You're trolling or flaming, but in the spirit of good natured debate I'll reply:
> Governments and businesses have locked themselves into a platform, > that doesn't make it a monopoly just because you say it is. > In order for it to be a monopoly, Windows would have to be the ONE and only
You're quibbling on the definition of Monopoly. There is more than one product. I don't have the current number, but Wiki says their share reached 3% by 2004. A monopoly doesn't need to be the only product; just the only viable one. Microsoft has seized most of the market using illegal practices. However, they've never been held legally accounted and never will be. End of Story. No point crying over it. It's just the way it is.
> (you know, like the meaning of MONO) operating system available. If that's what > you think, you clearly don't think very highly of Linux or Macs, or at least > enough to consider them as viable alternatives to a Windows PC.
Did you actually read my post? I said we use Linux for Servers. When you've got a big customer who is exclusively a Windows shop, what do you think would happen if we walked in their and proposed a Mac solution?
Answer that!
> Coming from a blatant anti-Microsoft Linux fanboi, you're really selling yourself short there. > Have your cry and get over it already, but don't use words when you clearly have no idea what they mean.
Ok. Now you're getting into name calling, and with all due respect you don't know what I think. It's good to debate stuff, but what do you really hope to accomplish by calling names? That'll only get you on the Ignore list (good natured debate ends)
> A monopoly product? Aha! So you finally admit it, Mac OS and Linux > are clearly not good enough to be considered as alternatives.
"*Finally* admit it"? Are you stalking me?:-)
Seriously, so many businesses and pretty much all government use Windows. If you want to sell software to these guys, you have to develop Windows. We use Linux on our servers... because we can... but for anything workstation, we're Windows. It bites, but that's the way it is. These guys dictate and as an ISV we have to follow.
I used to be seriously rah-rah OS/2. After that experience, I promised never to get religious about platforms again.
> It is a commercial entity engaged on behalf of a copyright holder to perform audits of suspected license violations
They are, but they have no right to come up and comb through your records.** If they have evidence the law has been broken, take it to the Feds where there are checks and balances. Time is money, and small business has better thing to do than entertain some dork in a suit for day on the hope he might find a duplicate license key. If Microsoft wants to pay me $180 an hour to entertain the dork, I might be interested.
** = Their shrinkwrap agreement says they have all sorts of rights. But shrinkwraps are shaky, and so is a monopoly demanding you waive your rights in order to use their monopoly product.
Thanks for the tip. I'd been avoiding it since noticing every release since 4 got worse and worse.
(Adobe: Nobody needs flashing advertisements when they're trying to read a document. e.g. Adobe 7.0 on my Compaq flashes up an obnoxious "SPECIAL OFFER FOR HP CUSTOMERS!")
> You overestimate youth. They neither care about nor are capable of understanding these things.
In which case we've turned full circle. Kids used to say the same about parents. But compared to Vietnam when it was young people who were protesting, with Iraq the protesters are the ones with grays in their hair. Young people are too busy shopping to be bothered. "Hey, The war isn't over *here*, is it?" Was a discussion in the press about this a while back where they came up with the term "Generation Me".
Maybe it's a generational backlash; a generation that cares, produces one that doesn't, which in turn produces another that does care.
> The sale of licenses where someone thinks they have XYZ permission, > when in fact they don't (e.g. special registered corporate license, > upgrade key instead of original). Blah blah..
I was thinking you have to send in your Windows holotoken or whatever that sticker is they put on your PC, or the authenticity thing. On top of that you'd need a statutory declaration or something that the software has been decommissioned.
eBay apparently let Windows be resold over eBay, but backed off at MS's request. But hey: If the software really is yours to sell, you have a legal right to sell it!!! Any bureau/website/company that does it needs to make sure everything is legit. If it is, not a damned thing MS can do to stop you.
This'll only be viable if there is a Vista backlash. If Vista is successful (and most consumers won't have even heard of the DRM), then this wouldn't fly. I'm fine with XP and would have liked the option, because Vista sounds truly suckulous.
Adobe have deservedly copped criticism over the years, but one great thing they've shown by example is that if you *do* let go out of specs (as they did with PDF), you can still be a viable business. More than viable. Adobe is still the #1 name in PDF/PS, but they do so alongside competitors (GhostScript/View and the zillion PDF generation tools). Yet Adobe is still making money.
Compare that to Sun with Java. Sun just wouldn't let go, so it never got beyond being just another product that competitors had to *take down!* One of those was Microsoft, but they themselves made the same mistake with Microsoft Word. Remember how DOC files used to be the "standard" (cough) for distributing documents on the web? Now it's all either PDF or HTML. If MS had let go, maybe, people would have used that?** In the long run, when we're talking about data which *needs* to be interchangable and not tied to one software vendor, an open spec will win. Especially a better one! (PDFs look the same. Word DOCs don't!)
(Reading this and feeling good Adobe? *great*. Now please head on over to Joel and learn about user interface design http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0 000000057.html Beyond [PageUp/PageDown], Adobe Reader's interface is very badly designed. The preferences make me weep and why can't I bookmark a la Visual Studio? And please stop trying to stuff every scripting concept known to humanity into the PDF spec, because all you're doing is turning PDF into the ultimate Trojan vector! Had to get that off my chest...)
Anyway, PDF and PS still rock and I'm glad they won!
** = Yes, Microsoft did make a feint with their Office XML, but everyone recognizes it for the debacle it is. Sorry Dad!;-)
For the first time in history we have a product nobody wants with features no user wants hoisted on a public by a company that's making it as hard to use as possible. Any other company would be at panicstations. Microsoft don't care, because they know ultimately we will end up buying it off them any way.
My idea: a web site exchange that sells old licenses of XP. When your laptop breaks, you can sell the license. We can even require you mail in your certificate to ensure its legit. eBay turned down this money. Lonely businessgeek looking for an idea, Will you?
Me Too(tm)! This isn't a flash-in-the-plan moral boycott. We're all scared any big company who has a problem with us can shut us down with a call to GoDaddy! Courts be damned. For those of us who make a living off our domain name, ouch!
Friend of mine also suggested namesecure.com. He said check the T&Cs to make sure they don't have a similar "GoDaddy clause".
BTW Saw GoDaddy on their web site complaining "CBS rejected our second Superbowl Ad". Hypocrites!
> Not surprisingly, the same areas are blurred in Google Earth.
> But how about images from satellites operated by other nations,
> such as SPOT or Sovinformsputnik?
Don't worry! Everyone knows Osama only use Google Earth. He's still boycotting Sovinformsputnik over of the Soviet Invasion of Aghanistan (Go Taliban!), and said he wouldn't be caught dead using SPOT.
There's a lot that needs changing on the whole planet. Fortunately thanks to the Internet people are talking and exchanging ideas now in a way that's never happened in human history. Who knows? Across the world, maybe we'll finally get something done. Robert X. Cringely said he'd bet on a thousand geeks rather than a thousand politicans any day of the week. So would I.
Pleasure talking to you on the big melting pot that is Slashdot.
> I assume everybody is capable of telling it. But whether people bother to tell it, > is another question. One quickly loses his/her ability to reason when some strong > emotion is mobilized. That's how the neo-conservatives, in fact, most politicians, get their way.
These days people travel a lot. It's common to meet backpackers and students from other countries. We have the Internet to communicate with each other. It changes perceptions. I hope most people realize the rest of the world are a lot like us. I'm told if you visit Iran, most people are warm and friendly towards foreigners, even Americans. They're not all religious nuts, only the ones we see on TV.
If you haven't already and you can, read George Orwell's Book "1984". It says a lot about this.
> Certainly the average American people has more power than the average Chinese, > and arguably average people in any other country.
I'm not sure that they do. China has only one party. America has two parties, but they're nearly identical. (Look at the last election: War President Bush vs War President Kerry). Most of the time they might as well be one party. The difference is Americans think they're free. Chinese on the other hand know they're not (I hope).
Rich Americans have more power than anyone else on Earth, even the President. Some of them use it for good (today's Bill Gates). Others use it for avarice (Rupert Murdoch). If Rupert Murdoch wanted to kick President Bush out tomorrow, he could. Imagine a thousand newspapers and FOX news screaming "Impeach!" He'd be gone tomorrow. No one else on Earth can do that. Is that one vote one value?
> You've got the chance to elect a president that unilaterally dictates over world affairs. > We don't even have much say over Chinese affairs yet.
Governments do whatever they want to do. They only pretend to listen at election time. At least you know you're not free.;-)
> And you somehow believe that the western world is immune to this indoctrination ? > But somehow, when it's China involved, manipulation of information is the worst thing in the world. Take a look closer to home.
On the contrary, I agree with you. Look at Iraq.
We have a huge problem with a corporate media telling us what to think (Hi, Rupert), but we do have basic protections like free speech which the government hasn't taken away from us... yet. The Internet makes it wonderfully hard for them to even try it. Sure, right-to-a-speedy-trial and confessions-under-duress are taking a battering now, but thanks to free speech, we've at least got a chance. Your average Chinese doesn't, and I bet they've never heard of these:
> People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
I think people are smart enough to tell the difference between the ones doing the shooting and the ones getting shot at.
People are smart enough to distinguish between a government and the public at large. Governments go off and do their own thing. The public don't have a choice. Democracy? Some of us get to vote every 4 years between 2 parties which are nearly identical and have the same corporate donors. Nah. You're along for the ride.
It isn't all bad. For most of us the food is good and there's lots on TV. That keeps us happy.
> Censorship is the fault of the Chinese government, All Google ever > did was respect and abide by the laws of the country they're trying to do business in.
All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing, and greedy ones to say they're just following the laws in the country they're trying to do business in. Just because your government tells you to lie to, rat on or murder your neighbor, doesn't mean you have to do it.
>> They are having a related problem in Cambodia where young people don't believe the Killings Fields ever happened. > Do you have sources for that? When I was in Cambodia it wasn't my impression that the Cambodian government tries > to deny their country's past.
Aware that Cambodia is *nothing* like China, and yes, they do try. From memory, no one had talked about the Killing Fields and it wasn't taught in schools. Having gone so long having heard nothing, when someone finally says something, it's a big like talking about a faked moon landing. A similar, albeit much more low key thing in modern Australia, is that a young person today can't comprehend the social movements of the 1980s. It's beyond their memory and not taught in schools, so doesn't exist. Same but starker in China; if no one dares talk about it, it ceases to exist.
I heard it on Radio Australia's Asia Pacific Programme. Here are some links. If you want to see the film, contact the makers. I think they'd only be too happy to share it with you:
I asked him if he'd look at GKG.net. He said their agreement says: "GKG reserves the right to suspend, cancel, transfer or modify your services in the event that:..."
Many of these ideas aren't really innovative. 'One click' for example. So write a scrip that generates randomly a taxonomy of ideas, through sheer brute force and sentence manipulation. {noun} {verb} {noun} {conjunctive} {conditional} etc. Like those things that generate random 'research' papers. Give everything a number.
"But idea #133,727,981,451 clearly alluded to the same thing!"
Well apparently you're not. I've got an idea.
Let's man that 'troop surge' in Iraq with USPTO officials. Either way they grind the Iraqis with fees "Sorry Sir, but there is a $250 fee for setting up an ambush. That's per person" or as decoys draw the fire away from real troops.
Slashdot Mirror
You're trolling or flaming, but in the spirit of good natured debate I'll reply:
> Governments and businesses have locked themselves into a platform,
> that doesn't make it a monopoly just because you say it is.
> In order for it to be a monopoly, Windows would have to be the ONE and only
You're quibbling on the definition of Monopoly. There is more than one product.
I don't have the current number, but Wiki says their share reached 3% by 2004.
A monopoly doesn't need to be the only product; just the only viable one.
Microsoft has seized most of the market using illegal practices.
However, they've never been held legally accounted and never will be.
End of Story. No point crying over it. It's just the way it is.
> (you know, like the meaning of MONO) operating system available. If that's what
> you think, you clearly don't think very highly of Linux or Macs, or at least
> enough to consider them as viable alternatives to a Windows PC.
Did you actually read my post? I said we use Linux for Servers. When you've got
a big customer who is exclusively a Windows shop, what do you think would
happen if we walked in their and proposed a Mac solution?
Answer that!
> Coming from a blatant anti-Microsoft Linux fanboi, you're really selling yourself short there.
> Have your cry and get over it already, but don't use words when you clearly have no idea what they mean.
Ok. Now you're getting into name calling, and with all due respect you don't know what I think.
It's good to debate stuff, but what do you really hope to accomplish by calling names?
That'll only get you on the Ignore list (good natured debate ends)
The real cause of the extinction of the hobbit is New Line Cinema.
> A monopoly product? Aha! So you finally admit it, Mac OS and Linux
:-)
> are clearly not good enough to be considered as alternatives.
"*Finally* admit it"? Are you stalking me?
Seriously, so many businesses and pretty much all government use Windows. If you want to sell software to these guys, you have to develop Windows. We use Linux on our servers... because we can... but for anything workstation, we're Windows. It bites, but that's the way it is. These guys dictate and as an ISV we have to follow.
I used to be seriously rah-rah OS/2. After that experience, I promised never to get religious about platforms again.
> judge gives them power to force entry and seize all hardware at your facilities.
... oh Lordy ... That's a good one! :-)
But isn't Justice equal for both rich and poor?
(silence)
> It is a commercial entity engaged on behalf of a copyright holder to perform audits of suspected license violations
They are, but they have no right to come up and comb through your records.** If they have evidence the law has been broken, take it to the Feds where there are checks and balances. Time is money, and small business has better thing to do than entertain some dork in a suit for day on the hope he might find a duplicate license key. If Microsoft wants to pay me $180 an hour to entertain the dork, I might be interested.
** = Their shrinkwrap agreement says they have all sorts of rights. But shrinkwraps are shaky, and so is a monopoly demanding you waive your rights in order to use their monopoly product.
Thanks for the tip. I'd been avoiding it since noticing every release since 4 got worse and worse.
(Adobe: Nobody needs flashing advertisements when they're trying to read a document. e.g. Adobe 7.0 on my Compaq flashes up an obnoxious "SPECIAL OFFER FOR HP CUSTOMERS!")
> You overestimate youth. They neither care about nor are capable of understanding these things.
In which case we've turned full circle. Kids used to say the same about parents. But compared to Vietnam when it was young people who were protesting, with Iraq the protesters are the ones with grays in their hair. Young people are too busy shopping to be bothered. "Hey, The war isn't over *here*, is it?" Was a discussion in the press about this a while back where they came up with the term "Generation Me".
Maybe it's a generational backlash; a generation that cares, produces one that doesn't, which in turn produces another that does care.
> The sale of licenses where someone thinks they have XYZ permission,
> when in fact they don't (e.g. special registered corporate license,
> upgrade key instead of original). Blah blah..
I was thinking you have to send in your Windows holotoken or whatever that sticker is they put on your PC, or the authenticity thing. On top of that you'd need a statutory declaration or something that the software has been decommissioned.
eBay apparently let Windows be resold over eBay, but backed off at MS's request. But hey: If the software really is yours to sell, you have a legal right to sell it!!! Any bureau/website/company that does it needs to make sure everything is legit. If it is, not a damned thing MS can do to stop you.
This'll only be viable if there is a Vista backlash. If Vista is successful (and most consumers won't have even heard of the DRM), then this wouldn't fly. I'm fine with XP and would have liked the option, because Vista sounds truly suckulous.
Adobe have deservedly copped criticism over the years, but one great thing they've shown by example is that if you *do* let go out of specs (as they did with PDF), you can still be a viable business. More than viable. Adobe is still the #1 name in PDF/PS, but they do so alongside competitors (GhostScript/View and the zillion PDF generation tools). Yet Adobe is still making money.
0 000000057.html Beyond [PageUp/PageDown], Adobe Reader's interface is very badly designed. The preferences make me weep and why can't I bookmark a la Visual Studio? And please stop trying to stuff every scripting concept known to humanity into the PDF spec, because all you're doing is turning PDF into the ultimate Trojan vector! Had to get that off my chest...)
;-)
Compare that to Sun with Java. Sun just wouldn't let go, so it never got beyond being just another product that competitors had to *take down!* One of those was Microsoft, but they themselves made the same mistake with Microsoft Word. Remember how DOC files used to be the "standard" (cough) for distributing documents on the web? Now it's all either PDF or HTML. If MS had let go, maybe, people would have used that?** In the long run, when we're talking about data which *needs* to be interchangable and not tied to one software vendor, an open spec will win. Especially a better one! (PDFs look the same. Word DOCs don't!)
(Reading this and feeling good Adobe? *great*. Now please head on over to Joel and learn about user interface design http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog
Anyway, PDF and PS still rock and I'm glad they won!
** = Yes, Microsoft did make a feint with their Office XML, but everyone recognizes it for the debacle it is. Sorry Dad!
This is funny, in a weird rather than ha-ha way.
For the first time in history we have a product nobody wants with features no user wants hoisted on a public by a company that's making it as hard to use as possible. Any other company would be at panicstations. Microsoft don't care, because they know ultimately we will end up buying it off them any way.
My idea: a web site exchange that sells old licenses of XP. When your laptop breaks, you can sell the license. We can even require you mail in your certificate to ensure its legit. eBay turned down this money. Lonely businessgeek looking for an idea, Will you?
Jeff Bezos won't care, but what about Tim O'Reilly when he discovers a story about him on Slashdot only got 14 posts?
> mobile browsers to purchase both photographic and video adult-oriented
> content from Telus, at an average of CD$4 per download.
which only goes to prove, using a cellular phone really does make you stupid.
Me Too(tm)! This isn't a flash-in-the-plan moral boycott. We're all scared any big company who has a problem with us can shut us down with a call to GoDaddy! Courts be damned. For those of us who make a living off our domain name, ouch!
Friend of mine also suggested namesecure.com. He said check the T&Cs to make sure they don't have a similar "GoDaddy clause".
BTW Saw GoDaddy on their web site complaining "CBS rejected our second Superbowl Ad". Hypocrites!
> Not surprisingly, the same areas are blurred in Google Earth.
> But how about images from satellites operated by other nations,
> such as SPOT or Sovinformsputnik?
Don't worry! Everyone knows Osama only use Google Earth. He's still boycotting Sovinformsputnik over of the Soviet Invasion of Aghanistan (Go Taliban!), and said he wouldn't be caught dead using SPOT.
There's a lot that needs changing on the whole planet. Fortunately thanks to the Internet people are talking and exchanging ideas now in a way that's never happened in human history. Who knows? Across the world, maybe we'll finally get something done. Robert X. Cringely said he'd bet on a thousand geeks rather than a thousand politicans any day of the week. So would I.
Pleasure talking to you on the big melting pot that is Slashdot.
> I assume everybody is capable of telling it. But whether people bother to tell it,
;-)
> is another question. One quickly loses his/her ability to reason when some strong
> emotion is mobilized. That's how the neo-conservatives, in fact, most politicians, get their way.
These days people travel a lot. It's common to meet backpackers and students from other countries.
We have the Internet to communicate with each other. It changes perceptions. I hope most people
realize the rest of the world are a lot like us. I'm told if you visit Iran, most people are warm
and friendly towards foreigners, even Americans. They're not all religious nuts, only the
ones we see on TV.
If you haven't already and you can, read George Orwell's Book "1984". It says a lot about this.
> Certainly the average American people has more power than the average Chinese,
> and arguably average people in any other country.
I'm not sure that they do. China has only one party. America has two parties, but they're nearly identical. (Look at the last election: War President Bush vs War President Kerry). Most of the time they might as well be one party. The difference is Americans think they're free. Chinese on the other hand know they're not (I hope).
Rich Americans have more power than anyone else on Earth, even the President. Some of them use it for good (today's Bill Gates). Others use it for avarice (Rupert Murdoch). If Rupert Murdoch wanted to kick President Bush out tomorrow, he could. Imagine a thousand newspapers and FOX news screaming "Impeach!" He'd be gone tomorrow. No one else on Earth can do that. Is that one vote one value?
> You've got the chance to elect a president that unilaterally dictates over world affairs.
> We don't even have much say over Chinese affairs yet.
Governments do whatever they want to do. They only pretend to listen at election time. At least you know you're not free.
> And you somehow believe that the western world is immune to this indoctrination ?
1 558,00.htmlt h-van_x.htm
> But somehow, when it's China involved, manipulation of information is the worst thing in the world. Take a look closer to home.
On the contrary, I agree with you. Look at Iraq.
We have a huge problem with a corporate media telling us what to think (Hi, Rupert), but we do have basic protections like free speech which the government hasn't taken away from us... yet. The Internet makes it wonderfully hard for them to even try it. Sure, right-to-a-speedy-trial and confessions-under-duress are taking a battering now, but thanks to free speech, we've at least got a chance. Your average Chinese doesn't, and I bet they've never heard of these:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-190
http://www.faluninfo.net/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-14-dea
> People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
I think people are smart enough to tell the difference between the ones doing the shooting and the ones getting shot at.
People are smart enough to distinguish between a government and the public at large. Governments go off and do their own thing. The public don't have a choice. Democracy? Some of us get to vote every 4 years between 2 parties which are nearly identical and have the same corporate donors. Nah. You're along for the ride.
It isn't all bad. For most of us the food is good and there's lots on TV. That keeps us happy.
> Censorship is the fault of the Chinese government, All Google ever
> did was respect and abide by the laws of the country they're trying to do business in.
When IBM installed and programmed card machines to sort out the Jews and Gays, they were thinking just like you.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0213/black.php
All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing, and greedy ones to say they're just following the laws in the country they're trying to do business in. Just because your government tells you to lie to, rat on or murder your neighbor, doesn't mean you have to do it.
>> They are having a related problem in Cambodia where young people don't believe the Killings Fields ever happened.
9 .htmm -screening-at-fcc-on-dec-13-phnom.html
> Do you have sources for that? When I was in Cambodia it wasn't my impression that the Cambodian government tries
> to deny their country's past.
Aware that Cambodia is *nothing* like China, and yes, they do try. From memory, no one had talked about the Killing Fields and it wasn't taught in schools. Having gone so long having heard nothing, when someone finally says something, it's a big like talking about a faked moon landing. A similar, albeit much more low key thing in modern Australia, is that a young person today can't comprehend the social movements of the 1980s. It's beyond their memory and not taught in schools, so doesn't exist. Same but starker in China; if no one dares talk about it, it ceases to exist.
I heard it on Radio Australia's Asia Pacific Programme. Here are some links. If you want to see the film, contact the makers. I think they'd only be too happy to share it with you:
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/asiapac/programs/s181594
http://www.bigpond.com.kh/users/kid/
http://www.sangsalapak.org.kh/whatson/2006/12/fil
To be clear: He said NameSecure doesn't have that clause
I asked a buddy with a plethora (yes, a plethora) of domains. He recommended:
..."
http://www.namesecure.com/
I asked him if he'd look at GKG.net. He said their agreement says: "GKG reserves the right to suspend, cancel, transfer or modify your services in the event that:
Just another GoDaddy.
Many of these ideas aren't really innovative. 'One click' for example. So write a scrip that generates randomly a taxonomy of ideas, through sheer brute force and sentence manipulation. {noun} {verb} {noun} {conjunctive} {conditional} etc. Like those things that generate random 'research' papers. Give everything a number.
"But idea #133,727,981,451 clearly alluded to the same thing!"
Well apparently you're not. I've got an idea. Let's man that 'troop surge' in Iraq with USPTO officials. Either way they grind the Iraqis with fees "Sorry Sir, but there is a $250 fee for setting up an ambush. That's per person" or as decoys draw the fire away from real troops.
> 'We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward.'
He's talking about *you*. He was *very* motivated by monetary reward.