Re:No WuName to Normal Translator
on
Humpday Quickies
·
· Score: 2
At least it appears that in some cases (see the lyrics revamp to Particle Man elsewhere in this discussion) it actually does map last names consistently... for example:
me (real name) --> Tha Winged Cow my wife --> International Cow
I have the feeling she may not find that all that funny:)
I still prefer this one though:
Spud Zeppelin --> Cybernetic Tiger
It's Grrrrrrrrrrreat!
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
It seems pretty clear to me that it would violate our 4th, 5th, and 14th amendment rights....
But what also does seem overwhelmingly clear to me is that our friends on the other side of the Atlantic are increasingly in need of a written (rather than the gentleman's agreement they have now) constitution.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Note: I already self-moderated this down by suppressing my bonus...
The Libertarian voting system you describe creates a huge number of problems -- not the least of which are that there is no mechanism for reflecting "second choice" and consequently most "strategic voting" schemes fail miserably.... I'm convinced what you'd get are a bunch of fringe candidates winning elections with 5% of the vote. It may not be a bad way to run a primary, however, so long as the top n (2? 3? 5?) votegetters wind up on a closed (ie. no write-ins) ballot.
And when you get to closed ballots, the "vote for one" system we use today is a disaster when you have more than two candidates in an election. Dr. Don Saari of Northwestern has done extensive research in voting theory, and openly advocates the use of Borda counts (voters rank-order the n candidates, their top choice gets n-1 points, second choice n-2, etc., last choice gets 0) in elections to avoid the sorts of electoral "tragedies" (ie. where the last choice of a majority of the electorate winds up winning the election) we've had recently.
By the way, as an aside, the pre-printed cards system you advocate all-but-forces the ballots to be hand-counted... driving the cost of conducting the election up significantly.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Of that old SNL sketch where Eddie Murphy was hosting a bogus "Black History Minute" about George Washington Carver -- where "Skippy" and "Jif" became millionares, while "Carver died penniless and insane, still trying to play a phonograph record with a peanut.":)
On a more serious note, I can think of one company about a mile up the road from me who would probably love to talk to him about the technology and its potential for inclusion in direct mail. I suspect that the problem isn't that potential and VCs are uninterested in the technology as much as it is a reluctance/inability to hook up with a sufficiently competent marketroid to present it to them correctly. Some of the r&d companies with the best technology around languish for years because they can't sell their way out of a paper bag....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
But isn't the address in the 209 space for the Cable Modem-based connection they've switched to NOW so people can get their files and fix DNS? I was looking for an address for one of their boxes that isn't accessible:)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
If you do an ARIN whois on one of MassLinux's nameservers (NS.SUNDOWNIS.COM -- Sundown IS is one of their sister companies -- 63.66.103.5) you'll find it in a particular company's CIDR block....
Let's just say it appears their problems begin and end with U.:)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Actually, there are about 10 states without state income taxes -- among them (last time I checked) are Florida, Washington, Nevada and Texas. New Hampshire only taxes interest income (again, YMMV), and Rhode Island says "your state tax obligation is precisely 27.5% of your federal tax obligation" (once again, YMMV). So really, you should only need about 42 CPAs *g*. That number could even go down if you pick the right CPAs (there's probably at least one in Waukegan who can do both Illinois and Wisconsin, etc.).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Do a search on the LeTax project... we had a presentation at CFUG back in June by one of the developers.... I wish I could get you the URL for the project right now, but my notes from that meeting are at home and I'm at work....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
For those of you who don't know, Excite lets you add tide tables as part of their customization. This is what mine currently looks like: Old Saybrook Point, Connecticut Tides December 21 Low3:25PM -0.50 High9:27PM3.08 December 22 Low3:23AM -0.31 High9:49AM4.11 Low4:23PM -0.58 High10:28PM3.11
These don't appear to be all THAT unusual to me at all....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
The 1st Law of Mass Media is "Give the people what they want." It appears CNN is doing exactly that... after all, it is Christmas, and (by the way, this has nothing to do with my opinion on the subject [I support eToy], just my perception of how CNN is handling it):
Dr. Seuss' Grinch conspired to keep toys out of the hands of children using a dogsled. RTM is conspiring to do likewise (again, in the eyes of the public) using a DoS attack.
The Grinch lived on top of a mountain. eToy is based in Switzerland.
The Grinch didn't like Christmas because of the noise. eToy (again, popular perception) doesn't like the e-commerce.
The Grinch was a mean-spirited recluse. eToy is a group of free-spirited *gasp* performance artists, aligned with a group of *gasp* free-thinking H/CRackers.
The Grinch freely exploited his little dog, Max. RTM are freely exploiting the "zombie" machines they've compromised.
There may be other parallels, these were just readily apparent. Remember what ESR likes to talk about with regard to technology in the media: people only pay attention to tech stories with protagonists. In this case, they've got a protagonist (the Whos down at eToys) and a story that they more-or-less already know (or at least think they do)... what more could John Q. Public ask for?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I see a lot being said about "we can write an open source.ASF player" and "ASF is a documented format" -- but as a reminder:
We already have that with Quicktime.MOV players, and how many of those can you actually watch?
Why? As many of you remember, the problem wasn't the availability of the player, but the availability of the Sorenson codec used extensively by Mac-centric Quicktime developers. Codecs, and getting ports of these highly proprietary (ie.: considered "trade secrets" oftentimes instead of patented, to avoid having to publish) will be the main issue in viewing Windows Media on other OSs.
Oh, and don't expect these codecs to be particularly cross-platform, either.... Having been involved with the development of one a couple years ago, I can tell you that in the development of these things there's an awful lot of bit-twiddling going on to milk as much out of a particular hardware platform you're designing around as possible -- taking full advantage of writing code heavily optimized for a particular processor in order to achieve the equivalent of decompressing dozens of 320x240 JPEGs per second. Consequently, there's a very real (no pun intended) possibility that a number of these codecs will NEVER fly on a lot of hardware, because the plumbing isn't optimized for them (ever run a FPU benchmark on a RISC box?).
So, the reality is that we may wind up in a world where we do have to run the WMP emulated on x86-based Unix boxes and suffer (or run players remotely over X) elsewhere. It's not pessimism, just a bit of a reality check... personally I just use my wife's Wintel whenever I want to watch video.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
As long as we're playing with numbers...
on
Happy Odd Day!
·
· Score: 1
Consider the following:
During the 6 month period, 9/1/1999-2/29/2000, there will have been several days whose dates are entirely composed of exactly two digits...
Most ISP's have caught onto the complaints being groundless, and for many years now they've been ignoring RTC's letters, however with the new law, the ISP has to shut it down regardless.
Careful about overestimating the DMCA -- it only gives that broad, reaching ability WRT Copyright violations, NOT Trademark violations like were alleged here. If Xenu isn't redistributing any copyrighted materials of the Scientologists, the DMCA can't be applied....
Example: Suppose I put up a site detailing my experiences with drinking Dr. Pepper while eating eggs, and the extreme distress it causes me. Dr. Pepper couldn't go after me using DMCA just because I am referring to them by their (trademarked) name. If, however, I put the lyrics to one of their lengthy jingles (which I presume are copyrighted) up on the site, then they have a copyright infringement to which DMCA would be applicable.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
If memory serves, US trademark law explicitly forbids trademarking a term which is a "personal name", specifically to avoid issues like who was using "Smith" first. But, typically (like crappy patents) the trademarks get registered and then have to be overturned.
Taking this a step further than the "old mother" from the nursery rhyme, I recall a Hubbard Road in rural Idaho that presumably predates L. Ron (and was probably named for SOMEONE), and it occurs to me that there's a reasonably famous (!?) Glenn Hubbard running around these days (baseball pitcher?).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
News.com reported earlier this year that Welles not only successfully won her right to use the term "Playmate of the Year" to describe herself, but she also was countersuing Playboy for unfair business practices, defamation, etc.
So it appears that if someone is writing about the Scientologists, they have the right to use the correct terminology to describe them, even if those terms are trademarked. It seems to me it would be no different than writing a product review of Coca-Cola, and actually using the word "Coca-Cola."
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
It occurs to me that Yahoo's motives in this may not be as broad-sweeping as people are trying to predict... just like Amazon apparently got their one-click patent specifically to sue B&N, I wouldn't be surprised if this were a mechanism designed specifically as a hedge against Excite.
My Yahoo and Excite start pages already look surprisingly similar; if Yahoo believes they found competetive advantage in how they are putting them together, they may simply be trying to protect that competetive advantage using whatever means they happen to have at their disposal.
Although, quite frankly, my Excite page loads faster...
I'm not being an apologist here at all, I am also fundamentally opposed to the concept of software patents. All I'm trying to present is a guess at what might be their strategy behind it.... I will say that it makes absolute-zero sense for Yahoo, a company whose core business is still being a search engine (ok, directory, technically, but nevertheless...), to go after any number of sites they're indexing; it makes a lot more sense for them to target specific competitors building similar portals by attempting to hamstring their technical options.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
This is the Salary Calculator that Money magazine links to in their tools section. It works pretty well. Helps to compute the "real" dollar amount of that large salary offer with relo is worth....
Caveat: I've found that it
Underestimates the cost of living in CT.
Typically doesn't take into account major differences in state taxes (eg. no income tax in TX or WA).
Can't predict intangibles (like generally not needing a car if you live in Boston, NY, or Chicago).
So, YMMV. But at least it's a start:)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Windows 95 Upgrade? WTF are you UPG'ing Win 95 FROM? 3.1?? Sounds like more-or-less full retail to me... which means the numbers are just about what I stated, $90-something to get 95, then $89 to upgrade it to 98.
As far as Win2K being a "business OS" -- AFAIK this was supposed to be the "Grand Unified Theory" of Windoze... the "one platform fits all" operating system designed as a clear upgrade path from both 98 and NT. And at $149/$219/$349, that's a pretty sinus-clearing upgrade path as well... nevermind the already-suspect compatibility with the sort of legacy DOS apps that home users (and bankers) seem to love.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
...surely the laws you have in America provide you with adequate rights to appeal?
Since I take it you're not an American, a brief civics lesson:
Suppose I am tried and convicted of something... I have every right to appeal, but:
The appeals court has every right to refuse to hear the appeal. Appeals get refused all the time in this country -- all the way up to the Supreme Court, which only hears those cases it chooses to rule on. (Or those in which it has original jurisdiction, but that's another matter entirely).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
There was once Southern Bell, Western Bell and Pacific Bell. Southern Bell and Western Bell merged a while ago, forming Southwestern Bell.
Umm, No. PacTel (San Francisco), BellSouth (Atlanta), USWest (Denver), and Southwestern Bell (Dallas) were FOUR of the SEPARATE Baby Bells from the outset. BellSouth and Southwestern Bell are still separate companies; I think there were mergers involving USWest and PacTel into some of the other Baby Bells, but I'm not sure exactly which -- it's hard to tell the players without a scorecard!
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Consider for a moment (or go back a bit earlier in the week to the m$-wage-accounting thread) the impact this has on the m$ employees who traded away the prospect of higher wages elsewhere for stock options in a seemingly-ever-increasing company. The stock tanks (as it's in the process of doing), those options become worthless.
Regardless of how we feel about their coding and debugging practices, these people are fellow professionals in the industry, we should be perhaps a little sympathetic to their current plight. Gates, Ballmer, et al aren't the only ones losing in the market tonight, folks.
But does that (and the fact that several of my mutual funds also hold m$ stock) preclude me from celebrating tonight? Hell No! *g*
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Having been involved in both (a) proprietary technology for the web and (b) commercial website development at different points in my career, it seems eminently clear to me what the counterattack strategy is:
When you come across a site that is incompatible with your browser, fire off a letter to said company's VP of marketing, pointing out that the developer they chose to build their site has made technical decisions that deliberately exclude 25-80% (depending on how severe the platform-specific nature of the site is) of their potential audience. Have your friends do likewise. Sit back and enjoy the fireworks. I haven't met a marketing VP yet who has said that they want their site anything BUT 100%-cross-platform.
Microsoft will ultimately lose the battle over proprietary web goodies simply because everybody isn't using a Microsoft client. Between AOL, Apple, *nix, Netscape-on-Win, etc. the vast majority of the world isn't.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Slashdot Mirror
At least it appears that in some cases (see the lyrics revamp to Particle Man elsewhere in this discussion) it actually does map last names consistently... for example:
:)
me (real name) --> Tha Winged Cow
my wife --> International Cow
I have the feeling she may not find that all that funny
I still prefer this one though:
Spud Zeppelin --> Cybernetic Tiger
It's Grrrrrrrrrrreat!
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
It seems pretty clear to me that it would violate our 4th, 5th, and 14th amendment rights....
But what also does seem overwhelmingly clear to me is that our friends on the other side of the Atlantic are increasingly in need of a written (rather than the gentleman's agreement they have now) constitution.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Note: I already self-moderated this down by suppressing my bonus...
The Libertarian voting system you describe creates a huge number of problems -- not the least of which are that there is no mechanism for reflecting "second choice" and consequently most "strategic voting" schemes fail miserably.... I'm convinced what you'd get are a bunch of fringe candidates winning elections with 5% of the vote. It may not be a bad way to run a primary, however, so long as the top n (2? 3? 5?) votegetters wind up on a closed (ie. no write-ins) ballot.
And when you get to closed ballots, the "vote for one" system we use today is a disaster when you have more than two candidates in an election. Dr. Don Saari of Northwestern has done extensive research in voting theory, and openly advocates the use of Borda counts (voters rank-order the n candidates, their top choice gets n-1 points, second choice n-2, etc., last choice gets 0) in elections to avoid the sorts of electoral "tragedies" (ie. where the last choice of a majority of the electorate winds up winning the election) we've had recently.
By the way, as an aside, the pre-printed cards system you advocate all-but-forces the ballots to be hand-counted... driving the cost of conducting the election up significantly.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Of that old SNL sketch where Eddie Murphy was hosting a bogus "Black History Minute" about George Washington Carver -- where "Skippy" and "Jif" became millionares, while "Carver died penniless and insane, still trying to play a phonograph record with a peanut." :)
On a more serious note, I can think of one company about a mile up the road from me who would probably love to talk to him about the technology and its potential for inclusion in direct mail. I suspect that the problem isn't that potential and VCs are uninterested in the technology as much as it is a reluctance/inability to hook up with a sufficiently competent marketroid to present it to them correctly. Some of the r&d companies with the best technology around languish for years because they can't sell their way out of a paper bag....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
But isn't the address in the 209 space for the Cable Modem-based connection they've switched to NOW so people can get their files and fix DNS? I was looking for an address for one of their boxes that isn't accessible :)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
If you do an ARIN whois on one of MassLinux's nameservers (NS.SUNDOWNIS.COM -- Sundown IS is one of their sister companies -- 63.66.103.5) you'll find it in a particular company's CIDR block....
:)
Let's just say it appears their problems begin and end with U.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Actually, there are about 10 states without state income taxes -- among them (last time I checked) are Florida, Washington, Nevada and Texas. New Hampshire only taxes interest income (again, YMMV), and Rhode Island says "your state tax obligation is precisely 27.5% of your federal tax obligation" (once again, YMMV). So really, you should only need about 42 CPAs *g*. That number could even go down if you pick the right CPAs (there's probably at least one in Waukegan who can do both Illinois and Wisconsin, etc.).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Do a search on the LeTax project... we had a presentation at CFUG back in June by one of the developers.... I wish I could get you the URL for the project right now, but my notes from that meeting are at home and I'm at work....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Darth Maul
Now there's a face that was EVERYWHERE this year....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Maybe IAAAA? (I am an amateur astronomer) :)
Not that I've had my 'scope out in quite some time, but...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
For those of you who don't know, Excite lets you add tide tables as part of their customization. This is what mine currently looks like:
Old Saybrook Point, Connecticut Tides
December 21
Low3:25PM -0.50
High9:27PM3.08
December 22
Low3:23AM -0.31
High9:49AM4.11
Low4:23PM -0.58
High10:28PM3.11
These don't appear to be all THAT unusual to me at all....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
The 1st Law of Mass Media is "Give the people what they want." It appears CNN is doing exactly that... after all, it is Christmas, and (by the way, this has nothing to do with my opinion on the subject [I support eToy], just my perception of how CNN is handling it):
There may be other parallels, these were just readily apparent. Remember what ESR likes to talk about with regard to technology in the media: people only pay attention to tech stories with protagonists. In this case, they've got a protagonist (the Whos down at eToys) and a story that they more-or-less already know (or at least think they do)... what more could John Q. Public ask for?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I see a lot being said about "we can write an open source .ASF player" and "ASF is a documented format" -- but as a reminder:
Why? As many of you remember, the problem wasn't the availability of the player, but the availability of the Sorenson codec used extensively by Mac-centric Quicktime developers. Codecs, and getting ports of these highly proprietary (ie.: considered "trade secrets" oftentimes instead of patented, to avoid having to publish) will be the main issue in viewing Windows Media on other OSs.
Oh, and don't expect these codecs to be particularly cross-platform, either.... Having been involved with the development of one a couple years ago, I can tell you that in the development of these things there's an awful lot of bit-twiddling going on to milk as much out of a particular hardware platform you're designing around as possible -- taking full advantage of writing code heavily optimized for a particular processor in order to achieve the equivalent of decompressing dozens of 320x240 JPEGs per second. Consequently, there's a very real (no pun intended) possibility that a number of these codecs will NEVER fly on a lot of hardware, because the plumbing isn't optimized for them (ever run a FPU benchmark on a RISC box?).
So, the reality is that we may wind up in a world where we do have to run the WMP emulated on x86-based Unix boxes and suffer (or run players remotely over X) elsewhere. It's not pessimism, just a bit of a reality check... personally I just use my wife's Wintel whenever I want to watch video.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Consider the following:
During the 6 month period, 9/1/1999-2/29/2000, there will have been several days whose dates are entirely composed of exactly two digits...
9/1/1999
9/9/1999
9/11/1999
9/19/1999
11/1/1999
11/9/1999
11/11/1999
11/19/1999 (today)
2/2/2000
2/22/2000
I haven't explored it further, but now I am curious... has any other comparatively short period been likewise bless()'d ?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Most ISP's have caught onto the complaints being groundless, and for many years now they've been ignoring RTC's letters, however with the
new law, the ISP has to shut it down regardless.
Careful about overestimating the DMCA -- it only gives that broad, reaching ability WRT Copyright violations, NOT Trademark violations like were alleged here. If Xenu isn't redistributing any copyrighted materials of the Scientologists, the DMCA can't be applied....
Example: Suppose I put up a site detailing my experiences with drinking Dr. Pepper while eating eggs, and the extreme distress it causes me. Dr. Pepper couldn't go after me using DMCA just because I am referring to them by their (trademarked) name. If, however, I put the lyrics to one of their lengthy jingles (which I presume are copyrighted) up on the site, then they have a copyright infringement to which DMCA would be applicable.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
If memory serves, US trademark law explicitly forbids trademarking a term which is a "personal name", specifically to avoid issues like who was using "Smith" first. But, typically (like crappy patents) the trademarks get registered and then have to be overturned.
Taking this a step further than the "old mother" from the nursery rhyme, I recall a Hubbard Road in rural Idaho that presumably predates L. Ron (and was probably named for SOMEONE), and it occurs to me that there's a reasonably famous (!?) Glenn Hubbard running around these days (baseball pitcher?).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
News.com reported earlier this year that Welles not only successfully won her right to use the term "Playmate of the Year" to describe herself, but she also was countersuing Playboy for unfair business practices, defamation, etc.
So it appears that if someone is writing about the Scientologists, they have the right to use the correct terminology to describe them, even if those terms are trademarked. It seems to me it would be no different than writing a product review of Coca-Cola, and actually using the word "Coca-Cola."
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
It occurs to me that Yahoo's motives in this may not be as broad-sweeping as people are trying to predict... just like Amazon apparently got their one-click patent specifically to sue B&N, I wouldn't be surprised if this were a mechanism designed specifically as a hedge against Excite.
My Yahoo and Excite start pages already look surprisingly similar; if Yahoo believes they found competetive advantage in how they are putting them together, they may simply be trying to protect that competetive advantage using whatever means they happen to have at their disposal.
Although, quite frankly, my Excite page loads faster...
I'm not being an apologist here at all, I am also fundamentally opposed to the concept of software patents. All I'm trying to present is a guess at what might be their strategy behind it.... I will say that it makes absolute-zero sense for Yahoo, a company whose core business is still being a search engine (ok, directory, technically, but nevertheless...), to go after any number of sites they're indexing; it makes a lot more sense for them to target specific competitors building similar portals by attempting to hamstring their technical options.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
This is the Salary Calculator that Money magazine links to in their tools section. It works pretty well. Helps to compute the "real" dollar amount of that large salary offer with relo is worth....
Caveat: I've found that it
So, YMMV. But at least it's a start :)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Windows 95 Upgrade? WTF are you UPG'ing Win 95 FROM? 3.1?? Sounds like more-or-less full retail to me... which means the numbers are just about what I stated, $90-something to get 95, then $89 to upgrade it to 98.
As far as Win2K being a "business OS" -- AFAIK this was supposed to be the "Grand Unified Theory" of Windoze... the "one platform fits all" operating system designed as a clear upgrade path from both 98 and NT. And at $149/$219/$349, that's a pretty sinus-clearing upgrade path as well... nevermind the already-suspect compatibility with the sort of legacy DOS apps that home users (and bankers) seem to love.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Since I take it you're not an American, a brief civics lesson:
Suppose I am tried and convicted of something... I have every right to appeal, but:
The appeals court has every right to refuse to hear the appeal. Appeals get refused all the time in this country -- all the way up to the Supreme Court, which only hears those cases it chooses to rule on. (Or those in which it has original jurisdiction, but that's another matter entirely).
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
There was once Southern Bell, Western Bell and Pacific Bell. Southern Bell and Western Bell merged a while ago, forming Southwestern Bell.
Umm, No. PacTel (San Francisco), BellSouth (Atlanta), USWest (Denver), and Southwestern Bell (Dallas) were FOUR of the SEPARATE Baby Bells from the outset. BellSouth and Southwestern Bell are still separate companies; I think there were mergers involving USWest and PacTel into some of the other Baby Bells, but I'm not sure exactly which -- it's hard to tell the players without a scorecard!
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Note that in his findings, the Judge even admits that Microsoft hasn't used its supposed monopoly to raise prices.
Tell THAT to consumers. Or do I need to point out that:
That sounds like increases well in excess of the pace of inflation to me...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Consider for a moment (or go back a bit earlier in the week to the m$-wage-accounting thread) the impact this has on the m$ employees who traded away the prospect of higher wages elsewhere for stock options in a seemingly-ever-increasing company. The stock tanks (as it's in the process of doing), those options become worthless.
Regardless of how we feel about their coding and debugging practices, these people are fellow professionals in the industry, we should be perhaps a little sympathetic to their current plight. Gates, Ballmer, et al aren't the only ones losing in the market tonight, folks.
But does that (and the fact that several of my mutual funds also hold m$ stock) preclude me from celebrating tonight? Hell No! *g*
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Having been involved in both (a) proprietary technology for the web and (b) commercial website development at different points in my career, it seems eminently clear to me what the counterattack strategy is:
When you come across a site that is incompatible with your browser, fire off a letter to said company's VP of marketing, pointing out that the developer they chose to build their site has made technical decisions that deliberately exclude 25-80% (depending on how severe the platform-specific nature of the site is) of their potential audience. Have your friends do likewise. Sit back and enjoy the fireworks. I haven't met a marketing VP yet who has said that they want their site anything BUT 100%-cross-platform.
Microsoft will ultimately lose the battle over proprietary web goodies simply because everybody isn't using a Microsoft client. Between AOL, Apple, *nix, Netscape-on-Win, etc. the vast majority of the world isn't.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.