MDMA is different and has been linked to brain damage by multiple studies I believe.
Yeah. And a leading researcher smoked pot in the lab - after which he turned into a bird, flew into an inkwell, and became trapped, flying around and around for hours until he passed out from exhaustion.
It was a government funded study. It must be true. I saw photostats of his lab notes....
Ever watched Reefer Madness? It should give you a clue about where these "studies" are coming from...
So you apparently really believe that, if all those Chinese who are getting pirated copies of Windows weren't able to get the pirated copies, they would be paying full price for the software (or DVD or whatever)? That's the kind of flawed logic that has allowed the RIAA to dig themselves into the hole they're in now...
money, which we are hemorrhaging, in part, due to piracy.
We are not "hemorrhaging" cash - we just aren't producing anything these "pirates" consider worth paying for. Not making a sale is not the same as having some one take away from you monies that have you already made. The corps don't own the money, and their constant whining about me (or anyone) not giving it to them is just sour grapes. I don't owe them anything. They should have to work for a living like the rest of us...
As you point out, Microsoft has done okay for itself, regardless of rampant piracy overseas for many years, I might add. Of course, they have managed to enforce certain predatory business practices of questionable legality, themselves, but they have gotten away with it, so we can let that lie, for the time being. Really, though, Mirosoft should think twice before casting any stones on the basis of allegations of criminal behavior.
Furthermore, Microsoft has been one of the few companies to successful prosecute pirates - and without creating a cabinet post (well, if you don't count their ownership of Dubya) to do it.
Capitalism in action, dude - people in China won't pay $20 for the DVD, but they'll pay $1. A sale you didn't make is not lost capital, it's a failure of marketing and design.
I guess you could argue that e.g. P2P "costs sales" because it lets people find out what crap the music or video is *before* they pay good money for it, and hence they don't buy it - freeing the consumer from the (rigged) tyranny of so-called "critics", basically - but creating a government position with the idea of enforcing sales quotas for failed products - which is how I view these so-called "anti-piracy" efforts - is a bit over-the-top.
...Microsoft. They have 58,000 employees worldwide with about 30,000 in the Seattle area alone.
As I understand it, Microsoft has been careful to define their overseas sweatshop employees as "not Microsoft employees" - this keeps the heat off them for outsourcing and makes them appear to be less hostile to the working stiff consumer. It's an image thing.
Most of your points here I take, but I think they are going to side issues. I maintain that this article is about a shenangian - about enabling corporate hacks (in the old sense - workers lacking real skillz) to continue to charge more than the market will realistically bear for 2nd and 3rd rate products - while giving their activities sanction under guise of law enforcement. "It's a poor workman blames the tool," so-to-speak.
It is a continuation of the marginalization and ultimate criminalization of non-consumption or consumption of alternative products. The companies' profits will fall if they are not propped up by government, regardless of piracy, because they cannot produce goods that can command an honest dollar.
The only real losses in the realm of intellectual property occur when real innovation is suppressed or stolen by a corporatation - that's a loss to an individual and neither this ploy nor any other by the Dubya regime does squat to address those sorts of abuses.
And that's before we start talking about the millions of lives that could be saved just by re-directing the corporate fat-cat turned politician's salary alone...
The government wants those additional tax dollars from the Microsofts and EAs and 20th Century Foxes and Capitol records of the world.
You have got to be kidding! Corporations don't pay taxes. Nor do the very rich.
Furthermore, the US Federal Govt isn't spending anything on providing any sort of healthcare for the people who do pay taxes, and highways are paid for out of petro and vehicle taxes.
Your postulated interest in the financial health of Sony Corp (DVD patents - and they're not a US company, btw) and Capital Records (Canadian, I think, owned by Seagrams, but you can check me on that) is completely spurious - not to say misguided.
I personally could give a shit about the output of the so-called US entertainment industry until and unless they start paying me to consumer their lame crapola. I don't download off P2P because they don't have anything I want and I damned well have no interest in paying some beer-oh-crat a 6 figure salary to watch out for some multinational corp that produces crap, pays no US taxes, and has few US employees (Microsoft, for instance, is doing a lot more for employment in India than they are in the US).
Our government taking this steps might ultimately hinder my ability to get a copy of the latest DVD for free rather than paying the $5 rental fee or the $20 Netflix subscription or just buying the damn DVD for $20, but I don't lose any sleep over this.
Your government (I don't claim it - the current US regime is an occupying force and is not American in any way shape or form - loud, psuedo-patriotic whining to the contrary notwithstanding) taking this step will lead only to higher taxes for you, more people in the prisons you pay for, and increased prices for those DVDs full of cut-rate bullshite. I mean, you don't actually believe they're doing this to lower prices, do you?
Besides, all that "piracy" they keep going on about isn't even taking place in the US - it's mostly in e.g. China already - if something really needs to be done about it, it should be Condi's job - hardly a task for a whole new cabinet position.
I agree with the previous poster - we're already invovled in enough wars whose sole purpose is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Enough already. Peace in our time, god-dammit.
In short, they're pissing in your ear - it's up to you whether you believe them when they tell you it's raining...
I think it's left over propaganda from the cold war, that has proved useful for certain corporate interests when they seek to expand their own privilege at the expense of individual freedoms. It's a very personal viewpoint, but I hope it's of interest.
Heh. Yes, thanks. I would have to say that personal viewpoints are pretty much the only viewpoints of interest. Corporate or governmental viewpoints are more along the lines of... intel, I guess I would say. Occassionally useful, perhaps, but mostly boring.
I am tending to agreement about the fear of socialism being an artifact of the cold war era. I can't really find any other reasonable explanation for it.
Anyway, a good analogy to feudalism, I think. I'm thinking I will probably borrow from it while using my soapbox, if that's okay with you.
Some interesting points you make - speaking directly to some issues I've been considering recently. I'm most interested in your implied equivalency between free capitalist society and the situation that now exists in the US where millions are enslaved (for lack of a better word) by corporate media...
this is just the byproduct of human nature in a free capitalist society. It's not someone's FAULT
I am aware that there is an overwhelming tendency in certain quarters to characterize "human nature" as a need to oppress and ultimately destroy other human beings. You state it here as fact, but to my mind, this has not been shown. The influence of western religious thought on this topic - specifically in the US - is undeniable. Judeo/Christianity teaches "original sin". This is, imo, the fundamental underpinning of the idea that humans are somehow inherently inhumane when allowed to freely follow their own desire.
This precept could be contrasted with a sort of socialist POV, wherein there is no "original sin", and human nature is defined as a tendency to form groups which work together towards a common goal, thereby acheiving things which individual humans cannot accomplish on their own (canonical example of taking down a mastadon to feed a tribe).
In this last example, the "capitalism" we see in the US currently is not capitalism at all, but a gross perversion of the concept of net gain from a set of behaviours by a group.
I'm not addressing whether or not there is a FAULT - someone to BLAME - but in this socialist scenario there is almost certainly some group of emotionally and socially sick individuals who would be to blame - although as you point out, the set "Victims" is quite broad.
To suggest that it is someone's fault would require that that someone is 1) authoratative and 2) should know better (unlike the rest of us who were taught what we know.) Perhaps you should be blaming God here?? (God being the only one who could meet requisites 1 and 2 above)
I think you're jumping over a few steps in a logial process by going directly to that last - that God is the only one who meets the requisites 1 & 2, but I don't agree that 1) is necesarily requisite, anyway. Subversion and conspiracy as means of rule or control of a population do not de facto require authority. In fact, I think it could be argued that authority would be a disadvantage in situations where anonymity and secrecy are paramount. In short, you've dismissed the idea that could be truly Evil forces at work - Masters of Deception and Lies - so your introduction of God here becomes completely disingenous - if God, then Satan. You've detracted from your own point.
Requisite 2 - knowledge of right and wrong - is not truly requisite, either. Much Evil is done by those who really believe they are doing the right thing. You ignore the possibility that the consipitors - the Evil forces - are sociopathic - sick, in a word - which trivially explains why "know better" is not a requisite for such individuals to exist.
These may be the costs of freedom, economic and otherwise. Of course, we can address these costs in ways, seeking remedy, but we shouldn't forget or lose sight of the fact that the benefits of these systems far outweigh the downsides and the costs.
This last is really interesting. You basically equate capitalism turned fascist with "freedom", then claim that the cost of capitalism is to destroy the consumer. I cannot agree.
I submit for your consideration a couple points that - while I haven't found convincing arguments for them, I have been considering:
A. Capitalism != Freedom. There is no dependency between Capitalism and (presonal) Freedom. They may co-exist (they are not mutually exlusive), but either can exist without the other.
B. Socialism and Freedom are not mutually exclusive.
I'm open to critique of either of those, since - as I say - I haven't really fixed on a truth value for either.
any candidate who would say something like that while running for office just never should have gotten his party's nomination let alone get elected
Can't speak to the RNC actions, but it's been pretty well established that Dubya was never elected President of the United States - he was appointed by the Supreme Court. First explicitly in 2000, then tacitly in 2004 when the Court declined to consider the election fraud suits brought by various parties (notably Citizens of Ohio). In short, under the Constitution of the United States of America the man is not the president - in fact, as best I've been able to determine, there is no acting President.
I maybe over exagerating things a tad
No, but you (and others) may be forgiven, I think, for not wanting to carry the logic through to the obvious conclusions. The Reality is... disturbing... to say the least - it could reasonably be called "unthinkable" by a sane individual.
/.'s article here is the first I've heard of this Real ID plan...
Well, aside from the obvious fact that since the neo-con coup the network media hasn't covered anything except talking-dubya-points, the reason you haven't noticed this tidbit of legistlation (which apparently started back in Feburary) is because "liberal media" has painted it as an immagration issue - that is: the only people targeted by this legislation according to the to PTB and their media cheerleaders were illegal aliens - I heard it debated on Faux News as an immagration issue a least a month ago. I would have to say either
a) you haven't been paying attention, or b) you are foolish enough to a ctually believe the that the motives these pseudo-news agencies put forward are the actual intent of the neo-con coup. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course...
A true American Patriot follows his own morals, not his president. If your morals align with our current governments, then you are a traitor to the very ideals that are supposed to set us above all the commies and terrorists.
Geez. How soon we forget. An entire page of commentary and no one has mentioned it yet, but that is the Microsoft strategy.
Furthermore, there is no reason at all to believe that just because M$ says they bought VPC to compete with VMware that it is true. In fact, given Micro$history there's every reason not to believe it.
Anybody got a pool on when we see the first Linux patch from M$ - the one that will let Linux run on VPC? Remember Java - they didn't "break it", they just "extended" it.
And as for NT 4.0 support... Phfft. They don't have any interest in supporting those kinds of antiques unless they're getting more $$ for it than they do for hacking together another OS-upgrade-support kludge.
I predict VPC support from M$ will be very short-lived; it's a near term wedge they can use to deceive a small fraction of a small market into spending some money with M$, yes, but the real goal has to be exactly what the kind of stunt they pulled with Java. Copy it until they can't get away with it - create proprietary extensions, then produce a clone with a different naming scheme, sanitized binaries, and no traceable legal relation to the original product. Once they have that VPC will disapear, support will dry up, and anyone gullible enough to have bought it will be told to "upgrade".
I'll say it again, Bill: the only thing you can do that stands a chance of keeping Microsoft in the software game long term is to release a Linux distro. Of course, you'll probably have to hire some developers, but from what I hear you won't have to pay US wages... Good Luck, and God Bless.
M$ would love it if everybody compared open source with M$Windows as a simple short-term TCO business decision, not as a long-term political decision.
This is one of the most insightful statements I've ever seen or heard as part of the Linux vs. Windoze debate. The whole post goes straight to the heart of the problems, but your characterization of the issues as political got passed over by most of the reponses that I saw, and I think it deserves highlighting.
The fact is, the problems with Windoze and M$ in general have moved pretty definitively from the technical realm to the political realm - at least from my POV - and it is this trend that will ultimately lead people to explore alternatives.
And I do see it as "leading" and "exploration" - the move to Open Source Software - like most alterations of personal philosphical and political ideals does not generally result from direct external influence - and especially not from argument - such personal growth is generally internally motivated, in my experience. The individual finds that they are not satisfied with what is, they get glimmer of what could be, and they follow it.
From that POV, the whole idea of trying to "convert" someone to using Open Source in general or Linux in particular is just silly. It can't be done, and sure as hell can't be done by ranting about how much Winblows sux0r.
The only thing that can practically be done to further acceptance of Open Source (again imo) is to keep the idea alive as an alternative - people who are already sick of M$ shennanigans don't need converting, they just need an alternative, and will readily adopt one when it presents itself.
Really good points about use and abuse of language for reasons of psychological manipulation of populations, too, btw. Thanks.
Whereas bandwidth and internet access should be utilitarian - that is:
like potable water, access to the global information networks should be
something that is a) trivially accessible in a civilized society, and
b) raises the quality of life for everyone who has access to it.
The telco approach is to retain access to the internet - and wifi acccess in particular - as a commodity.
It's about time somebody at the FCC started doing their job. It'll be interesting to see how successful this particular David is at taking on the Goliath of the combined Bells, cable companies, ISPs, and (probably) the entertainment industry (guessing that e.g. Time-Warner et al is backing or will be backing the telcos in this particular power grab).
... set up wifi, but whether or not we should be allowed to if we want to.
If the telcos have their way, this (and every other) discussion about whether or not govt should provide bandwidth in the same way they provide sewage systems and potable water in many areas will be moot - and quite frankly, the entire discussion of whether or not govt should provide these types of services is nothing more than a distraction from the point that certain powerful corporations are working very hard to take the decision out of public hands.
I personnally don't care to even give the telcos the chance to make this kind of decision unilaterally. And how much are they paying the state and local govts to castrate themselves (and thereby the public) in this way? The telcos are almost certainly breaking a whole raft of laws just to push this kind of crap legislation...
How's about: Coca-cola(tm) pushes legislation to prevent municipalities from selling potable water because municiple sales hurt sales of Dasani? It would make about as much sense.
Does no one remember the FEC threat against the owner of... what was it, gwbush.com ?... circa 1999? I haven't seen it mentioned here, but maybe I just missed it...
You remember: It was the FEC action that was the follow-on to the aspiring dictator's attempts to shut down the parody site?
Iirc, the sound byte was something like "There's gotta be some limits to freedom." I've got the MP3 of it around here somewhere.
When Dubya's slightly premature edict didn't take hold quite as effectively as he demanded (the site stayed up and his lawsuit was tossed out), then suddenly and mysteriously the FEC stepped in and "fined" the owner of the domain something like $25,000...
Anyone who didn't see which way the 2000 "election" was going to fall at that time was just deluding themselves.
Anyone who remembers shouldn't be surprised to see the FEC moving again on behalf of the Regime to consolidate Power.
Wow. The courts first threw Dubya's lawsuit out, concluding (apparently) that Speech was protected - even if the subject of that Speech was a fortunate son who wannabe da prez. Amazing how things can change in 4 or 5 years, isn't it?
This latest from the FEC is just one more stone in the wall of Suppression of Dissent that the Regime has been building since Day One.
"Maybe it was to take the edge off the coke." -
Boondocks
And does anyone recall Doonesbury during the reign of Bush I?
"You have the Right to Free Speech... unless you're actually stupid enough to actually try it. Know your Rights."
Leo, I somehow found myself following a chain (backwards) of your postings thru this thread in response to various other - more slashdotesque - posts, and I get the impression you consider yourself authoritative on some of these topics. You may be, I can't know, but I am going to have to take mild exception to some of your points, and maybe try to get you to clarify a bit..
A smart person should [...]
I would have prefered the word "capable" as opposed to "smart" in a paragraph like the one you wrote, there. A person can balance a check book without being particularly smart. Likewise cooking, vehicle upkeep, conversation, and so on.
Use of "smart" implies to me something a bit more than basically mundane day to capabilities, which - in my view - cover pretty much everything you listed except maybe juggling. Juggling could be considered a sort of mundane activity if one is a clown, I suppose... Nevertheless, I don't agree that "all smart people should be able to juggle", since I am smart, and I don't juggle. I would argue there that you are presupposing the smart person has the use of their hands - unless you're talking about some less mundane sort of juggling, perhaps with the feet.
Regardless, it makes no more sense to say "a smart person should be able to juggle" than to say "a smart person must be able to have hands", which I do not consider a particularly useful or valid statement in this context. A small point, perhaps, but I think it supports the larger point of the examples being of capability rather than intelligence.
Furthermore, I think your closing paragraph of this post
It's bad when somebody focuses on one area of study to the exclusion of all others [...]
Represents a pretty narrow view, as well. You support your premise there with
It's worse when somebody who has become expert in one particular discipline mistakenly thinks he's now smart. Somebody who knows everything there is to know about programming a computer but who is ignorant of poetry or biology or politics isn't smart. At best, he could be described as a sort of self-induced idiot savant.
I submit that the only reason you think you can get away with that bit is because you use the example of "programming a computer" - in an audience that you apparently feel is rife with self-indulgant, wet-behind-the ears techno geeks who wanna be high-school dropouts.
Replace the "programming a computer" with "playing the violin" and you might get the idea of what I'm talking about.
In short, I think it might be helpful if you spent some (more) posting time on what the differences between "school" and "education" are - what the difference between "smart" and "educated" is (I see you addressed that below, but I found that post likewise un-satisfying and will probably respond to it directly).
Overall it sounds to me like you might have something worth saying, but it's not getting entirely through, here. And it definitely sounds like you're a bit hostile to your audience here - or if not overtly hostile, at least a bit worried that what you percieve as a general "dislike" for "school" might stand a chance of winning a place in some larger forum.
I think "disillusionment" probably describes most recent grads' general view of school - even more than "dislike".
I also think you should consider that - while some of your points address accurately the benefits of an idealized educational system - that system does not now exist in US society, at least. The cold fact is that the public school system in the US is at the very least badly broken. Whether or not that breakage is terminal remains to be seen, but certainly there are no pat answers. There are a number of cultures that have been dealing with this same problem quite a bit longer than the US has, and - in the case of UK, at least - many of the problems still exist, and have n
Your faith in your grade-school civics teacher is so laughably naive that I wouln't bother to respond to it except that you are so obviously the tool of some interest to whose ongoing benefit it is that the public continue to believe The Lie.
You're votes count if the Tool selected by the Corporations to "win" the elections *sez* that your votes count.
Get used to it.
This child-like Faith in the System that you exhibit is absolutely what makes you and others like you the biggest part of the problem in the US today. You really should drop back and read some of the writings of the Founders before you try to decieve the broader public who may not have the kinds of... entanglements... that so obviously have trapped you in in a sinking ship - so to speak.
Hey, what's all this about using gravity waves to see things and detect stuff? I thought gravity waves were supposed to be a propulsion system. All we need is an emitter and a lattice to get them into a laminar, coherent, directed pattern, right?
A spinning thing has more mass than a non spinning thing (more energy in the system)
Is it really more mass, or is it more dense.... ?
Hrm - what exactly is the relationship of mass to density? If mass is Energy, then, mass is dependant on any matter, so gravity is caused by energy density? Or energy density in a cyclic (spin) vector? That's the gravity wave?
There are people at Micrsoft that know exactly what Linux is and what it is capable of now and what it will be capable of in the future.
Okay, there may be some people that haven't jumped ship yet, but I stand by the point that anyone with any real engineering skill or the ability to take a broad view of the business and marketting side has been effectively neutered.
I don't really believe there's anyone there doing actual engineering (if there is, the results aren't getting out). and their marketting is just lame. Clearly they don't understand eitehr what they're selling, who their customers are, what their customers want, or where the market is going.
"Brute force" pretty much describes their approach to everything, it looks like to me, which - applied across the lifespan of the company as it has been with M$ - doesn't imply any particular expertise, or even intelligence. [note that I'm speaking of the corporation Microsoft, and not about the individual employees - I'm sure every one of those 15,000 "not employees of Microsoft" that draw their rupees from Microsoft was hand-picked]
Micrsoft is a company run by the accounting and marketing departments with engineering, support and customer services taking a back seat (kept on life support for marketing purposes only).
As I mentinoed above, I don't think their marketting people are very effective, either. This could be a long discussion, and I should probably invoice them for an analysis, but... well, I'll just agree with you about accounting - I think it's all about counting the beans.
Something else to keep in mind in this respect is that M$ is no longer really a software company. Iirc, they were investing heavily in telecoms firms during the runup to the dot.com crash, to the point where the securities they own in telecoms (in the US and overseas) probably are worth more than the software side of their business - yet the securities don't amount to "ownership" in any one of the telecoms firms. I find this just fascinating, myself; Microsoft has orphaned the software side of the business in favuor of being an investments company specialzing in communications companies, but hasn't told anyone - or at least, not "out loud".
So. How were the Global Crossing and Worldcomm events related to Gate's investments in the telecomm sector? Who is in a position to find out?
No one seems very interested in the implications of this, as best I can tell, but I think implications for e.g. the future of Windows, are just fascinating.
It really makes you stop and think about how Micrsoft marketing department defines their customers and how intelligent they think their customers or potential customers really are
I actually think this is the "root of all evil" at Microsoft. Customers, like everyone else, are people, and will behave in ways consistent with the way you treat them. A lesson not learned by Microsoft and a number of the mega-corps M$ is now investing in - the ones adopting the so-called "Microsoft Business Model". I will be surprised if there is not a further crash in the tech sector in the near future as the companies that bought in to Microsoft's world view go down like dominos. I think that "buy in" was already a big part of the set-up for the first ".com bubble"...
and the statements given as facts (not opinions) by the Micrsoft Drone are really starting to cross of the line of civil accountability and are laying Microsft open to legal action by Government consumer departments and those "other" companies that articles like this are designed to damage.
Nice point. I have often imagined a micro-billing system that will back-charge Micorsoft the cost of 3500 employees sitting idle while their PCs reboot 4 or 5 times a day due to buggy software and spend hours recreating lost d
Y'kno, this points up one of the biggest problems - in my experience - that exists with the attempts made by Microsoft advocates to discredit Linux [security|usability|cost|performance|whatever]. That flaw is: They don't know what Linux is.
Seriously. They don't know the difference between a kernel and a distribution. I had a senior "software strategist" Microsoft try to tell me (in casual conversation) with a straight face that Windows was more robust than Linux, faster than Linux, and less secure than Linux.
When I challenged him on this the first words out of his mouth were "Red Hat" followed closely by a trivial diss of the KDE desktop environment. He couldn't grasp what I was talking about when I told him that I use Linux but don't use either Red Hat or KDE - tried to tell me that I didn't use Linux, even, and guessed that "[my] version of Linux" didn't have a GUI.
He didn't know what GNU was, he had no familiarity with the concept of a "kernel", no realization that e.g. KDE != Linux (decoupling of the user interface is taught as a "Good Programming Practice", eh?) - in short he just made a fool of himself on the whole topic, demonstrating only that he was completely clueless.
When I pointed out to him that Microsoft could save itself by creating their own distribution of Linux and making it "the best" it took him about 2 minutes of sputtering befuddlement before I realized that Microsoft probably doesn't own the software expertise to put together even a single application package for and existing GNU/Linux distro - let alone put out their own distro with e.g. an office applications suite that could compete with OpenOffice.
That is why I no longer consider Microsoft a credible threat to the ultimate market dominance of GNU and Linux: Microsoft owns neither the vision nor the skillz to save itself.
This is based not only on this single chance encounter with a Microsoftie, but on numerous conversations with M$ "advocates" and observation of the overall lack of quality of Microsoft products.
It appear to me that M$ will just keep hammering the brute for algoritm of FUD and marketting dollars even as the market throws shovelfuls of dirt onto their coffin.
Face it Bill: The market is saturated. Microsoft's business model is not only dead, it's beginning to smell bad. Of course, given that you've made yours, there's no real reason to salvage the company, is there....
First of all, I want to thank you for supporting my point so completely.
It isn't just that he used the names,
Ah. So it was just the one name, then... I should have known that - as you point out - you don't know enough about Dubya to even understand the connection, anyway... You're a Gatesian.
he was obviously insulting the readers of slashdot.
Huh. I guess that just went right over my head - *whoosh* - just like the irony of you responding to me apparently got by you... Just to be clear on this, I'm insulting you personally, not the rest of the readers.
Furthermore he was muddying the waters by comparing Bill Gates and George Bush, two people who are very different.
Oh, I can't agree with that. Dubya and Charming Billy are very similar - they both want to control the world and they both like the idea of Microsoft not getting sentenced for the crimes of which they have been convicted. You do remember that campaign promise wrung out of Dubya, doncha - Charming Billy should remember it, since he's indebted to Dubya, now, on account of Dubya making good on that particular promise. Does the name "Ralph Reed" ring a bell? (that's a clue, in case you didn't recognize it as it bit you on the ass)
Stop making everything seem like some cordinated attack
Uhhhmmmm.... no?
How could George Bush have anything to do with the dotcom crash?
How could he not? He's the leader of the free world, and he let it happen on his watch. Sounds reasonable to me.
How is what he said relevant?
Well, at least he didn't burden me with a detailed account of his lunch hour. Offhand I'd say his post was basically one more relevant to, say, Reality that any of the drivel you're spouting.
Funny how you can't use these names at all on/. anymore without someone jumping in to make sure your comment is depracted. "Troll" ? Hey, I think there's probably quite a few people who share this general feeling - not trying to prove blame, or anything - just generalized disconent without a target.
I haven't heard anyone blaming e.g. Bill Clinton or Martha Steward for the.com crash, for instance... Of course, having brought this up here, I probably will, now.
"The dot.com crash was caused market maniplations by Osama bin Ladin and the Saudi Royals at the behest of Dick Cheney in order to soften up the amerikan public for 9/11 - millions of people laid off, fortunes shattered, lifestyles irretreviably lost - by the time lives were lost, the nation was already chronically depressed. 9/11 led to hopelessness and apathy, which in turn made the public malleable, easy made a tool of Cheney's drive for Empire..."... or so they think in 2027...
the police arrested him based on a complaint from BT
As you say - which points up yet another possiblility:
Does the complainant (the BT employee who reported the incident) know the individual that was arrested?
Maybe sysadmin had some grudge against the user and used the fact that the user is not using "approved" software/hardware in order to - what, avoid paying off a wager? Providing support for a non-approved OS/browser? Revenge for getting beaten in a game or dissed in a net post? Could be a social vendatta, or a personal grudge. A sysadmin trying to protect his job. Lots of possiblities there... had teh guy arrested and gotten his equipment confiscated for some reason that had nothing to do with what the guy was doing or what s/w he was using... I hope the British cops have sufficient technical expertise that they don't have to depend solely on BT's "expert" to make a case - or not, as the case maybe.
There were some articles about Britians efforts to acquire and use IT expertise within the law enforcement community. That expertise should definitely be applied in a case like this.
I'm not going to dispute the validity of the United States' last year's presidential election
Well, I am, but that's just the way I am...
[...] there were some, relatively minor, problems
Well, whether or not those problems were "minor" is - I suppose - a matter of whether or not you are one of the dis-enfranchised who is being mocked as a "conspiracy nut" from the floor of the US Senate. Obviously the Right didn't think the problems were minor or they wouldn't work so hard to discredit the whistle-blowers and suppress any dissent. (You'll probably see them in action right here on/. once this post goes up). The did, however, put out that exact phrasing ("minor problems") in the official propaganda. Currently persons who express the view that there may have been actual, systemic problems are dismissed as "mentally ill", "hysterical", "conspiracy nuts", etc - echoing the same logic the Soviets used to fill the work camps in Siberia, I believe, but again, maybe that's just me...
Ultimately what happened in 2000 did not seem consistent with the values of openness and democratic process US politicians seem so eager to praise constantly
Vote fraud took place in US elections (state and federal) in 2000, 2002, and 2004. Beyond that I can't say. The pattern of disenfranchisement of minorities has a history going back to the beginning - 2000 and 2004 are just blatant examples which the "winners" (the perpetrators of the fraud, obviously) refuse to acknowledge for fear they can't win in a fair and open vote. Very third world, both conceptually and in tactical implementation. There is no sign of a strategic, change, though, since no one has successfully organized a challenge, yet.
In short, the US has become a "one party democracy" very like the USSR was reported (in the US) to have been.
, many of the actions of their politicians directly affect matters geographically distant from the USA. The current administration's seeming disdain for anyone outside their inner circle in concert with the circumstances of Mr. Bush's election for president leaves a bitter, bitter taste in my mouth. This type of sentiment is not uncommon in the world at the moment.
Yes. I can appreciate that. Imagine the sentiment within the US - among the actual citizens, that is - those who still believe in the Constitution. I can only hope that when the time comes for the Regime to come down the "friends and allies" of the US that the Regime will call upon to help "put down revolt" will understand the differnce between what they're hearing from the seats of Power and the beliefs and intentions of actual American Citizens who still believe in and live by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
From that POV, the DC government does not even remotely represent the broad population of the US or any of their interests. What DC represents is a ruling cabal of proabably 3% to 5% of the population.
There is an additional group of citizens - the very poor, mostly fundamentalist Christian, and mostly uneducated - in areas like the deep south - who believe that the Regime is Good and Just, but that is simply because they are largely uninformed. If and when they find out what's going on, I think most of them will come around and back the Constitution. Educating those people concerning the true nature of what they are voicing support for is the real challenge facing those who favour Regime Change in the US, and it is not clear yet that it is even possible in the face of massive, onging media propaganda in support of the regime.
There is no remaining Left-wing media in the US, as far as I can tell. Only Right and Right-center. There is some remaining "Liberal" presence left on the Internet, but I expect that, too, will fade over the 4 years. Already it is completely discounted within the US b
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. And a leading researcher smoked pot in the lab - after which he turned into a bird, flew into an inkwell, and became trapped, flying around and around for hours until he passed out from exhaustion.
It was a government funded study. It must be true. I saw photostats of his lab notes....
Ever watched Reefer Madness? It should give you a clue about where these "studies" are coming from ...
So you apparently really believe that, if all those Chinese who are getting pirated copies of Windows weren't able to get the pirated copies, they would be paying full price for the software (or DVD or whatever)? That's the kind of flawed logic that has allowed the RIAA to dig themselves into the hole they're in now...
We are not "hemorrhaging" cash - we just aren't producing anything these "pirates" consider worth paying for. Not making a sale is not the same as having some one take away from you monies that have you already made. The corps don't own the money, and their constant whining about me (or anyone) not giving it to them is just sour grapes. I don't owe them anything. They should have to work for a living like the rest of us...
As you point out, Microsoft has done okay for itself, regardless of rampant piracy overseas for many years, I might add. Of course, they have managed to enforce certain predatory business practices of questionable legality, themselves, but they have gotten away with it, so we can let that lie, for the time being. Really, though, Mirosoft should think twice before casting any stones on the basis of allegations of criminal behavior.
Furthermore, Microsoft has been one of the few companies to successful prosecute pirates - and without creating a cabinet post (well, if you don't count their ownership of Dubya) to do it.
Capitalism in action, dude - people in China won't pay $20 for the DVD, but they'll pay $1. A sale you didn't make is not lost capital, it's a failure of marketing and design.
I guess you could argue that e.g. P2P "costs sales" because it lets people find out what crap the music or video is *before* they pay good money for it, and hence they don't buy it - freeing the consumer from the (rigged) tyranny of so-called "critics", basically - but creating a government position with the idea of enforcing sales quotas for failed products - which is how I view these so-called "anti-piracy" efforts - is a bit over-the-top.
As I understand it, Microsoft has been careful to define their overseas sweatshop employees as "not Microsoft employees" - this keeps the heat off them for outsourcing and makes them appear to be less hostile to the working stiff consumer. It's an image thing.
Most of your points here I take, but I think they are going to side issues. I maintain that this article is about a shenangian - about enabling corporate hacks (in the old sense - workers lacking real skillz) to continue to charge more than the market will realistically bear for 2nd and 3rd rate products - while giving their activities sanction under guise of law enforcement. "It's a poor workman blames the tool," so-to-speak.
It is a continuation of the marginalization and ultimate criminalization of non-consumption or consumption of alternative products. The companies' profits will fall if they are not propped up by government, regardless of piracy, because they cannot produce goods that can command an honest dollar.
The only real losses in the realm of intellectual property occur when real innovation is suppressed or stolen by a corporatation - that's a loss to an individual and neither this ploy nor any other by the Dubya regime does squat to address those sorts of abuses.
And that's before we start talking about the millions of lives that could be saved just by re-directing the corporate fat-cat turned politician's salary alone...
You have got to be kidding! Corporations don't pay taxes. Nor do the very rich.
Furthermore, the US Federal Govt isn't spending anything on providing any sort of healthcare for the people who do pay taxes, and highways are paid for out of petro and vehicle taxes.
Your postulated interest in the financial health of Sony Corp (DVD patents - and they're not a US company, btw) and Capital Records (Canadian, I think, owned by Seagrams, but you can check me on that) is completely spurious - not to say misguided.
I personally could give a shit about the output of the so-called US entertainment industry until and unless they start paying me to consumer their lame crapola. I don't download off P2P because they don't have anything I want and I damned well have no interest in paying some beer-oh-crat a 6 figure salary to watch out for some multinational corp that produces crap, pays no US taxes, and has few US employees (Microsoft, for instance, is doing a lot more for employment in India than they are in the US).
Your government (I don't claim it - the current US regime is an occupying force and is not American in any way shape or form - loud, psuedo-patriotic whining to the contrary notwithstanding) taking this step will lead only to higher taxes for you, more people in the prisons you pay for, and increased prices for those DVDs full of cut-rate bullshite. I mean, you don't actually believe they're doing this to lower prices, do you?
Besides, all that "piracy" they keep going on about isn't even taking place in the US - it's mostly in e.g. China already - if something really needs to be done about it, it should be Condi's job - hardly a task for a whole new cabinet position.
I agree with the previous poster - we're already invovled in enough wars whose sole purpose is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Enough already. Peace in our time, god-dammit.
In short, they're pissing in your ear - it's up to you whether you believe them when they tell you it's raining...
Heh. Yes, thanks. I would have to say that personal viewpoints are pretty much the only viewpoints of interest. Corporate or governmental viewpoints are more along the lines of ... intel, I guess I would say. Occassionally useful, perhaps, but mostly boring.
I am tending to agreement about the fear of socialism being an artifact of the cold war era. I can't really find any other reasonable explanation for it.
Anyway, a good analogy to feudalism, I think. I'm thinking I will probably borrow from it while using my soapbox, if that's okay with you.
Some interesting points you make - speaking directly to some issues I've been considering recently. I'm most interested in your implied equivalency between free capitalist society and the situation that now exists in the US where millions are enslaved (for lack of a better word) by corporate media...
I am aware that there is an overwhelming tendency in certain quarters to characterize "human nature" as a need to oppress and ultimately destroy other human beings. You state it here as fact, but to my mind, this has not been shown. The influence of western religious thought on this topic - specifically in the US - is undeniable. Judeo/Christianity teaches "original sin". This is, imo, the fundamental underpinning of the idea that humans are somehow inherently inhumane when allowed to freely follow their own desire.
This precept could be contrasted with a sort of socialist POV, wherein there is no "original sin", and human nature is defined as a tendency to form groups which work together towards a common goal, thereby acheiving things which individual humans cannot accomplish on their own (canonical example of taking down a mastadon to feed a tribe).
In this last example, the "capitalism" we see in the US currently is not capitalism at all, but a gross perversion of the concept of net gain from a set of behaviours by a group.
I'm not addressing whether or not there is a FAULT - someone to BLAME - but in this socialist scenario there is almost certainly some group of emotionally and socially sick individuals who would be to blame - although as you point out, the set "Victims" is quite broad.
I think you're jumping over a few steps in a logial process by going directly to that last - that God is the only one who meets the requisites 1 & 2, but I don't agree that 1) is necesarily requisite, anyway. Subversion and conspiracy as means of rule or control of a population do not de facto require authority. In fact, I think it could be argued that authority would be a disadvantage in situations where anonymity and secrecy are paramount. In short, you've dismissed the idea that could be truly Evil forces at work - Masters of Deception and Lies - so your introduction of God here becomes completely disingenous - if God, then Satan. You've detracted from your own point.
Requisite 2 - knowledge of right and wrong - is not truly requisite, either. Much Evil is done by those who really believe they are doing the right thing. You ignore the possibility that the consipitors - the Evil forces - are sociopathic - sick, in a word - which trivially explains why "know better" is not a requisite for such individuals to exist.
This last is really interesting. You basically equate capitalism turned fascist with "freedom", then claim that the cost of capitalism is to destroy the consumer. I cannot agree.
I submit for your consideration a couple points that - while I haven't found convincing arguments for them, I have been considering:
A. Capitalism != Freedom. There is no dependency between Capitalism and (presonal) Freedom. They may co-exist (they are not mutually exlusive), but either can exist without the other.
B. Socialism and Freedom are not mutually exclusive.
I'm open to critique of either of those, since - as I say - I haven't really fixed on a truth value for either.
Can't speak to the RNC actions, but it's been pretty well established that Dubya was never elected President of the United States - he was appointed by the Supreme Court. First explicitly in 2000, then tacitly in 2004 when the Court declined to consider the election fraud suits brought by various parties (notably Citizens of Ohio). In short, under the Constitution of the United States of America the man is not the president - in fact, as best I've been able to determine, there is no acting President.
No, but you (and others) may be forgiven, I think, for not wanting to carry the logic through to the obvious conclusions. The Reality is ... disturbing ... to say the least - it could reasonably be called "unthinkable" by a sane individual.
Well, aside from the obvious fact that since the neo-con coup the network media hasn't covered anything except talking-dubya-points, the reason you haven't noticed this tidbit of legistlation (which apparently started back in Feburary) is because "liberal media" has painted it as an immagration issue - that is: the only people targeted by this legislation according to the to PTB and their media cheerleaders were illegal aliens - I heard it debated on Faux News as an immagration issue a least a month ago. I would have to say either a) you haven't been paying attention, or b) you are foolish enough to a ctually believe the that the motives these pseudo-news agencies put forward are the actual intent of the neo-con coup. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course...
Here is a list of articles about this legislation (trivially found using Google) from some touchy feely immagration rights outfit that no one will pay any attention to.
[ -- copied & pasted -- ]
The REAL ID Act in the Media
patriots wear black
Geez. How soon we forget. An entire page of commentary and no one has mentioned it yet, but that is the Microsoft strategy.
Furthermore, there is no reason at all to believe that just because M$ says they bought VPC to compete with VMware that it is true. In fact, given Micro$history there's every reason not to believe it.
Anybody got a pool on when we see the first Linux patch from M$ - the one that will let Linux run on VPC? Remember Java - they didn't "break it", they just "extended" it.
And as for NT 4.0 support ... Phfft. They don't have any interest in supporting those kinds of antiques unless they're getting more $$ for it than they do for hacking together another OS-upgrade-support kludge.
I predict VPC support from M$ will be very short-lived; it's a near term wedge they can use to deceive a small fraction of a small market into spending some money with M$, yes, but the real goal has to be exactly what the kind of stunt they pulled with Java. Copy it until they can't get away with it - create proprietary extensions, then produce a clone with a different naming scheme, sanitized binaries, and no traceable legal relation to the original product. Once they have that VPC will disapear, support will dry up, and anyone gullible enough to have bought it will be told to "upgrade".
I'll say it again, Bill: the only thing you can do that stands a chance of keeping Microsoft in the software game long term is to release a Linux distro. Of course, you'll probably have to hire some developers, but from what I hear you won't have to pay US wages... Good Luck, and God Bless.
Yeah, and besides, these WiFi hotspots only allow access to sites located within Texas.
If you want the US Constitution to apply in Texas, it would probably be a good idea to get Texas to vote to join the Union, first, anyway...
This is one of the most insightful statements I've ever seen or heard as part of the Linux vs. Windoze debate. The whole post goes straight to the heart of the problems, but your characterization of the issues as political got passed over by most of the reponses that I saw, and I think it deserves highlighting.
The fact is, the problems with Windoze and M$ in general have moved pretty definitively from the technical realm to the political realm - at least from my POV - and it is this trend that will ultimately lead people to explore alternatives.
And I do see it as "leading" and "exploration" - the move to Open Source Software - like most alterations of personal philosphical and political ideals does not generally result from direct external influence - and especially not from argument - such personal growth is generally internally motivated, in my experience. The individual finds that they are not satisfied with what is, they get glimmer of what could be, and they follow it.
From that POV, the whole idea of trying to "convert" someone to using Open Source in general or Linux in particular is just silly. It can't be done, and sure as hell can't be done by ranting about how much Winblows sux0r.
The only thing that can practically be done to further acceptance of Open Source (again imo) is to keep the idea alive as an alternative - people who are already sick of M$ shennanigans don't need converting, they just need an alternative, and will readily adopt one when it presents itself.
Really good points about use and abuse of language for reasons of psychological manipulation of populations, too, btw. Thanks.
Whereas bandwidth and internet access should be utilitarian - that is: like potable water, access to the global information networks should be something that is a) trivially accessible in a civilized society, and b) raises the quality of life for everyone who has access to it.
The telco approach is to retain access to the internet - and wifi acccess in particular - as a commodity.
It's about time somebody at the FCC started doing their job. It'll be interesting to see how successful this particular David is at taking on the Goliath of the combined Bells, cable companies, ISPs, and (probably) the entertainment industry (guessing that e.g. Time-Warner et al is backing or will be backing the telcos in this particular power grab).
... set up wifi, but whether or not we should be allowed to if we want to.
If the telcos have their way, this (and every other) discussion about whether or not govt should provide bandwidth in the same way they provide sewage systems and potable water in many areas will be moot - and quite frankly, the entire discussion of whether or not govt should provide these types of services is nothing more than a distraction from the point that certain powerful corporations are working very hard to take the decision out of public hands.
I personnally don't care to even give the telcos the chance to make this kind of decision unilaterally. And how much are they paying the state and local govts to castrate themselves (and thereby the public) in this way? The telcos are almost certainly breaking a whole raft of laws just to push this kind of crap legislation...
How's about: Coca-cola(tm) pushes legislation to prevent municipalities from selling potable water because municiple sales hurt sales of Dasani? It would make about as much sense.
Does no one remember the FEC threat against the owner of ... what was it, gwbush.com ? ... circa 1999? I haven't seen it mentioned here, but maybe I just missed it...
You remember: It was the FEC action that was the follow-on to the aspiring dictator's attempts to shut down the parody site?
Iirc, the sound byte was something like "There's gotta be some limits to freedom." I've got the MP3 of it around here somewhere.
When Dubya's slightly premature edict didn't take hold quite as effectively as he demanded (the site stayed up and his lawsuit was tossed out), then suddenly and mysteriously the FEC stepped in and "fined" the owner of the domain something like $25,000...
Anyone who didn't see which way the 2000 "election" was going to fall at that time was just deluding themselves.
Anyone who remembers shouldn't be surprised to see the FEC moving again on behalf of the Regime to consolidate Power.
Wow. The courts first threw Dubya's lawsuit out, concluding (apparently) that Speech was protected - even if the subject of that Speech was a fortunate son who wannabe da prez. Amazing how things can change in 4 or 5 years, isn't it?
This latest from the FEC is just one more stone in the wall of Suppression of Dissent that the Regime has been building since Day One.
And does anyone recall Doonesbury during the reign of Bush I?
Leo, I somehow found myself following a chain (backwards) of your postings thru this thread in response to various other - more slashdotesque - posts, and I get the impression you consider yourself authoritative on some of these topics. You may be, I can't know, but I am going to have to take mild exception to some of your points, and maybe try to get you to clarify a bit..
I would have prefered the word "capable" as opposed to "smart" in a paragraph like the one you wrote, there. A person can balance a check book without being particularly smart. Likewise cooking, vehicle upkeep, conversation, and so on.
Use of "smart" implies to me something a bit more than basically mundane day to capabilities, which - in my view - cover pretty much everything you listed except maybe juggling. Juggling could be considered a sort of mundane activity if one is a clown, I suppose ... Nevertheless, I don't agree that "all smart people should be able to juggle", since I am smart, and I don't juggle. I would argue there that you are presupposing the smart person has the use of their hands - unless you're talking about some less mundane sort of juggling, perhaps with the feet.
Regardless, it makes no more sense to say "a smart person should be able to juggle" than to say "a smart person must be able to have hands", which I do not consider a particularly useful or valid statement in this context. A small point, perhaps, but I think it supports the larger point of the examples being of capability rather than intelligence.
Furthermore, I think your closing paragraph of this post
Represents a pretty narrow view, as well. You support your premise there with
I submit that the only reason you think you can get away with that bit is because you use the example of "programming a computer" - in an audience that you apparently feel is rife with self-indulgant, wet-behind-the ears techno geeks who wanna be high-school dropouts.
Replace the "programming a computer" with "playing the violin" and you might get the idea of what I'm talking about.
In short, I think it might be helpful if you spent some (more) posting time on what the differences between "school" and "education" are - what the difference between "smart" and "educated" is (I see you addressed that below, but I found that post likewise un-satisfying and will probably respond to it directly).
Overall it sounds to me like you might have something worth saying, but it's not getting entirely through, here. And it definitely sounds like you're a bit hostile to your audience here - or if not overtly hostile, at least a bit worried that what you percieve as a general "dislike" for "school" might stand a chance of winning a place in some larger forum.
I think "disillusionment" probably describes most recent grads' general view of school - even more than "dislike".
I also think you should consider that - while some of your points address accurately the benefits of an idealized educational system - that system does not now exist in US society, at least. The cold fact is that the public school system in the US is at the very least badly broken. Whether or not that breakage is terminal remains to be seen, but certainly there are no pat answers. There are a number of cultures that have been dealing with this same problem quite a bit longer than the US has, and - in the case of UK, at least - many of the problems still exist, and have n
Your faith in your grade-school civics teacher is so laughably naive that I wouln't bother to respond to it except that you are so obviously the tool of some interest to whose ongoing benefit it is that the public continue to believe The Lie.
You're votes count if the Tool selected by the Corporations to "win" the elections *sez* that your votes count.
Get used to it.
This child-like Faith in the System that you exhibit is absolutely what makes you and others like you the biggest part of the problem in the US today. You really should drop back and read some of the writings of the Founders before you try to decieve the broader public who may not have the kinds of ... entanglements ... that so obviously have trapped you in in a sinking ship - so to speak.
Hey, what's all this about using gravity waves to see things and detect stuff? I thought gravity waves were supposed to be a propulsion system. All we need is an emitter and a lattice to get them into a laminar, coherent, directed pattern, right?
Is it really more mass, or is it more dense .... ?
Hrm - what exactly is the relationship of mass to density? If mass is Energy, then, mass is dependant on any matter, so gravity is caused by energy density? Or energy density in a cyclic (spin) vector? That's the gravity wave?
Has relativity been proved?
Okay, there may be some people that haven't jumped ship yet, but I stand by the point that anyone with any real engineering skill or the ability to take a broad view of the business and marketting side has been effectively neutered.
I don't really believe there's anyone there doing actual engineering (if there is, the results aren't getting out). and their marketting is just lame. Clearly they don't understand eitehr what they're selling, who their customers are, what their customers want, or where the market is going.
"Brute force" pretty much describes their approach to everything, it looks like to me, which - applied across the lifespan of the company as it has been with M$ - doesn't imply any particular expertise, or even intelligence. [note that I'm speaking of the corporation Microsoft, and not about the individual employees - I'm sure every one of those 15,000 "not employees of Microsoft" that draw their rupees from Microsoft was hand-picked]
As I mentinoed above, I don't think their marketting people are very effective, either. This could be a long discussion, and I should probably invoice them for an analysis, but ... well, I'll just agree with you about accounting - I think it's all about counting the beans.
Something else to keep in mind in this respect is that M$ is no longer really a software company. Iirc, they were investing heavily in telecoms firms during the runup to the dot.com crash, to the point where the securities they own in telecoms (in the US and overseas) probably are worth more than the software side of their business - yet the securities don't amount to "ownership" in any one of the telecoms firms. I find this just fascinating, myself; Microsoft has orphaned the software side of the business in favuor of being an investments company specialzing in communications companies, but hasn't told anyone - or at least, not "out loud".
So. How were the Global Crossing and Worldcomm events related to Gate's investments in the telecomm sector? Who is in a position to find out?
No one seems very interested in the implications of this, as best I can tell, but I think implications for e.g. the future of Windows, are just fascinating.
I actually think this is the "root of all evil" at Microsoft. Customers, like everyone else, are people, and will behave in ways consistent with the way you treat them. A lesson not learned by Microsoft and a number of the mega-corps M$ is now investing in - the ones adopting the so-called "Microsoft Business Model". I will be surprised if there is not a further crash in the tech sector in the near future as the companies that bought in to Microsoft's world view go down like dominos. I think that "buy in" was already a big part of the set-up for the first ".com bubble" ...
Nice point. I have often imagined a micro-billing system that will back-charge Micorsoft the cost of 3500 employees sitting idle while their PCs reboot 4 or 5 times a day due to buggy software and spend hours recreating lost d
Y'kno, this points up one of the biggest problems - in my experience - that exists with the attempts made by Microsoft advocates to discredit Linux [security|usability|cost|performance|whatever]. That flaw is: They don't know what Linux is.
Seriously. They don't know the difference between a kernel and a distribution. I had a senior "software strategist" Microsoft try to tell me (in casual conversation) with a straight face that Windows was more robust than Linux, faster than Linux, and less secure than Linux.
When I challenged him on this the first words out of his mouth were "Red Hat" followed closely by a trivial diss of the KDE desktop environment. He couldn't grasp what I was talking about when I told him that I use Linux but don't use either Red Hat or KDE - tried to tell me that I didn't use Linux, even, and guessed that "[my] version of Linux" didn't have a GUI.
He didn't know what GNU was, he had no familiarity with the concept of a "kernel", no realization that e.g. KDE != Linux (decoupling of the user interface is taught as a "Good Programming Practice", eh?) - in short he just made a fool of himself on the whole topic, demonstrating only that he was completely clueless.
When I pointed out to him that Microsoft could save itself by creating their own distribution of Linux and making it "the best" it took him about 2 minutes of sputtering befuddlement before I realized that Microsoft probably doesn't own the software expertise to put together even a single application package for and existing GNU/Linux distro - let alone put out their own distro with e.g. an office applications suite that could compete with OpenOffice.
That is why I no longer consider Microsoft a credible threat to the ultimate market dominance of GNU and Linux: Microsoft owns neither the vision nor the skillz to save itself.
This is based not only on this single chance encounter with a Microsoftie, but on numerous conversations with M$ "advocates" and observation of the overall lack of quality of Microsoft products.
It appear to me that M$ will just keep hammering the brute for algoritm of FUD and marketting dollars even as the market throws shovelfuls of dirt onto their coffin.
Face it Bill: The market is saturated. Microsoft's business model is not only dead, it's beginning to smell bad. Of course, given that you've made yours, there's no real reason to salvage the company, is there....
Does this mean that Microsoft is finally ready to release that raft of "Linux viruses" that they have been working on for the last five years?
I hear they've had thousand script kiddies on the payroll, racing to produce the "Linux-killer" virus ever since Red Hat incorporated...
First of all, I want to thank you for supporting my point so completely.
Ah. So it was just the one name, then... I should have known that - as you point out - you don't know enough about Dubya to even understand the connection, anyway... You're a Gatesian.
Huh. I guess that just went right over my head - *whoosh* - just like the irony of you responding to me apparently got by you... Just to be clear on this, I'm insulting you personally, not the rest of the readers.
Oh, I can't agree with that. Dubya and Charming Billy are very similar - they both want to control the world and they both like the idea of Microsoft not getting sentenced for the crimes of which they have been convicted. You do remember that campaign promise wrung out of Dubya, doncha - Charming Billy should remember it, since he's indebted to Dubya, now, on account of Dubya making good on that particular promise. Does the name "Ralph Reed" ring a bell? (that's a clue, in case you didn't recognize it as it bit you on the ass)
Uhhhmmmm.... no?
How could he not? He's the leader of the free world, and he let it happen on his watch. Sounds reasonable to me.
Well, at least he didn't burden me with a detailed account of his lunch hour. Offhand I'd say his post was basically one more relevant to, say, Reality that any of the drivel you're spouting.
.... so now you can say you've been trolled.
Funny how you can't use these names at all on /. anymore without someone jumping in to make sure your comment is depracted. "Troll" ? Hey, I think there's probably quite a few people who share this general feeling - not trying to prove blame, or anything - just generalized disconent without a target.
I haven't heard anyone blaming e.g. Bill Clinton or Martha Steward for the .com crash, for instance ... Of course, having brought this up here, I probably will, now.
"The dot.com crash was caused market maniplations by Osama bin Ladin and the Saudi Royals at the behest of Dick Cheney in order to soften up the amerikan public for 9/11 - millions of people laid off, fortunes shattered, lifestyles irretreviably lost - by the time lives were lost, the nation was already chronically depressed. 9/11 led to hopelessness and apathy, which in turn made the public malleable, easy made a tool of Cheney's drive for Empire..." ... or so they think in 2027 ...
As you say - which points up yet another possiblility:
Does the complainant (the BT employee who reported the incident) know the individual that was arrested?
Maybe sysadmin had some grudge against the user and used the fact that the user is not using "approved" software/hardware in order to - what, avoid paying off a wager? Providing support for a non-approved OS/browser? Revenge for getting beaten in a game or dissed in a net post? Could be a social vendatta, or a personal grudge. A sysadmin trying to protect his job. Lots of possiblities there... had teh guy arrested and gotten his equipment confiscated for some reason that had nothing to do with what the guy was doing or what s/w he was using ... I hope the British cops have sufficient technical expertise that they don't have to depend solely on BT's "expert" to make a case - or not, as the case maybe.
There were some articles about Britians efforts to acquire and use IT expertise within the law enforcement community. That expertise should definitely be applied in a case like this.
Well, I am, but that's just the way I am...
Well, whether or not those problems were "minor" is - I suppose - a matter of whether or not you are one of the dis-enfranchised who is being mocked as a "conspiracy nut" from the floor of the US Senate. Obviously the Right didn't think the problems were minor or they wouldn't work so hard to discredit the whistle-blowers and suppress any dissent. (You'll probably see them in action right here on /. once this post goes up). The did, however, put out that exact phrasing ("minor problems") in the official propaganda. Currently persons who express the view that there may have been actual, systemic problems are dismissed as "mentally ill", "hysterical", "conspiracy nuts", etc - echoing the same logic the Soviets used to fill the work camps in Siberia, I believe, but again, maybe that's just me...
Vote fraud took place in US elections (state and federal) in 2000, 2002, and 2004. Beyond that I can't say. The pattern of disenfranchisement of minorities has a history going back to the beginning - 2000 and 2004 are just blatant examples which the "winners" (the perpetrators of the fraud, obviously) refuse to acknowledge for fear they can't win in a fair and open vote. Very third world, both conceptually and in tactical implementation. There is no sign of a strategic, change, though, since no one has successfully organized a challenge, yet.
In short, the US has become a "one party democracy" very like the USSR was reported (in the US) to have been.
Yes. I can appreciate that. Imagine the sentiment within the US - among the actual citizens, that is - those who still believe in the Constitution. I can only hope that when the time comes for the Regime to come down the "friends and allies" of the US that the Regime will call upon to help "put down revolt" will understand the differnce between what they're hearing from the seats of Power and the beliefs and intentions of actual American Citizens who still believe in and live by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
From that POV, the DC government does not even remotely represent the broad population of the US or any of their interests. What DC represents is a ruling cabal of proabably 3% to 5% of the population.
There is an additional group of citizens - the very poor, mostly fundamentalist Christian, and mostly uneducated - in areas like the deep south - who believe that the Regime is Good and Just, but that is simply because they are largely uninformed. If and when they find out what's going on, I think most of them will come around and back the Constitution. Educating those people concerning the true nature of what they are voicing support for is the real challenge facing those who favour Regime Change in the US, and it is not clear yet that it is even possible in the face of massive, onging media propaganda in support of the regime.
There is no remaining Left-wing media in the US, as far as I can tell. Only Right and Right-center. There is some remaining "Liberal" presence left on the Internet, but I expect that, too, will fade over the 4 years. Already it is completely discounted within the US b