You wrote: "Lets face it, our schools don't get enough money. Until we do something about this, the schools are going to whore themselves out to corporate interests."
I couldn't agree more. So why is congress having such a hard time deciding what to do with the budget surplus? Perhaps they are idiots? Or maybe that's just Republicans.
Actually I would have to say wait on this. I have been talking to some Pepsi people and I am waiting patiently until I get feedback from them. When I get the information I will post another reply.
I'll give Pepsi the benefit of the doubt (after all, they're not responsible for that HORRIBE 7-UP 'UN' campaign, are they?) and continue thinking that perhaps they just paid the high school 'for the right to use its logo on student id cards' without knowing that the cards are actually 'display badges' with student's SSN on them.
But even if they are paying the school for advertising on SSN-bearing display badges, if they can find some really good reason to keep doing it or (preferably) stop doing it, I guess I'll keep buying Pepsi because it does taste better than Coke.:)
Actually I tried to find this information out. I called Pepsi Cola Company's 800 number (which I won't publish in this flaming forum) and asked a very nice lady named Linda some questions.
How many such deals does Pepsi Co have with high schools in the United States?
How does Pepsi Co solicit schools for this deal?
How much does Pepsi Co pay a high school for this deal?
She is supposed to email me back what she finds out.
And for those of you chomping at the bit to yell 'Pepsi is evil' as I was with an earlier, kneejerk post, maybe just chalk it up to capitalism and say 'gee, the school board voted to have these id cards in use, pepsi is just using them for advertising'.
But I'll leave it up to you to decide if you think Pepsi is being morally bad by endorsing these ID cards.
I know that I will start telling friends to boycott Pepsi products until this matter is resolved.
Ridiculous.
What sucks is that we are already boycotting Coke products because of Coke's stranglehold on the university (no university machine/store can sell pepsi products) so I guess i'll be drinking marsh brand.
I've had my SSN as my ID all through public school and college (Purdue University) and of course on my Indiana driver's license.
But luckily I was out of my high school (Marion High School) before they started having kids wear id tags. My younger brothers thought that was bad. They had no idea. Now they are wearing transparent backpacks.
If you don't wear a transparent backpack, they will confiscate your backpack and all contents.
Strange stuff.
I guess they've always had armed guards there, not sure if they have metal detectors or not.
No opinion on the matter, but what I guess I would say is, wow, this is pretty sad.
I completely agree with almost all of this post, particularly the spirit of it (see my post a little further down, re: microsoft punishment).
But I have to point out a couple differences, especially the house-renting analogy (which is a good one).
"If I say you can rent my house only if you agree to also water the lawn once a week, it's up to you to accept the exchange."
What happens if it is more like...
"IF I say you can rent my house only if you agree to have only dogs as pets, it's up to you to accept the exchange."
Still looks pretty good, but what if -every- house in the area where you have to work has this agreement.
Then you have a problem (unless you are a dog person). Basically then there can be no cats in this city, which is unfair to my cute little cat:)
I suppose one could then build their own house, but that is at great expense.
Or, as is happening now, if the market for houses which allow cats is large enough, perhaps a new house-builder will form up (linux cat houses) and build lots of houses for cat-lovers to live in.
But then again you run into the trouble of, hey, what if all the land zoned for housing is taken up:)
Rezone... (or perhaps take dog-only house owners to federal court).
Of course, how a discussion about operating systems and questionable marketing strategy turned into a discussion of house pet merits, I don't know.
as always my completely uninformed, kneejerk opinion which fluctuates hourly.
I do not think that any of these suggested punishments are fair.
"Force MS to release full specs and write full export capabilities" - no, no, no. If enough people want those capabilities and will not buy MS Office without them, Microsoft will write the capabilities. But if people will buy MS Office without them, let them buy what they want. Who are we to tell someone what they are using is less than optimal if it is sufficient enough for them. There are various alternatives (StarOffice, Corel, etc), but the simple fact is that most people will just buy MS Office out of habit or popularity, which is THEIR DECISION.
"Prohibit MS from bundling multiple packages together" is perhaps the best idea, although I would modify it to read "Prohibit MS from bundling multiple packages together which cannot be removed individually or used separately", but even THAT is unfair, because if they want to, say, use a single component as a base class for all their software and make every single component proprietary, let them. As long as people will use their software let people buy it and use it. When someone wants something else, they will change, or Microsoft will (more likely) change their product to match.
"Prohibit MS from deviating from standards" is interesting also, especially considering their completely worthless 'version' of Java. Being a Java developer I know first hand what deviating from standards can do, about half of my development time is spent writing hacks to get Java functionality which works perfectly under a real Java to work under Windows' jview or IE. And I think that since Sun has a license that you cannot make a bad copy of Java, Microsoft should be prohibited from what they are doing. But unless a particular license exists (like say with the TCP/IP standards you mentioned), if they do not follow the TCP/IP standard then they are screwed, and if they present what we might view as a shoddy implementation of TCP/IP, then AGAIN, let people buy it if they want to. If someone wants a really really good TCP/IP implementation, they should come to Purdue and study under Comer and Park and write their own. Or simply use something else.
disclaimer before continuing: I have no idea about the laws concerning anti-trust stuff, and the few bits I have heard are probably heresay or complete rubbage, nonetheless I will state what I think based on the limited information that I have.
Personally I do not think that Microsoft is doing something wrong if they ask/force Gateway2000 to use only windows on their machines. If their deal is good enough and gateway can sell enough computers, I don't care, let people buy it, let gateway and microsoft make their deal. Perhaps that is unfair to JohnDoeOS, which of course is not allowed to be preinstalled on a gateway PC because of this deal, but hey, if enough people wanted it to warrant it, gateway would not make the deal. I think that the 'deals' Microsoft has with PC companies are extremely good for the average PC user, who just wants a freakin' word processor and net connection and doesn't care about how good his/her implementation of Java and/or TCP/IP is, because these deals help bring cost down for some systems (I.E., if there was no deal and you wanted windows, you'd have to pay more).
BUT, and I repeat, BUT, these kind of deals are prohibited BY LAW (I am COMPLETELY UNSURE OF THIS FACT/NON-FACT). If that is true, then perhaps Microsoft does need punished (how I will not begin to assume to know). But I think that the laws, if such they are, are crap. I hate capitalism to the extreme, but that is the way things work here.
BTW, I run FreeBSD for my servers, Solaris x86 for development, Linux for my desktop, and of course Windows NT for administrative work at work. My favorite flavor is...
none of the above. (read the sig). I hate computers.:)
"... why should they get first pick of all the toys, even after the other kids have claimed them? "
it's called trademark law.
and it's also how america works. the first lawsuit i can remember like this was the guy who registered mcdonalds.com and tried to sell it to the real mcdonalds. it's like ticket scalping in principle, and several states do have laws again ticket scalping (and i think all should). i hope we can all agree that if i had a company named 'ReallyBigToys', and had registered that as a trademark, and had registered 'reallybigtoys.com', and someone registered 'BUYreallybigtoys.com' or anything similar, that would clearly violate the system.
i'm not saying the system is good. i'm not saying it's evil.
in fact, i'm not saying anything at all, except aolsearch.com is clearly protected under copyright law, as sure as i can't label my home-bottled brews 'Budweiser' and try to sell them.
but i will say this: aol had much more proper channels to go through to resolve this. hijacking just because you can is absolutely ridiculous, and as many people on this thread have stated, NSI should not be the deciding body. if the woman from the original aolsearch.com had paid her dues signifying the binding contract, NSI should be facing some kind of penalty for breaking that contract.
Quite frankly this scares me. A lot. This doesn't frighten me as much as did the rumour that motorola used the human skull as a signal amplifier for a series of its phones, but after all, this report's findings just make sense. Waves of energy going through your body don't just do absolutely nothing, do they? It's not quite the same as microwaving your head, but I know that I have been trying to limit my exposure for quite a while, but there's not much chance of that living in a big city, and working in the computer industry. Every one of us nearly has a cell phone, if not a handful of other gadgets.
if the new films were nothing other than two hours of text one line at a time rolling up the screen telling us the story, i would pay my 8.50 to go see it. add john williams' soundtrack and of course i'll go. add just one jedi duel and i'm ecstatic. any picture or sound at all, in other words, is gravy on top of something i have been waiting about half my life to see.
in any case i will be going to episode i at least four or five times, and would be going even if, as i said, it was only the text of the story scrolling up the screen.
Slashdot Mirror
You wrote: "Lets face it, our schools don't get enough money. Until we do something about this, the schools are going to whore themselves out to corporate interests."
I couldn't agree more. So why is congress having such a hard time deciding what to do with the budget surplus? Perhaps they are idiots? Or maybe that's just Republicans.
Actually I would have to say wait on this. I have been talking to some Pepsi people and I am waiting patiently until I get feedback from them. When I get the information I will post another reply.
:)
I'll give Pepsi the benefit of the doubt (after all, they're not responsible for that HORRIBE 7-UP 'UN' campaign, are they?) and continue thinking that perhaps they just paid the high school 'for the right to use its logo on student id cards' without knowing that the cards are actually 'display badges' with student's SSN on them.
But even if they are paying the school for advertising on SSN-bearing display badges, if they can find some really good reason to keep doing it or (preferably) stop doing it, I guess I'll keep buying Pepsi because it does taste better than Coke.
Actually I tried to find this information out. I called Pepsi Cola Company's 800 number (which I won't publish in this flaming forum) and asked a very nice lady named Linda some questions.
How many such deals does Pepsi Co have with high schools in the United States?
How does Pepsi Co solicit schools for this deal?
How much does Pepsi Co pay a high school for this deal?
She is supposed to email me back what she finds out.
And for those of you chomping at the bit to yell 'Pepsi is evil' as I was with an earlier, kneejerk post, maybe just chalk it up to capitalism and say 'gee, the school board voted to have these id cards in use, pepsi is just using them for advertising'.
But I'll leave it up to you to decide if you think Pepsi is being morally bad by endorsing these ID cards.
I know that I will start telling friends to boycott Pepsi products until this matter is resolved.
Ridiculous.
What sucks is that we are already boycotting Coke products because of Coke's stranglehold on the university (no university machine/store can sell pepsi products) so I guess i'll be drinking marsh brand.
I've had my SSN as my ID all through public school and college (Purdue University) and of course on my Indiana driver's license.
But luckily I was out of my high school (Marion High School) before they started having kids wear id tags. My younger brothers thought that was bad. They had no idea. Now they are wearing transparent backpacks.
If you don't wear a transparent backpack, they will confiscate your backpack and all contents.
Strange stuff.
I guess they've always had armed guards there, not sure if they have metal detectors or not.
No opinion on the matter, but what I guess I would say is, wow, this is pretty sad.
I completely agree with almost all of this post, particularly the spirit of it (see my post a little further down, re: microsoft punishment).
:)
:)
But I have to point out a couple differences, especially the house-renting analogy (which is a good one).
"If I say you can rent my house only if you agree to also water the lawn once a week, it's up to you to accept the exchange."
What happens if it is more like...
"IF I say you can rent my house only if you agree to have only dogs as pets, it's up to you to accept the exchange."
Still looks pretty good, but what if -every- house in the area where you have to work has this agreement.
Then you have a problem (unless you are a dog person). Basically then there can be no cats in this city, which is unfair to my cute little cat
I suppose one could then build their own house, but that is at great expense.
Or, as is happening now, if the market for houses which allow cats is large enough, perhaps a new house-builder will form up (linux cat houses) and build lots of houses for cat-lovers to live in.
But then again you run into the trouble of, hey, what if all the land zoned for housing is taken up
Rezone... (or perhaps take dog-only house owners to federal court).
Of course, how a discussion about operating systems and questionable marketing strategy turned into a discussion of house pet merits, I don't know.
as always my completely uninformed, kneejerk opinion which fluctuates hourly.
i am sam i am. i live in a cave.
I do not think that any of these suggested punishments are fair.
:)
"Force MS to release full specs and write full export capabilities" - no, no, no. If enough people want those capabilities and will not buy MS Office without them, Microsoft will write the capabilities. But if people will buy MS Office without them, let them buy what they want. Who are we to tell someone what they are using is less than optimal if it is sufficient enough for them. There are various alternatives (StarOffice, Corel, etc), but the simple fact is that most people will just buy MS Office out of habit or popularity, which is THEIR DECISION.
"Prohibit MS from bundling multiple packages together" is perhaps the best idea, although I would modify it to read "Prohibit MS from bundling multiple packages together which cannot be removed individually or used separately", but even THAT is unfair, because if they want to, say, use a single component as a base class for all their software and make every single component proprietary, let them. As long as people will use their software let people buy it and use it. When someone wants something else, they will change, or Microsoft will (more likely) change their product to match.
"Prohibit MS from deviating from standards" is interesting also, especially considering their completely worthless 'version' of Java. Being a Java developer I know first hand what deviating from standards can do, about half of my development time is spent writing hacks to get Java functionality which works perfectly under a real Java to work under Windows' jview or IE. And I think that since Sun has a license that you cannot make a bad copy of Java, Microsoft should be prohibited from what they are doing. But unless a particular license exists (like say with the TCP/IP standards you mentioned), if they do not follow the TCP/IP standard then they are screwed, and if they present what we might view as a shoddy implementation of TCP/IP, then AGAIN, let people buy it if they want to. If someone wants a really really good TCP/IP implementation, they should come to Purdue and study under Comer and Park and write their own. Or simply use something else.
disclaimer before continuing: I have no idea about the laws concerning anti-trust stuff, and the few bits I have heard are probably heresay or complete rubbage, nonetheless I will state what I think based on the limited information that I have.
Personally I do not think that Microsoft is doing something wrong if they ask/force Gateway2000 to use only windows on their machines. If their deal is good enough and gateway can sell enough computers, I don't care, let people buy it, let gateway and microsoft make their deal. Perhaps that is unfair to JohnDoeOS, which of course is not allowed to be preinstalled on a gateway PC because of this deal, but hey, if enough people wanted it to warrant it, gateway would not make the deal. I think that the 'deals' Microsoft has with PC companies are extremely good for the average PC user, who just wants a freakin' word processor and net connection and doesn't care about how good his/her implementation of Java and/or TCP/IP is, because these deals help bring cost down for some systems (I.E., if there was no deal and you wanted windows, you'd have to pay more).
BUT, and I repeat, BUT, these kind of deals are prohibited BY LAW (I am COMPLETELY UNSURE OF THIS FACT/NON-FACT). If that is true, then perhaps Microsoft does need punished (how I will not begin to assume to know). But I think that the laws, if such they are, are crap. I hate capitalism to the extreme, but that is the way things work here.
BTW, I run FreeBSD for my servers, Solaris x86 for development, Linux for my desktop, and of course Windows NT for administrative work at work. My favorite flavor is...
none of the above. (read the sig). I hate computers.
i am sam i am. i live in a cave.
If MIR, by some strange happenstance, lands in my lawn, can I make a treehouse out of it?
:)
any thoughts?
Is the remnants of Earth from the future after we actually decided to turn on that giant particle accelerator off long island.
anyhoo...
and you vegetarians remember...
plants are living things too. they're just easier to catch.
"... why should they get first pick of all the toys, even after the other kids have claimed them? "
it's called trademark law.
and it's also how america works. the first lawsuit i can remember like this was the guy who registered mcdonalds.com and tried to sell it to the real mcdonalds. it's like ticket scalping in principle, and several states do have laws again ticket scalping (and i think all should). i hope we can all agree that if i had a company named 'ReallyBigToys', and had registered that as a trademark, and had registered 'reallybigtoys.com', and someone registered 'BUYreallybigtoys.com' or anything similar, that would clearly violate the system.
i'm not saying the system is good. i'm not saying it's evil.
in fact, i'm not saying anything at all, except aolsearch.com is clearly protected under copyright law, as sure as i can't label my home-bottled brews 'Budweiser' and try to sell them.
but i will say this: aol had much more proper channels to go through to resolve this. hijacking just because you can is absolutely ridiculous, and as many people on this thread have stated, NSI should not be the deciding body. if the woman from the original aolsearch.com had paid her dues signifying the binding contract, NSI should be facing some kind of penalty for breaking that contract.
i am sam i am.
Quite frankly this scares me. A lot. This doesn't frighten me as much as did the rumour that motorola used the human skull as a signal amplifier for a series of its phones, but after all, this report's findings just make sense. Waves of energy going through your body don't just do absolutely nothing, do they? It's not quite the same as microwaving your head, but I know that I have been trying to limit my exposure for quite a while, but there's not much chance of that living in a big city, and working in the computer industry. Every one of us nearly has a cell phone, if not a handful of other gadgets.
i am sam i am
if the new films were nothing other than two hours of text one line at a time rolling up the screen telling us the story, i would pay my 8.50 to go see it. add john williams' soundtrack and of course i'll go. add just one jedi duel and i'm ecstatic. any picture or sound at all, in other words, is gravy on top of something i have been waiting about half my life to see.
in any case i will be going to episode i at least four or five times, and would be going even if, as i said, it was only the text of the story scrolling up the screen.
im am sam i am