>I find it interesting that there's no big launch party, midnight madness, etc for Vista.
Well... CompUSA opened at 10:00 p.m. last night offering various items for sale pending the midnight availability of Vista.
Also, evidently MS held some sort of launch party at various sites in Second Life. People have noticed that a goodly number of the sites chosen in SL for the party (it was necessarily distributed, since at most 40 people can be at any one place in SL) are places at which "escorts" are commonly available.
Hello. The initial C14 content of this artifact is X%. Measure its current C14 content, then travel back in time the appropriate interval and purchase a license from Microsoft to access this data.
Can I make backups? (And as others have asked, how can it tell my intent?) Is it dependent on some piece of hardware that might break, or is proprietary? If the company owning it disappears, am I SOL?
That's not how I remember it... I recall there being multiple mutually incompatible systems, with only a few broadcasters or manufacturers willing to bet on any of them, so that AM stereo fizzled. In one room of my house I still have a Realistic AM tuner that can decode one of those systems, assuming anyone out there still uses it.
The music depends on what whoever owns that portion of land you're on decides to provide, if any. Believe me, if you want to hear techno or rap or electronica, it's there in plenty. (There's a goodly number of singer-songwriters doing live shows, and they're pretty darned good, too.)
I agree about the graphics; LL promises that they'll improve them and I guess we'll see whether they're serious about it.
I hope that the OSing of the client will lead to a lot of UI experimentation and improvement, and maybe even improved graphics before LL gets around to it.
Are you representative of SL residents in general? I don't know; I have no idea what fraction of them misuse the phrase "begs the question."
Is it totalitarian, or is it just a question of trying to deprive competitors of that 21%? Microsoft counts on leveraging its monopoly. It doesn't have to innovate... but as long as nobody else can, either, what's the problem?
For the system to be clearly unsustainable, one would need to believe that people would undermine a system that is delivering them a rising standard of living. It would seem unlikely that they would do so in any sort of broad, universal way.
That's assuming people behave rationally. TFA is just an example of the ongoing chorus inciting envy, provoking irrational behavior so that people will give the coercive power of government to those promising to use it to steal on their behalf. Read your Bastiat.
As a registered Libertarian, you should know that the vast majority of those public services are things that the government shouldn't be doing, and hence there shouldn't be taxes to pay for them.
The vast majority of funds and foundations that have long survived their founders have gone in ideological directions that would outrage said founders; if Gates has set a time limit on his foundation, I certainly can't argue with it.
The summary is poorly phrased, and I certainly hope that the lawyers for Iowa haven't stated it that way.
The problem is that, for political rather than technical reasons, MS tightly coupled IE to Windows, at least trying to make them inseparable. That coupling makes IE security holes, which are notorious for their number and severity, that much more of a threat. Simply bundling them, while evil from the point of view of leveraging a monopoly, isn't a security issue, as you point out.
>The DRI folks never got past arrogance and a high-falutin' "we can't possibly be wrong" attitude. Found a bug in the linker, or CP/M, or GEMDOS? You had to prove it six different ways, then they'd fix it WRONG.
Funny you should say that. I recall a letter to the editor of BYTE magazine describing an experience with a bug in Microsoft's FORTRAN compiler. After several releases in which the bug remained unfixed, the letter writer finally got a response from Microsoft that they were in fact not going to fix the bug.
Jean Sammet created FORMAC, was on the committee that created COBOL (which was a considerable advance at the time), and wrote a monumental book/taxonomy of programming languages that is of great historical value. She deserves to be on the list.
If you want to cut spending, tell them to cut the thing that takes over half of the budget: the military.
Congratulations...you didn't drink the Kool-Aid, you ate the Ben and Jerry's.
Note the fine print in their publications: their pie charts show only the discretionary budget, i.e. the part that the government hasn't irrevocably committed itself to spending. It is dwarfed by the nondiscretionary part, i.e. the entitlement programs. Basically you have three choices--sort of like Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, none of them are pretty.
1. You can let the whole megillah come crashing down. 2. You can tax the young into poverty to keep the elderly living in the state to which they are accustomed. (One estimate is an 82% income tax rate to keep the elderly attached to the trough.) 3. You can cut entitlement programs.
Take your pick, but because the elderly vote in force, (3) isn't bloody likely.
The past six years? You might want to look up when CALEA was passed and when the Clipper chip brouhaha happened, not to mention "Know Your Customer"...
The original point is this: is getting the OEM cost of Windows refunded worth the time and effort? If I can make $50/hour doing some work, but I spend three hours getting a $50 refund on some purchase, is it worth the effort?
I guess that depends on how much one thinks one's principles are worth.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, that will have to wait until the petition starts to get rid of "empowering."
>I find it interesting that there's no big launch party, midnight madness, etc for Vista.
Well... CompUSA opened at 10:00 p.m. last night offering various items for sale pending the midnight availability of Vista.
Also, evidently MS held some sort of launch party at various sites in Second Life. People have noticed that a goodly number of the sites chosen in SL for the party (it was necessarily distributed, since at most 40 people can be at any one place in SL) are places at which "escorts" are commonly available.
Hello. The initial C14 content of this artifact is X%. Measure its current C14 content, then travel back in time the appropriate interval and purchase a license from Microsoft to access this data.
Thank you,
The Microsoft Immortal Advantage Team
On the contrary; it falls in the category described in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, i.e. "funny only once."
Hmmm. Isn't what you suggest simply a protection racket? "Pay us off or we'll mug/kidnap/kill you."
In this hypothetical case...
Can I make backups? (And as others have asked, how can it tell my intent?)
Is it dependent on some piece of hardware that might break, or is proprietary?
If the company owning it disappears, am I SOL?
That's not how I remember it... I recall there being multiple mutually incompatible systems, with only a few broadcasters or manufacturers willing to bet on any of them, so that AM stereo fizzled. In one room of my house I still have a Realistic AM tuner that can decode one of those systems, assuming anyone out there still uses it.
So, what do you propose should be done because of the ability of people to rationalize theft?
Two words: AM stereo.
The music depends on what whoever owns that portion of land you're on decides to provide, if any. Believe me, if you want to hear techno or rap or electronica, it's there in plenty. (There's a goodly number of singer-songwriters doing live shows, and they're pretty darned good, too.)
I agree about the graphics; LL promises that they'll improve them and I guess we'll see whether they're serious about it.
I hope that the OSing of the client will lead to a lot of UI experimentation and improvement, and maybe even improved graphics before LL gets around to it.
Are you representative of SL residents in general? I don't know; I have no idea what fraction of them misuse the phrase "begs the question."
They are a government agency. A business can decide to ignore some potential customers, but a government cannot decide to ignore citizens.
When?
What person who doesn't already have that association in his or her brain is going to watch the stuff?
If that were the real reason, the US could've just made a sweetheart deal with Saddam Hussein the way the French did, and saved a lot of trouble.
Is it totalitarian, or is it just a question of trying to deprive competitors of that 21%? Microsoft counts on leveraging its monopoly. It doesn't have to innovate... but as long as nobody else can, either, what's the problem?
Ah, so it's OK to steal, as long as you don't take too much. Keep the host healthy enough that the parasite can have a steady supply.
For the system to be clearly unsustainable, one would need to believe that people would undermine a system that is delivering them a rising standard of living. It would seem unlikely that they would do so in any sort of broad, universal way.
That's assuming people behave rationally. TFA is just an example of the ongoing chorus inciting envy, provoking irrational behavior so that people will give the coercive power of government to those promising to use it to steal on their behalf. Read your Bastiat.
As a registered Libertarian, you should know that the vast majority of those public services are things that the government shouldn't be doing, and hence there shouldn't be taxes to pay for them.
The vast majority of funds and foundations that have long survived their founders have gone in ideological directions that would outrage said founders; if Gates has set a time limit on his foundation, I certainly can't argue with it.
The summary is poorly phrased, and I certainly hope that the lawyers for Iowa haven't stated it that way.
The problem is that, for political rather than technical reasons, MS tightly coupled IE to Windows, at least trying to make them inseparable. That coupling makes IE security holes, which are notorious for their number and severity, that much more of a threat. Simply bundling them, while evil from the point of view of leveraging a monopoly, isn't a security issue, as you point out.
>The DRI folks never got past arrogance and a high-falutin' "we can't possibly be wrong" attitude. Found a bug in the linker, or CP/M, or GEMDOS? You had to prove it six different ways, then they'd fix it WRONG.
Funny you should say that. I recall a letter to the editor of BYTE magazine describing an experience with a bug in Microsoft's FORTRAN compiler. After several releases in which the bug remained unfixed, the letter writer finally got a response from Microsoft that they were in fact not going to fix the bug.
Jean Sammet created FORMAC, was on the committee that created COBOL (which was a considerable advance at the time), and wrote a monumental book/taxonomy of programming languages that is of great historical value. She deserves to be on the list.
If you want to cut spending, tell them to cut the thing that takes over half of the budget: the military.
Congratulations...you didn't drink the Kool-Aid, you ate the Ben and Jerry's.
Note the fine print in their publications: their pie charts show only the discretionary budget, i.e. the part that the government hasn't irrevocably committed itself to spending. It is dwarfed by the nondiscretionary part, i.e. the entitlement programs. Basically you have three choices--sort of like Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, none of them are pretty.
1. You can let the whole megillah come crashing down.
2. You can tax the young into poverty to keep the elderly living in the state to which they are accustomed. (One estimate is an 82% income tax rate to keep the elderly attached to the trough.)
3. You can cut entitlement programs.
Take your pick, but because the elderly vote in force, (3) isn't bloody likely.
The past six years? You might want to look up when CALEA was passed and when the Clipper chip brouhaha happened, not to mention "Know Your Customer"...
The original point is this: is getting the OEM cost of Windows refunded worth the time and effort? If I can make $50/hour doing some work, but I spend three hours getting a $50 refund on some purchase, is it worth the effort?
I guess that depends on how much one thinks one's principles are worth.