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This simple wireless device would connect you to a database of speeding violations and download the speed of the most recently ticketed motorist on the current road. No doubt it would take a controversial and unscrupulous company to handle this service (saaaay...microsoft?).
You would then use
this information to decide how fast you want to drive and how risky it really is!
[link]
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We just tail the fastest car on the road. |
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The vertical scale shows speed, the horizontal scale shows likelihood of receiving a ticket (expressed as a percentage), you show up as a blip on the radar. I like it, but that horizontal scale would be a moving target... |
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//Do you really consider MS to be unscrupulous? I think it far more likely that Real Networks or AOL would be behind something like this. MS offerings trend towards the squeaky clean. I think that no matter what intentions MS sets out with, they are unfairly painted with the "evil" brush. I, for one, am rather sick of it.// |
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Well, I guess that's where you and I differ, PeterSealy. I have never understood the vilification. I do think it's really easy to jump on the MS is evil bandwagon, though. Just like the US is evil bandwagon. No organization should ever reach beyond mediocrity, eh? My brackets indicate editorial comment. What are yours for? |
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You wouldn't want the last ticketed speed surely - you'd want the lowest for the past month. Or better still, you'd want the secret police guidelines - certainly with speed cameras in Britain they have a space above the official speed limit where they don't prosecute. You just need a sign showing the unofficial speed limit below the real one. |
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(And bristolz, Microsoft are evil, maybe not compared to AOL, but their business practices are far more shady and underhand than, eg Sun. You should note that some big corporations are able to inspire respect and liking - Sony, Apple, Levis, Gap, Nokia - and some inspire particular hatred. This is usually for a reason, and cannot be explained by people hating the successful.) |
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yeah. PeterSealy wears Gap. What better mark of respect is there? |
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Careful, [bristolz], last time I supported Microsoft on here, I got told off. (For the record, I agree with you.) |
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Well, I don't disagree that MS hasn't been the most gentle of giants. I guess I object to the knee-jerk labeling, though. From my perspective MS has only done me good, especially when compared to Sun, a company that has, through insane customer service and arrogance, nearly driven me crazy. Plus their "I'm going to tell Mom on you" approach to dealing with competitors is particulary grating.
Anyway, enough of this ranting of mine. . . . I agree with Waugs, the speed limit sign is a pretty good indicator as to how fast one needs to go, or not go, to either get, or avoid, a ticket. |
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Is that the imperial "we" you are using, PeterSealy? It surely doesn't include me. Both Excel and Word are still fine, wonderful even, products that show a huge amount of MS effort in getting all the things people have requested over the years into packages that work. It shows that they listen closely to customers and respond. And who in the hell wants Unix with a GUI? I want "my" OS and Win comes as close to that as possible. I've lived in the Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX versions of OS hell and I have better things to do with my time than diddle with command line crap on a 30 year old OS. If I were building server farms I *might* be tempted but, honestly, everything I need to do with a couple of exceptions, works best on Win. In my book, what works best . . . wins.
Further, in your divested ideal of MS, my working life would become harder, not easier. The overarching aspect of MS is precisely what makes it so appealing to me. I'd rather have them do the hard integration work than me. In systems as complex as OSes, I'm much more inclined to let MS watch my back than depend on my own skills (or lack) to close up all the holes and problems in Unix. And you're fooling yourself if you think there aren't any. |
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It's odd how no-one suggests that General Motors should make *either* family cars *or* trucks *or* 4-wheel-drives but not all three; or that AOL-Time-Warner should publish magazines *or* make TV shows *or* ... Do Americans really hate success, or just other people's success? |
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We seem to have abandoned speed limits and started a {pro,anti}-MS-flamewar ... |
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«Just like the US is evil bandwagon.» Or the Afghanistan is evil bandwagon? Often there are reasons why people consider certain groups to be evil. Sometimes these reasons are misguided. |
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«And who in the hell wants Unix with a GUI?» A whole heap of Mac users. In case you didn't know, the latest Macintosh machines run Unix with a GUI (called Mac OS X). Admittedly, most other GUIs for Unix have been rather lame, nowhere near as user-friendly as the command line. |
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I dislike Windows, purely because it strikes me as an ugly mess built on top of outdated system. It's nice to see that they have decided to chuck out DOS entirely ... but in my limited experience of Win2K, it's been (as PeterSealy said) even more messy. |
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I like Microsoft Word, but as a general rule, though, most of the stuff more added more recently that Word for Windows 2 is just pointless fluff (although I can see that many people appreciate the multicoloured squiggly underlines that Word95 provides). |
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I haven't seen anything that comes even close to duplicating Excel either, although I admit that I'm not exactly a heavy spreadsheet user. (Whoever decided to make graphs spontaneously change font size by default should have a great deal of pain inflicted on them.) |
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«I'm much more inclined to let MS watch my back than depend on my own skills» If you're talking about security here, then I'd certainly trust my skills better than those of MS. If I'd used Outlook as my email programme or IIS on my server, then I would probably have suffered the effects of a few viruses by now. |
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«I'd rather have them do the hard integration work than me.» This is a good point. On the other hand, there's no reason why the OS can't have hooks in it to allow it to integrate with whatever office apps, file manager, web browser, email client or other software commodity you prefer. I see this as having nothing to do with breaking up Microsoft. |
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[angel] That's because General Motors doesn't own 90% of the motor industry. Microsoft owns a huge proportion of the PC OS and office industry, though. In Australia, we have media cross-ownership laws that stop media corporations from conglomerating too much. I imagine they have them where you live, too. |
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[PeterSealy] What about Microsoft hardware? It should probably be a separate company in your scheme. |
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[cp]: Surely Microsoft has the market penetration that it has because people have voluntarily purchased Microsoft products. |
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[angel] True, but now that MS has such a huge market penetration, they can use this to (a) leverage other products which are making a loss, e.g. Internet Explorer; (b) make cruddier products than they would have to if there was stiffer competition. |
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I'm _not_ saying that all Microsoft products are bad, mind you, I'm just saying that many could be better, and probably would be if there was more competition. |
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I regularily Microsoft XP for Custard, it's delicious and I'm not at all concerned that they will dominate the custard market ... |
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I apologize to all halfbakers everywhere for going off on this tirade. My bad. |
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// you cannot close a Microsoft debate, even with proper notation. // |
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No, but if you wait a little while, it'll soon crash or blue-screen. |
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Looks like I was supposed to post "Microsoft is Evil" not "Last Ticketed Speed". Sorry everybody! |
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Sorry for dragging this on for far longer than necessary, but: |
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[PeterSealy] Yes, Microsoft do make hardware. They make nice keyboards and optical mice (not quite as good as Logitech, though), and I believe they do joysticks and game console equipment too. |
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[rotato] «Looks like I was supposed to post "Microsoft is Evil" not "Last Ticketed Speed".» It may seem like this, but if you'd actually posted "Microsoft is Evil", for all you know we may have been side tracked into speaking about speed limits. |
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Touche cp! An undeniably excellent point. |
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Microsoft is the maker of the wonderful new Xbox |
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MS makes mice, joysticks, keyboards, xboxes, and undoubtedly some other stuff and mess. Their hardware is generally quite respectable. |
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I would pay for this device. |
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