When the Mom & Pop shop on the
corner overcharges you by four dollars, nobody cares, but when Amazon does it we get a flurry of
Slashdot articles about it.
Of course people complain and worry more about the ethical failings of large corporations as opposed to the ethical failings of "Mom & Pop" shops. When the corner store overcharges you, you go to another corner store, complain to the owner, tell all your friends, whatever. Your local government weilds a lot of power over the Mom and Pop shops. And if your Mom and Pop shop controls the municipal government, they don't control the county government or the state government.
Large corporations not only have the power to "do it to more people," but they also pour huge sums of money into campaigns and lobbyists in the U.S. to ensure that they have access and favors that Mom and Pop can't dream of. Think DMCA. And they do the same thing, or worse, around the globe. The fear that big business is more dangerous and/or powerful than government exists for a reason!
Large corporations can do much more horrible things than Mom and Pop shops. This is obvious to any observer. Because they are capable of much more damage (and much more good, but that's usually not seen to be as profitable), they should be held to higher levels of scrutiny and skepticism than Mom and Pop.
Answer the usual types of questions you answer when doing a Linux or FreeBSD install from CD.
Reboot.
I've been running OpenBSD on my HTTP/SMTP server for about a year and a half. Securing the machine and (this is the really important part) keeping it secure have been very easy. It's nice to not have to spend all my time reading advisories and applying patches.
FWIW, the French novella from which the movie took its name (author's name was Boulle, I believe) was even more "loudly metaphorical." In fact, it was heavy-handed social commentary. _Lord of the Flies_ has nothing on it for obvious symbolism. It was also less "story driven." No guns, no commentary on nuclear holocaust (at least that I can recall), none of that. In the book, human day-to-day life had become so mundane that apes could perform the same function, so they eventually just took over. This, of course, is probably even more wildly implausible than the movie version. But I get the impression that the author's intent was not believable sci-fi but, instead, biting social commentary. For example, scientists in the ape society (and, presumably, the human society that was its immediate predecessor) did no research. Instead, they read old tomes, rewrote what they read, and published that way. Personally, if I'm going to the movies, I'd rather see Charlton Heston yelling "It's a mad house!" while being sprayed with a high-powered hose than supposedly-weighty social commentary. Nonetheless, the original movie was so unfaithful to the book, I don't see any reason for a "remake" to tow a close line to the first movie.
So, did anyone notice? 'Inaugural survey of the Microsoft Exchange forum' then: principal corporate messaging solution: Exchange with 65% and lastly: 'If anything has to go in favor of the y2k project, what will it be?' The Groupware system.
Link the three together and you'll have difficulty to stop laughing:)))
Once again the image perceived by the rest of the world of the 'average american' has been confirmed:)
See how easy it is to get people fired up?
Anyway...Irrelevant? Where have we heard this kind of reasoning before? So what about the millions of people who're using windows? We might as well giv up then, and all install NT on our servers, right?
Not to defend SuSe here, I'm using Slackware...But I always was under the impression that the general idea here was: I _do_ have a choice!
Slashdot Mirror
Of course people complain and worry more about the ethical failings of large corporations as opposed to the ethical failings of "Mom & Pop" shops. When the corner store overcharges you, you go to another corner store, complain to the owner, tell all your friends, whatever. Your local government weilds a lot of power over the Mom and Pop shops. And if your Mom and Pop shop controls the municipal government, they don't control the county government or the state government.
Large corporations not only have the power to "do it to more people," but they also pour huge sums of money into campaigns and lobbyists in the U.S. to ensure that they have access and favors that Mom and Pop can't dream of. Think DMCA. And they do the same thing, or worse, around the globe. The fear that big business is more dangerous and/or powerful than government exists for a reason!
Large corporations can do much more horrible things than Mom and Pop shops. This is obvious to any observer. Because they are capable of much more damage (and much more good, but that's usually not seen to be as profitable), they should be held to higher levels of scrutiny and skepticism than Mom and Pop.
I've been running OpenBSD on my HTTP/SMTP server for about a year and a half. Securing the machine and (this is the really important part) keeping it secure have been very easy. It's nice to not have to spend all my time reading advisories and applying patches.
FWIW, the French novella from which the movie took its name (author's name was Boulle, I believe) was even more "loudly metaphorical." In fact, it was heavy-handed social commentary. _Lord of the Flies_ has nothing on it for obvious symbolism. It was also less "story driven." No guns, no commentary on nuclear holocaust (at least that I can recall), none of that. In the book, human day-to-day life had become so mundane that apes could perform the same function, so they eventually just took over. This, of course, is probably even more wildly implausible than the movie version. But I get the impression that the author's intent was not believable sci-fi but, instead, biting social commentary. For example, scientists in the ape society (and, presumably, the human society that was its immediate predecessor) did no research. Instead, they read old tomes, rewrote what they read, and published that way. Personally, if I'm going to the movies, I'd rather see Charlton Heston yelling "It's a mad house!" while being sprayed with a high-powered hose than supposedly-weighty social commentary. Nonetheless, the original movie was so unfaithful to the book, I don't see any reason for a "remake" to tow a close line to the first movie.
So, did anyone notice?
:)))
'Inaugural survey of the Microsoft Exchange forum'
then:
principal corporate messaging solution: Exchange with 65%
and lastly:
'If anything has to go in favor of the y2k project, what will it be?'
The Groupware system.
Link the three together and you'll have difficulty to stop laughing
Once again the image perceived by the rest of the world of the 'average american' has been confirmed :)
See how easy it is to get people fired up?
Anyway...Irrelevant? Where have we heard this kind of reasoning before? So what about the millions of people who're using windows? We might as well giv up then, and all install NT on our servers, right?
Not to defend SuSe here, I'm using Slackware...But I always was under the impression that the general idea here was: I _do_ have a choice!