This is an interesting idea. Corporations as people could lead to many pitfalls. For instance, if a Corporation is allowed to vote, can it hold public office ? President Microsoft ? If a Corporation is deemed a person with the right to vote, then isn't it also subject to Military Draft Registration and if the draft were reinstated, would then everyone who works for the company then have too serve ? The Microsoft Brigade ?
In short, campaign finance limits of any sort are unconstitutional.
I see two problems with your logic. First Corporations can not vote for a reason, they are not people and therefore have no constitutional right to vote, in fact a Corporation has no constitutional rights at all. Because they are not people, Corporations should not have any voice in government at all. Second, money equals access, more money means more access, this means the wealthiest 2% of the population has the most access and can get thier opinions heard much easier than the rest of us. Micheal Dell and I have the same Senator, If want my voice heard, I have to write a letter, which will be read by an intern and thrown in a pile, if Dell wants to give his opinion, he asks the Senator out to lunch. Unregulated campaign finance is unconstitutional because it gives those who need the least, more say in government and those who need the most, the least say.
Lots of small utilites, each with only one function, which it does very well , and can have its output piped to other such utilities or vice versa. Sounds like Unix to me.
The idea that work and human endeavor have no higher purpose than making money is a pretty miserable philosophy of life and has never been a sufficient foundation for a society or a corporation.
I agree, the foundation of any society or corporation should be for the betterment of mankind. However, that is just not the reality. If it were, there would be no need for a minimum wage, underage worker laws, worker safety regulations, consumer protections or environmental regulations. All of these things came about because corporations set aside the "Betterment of mankind" philosophy in favor of greed. Many of the companies who were the worst offenders are still in business today and didn't change becaue it was the moral thing to do, but changed because they were forced to.
people decided it was in the public interest to allow them to exist.
This is true at least in theory, but in reality many companies act in thier own self interest. To stay on topic, I will give Disney as an example. How does keeping the Mikey Mouse IP locked up for another 20 years serve the public good ? The only reason they do it is to make more money. Releasing Mikey would serve the public, because then other artists could do thier own takes on him or Non-Profit organizations could use him as an icon.
This is utterly true, money is a hard thing to argue against, especially in a capitalist society. IP holders SHOULD allow thier property to pass into the public domain after a reasonable time period, for the good of the people. However Corporations exist for the sole purpose of making money and are not in and of themselves moral entities. Certainly many corporations have moral people working for them, but morality usually takes a back seat to profits, this is especially true today when stockholders can sue a CEO for not extracting every last penny from its IP and government is oh so willing to let them do it. Naturally any corporations first reaction to any situation is going to be "Where is the money in that ?"
In order for real change to occur in our favor, we muct give these companies a compelling reason to realse thier IP to the public domain. Since money is the prime motivators, perhaps charging for continued exclusive use after a reasonable time period, say $1000 a year, every year after 15 years. Maybe allow the company to write a certain amount off thier taxes for say 5 years after the IP has been released. Perhaps a combination of both.
Re:Software auto-update is common
on
Read the Fine Print
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Google's Toolbar does the same thing, according to their official-until-we-change-it legalese
The difference is Google only checks for a single piece of information on a single piece of software and my system does not depend on this software to run. I have never had a Google Toolbar update screw up my entire system or even introduce another bug or open security holes. Google also has a pretty good privacy policy for which it has an excellent track record for following. In short, Google has earned my trust, Microsoft has proven time and time again they can not be trusted and it will take more than setting aside 28 days out of the last 20 years to fix problems to restore that trust.
Microsoft stands to gain the most from this. Now they can write closed libraries and charge for them. Of course if anyone wants to be able to use any.net services under Linux they will have to purchase the libraries, which will probably cost more than a retail copy of Windows XP.
I don't know about the Athlon XP, but I am running a pair of older 1.2 Ghz (266 FSB) Athlons on my Tyan board and they work just fine. The board detects them and Linux uses them perfectly well. Redhat 7.2 detected them and installed the SMP kernel, though later I recompiled my own kernel to optimize it for Athlon processors.
But you can't buy food/house/car with self respect, neither send your kids to college
If you really feel this way, I feel sorry for you. The only thing we come into this world with is our self resect and the only thing we leave it with is our self respect. In between, we are forced to give up little bits of it in order to survive. If Alan Cox can retain some of his self respect by refusing to work for AOL/TW, then more power to him.
I can't believe people are still responding to this, almost a week after the original posting. I say too you the same thing I said the AC. If at age 14, someone gave you that kind of responsibility, and you successfully lived up to their expectation, then good for you, you got lucky and you should thank the person who hired you, because they bet their job on you. This is a risk I would not take.
This is not about age discrimination, I am sure that at age 14 you and the previous AC were very qualified for the jobs you were doing. What this is about is "Making Good Decisions". One of my many jobs is I occasionally hire new people, this job requires that I "Make Good Decisions"
You say you where in charge of a 100K computer when you were 14 years old and according to you this was a "Good Decision" because you did your job and had no major problems. BUT what IF something had gone wrong, the company lost a big client and it was your fault. As the person who hired you, how would I defend my "Good Decision" to the CEO, or if I am the CEO, how do I defend my choice to hire you to my investors or to other potential clients ? Do you think they will care that you are a wonder boy ? I would probably be fired right along with you or if I am the CEO, my investor's will sue me for being incompetent. Where as a 22 year old with a certification, a couple years help desk experience and one or two good references, is an easy choice to defend.
Microsoft will stick with the "Standard" just like they did with Java, only this time there won't be anyone pig-headed like Sun rejecting their improvements out of spite.
I am not sure I'd classify what Microsoft wanted to do to Java as "improvements". Whether or not they were improvements, Microsoft broke the license agreement with Sun. The agreement specificly stated any Java implementation by Microsoft would be standards compliant. Microsoft purposly failed to do this and as a result lost in court because of it.
"Just following orders" is a reasonable defense in, say, a military setting, where you could be shot for disobeying orders,
The "Just following orders" defense is covered in the UCMJ, it clearly states a soldier does not have to follow an illegal order. While that is the way it is suppose to work, I doubt it does in reality.
Apparently certain people are a little a bitter that teens can do the same job that middle age adults can do and do it better.
Sounds like you are still waiting for your Admin rights to be given who nows maybe before you become to 50 you can get it or are you still working a lowly Help Desk position?
You are young, smart and sooo cool, while I am old, dumb and uncool. I guess you told me. Good luck, have a nice life and when you are my age I hope you still feel the same way.
You are correct, the 2.5 kernel is the development kernel. The difference is the 2.5 kernel is targeted to eventually become 2.6 or possibly 3.0. This new branch -mjc is specificly for developing and testing new features/bug fixes for the 2.4.x kernel.
Now this is the question of the day. I never used the AC kernel because I prefered to stick closer to stable tree, but I did add patches as I needed them. The VM stuff did wonders for me, but the PreEmpt patch made no noticable difference, probably because I use a dual processor system.
Of the included patches; Reverse Mapping patch #9, Preemptible Kernel Patch, Lock-Break Patch, CPU affinity/proc entry, Netdev-random, Software Suspend, Real Time Scheduler for Linux, IDE updates. Which ones can we expect to have an impact on preformance ? and which ones simply fix a long standing problem ?
I don't think there will be a problem, after all the AC branch has been around for a long time. I got from the report is this new branch will replace the AC branch now that Alan Cox has moved onto 2.5 development. Besides I see no reason to srop development on the 2.4 branch just because Linus opened 2.5, people are going to be using the 2.4 kernel for along time to come. So I say Why Not ?
I think by lumping all teenagers into the irresponsible category just shows that people aren't open minded like the software must of prefer on this site.
My statement had nothing to do with being open minded, it had to do with reality. Fact of the matter is MOST (not all) teenagers are irresponsible, it is a part of being a teenager and if you weren't irresponsible as a teenager, you didn't do it right.
I have held professional paying jobs at a prestigious University in my area since I was 14.
The fact that you replied as an Anonymous Coward does not add beleivablity to your claim. If someone gave you that kind of responsibility at that age, you got lucky and if you lived upto the job, then great, good for you. I have to ask, were you a legitament Domain Admin or did the real Domain Admin give you his password and did his boss know about it ? The person who gave you Domain Admin rights was betting his job on you, because had you screwed up both of you would have been gone. If you haven't thanked him, you should.
I don't buy it. Being on the net for 5 years or taking apart and playing with computers with your friends isn't real world(tm) job experience.
Volunteering to admin your High Schools network 2 hours a week, isn't real world job experience either. I know of no business that would trust thier computer network to a 14 year old, no matter how good he was. 14 year olds tend to have surges of hormones that make them do stupid things. Don't take it personally, I do not question your skill, but I do think you are overestimating your job experience.
In the last 20 years the "War on Drugs" has cost us billions of dollars, many bad laws have been passed because of it, many good peoples lives have been ruined and drug abuse is worse now then it ever has been.
Today we have Bush's "War on Terrorism" which I beleive will be exactly as successful as the "War on Drugs". In 20 years we will have spent trillions of dollars, many bad laws will be passed, many good peoples lives will be ruined and terrorism will be worse than ever.
Slashdot Mirror
This is an interesting idea. Corporations as people could lead to many pitfalls. For instance, if a Corporation is allowed to vote, can it hold public office ? President Microsoft ? If a Corporation is deemed a person with the right to vote, then isn't it also subject to Military Draft Registration and if the draft were reinstated, would then everyone who works for the company then have too serve ? The Microsoft Brigade ?
In short, campaign finance limits of any sort are unconstitutional.
I see two problems with your logic. First Corporations can not vote for a reason, they are not people and therefore have no constitutional right to vote, in fact a Corporation has no constitutional rights at all. Because they are not people, Corporations should not have any voice in government at all. Second, money equals access, more money means more access, this means the wealthiest 2% of the population has the most access and can get thier opinions heard much easier than the rest of us. Micheal Dell and I have the same Senator, If want my voice heard, I have to write a letter, which will be read by an intern and thrown in a pile, if Dell wants to give his opinion, he asks the Senator out to lunch. Unregulated campaign finance is unconstitutional because it gives those who need the least, more say in government and those who need the most, the least say.
Lots of small utilites, each with only one function, which it does very well , and can have its output piped to other such utilities or vice versa. Sounds like Unix to me.
The idea that work and human endeavor have no higher purpose than making money is a pretty miserable philosophy of life and has never been a sufficient foundation for a society or a corporation.
I agree, the foundation of any society or corporation should be for the betterment of mankind. However, that is just not the reality. If it were, there would be no need for a minimum wage, underage worker laws, worker safety regulations, consumer protections or environmental regulations. All of these things came about because corporations set aside the "Betterment of mankind" philosophy in favor of greed. Many of the companies who were the worst offenders are still in business today and didn't change becaue it was the moral thing to do, but changed because they were forced to.
it is widely known that Xerox has a strong case for prior art.
Also didn't some guy use the hyperlink idea back in the 60's on a project I think was called Xanadu or similar.
people decided it was in the public interest to allow them to exist.
This is true at least in theory, but in reality many companies act in thier own self interest. To stay on topic, I will give Disney as an example. How does keeping the Mikey Mouse IP locked up for another 20 years serve the public good ? The only reason they do it is to make more money. Releasing Mikey would serve the public, because then other artists could do thier own takes on him or Non-Profit organizations could use him as an icon.
This is utterly true, money is a hard thing to argue against, especially in a capitalist society. IP holders SHOULD allow thier property to pass into the public domain after a reasonable time period, for the good of the people. However Corporations exist for the sole purpose of making money and are not in and of themselves moral entities. Certainly many corporations have moral people working for them, but morality usually takes a back seat to profits, this is especially true today when stockholders can sue a CEO for not extracting every last penny from its IP and government is oh so willing to let them do it. Naturally any corporations first reaction to any situation is going to be "Where is the money in that ?"
In order for real change to occur in our favor, we muct give these companies a compelling reason to realse thier IP to the public domain. Since money is the prime motivators, perhaps charging for continued exclusive use after a reasonable time period, say $1000 a year, every year after 15 years. Maybe allow the company to write a certain amount off thier taxes for say 5 years after the IP has been released. Perhaps a combination of both.
Google's Toolbar does the same thing, according to their official-until-we-change-it legalese
The difference is Google only checks for a single piece of information on a single piece of software and my system does not depend on this software to run. I have never had a Google Toolbar update screw up my entire system or even introduce another bug or open security holes. Google also has a pretty good privacy policy for which it has an excellent track record for following. In short, Google has earned my trust, Microsoft has proven time and time again they can not be trusted and it will take more than setting aside 28 days out of the last 20 years to fix problems to restore that trust.
The GNU-Nazi will have to start his own
He already has, its called DotGNU
Microsoft stands to gain the most from this. Now they can write closed libraries and charge for them. Of course if anyone wants to be able to use any .net services under Linux they will have to purchase the libraries, which will probably cost more than a retail copy of Windows XP.
I don't know about the Athlon XP, but I am running a pair of older 1.2 Ghz (266 FSB) Athlons on my Tyan board and they work just fine. The board detects them and Linux uses them perfectly well. Redhat 7.2 detected them and installed the SMP kernel, though later I recompiled my own kernel to optimize it for Athlon processors.
But you can't buy food/house/car with self respect, neither send your kids to college
If you really feel this way, I feel sorry for you. The only thing we come into this world with is our self resect and the only thing we leave it with is our self respect. In between, we are forced to give up little bits of it in order to survive. If Alan Cox can retain some of his self respect by refusing to work for AOL/TW, then more power to him.
Remember the bad press Adobe recieved over a similar action against an Open Source project, perhaps whoever this is, wants avoid more of the same.
I can't believe people are still responding to this, almost a week after the original posting. I say too you the same thing I said the AC. If at age 14, someone gave you that kind of responsibility, and you successfully lived up to their expectation, then good for you, you got lucky and you should thank the person who hired you, because they bet their job on you. This is a risk I would not take.
This is not about age discrimination, I am sure that at age 14 you and the previous AC were very qualified for the jobs you were doing. What this is about is "Making Good Decisions". One of my many jobs is I occasionally hire new people, this job requires that I "Make Good Decisions"
You say you where in charge of a 100K computer when you were 14 years old and according to you this was a "Good Decision" because you did your job and had no major problems. BUT what IF something had gone wrong, the company lost a big client and it was your fault. As the person who hired you, how would I defend my "Good Decision" to the CEO, or if I am the CEO, how do I defend my choice to hire you to my investors or to other potential clients ? Do you think they will care that you are a wonder boy ? I would probably be fired right along with you or if I am the CEO, my investor's will sue me for being incompetent. Where as a 22 year old with a certification, a couple years help desk experience and one or two good references, is an easy choice to defend.
Microsoft will stick with the "Standard" just like they did with Java, only this time there won't be anyone pig-headed like Sun rejecting their improvements out of spite.
I am not sure I'd classify what Microsoft wanted to do to Java as "improvements". Whether or not they were improvements, Microsoft broke the license agreement with Sun. The agreement specificly stated any Java implementation by Microsoft would be standards compliant. Microsoft purposly failed to do this and as a result lost in court because of it.
Well considering the base class library has also gone through ECMA standardisation along with C# I'm not sure you need worry.
Mono will be implimenting the ECMA spec, so MS an drift where they like.
Microsoft will stick with the "Standard" just like they did with Java, only this time there won't be anyone to sue them.
"Just following orders" is a reasonable defense in, say, a military setting, where you could be shot for disobeying orders,
The "Just following orders" defense is covered in the UCMJ, it clearly states a soldier does not have to follow an illegal order. While that is the way it is suppose to work, I doubt it does in reality.
Apparently certain people are a little a bitter that teens can do the same job that middle age adults can do and do it better.
Sounds like you are still waiting for your Admin rights to be given who nows maybe before you become to 50 you can get it or are you still working a lowly Help Desk position?
You are young, smart and sooo cool, while I am old, dumb and uncool. I guess you told me. Good luck, have a nice life and when you are my age I hope you still feel the same way.
You are correct, the 2.5 kernel is the development kernel. The difference is the 2.5 kernel is targeted to eventually become 2.6 or possibly 3.0. This new branch -mjc is specificly for developing and testing new features/bug fixes for the 2.4.x kernel.
Now this is the question of the day. I never used the AC kernel because I prefered to stick closer to stable tree, but I did add patches as I needed them. The VM stuff did wonders for me, but the PreEmpt patch made no noticable difference, probably because I use a dual processor system.
Of the included patches; Reverse Mapping patch #9, Preemptible Kernel Patch, Lock-Break Patch, CPU affinity /proc entry, Netdev-random, Software Suspend, Real Time Scheduler for Linux, IDE updates. Which ones can we expect to have an impact on preformance ? and which ones simply fix a long standing problem ?
I don't think there will be a problem, after all the AC branch has been around for a long time. I got from the report is this new branch will replace the AC branch now that Alan Cox has moved onto 2.5 development. Besides I see no reason to srop development on the 2.4 branch just because Linus opened 2.5, people are going to be using the 2.4 kernel for along time to come. So I say Why Not ?
Number Six: Who is Number One ? ... Number Six !
Number Two: You are
I think by lumping all teenagers into the irresponsible category just shows that people aren't open minded like the software must of prefer on this site.
My statement had nothing to do with being open minded, it had to do with reality. Fact of the matter is MOST (not all) teenagers are irresponsible, it is a part of being a teenager and if you weren't irresponsible as a teenager, you didn't do it right.
I have held professional paying jobs at a prestigious University in my area since I was 14.
The fact that you replied as an Anonymous Coward does not add beleivablity to your claim. If someone gave you that kind of responsibility at that age, you got lucky and if you lived upto the job, then great, good for you. I have to ask, were you a legitament Domain Admin or did the real Domain Admin give you his password and did his boss know about it ? The person who gave you Domain Admin rights was betting his job on you, because had you screwed up both of you would have been gone. If you haven't thanked him, you should.
You are 19 and currently have 5 years experience?
I don't buy it. Being on the net for 5 years or taking apart and playing with computers with your friends isn't real world(tm) job experience.
Volunteering to admin your High Schools network 2 hours a week, isn't real world job experience either. I know of no business that would trust thier computer network to a 14 year old, no matter how good he was. 14 year olds tend to have surges of hormones that make them do stupid things. Don't take it personally, I do not question your skill, but I do think you are overestimating your job experience.
Reagan's war on drugs
In the last 20 years the "War on Drugs" has cost us billions of dollars, many bad laws have been passed because of it, many good peoples lives have been ruined and drug abuse is worse now then it ever has been.
Today we have Bush's "War on Terrorism" which I beleive will be exactly as successful as the "War on Drugs". In 20 years we will have spent trillions of dollars, many bad laws will be passed, many good peoples lives will be ruined and terrorism will be worse than ever.
Remember, you heard it on Slashdot first.