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What Would The World Be Like Without Microsoft?
CanadianMikey asks: "The debate with the business side of computing rages on about the validity of Open Source. Is it good or bad? What is the future of computing? Could it have been different, and where will the 21st century take us? Is Microsoft just the big nail that always gets hammered first and will someone step in to take their place when they are finally taken down?
If Microsoft were to close up shop, who do the readers of Slashdot think would be tomorrow's Microsoft? What about the forgotten windows?"
GNAA Leaks Windows 2000 Source code
.________________________________________________. fucking
by GNAA staff
As previously reported here, source code to Microsoft's latest operating system has been stolen.
So far, nobody claimed responsibility for the act, and Microsoft is denying it even happened. But you know better than that! GNAA 0wnz you.
We will be right back after this commercial break!
According to Google Zeitgeist, there are about 80% of Internet Explorer 6 users. The only platform supporting Internet Explorer 6 is, of course, Microsoft Windows. These statistics are consistent with the earlier presented graphs of the operating systems used to access Google, with the Windows family consistently taking the top 3 ranks. Out of remaining 20%, the split is even between MSIE 5.5, MSIE 5.0, both Windows-only browsers. Netscape 5.x (including Mozilla) counts for only a measly 5% of browsers used to access Google. As you can see from the graph, this sample was calculated starting from March 2001 until September 2003.
According to Google Zeitgeist, there are about 80% of Internet Explorer 6 users. The only platform supporting Internet Explorer 6 is, of course, Microsoft Windows. These statistics are consistent with the earlier presented graphs of the operating systems used to access Google, with the Windows family consistently taking the top 3 ranks. Out of remaining 20%, the split is even between MSIE 5.5, MSIE 5.0, both Windows-only browsers. Netscape 5.x (including Mozilla) counts for only a measly 5% of browsers used to access Google. As you can see from the graph, this sample was calculated starting from March 2001 until September 2003.
And now we return to our scheduled broadcast...
| ______________________________________._a,____ | CmdrTaco
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ | will
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ | he ever learn that
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ | GNAA is totally
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ | unstoppable? Teamed
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ | up with the other troll groups,
| _________#1__________?________________________ | GNAA will absolutely own
| _________j1___________________________________ | the shitty place that is slashdot.
| ____a,___jk_GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_ | Just remember, the longer the lines are,
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ | the smaller CmdrTaco's penis.
| ______-"!^____________________________________ | This logo is (C) 2003, 2004 GNAA
` _______________________________________________' [1]
(C) GNAA 2003, 2004
aka, "in the shitheap"
Big and hard just like I like 'em.
Which is better...
A world without MicroSoft
GNAA crap floods
PollTroll's Poll Troll Tolls
Sex with a mare
Which is better...
A world without MicroSoft
GNAA crap floods
PollTroll's Poll Troll Tolls
Sex with a mare
Anyone who's been around here for a while probably knows I have a very long fuse. I really don't get upset by much, and I've always allowed a lot more silly shit to go on here than most people would. It should be no surprise though that everyone has a limit, and a few former posters here finally hit mine on Sunday.
Since there's already been a lot of confusion about it, what happened was that some people posted links to a porn image with my wife's face photoshopped in. Objectively, it was a rather good photoshop job. Nevertheless, that particular clique earned themselves immediate lifetime bans. I know some of you know where the pictures are. If you'd like your accounts erased as well, please post links to them below. I'm sure someone will test me on this. I'm not kidding. There was also some related stuff with comments designed to crash browsers and so forth. Apparently, all the assholes went nuts at the same time.
Following that was a joyous day of playing whack-a-mole, watching the new accounts get created and removing them. It got boring real fast. Finally, mainly because I had work to finish, I just shut off new user accounts altogether to think about it.
And then one of our Scoop servers was broken into and basically trashed by a rootkit. I don't think it had anything to do with events on the site itself, but the timing sure was bad. The box is back up, and should be back to serving this weekend. We seem to be doing fine on one for now. But that's another story altogether.
I don't think we have a huge problem here. There's almost always been a few annoying people with enough free time to piss off everyone else. The names change a little but the song remains the same. If there was some way to keep it from becoming another game for multiple accounts, I would love to have user voting on whether another user could stay or not. However, that would require some kind of hard proof of identity, and I'm just not prepared to deal with that hassle, nor do I think most of you would accept it for the fairly limited benefits of just having an account here.
So the question is, how do we make it more difficult for obnoxious people to disrupt the site, without barring the gates altogether? And from a wider view, how can a large community like this continue to grow in an organic way? I think part of the initial success of the site was due to the word-of-mouth nature of who showed up to use it. Now that half of our pages are result number one for some google search or another, it seems like a lot of that person-to-person growth, and the sense of community that comes with it, has been lost.
I'd like to propose a strategy for this with four parts. The overall ideas behind it are first, to create more of a barrier to entry and thereby make losing accounts more of a hardship, and second, to recognize that some administrative oversight of who stays and who goes is necessary, while making it as accountable as we can to the wishes of other members (without, hopefully, turning it into a game itself).
Part I: Sponsorship
The first part of the plan involves new accounts. I don't mean sponsorship as in advertising, I mean sponsorship as in vouching for another prospective user.
The idea is this: someone creates a new account. They go through the normal email confirmation. At this point they cannot do anything. Before you have the privileges of a user, you must get an existing user to sponsor you. That just means that some user with the ability to sponsor others goes to a page and enters the new user's nickname. These two are now associated, and if a user gets kicked off the site, their sponsor does too.
Our hypothetical new user, after being sponsored, is now a full user of K5 in all senses but one. They can post comments and diaries, they can submit stories, they can vote and rate comments. The only thing they can't do yet is sponsor other users. The criteria for this are adjustable, but I'm leaning toward a requirement of 60 days of sponsored membership and 40 po
Actually, if you were take the last hour of Slashdot commenting into account, you'd only around 4%, as 96% of the last posts were pure GNAA pwnage.
Your book looks like a total rip-off from all the cliches from all Final Fantasy. Even the characters are cookie cutters!
This will greatly affect the global economy as a whole. Investors would realize millions of lossed dollars should one day Microsoft decide to jump ship. Basically, all the investors would sell their shares of MSFT and drive a whole wide range of stocks to go down, not just MSFT. As if stocks are low enough already. Small software companies that rely entirely on MS products will go bankrupt. The whole state of Washington would be screwed. Even the hardware sector most especially Intel who invests so much to tune their stuff to run specifically on windows will be greatly affected. Boy I can picture Intel being especially screwed when IBM will take over #1 spot for the mainstream processor market. IBM would probably attempt to come back to the software market with a new and improved OS/2 possibly with a Linux kernel. To tell you the truth Big Blue has the resources to become a monopoly considering their decades of experience and the fact they have divisions on both software and hardware. My biggest question to be answered: Either Microsoft or IBM haven't worked together enough to integrate their products e.g. Windows on Power PC. In fact the CELL for the Playstation 3 is based on IBM tech. This would make Apple really happy as they have a chance to grab more developers to switch to their platform for development work. The Unix gurus would most definetly have their jobs back. The certified MCSC guys would find job openings as they have to continue supporting windows servers. The Unix gurus would be called up once again to support a big increase in the switch to Unix platform servers. There's a lot of ups and downs, but at least temporarily in the beginning its chaotic at best.
so is she hot?
Thankyou JebusIsLord
Being a failure as a geek, when I converted to OO on Xandros from CorelWP on Win98 I lost my sissors from the WingDing font 88. 1 & 1/2 years later you have helped hide my shame.
Thank you.
No. You can't look at my Sig; it's mine, and I'm not showing you.
Games are to computing, what porn is to everyone else.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Well, same to you, you socialist prat.
Now then, would you care to actually address any of the points I've made?
I want safety inspections to be carried out by people who actually have something to *lose* if they're wrong.
Relying on government for safety is simply irresponsible.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."