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News broke today that Microsoft is offering employees in China a Lumia 630 device to leave the company voluntarily. What's the punishment if they stay?
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Kent Sharkey wrote: What's the punishment if they stay?
They get an iPhone?
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Kent Sharkey wrote: What's the punishment if they stay?
They get a Surface.
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I think what surprises me about this offer is the utter cluelessness of the people who made the offer. Didn't they see that such an offer would be the object of wide spread mockery on the internet? The whole thing is a beautiful premise that begs for any number of glorious punch lines.
Seriously, how detached from the public do you have to be in order to think this offer was a win?
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Kent Sharkey wrote: What's the punishment if they stay?
2 Lumias...
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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With close to $2 billion down the tubes and a new CEO more interested in operating systems than devices, the days of the Microsoft Surface tablet could be numbered. "'Tis but a scratch"
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But the latest Surface tablet is getting nice reviews.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Wasn't there similar gloom and doom over the X-Box?
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Yeah, I seem to recall reading billion dollar loss headlines about it as well. And still. I don't think that division has ever made money.
TTFN - Kent
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By itself, the division may not rake in the money, but with the license fees for game developers to get SDKs, devkits, etc, along with first-party games like Halo, they don't really need to worry too much about it.
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True, and they (XBox) have been doing better lately. I think that you've hit on a big difference between XBox and Surface though: there seems little way that the Surface can create such an ecosystem. The XBox devices themselves can do poorly, but the ecosystem as a whole does well.
Quote: The company took in $19.9 billion in revenue this quarter – up 10 percent compared to last year's earnings – with $4.97 billion in net income. Revenue for Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes Xbox 360 hardware and software sales, grew by 8 percent ($134 million) this quarter, and 6 percent ($566 million) year-on-year.
Microsoft additionally reports that Xbox Live transactional revenue grew by nearly 20 percent during the last quarter year.
TTFN - Kent
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"Negative. Negative. Just impacted on the Surface."
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As part of our ongoing commitment to delivering a more secure browser, starting August 12th Internet Explorer will block out-of-date ActiveX controls. ActiveX: the gift that keeps giving
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Fortunately that feature can be switched off. What a security hole if users have to update several items every day - they get used to it and will install every crap.
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Government sources said ten Apple products including all iPad and MacBook products were excluded from a final government procurement list distributed last month. At this rate, they might have to move all work back to abacuses (or abaci if you're a Latin scholar)
Or suanpan, I suppose would be more accurate
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Actually it would be abacii as the correct plural.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Only if the device were called an abacius. (Masculine nouns in Latin typically go from -us to -i, not -ii).
Also, according to various dictionaries I checked (as I knew there might be a few pendants in da house), and summarized on Wikipedia[^]: Quote: The preferred plural of abacus is a subject of disagreement, with both abacuses[6] and abaci[6] in use.
TTFN - Kent
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Quote: preferred plural of abacus is a subject of disagreement
Well I disagree with them. I use "...ii" for all appropriate plurals I come across such as, "That man is rich. He has a whole fleet of Lexii." Also, accepted plurals of Octopus and Hippopotamus are Octopii and Hippopotamii respectively and neither of them end in "...ius". These Latin scholars just don't really agree on anything and since the last person to actually speak the proper version of this language (as apart from the ecclesiastical dialect of it) died a long time ago everything is really guesswork over is it a rule or justium baddus spellingus!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Well, true on no one left that actually speaks Latin, so we can't be absolutely sure, but
Octopus: (Oxford dictionaries[^]): Quote: The standard plural in English of octopus is octopuses. However, the word octopus comes from Greek and the Greek plural form octopodes is still occasionally used. The plural form octopi, formed according to rules for some Latin plurals, is incorrect.
Hippopotamus: (Meriam Webster[^]): Quote: plural hip·po·pot·a·mus·es or hip·po·pot·a·mi
And do you actually say, "Lex-ee-ee" or "Lex-ee"? For Lexi?
TTFN - Kent
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Dictionaries? Hah! What do they know of reality?
"Lex-eye". 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Forogar wrote: I use "...ii" for all appropriate plurals I come across
So is Hawaii plural for anything?
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Yes, the Hawaus Islands! 
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Excellent! 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Quid dicis? Tu Latinam linguam nescis. Nunc tace!
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