For now, Google is the enemy of our enemies, and is perforce our friend.
No, Google is your friend. Google seeks to create and share information others create. As long as they believe in and fight for the right of others to do the same, they are your friend. This is the exact opposite and the cure for the insane but inate will to control others you see. The truth does set you free.
We now live in a VERY dangerous time in which the scales seem to be tipping in favor of an Orwellian outcome where all information is locked down tight and any attempt to look under the hood or otherwise perform any "unauthorized" operation on any information/data/operating code is met with a draconian response of severely criminalizing those who would attempt to do so.
Ah, true, but you do not go far enough in your understanding of collective oligarchy and current law. Creating and sharing information is also against the rules by the DMCA, a very real law. You are supposed to mindlessly consume information fed to you, not examine, share or even remember it. Control of information is key to establishing an Orwellian society. That society proves it's existence to itself through suffering. The result is a society that exists to make you misserrable.
In the pathetic WalMart example you see the motivation and an indication of how absolutely that motivation is applied. They are paranoid. Perfect information might hurt their sales and ability to take your money. Walmart is also freaky about taking pictures in their stores and other petty details. It's all about power and control. The small scale of this power and control is a good reason to be afraid. It indicates that no detail is too small to be controlled and manipulated. Power demands absolute power and the will to power is part of human nature. Small minded people get a kick out of such petty control but it's part of all of us and it's implications are much larger.
Orwell recognized this about human nature. He drew his conclusions from experience in the colonies of the British Empire, as a tramp in Paris and London, a witness to communist revolutions in Spain and the second world war. These were all terrible experiences where the ordinary rules of conduct were removed and people were free to do oppress each other in any way. So, I'll quote the master:
'The rule of the Party is for ever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.'
' You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power?'
He knew in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others.
'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore --'
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.
'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'
'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.... The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in thei
could just be they have reached some kind of tipping point where they believe that Linux now is a viable alternative to MS where they didn't previously. You know, opinions changing when the facts do
No, the campaign was not like that and not much has really changed as far as Unisys should be concerned.
Unisys did not directly compare M$ and Linux, they ran a foolish smear campain on Unix for M$. Everything they derided, from Sun purple on the floor to the "Mysteriousness" and cost, was aimed at closed source Unix. This was foolish because closed source Windoze suffers from all of the same problems to a worse degree and other more important problems like a lack of stability or network security. M$ stooges tried to paint free software with the same brush but that effort was even more foolish for reasons that are obvious. The only kinds of people who could fall for this would be windoze desktop users forced to make IT decisions they are not qualified to make and they were the target group of this emotion based smear attack.
Changes in the last two years don't have much to do with Unisys's about face either. Many of the improvements for Linux that have happened in the last two years have been on the desktop, something Unisys still does not want. Better device support make Linux easier than ever to deploy on the desktop. KDE and Gnome applications have vastly surpassed their Windoze counterparts and everything look better thanks to better X fonts. The server side has improved some, as all free software will, but all the things Unisys would do with a Linux server they could have done two or three years ago without a problem.
The quesion is, can a single company do as much as an entire country can on it's own? I doubt it and so does Microsoft. Why else would they buy off their competition? They should have all confidence they will prevail without such tricks. The trend outlined above indicates they have no such confidence and can't really keep up.
The screenshots above speak for themselves, even if your browser does not support the characters a default install of Mepis does. The Microsoft programs are unmodified English language programs. Free software has Korean character support and translations that Koreans are giving themselves. It's difficult to see how M$ can maintain dominance without doing more than writing korean language how-to's.
Buy a page? How stupid. How on earth would I know I want the page before I read it? Why would a particular page come up to begin with? I can think of few instances I'd want to look at a single page of a book but none of them would separate me from my money. Google's print service and book reviews spring to mind.
Google searches text and gives you relevant quotes. The page itself might be available if it looked like the thing was related to what you were interested in to begin with. This service is mostly useful for finding books that might help your research, like a very good card catalog. If the book's copyright is expired, Google will save you the trip to the library, but not always yet. In my last search, I found a 2004 reprint of a book originally published in 1918. Gutenberg had the text.
The only other case I can think of is that someone might reference a book or a passage of a recent book. That might make me want to look at the book. Hopefully, the author would simply quote enough of the book to get their point across. If I really wanted more I'd go to the library.
Oh wait, these same greed heads have already assaulted the libraries. See here. It's always amazing how greedy and stupid people can be. RMS was right again. How else can you get people deep into debt over school books besides charging per word?
You are telling me the people who gave us DMCA and CAN-SPAM are going to do anything but make sure they can do whatever they want? Anyone paising M$ these days is a shill, a fool or seriously misquoted. Yep, looks like bad quoting there.
Your second quote does not show favor or approval by EPIC. Snakes mature with age. Indeed, from your fine article,
Hoofnagle cautioned, noting that Microsoft's statement of principles says the company supports "consumer opt-in" -- the consumer's advance permission would be required -- for sharing of sensitive (e.g., financial or medical) data but supports "opt-out" -- data can be shared unless the consumer explicitly says "no" -- for every other kind of information.
Your third quote should go further in it's statement of mistrust of Microsoft by the ACLU. Again, from the FA:
ACLU legislative counsel Timothy Sparapani also praised Microsoft's move, but cautioned that any federal privacy law would need to include safeguards for data gathered by commercial data brokers.
But we don't need experts misquoted to help us rip Microsoft a new one when it comes to anything customer friendly. Microsoft is anything but subtle about what it does. We can look at their own BS to see what they want to do. From their own nonsensical web page, followed by plain English translation:
Create a baseline standard across all organizations and industries for offline and online data collection and storage. This federal standard should pre-empt state laws and, as much as possible, be consistent with privacy laws around the world.
The Microsoft way or the Highway, once again.
Increase transparency regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. This would include a range of notification and access functions, such as simplified, consumer-friendly privacy notices and features that permit individuals to access and manage their personal information collected online.
A notice of vile activity is not a prohibition of vile activity. A promise of sharing from Microsoft is worth about as much as a shared source license.
Provide meaningful levels of control over the use and disclosure of personal information. This approach should balance a requirement for organizations to obtain individuals consent before using and disclosing information with the need to make the requirements flexible for businesses, while avoiding bombarding consumers with excessive and unnecessary levels of choice.
Microsoft's idea of balanced is well known as is what they consider a reasonable level of trust.
Ensure a minimum level of security for personal information in storage and transit. A federal standard should require organizations to take reasonable steps to secure and protect critical data against unauthorized access, use, disclosure modification and loss of personal information.
Oh yeah, a certification process approved by an industry follower like Microsoft. Anything that would pass Microsoft for security or privacy is crooked enough to outlaw anything else.
I'll believe Microsoft gives a shit about anything but spamming their users when their OS has a half life better than 20 minutes on any network.
The proposed change would thwart removal of a button to download software that an author put in, not make a download button manditory. This interesting and mild idea is being considered carefully to avoid problems it might cause if abused by contributors.
There's more, but it's not worth the trouble to detail. That last Slashdot story was just more BS from another Wintel rag.
If you have a real objection to a real proposed change, let's hear it.
"My Problem: [quote from gpl].... "either version 1, or (at your option) any later version." This is on my software. If I dont like GPL 3.0, and dont want my software distributed under it, I'm already screwed.
You have already given the world the four software freedoms to your code. A new license can not take that away from your users because they would chose to keep the old license. What more can they take from you? What have you thought of that my innocent mind can not?
You can't push a rope and you can't make a man work. If you don't like the changes to the GPL you can publish all of your new code under any other license you like. Code grows quickly or dies. It will soon be useless without a maintainer.
What a pathetic way to announce your low sales expectation. "Master Gates, no one is going to buy this piece of shit unless we make it hard to find and review." "Make it so Stevie! Only the faithful leet shall have them, and write another review for the Wintel press today." The hype machine does not get any worse than that.
Now, how many other M$ things have they done this with?
So to uninstall this mess, they want me to go to a web site, hosted by the company who wrote the spyware/rootkit, and run an activeX control. Hahahahaha.... "Just Say NO!"
If you did not use an OS with silly stuff like activeX, you would not have a root kit installed. You might not have been able to get anything out of the CD, but that's OK, you could have taken it back as defective. I suggest you do the same with your OS.
That CEO has a bad attitude, but even worse flamebait comes from Richard Doherty, principle analyst for research firm Envisioneering:
"... right now any innovation only belongs to a half a dozen companies."
What a moron. If he considers a corpse of patent lawyers innovation, he might have a point. If he wants features and convenience, he has no clue.
KDE and other have it all gpl'd and ready for anyone. Playing, ripping and portability, it's all there.
For ripping, there's the easy "abcde" program and KDE's Konqueror. It just works, no further effort required. If you don't want to buy your music in a box, you can go get it for free at Magnitune and other Creative Commons sites that save you the trouble of ripping.
For play KDE alone have three excellent programs, Juk, Amork and Noatun. Noatun, while older, is my current favorite. It's network aware, as most KDE applications are, supports all sorts of playback including video, does shuffle and more. Can your music player sftp into your homebox? Outside of KDE, there are reliable standards like xmms, which also does network playlists, videos and all that.
My laptop coupled with a fm transmitter and a cheap fm equipped digital music player runs rings around a DRM'd ipod. I get a real keyboard, full screen to drag and drop my music around and have to be at my desk anyway. Why limit yourself to 40 or 60 gigs when you can see your biggest, fattest network box? When I want to go portable, I can drag a few hours of random music onto the player and walk off.
Music is the past, others are already living in the video future. Open Zaurus has been doing video streaming through the network for years.
So, the work is already done and Neuros is not so dumb to ask for help doing it. For the price of a few devices, they can have the best music / video player in the world. I imagine the experiment will be educational for more than the CEO.
If they are smart, they'll ship it with a Mepis CD to fix the end user's computer too. It's not like you can support a decent device on Windoze these days. Plugging cool portable devices to Windoze has like trying to put coal into your Ferrari for years now because Microsoft breaks what's not Microsoft.
I guess I should have broadened the scope of my premise to include the general look and feel of OpenOffice.org. This is fact: This application looks better on Windows than on Linux. Now you tell me it does not.
OK, I'll tell you that it's been a long time since I've seen any desktop besides OSX look as good as Debian or Mepis default installs. Solaris and Windoze don't come close anymore. I don't know what you did in four hours of messing with config files or why you needed to, but the story is really the same on Windoze. I dare you to try to change menu fonts there. For more than a year now, default X configurations have been excellent. As Windoze performance declines over time, so does it's appearance, but X continues to look good.
When you combine good fonts in X with KDE menu and Enlightenment theme transparencies, you have the best looking desktop in the world. Mac OSX can match fonts and has nice GUI zooming and other tricks which rate about equal in utility, but given the choice between free and non free, why chose non free?
Windoze is an unmitigated dissaster. Any "real" graphics program there comes with it's own version of directX which might screw every other program you have. Beyond that, consistency between vendors and even between versions is non-existant. You might be able to go to the font fairy and get pretty looking fonts, but messing with your actual system fonts is liable to blow up more than it fixes. Systems that are simply run by normal people start off ugly and get uglier.
Thanks for the well thought out piece. I'm glad you did not flame him.
It will probably take Greg about six months to be embarrassed of writing that piece as he discovers the really cool world of free software. He'll be pleasantly surprised by spell checking in Konqueror, blown away by the Kontrol center, very happy with the excellent integration between KDE components, like being able to open and edit a Kword document in a browser tab that's split with google for research and many other fine features Windoze will never get past the vapor stage with. More interestingly to him is the very real and good support Window managers and programs from different groups have for each other. As a Microsoftie, he's put up with far greater quirks than any free software program will deliver. Just how much better free software is will come to him in waves.
Now, the way his blog looks is something that he should be taken to task for right away. The victorian wallpaper.... gag. Oh well, there's no accounting for taste.
Bill's memory and reasoning are flawed. On his giving, he says:
If those children were in rich countries, we would have headlines, wed take action. We wouldnt rest until every child was protected.
He's forgotten two things. The US DID have mosquito born illness and the cure was mosquito irradiation by draining swamps near people. Elimination of the vector is really the only means of eliminating the disseases associated with it.
It will be interesting to see if this $250,000,000 gift will produce a miracle cure. Who knows, it might be cheaper to make a drug than it is to drain swamps. Given the global drug distribution record, I'm inclined to think the money would have been better spent the way the US spent it 100 years ago.
Indeed, the death is greatly exaggerated. "Worst year ever" for flat growth? That's nuts, what a greedy bunch. No wonder many online newspapers are so stuffed with useless adverts. I've got news for them, don't do it because I've got my choices across the globe for news.
My first thought was, where's the money going? If the paper revenue is shrinking, the online advertisement market should pick up, within margins of waste reduction. The eyeballs and wallets behind them should be worth the same amount of money regardless of advertisement delivery. Google, is showing the way to make the money spent work better.
There's lots of good news in the numbers and it looks like publishing is going back to what it used to be. Local revenue is up and online advertising is up. This means local papers are able to exercise more control and that reflects the initial promise of the web - to allow a broader voicing of diverse opinion. The concentrated power of a few big papers and broadcasters of the last century was unhealthy. New providers, both national and local, are taking their place. I imagine they are underestimating online advertising revenue. A friend of mine runs a forum and nets $600/month off Google ads doing it. I use it to get local news of interest to me, would Goldman Sachs consider that news and count it? They should.
Therefore, despite much outstanding material contained in the standards, we have no choice but to ask the KSBE to refrain from referencing or quoting from NSTA Pathways in the KSES.
Refrain from REFERENCING them? That's nuts, out of control.
Well, that's true, though one did come from the other according to the FAQ:
OpenDocument previously was called Open Office. What is the relation to OpenOffice.org?
When the OASIS OpenDocument TC was founded, it chose the OpenOffice.org XML file format as the basis for its work, because the OpenOffice.org XML file format had already proven its value in real life. The OpenDocument format, therefore, is an advancement of the OpenOffice.org XML file format. It us usable and used by OpenOffice.org, but also by other office applications like KOffice.
By realizing the difference, we realize the concerns raised on behalf of the blind are pure FUD. The move to OpenDocument has nothing to do with the faults of one or another application used to read it. In fact, it allows for competition in presentation not possible with Microsoft's closed formats. It is already happening, and we can be sure the results will be better than anything Microsoft has to offer.
Microsoft FUDsters will exploit this confusion as much as they can, but it all rebounds on them. No one is pushing a specific application but Microsoft.
This is typical Microsoft and hopefully their reputation is catching up to them. They have focused on something few people know about, confused terms and tried to project the weaknesses of their own softare onto others. We've seen it again and again: Linux costs more than Microsoft, Linux is less secure than Microsoft, Microsoft is better than anything. You can insert Word Perfect, OS/2, DRDOS, Netscape and a host of other "competitors" into the above formula. It's been bullshit all along and it's bullshit today. People have caught on and it's not going to work forever.
You can fool some of the people all of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
The Ambassador program has been going on for years at LSU. I have yet to have run into one yet, thankfully.
Part Two of the program is a $500,0000 per year site license, as noted here, which brings the Microsoft Tax to everyone on campus. This is a program that eats up 1/8 of the $150/year student tech fee for the ability to download the most basic of software, productivity software, email client and this goofey one note. Someone on the thread does the math and estimates Microsoft will pocket about $300 per software set they distribute, which is well above the usual Dell rip-off. Of course, it is much much more than a download of Mepis, which has more and better applications.
In typical Microsoft style, they are touting the rip-off as "free software". They spammed every student on campus with an email that mentioned a commitment but no costs and had the nerve to stand in the middle of free speech alley and proclaim "free" downloads. What a turn off.
Surprisingly, it has not worked very well. People are outraged when they learn the cost. Few people want to risk their only working computer to "upgrade" software they already own, as free software advocates can tell you. Most people walked by the barkers at free speech alley and could care less. Did they really think people care about Outlook? I was one of the few people who bothered to talk to them and I agree with the BRLUG poster above, the reps were poorly trained and did not know their product. Spam backfires. Most people are going to look at the Microsoft dream play, where a fellow student tries to hawk a program, as weird and disturbing.
If that model doesn't appeal to you, then you shouldn't have chosen it in the first place.
What makes you think people have a choice? Do you really think people have voluntarily "standardized" on the worst commercial software available? I don't. It has much more to do with anti-competitive practices proved in court again and again. People use Windoze due to manufacturer and dealer manipulation the results of which is difficult even for armies of kernel hackers to keep up with. It's only getting worse.
Device drivers are one of the biggest obstacles to alternate software use. GUI auto configuration in free software is now better than it is in commercial software, but there's more than that to deal with. I've got five laptops, spanning 10 years. Power management only works on three of them, pcmcia on four. The newer the hardware is, the more likely it is not to work, but some stuff never gets fixed or is broken again by a bios "upgrade". I use free software anyway, because I'm determined and because I've used it enough to know how much more is available to actually do things I want to do with my pictures, text, music, movies and other files. Many people never get passed the quirks and the crappy winmodem or sound card is a show stopper.
As Treacherous Computing is pushed and Bill Gates works his OS into your BIOS, things will only get harder. A computer with a fritz chip that won't boot anything other than a Microsoft approved kernel is game over for free software.
What are you going to do then? You are going to run free software on older hardware or you are going to take Bill's subscription deal. There you will stay stuck until someone makes free hardware - but that might be illegal by then.
I run Linux and use OSS almost exclusively at home, work and school. If greedy software companies want to push more people to Open Source it can only help. After all, companies only control the market if consumers allow it.
I run nothing but free software, but now me and everyone else at LSU gets to pay the Microsoft Tax like everyone else. The $500,000 / year deal is so bad that the per copy distribution cost will be close to or exceed CompUSA customer rape prices. Far from pushing everyone into the Microsoft camp, it's being billed as "free software" and it will delay student use of real free software. With a site license, you too can subsidize other people's bad choices.
Talk to your student government representatives NOW. here is no escape without knowledge.
And how exactly, pray tell, is this any different than Slashdot? A 'blog' (for lack of a better term) owned by OSTG, which makes a living selling products and services that directly compete with Microsoft, yet dedicates terabytes of bandwidth to bullshit-laden half-retarded FUD-infested 'stories' about Microsoft?
Actually, Slashdot was one of the first user moderated and user filled blogs. The opinion you ridicule here is the considered opinion of your customer's. It was started by a few tech school students and has grown.
There are many differences between Slashdot and Forbes. The first and most important is that Forbes claims to be an impartial newpaper. Slashdot has always been an editorial, as you might gather from the "news that matters" tag, and almost always mirrors other content rather than generating it's own. That's why you find this Forbes article being ridiculed. Another important distinction is that Forbes is paid by Microsoft to publish. I imagine that OSTG is making money off Slashdot, so the relationship between tail and dog is reversed. Most importantly to me, Forbes stories usually violate common sense and personal observations. Slashdot, on the other hand, usually mirrors content from other sites filled with reproducible research and sensible opinion. Finally, the voices you read here, when the place is not overwhelmed by paid astroturfers, is the considered opinion of... your customers.
BTW, I remember you, you posted something once claiming that anyone who disagreed with you had an 'enslaving mouth' or some such nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
I know you won't enjoy your palliative treatment. Here's another 1,700,000 or so articles about a slow, painful death.
I know, you were joking. It's not funny when you work with the victims.
No, Google is your friend. Google seeks to create and share information others create. As long as they believe in and fight for the right of others to do the same, they are your friend. This is the exact opposite and the cure for the insane but inate will to control others you see. The truth does set you free.
We now live in a VERY dangerous time in which the scales seem to be tipping in favor of an Orwellian outcome where all information is locked down tight and any attempt to look under the hood or otherwise perform any "unauthorized" operation on any information/data/operating code is met with a draconian response of severely criminalizing those who would attempt to do so.
Ah, true, but you do not go far enough in your understanding of collective oligarchy and current law. Creating and sharing information is also against the rules by the DMCA, a very real law. You are supposed to mindlessly consume information fed to you, not examine, share or even remember it. Control of information is key to establishing an Orwellian society. That society proves it's existence to itself through suffering. The result is a society that exists to make you misserrable.
In the pathetic WalMart example you see the motivation and an indication of how absolutely that motivation is applied. They are paranoid. Perfect information might hurt their sales and ability to take your money. Walmart is also freaky about taking pictures in their stores and other petty details. It's all about power and control. The small scale of this power and control is a good reason to be afraid. It indicates that no detail is too small to be controlled and manipulated. Power demands absolute power and the will to power is part of human nature. Small minded people get a kick out of such petty control but it's part of all of us and it's implications are much larger.
Orwell recognized this about human nature. He drew his conclusions from experience in the colonies of the British Empire, as a tramp in Paris and London, a witness to communist revolutions in Spain and the second world war. These were all terrible experiences where the ordinary rules of conduct were removed and people were free to do oppress each other in any way. So, I'll quote the master:
'The rule of the Party is for ever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.'
' You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power?'
He knew in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others.
'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly. 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, and therefore --'
He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to thirty-five.
'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should know better than to say a thing like that.'
'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. ... The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in thei
No, the campaign was not like that and not much has really changed as far as Unisys should be concerned.
Unisys did not directly compare M$ and Linux, they ran a foolish smear campain on Unix for M$. Everything they derided, from Sun purple on the floor to the "Mysteriousness" and cost, was aimed at closed source Unix. This was foolish because closed source Windoze suffers from all of the same problems to a worse degree and other more important problems like a lack of stability or network security. M$ stooges tried to paint free software with the same brush but that effort was even more foolish for reasons that are obvious. The only kinds of people who could fall for this would be windoze desktop users forced to make IT decisions they are not qualified to make and they were the target group of this emotion based smear attack.
Changes in the last two years don't have much to do with Unisys's about face either. Many of the improvements for Linux that have happened in the last two years have been on the desktop, something Unisys still does not want. Better device support make Linux easier than ever to deploy on the desktop. KDE and Gnome applications have vastly surpassed their Windoze counterparts and everything look better thanks to better X fonts. The server side has improved some, as all free software will, but all the things Unisys would do with a Linux server they could have done two or three years ago without a problem.
The quesion is, can a single company do as much as an entire country can on it's own? I doubt it and so does Microsoft. Why else would they buy off their competition? They should have all confidence they will prevail without such tricks. The trend outlined above indicates they have no such confidence and can't really keep up.
The screenshots above speak for themselves, even if your browser does not support the characters a default install of Mepis does. The Microsoft programs are unmodified English language programs. Free software has Korean character support and translations that Koreans are giving themselves. It's difficult to see how M$ can maintain dominance without doing more than writing korean language how-to's.
Google searches text and gives you relevant quotes. The page itself might be available if it looked like the thing was related to what you were interested in to begin with. This service is mostly useful for finding books that might help your research, like a very good card catalog. If the book's copyright is expired, Google will save you the trip to the library, but not always yet. In my last search, I found a 2004 reprint of a book originally published in 1918. Gutenberg had the text.
The only other case I can think of is that someone might reference a book or a passage of a recent book. That might make me want to look at the book. Hopefully, the author would simply quote enough of the book to get their point across. If I really wanted more I'd go to the library.
Oh wait, these same greed heads have already assaulted the libraries. See here. It's always amazing how greedy and stupid people can be. RMS was right again. How else can you get people deep into debt over school books besides charging per word?
CDT takes "opt-out" seriously, so why should I take them seriously?
Your second quote does not show favor or approval by EPIC. Snakes mature with age. Indeed, from your fine article,
Hoofnagle cautioned, noting that Microsoft's statement of principles says the company supports "consumer opt-in" -- the consumer's advance permission would be required -- for sharing of sensitive (e.g., financial or medical) data but supports "opt-out" -- data can be shared unless the consumer explicitly says "no" -- for every other kind of information.
Your third quote should go further in it's statement of mistrust of Microsoft by the ACLU. Again, from the FA:
ACLU legislative counsel Timothy Sparapani also praised Microsoft's move, but cautioned that any federal privacy law would need to include safeguards for data gathered by commercial data brokers.
But we don't need experts misquoted to help us rip Microsoft a new one when it comes to anything customer friendly. Microsoft is anything but subtle about what it does. We can look at their own BS to see what they want to do. From their own nonsensical web page, followed by plain English translation:
Create a baseline standard across all organizations and industries for offline and online data collection and storage. This federal standard should pre-empt state laws and, as much as possible, be consistent with privacy laws around the world.
The Microsoft way or the Highway, once again.
Increase transparency regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. This would include a range of notification and access functions, such as simplified, consumer-friendly privacy notices and features that permit individuals to access and manage their personal information collected online.
A notice of vile activity is not a prohibition of vile activity. A promise of sharing from Microsoft is worth about as much as a shared source license.
Provide meaningful levels of control over the use and disclosure of personal information. This approach should balance a requirement for organizations to obtain individuals consent before using and disclosing information with the need to make the requirements flexible for businesses, while avoiding bombarding consumers with excessive and unnecessary levels of choice.
Microsoft's idea of balanced is well known as is what they consider a reasonable level of trust.
Ensure a minimum level of security for personal information in storage and transit. A federal standard should require organizations to take reasonable steps to secure and protect critical data against unauthorized access, use, disclosure modification and loss of personal information.
Oh yeah, a certification process approved by an industry follower like Microsoft. Anything that would pass Microsoft for security or privacy is crooked enough to outlaw anything else.
I'll believe Microsoft gives a shit about anything but spamming their users when their OS has a half life better than 20 minutes on any network.
The proposed change would thwart removal of a button to download software that an author put in, not make a download button manditory. This interesting and mild idea is being considered carefully to avoid problems it might cause if abused by contributors.
There's more, but it's not worth the trouble to detail. That last Slashdot story was just more BS from another Wintel rag.
If you have a real objection to a real proposed change, let's hear it.
You have already given the world the four software freedoms to your code. A new license can not take that away from your users because they would chose to keep the old license. What more can they take from you? What have you thought of that my innocent mind can not?
You can't push a rope and you can't make a man work. If you don't like the changes to the GPL you can publish all of your new code under any other license you like. Code grows quickly or dies. It will soon be useless without a maintainer.
Now, how many other M$ things have they done this with?
If you did not use an OS with silly stuff like activeX, you would not have a root kit installed. You might not have been able to get anything out of the CD, but that's OK, you could have taken it back as defective. I suggest you do the same with your OS.
More Expensive: Marine Goods.
Even More Expensive: Aero Goods.
Aero, electronic goods exposed to a marine environment ... Could we make that Monopoly Nuclear running NT too? Now that would be expensive.
Really, who knows, clever people can make anything work.
"... right now any innovation only belongs to a half a dozen companies."
What a moron. If he considers a corpse of patent lawyers innovation, he might have a point. If he wants features and convenience, he has no clue.
KDE and other have it all gpl'd and ready for anyone. Playing, ripping and portability, it's all there.
For ripping, there's the easy "abcde" program and KDE's Konqueror. It just works, no further effort required. If you don't want to buy your music in a box, you can go get it for free at Magnitune and other Creative Commons sites that save you the trouble of ripping.
For play KDE alone have three excellent programs, Juk, Amork and Noatun. Noatun, while older, is my current favorite. It's network aware, as most KDE applications are, supports all sorts of playback including video, does shuffle and more. Can your music player sftp into your homebox? Outside of KDE, there are reliable standards like xmms, which also does network playlists, videos and all that.
My laptop coupled with a fm transmitter and a cheap fm equipped digital music player runs rings around a DRM'd ipod. I get a real keyboard, full screen to drag and drop my music around and have to be at my desk anyway. Why limit yourself to 40 or 60 gigs when you can see your biggest, fattest network box? When I want to go portable, I can drag a few hours of random music onto the player and walk off.
Music is the past, others are already living in the video future. Open Zaurus has been doing video streaming through the network for years.
So, the work is already done and Neuros is not so dumb to ask for help doing it. For the price of a few devices, they can have the best music / video player in the world. I imagine the experiment will be educational for more than the CEO.
If they are smart, they'll ship it with a Mepis CD to fix the end user's computer too. It's not like you can support a decent device on Windoze these days. Plugging cool portable devices to Windoze has like trying to put coal into your Ferrari for years now because Microsoft breaks what's not Microsoft.
OK, I'll tell you that it's been a long time since I've seen any desktop besides OSX look as good as Debian or Mepis default installs. Solaris and Windoze don't come close anymore. I don't know what you did in four hours of messing with config files or why you needed to, but the story is really the same on Windoze. I dare you to try to change menu fonts there. For more than a year now, default X configurations have been excellent. As Windoze performance declines over time, so does it's appearance, but X continues to look good.
When you combine good fonts in X with KDE menu and Enlightenment theme transparencies, you have the best looking desktop in the world. Mac OSX can match fonts and has nice GUI zooming and other tricks which rate about equal in utility, but given the choice between free and non free, why chose non free?
Windoze is an unmitigated dissaster. Any "real" graphics program there comes with it's own version of directX which might screw every other program you have. Beyond that, consistency between vendors and even between versions is non-existant. You might be able to go to the font fairy and get pretty looking fonts, but messing with your actual system fonts is liable to blow up more than it fixes. Systems that are simply run by normal people start off ugly and get uglier.
Thanks for the well thought out piece. I'm glad you did not flame him.
It will probably take Greg about six months to be embarrassed of writing that piece as he discovers the really cool world of free software. He'll be pleasantly surprised by spell checking in Konqueror, blown away by the Kontrol center, very happy with the excellent integration between KDE components, like being able to open and edit a Kword document in a browser tab that's split with google for research and many other fine features Windoze will never get past the vapor stage with. More interestingly to him is the very real and good support Window managers and programs from different groups have for each other. As a Microsoftie, he's put up with far greater quirks than any free software program will deliver. Just how much better free software is will come to him in waves.
Now, the way his blog looks is something that he should be taken to task for right away. The victorian wallpaper .... gag. Oh well, there's no accounting for taste.
If those children were in rich countries, we would have headlines, wed take action. We wouldnt rest until every child was protected.
He's forgotten two things. The US DID have mosquito born illness and the cure was mosquito irradiation by draining swamps near people. Elimination of the vector is really the only means of eliminating the disseases associated with it.
It will be interesting to see if this $250,000,000 gift will produce a miracle cure. Who knows, it might be cheaper to make a drug than it is to drain swamps. Given the global drug distribution record, I'm inclined to think the money would have been better spent the way the US spent it 100 years ago.
My first thought was, where's the money going? If the paper revenue is shrinking, the online advertisement market should pick up, within margins of waste reduction. The eyeballs and wallets behind them should be worth the same amount of money regardless of advertisement delivery. Google, is showing the way to make the money spent work better.
There's lots of good news in the numbers and it looks like publishing is going back to what it used to be. Local revenue is up and online advertising is up. This means local papers are able to exercise more control and that reflects the initial promise of the web - to allow a broader voicing of diverse opinion. The concentrated power of a few big papers and broadcasters of the last century was unhealthy. New providers, both national and local, are taking their place. I imagine they are underestimating online advertising revenue. A friend of mine runs a forum and nets $600/month off Google ads doing it. I use it to get local news of interest to me, would Goldman Sachs consider that news and count it? They should.
How also can they deny Kansas fair use quotation of parts of their standards documents?
Oh wait, it gets worse!
Therefore, despite much outstanding material contained in the standards, we have no choice but to ask the KSBE to refrain from referencing or quoting from NSTA Pathways in the KSES.
Refrain from REFERENCING them? That's nuts, out of control.
Well, that's true, though one did come from the other according to the FAQ:
OpenDocument previously was called Open Office. What is the relation to OpenOffice.org?
When the OASIS OpenDocument TC was founded, it chose the OpenOffice.org XML file format as the basis for its work, because the OpenOffice.org XML file format had already proven its value in real life. The OpenDocument format, therefore, is an advancement of the OpenOffice.org XML file format. It us usable and used by OpenOffice.org, but also by other office applications like KOffice.
By realizing the difference, we realize the concerns raised on behalf of the blind are pure FUD. The move to OpenDocument has nothing to do with the faults of one or another application used to read it. In fact, it allows for competition in presentation not possible with Microsoft's closed formats. It is already happening, and we can be sure the results will be better than anything Microsoft has to offer.
Microsoft FUDsters will exploit this confusion as much as they can, but it all rebounds on them. No one is pushing a specific application but Microsoft.
This is typical Microsoft and hopefully their reputation is catching up to them. They have focused on something few people know about, confused terms and tried to project the weaknesses of their own softare onto others. We've seen it again and again: Linux costs more than Microsoft, Linux is less secure than Microsoft, Microsoft is better than anything. You can insert Word Perfect, OS/2, DRDOS, Netscape and a host of other "competitors" into the above formula. It's been bullshit all along and it's bullshit today. People have caught on and it's not going to work forever.
You can fool some of the people all of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Part Two of the program is a $500,0000 per year site license, as noted here, which brings the Microsoft Tax to everyone on campus. This is a program that eats up 1/8 of the $150/year student tech fee for the ability to download the most basic of software, productivity software, email client and this goofey one note. Someone on the thread does the math and estimates Microsoft will pocket about $300 per software set they distribute, which is well above the usual Dell rip-off. Of course, it is much much more than a download of Mepis, which has more and better applications.
In typical Microsoft style, they are touting the rip-off as "free software". They spammed every student on campus with an email that mentioned a commitment but no costs and had the nerve to stand in the middle of free speech alley and proclaim "free" downloads. What a turn off.
Surprisingly, it has not worked very well. People are outraged when they learn the cost. Few people want to risk their only working computer to "upgrade" software they already own, as free software advocates can tell you. Most people walked by the barkers at free speech alley and could care less. Did they really think people care about Outlook? I was one of the few people who bothered to talk to them and I agree with the BRLUG poster above, the reps were poorly trained and did not know their product. Spam backfires. Most people are going to look at the Microsoft dream play, where a fellow student tries to hawk a program, as weird and disturbing.
What makes you think people have a choice? Do you really think people have voluntarily "standardized" on the worst commercial software available? I don't. It has much more to do with anti-competitive practices proved in court again and again. People use Windoze due to manufacturer and dealer manipulation the results of which is difficult even for armies of kernel hackers to keep up with. It's only getting worse.
Device drivers are one of the biggest obstacles to alternate software use. GUI auto configuration in free software is now better than it is in commercial software, but there's more than that to deal with. I've got five laptops, spanning 10 years. Power management only works on three of them, pcmcia on four. The newer the hardware is, the more likely it is not to work, but some stuff never gets fixed or is broken again by a bios "upgrade". I use free software anyway, because I'm determined and because I've used it enough to know how much more is available to actually do things I want to do with my pictures, text, music, movies and other files. Many people never get passed the quirks and the crappy winmodem or sound card is a show stopper.
As Treacherous Computing is pushed and Bill Gates works his OS into your BIOS, things will only get harder. A computer with a fritz chip that won't boot anything other than a Microsoft approved kernel is game over for free software.
What are you going to do then? You are going to run free software on older hardware or you are going to take Bill's subscription deal. There you will stay stuck until someone makes free hardware - but that might be illegal by then.
This is different from the present in what way? You can fool some of the people all of the time.
I run nothing but free software, but now me and everyone else at LSU gets to pay the Microsoft Tax like everyone else. The $500,000 / year deal is so bad that the per copy distribution cost will be close to or exceed CompUSA customer rape prices. Far from pushing everyone into the Microsoft camp, it's being billed as "free software" and it will delay student use of real free software. With a site license, you too can subsidize other people's bad choices.
Talk to your student government representatives NOW. here is no escape without knowledge.
That might just work and then you will miss your flight.
Then everyone would find themselves buying a new passport.
I see a good market for foil lined wallets in 2007. One of those would be cheaper than buying a new passport.
Actually, Slashdot was one of the first user moderated and user filled blogs. The opinion you ridicule here is the considered opinion of your customer's. It was started by a few tech school students and has grown.
There are many differences between Slashdot and Forbes. The first and most important is that Forbes claims to be an impartial newpaper. Slashdot has always been an editorial, as you might gather from the "news that matters" tag, and almost always mirrors other content rather than generating it's own. That's why you find this Forbes article being ridiculed. Another important distinction is that Forbes is paid by Microsoft to publish. I imagine that OSTG is making money off Slashdot, so the relationship between tail and dog is reversed. Most importantly to me, Forbes stories usually violate common sense and personal observations. Slashdot, on the other hand, usually mirrors content from other sites filled with reproducible research and sensible opinion. Finally, the voices you read here, when the place is not overwhelmed by paid astroturfers, is the considered opinion of ... your customers.
BTW, I remember you, you posted something once claiming that anyone who disagreed with you had an 'enslaving mouth' or some such nonsense.
I agree, that sounds like nonsense.