If Microsoft works through ISO to improve the standard, and ODF and OOXML are gradually harmonized, then all our complaining is moot Given Microsoft's past actions regarding ODF, what do you think the chances are that they will allow them to be harmonized?
Consider this silver lining: without ODF, under what other circumstances would Microsoft have turned their new document file format over to a standards body? Turned it over? They rammed it through the process using every dirty tactic they could come up with. Somehow I'm thinking that Microsoft hasn't really lost control of anything. They seem to have plenty of control over the ISO.
Yours was the first post I read which specifically said the BBC are not culpable in the current barney about bandwidth. All I'm saying is that from where I'm standing, they are, because they've let millions of noobies install a peer-to-peer network which is always seeding by default. I'm not claiming that that was a great idea or that they shouldn't have done more to educate people about what they were installing. I'm just saying that as far as bandwidth payments go, the BBC is paying for their own, and the subscribers are paying for their own, so the ISPs are the ones that are at fault for any problems that occur due to people actually using all that bandwidth that they're paying for. Completely separate issue from people exceeding their bandwidth allocation and having to pay overage fees.
What exactly does your post have to do with what I said? I'm not even talking about those ISPs that charge for overusage (who should love the BBC), I specifically addressed those that don't, which is what the article is about. You're bitching about something entirely different. Maybe it's a justifiable argument, maybe not. I don't tend to visit the BBC much. But it's not even remotely a rebuttal to my post.
I think you are missing that the iPlayer can work in a P2P mode, so the ISPs claim that the BBC does not pay its fair share (because it merely seeds the downloads). If the BBC is paying for the data that it is uploading, then it is paying its fair share. The rest of the bandwidth use is customers uploading and downloading data with each other, which they also pay for via their ISP fees. If those fees don't cover the cost of the bandwidth, then that is the fault of the ISP, not the BBC. ISPs keep promising the world to their customers, only to complain when they actually try to make use of all that "unlimited" downloading speed the ISP told them they were getting.
Why do people constantly bash on Vista. It runs great on my computer and I have no problems with it. Maybe because it doesn't really offer us any compelling reason to upgrade from XP. Microsoft has finally managed to make XP work fairly well and then they release Vista which doesn't really add much that is useful, but does add a lot of incompatibilities, all the problems created by immature drivers, greater hardware requirements, and some annoying features. What exactly is the incentive to "upgrade" to Vista?
I actually like the fact that they are putting the border around the comments that encloses the replies. It makes it easier to follow long threads where it sometimes becomes a pain to track back to a parent comment, especially when they all use the same subject line (e.g. Re:Cramped comments). The nested reply box is cool too:)
There does seem to be about a 1/2 inch margin around the comments though, and I'm not too wild about that. I think 1/8 inch or so would be sufficient.
It might even be a good idea to certify IT professionals (beyond other schemes like Cisco certification), as the presence of IT quackery is manifest. How you'd go about it in an industry like IT would take a great deal of thought, though. Yes, and such a scheme should only be devised by one with the proper certifications to create it, certainly.
Who are you voting for, so I know who not to support? I'm just not interested in the elitist's candidate. How exactly is it elitist to suggest that you have a duty to have some modicum of knowledge about the candidate that you're voting for? Why do you think it's ok to vote without even bothering to inform yourself about who you're voting for, or how they might affect the country?
Cry me a river, hippie. You're the one supporting government-sanctioned monopolies. So I'm the hippie and you're the commie? These networks were subsidized and protected from competition by the government. To say that those companies built those networks themselves is bullshit. They wouldn't have jack shit if the government hadn't granted them monopolies. Take your trolling elsewhere pinko.
There are no net neutrality laws AFAIK, and I personally think giving the government ANY regulation powers or control of the internet is a horrible idea. Too late. It's government regulation that brought us these monopolies to begin with. They created the monster, it's their duty to reign it in if it tries to run amok.
If Comcast continues to limit availability of certain protocols then competing ISPs and community sponsored networks will fill the void. Yeah, that hasn't been going so well. Competing ISPs often don't exist, or if they do, they're phone companies who are also local monopolies that do whatever they feel like with their network.
What we really need is municipal ownership of the infrastructure, which would allow for any number of ISPs to offer services to the customers and create true competition in that market. Right now, due to the mounds of regulations that have accumulated over the years, we have companies that have no incentive to compete or improve their networks beyond the basics. Others are shut out of the infrastructure and we have no innovation or real choice in the market.
It isn't really a monopoly. Yes, they have the right to be the cable provider for a particular area, but that is not a monopoly for Internet and television service.
You don't like Comcast cable Internet? Switch to DSL or wireless(if it's available). You don't like Comcast cable television? Switch to Satellite.
I do believe, however, that Cable companies should not be able to be the exclusive provider for cable access for any area. You speak as if those things are equivalent. They're not. There's big differences in service levels and capabilities depending on where you live and what you use the service for. If there's only one cable company allowed to serve an area, then that is a government-sanctioned monopoly, by definition. By your definition, since I could use IP over Carrier Pigeon, the local cable company doesn't have a monopoly.
Yeah, I wish they were less expensive. But they were upwards of $500+ about 2 years ago. So the prices on the units are dropping reasonably quickly (I expect to see readers based on e-ink drop below $200 in the next 12-18 months). What's the battery life like on the Sony Reader? I'm thinking about getting one, but it's still kinda pricey right now. If they were under $200, I would buy one in an instant. I'm still seeing them for more like $300 right now, and I'm concerned that they don't really have a lot of storage space. I'd be carrying around a lot of reference books which are much larger than their stated average of 1.24MB per book. That could be a problem.
This only means that your congress and other government agencies are also bad, it doesn't make FCC practice okay and sure as hell doesn't constitute a reason to stop improving things. Didn't mean to imply that at all. Just wondering why the FCC is being focused on rather than another agency. Is there some reason to go after it first? Just wondering if there is some strategy behind this.
Less government + less government power = less effect of government corruption on normal peoples lives. It's a simple equation, but I don't think it's the least bit vague or unworkable. "Less government" is extremely vague. What do you cut? How do you cut it without causing major undesirable side-effects? How do you get people behind your proposed cuts unless you can explain what you want to cut, why you want to cut it, and how it will impact those people who's support you want? Keep in mind that you'll need a fairly large amount of support to get anything done, so you'll have to be pretty careful about what you decide to cut. This is just the beginning and off the top of my head too. There's probably a hundred other things that need to be considered as well. You need a LOT more detail.
The Libertarian answer is to reduce the size of government to reduce the amount of corruption The problem with the Libertarian answer is that it is vague and largely unworkable due to the current level of corruption. You need to come up with ways to reduce the amount of impact the corrupt officials can have by proposing things that are concrete and easier for people to get behind than something like "reducing the size of government".
Basically, FCC employees brown-nose prospective future employers by decreeing public policies that benefits those future employers. So it's just like Congress, or any number of other government agencies.
BINGO! They have the power. If I own your boss, I defeat you in anyendeavor that includes him. There is no way to fight something like that. Well, yeah. My point is that it didn't have anything to do with their lawyers. Their lawyers were horrible and didn't do anything to defeat the DoJ. Microsoft's donations to those in power are what got them off.
Rather, the true answer is that Microsoft has such a big team of lawyers they can defeat the DoJ. What can any lawyer do against such weaponry? Microsoft didn't defeat the DoJ. The DoJ had them nailed to the wall before the Bush administration called them off and let MS off the hook. A lot of the testimony by MS was actually incredible to read. It's hard to believe that people that are supposed to be so smart could actually be so astoundingly bad at lying. They got called on their lies repeatedly and had no chance of winning by the end of it. Political donations pay off in the end though, especially when the party in power doesn't believe in anti-trust law. So we end up with a worthless settlement and Microsoft goes back to business as usual.
I'd also check out what Comodo is doing.... I particularly like their firewall. It is very granular and allows you to create a myriad of rules based on software and/or ports. I use Comodo's firewall, and I think it works well. I do think the UI could use some more polish though. It's not as easy to work with as ZoneAlarm's, but at least Comodo doesn't randomly lock out my internet connection.
The Battlestar event is much more the equivalent of the U2 flying across the USSR that was mentioned previously... a provocative act, but not the opening shot of a war. Especially when you consider that the Cylons were already spying and sabotaging the human worlds.
I'm not sure if exposing some tax fraud is a goal high enough to disregard legal standards. Isn't committing or abetting tax fraud already disregarding legal standards?
I meant to note also that the use of the pictures was for commercial purposes, which, IMO, is not such a non-sense case. If they'd been used for some purpose that was non-commercial in nature, then I would agree that the law should look at the use differently (and it would, I believe).
I thought I made that pretty clear. Copyright laws are generally nonsense, but this case is pretty sensible. They used his pictures without permission. They then proceeded falsify documents and lie about where they got the pictures. You're supporting them on this?
Personally, I think that Might and Magic 6 and 7 were the best for that; I would love to see another game with the wide-open-world-yet-awesome-story flavor. If you've played those games and can suggest some that are similar, I would be open to them. I haven't found anything like that lately. I'm just playing Oblivion with a bunch of mods that get rid of level-scaling and other annoying things about it, as well as adding a ton more content (specifically FCOM, Supreme Magicka, some UI mods, and a lot of other little tweaks to things like bows and stealth, landscape mods, and some nice quest mods as well).
For 100 point's I could pretty much make an unstoppable character. Fortunatly, I put role playing first. But others will not put role playing first. They will create characters that exploit whatever defects there are in the system (and with such a complex system, there will be many), and even worse, some will create characters to use for nothing but griefing, and probably be wildly successful at it.
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly does your post have to do with what I said? I'm not even talking about those ISPs that charge for overusage (who should love the BBC), I specifically addressed those that don't, which is what the article is about. You're bitching about something entirely different. Maybe it's a justifiable argument, maybe not. I don't tend to visit the BBC much. But it's not even remotely a rebuttal to my post.
I actually like the fact that they are putting the border around the comments that encloses the replies. It makes it easier to follow long threads where it sometimes becomes a pain to track back to a parent comment, especially when they all use the same subject line (e.g. Re:Cramped comments). The nested reply box is cool too :)
There does seem to be about a 1/2 inch margin around the comments though, and I'm not too wild about that. I think 1/8 inch or so would be sufficient.
What we really need is municipal ownership of the infrastructure, which would allow for any number of ISPs to offer services to the customers and create true competition in that market. Right now, due to the mounds of regulations that have accumulated over the years, we have companies that have no incentive to compete or improve their networks beyond the basics. Others are shut out of the infrastructure and we have no innovation or real choice in the market.
You don't like Comcast cable Internet? Switch to DSL or wireless(if it's available).
You don't like Comcast cable television? Switch to Satellite.
I do believe, however, that Cable companies should not be able to be the exclusive provider for cable access for any area. You speak as if those things are equivalent. They're not. There's big differences in service levels and capabilities depending on where you live and what you use the service for. If there's only one cable company allowed to serve an area, then that is a government-sanctioned monopoly, by definition. By your definition, since I could use IP over Carrier Pigeon, the local cable company doesn't have a monopoly.
I meant to note also that the use of the pictures was for commercial purposes, which, IMO, is not such a non-sense case. If they'd been used for some purpose that was non-commercial in nature, then I would agree that the law should look at the use differently (and it would, I believe).
I thought I made that pretty clear. Copyright laws are generally nonsense, but this case is pretty sensible. They used his pictures without permission. They then proceeded falsify documents and lie about where they got the pictures. You're supporting them on this?