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::: Thursday, October 31 ::: |
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::: Wednesday, October 30 ::: |
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Eh: New MS Office shuts out old Windows
I fully understand Microsoft's position here, but it is not, as this article would lead you to believe, a non-issue. Approximately 55% of businesses which use Office are still using Office 97 and are, for the most part, running it on Windows 9x. The only way for Microsoft to encourage these users to cough up more cash is to through "forced obsolescence" known in other industries as simply "exortion". The upside is that I doubt many such businesses will take the bait... it's a simple matter of vanishing returns.
Good thing the government decided Microsoft was a monopoly, otherwise they would get away with schemes like this all the time. Oh, wait...
[update: The Reg more or less agrees with me]
9:51 AM CST :: tell me a story
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Wow: EC hits Nintendo with fine for fixing game prices
Between this decision and the Aussie courts finding against Sony, it's looking more and more like legal support for regional coding might be fading fast. The up side is, of course, that we could import lots of games, dvds, etc without worrying about compatibility.
The downside that not too many people have considered is that if companies can't price their media based upon the demand of a particular market then they will have to apply a single pricing model. Such a model would lower prices for some parts of the world, but for the US and the UK it would mean much higher prices. That is unless the media providers decide to cut their profits rather than gouging their customers.
Which do you consider more likely?
9:08 AM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Friday, October 25 ::: |
Uhm, hi. Just taking a moment to come up for air. I'm still crazy busy, but things should slow down in a week or two.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately which is cool cause I like to think, but somewhat bad in a certain sense because I have trouble getting to sleep when I think too much. Even the crosswords don't work anymore. I get more and more sleepy as the week progresses and by the time the weekend arrives my thinking is completely fuddled and thus a little counter-productive. I'll get it all worked out eventually.
Mostly I've been rolling over the fact that, although I like my job, I don't seem to be doing anything else anymore. It's like that line from Amy Hit the Atmosphere... "today was just a day fading into another and that can't be what a life is for". That said, I can't really see where to go from here.
Some people turn to religion, but I was raised from birth to believe a certain way and when that way seems to contradict (and openly discourage) logical thought processes it all begins to seem a little pointless. I'd like to study other belief systems, but I'm so hard-wired into one way of thinking I end up in a shame spiral which winds up with me being further from any sort of "truth" than I was when I started.
Some people turn to money, but I'm in that peculiar place in my life where I'm making more money than I ever thought I would, but not enough to live in a truly extravagant manner. Plus there's that ugly "saving for emergencies" gene that I inherited from my Mom, that constantly whispers in the back of my mind that any savings, regardless how large, could be wiped out overnight by illness or other hardships. Whenever I try and buy something which is purely recreational that whisper turns to a scream. If I ignore the scream and buy the damn thing anyway it subsides, but pops up when I'm thinking at night and a new shame spiral begins.
What's silly is that everything above makes it sound like I'm miserable, but most of the time I'm really not. I'm very happy most of the time. I'm just not really happy with where I'm likely to end up if I continue this way for another 40 years.
So, in summary, I have realized I'm lost and after years of struggling I decide to pull over to ask directions, only to find that the gas station closed in 1966.
5:04 PM CST :: tell me a story
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::: Wednesday, October 2 ::: |
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dinoneil[at]newdream[dot]net
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