> By some measures of success, sure.
Well, by the ones that count. They can't be doing that much wrong.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gr...
But this is off topic I suppose, not about
I think MS is just a popular punching bag out of habit, as this whole post demonstrates. I hardly ever comment, but still had to offer my 2c to this one.
> the very last piece of the technology business that Microsoft dominates
A business doesn't have to dominate a market to do well. That's a very recent perception, caused by the monster successes of Apple, Google, Facebook, etc - each dominating a particular market (or two), but not doing amazingly well in others. Microsoft is a different business to those, in that they have fingers in lots of pies. They can afford to be struggling in some markets. MS isn't just
Exchange Server
Sharepoint
SQL Server
MS Office / Office 365
IIS / Azure
Visual Studio
Windows Mobile (as a phone/tablet product)
Windows Phone (modest uptake but at least it's competition)
MS Hardware - keyboards, mice, game controllers, etc.
XBox
That's not a complete list, and then there's MS Research division. I don't think one can compare Microsoft to many other companies, except of course Apple and Google, who also diversify a great deal. You can compare open source products like *nix, Eclipse, etc. to *specific MS products* but to say MS as a whole is in trouble because of individual examples of market share is, I think, illogical. MS is a huge beast and has a lot of talent. They need to be more agile, but that can be done. We will see with the new leadership.
What I do is use the UAControl addon for Firefox, which lets you specify a browser User Agent string on a per-site basis. This lets me tell Google that I'm actually using an old, outdated version on Firefox, and tada, Google always gives me the older, "simpler" version of their search results, which I find much much easier to use.
https://addons.mozilla.org/En-...
Settings:
Site: www.google.com
UA string: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.1
Search now looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/Yo3neuU.png
Nice and simple, the way it used to be.
Note the lack of ads - just use the AdBlock Plus addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en/...
> Is it just me or is Orbital Sciences' track record extremely poor?
I guess it's both of you then.
> Our leader removed the minister for science!
The U.S. doesn't have a secretary for science either. Some countries do, others don't.
> He has reduced funding for our science organization [sic]* CSIRO
organiSation - Australian spelling. Yes this is very unfortunate, as are the ABC funding cuts. Hopefully it's a temporary situation - force an organisation to re-think priorities, then later review. It's an "easy" (for government) way of forcing an organisation to cut things it doesn't really feel are necessary - forcing it to "re-focus". Very clumsy and "blunt instrument" way of doing it (as opposed to an actual independent review) but that's government for you.
> condemned renewable energy
He's said a lot of stupid things, but happily Abbott has now rejected cutting the renewable energy target.
> promoted coal
Because other countries buy it. One can't really tell a country not to market their natural resources.
> destroyed our manufacturing sector
That happened a long time ago, not caused by the current government.
> and is pushing to make university only for the rich.
Not intentionally, but "deregulation" is what the Liberal Party has always been about, like the Republicans in the U.S. People should know that and vote accordingly. You can't blame a party for being what it is. Deregulation should be expected from them, it's not Abbott in particular.
However, Abbott lied through his teeth about all their policies prior to the election, and that you *can* blame a party for. There should be a law to invalidate an election when that happens - how can you have voting and Democracy when politicians do the complete opposite to everything they said up to the election? That's the *real* crime here. If they had been honest and up front about everything before the election, they would not have gotten in at all. That shouldn't be too much to expect in a modern country.
> I just graduated with a degree in chemical and biological engineering
May I ask what country you studied in? In the U.S (and now soon in Australia) it is very hard to just "go back to school", if not impossible for many people, purely from a financial point of view. For many people, in terms of study & changing careers, there are only 1 or 2 chances.
>
Really? I'm still using my Galaxy S2 and *very* happy with it. Rooted, firewall, no ads, plays games, GPS. I can even call people. Why would I want to upgrade? Once my contract was over, I got another contract just to have a backup phone - Galaxy S3. I use it chiefly as a TV / multimedia remote in the lounge room. It doesn't even have a SIM card, that's how content I am with my S2 as a phone.
Admittedly 4G would be a bit nicer than 3G but I don't surf on the phone so who cares. It does everything I need. Oh and taking photos? WFT do you want to use a phone for taking photos? I have a little Canon S200 that shits all over any phone camera because.. well, it's a camera, that's what it's for.
That's a lot of stuff to say without backing any of it up with references. I'll take that rant as your personal opinion and move on. If you want people to take a post full of claims like that seriously, provide links to support them.
Lucky I'm on XP and don't have to worry. It's been 100% stable for months now.
Hooray for the Job Creators!
> They drill this into us all the time in martial arts. When fighting, you don't have time to sit and think about your next move, it just has to come naturally, like some kind of instinct.
You're talking about "reflex", not "muscle memory". I've done martial arts too, and found the problem with this approach is that, if someone has very reflexive, "automatic" defensive moves, it's very easy for an attacker to take advantage of that by baulking. Making the defender expect an attack in one place, then attacking somewhere else instead. Reflexes don't deal with that very well.
Drugs are made more dangerous by being illegal
Not really, it depends what you mean by "illegal". Bear with me... Personally think illegality sends a good signal for kids - drugs are bad, m'key? - but the *punishment* is the question. Allowing police to arrest a user means these things:
1. For young people, parents get to know what their child is doing
2. Police can get the name of the *dealer* from the user
3. The user can be placed in mandatory rehab as "punishment".
4. If rehab isn't necessary, then the only punishment is a small fine.
User gets a slap on the wrist (or rehab) but police get the info they need. What's wrong with that?
If it's not illegal, it makes finding the dealers more difficult for police. PLUS - and I think this is the worst aspect of making them legal - drugs suddenly become a *legitimate business*. And we all know how ethically business behaves once they can deal in an addictive product.
I find an easy solution is to make sure those sorts of emails all go to a single internal address which is then forwarded to *2 or 3 other people*. That way the IT manager gets it, the individual responsible for actually doing it gets it, and someone else as a backup.
This reminds everyone how important it is, and people communicate to make sure it happens. The manager or backup person gets it and goes "ah, that guy isn't here anymore, we'd better sort that out".
Firefox *really* needs forking to follow the original vision.
Already attempted. Try PaleMoon. http://www.palemoon.org/
Immunity is a collective endeavor. You're undermining it.
If you're responding to an American, it seems they're becoming less and less interested in "collective endeavours". I'm just waiting for someone to start calling mandatory immunisation "Socialism". The U.S. seems to have an enormous and growing number of people with an innate mistrust of science. Very different from the past, and very weird for a country who (briefly, it seems) became the technological powerhouse of the world.
The optimum committee has no members. -- Norman Augustine
