Does Microsoft properly document their hardware, or is the documentation, "How to install the Windows drivers."
I'd never in a month of Sundays expect them to furnish Linux drivers, though maybe *BSD drivers in two weeks of Sundays. But does Microsoft properly document their hardware so the community can write its own drivers? I know people use MS keyboards and mice with Linux, but those had well entrenched standards. What about getting the extra bells and whistles working?
How about shipping the documentation with a "You may not use this documentation to develop GPL-licensed drivers!" clause?
If Eldred is against Ashcroft, then Eldred must be a terrorist. If Lessig is arguing on behalf of Eldred, then Lessig must be a terrorist, too.
You know, the really annoying thing is that I'm SURE there are people who would seriously agree with this line of reasoning, if not come up with it, themselves.
As for AOtC, I don't think he needs to do much to turn the Galaxy against the Jedi, since there are so few remaining. They gathered "every available Jedi" for the big battle just before the climax of the movie, and by the time Yoda and the Clones got there, there were only a handful left. I suspect the Jedi left can simply be picked off one-by-one or given very hazardous assignments, and let nature take its course.
As for reality, how do we decide when the War on Terror is over? As long as there is suffering, misery, hatred, and people with nothing to lose, there will be potential terrorists. You can't attack the real terrorist problem with a weapon, and some would argue it can never be solved. Orwell's "We had always been at war..." quote comes up, frequently.
What's really funny is that the underlying plot of both TPM and AOtC is the same.
Step1: Palpatine engineers a crises by making secret deals behind the scenes, wearing his Dark Cloak.
Step2: The Imperial Senate responds to the crisis by granting Palpatine greater powers.
Step3: Palpatine double-crosses his co-conspirators, cementing his new position. Chances are he has really double-crossed both sides and placed himself in the winning position no matter who prevails.
First time, Palpatine got himself made Prime Minister. Second time, he got Emergency Powers.
Wonder what will happen with Episode III, besides putting the black suit on Anakin...
I have broadband, and occasionally think about going back to dialup. The Terms Of Service are absolutely ludicrous. "No servers of any kind," give me a break. Many things run poorly without at least a dummy (or tcp rst) Ident, and tcp/ip is just plain broken without some amount of ICMP. "Only one PC connection," I have a firewall and one desktop back of it, so they get no more traffic than if the firewall weren't there - less, because I proxy/cache on that machine, too.
I stick by the spirit of my original TOS, and run a few highly restricted services for my own use, only. The speed is nice, but if they ever started cracking down and *really* enforcing the rules, I'd probably have to go back to dialup. I just wish I were close enough for DSL.
Reverse Polish Notation calculators are really stack machines, and the stack is exposed to the user. On an RPN calculator, operations are generally done between the Top Of Stack and the Next On Stack, leaving the answer on TOS. The Enter key pushes TOS to NOS, but also delimits so you can type another number.
So in the simple example given: 6 - TOS=6 NOS=?? Enter - TOS=6 NOS=6 12 - TOS=12 NOS=6 + - TOS=18 NOS=??
The stacks in HP calculators were (don't know if this has changed) 4 deep, and that was generally enough. There is a key to exchange TOS and NOS, and a Roll key to roll the whole stack.
Back when RPN got its foothold in the calculator business, algebraic calculators were handling parenthesis poorly, if at all. Some had a single parenthesis, some had one level of nested parenthesis. RPN avoided the issue, by making the user think differently.
I agree that the expenses are criminally out of line, absolutely. My point was that expenses do need to be paid, and the music revenue is what needs to pay them.
What's out of balance here is that since the RIAA gets to deduct its expenses from the Artists' share, it has no incentive whatsoever to keep its costs in line. That is why I brought up the government contractor analogy, because many government contracts are cost-plus. In both situations, there is a very real incentive to increase costs as much as feasible.
One part of the solution would be quite simple: Costs that the RIAA member controls come from the RIAA member's share of the revenue. Costs that the artists control come from the artists' share. I suspect that as long as the division could be equitably done (a BIG if) costs would come into line very quickly.
> As for recoupment, the example given in the USA Today article is tame. I won't mention the name, but there is a band who has sold millions, for each > of their more than five albums. But each time, video costs, recording costs, marketing/promotion costs, plane fares (for huge label entourages), hotel > bills (for these same label execs) were all paid for by the band. > > Sum total? They sold 35 million records and still OWE the label over 2 million dollars.
Clearly expenses need to be recovered, and these are real expenses for the label. A side issue here is the old, "somebody else's problem." In this case, the labels can rack up any sort of expenses they see fit, and chalk it up against the artists' royalties. They have even less incentive to control their costs than a government contractor!
The USA Today article mentioned "transparency", but clearly even what was proposed didn't go far enough. Transparency is also needed on the label's overhead expenses. Perhaps artists would look to sign with a label with more competitive expenses.
My birthday is coming up, and I delivered my list to my wife. In addition to several books, it included several Indie titles with links to some relevant pages at "www.cdbaby.com".
There is no shortage of musicians or music. Nor is there a shortage of good musicians or good music. It's simply a matter of finding it, and if you look a little harder you can find good stuff that doesn't grant any money to the RIAA.
The name of the story was, "Tank Farm Dynamo" about a privatized effort to reuse external tank, written by David Brin. I read it as part of a collection bound in dead tree form, but it's available on the web at: http://www.orbit6.com/et/tankfarm.htm
This type of thing has popped up in the wake of recent corporate scandals. There has been a lot of fuss over how to count stock options, and Bill Parrish (www.billparrish.com) has made a lot of fuss over Microsoft's accounting practices for years.
Others aren't as rabid, but still speak to the dangers of dilution as a very real side-effect of the high-tech addiction to stock options. But this may be the first time I've seen real numbers assigned to a real, healthy company. I remember reading that back in IBM's $40/share bad days the company was a takeover target because the assets were a becoming a bargain, but it was dodging the bullet because the total price tag was so high.
I wonder what Microsoft's book-to-asset ratio is? Where do you find these numbers, and how hard is this information to dig out? What's a more traditional book-to-asset ratio?
I'm sure glad to know that we "content consumers" are being considered in this standardization process.
I need to write to "my" folks in DC about this. I keep meaning to do so, and never have time. As far as I'm concerned, the ??AA can go ahead and push all the DRM and content protection encumbrance into their delivery systems that they want, with only ONE condition:
Full capability for recording/editing/playing unprotected media must NEVER be removed.
As long as this capability is retained, I wish them luck, and hope they impose ever-more-onerous constraints on their content. They're digging their own graves by treating artists like dirt and viewing/listening like taxable criminal activities. Nor do I particularly care if there are legal consequences legislated for removing watermarks, etc.
IMHO removal of recording/editing/playing of unprotected media is and should be protected under the First Ammendment. When digital media distribution becomes the norm, gatekeepers like the ??AA gain unconstitutional power if capabilities for unprotected media are removed. Aside from this, unencumbered capabilities permit the genesis of a 'replacement media business model.'
There's been a flurry of campaign finance reform attempts in the past year or two, driven by popular opinion. The current method of fighting it seems to be to describe campaign contributions as 'speaking' to the candidate, and therefor any attempts to limit those contributions are curtailing 'freedom of speech.' Sounds to me rather like claiming First Ammendment protection for bribary.
In Vermont we have a campaign finance reform law that has had its implementation 'delayed' by court action while things are figured out. In Tuesday's Primary one of the more contested races featured a candidate outspending his rivals by a large margin. He was criticized for this, and reminded of the pending law. His response, the 'money is speech' argument.
Perhaps the best counter to this strategy would be to extend OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) 'protection' to elected officials. Then assert that the 'speech' of excessive campaign contributions is so loud as to threaten the hearing of the candidate. Cap the decibels.
Last time the "sleeping giant" was wakened was WWII, and we came out and did the Right Thing, during and shortly after. Non-punitive postwar policies in both Europe and the Far East were some of our finest moments.
After the Cold War, the US sort of began dozing off, again. We still had our fingers in other pies, but the level of engagement was lowering. At times it looked like the world was going to do quite happily without *any* superpowers, eventually.
On 9/11, I knew that the sleeping giant was awakened, again. But this time I had an ugly feeling that the sleeper was going to be *very* grumpy, and not so 'polite' as last time. This seems to be happening, unfortunately. Part of the Al Qaida purpose was to drive a wedge between the West and the Moslem world. Especially with the recent Iraq noise, we seem to be playing into their hands, giving them greater success by driving a wedge between the US and the rest of the world, not just the Moslems.
IMHO there is a key distinction to be made here about fundamentalist Moslem terrorists: They don't believe in modern society. They share beliefs with a Moslem subset that would like to see the world taken back to the year AD 700, when the Prophet lived. Think Afghanistan during Taliban rule, except that during the times of the Prophet, society was much more enlightened with respect to women. Generally in a war, you have two societies fighting for dominance, with the implicit assumption that one society will force its will on the other, but that both will remain essentially intact, one changed. The current War on Terror is different, because Al Qaida's objective is not to change our society but to eliminate it. They currently participate in modern society, in order to remove it in favor of their Utopian vision of the times of the Prophet. (Though again it's a vision that may not truly square with the reality back then.)
It's noteworthy that as naughty as he may be, Saddam Hussain heads a nation, and it acts like a nation. Perhaps a naughty nation, but still a nation. That's fundamentally different from Al Qaida. I guess they'd really like to destroy the society and nation of Israel, and that's not good, but that's a far cry from rejection/destruction of modern society.
IMHO the greatest problem facing the world today is overpopulation and its attendant resource/environmental effects. The greatest factor in dropping the birthrate around the world is the education and empowerment of women. Moslem fundamentalism is a grave danger to the entire world, precisely in its disempowerment of women. The US is not blameless here, with its blind-spot on "reproductive issues" in foreign policy, but at least we don't advocate burkasn.
I am not a consumer! I am a CITIZEN! Please use t
on
Adobe Gets Hit By DMCA
·
· Score: 2
This too shall pass.
Honestly, I hope not, though I fear in the current political/economic climate that the difference will be rendered negligible. Fortunately, I expect that given a bit of time, the current political/economic climate will pass, too. I hope it will pass, first.
> Free Marken uber Alles? Hello, flyspeck, it's not the free market that passed the DMCA--it's a hyper-active government that did so. > >Bought and paid for legislation? Yes. Still legislation, and has nothing to do with the free market. Grow a brain.
I suspect you've made the mistaken assumption that corporate America believes in the Free Market. Balderdash. The Free Market is a tool, like any other tool such as Research, Manufacturing, Creative Bookeeping, or lawyers that are used on the way up the ladder. Unlike the other mentioned tools, the Free Market doesn't stop those below you from climbing up your back. That's what Purchased Legislation is for.
But make no mistake, corporate America doesn't "believe" in the Free Market. The exist in it as they must, and exploit it as they can.
6'4" and normally 172 lbs, down recently to 162 lbs because of short-term (2 weeks into 4 weeks worth) disruptions around the house. Most people don't sympathize too much with this problem. It's easy to eat more, harder to eat more of the right things.
I tried looking for it, but it was really tough to find on NTSC. A source for a reliable supply would be welcome.
I also heard that a bigger-budget version was being done, but that was only one rumor. The rumors seem a bit more solid for Good Omens. (By what's-his-name, the Baron Munchousen, Time Bandits, Brazil, Fisher King guy - HE could do it.) One can only hope.
In a corporate setting, PCs are not truly general purpose machines, so ease of use doesn't mean the same thing that it does in the home or SOHO settings. Employees are trained to use corporate systems, and that includes PCs as well as more specialized tools, both software and hardware.
For a corporation, a different side of ease of use is ease of licensing and purchasing. Maybe in a post LicenseV6 world Microsoft will have made this "easier", but in the transition there's a heck of a lot of turmoil, and their products have just become more "difficult" to use. That has nothing to do with the software itself, just the legal and purchasing implications.
I'd argue that it's not really a standard until a third party can read the documentation and implement their own. Until then, it just looks, walks, and quacks like a standard, but really isn't one.
Barbary Pirates vs Al Qaeda
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 2
There remains a difference between the Barbary Pirates and Al Quaeda. Perhaps the Barbary Pirates weren't a nation, but in many ways they acted as such. For instance, you speek of "broke all of the agreements" and "diplomatic measures". Those are nation-like things, even if there is no formal status. If I understand correctly, the Barbary Pirates were not physically hosted by other nations, though there may well have been port visits.
Al Qaeda has no nation-like aspects. It takes guerilla warfare to a new urban level, and depends on hidden hosting in other nations. I suspect Afghanistan will be the last formal hosting of Al Qaeda that will ever be seen, and even Iraq will probably never admit to it, even if they are.
Another poster is right. The scariest thing about this "War on terrorism" is that there is absolutely no way to know when peace breaks out.
I'd tend to think the washer/soap market is more like inkjet cartridges than captive batteries, too. It wasn't so much that I think it likely as that the DMCA seems to be creeping into some odd places. The washer market was mentioned as humor, but there *is* a path and precedent for it to happen. I'm glad to hear that the captive battery was a market failure. I hadn't heard that part of the story.
Besides, many people do tend to have strong feelings about both washer and detergent brandings. Forcing links where non existed previously would probably tank the whole "soap cartridge" idea, no matter what other merits it might have had.
OTOH, back during the energy crisis, makers of outboard and inboard/outboard motors bought up boat makers, in order to "secure a transom for their product" to be mounted on. This situation still exists, and boat/motor brand preferences tend to be strong, like appliance/detergent. So there is a precedent for this being done successfully.
Slashdot Mirror
Does Microsoft properly document their hardware, or is the documentation, "How to install the Windows drivers."
I'd never in a month of Sundays expect them to furnish Linux drivers, though maybe *BSD drivers in two weeks of Sundays. But does Microsoft properly document their hardware so the community can write its own drivers? I know people use MS keyboards and mice with Linux, but those had well entrenched standards. What about getting the extra bells and whistles working?
How about shipping the documentation with a "You may not use this documentation to develop GPL-licensed drivers!" clause?
Eldred v. Ashcroft??
Isn't Ashcroft against terrorists?
If Eldred is against Ashcroft, then Eldred must be a terrorist. If Lessig is arguing on behalf of Eldred, then Lessig must be a terrorist, too.
You know, the really annoying thing is that I'm SURE there are people who would seriously agree with this line of reasoning, if not come up with it, themselves.
As for AOtC, I don't think he needs to do much to turn the Galaxy against the Jedi, since there are so few remaining. They gathered "every available Jedi" for the big battle just before the climax of the movie, and by the time Yoda and the Clones got there, there were only a handful left. I suspect the Jedi left can simply be picked off one-by-one or given very hazardous assignments, and let nature take its course.
As for reality, how do we decide when the War on Terror is over? As long as there is suffering, misery, hatred, and people with nothing to lose, there will be potential terrorists. You can't attack the real terrorist problem with a weapon, and some would argue it can never be solved. Orwell's "We had always been at war..." quote comes up, frequently.
What's really funny is that the underlying plot of both TPM and AOtC is the same.
Step1: Palpatine engineers a crises by making secret deals behind the scenes, wearing his Dark Cloak.
Step2: The Imperial Senate responds to the crisis by granting Palpatine greater powers.
Step3: Palpatine double-crosses his co-conspirators, cementing his new position. Chances are he has really double-crossed both sides and placed himself in the winning position no matter who prevails.
First time, Palpatine got himself made Prime Minister. Second time, he got Emergency Powers.
Wonder what will happen with Episode III, besides putting the black suit on Anakin...
I have broadband, and occasionally think about going back to dialup. The Terms Of Service are absolutely ludicrous. "No servers of any kind," give me a break. Many things run poorly without at least a dummy (or tcp rst) Ident, and tcp/ip is just plain broken without some amount of ICMP. "Only one PC connection," I have a firewall and one desktop back of it, so they get no more traffic than if the firewall weren't there - less, because I proxy/cache on that machine, too.
I stick by the spirit of my original TOS, and run a few highly restricted services for my own use, only. The speed is nice, but if they ever started cracking down and *really* enforcing the rules, I'd probably have to go back to dialup. I just wish I were close enough for DSL.
Others have given examples, but here's the core:
Reverse Polish Notation calculators are really stack machines, and the stack is exposed to the user. On an RPN calculator, operations are generally done between the Top Of Stack and the Next On Stack, leaving the answer on TOS. The Enter key pushes TOS to NOS, but also delimits so you can type another number.
So in the simple example given:
6 - TOS=6 NOS=??
Enter - TOS=6 NOS=6
12 - TOS=12 NOS=6
+ - TOS=18 NOS=??
The stacks in HP calculators were (don't know if this has changed) 4 deep, and that was generally enough. There is a key to exchange TOS and NOS, and a Roll key to roll the whole stack.
Back when RPN got its foothold in the calculator business, algebraic calculators were handling parenthesis poorly, if at all. Some had a single parenthesis, some had one level of nested parenthesis. RPN avoided the issue, by making the user think differently.
I suspect you missed my point.
I agree that the expenses are criminally out of line, absolutely. My point was that expenses do need to be paid, and the music revenue is what needs to pay them.
What's out of balance here is that since the RIAA gets to deduct its expenses from the Artists' share, it has no incentive whatsoever to keep its costs in line. That is why I brought up the government contractor analogy, because many government contracts are cost-plus. In both situations, there is a very real incentive to increase costs as much as feasible.
One part of the solution would be quite simple: Costs that the RIAA member controls come from the RIAA member's share of the revenue. Costs that the artists control come from the artists' share. I suspect that as long as the division could be equitably done (a BIG if) costs would come into line very quickly.
> As for recoupment, the example given in the USA Today article is tame. I won't mention the name, but there is a band who has sold millions, for each
> of their more than five albums. But each time, video costs, recording costs, marketing/promotion costs, plane fares (for huge label entourages), hotel
> bills (for these same label execs) were all paid for by the band.
>
> Sum total? They sold 35 million records and still OWE the label over 2 million dollars.
Clearly expenses need to be recovered, and these are real expenses for the label. A side issue here is the old, "somebody else's problem." In this case, the labels can rack up any sort of expenses they see fit, and chalk it up against the artists' royalties. They have even less incentive to control their costs than a government contractor!
The USA Today article mentioned "transparency", but clearly even what was proposed didn't go far enough. Transparency is also needed on the label's overhead expenses. Perhaps artists would look to sign with a label with more competitive expenses.
My birthday is coming up, and I delivered my list to my wife. In addition to several books, it included several Indie titles with links to some relevant pages at "www.cdbaby.com".
There is no shortage of musicians or music. Nor is there a shortage of good musicians or good music. It's simply a matter of finding it, and if you look a little harder you can find good stuff that doesn't grant any money to the RIAA.
The name of the story was, "Tank Farm Dynamo" about a privatized effort to reuse external tank, written by David Brin. I read it as part of a collection bound in dead tree form, but it's available on the web at: http://www.orbit6.com/et/tankfarm.htm
Fascinating information.
This type of thing has popped up in the wake of recent corporate scandals. There has been a lot of fuss over how to count stock options, and Bill Parrish (www.billparrish.com) has made a lot of fuss over Microsoft's accounting practices for years.
Others aren't as rabid, but still speak to the dangers of dilution as a very real side-effect of the high-tech addiction to stock options. But this may be the first time I've seen real numbers assigned to a real, healthy company. I remember reading that back in IBM's $40/share bad days the company was a takeover target because the assets were a becoming a bargain, but it was dodging the bullet because the total price tag was so high.
I wonder what Microsoft's book-to-asset ratio is? Where do you find these numbers, and how hard is this information to dig out? What's a more traditional book-to-asset ratio?
I'm sure glad to know that we "content consumers" are being considered in this standardization process.
I need to write to "my" folks in DC about this. I keep meaning to do so, and never have time. As far as I'm concerned, the ??AA can go ahead and push all the DRM and content protection encumbrance into their delivery systems that they want, with only ONE condition:
Full capability for recording/editing/playing unprotected media must NEVER be removed.
As long as this capability is retained, I wish them luck, and hope they impose ever-more-onerous constraints on their content. They're digging their own graves by treating artists like dirt and viewing/listening like taxable criminal activities. Nor do I particularly care if there are legal consequences legislated for removing watermarks, etc.
IMHO removal of recording/editing/playing of unprotected media is and should be protected under the First Ammendment. When digital media distribution becomes the norm, gatekeepers like the ??AA gain unconstitutional power if capabilities for unprotected media are removed. Aside from this, unencumbered capabilities permit the genesis of a 'replacement media business model.'
Let's cut to the chase, here.
Is money speech?
There's been a flurry of campaign finance reform attempts in the past year or two, driven by popular opinion. The current method of fighting it seems to be to describe campaign contributions as 'speaking' to the candidate, and therefor any attempts to limit those contributions are curtailing 'freedom of speech.' Sounds to me rather like claiming First Ammendment protection for bribary.
In Vermont we have a campaign finance reform law that has had its implementation 'delayed' by court action while things are figured out. In Tuesday's Primary one of the more contested races featured a candidate outspending his rivals by a large margin. He was criticized for this, and reminded of the pending law. His response, the 'money is speech' argument.
Perhaps the best counter to this strategy would be to extend OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) 'protection' to elected officials. Then assert that the 'speech' of excessive campaign contributions is so loud as to threaten the hearing of the candidate. Cap the decibels.
Last time the "sleeping giant" was wakened was WWII, and we came out and did the Right Thing, during and shortly after. Non-punitive postwar policies in both Europe and the Far East were some of our finest moments.
After the Cold War, the US sort of began dozing off, again. We still had our fingers in other pies, but the level of engagement was lowering. At times it looked like the world was going to do quite happily without *any* superpowers, eventually.
On 9/11, I knew that the sleeping giant was awakened, again. But this time I had an ugly feeling that the sleeper was going to be *very* grumpy, and not so 'polite' as last time. This seems to be happening, unfortunately. Part of the Al Qaida purpose was to drive a wedge between the West and the Moslem world. Especially with the recent Iraq noise, we seem to be playing into their hands, giving them greater success by driving a wedge between the US and the rest of the world, not just the Moslems.
IMHO there is a key distinction to be made here about fundamentalist Moslem terrorists: They don't believe in modern society. They share beliefs with a Moslem subset that would like to see the world taken back to the year AD 700, when the Prophet lived. Think Afghanistan during Taliban rule, except that during the times of the Prophet, society was much more enlightened with respect to women. Generally in a war, you have two societies fighting for dominance, with the implicit assumption that one society will force its will on the other, but that both will remain essentially intact, one changed. The current War on Terror is different, because Al Qaida's objective is not to change our society but to eliminate it. They currently participate in modern society, in order to remove it in favor of their Utopian vision of the times of the Prophet. (Though again it's a vision that may not truly square with the reality back then.)
It's noteworthy that as naughty as he may be, Saddam Hussain heads a nation, and it acts like a nation. Perhaps a naughty nation, but still a nation. That's fundamentally different from Al Qaida. I guess they'd really like to destroy the society and nation of Israel, and that's not good, but that's a far cry from rejection/destruction of modern society.
IMHO the greatest problem facing the world today is overpopulation and its attendant resource/environmental effects. The greatest factor in dropping the birthrate around the world is the education and empowerment of women. Moslem fundamentalism is a grave danger to the entire world, precisely in its disempowerment of women. The US is not blameless here, with its blind-spot on "reproductive issues" in foreign policy, but at least we don't advocate burkasn.
This too shall pass.
Honestly, I hope not, though I fear in the current political/economic climate that the difference will be rendered negligible. Fortunately, I expect that given a bit of time, the current political/economic climate will pass, too. I hope it will pass, first.
> Free Marken uber Alles? Hello, flyspeck, it's not the free market that passed the DMCA--it's a hyper-active government that did so.
>
>Bought and paid for legislation? Yes. Still legislation, and has nothing to do with the free market. Grow a brain.
I suspect you've made the mistaken assumption that corporate America believes in the Free Market. Balderdash. The Free Market is a tool, like any other tool such as Research, Manufacturing, Creative Bookeeping, or lawyers that are used on the way up the ladder. Unlike the other mentioned tools, the Free Market doesn't stop those below you from climbing up your back. That's what Purchased Legislation is for.
But make no mistake, corporate America doesn't "believe" in the Free Market. The exist in it as they must, and exploit it as they can.
6'4" and normally 172 lbs, down recently to 162 lbs because of short-term (2 weeks into 4 weeks worth) disruptions around the house. Most people don't sympathize too much with this problem. It's easy to eat more, harder to eat more of the right things.
I tried looking for it, but it was really tough to find on NTSC. A source for a reliable supply would be welcome.
I also heard that a bigger-budget version was being done, but that was only one rumor. The rumors seem a bit more solid for Good Omens. (By what's-his-name, the Baron Munchousen, Time Bandits, Brazil, Fisher King guy - HE could do it.) One can only hope.
Try:
http://www.watermaid.com.au
for one. There are quite a few others, too. Just throw "salt water chlorination" into google.
I was making a feeble attempt at humor.
Are these the switched fabrics I keep hear about:-?
In a corporate setting, PCs are not truly general purpose machines, so ease of use doesn't mean the same thing that it does in the home or SOHO settings. Employees are trained to use corporate systems, and that includes PCs as well as more specialized tools, both software and hardware.
For a corporation, a different side of ease of use is ease of licensing and purchasing. Maybe in a post LicenseV6 world Microsoft will have made this "easier", but in the transition there's a heck of a lot of turmoil, and their products have just become more "difficult" to use. That has nothing to do with the software itself, just the legal and purchasing implications.
I'd argue that it's not really a standard until a third party can read the documentation and implement their own. Until then, it just looks, walks, and quacks like a standard, but really isn't one.
There remains a difference between the Barbary Pirates and Al Quaeda. Perhaps the Barbary Pirates weren't a nation, but in many ways they acted as such. For instance, you speek of "broke all of the agreements" and "diplomatic measures". Those are nation-like things, even if there is no formal status. If I understand correctly, the Barbary Pirates were not physically hosted by other nations, though there may well have been port visits.
Al Qaeda has no nation-like aspects. It takes guerilla warfare to a new urban level, and depends on hidden hosting in other nations. I suspect Afghanistan will be the last formal hosting of Al Qaeda that will ever be seen, and even Iraq will probably never admit to it, even if they are.
Another poster is right. The scariest thing about this "War on terrorism" is that there is absolutely no way to know when peace breaks out.
I'd tend to think the washer/soap market is more like inkjet cartridges than captive batteries, too. It wasn't so much that I think it likely as that the DMCA seems to be creeping into some odd places. The washer market was mentioned as humor, but there *is* a path and precedent for it to happen. I'm glad to hear that the captive battery was a market failure. I hadn't heard that part of the story.
Besides, many people do tend to have strong feelings about both washer and detergent brandings. Forcing links where non existed previously would probably tank the whole "soap cartridge" idea, no matter what other merits it might have had.
OTOH, back during the energy crisis, makers of outboard and inboard/outboard motors bought up boat makers, in order to "secure a transom for their product" to be mounted on. This situation still exists, and boat/motor brand preferences tend to be strong, like appliance/detergent. So there is a precedent for this being done successfully.