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Comment Re:Oh please (Score 1) 287

I believe the car is holding back SO MUCH stuff that folks using a smartphone is their only recourse.

The PC industry was based around a "screwup" on IBM's part - it opened the PC architecture. They tried to correct it (remember the PS/2 and OS/2 and the proprietary microchannel architecture?)

The rise of windows was based on this open architecture. Microsoft pushed to have PCs become a commodity so windows sales would be strong. (Read up on substitutes and complements - if peanut butter prices go down, jelly sales will rise).

I believe if the car manufacturers opened up their cars like the IBM PC and it's bus, put in *simple* plug-in slots or something similar for computer hardware, all kinds of crazy and useful stuff would come to your car. Imagine if you (not an installer) could change or add to your car stereo like plugging in a graphics card or sound card? (probably would work better like a rack - think smaller 19" rack mounting for audio equipment, except with standard interfaces in the back)

Comment Re:Failed CEO and Gubernatorial Candidate (Score 1) 553

Uh, no. Fiorina ran for US Senate. You're thinking of Meg Whitman, who tried to click "Buy It Now" on the California Governorship ($150 million campaign). But your confusion is understandable, since they're both from the tech sector, and they both spout buzzword-bingo gibberish.

Whitman lost to Jerry Brown, BTW, thus earning Brown the singular distinction of having to clean up the mess left by a B-grade movie actor twice.

Comment Re:How I manage these calls (Score 3, Insightful) 227

Sounds like my algorithm.

Very very occasionally, if the description sounds interesting, I'll paste the description/requirements into Google. Most of these spamming third-party recruiters just copy-paste from public job postings, so Google can usually find the original posting on the employer's Web site.

Comment Re:Still Waiting for The Other Shoe (Score 1) 322

They've clarified this many times.

No, they haven't. All the "clarifications" I can find are simply regurgitations of the same ambiguous phrasing.

When you realize that Microsoft have been openly discussing a subscription-based version of Windows, then the phrase, "Free for the first year," takes on an entirely different meaning, now doesn't it? Microsoft has not clarified this, even to discredit it.

And even if MS isn't planning on a subscription-based flavor of Windows, they still have been abundantly less than clear exactly which version of Windows 10 you'll be receiving for free. Will it be a kind-for-kind trade (Home version for Home version, "Pro" version for "Pro" version, etc.), or will everyone get the lowest tier SKU available, probably with Bing plastered everywhere?

It would be nice if I were wrong about this. But Microsoft's history demands that I be very suspicious of Gateses bearing gifts.

Comment Still Waiting for The Other Shoe (Score 0) 322

A few week ago we heard that upgrades from Win7 and Win8 to Windows 10 would be "free for the first year," a deliberately ambiguous phrasing that they have yet to clarify. Now they're offering "free" Win10 upgrades from unsanctioned copies of Win[78] as well.

All of which makes me deeply suspicious of what this "free" version of Windows actually is. We clearly haven't been told the whole story yet.

Comment The 3DO Deal that Never Happened (Score 1) 153

It was never widely known that Sega of Japan was, for a time, negotiating to merge with/acquire The 3DO Company. Unfortunately, best available information suggests that Trip Hawkins, 3DO's chairman and CEO, wanted too much, and the deal fell through.

As it happens, about three years ago I started doing an irregular series of Let's Play/Drown Out videos on YouTube with my colleage, GammaDev. Both of us are former employees of 3DO, and we covered The Deal that Never Happened in a video about two years ago (seek to 25:12).

Comment Re: Lenovo (Score 2) 144

That's a nice concept as far as it goes, but at some point you're still dependent on hardware-specific drivers from Lenovo. As of this writing, you can pick up device drivers piecemeal. But once they get it into their tiny little brains to create a single "Universal Installer" that bundles all the necessary drivers with all the unnecessary, unwanted bloatware and spyware, you're back in the same leaky boat.

Frankly, I'm having a hard time seeing how Lenovo recovers from this.

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