Yep. White, late twenties, college graduate, middle class, and soon to be married. Anything else you'd like to suggest I should feel guilty about?
Anyway, I'm certainly not about to suggest that extremists are going to lay down their arms because we stop screwing around with the politics of the region they happen to be inhabiting. The only thing we can do is work with the nations they may flee to, flush them out, and bring them to justice. We could do much better, however, at not encouraging otherwise moderate Muslims to hate America. Iraq is certainly drawing fighters "like moths to a flame", but if those people would not be motivated to fight were it not for the occupation, then is it really a benefit to the security of either the Middle East or the United States?
Now that we're there, however, we have a responsibility to stabilize that nation and avert civil war, lest we simply hand over a new homeland for them to replace Afghanistan. We don't stand a chance of doing that until we admit that what we're doing simply isn't working.
As for continuing the war from 1991, there's a reason why Bush Sr. didn't occupy Iraq. The US didn't want to take on the burden, and the Saudis didn't want a secular democracy next door. It's ugly, but it's realpolitik - sometimes, preserving stability means leaving some truly monstrous people in power. As nice as it would be, we can't simply march democracy across the planet overnight and expect it to work.
But hey, call me a pussy if it makes you feel better. The reason for my views has nothing to do with being a pussy, nor anything to do with guilt. It's simply that I feel that Bush is completely and fundamentally wrong, and that there has to be someone in Washington who could do a better job.
Yeah, but if you add "is permitted by the Constitution", you can filter out certain methods. No one said it's always clear-cut, but that's what the judiciary is for - short-circuiting "activist judges" doesn't solve the problem, it just ignores it.
First, I know that I wasn't the only one who, right when the war started, held the view that it was going to be a long, unpopular, bloody slog of an occupation, one where we'd hear about violence every night on the news. I knew we weren't going to be greeted as liberators, I knew it wasn't going to be over in 6 months like Rumsfeld said. So why is it that an at-the-time college student sees all this coming, and yet the supposedly finest minds in the Department of Defense can't? Don't give me the "you can't defeat terror in 6 months" crap, because if you know that's true, then again, why can't our so-called leaders figure this out? Either they are incompetent, or they lied, and either way, they shouldn't hold power.
Second, let's not call Bush conservative - he's the worst excuse for a conservative I've ever seen. When he's not pissing away billions of tax dollars tilting at windmills (or should that be oil wells?) or entangling the US in regional politics we have no business being involved in (one-sidedly at that), he's spying on Americans and legislating morality. So much for "that which governs least."
As for your elitist "I'm so much better than you because I'm not a liberal" bullshit, who gives a fuck what you think of yourself? Either stick to retufing the argument, or shut the fuck up.
Nah. If you've got 40 hours of quality, then sure, it's a good deal. If you've got 10 hours of quality and 30 hours of filler, then I'd much prefer that the game be cut down to 10 hours. I've only got so much free time in a week, and I want to enjoy it, not grind through filler.
There isn't a centralized repository for commercial software because no one's come up with a good business model for it yet. It's just a drawback of commercial software.
It's not blame, really - I recognize that there's some cool stuff going on in the OSS world. In my case, however, the benefits to me of running MS' software (and thereby participating in MS' business model) outweigh both the monetary cost of the software and the opportunity cost of running Linux.
Yep. It's called "taking the high road." Comes with maturity, you know, presenting a less juvenile public face. The OP didn't say to stop hating Microsoft; he said to stop focusing on hating Microsoft.
Linux may be able to cover a lot of the common usage scenarios, but MS still has them beat in one area - the more MS stuff you have, the more effectively it interoperates. Let me know when I can seamlessly stream media from Linux to my Xbox 360, or when someone's got a.Net 2.0 IDE I can use at home (and no, "quit and work in a Java shop" is not an answer - I care more about my job than I do my OS).
MS has a huge incentive to create products that add value to each other. Apple does this even better, but they play in far fewer markets than MS. And yeah, I basically just described Microsoft leveraging their monopoly, but I'm enjoying the benefits. It'd be nice if all this stuff were standardized, but there's way too much at stake for that to ever happen.
5 minutes? And how many years of learning to be able to diagnose the problem and effectively research it?
I think you're taking for granted the body of knowledge you've amassed over the years. Most people don't have that - do you really think my fiancee would understand how to fix that problem? Probably not, but she still needs a machine that reliably runs Photoshop and InDesign.
The DoD? Perhaps you mean the DoJ. If it were the DoD chasing them, they'd probably just laugh it off - these are the same clowns who, given the greatest military in the world, can't find one guy hiding in a mountain range.
Didn't Sega say that Nintendo's systems were the new "spiritual home" of Sonic? Granted, there are two new Sonic games coming to 360, one of which is also coming to PS3, but I seem to recall a comment along those lines.
The Xbox 360 Core System was pretty much universally mocked by Xbox fans - see Penny Arcade's take on it. At launch, the fans are the ones buying the systems, so it makes sense to placate them.
Next year, when Sony's trying to move volume over the holidays, expect a different split.
There's one thing, however, that MS still does exceptionally well. All of their stuff works together, doing more than the sum of their parts could. Sure, Visual Studio is nice, but if you're running SQL Server, it's even nicer, as you can work with the DB very easily from within the IDE. Conversely, you can develop.Net assemblies that are called from SQL Server, extending that product as well. (Yes, you can do all that with Oracle's VS.Net plugin as well, but Oracle has the resources to pull something like that off.)
Sometimes this backfires, and features that could have been done openly are denied to the user (Xbox 360 video streaming, for example). For the most part, however, MS has an incentive to integrate that few other companies do, since they have the resources to compete in complementary markets where their competitors may not. There are both pros and cons for the consumer in these cases.
Microsoft's ability to pursue a strategy as a whole is one of its major strengths, and it's not one to be written off - unless the people at the top forming that strategy lose their way, when it becomes a major weakness.
"All the EU is saying is that MS aren't a special case, but must obey the rules just like everyone else."
So why haven't they gone after Apple for bundling iTunes? For not opening their DRM protocols? (Yes, some governments have made threats, but I haven't seen any action.)
Slashdot Mirror
They do.
Buy plenty of comfortable couches and pillows, and you'll have half the Comcast reps in your area over at your place.
Yep. White, late twenties, college graduate, middle class, and soon to be married. Anything else you'd like to suggest I should feel guilty about?
Anyway, I'm certainly not about to suggest that extremists are going to lay down their arms because we stop screwing around with the politics of the region they happen to be inhabiting. The only thing we can do is work with the nations they may flee to, flush them out, and bring them to justice. We could do much better, however, at not encouraging otherwise moderate Muslims to hate America. Iraq is certainly drawing fighters "like moths to a flame", but if those people would not be motivated to fight were it not for the occupation, then is it really a benefit to the security of either the Middle East or the United States?
Now that we're there, however, we have a responsibility to stabilize that nation and avert civil war, lest we simply hand over a new homeland for them to replace Afghanistan. We don't stand a chance of doing that until we admit that what we're doing simply isn't working.
As for continuing the war from 1991, there's a reason why Bush Sr. didn't occupy Iraq. The US didn't want to take on the burden, and the Saudis didn't want a secular democracy next door. It's ugly, but it's realpolitik - sometimes, preserving stability means leaving some truly monstrous people in power. As nice as it would be, we can't simply march democracy across the planet overnight and expect it to work.
But hey, call me a pussy if it makes you feel better. The reason for my views has nothing to do with being a pussy, nor anything to do with guilt. It's simply that I feel that Bush is completely and fundamentally wrong, and that there has to be someone in Washington who could do a better job.
Yeah, but if you add "is permitted by the Constitution", you can filter out certain methods. No one said it's always clear-cut, but that's what the judiciary is for - short-circuiting "activist judges" doesn't solve the problem, it just ignores it.
You've got to be kidding.
First, I know that I wasn't the only one who, right when the war started, held the view that it was going to be a long, unpopular, bloody slog of an occupation, one where we'd hear about violence every night on the news. I knew we weren't going to be greeted as liberators, I knew it wasn't going to be over in 6 months like Rumsfeld said. So why is it that an at-the-time college student sees all this coming, and yet the supposedly finest minds in the Department of Defense can't? Don't give me the "you can't defeat terror in 6 months" crap, because if you know that's true, then again, why can't our so-called leaders figure this out? Either they are incompetent, or they lied, and either way, they shouldn't hold power.
Second, let's not call Bush conservative - he's the worst excuse for a conservative I've ever seen. When he's not pissing away billions of tax dollars tilting at windmills (or should that be oil wells?) or entangling the US in regional politics we have no business being involved in (one-sidedly at that), he's spying on Americans and legislating morality. So much for "that which governs least."
As for your elitist "I'm so much better than you because I'm not a liberal" bullshit, who gives a fuck what you think of yourself? Either stick to retufing the argument, or shut the fuck up.
... for the battery in a PSP to take some 9-year-old's finger off.
Lawsuit of the century.
Hell, just go buy the Collector's Edition of Doom 3 for the original Xbox, and get Doom and Doom 2 included.
And you also get Doom 3, but I get the impression that not everyone sees that as a good thing.
Nah. If you've got 40 hours of quality, then sure, it's a good deal. If you've got 10 hours of quality and 30 hours of filler, then I'd much prefer that the game be cut down to 10 hours. I've only got so much free time in a week, and I want to enjoy it, not grind through filler.
You must have hit your head and blacked out. Use a shorter cord next time.
It's called CompUSA.
There isn't a centralized repository for commercial software because no one's come up with a good business model for it yet. It's just a drawback of commercial software.
It's not blame, really - I recognize that there's some cool stuff going on in the OSS world. In my case, however, the benefits to me of running MS' software (and thereby participating in MS' business model) outweigh both the monetary cost of the software and the opportunity cost of running Linux.
Yep. It's called "taking the high road." Comes with maturity, you know, presenting a less juvenile public face. The OP didn't say to stop hating Microsoft; he said to stop focusing on hating Microsoft.
Linux may be able to cover a lot of the common usage scenarios, but MS still has them beat in one area - the more MS stuff you have, the more effectively it interoperates. Let me know when I can seamlessly stream media from Linux to my Xbox 360, or when someone's got a .Net 2.0 IDE I can use at home (and no, "quit and work in a Java shop" is not an answer - I care more about my job than I do my OS).
MS has a huge incentive to create products that add value to each other. Apple does this even better, but they play in far fewer markets than MS. And yeah, I basically just described Microsoft leveraging their monopoly, but I'm enjoying the benefits. It'd be nice if all this stuff were standardized, but there's way too much at stake for that to ever happen.
Say what? I'm pretty sure you get DU from enriching uranium for fuel, not from pulling it out of a reactor afterwards....
Not over component. The last update added upconversion for VGA only.
5 minutes? And how many years of learning to be able to diagnose the problem and effectively research it?
I think you're taking for granted the body of knowledge you've amassed over the years. Most people don't have that - do you really think my fiancee would understand how to fix that problem? Probably not, but she still needs a machine that reliably runs Photoshop and InDesign.
The DoD? Perhaps you mean the DoJ. If it were the DoD chasing them, they'd probably just laugh it off - these are the same clowns who, given the greatest military in the world, can't find one guy hiding in a mountain range.
Doesn't the EULA define the product as the license and accompanying media, if any?
XML-in-RDBMS was actually the Daily WTF a couple of days ago.
Not Enterprisey enough. You should be using XML for everything - transactions are just a fad anyway!
Didn't Sega say that Nintendo's systems were the new "spiritual home" of Sonic? Granted, there are two new Sonic games coming to 360, one of which is also coming to PS3, but I seem to recall a comment along those lines.
The Xbox 360 Core System was pretty much universally mocked by Xbox fans - see Penny Arcade's take on it. At launch, the fans are the ones buying the systems, so it makes sense to placate them.
Next year, when Sony's trying to move volume over the holidays, expect a different split.
There's one thing, however, that MS still does exceptionally well. All of their stuff works together, doing more than the sum of their parts could. Sure, Visual Studio is nice, but if you're running SQL Server, it's even nicer, as you can work with the DB very easily from within the IDE. Conversely, you can develop .Net assemblies that are called from SQL Server, extending that product as well. (Yes, you can do all that with Oracle's VS.Net plugin as well, but Oracle has the resources to pull something like that off.)
Sometimes this backfires, and features that could have been done openly are denied to the user (Xbox 360 video streaming, for example). For the most part, however, MS has an incentive to integrate that few other companies do, since they have the resources to compete in complementary markets where their competitors may not. There are both pros and cons for the consumer in these cases.
Microsoft's ability to pursue a strategy as a whole is one of its major strengths, and it's not one to be written off - unless the people at the top forming that strategy lose their way, when it becomes a major weakness.
"All the EU is saying is that MS aren't a special case, but must obey the rules just like everyone else."
So why haven't they gone after Apple for bundling iTunes? For not opening their DRM protocols? (Yes, some governments have made threats, but I haven't seen any action.)
So much for their not being a double standard.
Not likely. The bits are probably part of an embedded resource file, and changing those would trigger system file protection.
Holy shit, my brain is fried - thank god it's a long weekend. I thought Animal House was DTD.
I done fucked this one up. My apologies.