No, Microsoft are not innovators in any way or sense. Wal-mart doesn't consider themselves innovators for selling a product they bought from SmallGuy #605, they are only a retailer. Microsoft has bought or copied every idea they ever had, NOTHING AT ALL HAS EVER BEEN INVENTED BY MICROSOFT. I assert this with no hesitation whatsoever. Word processors, spreadsheets, GUI, icons, mouse, networking, internet, browser, integration, presentation graphics, WYSIWYG, windows, hypertext, wireless, consoles, and a million other technologies... NOT ONE was invented by Microsoft but each and every one has been made famous in their name. In fact Microsoft has NEVER IN ITS HISTORY invented something! They are great at copying the code of others and making it look better, but Microsoft the great innovator has never made an innovation in the history of computing...
I don't see how his inline comments add anything to the memo that we wouldn't have gotten from it if he hasn't simply quoted it sans-editorial. In fact, his comments look less like clarification and commentary than simple whining. He should read "Eric Raymond's tips for effective open source advocacy" some time.;-)
I also am surprised that he acts almost insulted by the memo. What did he expect, Microsoft would support OSS? The phrase "free software" gets the same reaction from Microsoft as the phrase "free cars" would get from Ford. Don't fault the rattlesnake for biting.
Ask Slashdot: Have you noticed that all Ask Slashdot articles lately have only been bitchy whines about the crappy content on this site and how everyone that reads/. these days is just a tourist? Am I the only person who has noticed it and how do you think we can reverse this growing trend in the community?
But wait! How will you duplicate the sluggish performance of the Start menu? You know, how it takes 10 seconds just to expand a level? I guess you could just insert an endless FOR loop, but that wouldn't be creative. How about installing a distributed computing client that would start crunching numbers while your Start menu struggles to open? That way while a Windows user waits in agony to drill down to All Programs --> Accessories --> Games, Linux users can actually spend that wasted time finding a cure for cancer!
So broadcast used to tax you by making you watch ads, but the signal was free. Then cable came out with no ads, but you paid for the signal. Now you pay for the signal and have to watch ads. And the recommendation is you pay extra for "Premium" channels with no ads? I suppose in ten years I can pay for "super duper mega-premium" cable that does what cable did 15 years ago?
Me, I look at the size of cable companies today and the billions of dollars the media industry is worth and I barely stifle a tear when thinking of the prospect of them being taken to the cleaners by PVRs. Good! Trim the fat, fire the executives and learn the value of a shiny penny, just like the rest of us...
My understanding is that the difference is rain falls gently, due to the nature of its formation. However seeding causes all the moisture in the atmosphere to condense at once, not gradually. Hence you get a massive rainfall that is completely unnatural and potentially dangerous. I don't think seeding creates water, it just causes it to precipitate at unnatural rates...
Who wants odds on how long before weather is used as a weapon in war?
It's real, now. No need for speculation. The secretive European Union has been launching tornadoes and hurricanes and floods against the Americans for decades, unfortunately it's only resulted in more sturdy trailer-home designs...
It is a shame that a building hosting so many good initiatives should be the one to go, but as always: there is no excuse for not have a backup.
Uhhh, yes there is... I suspect you either know nothing about IT or are fresh out of college. DRP (disaster recovery planning) factors in things such as criticality of data, cost, and acceptable downtime. A university payroll system may need to be back up within 12 hours of a major incident, so in addition to tape backups you might have a failover site. Contrary to your simplistic post, even the richest corporations rarely have failover sites of their own. They simply contract out to a DRP vendor who have these types of machines lying dormant in a glass room, waiting to cut over. On the other hand a university FTP site is probably classified as low risk, low impact. So you would rely on off-site backup tapes and perhaps only restore when you've arranged for an alternate site and taken delivery of new servers. You don't pay millions of dollars to have two glass rooms just so you can have uninterrupted FTP service...
I concur wholeheartedly, Chris Columbus shouldn't do the remaining Harry Potter movies, after all the first two were so disappointing, right? I say we should put Joel Schumacher in charge, after all think of what a stunning job he did when he took over the Batman series from that hack, Tim Burton. A blade-wielding hockey player army, brilliant! Nothing provides more of a shot-in-the-arm than removing a director from a project as soon as he's created two of the most popular films ever made. Send in the amateurs, I say!
Re:So? Do you think nobody paid for those tickets?
on
The Last Comdex?
·
· Score: 2
If a company gives you a ticket, they paid for it.
Wow, so like 5 companies paid for me to sit in a local bar getting shitfaced only to claim that I was as Comdex? Wow, no wonder our industry is in the shithole...
New COMDEX 5.0 Platinum! With 30 free hours!
on
The Last Comdex?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This is what happens when you throw free passes around like they're AOL CDs. Did anyone, ever actually pay to get into Comdex? Well, I suppose the techies and developers may have had to pay but pointy-haired bosses like me always got inundated with free passes from companies we'd never dream of buying from. No wonder it was never a great show...
Sorry, but I think your post is really ignorant. The DMCA is law and many consumer rights are already gone. The chances of the DMCA going away are slim to nil, anything reasonable you can do to try to reaffirm your rights is a step in the right direction. You sound like the people who preach that income tax is unconstitutional and we should be fighting to have it repealed. It ain't gonna happen, sister, so come back to reality.
"The test was declared a resounding success when the message '@#FGGgWEe#GR... +++ATZ +++ATH0 NO CARRIER' was successfully received by the San Celemente station. Congratulations to all involved!"
Yes I understand how profits are calculated. So when you hand out $25 paperweights that read "Employees are our Most Valuable Asset" to every person in the company, that's an expense. It is deducted from revenue and profits drop accordingly.
In fact this is how much Enron-like accounting starts. In order to keep profits stable, a company might "invest" funds during a highly profitable year, thus hiding a portion of profits. During lean times you might reclaim some of these investments and add them to revenue. The net result is that profits are kept at an attractive average, rather than fluctuating wildly. After all, shareholders will praise you if profits increase 5% for three years. But they'll have your job if profits rise 25% one year then drop by 10% the next year. So companies start to transfer money between "buckets" to save their skins. Microsoft did this, Enron did this. However Enron did it to hide the fact that they were in serious financial trouble whereas Microsoft was using it to keep profits stable, not to deceive shareholders. This is the difference between a simple warning from the SEC for Microsoft and jail time for Enron.
I will admit to downloading a number of movies... mainly because I'm not willing to pay $4 to rent it once, or more to watch it once in an uncomfortable theatre.
I'll go one up on you here. I will admit to downloading a number of movies because I own them yet some greedy suit wants me to buy them a second time for twice the price on DVD. And yet to manufacture the VHS tape costs many times as much as the DVD disc. Why is the DVD double the price? If when I bought the VHS tape I didn't buy the film, I only licensed it for home viewing, then obviously I still have a license for home viewing from DVD. The MPAA would call my burned DVDs "piracy", I call it "one good turn deserves another."
This is similar to the little pie chart you see on gas pumps claiming only 5% profit on gas sales. The problem is that profit is purely subjective since all expenses are subtracted from profit. Send the entire company on a 1-week vacation in Hawaii? It gets deducted from profits. Hire a hundred people to act as a permanent "think-tank"? Deducted. Free beer in the cafeteria? Deducted. You can burn hundred-dollar bills for warmth but still claim no profits. When a company cries poor due to low profits you need to take a closer look. Operating losses, declining sales, or decreased revenue are better indicators of corporate health. Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, and now Marvel comics all cry poor in profits but are throwing buckets of money into a woodchipper 'cause they've run out of places to stack it...
Siphoning gas from your neighbours tank is dead simple. But people don't do it. Why? It's stealing. But explain to me why people don't mind steal^H^Hcopying movies/music/etc when clearly there are so many other things that can be easily stolen in life?
Oooo! Ooooo! Pick me! Uhm, is it because my neighbours aren't money-grubbing thieves who charge me $13.50 for a movie admission and $10 for a cup of watered down soda and a bag of popped air?
Why would they even *want* to do this. Like 90% of all Linux users I use the shell chosen by my distro. That's almost 100% Bash. I've done some pretty techie stuff with my system and tend to be a pretty advanced RedHat user but the thought of changing my shell never even occurred to me. After all, it works just great, why would I care? It seems to me only total techie geeks would reject the Bash shell and if they're so damn techie why create a distro that limits this ability. Am I missing something here???
Soooo..... When.NET beats the pants off J2EE it's not newsworthy, but when someone questions the results it is? Surely if one is worthy of posting on/. they both should be...
Bluelight is part of K-Mart, K-Mart owns the licences for bluelight's computers, K-Mart can't sell the rights to those licenses when it sells Bluelight.
An accurate representation of Microsoft's position. So when 3COM bought Palm they didn't need to buy all new licenses, but once they spun them off they need to? I think the absurdity is patently obvious.
Most companies when publishing in PDF format do so, not for openness but to preotect against copying or modification.
For example, my company works extensively with the FDA and we publish all our standard operating procedures (SOPs) in PDF format since it's so difficult to copy. We rely not on the openess of the format but on its limitations. Not earth-shattering but I wanted to mention that PDF is not a particularly open format, despite its structures being well known.
The part I thought most comical was the people writing to warn him that the CIA would be after him and to exercise caution, or with ideas on how to win a war. Yes, I'm sure Saddam fired off a hardcopy of that e-mail, brought it to his War Ministry and they all read it in awe.
"By the grace of Almighty Allah, skater601@aol.com has shown us the road to salvation!"
Can someone in the know please explain what this is all about and the advantages? As usual, this article is aimed at dummies and features an indistinguishable mix of buzzwords interspersed with appropriate amounts of techie lingo, for effect. Why does a Sun designer describe it as "the holy grail" and what will it buy us? Thanks in advance...
Slashdot Mirror
No, Microsoft are not innovators in any way or sense. Wal-mart doesn't consider themselves innovators for selling a product they bought from SmallGuy #605, they are only a retailer. Microsoft has bought or copied every idea they ever had, NOTHING AT ALL HAS EVER BEEN INVENTED BY MICROSOFT. I assert this with no hesitation whatsoever. Word processors, spreadsheets, GUI, icons, mouse, networking, internet, browser, integration, presentation graphics, WYSIWYG, windows, hypertext, wireless, consoles, and a million other technologies... NOT ONE was invented by Microsoft but each and every one has been made famous in their name. In fact Microsoft has NEVER IN ITS HISTORY invented something! They are great at copying the code of others and making it look better, but Microsoft the great innovator has never made an innovation in the history of computing...
I don't see how his inline comments add anything to the memo that we wouldn't have gotten from it if he hasn't simply quoted it sans-editorial. In fact, his comments look less like clarification and commentary than simple whining. He should read "Eric Raymond's tips for effective open source advocacy" some time. ;-)
I also am surprised that he acts almost insulted by the memo. What did he expect, Microsoft would support OSS? The phrase "free software" gets the same reaction from Microsoft as the phrase "free cars" would get from Ford. Don't fault the rattlesnake for biting.
Proper format would be:
Ask Slashdot: Have you noticed that all Ask Slashdot articles lately have only been bitchy whines about the crappy content on this site and how everyone that reads /. these days is just a tourist? Am I the only person who has noticed it and how do you think we can reverse this growing trend in the community?
But wait! How will you duplicate the sluggish performance of the Start menu? You know, how it takes 10 seconds just to expand a level? I guess you could just insert an endless FOR loop, but that wouldn't be creative. How about installing a distributed computing client that would start crunching numbers while your Start menu struggles to open? That way while a Windows user waits in agony to drill down to All Programs --> Accessories --> Games, Linux users can actually spend that wasted time finding a cure for cancer!
So broadcast used to tax you by making you watch ads, but the signal was free. Then cable came out with no ads, but you paid for the signal. Now you pay for the signal and have to watch ads. And the recommendation is you pay extra for "Premium" channels with no ads? I suppose in ten years I can pay for "super duper mega-premium" cable that does what cable did 15 years ago?
Me, I look at the size of cable companies today and the billions of dollars the media industry is worth and I barely stifle a tear when thinking of the prospect of them being taken to the cleaners by PVRs. Good! Trim the fat, fire the executives and learn the value of a shiny penny, just like the rest of us...
My understanding is that the difference is rain falls gently, due to the nature of its formation. However seeding causes all the moisture in the atmosphere to condense at once, not gradually. Hence you get a massive rainfall that is completely unnatural and potentially dangerous. I don't think seeding creates water, it just causes it to precipitate at unnatural rates...
Who wants odds on how long before weather is used as a weapon in war?
It's real, now. No need for speculation. The secretive European Union has been launching tornadoes and hurricanes and floods against the Americans for decades, unfortunately it's only resulted in more sturdy trailer-home designs...
It is a shame that a building hosting so many good initiatives should be the one to go, but as always: there is no excuse for not have a backup.
Uhhh, yes there is... I suspect you either know nothing about IT or are fresh out of college. DRP (disaster recovery planning) factors in things such as criticality of data, cost, and acceptable downtime. A university payroll system may need to be back up within 12 hours of a major incident, so in addition to tape backups you might have a failover site. Contrary to your simplistic post, even the richest corporations rarely have failover sites of their own. They simply contract out to a DRP vendor who have these types of machines lying dormant in a glass room, waiting to cut over. On the other hand a university FTP site is probably classified as low risk, low impact. So you would rely on off-site backup tapes and perhaps only restore when you've arranged for an alternate site and taken delivery of new servers. You don't pay millions of dollars to have two glass rooms just so you can have uninterrupted FTP service...
>The only thing I've ever got out of attending COMDEX is a horrible flu.
Well depending on how you look at it maybe that's proof that at least some good things come out of Comdex. ;-)
I concur wholeheartedly, Chris Columbus shouldn't do the remaining Harry Potter movies, after all the first two were so disappointing, right? I say we should put Joel Schumacher in charge, after all think of what a stunning job he did when he took over the Batman series from that hack, Tim Burton. A blade-wielding hockey player army, brilliant! Nothing provides more of a shot-in-the-arm than removing a director from a project as soon as he's created two of the most popular films ever made. Send in the amateurs, I say!
If a company gives you a ticket, they paid for it.
Wow, so like 5 companies paid for me to sit in a local bar getting shitfaced only to claim that I was as Comdex? Wow, no wonder our industry is in the shithole...
This is what happens when you throw free passes around like they're AOL CDs. Did anyone, ever actually pay to get into Comdex? Well, I suppose the techies and developers may have had to pay but pointy-haired bosses like me always got inundated with free passes from companies we'd never dream of buying from. No wonder it was never a great show...
Sorry, but I think your post is really ignorant. The DMCA is law and many consumer rights are already gone. The chances of the DMCA going away are slim to nil, anything reasonable you can do to try to reaffirm your rights is a step in the right direction. You sound like the people who preach that income tax is unconstitutional and we should be fighting to have it repealed. It ain't gonna happen, sister, so come back to reality.
"The test was declared a resounding success when the message '@#FGGgWEe#GR... +++ATZ +++ATH0 NO CARRIER' was successfully received by the San Celemente station. Congratulations to all involved!"
Yes I understand how profits are calculated. So when you hand out $25 paperweights that read "Employees are our Most Valuable Asset" to every person in the company, that's an expense. It is deducted from revenue and profits drop accordingly.
In fact this is how much Enron-like accounting starts. In order to keep profits stable, a company might "invest" funds during a highly profitable year, thus hiding a portion of profits. During lean times you might reclaim some of these investments and add them to revenue. The net result is that profits are kept at an attractive average, rather than fluctuating wildly. After all, shareholders will praise you if profits increase 5% for three years. But they'll have your job if profits rise 25% one year then drop by 10% the next year. So companies start to transfer money between "buckets" to save their skins. Microsoft did this, Enron did this. However Enron did it to hide the fact that they were in serious financial trouble whereas Microsoft was using it to keep profits stable, not to deceive shareholders. This is the difference between a simple warning from the SEC for Microsoft and jail time for Enron.
I will admit to downloading a number of movies... mainly because I'm not willing to pay $4 to rent it once, or more to watch it once in an uncomfortable theatre.
I'll go one up on you here. I will admit to downloading a number of movies because I own them yet some greedy suit wants me to buy them a second time for twice the price on DVD. And yet to manufacture the VHS tape costs many times as much as the DVD disc. Why is the DVD double the price? If when I bought the VHS tape I didn't buy the film, I only licensed it for home viewing, then obviously I still have a license for home viewing from DVD. The MPAA would call my burned DVDs "piracy", I call it "one good turn deserves another."
This is similar to the little pie chart you see on gas pumps claiming only 5% profit on gas sales. The problem is that profit is purely subjective since all expenses are subtracted from profit. Send the entire company on a 1-week vacation in Hawaii? It gets deducted from profits. Hire a hundred people to act as a permanent "think-tank"? Deducted. Free beer in the cafeteria? Deducted. You can burn hundred-dollar bills for warmth but still claim no profits. When a company cries poor due to low profits you need to take a closer look. Operating losses, declining sales, or decreased revenue are better indicators of corporate health. Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, and now Marvel comics all cry poor in profits but are throwing buckets of money into a woodchipper 'cause they've run out of places to stack it...
Siphoning gas from your neighbours tank is dead simple. But people don't do it. Why? It's stealing. But explain to me why people don't mind steal^H^Hcopying movies/music/etc when clearly there are so many other things that can be easily stolen in life?
Oooo! Ooooo! Pick me! Uhm, is it because my neighbours aren't money-grubbing thieves who charge me $13.50 for a movie admission and $10 for a cup of watered down soda and a bag of popped air?
Why would they even *want* to do this. Like 90% of all Linux users I use the shell chosen by my distro. That's almost 100% Bash. I've done some pretty techie stuff with my system and tend to be a pretty advanced RedHat user but the thought of changing my shell never even occurred to me. After all, it works just great, why would I care? It seems to me only total techie geeks would reject the Bash shell and if they're so damn techie why create a distro that limits this ability. Am I missing something here???
So I was making paper on computer when suddenly Slashdot posted on their front page that a HOWTO for some distro had been released. And I was like...
Huh?
Soooo..... When .NET beats the pants off J2EE it's not newsworthy, but when someone questions the results it is? Surely if one is worthy of posting on /. they both should be...
Bluelight is part of K-Mart, K-Mart owns the licences for bluelight's computers, K-Mart can't sell the rights to those licenses when it sells Bluelight.
An accurate representation of Microsoft's position. So when 3COM bought Palm they didn't need to buy all new licenses, but once they spun them off they need to? I think the absurdity is patently obvious.
A very minor and unimportant comment:
Most companies when publishing in PDF format do so, not for openness but to preotect against copying or modification.
For example, my company works extensively with the FDA and we publish all our standard operating procedures (SOPs) in PDF format since it's so difficult to copy. We rely not on the openess of the format but on its limitations. Not earth-shattering but I wanted to mention that PDF is not a particularly open format, despite its structures being well known.
The part I thought most comical was the people writing to warn him that the CIA would be after him and to exercise caution, or with ideas on how to win a war. Yes, I'm sure Saddam fired off a hardcopy of that e-mail, brought it to his War Ministry and they all read it in awe.
"By the grace of Almighty Allah, skater601@aol.com has shown us the road to salvation!"
Jeez, people can be so dumb...
Can someone in the know please explain what this is all about and the advantages? As usual, this article is aimed at dummies and features an indistinguishable mix of buzzwords interspersed with appropriate amounts of techie lingo, for effect. Why does a Sun designer describe it as "the holy grail" and what will it buy us? Thanks in advance...