Domain: mercurynews.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mercurynews.com.
Comments · 468
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Re:Ridiculous quote from cnn.com article
No, one reason Linux/*BSD/etc. are more secure is because the source code has always been available, and has been reviewed and hacked by thousands of people for 10 years. The source didn't just show up on the Internet yesterday.
If Linux's source had been developed in secret for the last ten years, you better believe its sudden revelation would lead to the discovery of new vulnerabilities and exploits, and that's exatly what will happen to NT/2000/XP if there are any substantive pieces of the OS in the partical source that has been released.
Microsoft is downplaying the whole situation as an intellecutal property issue, but I don't believe it. It will likely result in more vulnerabilities and exploits against Windows. Microsoft execs have been saying for years that revealing Windows source code would make the OS more vulnerable to attacks.
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Re:$22 million in jobs
> > $22 million in jobs or in dividends to stock holders.
> Do you think that shareholders stick their money in socks when they get it? I don't. I either invest it again (which creates jobs) or I spend it (ditto).
Nice. Its exactly this impression that the rich want everyone to have. Screw the middle class, and they dont even know it.
Check this out.
our tax system now forces most Americans to subsidize the lifestyles of the very rich, who enjoy the benefits of our democracy without paying their fair share of its price..... The author exposes how tax cuts supposedly intended to help the middle class benefit the super rich far more... -
Re:Before outsourcing, "hardship" visas
Well, alot of companies seem to have gotten no hangover as a result of discarding their "currently invested capital and starting from scratch" when they moved from U.S. to Indian based IT talent.
The difference that you are forgetting about is that we're just coming to an end of the first wave of outsourcing. Let me rehash briefly things that I have *not* seen (and I was watching all this outsourcing hoopla unroll, having been very close to the heart of things):- concerns about quality (they were overridden by cost savings concerns);
- concerns about intellectual property theft (anybody remembers Ishoni Networks? Thought so...);
- (related) concerns about inability to bring the unscrupulous partners to justice - hell, they can't do that even if the company is in the US! (ask me how I know...)
- concerns about cultural differences - they're different for different nationalities, but they all have their impact. Nobody paid attention to this back then, because the decisions were being made by people on the top who may have never as much as spoken with an alien;
- concerns about xenophobia - foreigners in US had to live with the fact they were ridiculed, 'cause they came here by their own volition. However, not so if they are offended in their native countries, and some of the cultures are very particular about having their grudge revenged (Roger Zelazny: "revenge is a dish that is best served cold");
As long as the labor cost difference is sufficient to counter the "exit cost" of throwing away current capital and yield a net increase ROI, there will be no hangover.
I don't think you'd find too many companies that would advertise the screwups. Like I was saying, the cost to exit for some may have been so high that the only case when it comes out will be when the company goes down or the results are otherwise publicly visible (as in: Dell, HP call center stories, or that infamous case with a threat to publish confidential information). Therefore, they will pretend that everything is just fine until the very last moment, by which time it is way too late.From the tone of your post, I infer that you are looking forward to a day of reckoning for these companies that outsource U.S. jobs. My advice: don't hold your breath.
Now, that would be foolish... I'll turn blue and die before that happens. As someone put it, "market can stay insane longer than a person can stay solvent". -
Re:Legal?
ASAICT, the actual figure is closer to 90%, at least this is what was conceded by RIAA lawyers in the US case and was discussed here on
/. some hours ago.
Other issues leaning heavily against your argument would be that you have posed a false analogy, as it is difficult to make a case for filesharing being as harmful to individuals and society as rampand addictive drug use, and that the actual harm to the members of the RIAA is difficult to calculate, because you cannot say how many of the downloaders are actually using the service to test drive music before buying (in which case filesharing is acting as advertising for the RIAA members products), or how many copies of a particular song has been downloaded (I doubt the RIAA has actually researched the logs of every kazaa/morpheus install prosecuted for this statistic).
There is nothing stopping them from being responsible for the content - they could require shareable files to be hashed and verified before they could be shared.
Which would require centralized control, be rather expensive, and would completely change the nature of the P2P network. One of the beauties of P2P is the lack of centralized control, and to change that would introduce the possibility of censorship, not only for eliminating copyrighted material, but for eliminating dissent in some of the more oppressive countries. P2P is not necessarily limited to music (I have downloaded various text-files from the gnutella network) and a raid such as this is simply intimidation, and very likely a reaction to the way the court case in the US seems to be heading (see above link).
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link not working?
click here!
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Re:"Leaked" instead of "Rumors"
Wow, thanks for pointing that out. I just figured two stories that were based on one story must be dupes.
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Legislation Is Not the AnswerFrom the Mercury News article:
Democratic Assembly member Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, chairwoman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, said Thursday she and others will introduce legislation intended to persuade publishers to provide more unbundled textbooks and explain changes in new editions, and encourage faculty to consider price when choosing books.
I really don't think that the government should be wasting it's time with something like this. For people who are interested in escaping the high prices of the bookstores there are already alternatives:- Ask your professor what books will be required, buy them at Amazon or Narnes & Boble.
- Buy books from one of the book swapping services that are discussed in the article. If your institution doesn't have one, set one up and make a few bucks.
:)
I really don't see a reason for the government to intervene here. -
Building While Time is RunningWhile The Sims lets you edit your house within the game, it does pause time, so the people aren't trying to walk around while you're rearranging the living room and putting up walls.
During the development of The Sims, one of the parts I worked on was the in-game editing tools. Originally, the tools could be active while time was running, and it caused all kinds of unplanned problems: You could pick up a burning fire and drop it on a victim, who would start screaming and die a horrible death. You could move the shower out of the way while somebody was getting into it, and watch them bathe naked in the middle of the room.
Instead of telling us programmers to fix the code, Will Wright addressed those problems by coming up with the Live/Buy/Build modes, which froze time while you were buying objects or building architecture. Underneath the hood, the game was perfectly happy to go on simulating while you were in build or buy mode, but the user interface forced it to pause.
But when the time came around to revisit the user interface design for The Sims Online, that solution no longer worked: You CAN'T freeze time, because it's an online game, so you're not the only player who would be frozen.
The Sims Online essentially requires time to go on while anyone's in build or buy mode. So the programmers had to fix the architectural and object placement tools to support that, the object scripters had to reprogram the objects to expect anything to happen, and the testers had to flush out zillions of unexpected bugs and side-effects from that major design change.
The other challenges that needed to be carefully balanced, were the perfect synchronization with the other players (so different people didn't end up with inconsistent views), and the immediate local feedback (so the wysiwyg house editing interface isn't sluggish, and always shows you what you'll get). The necessary compromise is that sometimes editing operations may not take effect, because somebody sat in (and locked) the chair you were about to move, for example.
Since I'm one of the people culpable for how complex and messy that wysiwyg editing code is, I was totally amazed how The Sims Online team at Maxis eventually got the editing tools to work as well as they do now.
The first time during The Sims Online beta that I saw another player editing their lot, building walls, laying out tiles and wallpaper, moving objects around, there were certainly a bunch of weird bugs and inconsistencies. But Maxis got them out eventually and now it works like a charm!
It's really amazing to sit back in Berkeley and watch your housemate in Japan build, landscape, decorate, furnish and feng-shui a home in The Sims Online. Watching a master at work is a great way to learn technique! You can even knock down the walls or move objects around at the same time yourself, if you're both housemates! So you have to be careful who you choose as housemates, because you might come back and find your lot trashed by The Sims Mafia. I'd love to watch one of those operations go down!
I can't wait for the multi player online versions of Photoshop and 3D Studio Max!
-Don
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Re:Still won't get venture capitalParent wrote: "appearently the Vulture Capitalists in Silly Valley won't even look at your business plan if it involves using US engineering talent for the bulk of the development. They want offshoring in the plan to begin with before they dish out any money.
That's false. Some top tier VC firms want tech that is not easily commoditized, and even tell the press that those jobs will stay here.
For example, a couple days ago's San Jose Mercury News quotes VCs saying the opposite:
"[Kevin] Fong [of the Mayfield Fund], too, expressed optimism about jobs. His firm has doubled its pace of investment into new companies, he said, and they're hiring. ``These are the kinds of jobs that won't be leaving the country,'' he said. ``They require very deep domain experience, the ones you find in the valley.''"
Sounds to me like you're source was trying to make excuses for not having his biz-plan read -- or perhaps he was talking to a VC firm targeting markets inappropriate for his product.
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Bubble burst, or champagne still bubbling?Yesterday's SJ Mercury news article has stats that VC funding is way up (22% over last quarter), and that software is the big winner with $415 million in the bay area this quarter.
Sure one bubble may have burst, but looking at the glass as a whole, the champagne is still sparkling.
(or the beer's still got a nice head of foam)
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A Better Article, Some Clarification
This article has way more details than the parent post. Sharman is suing because the RIAA used Kazaa Lite, an illegal replica of Kazaa without the ads, and for violating the license agreement by sending warnings to Kazaa users. Unlike the Recording and Movie industries, which allege that Kazaa is illegal because it could be used as a tool in copyright infringement, Sharman is alleging that the RIAA is using software which directly violates copyrights. Kazaa Lite explicitly states in the license agreement that it is illegal.
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This article has a lot more info
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Re:Fact is both side were deeply wrong
Soldier are paid/engaged to kill each other in their nation's name.
You make it seem like most soldier's in most wars aren't forced (drafted) into fighting. Iraq killing Americans is having an effect on the people who joined the Army & the Reserves. The government is offering people $10,000 to stay in. And that's not helping much.
And to be off-topic, if WW2 Was Fought Like Vietnam. -
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere!
Just give me $200,000 to help out my state and keep my public library open 7 days a week. Or how about just a few hundred thousand to keep my fire station open.
I mean that's nothing compared to the billion or trillion dollars right? Its chump change.
Why do I suddenly feel like a beggar asking for pennies.... -
Re:Take your choice...
Earthlink is no longer related to the church if scientology. Sky Dayton's slimy ass left years ago. It is now just a regular run of the mill megacorporation who only cares about its stock holders.
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Re:Neither "solution" is very attractive.
Before tax credits for using U.S. workers, we need to close the tax loopholes for multinational corporations that are encouraging them to offshore work. Profits earned overseas are taxed if invested back in the U.S., but they are tax-free if invested back overseas. There is a U.S. Senate bill offering amnesty for these overseas profits. This is one of many examples of American workers getting outmaneuvered and not even knowing it.
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How about just slightly behind the cutting edge?
250GB for $149.99 (after rebate) = less than $0.60/GB. (And 8MB buffer/7200RPM at that...)
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Just go to Fry's
In case you haven't seen it yet, they have low-end machines that are comparable, already running Linux, for about $200.
IANAFETG (I Am Not A Fry's Employee, Thank Goodness)