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IMO MS would be better off if they offered free OS upgrades, and a streamlined upgrade process. Windows upgrades are a small chunk of their revenue, so they won't take much of a financial hit from doing so. However a large part of MS's problems are relating to customers sticking with old versions for years after new ones are available. ex the huge number of people still running XP boxes. W7 will run tolerably fast on any computer capable of running a modern light workload without chugging; meaning that most of the people who're keeping their relics around instead of upgrading could do so. Most won't because upgrading windows is both a PITA, and because it would cost ~$100 for the upgrade disk. It's probably too late to streamline the w7 upgrade process (although something that would batch up the Xp->Vista->W7 double upgrade as a single button walk away for a day and let it reboot 9000 times option would be really helpful); but just offering a free download would probably get a lot of them off of it.
If nothing else, the next time the family geek needs to fix their computer because they hopelessly crapped it up (again); I suspect most of us would insist "your XP is too broke to fix, I'm backing up your data and giving you w7 instead".
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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World View Enterprises of Tucson, AZ, plans to offer suborbital spaceflight in a capsule lifted by balloon to 18.6 miles (30 km), which then glides back to Earth. It's extra if you want the balloon shaped like a poodle
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Cool,
But don't the winds go at like 100+mph at that height? If so, it would be anything but a "gentle" ride
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The air is extremely thin, so the force would be far less than on ground level.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Interesting; but a few years ago I read about a company based in Moscow offering flights to a similar altitude from the backseat of a demilled Mig-31 interceptor for only $30k.
Assuming that company is still in business $45k seems like a lot more to pay just to avoid getting a passport and a bit of jetlag.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Well, apart from the altitude it's a totally different experience. It's difficult to compare the two in terms of which one has the most value.
A fighter jet is highly intimidating for people who are not used to piloting airplanes or race-cars, while the balloon would be a quiet ride that most people are able to handle. And the fighter jet flying experience can't possibly last as long as the balloon flight.
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BlackBerry's BBM service is one of its most beloved features, and iOS and Android users apparently haven't forgotten about it. In a blog post, BlackBerry reports that over 10 million people have downloaded its cross-platform mobile app in the first 24 hours since its release yesterday. That should help their bottom line. Oh, it's a free download.
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I'm surprised it even took them this long to do this... they should have been popping out apps as soon as they started lagging in the smart phone market (make money from the customers they lost in some form or another).
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I'm not. Until their most recent Dingleberry faceplanted to the tune of $1bn, they were banking on crap exclusivity to try and lock people in to the Cackberry platform.
Launching BBM on other platforms is an admission that they know they're screwed.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Well, I think for a lot of people it was painfully obvious their strategy wasn't working for quite a long time.
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Hey now. RIM has been able to point out that they're making very rapid progress with the BB10 platform. Granted the direction of the progress is a narrowing spiral with rapid descent; but the difference between speed and velocity only confuses suits so they're only reporting instantaneous measurements of the former to the MBAs.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Microsoft continues to flesh out its Bing developer platform with a new speech-recognition control, allowing coders to add speech input to their Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 apps. "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all"
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Camera capabilities continue to be a differentiator, as well as LTE in the tablet Did they put the Nokia name on with a sticker so they can replace it in a month?
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Apparently, a phablet is a tablet that can be used as a telephone. A tablet being a cheap computer, I'm wondering why there's no tvblet (since you can watch movies), no sndblet - but any tablet is a throwblet*
used on people without any elephanting idea inventing new words
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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What? no blue screens?
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Those come later, unexpectedly...
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Oracle is heavily promoting Java for embedded systems, but there are doubts as to whether it's up to the job Wait... let me guess! Write once, run... (needs something here)
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Oracle hypes Java for the Internet of things Oracle attacks open source[^]
..but regardless of Oracle's speech, Java will be there; Windows is too expensive to put on a lot of devices.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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We all have ideas or projects that we've been wanting to do but the time is never quite right - well that is what Progvember is about. You have 30 days to make it a reality. Why should those English majors have all the fun in November?
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Coding and then coding some more at night, and all weekend, every weekend. That's my November anyway.
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At its Ideas Summit in New York, Google revealed Uproxy: a service that aims to change the way people around the globe use the internet. A browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, uProxy can bypass restrictive firewalls that hinder users from accessing vital (and trivial) information online by creating peer-to-peer connections. "After all it's not easy, banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall."
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Version 10.9 of OS X trades big cats for surfer dudes, will land on Macs today. Free? Well that's thinking different
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The company has listed various vulnerabilities which affect Java 5, 6, and 7, as well as Oracle Database 11g and 12c, Fusion Middleware, Enterprise Manager, E-Business Suite, Flexcube Products Suite, Oracle’s Health Sciences and Retail Products suites, Primavera, PeopleSoft, Siebel and MySQL. Have a nice day
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