I slipped out of the old folks home, thought I would come back. Some things are the same - stories that are half-stories, the constant pandering to marginal political theories (on "both sides"), the public sniping...
Big Oil (and the strange bedfellows it brings) may be an issue, but it continues to amaze me that the entire crowd here always thinks that the giant Sequoia in front of them is the entire forest. In 10 years we will have bigger problems, problems that are already manifested and clearly visible on the horizon. And the real irony? Everyone here in the tech industry is directly dependent on its very existence.
Yet we continue to pander around to (whatever strikes the tech industry's fancy) instead of tackling the issues directly.
Tech is no longer tech, it's a fashion show put on by a bunch of con artists hoping for a payday.
I guess I'll be returning to my old folks home now...
Why the hell is everyone whining about the Catalyst drivers, when the existing Xorg ports work, are stable, and really should be the center of our attention with regard to effort/coding/bug-reporting.
It irritates me to no end to see STOO-PID-ass reports of "AMD/ATI is suxxor because of Catalyst, use proprietary NoVideo bullshit-bullshit"...when I know better to begin with.
Stop loading crappy-ass binary drivers, start feeding back bug reports to the Xorg devs, and maybe you'll get something that's better than "I clicky-clicked the proprietary driver in Urbunghole Maya Calendar 2012.9997 Edition, and it loaded but now suxxors my system".
</rant off>
Seriously, I want to hear a list of why the Catalyst drivers are even needed. Give me good reasons why I absolutely positively MUST install Catalyst & Co. when the existing efforts are working.
Bonus points if you can tell me why I can decode AND PLAY 1920x1080 HD just fine with Xorg drivers, but shouldn't be able to.
Beginning in 1988, and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anticompetitive "per processor" licenses. Under a per processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with a Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased. In fiscal year 1993, per processor licenses accounted for an estimated 60% of MS-DOS sales to OEMs and 43% of Windows sales to OEMs.(3) Collectively, the OEMs who have such per processor contracts are critical to the success of competing operating system vendors, but those OEMs effectively are foreclosed to Microsoft's competitors.
C) May be the case, but it still happened. And as I recall, the practice continued to happen after the trial was concluded, for a short time. The trial concluded in late '99, which means the practice did continue into the '00s...
Of course, this is old news, see something from 2007 no less... http://techrights.org/2007/10/29/exclusionary-deals-linux/
I'll leave the rest to you as an exercise.
Microsoft charges the OEM per copy, regardless if it is installed on the machine or not. This was a well-known, on-going tactic from early 2000's and was one of the main drivers in the "I want my refund" ~ "go talk to the vendor" BS that this article is pointing out.
Microsoft doesn't give their cash cows away for free. If you really believe that they are paying someone to put Windows on a crapware box you buy from Dell/Lenovo, then you should go back to smoking your pipe, and whatever mind-altering substance was in it.
For the love of $DIETY, please, involve yourself with what is left of WebOS if/when it is released.
Gnome, KDE, etc. are all showing their "age" and "Windows 95 everything-is-an-ugly-component" mentality. If WebOS is truly open-sourced (not fake open-sourced) then there is a slim, slim chance of having a desktop that actually would be a delight to use, instead of the goddamn window-explorer-desktop mindset that has dominated the GUI space for decades.
Well, this is a kick in the face for anyone who said that you can make money through making open source software, nomatter how you think of sharing your code while still covering your costs, someone's just going to rebrand it.
And to think, I just posted an anonymous reply to this(below) and was marked down. All because I didn't want to make a buck.
I'm tired. Tired of "me-too" get rich quick bullshit. Time for me to go home. There are bigger, pressing issues that are worth my time, compared to watching people get pissed about some neckbeard (me) pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. To those who just can't seem to get their head wrapped around the original concepts behind OSS, good luck deluding yourselves. To those who think that everything can be solved by increased quarterly corporate profits, well, enjoy eating dollar bills. Lastly, for the professional astroturf accounts out there - and yes, they do exist, I have seen them actively over a decade right here in Slashdot - well, you can fool some of the people some of th etime, but not all of the people all of the time. And I have a long, long memory of who you are. Goodbye, good luck.
The commercial route was always something someone would recommend here but it used to be a case of "if you trust $company they could do it for you" now it's like "if you are an insane moron who hates his life, you could do it yourself". The complacency has turned into derogative condescension. Soon it's going to be a matter of old plain hostility, and that makes me type a colon and an open parenthesis.
Even before opening this article I knew it would be
overflowing with cries to drop this self-dependency stupidity and
just surrender to the corporate gods.
Hello friend. Perhaps you haven't noticed - Slashdot's original
core crowd left a long, long time ago. Sure, we (the original,
older crowd) stop in now and then, but the generational gap here is
growing, and daily.
For most of the (new) Slashdot folk here, the corporate way of
life is the only life they relate to. Silicon Valley apparently has
gone from "daring to make changes that affect future generations
in a positive way by doing cool and new things" to "how can
we suck the corporate teet hard enough to milk dollars into us before
our VC funding dries up". This mentality is not just there, but
everywhere; it's spreading, and it appears to be a function of how
the current generation of programmers, web designers, engineers, and
many many others have been taught. And in some cases, even how they
were raised as kids.
It's OK though. There are enough of us, the so-called
“neckbeards”, out there to know better, and we're lurking
quietly in the background. Sooner or later, the more deluded ones
will completely fuck things up, and they will come crying with their
boo-boos and howling in pain. And we'll just have to step in and
clean up the scrape, put a band-aid over the top, and send them back
out. Because, for some reason I haven't been able to trace yet, the
next generation's method of learning has been completely stunted.
They don't ask why anymore, they only ask how. More on
that in a moment...
In the meantime, it's funnier than hell to watch them just fuck
things up, and then they wonder why things don't work like they
should, and then they re-invent the wheel to fix a problem that only
existed in their head to begin with...
What the fuck?
You're just aware of this transition now? Well, better late than
never, I suppose.
What is the purpose of free software if you are not
supposed to use your freedom? You can build your system using open
standards, install an open source OS with an open source mail server.
But you will get blocked because you are not a business? More over,
what is the purpose of freedom when you are not supposed to exercise
it? It really has come to the point where "freedom" means
"freedom to work for the system".
This is the Grand Co-optment of both the Internet and the Open
Source movement. The PTB have long known (and feared) these two
disrupting factors, but they've since found a way to get sheeple
the upcoming echo of the boomer generation to come around, and are
still hell-bent on subjugating both of those phenomena to their
interests.
With regard to the Internet, the transition from an open "network
of networks" to a completely sealed and monitored panopticon is
nearly complete. Hosting a home server in this day and age is
promoted as "an anachronism", or "a throwback".
The road blocks thrown up for home use are intentional - we don't
want you to do your own thing, we want you to consume our
services, because all you are to us is a tube that we ram
worthless crap down the front of, and dollar bills get shit out the
back of you. This is pretty much how the major corporate entities
see everyone, even their own employees. This isn't about
defending networks from spam, it's all about making a profit from
hosted services. Any idiot would realize that sealing port 25 on
home DSL/Cable/Fiber routers does jack shit – a good
virus/malware writer would simply move the port around to 2525 or
even employ SSL. But try to get a connection to port 25 on your home
router. There's about an 80% chance (plucked that figure from the
top of my head based on empirical observation only) that you just
can't do it. Why? Because – gawd fo
let me get this straight - my father-in-law, who is English, but has married my mother and is living in Oregon (who'da thunk?), would rather pay those "high taxes" to keep his medical coverage and benefits from good 'ol blighty, yet you say he's living in a fantasy? What are you smoking and where do I get it?
It's another three-ring circus. Get your tickets at the Apple Genius Bar, watch Richard "Liontamer" Stallman put his head in Steve Job's mouth, and remember folks, you can take home the DRM-enabled iPod edition for viewing!
Hm. This is why I don't pay for a subscription to slashdot. (scratches ass) ok, time to haul out the trollbait. Just be sure to wash your hands after sprinkling it around.
The FSF is approaching this 180-degrees wrong. Apple will actually gain something out of this as paying Johns^Wcustomers discover that they can't get help they desperately need, like "why can't I eject my CD from my computer without my keyboard attached?"
The FSF will suffer another public relations blow in doing so, allowing them to dwindle into background noise.
The Windows old folks home will continue to go on, because, um, we really don't know what else to do with them.
Get off my lawn. Ma, get my gun.
Ok, let's play it out:
Windows is here and will stay, as long as Ballmer doesn't do something stupid like, oh, attempt to buy Yahoo with all of their cash money. Or, say, market video games. And cell phones. Maybe one of those thin-display thingys but with something geeky-cool, like a touch-screen...
Apple's market share will continue to grow as long as they can brush aside criticism of their business model. Of course, this is nothing new - it's been going on for a long, long time and no-one has really perked their head up to notice until recently. Everyone will miss the real point - that as Apple continues to accelerate in market share,they continue to tighten their grip on their customers through vendor-lock-in. This model worked well for the Microsoft/Business relationship, but there are far more Joe Sixpack customers out there than their are John Cubedweller office workers. And Apple would really, really like to get to know you, your wife, and the rest of your family.
Linux doesn't have a business model, no matter how much Red Hat would like them to. As such, it remains always beyond Joe Sixpack's reach, even though it's embedded all over the place.
BSD is in a ship that looks alot like the USS Linux but the crew thinks they're out to sea, despite still being tied to the dock. Hence, it charts a course to nowhere.
Solaris will do well in markets that were previously dominated by Solaris, accounting for a strong uptick in Solaris adoption. This fits well with Sun's new (no, not that old one, the new one) direction.
You'll probably never see this but hey, it's worth a try.
Anytime you can bend the ears of millions of people by name recognition alone you've accomplished something. And the fact that he has gotten rich for being a raving maniac only proves how well it's working for him. There are tons of people who have tried the same route who have ended up looking like idiots and dead broke.
Populist ideology is still around, live, and kicking. It comes in all kinds of flavors, true.
What cure? The point of that was that cures can be found in a cost-effective fashion that allows people *around the world* to have access to them. But because there is *no profit to be had* in that situation, they will never be developed.
You said for "treatable condition" that means there is a cure. That's what I'm talking about since you didn't mention specific conditions. Talk about double speak.
(sigh) fine, as I didn't make clear that the existing Pharma corps don't see a profit and therefore aren't motivated to pursue those, I'll conceed this to you.
My guess is that if you cared to name a few of these issues surrounding starvation you'd quickly find that people are dying not because of the lack of food but because of local customs (call it religion if you like), political situations, miseducation, blackmarket substandard food, etc etc etc.
Hmm, sounds wrong.What does food have to do with pharmaceuticals? We're talking about pharmaceuticals and the industry here. Stop trying to divert the topic to attempt to fool people into thinking you have a valid point.
This was an examination of the process, not a diversion. I'm thinking out loud - as it's confusing to you, ignore it.
And don't forget that tragedies like Ethiopia happened because there was tons of food on Ethiopian docs but he military kept it from civilians. It's a perfect example!
I see tragedy here at home. Don't even need a plane/train/auto/ship ticket to get there. There's no military preventing people from getting to food here, is there? Political issues? Only if you think the govt. has some weird conspiratorial agenda. Insanity? Some of the folks I see are, but not all of them. So what does that leave? Why do people starve in a "land of plenty"? I've been trying to answer that one for over a decade. You have an answer for this situation - why people starve, even die, state-side?
How do you kow that I have not been sending that money for some time now? Do you know how many charities keep asking me for more money, yet I struggle to feed my own?
By the way, the reference was to Television, not Internet Gaming. And yes, there's tons of crap in Internet Gaming too. Still, tit for tat - you say I'm confusing things, I think you're there with me.
Seems that you don't care if you're the one having the fun but God forbid others spend their spare cash to improve their lives.
Ya know what, I bet you think I have cable TV and Air Conditioning. You probably even think I drive a car to work; OK, a car is a bit much, let's go with a moped or motorcycle. Let's lay it out - you tell me the luxury that I have and I'll see if I even have it. Don't tell me running clean water or clean air or some other baloney. If the necessities of living is a luxury then that opens the door to all kinds of nasty things that we don't want to talk about.
By the way, the internet hookup is a necessity - it's a job *requirement*, which in turn implies a job, which in turn implies that maybe I need to earn money and pay it for rent/food/water/not freezing to death. And that "idle" time of not using it is wasted. So I hardly see the argument that my postings on the Internet are a waste - it's a type of resource that's wasted if it's not utilized. Something about electrical power being consumed no matter if the routers are transmitting or not...
No, I will not accept "get another job" as a realistic option. Let's just not go there - it'll lead to nasty things like neglect charges, starvation, and exposure to the elements.
To the first (italics) poster, agreed. Pretty obvious that the medical system state-side is broken to the core and will continue to be so as long as we (a) think of health care as a luxury (b) make doctors pay out six digits in college costs (c) have doctors cover for negligent staffers that should get the hell out of the industry, but won't, because they can't afford to.
Bullshit. The insurance industry is a far cry from the medical industry. Learn the difference.
Good dope you're smoking. Where did I say insurance? And I even quoted the original paragraph for context.
Oh, not everything in the world is invented here in the US. Is that a big problem for you?
Only if I can't get access to it. I really don't care if it developed in upper get-out-of-fuckmonistan, if it works, why isn't it available, world-wide? Funny how you paint me as nationalistic but your own rhetoric excels in that fashion.
What does fuck does this have to do with the pharmaceutical industry?
Medical technology has come so far in the last couple of decades it should amaze most people. Instead we have people who do nothing but look at the flaws in it and claim that it doesn't work at all. The 1 glaring failure out of the 99 successes and you want to condemn them for it?
I think you confused yourself. You didn't talk about pharma in the original sentence that I was replying to. You talked about medical technology - and by extension, medicine.
No, what you did is tried to substitute empirical evidence with antidote.
So what I experience is not empirical evidence? What kind of double-plus-good-duckspeak bullshit is this?
If there is a treatment for it what more do you want the pharmaceutical companies to do? It seems that they did their part, they developed a cure. What else would you have them do?
What cure? The point of that was that cures can be found in a cost-effective fashion that allows people *around the world* to have access to them. But because there is *no profit to be had* in that situation, they will never be developed.
My guess is that if you cared to name a few of these diseases you'd quickly find that people are dying not because of the pharmaceutical companies but because of local customs (call it religion if you like), political situations, miseducation, blackmarket substandard meds, etc etc etc.
Let's try that again:
My guess is that if you cared to name a few of these issues surrounding starvation you'd quickly find that people are dying not because of the lack of food but because of local customs (call it religion if you like), political situations, miseducation, blackmarket substandard food, etc etc etc.
Hmm, sounds wrong.
...your rant is along the line of the people who would scream "Why do we have TV entertainment when the airtime could be used for educational purposes?
Why, yes, after watching the crap that parades for entertainment, that question DOES resonate with me.
Why do we have malls when we could have wheat fields?
Given that half the shopping malls within a 25 mile radius are unlit or partly rented, in an area of a measily 1.5 million people, and in a state where hunger is an issue, that is a good question.
Why do we have iPods when we could be using these electronics for building a better world?
An excellent choice! By the way, I don't own one, nor will I ever.
Do you care to answer those questions?
Yes I do. What we are doing now - having discourse over these topics - is just that.
How dare you use a great invention like the internet to sit on slashdot and comment?
Because the commentary is geared towards improvements in society? Or because I'm fawning over the latest goddamn worthless gadget?
How dare Slashdot think that they're important enough to take up server space or bandwidth? Ah...did slashdot charge me $4 through my $480/month insurance for that?
I choose to let companies do what they can to survive. As much as you bitch and wail about "drugs to get me up and hard" you've completely neglected the tons of drugs that are saving lives and helping people remain functional members of society. Stop putting bullshit spin and outright ignorance into the debate and maybe you'll see that it's not what you make it out to be.
I see.
Survive. Right.
Oh gawd, if I laughed any harder...
Tons of drugs...you mean, like when they slightly changed Prozac and re-marketed it as a new drug? You do know why, right?
Tell you what. Tell me how record profits make it difficult to "survive". Tell me how people using treatments for AIDS will "survive" compared to the companies selling them drugs.
Hey, it's only a few hundred dollars a bottle to get AZT. I'm sure that's an affordable price in Africa.
And like I've already told another poster, if you don't like the way pharmaceutical companies conduct their business than start your own. You and millions of people on the street scream there is a better way, prove it!
With what? It's not a "prove it" issue, it's a "no-one can afford to prove it" issue.
Here, let's make it simple.
I'll start a pharma company. I need to make profits. I develop an amazing drug that I can sell for $10 wholesale that fights malaria. I also develop one for $100 wholesale that makes you orgasm twice.
Which should I sell?
If you answer the first one, you loose (your argument).
If you answer the second one, you loose (your perspective).
...explain how you think future R&D should be handled if they don't have the opportunity to make money from their last venture.
I'll do that as soon as you explain to me why it's far more important to develop not one but TWO(!) drugs to get me up and hard for the wife, yet there are horrible, terrible, but completely treatable conditions world-wide that we completely ignore because "there's no profit to be had".
Profits or people. And in this case, it's not a "many-shades-of-grey" or "I-can-weasel-out-because-of-circumstances" choice. So...Choose.
I suppose you think it's better to languish in pain and suffering instead of paying your fair dues to an entity that gambled to create a remedy in the first place.
1K to turn someone into a productive member of society and lead a meaningful life? It's a bargain. We're paying more than that to keep rapists alive in jails. Not to mention that as technology moves on it will either cost less or new drug will take it's place being either more effective or less expensive.
So...let me get this straight, 30%-50% of my child's future income will go into this treatment so they can do nothing but work, because there's no money left over to live life? Do you honestly think that people live to work, instead of work to live?
What I'm saying is that curing people by using money/profit as the incentive does not work. I would go as far as saying that using profit as an incentive for anything at all is grotesque.
Call it grotesque all you want, but don't say it doesn't work but it sure as hell does. It's not perfect, we don't exist in a Star Trek society, but it does work. Medical technology has come so far in the last couple of decades it should amaze most people. Instead we have people who do nothing but look at the flaws in it and claim that it doesn't work at all. The 1 glaring failure out of the 99 successes and you want to condemn them for it? I bet you don't have as good of a track record as the pharmaceutical industry. If you did you probably wouldn't have the time to waste here bitching about it.
To the first (italics) poster, agreed. Pretty obvious that the medical system state-side is broken to the core and will continue to be so as long as we (a) think of health care as a luxury (b) make doctors pay out six digits in college costs (c) have doctors cover for negligent staffers that should get the hell out of the industry, but won't, because they can't afford to.
To the next reply, What's that smell?
Medical technology has come so far...(#1)that we have to import tech from Europe that should have been here years ago, or take trips to Canada to do the same procedure for less money? (#2) That treatment for autism in India is light-years ahead of the US? (#3) That privatized healthcare is bankrupting families?
99% success rate? WTF? How did you manage to reach up into your asshole deep enough to pull something from your spleen? My mother is dying from fucking lung cancer because her doctor ignored her requests not once, twice, thrice, but FOUR FUCKING TIMES to have her hip joints examined. We're talking about cancer that could have been treated aggressively with a better than 80% survival rate, provided the doctor wasn't a complete fucking quack!
Ok, let's also pre-emptively put our cards on the table before you even reply. My wife's back could be permanently fixed with new medical devices that you can't get here in the states (but it's available in Europe), including a complete replacement for defective vertebrae (answers #1). My autistic son fights an uphill battle while people my wife knows from India have been able to all but completely cure their son of it (answers #2). And I'm in debt and nearly bankrupt, not because I bought a house on speculation or too many bigscreen flat TV's or some other bullshit that Americans whine about - no, I'm almost bankrupt from fucking multi-thousand-dollar medical bills (answers #3).
There you go, backed up every one of my assertions with EMPERICAL EXPERIENCE. Attempting to tell me that the didn't happen, or aren't true, would indicate that you have a SEVERE DISCONNECT FROM REALITY because I FUCKING EXPERIENCED IT. In short: stop drinking the goddamn corpo-rightist-facist-mass-media-group-think koolaid. Go do your homework. And get the fuck off my lawn.
I can understand all of the commmentary about how it is slow, how it has display glitches, etc.
But what I don't understand is how everyone glosses over the complete, utter steaming mound that is Office2007. It runs just as slow, has just as many display glitches, and I have to use a fucking cray to power it.
Its pretty well established that "the Rich" pay an overwhelming proportion of the tax bill - the top 10% of people pay about 70%....so in response to your statement, how exactly are you making the rich richer ?
If you want to say that those with a soul must agree with you, you may want to get some facts straight first.
70% of what? Total federal tax revenues? A persons income? Tax revenues by that bracket only? When you denote a percentage bracket, is the demarcation between brackets linear, probabilistic, or something else (in other words, does the top 1% represent all incomes over $100,000.00, or over $100,000,000.00)? Just how many people are represented in this graph?
If I read the graph one way - to say that it's a percentage of income for a specific bracket - then the graph is incorrect, but if I read it another way - that the percentage is for the bracket it is in plus all of the other brackets above it, that is to say for all "remaining" income brackets combined, then why do the middle brackets get better "breaks" than the 25% and top 1%? Why are we using 2004 figures when the IRS collects data every tax year (see the fine print in the graph)?
This data isn't terribly clear. Anyone else have a slightly newer, much clearer view, one that breaks income brackets down nicely by tax bracket AND cross-references the number of people in that bracket AND cross-references the low, median, and high incomes in those brackets? Are we strictly talking dollars here or people and money?
If the rich are being taxed disproportionately, then they do they fight so hard to AVOID a flat tax, which would be equal for all taxpayers that exceed a minimum threshold for income? After all, if this data is correct, and they are paying 19% of income into tax, then having their tax rate reduced to a flat 15% would a boon, would it not?
Why is it that the top income brackets don't pay AMT, yet the "middle class" pays it more and more?
Why do the top brackets have an opportunity to write off tax shelters that are not available to brackets below them? Telling me that the market price for tax-shelter investments is a non-issue (and therefore should not be brought up) is like saying it's easy for anyone making less than $5,000 yearly to loose a loaf of bread, just go visit the store and get another loaf, it's not like you needed that money for something else...
I guess the short of what I am saying is: there are some specious arguments based on incomplete samples of data being given. If I can disprove the argument without the need for hard data, then is there an issue with the logic (in which case, please explain the missing or erroneous logic in detail), or there an issue with the data (in which case, the figures you are giving are pretty much hot air, look elsewhere for better data before presenting it).
Here in Oregon we haev NO SALES TAX AT ALL. it has been brought up 8 times by our legislature and it has been voted out by citizen rferendum every single time. Yes we are loons in many respects but this one is a point of pride. I wonder how many companies will re-locate to this tax haven...
Which means we will need to fight all that much harder in the coming years, should this pass. As soon as it does the Oregon legislature will stand up and say "We're missing all that gravy! Put out a sales tax!"
Slashdot Mirror
I slipped out of the old folks home, thought I would come back. Some things are the same - stories that are half-stories, the constant pandering to marginal political theories (on "both sides"), the public sniping... Big Oil (and the strange bedfellows it brings) may be an issue, but it continues to amaze me that the entire crowd here always thinks that the giant Sequoia in front of them is the entire forest. In 10 years we will have bigger problems, problems that are already manifested and clearly visible on the horizon. And the real irony? Everyone here in the tech industry is directly dependent on its very existence. Yet we continue to pander around to (whatever strikes the tech industry's fancy) instead of tackling the issues directly. Tech is no longer tech, it's a fashion show put on by a bunch of con artists hoping for a payday. I guess I'll be returning to my old folks home now...
Why the hell is everyone whining about the Catalyst drivers, when the existing Xorg ports work, are stable, and really should be the center of our attention with regard to effort/coding/bug-reporting.
It irritates me to no end to see STOO-PID-ass reports of "AMD/ATI is suxxor because of Catalyst, use proprietary NoVideo bullshit-bullshit"...when I know better to begin with.
Stop loading crappy-ass binary drivers, start feeding back bug reports to the Xorg devs, and maybe you'll get something that's better than "I clicky-clicked the proprietary driver in Urbunghole Maya Calendar 2012.9997 Edition, and it loaded but now suxxors my system".
Seriously, I want to hear a list of why the Catalyst drivers are even needed. Give me good reasons why I absolutely positively MUST install Catalyst & Co. when the existing efforts are working.
Bonus points if you can tell me why I can decode AND PLAY 1920x1080 HD just fine with Xorg drivers, but shouldn't be able to.
Oh, here's one more reference... http://www.mdd.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Opinions/gravityopinion3.pdf 2nd page, footnote...clearly notes that this action continued after 99.
Do you know if they still doing this?
A) The use of the word was should be a hint that it may or may not be the case.
Do you have any citations?
B) Yes, I have citation from the Dept. of Justice no less, http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f0000/0045.htm Relevant paragraph quoted:
Of course, that was before judgement...you could always read the court's findings of fact, if that helps with the credibility of this. http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
That's some bullshit right there.
C) May be the case, but it still happened. And as I recall, the practice continued to happen after the trial was concluded, for a short time. The trial concluded in late '99, which means the practice did continue into the '00s... Of course, this is old news, see something from 2007 no less... http://techrights.org/2007/10/29/exclusionary-deals-linux/ I'll leave the rest to you as an exercise.
Microsoft charges the OEM per copy, regardless if it is installed on the machine or not. This was a well-known, on-going tactic from early 2000's and was one of the main drivers in the "I want my refund" ~ "go talk to the vendor" BS that this article is pointing out. Microsoft doesn't give their cash cows away for free. If you really believe that they are paying someone to put Windows on a crapware box you buy from Dell/Lenovo, then you should go back to smoking your pipe, and whatever mind-altering substance was in it.
For the love of $DIETY, please, involve yourself with what is left of WebOS if/when it is released. Gnome, KDE, etc. are all showing their "age" and "Windows 95 everything-is-an-ugly-component" mentality. If WebOS is truly open-sourced (not fake open-sourced) then there is a slim, slim chance of having a desktop that actually would be a delight to use, instead of the goddamn window-explorer-desktop mindset that has dominated the GUI space for decades.
Well, this is a kick in the face for anyone who said that you can make money through making open source software, nomatter how you think of sharing your code while still covering your costs, someone's just going to rebrand it.
And to think, I just posted an anonymous reply to this(below) and was marked down. All because I didn't want to make a buck. I'm tired. Tired of "me-too" get rich quick bullshit. Time for me to go home. There are bigger, pressing issues that are worth my time, compared to watching people get pissed about some neckbeard (me) pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. To those who just can't seem to get their head wrapped around the original concepts behind OSS, good luck deluding yourselves. To those who think that everything can be solved by increased quarterly corporate profits, well, enjoy eating dollar bills. Lastly, for the professional astroturf accounts out there - and yes, they do exist, I have seen them actively over a decade right here in Slashdot - well, you can fool some of the people some of th etime, but not all of the people all of the time. And I have a long, long memory of who you are. Goodbye, good luck.
I should have waited a bit longer before posting. A correction: You made my weekend because you obviously do get it.
In my defence the frog was cooked too slowly.
It's never too late to jump out of the pot.
The commercial route was always something someone would recommend here but it used to be a case of "if you trust $company they could do it for you" now it's like "if you are an insane moron who hates his life, you could do it yourself". The complacency has turned into derogative condescension. Soon it's going to be a matter of old plain hostility, and that makes me type a colon and an open parenthesis.
You just made my weekend.
Hello friend. Perhaps you haven't noticed - Slashdot's original core crowd left a long, long time ago. Sure, we (the original, older crowd) stop in now and then, but the generational gap here is growing, and daily.
For most of the (new) Slashdot folk here, the corporate way of life is the only life they relate to. Silicon Valley apparently has gone from "daring to make changes that affect future generations in a positive way by doing cool and new things" to "how can we suck the corporate teet hard enough to milk dollars into us before our VC funding dries up". This mentality is not just there, but everywhere; it's spreading, and it appears to be a function of how the current generation of programmers, web designers, engineers, and many many others have been taught. And in some cases, even how they were raised as kids.
It's OK though. There are enough of us, the so-called “neckbeards”, out there to know better, and we're lurking quietly in the background. Sooner or later, the more deluded ones will completely fuck things up, and they will come crying with their boo-boos and howling in pain. And we'll just have to step in and clean up the scrape, put a band-aid over the top, and send them back out. Because, for some reason I haven't been able to trace yet, the next generation's method of learning has been completely stunted. They don't ask why anymore, they only ask how. More on that in a moment...
In the meantime, it's funnier than hell to watch them just fuck things up, and then they wonder why things don't work like they should, and then they re-invent the wheel to fix a problem that only existed in their head to begin with...
You're just aware of this transition now? Well, better late than never, I suppose.
This is the Grand Co-optment of both the Internet and the Open Source movement. The PTB have long known (and feared) these two disrupting factors, but they've since found a way to get sheeple the upcoming echo of the boomer generation to come around, and are still hell-bent on subjugating both of those phenomena to their interests.
With regard to the Internet, the transition from an open "network of networks" to a completely sealed and monitored panopticon is nearly complete. Hosting a home server in this day and age is promoted as "an anachronism", or "a throwback". The road blocks thrown up for home use are intentional - we don't want you to do your own thing, we want you to consume our services , because all you are to us is a tube that we ram worthless crap down the front of, and dollar bills get shit out the back of you. This is pretty much how the major corporate entities see everyone, even their own employees. This isn't about defending networks from spam, it's all about making a profit from hosted services. Any idiot would realize that sealing port 25 on home DSL/Cable/Fiber routers does jack shit – a good virus/malware writer would simply move the port around to 2525 or even employ SSL. But try to get a connection to port 25 on your home router. There's about an 80% chance (plucked that figure from the top of my head based on empirical observation only) that you just can't do it. Why? Because – gawd fo
Mod parent up. This has nothing to do with predation. It has everything to do with...you get the idea.
let me get this straight - my father-in-law, who is English, but has married my mother and is living in Oregon (who'da thunk?), would rather pay those "high taxes" to keep his medical coverage and benefits from good 'ol blighty, yet you say he's living in a fantasy? What are you smoking and where do I get it?
Hm. This is why I don't pay for a subscription to slashdot. (scratches ass) ok, time to haul out the trollbait. Just be sure to wash your hands after sprinkling it around.
Ok, let's play it out:
Why are people leaving the industry again?
Anytime you can bend the ears of millions of people by name recognition alone you've accomplished something. And the fact that he has gotten rich for being a raving maniac only proves how well it's working for him. There are tons of people who have tried the same route who have ended up looking like idiots and dead broke.
Populist ideology is still around, live, and kicking. It comes in all kinds of flavors, true.
BTW, I have a bone to pick with you. I replied to your accusation of being a "hipocrite" but it appears you never read the message. However, you're (hopefully) human - there's only so much time for things, and replying to someone who argued with you is probably low on your list, which is understandable.
You said for "treatable condition" that means there is a cure. That's what I'm talking about since you didn't mention specific conditions. Talk about double speak.
(sigh) fine, as I didn't make clear that the existing Pharma corps don't see a profit and therefore aren't motivated to pursue those, I'll conceed this to you.
My guess is that if you cared to name a few of these issues surrounding starvation you'd quickly find that people are dying not because of the lack of food but because of local customs (call it religion if you like), political situations, miseducation, blackmarket substandard food, etc etc etc. Hmm, sounds wrong. What does food have to do with pharmaceuticals? We're talking about pharmaceuticals and the industry here. Stop trying to divert the topic to attempt to fool people into thinking you have a valid point.
This was an examination of the process, not a diversion. I'm thinking out loud - as it's confusing to you, ignore it.
And don't forget that tragedies like Ethiopia happened because there was tons of food on Ethiopian docs but he military kept it from civilians. It's a perfect example!
I see tragedy here at home. Don't even need a plane/train/auto/ship ticket to get there. There's no military preventing people from getting to food here, is there? Political issues? Only if you think the govt. has some weird conspiratorial agenda. Insanity? Some of the folks I see are, but not all of them. So what does that leave? Why do people starve in a "land of plenty"? I've been trying to answer that one for over a decade. You have an answer for this situation - why people starve, even die, state-side?
Why, yes, after watching the crap that parades for entertainment, that question DOES resonate with me. You don't use your valuable technology for entertainment that (gasp!) costs money? How dare you? That 10 or 15 dollars a month could be keeping poor Julio in Ecuador in shoes and rice! Hypocrite.
How do you kow that I have not been sending that money for some time now? Do you know how many charities keep asking me for more money, yet I struggle to feed my own?
By the way, the reference was to Television, not Internet Gaming. And yes, there's tons of crap in Internet Gaming too. Still, tit for tat - you say I'm confusing things, I think you're there with me.
Seems that you don't care if you're the one having the fun but God forbid others spend their spare cash to improve their lives.
Ya know what, I bet you think I have cable TV and Air Conditioning. You probably even think I drive a car to work; OK, a car is a bit much, let's go with a moped or motorcycle. Let's lay it out - you tell me the luxury that I have and I'll see if I even have it. Don't tell me running clean water or clean air or some other baloney. If the necessities of living is a luxury then that opens the door to all kinds of nasty things that we don't want to talk about.
By the way, the internet hookup is a necessity - it's a job *requirement*, which in turn implies a job, which in turn implies that maybe I need to earn money and pay it for rent/food/water/not freezing to death. And that "idle" time of not using it is wasted. So I hardly see the argument that my postings on the Internet are a waste - it's a type of resource that's wasted if it's not utilized. Something about electrical power being consumed no matter if the routers are transmitting or not...
No, I will not accept "get another job" as a realistic option. Let's just not go there - it'll lead to nasty things like neglect charges, starvation, and exposure to the elements.
Tons o
Bullshit. The insurance industry is a far cry from the medical industry. Learn the difference.
Good dope you're smoking. Where did I say insurance? And I even quoted the original paragraph for context.
Oh, not everything in the world is invented here in the US. Is that a big problem for you?
Only if I can't get access to it. I really don't care if it developed in upper get-out-of-fuckmonistan, if it works, why isn't it available, world-wide? Funny how you paint me as nationalistic but your own rhetoric excels in that fashion.
What does fuck does this have to do with the pharmaceutical industry?
Medical technology has come so far in the last couple of decades it should amaze most people. Instead we have people who do nothing but look at the flaws in it and claim that it doesn't work at all. The 1 glaring failure out of the 99 successes and you want to condemn them for it? I think you confused yourself. You didn't talk about pharma in the original sentence that I was replying to. You talked about medical technology - and by extension, medicine.
No, what you did is tried to substitute empirical evidence with antidote.
So what I experience is not empirical evidence? What kind of double-plus-good-duckspeak bullshit is this?
Forget it. It's not worth discussing anymore.
My guess is that if you cared to name a few of these diseases you'd quickly find that people are dying not because of the pharmaceutical companies but because of local customs (call it religion if you like), political situations, miseducation, blackmarket substandard meds, etc etc etc.
Let's try that again:
My guess is that if you cared to name a few of these issues surrounding starvation you'd quickly find that people are dying not because of the lack of food but because of local customs (call it religion if you like), political situations, miseducation, blackmarket substandard food, etc etc etc.
Hmm, sounds wrong.
Why do we have malls when we could have wheat fields? Given that half the shopping malls within a 25 mile radius are unlit or partly rented, in an area of a measily 1.5 million people, and in a state where hunger is an issue, that is a good question.
Why do we have iPods when we could be using these electronics for building a better world? An excellent choice! By the way, I don't own one, nor will I ever.
Do you care to answer those questions? Yes I do. What we are doing now - having discourse over these topics - is just that.
How dare you use a great invention like the internet to sit on slashdot and comment? Because the commentary is geared towards improvements in society? Or because I'm fawning over the latest goddamn worthless gadget?
How dare Slashdot think that they're important enough to take up server space or bandwidth? Ah...did slashdot charge me $4 through my $480/month insurance for that?
I choose to let companies do what they can to survive. As much as you bitch and wail about "drugs to get me up and hard" you've completely neglected the tons of drugs that are saving lives and helping people remain functional members of society. Stop putting bullshit spin and outright ignorance into the debate and maybe you'll see that it's not what you make it out to be.
I see.
Survive. Right.
Oh gawd, if I laughed any harder...
Tons of drugs...you mean, like when they slightly changed Prozac and re-marketed it as a new drug? You do know why, right?
Tell you what. Tell me how record profits make it difficult to "survive". Tell me how people using treatments for AIDS will "survive" compared to the companies selling them drugs.
Hey, it's only a few hundred dollars a bottle to get AZT. I'm sure that's an affordable price in Africa.
And like I've already told another poster, if you don't like the way pharmaceutical companies conduct their business than start your own. You and millions of people on the street scream there is a better way, prove it! With what? It's not a "prove it" issue, it's a "no-one can afford to prove it" issue.
Here, let's make it simple.
I'll start a pharma company. I need to make profits. I develop an amazing drug that I can sell for $10 wholesale that fights malaria. I also develop one for $100 wholesale that makes you orgasm twice.
Which should I sell?
If you answer the first one, you loose (your argument).
If you answer the second one, you loose (your perspective).
Do you understand now?
...explain how you think future R&D should be handled if they don't have the opportunity to make money from their last venture.
I'll do that as soon as you explain to me why it's far more important to develop not one but TWO(!) drugs to get me up and hard for the wife, yet there are horrible, terrible, but completely treatable conditions world-wide that we completely ignore because "there's no profit to be had".
Profits or people. And in this case, it's not a "many-shades-of-grey" or "I-can-weasel-out-because-of-circumstances" choice. So...Choose.
I suppose you think it's better to languish in pain and suffering instead of paying your fair dues to an entity that gambled to create a remedy in the first place.
WTF?
This isn't church.
I have full control of my faculties, I socialize, I have dated (many times!) and I have started a family. I am not new here. Get off my lawn.
1K to turn someone into a productive member of society and lead a meaningful life? It's a bargain. We're paying more than that to keep rapists alive in jails. Not to mention that as technology moves on it will either cost less or new drug will take it's place being either more effective or less expensive.
So...let me get this straight, 30%-50% of my child's future income will go into this treatment so they can do nothing but work, because there's no money left over to live life? Do you honestly think that people live to work, instead of work to live?
What I'm saying is that curing people by using money/profit as the incentive does not work. I would go as far as saying that using profit as an incentive for anything at all is grotesque. Call it grotesque all you want, but don't say it doesn't work but it sure as hell does. It's not perfect, we don't exist in a Star Trek society, but it does work. Medical technology has come so far in the last couple of decades it should amaze most people. Instead we have people who do nothing but look at the flaws in it and claim that it doesn't work at all. The 1 glaring failure out of the 99 successes and you want to condemn them for it? I bet you don't have as good of a track record as the pharmaceutical industry. If you did you probably wouldn't have the time to waste here bitching about it.
To the first (italics) poster, agreed. Pretty obvious that the medical system state-side is broken to the core and will continue to be so as long as we (a) think of health care as a luxury (b) make doctors pay out six digits in college costs (c) have doctors cover for negligent staffers that should get the hell out of the industry, but won't, because they can't afford to.
To the next reply, What's that smell?
Medical technology has come so far...(#1)that we have to import tech from Europe that should have been here years ago, or take trips to Canada to do the same procedure for less money? (#2) That treatment for autism in India is light-years ahead of the US? (#3) That privatized healthcare is bankrupting families?
99% success rate? WTF? How did you manage to reach up into your asshole deep enough to pull something from your spleen? My mother is dying from fucking lung cancer because her doctor ignored her requests not once, twice, thrice, but FOUR FUCKING TIMES to have her hip joints examined. We're talking about cancer that could have been treated aggressively with a better than 80% survival rate, provided the doctor wasn't a complete fucking quack!
Ok, let's also pre-emptively put our cards on the table before you even reply. My wife's back could be permanently fixed with new medical devices that you can't get here in the states (but it's available in Europe), including a complete replacement for defective vertebrae (answers #1). My autistic son fights an uphill battle while people my wife knows from India have been able to all but completely cure their son of it (answers #2). And I'm in debt and nearly bankrupt, not because I bought a house on speculation or too many bigscreen flat TV's or some other bullshit that Americans whine about - no, I'm almost bankrupt from fucking multi-thousand-dollar medical bills (answers #3).
There you go, backed up every one of my assertions with EMPERICAL EXPERIENCE. Attempting to tell me that the didn't happen, or aren't true, would indicate that you have a SEVERE DISCONNECT FROM REALITY because I FUCKING EXPERIENCED IT. In short: stop drinking the goddamn corpo-rightist-facist-mass-media-group-think koolaid. Go do your homework. And get the fuck off my lawn.
I can understand all of the commmentary about how it is slow, how it has display glitches, etc. But what I don't understand is how everyone glosses over the complete, utter steaming mound that is Office2007. It runs just as slow, has just as many display glitches, and I have to use a fucking cray to power it.
Its pretty well established that "the Rich" pay an overwhelming proportion of the tax bill - the top 10% of people pay about 70%....so in response to your statement, how exactly are you making the rich richer ?
If you want to say that those with a soul must agree with you, you may want to get some facts straight first.
70% of what? Total federal tax revenues? A persons income? Tax revenues by that bracket only? When you denote a percentage bracket, is the demarcation between brackets linear, probabilistic, or something else (in other words, does the top 1% represent all incomes over $100,000.00, or over $100,000,000.00)? Just how many people are represented in this graph?
If I read the graph one way - to say that it's a percentage of income for a specific bracket - then the graph is incorrect, but if I read it another way - that the percentage is for the bracket it is in plus all of the other brackets above it, that is to say for all "remaining" income brackets combined, then why do the middle brackets get better "breaks" than the 25% and top 1%? Why are we using 2004 figures when the IRS collects data every tax year (see the fine print in the graph)?
This data isn't terribly clear. Anyone else have a slightly newer, much clearer view, one that breaks income brackets down nicely by tax bracket AND cross-references the number of people in that bracket AND cross-references the low, median, and high incomes in those brackets? Are we strictly talking dollars here or people and money?
If the rich are being taxed disproportionately, then they do they fight so hard to AVOID a flat tax, which would be equal for all taxpayers that exceed a minimum threshold for income? After all, if this data is correct, and they are paying 19% of income into tax, then having their tax rate reduced to a flat 15% would a boon, would it not?
Why is it that the top income brackets don't pay AMT, yet the "middle class" pays it more and more?
Why do the top brackets have an opportunity to write off tax shelters that are not available to brackets below them? Telling me that the market price for tax-shelter investments is a non-issue (and therefore should not be brought up) is like saying it's easy for anyone making less than $5,000 yearly to loose a loaf of bread, just go visit the store and get another loaf, it's not like you needed that money for something else...
I guess the short of what I am saying is: there are some specious arguments based on incomplete samples of data being given. If I can disprove the argument without the need for hard data, then is there an issue with the logic (in which case, please explain the missing or erroneous logic in detail), or there an issue with the data (in which case, the figures you are giving are pretty much hot air, look elsewhere for better data before presenting it).
Which means we will need to fight all that much harder in the coming years, should this pass. As soon as it does the Oregon legislature will stand up and say "We're missing all that gravy! Put out a sales tax!"