You bash the Republicans, but how are the democrats any better?
Classic retort. I love how whenever anyone questions the Republicans that someone always has to say something like the Democrats are just as bad.
But the sad thing is that even as little as 20 years ago this was more true than it is now. The neo-cons have turned the republican party into a farce of what it's values were supposed to represent. Smaller government, more freedom (ie liberty), national independence (ie a self-sustaining nation).
It's easy to point at the Democrats and say they have done bad things because all politicians have but the simple fact of the matter is that the Republicans have done more damage to the liberty, safety, and overall strength of the USA than anyone else has in recent history. And all for the glory, power, and wealth of the few. Stick that in your pipe and smoke on it for a while.
After being ignored the 1st time I decided to keep a copy the text of my latest email to Bellsouth. When trying to access their page with my latest version of Opera I am told to "upgrade" to IE or Netscape. For the record most of the times when I access this page it's to pay my bill.
--- Once again I would like to renew my request that your website be updated to support all modern browsers. The idea that by running a current version of Opera but then being told to "upgrade" speaks poorly of your website and it's staff.
The fact that all one must do to access Bellsouth's website is to change the user agent gives lie to the fact any upgrade is need.
Please respect your customers by allowing them the option of using whatever modern browser they wish instead of making them think that they must use a browser that has so many security issues that the federal government has dissuaded it's use or one that has become outdated.
Thank you. ---
Yes it may be a little harsh but sometimes you have to be pretty forthright to get past the corperate mindset. Until I get a response I plan on sending this same text once a week.
Also, I noticed that some of you have somehow been able to slip back into being able to concentrate on your work and somehow managed to control your bowles which means I have no choice but to ratchet up the alert level to...Blackwatch Plaid!
I recently have been on 2 5 day not only inet but power blackouts!
The 1st time was not so bad. I had my Palm fully charged and loaded with good books to read. And that is not unimportant as it seems because it is a back-lit screen so I could read at night without having to resort to a lot of lamps, candles, or flashlights. All but the latter generate heat, bad!, and the flashlights use up batteries quickly enough when there are none in the state!
I can say that I suffered no real ill effects but of course I had plenty of other things to keep me miserable at the same time. The sweltering heat, the fun of cooking without power, cleaning up the mess with chainsaws (Ok that one was kinda fun.), cold showers. But I did miss it.
Now the 2nd time was a little more rough. I lost my DSL as the storm 1st hit but still had dial-up and power. I was hopeful. Well that got dashed pretty quickly as the power soon went out again and into darkness and heat I plunged. I had changed up my backup Palm that I use for writing on the road but had forgotten to install the keyboard driver for it, doh! My main Palm was only 1/2 charged and it died about day 2. Back to reading by candle light!
I guess my example is a bad one because there were so many other variables involved but I can say that as someone who uses the inet probably way too much that I suffered no real ill effects. I used the time to do some writing the old fashioned way with paper and reading a bunch. I also listened to the radio a lot and knowing that everyone down here was pretty much in the same boat helped.
Oh, and btw as Jeanne is likely headed our way right now I have both Palm's charged up and ready to go!
Yeah we are way offtopic here but none the less. Being an atheist I don't truly know the ins and outs of how religions are supposed work but my main point about some people in business was this.
They may not do evil things all the time but if there ever is a question of ethics vs money that occurs then it's pretty easy to just choose the wrong side. I'm quite sure that there is some initial justification in the thought that they are just doing it to "put bread on the table" and such. And then being able to get final absolution from a church seals the deal.
What CA was doing was clearly beyond the bounds of a one time deal as was Enron and who knows how many others. It would be interesting to see though how many of those involved with these types of fraud cases thought themselves to be "good Christians".
Whoa, mixing religious dogma with business principals is enough to warrant a few replys but sadly I can even see it in a way.
I worked for this one gentlemen at one point and time and he was in many capacities one of the best businessmen I have known to date. He worked hard, treated his employees relatively well, and was a pretty nice guy. However I will never forget one meeting when he started nearly preaching before he caught himself. He smiled and apologized but said that he was in seminary school for a year before he dropped out and went to collage so it sometimes slipped out.
I had always known he was a religious man but I had not realized the depth. And once I knew that I started looking closer at the way he did things. He actually was pretty ethical in his dealings, mostly due to the fact that he was skilled, but always there was a very underlying current of the idea that he would do whatever he had to if it meant making a buck.
The knowledge, if you truly believe it, that no matter what you do every Sunday if you confess and such you will be forgiven is a very liberating idea. And also a very scary one.
Those are just two recent examples of articals which really are just court docuents that have been put into text. And I'm afraid that things don't get much more legalease than court documents.
While I realise the thrust of your post was more on another topic, your topic itself was part of the trend on/. here to scream "Groklaw had this 1st!" And while true does not really serve anything.
Now don't get me wrong, Groklaw is a good site for the most up to date information on all of this but the format that PJ put it in, her editorializing not withstanding, is very legalease.
And that also is just fine. There are geek lawyers out there who want to know the straight dope on what's going on with SCO, the IANAL geeks who know enough to read it without getting splitting headaches after a while, and those of us like me to still go there and read but soon develop splitting headaches after a while.
I don't expect a lawyers to understand C and don't think that just beacuse geeks are considered to be smart that they should automaticly have to understand legalease. It's unfair to expect just because Groklaw exists that/. should not cover it as well. Do you expect to find a major story in only one newspaper?
Groklaw has their niche as does/. and it's getting rather old to watch every story about SCO on/. have someone scream, "This is old new! Groklaw had it first!"
Chances are you've probably not seen my desk -- not an easy task.
While the old saying does, "Never judge a man until you have sat for a day at his desk." I have to wonder if it even holds a candle to some truely messy desks.
Finally, as developers of open source e-mail technologies, we are concerned that no company should be permitted IP rights over core Internet infrastructure.
Is any really surprised that MS is trying to build it's patent arsenal around such things? And of course they want to do it quickly because it's much easier to get something underhanded accepted quickly. (PATRIOT Act anyone?)
We are also concerned by the rush to adopt this standard in spite of technical concerns, lack of experience in the field, and a lack of consensus in the IETF MARID WG.
I think again Open Source groups show their strength by not allowing such tactics to take place without notice. It also shows that many major groups are very aware of how the game is being played.
Same with this DirecTV thing. Their were cheating them out of programming by getting a smart card that was illegal and getting them products for free.
Actually the DirectTV smartcard issue was a bit different. They went after anyone who had purchased the gear needed to reprogram the smartcards that they were using regardless of if they used it for that or in some cases even had DirectTV at all!
If the people at Google know what's good for them, and a suspect they might, they will keep their search engine clean and fast. Refineing it such that it stays on top. No more wading though countless newsgroup posts to find what your really looking for. Or a better way to refine searches that do hit things like newsgroups.
After that they can branch out and play in the market. Gmail is one such venture and there are others that are worth a stab at such as the peoplefinder thing that I don't remember off the top of my head right now what it's called but it's been a pet project for a while now. Other things such as Froogle seem to be worthy of more development.
However key to all the fishing they might want to do they have to keep that main engine humming. Do no evil! Keep the respect of the geeks and lusers alike. Computers move fast and the internet moves even faster and once you slip it's very hard to go back.
Michael is a pillar of journalistic integrity! He represents the most fair and balanced of all the/. editors and the very thought that he would ever use his power to further any of his own goals is ludicrous.
* The preceding message was paid for by the Micheal for Micheal foundation.
...but all the "ANYBODY BUT BUSH/NO BLOOD FOR OIL/OMGWTFBUSHSUX0RS" 'liberals' have completely driven me away from that side as well.
If that's your main problem then I have no clue why you would ever support the Republicans because they turn on the smear machines on full against anyone that challenges them. Specifically against Kerry:
"Assuming that the unthinkable happens and Senator Kerry becomes president..." --Neil Cavuto, Fox's managing editor for business news.
"It is clear that at least one of Kerry's Purple Heart awards was the result of his own negligence, not enemy fire, and that Kerry went to unusual lengths to obtain the award after being turned down by his own commanding officer." --Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
Kerry "looks French" -- An anonymous Bush adviser told to the New York Times.
In political blogs I've seen countless right-wing proponents who claim that something to the effect of, "OMGIFSKERRYWINSWEAREALLGONNADIE!#$@!@" So please don't think that it's just the "liberals" who are even close to being guilty of this nonsense.
I can agree with basically everything you said but for:
...and even then i could probably only justify it for its graphics and video capabilities.
It's been a while since the Mac platform has had any claim to being better at video than the x86 architecture. The fact that Mac's arn't even at the cutting edge of 3d cards should be proof enough of that, and yes that's really more of a gamer thing but it still proves the point.
There are still some good reasons to justify buying a Mac but at least be honest about it before you plunk down the cash that could buy you two x86 PCs for one.
Current standard film still records at 24 frames per second. If you watch closely during any sequence that has any action in it you will see how poor and antiquated that frame rate value truly is. And yet because we have become accustom to it nobody seems to question it. (Except for that crazy Lucas guy who wants everyone to convert to digital video.)
Audiophiles similarly have become accustom to all sorts of crazy arguments about what you can and can't hear. CD's arn't as "warm" as LP's, tubes are better than transistors, high quality MP3's don't sound like the CDs. However I'm quite sure that if you were to sit down two people who had not heard any given track that was played on a CD and then on a very high quality compressed format they would be hard pressed to pick which was which. (Given that it's a 50/50 chance a more controlled method of testing would have to be done but I think you get my point.)
Now I still personally will never pay for any stripped down, DRM crippled, poorly encoded music but I don't think that using a compressed format, done right, is a bad thing at all.
While Firefox's extensions do allow for many things that Opera does not, not many of them are really what I would consider browser features. I really don't want/need a game in a browser. Uptime tracking is neat but not really essential.
Now don't get me wrong, I just downloaded 9.3 and it looks great. Works great. Updates are coming fast. I would almost say it ties with Opera in total useablity but for one little thing.
F12. F12 is what I mean when I talk about Power Users. Unless I'm missing something in Firefox that allows for this type of functionality when browsing the web then Opera still has a big edge. Being able to turn on and off pretty much everything (GIF animation, sound in webpages, Java, plug-ins, and Javascript) on the fly is something you just can't beat.
If Firefox had that I might be using it now instead of Opera because it's just that good. However until then I've got to stick with Opera.
I realize that Firefox and Mozilla get all the glory here on/. due to them being OSS but the bottom line in all of this is just that IE is the one to blame.
I've been using Opera since v5.x and have never looked back. Lately I've seen a lot of improvement in Firefox but they are still playing catchup with Opera.
For whatever reason Opera only seems to get a nod here when it should be getting a lot more but cest la vie. I personally will continue to support Opera until they sell out or whatever but I hope that they, and everyone else, realize that having a marketplace full of a few, maybe even many diffrent browsers will only help everyone in the long run.
Currently I am installing Firefox for people who just need to use anything but IE; mostly end users. For a power user however Opera is the way to go.
For another most of the posts here, correctly imo, point out that this is nothing new or even that cool. Other teams have allready accomplished more than this with much less overhead. Why do you need XP on a plane? To play minesweeper on?
Lastly I doubt many people here would consider an "award from Microsoft" as being much of anything to brag about.
Slashdot Mirror
You bash the Republicans, but how are the democrats any better?
Classic retort. I love how whenever anyone questions the Republicans that someone always has to say something like the Democrats are just as bad.
But the sad thing is that even as little as 20 years ago this was more true than it is now. The neo-cons have turned the republican party into a farce of what it's values were supposed to represent. Smaller government, more freedom (ie liberty), national independence (ie a self-sustaining nation).
It's easy to point at the Democrats and say they have done bad things because all politicians have but the simple fact of the matter is that the Republicans have done more damage to the liberty, safety, and overall strength of the USA than anyone else has in recent history. And all for the glory, power, and wealth of the few. Stick that in your pipe and smoke on it for a while.
I hate replying to my own posts but here is a link of what people that don't have the correct user agent string see.
I find it very condescending and frankly, as you may have guessed, it's pissed me off.
After being ignored the 1st time I decided to keep a copy the text of my latest email to Bellsouth. When trying to access their page with my latest version of Opera I am told to "upgrade" to IE or Netscape. For the record most of the times when I access this page it's to pay my bill.
---
Once again I would like to renew my request that your website be updated to support all modern browsers. The idea that by running a current version of Opera but then being told to "upgrade" speaks poorly of your website and it's staff.
The fact that all one must do to access Bellsouth's website is to change the user agent gives lie to the fact any upgrade is need.
Please respect your customers by allowing them the option of using whatever modern browser they wish instead of making them think that they must use a browser that has so many security issues that the federal government has dissuaded it's use or one that has become outdated.
Thank you.
---
Yes it may be a little harsh but sometimes you have to be pretty forthright to get past the corperate mindset. Until I get a response I plan on sending this same text once a week.
Also, I noticed that some of you have somehow been able to slip back into being able to concentrate on your work and somehow managed to control your bowles which means I have no choice but to ratchet up the alert level to...Blackwatch Plaid!
I recently have been on 2 5 day not only inet but power blackouts!
The 1st time was not so bad. I had my Palm fully charged and loaded with good books to read. And that is not unimportant as it seems because it is a back-lit screen so I could read at night without having to resort to a lot of lamps, candles, or flashlights. All but the latter generate heat, bad!, and the flashlights use up batteries quickly enough when there are none in the state!
I can say that I suffered no real ill effects but of course I had plenty of other things to keep me miserable at the same time. The sweltering heat, the fun of cooking without power, cleaning up the mess with chainsaws (Ok that one was kinda fun.), cold showers. But I did miss it.
Now the 2nd time was a little more rough. I lost my DSL as the storm 1st hit but still had dial-up and power. I was hopeful. Well that got dashed pretty quickly as the power soon went out again and into darkness and heat I plunged. I had changed up my backup Palm that I use for writing on the road but had forgotten to install the keyboard driver for it, doh! My main Palm was only 1/2 charged and it died about day 2. Back to reading by candle light!
I guess my example is a bad one because there were so many other variables involved but I can say that as someone who uses the inet probably way too much that I suffered no real ill effects. I used the time to do some writing the old fashioned way with paper and reading a bunch. I also listened to the radio a lot and knowing that everyone down here was pretty much in the same boat helped.
Oh, and btw as Jeanne is likely headed our way right now I have both Palm's charged up and ready to go!
For one thing I never said I went to college I was telling the story about the guy who did end up going to business college.
Sheesh, you and the other grammar nazi in this thread need to chill. I bet when you see a typo in a newspaper paper you get a chubby.
Yeah we are way offtopic here but none the less. Being an atheist I don't truly know the ins and outs of how religions are supposed work but my main point about some people in business was this.
They may not do evil things all the time but if there ever is a question of ethics vs money that occurs then it's pretty easy to just choose the wrong side. I'm quite sure that there is some initial justification in the thought that they are just doing it to "put bread on the table" and such. And then being able to get final absolution from a church seals the deal.
What CA was doing was clearly beyond the bounds of a one time deal as was Enron and who knows how many others. It would be interesting to see though how many of those involved with these types of fraud cases thought themselves to be "good Christians".
Whoa, mixing religious dogma with business principals is enough to warrant a few replys but sadly I can even see it in a way.
I worked for this one gentlemen at one point and time and he was in many capacities one of the best businessmen I have known to date. He worked hard, treated his employees relatively well, and was a pretty nice guy. However I will never forget one meeting when he started nearly preaching before he caught himself. He smiled and apologized but said that he was in seminary school for a year before he dropped out and went to collage so it sometimes slipped out.
I had always known he was a religious man but I had not realized the depth. And once I knew that I started looking closer at the way he did things. He actually was pretty ethical in his dealings, mostly due to the fact that he was skilled, but always there was a very underlying current of the idea that he would do whatever he had to if it meant making a buck.
The knowledge, if you truly believe it, that no matter what you do every Sunday if you confess and such you will be forgiven is a very liberating idea. And also a very scary one.
First, Groklaw is made by a legalease for non-legalease.
/. here to scream "Groklaw had this 1st!" And while true does not really serve anything.
I'm sorry but I'm going to have to wonder if you have read some of the things that are posted on Groklaw:
Chris Sontag's Supplemental Declaration - as text
SCO's Memo in Support of its Expedited Motion to Enforce the Scheduling Order - text
Those are just two recent examples of articals which really are just court docuents that have been put into text. And I'm afraid that things don't get much more legalease than court documents.
While I realise the thrust of your post was more on another topic, your topic itself was part of the trend on
Old news for GROKLAW readers...
/. should not cover it as well. Do you expect to find a major story in only one newspaper?
/. and it's getting rather old to watch every story about SCO on /. have someone scream, "This is old new! Groklaw had it first!"
Now don't get me wrong, Groklaw is a good site for the most up to date information on all of this but the format that PJ put it in, her editorializing not withstanding, is very legalease.
And that also is just fine. There are geek lawyers out there who want to know the straight dope on what's going on with SCO, the IANAL geeks who know enough to read it without getting splitting headaches after a while, and those of us like me to still go there and read but soon develop splitting headaches after a while.
I don't expect a lawyers to understand C and don't think that just beacuse geeks are considered to be smart that they should automaticly have to understand legalease. It's unfair to expect just because Groklaw exists that
Groklaw has their niche as does
Debian is listed as a "Silver Member" on their group member page.
Chances are you've probably not seen my desk -- not an easy task.
While the old saying does, "Never judge a man until you have sat for a day at his desk." I have to wonder if it even holds a candle to some truely messy desks.
Finally, as developers of open source e-mail technologies, we are concerned that no company should be permitted IP rights over core Internet infrastructure.
Is any really surprised that MS is trying to build it's patent arsenal around such things? And of course they want to do it quickly because it's much easier to get something underhanded accepted quickly. (PATRIOT Act anyone?)
We are also concerned by the rush to adopt this standard in spite of technical concerns, lack of experience in the field, and a lack of consensus in the IETF MARID WG.
I think again Open Source groups show their strength by not allowing such tactics to take place without notice. It also shows that many major groups are very aware of how the game is being played.
Same with this DirecTV thing. Their were cheating them out of programming by getting a smart card that was illegal and getting them products for free.
Actually the DirectTV smartcard issue was a bit different. They went after anyone who had purchased the gear needed to reprogram the smartcards that they were using regardless of if they used it for that or in some cases even had DirectTV at all!
If the people at Google know what's good for them, and a suspect they might, they will keep their search engine clean and fast. Refineing it such that it stays on top. No more wading though countless newsgroup posts to find what your really looking for. Or a better way to refine searches that do hit things like newsgroups.
After that they can branch out and play in the market. Gmail is one such venture and there are others that are worth a stab at such as the peoplefinder thing that I don't remember off the top of my head right now what it's called but it's been a pet project for a while now. Other things such as Froogle seem to be worthy of more development.
However key to all the fishing they might want to do they have to keep that main engine humming. Do no evil! Keep the respect of the geeks and lusers alike. Computers move fast and the internet moves even faster and once you slip it's very hard to go back.
...from our all-time favourite, Michael.
/. editors and the very thought that he would ever use his power to further any of his own goals is ludicrous.
Michael is a pillar of journalistic integrity! He represents the most fair and balanced of all the
* The preceding message was paid for by the Micheal for Micheal foundation.
People so easily turned into criminals *should* be watched carefully.
Indeed, if it's so easy to become a criminal there must be something very wrong with the law.
...but all the "ANYBODY BUT BUSH/NO BLOOD FOR OIL/OMGWTFBUSHSUX0RS" 'liberals' have completely driven me away from that side as well.
If that's your main problem then I have no clue why you would ever support the Republicans because they turn on the smear machines on full against anyone that challenges them. Specifically against Kerry:
"Assuming that the unthinkable happens and Senator Kerry becomes president..." --Neil Cavuto, Fox's managing editor for business news.
"It is clear that at least one of Kerry's Purple Heart awards was the result of his own negligence, not enemy fire, and that Kerry went to unusual lengths to obtain the award after being turned down by his own commanding officer." --Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
Kerry "looks French" -- An anonymous Bush adviser told to the New York Times.
In political blogs I've seen countless right-wing proponents who claim that something to the effect of, "OMGIFSKERRYWINSWEAREALLGONNADIE!#$@!@" So please don't think that it's just the "liberals" who are even close to being guilty of this nonsense.
I can agree with basically everything you said but for:
...and even then i could probably only justify it for its graphics and video capabilities.
It's been a while since the Mac platform has had any claim to being better at video than the x86 architecture. The fact that Mac's arn't even at the cutting edge of 3d cards should be proof enough of that, and yes that's really more of a gamer thing but it still proves the point.
There are still some good reasons to justify buying a Mac but at least be honest about it before you plunk down the cash that could buy you two x86 PCs for one.
Current standard film still records at 24 frames per second. If you watch closely during any sequence that has any action in it you will see how poor and antiquated that frame rate value truly is. And yet because we have become accustom to it nobody seems to question it. (Except for that crazy Lucas guy who wants everyone to convert to digital video.)
Audiophiles similarly have become accustom to all sorts of crazy arguments about what you can and can't hear. CD's arn't as "warm" as LP's, tubes are better than transistors, high quality MP3's don't sound like the CDs. However I'm quite sure that if you were to sit down two people who had not heard any given track that was played on a CD and then on a very high quality compressed format they would be hard pressed to pick which was which. (Given that it's a 50/50 chance a more controlled method of testing would have to be done but I think you get my point.)
Now I still personally will never pay for any stripped down, DRM crippled, poorly encoded music but I don't think that using a compressed format, done right, is a bad thing at all.
While Firefox's extensions do allow for many things that Opera does not, not many of them are really what I would consider browser features. I really don't want/need a game in a browser. Uptime tracking is neat but not really essential.
Now don't get me wrong, I just downloaded 9.3 and it looks great. Works great. Updates are coming fast. I would almost say it ties with Opera in total useablity but for one little thing.
F12. F12 is what I mean when I talk about Power Users. Unless I'm missing something in Firefox that allows for this type of functionality when browsing the web then Opera still has a big edge. Being able to turn on and off pretty much everything (GIF animation, sound in webpages, Java, plug-ins, and Javascript) on the fly is something you just can't beat.
If Firefox had that I might be using it now instead of Opera because it's just that good. However until then I've got to stick with Opera.
I realize that Firefox and Mozilla get all the glory here on /. due to them being OSS but the bottom line in all of this is just that IE is the one to blame.
I've been using Opera since v5.x and have never looked back. Lately I've seen a lot of improvement in Firefox but they are still playing catchup with Opera.
For whatever reason Opera only seems to get a nod here when it should be getting a lot more but cest la vie. I personally will continue to support Opera until they sell out or whatever but I hope that they, and everyone else, realize that having a marketplace full of a few, maybe even many diffrent browsers will only help everyone in the long run.
Currently I am installing Firefox for people who just need to use anything but IE; mostly end users. For a power user however Opera is the way to go.
Show me an honest review and I'll show you someone who is not makeing any money.
You proably are right, either way however I think my point still stands.
/. seems to be hoseing up rather often?
On another note, has anyone else noticed that since the last patch
Well for one thing this is Slashdot after all.
For another most of the posts here, correctly imo, point out that this is nothing new or even that cool. Other teams have allready accomplished more than this with much less overhead. Why do you need XP on a plane? To play minesweeper on?
Lastly I doubt many people here would consider an "award from Microsoft" as being much of anything to brag about.