A lot of Britons think tax on gasoline should be increased in the USA. They don't necessarily think it should be decreased in the UK, but would prefer instead to see better results from the money being poured into public transport.
Now why on earth would they want someone to be screwed as much as they are? That's like saying, I had to have my hands cut off so everyone else should too. Or, I'm getting screwed so everyone else should be too. Are they taking crazy pills or something??
What the honest hope to unmask is criminals by considering everyone a suspect. What they will do is discover and harass political opposition. Dark times for the UK.
Wow and people call my country (USA) oppressive! Makes me glad I'm not there... OTOH, I remember the complaints centuries ago when the US would complain about taxation without representation, the Brits would complain that they still had to pay more than us, that doesn't make it right! Nowadays we Americans are complaining aobut gas when the Brits are paying upwards of 7$/gallon, well I have news for you Brits, that doesn't make it right!! Just because you're getting screwed more than us that doesn't make it right that we're still getting screwed, albeit less than you! Now our rights are being eroded though at a lesser rate than the Brits... I have news for you...
Hopefully someday we in America will stop screwing ourselves at a lesser rate than GB and perhaps all together...
It reminds me of that Eddie Izzard bit in "Dress To Kill" where he talks about how we as a society abhor serial killers but when we start to get even into the hundreds or thousands or millions we're like, "well done!" that's impressive! In an odd morbid sort of way... I mean, you hear about worms and crap like that or the oddball who hacked A system... but to create a "maze" of over 10k sites?? Well, uh... impressive!
So... by setting up an online store, allowing users download songs for a nominal fee to multiple players is a patentable method?? Seriously the patent office here in the US is really messed up. In this case, Steve Jobs would be better off "buying them out" a la Bill Gates on The Simpsons than any sort of settlement. I can't stand Mr. Jobs & I'll take his side on this even.
The problem isn't management not seeing the benefit of IT, it is the lack of management skills within IT leadership and the typical geek mentality which is counter productive to traditional business.
I'm not saying that either one is better or doesn't have a place but workers in IT & particularly IT leadership need to start thinking that those business management classes in college are a good idea to at least take & listen in on. You're not going to convince the ones with deep pockets (upper management) to keep you around if you don't show your value up front to them. Sure, their practices may be antiquated but they are time-tested and in their eyes, work.
Geeks are also going to need to realize that not all things are academic, business leaders expect results, not some elegant solution that looks cool in an IDE. There's that classic line from Ghostbusters I remember, "I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there."
Maybe it's not that extreme but that is the truth, like it or not.
Really, they have an untenable position in claiming MS should be regulated. It's all based on emotion and poor arguments. But seeing the same tired old arguments from these people about the "convicted monopolist" (a meaningless phrase they use over and over) really gets too boring to bother replying.
I agree with all your statements including the one above however I feel I need to add one thing, I don't believe that the anti-trust people are driven by emotion and poor arguments alone. I believe there is something much more sinister than that and it is the underlying agenda of trying to steal from someone else's pie.
I believe that this is just another attempt to fine MS and take a piece of their profits (read: tax, theft, whatever). I believe that the EU fines MS for these bogus situation simply to fund their pork projects and the USA for the same reason. Maybe someone at Microsoft isn't going to lunch with the right person, etc... either way I believe that it's turned into some ugly political power sort of thing.
Who has the biggest pockets? That's who we'll steal from because the average reactionary person wont care/notice.
Oh btw, I don't run any MS products @ home. At work it's a different story but hey... it's not my business...
I sort of agree with you, except that t seems to me that most places you buy computers sell them with Microsoft software pre-installed. (Unless they're selling Macs, obv.) So a) the average computer user thinks that Windows is the best option (otherwise why would computer manufacturers always ship with it), b) the average computer user gets used to using Windows, and c) the average computer user pays extra for their system because they think they need Windows with it.
Thanks for refining my point here... I have some more thoughts on the issue. Generally anti-trusts are used to break a locked-in industry. Think US steel or Standard Oil or Ma-Bell... these were all instances where not only was there a huge corporation which mobbed the market and supply but also where there are/were huge operational costs & barriers to breaking in the industry. To write software the barrier is *MUCH* lower and sometimes, non-existent!:) So here we have an industry where there is a juggernaut in-place however there *ARE* viable alternatives which do quite well on their own, so what if they don't have the same usage-adoption rates...
I believe what we have with Microsoft is more of a McDonalds or Coca-Cola thing going on than an actual monopoly. We have three companies in the last sentence which, through great marketing and no business ethics, have nearly cornered a market which there are still viable alternatives to- it's just that the public is either ignorant or too stupid to use them (the alternatives) and yet we have no need for anti-trust in any of these markets because the alternatives still do just fine.
I hate this anti-trust crap with Windows. Let MS do whatever they want to lock people into using their OS and other crap. This isn't flamebait btw, they're a private company who can make the product however they want and if people are too stupid to realize that there are other options out there so be it.
I know plenty of techies, creative-types and non-users who have discovered non-MS OSes and other software & love it. My mom is the simplest user you could ask for & uses Linux. Plenty of programmer & artist friends of mine have moved on to OSX. It's THEIR CHOICE.
It's not like Windows is the only OS out there and regardless of its market share, the alternatives are widely known & advertised. I went to Brazil for vacation recently & noticed that everyone down there uses Linux. I myself use Debian.
Big whoop. Let them lock people in. It's so silly to think that "ooooh we know better" and "ooooh people can't think for themselves" and "oooh people need the govt. to protect them".
I'm not saying we don't need to have anti-trust watchdogs but this is a ridiculous waste of time money and resources. Oh, Netscape lost the browser "war" in the 90s because it sucked, not because of some evil-Microsoft crap like everyone makes it sounds AND... if you look at it in the long-run, we're better off that Microsoft won that "war" because we have the Mozilla foundation & firefox & Opera to use which we probably wouldn't if Netscape had won.
That'll be amusing when he tries to get this passed. I'd love to see this bill get laughed at when he is informed that it has virtually no enforceable methods and that international users will just see this as another ignorant "Stupid American" method of trying to control what it cannot.
Oh, before anyone mods me as flamebait (which the zealots love to do) I'm a patriotic American and in case you haven't heard about something called The Monroe Doctrine...
The Register is running a related story about why some people are uncomfortable with the United States' influence on ICANN.
Thanks to the US and the DoD we HAVE an internet. As long as the ICANN is located in America they will have to run as a non-profit. Simply put, they're not going to get an exemption just because they think they're some international entity which they really aren't. Come on, get real.
You really don't get the point of a public URL. It's like a phone number. There's no law against calling a phone number, even if the answering machine is playing copyright songs.
Again you are missing the point, the point isn't the use of said URL but rather the ABUSE of it. It IS against the law to abuse phone numbers, it is against the law to abuse someone's private property, it is against the law to abuse someone's webserver, even if it is publicly available. At least in the US it is... I don't know where you're at so the laws may be different there...
The parent was unfairly modded down and they have some very good points. As history has shown, this is how religious zealots take care of conflicting views, by "modding down" ideas & people who disagree with them. Now modding down may imply impalement, crucifixion, drawing & quartering, beheading, etc... on/. it means marking overrated:)
The internet home analogy is broke. Just like darn near all analogies around here...anyway.
That is not the analogy. The inference is between the home & website, both which are the property of the respective owners hence, the analogy is not broke.
A website isn't a private home. Your analogy is a complete failure.
Rather your argument is a complete failure. definition for an analogy:an inference that if things agree in some respects they probably agree in others.
A website doesn't have to be a "private home" as you say to make the analogy work. To learn more about proper & effective logical arguments I suggest you read Plato, The Republic. It's a great book with effective & unrelated analogies and logical progression.
How is it wrong to just visit a completely public URL? If they're losing money it's their fault; you can't just say that verizon losing money is wrong. How is that wrong? We're gaining value. Nothing has been destroyed here. This situation is purely verizon's affiliate being lazy and insecure, and you're just stupid for thinking it's wrong to take advantage of that.
So if a mentally challenged person leaves their front door open by your logic it is okay to walk into their living room & watch tv for the afternoon after all, nothing was destroyed!
I fear people who use this train of thought because they are either sociopaths or are so immature they have no ethics whatsoever. I sincerely hope you learn better than this.
And that's why other countries don't have punitive damages. Somehow civil matters got all mixed up in the USA. I guess greed does that.
That is not why. Most countries that do not have punitive damage allowances in their laws are usually run by tyrants anyways. The idea of of punitive damages is to punish an entity enough so they think twice before they do it again, it's a civil punishment for a civil case where a criminal punishment should be enacted but cannot be for whatever reason.
You know what happens when tort reform runs rampant and punitive damages are out the window? Companies like Exxon can get away with murder by polluting an entire coastline and having only to pay 2 weeks worth of profit as a fine. This is not greed, this is not tort reform, this is justice gone wrong. Thanks to the tort reform in America Exxon has a punishment that does virtually nothing to a company which committed a criminal act. The amount they have to pay is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the citizens of Alaska have paid with their well-being. So perhaps it is the lack of a real punitive damage which is greedy!
Now I see what you mean when for instance, people who KNEW cigarettes would kill them continue to smoke and now tobacco companies are having to pay out the a** because of some jerk who took a KNOWN risk and then whined about it later but this is a law that needs refining, not a blanket statement that all punitive damages are greedy.
But how does one simulate gravity? It has to propagate in every direction at the something like speed of light or else -- god forbid -- information could travel faster than light. The whole concept of gravity, that every individual particle affects however slightly every other particle, is not possible to compute directly.
If your hypothesis is correct then we wouldn't know the answer to this because we are not the ones running the simulation & whoever is obviously has technology & knowledge greater than our own hence, it would be possible to compute gravity directly in every known situation. This would also fit the rules of quantum physics in that you can either know the state or position of things but not both since the simulator would be using this OR clause to save memory and/or processing capability.
I've always liked the way Intel code names their processors, as I was born and raised in Tillamook, which had it's own Mobile Processor. Nehalem, is in fact another city in Tillamook County, Oregon. Some of you might remember Nehalem's prior claim to fame was an Everclear song on their breakthrough album Sparkle and Fade, entitled simply 'Nehalem'.
Don't forget the notorious Willamette chip!! Though I'm not sure if anyone wants to be known for that...
Eventually these sorts of people will die off or fade away... there are no scientific facts though so I guess they're right "theory"... the "theory" of gravity in classical physics... the "theory" of math... the "theory" of religion...
Slashdot Mirror
So I don't get it does it go like this now?:
1. Write FOSS
2. Apply GPLv2
3. lower yourself to other litigious morons and abuse tort
4. profit!!!
A lot of Britons think tax on gasoline should be increased in the USA. They don't necessarily think it should be decreased in the UK, but would prefer instead to see better results from the money being poured into public transport.
Now why on earth would they want someone to be screwed as much as they are? That's like saying, I had to have my hands cut off so everyone else should too. Or, I'm getting screwed so everyone else should be too. Are they taking crazy pills or something??
What the honest hope to unmask is criminals by considering everyone a suspect.
What they will do is discover and harass political opposition. Dark times for the UK.
Wow and people call my country (USA) oppressive! Makes me glad I'm not there... OTOH, I remember the complaints centuries ago when the US would complain about taxation without representation, the Brits would complain that they still had to pay more than us, that doesn't make it right! Nowadays we Americans are complaining aobut gas when the Brits are paying upwards of 7$/gallon, well I have news for you Brits, that doesn't make it right!! Just because you're getting screwed more than us that doesn't make it right that we're still getting screwed, albeit less than you! Now our rights are being eroded though at a lesser rate than the Brits... I have news for you...
Hopefully someday we in America will stop screwing ourselves at a lesser rate than GB and perhaps all together...
People in power really don't have as much to hide.
Wow, that is the most naive statement I've heard in well... as long as I can remember!
It reminds me of that Eddie Izzard bit in "Dress To Kill" where he talks about how we as a society abhor serial killers but when we start to get even into the hundreds or thousands or millions we're like, "well done!" that's impressive! In an odd morbid sort of way... I mean, you hear about worms and crap like that or the oddball who hacked A system... but to create a "maze" of over 10k sites?? Well, uh... impressive!
So... by setting up an online store, allowing users download songs for a nominal fee to multiple players is a patentable method?? Seriously the patent office here in the US is really messed up. In this case, Steve Jobs would be better off "buying them out" a la Bill Gates on The Simpsons than any sort of settlement. I can't stand Mr. Jobs & I'll take his side on this even.
The problem isn't management not seeing the benefit of IT, it is the lack of management skills within IT leadership and the typical geek mentality which is counter productive to traditional business.
I'm not saying that either one is better or doesn't have a place but workers in IT & particularly IT leadership need to start thinking that those business management classes in college are a good idea to at least take & listen in on. You're not going to convince the ones with deep pockets (upper management) to keep you around if you don't show your value up front to them. Sure, their practices may be antiquated but they are time-tested and in their eyes, work.
Geeks are also going to need to realize that not all things are academic, business leaders expect results, not some elegant solution that looks cool in an IDE. There's that classic line from Ghostbusters I remember, "I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there."
Maybe it's not that extreme but that is the truth, like it or not.
Really, they have an untenable position in claiming MS should be regulated. It's all based on emotion and poor arguments. But seeing the same tired old arguments from these people about the "convicted monopolist" (a meaningless phrase they use over and over) really gets too boring to bother replying.
I agree with all your statements including the one above however I feel I need to add one thing, I don't believe that the anti-trust people are driven by emotion and poor arguments alone. I believe there is something much more sinister than that and it is the underlying agenda of trying to steal from someone else's pie.
I believe that this is just another attempt to fine MS and take a piece of their profits (read: tax, theft, whatever). I believe that the EU fines MS for these bogus situation simply to fund their pork projects and the USA for the same reason. Maybe someone at Microsoft isn't going to lunch with the right person, etc... either way I believe that it's turned into some ugly political power sort of thing.
Who has the biggest pockets? That's who we'll steal from because the average reactionary person wont care/notice.
Oh btw, I don't run any MS products @ home. At work it's a different story but hey... it's not my business...
I sort of agree with you, except that t seems to me that most places you buy computers sell them with Microsoft software pre-installed. (Unless they're selling Macs, obv.) So a) the average computer user thinks that Windows is the best option (otherwise why would computer manufacturers always ship with it), b) the average computer user gets used to using Windows, and c) the average computer user pays extra for their system because they think they need Windows with it.
Thanks for refining my point here... I have some more thoughts on the issue. Generally anti-trusts are used to break a locked-in industry. Think US steel or Standard Oil or Ma-Bell... these were all instances where not only was there a huge corporation which mobbed the market and supply but also where there are/were huge operational costs & barriers to breaking in the industry. To write software the barrier is *MUCH* lower and sometimes, non-existent!
I believe what we have with Microsoft is more of a McDonalds or Coca-Cola thing going on than an actual monopoly. We have three companies in the last sentence which, through great marketing and no business ethics, have nearly cornered a market which there are still viable alternatives to- it's just that the public is either ignorant or too stupid to use them (the alternatives) and yet we have no need for anti-trust in any of these markets because the alternatives still do just fine.
To whoever modded me flamebait, thanks for proving my point! :)
I hate this anti-trust crap with Windows. Let MS do whatever they want to lock people into using their OS and other crap. This isn't flamebait btw, they're a private company who can make the product however they want and if people are too stupid to realize that there are other options out there so be it.
I know plenty of techies, creative-types and non-users who have discovered non-MS OSes and other software & love it. My mom is the simplest user you could ask for & uses Linux. Plenty of programmer & artist friends of mine have moved on to OSX. It's THEIR CHOICE.
It's not like Windows is the only OS out there and regardless of its market share, the alternatives are widely known & advertised. I went to Brazil for vacation recently & noticed that everyone down there uses Linux. I myself use Debian.
Big whoop. Let them lock people in. It's so silly to think that "ooooh we know better" and "ooooh people can't think for themselves" and "oooh people need the govt. to protect them".
I'm not saying we don't need to have anti-trust watchdogs but this is a ridiculous waste of time money and resources. Oh, Netscape lost the browser "war" in the 90s because it sucked, not because of some evil-Microsoft crap like everyone makes it sounds AND... if you look at it in the long-run, we're better off that Microsoft won that "war" because we have the Mozilla foundation & firefox & Opera to use which we probably wouldn't if Netscape had won.
That'll be amusing when he tries to get this passed. I'd love to see this bill get laughed at when he is informed that it has virtually no enforceable methods and that international users will just see this as another ignorant "Stupid American" method of trying to control what it cannot.
Oh, before anyone mods me as flamebait (which the zealots love to do) I'm a patriotic American and in case you haven't heard about something called The Monroe Doctrine...
The Register is running a related story about why some people are uncomfortable with the United States' influence on ICANN.
Thanks to the US and the DoD we HAVE an internet. As long as the ICANN is located in America they will have to run as a non-profit. Simply put, they're not going to get an exemption just because they think they're some international entity which they really aren't. Come on, get real.
You really don't get the point of a public URL. It's like a phone number. There's no law against calling a phone number, even if the answering machine is playing copyright songs.
Again you are missing the point, the point isn't the use of said URL but rather the ABUSE of it. It IS against the law to abuse phone numbers, it is against the law to abuse someone's private property, it is against the law to abuse someone's webserver, even if it is publicly available. At least in the US it is... I don't know where you're at so the laws may be different there...
The parent was unfairly modded down and they have some very good points. /. it means marking overrated :)
As history has shown, this is how religious zealots take care of conflicting views, by "modding down" ideas & people who disagree with them. Now modding down may imply impalement, crucifixion, drawing & quartering, beheading, etc... on
The internet home analogy is broke. Just like darn near all analogies around here...anyway.
That is not the analogy. The inference is between the home & website, both which are the property of the respective owners hence, the analogy is not broke.
A website isn't a private home. Your analogy is a complete failure.
Rather your argument is a complete failure.
definition for an analogy:an inference that if things agree in some respects they probably agree in others.
A website doesn't have to be a "private home" as you say to make the analogy work. To learn more about proper & effective logical arguments I suggest you read Plato, The Republic. It's a great book with effective & unrelated analogies and logical progression.
How is it wrong to just visit a completely public URL? If they're losing money it's their fault; you can't just say that verizon losing money is wrong. How is that wrong? We're gaining value. Nothing has been destroyed here. This situation is purely verizon's affiliate being lazy and insecure, and you're just stupid for thinking it's wrong to take advantage of that.
So if a mentally challenged person leaves their front door open by your logic it is okay to walk into their living room & watch tv for the afternoon after all, nothing was destroyed!
I fear people who use this train of thought because they are either sociopaths or are so immature they have no ethics whatsoever. I sincerely hope you learn better than this.
Who modded parent insightful?
And that's why other countries don't have punitive damages. Somehow civil matters got all mixed up in the USA. I guess
greed does that.
That is not why. Most countries that do not have punitive damage allowances in their laws are usually run by tyrants anyways. The idea of of punitive damages is to punish an entity enough so they think twice before they do it again, it's a civil punishment for a civil case where a criminal punishment should be enacted but cannot be for whatever reason.
You know what happens when tort reform runs rampant and punitive damages are out the window? Companies like Exxon can get away with murder by polluting an entire coastline and having only to pay 2 weeks worth of profit as a fine. This is not greed, this is not tort reform, this is justice gone wrong. Thanks to the tort reform in America Exxon has a punishment that does virtually nothing to a company which committed a criminal act. The amount they have to pay is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the citizens of Alaska have paid with their well-being. So perhaps it is the lack of a real punitive damage which is greedy!
Now I see what you mean when for instance, people who KNEW cigarettes would kill them continue to smoke and now tobacco companies are having to pay out the a** because of some jerk who took a KNOWN risk and then whined about it later but this is a law that needs refining, not a blanket statement that all punitive damages are greedy.
But how does one simulate gravity? It has to propagate in every direction at the something like speed of light or else -- god forbid -- information could travel faster than light. The whole concept of gravity, that every individual particle affects however slightly every other particle, is not possible to compute directly.
If your hypothesis is correct then we wouldn't know the answer to this because we are not the ones running the simulation & whoever is obviously has technology & knowledge greater than our own hence, it would be possible to compute gravity directly in every known situation. This would also fit the rules of quantum physics in that you can either know the state or position of things but not both since the simulator would be using this OR clause to save memory and/or processing capability.
I've always liked the way Intel code names their processors, as I was born and raised in Tillamook, which had it's own Mobile Processor. Nehalem, is in fact another city in Tillamook County, Oregon. Some of you might remember Nehalem's prior claim to fame was an Everclear song on their breakthrough album Sparkle and Fade, entitled simply 'Nehalem'.
Don't forget the notorious Willamette chip!! Though I'm not sure if anyone wants to be known for that...
Eventually these sorts of people will die off or fade away... there are no scientific facts though so I guess they're right "theory"... the "theory" of gravity in classical physics... the "theory" of math... the "theory" of religion...
Not only is free being a rip off but customers are actually paying more to upgrade to XP. I would do so if I could get drivers for my notebook.
1. Release Vista & deprecate XP
2. re-allow XP OS pathway
3. gouge XP price (was: ???)
4. profit!!!
dealt it!!
It is insensitive to print a picture of Mohammed? It's insensitive to suicide bomb people as well.