amusing sight.
He was probably crying in anguish after his server got hacked for the
umpteenth time. If he wasn't ... well all I can say is "sorry, not my
kink."
Notice that what I disputed was the claim that Apache is perceived by
everyone to be better than IIS (or more accurately, the IIS is perceived
to be shoddy by everyone).
IIS is perceived by Microsoft to be better -- better to Microsoft's
bottom line that is. Apache is the one widely endorsed by independent
web masters. Apache is the ONLY one of the two that independent
webmasters EVER proudly claim their site to be powered by on its every
page. By every sensible measure, Apache is superior to IIS.
It can do all the dynamic stuff IIS can do too, modulo replacement of
equally-shoddy ASP by equally-superior (and on-topic!) JSP.
The only defense of IIS I stated was that there exist some people who
like it.
Yes -- Microsoft employees. So? Oh wait a minute. Now you're going to
try to claim you never intended to claim that IIS wasn't shoddy in the
first place? Sorry, no do-overs, you claimed that, it got proven
false, them's the breaks.
Maybe I should state explicitly that I personally prefer Apache over
IIS. I hope this will eliminate any false assumptions you may have made
about my position regarding these two servers.
I never made any assumptions, only reasonable inferences from what you
said. When you attacked me for saying IIS was shoddy, that marked you
as an IIS fan. Now you claim that you prefer Apache. I can only
conclude that you were misleading then, are outright lying now, or
love IIS but love Apache more? I don't know which is worse. Being lied
to isn't nice but finding out that that guy on usenet you've been
battling has that kind of web server kink is outright vomit-inducing.
Speaking of which, I think I'll go find the nearest toilet now...
BTW after endorsing both Firefox and Apache you are DEFINITELY fired
if you were in fact hired my M$ to promote Vista here.
You said that IIS was perceived universally as being worse, and I
disagreed.
No, I said that it was simply worse. I never said anything about
"perceived". I said "was". A bunch of delusionals "perceiving" IIS to
be the greatest thing since sliced bread, plus a round dozen Microsoft
employees loving what it does to their pocketbooks, doesn't change the
fact that it's simply a shoddier web server than Apache.
I said it was shoddy and you jumped at that, implying you disagreed.
You can't rewrite history. Sorry. As I said above, no do-overs.
Yes, and I've heard your claims. Notice that the more times you make
those claims doesn't necessarily make it more and more true each time.
No, they remain just as true as they were before I said them even
once. It's just that with repetition there's a slim chance that even a
xylocephalic postmodern relativist like you might "get it" eventually.
Perhaps I should just give up on that seemingly-forlorn hope though...
Even then, only if there were evidence to believe that the bursting
into flames was caused by Vista. If, for example, you had a video of kids
installing Vista onto a computer, and then detonating a firecracker within
it, this would not cause me to like Vista less.
Now *there's* an idea. Well, a video of kids loading Vista onto a
computer and then giggling as it burst into flames and stuff shot out
of the holes in the side, with the firecracker not being shown being
put in there beforehand. Especially if it's detailed enough to show
some smoke coming out as the install progressed, and then the fire
afterward. This is a great idea for a viral YouTube video, and anti-MS
propaganda! Yes! Thank you!
No Videos found for 'vista porno for pyros'
Your Google-fu is not strong.
(And what's with posting semi-HTML? Yuck...this last post of yours was
especially bad.)
This is why I find it amusing when people who have never tried Vista
criticize it. The search feature doesn't do what the button on XP does.
The Vista one is much more useful: You type in a substring of a name of a
program, and the contents of the start menu will update with a list of
programs and documents containing that substring. So for example, you can
type "not" to see "notepad.exe" and "Death Note Episode 28.avi" and so on.
So much for using your start menu to put permanent links to frequently
used stuff then, if they'll get overwritten the first time you do a
search. I much prefer searches being their own separate explorer
windows -> more than one at a time and results being "pseudo-folders" -
more than one at a time, and you can launch stuff from it, and ...
Also, your example is ludicrous. I'd never perform a systemwide search
for all files with "not" in the name to try to get to Notepad faster,
not on a machine with about 1,000,000 unique files filling ~160GB of
disk space. It would take far longer than clicking Start ->
Accessories -> Notepad.
If this is the sort of thing Vista users have to do to find Notepad
because the alternative is even slower, then it's no wonder Vista is
so widely criticized!
There's many small improvements like that sprinkled all over Vista
which makes me long for it whenever I'm stuck on an XP machine, and have
to actually search through the start menu to find the shortcut to the
notepad program, for example.
You consider performing a search to be faster? On what, a craptop with
300MB (yes MB) of disk space and all of 1345 files or a PDA or
something? I know if I clicked Start -> Search and typed "not" in "All
or part of the file name" I'd be waiting for ten minutes or so before
I got notepad.exe, buried in probably a metric shitload of irrelevant
clutter (I'd use "notepad.exe" as the search query in actuality). I
find it difficult to believe that Vista is any faster, unless you
cheated and scoped the search to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users
\Start Menu on Vista but not on XP or something like that.
Is Vista's search genuinely faster, given a fair comparison (searches
scoped equally, same approximate size of scope in file count and
megabytage; equally powerful hardware)? Surely not?
I didn't see tons of cogent argument. I think I saw 2 cogent arguments
after 3 chapters.
Are you still talking? ... Aren't you going to be late for your
appointment with that optometrist?
What was the point of bringing up basketball, if they were not
suggesting such a chain of reasoning, then?
It was probably part of an example of some kind. Examples often
contain details irrelevant to the larger point being made. It doesn't
make them any less valid.
BTW, congratulations on winning the argument. Can you give me a P.O.
box to which I may mail you a prize?
This thread ending without any further ado is prize enough; that and
your capitulation on record for posterity here @ Google Groups.
HAND.
