GP (not sure if that's you or not, both ACs) mentioned both 2 megabyte images from his current (7.2 megapixel) camera and a 2.1 megapixel old camera, and was apparently surprised that the 2 megabyte (presumably JPEG) files from his current camera have fewer artifacts than the 5872 byte JPEGs on the example site. I suspect he thought the 5872 number was kilobytes, i.e. a 5-6 megabyte file, which would explain why he would seemingly expect that to have better quality than the 2 megabyte files.

And bits per pixel times pixels only gives you a higher number of uncompressed bytes for the resultant files; compression should more than compensate for that, such as how his 7.2 megapixel camera which is presumably 32 bits per pixel doesn't therefore produce 28.8 megabyte files, but rather only around 2 megabytes files. If his old 2.1 megapixel camera was generating files that looked as crappy as the 5872 byte JPEG on the example site, they were probably (or at least hopefully) only a few kilobytes large each themselves.

First, I'm sure it's not that rare for home users to want a wireless NAS. Second, I didn't say that I was in the majority. You said, "There's no reasonable excuse to want wireless networking in a server." I was merely pointing out that there is a reasonable excuse for wanting wireless.

Well that's an issue of priority. I can want wireless networking, along with all kinds of other things, while recognizing that there are higher priority issues. That doesn't mean it's unreasonable to want it.

No, it's not just like that. It would be more comparable to buying a TV at full price, and then having to constantly pay a subscription fee (in addition) to keep the TV's operating system working, or else it wouldn't turn on. Because yes, modern TVs have operating systems, too. Content is a different thing. Add-ons are different things. But to keep the machine you purchased functioning on a basic level, you shouldn't need to pay a subscription fee.

And that's specifically where I'm drawing the distinction. For most people, if you say, "Well you could just install another OS," it's actually not too different in saying, "Yes, you need to pay a subscription fee or your TV's operating system, or else it will stop working. If you don't like it, you could hack it to run Linux." The TV is an appliance, and people don't want to worry about their TV's operating system. For most people, computers are an appliance in approximately the same way.

Sure, they might know that you can do different things on a Mac vs. a Dell, but you can do different things on a Sony TV vs a Samsung TV. The GUI looks different, and there are minor differences in the functionality, but they don't have a grasp on what the actual technical differences are.

So yes, I'd be in favor of offering subscriptions for Windows, but if they're going to stop offering the option to purchase a perpetual license of Windows with free updates, then they should have the Windows subscription include a free perpetual license for Windows, and only have the subscription be necessary for updates. If my only option for Windows is to have a subscription version that completely stops working when I stop paying, then I'm going to avoid using in any situation where it's not completely required.

Not necessarily. When you've worked with these kinds of things long enough, you realize that most businesses are willing to spend money on *something*, and the willingness to spend is often connected to how and where it fits in their budgets. You have businesses much more willing to spend $10/month every month, reliably, then to spend $120 per year all at once. You have some that will spend money on renting things, but not buying things, or vice versa. Don't underestimate the importance of being able to push an expense past the paper-pushers.

Along with everything else, sometimes it's just an irrational thing. I can get a client to agree to spend $10/month every month for the next 5 years, and explain, "this is just what you're going to spend." It works itself into their budgets and they just take it for granted. If I charge them $600 every 5 years instead, even though it's not that much money and it amounts to the same amount, it'll be an argument every 5 years. "Do we really need to spend the $600 this year? Can't we put it off? Can't we just not spend that money?"

Of course businesses don't want to spend money that they don't need to, but I don't think it comes down to "not wanting to spend money" as much as people who want their expenses to be justified, which is pretty much everyone.

Not exactly. Because it's mandatory in a way that doesn't make sense. It might make sense in cases where people lease a computer. Let's say I lease a Dell laptop for 4 years, and included in that cost were all Microsoft software updates for those 4 years. That makes some sense, because then I'm essentially renting the hardware and the software it requires for 4 years, after which, I'm done with it. However, if I buy a computer, I've bought it, and I expect it to be able to run its basic functions indefinitely, until it breaks.

And that's why I think a mandatory OS subscription is a really awful idea. If you're very knowledgeable about computers, you might not think this way, because you think about how you can install a new operating system, and therefore think of it as separable from the computer itself. However, for most people (and most businesses), it's more of a single unit. You buy a machine, and the operating system is just part of it required to make it work. Without an operating system, the thing is useless. So it's not like Adobe CS or Microsoft Office, which people see as an add-on piece of software, but it's something directly involved with making the hardware that they bought functional at all.

So it's not like employees or heating, which are services that you pay for. It makes sense that you would continually have to pay for it. It would be better to compare it to buying a chair where the seat is designed to self-destruct every month like clockwork, rendering the entire thing useless until you buy a new seat from a single particular manufacturer. It might make sense if you rented the chair to say that you have to pay every month, but if you've purchased the chair, why would you put yourself in the position of needing to pay monthly, for no reason except to satisfy the money-grab of the seat manufacturer?

My experiences is that you might find applications for either that don't exist for the other. For enterprise, managing a large fleet of workstations is a bit easier with Windows workstations running on a Windows domain, but there are actually management tools for Macs. Most Windows IT people just don't know about them. If I had an objection to Macs for the enterprise market, it'd sooner be that Microsoft Office for Mac sucks, and Apple seems intent on screwing up their file sharing with crappy implementations of SMB.

But yes, I would take your point that in some situations, the TCO for Mac would probably end up being higher. But then, that's what I said-- that the TCO may be higher or lower, depending on "things like user training, what kinds of systems your IT department is familiar with, and what kinds of functionality you need from your computer."

It doesn't solve the problem of "forced upgrades", but as you said, the upgrades are free. But none of that is actually what bothers me. If Microsoft was trying to push us all to Windows 10, I would be kind of ok with that. At the heart of my first post, I was saying that I don't even exactly have a problem with them pushing people towards a subscription model, if the intention of that subscription model is to keep everyone up-to-date by having a lower yearly cost for continued updates, rather than a higher up-front cost.

It seems to me that part of the problem Microsoft runs into is, people will buy Windows XP and then stick with it for 10 years because they don't want to pay $250 per computer to upgrade to the next version, only to know that they're supposed to spend $250 in a couple years for the next version. The result is that Microsoft has to offer continued support for old versions of their software for 10 years, which kind of sucks for Microsoft. Part of my thinking is that, because of how IT business decisions work, even if they were to charge the same amount ($100/year subscription vs. $250 every 2.5 years to buy a new version), they'd probably get more people to pay it for subscription services. This is especially true if they bundle it with other services businesses use (Office 365) to make it a good value for the money.

What doesn't work for me, however, is the idea of an operating system that stops working if you stop paying the subscription. I couldn't, in good conscience, recommend that to a client.

It's a small point, I'm actually not sure that's true. I support Macs and PCs, and I suspect that if your business can go with Macs, the TCO may be lower. Of course, that depends on things like user training, what kinds of systems your IT department is familiar with, and what kinds of functionality you need from your computer. Yes, you're going to spend at least $1000 for a laptop and at least $600 for a desktop, but I wouldn't generally recommend businesses buy those cheapo $300 desktop/ $700 laptops anyway. You'll spend more money supporting them than you save buying them.

But speaking as an IT pro, none of this solves the "I don't want to spend any money" problem. If you don't want to spend any money, then don't attempt to run a business. Keeping the TCO low does not mean "not spending money".

Well not "nothing" exactly. If Windows forces people to go with a subscription plan where their computers stop working when they stop paying the subscription, I'll warn my clients of that danger. I'll probably recommend against going along with the whole thing, and offer help them look for alternatives if possible (e.g. standardizing on the last version of Windows without that requirement, evaluating alternative operating systems). Given my experiences, I'd expect that a few will switch to Mac, most will want to standardize on Windows 8.1 and wait to see how things shake out. A lot of clients didn't want to upgrade from XP, and we're only getting the last few to upgrade now that Microsoft has officially dropped support, so if we recommend going no further than Windows 8 or 10 or whichever is the last version you can "buy", then I doubt clients will object.

Of course, though, some clients will still want to go with Windows, and some won't have a choice. Microsoft has a long history of trying to make sure you have no choice other than to go along with buying the products they want you to buy. In the end, if my client has a business need that requires Windows, and they choose to spend their money on paying a subscription, I'll set it up for them. It's not my job to tell my clients what to do. I advise them on what choice I think is good, and then help them with whatever choice they make.

Why are you surprised that a 5.8 thousand byte image has more artifacts than a 2 million(ish) byte image?

If all predictions had indeed not come to pass, you might have a point. But of course that's hyperbole, which is to say: you are making shit up. In the real, fact-based world climate science has an all-too-good track record. Yes, it is not perfectly accurate, but that's really not something with which to comfort yourself. If you get run over by a bus, it doesn't matter whether it hits you from the front or the side: you're still dead. It's best to pay attention and get out of the way when there is a bus bearing down on you. And as for extinction events, it doesn't matter whether they're human-caused or not. What matters is not being taken out by them. Or anyway, so the thinking goes...

Right, that was my point. The methane doesn't just disappear.

Offshoring and immigration are completely irrelevant to the "information wants to be free" debate. One is about labor relations, and asking the government not to enable (though immigration and tax policy) greedy corporations to force down the price of wages for local people just to stuff the pockets of corporate shareholders and executives. The other is about communication and not prohibiting any forms of it. They have nothing to do with each other.

Yes. You got a problem with that?

The profit comes first. The full outline would be something like this.

* Do unethical things.
* ????
* Profit
* Deny the unethical things happened
* Admit something unethical may have happened, but ask people to wait before passing judgment
* Delay
* Admit the whole thing, but claim that the time for a response has already passed.

Expected, could and maybe do not have probabilities assigned. So when you say "with a very low probability," you are putting words in gmustera's mouth. The probability isn't very low. It's likely that this caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event. But I'm sure that you, with your anti-government rhetoric and your bunker in the basement, will survive an extinction event just fine. No doubt you've done the science, and figured out how much stockpiled oxygen you need to stockpile to get through it, and how big your airtight greenhousese need to be to grow the food you won't be able to safely grow outside, and that's why you're not worried.

Remember that uncertainty cuts both ways, Padawan.