The/./Google circle-jerk has almost run its course. Soon the geek will smell mass adoption (anathema to early adopters and geeks alike) and turn on Google like a rabid dog.
Of course the other major email players (guess) will offer vastly more storage. Its a simple way to keep their customers from moving...and yes, they can afford it.
Meanwhile they can watch Google take the heat for its ad angle. Its amazing Google has clinged to the ad issue for this long - its bought them bad PR when they still need their lilly-white "we're on the users side" cred. Strike one for Google marketing. Sorry guys, you should have caved at the first hint of public backlash.
Microsoft could easily launch a competing service (actually they could offer 10 GB per user) with no ads and simply treat it as a loss-leader with almost no significant impact on their bottom line.
Its about incentive - who has more financial incentive to violate your privacy? Google is the BigBrother(tm) company as a key aspect of its survival. Microsoft need not be.
The US will never engage in air combat with an enemy ever again. Terrorism is the future of warfare. If you don't understand this, read over twenty years of world history. Read about dirt-poor Palestinians bringing the Israeli economy to its knees for a few dollars. Read about Chechnyan rebels killing Russians in Russia for pennies. Read about American fundamentalists blowing up other Americans for practically no cost.
The military is buying toys for boys so the boys can get paid. This has zero, zilch, nada to do with pending threats to the US, but many small-brained people like to think so.
The endgame for SCO only has two results, and they aren't approaching either with vigor according to BayStar:
1. Concentrate on and press the legal issues and win. Results for BayStar are obvious.
2. If the court cases are to be lost/abandoned etc then SCO needs to have some public goodwill in order to attract new customers.
It isn't doing (1), all we are seeing is grandstanding and namecalling.
It surely isn't doing (2) - SCO is the most hated company in tech.
Darl fancies himself a scrapper who can take the heat, but he's sacrificing SCO and all of the shareholder equity to buttress his ego. A CEO should put shareholders first.
So much of the banter on this topic seems to follow from the incorrect premise that Real is a meaningful presence in digital media. Maybe in 1998. Now it is astroturf. Why would Apple want to rescue a company that is dying? Why would Apple want to latch on to a dying codec? Why would Apple want to distract itself from its ownership of the market?
It won't find one. For whatever reason - a crappy client, death-by-Microsoft, etc...Real is no longer relevant in the media marketplace. It had to happen - between Quicktime/AAC, Windows Media, MP3, and even Ogg, there was no room whatsoever for a codec, client, and company with nothing to offer.
Real won't be missed, it hasn't done anything of value to the marketplace or userbase for years now.
This is the dreck that passes for critical thinking here? Gee, I guess everyone else is doing it, it must be okay, oh, and by the way we all love Google so we don't mind getting lubed up - they use linux!!!!
Come now. You have no proof these other email services are reading your mail and frankly to claim as much in ignorance is a disingenous tactic even this mob of GED-dropouts must grasp.
So what happens when I send a thousand keywords for gay sex in a spam to you? YOU'VE GOT MALE! Get used to "interesting" ads in the rest of your reading this month.
Is your personal information grist for an adword engine? If so, sign up. In a few months when ad words from an unfortunate email won't get out of your face, you will never forget that you are part of the machine whether you like it or not...all for $5 worth of disk space.
MS sits on immense mountain of cash. Google does not. Which will likely gut your privacy concerns to make a buck? Maybe both, but Google's revenue stream is much more closely tied to BigBrother than MS's.
You glibly disregard all of the privacy concerns that you would be screaming to the top of your lungs were this MSN or Yahoo, disregarding the fact that their much larger comparative cash hoardes implies they would have less incentive to mine your mail for ad words.
This get-out-of-jail card/. grants to Google is ridiculous. In a year it will be gone and the mob will turn on Google and we can look back on this collective idiocy.
Why would Google scuttle their future trying to acquire a DOA hardware vendor that is sitting on a mountain of cash? If they want to acquire cash they can have an IPO.
Eiffel is so far down the list of languages set to become the "next" tool of choice that it is frankly laughable to suggest. You can count the number of experienced Eiffel programmers in the state of California on your fingers and toes. Come on guys, get real.
Re:Your office is not defending the USA
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Actually, again, history and current practices do not support your assertion. National Defense as a function of overall spending, and GDP, is still at an all time low.
Wrong. We already know the defense budget for the past two years has been greatly expanded. Going earlier you can see how the Clinton administration began a long upward path of pork.
So you'd ignore North Korea's unveiled threats and their efforts to get a fully functional intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear payload?? One that now has the range to reach the West Coast?
They will level Tokyo and Seoul before they consider San Diego, you know that. Tokyo probably deserves it after what they did to the Koreans in the last century so I won't gripe about that. Now I turn it back on you. Instead of picking a convenient adversary who provides enough of a threat to justify your budget but not enough to justify true fear...how about Russia? Your organization can't counter a real threat. If China were to seriously decide to equip themselves for a ballistic assault on the US you would not be able to protect against that either. In fact you are floating a trillion dollar bet on the fact that your first test will be a power just significant enough to get a rocket off the ground but not significant enough to make it hard to shoot down.
Re:Your office is not defending the USA
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Using your logic, we should disband the Navy because terrorists don't use boats (except to target Navy...but that's a redundant arguement). There aren't many "malls in the sea" for them to bomb.
The military can only draw on a limited pool of funds and people. Those resources should be directed at the actual threat. Your argument only works in an environment of unlimited resources...and recently history is on your side as the govt has been growing military spending at an alarming rate. That said, the hikes can't last forever, and the star wars projects are very expensive considering what you could be buying otherwise.
Terrorists are like flies. More annoying than effective.
I dunno, I spend three hours in line at airports now. Seems pretty effective to me.
Your office is not defending the USA
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No offense, I am sure you are a good person doing good work, but the next attack on the USA is going to come over the Mexican border in the back of a truck and be deployed directly in civillian areas. Terrorism is the future of warfare. Your office is a cold-war relic. The Chinese have already succesfully invaded the US in any case - go to Walmart and look at the "MADE IN" label on any product. Why would they want to kill their cash cow?
Terrorism is the future of warfare. Repeat it until you believe it. The next attack on the US will cost less than the fuel for one US missile.
Yours in only truly insightful post
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Its incredible how small the thinking is on this message board. When was the last time the US was attacked by a ballistic missile? When was the last time the US was attacked with commercial airplanes? Terrorism is the future of warfare.
Potential rivals to the US need not concern themselves with space-based defenses because there are so many easy pickings that can be taken out for very low cost. Place radioactive dust in the NYC subway. McVeigh-bomb a nuclear power plant. Shoot down airliners with thirty-year-old missiles.
Remember that the US economy was plunged into recession for the cost of ten box cutters and some unconventional thinking. Space based weapon truly are a Maginot Line. US taxpayers will wonder how a nuclear weapon could find its way into the US when they have spent a trillion dollars circling the globe in death satellites...yet the same money could have been used on the ground, in the "theater" of terrorist tactics to detect and deflect incursions.
Terrorism is the future of war. Until you grasp and understand that there is no point discussing military tech.
From the description:Any space in an indent will cause an error.
Goodbye Prothon.
BZZT - commodity value is based on SCARCE SUPPLY
on
The Wrong Stuff
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If you truck one million tons of gold into earth orbit, how long do you think the price is going to stay above $400 an ounce? Or even four cents an ounce? Or even a penny an ounce?
Steven Weinberg is an intellectual titan. Unfortunately, that really doesn't make him more qualified than anyone else to judge the merits of manned space flight
Actually it does.
Humans as we know them won't be here anyway
on
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It is doubtful that humans as we know them will even exist in one thousand years. By that time there will be absolutely no value in maintaining a strictly biological existance. Your brain (or just your thoughts) in a artificial life form will live for ten thousand years, be impervious to the elements (or lack thereof) and be able to do everything you can do now and more.
Look at the evolutionary charts for computer capacity and human mental capacity - the lines corss some time in the next fifty years. In two hundred years humans as we know them may have to fight for their right to exist. In one thousand years they will either have given up or will be wiped out.
Slashdot Mirror
The /./Google circle-jerk has almost run its course. Soon the geek will smell mass adoption (anathema to early adopters and geeks alike) and turn on Google like a rabid dog.
Meanwhile they can watch Google take the heat for its ad angle. Its amazing Google has clinged to the ad issue for this long - its bought them bad PR when they still need their lilly-white "we're on the users side" cred. Strike one for Google marketing. Sorry guys, you should have caved at the first hint of public backlash.
Its about incentive - who has more financial incentive to violate your privacy? Google is the BigBrother(tm) company as a key aspect of its survival. Microsoft need not be.
The US will never engage in air combat with an enemy ever again. Terrorism is the future of warfare. If you don't understand this, read over twenty years of world history. Read about dirt-poor Palestinians bringing the Israeli economy to its knees for a few dollars. Read about Chechnyan rebels killing Russians in Russia for pennies. Read about American fundamentalists blowing up other Americans for practically no cost.
The military is buying toys for boys so the boys can get paid. This has zero, zilch, nada to do with pending threats to the US, but many small-brained people like to think so.
1. Concentrate on and press the legal issues and win. Results for BayStar are obvious.
2. If the court cases are to be lost/abandoned etc then SCO needs to have some public goodwill in order to attract new customers.
It isn't doing (1), all we are seeing is grandstanding and namecalling.
It surely isn't doing (2) - SCO is the most hated company in tech.
Darl fancies himself a scrapper who can take the heat, but he's sacrificing SCO and all of the shareholder equity to buttress his ego. A CEO should put shareholders first.
How many of you have bought SCO linux licenses?
Real won't be missed, it hasn't done anything of value to the marketplace or userbase for years now.
Cheap RFID pretty much undermines their entire business.
Neal, fire your editor.
Come now. You have no proof these other email services are reading your mail and frankly to claim as much in ignorance is a disingenous tactic even this mob of GED-dropouts must grasp.
So what happens when I send a thousand keywords for gay sex in a spam to you? YOU'VE GOT MALE! Get used to "interesting" ads in the rest of your reading this month.
Is your personal information grist for an adword engine? If so, sign up. In a few months when ad words from an unfortunate email won't get out of your face, you will never forget that you are part of the machine whether you like it or not...all for $5 worth of disk space.
MS sits on immense mountain of cash. Google does not. Which will likely gut your privacy concerns to make a buck? Maybe both, but Google's revenue stream is much more closely tied to BigBrother than MS's.
Truly this is a forum of morons.
This get-out-of-jail card /. grants to Google is ridiculous. In a year it will be gone and the mob will turn on Google and we can look back on this collective idiocy.
Why would Google scuttle their future trying to acquire a DOA hardware vendor that is sitting on a mountain of cash? If they want to acquire cash they can have an IPO.
Your argument may make sense for newish tools, but Eiffel has been floundering in the market for over a decade.
Eiffel is so far down the list of languages set to become the "next" tool of choice that it is frankly laughable to suggest. You can count the number of experienced Eiffel programmers in the state of California on your fingers and toes. Come on guys, get real.
Has it not sunk in yet?
Wrong. We already know the defense budget for the past two years has been greatly expanded. Going earlier you can see how the Clinton administration began a long upward path of pork.
So you'd ignore North Korea's unveiled threats and their efforts to get a fully functional intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear payload?? One that now has the range to reach the West Coast?
They will level Tokyo and Seoul before they consider San Diego, you know that. Tokyo probably deserves it after what they did to the Koreans in the last century so I won't gripe about that. Now I turn it back on you. Instead of picking a convenient adversary who provides enough of a threat to justify your budget but not enough to justify true fear...how about Russia? Your organization can't counter a real threat. If China were to seriously decide to equip themselves for a ballistic assault on the US you would not be able to protect against that either. In fact you are floating a trillion dollar bet on the fact that your first test will be a power just significant enough to get a rocket off the ground but not significant enough to make it hard to shoot down.
The military can only draw on a limited pool of funds and people. Those resources should be directed at the actual threat. Your argument only works in an environment of unlimited resources...and recently history is on your side as the govt has been growing military spending at an alarming rate. That said, the hikes can't last forever, and the star wars projects are very expensive considering what you could be buying otherwise.
Terrorists are like flies. More annoying than effective.
I dunno, I spend three hours in line at airports now. Seems pretty effective to me.
Terrorism is the future of warfare. Repeat it until you believe it. The next attack on the US will cost less than the fuel for one US missile.
Potential rivals to the US need not concern themselves with space-based defenses because there are so many easy pickings that can be taken out for very low cost. Place radioactive dust in the NYC subway. McVeigh-bomb a nuclear power plant. Shoot down airliners with thirty-year-old missiles.
Remember that the US economy was plunged into recession for the cost of ten box cutters and some unconventional thinking. Space based weapon truly are a Maginot Line. US taxpayers will wonder how a nuclear weapon could find its way into the US when they have spent a trillion dollars circling the globe in death satellites...yet the same money could have been used on the ground, in the "theater" of terrorist tactics to detect and deflect incursions.
Terrorism is the future of war. Until you grasp and understand that there is no point discussing military tech.
Goodbye Prothon.
Actually it does.
Look at the evolutionary charts for computer capacity and human mental capacity - the lines corss some time in the next fifty years. In two hundred years humans as we know them may have to fight for their right to exist. In one thousand years they will either have given up or will be wiped out.