That used to be the case, but it isn't in an age where the product is the end user.

So the headline should read:
Company selling pointless games running on a platform wholly based around the idea of transient crowd whims faces long-term strategic challenges.

I think the appropriate quip is "News at 11".

What kept you from using a tablet (wacom-style tablets) before? I've been paperless for ages, and there's no credit for the Surface Pro there.

What kept me from using a wacom style tablet before? Well, being able to carry a single device and jot on it in the same way as one would a real clipboard and paper is not possible if you're carrying multiple devices with cables between them. With surface pro, you literally walk around taking notes, snapping photos recording conversations or jotting quick pieces of information as you go, with a device that can do what a real piece of paper can as well all the other cool stuff a laptop can.

If you've managed to be paperless using a wacom style tablet, then congratulations on being able to, but your job differs from the majority of normal peoples' jobs.

Device, and OS. Actually, how can note-taking be "the best in the planet" when (a) note taking is extremely simple to do right (b) OS and device support is so aweful (c) shareware? REALLY?

Modern note taking is a technically non-trivial task, especially when you consider that OneNote consolidates free inking functionality, text note taking with a keyboard, importing content from Internet, embedding audio and video notes and makes it all nicely polished. If notepad.exe suffices for your needs, then fine, but I believe I pre-empted the "my use case is simple therefore anything more complex is wrong" argument in my previous post.

Sure, because word now has better formatting and backwards/forwards compatibility than latex had 2 decades ago.

Latex isn't even analogous to a word processor. Do you have any connection to the real work that real people do? Or are you one of those BOFH types who revels in wielding petty power from the dungeon of an office building, only emerging to unjam a printer somewhere?

The fact the businesses use it and that it's here to stay don't make it a good product. That's just good marketing.
MSO is incredibly immature, and extremely hard to use.

You say MSO is hard to use after considering Latex to be an alternative product? You're living on bizarro world. Thankfully, I don't live there, which is why we disagree.

And the winner is...

"Microsoft completely ripped-off the display and windowing stack of NeXT/OSX, with their weird XML in place of PostScript/PDF."

Ripping off a product that would not exist for another 20 years is an incredible feat. Give them some credit.

- The XBox line isn't exactly a sidelined product.
- Surface Pro is loved by those who use it, and many (including me) think it is a product whose time is only just arriving. It is the closest we've come yet to being able to go truly paperless, especially as a student.
- OneNote is the best note-taking app on the planet, the only limitation being it's lack of broad device support.
- Office 365 with documents stored on Skydrive ROCKS. It is like GDocs, except with more features and not totally sucking. Full real time collaborative edits would be nice, but I'll take the ability to work on and generate .docx / .xlsx files without munging them up any day*.

Let's also not forget that even after decades, Excel and Word are light years ahead of anything else that has attempted to challenge them. Sure, I have issues with some of their moves (I'm looking at you, Metro!), but I can't say, as a mature objective person, they anything they've done has totally ballsed things up to the point that I have to go running into the decrepit arms of OpenOffice.

Oh, and before you go off yelling "OMG shillz0r!!" I would like to point out that I have been around here a long, long time. I've earned my stripes. I use Linux daily, admin several servers, have a homebrew NAS running FreeBSD and did my share of M$ bashing. However, berating them as though their products aren't worth anything is just immature. Grow up.

Also, don't be coughing up the old argument "$other product is better than Microsoft's offering because my personal use case fits into its feature set!"

* And yes, the OOXML format is here to stay. It's what the vast majority of businesses use, so get used to it. It'd be nice if ODF was the standard, but then again, try creating ODF files in OpenOffice, editing them in AbiWord and back again a few times. ODF is no better at providing word processor agnosticism than is OOXML, and has the detraction that all the ODF word processors suck royally.

$competitor watches users flock to Google, who are making money by gathering piles of data on those users allowing them to more effectively monetize their user base. $competitor follows suit.

News at 11.

Out of interest, how to deleted coins get replaced into circulation? If there is a finite supply of BitCoin, and a slow de-circulation due to loss upon deletion, how does that get fixed?

In the real world, the government has statisticians who work out the approximate total loss due to destruction and re-mint coin to replace it. How would that work in the BTC world?

Never underestimate the subversive power of blue socks. Empires were felled with them. Brutus was wearing a pair when he heard the words "Et tu?".

Whistleblower: The government is watching you. The wealthy elite are enslaving you. The politicians are oppressing you. These facts are obvious, and I have proof.
Public: Meh.

"he turned himself into the police"

I just changed my view of this trial. No Mighty Morphing Power Ranger could ever be guilty of cold-blooded murder.

HUMA

This is the real issue. Sysadmins tend to have hyper inflated views of their own roles. Many believe they are the only reason that the company exists, and have utter disdain for everyone else around them. Their "if it weren't for me you'd not have a job" attitude is what leads them to have the spoiled, bratty, entitlement attitude that they have.

Dennis Nedry's character has more than a little resemblance to the usual state of affairs in real life. Fat, lazy, obnoxious and totally convinced of their own indispensability.

Oh, and I know all this because I am a sysadmin. Now stop reading Slashdot before I revoke all your Internet privileges.

WINDOW POWER!

This is myopic, and I bet you are not a parent. In fact I bet you're probably still a kid, with that attitude.

It is not a new trend that companies make it easy to spend huge amounts of money before a parent knows what's going on. Buying a kid a toy used to be a safe bet, the purchase of the item was the sum total of the toy's price. Nowadays, every device has a built in app-store or similar functionality and a credit card is required to even make the device function (why does Apple require a credit card to download free apps or update apps that you've already paid for?!).

Expecting parents to be looking over the shoulder of their kids, who are still too young to have developed the ability to fully comprehend the consequences of spending 50c every few minutes over the span of a month, is unreasonable, and companies that engage in predatory sales in this manner should not be given a free pass on the back of the "well parents should be looking after their kids" argument.

I owned and ran a cell phone shop for 10 years, and one of the most frequent complaints was parents giving a "safety phone" to their kids at age 15 only to rack up huge bills on premium ringtone services. Sure, those kids should probably have been on prepaid, but that does not clear the companies charging $5 per ringtone, and then auto subscribing the number to a $5/day new ringtone service of responsibility. Yes, this happened, just like I'm describing it.

Companies feeding on the impulsiveness of children should be strung up and flogged. So should Apple, for making it a requirement that a credit card be entered into the phone at all times.

Stop being level-headed. You're ruining the opportunity for rich people to declare war on something.