Xenocity

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29431412 Microsoft is skipipng 9 in favor of 10. Windows 10 is coming next year to all devices. The OS will morph to fit each device. Xbox One is getting it too. Microsoft HQ has yet to cofirm the free upgrade that their overseas subsidaries are talking about.

Is it fair to count the years after their bankruptcy and EA bail out (1997 - to present)? I want a new Sim Earth and another Simcity 2013 expansion pack. Also Maxis can you port the Saturn version of Simcity 2000 to PC/Mac? Maxis... the only PC gaming company I have ever loved.

No... It is a video game made up of mainly Nintendo characters from Nintendo's franchises. The only two non Nintendo characters are Pac-man and Sonic. The full roster is below This game is very addictive

Windows 7 is vastly overrated. It is one of Microsoft's best efforts, but still gets more praise than it deserves. I actually love 8.1 and the titles. I find it easier and snappier to use (I started using at Windows 95) That's what many said about Windows 7... A revision is a service pack by another name. There is no reason to believe Microsoft actually built Windows 9 from the ground up in under a year with a new kernal. Currently Windows 8's is Windows kernal is 6.2 and Windows 8.1 is running Windows Kernal 6.3 I believe Microsoft is rushing Windows 9 out to match OSX 10.10 Yosemite's new interface and features. You have to be the first person I have encountered who actually really like Windows 8. Every one else I have talked to do not like Windows 8 to some degree, with some, including my mother, hating it and its supposed improvement, 8.1, with a passion. I have tried working with my mother's Windows 8.1 and I have issues myself, so I am among the legions who dislike it. I still run on XP and if I were to upgrade toady or in the near future, it will be Windows 7. Well it really isn't that hard to use. I did go into the systems menu and turn stuff on and off.

Cheating in anyway while playing online, wil result in an banning. It's in the ToS. Offline mode you can mod it as you see fit. If you want unlimited money and stuff use sandbox mode.

You'll get the landmarks after I get the remaining Arcologies from Simcity 2000. What do you mean?... are you working on a fix to the MoreLandMarks mod? I was being silly and no. Though I do want the other arcologies to be modded into Simcity 2013

Btw, 1 Apple didnt invent the GUI.Who follows who? 2 journalists are known to be dumb!!! Xerox invented the GUI, which they didn't know what to do with, and sold it and the patents to Apple for millions of shares of stock before the company went public. Xerox made loads of money when Apple's stock syrocketed at the IPO. The original key patents held by Apple, IBM, and Microsoft have since expired. Those journalists aren't dumb they were making a half hearted joke, Microsoft main competition has traditionally been Apple admitted by Bill Gates himself. Microsoft has purposely followed Apple and IBM down the rabbit hole when it has come to their product design. Microsoft's business plan goes as follows: Surface Pro is positioned as the main competitor of iPad and Macbook Pro. It is only advertised in comparision to those products Xbox consoles follows Sony's Playstation strategy to near perfection Microsoft's Smartphones are positioned as the main competitor to iPhone and it advertised as such Windows 8 Mobile is positioned against iOS as its main competitor despite Android having the biggest marketshare Windows 7 Mobile launched with a funeral burying the iPhone Microsoft's Azure servers are positioned against IBM's servers, which are now owned by Lenovo Each new Windows launch is launched with a comparision against the newest version of OSX Microsoft always positions their enterpising software against IBM. Microsoft Office always launches with a comparsion to Apple's iWorks Microsoft's Access is positioned as a direct competitor to FileMaker which is subsidary of Apple. Microsoft's multimedia software is advertised as the main competitor to Apple's software, with no metion of Adobe. Windows Media Player positioned as the superior alternative to QuickTime Internet Explorer is advertised as the main competitor to Safari Microsoft has an unhealthy obession with IBM and Apple. P.S. I never said Apple invented the GUI.

You'll get the landmarks after I get the remaining Arcologies from Simcity 2000.

first off ME doesn't count because Microsoft rushed it to market purposely to take advantage of the millenium celebrations and it never gained mainstream developer support (They all went to 2000 and XP) ME also has the shortest lifespan of any Windows OS of just 11 months. Vista wasn't a bad OS, it just suffered from Microsoft doubling the specs required to fully run Vista at the last minute. Remember this sticker? These computers fit the minimum specs Microsoft listed, though you couldn't fully run Vista and all it's features (Microsoft failed to tell us that). Microsoft and the OEMs lost the suit and paid out millions in damages. Aero UI was created in response to all the feedback from businesses and powers users who hated the XP UI. XP earned the nickname from these users as the "Fisher-Price" OS, kiddy OS. They hated the fact that Windows XP was too damn colorful which made it look like a Nintendo game. They told Microsoft to make a next gen UI that went back to the serious/professional design of earlier Windows. Thus Aero was born! The two major complaints with Aero is how shiny and distracting the UI is and how it bogs down systems. The only major complaint of Windows 10 is it being too flat for some. ---------------- Here is the official start menu in 8.1.1 (you need updated 1 installed) The start menu is on by default and can be turned off. --------- Though is Windows 10 fully flat in response to OSX 10.10 Yosemite and the other OSes? Typically Windows has followed Apple's desktop OSes when it comes to UIs. A reporter at the Windows 10 event asked Microsoft if they would start using big cat names, since they are at 10 now. Another reporter asked Microsoft if they chose the number 10 due to OSX 10.10 coming in a few weeks. Coinicidence? Is Microsoft late to the flat party?

Modders have already released a bunch of mods and more are coming. Maxis is still gathering feedback on update 10 to decide what to do next.

Yup I know, my Macbook Pro is the only computer I own. Like I said, I know plenty of engineers, business folk, and even some software developers. They are all glued to Microsoft due to "industry standards" and the development tools. Enterprise ❤ Microsoft due to "standards" and "compliance" I don't agree with it, but I don't set the rules. Actually Windows 10 is indeed the 10th Windows release with the full GUI (if you count 8.1 as seperate OS like Microsoft does). It would be the 13th consumer release if you include 3.0 and before. Windows 10 = 10 Windows 8.1 = 9 Windows 8 = 8 Windwos 7 = 7 Windows Vista = 6 Windows XP = 5 Windows 2000 = 4 Windows 98 = 3 Windows 95 = 2 Windows 3.1 = 1

It is a cool building. You get an insurance pay out every time a building is destroyed, provided it is insured. Also Simcity 2000 Special Edition is out on Origin now.

Actually with all the business folk and engineers I know always complain to no end about how Apple is always refusing to conform to the norm by imposing proprietary standards on the market. Microsoft is considered the company that follows standards over proprietary ones. You can easily find news articles about Apple and how they refuse to use industry norms on nearly ever aspect. Apple of the 90s suffered from a power struggle between Jobs and Sculley. The board sided with Sculley and forced Jobs out of the company. Jobs' vision was seen as too radical and too expensive by the board. The board ran the company. Right now U.S. government is unhappy with the penalties the Judge issued on Apple for losing the e-Book anitrust case regarding iBooks store. Apple was forced to pay millions in damages to the government which in turn was issued to consumers in the form of Kindle credit, and was forced to accept a antirust monitor to keep watch on iTunes and iBooks to ensure fair play. Apple was found guilty for colluding with publishers on e-Book prices, which caused e-Book prices to up instead of down. The U.S. government is debating on whether or not to appeal the case, because the believe it is in the consumers and market's best interest to break up iTunes and ban Apple from signing contracts with different media and recording companies. The U.S. and EU regulators claim Apple has set the price of music far below the natural market point for music. They claim Apple is abusing their massive market share of digital music (75%+ marketshare of digital music, ~40% total music marketshare) by forcing companies and artists to Apple's pricing models. They also claim this has made it impossible for any other retailers/merchants/services to fairly compete against Apple. Other retailers/merchants/services have filed antitrust claims as well. Price of a product is normally set by the company that produces it basing it on supply, demand, and costs of production. CDs are priced between $10-$20, this includes the production of CDs, shipping, distribution, and retailer mark up. iTunes digital music was originally set at a price of $.99, because 5 major music studios banked on Sony (who owns BMG) to develop digital music store and program, Sony failed to do the project thus leaving Apple as the sole option and forcing 5 major studios to agree to Jobs demand. Apple in 2011 (or was it 2012) agreed to allow $1.29 for new songs in order to compete against Microsoft who was bankrolling the 5 major studios with blank checks to get them to support Zune. According to economics the $.99 and $1.29 price on iTunes is well below the equilbrum pricing (where supply meets demand) aka the natural price point. This in the short run benefits consumers leading to a monopoly in the long run. It also means the price of digital music should be significantly higher than the current prices. Lastly Apple is also facing issues from the movie and TV studios who are demanding higher prices for their goods. Soon the regulators of both U.S. and EU will decide the fate of iTunes and digital music. Also Rhapsody lost a U.S. copyright case and was forced to pay out millions in damages and agree to huge licensing terms to the RIAA. All sites that stream music and radio have licensing contracts for all the content, which is makes very little profit due to the licensing costs (same goes for iTunes radio). The last major threat to Apple is their own shareholders who are claiming Tim Cook and co. are not running the company in the best interest of the shareholders. They are claiming Tim Cook and co. are not selling enough of every product and are unhappy with the profit margins on all the products. The shareholders are taking Apple to court over all of it, claiming Apple isn't maximizing profits for investors. Well there goes 9... At least they have delayed it until later next year.

Quebec is joined by Canada via a Treaty and Act of Westminster They can only leave Canada by the will of the voters of Quebec with consent of Canada Polls are taken on a regular basis even by the BBC shows 50/50 split on independence. I've read and heard plenty on the demand for another referendum in Quebec. It's literally reported on every few months by the American and foreign media outlets. BBC world has been reporting on Quebec's Independence movement, and how close they are to leaving Canada, over the last year. Canada is like Belgium, both are countries created by treaties agreed upon by foreign powers. Countries created this way generally break up due cultural and linquistic differences. Canada needs to let Quebec join with France and let Eastern provinces vote on leaving as well. There is no good in keeping Canada together in its current form. With that all said, there is talk of Canada eventually agreeing to be annexed by U.S., due to the Canada's overdependancy with U.S. Canada needs the U.S. for security and economics. Literally 70% of the Canadian economic activity is due to doing business with the U.S. This number goes up every year as Canada grows more dependent on the U.S. economically. It is regularly discussed in both business and political circles here in the states. Essentially each Canadian province would become a state. Though the main issue talked about regarding this is the difficulty in Canadian provinces making the switch to full capitalist system. I think you've been reading too much into the foreign press. Of late, we've been seeking trading partners outside the U.S. sphere of influence and we are being quite successful. No Canadian would ever want to be an American. This is built into the psyche. There is absolutely nothing admirable about U.S. citizenship, and lots to denigrate starting with the love affair with arms, and a really stupid political system. Canada will never lose it's dependacy on the U.S., it's just not possible or in the best interest of Canada. Canada has nothing superior to the U.S., not even it's maplely smelling money. The U.S. political system is far more stable than Canada's. I mean Harper and his party are trying to bring capitalism and true democracy to Canada. The liberals have sold you guys up the socialist river, which nearly bankrupted Canada in the 80s and early 90s. There's a reason why Canada is the butt of jokes worldwide and is called America's hat!

You do know that Linux kernal is a near line for line copy of the Unix kernal. Right now Linux is currently around ~1% of the global marketshare by all tracking metrics, and the majority of Linux computers are servers. OSX is currently holding ~10% of the global marketshare. They are more advanced than Windows, but that doesn't equate to developers supporting them. Right now developers and business are forcing Microsoft to hold on to legacy development tools. So far the reason why software developers avoid Linux with a passion, is the fact that Linux users won't purchase software unless it is free. The reasons why developers refuse to fully support OSX is due to the low marketshare of OSX and Apple's development tools and framework not being compatible with Windows legacy tools. OSX users at least buy productivity software. Windows will continue to dominant software wise as long as Microsoft allows legacy tools to run and allows anything to work on Windows. It also helps that Windows has a big enough marketshare for even the smallest developers to turn a profit. If one tech company gets broken up this decade, it will be Apple. Right now the U.S. government is fighting Apple in court over: Keeping music prices artificially low Keeping movies prices artificially low Keeping mobile apps prices artificially low Forcing mobile phone prices artificially low Fixing e-Book prices U.S. government is asking the federal courts to ban Apple from signing contracts with media and music companies, forcing a massive price increase. They are also asking iTunes to be taken away from Apple. The EU is also investigating after numerous companies and consumers filed antitrust issues with the EU comission for: Locking their OS to their computers Locking most of their software to their OS Locking iOS to their mobile devices Using Lightning bolt adapter for their mobile devices as the connector Not allowing iOS 7 and iOS 8 to run on all models of their mobile devices in existence including the original iPhone iTunes is seen as a monoply in the digital media space, with keeps prices artificially low, below the natural market. The EU will decide whether or not Apple should be legally forced to license out it's OSes and other software. They will also decide whether or not Apple can have exclusive proprietary hardware as well.

--shame that's against Origin and Steam's EULA.. can't sell accounts.. I think they hand out account bans for that.. no appeals They do ban you and you can get IP banned as well. Same with iTunes, U-play, and others.

I can understand a dislike for flatness, but Office 13 has the best office interface yet! You can install themes on Windows 8 very easily, so you aren't stuck with flatness. Businesses love XP and won't move on any time soon. XP and 7 currently are at a 40/40 spilt of the Windows market with 8 at 9%. There is a list of supposed features that were axed with moving forward to Vista that people still gripe about. Anyways you are running out of places to hide from flatness. (You can alter the flatness in 8 )

That was the preorder bonus for the regular version. Once the game launched, you had to buy those two sets separately. Deluxe version also contains those sets as well. Also Simcity Plus is on sale for 14.99 now.

I know Though to be fair AUS and NZ are the worst selling regions for the system. I just can't wait for the October OS update... I NEED THEMES!

The reason why Aero was removed from Windows 8 was due to all the complaints from customers and business showing Aero was compromising performance and causing their systems to see significant slow downs. People hated Aero with a passion the world over. It's odd that you didn't see any performance boost going to Windows 8 over 7. Windows 8 is less resource intensive than Windows 7. I know many engineers, software developers and other professionals, who refuse to move on from XP, claiming Microsoft removed too many features going to Vista, 7 and 8. They also refuse to upgrade to 64-bit processors and OS because it supposedly borks their 32 bit programs. By the by here is Windows 9 only screenshot, if you missed it. Flat is the future, Windows is the last to fully embrace it. Market research claims users, businesses and developers prefer flat!

Quebec is joined by Canada via a Treaty and Act of Westminster They can only leave Canada by the will of the voters of Quebec with consent of Canada Polls are taken on a regular basis even by the BBC shows 50/50 split on independence. I've read and heard plenty on the demand for another referendum in Quebec. It's literally reported on every few months by the American and foreign media outlets. BBC world has been reporting on Quebec's Independence movement, and how close they are to leaving Canada, over the last year. Canada is like Belgium, both are countries created by treaties agreed upon by foreign powers. Countries created this way generally break up due cultural and linquistic differences. Canada needs to let Quebec join with France and let Eastern provinces vote on leaving as well. There is no good in keeping Canada together in its current form. With that all said, there is talk of Canada eventually agreeing to be annexed by U.S., due to the Canada's overdependancy with U.S. Canada needs the U.S. for security and economics. Literally 70% of the Canadian economic activity is due to doing business with the U.S. This number goes up every year as Canada grows more dependent on the U.S. economically. It is regularly discussed in both business and political circles here in the states. Essentially each Canadian province would become a state. Though the main issue talked about regarding this is the difficulty in Canadian provinces making the switch to full capitalist system.

There history of Spain, Germany and Italy goes as follows. Spain: Spain was reunited by the marriage of Queen Isabelle and King Ferdand, which unifed their kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Spain then conquered Catalonia and Basque regions to bring stability to Spain. In 1580 the reigning monarchs of Portugal and Spain married unifying their crowns and country In 1640 Portugal separated from Spain ending their union In the early 1700s Spain and France tried to merge their crowns and countries into one super power, but the British were able to fund a coalition against them preventing it, nearly bankrupting the UK Germany: Germanic people were losely unified in a confederation against the Roman Empire After fighting the Roman Empire for centuries, the Germanic states unified into the Holy Roman Empire on December 25th 800 AD Charlemegne the first emperor After his death, the Kingdom of France separated from it France was created by two of his sons The Holy Roman Empire would eventually internally separate into Northern German states, Southern German states and Haspburg Austria Napolen's France would defeat the Holy Roman Emipre in 1814, disolving the empire for good. Austria would gain part of it and the rest would form the German Confederation and Prussia Around the year 900 the Anglo's and Saxon's would leave and conquer Britian They would end up creating England Around the year 1050, the German dialect of Saxon would fully evolve into the English Language In 1871 Napoleon III would lead France to war against Prussia Prussia would quickly and totally beat them with technology ending the war At the signing of the treaty in Paris, the German States voted to unify behind Prussia to form the German Empire. The King of Prussia would become the German Emperor Prussia held the majority of the German lands, the German people and resources Prussia would eventually integrate the other German states forming a unified country Prussia and Austria failed to agree on terms of unity In 1914, WWI breaks out and 4 years later Germany narrowly (they came so close to winning the war) loses the war forcing the break up of Eastern Germany and Austrian Empires in 1944, most of Prussia was given to Poland to punish Germany. Germany was the split in 4 pieces as was Austria as punishment for the war. Germany was then reunified in 1991 when Germany agreed to all of the UK and France's demands, allowing the treaty to be signed As part of the reunification, Germany had to agree to a currency and financial union with France and the rest of the EU. Germany also had to agree to bail out the Eurozone countries if came to that Germany is forbidden to leave both the EU and Euro. If the EU and Euro dissolve, Germany can only leave after the dissolution is complete and has to bear the costs of it. Yes, the UK and France forced it. Italy: Italy unified under the Roman Empire Western Roman Empire finally collasped with the final emperor being overthorwn in 476 AD The territory broke up into numeorus states Italian states would be reunified, conquered, broken up off and on until 1861 Starting in the 1850s the Italian speaking people wanted a unified country, leading to a war with the major European powers France would enter on the side of Italy, Austria on the side of the Pope. France would defeat Austria leading to Italy being unified in 1861 Italy would finally take Rome from the Pope in 1870, making it the capital of Italy in 1929 Italy and Vatican signed the Lateran Treaty ending the dispute between the two and recongizing the Vatican's independece. In short Germans and Italians wanted national unity, while not all of Spain wanted unity. Germany and Italy are stable countries in the unity sense.

Windows 7 is vastly overrated. It is one of Microsoft's best efforts, but still gets more praise than it deserves. I actually love 8.1 and the titles. I find it easier and snappier to use (I started using at Windows 95) That's what many said about Windows 7... A revision is a service pack by another name. There is no reason to believe Microsoft actually built Windows 9 from the ground up in under a year with a new kernal. Currently Windows 8's is Windows kernal is 6.2 and Windows 8.1 is running Windows Kernal 6.3 I believe Microsoft is rushing Windows 9 out to match OSX 10.10 Yosemite's new interface and features.