The vendor is a different party. Hence you cannot buy a "HP" or "Sony" or "Samsung" or "Asus" computer without Windows on it.
Wait, what? Every single last vendor you mentioned there sells devices that run OS's which are competitors to Windows. All of those vendors sells devices with Android, some sell Chromebooks, and some even sells computers with Linux.
Most people do not. Keep trolling for Microsoft.
Really? How many people do you know (who don't read Slashdot) go shopping for Cellular service without also purchasing a phone from the Cellular provider at the same time? How many people do you know expect an ISP to provide a modem when they order 'internet' service. I would love to make it illegal to prevent the same companies from providing both the service and the device to access the service, but that never flies. When something goes both the device manufacturer and the service provider will blame the other one for why your experience isn't working.
I'm aware that there are no technical limitations preventing swapping out hardware to interface with different services, but that's not what the voting public wants.
You mean we can't have a check-box on the PC vendor's web page where we configure our device, which lists several operating systems?
You can. But people will freak out when that checkbox would say "Linux + $80". They would think "But Linux is free". While it is a free OS, the OEM wouldn't get subsidies from bloatware providers which help subsidies the cost of the computer.
If Google decides to discontinue all Google services in Germany as a result, would that really be a "win" for the German consumer?
It can be, if German consumers are left with options that do conform to the law.
But do they make their money back though ads and forcing users to use Google Search and Google email, etc.. Or do they make money licencing their OS?
They actually pay vendors to put Android on devices, because of the increased revenue they get from active Android users.
A law that forbids selling hardware and software together would increase innovation. Consumers would only be able to buy hardware and software separately. That way, hardware vendors are encouraged to document the hardware and software vendors will compete on quality. Installation procedures would become very easy very quickly due to market pressure.
Normal people don't like that though. Let's say that you try and sell product A to somebody that requires product B to function. This person has neither used nor ever had interest in A or B. Most people aren't interested in one or the other. Normal people want an A+B product where somebody else has worked out all of the compatibility problems.
I'm honestly surprised that scientists arn't yet being marched into concentration camps at gunpoint.
We're planning that for this weekend.
Two reasons not to do that. First, "2." in at least some of those is a floating-point 2, so "i = 2." by itself would be ambiguous: does this assign an integer 2 and end the statement, or assign a floating-point 2. (and writing 2.0 doesn't really clarify, but rather raises the question of whether the 0 starts another statement). Second, all the old COBOL programmers who escaped that ecosystem would have something like anti-LSD-style flashbacks, and that can be dangerous.
That's still workable. A period followed by an end of line, or whitespace is the end of statement. A period that's between two numbers is a floating point number. A period surrounded by non-numbers and non-whitespace is a compilation error. I realize that the ship might have sailed as far as this is concerned, but if done originally I think it would have helped a lot of people ramp up on how to code.
It's not a quirk if pretty much every fukin language does it.
Yes, but if you're learning your first programming language you wonder why the end of statement character differs from the same one that you use when writing.
That pesky ";" statement terminator... I guess you had to uses something, but it causes me the most trouble..
C, C++, Pascal, Perl, Java, C#, bash/sh, ksh, JavaScript..... The list goes on..
They should have used the '.' character to end a statement. It's the same one used in written language.
My wife doesn't want to switch our ISP because her main e-mail address uses that at the domain name, and maybe a thousand friends, business contacts, and acquaintances have it as her contact info.
I've switched ISP's and my old ISP still keeps alive the email address they created for me. I don't use it for much, but it's quite possible it would be more effort for the ISP to disable the mailbox than it is for them to keep it running.
Besides, lots of people have 'connected' accounts via Facebook, gmail, or a Microsoft Account. For all of those you change your primary address, and the email address for you changes on all of your contacts.
Did he also decide to produce the Hex output that is entirely useless and without merit? I understand that's for debugging purposes, but who decided that was a good idea to leave in for a consumer-level OS? Seriously.
How is it a bad idea to present the information in a consumer-level OS? What would be better, not showing information?
Why are we modding up "I don't understand conservation of energy"? The only kinetic energy weapon that could sort of replace nuclear bombs would be bombardment with large asteroids, which no one currently has the capability to do and if they did would take ages to arrive. The kinetic rods would make great orbital armor or bunker piercing weapons, but there's no way they'll replace nuclear weapons.
I think it is getting modded up because they're an option now. 50 years ago certain targets were only really attainable via nuclear strikes. But now we have some really strong conventional weapons that don't replace a nuclear weapon in absolute magnitude, but they are strong enough to take out the target, and not leave you with the ethical dilemma of using a nuclear weapon.
Putin can and will rattle his Nuclear saber but he won't use it until the utmost end of need so at the moment those are empty threats.
[Citation Needed]
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.
