The hardware in Apple stuff doesn't trap anything that doesn't have RIAA/MPAA shackles on it (DRM), and a lot of it doesn't anymore. Just take your files and play them on anything that plays standards compliant MPEG4/H.264/AAC media.

It's really hard to have an intelligent exchange just about anywhere, and you're becoming a poster child as to why.

Ever hear of "embrace, extend, extinguish"? Microsoft built in browser incompatibilities with an object tag for ActiveX to make sure Netscape and Opera performed poorly (Opera sued for that), MSN.com even served a different CSS to Opera visitors to make it look broken, for a while, you saw a blank screen on msn.com unless your user-agent string said MSIE, they extended and broke CSS favoring their own -ms- property extensions, they broke Java in browsers with J/Direct, they created Java development tools that stripped away all the cross platform intentions of Java (Sun sued for that), they planned to extinguish the HTML standard with their own free browser to "cut off Netscape's air supply" (Paul Maritz revealed this in a meeting with Intel), they extended and broke Kerberos to lock out other platforms from Windows 2000, they embraced and extended the AOL IM protocol to make AOL's own IM software stop working, they made a mess out of ISO-9660 with their Joliet extension (so you only see the 8.3 names in other platforms), they told Intel to withdraw VDI and threatened PC makers if they implemented it (look up Steven McGeady's testimony), Bill Gates told Andy Grove to shut down the Intel Architecture Labs driving CPU level Internet technologies without Microsoft's permission, Intel had to kill NSP, kill Java support, stop support for Netscape - all part of their illegal restrictive licensing agreements with OEMs to favor Microsoft and harm everything else, they signed up OEMs for a rebate on installing Windows on PCs in exchange for a fee they had to pay for any PC they sold without Windows, effectively making a PC without bundling Windows more expensive for the OEM to make (anti-competitive and illegal), Microsoft threatened Apple unless they abandoned the ability of QuickTime to play multimedia content on computers (they refused and Microsoft sabotaged QuickTime's functionality on Windows with misleading error messages and technical changes or bugs so that QuickTime software sometimes didn't work properly on Windows), they stuffed an ISO standards body to make OOXML (a compendium of Microsoft proprietary undefined digital glop) a "standard" which only they controlled (instead of the truly available ODF standard), Microsoft had fully developed FUD as a marketing strategy (announcing nonexistent products to head off something a competitor actually made or claiming competitive software will crash Windows), If you’ve bought a new PC lately, it probably came equipped with something called “Secure Boot” (UEFI), a feature which prevents you from running anything but Windows on the PC...

These people aren't very nice, relying on a mix of brilliant marketing, threats against OEMs (Microsoft thought they owned any PC right down to the metal), failings of competitors, vaporware and fraudulent illusions. Sure, Netscape had problems and so did Microsoft. They earned their success with their best office productivity software, but their biggest success came from bending everyone over and fucking them, including the customers. Good competition could have been here a lot sooner.

Jesus fucking Christ yourself, buddy. Apple, Google and Facebook was disruptive to Microsoft and only had a choice to face an uphill battle against it or partner with it. There were innovators and practically every one of them had to battle Microsoft in one way or another. Hell, Microsoft even viewed newspapers and television as competition. I'm an IT guy too with the difference that I also saw the strengths of things NOT Microsoft.

It's pretty well documented that Microsoft leveraged three things because of their popularity; (1) strong armed business partners into doing whatever Microsoft wanted under threat of getting thrown off the gravy train, (2) tied their software together so, to the end user, it appeared everything would fall down if anything non-Microsoft was introduced to the system and (3) was actively replicating functions other innovators were coming up with and releasing it en-masse to be Windows only, suppressing many innovators, large and small.

At some point, the "popularity" of Microsoft shifted from having desirable products to "people" being fearful of exiting their ecosystem. By "people", I mean people who didn't know any different. Microsoft products were getting very shoddy and expensive, and they didn't care. I can't tell you how many eye rolls I've spent on board meetings where mentioning something that didn't come from Microsoft sent them scurrying in terror. They all thought email was Outlooking, the Internet was the Big Blue E and the only possible computer to buy was anything Windows because they needed to print Word documents. The real innovations were happening elsewhere and it took 10 years before the frustration of being stuck in Microsoft world came to the surface.

Ha... I said "surface".

Oh.. that 5 year span when NOTHING improved on IE? That piece of time between the death of Netscape and the advent of tabbed browsing (and RSS feeds) on Firefox? The lack of innovation certainly WAS Microsoft's fault. Not only that, it was their plan - eliminate everything else so they didn't have to spend money on competition.

People used IE in the early 2000s because it came with the computer. Microsoft had won the desktop wars and with it, everything else. The era of being cross platform was gone. Everyone clicked the Big Blue E to get on the Internet and nobody was going to PAY for Netscape. IE was the logical choice as most people thought Microsoft was the only source for computer software. Under threat of never seeing your precious Word and Excel documents again, they were right.

The ability to stifle innovation (including their own) came from two things; Microsoft Server Extensions and tolerance to really bad code, both of which were a good thing in a way. The big problem with Netscape at the time is they were trying really hard to be W3C standards compliant and, except for the addition of Java to Netscape, things moved very slowly. Microsoft grew impatient with the W3C and leapt out way ahead with Server Extensions, those little addons which made the browser much more like a client-server relationship instead of the stateless relationship originally intended with browsers. Front Page made it easy to activate complex tasks by moving the heavy lifting to the server and calling it with a simple trigger in HTML.

Of course, Server Extensions brought many new capabilities never before seen on a browser, something the W3C couldn't keep up with and it was never Microsoft's intention to standardize them (as in go through a standards committee to define and publish the technology). The problem was that all these sites were "IE Only". Microsoft was VERY close to ensuring anyone not using a totally Microsoft technology chain on the Internet saw a blank screen. In other words, they nearly owned the Internet.

IE's tolerance for bad coding was good for IE users as it rendered pages with broken code pretty well. Microsoft handed out a lot of free copies of Front Page to create this broken code which would render with unexpected results on other browsers. Front Page (and plain bad hand coding) made anything other than IE look illiterate. That's the price of sitting around on your hands. Microsoft was there to take it all away in a long series of brilliant chess moves... and then everything went thud for a while.

It actually functioned rather well when it was novel, but nothing moved in terms of real technical advances unless Microsoft was threatened by some shred of competition which was quickly squashed. The next software patch would allow IE to do the same thing for free but for Windows only. Otherwise, Microsoft pretty much sat on their asses and took their sweet old time releasing anything new. Innovation was dead as long as nobody dared try to use anything else.

I'll try that one - the ruling forced Microsoft to survive on the merits of their products rather than strong arm tactics to force business partners to submit to their wishes. No innovation allowed that would circumvent their leverage of Office into every other aspect of business computing.

There was lots of innovation going on and lots of excitement about what could be done with a microcomputer. Microsoft uniquely understood the power of cross platform capabilities (that's exactly where they started - porting software to the myriad platforms out there). When they suddenly realized they had created their own platform, everything shifted to protecting it. They would "partner" with countless software companies like the old days, modify the product to be Microsoft only, release it to the masses stripping away any cross platform capability and made the original technology irrelevant.

That was the death of any threats against Microsoft for several years.

Hehe... You said "surface"

"China's state-run media, which dubbed the plane Air Force One..."
HEY, just a minute there...

China practically invented the category of Gov't spyware in electronics. Be careful what you say in front of your Chinese made toaster.

That's what I was thinking. Many of the posts are trying to tell me that I'm stupid because I just want something to work for a change.

Interesting. I've got a friend with a Droid who uses the turn by turn for driving and it'll tell her to "turn around" "turn left" or do something else bizarre while sitting at a traffic light. She's ready to throw it out the window.

They have their own version of AOL now.

Haven't tried using multiple fingers on a MBP, Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad yet?

errata: I said DC is 10 square miles. That's incorrect. It's actually a square 10 miles on a side, a large chunk of which was eventually returned to Virginia long ago. DC is 68.3 square miles which makes it 0.00179% of the US land area.

Here... let me help you with the speculation:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8502957/smaller-risk-of-getting-shot-in-australia

There are no references in the article to substantiate their claim of being 15x more likely to get shot in the US than Australia, but seeing as they "made a sharp turn away from the gun culture in 1996", Australia must have been a mighty rough place at one time. It's still almost a rounding error away from the claimed US "getting shot" per capita rate today.

You know, nobody is happy with any of this. Who has the lowest crime rate anywhere? Switzerland.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/why-switzerland-has-the-lowest-crime-rate-in-the-world.html

Mexico has a high rate of deaths by gunfire, higher than the US, even though all guns are illegal in Mexico. Banning guns nationally isn't really working out for them.

It appears that armed citizens have a higher survival rate than disarmed citizens left as victims to those who follow no laws. Singapore has a low crime rate due to their system of immediate corporal punishment for offenses which Americans would receive a parole sentence. Anyone who opens fire during a crime and is caught is quickly tried and executed in Singapore. Same goes for narcotics offenders. That doesn't happen in the US, so here we are with gun toting criminals on the street in some places.

Bottom line is I agree with the dangers of getting shot in the US, but more than half of the death rate by gunfire is people shooting themselves in the head. The other consideration is regional if you're filtering by intentional homicide. The largest danger comes from a small sliver of regions and subcultures within the US. If you walk into a narcotics driven badland, you're more likely to be harmed.

Here's a "List of countries by intentional homicide rate": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homicide_rate

Murder Capital of the US is the DIstrict of Columbia. It's just 10 square miles of the US (out of 3.79 million) and practically all of the deaths are narcotics related. I've lived right outside of DC for 35 years and work in DC. Know it well. I've never heard gunfire. Must be because the crack houses are the old solid masonry row houses. So, 0.000264% of the US is the most dangerous. Next is Puerto Rico (3435 square miles or 0.00214% of the US) and below that is Louisiana. Most of the crime in Louisiana is centered on four cities. I won't speculate here why their crime rate is high because... hmmm... I can't even say that. Those three areas of the US, one of which isn't even on the mainland, make up for a huge chunk of the overall statistic leaving the rest of the US relatively safe - except for a few areas rife with narcotics traffic. The Northern Territory of Australia is worse than about half of the US. Even New Jersey is safer than the Northern Territory.

Ok, enough.

Gawd, talk about bending facts around!

Population of Australia as of 23 July 2012 at 01:47:58 PM (Canberra time): 22,678,733
Population of USA as of 23 July 2012 at 11:48:59 PM EST: 314,004,363

Seeing as there are 13.845 time as many capitas in the US as there are in Australia, it seems it's MORE likely to be shot (per capita) in Australia than the US.

Thanks for playing. Please try again.