Just like Metallica's bull$#&T war against piracy Microsoft benefits from and was built on the concept of _almost every computer_ running it's software. The company might 'claim' to have a serious problem with piracy, hell they might fund major sting operations and propaganda to dissuade piracy but what they really want to dissuade is people not buying their software when they can afford to.
What they won't admit, and what would crush them completely is if they actually got rid of every pirated copy of microsoft windows in the world. If the entire country of romania never ran microsoft products, you would have an entire country of linux fans contributing to linux's evolution and coding software exclusively (or mostly) for linux platforms.
What kind of jolt would that be to Microsoft? A major one I think. But romania would have lost out as well (numbers wise), since Linux has traditionally been more complicated for new-users to use and receive support on than windows.
Metallica can afford to sue and chase-down and arrest their own fans, because after they used bootlegging of tapes to become world-famous while fans footed the bill of reproduction and distribution -- they have enough money to re-write history and say that napster is bad. How many people buy music they've never heard before? You can't sell CD's to the world by just showing off a picture of some faggy guys in tights, just like Microsoft can't possibly sell Windows to 90% of the people on earth using personal computers.
But trust me, they want to be on 90% of the computers.
It's interesting that they're reporting this ; but you can't take flat-out numbers with a grain of salt. They're either correct or complete lies ; and I think we all know they have to be complete lies.
These companies don't report half the cases of identity theft to end-consumers, banks and definitely not the police because they don't want to alarm anybody -- especially when the case is unsolvable. I've had my bank card 'suspended' 3 times in the past two years because someone has stolen my pin and copied the card at a gas station or variety store and the bank tells me only, "The card was copied along with a number of other cards. Your account hasn't been effected, just come into the bank for a new card and choose a new pin".
My account hasn't been affected because the bank noticed it and silently footed the bill ; only even bothering to tell me because I couldn't use the card. I imagine a credit card that has no PIN on it - you would never notice ; and how much easier would it be to copy a credit card. You don't need to read the pin over someone's shoulder.
If theft is down or up you'll never know the truth. If it's down by half, why wouldn't they say it's down by 3/4's. Even a reduction, if it occurred would likely be embellished.
This looks to me like a promising step towards machinery for cleaning arteries. I imagine it won't be past our own life-times (we that aren't close to dead) before technology like this silently and efficiently ensures we never die of clogged arteries, strokes, blood clots.
Then we can sit in front of our computers all day long eating cheesy nacho's and injecting ourselves with nano fat collectors.
In my humble opinion, the ISP's claim to provide you with a certain speed and bandwidth for downloads and a certain speed and bandwidth for uploads. If you're paying for bandwidth (which you are) you deserve to have that bandwidth available.
We've been footing the bill since the dawn of the Internet and for them to limit our bandwidth as if their job involves somehow ensuring that _we as internet users_ don't break the law - is totally ludicrous.
There should be a law in effect that says NO ISP can sell bandwidth past a very specific ratio of what THEY THEMSELVES pay for and have available. Right now there are actually dial-up providers out there that offer ultra, ultra cheap internet access but you can't get it because their phone lines are always busy and ONCE YOU DO get on, they've split a relatively high-speed connection across so many damned people you can't even get a full 56k download - and we all know that's totally ridiculous.
If ISP's had to ENSURE bandwidth past their own networks was sufficient for what they were selling off - these questions would *never* be raised.
I was 1.walking down Yonge Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and my 2.RIM started vibrating. I was really surprised to find I had received an advertisement. An advertisement that I did not request, and definitely did not want to see. It was just a link to a web page but even still, it was very upsetting.
3.I think we need to get on top of this problem before it gets out of hand. Bluetooth marketing is going to go viral in very short time. 4.Once someone realizes that they can offer this type of advertising medium to the less-tech-savvy businesses out there with simple technology, everybody is going to jump on board. Not because it's particularly effective, but because it is particularly CHEAP. Just like mass email marketing ; but technically-involved enough to cut out the average small and even medium-sized businesses from doing it themselves. Instead of silently advertising, the concept of bluetooth spamming is going to be promoted and marketed by marketing companies.
---- Footnotes:
1 : This never happened.
2 : RIM sounds like a synonym for anus.
3 : I don't really think that, I hardly care.
4 : Surprisingly, this statement is actually true.
I think it's obvious the entire slashdot community is going to be 'against' this initiative. We all have experience using 'more than average' time on the internet and particularly the world wide web ; it is completely impossible to 'guide' people on the internet.
China would have to have a ginormous amount of 'censors' constantly surfing and updating their own database of acceptable internet sites to have anything close to a 'guidance initiative'. This is just a media spin on what china has been doing all along, blocking major portions of the internet off completely from it's own citizens.
You can see the ridiculous tracert douginadress.com takes to reach chinese citizens right now ; another comment on China's inability to even provide standard censorship
The real question is this: If a bad student can watch all the lectures and do so well on an exam, what were they really teaching you in the class anyways? Did they not prove they knew it by passing the exam?
Attendence requirements are another way of saying, "It's not really about your education". The real question should be which students are smart enough to crunch for an exam 24 hours in advance and pass.
Umm, is it just me or is it common knowledge that honeybee's are low enough on the food chain to easily be frozen into suspended animation and back again with thawing?
Some guy I work with does it for fun in his off hours (Yeah, and *I'm* the slashdot geek).
This is living proof and retribution for Microsoft's monopoly on the world software market. As many people have said, why not buy a PC with *NO* operating system installed if you're just going to Pirate Windows anyways?
The reason is, Windows on these PC's is not the Primary Operating system - it is simply the operating system *required* for certain software packages, most notably games.
If Microsoft has such a problem with Linux users pirating windows, they can give up the monopoly on games and we'll just stop using them entirely.
The truth is, a windows operating system installed for free is better than none at all and Microsoft knows it. The more people running their stupid O.S., even if some are pirates, the more associated software they sell, the more they keep their stronghold on bastardized HTTP, Games Software, Office Software, etc.
Pirates give Microsoft the power to invent their own standards, in their own favour. Take away the pirates, and you take away Microsoft's market share, advertising ability, their power.
Windows is the platform for a much larger agenda, and the pirates aren't thanked - because Microsoft knows they can punish them *and* make money from them.
If Microsoft thought it was actually possible to wipe out piracy of their OS, they wouldn't do it.
Does this mean we're getting closer to the ansible? Or am I reading this wrong?
*The ansible is a device invented by William Scott Card that allows you to communicate faster than the speed of light, since photons linked to each other react instantaneously as their linked counterpart is manipulated, no matter the distance between them (or so we think).
Personally my laymens concept of string theory makes me believe taking the photons great distances apart from each other will stretch their connecting 'string' to a limit, causing unknown results.
I read the article ; you managed to bash everything I said in the exact wrong context and then as you moved along you just made an answer to my entire point that's the equivilant of "This isn't interesting" "Yes it is".
My opinion, if you bother to read the msg. is that it isn't a huge deal, like other people in this forum are saying - because in terms of our own personal, home computers - it's not going to do much. Maybe it will increase speeds past the point they're already at, which is -- to fast to really care that much about making a difference.
Good for Sun - oh wait, I said that. I'm glad it will increase the speed on servers, which is obvious, if you read the msg.
If you don't have something good to say,
don't say anything at all.
I haven't been over my grammatical rules since Grade 1 (1986) -- but don't you capitalize all Noun's in a sentence. Person, Place, or Thing.
Is this a Canadian specific rule?
Not that the "Internet" should be capitalized, but -- the article explains, "Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was."
That will be great when we can just buy chips and literally drop them into a box with i/o ports. But since that isn't going to happen - what's the real advantage to the consumer of having no motherboard?
Won't we just be fastening our add-on cards, etc to some sort of board? And won't these chips need to be fastened to a 'board' so that they can communicate with each other properly? ie. be the proper distances away from each other, not be rolled around like bingo dice?
In the least, we will still require our standard ports to be fastened to... something. My guess is that will be ports on a board. Essentially, doesn't this mean we will all be buying the 'new' computers from scratch, making our AT, ATX motherboards obsolete - even if they operate at speeds we can live with?
It is interesting that computing power will increase, but:
P.C.'s have reached a speed in recent years that standard, home-user software will not exceed in terms of requirements - for some time. (even CounterStrike doesn't appear to be bloating up too fast). So why the excitement over more computing power for home users, at the cost of replacing entire systems?
I think the real advantage would be a cost effective communications chip that can be 'distributed' throughout an area - bringing an intranet or internet access to that area for fairly cheap (after all, these chips do communicate at breakneck speeds, no?)
Don't get me wrong, the invention is fascinating, and I do hope the future of computing moves to modular designs such as this - I'm just saying the excitement factor here may be more grandiose and dillusional than is necessary.
Thank you everybody for your responses. To reply to them as a whole, I see many good points being made - however.
Most of the posts here talk about document management and software (Not surprising, this is slashdot). The industry itself is a lot more than that, I know because I work in it. Also there are many college courses dedicated to filing practices, filing methods, maintaining proper storage equipment.
As much as the slashdot community by it's very nature is against physical records management - we have more paper records than ever before. It is an industry that looks like it will be growing with current technology.
Document scanning and imaging costs a lot more money than most people think. In fact most companies have had at least one shot at trying to image documents and given up entirely. The reason is - records management is not a commonly understood profession. Many employees at smaller companies take filing and records management for granted. ARMA, the authority on records and information management has forgone a useful web site for more marketing materials and event listings (ie. marketing).
What I was really looking for here, on top of a discussion, was people's opinions of the industry and some direction for the company I work at, in terms of marketing and service offerings. We are already very well established for mobile storage equipment, filing services and the odd consulting job. In the past we sold software and got out of the industry because the market was more trouble than it was worth. Now that i'm on board, I'm re-examining that and trying to come up with a solution that appeals to our customers, or a new type of customer, and meets an industry demand.
I think you've helped me with that in this forum, thank you very much.
And they'll be able to run for years at a time by utilizing nuclear reactors.
One person said they believe all of our environmental problems can be solved by technology and this is a perfect example of that......... What part of "Monitoring" has anything to do with solving environmental problems?
Hey, look there's an environmental problem! Call in the "We can do anything we please environmental squad!"
"Hi there, you'll have to stop producing steel, and you sir, you'll have to stop fertalizing your farm. And you ma'm, we're going to ban you from flushing bleach cleaning water down your toilet"
My company is going to release a really simple program soon to change the Microsoft Automatic Search in Explorer. I can't stand misspelling a domain or something because my keyboard's all sticky... er....
anyways, that search engine sucks.
"More and more we see Google as a competitor". Considering microsoft never had their market at all, this statement is totally awesome. I wish I had their marketing guys working for me.
It's amazing that they can make google look like the little guy when they're kicking their ass all over the place, and microsoft's results aren't even worth viewing.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like Metallica's bull$#&T war against piracy Microsoft benefits from and was built on the concept of _almost every computer_ running it's software. The company might 'claim' to have a serious problem with piracy, hell they might fund major sting operations and propaganda to dissuade piracy but what they really want to dissuade is people not buying their software when they can afford to.
What they won't admit, and what would crush them completely is if they actually got rid of every pirated copy of microsoft windows in the world. If the entire country of romania never ran microsoft products, you would have an entire country of linux fans contributing to linux's evolution and coding software exclusively (or mostly) for linux platforms.
What kind of jolt would that be to Microsoft? A major one I think. But romania would have lost out as well (numbers wise), since Linux has traditionally been more complicated for new-users to use and receive support on than windows.
Metallica can afford to sue and chase-down and arrest their own fans, because after they used bootlegging of tapes to become world-famous while fans footed the bill of reproduction and distribution -- they have enough money to re-write history and say that napster is bad. How many people buy music they've never heard before? You can't sell CD's to the world by just showing off a picture of some faggy guys in tights, just like Microsoft can't possibly sell Windows to 90% of the people on earth using personal computers.
But trust me, they want to be on 90% of the computers.
---
metallicas new album?
What we need is a foam-cell with a small chunk of unreacted potassium enveloped in a bucky-ball attached to it, with a detonator mechanism.
"Oohhh, jeeez my chest feels like it's on fire"
"You're probably just getting over a heart-attack... drink some milkshake, it'll cool ya down"
---
speaking of milkshake
It's interesting that they're reporting this ; but you can't take flat-out numbers with a grain of salt. They're either correct or complete lies ; and I think we all know they have to be complete lies.
These companies don't report half the cases of identity theft to end-consumers, banks and definitely not the police because they don't want to alarm anybody -- especially when the case is unsolvable. I've had my bank card 'suspended' 3 times in the past two years because someone has stolen my pin and copied the card at a gas station or variety store and the bank tells me only, "The card was copied along with a number of other cards. Your account hasn't been effected, just come into the bank for a new card and choose a new pin".
My account hasn't been affected because the bank noticed it and silently footed the bill ; only even bothering to tell me because I couldn't use the card. I imagine a credit card that has no PIN on it - you would never notice ; and how much easier would it be to copy a credit card. You don't need to read the pin over someone's shoulder.
If theft is down or up you'll never know the truth. If it's down by half, why wouldn't they say it's down by 3/4's. Even a reduction, if it occurred would likely be embellished.
Speaking of embellished.
This looks to me like a promising step towards machinery for cleaning arteries. I imagine it won't be past our own life-times (we that aren't close to dead) before technology like this silently and efficiently ensures we never die of clogged arteries, strokes, blood clots.
Then we can sit in front of our computers all day long eating cheesy nacho's and injecting ourselves with nano fat collectors.
Mmmmm... nachos.
In my humble opinion, the ISP's claim to provide you with a certain speed and bandwidth for downloads and a certain speed and bandwidth for uploads. If you're paying for bandwidth (which you are) you deserve to have that bandwidth available.
We've been footing the bill since the dawn of the Internet and for them to limit our bandwidth as if their job involves somehow ensuring that _we as internet users_ don't break the law - is totally ludicrous.
There should be a law in effect that says NO ISP can sell bandwidth past a very specific ratio of what THEY THEMSELVES pay for and have available. Right now there are actually dial-up providers out there that offer ultra, ultra cheap internet access but you can't get it because their phone lines are always busy and ONCE YOU DO get on, they've split a relatively high-speed connection across so many damned people you can't even get a full 56k download - and we all know that's totally ridiculous.
If ISP's had to ENSURE bandwidth past their own networks was sufficient for what they were selling off - these questions would *never* be raised.
speaking of never being raised.
I was 1.walking down Yonge Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and my 2.RIM started vibrating. I was really surprised to find I had received an advertisement. An advertisement that I did not request, and definitely did not want to see. It was just a link to a web page but even still, it was very upsetting.
3.I think we need to get on top of this problem before it gets out of hand. Bluetooth marketing is going to go viral in very short time. 4.Once someone realizes that they can offer this type of advertising medium to the less-tech-savvy businesses out there with simple technology, everybody is going to jump on board. Not because it's particularly effective, but because it is particularly CHEAP. Just like mass email marketing ; but technically-involved enough to cut out the average small and even medium-sized businesses from doing it themselves. Instead of silently advertising, the concept of bluetooth spamming is going to be promoted and marketed by marketing companies.
----
Footnotes:
1 : This never happened.
2 : RIM sounds like a synonym for anus.
3 : I don't really think that, I hardly care.
4 : Surprisingly, this statement is actually true.
I think it's obvious the entire slashdot community is going to be 'against' this initiative. We all have experience using 'more than average' time on the internet and particularly the world wide web ; it is completely impossible to 'guide' people on the internet.
China would have to have a ginormous amount of 'censors' constantly surfing and updating their own database of acceptable internet sites to have anything close to a 'guidance initiative'. This is just a media spin on what china has been doing all along, blocking major portions of the internet off completely from it's own citizens.
You can see the ridiculous tracert douginadress.com takes to reach chinese citizens right now ; another comment on China's inability to even provide standard censorship
Man I hate university / colleges.
The real question is this: If a bad student can watch all the lectures and do so well on an exam, what were they really teaching you in the class anyways? Did they not prove they knew it by passing the exam?
Attendence requirements are another way of saying, "It's not really about your education". The real question should be which students are smart enough to crunch for an exam 24 hours in advance and pass.
douginadress
douginadress.com
Humans are susceptable to EMP bursts, but worse, they're subject to bullets.
Umm, is it just me or is it common knowledge that honeybee's are low enough on the food chain to easily be frozen into suspended animation and back again with thawing?
Some guy I work with does it for fun in his off hours (Yeah, and *I'm* the slashdot geek).
My only suggestion is read this and this.
Other than that, good luck!
This is living proof and retribution for Microsoft's monopoly on the world software market. As many people have said, why not buy a PC with *NO* operating system installed if you're just going to Pirate Windows anyways?
The reason is, Windows on these PC's is not the Primary Operating system - it is simply the operating system *required* for certain software packages, most notably games.
If Microsoft has such a problem with Linux users pirating windows, they can give up the monopoly on games and we'll just stop using them entirely.
The truth is, a windows operating system installed for free is better than none at all and Microsoft knows it. The more people running their stupid O.S., even if some are pirates, the more associated software they sell, the more they keep their stronghold on bastardized HTTP, Games Software, Office Software, etc.
Pirates give Microsoft the power to invent their own standards, in their own favour. Take away the pirates, and you take away Microsoft's market share, advertising ability, their power.
Windows is the platform for a much larger agenda, and the pirates aren't thanked - because Microsoft knows they can punish them *and* make money from them.
If Microsoft thought it was actually possible to wipe out piracy of their OS, they wouldn't do it.
http://prettybored.com
Long Articles by Wes Clark
Does this mean we're getting closer to the ansible? Or am I reading this wrong?
*The ansible is a device invented by William Scott Card that allows you to communicate faster than the speed of light, since photons linked to each other react instantaneously as their linked counterpart is manipulated, no matter the distance between them (or so we think).
Personally my laymens concept of string theory makes me believe taking the photons great distances apart from each other will stretch their connecting 'string' to a limit, causing unknown results.
Maybe we'll blow ourselves up!
Wes Clark
http://prettybored.com
I read the article ; you managed to bash everything I said in the exact wrong context and then as you moved along you just made an answer to my entire point that's the equivilant of
"This isn't interesting"
"Yes it is".
My opinion, if you bother to read the msg. is that it isn't a huge deal, like other people in this forum are saying - because in terms of our own personal, home computers - it's not going to do much. Maybe it will increase speeds past the point they're already at, which is -- to fast to really care that much about making a difference.
Good for Sun - oh wait, I said that.
I'm glad it will increase the speed on servers, which is obvious, if you read the msg.
If you don't have something good to say,
don't say anything at all.
I haven't been over my grammatical rules since Grade 1 (1986) -- but don't you capitalize all Noun's in a sentence. Person, Place, or Thing.
Is this a Canadian specific rule?
Not that the "Internet" should be capitalized, but -- the article explains, "Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was."
I'm confused.
That will be great when we can just buy chips and literally drop them into a box with i/o ports. But since that isn't going to happen - what's the real advantage to the consumer of having no motherboard?
... something. My guess is that will be ports on a board. Essentially, doesn't this mean we will all be buying the 'new' computers from scratch, making our AT, ATX motherboards obsolete - even if they operate at speeds we can live with?
Won't we just be fastening our add-on cards, etc to some sort of board? And won't these chips need to be fastened to a 'board' so that they can communicate with each other properly? ie. be the proper distances away from each other, not be rolled around like bingo dice?
In the least, we will still require our standard ports to be fastened to
It is interesting that computing power will increase, but:
P.C.'s have reached a speed in recent years that standard, home-user software will not exceed in terms of requirements - for some time. (even CounterStrike doesn't appear to be bloating up too fast). So why the excitement over more computing power for home users, at the cost of replacing entire systems?
I think the real advantage would be a cost effective communications chip that can be 'distributed' throughout an area - bringing an intranet or internet access to that area for fairly cheap (after all, these chips do communicate at breakneck speeds, no?)
Don't get me wrong, the invention is fascinating, and I do hope the future of computing moves to modular designs such as this - I'm just saying the excitement factor here may be more grandiose and dillusional than is necessary.
Infofile
Thank you everybody for your responses. To reply to them as a whole, I see many good points being made - however.
Most of the posts here talk about document management and software (Not surprising, this is slashdot). The industry itself is a lot more than that, I know because I work in it. Also there are many college courses dedicated to filing practices, filing methods, maintaining proper storage equipment.
As much as the slashdot community by it's very nature is against physical records management - we have more paper records than ever before. It is an industry that looks like it will be growing with current technology.
Document scanning and imaging costs a lot more money than most people think. In fact most companies have had at least one shot at trying to image documents and given up entirely. The reason is - records management is not a commonly understood profession. Many employees at smaller companies take filing and records management for granted. ARMA, the authority on records and information management has forgone a useful web site for more marketing materials and event listings (ie. marketing).
What I was really looking for here, on top of a discussion, was people's opinions of the industry and some direction for the company I work at, in terms of marketing and service offerings. We are already very well established for mobile storage equipment, filing services and the odd consulting job. In the past we sold software and got out of the industry because the market was more trouble than it was worth. Now that i'm on board, I'm re-examining that and trying to come up with a solution that appeals to our customers, or a new type of customer, and meets an industry demand.
I think you've helped me with that in this forum, thank you very much.
--Doug Styles
Infofile Systems Inc.
And they'll be able to run for years at a time by utilizing nuclear reactors.
One person said they believe all of our environmental problems can be solved by technology and this is a perfect example of that......... What part of "Monitoring" has anything to do with solving environmental problems?
Hey, look there's an environmental problem! Call in the "We can do anything we please environmental squad!"
"Hi there, you'll have to stop producing steel, and you sir, you'll have to stop fertalizing your farm. And you ma'm, we're going to ban you from flushing bleach cleaning water down your toilet"
Doug
infofile systems inc.
What happens when machines become our hands?
Rabies is the only disease on earth that is 100% fatal? I don't understand, who has ever lived a full life with untreated lung, or brain cancer?
Do you mean Virus?
No thanks, I think I'd rather receive the Spam.
-Doug
My company is going to release a really simple program soon to change the Microsoft Automatic Search in Explorer. I can't stand misspelling a domain or something because my keyboard's all sticky... er....
anyways, that search engine sucks.
"More and more we see Google as a competitor". Considering microsoft never had their market at all, this statement is totally awesome. I wish I had their marketing guys working for me.
It's amazing that they can make google look like the little guy when they're kicking their ass all over the place, and microsoft's results aren't even worth viewing.
Would you like to play a game of..... Global Thermonuclear Warfare?
>yes.