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> Command came down from on high because the people on high at Fox > wanted Arnold to win.
Another theory was that they heard from their VIEWERS in California, many of which probably supported Arnold and didn't like the network treating him like a joke candidate. At any rate we will never know for sure of the motivation, only that of all the major outlets only Fox did the right thing and in the end actions count for more than intentions.
> Your point is true, but the distinction is not really important.
Dunno, pretty big difference between intentional bias and trying to be a good citizen and doing something because the President of the USA asked them to.
> The fact that you believe the Plame affair to be a minor issue is > telling. It's a felony.
Nah, it just says I'm an old fart who isn't shocked at full contact politics. Not the first felony and certainly not the last. Heck, the Pentagon Papers probably rose to an overt act of Treason but if anybody was executed over it never made the papers. Besides, this one is still going to have a few more plot twists methinks so I'm not worrying about it until a few more chapters get written.
> the Democrats can prove logically that there's a guaranteed felon > in the White House and the only way to get rid of her is to elect a > new administration.
Har Har, nice attempt at character assassination but I really doubt Miss Rice is the leak. But if she did decide it had to be done, she won't get busted for it; that is one hella smart lady.
> Murdoch vs. Turner: Turner is no liberal. Nor is he married to Jane > Fonda any longer.
Yea, and the Pope isn't Catholic. I did know Ted & Jane aren't married anymore. Talk about Poetic Justice! Ted finally finds the Godless Communist of his dreams and then she goes and finds God! Almost makes me believe in God, and that He has a sick and twisted sense of humor.:)
> Besides, CNN has taken a giant step to the right to try to keep > up with Fox's ratings.
And of course Ted isn't in charge anymore, which might also have something to do with it. But yea, I'm sure dropping to #2 behind a young upstart like Fox has to stick in their craw just a bit. And it says a lot about how out of step mainstream news is that as soon as a single news outlet leaned Right they shot to #1 and now the others are forced to change their position in a desperate attempt to recover ratings. But they still have a long way to go to reach unbiased.
> This is what I mean by calling names. You're not making an argument, > you're calling me insane.
Not at all, and I wouldn't mind if liberals think us Conservatives are "hopelessly misguided, delusional, borderline fascists". Because that means we would actually exist on the liberal radar as actual people with a coherent worldview, just one they disagree with.
What I object to is the standard PC liberal position that the world consists of various brands of liberalism with full blown socialists/communists over to their left but no rational position to the right so there is no reason to deal with us, give our positions a hearing, etc.
But is is perfectly OK for political opponents to think the other side is zarking mad, as long as everyone can have good clean debates and keep it somewhat civil. We are after all playing for real stakes in a dangerous age. What does worry me is the recent tendancy, as the left feels power slipping away, for Democratic presidential candidates to forget we are all supposed to be Americans and fighting on the same side when we are at war.
> I'm concerned foremost with an empirical basis for policy making. > Clinton was quite good at this, the Bush Administration is famously > afraid of it.
If by empirical you mean cold calculated political decisions refined by focus groups we must be using a different definition of the word. Truth be told I wasn't a fan of S
Re:Translated for the America-Impaired
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> I gave examples, you called me names.
Talk about making my point for me. Calling liberals a liberal is "name calling". On the other hand you don't find many conservatives running from being named as one. (Of course we do often object to the more common media labels of "Right wing reactionary", "extreme right", etc. and the implied homophobe, racist, anti-semetic, sexist, blah blah.)
> They insisted on highlighting the gravitas of the Schwarzenegger > campaign.
Not initially. They joined into the "Governator" and "Total Recall" gags like everyone else until the command came down from the top telling them to start treating him like another candidate, which was the correct thing to do. And the people of California agreed he was a serious enough candidate for them to actually elect him. Considering the other choices it might have been wise, but you won't find me cheering all that loudly.
> They invented the term homicide bomber out of whole cloth in a > deliberate and cynical attempt to reframe the Palestinian question.
No they didn't, but I'll forgive you the ignorance since you obviously get your news from the left press. The White House made that request of all of the media, trying to get the upper hand in the propaganda war against the TERRORISTS. I don't think the Palistinians were the main subject. (Not that they aren't terrorists.) Of course since it came from the Anti-Christ (George W) the rest of the media promptly ignored the request. But I DID see the press secretary make the request.
> They are run by Rupert Murdoch.
Well that tears it. Of course! That makes them hopelessly biased. But CNN being run for years by an admitted socialist/green activist, married to Fucking Hanoi Jane never tainted CNN's journalistic integrity.
> Their coverage of the Plame felony has been notoriously one-sided.
Dunno about that. I mostly watch FoxNews (but do check the enemy camp for a few hours each week by having my MythTV box grab some of the CNN talking heads.) and heard more than I needed to know about that little tempest in a teapot. Ain't it amazing how leftists HATE the CIA most of the time, that is until defending it gets to score points against the hated enemy. (George W for the slowwitted readers. Saddam and Bin Laden are just naughty boys, not worth Bill Clinton's time to grab when they offered Bin Laden up on a silver platter.)
> There is no major national left-wing news television or radio > network at the present time.
Which only proves the blindness of the left. While those of on the Right will concede you guys exist (but are hopelessly misguided, delusional, borderline anti-american, but you DO exist) you guys think the political spectrum goes from Joe Stalin to Joe Lieberman and anything to the right of there is only howling madness.
> What on earth is it that makes you think MSNBC is left-wing?
I listed them last because they are the best of the bunch, but for all the wrong reasons. They are still run by liberals, but their ratings suck so bad they are trying to copy Fox. But not understanding what makes Fox succeed they are doing poorly. I don't give a rat's ass about Savage, he is an idiot. A right wing version of Howard Dean, a bomb thrower at best and not nearly as funny as Ann Coulter.
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> There is no major national left-wing news television or radio > network at the present time.
Which only proves you ARE a left winger/socialist (10's and 20's)/liberal (30's, - 80's, outright stealing and redefining the label which used to define free market, individual liberties folk like myself)/progressive (90's - now)/whatever new word you guys want to tarnish next.
And isn't it telling that as soon as a name becomes clearly associated with you guys you abandon it because it becomes a toxic kiss of death for any candidate not running in California, New York or Washington DC?
NPR, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Reuters. All are far to the left of center, NPR and CNN are virtually mouthpieces for the DNC, although NPR is a little too 'progressive' even for the Democratic party sometimes.
Fox and talk radio do carry the torch for the Conservative movement to varying degrees. Talk radio tends to be unashamedly conservative while Fox tries for a little more balanced presentation. But in today's media climate even a truly unbiased news source would appear to lean conservative due to being all alone on the rightmost portion of the visible spectrum. Now I'd have no objection to news outlets being as biased as they want to be if it werent for the fact that the heavy hand of government restricts competition by limiting new TV outlets and openly subsidizing NPR/PBS.
Yes, Novell is dead. But they were above that magic size for a corporation where you never truly die, you just become an undead dinosaur. But while feeding off of an ever shrinking installed base can keep the lights on for a few years, dead is still dead. When was the last time you heard of a NEW Netware install? And if there will never be a NEW Netware customer, and a few abandon it every year, the end result is forgone. Just like there are still sites using Token Ring or DECNet, it doesn't mean that they aren't both dead technology. Dead in this sense doesn't mean Chapter 11, it just means zero growth, an end to innovation (i.e. maintaince only mode) and a long slow slide to oblivion.
Novell isn't porting to Linux to spur a new wave of sales, they are doing it because hardware is changing faster than they can afford to port Netware to it and the days of every hardware vendor undertaking the driver development effort for Netware are long gone. So they think that by putting a Netware protocol stack atop Linux they can keep selling their captive audience of legacy Netware installations a couple more rounds of upgrades.
I having sticker shock. For That kind of coin you can slap together a Mini-ITX machine with a DVI port and do a hell of a lot more than display stills. And after having had access to a plasma display I have no desire to own one. They get burn in a matter of hours, making them pretty much useless for home video. (Almost all available content has black bars somewhere.)
1. Why are all three "64bit" boards limited to 4GB of memory?
2. Why are they being evaluated solely with 32bit applications/operating systems? Can't we at least get a kernel compile time benchmark? RedHat's RHEL3 has a free set of beta iso's available for AMD64 so there really wasn't a good excuse for not finding out how well they perform in their native mode.
3. What was the reason for the reviewer's obsession with having six-channel audio as analog outputs without a dongle? Isn't that what SPID-F plugs are for?
4. Since Linux is currently the ONLY supported OS for AMD64 in native mode, information about how well the boards are supported driver wise would have been helpful.
> For those that don't remember, the link above is referring to the > Tauzin-Dingell bill, which was the infamous bill to allow companies > like Verizon to prevent sharing their lines with other companies > offering DSL, like Covad, etc.
Yes, many analysts give Rep Tauzin primary credit for setting us up the.bomb. Of course the bubble WOULD have burst on its own eventually but that bill caused the CLECS to explode as investors realized they had just been legislated out of business, also taking out the DSL industry, both combined to put Lucent and Nortel into a credit crunch because they had been self-financing the all of the above's (because of their crappy credit ratings) equipment buying spree which cascaded into the rest of the tech sector. Next thing you know Worldcon can no longer cover up their losses and the world discovers we really don't need to double our fiber capacity on a Moore's Law schedule which tanks JDS and the other fiber hardware vendors, etc.
But ALL of the dominoes track back to Tauzin putting BellSouth's interest ahead of everyone else. He (along with the Louisiana PUC) is joined to BellSouth's hip. The other crap is just campaign contributions and backroom dealing, but BellSouth is like family for Billy "BellBoy" Tauzin.
> Other likely candidates are Debian unstable and Fedora...though I > believe that the number of people who choose to run either of those > is a lot smaller.
Uh, what are you talking about? To all appearances Sid is THE preferred flavor of Debian. A few servers run Woody and idiots like myself who decided to give Debian a try and actually believed the FAQ when it said non-developers should be running Woody. Good luck finding much (non-included) software for Woody though, ALL of the action is on unstable and Sarge is totally ignored.
We have seen this all before. Remember the hype machine for Chicago? How about Cairo? The finished product never resembles the hype but it keeps the trade press talking about Microsoft's product that will never be instead of competitors products which are shipping now.
Lete not get all worked up, we all know what is going to happen.
1. LG continues to deny any responsibility.
2. The usual suspects will float a few pieces on the ZD rags and perhaps C|Net spreading FUD that Linux is dangerous.
3. One of the Linux IDE Gods will become sufficently annoyed that a proper investigation will happen, the flaw in LG's firmware will be documented in overkill detail.
4. The PR war will turn against LG, they will repent and issue a firmware update, stick a penguin somewhere deep on their support site and declare their eternal love of all things Linux. But it will strictly be for PR.
5. Once understood, a workaround will keep Linux from destroying unpatched drives. Probably something as simple as not checking for packet writing capacity unless basic RW support has already been detected.
6. No longterm changes anywhere. Nothing to see here, move along.
> That's why I don't run WINE and have absolutely no appreciation > for the WINE project.
Too narrowminded. There are a lot of legacy win32 apps in regular use out there that won't get ported. Many times it is impossible to even locate the source or any design docs. It only takes ONE to keep a machine chained to Windows. If it takes wine to get that desktop converted it is still a win. Because once the conversion has taken place that shop probably won't invest in MORE win32 software and eventually those stragglers will get discarded as the relentless march of time obsoletes dead end programs that aren't being well maintained and probably never worked flawlessly in the first place.
> As to the amendment being passed to "solve the argument", it was > actually passed for a much different reason: As a tactic by the US > Federal Government to weaken the Confederate States of America during > the "Civil War/War Between the States".
Please don't refer to it as the "Civil War". That is Yankee propaganda. A Civil war is when two or more factions engage in a war over the machinery of government. The CSA had zero designs on Washington DC or any of the northern nation-states. Personally I prefer "War of Northern Aggression" but "Failed War for Southern Independence" also works.:) Both have an implied slight against the Damned Yankee conquerers.
But more seriously, you have a factual error in there. You have the Emancipation Proclamation confused with an actual Constituitional Amenment. The Emancipation Proclamation was a legally void propaganda piece designed to disuade France (always an unreliable ally) from extending diplomatic recognition to the CSA and thereby ratcheting the blockade of Southern ports to a whole new level of difficulty. (The French navy of the time would have been a formidible foe to the Union fleet.) Go re-read it sometime! It only freed slaves in states "in rebellion", i.e. places where US law held no sway. The actual Amendment was passed AFTER the war, during "Reconstruction" where the subject states were forced at gunpoint to pass the amendment so that it would have enough votes to be ratified, seeing as not enough Northern states had any interest in passing it.
Lincoln was a monster. Booth's only problem was not shooting the bastard a few years earlier when it would have done some good. Anybody who thinks Clinton getting blown in the Oval Office stained the dignity of the office simply doesn't know enough history to know what sort of dubious characters preceeded him.
> According to my understanding, the only thing questionably legal about > software is the fact that in many cases, you can't return it. It's very > normal for contracts and agreements to be changed after an initial > contract has been signed.
It isn't illegal, however it also isn't a valid contract. Contracts require several things to be considered as valid:
1. Both parties must agree to it. Since I already OWN a copy of a software title purchased at retail what am I, as the purchaser, being granted by the proposed contract that I don't already possess? Ownership of a legally reproduced copy of a copyrighted work includes the right to execute it in the case of computer software. Acceptance of the agreement might entitle me to support, upgrades, etc. but if I decide that the terms of the agreement are more of a negative than those benefits I am quite within my rights to reject the license agreement.
2. All parties to a contract MUST have the ability to read and agree to it BEFORE any thing of value is exchanged or service is performed and all parties must sign it. No EULA meets that requirement and is therefore invalid on it's face.
3. All parties must have the ability to enter into legally binding contacts. Since minors are allowed to purchase software with no objections by the publishers, a good case could be made that they don't actually care about the EULA.
4. As far as I know, no court has upheld the validity of clicking an "I Agree" button as being equal to a signature. Especially in light of the market reality that you can't read the EULA until you purchase and open the product, at which time retailers are forbidden by the manufacturers to refund the purchase price. (See #2)
> For example, last week I received a notice from the local phone > company notifying me of changes in the billing terms. Nothing major, > and nothing I'm worrried about - but contained therein was a phrase > like "continued use of our services constitutes agreement to these > terms". It's perfectly legal - the next time you make a payment, > you're legally binding yourself to those terms.
Bad example. There is a difference between a PRODUCT and a SERVICE. A service is a recurring item. But if you sign up for new phone service and get their terms of service they can't change it until the next billing cycle and they have to give you a copy of the changes in advance, giving you the chance to refuse the change.
Back in the mid '90's I got into financial difficulty. The credit card co's knew because the first time I missed a payment I got a letter announcing a change in my agreement, raising my interest to levels that only a few decades ago would constitute usary. So I called the bastards and said "I refuse this change in my agreement." They of course cancelled the account, but I got to pay em off at the originally agreed upon interest rate. Of course they got wise to that trick and nowadays all cards put a default rate and the conditions that will get you moved to that rate right up front in the federally mandated disclosure statement. Point being that even banks can't change a contract after signing. And fro most software sales, the implied contract happens at the cash register when FRNs get exchanged for shrinkwrapped boxes.
And no, I'm not on some blacklist for standing up to the credit companies. I don't have those same cards but paying em off appears to have actually raised my credit score. So now any pitch that has a two digit rate (ignoring intro rates) or an annual fee gets canned instantly.
> The 'First Sale Doctrine' means you can do whatever you want with > something after you buy it. Strangely enough, software seems to be > excluded(kind of. But I don't understand why).
Unless you are unlucky enough to live in Virgina or Maryland (the two states that passed UCITA or parts of it) software EULAs don't exist except in the publisher's minds. You are bound only by copyright law in what you can do with a software product bought at retail.
Licensing aggreements such as Software Assurance and other corporate bulk licensing deals are normally in the form of real signed contracts and are therefore fully valid and enforcable.
Think about what Windows 9x really IS. What is happening is that DOS is finally dying and THAT is a big shift. And while is was silly to refer to the specific version of VB (the last one, Version 6) the bigger picture is that VB is also dying, a language/product line that powered most of the corporate world's interally developed applications for well over a decade. VB.net's only connection to VB is the brand name Microsoft is trying to leverage.
My problem with the article is the barely concealed sales pitch for the upgrade treadmill. An attitude of "who care if it works, better pitch it now lest something bad happen. We promise that nothing bad can happen if you buy shiny, new stuff because we all know it will seamlessly migrate and probably even get you laid."
My philosophy is that if you happen to have a boatload of printers on Token Ring that are working well, leave em the hell alone until they stop working well. But DO start planning for that day because it will happen eventually.
> Are investment firms really that dumb? Can I sue IBM and just get $50 > million by pretending to be a player in industry?
Yup, it is just that easy. IF you can talk the talk, wear the Guici suit and have the right friends in the right places. The money people who make the decisions haven't a clue what most of the companies they invest in actually DO, but they know the guy wearing the suit went to the right schools, mingles in the right circles and says the right things. So they ASSume he is one of 'them' and if he says he is going to be getting to step 3 (profit!) real soon now, they all line up to throw money his way, hoping to get a piece of the action.
That document says Microsoft is one of the top ten entities doing PIPE transactions, not that they are doing them through BayStar. If the title of the graphic isn't clear enough, notice the attribution at the bottom.
But it won't matter in the end. They are doomed and any idiot who invests in them or carries a long position in their stock is going to get screwed. Unfortunatly there is still a unhealthy supply of idiots handing out other people's cash trying to get the '90s levels of payback again.
They are just trolling again, please don't feed the trolls.
If they send it to a court it might mean something, something tossed out to get the/. crowd riled up again or attract a few more ignorant investors doesn't really matter.
And no I don't care about the investors who are getting screwed. "It is immoral to let a sucker keep his money." (quoting RAH) Anyone sinking money into what was a penny stock earlier this year without investigating the situation deserves to get shafted just as hard as the idiots who bid Amazon up to a valuation higher than Boeing in the.bomb days.
The problem seems to be most of the GNOME/KDE developers were trained on Windows and thinking in terms of it, want to reinvent it smashing X into a pale echo of Win32, instead of having a deep knowledge and respect for what UNIX/GNU/X offers.
Another post slagging X by someone who couldn't be bothered to know what the hell they are talking about. The clipboard services offered by the X server are more than able to handle the job you describe. Nobody uses it, much like none of the 'modern' (read copying Windows) desktop environments bother to use X Resources, instead reinventing different and incompatible client side preference stoarge methods.
I have read through the pitches for RFID library systems. They don't turn them off, it would defeat the purpose: reduce the labor required to circulate books. When you drop the book back off at the library it can automatically check it back in if the tag is still active, and no labor is required to re-tag the book before reshelving it.
Remember that RFID tags are normally not programmable, they have sequential serial numbers into infinity and beyond. Without the library's database to cross the serial number to an accession number and thence to author/title the tag is useless.
I'm hot for the idea, the pricetag is just too freaking high for a small library system like the one I work for to even consider suggesting it t the people who write the checks.... yet.
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> Command came down from on high because the people on high at Fox
:)
> wanted Arnold to win.
Another theory was that they heard from their VIEWERS in California, many of which probably supported Arnold and didn't like the network treating him like a joke candidate. At any rate we will never know for sure of the motivation, only that of all the major outlets only Fox did the right thing and in the end actions count for more than intentions.
> Your point is true, but the distinction is not really important.
Dunno, pretty big difference between intentional bias and trying to be a good citizen and doing something because the President of the USA asked them to.
> The fact that you believe the Plame affair to be a minor issue is
> telling. It's a felony.
Nah, it just says I'm an old fart who isn't shocked at full contact politics. Not the first felony and certainly not the last. Heck, the Pentagon Papers probably rose to an overt act of Treason but if anybody was executed over it never made the papers. Besides, this one is still going to have a few more plot twists methinks so I'm not worrying about it until a few more chapters get written.
> the Democrats can prove logically that there's a guaranteed felon
> in the White House and the only way to get rid of her is to elect a
> new administration.
Har Har, nice attempt at character assassination but I really doubt Miss Rice is the leak. But if she did decide it had to be done, she won't get busted for it; that is one hella smart lady.
> Murdoch vs. Turner: Turner is no liberal. Nor is he married to Jane
> Fonda any longer.
Yea, and the Pope isn't Catholic. I did know Ted & Jane aren't married anymore. Talk about Poetic Justice! Ted finally finds the Godless Communist of his dreams and then she goes and finds God! Almost makes me believe in God, and that He has a sick and twisted sense of humor.
> Besides, CNN has taken a giant step to the right to try to keep
> up with Fox's ratings.
And of course Ted isn't in charge anymore, which might also have something to do with it. But yea, I'm sure dropping to #2 behind a young upstart like Fox has to stick in their craw just a bit. And it says a lot about how out of step mainstream news is that as soon as a single news outlet leaned Right they shot to #1 and now the others are forced to change their position in a desperate attempt to recover ratings. But they still have a long way to go to reach unbiased.
> This is what I mean by calling names. You're not making an argument,
> you're calling me insane.
Not at all, and I wouldn't mind if liberals think us Conservatives are "hopelessly misguided, delusional, borderline fascists". Because that means we would actually exist on the liberal radar as actual people with a coherent worldview, just one they disagree with.
What I object to is the standard PC liberal position that the world consists of various brands of liberalism with full blown socialists/communists over to their left but no rational position to the right so there is no reason to deal with us, give our positions a hearing, etc.
But is is perfectly OK for political opponents to think the other side is zarking mad, as long as everyone can have good clean debates and keep it somewhat civil. We are after all playing for real stakes in a dangerous age. What does worry me is the recent tendancy, as the left feels power slipping away, for Democratic presidential candidates to forget we are all supposed to be Americans and fighting on the same side when we are at war.
> I'm concerned foremost with an empirical basis for policy making.
> Clinton was quite good at this, the Bush Administration is famously
> afraid of it.
If by empirical you mean cold calculated political decisions refined by focus groups we must be using a different definition of the word. Truth be told I wasn't a fan of S
> I gave examples, you called me names.
Talk about making my point for me. Calling liberals a liberal is "name calling". On the other hand you don't find many conservatives running from being named as one. (Of course we do often object to the more common media labels of "Right wing reactionary", "extreme right", etc. and the implied homophobe, racist, anti-semetic, sexist, blah blah.)
> They insisted on highlighting the gravitas of the Schwarzenegger
> campaign.
Not initially. They joined into the "Governator" and "Total Recall" gags like everyone else until the command came down from the top telling them to start treating him like another candidate, which was the correct thing to do. And the people of California agreed he was a serious enough candidate for them to actually elect him. Considering the other choices it might have been wise, but you won't find me cheering all that loudly.
> They invented the term homicide bomber out of whole cloth in a
> deliberate and cynical attempt to reframe the Palestinian question.
No they didn't, but I'll forgive you the ignorance since you obviously get your news from the left press. The White House made that request of all of the media, trying to get the upper hand in the propaganda war against the TERRORISTS. I don't think the Palistinians were the main subject. (Not that they aren't terrorists.) Of course since it came from the Anti-Christ (George W) the rest of the media promptly ignored the request. But I DID see the press secretary make the request.
> They are run by Rupert Murdoch.
Well that tears it. Of course! That makes them hopelessly biased. But CNN being run for years by an admitted socialist/green activist, married to Fucking Hanoi Jane never tainted CNN's journalistic integrity.
> Their coverage of the Plame felony has been notoriously one-sided.
Dunno about that. I mostly watch FoxNews (but do check the enemy camp for a few hours each week by having my MythTV box grab some of the CNN talking heads.) and heard more than I needed to know about that little tempest in a teapot. Ain't it amazing how leftists HATE the CIA most of the time, that is until defending it gets to score points against the hated enemy. (George W for the slowwitted readers. Saddam and Bin Laden are just naughty boys, not worth Bill Clinton's time to grab when they offered Bin Laden up on a silver platter.)
> There is no major national left-wing news television or radio
> network at the present time.
Which only proves the blindness of the left. While those of on the Right will concede you guys exist (but are hopelessly misguided, delusional, borderline anti-american, but you DO exist) you guys think the political spectrum goes from Joe Stalin to Joe Lieberman and anything to the right of there is only howling madness.
> What on earth is it that makes you think MSNBC is left-wing?
I listed them last because they are the best of the bunch, but for all the wrong reasons. They are still run by liberals, but their ratings suck so bad they are trying to copy Fox. But not understanding what makes Fox succeed they are doing poorly. I don't give a rat's ass about Savage, he is an idiot. A right wing version of Howard Dean, a bomb thrower at best and not nearly as funny as Ann Coulter.
> There is no major national left-wing news television or radio
> network at the present time.
Which only proves you ARE a left winger/socialist (10's and 20's)/liberal (30's, - 80's, outright stealing and redefining the label which used to define free market, individual liberties folk like myself)/progressive (90's - now)/whatever new word you guys want to tarnish next.
And isn't it telling that as soon as a name becomes clearly associated with you guys you abandon it because it becomes a toxic kiss of death for any candidate not running in California, New York or Washington DC?
NPR, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Reuters. All are far to the left of center, NPR and CNN are virtually mouthpieces for the DNC, although NPR is a little too 'progressive' even for the Democratic party sometimes.
Fox and talk radio do carry the torch for the Conservative movement to varying degrees. Talk radio tends to be unashamedly conservative while Fox tries for a little more balanced presentation. But in today's media climate even a truly unbiased news source would appear to lean conservative due to being all alone on the rightmost portion of the visible spectrum. Now I'd have no objection to news outlets being as biased as they want to be if it werent for the fact that the heavy hand of government restricts competition by limiting new TV outlets and openly subsidizing NPR/PBS.
> I have yet to see a Longhorn advertisement on TV or a billboard
> or anywhere.
Why the hell would they PAY to advertise their vaporware? It's the top story on C|Net right now and even the fscking Drudge Report has a story on it.
> Novell is dead? Thats news to me!
Yes, Novell is dead. But they were above that magic size for a corporation where you never truly die, you just become an undead dinosaur. But while feeding off of an ever shrinking installed base can keep the lights on for a few years, dead is still dead. When was the last time you heard of a NEW Netware install? And if there will never be a NEW Netware customer, and a few abandon it every year, the end result is forgone. Just like there are still sites using Token Ring or DECNet, it doesn't mean that they aren't both dead technology. Dead in this sense doesn't mean Chapter 11, it just means zero growth, an end to innovation (i.e. maintaince only mode) and a long slow slide to oblivion.
Novell isn't porting to Linux to spur a new wave of sales, they are doing it because hardware is changing faster than they can afford to port Netware to it and the days of every hardware vendor undertaking the driver development effort for Netware are long gone. So they think that by putting a Netware protocol stack atop Linux they can keep selling their captive audience of legacy Netware installations a couple more rounds of upgrades.
I having sticker shock. For That kind of coin you can slap together a Mini-ITX machine with a DVI port and do a hell of a lot more than display stills. And after having had access to a plasma display I have no desire to own one. They get burn in a matter of hours, making them pretty much useless for home video. (Almost all available content has black bars somewhere.)
1. Why are all three "64bit" boards limited to 4GB of memory?
2. Why are they being evaluated solely with 32bit applications/operating systems? Can't we at least get a kernel compile time benchmark? RedHat's RHEL3 has a free set of beta iso's available for AMD64 so there really wasn't a good excuse for not finding out how well they perform in their native mode.
3. What was the reason for the reviewer's obsession with having six-channel audio as analog outputs without a dongle? Isn't that what SPID-F plugs are for?
4. Since Linux is currently the ONLY supported OS for AMD64 in native mode, information about how well the boards are supported driver wise would have been helpful.
> For those that don't remember, the link above is referring to the
.bomb. Of course the bubble WOULD have burst on its own eventually but that bill caused the CLECS to explode as investors realized they had just been legislated out of business, also taking out the DSL industry, both combined to put Lucent and Nortel into a credit crunch because they had been self-financing the all of the above's (because of their crappy credit ratings) equipment buying spree which cascaded into the rest of the tech sector. Next thing you know Worldcon can no longer cover up their losses and the world discovers we really don't need to double our fiber capacity on a Moore's Law schedule which tanks JDS and the other fiber hardware vendors, etc.
> Tauzin-Dingell bill, which was the infamous bill to allow companies
> like Verizon to prevent sharing their lines with other companies
> offering DSL, like Covad, etc.
Yes, many analysts give Rep Tauzin primary credit for setting us up the
But ALL of the dominoes track back to Tauzin putting BellSouth's interest ahead of everyone else. He (along with the Louisiana PUC) is joined to BellSouth's hip. The other crap is just campaign contributions and backroom dealing, but BellSouth is like family for Billy "BellBoy" Tauzin.
> Other likely candidates are Debian unstable and Fedora...though I
> believe that the number of people who choose to run either of those
> is a lot smaller.
Uh, what are you talking about? To all appearances Sid is THE preferred flavor of Debian. A few servers run Woody and idiots like myself who decided to give Debian a try and actually believed the FAQ when it said non-developers should be running Woody. Good luck finding much (non-included) software for Woody though, ALL of the action is on unstable and Sarge is totally ignored.
Nah, but they have darned near perfected it.
We have seen this all before. Remember the hype machine for Chicago? How about Cairo? The finished product never resembles the hype but it keeps the trade press talking about Microsoft's product that will never be instead of competitors products which are shipping now.
Lete not get all worked up, we all know what is going to happen.
1. LG continues to deny any responsibility.
2. The usual suspects will float a few pieces on the ZD rags and perhaps C|Net spreading FUD that Linux is dangerous.
3. One of the Linux IDE Gods will become sufficently annoyed that a proper investigation will happen, the flaw in LG's firmware will be documented in overkill detail.
4. The PR war will turn against LG, they will repent and issue a firmware update, stick a penguin somewhere deep on their support site and declare their eternal love of all things Linux. But it will strictly be for PR.
5. Once understood, a workaround will keep Linux from destroying unpatched drives. Probably something as simple as not checking for packet writing capacity unless basic RW support has already been detected.
6. No longterm changes anywhere. Nothing to see here, move along.
> That's why I don't run WINE and have absolutely no appreciation
> for the WINE project.
Too narrowminded. There are a lot of legacy win32 apps in regular use out there that won't get ported. Many times it is impossible to even locate the source or any design docs. It only takes ONE to keep a machine chained to Windows. If it takes wine to get that desktop converted it is still a win. Because once the conversion has taken place that shop probably won't invest in MORE win32 software and eventually those stragglers will get discarded as the relentless march of time obsoletes dead end programs that aren't being well maintained and probably never worked flawlessly in the first place.
> As to the amendment being passed to "solve the argument", it was
:) Both have an implied slight against the Damned Yankee conquerers.
> actually passed for a much different reason: As a tactic by the US
> Federal Government to weaken the Confederate States of America during
> the "Civil War/War Between the States".
Please don't refer to it as the "Civil War". That is Yankee propaganda. A Civil war is when two or more factions engage in a war over the machinery of government. The CSA had zero designs on Washington DC or any of the northern nation-states. Personally I prefer "War of Northern Aggression" but "Failed War for Southern Independence" also works.
But more seriously, you have a factual error in there. You have the Emancipation Proclamation confused with an actual Constituitional Amenment. The Emancipation Proclamation was a legally void propaganda piece designed to disuade France (always an unreliable ally) from extending diplomatic recognition to the CSA and thereby ratcheting the blockade of Southern ports to a whole new level of difficulty. (The French navy of the time would have been a formidible foe to the Union fleet.) Go re-read it sometime! It only freed slaves in states "in rebellion", i.e. places where US law held no sway. The actual Amendment was passed AFTER the war, during "Reconstruction" where the subject states were forced at gunpoint to pass the amendment so that it would have enough votes to be ratified, seeing as not enough Northern states had any interest in passing it.
Lincoln was a monster. Booth's only problem was not shooting the bastard a few years earlier when it would have done some good. Anybody who thinks Clinton getting blown in the Oval Office stained the dignity of the office simply doesn't know enough history to know what sort of dubious characters preceeded him.
> According to my understanding, the only thing questionably legal about
> software is the fact that in many cases, you can't return it. It's very
> normal for contracts and agreements to be changed after an initial
> contract has been signed.
It isn't illegal, however it also isn't a valid contract. Contracts require several things to be considered as valid:
1. Both parties must agree to it. Since I already OWN a copy of a software title purchased at retail what am I, as the purchaser, being granted by the proposed contract that I don't already possess? Ownership of a legally reproduced copy of a copyrighted work includes the right to execute it in the case of computer software. Acceptance of the agreement might entitle me to support, upgrades, etc. but if I decide that the terms of the agreement are more of a negative than those benefits I am quite within my rights to reject the license agreement.
2. All parties to a contract MUST have the ability to read and agree to it BEFORE any thing of value is exchanged or service is performed and all parties must sign it. No EULA meets that requirement and is therefore invalid on it's face.
3. All parties must have the ability to enter into legally binding contacts. Since minors are allowed to purchase software with no objections by the publishers, a good case could be made that they don't actually care about the EULA.
4. As far as I know, no court has upheld the validity of clicking an "I Agree" button as being equal to a signature. Especially in light of the market reality that you can't read the EULA until you purchase and open the product, at which time retailers are forbidden by the manufacturers to refund the purchase price. (See #2)
> For example, last week I received a notice from the local phone
> company notifying me of changes in the billing terms. Nothing major,
> and nothing I'm worrried about - but contained therein was a phrase
> like "continued use of our services constitutes agreement to these
> terms". It's perfectly legal - the next time you make a payment,
> you're legally binding yourself to those terms.
Bad example. There is a difference between a PRODUCT and a SERVICE. A service is a recurring item. But if you sign up for new phone service and get their terms of service they can't change it until the next billing cycle and they have to give you a copy of the changes in advance, giving you the chance to refuse the change.
Back in the mid '90's I got into financial difficulty. The credit card co's knew because the first time I missed a payment I got a letter announcing a change in my agreement, raising my interest to levels that only a few decades ago would constitute usary. So I called the bastards and said "I refuse this change in my agreement." They of course cancelled the account, but I got to pay em off at the originally agreed upon interest rate. Of course they got wise to that trick and nowadays all cards put a default rate and the conditions that will get you moved to that rate right up front in the federally mandated disclosure statement. Point being that even banks can't change a contract after signing. And fro most software sales, the implied contract happens at the cash register when FRNs get exchanged for shrinkwrapped boxes.
And no, I'm not on some blacklist for standing up to the credit companies. I don't have those same cards but paying em off appears to have actually raised my credit score. So now any pitch that has a two digit rate (ignoring intro rates) or an annual fee gets canned instantly.
> The 'First Sale Doctrine' means you can do whatever you want with
> something after you buy it. Strangely enough, software seems to be
> excluded(kind of. But I don't understand why).
Unless you are unlucky enough to live in Virgina or Maryland (the two states that passed UCITA or parts of it) software EULAs don't exist except in the publisher's minds. You are bound only by copyright law in what you can do with a software product bought at retail.
Licensing aggreements such as Software Assurance and other corporate bulk licensing deals are normally in the form of real signed contracts and are therefore fully valid and enforcable.
Think about what Windows 9x really IS. What is happening is that DOS is finally dying and THAT is a big shift. And while is was silly to refer to the specific version of VB (the last one, Version 6) the bigger picture is that VB is also dying, a language/product line that powered most of the corporate world's interally developed applications for well over a decade. VB.net's only connection to VB is the brand name Microsoft is trying to leverage.
My problem with the article is the barely concealed sales pitch for the upgrade treadmill. An attitude of "who care if it works, better pitch it now lest something bad happen. We promise that nothing bad can happen if you buy shiny, new stuff because we all know it will seamlessly migrate and probably even get you laid."
My philosophy is that if you happen to have a boatload of printers on Token Ring that are working well, leave em the hell alone until they stop working well. But DO start planning for that day because it will happen eventually.
Didn't see too many bailout checks issued in the wake of Enron or Worldcon.
> Are investment firms really that dumb? Can I sue IBM and just get $50
> million by pretending to be a player in industry?
Yup, it is just that easy. IF you can talk the talk, wear the Guici suit and have the right friends in the right places. The money people who make the decisions haven't a clue what most of the companies they invest in actually DO, but they know the guy wearing the suit went to the right schools, mingles in the right circles and says the right things. So they ASSume he is one of 'them' and if he says he is going to be getting to step 3 (profit!) real soon now, they all line up to throw money his way, hoping to get a piece of the action.
That document says Microsoft is one of the top ten entities doing PIPE transactions, not that they are doing them through BayStar. If the title of the graphic isn't clear enough, notice the attribution at the bottom.
But it won't matter in the end. They are doomed and any idiot who invests in them or carries a long position in their stock is going to get screwed. Unfortunatly there is still a unhealthy supply of idiots handing out other people's cash trying to get the '90s levels of payback again.
They are just trolling again, please don't feed the trolls.
/. crowd riled up again or attract a few more ignorant investors doesn't really matter.
.bomb days.
If they send it to a court it might mean something, something tossed out to get the
And no I don't care about the investors who are getting screwed. "It is immoral to let a sucker keep his money." (quoting RAH) Anyone sinking money into what was a penny stock earlier this year without investigating the situation deserves to get shafted just as hard as the idiots who bid Amazon up to a valuation higher than Boeing in the
The problem seems to be most of the GNOME/KDE developers were trained on Windows and thinking in terms of it, want to reinvent it smashing X into a pale echo of Win32, instead of having a deep knowledge and respect for what UNIX/GNU/X offers.
Another post slagging X by someone who couldn't be bothered to know what the hell they are talking about. The clipboard services offered by the X server are more than able to handle the job you describe. Nobody uses it, much like none of the 'modern' (read copying Windows) desktop environments bother to use X Resources, instead reinventing different and incompatible client side preference stoarge methods.
I have read through the pitches for RFID library systems. They don't turn them off, it would defeat the purpose: reduce the labor required to circulate books. When you drop the book back off at the library it can automatically check it back in if the tag is still active, and no labor is required to re-tag the book before reshelving it.
Remember that RFID tags are normally not programmable, they have sequential serial numbers into infinity and beyond. Without the library's database to cross the serial number to an accession number and thence to author/title the tag is useless.
I'm hot for the idea, the pricetag is just too freaking high for a small library system like the one I work for to even consider suggesting it t the people who write the checks.... yet.