Well, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that anything Microsoft produces is out of question. The reason for that is that whenever I use one of their products, it progressively turns into a locked proprietary program and getting out of it becomes impossible. That's fine if the product remains unbeatable in quality but it's rarely the case to say the least. I try to not have that happen again and FOSS never lets me down on that.
There is also the question of privacy. That's why my Org files are on my ownCloud and I have peace of mind forever.
Well, I understand what you are saying and I agree that you are one of many, but I disagree with your analysis. I use mostly Microsoft technology and most of what I use is open source, from .NET to C# to NuGet to many, many frameworks. I am very oriented toward open source and very comfortable in the .NET world. It's very similar situation to a Mac user.
As far as storing data I also have my "own cloud" and I also use Dropbox and SkyDrive. I like all of the above and I find Dropbox extremely convenient. However, I do have a concern that Dropbox is not as secure as SkyDrive.
That's pretty much the lesson learned for everyone here today. People won't see that you have to complete 18 steps with their customer service beforehand. Instead, they'll see complain on HN = instant gratification.
Look for an increase in this kind of whinging in the very near future, and it won't be fun for anyone.
On the one hand, that kind of thing would probably bring the community down, but on the other, given how this site is such a tech company nexus, would that even be surprising?
According to Wikipedia, Bell Labs most notably contributed to the invention of "radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the UNIX operating system, the C programming language". Google doesn't come close to such groundbreaking innovations [1]. Granted, there's not a whole lot of those these days but it can't be a coincidence that innovation slowed down at the same moment Bell Labs was downsized. Google doesn't help with that.
[1] MapReduce is probably the most important thing Google researched but it only helps with companies' computing load, much like AT&T's telephony protocol improvements we never talk about.
Your body generally prevents you from drinking too much water, and from eating too much food, etc. Besides, water and food is a necessity while heroin is not (far from it, almost no one will ever need it).
And that's what the person above meant: it's not the highly addictive or the easily lethal nature of heroin that is a problem, but the combination of both. Most things that combine these two attributes are illegal.
However, I go agree that there is a problem with the fact that it is so addictive that making it illegal makes things worse because of low quality products. Doesn't undermine the point of the post above though. In an ideal world, no one would try to get heroin.
>In an ideal world, no one would try to get heroin
It's a sad statement.
In what ideal world? Brave new world type "ideal world"? World with "shiny, happy" people which you see in TV commercials? And in an ideal world, no one would try rock climbing and BASE jumping? Because these activities are far more dangerous than doing heroin.
You see, some people like hacking on perl, some playing PC games, some enjoy rock climbing and some love doing heroin. Now the tragedy comes then government makes some things so more dangerous for the user and society by making them illegal.
I think we three might be able to agree the quote could be downgraded to:
"In an ideal world, heroin would be one of many fringe activities, like rock climbing, BASE jumping, etc."
In the mean time, many who pursue heroin aren't doing it as a hobby/for the exploration, but as a replacement for responsible living, a thrill as they grind their productive lives into the ground. That is the real tragedy, not that anyone, anywhere does it.
Again, these applications are important to their customers (advertisers), not to the users. And while the research might be reused somewhere else, these companies are so big that the negative impact to users will be much larger.
The inline "reply" link doesn't show up until a while after a comment has been posted; but you can simply use the permalink for the comment, there you will always find a reply box.
Gabe was the 271st employee at Microsoft[0] and "was the producer on the first three releases of Windows"[1], so I suppose that, even if he hasn't contributed to the very same code as Bill Gates did, there must be an earlier employee who has. I don't estimate his Gates code number to be more than 2.
Oh I forgot Gabe worked at MS, in that case, yeah, it must be pretty low. Gabe worked both at Valve and MS, and both companies have submitted code to the Linux Kernel.
There is also the question of privacy. That's why my Org files are on my ownCloud and I have peace of mind forever.