Arguably, EVERYONE is doing the same thing. It is a valid argument to say that an OS needs a "formatted text browser". Bundled and free. The fact that Netscape didn't also posess a dominant OS at the time they were hawking their browser was just tough beans.
However - a lot of the other stuff MS has done, was just plain illegal (OEM coersion etc.). They do need to be spanked. And it didn't bode well for the fact that MS was well on the road to establishing an information and transactional dictatorship over the entire world. In that case, legal or no, they MUST be stopped. What if Quicken were dead, MS Money took over, was integrated into IE with MS Wallet, and became the ONLY defacto way to transact business via the web - but as part of that deal, because they were the only game in town, MS was able to extract a cut of every transaction? or collect and amass a database of personal information, and sell that to the highest bidder/spammer? What if MS also used a similar strategy to control news distribution. Checkmate. Game Over.
Few sane people realize how very close Bill Gates was to actually pulling it off.
As far as W2k not being readily adopted right away.
If you recall, there was the same trepidation when Novell came out with 4.0, and for years afterwards, people stuck with 3.11, until Novell was finally forced to offer y2k fixes for 3.x, because people wouldn't upgrade to 4.x, because they didn't feel they needed NDS, the small networks wanted to stick with Bindery. Novell fought an uphill battle with 4.x adoption, at least until 4.12, when NDS was really stable enough. Novell's literature regarding MAD (Microsoft Active Directory *snicker*), saying that they took YEARS to learn those hard lessons, there's no reason to listen to Microsoft's hype and think that they'll get it right the first time, and even then, it's too much for most small shops. MAD (*snicker*) will have the same long, uphill battle, possibly worse, because there's so much competition in the directory market, and the server market at that level has also proven a consistently tough nut to crack vs. Linux, Solaris, etc. Eventually, tho - with all the other nifty features tied to MAD, and with MS's desktop market dominance, they hold the cards. . . i fear.
The Microsoft file formats ARE open. They're just poorly documented. Who's to say that they'll be well documented if it's mandated by law. Define "well" documented. Who's going to oversee this, review all the documentation, make sure the specs are accurate, make sure that it's done on a timely basis? It can't be done.
this is why they must be FORCED to adhere to an open standard, and that that standard is the default, and that it implements all features that are implemented in the "native" (no longer default) format. Microsoft are crafty bastards. They'll argue - use RTF, but rtf doesn't implement all the features of DOC. Then there's HTML, but their HTML support sucks. How do you make it not suck? have a DOJ laywer sit in on project team meetings?
It's a very slippery slope.
This is why we should just jail em and be done with it.
Finally! Someone agrees with me! Jail time! Let's see Bill and Steve make innovative license plates! And Nathan too, just because I hate the name Nathan.
Another good point to make here is that Microsoft has also made it clear that customers will be made uncomfortable, and be made to pay the price of the punishment inflicted on Microsoft. Patches will be delayed, "innovation" slowed. Because they are the only game in town, (and this will PROVE it finally, once and for all), customers will have no choice but to take it up the ass even more, and Microsoft will blame the government "communist interference".
How do you get that "arms" refers to "guns", whether they are the unreliable muzzle-loading flintlocks of the era, or an M-16? "Arms" means weapons. That can encompass everything from Chuck Norris' fist, to disintegrator zap guns, to, really, nuclear weapons. Obviously, we have to draw a line somewhere. The government can't regulate a well-trained Karate expert's fist. Nor can we leave unregulated, the ownership of weapons of mass-destruction, even if it does violate the letter of the 2nd amendment. The point is, this battle is already lost, because if you draw that line somewhere, then the government will have what freedom fighters, rebels if you will, do not, and therefore, armed resistance to the US government will ultimately fail.
it's probably so they can hand-off the photo to the police if the transaction turns out fraudulent, who cares if it helps pin-down the criminal? The fact that they're cooperating with the police probably also helps in their dealings with the credit card company, and/or insurance. The cops probably shitcan it all anyway.
But snail mail is a point to point protocol. posting on the internet can affect more than one person. (or in the case of/., tens of people!)
So I may be able to get up on/. and spew my insane rantings and twist the minds of 14 year olds to become seditious terrorists like myself, and be afraid of reprisal. But if I do it via snail mail, I can only twist one mind at a time.
It's just like Lars said man, it's a matter of scale and volume.
To be fair, they DO bust a higher percentage of rapists, murderers and other serious criminals.
It's just not physically possible to bust EVERY speeder, some estimates say that they get about.001% of them. Judging from my drive from Phoenix to LA last weekend, I'd say it's far less. It's said that 25% of murderers get caught.
Plus, murderers cost money to prosecute. Speeders (even the miniscule percentage they choose to go after, the red sports cars, the blacks, the hispanics, the "dangerous looking") generate cash-flow, which helps fund the extra manpower used to police them.
This is one thing that pisses me off to no end. The public funding of sports stadiums.
Boy, I wish *I* could start a business where the government pays lavishly for the place where I do it. That's right. A stadium is to a sports team, what a store is to a grocer. Why doesn't the government pay for office buildings? Grocery stores?
Meanwhile, sporting events have turned out to be an obscenely profitable business. Witness what some of the players rake in, to say nothing of the promoters and advertisers. And what if you have no personal interest in sports?
I can understand something like public health care, even if I'm never sick, I gladly pay, because I'd hate to see everyone else get sick and die with no health insurance, I rely on those people. But how is society harmed if there's no public funding of sports? Sports would not go away. And even if it did, good riddance.
I was actually deeply embarrassed by the poor quality of the dubbing of Akira. I invited a bunch of friends, who weren't really into Anime, but were into sci fi, to see it. I already had a japanese copy on VHS. Suffice it to say that ten minutes into the movie, we were all pretty much laughing at how bad the voices were. It sounded like a Scooby-doo episode. All they were missing was Casey Casem as the Colonel.
I'm suprised nobody mentioned Wings of Honniamise (sp?)!
As far as technical animation goes, I place it #1. It's very long, and the story is a bit slow, but there are some action parts. Basically it's about two nations on an alternate world, where one nation is developing a space program. Lots of elements from "the right stuff". In the end, the first man in space launch becomes a political chesspiece, and ignites a war. A really beautifully rendered and animated war. Kind of introspective. The art and animation are breathtaking, and the design of. . . things, also something any geek should love. Filled with alternate versions of telephones, computers, clocks, doorbells, motorcycles, airplanes, all kinds of really cool things, redesigned to look, different from what we're used to. A really, really excellent movie. The really funny thing is, the main character wanted to be an air-force pilot, but his grades weren't good enough to get in, so he joined the space-force and became an astronaut.
No giant robots, no hot babes with laser swords, no head-exploding kung-fu.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Re:What about Princess Mononoke?
on
Essential Anime
·
· Score: 1
Actually, THE Steven Speilburg once stated that Castle Cagliostro was the greatest action-adventure film of all-time.
As far as Anime mind-blowing artwork, it wasn't, but from an animation and direction point of view, it's a masterpiece. Quite a lot of fun to watch.
It doesn't matter if humanity's extinction is good or bad. It IS inevitable. What is the point if we survive another 1000 years to be extinguished by a meteor collision with earth, or solar flares, supervirus, nuclear war, invasion by aliens?
In one billion years, will it make a difference?
In twelve billion years, will it make a difference? How about 100 billion years? There will be nothing left of the entire universe at that time but a few widely dispersed black holes boiling away hawking radiation. What's the point? We could all perish tomorrow, and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
Or, it could just be my 33rd Birthday today. (3 is more than halfway to 5, which means I'm almost 35, which is halfway to 40 in my 30's, which means I'm fucking old.)
I've been reading some of these terraforming comments with amusement.
Yes, not only is there the problem of the sheer VOLUME of gas needing to be transformed, (not just at the surface, but at all elevations and altitudes), but then there's the pressure problem, not enough to sustain human life naturally, then there's the albedo problem, not enough to trap enough heat to make it warm enough to survive, then there's the magnetic field, or actually the absence of one, which would mean that your shiny new oxygen atmosphere would not be protected from being stripped away by the solar wind, and of course the radiation.
This is definately for the application of people living in a protected environment on the surface.
"Why not save a few trillion dollars and reduce the delta of total entropy in the universe by using more alternative power sources in the first place? Solar panels, ocean thermal transfer, hydroelectric, wind and other alternative sources feeding giant flywheels could lower our dependence upon fossil fuels."
Because those alternative energy sources SUCK for automotive uses. Have you ever been stuck behind one of those new hybrid Honda's? They max out at like 60 MPH. Not fun on the freeway, I tell you.
Well, that's what I said about Quicktime VR. I said, THIS is the future of pornography. Funny how it hasn't really caught on. Steve Jobs is missing a BIG market here. ..
Slashdot Mirror
yah, basically, it's a "taste of your own medicine" kind of thing. If I were Napster, I'd be cool about it.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Arguably, EVERYONE is doing the same thing. It is a valid argument to say that an OS needs a "formatted text browser". Bundled and free. The fact that Netscape didn't also posess a dominant OS at the time they were hawking their browser was just tough beans.
However - a lot of the other stuff MS has done, was just plain illegal (OEM coersion etc.). They do need to be spanked. And it didn't bode well for the fact that MS was well on the road to establishing an information and transactional dictatorship over the entire world. In that case, legal or no, they MUST be stopped. What if Quicken were dead, MS Money took over, was integrated into IE with MS Wallet, and became the ONLY defacto way to transact business via the web - but as part of that deal, because they were the only game in town, MS was able to extract a cut of every transaction? or collect and amass a database of personal information, and sell that to the highest bidder/spammer? What if MS also used a similar strategy to control news distribution. Checkmate. Game Over.
Few sane people realize how very close Bill Gates was to actually pulling it off.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
As far as W2k not being readily adopted right away.
If you recall, there was the same trepidation when Novell came out with 4.0, and for years afterwards, people stuck with 3.11, until Novell was finally forced to offer y2k fixes for 3.x, because people wouldn't upgrade to 4.x, because they didn't feel they needed NDS, the small networks wanted to stick with Bindery. Novell fought an uphill battle with 4.x adoption, at least until 4.12, when NDS was really stable enough. Novell's literature regarding MAD (Microsoft Active Directory *snicker*), saying that they took YEARS to learn those hard lessons, there's no reason to listen to Microsoft's hype and think that they'll get it right the first time, and even then, it's too much for most small shops. MAD (*snicker*) will have the same long, uphill battle, possibly worse, because there's so much competition in the directory market, and the server market at that level has also proven a consistently tough nut to crack vs. Linux, Solaris, etc. Eventually, tho - with all the other nifty features tied to MAD, and with MS's desktop market dominance, they hold the cards. . . i fear.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
BeOS? OS/2?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
ten years of hacking autoexec.bat and config.sys files - I think they can be lumped in with rapists and murderers.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
The Microsoft file formats ARE open. They're just poorly documented. Who's to say that they'll be well documented if it's mandated by law. Define "well" documented. Who's going to oversee this, review all the documentation, make sure the specs are accurate, make sure that it's done on a timely basis? It can't be done.
this is why they must be FORCED to adhere to an open standard, and that that standard is the default, and that it implements all features that are implemented in the "native" (no longer default) format. Microsoft are crafty bastards. They'll argue - use RTF, but rtf doesn't implement all the features of DOC. Then there's HTML, but their HTML support sucks. How do you make it not suck? have a DOJ laywer sit in on project team meetings?
It's a very slippery slope.
This is why we should just jail em and be done with it.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Finally! Someone agrees with me! Jail time! Let's see Bill and Steve make innovative license plates! And Nathan too, just because I hate the name Nathan.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Another good point to make here is that Microsoft has also made it clear that customers will be made uncomfortable, and be made to pay the price of the punishment inflicted on Microsoft. Patches will be delayed, "innovation" slowed. Because they are the only game in town, (and this will PROVE it finally, once and for all), customers will have no choice but to take it up the ass even more, and Microsoft will blame the government "communist interference".
All the more reason to abandon the platform.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
It is not impossible to be a monster, secretly, and to outwardly look, or act normal.
It's called being a sociopath. Look at Clinton.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Lebannon and Chechnya (although Lebannon was more of a prolonged annoyance than a successful campaign to overthrow perceived tyrrany)
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
um. 2500 nuclear warheads is disarmed?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
How do you get that "arms" refers to "guns", whether they are the unreliable muzzle-loading flintlocks of the era, or an M-16? "Arms" means weapons. That can encompass everything from Chuck Norris' fist, to disintegrator zap guns, to, really, nuclear weapons. Obviously, we have to draw a line somewhere. The government can't regulate a well-trained Karate expert's fist. Nor can we leave unregulated, the ownership of weapons of mass-destruction, even if it does violate the letter of the 2nd amendment. The point is, this battle is already lost, because if you draw that line somewhere, then the government will have what freedom fighters, rebels if you will, do not, and therefore, armed resistance to the US government will ultimately fail.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
it's probably so they can hand-off the photo to the police if the transaction turns out fraudulent, who cares if it helps pin-down the criminal? The fact that they're cooperating with the police probably also helps in their dealings with the credit card company, and/or insurance. The cops probably shitcan it all anyway.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
e-commerce companies lazy?
No shit sherlock! The whole point of e-commerce is to minimize overhead!
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
But snail mail is a point to point protocol. posting on the internet can affect more than one person. (or in the case of /., tens of people!)
/. and spew my insane rantings and twist the minds of 14 year olds to become seditious terrorists like myself, and be afraid of reprisal. But if I do it via snail mail, I can only twist one mind at a time.
So I may be able to get up on
It's just like Lars said man, it's a matter of scale and volume.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
To be fair, they DO bust a higher percentage of rapists, murderers and other serious criminals.
.001% of them. Judging from my drive from Phoenix to LA last weekend, I'd say it's far less. It's said that 25% of murderers get caught.
It's just not physically possible to bust EVERY speeder, some estimates say that they get about
Plus, murderers cost money to prosecute. Speeders (even the miniscule percentage they choose to go after, the red sports cars, the blacks, the hispanics, the "dangerous looking") generate cash-flow, which helps fund the extra manpower used to police them.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
This is one thing that pisses me off to no end. The public funding of sports stadiums.
Boy, I wish *I* could start a business where the government pays lavishly for the place where I do it. That's right. A stadium is to a sports team, what a store is to a grocer. Why doesn't the government pay for office buildings? Grocery stores?
Meanwhile, sporting events have turned out to be an obscenely profitable business. Witness what some of the players rake in, to say nothing of the promoters and advertisers. And what if you have no personal interest in sports?
I can understand something like public health care, even if I'm never sick, I gladly pay, because I'd hate to see everyone else get sick and die with no health insurance, I rely on those people. But how is society harmed if there's no public funding of sports? Sports would not go away. And even if it did, good riddance.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Never mind Marathon. (II, Infinity).
.
Halo. .
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
I was actually deeply embarrassed by the poor quality of the dubbing of Akira. I invited a bunch of friends, who weren't really into Anime, but were into sci fi, to see it. I already had a japanese copy on VHS. Suffice it to say that ten minutes into the movie, we were all pretty much laughing at how bad the voices were. It sounded like a Scooby-doo episode. All they were missing was Casey Casem as the Colonel.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
I'm suprised nobody mentioned Wings of Honniamise (sp?)!
As far as technical animation goes, I place it #1. It's very long, and the story is a bit slow, but there are some action parts. Basically it's about two nations on an alternate world, where one nation is developing a space program. Lots of elements from "the right stuff". In the end, the first man in space launch becomes a political chesspiece, and ignites a war. A really beautifully rendered and animated war. Kind of introspective. The art and animation are breathtaking, and the design of. . . things, also something any geek should love. Filled with alternate versions of telephones, computers, clocks, doorbells, motorcycles, airplanes, all kinds of really cool things, redesigned to look, different from what we're used to. A really, really excellent movie.
The really funny thing is, the main character wanted to be an air-force pilot, but his grades weren't good enough to get in, so he joined the space-force and became an astronaut.
No giant robots, no hot babes with laser swords, no head-exploding kung-fu.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Actually, THE Steven Speilburg once stated that Castle Cagliostro was the greatest action-adventure film of all-time.
As far as Anime mind-blowing artwork, it wasn't, but from an animation and direction point of view, it's a masterpiece. Quite a lot of fun to watch.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
It doesn't matter if humanity's extinction is good or bad. It IS inevitable. What is the point if we survive another 1000 years to be extinguished by a meteor collision with earth, or solar flares, supervirus, nuclear war, invasion by aliens?
In one billion years, will it make a difference?
In twelve billion years, will it make a difference? How about 100 billion years? There will be nothing left of the entire universe at that time but a few widely dispersed black holes boiling away hawking radiation. What's the point? We could all perish tomorrow, and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
Or, it could just be my 33rd Birthday today. (3 is more than halfway to 5, which means I'm almost 35, which is halfway to 40 in my 30's, which means I'm fucking old.)
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
I've been reading some of these terraforming comments with amusement.
Yes, not only is there the problem of the sheer VOLUME of gas needing to be transformed, (not just at the surface, but at all elevations and altitudes), but then there's the pressure problem, not enough to sustain human life naturally, then there's the albedo problem, not enough to trap enough heat to make it warm enough to survive, then there's the magnetic field, or actually the absence of one, which would mean that your shiny new oxygen atmosphere would not be protected from being stripped away by the solar wind, and of course the radiation.
This is definately for the application of people living in a protected environment on the surface.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
"Why not save a few trillion dollars and reduce the delta of total entropy in the universe by using
more alternative power sources in the first place? Solar panels, ocean thermal transfer,
hydroelectric, wind and other alternative sources feeding giant flywheels could lower our
dependence upon fossil fuels."
Because those alternative energy sources SUCK for automotive uses. Have you ever been stuck behind one of those new hybrid Honda's? They max out at like 60 MPH. Not fun on the freeway, I tell you.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
Well, that's what I said about Quicktime VR. I said, THIS is the future of pornography. Funny how it hasn't really caught on. Steve Jobs is missing a BIG market here. . .
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .