The one issue that the parent missed here is that a huge majority of the "gun nuts" absolutely LOVE Bush. They'll just say that ter'ists have no constitutional rights anyway and excuse away any violations.
But try to restrict the guns or their religion, and they WILL kill.
The entire post reads like nothing more than someone crying because what THEY think of as being the "best" may or may not match the tastes or opinions of the public at large.
Boo hoo, sucks to be you.
A "meritocracy" sounds like a great idea, except for one issue: who decides what metrics define "merit"? Horn-haired managers? Egghead academics? Some "yay-hoo" from the woods in Alabama?
Sometimes what is "best" is simply what most succinctly and persuasively reflects the interests of those who read/hear/see it. Which is why there are a multitude of genres, sites, newspapers, magazines, political parties, whatever.
Really, it just reeks of an elitist trying to persuade everyone to give up their freedom of speech and association so as to make implementation of his version of a Utopia a reality.
As a Sirius subscriber, I'm still left shaking my head regarding the channels they nixed as opposed to the ones they kept. Rather than consolodating the ones that were basically duplicitive of each other, they killed the unique ones. This was a boneheaded move.
They did drop their most unique and niche content - the stuff that customers can't get on terrestrial radio. For example, they still have several channels of "rap and hip-hop", while killing the one disco/R&B channel. My wife was really pissed about losing her disco station, which is one of the big reasons for getting the service in the first place. So, it's back to the CDs for her. She may keep the service for Stern, but isn't sure yet.
The key to making the service viable is to carry a larger diversity of "niche" channels, not a bunch of "mainstream" ones that mainly compete against terrestrial radio or even each other.
The entire business model needs to be rethought. Right now, it's based on lock-in of subscribers who obtain expensive radios and would lose their entire acquisition investment if they drop the subscription. That risk deters potential customers from even considering the service at all.
A few non-subscription channels, even if they are somewhat bland "mainstream commercial" content, removes that disincentive. Those who want the unique content will subscribe, those who don't won't, but at least get some revenue from advertisers on the "free" channels. The more listeners, the higher the advertising revenues.
Pay for commercial-free and unique content with the assurance that the equipment will still have some limited functionality minus the subscription would work much better.
One other opportunity that Sirius could persue is to act as a "content originator" for a network of terrestrial broadcasters, especially those adding HD Radio. Offering them the content at a lower cost than they would incur by hiring DJs and sharing ad revenue could work as an additional income stream.
Attack the market in multiple directions at once rather than just being a one-trick-pony is the real key to success.
The US military is not stupid, and does take systems security very seriously. What would look like ultra-paranoid behavior to a civilian may well be fully justified in the military world.
The reason is simple: any breach, leak, or DoS can result in somebody being killed, operations foiled, or even wars lost.
Security people have to guard against known threats and techniques, which are very challenging, plus unknown ones that nobody has even thought to consider. Being able to trust the technology that they are using is a very important element in managing that security.
All systems are somewhat sensitive, given that even non-sensitive tidbits of information can be assembled together to give a pretty good picture of very sensitive activities if enough of them are available.
For example, a point of sale system in a military base's dining facility could be tapped to give a count of meals served per day. If an adversary sees a sudden drop or increase, they know that SOMETHING is going on. Combine that with changes at other bases and a picture of force distribution begins to emerge that then guides the adversary where to plan to deploy their forces to defend or attack.
I can see why there is a need to avoid the use of any removable media, even on non-sensitive systems. Just a few pieces of malware or compromised hardware can result in leaking enough unclassified "factoids" to compromise the secrecy and security of important operations.
Hardware is especially troublesome from a security standpoint. It does not need operating system permission to access memory, and can sit silently in place until activated. One innocuous-looking IC can easily contain a hidden microcontroller that has full DMA capabilities, and there's no way - short of physically mapping out every transistor in every chip in the device - to even know whether or not they exist.
I'd be paranoid too if military systems security was part of my job.
Fedora and Ubuntu are aimed at different audiences and/or "market" segments. Ubuntu is a great "just works" distro, whereas Fedora is much nicer for tweakers.
Both have little things the other lacks, or work slightly differently in some ways.
I am pointing out that there are some prosecutors (not all, but some) who will never accept a "loss" and will always make even a symbolic victory on even the smallest misdemeanor/summary charge necessary before dropping their interest in someone. In other words, they will never take "no" for an answer, even if it comes from a judge and jury.
All the talk out there regarding the "viral" nature of GPL code has confused a lot of otherwise very smart people. What happens is that they miss the dividing line between "the development" and "the use" of the programs.
This seems to be, in my experience, more likely among lawyers than in other groups.
It just proves the old saying the stupidity and hydrogen are the universal elements of the universe.
And, professionally, I'd run from a client like that. They strike me as paranoid enough to end up suing for a trivial reason down the road or cherry-pick advice in a manner that ensures failure of any project you would engage in for them.
Actually, there are prosecutors and cops out there who will keep going after every case until they get "something" out of it. Even after an acquittal, they will basically put the defendant under a microscope and keep dragging them in on new charges until they get some sort of a guilty plea or conviction.
This is really common with organized crime prosecutions, with John Gotti being a textbook example. It took several tries, but they did finally get him.
The two most liberal justices (Stevens and Ginsburg) are the ones most likely to leave the court during his term, so the balance of the court should stay pretty much where it is.
The most likely change to the make-up of the court's ideology would have been if McCain had won, then one or two conservatives would have changed it from 5-4 to 6-3 or 7-2.
I wonder if there will be a point that Novell can force SCO into an involuntary Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy? Especially in light of the ruling that this money isn't a "normal" debt but a "conversion" - does that take it outside of what the bankruptcy court can protect?
Actually, the big issues here are that the law is being misapplied to fit circumstances clearly not within its purview, and the action itself isn't actually criminal.
This is a perfect case for a civil suit instead. What they are doing is taking a "tort" (punished via lawsuit) and turning it into a "crime" (punished via criminal charges and prison).
This entire case should have been in a civil court from the beginning.
What is the definition of the "computer with which it was sold"? Is it the case which the original electronics were mounted in and the sticker is attached to? Is it the mainboard? The HDD? Some other combination?
The reason why I wonder about this is that it may make upgrading your machine a EULA violation - say your mobo dies and is no longer produced and must be replaced. Does this end your license?
PCs are modular units, not monolithic (except maybe for laptops). Components can be swapped in and out over time, either to upgrade or simply to repair the hardware.
...can't even agree much of the time on these points.
You have some who are very expansive in their use of language to the point that nearly any law can cover any activity, and then you have others who are so narrow in their use that nearly every law is almost impossible to violate.
The issue is that right now, if you investigate anyone deeply enough, you can find something they have done that violated some law or regulation.
Really, if you take an honest look at the situation, it sure seems that all of the different "interpretations" are really just attempts to evade the actual law and instead have the system arbitrarilly act in the interest of whichever "side" finds it inconvenient.
The strategy is to obfuscate what the laws actually say with a blizzard of words, assumptions, court precidents, rationalizations, and reasonings until the real meaning is lost to a maze of confusion.
Really, the big issue is that our current body of law is so huge and often self-contradictory that nobody can really be sure of whether many daily acts are legal or not.
Maybe the entire thing just needs a reboot where we scrap everything but the Constitution and start over.
I don't recall the case name, but just a couple of years ago it was ruled that employees had to be paid during periods where they were putting on and taking off protective gear and uniforms. I can't see waiting for a machine to boot up to be any different.
Major back-pay is coming their way for this. All those 15 to 30 minute periods add up. Plus probable punitive damages, and sometimes the feds even decide to toss a fine in for good measure.
HP is beyond angry that MS listened to other manufacturers' concerns, and made a change that prevented HP from being able to basically corner the early-adoption market, or at least a huge chunk of it.
The saying "sucks to be them" comes to mind. Especially since I'm pretty sure that HP needs MS more than MS needs HP. What choice does HP have besides going with MS - switching to exclusively Linux pre-loads? Write their own OS? Good luck.
While I can understand HP's position to a point, I can't escape thinking that maybe, just maybe, they should have been improving their product to the maximum extent possible anyway, regardless of what MS did or didn't say or promise. Unless there is a hard written contractural committment, HP is basically SOL.
I guess I just can't get too fired up watching a spat between companies using corporate politics and marketing departments to dictate engineering.
All business models are just that - models. They are there to give structure to effort within the framework of what's possible at a particular time.
The model doesn't create the reality, it must reflect it or utterly fail. If the underlying reality changes, the model must change or die. Those who adapt can prosper, and those that don't will ultimately fade away into irrelevance.
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The one issue that the parent missed here is that a huge majority of the "gun nuts" absolutely LOVE Bush. They'll just say that ter'ists have no constitutional rights anyway and excuse away any violations.
But try to restrict the guns or their religion, and they WILL kill.
An accidental discovery is often great. I just hope nobody can get a patent for the discovery itself. Since it's an accident...
Well, maybe -1, Flamebait times 5.
I have some karma to burn, and it's sometimes fun to tweak the $WHATEVER_GROUP of the day that pisses me off.
Why not just make that the first semester of the senior year in High School?
There is. It's called "xrdp" and can be found at xrdp.sourceforge.net.
The entire post reads like nothing more than someone crying because what THEY think of as being the "best" may or may not match the tastes or opinions of the public at large.
Boo hoo, sucks to be you.
A "meritocracy" sounds like a great idea, except for one issue: who decides what metrics define "merit"? Horn-haired managers? Egghead academics? Some "yay-hoo" from the woods in Alabama?
Sometimes what is "best" is simply what most succinctly and persuasively reflects the interests of those who read/hear/see it. Which is why there are a multitude of genres, sites, newspapers, magazines, political parties, whatever.
Really, it just reeks of an elitist trying to persuade everyone to give up their freedom of speech and association so as to make implementation of his version of a Utopia a reality.
As a Sirius subscriber, I'm still left shaking my head regarding the channels they nixed as opposed to the ones they kept. Rather than consolodating the ones that were basically duplicitive of each other, they killed the unique ones. This was a boneheaded move.
They did drop their most unique and niche content - the stuff that customers can't get on terrestrial radio. For example, they still have several channels of "rap and hip-hop", while killing the one disco/R&B channel. My wife was really pissed about losing her disco station, which is one of the big reasons for getting the service in the first place. So, it's back to the CDs for her. She may keep the service for Stern, but isn't sure yet.
The key to making the service viable is to carry a larger diversity of "niche" channels, not a bunch of "mainstream" ones that mainly compete against terrestrial radio or even each other.
The entire business model needs to be rethought. Right now, it's based on lock-in of subscribers who obtain expensive radios and would lose their entire acquisition investment if they drop the subscription. That risk deters potential customers from even considering the service at all.
A few non-subscription channels, even if they are somewhat bland "mainstream commercial" content, removes that disincentive. Those who want the unique content will subscribe, those who don't won't, but at least get some revenue from advertisers on the "free" channels. The more listeners, the higher the advertising revenues.
Pay for commercial-free and unique content with the assurance that the equipment will still have some limited functionality minus the subscription would work much better.
One other opportunity that Sirius could persue is to act as a "content originator" for a network of terrestrial broadcasters, especially those adding HD Radio. Offering them the content at a lower cost than they would incur by hiring DJs and sharing ad revenue could work as an additional income stream.
Attack the market in multiple directions at once rather than just being a one-trick-pony is the real key to success.
The US military is not stupid, and does take systems security very seriously. What would look like ultra-paranoid behavior to a civilian may well be fully justified in the military world.
The reason is simple: any breach, leak, or DoS can result in somebody being killed, operations foiled, or even wars lost.
Security people have to guard against known threats and techniques, which are very challenging, plus unknown ones that nobody has even thought to consider. Being able to trust the technology that they are using is a very important element in managing that security.
All systems are somewhat sensitive, given that even non-sensitive tidbits of information can be assembled together to give a pretty good picture of very sensitive activities if enough of them are available.
For example, a point of sale system in a military base's dining facility could be tapped to give a count of meals served per day. If an adversary sees a sudden drop or increase, they know that SOMETHING is going on. Combine that with changes at other bases and a picture of force distribution begins to emerge that then guides the adversary where to plan to deploy their forces to defend or attack.
I can see why there is a need to avoid the use of any removable media, even on non-sensitive systems. Just a few pieces of malware or compromised hardware can result in leaking enough unclassified "factoids" to compromise the secrecy and security of important operations.
Hardware is especially troublesome from a security standpoint. It does not need operating system permission to access memory, and can sit silently in place until activated. One innocuous-looking IC can easily contain a hidden microcontroller that has full DMA capabilities, and there's no way - short of physically mapping out every transistor in every chip in the device - to even know whether or not they exist.
I'd be paranoid too if military systems security was part of my job.
It's strange, but I work with stereoscopic video and have noticed that even 640X480 in stereo 3D looks a lot sharper than 1920X1080 mono.
It is a psycho-visual effect, for sure. But it is real.
IMHO - forget about HD and use the bandwidth for 3D.
How many people could tell the difference between YouTube and SDTV?
Wake me up when we have HD 3D pr0n available.
My Linux boxes tend to have an uptime of over 90 days or more, depending on whether or not power is stable.
Fedora and Ubuntu are aimed at different audiences and/or "market" segments. Ubuntu is a great "just works" distro, whereas Fedora is much nicer for tweakers.
Both have little things the other lacks, or work slightly differently in some ways.
I say use the one you prefer.
As a CTO, my document retention policy is very simple:
Everything is retained forever. That means every IM and e-mail that traverses the company network, server, or is even related to business. Period.
Yes, even spam is retained.
Uh, no.
I am pointing out that there are some prosecutors (not all, but some) who will never accept a "loss" and will always make even a symbolic victory on even the smallest misdemeanor/summary charge necessary before dropping their interest in someone. In other words, they will never take "no" for an answer, even if it comes from a judge and jury.
All the talk out there regarding the "viral" nature of GPL code has confused a lot of otherwise very smart people. What happens is that they miss the dividing line between "the development" and "the use" of the programs.
This seems to be, in my experience, more likely among lawyers than in other groups.
It just proves the old saying the stupidity and hydrogen are the universal elements of the universe.
And, professionally, I'd run from a client like that. They strike me as paranoid enough to end up suing for a trivial reason down the road or cherry-pick advice in a manner that ensures failure of any project you would engage in for them.
Actually, there are prosecutors and cops out there who will keep going after every case until they get "something" out of it. Even after an acquittal, they will basically put the defendant under a microscope and keep dragging them in on new charges until they get some sort of a guilty plea or conviction.
This is really common with organized crime prosecutions, with John Gotti being a textbook example. It took several tries, but they did finally get him.
That seems to be an unusual arrangement, but it seems to be legitimate too. Partnership arrangements often have various covenants and restrictions.
Maybe you can go with the open version and find/groom a non-partner developer instead?
The two most liberal justices (Stevens and Ginsburg) are the ones most likely to leave the court during his term, so the balance of the court should stay pretty much where it is.
The most likely change to the make-up of the court's ideology would have been if McCain had won, then one or two conservatives would have changed it from 5-4 to 6-3 or 7-2.
I wonder if there will be a point that Novell can force SCO into an involuntary Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy? Especially in light of the ruling that this money isn't a "normal" debt but a "conversion" - does that take it outside of what the bankruptcy court can protect?
Actually, the big issues here are that the law is being misapplied to fit circumstances clearly not within its purview, and the action itself isn't actually criminal.
This is a perfect case for a civil suit instead. What they are doing is taking a "tort" (punished via lawsuit) and turning it into a "crime" (punished via criminal charges and prison).
This entire case should have been in a civil court from the beginning.
My question on the OEM version restriction is:
What is the definition of the "computer with which it was sold"? Is it the case which the original electronics were mounted in and the sticker is attached to? Is it the mainboard? The HDD? Some other combination?
The reason why I wonder about this is that it may make upgrading your machine a EULA violation - say your mobo dies and is no longer produced and must be replaced. Does this end your license?
PCs are modular units, not monolithic (except maybe for laptops). Components can be swapped in and out over time, either to upgrade or simply to repair the hardware.
...can't even agree much of the time on these points.
You have some who are very expansive in their use of language to the point that nearly any law can cover any activity, and then you have others who are so narrow in their use that nearly every law is almost impossible to violate.
The issue is that right now, if you investigate anyone deeply enough, you can find something they have done that violated some law or regulation.
Really, if you take an honest look at the situation, it sure seems that all of the different "interpretations" are really just attempts to evade the actual law and instead have the system arbitrarilly act in the interest of whichever "side" finds it inconvenient.
The strategy is to obfuscate what the laws actually say with a blizzard of words, assumptions, court precidents, rationalizations, and reasonings until the real meaning is lost to a maze of confusion.
Really, the big issue is that our current body of law is so huge and often self-contradictory that nobody can really be sure of whether many daily acts are legal or not.
Maybe the entire thing just needs a reboot where we scrap everything but the Constitution and start over.
I don't recall the case name, but just a couple of years ago it was ruled that employees had to be paid during periods where they were putting on and taking off protective gear and uniforms. I can't see waiting for a machine to boot up to be any different.
Major back-pay is coming their way for this. All those 15 to 30 minute periods add up. Plus probable punitive damages, and sometimes the feds even decide to toss a fine in for good measure.
So, let me see if I understand this...
HP is beyond angry that MS listened to other manufacturers' concerns, and made a change that prevented HP from being able to basically corner the early-adoption market, or at least a huge chunk of it.
The saying "sucks to be them" comes to mind. Especially since I'm pretty sure that HP needs MS more than MS needs HP. What choice does HP have besides going with MS - switching to exclusively Linux pre-loads? Write their own OS? Good luck.
While I can understand HP's position to a point, I can't escape thinking that maybe, just maybe, they should have been improving their product to the maximum extent possible anyway, regardless of what MS did or didn't say or promise. Unless there is a hard written contractural committment, HP is basically SOL.
I guess I just can't get too fired up watching a spat between companies using corporate politics and marketing departments to dictate engineering.
All business models are just that - models. They are there to give structure to effort within the framework of what's possible at a particular time.
The model doesn't create the reality, it must reflect it or utterly fail. If the underlying reality changes, the model must change or die. Those who adapt can prosper, and those that don't will ultimately fade away into irrelevance.