There are now crytpo ATMs in gas stations and convenience stores
Cortana always felt like an also-ranâs also-ran. Like, it felt like a permanent tech demo, pushed out before itâs time because of shareholder bullshit.
This explains Cortana as well.
Although Microsoft settled and avoided being busted up, the anti-trust case against Microsoft continues to haunt the organization. Since that case, they did not use their monopoly power on the desktop to help any of their other product achieve market dominance. The results were that many of their future products, both good and bad, failed to gain traction. This led to a downward spiral for Microsoft. They couldnât win with phones. Without phones in peopleâs pockets, they couldnât win with other things, and so on.
Little did Microsoft know that the justice department was basically giving up on pursuing anti-trust cases against anyone. Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook have all been able to do what Microsoft did, and much worse, to great effect.
You can see this play out in the battle between Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant. Due to these technologies largely being data driven, the companies with larger platforms and more data are able to product a better product. Microsoft doesnât have anything on your phone. The amount of data available to them to make Cortana good is relatively much smaller than what the competitors have. Also, the competitors are much more willing to use their monopoly/oligopoly power to use integrations with their existing platforms to push their product over the top.
AFAIK you canât replace Siri on your iPhone or iWatch with an alternative assistant the same way you can change your default browser on Windows. Your Pixel phone has a deep Google Assistant integration. Amazon uses its store to get really inexpensive Alexa devices in your home. Iâve even seen them pay Twitch streamers to use Alexa while streaming as a means to push it.
The fact that Microsoft didnât, or wasnât able, to use its power to lock out the competition from Windows is what allowed those companies to exist in the first place. If Microsoft made it so that Windows Media Player was the best on Windows, and nothing else could be as good, there would be no iTunes, no iPod. No iPod, no comeback of Apple and no iPhone. If no browser could be as good as IE, they could have locked out Google and Chrome. If they control the browser, they control the only way Facebook and Amazon can reach users.
The very beginnings of all those companies (in their current forms) depend on Microsoftâs fear of further anti-trust action. Meanwhile, they all do what Microsoft was scared away from doing to much greater degrees. This is why we must elect politicians who will bust up big tech. As any large company is forced to be open or broken, new ones will constantly be birthed off of their backs in a perpetual cycle of platform diversity. We only ran the cycle once because we forced Windows open, but have let the current kings run wild.
There is the beginning of serious anti-trust action rumbling against Facebook and Google (Amazon is I think frankly getting a pass for now because of their Intel and Defense contracts). Also under Nadellaâs leadership I believe Microsoft has successfully pivoted to enterprise cloud computing & solutions and govât contracts as the new direction for the core business. The fact that Microsoft beat out Amazon for the JEDI contract (one that 1 year previously Oracle was suing Amazon and the Govât claiming the RFP was written to make it so only Amazon could win) is a really big deal for Microsoft.
The question is if theyâll find enough engineers to actually work on it, regardless of who gets the contract. Many engineers, even the libertarian nutty kind, are often opposed to working on that sort of thing. And itâs not like you can so easily outsource a defense contract to engineers from another country. Lots of obvious concerns there.
Itâs way more likely Amazon lost that JEDI bid due to Bezos owning the Washington Post than any anti-monopoly ideas.
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Luke I was saying Amazonâs overall work with the Intel and Military generally shields them the larger from anti-trust push that you see both parties talking about regarding facebook and google. You really only tend to see people like Sanders or Warren talking about going after Amazon in a federal capacity.
Microsoftâs culture has always been fairly pro-govât and US military historically. I donât see this being an issue for them in the way the defense contracts were for Google where the company culture was built in a very particular way around a stated ethical framework that attracted developers drawn to it.
Back in the way-pre-YouTube days, I had one of the most popular websites for juggling videos. The way I got around hosting costs was to use Yahoo Groups. Iâd upload the files there and then use public sharing links to embed them on my website, and people would download from there.
There was only so many files (or mb) you could upload per group, so any time some other juggling email list wanted a moderator, Iâd volunteer just to have another place to put videos.
Now Yahoo Groups is closing, and thereâs a service to download a zip file of all the messages, links and uploaded files. All the groups you moderated or were public are collected into a single zip.
I downloaded all the videos I ever posted on the internet from 2000 to 2004, and it comes to 95 mb.
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Lol nice, im picturing 240p quicktime vids.
240 x 240 mpg files. But you were close!
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I find it really fascinating how I had no complaints watching such low quality videos back then, but if we watch them now they seem unwatchable.
Brains have wonderful imaginations.
I keep wanting to reply Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight but I know the FMV cut-scenes will be at an obscenely low resolution that will look like tetris blocks when blown up to 1080p
I donât think it will be that bad. The FMVs at the start of C&C: Red Alert and Mechwarrior 2 hold up just fine.
Jedi Knight 2 I think is a better game, though.
Yeah but it hasnât got those FMV cutscenes. My connection to Kyle as a character was built on those. The in-engine character model stuff in Jedi Knight II is less engaging and works because of my previous attachment from Jedi Knight (which also I think tells a more interesting story).
The old Microsoft Edge is now officially âlegacy softwareâ by Microsoft. Long live Chromium Edge.