I do not necessarily think it was 'an attack' on the US, even if it was, the information he released was truth, nothing more. I do not believe they can stop the 'site' at this point, if somehow they did, there is several now to take their place. I think it is a good thing.
Whether it's the truth or not doesn't really matter. Most of what is being release was said or written in strict confidence between sets of people who understood only a limited amount of people would know about it. Think about it this way, suppose the cops wiretapped your phone suspecting you were dealing drugs with known terrorists. All they get is you talking about how your partner looked fat in the outfit they wore last night, and how you think one of your best friends have a drinking problem and he's becoming an ass. Nothing terribly bad, and all true from your perspective. Now lets say that a cop knew he was going to get fired for whatever outside reason and dumped all these tapes of you talking privately to certain people in confidence along side the road on his way to an interview for a new job. Now suppose I found them and posted them all on the interweb. Does the fact that they are all true make that right? Does it make it permissive? I mean ignore the fact that the cop acted illegally, I came buy them legally, and haven't broken a law (actually I have but pretend I haven't) and posted them for everyone, including your partner and friend with the drinking problem to hear and see. Are we good now? Well, what makes the difference if we are not? You might say "well, those were your communications, not the government", but it's the government who kept recorded them and kept them, shouldn't I be able to disseminate government information even when the communications help were regarded as confidential at the time?
We are not talking about private citizens, we talking Federal employees who are being paid and acting on our behalf, that directly effects every person in this country and many more around the world. The data here wasn't unknowingly tapped, they knew records were kept and many government officials (at least higher end ones) could read it.
The scenario you create here involves private citizens whos actions, have no effect on the rest of the world, nor are they paid or acting on the public's interest, who have an expatiation of privacy, etc. These are two total separate issues.
If this same cop in your scenario found out.. I was drinking on the job, in which peoples lives were actually in danger and he 'anonymously' reported it to my work, I think it would be the morally right thing to do. If I found out the cops did that, I hope I would have enough reason in myself to understand why he did it and accept it was the right thing to do.
Your heart is in the right place, but it seems you fell for a fallacy here, and don't seem to have a good understanding of what the laws, rights, and powers are that are relevant to your arguments. Namely, the Constitution. The federal government has no right to privacy. Why? It's not in the constitution. The federal government only has the powers enumerated in the Constitution. And whatever federal powers are not enumerated in the Constitution are given back to the states and to the people (see 10th amendment). So, if you publish wiretaps on my phone conversations you'll be subject to whatever laws protect me and my communications from wiretapping, which likely even vary from state to state. No connection to what happened with the leaked wires, since the federal government is not a person, it is an entity specifically defined in the Constitution, and which has certain powers. Now, if you are a federal employee and release classified info, you are liable to whatever consequences stem from the fact that you applied for a clearance by, under an oath, stating you'd protect that info. You betrayed that oath. Finally, if you release this secret info to me, and I am not a federal employ
Those are good questions, and I really don't have the answers. From TSA's website (http://www.tsa.gov/who_we_are/what_is_tsa.shtm):
"We are the Transportation Security Administration, formed immediately following the tragedies of Sept. 11. Our agency is a component of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems.
"With our state, local and regional partners, we oversee security for the highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, ports and the 450 U.S. airports. We employ approximately 50,000 people from Alaska to Puerto Rico to ensure your travels - by plane, train, automobile or ferry â" are safe and secure."
They are definitely acting on behalf of the federal government (as part of the DHS). I am not sure what recourse you'd have if they'd denied you access to air travel.
Whether they are trained or not in constitutional issues, that is irrelevant. It's up to you to be, as a free citizen, as you put it.
Walking out of any security related situation without permission is generally a bad idea (IMHO). Always ask permission ("Am I free to go?"). You can always sue later to attempt to redress an illegal detention.
Those rights refer to detention by the police. If you act evasive like that with the TSA then although you would not be arrested, you may not be allowed to board your flight.
That would be a scary world. Fortunately, your constitutional rights do protect you from the government in general or from any of its agents.
Being detained without a well-articulated reasonable suspicion (and frankly, suspicion of the crimes you listed simply because you're carrying some sort of manuscript is unlikely to be recognized reasonable) would make TSA liable to a lawsuit.
A case being brought to court on any of this would only serve to try to eliminate whatever laws are in the federal books that allows the TSA agents to even consider acting in the manner they did. Which would be a net positive.
The main point here is, a law may be passed that allows a government agency to act in a way that blatantly disregards the US Constitution, but the only ways that I am aware of to correct such laws are to either challenge them in court (by being prosecuted for breaking it) or to get the legislature to eliminate such laws from the books. The latter is not very common, the prior is not very convenient for the brave bastard that actually does the challenging. Luckily, there are still some brave bastards around.
I don't really see where his 1st or 5th amendment rights would come up.
I suppose he could try to say they took his stuff away, but he probably consented to that.
His 1st A. rights would have come into play if he had been prosecuted (essentially for having written a script and tried to travel with it). His 5th A. rights is what he should have made use of, and refuse an explanation to the TSA agents. That would have forced them to either let him go (the appropriate thing to do here) or to put him under arrest under some sort of charges, which brings be to my original point, that bringing such a case to court could actually have had some impact.
Negatory. If I come to your property I don't have to agree with anything. On the other hand, you are free to ask me to leave. If I refused, I'd be trespassing, and proper action could be taken by you.
Regarding air plane traveling, you give up your 4th amendment rights ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, etc."). He went out of his way to give up his 5th amendment rights, which no one is expected to do.
"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation." Mr. Sable's ignorance or willful abdication of his 5th amendment rights caused him to perhaps waste a great opportunity to challenge TSA policies on search of personal belongings. Next time, maybe a better approach would be (disclaimer, IANAL): "Am I being detained?" followed by "I'd like you to tell me what laws you are accusing me of breaking," or "I won't make any statements until I have spoken to a lawyer," as the case may be. If Mr. Sable had actually been prosecuted simply for having exercised his 1st amendment rights, his case would have had a much more significant impact in our fear-prone society, causing perhaps some much needed "clarification" of what the federal government can/cannot do "for our own good" to "protect us from the evil terrorists." Perhaps even a re-evaluation of TSA policies, or at least application of punishment to over-zealous agents.
"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble." You're not in trouble just because a government employee says so (or looks at you funny). We do have a bill of rights, you know.
From TFA: "In the end, I feel my privacy is a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium." No one of any importance was "educated." No policy is likely to be changed as a result of this incident; law-abiding citizens are still going to be stopped in airports for carrying 'strange' books, scripts, magazines, etc. All this shows is that TSA agents can act in an arbitrary manner with repercussions.
Ticket anyone driving on the fast lane that is not overtaking.
Slow drivers on the fast lane are the problem, as a bunch of people here have pointed out (only to be moderated as trolls -- get a clue mods). The fast lane is for overtaking traffic. You have no bussiness being there if you're driving slower or the same speed as the cars on the other lanes.
Road rage episodes, while not excusable, usually happen out of frustration of this special type of slow drivers. Don't know what their mindset is, I can only guess that they have some sort of selfrighteousness complex that allows them to think that, if they believe they are driving correctly they're granted the right to interfere with others that in their view are driving incorrectly.
Remove slow drivers on the fast lane and you'll not only make roads safer but improve traffic as well.
IMO, there are a few problems with your assessment here.
First of all, a factual error: Mandatory voting as implemented in Brazil does not affect your freedom of expression. Even with electronic voting, the voter has the option of anulling their vote, by selecting the "Annul Vote" option. So, if you refuse to vote for any of the candidates, you still have that option. That clearly indicates a protest vote. The one thing the electronic voting system did away with was the possbility of mistakenly annulling your vote (see Florida elections, 2000).
Second, I disagree that not being forced by law to vote generates better informed voters, necessarily. Again, using GWB as a case study, it seems to me that a lot of his voters were lured by vague things like "Values", or "Tough on Terror". I don't have especific references to that last statement, but it is the impression I have from following political news for the last few years. It seems to me that ellective voting tends to favor well-organized minorities, which simply by voting as one block may outnumber the votes on certain issues, even if the majority of Citizens have a different view on said issues. E.g.: A president is elected in singnificant part based on his positions on issues like Stem Cell Research and Abortion, while pollsshow that the majority of Americans disagrees with him.
Voting as a legal duty solves the issue above since most people are likely to have an opinion on most things, so vote counts are more likely to reflect the collective mind of the Citizens. And even if they don't have an opinion, they can still abstain by actively annulling their vote. The amount of annulled votes is a valuable statistic that reflects the fraction of the population that thinks the system has failed them. No such assessment can be made from the fraction of the Citizens that just didn't feel like voting that day.
In summary, we disagree on this: the right not to vote because you can't be bothered to do it doesn't mean much to me. But the right to actively abstain from voting by indicating so on a ballot, that to me is as important as voting.
Unlike what you may think based on the title alone, The Economist is a NEWS magazine. It's a MOST WELL REGARDED weekly news magazine. Yeah, it sure does have one heck of a broad audience. Get a clue, please.
And sure enough, I just have the latest issue here in front of me (Aug 19), and they have indeed published an ad (first ad after the contents, must have been expensive). That doesn't mean they're respectable, only that they have the money to publish an ad.
Well, I agree that it is hard to draw the line on what is considered an upgrade. But I'm relating my own decision process here: I have a 4 years old Sony Vega (250 lbs of glass), and I have a three years old computer. Faced with the option of getting a new machine or an xbox, I went with the xbox. I guess if you have to buy the TV as well your decision could go a different way.
Anyway, this whole thread is off topic to begin with...
Secondly, comparing the cost of my PC to the cost of an XBOX360 is ludicrous.
No it isn't. We're talking about games here. For any other use, that PC you had 3-5 years ago would do (unless you're running scientific/academic apps on your home pc).
To play newer games on a PC at a quality equivalent to what you get on the xbox, you need a minimum set of requirements. Right now I dare say those requirements will cost you about three times more than an xbox.
Someone suggested you'd need to include the HD TV set in the xbox price. I argue you don't. It's assumed you already have a TV (which by itself can't run games), the same way it is assumed you already have a 3-5 years old PC (that won't run the new games).
Why bother with that hassle when the numbers of people donwloading and actually USING the linux version are so small compared with that of windows?
That would be true if they were never going to port it to other platforms. Given that they did port it, it seems worse to have to change infrastructure (e.g., from MS stuff to SDL) than to have used SDL/OpenAL to begin with.
Finish reading the article, he mentions that at the end. Something to the effect that SUVs are taxed differently because they're considered trucks, i.e., above 3 tons; so SUV owners themselves use that fact to get the tax breaks. If so, then they should deal with the traffic limitations of owning a truck. He argues you shouldn't be able to have it both ways.
According to the post, he "[accused] the company of a 'drug-dealer practice", which is not an anology.
Defamation is a civil matter, so in this case the burden of proof is on the brazilian engineer (he has to prove MS is behaving as a drug-dealer, whatever that means), or he'll be found guilty of defamation.
Or something like that, IANAL...
BTW, I'm pretty sure that works the same way in the US. Isn't that true?
pricing, program availablity, hardware support, networking support...
I don't think pricing was a big issue here. Would you care to refresh my memory on the OS/2 vs. Win95 price points?
Program availability and hardware support are indeed factors. And again, if IBM had put more marketing effort into OS/2, they wouldn't have been. Again, technically, OS/2 was the best solution.
Network support? I don't think that was a problem at all. What network support did Win95 have that OS/2 didn't? Novell supported it, and that was pretty much the thing at the time.
OS/2 happened to be the best desktop solution at the time: Win 3.11 was nowhere near it; And then Win 95 came, still an inferior solution. If anybody got fired for recommending it, it was because it didn't survive. And that was IBM's fault, for not marketing it properly.
I don't think longhorn will have the same fate. Do you?
I'm talking about CORPORATE IT MANAGERS. Of the companies we deal with most have it departments full of 'point and click' it personel. These people might have an MSCE to their name.. but most of their knowledge comes from reading 'PcPlus'. They simply do not understand computers.. but they do so more than the rest of the company, and in the land of the blind..
It's a sort of a vicious cicle:
Corporations are forgiving to incompetence if it's disguised as "low risk solutions". In other words (I'm quoting a decision maker here where I work, he's in the IT department on a Fortune 500 company): "You'll never get fired for buying MS." Longhorn will come and will be adopted in my workplace. Even if it causes a catastrophic failure, no one would be fired. "It wasn't anyone's fault, it's those pesky worms and hackers. Nothing we can do about it. Just apply the next SP."
Ah, but if a strong headed person comes, makes some objective decisions that cause changes, and there's any problem, that person will feel the heat, the corporation will be much less forgiving.
The reason for this nonsensical situation is probably known to everyone here. Management, even though it arguably accounts for very little in terms of revenue generation, is still considered the most important part of a company. Techs and geeks tend to care little about management, no chalenge involved, but a lot of PowerPoint slides, buzzwords and catch frases. Who would opt for getting an MBA instead of an MEE or MS? Mostly non-technically inclinded people. But an MBA is a HUGE advantage if you want to make manager.
And to make things even worse, MBAs feel threatened by techs. If challenged, they'll go out of their to prove they're right and techs are wrong, handwaving about "COTs" and "business sense", etc. That completes the circle. And if a tech makes management, he/she will be antagonised at every change they want to effect.
For the record, I know what COT means, but it's often used with little basis on fact.
They'll probably get some sort of deal, novell/suse should be all too willing to help them out. And if not, remember that, now that yast has been released under a more friendly license, they only have to pay for one copy of suse (if they want to) and they can put it in as many machines as they want...
Now, they're probably getting support also, and that has to cost some. But if it's like Dell's workstations with RH, you get the linux support from novell directly, and just for a few months. Than you pay novell yourself if you need more.
The whole point of watermark technology is to provide proof of origin or ownership, by providing a mark that is very hard to remove. This tech is valued on that sole premise: if I find my watermark on something, I can prove it's mine.
If someone can remove your watermark technology, to sue them (under the DMCA or whatever) is to admit and certify that your own technology is crap.
Not to mention the possibility that the watermark wasn't there to begin with...
> It turns out that in the testing that they did, > the drivers using the HUD to watch TV while > driving performed BETTER than they did when not > watching.
Those were not male drivers, I asure you;-)
Seriously, I find it very hard to believe that a normal person would be able to pay attention to a show projected on their windshield, and still be fully aware to what is happening outside. And frankly, how could they possibly be able to test that properly?
Now I do believe that a hud would be great if it would project intrument info (speed, rpm, even navigation) to the windshield. That would be very helpful indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether it's the truth or not doesn't really matter. Most of what is being release was said or written in strict confidence between sets of people who understood only a limited amount of people would know about it. Think about it this way, suppose the cops wiretapped your phone suspecting you were dealing drugs with known terrorists. All they get is you talking about how your partner looked fat in the outfit they wore last night, and how you think one of your best friends have a drinking problem and he's becoming an ass. Nothing terribly bad, and all true from your perspective. Now lets say that a cop knew he was going to get fired for whatever outside reason and dumped all these tapes of you talking privately to certain people in confidence along side the road on his way to an interview for a new job. Now suppose I found them and posted them all on the interweb. Does the fact that they are all true make that right? Does it make it permissive? I mean ignore the fact that the cop acted illegally, I came buy them legally, and haven't broken a law (actually I have but pretend I haven't) and posted them for everyone, including your partner and friend with the drinking problem to hear and see. Are we good now? Well, what makes the difference if we are not? You might say "well, those were your communications, not the government", but it's the government who kept recorded them and kept them, shouldn't I be able to disseminate government information even when the communications help were regarded as confidential at the time?
We are not talking about private citizens, we talking Federal employees who are being paid and acting on our behalf, that directly effects every person in this country and many more around the world. The data here wasn't unknowingly tapped, they knew records were kept and many government officials (at least higher end ones) could read it.
The scenario you create here involves private citizens whos actions, have no effect on the rest of the world, nor are they paid or acting on the public's interest, who have an expatiation of privacy, etc. These are two total separate issues.
If this same cop in your scenario found out.. I was drinking on the job, in which peoples lives were actually in danger and he 'anonymously' reported it to my work, I think it would be the morally right thing to do. If I found out the cops did that, I hope I would have enough reason in myself to understand why he did it and accept it was the right thing to do.
Your heart is in the right place, but it seems you fell for a fallacy here, and don't seem to have a good understanding of what the laws, rights, and powers are that are relevant to your arguments. Namely, the Constitution. The federal government has no right to privacy. Why? It's not in the constitution. The federal government only has the powers enumerated in the Constitution. And whatever federal powers are not enumerated in the Constitution are given back to the states and to the people (see 10th amendment). So, if you publish wiretaps on my phone conversations you'll be subject to whatever laws protect me and my communications from wiretapping, which likely even vary from state to state. No connection to what happened with the leaked wires, since the federal government is not a person, it is an entity specifically defined in the Constitution, and which has certain powers. Now, if you are a federal employee and release classified info, you are liable to whatever consequences stem from the fact that you applied for a clearance by, under an oath, stating you'd protect that info. You betrayed that oath. Finally, if you release this secret info to me, and I am not a federal employ
Those are good questions, and I really don't have the answers. From TSA's website (http://www.tsa.gov/who_we_are/what_is_tsa.shtm):
"We are the Transportation Security Administration, formed immediately following the tragedies of Sept. 11. Our agency is a component of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems.
"With our state, local and regional partners, we oversee security for the highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, ports and the 450 U.S. airports. We employ approximately 50,000 people from Alaska to Puerto Rico to ensure your travels - by plane, train, automobile or ferry â" are safe and secure."
They are definitely acting on behalf of the federal government (as part of the DHS). I am not sure what recourse you'd have if they'd denied you access to air travel.
Whether they are trained or not in constitutional issues, that is irrelevant. It's up to you to be, as a free citizen, as you put it.
Walking out of any security related situation without permission is generally a bad idea (IMHO). Always ask permission ("Am I free to go?"). You can always sue later to attempt to redress an illegal detention.
Finally, you may want to look at some of these videos, and start your search from there:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646&hl=en
http://www.youtube.com/user/CheckpointUSA
Those rights refer to detention by the police. If you act evasive like that with the TSA then although you would not be arrested, you may not be allowed to board your flight.
That would be a scary world. Fortunately, your constitutional rights do protect you from the government in general or from any of its agents.
Being detained without a well-articulated reasonable suspicion (and frankly, suspicion of the crimes you listed simply because you're carrying some sort of manuscript is unlikely to be recognized reasonable) would make TSA liable to a lawsuit.
A case being brought to court on any of this would only serve to try to eliminate whatever laws are in the federal books that allows the TSA agents to even consider acting in the manner they did. Which would be a net positive.
The main point here is, a law may be passed that allows a government agency to act in a way that blatantly disregards the US Constitution, but the only ways that I am aware of to correct such laws are to either challenge them in court (by being prosecuted for breaking it) or to get the legislature to eliminate such laws from the books. The latter is not very common, the prior is not very convenient for the brave bastard that actually does the challenging. Luckily, there are still some brave bastards around.
I don't really see where his 1st or 5th amendment rights would come up.
I suppose he could try to say they took his stuff away, but he probably consented to that.
His 1st A. rights would have come into play if he had been prosecuted (essentially for having written a script and tried to travel with it). His 5th A. rights is what he should have made use of, and refuse an explanation to the TSA agents. That would have forced them to either let him go (the appropriate thing to do here) or to put him under arrest under some sort of charges, which brings be to my original point, that bringing such a case to court could actually have had some impact.
Negatory. If I come to your property I don't have to agree with anything. On the other hand, you are free to ask me to leave. If I refused, I'd be trespassing, and proper action could be taken by you.
Regarding air plane traveling, you give up your 4th amendment rights ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, etc."). He went out of his way to give up his 5th amendment rights, which no one is expected to do.
All this shows is that TSA agents can act in an arbitrary manner with repercussions.
That should have been "...manner WITHOUT repercussions."
The legal situation is that if you want to fly on a commercial plane, you consent to the search.
I believe you're right, which is why I didn't mention the 4th amendment, only the 5th (and 1st).
"I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation." Mr. Sable's ignorance or willful abdication of his 5th amendment rights caused him to perhaps waste a great opportunity to challenge TSA policies on search of personal belongings. Next time, maybe a better approach would be (disclaimer, IANAL): "Am I being detained?" followed by "I'd like you to tell me what laws you are accusing me of breaking," or "I won't make any statements until I have spoken to a lawyer," as the case may be. If Mr. Sable had actually been prosecuted simply for having exercised his 1st amendment rights, his case would have had a much more significant impact in our fear-prone society, causing perhaps some much needed "clarification" of what the federal government can/cannot do "for our own good" to "protect us from the evil terrorists." Perhaps even a re-evaluation of TSA policies, or at least application of punishment to over-zealous agents.
"The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble." You're not in trouble just because a government employee says so (or looks at you funny). We do have a bill of rights, you know.
From TFA: "In the end, I feel my privacy is a small price to pay for educating the government about the medium." No one of any importance was "educated." No policy is likely to be changed as a result of this incident; law-abiding citizens are still going to be stopped in airports for carrying 'strange' books, scripts, magazines, etc. All this shows is that TSA agents can act in an arbitrary manner with repercussions.
Ticket anyone driving on the fast lane that is not overtaking.
Slow drivers on the fast lane are the problem, as a bunch of people here have pointed out (only to be moderated as trolls -- get a clue mods). The fast lane is for overtaking traffic. You have no bussiness being there if you're driving slower or the same speed as the cars on the other lanes.
Road rage episodes, while not excusable, usually happen out of frustration of this special type of slow drivers. Don't know what their mindset is, I can only guess that they have some sort of selfrighteousness complex that allows them to think that, if they believe they are driving correctly they're granted the right to interfere with others that in their view are driving incorrectly.
Remove slow drivers on the fast lane and you'll not only make roads safer but improve traffic as well.
IMO, there are a few problems with your assessment here.
First of all, a factual error: Mandatory voting as implemented in Brazil does not affect your freedom of expression. Even with electronic voting, the voter has the option of anulling their vote, by selecting the "Annul Vote" option. So, if you refuse to vote for any of the candidates, you still have that option. That clearly indicates a protest vote. The one thing the electronic voting system did away with was the possbility of mistakenly annulling your vote (see Florida elections, 2000).
Second, I disagree that not being forced by law to vote generates better informed voters, necessarily. Again, using GWB as a case study, it seems to me that a lot of his voters were lured by vague things like "Values", or "Tough on Terror". I don't have especific references to that last statement, but it is the impression I have from following political news for the last few years. It seems to me that ellective voting tends to favor well-organized minorities, which simply by voting as one block may outnumber the votes on certain issues, even if the majority of Citizens have a different view on said issues. E.g.: A president is elected in singnificant part based on his positions on issues like Stem Cell Research and Abortion, while polls show that the majority of Americans disagrees with him.
Voting as a legal duty solves the issue above since most people are likely to have an opinion on most things, so vote counts are more likely to reflect the collective mind of the Citizens. And even if they don't have an opinion, they can still abstain by actively annulling their vote. The amount of annulled votes is a valuable statistic that reflects the fraction of the population that thinks the system has failed them. No such assessment can be made from the fraction of the Citizens that just didn't feel like voting that day.
In summary, we disagree on this: the right not to vote because you can't be bothered to do it doesn't mean much to me. But the right to actively abstain from voting by indicating so on a ballot, that to me is as important as voting.
Unlike what you may think based on the title alone, The Economist is a NEWS magazine. It's a MOST WELL REGARDED weekly news magazine. Yeah, it sure does have one heck of a broad audience. Get a clue, please.
And sure enough, I just have the latest issue here in front of me (Aug 19), and they have indeed published an ad (first ad after the contents, must have been expensive). That doesn't mean they're respectable, only that they have the money to publish an ad.
Well, I agree that it is hard to draw the line on what is considered an upgrade. But I'm relating my own decision process here: I have a 4 years old Sony Vega (250 lbs of glass), and I have a three years old computer. Faced with the option of getting a new machine or an xbox, I went with the xbox. I guess if you have to buy the TV as well your decision could go a different way.
Anyway, this whole thread is off topic to begin with...
Secondly, comparing the cost of my PC to the cost of an XBOX360 is ludicrous.
No it isn't. We're talking about games here. For any other use, that PC you had 3-5 years ago would do (unless you're running scientific/academic apps on your home pc).
To play newer games on a PC at a quality equivalent to what you get on the xbox, you need a minimum set of requirements. Right now I dare say those requirements will cost you about three times more than an xbox.
Someone suggested you'd need to include the HD TV set in the xbox price. I argue you don't. It's assumed you already have a TV (which by itself can't run games), the same way it is assumed you already have a 3-5 years old PC (that won't run the new games).
excellent arthur clarke reference, I wish I could mod you up.
From the SuSE site:
Main memory: At least 128 MB; 256 MB recommended
And that's probably for the default kde desktop install. If you use something lighter you should be ok with less memory.
And, of course, it will probably install even if you're running on much less than the minimum req.
Why bother with that hassle when the numbers of people donwloading and actually USING the linux version are so small compared with that of windows?
That would be true if they were never going to port it to other platforms. Given that they did port it, it seems worse to have to change infrastructure (e.g., from MS stuff to SDL) than to have used SDL/OpenAL to begin with.
Finish reading the article, he mentions that at the end. Something to the effect that SUVs are taxed differently because they're considered trucks, i.e., above 3 tons; so SUV owners themselves use that fact to get the tax breaks. If so, then they should deal with the traffic limitations of owning a truck. He argues you shouldn't be able to have it both ways.
According to the post, he "[accused] the company of a 'drug-dealer practice", which is not an anology.
Defamation is a civil matter, so in this case the burden of proof is on the brazilian engineer (he has to prove MS is behaving as a drug-dealer, whatever that means), or he'll be found guilty of defamation.
Or something like that, IANAL...
BTW, I'm pretty sure that works the same way in the US. Isn't that true?
pricing, program availablity, hardware support, networking support...
I don't think pricing was a big issue here. Would you care to refresh my memory on the OS/2 vs. Win95 price points?
Program availability and hardware support are indeed factors. And again, if IBM had put more marketing effort into OS/2, they wouldn't have been. Again, technically, OS/2 was the best solution.
Network support? I don't think that was a problem at all. What network support did Win95 have that OS/2 didn't? Novell supported it, and that was pretty much the thing at the time.
OS/2 happened to be the best desktop solution at the time: Win 3.11 was nowhere near it; And then Win 95 came, still an inferior solution. If anybody got fired for recommending it, it was because it didn't survive. And that was IBM's fault, for not marketing it properly.
I don't think longhorn will have the same fate. Do you?
I'm talking about CORPORATE IT MANAGERS. Of the companies we deal with most have it departments full of 'point and click' it personel. These people might have an MSCE to their name.. but most of their knowledge comes from reading 'PcPlus'. They simply do not understand computers.. but they do so more than the rest of the company, and in the land of the blind..
It's a sort of a vicious cicle:
Corporations are forgiving to incompetence if it's disguised as "low risk solutions". In other words (I'm quoting a decision maker here where I work, he's in the IT department on a Fortune 500 company): "You'll never get fired for buying MS." Longhorn will come and will be adopted in my workplace. Even if it causes a catastrophic failure, no one would be fired. "It wasn't anyone's fault, it's those pesky worms and hackers. Nothing we can do about it. Just apply the next SP."
Ah, but if a strong headed person comes, makes some objective decisions that cause changes, and there's any problem, that person will feel the heat, the corporation will be much less forgiving.
The reason for this nonsensical situation is probably known to everyone here. Management, even though it arguably accounts for very little in terms of revenue generation, is still considered the most important part of a company. Techs and geeks tend to care little about management, no chalenge involved, but a lot of PowerPoint slides, buzzwords and catch frases. Who would opt for getting an MBA instead of an MEE or MS? Mostly non-technically inclinded people. But an MBA is a HUGE advantage if you want to make manager.
And to make things even worse, MBAs feel threatened by techs. If challenged, they'll go out of their to prove they're right and techs are wrong, handwaving about "COTs" and "business sense", etc. That completes the circle. And if a tech makes management, he/she will be antagonised at every change they want to effect.
For the record, I know what COT means, but it's often used with little basis on fact.
They'll probably get some sort of deal, novell/suse should be all too willing to help them out. And if not, remember that, now that yast has been released under a more friendly license, they only have to pay for one copy of suse (if they want to) and they can put it in as many machines as they want...
Now, they're probably getting support also, and that has to cost some. But if it's like Dell's workstations with RH, you get the linux support from novell directly, and just for a few months. Than you pay novell yourself if you need more.
The whole point of watermark technology is to provide proof of origin or ownership, by providing a mark that is very hard to remove. This tech is valued on that sole premise: if I find my watermark on something, I can prove it's mine.
If someone can remove your watermark technology, to sue them (under the DMCA or whatever) is to admit and certify that your own technology is crap.
Not to mention the possibility that the watermark wasn't there to begin with...
> It turns out that in the testing that they did,
;-)
> the drivers using the HUD to watch TV while
> driving performed BETTER than they did when not
> watching.
Those were not male drivers, I asure you
Seriously, I find it very hard to believe that a normal person would be able to pay attention to a show projected on their windshield, and still be fully aware to what is happening outside. And frankly, how could they possibly be able to test that properly?
Now I do believe that a hud would be great if it would project intrument info (speed, rpm, even navigation) to the windshield. That would be very helpful indeed.