So if things weigh less in India, wouldn't launching rockets and shuttles from there be easier? A 500,000-pound rocket would only weigh 495,000 in India - not a huge savings overall, but you could reduce fuel consumption and save money or go a bit further on the same amount of fuel. And the location is about as far south as Florida, so that's enough planetary curve for them. Should we expect to see more US companies building launch facilities in SE Asia after this report has been out a while?
XBox is looking more and more like a PC because it is a damned PC, with a few tweaks and a TV instead of a monitor. XBox is just a trojan horse to get Microsoft inside the homes of people who don't want PCs. XBox, UltimateTV/WebTV, and the short-lived MSN appliances are/were all trojan horses to get Microsoft through the door and closer to the drawers where PC non-users keep their checkbooks.
COMDEX security? Who has time or money to go to COMDEX in this economy? Useless exercises like that geek pornofest are the first to go when budgets get tight. I don't have time to worry about COMDEX, I'm too busy looking for a way to make money that doesn't break the law or involve mops and fast food.
I haven't seen the movie yet (leaving to catch it in literally half an hour) but from what I've read I could have sworn the John Godman character's name was Sully, not James. Did I misread, or did Taco mishear the name repeatedly?
Glad to see a movie review posted by someone other than JonKatz. Nothing wrong with Katz IMO, just when he posts you have to fight hundreds of anti-Katz submissions under it. Bleh.
Too bad Apple sold its shares in ARM... They purchased them when the Newton used ARM chips and then sold most of the investment about a year ago. I thought it was a mistake at the time - but Apple could probably purchase the entire company now for what it made selling the shares last year.
Don't forget that this is just a settlement with the federal government. About half the states have been very unhappy with how the US DoJ handled its case and have split with it and the other states in order to continue pushing forward. This isn't done yet, although unfortunately the chances are very slim of it going anywhere else with just the states involved.
WillSeattle typed:I should point out that, while Google is great and my personal choice, we should all be aware that they're running ads in Fortune advertising how companies can get "their words" (two line ads) in the search engine results.
If you check the Google site, you'll notice that the advertising links are clearly marked... Yahoo and most other search/index sites do the same thing. If it helps them to continue offering high-quality service, I don't mind.
While we're on the subject... Has anyone else noticed that Google now includes PDF files in its searching? It indexes the content of the files and even lets you view them as plaintext. That's the best thing since bread came sliced, IMO.
tkrotchko typed:They're not interested in BeOS, and they're not interested in the name.
What else did BE own?
Operating system designers with incredible skills (Most of them originally came from Apple, of course). In this day and age intellectual capital is everything, and that's exactly what Palm is buying in Be - brainpower.
night_flyer typed:not according to the article [msnbc.com] I read... its MAC ONLY
Read that again... MSNBC is the source of your information. They usually take the highroad, but not always. Quote another source not owned by Microsoft and I'll be more likely not to totally ignore your posting.
shredds typed:There was/. article months ago about how computer graphics for movies were being moved to Linux render farms. This meant that Hollywood was going Linux. Well, why can't the same thing happen for recording industry (also hollywood/LA)? There is a huge demand for it. Believe me, I wouldn't pay god knows how much for ProTools if I could just download a free linux equivalent, which would probably run faster anyway.
If the recording industry moved to Linux, they wouldn't just be saving tons of money for software (their only costs would be hardware). They might also adopt a new outlook on the "free world". A combination of the two might shut up the RIAA.
The RIAA is exactly why the industry will never move away from Windows. Microsoft is all but guaranteeing that music piracy will dry up if the major players switch to Windows Media encodings exclusively, and each new release of Windows has another restriction on how and what media can be made or played. The recording industry inherently doesn't want to 'shut up' the RIAA since it only does exactly what they tell it to.
"Yes," said kingdom spokesman Jim Dilldunnam, "the Emperor is aware of his nudity. But His Majesty's nakedness would not be a problem for the uneducated masses if you irresponsible media types would just cease telling them about it."
In 10 years, NASA went from being a waste of money with little purpose to being a waste of money with no purpose. Now instead of sending up shuttles for no good reason on a weekly basis, they build multi-million dollar probes and explode them in the atmospheres of planets millions of miles away. The other bureaucrats must be extremely proud of Mr. Goldin.
If NASA isn't going to do something useful like send a human to mars or enhance military defense, shut it down. Let the FAA or military handle regulations over space flight and end the pointless experiments that result in no new information beyond "computer enhanced" photos of objects that probably look nothing like what we end up seeing
Sounds to me like just a massive security problem waiting for someone to take advantage of it. Those protocols are extremely extremely insecure, from what I recall. At least use the newer standards!
If I was a citizen of that area, I'd be urging for subsidies that would provide low-cost two-way satellite Internet connections - assuming the dish providers ever make them available instead of just promising it for years. I'm in a rural area with similar problems, and I'd pay up to $45 a month for two-way dish Internet, but nobody will sell it to me. So I'm stuck at a 28.8 connection with bad phone lines miles away from the server I dial into. But only 20 miles away one town gives all its citizens free DSL, and another has cable, DSL, and ISDN available for low cost. Really annoying - so close yet so very very far.
Increasingly, it appears the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the shooting war that began last night have made more distinct another evolutionary leap in information: the Net is emerging as our most serious communications medium and clearly the freest and most diverse.
Ok, are we going to read the same thing after every US tragedy? Oklahoma City was the Internet's "proving ground," Columbine was the Internet's "proof of usefulness," Monica Lewinsky was evidence of the Internet's "advantages of traditional media." Every tragedy produces comments like this, but the Web is 10 years old now - the Internet became mainstream 4 or 5 years ago, at the latest. People know what the 'net offers, it doesn't take a disaster to "prove" it again.
Conventional journalists are still obsessed with hackers and pornographers; still fuss about whether the Net is safe or factual. But increasingly, they steer readers to their websites for more in-depth information and conversation.
Unfortunately, the mainstream news sites are almost all that remain. ABCNews.com and cnn.com are our most important sources of information online, but does that change anything? It leaves information in the hands of the monopolistic communications behemoths and gives them an excuse to provide less coverage through their traditional print and broadcast outlets.
"Freest and most diverse" my ass. Independent sites like The Industry Standard and Wired News (they need Jon there more than Slashdot, obviously) are being shut down or cut to the bone as funding and advertising dry up, leaving only the major media outlets to continue shoveling out the same crap they've always produced. Yahoo and the rest all rely on triple-filtered newswire trash like Reuters or Bloomberg news, which provide only the basest of information that seems to be typed up by robots.
The Internet had potential, but more and more we see the mass media outlets choking that off and turning it into just another way for the same old companies to reach people with the same information they've always provided.
For a full list of replacements for Internet Explorer on any computer system, check out the Internet Explorer listing on MSBC's The Alternative. It's worth a read to see just how many IE replacements are available, quite a few of them for Macs.
Also, one of the types has (small) labelling saying that the CD cannot be played on computers.
But can it still be played on the radio? That's what we need protection from... But seriously, be glad this is being tried out on popular music like NStynk instead of good music like the type performed by Erin McKeown or John Lee Hooker. Maybe the kiddies will discover good music if they can't download crap anymore.
palndrumm typed:Independent, yes, but if it's an impartial, unbiased viewpoint you're looking for, a site called "msboycott.com" probably isn't the best place to start looking...
We don't like Microsoft, but I've got nothing for or against Sun. It's a fair review, I listed the bad points of StarOffice with the good. Some Microsoft alternatives suck, admittedly, but StarOffice doesn't. You're gonna believe ZDNet over me? That hurts.
I reviewed StarOffice about a year ago for my Web Site. Some of you might be interested in reading it, since its an independent review written by someone not working for a major media Web site. Or maybe you wouldn't... Either way, here it is.
"And he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name." (Rev. 13:17)
Anyone else suspect maybe this is just a big scheme to use the.us TLD for something besides low-rent local government Web sites? I bet the Postal Service is connected to this idea somehow, if it's for real.
The US government didn't ban stem cell research, all Bush did was prevent the government from directly funding research on new cells. Private industry and nonprofit groups can still do whatever they want with the existing or new cells, so long as they use their own funds.
That said, Clark could distribute some of his billions to those groups to make up for money the government won't be giving them. But instead he's going to have a hissy fit and withhold that cash just to draw attention to himself (if he had given, we wouldn't have seen the story here). He's cutting off his nose to spite his face; shooting himself in the left foot because he's mad someone shot him in the right. It's totally counterproductive for him to do this.
And it could be worse for him - imagine a scenario where Jim Clark was taxed at 90% and had no free money of his own, and then the government decided who and what got the money taken from him. Jim Clark should thank God and George W. Bush (I'm not putting them on the same level) that he lives in a nation where he can choose who and what gets his money instead of having it chosen for him. Jim can send his Bush tax refund check and a whole lot more over to BioWhoever and let them use it for cell research instead of just bitching about Bush not sending the money straight to them. Bottom line: Jim, put your money where your mouth is or stop whining.
I dare say that most Internet new sites (mainstream ones anyway, ZD/CNet, InfoWorld, etc.) look like corporate whores because they get their news from wire services that are corporate whores. Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press, and Dow Jones Newswire. Now those are a bunch of independent thinking and incorruptable companies, eh?
I also dare say that most of the bankrupt news sites wouldn't be in so much trouble if they actually wrote their own news instead of using the same wire stories all their competitors use. Go to Yahoo News, Netscape News, MSN, ZDNet, and PCWeek. Reuters feeds on every one of them, often the same stories. And some sites just use the same reports with a few words changed around so they don't have to credit the original source (or pay for the story - or admit they don't have any competent writers on staff.)
Creative, independent, and different-thinking companies don't always survive - but at least people will care if they don't. I couldn't care less if some Reuters rehash "news" site goes under because I probably don't go to that site anyway. But on the other hand I would probably get teary if The Register, Aint It Cool, Tom's Hardware, Mac OS Rumors, BetaNews, or TheStandard.com (what remains of it) went away because they at least have the guts to be different.
Hello? You Work For Microsoft Now
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
We're introducing this awesome new gaming platform, it's gonna be all the rage this fall. Everybody will be buying our console, and you can port your existing DreamCast and Windows games over to it easily. We're going to put Nintendo and Sony out of business, so don't even bother making a version for their consoles anymore.
Oh, and I forgot to mention... We're going to buy up half your competitors (at least 5 in the last 2 years), then release new versions of their well-known old titles (Marathon, MechWarrior, etc.) for our new console and bundle those with it at a "discount" so you can't hope to compete with us. Have a nice day.
Now the console game publishers can find out how it feels to be a Microsoft developer. The Behemoth is doing to this industry what it keeps doing to its Windows patners - promising them the world and then slowly screwing them over by bundling competing products and eating away at their market. Why can't one of these companies figure this stuff out?
Is this delay because of production problems / quality issues or just because the struggling AOLTW movie division can't hope to compete with StarWars Episode II: Send In The Clones? They've lost too much money recently to send a big-budget guaranteed hit in to fall on its sword against the LucasFilm monster.
This story shows that the best way to get legal action going is to piss off someone who can make it happen. Rip off a lawyer, invade the privacy of a judge.... They don't care about my ability to access porn at work, but take away theirs and it's the biggest courtroom issue since OJ and the bloody glove.
Maybe there's a judge somewhere who misses Napster and can bring legal action against the RIAA for shutting that service down. That might be why the DOJ is investigating the music industry: the lawyers want their free music back.
YIAAL typed:... 5. They're Democrats who give Bush grief whenever they can. Why on earth wouldn't the Justice Department go after them?
Ever notice that every major news outlet is owned by a media monolith that happens to own one of those major music publishing companies? CNN and CBS News especially, but ABC News, Fox News, SkyTV in Europe... Not to mention the newspapers and magazines. (MSNBC/NBC News isn't, but Microsoft needs to suck up to the music industry.) If you think the liberally biased press goes after Bush now, just imagine what would happen if his administration started investigating other divisions of their own parent companies. We would see an entire presidential administration crucified in the name of "free speech."
Slashdot Mirror
So if things weigh less in India, wouldn't launching rockets and shuttles from there be easier? A 500,000-pound rocket would only weigh 495,000 in India - not a huge savings overall, but you could reduce fuel consumption and save money or go a bit further on the same amount of fuel. And the location is about as far south as Florida, so that's enough planetary curve for them. Should we expect to see more US companies building launch facilities in SE Asia after this report has been out a while?
XBox is looking more and more like a PC because it is a damned PC, with a few tweaks and a TV instead of a monitor. XBox is just a trojan horse to get Microsoft inside the homes of people who don't want PCs. XBox, UltimateTV/WebTV, and the short-lived MSN appliances are/were all trojan horses to get Microsoft through the door and closer to the drawers where PC non-users keep their checkbooks.
COMDEX security? Who has time or money to go to COMDEX in this economy? Useless exercises like that geek pornofest are the first to go when budgets get tight. I don't have time to worry about COMDEX, I'm too busy looking for a way to make money that doesn't break the law or involve mops and fast food.
Glad to see a movie review posted by someone other than JonKatz. Nothing wrong with Katz IMO, just when he posts you have to fight hundreds of anti-Katz submissions under it. Bleh.
Too bad Apple sold its shares in ARM... They purchased them when the Newton used ARM chips and then sold most of the investment about a year ago. I thought it was a mistake at the time - but Apple could probably purchase the entire company now for what it made selling the shares last year.
Don't forget that this is just a settlement with the federal government. About half the states have been very unhappy with how the US DoJ handled its case and have split with it and the other states in order to continue pushing forward. This isn't done yet, although unfortunately the chances are very slim of it going anywhere else with just the states involved.
If you check the Google site, you'll notice that the advertising links are clearly marked... Yahoo and most other search/index sites do the same thing. If it helps them to continue offering high-quality service, I don't mind.
While we're on the subject... Has anyone else noticed that Google now includes PDF files in its searching? It indexes the content of the files and even lets you view them as plaintext. That's the best thing since bread came sliced, IMO.
What else did BE own?
Operating system designers with incredible skills (Most of them originally came from Apple, of course). In this day and age intellectual capital is everything, and that's exactly what Palm is buying in Be - brainpower.
Read that again... MSNBC is the source of your information. They usually take the highroad, but not always. Quote another source not owned by Microsoft and I'll be more likely not to totally ignore your posting.
If the recording industry moved to Linux, they wouldn't just be saving tons of money for software (their only costs would be hardware). They might also adopt a new outlook on the "free world". A combination of the two might shut up the RIAA.
The RIAA is exactly why the industry will never move away from Windows. Microsoft is all but guaranteeing that music piracy will dry up if the major players switch to Windows Media encodings exclusively, and each new release of Windows has another restriction on how and what media can be made or played. The recording industry inherently doesn't want to 'shut up' the RIAA since it only does exactly what they tell it to.
"Yes," said kingdom spokesman Jim Dilldunnam, "the Emperor is aware of his nudity. But His Majesty's nakedness would not be a problem for the uneducated masses if you irresponsible media types would just cease telling them about it."
If NASA isn't going to do something useful like send a human to mars or enhance military defense, shut it down. Let the FAA or military handle regulations over space flight and end the pointless experiments that result in no new information beyond "computer enhanced" photos of objects that probably look nothing like what we end up seeing
Sounds to me like just a massive security problem waiting for someone to take advantage of it. Those protocols are extremely extremely insecure, from what I recall. At least use the newer standards!
If I was a citizen of that area, I'd be urging for subsidies that would provide low-cost two-way satellite Internet connections - assuming the dish providers ever make them available instead of just promising it for years. I'm in a rural area with similar problems, and I'd pay up to $45 a month for two-way dish Internet, but nobody will sell it to me. So I'm stuck at a 28.8 connection with bad phone lines miles away from the server I dial into. But only 20 miles away one town gives all its citizens free DSL, and another has cable, DSL, and ISDN available for low cost. Really annoying - so close yet so very very far.
Ok, are we going to read the same thing after every US tragedy? Oklahoma City was the Internet's "proving ground," Columbine was the Internet's "proof of usefulness," Monica Lewinsky was evidence of the Internet's "advantages of traditional media." Every tragedy produces comments like this, but the Web is 10 years old now - the Internet became mainstream 4 or 5 years ago, at the latest. People know what the 'net offers, it doesn't take a disaster to "prove" it again.
Conventional journalists are still obsessed with hackers and pornographers; still fuss about whether the Net is safe or factual. But increasingly, they steer readers to their websites for more in-depth information and conversation.
Unfortunately, the mainstream news sites are almost all that remain. ABCNews.com and cnn.com are our most important sources of information online, but does that change anything? It leaves information in the hands of the monopolistic communications behemoths and gives them an excuse to provide less coverage through their traditional print and broadcast outlets.
"Freest and most diverse" my ass. Independent sites like The Industry Standard and Wired News (they need Jon there more than Slashdot, obviously) are being shut down or cut to the bone as funding and advertising dry up, leaving only the major media outlets to continue shoveling out the same crap they've always produced. Yahoo and the rest all rely on triple-filtered newswire trash like Reuters or Bloomberg news, which provide only the basest of information that seems to be typed up by robots.
The Internet had potential, but more and more we see the mass media outlets choking that off and turning it into just another way for the same old companies to reach people with the same information they've always provided.
For a full list of replacements for Internet Explorer on any computer system, check out the Internet Explorer listing on MSBC's The Alternative. It's worth a read to see just how many IE replacements are available, quite a few of them for Macs.
But can it still be played on the radio? That's what we need protection from... But seriously, be glad this is being tried out on popular music like NStynk instead of good music like the type performed by Erin McKeown or John Lee Hooker. Maybe the kiddies will discover good music if they can't download crap anymore.
We don't like Microsoft, but I've got nothing for or against Sun. It's a fair review, I listed the bad points of StarOffice with the good. Some Microsoft alternatives suck, admittedly, but StarOffice doesn't. You're gonna believe ZDNet over me? That hurts.
I reviewed StarOffice about a year ago for my Web Site. Some of you might be interested in reading it, since its an independent review written by someone not working for a major media Web site. Or maybe you wouldn't... Either way, here it is.
Anyone else suspect maybe this is just a big scheme to use the .us TLD for something besides low-rent local government Web sites? I bet the Postal Service is connected to this idea somehow, if it's for real.
The US government didn't ban stem cell research, all Bush did was prevent the government from directly funding research on new cells. Private industry and nonprofit groups can still do whatever they want with the existing or new cells, so long as they use their own funds.
That said, Clark could distribute some of his billions to those groups to make up for money the government won't be giving them. But instead he's going to have a hissy fit and withhold that cash just to draw attention to himself (if he had given, we wouldn't have seen the story here). He's cutting off his nose to spite his face; shooting himself in the left foot because he's mad someone shot him in the right. It's totally counterproductive for him to do this.
And it could be worse for him - imagine a scenario where Jim Clark was taxed at 90% and had no free money of his own, and then the government decided who and what got the money taken from him. Jim Clark should thank God and George W. Bush (I'm not putting them on the same level) that he lives in a nation where he can choose who and what gets his money instead of having it chosen for him. Jim can send his Bush tax refund check and a whole lot more over to BioWhoever and let them use it for cell research instead of just bitching about Bush not sending the money straight to them. Bottom line: Jim, put your money where your mouth is or stop whining.
I dare say that most Internet new sites (mainstream ones anyway, ZD/CNet, InfoWorld, etc.) look like corporate whores because they get their news from wire services that are corporate whores. Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press, and Dow Jones Newswire. Now those are a bunch of independent thinking and incorruptable companies, eh?
I also dare say that most of the bankrupt news sites wouldn't be in so much trouble if they actually wrote their own news instead of using the same wire stories all their competitors use. Go to Yahoo News, Netscape News, MSN, ZDNet, and PCWeek. Reuters feeds on every one of them, often the same stories. And some sites just use the same reports with a few words changed around so they don't have to credit the original source (or pay for the story - or admit they don't have any competent writers on staff.)
Creative, independent, and different-thinking companies don't always survive - but at least people will care if they don't. I couldn't care less if some Reuters rehash "news" site goes under because I probably don't go to that site anyway. But on the other hand I would probably get teary if The Register, Aint It Cool, Tom's Hardware, Mac OS Rumors, BetaNews, or TheStandard.com (what remains of it) went away because they at least have the guts to be different.
Oh, and I forgot to mention... We're going to buy up half your competitors (at least 5 in the last 2 years), then release new versions of their well-known old titles (Marathon, MechWarrior, etc.) for our new console and bundle those with it at a "discount" so you can't hope to compete with us. Have a nice day.
Now the console game publishers can find out how it feels to be a Microsoft developer. The Behemoth is doing to this industry what it keeps doing to its Windows patners - promising them the world and then slowly screwing them over by bundling competing products and eating away at their market. Why can't one of these companies figure this stuff out?
Is this delay because of production problems / quality issues or just because the struggling AOLTW movie division can't hope to compete with StarWars Episode II: Send In The Clones? They've lost too much money recently to send a big-budget guaranteed hit in to fall on its sword against the LucasFilm monster.
This story shows that the best way to get legal action going is to piss off someone who can make it happen. Rip off a lawyer, invade the privacy of a judge.... They don't care about my ability to access porn at work, but take away theirs and it's the biggest courtroom issue since OJ and the bloody glove.
Maybe there's a judge somewhere who misses Napster and can bring legal action against the RIAA for shutting that service down. That might be why the DOJ is investigating the music industry: the lawyers want their free music back.
Ever notice that every major news outlet is owned by a media monolith that happens to own one of those major music publishing companies? CNN and CBS News especially, but ABC News, Fox News, SkyTV in Europe... Not to mention the newspapers and magazines. (MSNBC/NBC News isn't, but Microsoft needs to suck up to the music industry.) If you think the liberally biased press goes after Bush now, just imagine what would happen if his administration started investigating other divisions of their own parent companies. We would see an entire presidential administration crucified in the name of "free speech."