I've had a Stylistic 1200 [the-labs.com] for years now, with the battery stylus, I'd prefer touch instead. Been running WinXX variant on it as well as different Linux dists. Nothing new here. More powerful, sure. Bigger screen, yep. But "Microsoft's concept"? Please.
This is SOP for Microsoft, though. They always destroy someone else's innovative technology via the usual anticompetitive means (or just plain FUD), then release that same technology a few years later amid great fanfare as if it is a great new idea from Microsoft.
I do want more control over my system. But how the hell am I supposed to learn Debian if I can't install Debian?
Well, perhaps you learn the way we all do, by acculturation and experimentation. You just hang around Debian long enough and get cool with it. Like superparent said, you fall into a Debian Zen and it all makes sense. I reject the premise that you can't get a box up and running with the current Debian installer. The only special knowledge you need is what chips your hardware is running -- easily determined with a quick Google. All other install options tell you explicitly what to choose if you don't know what to do.
After you get running, however, you will have to tinker. No doubt about it. If you don't want to tinker, don't use Debian. I strongly recommend Mandrake or Red Hat. (They are both easier than Windows for installation.) It's like, I build my own machines because I want to tinker with the hardware. Others don't, and they buy a Dell or a Sony off the shelf. It's the same way with the distribution you choose.
Like Chicago, South Florida is an entrenched election-fixing political culture. If there is a way to "have trouble with the machines" so that the voting rules can be altered, they will have it. This is no plain cock-up with a new voting technology.
Voters in North Florida also had new voting machines to use, but they didn't have any trouble. It's not the technology, it's the system.
Gah, I have to agree. The headlining of this post pisses me off. Slackware was my first distro, and then I went to Debian because of the rumours about apt-get (which are true). Debian install is about as easy as can be. It doesn't look as pretty as Mandrake 8.2, but it's not any harder. Shut up with the "it's hard to install Linux" BS already.
This is utterly rediculous. The article doesn't say "it is assumed changes in ocean levels are responsible".
The article says this:
Cox and his colleague, Benjamin Chao of Goddard, were at first baffled by the sudden reversal and flattening of the gravity field. They considered that ice melting at the poles and raising the overall sea level could be the culprit. Calculations showed, however, that "you would have to drop a 10-by-10-by-5-kilometer cube of it into the ocean every year for the past five years." Separate measurements of sea surface height from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon mission don't support this scenario.
This story has probably gotten so much attention that it's too late to voice an opinion, but here goes anyway.
1. It is essentially impossible to force laws upon the population of the United States that are intolerable to that population. Even if the uber-extreme cases you are thinking of come to pass, either the market or the government will be required to self-correct fairly quickly. Prohibition is a good example on both counts.
2. I very strongly suspect that either now or after a correction we will have some kind of moderate DRM. This bill is actually a very good example of that kind of moderation (it is necessary to take the language at face value and strike the opening comments about how "protecting copyright-based industries = propsperity"). Under this bill, if I release a story, digitally signed by me, then no one can forward that story with the signature intact. The recipient would get an "unauthenticated" copy. Now I may not even care that it got forwared, as long as the recipient sees that it's unknowably altered from the original.
This is actually a way to relax copyright laws, ironically. We have less need of lengthy, oppressive, copyrights when "content creators" (i.e., anyone who creates content) can distribute it with the understanding that forwarded copies will show up as inauthentic.
The enormous difference between MPAA and RIAA is that MPAA devised a new format and put it into the market and then let consumers decide whether or not to buy. People opted for DVD on their own [1]. It just so happens that DVDs won't let you make copies, but frankly few people ever make copies of movies (and the movie rental business has proven very successful).
The RIAA on the other hand does not invent a new format. Instead they just go to government and try to get copying ruled illegal, or try to quietly slip copy-resistant CDs into the market (no new features; same quality). If RIAA could come up with a new way to package music with a bunch of new features that just happened to be copy-resistant, well, maybe consumers would opt for it.
[1] The DMCA surely helped the DVD push, but it didn't require anyone to buy them. The market could have opted away from DVD.
All you who cry "TPM and AoTC were betrayals" and whine endlessly about how much it suxored and fucking nitpick about whether the physics of Yoda's swordfight were accurate or whether it takes more skill to leap than to parry -- you are all like the worst kind of trekkies now. In other words, you are ruining for the rest of us a perfectly good pulp space opera that is escapist fiction which is not supposed to be realistic.
I am reminded of a Saturday Night Live sketch starring William Shatner, in which he is pelted with inane questions from feverish trekkies about "What was the combination to the lock in Episode 17?" Shatner tries to explain that it was just a prop, and there wasn't really a lock and therefore no combination at all, and the trekkies just stare without comprehension.
You are those fuckwits now. And yes, that means you too, you butt-munch, who are even now preparing a reply that goes something like "But Ep1 and Ep2 really were betrayals." Yes, you are the fuckwits.
Below is the comment I posted to the senate's web site. Don't dilute it by posting it as your own, but use it in any other way you see fit.
---------- POST BEGIN ---------
Esteemed members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary:
I favor copyright, digital rights management (DRM), and the philosophy that government should protect the rights of its citizens (both private and corporate). I object strenuously, however, to the behavior of the Congress on these matters. Copyright, DRM, and the protection of rights in general are expedients; they are means to desirable ends. They are not, and must not be construed as, ends in themselves. To consider them as proper ends is philosophically repellant and consitutionally unsound. Yet the Senate Committee on the Judiciary seeminlgy considers them so.
The positional statement of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary is to engage in "keeping our nation's copyright laws up-to-date in the face of new and evolving technological advancements." The method of updating our laws that the Committee proposes is to "craft copyright policies that advance the complementary goals of protecting copyrighted works, serving consumers and the public interest, and promoting the development of innovative technologies."
These goals are not numbered among the powers granted to the Congress by the people, and go quite against the protection of rights with which government is charged.
First, to the issue of promoting technology. One must assume that because "promoting the development of innovative technologies" follows from "copyright policies" the Congress means to promote technology that bears upon copyright. Congress has no such authority granted to it by the people. I fear that I need to produce the text of the Consitution, which seems to have been conveniently disregarded. Article I Section 8, Clause 8 states that Congress shall have the power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Further, Amendment X to the Constitution states that, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." It is irrefutably clear that Congress has not been granted the power by the people to affect "the development of innovative technologies" with respect to copyright. The people will innovate and develop copyright technology as they wish, and as our free market will support, without direction from Congress as to the nature of technology in which they will invest.
Second, the copyright authority granted to Congress is a power of expediency -- the power to enact a means to an end. That end is to enrich the public with arts and sciences. The goals of "protecting copyrighted works" and "serving consumers and the public interest" are therefore not complementary. These two do not stand equally before the Constitution. Rather, one is tolerated as a means to the other. Thomas Babington Macaulay stated in a speech in 1841 that, "It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good." With this sentiment I wholly agree. Not only must Congress refrain from elevating copyright protection to an equality with the public good, it must decline from its position that copyright protection is a worthwhile end, as it is in truth a pain that the public must suffer (for a limited time). This reversal is imperative from the Constitution and from common sense.
A final point regarding Article I Section 8, Clause 8: once again I call out its aim of enriching the public with arts and sciences. Nowhere can be found in its contents the aim that "authors and inventors" shall have the right to profit from their exlusive ownership. They will profit as they are able, by the creation of business methods that gain the voluntary participation of buyers. If the owners of copyrighted material do not believe they can profit from the sale of their goods in the current marketplace, they ought to immediately exit the industry. Congress may not undertake to ensure they are compensated. If otherwise, what other business might we ensure in this manner? I suggest the oft-cited example of buggy-whip manufacturers, who surely wish Congress to mandate that every automobile purchase require the purchase as well of a buggy whip, to compensate them for the fact that horse-drawn buggies are out of style. No; they should instead discover where else demand is present in the economy and spend their capital in that direction. But of course in the case of copyrighted works there is very much a demand in evidence, and there is very much a desire to fulfill that demand with a supply. Further interference by Congress to secure profits is unnecessary and unlawful.
I wish last to call attention to the grave deception of loss due to unauthorized distribution. There have been innumerable arguments against this concept, and there is nothing I can add to them. I merely point out the plain fact that those who cry loudest of their losses do not record those losses anywhere for public inspection. These are publicly traded corporations who are bound to display their profits and losses in order that the public may invest or withold their investment accordingly. In a recent C|Net article, the RIAA was reported to claim that "the sale of pirated recordings exceeds $4.2 billion worldwide, not including losses due to online piracy." In addition, the MPAA claimed that, "the film industry loses about $3 billion to non-Internet piracy per year." (It is noteworthy that these estimated exclude on-line activity, which is, oddly, the principle focus of the lobbying efforts of these orginazations.) If these losses are not duly recorded for the benefit of investors, then what economic loss is at issue? The mere hand waving and shouting by chief executives does not make the loss real. Congress certainly cannot proceed as if buoying the profits of these groups to offset unreported losses will have anything but a ruinous effect. Because these losses do not appear on the account books, there is no genuine poverty for these companies but only an imagined poverty. However, the $7.2 billion is spent already in the economy -- it is spent on clothing, perhaps, or medicine. Requiring the transfer of a this additional capital to these companies transforms an imagined poverty into a real poverty. The public will be impoverished by $7.2 billion in clothing and medicine, but not one cent benefitted with copyrighted content in return: the MPAA and RIAA claim they are due this payment for their current level of supply. They will require yet more of the public's dollars to increase their production.
I conclude that the drafting of legislation that extends and modifies copyright law on the astounding basis of the digitizing of the protected work is both exceeding of the authority of Congress and absurd in its premise. Do not propose to enact new laws where none are required. Especially, do not propose to enact new laws that take copyright as a good in itself, thereby eroding or eliminating the rights and freedoms of the public for the sake of the profit of a few.
Regards,
Brian Takle
Citizen
C|Net article April 24, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-891521.html
The speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay has entered the public domain, and I quote with impunity. I trust Mr. Macaulay would be pleased to see his words fuel debate in our century and not wish them locked away from use.
These kinds of comments always make we want to barf. It's the same type of reasoning that you see over here. The basic premise of these arguments is that you can't switch away from MS technology because it'll baffle Joe Dumbass.
But of course I want to refute the individual lies and misinformation too, just because you are an insufferable moron:
AOL isn't going to be stupid enough to try foisting a noticeably slower browser on their users
Mozilla RC2 pops up from a cold start (hasn't been run before) in about 4 seconds on my machine. IE takes -- guess what? -- about 4 seconds from a cold start too. And that's not using Quickstart, which would've boosted Mozilla's performance.
People are used to IE, most sites were designed with it in mind
I'm sure you mean that "web pages won't render unless you use IE." That's pure BS. I always install Mozilla or derivatives (e.g., Netscape) for machines I support and not once has a page failed to render. Oh wait, by "most sites" you must mean MSN.
nothing can change the fact that, when it comes to the simple activity of browsing, the MS product gives a smoother user experience.
What the blazing hell does "smoother" mean? Both Opera and Mozilla provide what is clearly a superior browsing experience. Maybe by "smoother" you mean "more apt to get hacked by a malicious script" or "capable of having your bookmarks, start menu, desktop, and registry tampered with by web sites with questionable motives."
The reason you don't see this thinking in the US is that our representatives in government believe it is their responsibility to make us prosperous. So they put their weight behind large corporations with the idea that a large, thriving corporation will produce jobs, etc. and in all ways make the citizenry better off. If doing this crushes the citizens' rights, well what's a few rights when we're talking about prosperity.
This point of view is utterly wrong. Apparently in Peru they understand that the government's job is to protect the rights of its citizens so that the citizens are free to pursue prosperity on their own. Dr. Nunez argues eloquently for protecting Peruvian citizens by requiring disclosure of source code -- that way everyone can see if advantage is being taken, or if someone is being spied on, etc., and no one can be locked out of government simply because they don't have 400USD to buy Office (or whatever it costs) so they can read government documents that are only published in Word.
Microsoft tries to pressure Peru by doing the "you have to choose us so that your citizens will be prosperous" charade, but fortunately Dr. Nunez already knows that's not the government's job.
Here's an idea: print out this letter and fax it to your Congressfolk, and ask them whether they agree with it. If they do, then why are they not choosing OSS? If they don't, then why are they opposed to objectives like "security of the state" and "free access of citizens to State documents"?
Everyone go to the place in your mind where you are keeping the list of countries you will move to when the US gets intolerable. Scratch in an entry for Peru.
The list of reasons not to use Real player only begins with the file-association tricks. Read the EULA that comes with Real One and then proceed to click Cancel to abort the installation. You'll want to.
Presumeably Mr. Boucher is refering to upcoming HDTV encryption. I do agree that we need to take some steps to assure that material which is, for example, broadcast across digital-television equipment should be protected in such a way as to disallow unauthorized copying and disallow uploading to the Internet. I actually endorse the idea of doing that. I wonder if he knows that this could render thousands of pieces of HDTV equipment nationwide obsolete, icluding TVs and set top boxes, that were not built with the new standard. Don't jump on this guy's boat too fast. It may be tempting to hear someone in Congress saying some things we want to hear, but we have to be careful. There is always the chance that he doesn't understand the reprecussions of the proposed standard.
I bet few folks here have thought about some of the really long-range issues that are being worked out with this stuff. What if in 50 years (or less!) you can upload yourself digitally, and happily exist noncorporeally for as long as you wish. Now what if someone did something with a part of you that you didn't want? As the "owner" of a piece of "intellectual property" you would probably want full control over that information. So even though these corporations are acting in dispicable ways in the short term, they may be participating in a long-term evolution in ways they do not understand.
REDMOND, WASHINGTON -- June 23, 2000 Microsoft today announced a new product offering called the Network Computer (NC). "Due to customer demand, we've developed a new way of computing that will enrich the end-user experience" said a senior Microsoft spokesman. "It involves constellations of computers, devices and services that work together over the network, where NCs connect to Windows 2000 Servers to deliver the engaging content that users demand. No one has ever been able to build something like this before." General strategy: let other people develop a good idea, FUD against it until it fails, wait a little while, and come out with precisely the same idea as your own invention. Completely different take: Don't put it past Micros~1 to make something like this fail on purpose. They probably haven't spend one dime on this kind of thing so far--it's all vapor. If they throw around some really bad implementations of an old Unix capability, they can later point to it and say "look, this doesn't really work."
Wylfing
"What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour?"
Having a guide such as this will help make Java apps look and feel the same across platforms, which can be very good, but for some reason, it's somewhat bothersome that the java app might not be consistant with the native apps on the computer.
Application consistency > platform consistency.
Take games, for instance. The last time I played a game that used the platform's UI was...well, never. Game designers often invent their own special-purpose UIs, and as long as they are internally consistent and work, the users will quickly adapt.
Wylfing
"What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour?"
Slashdot Mirror
This is SOP for Microsoft, though. They always destroy someone else's innovative technology via the usual anticompetitive means (or just plain FUD), then release that same technology a few years later amid great fanfare as if it is a great new idea from Microsoft.
Well, perhaps you learn the way we all do, by acculturation and experimentation. You just hang around Debian long enough and get cool with it. Like superparent said, you fall into a Debian Zen and it all makes sense. I reject the premise that you can't get a box up and running with the current Debian installer. The only special knowledge you need is what chips your hardware is running -- easily determined with a quick Google. All other install options tell you explicitly what to choose if you don't know what to do.
After you get running, however, you will have to tinker. No doubt about it. If you don't want to tinker, don't use Debian. I strongly recommend Mandrake or Red Hat. (They are both easier than Windows for installation.) It's like, I build my own machines because I want to tinker with the hardware. Others don't, and they buy a Dell or a Sony off the shelf. It's the same way with the distribution you choose.
Voters in North Florida also had new voting machines to use, but they didn't have any trouble. It's not the technology, it's the system.
The article says this:
Cox and his colleague, Benjamin Chao of Goddard, were at first baffled by the sudden reversal and flattening of the gravity field. They considered that ice melting at the poles and raising the overall sea level could be the culprit. Calculations showed, however, that "you would have to drop a 10-by-10-by-5-kilometer cube of it into the ocean every year for the past five years." Separate measurements of sea surface height from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon mission don't support this scenario.
What are you, comprehension-impaired?
1. It is essentially impossible to force laws upon the population of the United States that are intolerable to that population. Even if the uber-extreme cases you are thinking of come to pass, either the market or the government will be required to self-correct fairly quickly. Prohibition is a good example on both counts.
2. I very strongly suspect that either now or after a correction we will have some kind of moderate DRM. This bill is actually a very good example of that kind of moderation (it is necessary to take the language at face value and strike the opening comments about how "protecting copyright-based industries = propsperity"). Under this bill, if I release a story, digitally signed by me, then no one can forward that story with the signature intact. The recipient would get an "unauthenticated" copy. Now I may not even care that it got forwared, as long as the recipient sees that it's unknowably altered from the original.
This is actually a way to relax copyright laws, ironically. We have less need of lengthy, oppressive, copyrights when "content creators" (i.e., anyone who creates content) can distribute it with the understanding that forwarded copies will show up as inauthentic.
The enormous difference between MPAA and RIAA is that MPAA devised a new format and put it into the market and then let consumers decide whether or not to buy. People opted for DVD on their own [1]. It just so happens that DVDs won't let you make copies, but frankly few people ever make copies of movies (and the movie rental business has proven very successful).
The RIAA on the other hand does not invent a new format. Instead they just go to government and try to get copying ruled illegal, or try to quietly slip copy-resistant CDs into the market (no new features; same quality). If RIAA could come up with a new way to package music with a bunch of new features that just happened to be copy-resistant, well, maybe consumers would opt for it.
[1] The DMCA surely helped the DVD push, but it didn't require anyone to buy them. The market could have opted away from DVD.
Actually, scan several of the pages of Elby's web site and notice how much text has found its way into Tom's article. Nice work, Tom.
I am reminded of a Saturday Night Live sketch starring William Shatner, in which he is pelted with inane questions from feverish trekkies about "What was the combination to the lock in Episode 17?" Shatner tries to explain that it was just a prop, and there wasn't really a lock and therefore no combination at all, and the trekkies just stare without comprehension.
You are those fuckwits now. And yes, that means you too, you butt-munch, who are even now preparing a reply that goes something like "But Ep1 and Ep2 really were betrayals." Yes, you are the fuckwits.
---------- POST BEGIN ---------
Esteemed members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary:
I favor copyright, digital rights management (DRM), and the philosophy that government should protect the rights of its citizens (both private and corporate). I object strenuously, however, to the behavior of the Congress on these matters. Copyright, DRM, and the protection of rights in general are expedients; they are means to desirable ends. They are not, and must not be construed as, ends in themselves. To consider them as proper ends is philosophically repellant and consitutionally unsound. Yet the Senate Committee on the Judiciary seeminlgy considers them so.
The positional statement of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary is to engage in "keeping our nation's copyright laws up-to-date in the face of new and evolving technological advancements." The method of updating our laws that the Committee proposes is to "craft copyright policies that advance the complementary goals of protecting copyrighted works, serving consumers and the public interest, and promoting the development of innovative technologies."
These goals are not numbered among the powers granted to the Congress by the people, and go quite against the protection of rights with which government is charged.
First, to the issue of promoting technology. One must assume that because "promoting the development of innovative technologies" follows from "copyright policies" the Congress means to promote technology that bears upon copyright. Congress has no such authority granted to it by the people. I fear that I need to produce the text of the Consitution, which seems to have been conveniently disregarded. Article I Section 8, Clause 8 states that Congress shall have the power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Further, Amendment X to the Constitution states that, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." It is irrefutably clear that Congress has not been granted the power by the people to affect "the development of innovative technologies" with respect to copyright. The people will innovate and develop copyright technology as they wish, and as our free market will support, without direction from Congress as to the nature of technology in which they will invest.
Second, the copyright authority granted to Congress is a power of expediency -- the power to enact a means to an end. That end is to enrich the public with arts and sciences. The goals of "protecting copyrighted works" and "serving consumers and the public interest" are therefore not complementary. These two do not stand equally before the Constitution. Rather, one is tolerated as a means to the other. Thomas Babington Macaulay stated in a speech in 1841 that, "It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good." With this sentiment I wholly agree. Not only must Congress refrain from elevating copyright protection to an equality with the public good, it must decline from its position that copyright protection is a worthwhile end, as it is in truth a pain that the public must suffer (for a limited time). This reversal is imperative from the Constitution and from common sense.
A final point regarding Article I Section 8, Clause 8: once again I call out its aim of enriching the public with arts and sciences. Nowhere can be found in its contents the aim that "authors and inventors" shall have the right to profit from their exlusive ownership. They will profit as they are able, by the creation of business methods that gain the voluntary participation of buyers. If the owners of copyrighted material do not believe they can profit from the sale of their goods in the current marketplace, they ought to immediately exit the industry. Congress may not undertake to ensure they are compensated. If otherwise, what other business might we ensure in this manner? I suggest the oft-cited example of buggy-whip manufacturers, who surely wish Congress to mandate that every automobile purchase require the purchase as well of a buggy whip, to compensate them for the fact that horse-drawn buggies are out of style. No; they should instead discover where else demand is present in the economy and spend their capital in that direction. But of course in the case of copyrighted works there is very much a demand in evidence, and there is very much a desire to fulfill that demand with a supply. Further interference by Congress to secure profits is unnecessary and unlawful.
I wish last to call attention to the grave deception of loss due to unauthorized distribution. There have been innumerable arguments against this concept, and there is nothing I can add to them. I merely point out the plain fact that those who cry loudest of their losses do not record those losses anywhere for public inspection. These are publicly traded corporations who are bound to display their profits and losses in order that the public may invest or withold their investment accordingly. In a recent C|Net article, the RIAA was reported to claim that "the sale of pirated recordings exceeds $4.2 billion worldwide, not including losses due to online piracy." In addition, the MPAA claimed that, "the film industry loses about $3 billion to non-Internet piracy per year." (It is noteworthy that these estimated exclude on-line activity, which is, oddly, the principle focus of the lobbying efforts of these orginazations.) If these losses are not duly recorded for the benefit of investors, then what economic loss is at issue? The mere hand waving and shouting by chief executives does not make the loss real. Congress certainly cannot proceed as if buoying the profits of these groups to offset unreported losses will have anything but a ruinous effect. Because these losses do not appear on the account books, there is no genuine poverty for these companies but only an imagined poverty. However, the $7.2 billion is spent already in the economy -- it is spent on clothing, perhaps, or medicine. Requiring the transfer of a this additional capital to these companies transforms an imagined poverty into a real poverty. The public will be impoverished by $7.2 billion in clothing and medicine, but not one cent benefitted with copyrighted content in return: the MPAA and RIAA claim they are due this payment for their current level of supply. They will require yet more of the public's dollars to increase their production.
I conclude that the drafting of legislation that extends and modifies copyright law on the astounding basis of the digitizing of the protected work is both exceeding of the authority of Congress and absurd in its premise. Do not propose to enact new laws where none are required. Especially, do not propose to enact new laws that take copyright as a good in itself, thereby eroding or eliminating the rights and freedoms of the public for the sake of the profit of a few.
Regards,
Brian Takle
Citizen
C|Net article April 24, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-891521.html
The speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay has entered the public domain, and I quote with impunity. I trust Mr. Macaulay would be pleased to see his words fuel debate in our century and not wish them locked away from use.
But of course I want to refute the individual lies and misinformation too, just because you are an insufferable moron:
AOL isn't going to be stupid enough to try foisting a noticeably slower browser on their users
Mozilla RC2 pops up from a cold start (hasn't been run before) in about 4 seconds on my machine. IE takes -- guess what? -- about 4 seconds from a cold start too. And that's not using Quickstart, which would've boosted Mozilla's performance.
People are used to IE, most sites were designed with it in mind
I'm sure you mean that "web pages won't render unless you use IE." That's pure BS. I always install Mozilla or derivatives (e.g., Netscape) for machines I support and not once has a page failed to render. Oh wait, by "most sites" you must mean MSN.
nothing can change the fact that, when it comes to the simple activity of browsing, the MS product gives a smoother user experience.
What the blazing hell does "smoother" mean? Both Opera and Mozilla provide what is clearly a superior browsing experience. Maybe by "smoother" you mean "more apt to get hacked by a malicious script" or "capable of having your bookmarks, start menu, desktop, and registry tampered with by web sites with questionable motives."
This point of view is utterly wrong. Apparently in Peru they understand that the government's job is to protect the rights of its citizens so that the citizens are free to pursue prosperity on their own. Dr. Nunez argues eloquently for protecting Peruvian citizens by requiring disclosure of source code -- that way everyone can see if advantage is being taken, or if someone is being spied on, etc., and no one can be locked out of government simply because they don't have 400USD to buy Office (or whatever it costs) so they can read government documents that are only published in Word.
Microsoft tries to pressure Peru by doing the "you have to choose us so that your citizens will be prosperous" charade, but fortunately Dr. Nunez already knows that's not the government's job.
Here's an idea: print out this letter and fax it to your Congressfolk, and ask them whether they agree with it. If they do, then why are they not choosing OSS? If they don't, then why are they opposed to objectives like "security of the state" and "free access of citizens to State documents"?
I bet few folks here have thought about some of the really long-range issues that are being worked out with this stuff. What if in 50 years (or less!) you can upload yourself digitally, and happily exist noncorporeally for as long as you wish. Now what if someone did something with a part of you that you didn't want? As the "owner" of a piece of "intellectual property" you would probably want full control over that information. So even though these corporations are acting in dispicable ways in the short term, they may be participating in a long-term evolution in ways they do not understand.
Wylfing
"What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour?"Application consistency > platform consistency.
Take games, for instance. The last time I played a game that used the platform's UI was...well, never. Game designers often invent their own special-purpose UIs, and as long as they are internally consistent and work, the users will quickly adapt.
Wylfing
"What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour?"