I believe his main point to this was that its HIS equipment that HE bought, thus he should not be forced to watch/listen to advertisments.
You can receive broadcast TV for FREE, but it does come with a price: Advertisements. You can BUY HBO and Showtime, and they don't.
You buy your computer, you don't BORROW it, and thats the problem. The advertisements should be limited to KIOSKS and public terminals if they want to follow the same rules as television and traditional media outlets.
I am perpetually shocked at the willingness of Americans to give away the rights for which their ancestors suffered so much.
Menace the average modern American with anything halfway alarming -- terrorism, crime or any other of today's various boogeymen -- and in place of their forebearers' bravery, idealism and resolve, they will show cowardice, surrender and an astounding aptitude for cognative dissonence. They will gratefully trade their liberties for even the illusion of security, and will gladly indenture themselves to anyone who claims to offer them safety.
Is that really true? How many people do you talk to a day that claim, "yeah, I don't mind having my phone line tapped and recorded, or taking a blood test once a year because the government asked me to". I bet its hard to name people that actually think that. So, my question: Where are these people coming from these "polls" that they keep taking? Its probably the same people that keep voting that coke tastes better than pepsi, that I-Can't-Believe-Its-Not-Butter is indistinguishable from real butter, and that 65 is a safe national speed limit. These people don't really exist. You pay someone money, they'll vote whatever way you want them to.
When we had the bombing of the trade towers, tons of New Yorkers were out there, volunteering to help... You probably remember the same interviews, with the steel workers, and how determined they were to help, and how much those damn terrorist bastards were going to pay. In my home town, there were TONS of people flying flag-pole-sized american flags on flagpoles! attached to their truck beds! These people want blood, they don't want to sit on the sidelines and watch political debates.
I can't recall one conversation that I had with someone willing to give up their freedom to help stop terrorism. These people are made up by our left-wing, self-righteous media, period.
We're safer, we breath cleaner air. We don't suffer from hearing loss. We're not on our feet all day and we make good money.
We're safer and breathe cleaner air? What about all the tech workers that worked at IBM that got cancer from being too exposed to silicon purifying chemicals?
We don't suffer hearing loss, true, but most computer professionals are overweight, suffer from hemmorhoids from sitting for too long, and have heart problems from inactivity.
Your average auto worker has a few dangers: Loss of limb, loss of hearing.
Your average computer techician has a few dangers too: Nearsightedness, bad posture, hemmorhoids, overweight, heart conditions, and carpal tunnel.
And I don't know about you, but I don't get a real lunch break where I'm at. I get paid to work through my lunch, and be productive, so that means that as long as I can chew and sit in froma computer and do something I get paid, but it also means that whatever I eat is usually crap food.
First off: we are not all gonna die. It has been 800,000 years since the last time the poles flipped. At that time, our ancestors were walking around, munching on wooly mammoths an giant sloths, etc., armed with such amazing modern tech as sharpened flint and fire. If they can take it, so can we.
Perhaps 800,000 years ago we were monkeys.... Now look at us, we just keep gettin' uglier each time the damn poles flip!
The Microsoft tax came about when computer manufacturers like Dell and Gateway signed their lives away to sell MS OSes and no other preinstalled on machines. Thats why its called a tax, because, until recently, you couldn't buy a Dell, IBM, or a Gateway, without also buying a MS OS with it.
Our company used to use OpenMail for scheduling us on site somewhere. Worked great, except that Microsoft pulled all support for their previous MAPI extentions from Outlook 2002, so the connector that was supplied with OpenMail would not work. HP even said that they had no plans on making it work, and were selling it off.
Basically, when Microsoft can't make something better, they make it proprietary. In this case, rather than make Exchange better/cheaper, they just make Outlook not work with anything but Exchange.
SMP isn't a good thing in itself, as the article seemed to imply: it's what you use when there isn't a single processor available that's fast enough. One processor at full speed is almost always better than two at half the speed.
Not necessarily. You're fogetting that each time a new thread or process needs CPU time, the L1/L2 has to be flushed and new data is retrieved from main memory. Thats a huge overhead, as main memory is slow compared to L1/L2 cache. When using SMP, a thread or process can happily be on either CPU, so now you went from 1 cache flush for each new process, to a better chance of less flushes because you have twice the available processing. Almost all modern OSs use threads and processes (except some RT systems), so even if the CPU is not 100% maxed on both SMPs, you're data retrieval from main memory won't hurt you so much.
The best way to settle this all and the stupid shrink wrap license is this: Make anyone who SELLS closed source software liable for faults in their software that disrupt business, corrupt data, and lose revenue. You'll see Microsoft's cash pile drop like a rock.
Microsoft succeeds at anything it wants, because it all amounts to the one thing that drives America: Money. As long as Microsoft has money, they will get what they want, because history has shown us that with money, you can buy whatever you want.
Microsoft has already said they want nothing to do with GPL, and have further gone to say that interaction or usage of GPL'ed software on their systems is prohibited. How long will this last until Microsoft tries to say its illegal to run on their OS?
This ruling basically makes all research papers you'll ever write in college illegal. Footnotes, Endnotes, etc that list reference and page number are nothing more than printed deep linking.
When you specify something specifically, its illegal. There goes the ability to look up zoology in a dictionary, online or off, since you'll need the read the entire dictionary first before you're able to view the page that contains zoology.
Ahh, its a great day, you're getting married, all your friends are here, and they're all happy for you. Life is good. The walk down the isle, the church organ begins to play..... slience... A man in black steps into the isle and intones,
"You have violated Palladium law 52.b sec(c). You have no rights to play this song".
You reply, "But its a traditional wedding song!"
"But, the author gave you no rights, and neither did the federal government."
A sad and lonley day has transpired. A day that was supposed to be the best day of your life. And it was all a made possible by Microsoft...
I sorry, but you're completely wrong on this. Why is Microsoft even considering putting something into an OS that most consumers will be ticked about? Money.
You think the entertainment industry is helping to line Microsoft's pockets on policies like this? Is it in Microsoft's interest to spend lots of R&D money on something that people don't want, if its only there to make life more secure? No? They'll get industry recognition from everyone that counts: Big media, book publishers, and the government. Its what everyone in POWER wants, not what users want. Thats why we don't matter one &#^@ bit. We don't support Microsoft in the new economy. Why do you think they want a subscription model? We didn't want that, but we're not making them grow at a fast enough rate anymore. They made Office, it was good, we have no reason to upgrade because it was good. Now sales of Office 2002 suck. Soo, invent otherways to make money, and whalla, we side with people who have LOTS of money.
Microsoft cares about you and what you want? C'mon back to reality.
---
it's amazing how some people can put their foot in their mouth with their head so far up their ass.
After having read the slashdot article on the pledge of allegiance and its following comments, and now this article and its comments, I believe the we should be forced to say, "In God", as its obvious that every slashdot reader is a raving zealot.
We hear one cry that Linux isn't superior, that it isn't #1, and that it isn't LOVED BY ALL and we FREAK OUT. I bet that every CEO and CTO that glances at these messages we leave here has second thoughts on implimenting a Linux solution in his company. We appear as madmen. Until we can accept that we're number two we'll always appear as such. Our zealously shines on Slashdot, and we sound like spoiled children. We should be proud that Linux gets as much media attention as it does. It went from being used and developed by Linus to the #2 OS in 10 years! It has Microsoft scared. Sun is promising GNU compatible tools on Solaris. IBM is qualifing all of its server hardware for it. We've got the support from the companies that matter. Now we need to get the support from potential customers. And sounding like raving, religous zealots will not win us points with these people.
Ok, now tell me why you'd want this? One of the biggest things preventing Linux from taking off on the desktop is the lack of standardization and the multitude of distributions out there. Unless someone talks to a linux "expert" about what distro to use, the choice can be so overwhelming that they quit and keep using their Windows or OS/X.
Red Hat has 50% more market share than every other major linux vender, combined. 50%. Thats Suse, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, Slackware, Debian... The major ones. 50%. Thats a heck of a lot. Most software written for Linux says, "compatible with Red Hat Linux version..." on it. The reason: More market share. If we ever think we're gonna take the desktop, we need to have a limited number of distros, not more. There are hundreds, literally hundreds of distros available. Each one with an idea that what they are doing is The Right Way. I'm sorry, but that breeds incompatibility. That is not what we need if we're gonna survive.
3. The arrival of operating systems with easy-to-setup Internet access. Depsite what many people here on/. think of Microsoft, you have to admit that the inclusion of dial-up PPP access for Internet connections in Windows 95 was a major factor in the explosive growth of Internet usage.
What, Trumpet Winsock wasn't easy? I think its still available for download from www.tucows.com
Ext3 on a production server? You're braver than I... it's still an experimental FS (from 2.4.18 make config):
I've used 3Ware IDE RAID controllers using hardware based RAID 5 in a number of servers running Red Hat 7.x
Recently I deployed a server using ext3 on a 160G RAID-5 setup using a 3Ware 7850 on Linux. I haven't had a hiccup yet. I've always done a recompile, removed the debugger and compiled the support static, and never seen any issues.
ReiserFS is faster, and tighter, but it doesn't have any code to deal with bad blocks, otherwise I'd use it for production.
They have much more to loose in Europe than here. When our government brought Microsoft to court, every country that uses Microsoft software took notice. Why? Because here you have a company, who's products you use to make your business function, under scrunity for illegal business practices, under foreign laws. That worried many counties. Legal ramifications that you have absolutely no control over.
To those people, Open Source software just got a lot more appealing, because a foreign power can't take it away from you.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe his main point to this was that its HIS equipment that HE bought, thus he should not be forced to watch/listen to advertisments.
You can receive broadcast TV for FREE, but it does come with a price: Advertisements. You can BUY HBO and Showtime, and they don't.
You buy your computer, you don't BORROW it, and thats the problem. The advertisements should be limited to KIOSKS and public terminals if they want to follow the same rules as television and traditional media outlets.
I am perpetually shocked at the willingness of Americans to give away the rights for which their ancestors suffered so much.
Menace the average modern American with anything halfway alarming -- terrorism, crime or any other of today's various boogeymen -- and in place of their forebearers' bravery, idealism and resolve, they will show cowardice, surrender and an astounding aptitude for cognative dissonence. They will gratefully trade their liberties for even the illusion of security, and will gladly indenture themselves to anyone who claims to offer them safety.
Is that really true? How many people do you talk to a day that claim, "yeah, I don't mind having my phone line tapped and recorded, or taking a blood test once a year because the government asked me to". I bet its hard to name people that actually think that. So, my question: Where are these people coming from these "polls" that they keep taking? Its probably the same people that keep voting that coke tastes better than pepsi, that I-Can't-Believe-Its-Not-Butter is indistinguishable from real butter, and that 65 is a safe national speed limit. These people don't really exist. You pay someone money, they'll vote whatever way you want them to.
When we had the bombing of the trade towers, tons of New Yorkers were out there, volunteering to help... You probably remember the same interviews, with the steel workers, and how determined they were to help, and how much those damn terrorist bastards were going to pay. In my home town, there were TONS of people flying flag-pole-sized american flags on flagpoles! attached to their truck beds! These people want blood, they don't want to sit on the sidelines and watch political debates.
I can't recall one conversation that I had with someone willing to give up their freedom to help stop terrorism. These people are made up by our left-wing, self-righteous media, period.
Yes. Model trains are certainly a nerdy pursuit, and (having raced my own as a kid) I can certify that they can be much fun.
You need to read the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT is what started it all.
We're safer, we breath cleaner air. We don't suffer from hearing loss. We're not on our feet all day and we make good money.
We're safer and breathe cleaner air? What about all the tech workers that worked at IBM that got cancer from being too exposed to silicon purifying chemicals?
We don't suffer hearing loss, true, but most computer professionals are overweight, suffer from hemmorhoids from sitting for too long, and have heart problems from inactivity.
Your average auto worker has a few dangers: Loss of limb, loss of hearing.
Your average computer techician has a few dangers too: Nearsightedness, bad posture, hemmorhoids, overweight, heart conditions, and carpal tunnel.
And I don't know about you, but I don't get a real lunch break where I'm at. I get paid to work through my lunch, and be productive, so that means that as long as I can chew and sit in froma computer and do something I get paid, but it also means that whatever I eat is usually crap food.
First off: we are not all gonna die. It has been 800,000 years since the last time the poles flipped. At that time, our ancestors were walking around, munching on wooly mammoths an giant sloths, etc., armed with such amazing modern tech as sharpened flint and fire. If they can take it, so can we.
Perhaps 800,000 years ago we were monkeys.... Now look at us, we just keep gettin' uglier each time the damn poles flip!
Karma: n. the total effect of a person's actions during successive phases of their existance
/. which every geek envies, but has absolutely no idea what it is.
Karma: n. A thing on
The Microsoft tax came about when computer manufacturers like Dell and Gateway signed their lives away to sell MS OSes and no other preinstalled on machines. Thats why its called a tax, because, until recently, you couldn't buy a Dell, IBM, or a Gateway, without also buying a MS OS with it.
Our company used to use OpenMail for scheduling us on site somewhere. Worked great, except that Microsoft pulled all support for their previous MAPI extentions from Outlook 2002, so the connector that was supplied with OpenMail would not work. HP even said that they had no plans on making it work, and were selling it off.
Basically, when Microsoft can't make something better, they make it proprietary. In this case, rather than make Exchange better/cheaper, they just make Outlook not work with anything but Exchange.
SMP isn't a good thing in itself, as the article seemed to imply: it's what you use when there isn't a single processor available that's fast enough. One processor at full speed is almost always better than two at half the speed.
Not necessarily. You're fogetting that each time a new thread or process needs CPU time, the L1/L2 has to be flushed and new data is retrieved from main memory. Thats a huge overhead, as main memory is slow compared to L1/L2 cache. When using SMP, a thread or process can happily be on either CPU, so now you went from 1 cache flush for each new process, to a better chance of less flushes because you have twice the available processing. Almost all modern OSs use threads and processes (except some RT systems), so even if the CPU is not 100% maxed on both SMPs, you're data retrieval from main memory won't hurt you so much.
They have the money and the lawyers.
The best way to settle this all and the stupid shrink wrap license is this: Make anyone who SELLS closed source software liable for faults in their software that disrupt business, corrupt data, and lose revenue. You'll see Microsoft's cash pile drop like a rock.
Yeah, but he's probably running an on Wearners 2x that used that proprietary IO card, and its not bootable.
I guess we'll just have to wait till we can start booting from our USB thumb drives!
It'll never sell, they said. What will people do without their floppy drive!
Why would you use a floppy, zip or even a CD for an iMac? That would entail that people actually write software for it. How absurd!
I think we should all resurrect Gopher and start sharing files with it. We'll show em!
Microsoft succeeds at anything it wants, because it all amounts to the one thing that drives America: Money. As long as Microsoft has money, they will get what they want, because history has shown us that with money, you can buy whatever you want.
Want proof: http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/catalog/This website lists all the companies that Microsoft has either:
1) Bought
2) Stolen technology from
3) Sued into nothingness
4)Bundled software with its OS to drive it out of market.
http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html#deception This site lists all kinds of lovely information about Microsoft's practices.
Microsoft has already said they want nothing to do with GPL, and have further gone to say that interaction or usage of GPL'ed software on their systems is prohibited. How long will this last until Microsoft tries to say its illegal to run on their OS?
This ruling basically makes all research papers you'll ever write in college illegal. Footnotes, Endnotes, etc that list reference and page number are nothing more than printed deep linking.
When you specify something specifically, its illegal. There goes the ability to look up zoology in a dictionary, online or off, since you'll need the read the entire dictionary first before you're able to view the page that contains zoology.
Ahh, its a great day, you're getting married, all your friends are here, and they're all happy for you. Life is good. The walk down the isle, the church organ begins to play..... slience... A man in black steps into the isle and intones,
"You have violated Palladium law 52.b sec(c). You have no rights to play this song".
You reply, "But its a traditional wedding song!"
"But, the author gave you no rights, and neither did the federal government."
A sad and lonley day has transpired. A day that was supposed to be the best day of your life. And it was all a made possible by Microsoft...
I sorry, but you're completely wrong on this. Why is Microsoft even considering putting something into an OS that most consumers will be ticked about? Money .
You think the entertainment industry is helping to line Microsoft's pockets on policies like this? Is it in Microsoft's interest to spend lots of R&D money on something that people don't want, if its only there to make life more secure? No? They'll get industry recognition from everyone that counts : Big media, book publishers, and the government. Its what everyone in POWER wants, not what users want. Thats why we don't matter one &#^@ bit. We don't support Microsoft in the new economy. Why do you think they want a subscription model? We didn't want that, but we're not making them grow at a fast enough rate anymore. They made Office, it was good, we have no reason to upgrade because it was good. Now sales of Office 2002 suck. Soo, invent otherways to make money, and whalla, we side with people who have LOTS of money.
Microsoft cares about you and what you want? C'mon back to reality.
---
it's amazing how some people can put their foot in their mouth with their head so far up their ass.
After having read the slashdot article on the pledge of allegiance and its following comments, and now this article and its comments, I believe the we should be forced to say, "In God", as its obvious that every slashdot reader is a raving zealot.
We hear one cry that Linux isn't superior, that it isn't #1, and that it isn't LOVED BY ALL and we FREAK OUT. I bet that every CEO and CTO that glances at these messages we leave here has second thoughts on implimenting a Linux solution in his company. We appear as madmen. Until we can accept that we're number two we'll always appear as such. Our zealously shines on Slashdot, and we sound like spoiled children. We should be proud that Linux gets as much media attention as it does. It went from being used and developed by Linus to the #2 OS in 10 years! It has Microsoft scared. Sun is promising GNU compatible tools on Solaris. IBM is qualifing all of its server hardware for it. We've got the support from the companies that matter. Now we need to get the support from potential customers. And sounding like raving, religous zealots will not win us points with these people.
Even so, at least it's a competitor to redhat.
Ok, now tell me why you'd want this? One of the biggest things preventing Linux from taking off on the desktop is the lack of standardization and the multitude of distributions out there. Unless someone talks to a linux "expert" about what distro to use, the choice can be so overwhelming that they quit and keep using their Windows or OS/X.
Red Hat has 50% more market share than every other major linux vender, combined. 50%. Thats Suse, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, Slackware, Debian... The major ones. 50%. Thats a heck of a lot. Most software written for Linux says, "compatible with Red Hat Linux version..." on it. The reason: More market share. If we ever think we're gonna take the desktop, we need to have a limited number of distros, not more. There are hundreds, literally hundreds of distros available. Each one with an idea that what they are doing is The Right Way. I'm sorry, but that breeds incompatibility. That is not what we need if we're gonna survive.
I think it refers to the fact that it only affects those windows OSes, not all windows oses.
3. The arrival of operating systems with easy-to-setup Internet access. Depsite what many people here on /. think of Microsoft, you have to admit that the inclusion of dial-up PPP access for Internet connections in Windows 95 was a major factor in the explosive growth of Internet usage.
What, Trumpet Winsock wasn't easy? I think its still available for download from www.tucows.com
Ext3 on a production server? You're braver than I... it's still an experimental FS (from 2.4.18 make config):
I've used 3Ware IDE RAID controllers using hardware based RAID 5 in a number of servers running Red Hat 7.x
Recently I deployed a server using ext3 on a 160G RAID-5 setup using a 3Ware 7850 on Linux. I haven't had a hiccup yet. I've always done a recompile, removed the debugger and compiled the support static, and never seen any issues.
ReiserFS is faster, and tighter, but it doesn't have any code to deal with bad blocks, otherwise I'd use it for production.
They have much more to loose in Europe than here. When our government brought Microsoft to court, every country that uses Microsoft software took notice. Why? Because here you have a company, who's products you use to make your business function, under scrunity for illegal business practices, under foreign laws. That worried many counties. Legal ramifications that you have absolutely no control over.
To those people, Open Source software just got a lot more appealing, because a foreign power can't take it away from you.
"All you need is VNC" -- John Lennon