First on today's news: Time doesn't slow down for non-relativistic cases.
Stress has an impact on strength, so why can't there be an equivalent for speed of thought? It's a really interesting study, and I wouldn't have bet on the outcome. If the study was structured differently, such as reaction time to a loud sound that is either expected or unexpected, I imagine there would be a different outcome. The unexpected sound would get a quicker reaction.
From the article:
"None of this was anywhere near as annoying as all the crapware that comes installed on many Windows boxes, but it did give me a little bit of the same feeling that my eyeballs were being treated as a commodity."
What is the difference?
As far as the Google toolbar install, I agree that's rather over the top. There's just no need for the distro to install it, since most users will not want it. Setting the default homepage to Google makes complete sense to me. It has to be set to something, and the top search engine seems like an obvious choice. iGoogle is just a customizable front page for Google.
It sounds like the only difference is quantity of junk software installed by default. I just bought a cheap eMachines for my parents, and it was amazing what it had installed and set to run on start. An audio control panel that did the same things as Windows with a different skin, a tool for eMachines to send popup ads whenever they want, and 3 other tools I couldn't even figure out what the point of them was. I'm not sure if there's more, that's jsut what was running in the system tray.
If gOS computers become popular, expect the same quantity of junkware showing up on them.
Yay! I'm so looking forward to watching HDTV programs on my DS's 256×192 screen! \o/
Actually, your emoticon fits what you would have to do to reduce static if it read analog over the air signals. \o\ (lean left) for NBC,/o/ (lean right) for FOX, and \o/ (praise Jebus) for my local Christian broadcast channel.
Anytime something horribly bad is happening, we drag out the most worthless inconsequential legislation we can think of.
Naw, they always do this whether something bad is going on or not. Before 9/11 and the War on Terror there was the War on Pornography. It helps pander... errr... "solidify" the support base of parties. And it works all day every day, rain or shine. So it comes out whenever they want a boost.
Of course, the more congressional hearings they have, the less they usually end up doing about it.
Microsoft Office comes with Outlook, which is vital for most business users. For this reason, OpenOffice isn't an alternative to Microsoft's corporate solutions.
Ever hear of THUNDERBIRD?!??
It doesn't have the scheduling capabilities of Outlook and doesn't automatically set up Exchange accounts like Outlook, along with a number of other useful corporate features. Most of which would have to be provided by other programs.
The point of the article is an intro to free OSS for average computer users or corporate environments. CNet is trying to make the transition as smooth as possible. A business isn't interested in replacing their relatively inexpensive multi-user Office license with 3+ different programs and investing the time in retraining and support. It's simply not a cost effective way of doing business. And that's the bottom line for most businesses.
I'm still not very interested in taking the time to learn an entire new application suite unless the difference between Program A and Program B is absolutely huge. If Program A takes 20s to do a common operation, and Program B takes 5s, then yes, color me interested. Other than that, not so much.
How much do you feel your free time is worth? Microsoft Office costs well over $100 OEM. Even at $50/hour, that's 2 hours of work to learn and adjust to OpenOffice. It will probably take you less, since OO has an interface surprisingly similar to MS Office 2000.
Everything after that is money saved, especially when it comes time to upgrade MS Office. Why not give it a try next time you're ready to upgrade?
Considering that you based your arguments on a completely false statement, I think your whole argument can be dismissed.
Actually, that's a logical fallacy. Just because one statement a person makes is false, does not indicate that all other statements by that person are false.
That said, apparently in your race to judge people who may disagree with you as "shills", you either didn't read, didn't understand, or don't care about the point I was making. Which is that from the viewpoint of the politicians, Microsoft is a better choice since Microsoft software is what they use already. That is not my viewpoint.
So many Slashdotters pride themselves on rationality, critical thinking, and their use of logic. Half of the responses I've received to my original post derides me personally as stupid, naive, ignorant, or morally corrupt. You should be ashamed of yourselves. The reason why Slashdot doesn't have many dissenting voices is because you chase them all away when they pop up. Personally, I'd rather have a civilized discussion, and not a game of personal whack-a-mole like 95% of the websites out there.
I considered just canceling my account and walking away from Slashdot. Life is to short to deal with insulting people. But I wanted to see if I could cause even one of you to rethink exactly what you're doing to yourselves and the people you attack.
"1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats." And, of course, ODF will disappear tomorrow. Anyone with experience with different versions of MS Office knows that MS doesn't have a great track record with format backwards-compatibility. Will their standard change this? Who knows?
Of course ODF isn't going anywhere. But the politicians have never heard of it. And the politicians likely aren't talking to an IT expert that has. They probably have a couple of reports sitting in front of them for their staff to go over, and a lobbyist or two giving them the reasons Microsoft is a good idea on this one.
"2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs."
Oh really? How many? Where? Do you have corroborating evidence for this, or are you just guessing?
I did a quick check, and in '97, Microsoft had an estimate of 25,000 employees. That's much higher now, but I'm not going to spend more than 2 minutes looking it up. I don't understand your point here. Are you saying they DON'T have employees? Do you think jobs don't matter to a politician? Politicians love big businesses, obviously. They like the jobs, they like the taxes. Given a choice between exactly the same standard run by ODF or Microsoft, they'll pick MS every time, because its a bigger company, and has a higher share of jobs.
"3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products."
I.e. vendor lock in. Standards are meant to allow competition by preventing lock-in, not encouraging it. You may be right in that this may have indeed been what the politicians are thinking, but to me it's more a cry to educate our politicians (I'll allow the "negotiated instead of bought" for the sake of argument, but it's a crock), it has nothing to do with MS being the better choice.
Exactly my point. Politicians will only vote for ODF if someone explains why ODF is the better standard, that the difference actually matters, and that voting for ODF isn't going to cause problems with or for Microsoft. If someone fails to address all three points, the vote is going to Microsoft.
The politicians don't make decisions in a political vacuum. The better format is secondary. They're looking at which choice is a better choice (more potential jobs, taxes, etc) for the state.
"Most decisions in government are not bought and sold, they are negotiated based on the better argument."
This must be the single funniest thing ever posted on/. What a wonderful utopia it evokes!
If you truly believed your government was that corrupt, I would hope you wouldn't be on Slashdot, but attempting to remove your government from power by any means necessary.
Parents today obviously have ZERO interest in spending time with their children and monitoring their activities and habits.
Slow down there. How are you jumping from some parents' desire to prevent their children from watching exceptionally violent or sexual TV programming unsupervised to a Lord of the Flies household?
Parents cannot be tethered to their children 24 hours a day. These tools enable a good parent to enforce their rules when he/she is not present. No more, no less.
The V-Chip doesn't instantly cause good parents to become bad ones, leaving their children alone in front of the TV with 3 days of food.
The V-Chip and the TV ratings system has been an almost unqualified success. It allows adults to watch adult programming if they desire, adults to block content they do not want to see, and adults to block content they do not want their children to see.
It's a tool that does not create censorship, provides information about the content of a TV show, and lets viewers that care to make an informed, educated decision about whether or not programming is appropriate for what they wish to view.
If they can figure out a way to self-regulate most or all content, similar to the purpose of PICS for websites, it hurts no one and helps everyone who cares to use it.
It's sad so many people instantly think "corruption" when the government makes a decision they don't agree with. Isn't it possible Microsoft made a better case for their standard? A decision like this is like a civil court case, the person with the best argument wins.
Of the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons lawmakers (from their perspective) might want to use Microsoft's standard before any others:
1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats.
2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs.
3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
This is probably what the politicians were thinking about, and from that perspective, Microsoft looks like the right choice. Most decisions in government are not bought and sold, they are negotiated based on the better argument.
Their mail client is also incapable of handling hyperlinks longer than around 78 characters
That's completely understandable. If I understand it correctly, e-mail usually gets wrapped to 78 characters, plus the newline characters. Microsoft can't support links longer than that, because in fact there is no (easy) way to put a link or word longer than that in a single line. So your link in email gets split by the newline character/string. It depends on the format of how the email is written if the sending client obeys the characters per line limit.
"Why do you assume the justice dept will be on the RIAA side or even choose to intervene at all?"
Because the site linked to says that the feds will intervene on the side of the RIAA. But really, was anyone expecting otherwise?
There seems to be alot of people thinking this is a case of the big bad government teaming up with the big bad RIAA against the little guy.
The defendant in this case is claiming a law is unconstitutional. How is the RIAA qualified to defend against such a claim? Does the law get thrown out if the RIAA fails to give a good arguement? That's not how it works, and that's not how it should work.
It is the job of the DOJ to defend the law. They should get involved. If the RIAA questioned the constitutionality of a federal law, the DOJ would defend it.
As such, the DOJ is not "on the side of the RIAA". They are defending a federal law, written and approved by Congress, and signed into law by the President.
If you give up on a government, the government gives up on you. That's how it works.
Your two cents matter. As does everyone elses. If you really, truly pay attention to politics, not just campaigning, you'll find that most representatives do listen.
Or you can be lazy, do nothing, and then complain that your government doesn't listen to you.
Slashdot Mirror
First on today's news: Time doesn't slow down for non-relativistic cases.
Stress has an impact on strength, so why can't there be an equivalent for speed of thought? It's a really interesting study, and I wouldn't have bet on the outcome. If the study was structured differently, such as reaction time to a loud sound that is either expected or unexpected, I imagine there would be a different outcome. The unexpected sound would get a quicker reaction.
From the article: "None of this was anywhere near as annoying as all the crapware that comes installed on many Windows boxes, but it did give me a little bit of the same feeling that my eyeballs were being treated as a commodity."
What is the difference?
As far as the Google toolbar install, I agree that's rather over the top. There's just no need for the distro to install it, since most users will not want it. Setting the default homepage to Google makes complete sense to me. It has to be set to something, and the top search engine seems like an obvious choice. iGoogle is just a customizable front page for Google.
It sounds like the only difference is quantity of junk software installed by default. I just bought a cheap eMachines for my parents, and it was amazing what it had installed and set to run on start. An audio control panel that did the same things as Windows with a different skin, a tool for eMachines to send popup ads whenever they want, and 3 other tools I couldn't even figure out what the point of them was. I'm not sure if there's more, that's jsut what was running in the system tray.
If gOS computers become popular, expect the same quantity of junkware showing up on them.
Yay! I'm so looking forward to watching HDTV programs on my DS's 256×192 screen! \o/
/o/ (lean right) for FOX, and \o/ (praise Jebus) for my local Christian broadcast channel.
Actually, your emoticon fits what you would have to do to reduce static if it read analog over the air signals. \o\ (lean left) for NBC,
Does anyone else notice this pattern?
Anytime something horribly bad is happening, we drag out the most worthless inconsequential legislation we can think of.
Naw, they always do this whether something bad is going on or not. Before 9/11 and the War on Terror there was the War on Pornography. It helps pander... errr... "solidify" the support base of parties. And it works all day every day, rain or shine. So it comes out whenever they want a boost.
Of course, the more congressional hearings they have, the less they usually end up doing about it.
Ever hear of THUNDERBIRD?!??
It doesn't have the scheduling capabilities of Outlook and doesn't automatically set up Exchange accounts like Outlook, along with a number of other useful corporate features. Most of which would have to be provided by other programs.
The point of the article is an intro to free OSS for average computer users or corporate environments. CNet is trying to make the transition as smooth as possible. A business isn't interested in replacing their relatively inexpensive multi-user Office license with 3+ different programs and investing the time in retraining and support. It's simply not a cost effective way of doing business. And that's the bottom line for most businesses.
I'm still not very interested in taking the time to learn an entire new application suite unless the difference between Program A and Program B is absolutely huge. If Program A takes 20s to do a common operation, and Program B takes 5s, then yes, color me interested. Other than that, not so much. How much do you feel your free time is worth? Microsoft Office costs well over $100 OEM. Even at $50/hour, that's 2 hours of work to learn and adjust to OpenOffice. It will probably take you less, since OO has an interface surprisingly similar to MS Office 2000. Everything after that is money saved, especially when it comes time to upgrade MS Office. Why not give it a try next time you're ready to upgrade?
Considering that you based your arguments on a completely false statement, I think your whole argument can be dismissed.
Actually, that's a logical fallacy. Just because one statement a person makes is false, does not indicate that all other statements by that person are false.
That said, apparently in your race to judge people who may disagree with you as "shills", you either didn't read, didn't understand, or don't care about the point I was making. Which is that from the viewpoint of the politicians, Microsoft is a better choice since Microsoft software is what they use already. That is not my viewpoint.
So many Slashdotters pride themselves on rationality, critical thinking, and their use of logic. Half of the responses I've received to my original post derides me personally as stupid, naive, ignorant, or morally corrupt. You should be ashamed of yourselves. The reason why Slashdot doesn't have many dissenting voices is because you chase them all away when they pop up. Personally, I'd rather have a civilized discussion, and not a game of personal whack-a-mole like 95% of the websites out there.
I considered just canceling my account and walking away from Slashdot. Life is to short to deal with insulting people. But I wanted to see if I could cause even one of you to rethink exactly what you're doing to yourselves and the people you attack.
"1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats."
And, of course, ODF will disappear tomorrow. Anyone with experience with different versions of MS Office knows that MS doesn't have a great track record with format backwards-compatibility. Will their standard change this? Who knows?
Of course ODF isn't going anywhere. But the politicians have never heard of it. And the politicians likely aren't talking to an IT expert that has. They probably have a couple of reports sitting in front of them for their staff to go over, and a lobbyist or two giving them the reasons Microsoft is a good idea on this one.
"2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs."
Oh really? How many? Where? Do you have corroborating evidence for this, or are you just guessing?
I did a quick check, and in '97, Microsoft had an estimate of 25,000 employees. That's much higher now, but I'm not going to spend more than 2 minutes looking it up. I don't understand your point here. Are you saying they DON'T have employees? Do you think jobs don't matter to a politician? Politicians love big businesses, obviously. They like the jobs, they like the taxes. Given a choice between exactly the same standard run by ODF or Microsoft, they'll pick MS every time, because its a bigger company, and has a higher share of jobs.
"3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products."
I.e. vendor lock in. Standards are meant to allow competition by preventing lock-in, not encouraging it. You may be right in that this may have indeed been what the politicians are thinking, but to me it's more a cry to educate our politicians (I'll allow the "negotiated instead of bought" for the sake of argument, but it's a crock), it has nothing to do with MS being the better choice.
Exactly my point. Politicians will only vote for ODF if someone explains why ODF is the better standard, that the difference actually matters, and that voting for ODF isn't going to cause problems with or for Microsoft. If someone fails to address all three points, the vote is going to Microsoft.
The politicians don't make decisions in a political vacuum. The better format is secondary. They're looking at which choice is a better choice (more potential jobs, taxes, etc) for the state.
"Most decisions in government are not bought and sold, they are negotiated based on the better argument."
/. What a wonderful utopia it evokes!
This must be the single funniest thing ever posted on
If you truly believed your government was that corrupt, I would hope you wouldn't be on Slashdot, but attempting to remove your government from power by any means necessary.
Parents today obviously have ZERO interest in spending time with their children and monitoring their activities and habits.
Slow down there. How are you jumping from some parents' desire to prevent their children from watching exceptionally violent or sexual TV programming unsupervised to a Lord of the Flies household?
Parents cannot be tethered to their children 24 hours a day. These tools enable a good parent to enforce their rules when he/she is not present. No more, no less.
The V-Chip doesn't instantly cause good parents to become bad ones, leaving their children alone in front of the TV with 3 days of food.
The V-Chip and the TV ratings system has been an almost unqualified success. It allows adults to watch adult programming if they desire, adults to block content they do not want to see, and adults to block content they do not want their children to see.
It's a tool that does not create censorship, provides information about the content of a TV show, and lets viewers that care to make an informed, educated decision about whether or not programming is appropriate for what they wish to view.
If they can figure out a way to self-regulate most or all content, similar to the purpose of PICS for websites, it hurts no one and helps everyone who cares to use it.
It's sad so many people instantly think "corruption" when the government makes a decision they don't agree with. Isn't it possible Microsoft made a better case for their standard? A decision like this is like a civil court case, the person with the best argument wins.
Of the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons lawmakers (from their perspective) might want to use Microsoft's standard before any others:
1. Microsoft is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats.
2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs.
3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
This is probably what the politicians were thinking about, and from that perspective, Microsoft looks like the right choice. Most decisions in government are not bought and sold, they are negotiated based on the better argument.
Their mail client is also incapable of handling hyperlinks longer than around 78 characters
That's completely understandable. If I understand it correctly, e-mail usually gets wrapped to 78 characters, plus the newline characters. Microsoft can't support links longer than that, because in fact there is no (easy) way to put a link or word longer than that in a single line. So your link in email gets split by the newline character/string. It depends on the format of how the email is written if the sending client obeys the characters per line limit.
"Why do you assume the justice dept will be on the RIAA side or even choose to intervene at all?" Because the site linked to says that the feds will intervene on the side of the RIAA. But really, was anyone expecting otherwise? There seems to be alot of people thinking this is a case of the big bad government teaming up with the big bad RIAA against the little guy. The defendant in this case is claiming a law is unconstitutional. How is the RIAA qualified to defend against such a claim? Does the law get thrown out if the RIAA fails to give a good arguement? That's not how it works, and that's not how it should work. It is the job of the DOJ to defend the law. They should get involved. If the RIAA questioned the constitutionality of a federal law, the DOJ would defend it. As such, the DOJ is not "on the side of the RIAA". They are defending a federal law, written and approved by Congress, and signed into law by the President.
If you give up on a government, the government gives up on you. That's how it works.
Your two cents matter. As does everyone elses. If you really, truly pay attention to politics, not just campaigning, you'll find that most representatives do listen.
Or you can be lazy, do nothing, and then complain that your government doesn't listen to you.