What Microsoft needs are companies to keep buying CALs yearly. The OEMs are just a drop in the bucket as most corporate laptops will have the corporate image dumped onto them as soon as they arrive. OEMs are mainly there to try to prevent home users from switching to other OSs by being able to buy a laptop without an OS on it (large corporate purchases can be made without buying Windows licenses). MS has largely stopped giving a shit about enforcing licensing for home users. I recently went looking for the Win10 key I bought 5 odd years ago and couldn't find it only to realise that I never actually used it so I never downloaded it from the CD key site I bought it from and that was entirely due to the fact at no point did it ever ask for a key in the entire time I was using the OS.

Microsoft has one trick to keep companies buying CALs and that is Office 365, without using the native programs which only run on Windows, it's an unusable mess.

The main reason I've given up on GOG, which is to say I rarely buy anything from them any more is because their marketing emails stopped listing prices, instead going with the ambiguous "XX% off" which doesn't actually tell me what the price is, it's telling me what it isn't and I know it's designed to get more clickthroughs but it really has the opposite effect on me and I've unsubscribed from their mailing list.

Sadly this kind of behaviour has become all too common these days... FFS, if you want to sell me something, start by telling me how much it is otherwise I'm just going to ignore it.

I personally couldn't give a crap about friends lists... I'm a Linux user, I don't keep a lot of friends anyway.

To me GoG Galaxy it serves two purposes, 1 for games that are too large to be downloaded easily such as Cyberpunk 2077 which has about 50 parts to download and for games that get updated regularly. Aside from that it's a convenient launcher.

And if they somehow manage to do something bad enough to get fired from a force that has some semblance of integrity, there's dozens of other forces who'll turn a blind eye to it just to get a trained body in the door, even the worst of the worst of the most corrupt, laziest cops can get a job at Bumfuck County Sheriffs Department because no-one wants to live in Bumfuck, Nebroma. Cops that get fired from the LAPD for egregious racism (to the point where they can't ignore it any more), they all flee to places like the Idaho panhandle.

You didn't read my post... you just made up what you wanted to hear and answered that. It's not an argument against choice... it's a prediction that it will inevitably fail. People don't want to take a 23 hour flight. There is simply a limit to endurance there. Hell, here in the UK you've got loads of people who refuse to fly more than 2 hours. There's just not enough people willing to suffer that much to make this program commercially viable.. that means they'll have custom planes that are unprofitable on any route... which means QANTAS will have it's hands out yet again for government money (after doing all they can to kill competition in the Australian domestic market). If anything, you're arguing against choice as we'll have to force people to take flights they don't want to take in order for this not to fail. First to fall will be the PER-LHR flights as you're flying from nowhere to somewhere (Perth to London if you're too lazy to google an IATA code), the only reason you'd take this flight is if you're going from Perth on to another city. Perth is literally on the arse end of nowhere.

they may not have the right... but a somnambulant population will let it happen, the "dont tread on me" types will happily let the "right" government walk all over them and worse, many will even attack those that resist.

I mean just a few articles down there's one describing how the FCC is being used to censor media... where are the "I need mah gurns to protect me from the gubbermint" types now... now is your time to shine... instead you're making excuses because you like who it's currently targetting and are too thick and short sighted to see how it will be turned against you next.

Turns out as long as you let them do the odd school shooting every few weeks, they're quite happy with an oppressive government.

This reminds me of the plans BA looked at to run the Concorde to Australia. It never made it passed the planning stage as it would take six fuelling stops, only save a few hours at best due to the refuelling stops and would cost several times the cost of a ticket at 1970s prices (which were considerable... especially for 1970)

Yep, this is nothing but an advertisement for a third rate airline offering a flight no-one wants.

Why would you pay a premium... and I mean a premium over far better carriers like Singapore Airlines to take a longer flight with no break? I regularly fly from the UK to Australia to see family (once or twice a year) and realistically the 12-14 hour leg between Singapore and London is enough, especially in economy... even economy on a Singapore Airlines A380. Having an hour or two in Singapore where you can get a proper meal, use a proper toilet and properly stretch your legs (on a nice, static, non moving floor) is a godsend on a flight that takes 20-26 hours depending on which Australian city you're flying to.

Even if I were to fly QF again after the 2011 stranding of passengers to shaft employees... I'd have to have rocks in my head to pay more to fly for 23 hours with no break (estimated time from LHR-SYD) over flying Singapore where the stopover will at worse make it 26 hours. Hell, last time I flew to Oz I opted for the longer stopover and got a hotel in Singapore for the night which made a hell of a difference to how I felt when arriving back in London.

What should be noted, this is not a revenue flight, it's a test flight so it's not breaking any actual records. When this does start a revenue service the first thing it'll do is cannibalise the passengers on the current PER-LHR long haul flight as people who don't already fly QANTAS aren't going to be daft enough to take a less desirable flight for more money. So they'll be forced to kill that route to keep the LHR-MEL/SYD routes going which still won't be profitable so they'll be forced to cut those down. They can send the 787 Squeezeliners they use on the LHR-PER route to have the cabins refitted for regular routes but the A350s they've bought for this will be more expensive to run on regular routes even if they shove the maximum number of permissible seats onto them leaving them with planes that are unprofitable.... wouldn't be the first time and yep, they'll have their hands out to the Australian government again to pay for it.

I never would have guessed the British Royal Family posted on /.

Shout out to King Chuck the Wingnut.

The problem the Telegraph is facing is that their bullshit isn't working any more. Bullshit is like a drug, not just in the fact it addles the brain but also in the fact that as you're exposed to it you build up resistance to it, much like the smack addict who needs more and increasingly powerful hits of heroin to get the same high, those who live off of the bullshit of sources like the Tele are resistant to the kind of BS it used to print, so they need even more powerful BS to get the same impotent rage.

Much like heroin, make it too strong and you'll flat out kill any new users, so you're not going to get new customers. This is the problem facing much of the right wing media. If they tone it down to get a wider base of readers/viewers they'll lose their hardcore audience to other dealers who serve up pure, grade A, uncut black-tar bullshit and if they don't they'll slowly bleed that audience off without anyone replacing them.

This article is just the US (on /.) is just the cognitive dissonance of American Exceptionalism dealing with the fact things have well and truly gone to shit there. You can't deny it any more with secret police shooting people in the street, disappearing people for allegedly being migrants, the president literally trying to cancel anyone he doesnâ(TM)t like (Conan Obrien, changing FCC licences to 30 days, et al.) not to mention practically running the country by fiat (issuing presidential orders like edicts with a tame court refusing to stop him). So in order to reconcile this fact with the notion that 'Murica Uber Alles, they create a huge fantasy that everywhere else must be worse.

Yep, the old social contract of your employer taking care of you in exchange for years of continued service was broken before I was even born. They created a world of fear where mercenary attitudes rule and are now surprised that people are acting like mercenaries. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Your employer will not hesitate to throw you under the bus for a minor bump on the quarterly P&L sheet... You owe them nothing and realistically, if you get a chance to get ahead at their expense you've got to be stupid not to take it. Welcome to a world where the only one who will look out for you is you. Altruism is well and truly dead.

It's not even as complex as that... Apple are paying Ford to foist this on their customers.

There's a couple of huge differences between PC and Playstation... the first and foremost that any console is a monopoly, everything you do on a Playstation, everything you're allowed to own is done via Sony and entirely under Sony's good graces. Sony says "No" and you're screwed. PC isn't a monopoly, even with Steam being the 362.87 KG gorilla in the room they are not the only game in town. Sure they're one of the best which is what keeps them the top dog but you've options for days (GOG may not be a 362.87 KG Gorilla, but it definitely is a weighty Orangutang in it's own right).

The second thing is, Steam and Gog are making money without shafting their customers so they have no need to.

The third difference is, both GOG and Valve are entirely private corporations. No shareholders to please means no drive for constant increases in profit which means there's no need to make customers suffer just to make the quarterly balance sheet a tiny bit larger.

Also as a side note, you can download the offline installers from GOG and Valve's Gabe Newell has said they have a contingency in place in case they ever have to shut down Steam.

Of course the long term solution for every platform is for sales and ownership laws to be updated to stop this "we're calling it owned, but you're really just renting because we can change the terms whenever we like". This is unlikely to occur in the US until it's forced to by the rest of the world.

Whoa, whoa, whoa there Tiger... Firstly you're suggesting people live within their means... are you some kind of Commulinst or something? Why do you hate 'Murica?

Most people are already so far beyond their means that $10 a month being saved would be a huge improvement. When I was a lad (I'm only just over 40) saying you were living "payday to payday" was a sign you had money troubles, now it's a sign you're doing well as most people are living debt repayment to debt repayment. They got into debt to get a shiny car, then the banks suckered them into putting their daily expenses on the card too, so when the money enters their account it immediately leaves to service their debts leaving them with nothing so next months expenses have to be financed on credit too...

It's hard to put $10 away per month when you're $3000 in the black to begin with before you get to your mortgage... And they thing is, they'll call you and I stupid for not paying for everything through credit.

BTW, I save enough each month that I could afford to buy a new phone from that alone. I never fell into the credit trap as a young fella so I'm not stuck in that trap in mid-life.

With our high end products becoming overpriced, oversized phones the computing will be very basic indeed... and you'll still pay hundreds per month for it.