Slashdot Mirror

See The angry Bill Gates is the real Bill Gates.

See also Has Gates' combativeness hurt Microsoft in court case?

See Is Bill Gates a Genius?

Sorry to disappoint you: Haggar as in Haggar the Horrible. I guess I misspelled it the first time.

So, I am not the Haggai from HaArets, rather I am a guy living somewhere in HaTsafon, just like Haggar.

hmmm, "banding together" sounds familiar...

Wouldn't all this "banding together" get them into more (small) trouble?

First, the top 1% make 20.81% of all income covered under the income tax, yet pay 37.42% of all federal income taxes paid in the United States. For the Excel-impaired, this AP-based article largely recites the relevant statistics.

Second, the government does not "give" the rich (or anybody else) money when it cuts taxes. If you believe that the government owns your money and only gives you what it deems necessary to maintain your lifestyle, then it would appear that you're all for government paternalism and should have no objections to this video game bill at all!

I just love it when people think that laying down a tax, subsidizing an industry, or making something manditory will help improve the quality or price of the service or product:

Federal security guard sleeps on job.
Bailing out the US automotive and airline industry. WTO opposes overseas subsidy of industries.
Medicaid Abused by state government.
US prescription drug costs too high for many to afford. They go shopping in Canada instead.

Yup. Taxing your ISP is going to create guaranteed income for the recording industry. Some people have mentioned that [gasp] software has been pirated as well. If this passes will it not pave the way to have the federal government subsidize a company found guilty of monopolistic practices?

While it would be ironic as hell, it wouldn't suprise me.

I just love it when people think that laying down a tax, subsidizing an industry, or making something manditory will help improve the quality or price of the service or product:

Federal security guard sleeps on job.
Bailing out the US automotive and airline industry. WTO opposes overseas subsidy of industries.
Medicaid Abused by state government.
US prescription drug costs too high for many to afford. They go shopping in Canada instead.

Yup. Taxing your ISP is going to create guaranteed income for the recording industry. Some people have mentioned that [gasp] software has been pirated as well. If this passes will it not pave the way to have the federal government subsidize a company found guilty of monopolistic practices?

While it would be ironic as hell, it wouldn't suprise me.

I just love it when people think that laying down a tax, subsidizing an industry, or making something manditory will help improve the quality or price of the service or product:

Federal security guard sleeps on job.
Bailing out the US automotive and airline industry. WTO opposes overseas subsidy of industries.
Medicaid Abused by state government.
US prescription drug costs too high for many to afford. They go shopping in Canada instead.

Yup. Taxing your ISP is going to create guaranteed income for the recording industry. Some people have mentioned that [gasp] software has been pirated as well. If this passes will it not pave the way to have the federal government subsidize a company found guilty of monopolistic practices?

While it would be ironic as hell, it wouldn't suprise me.

I just love it when people think that laying down a tax, subsidizing an industry, or making something manditory will help improve the quality or price of the service or product:

Federal security guard sleeps on job.
Bailing out the US automotive and airline industry. WTO opposes overseas subsidy of industries.
Medicaid Abused by state government.
US prescription drug costs too high for many to afford. They go shopping in Canada instead.

Yup. Taxing your ISP is going to create guaranteed income for the recording industry. Some people have mentioned that [gasp] software has been pirated as well. If this passes will it not pave the way to have the federal government subsidize a company found guilty of monopolistic practices?

While it would be ironic as hell, it wouldn't suprise me.

I just love it when people think that laying down a tax, subsidizing an industry, or making something manditory will help improve the quality or price of the service or product:

Federal security guard sleeps on job.
Bailing out the US automotive and airline industry. WTO opposes overseas subsidy of industries.
Medicaid Abused by state government.
US prescription drug costs too high for many to afford. They go shopping in Canada instead.

Yup. Taxing your ISP is going to create guaranteed income for the recording industry. Some people have mentioned that [gasp] software has been pirated as well. If this passes will it not pave the way to have the federal government subsidize a company found guilty of monopolistic practices?

While it would be ironic as hell, it wouldn't suprise me.

Hidden checkboxes? This doesn't surprise me in the least. I haven't used the RealPlayer virus^Wsoftware is years because of the spam. In fact, when I last installed it, I specifically remember a.) requesting that I not be emailed anything from RealNetworks, and b.) shortly thereafter receiving an email or two per week from Maria Cantwell, former RealNetworks executive and current U.S. Senator.

A quick trip to Google shows some shenanigans typical of a politician. With people running RealNetworks like that, no wonder the software is so (IMHO) abysmal...

I suspect I'll get flamebait for this...but honestly, my intention is simply to voice an opinion: I thought that movie was boring!

Granted, I think I only plodded through the first 4 minutes before deciding it probably wouldn't be going anywhere.

The whole movie could've been one third the length if only they had shown each clip once rather than doing that not-clever repetitive thing for every single stupid out-of-context scene.

Maybe if I was patient enough to view the whole movie I would've seen wonderfully insightful people singing the praises of Bin Laden, Patty Murray style.

Pure Krunk.

There actually was some concern from conservative activists that the man was not sufficently in favor of supply-side economics and tax cuts for corporations and the rich, even so! But Bush has reassured the conservative activists that Friedman has been whipped into shape. The photograph shows he is recovering well, promises to do whatever Ashcroft says to, and is only slightly pale and wan from his indoctrination.

(+1 funny, -2 'yeah right, parody much?', +3 'what do you mean, that was straight news?')

I thought it was legal on sidewalks, but reading those legal bills is a headache.

Yup, legal on washington sidewalks seattletimes

Actually, yes. MSFT has an amazing history of shilling and astroturfing:

• MSFT paid Gartner to publish MSFT material as Gartner's
• fake "grass roots" letter writing
• another fake letter writing campaign
• paid for people to hang out in AOL forums
• paid for people to hang out in ZDNet "talkback" forums
• paid for people to hang out in CompuServe forums
• MSNBC doctored Wall Street Journal material
• Stuffed an on-line ballot box
• planned to plant fake op-ed pieces in local newspapers
• funded favorable think-tank whitepapers

I'm sure there's more, that's just all I can scrounge up in a few minutes. I seem to remember another MSFT-funded think-tank ("Indepence Institute"?) white paper, and there was an interesting "Brill's Content" article on how MSFT tracks reporters and what they write about MSFT. Actually, isn't the above enough? 10 items from 9 different sources about all varieties of shilling and astroturfing in forums from small to nation-wide. Yes, I think it's prudent to believe that MSFT employees watch Slashdot and mod-up pro-MSFT articles, or even submit them.

I'd go so far as to say that the average person should be suspicious of any pro-MSFT article or viewpoint posted in a public forum. If you, the reader, are pro-MSFT, I'm sorry: if you lie down with pigs, you can't expect to wake up in the morning smelling like roses.

If you think that Microsoft's $40 Billion is an impressive number calculate what Bill Gates would lose personally if Microsoft's stock lost half of its value.

His fortune is less tied to MS than you might think. Gates has diversified his holdings over the past several years and as of Sept. 9th of this year only held 11.6% of the company's stock. I believe his current net holdings are worth $43 billion. MSFT has 5,346,449,872 shares as of Sept. 30th, and it closed on that day at $43.74. On that day, MS stock was worth $223 billion, and he held only $27 billion in MS stock. If he lost half that, he'd go from $43 billion to $29.5 billion (ignoring the fact that an MS crash would take down the whole market). Boo hoo. He'd still have over 100 times what he was worth back in 1986.

Of course, this in no way invalidates your argument which is 100% correct. MS is a very stock price-obsessed company, and a lot of mutual funds invest so much money into it because it's preceived as a stable growth company. A major Enron-like shake-up like Bill Parish has been hoping for would devistate the market as badly as Enron's did. MS's business personnel are wholy obsessed with keeping this growth stable, and it's been well documented that MS uses tricky accounting to smooth losses from one quarter to the next by storing up money from good quarters and counting it as "earnings" later.

Incidentally, the Bill Gates Net Worth Page is an amusing collection of statistics and extrapolations about his wealth, though its data is a little out of date. It shows things like how long he could buy off every major official in the government (if he stopped earning money), how fast you'd have to go picking up dollar bills from end to end to earn money as fast as he has since MS went public (35+ MPH), and how if he can maintain his current rate of growth per year (over 35%!), he'll be a trillionaire by 2014.

a story from April 2002 showing a Seattle area Thriftway inplementing a similar system


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/68217_thumb27. shtml

> I think Steve Case is one of, if not THE, only major
> original AOL person left and that's because the AOL brand is
> synonymous with him.

And even he is still hanging by a thread..

They WERE doing pretty well, until they murdered 88 people with pencil-whipped maintenance records.

Some years ago, there was talk of Boeing selling the Commercial Airplane Group and just concentrating on defense contracts. That would be appropriate because, let's face it, Boeing is hardly a lean, mean, corporate machine. To the contrary, Boeing is basically a government agency and it's run like one.

Beyond that, "what is their strategy?" is a very good question. It very likely does not include remaining in the state of Washington.

You're right: it's turboprop-based. It's supposed to save fuel by flying low and building up a "buoyant aerodynamic effect".
More links:
Daily Telegraph UK
FuturePundit.com
Seattle Times
Boeing Frontiers with larger image

Not a bright thing to do. Furthermore, why would you post pictures of your expensive toys on the internet? Trying to prove to the folks back home you've made it I suppose.

Well, except maybe for this guy.

Anecdotal evidence is not an argument. Here's an excerpt from an article in the Seattle Times addressing precisely your point:

Many car drivers complain bitterly about motorcycle riders. They say riders exceed speed limits, and indeed speed was a factor in more than half the deaths of riders between ages 21 and 30 from 1993 to 2001 in Washington state. They say riders drive while drunk, and indeed alcohol was involved in 109 of the 365 accidents. They also say that riders weave in and out of traffic, pass on the right and don't signal. So, to them, the findings of a NHTSA-funded study, the most comprehensive ever conducted on motorcycle safety, may come as a surprise. Looking at 4,500 accidents in Los Angeles, researchers found that when motorcycles and other vehicles collided, it is usually the driver in the car who violated the motorcyclist's right of way. While that study was done in 1981, periodic looks at state police reports in Washington suggest its findings hold true today, said Dave Wendell, program manager for Evergreen Motorcycle Safety Training in Seattle. "Car drivers don't see us because they're not looking for us," Wendell said. "They're looking for something at least 6 feet wide with two headlights."

The full text is here.

Here's an article that says:

"Microsoft relies on Rational products to let customers perform modeling, having incorporated those products into Visual Studio, the most widely used development environment in the world. Now, Microsoft will probably drop Rational "like a hot potato," said Carl Hoagland, a fund manager for investment firm State Street Corp."

One would think that there is more to the Seattle Underground than what is on the tour.

I do remember hearing about the tunnels under the University of Washington back in 1997 when this article first came out. I later found out that a friend who didn't live there had assisted in setting up that squat, with electricty, television, etc. B_H

He couldn't have lied about it. He had a cross on his head .

Right you are my friend. Amazon.com switched
nearly its entire computer network to Linux
Amozon-Linux

A little follow-up -- according to this article reimbursement goes to the states -- the law provindes nothing for Justice -- and was $10 million for the 9 states that quit a year ago.

...thereby causing the death of more people than all weapons of mass distraction^Wdestruction combined have in the whole history of war (says UNICEF, among others)

Cell phone companies already have a large number of experienced exployees that have been meeting th ese necessary goals for years.

Yes, but Microsoft has 40.8 Billion Dollars.

Read it here!

...this when I submitted the story, but I had not found it yet at the time...

The problem is worse because people seem to live further from their workplaces than in the past. That usually means that each year there are more vehicle-miles driven than the year before.

Changes in land-use patterns (which could improve housing affordability), more variety of transportation options (along with more commute-trip reduction programs), and a change in commuter attitudes would help a lot.

Unfortunately, most people don't understand that the greater their distance from work (and anywhere else they plan to go), the more traffic they will create.

Also, I commend your will to bike. I have biked several times this year, and maybe will again tomorrow if the weather stays like this. There are other bike paths beside the Burke-Gilman trail. You can get a map of bike routes, if you are interested.

Just remember Seattle is know for its exceedingly poor city planning. For example,

1. Seattle used to have a trolley system, not unlike the street cars in san francisco. After a moment of genius urban planning it was removed. Click here for pictures.

2. Seattle couldn't agree on how to build a subway system, so they built a bus *tunnel* through downtown. Just to make it seem like they could intelligently plan for the future, they added tracks for a street car like metro system. They are still unused. (Last year they decided not to make the tunnel exclusive to light rail)

3. Seattle used to have another hill near downtown. They didn't like it so in 1897 they actually leveled half of it. It wasn't until the 1930's that they actually decided to remove it all. Here is an informative link with pictures.

4. Seattle's history of poor public planning also took place downtown. After fires and horrible sewage problems, they decided to put the sewage at street level and move the entire street up on story! For an entire neighborhood!

So Seattle, the town that actually raised its street level, lowered its hills, removed its light rail system only to have it cost in the *billions* to replace it, and when they try to replace it, it is only a bunch of unused tracks, is now spending 1.4 billion on a monorail. No one rides the monorail now, and they think that making it longer is going to change that? Hmm, did anyone tell them monorails are ugly?

-Sean

-Sean

(a) 100 million / mile. Not that bad. Gives us MORE reason to want to pay our state for doing things. Tribnet

(b)Hmmm whats all this stuff in between... You make it sound like they're too close together for a link to matter. Ooo Pictures

(c)Now I cant even BELIEVE you're using this as an arguement. 80% of the ridership comes from busses. EVEN if that happens thats a decrease in the overall usage of busses which means they can support more routes and take busses off the roads which is just one more thing out of your way and not causing traffic. Not only that but the 20% that dont come from busses get off the roads, and the 80% that do, get where they need to go. :)

(d) Check (a)

(e) Check (b)

AND sorry but a combination of systems is more often then not more effective. A monorail connecting all those areas doesnt sound cost effective. A light rail system connecting all those areas, doesnt *appear* to be a big enough impact on actual traffic. [In my opinion anyway]

(f) This, I dont know. Its the one thing on your list that doesnt make as much sense to me. Finally, I'd like to say if Seattle tries nothing, it therefore, ends up doing nothing. Would you rather make an attempt to alleviate traffic problems, or have too many people sit around whining, who dont want to pay taxes [refer to (a)] ??? I preferably would like to be able to get places without bumper to bumper traffic nearly everyday.

Modders, forgive my attitude. The Puget sound traffic can do that to us. We just want our problems fixed... thats all.

One thing people facing such numbers will quickly realize (as reported by the Seattle Times) is that the tax is easily avoidable. So much so that it could jeopardize funding. That it passed by less than 1% of the vote can only anger locals enough to actually do this in droves.

One thing people facing such numbers will quickly realize (as reported by the Seattle Times) is that the tax is easily avoidable. So much so that it could jeopardize funding. That it passed by less than 1% of the vote can only anger locals enough to actually do this in droves.

Your numbers are way off. Both monorail and light rail have initial 14 mile lines. Monorail has estimated $1.5B and light rail $2.5B, thus monorail is approximately $100M/mile and light rail $175M/mile.

Seattle PI's Monorail vs. light rail Q&A

what about just leaving them alone and trying to sell their products?

I love MS as much as the next guy here on /., and while I partially agree with this suit, the market still has the final word to say.

I submitted a while ago a story about Microsoft's attempt at interactive TV here in Portugal. It got rejected, but the point here is that it failed. Microsoft's testbed for iTV failed because the problems we have today with windows translated to the same problems with the MS iTV's software. The service was also a bit expensive (whether or not related to the MS tax), the set top box crashed a lot, and few saw the benefits of iTV. We are a bit behind europe in smoe areas, but in technology we are at about the same level so it was not a people's problem. (in a country of 10 million there are about 7 or 8 million cellphones; our ATM system allows for any kind of bank operation in any bank's ATM from withdrawing money to buying train tickets to paying the telephone or electricity bills; we have a nation-wide non-stop automated system for paying the highway toll).

MS failed because of the product they were trying to sell wasn't what the people wanted, they wanted to make us use the TV as a computer but we didn't. When they come with this cellphoneOS, let the people decide. Say what you want about mobile internet, games, messengers, digital built-in cameras, and all the rest of the crap, that while make cool geek toys (which I like to play with), the vast majority just wants to call someone.

And it's not going to be easy to de-throne the appeal Nokia has.

Microsoft may be the monopoly in computer operating systems and Office suits, but in other ponds they are the little fish.

china, japan peru, germany, france, etc...
I'd like to see someone actually build a world map with all the opensource-leaning countries marked.
that way we can see where it's growing...
This talks about some of the countries switching....
I don't know, I guess it would just be nice to have a master list... maybe the EFF could do this?

I agree. The number of stories like this that are cropping up are appalling (such as cases like the girl in Salem who was prohibited from selling bottled water at her school because Pepsi has an exclusive contract there).

I find it ironic (and sad) that the ones who argue the most for Competition and Free Enterprise are the ones who, in reality, want it the least.

More info is available at Google News."

The Last Comdex?
Slashdot-18 minutes ago
linuxwrangler writes Key3Media Group Inc. which produces the Comdex trade show
may be unable to make it's debt payments and could declare bankruptcy. ...

Key3Media May File for Chapter 11-Seattle Post Intelligencer
Comdex organizer says it may file for bankruptcy-San Francisco Chronicle
Low-key Comdex to highlight gadgets-InfoWorld

Sites that do not use Flash get my Seal of Approval.

smug bastard

what the bastard is so smug about

smug bastard

what the bastard is so smug about

smug bastard

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has a different take on this - they've digested the ruling, and it looks like judge Kollar-Kotelly may not have sold out as completely as some may think.

Here's the link - look at the quote from Machiavelli's The Prince, the reference to sua sponte discretion, and holding the directors that spoke at the trial personally responsible for upholding the intent of the agreement.

In fact, MS may reject the agreement themselves, now. And that may be what Judge K-K was after.

The machines dial numbers stored in a database using a mathematical algorithm to predict when a telemarketer will be ready to finish one sales call and start another. When the machine reaches a person, the call is supposed to be transferred to a telemarketer who is just finishing a previous call.

Automated dialers are illegal in many states, Washington State being one of them. A good story about this:

Link

Calls made using an automated dialing-and-announcing device for a commercial purpose -- to sell property, goods or services -- are against the law in Washington. Consumers are entitled to $500 in damages for each call.

Check your states website for information.

Another good source for your rights against telemarketers:

PrivateCitizen.org

From the Pacific Northwest, home of "innovative" approaches to software reliability, comes:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/13 4563661_ship27m.html


"Officials could not say for certain what caused the ship to heel, but they think the ballast system was probably at fault. A malfunction became evident about 3:30 a.m., when the 653-foot ship started to tilt. The crew was evacuated and no one was hurt. ...

The ship, in operation since June, has an automated ballast system that adjusts water levels in 28 compartments to keep it righted on the high seas."

Kind of frightening - wonder if the crew even knows how to do a manual override. (Also weird that evacuating the upper port balast chamber would cause it to list to port...)

So in the linked AP story we find the following quote:

The open-source movement advocates that software, such as the Linux operating system, should be distributed free and open to modification by others rather than treated as copyright-protected, for-profit property.

Is this what we really think of programming, then releasing our work as an open source project? Not that what the AP, or the Seattle Times or whoever will truly affect us as a hobby, but is the AP (and others) representing the Open Community correctly?

Consider: is it a problem that Red Hat (or Mandrake or Delta Labs, for crying out loud) sells Linux CDs? The hip, in-crowd will still d/l the ISO images from some FTP server somewhere, burn an install CD and go, right? Is not the point of Open Source that 'Where the Binaries go, so go the Sources'?

Even in the (gnu/) GPL?