Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. Your friends out there on the Redmond Campus are walking into a trap, as is your Rebel OS. It was I who allowed the Microsofties to know the location of the DRM. It is quite safe from their pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best zealots awaits them. I'm afraid the monopoly will be quite operational when your friends arrive.
(Bastardized from Emperor Palpatine, SW6, in case you missed it:) )
Actually, Microsoft has a decent history of busting monopolies with their own monopoly. I wouldn't be so cavalier, but then, Jobs always did have a blind spot the size of his foot in the general vicinity of his mouth.
Every gripe posted here so far is just like in Diablo II.
Whether it's goldfarmers (Baal runs), ninja-stealing drops (the one barbarian in the party who stands by the boss), or pathetic language skills across every server, these all seem to be common themes to Blizzard MMORPGs.
Maybe instead of pissing about it, we should just expose ourselves to some solar radiation. Or stop giving Blizzard money for a rehash of an earlier game which doesn't even fix obviously broken gameplay issues.
It only took them 10 patches of D2 to come anywhere close to fixing the balance issues. I wonder how long WoW will suck this way.
I would expect this is only a ploy to make it seem like he cares about the voting irregularities which occurred in WI during the 2004 Presidental election, causing several leading Milwaukee Democrats to be investigated.
Reading the requirements, not only does no one currently offer such a machine, but most machines in the state wouldn't live up to it today.
- PS3 sales exceed all expectations as Sony delivers sufficient consoles and games at launch, while the user base ignores the glaring fair-use issues inherent to the Sony product line. - PalmOne resurges as the owner of the cell/MP3/Palmtop space by incorporating WiMax and Sun microprocessors. - Apple's move to Intel chips causes the biggest brand loyalty seachange in modern history as disgurntled users throw their WinTel boxes off of buildings. - Lawsuits will be brought against cities offering WiMax by local users who are hacked over their unsecured connection. - AOL manages to rebirth itself as a dominant Internet player by selling residential access to Internet2. - Dell actually "gets off the pot" and begins to sell AMD desktop/laptop systems. - Elliot Spizer raids the home of Bill Gates, finds a Linux machine running the automated home features, along with the full archive of goatse images as framed art in a hallway. - Europe splits off from the Internet As We Know It, China joins in, and most left-wing American political websites go strangely quiet on what comes to be known as "Internet Classic". - The DMCA is overturned by a housewife in New York state appealing a fight with the RIAA all the way to the Supreme Court. Her arguments before the justices become required reading at most major law schools. - The "Third-World Laptop" will be widely used....to grind grain. See also, "The Gods Must Be Crazy".
All ad-based information companies work this way
on
The Google Caste System
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Think of a newspaper. The people who sell ad space and work in Classifieds are secondary to the reporters and editors who manage what stories go into the paper and the general political tone and direction. In fact, those sales people are generally looked down-upon as a necessary evil.
Think about TV. Who runs things, the people selling air time for commercials or the station manager who chooses what shows appear and what the format is when the network isn't forcing its agenda? Or even at network level, what directs them - people who sell ads or creative people who think their program could be a hit?
Radio is the same. Google's business model is: Sell non-obtrusive ads associated with information services. To do this, they need compelling services to make people get ads on the same web page. These services are like shows on TV or juicy news articles - they drive eyeballs, which allows for ad revenue.
Really, there is no other way to run it and make money.
In Maoist China, Economy plans you! (joke had to be made)
In my time studying economics, I had the privilege to learn from one of the biggest free-market advocates there is.
His name is Yuri Maltsev, former adviser to the Soviet government....on Gorbachev's reforms.
He would laugh at your new planned-market overlords. As do I. Let's keep this simple, and say that if a planned economy had any merit whatsoever, most of Eastern Europe would still be collectively referred to as, "The Soviet Bloc" instead of "Applicants for membership in the EU".
It's why Taiwan is in such a hurry to become part of the mainland. It's also, coincidentally, why the Tibetans asked China to annex them....the planned economic model is just so darned efficient!
First off, where does the ejaculate go? I mean, if M+M's drift everywhere......
not to mention how a few short+curlies end up in random places. I can't imagine floating with my tube of soup and finding one of THOSE drifting by.
And to consider the laws of motion....if you're not into bondage, you're going to have a hell of a time managing the deed. You're probably as likely to crumple on her pelvis as get anywhere with every 3rd thrust or so.
Why is it that Europeans, when stumbling on something pristene and good, always have to put their flag on it, claim it in the name of $LEADER, kick out the natives, screw up the borders and then run away when they've well and truly screwed it all up?
And furthermore, will we allow them to continue to do it? It's time the natives got restless!
Back in the day, my girlfriend had a Motorola cell phone. The phone + battery was the size of a purse and needed to stay plugged into the cigarette lighter of her car to work. The signal was pretty spotty, too.
A few weeks ago, I bought a Sanyo cell phone from Sprint. It can stay on for several days with light talking, and is easily pocket-sized. I have 700 prime-time minutes a month, and unlimited calls after 7 and on weekends for about 50USD/month. Coverage is excellent anywhere I take it.
Today, the latest advancement in phone technology is a phone with a minimum 6 pound battery/transceiver combo, and unlimited calling provided I have a non-existant wimax connection, or spotty service from the nearest Starbucks?
Yes, Microsoft deploying internet TV to underdeveloped areas like China and India is moronic. But stock analysts aren't techies, they just hear, "2 billion potential customers on a government contract!" Bada-bing, MS stock goes up 50 cents. No way in hell MS would market services to an area of the world that can't even pay full localized price for a stripped-down and insanely cheap copy of Windows XP.
And we all know it.
What MS should do is market this idea to colleges and inner-city schools, since broadband penetration is strongest and easiest in highly urban areas. Think how schoolkids - and the technology sector - could benefit from different MS luminaries teaching courses in programming. (seriously) Or people from Sun, Google or any other tech company you can think of. There is power in the idea, but not for the third world yet. The USA's own third world can use it now.
But as for the IMF, the main concern they always have is, "How are you going to pay this loan back?" Quite frankly, there's no point to giving Ethiopia 2 billion USD if all they'll do with it is plant corn, eat all the corn saving none for seed, skim 500 million off the top for the cronies, and make no infrastructure improvements that would allow for the sort of industrial/agribusiness base that could create tax income to even think about paying the interest on those loans.
And it's not like the Mafia. You don't have to take the money if you don't like the terms. And hell, half the time the loans are forgiven for some foreign policy move anyway.
Dell sells brand new, full computer packages for $300. A used P3-600 desktop is so cheap as to be laughable. Sure they're crap, but they're both enough to push the internet.
Ever serve in a food pantry? People come in wearing new shoes worth as much as that new Dell computer. It can be done, and this is the very group that would benefit most - poorer people living in high-density urban housing. Urban-sponsored Wimax makes little sense for suburbs where lot sizes push 1 acre and beyond.
The internet is to the modern age what books were to those who came before. In the past, you could be intelligent and educated if your family could afford a fairly large, private library, stocked with the expected classics. Or if you had access to one somehow, usually through a university.
The advent of public libraries allowed common people access to the educational tools and knowledge base once held only by the social elite. This lies at the heart of the American Dream - people who labor for little or nothing can raise children who, through public education and public libraries, know a more prosperous life as their inborn potential allows. The social and financial potential of their parents no longer truly mattered.
Today, almost anything you could want to learn exists on the internet, from home repairs to getting a foundation in some of the most advanced scientific research mankind does. Not having this access leaves you at a serious disadvantage to those who do have it. A modern city of any signifigance does not exist without a public library at its center somewhere, and, if society acts with the same wisdom as before, ways will be found to bring the internet readily to the masses. Civic access to the internet is, in this context, the only truly logical way to go.
Besides, Orson Scott Card predicted civic net access in Ender's Game. You wanna argue against the guy?
Great. Keep in mind that, since there is no commercial value to what you're doing whatsoever, that you have no money to do your research. Which means no equipment, no living expenses, no home for you or for your work, no way to record your discoveries and no way to publish your ideas.
And, if by some miracle you discover something interesting despite having no food, home, resources, lab, equipment or means of notetaking, who will care? How will you tell anyone, since most major journals only publish useful discoveries?
So you can either be a scientist in your spare time, or you can accept that money makes the world go 'round.
In any case, look at all the research lines that sat idle before Bayh-Doyle, according to the article in Fortune. Do you think they sat because they were worthless knowledge, or because they didn't strike a researcher's fancy?
Which outcome is better for society at large, undiscovered cures or expensive cures?
The tax cuts enabled economic growth, which put people to work which allowed.....more incomes to be taxed!
Tax cuts are actually, at certain taxation levels, a way to INCREASE net income. It has been made clear that the Bush tax cuts were made at this level.
People in concentration camps were most certainly going to die. Does that make it alright for Mengle to perform his medical testing on them? Some of his research on the effects of extreme environments is genuinely scientifically useful, but just because the subjects were "on their way out", does that make the experiements alright?
Does it strike anyone else as incredibly BAD timing for Microsoft to release a demanding UI for their next OS when Apple is moving to x86?
All the comparisons everyone has always wanted to make on a level playing field will be made. Microsoft will have a newly taxing UI while Apple will be using a Unix-based kernel.
Now, this could be MS catching up to the overhead Apple's OS X already has. It could be that any additional overhead in Vista will prove to be quite worthwhile, as GUI eventually did in comparison to the command-line interface.
All that is debatable. But for Microsoft's sake, it had better prove to be a good choice.
Sure it is impossible to prevent debris....the foam sprayers are union. Can't you tell by the careless work, the inattention to detail? These people clearly do not fear for their jobs.
1. This tape was almost certainly generated by a mainframe. Why? Because the server doesn't exist that can handle the volume Citibank pushes. Not even close.
Now, why's that important? Because your typical fraudster/hacker/script kiddie bad guy doesn't have a mainframe, tape reader (no, not like the one obsessive geeks have on their PC's as some kind of never-used backup device) and the ability to easily convert EBCIDIC to ASCII. Or even know what EBCIDIC was if they somehow managed to mount the tape to something that could try to read it. Not to mention getting the decode right for all the packed fields that store things like account balances, PIN numbers and other important bits. And if I told most of you that you would probably use IDCAMS to read this, you would get that 8-year-old-told-Santa-doesn't-exist blank stare on your face.
In short, this tape is practically useless except to a major IT installation.
2. Tapes like this are shipped all over the country all the time. Most folks use couriers, but UPS is not unheard of. And a courier could lose it just as easily....
3. As to the posters complaining that no one tracks what a good customer is, yes they do. There is a number that combines your credit score, number and balance of accounts, and general activity into what a bank would call a profibility rating. That's how YOUR bank would decide what sort of card to offer you. But since most/.'ers are the paranoid sort, they probably spread their banking out over 6 institutions, half of them online. So no one really gets to know you, or take care of your banking needs as a whole. Which would lift that score nicely and give you more of a bargaining chip, as in pulling all your accounts instead of just your crummy, profitless free checking.
Bush keeps the Major League Baseball mind control operations there. You think he got that last win only because his opponent was made by Dr. Frankenstein?
They're basically just consolidating current contracts, people. This will very likely SAVE the.gov money by bringing their PC support costs into one buy.
In other words, someone actually used some brain cells. This should be applauded!
Slashdot Mirror
Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. Your friends out there on the Redmond Campus are walking into a trap, as is your Rebel OS. It was I who allowed the Microsofties to know the location of the DRM. It is quite safe from their pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best zealots awaits them. I'm afraid the monopoly will be quite operational when your friends arrive.
:) )
(Bastardized from Emperor Palpatine, SW6, in case you missed it
Actually, Microsoft has a decent history of busting monopolies with their own monopoly. I wouldn't be so cavalier, but then, Jobs always did have a blind spot the size of his foot in the general vicinity of his mouth.
Every gripe posted here so far is just like in Diablo II.
Whether it's goldfarmers (Baal runs), ninja-stealing drops (the one barbarian in the party who stands by the boss), or pathetic language skills across every server, these all seem to be common themes to Blizzard MMORPGs.
Maybe instead of pissing about it, we should just expose ourselves to some solar radiation.
Or stop giving Blizzard money for a rehash of an earlier game which doesn't even fix obviously broken gameplay issues.
It only took them 10 patches of D2 to come anywhere close to fixing the balance issues. I wonder how long WoW will suck this way.
I would expect this is only a ploy to make it seem like he cares about the voting irregularities which occurred in WI during the 2004 Presidental election, causing several leading Milwaukee Democrats to be investigated.
Reading the requirements, not only does no one currently offer such a machine, but most machines in the state wouldn't live up to it today.
- PS3 sales exceed all expectations as Sony delivers sufficient consoles and games at launch, while the user base ignores the glaring fair-use issues inherent to the Sony product line.
- PalmOne resurges as the owner of the cell/MP3/Palmtop space by incorporating WiMax and Sun microprocessors.
- Apple's move to Intel chips causes the biggest brand loyalty seachange in modern history as disgurntled users throw their WinTel boxes off of buildings.
- Lawsuits will be brought against cities offering WiMax by local users who are hacked over their unsecured connection.
- AOL manages to rebirth itself as a dominant Internet player by selling residential access to Internet2.
- Dell actually "gets off the pot" and begins to sell AMD desktop/laptop systems.
- Elliot Spizer raids the home of Bill Gates, finds a Linux machine running the automated home features, along with the full archive of goatse images as framed art in a hallway.
- Europe splits off from the Internet As We Know It, China joins in, and most left-wing American political websites go strangely quiet on what comes to be known as "Internet Classic".
- The DMCA is overturned by a housewife in New York state appealing a fight with the RIAA all the way to the Supreme Court. Her arguments before the justices become required reading at most major law schools.
- The "Third-World Laptop" will be widely used....to grind grain. See also, "The Gods Must Be Crazy".
Think of a newspaper. The people who sell ad space and work in Classifieds are secondary to the reporters and editors who manage what stories go into the paper and the general political tone and direction. In fact, those sales people are generally looked down-upon as a necessary evil.
Think about TV. Who runs things, the people selling air time for commercials or the station manager who chooses what shows appear and what the format is when the network isn't forcing its agenda? Or even at network level, what directs them - people who sell ads or creative people who think their program could be a hit?
Radio is the same. Google's business model is: Sell non-obtrusive ads associated with information services. To do this, they need compelling services to make people get ads on the same web page. These services are like shows on TV or juicy news articles - they drive eyeballs, which allows for ad revenue.
Really, there is no other way to run it and make money.
Yes, China does censor my phone calls .
In Maoist China, Economy plans you!
(joke had to be made)
In my time studying economics, I had the privilege to learn from one of the biggest free-market advocates there is.
His name is Yuri Maltsev, former adviser to the Soviet government....on Gorbachev's reforms.
He would laugh at your new planned-market overlords. As do I.
Let's keep this simple, and say that if a planned economy had any merit whatsoever, most of Eastern Europe would still be collectively referred to as, "The Soviet Bloc" instead of "Applicants for membership in the EU".
It's why Taiwan is in such a hurry to become part of the mainland. It's also, coincidentally, why the Tibetans asked China to annex them....the planned economic model is just so darned efficient!
First off, where does the ejaculate go? I mean, if M+M's drift everywhere......
not to mention how a few short+curlies end up in random places. I can't imagine floating with my tube of soup and finding one of THOSE drifting by.
And to consider the laws of motion....if you're not into bondage, you're going to have a hell of a time managing the deed. You're probably as likely to crumple on her pelvis as get anywhere with every 3rd thrust or so.
Nah, I think I'll pass on the Love Capsule.
Why is it that Europeans, when stumbling on something pristene and good, always have to put their flag on it, claim it in the name of $LEADER, kick out the natives, screw up the borders and then run away when they've well and truly screwed it all up?
And furthermore, will we allow them to continue to do it? It's time the natives got restless!
Back in the day, my girlfriend had a Motorola cell phone. The phone + battery was the size of a purse and needed to stay plugged into the cigarette lighter of her car to work. The signal was pretty spotty, too.
A few weeks ago, I bought a Sanyo cell phone from Sprint. It can stay on for several days with light talking, and is easily pocket-sized. I have 700 prime-time minutes a month, and unlimited calls after 7 and on weekends for about 50USD/month. Coverage is excellent anywhere I take it.
Today, the latest advancement in phone technology is a phone with a minimum 6 pound battery/transceiver combo, and unlimited calling provided I have a non-existant wimax connection, or spotty service from the nearest Starbucks?
What a country!
Yes, Microsoft deploying internet TV to underdeveloped areas like China and India is moronic. But stock analysts aren't techies, they just hear, "2 billion potential customers on a government contract!" Bada-bing, MS stock goes up 50 cents. No way in hell MS would market services to an area of the world that can't even pay full localized price for a stripped-down and insanely cheap copy of Windows XP.
And we all know it.
What MS should do is market this idea to colleges and inner-city schools, since broadband penetration is strongest and easiest in highly urban areas. Think how schoolkids - and the technology sector - could benefit from different MS luminaries teaching courses in programming. (seriously) Or people from Sun, Google or any other tech company you can think of. There is power in the idea, but not for the third world yet. The USA's own third world can use it now.
But as for the IMF, the main concern they always have is, "How are you going to pay this loan back?" Quite frankly, there's no point to giving Ethiopia 2 billion USD if all they'll do with it is plant corn, eat all the corn saving none for seed, skim 500 million off the top for the cronies, and make no infrastructure improvements that would allow for the sort of industrial/agribusiness base that could create tax income to even think about paying the interest on those loans.
And it's not like the Mafia. You don't have to take the money if you don't like the terms. And hell, half the time the loans are forgiven for some foreign policy move anyway.
Well, let's see.
Dell sells brand new, full computer packages for $300. A used P3-600 desktop is so cheap as to be laughable. Sure they're crap, but they're both enough to push the internet.
Ever serve in a food pantry? People come in wearing new shoes worth as much as that new Dell computer. It can be done, and this is the very group that would benefit most - poorer people living in high-density urban housing. Urban-sponsored Wimax makes little sense for suburbs where lot sizes push 1 acre and beyond.
The internet is to the modern age what books were to those who came before. In the past, you could be intelligent and educated if your family could afford a fairly large, private library, stocked with the expected classics. Or if you had access to one somehow, usually through a university.
The advent of public libraries allowed common people access to the educational tools and knowledge base once held only by the social elite. This lies at the heart of the American Dream - people who labor for little or nothing can raise children who, through public education and public libraries, know a more prosperous life as their inborn potential allows. The social and financial potential of their parents no longer truly mattered.
Today, almost anything you could want to learn exists on the internet, from home repairs to getting a foundation in some of the most advanced scientific research mankind does. Not having this access leaves you at a serious disadvantage to those who do have it. A modern city of any signifigance does not exist without a public library at its center somewhere, and, if society acts with the same wisdom as before, ways will be found to bring the internet readily to the masses. Civic access to the internet is, in this context, the only truly logical way to go.
Besides, Orson Scott Card predicted civic net access in Ender's Game. You wanna argue against the guy?
OK, so you want to do research.
Great. Keep in mind that, since there is no commercial value to what you're doing whatsoever, that you have no money to do your research. Which means no equipment, no living expenses, no home for you or for your work, no way to record your discoveries and no way to publish your ideas.
And, if by some miracle you discover something interesting despite having no food, home, resources, lab, equipment or means of notetaking, who will care? How will you tell anyone, since most major journals only publish useful discoveries?
So you can either be a scientist in your spare time, or you can accept that money makes the world go 'round.
In any case, look at all the research lines that sat idle before Bayh-Doyle, according to the article in Fortune. Do you think they sat because they were worthless knowledge, or because they didn't strike a researcher's fancy?
Which outcome is better for society at large, undiscovered cures or expensive cures?
Total income at the federal level is up.
The tax cuts enabled economic growth, which put people to work which allowed.....more incomes to be taxed!
Tax cuts are actually, at certain taxation levels, a way to INCREASE net income. It has been made clear that the Bush tax cuts were made at this level.
"To him they were no more than lab animals in his demented mind."
Exactly.
Sounds kind of like what people are saying about fertilized embryos, yes?
People in concentration camps were most certainly going to die. Does that make it alright for Mengle to perform his medical testing on them? Some of his research on the effects of extreme environments is genuinely scientifically useful, but just because the subjects were "on their way out", does that make the experiements alright?
Does it strike anyone else as incredibly BAD timing for Microsoft to release a demanding UI for their next OS when Apple is moving to x86?
All the comparisons everyone has always wanted to make on a level playing field will be made. Microsoft will have a newly taxing UI while Apple will be using a Unix-based kernel.
Now, this could be MS catching up to the overhead Apple's OS X already has. It could be that any additional overhead in Vista will prove to be quite worthwhile, as GUI eventually did in comparison to the command-line interface.
All that is debatable. But for Microsoft's sake, it had better prove to be a good choice.
Sure it is impossible to prevent debris....the foam sprayers are union. Can't you tell by the careless work, the inattention to detail? These people clearly do not fear for their jobs.
Good No? Union Yes!
The next training class for the NASA engineers:
Gravity 101: Still In Full Effect.
"I launch an astronaut into the air, and if bits land, I know not where".
1. This tape was almost certainly generated by a mainframe. Why? Because the server doesn't exist that can handle the volume Citibank pushes. Not even close.
/.'ers are the paranoid sort, they probably spread their banking out over 6 institutions, half of them online. So no one really gets to know you, or take care of your banking needs as a whole. Which would lift that score nicely and give you more of a bargaining chip, as in pulling all your accounts instead of just your crummy, profitless free checking.
Now, why's that important? Because your typical fraudster/hacker/script kiddie bad guy doesn't have a mainframe, tape reader (no, not like the one obsessive geeks have on their PC's as some kind of never-used backup device) and the ability to easily convert EBCIDIC to ASCII. Or even know what EBCIDIC was if they somehow managed to mount the tape to something that could try to read it. Not to mention getting the decode right for all the packed fields that store things like account balances, PIN numbers and other important bits. And if I told most of you that you would probably use IDCAMS to read this, you would get that 8-year-old-told-Santa-doesn't-exist blank stare on your face.
In short, this tape is practically useless except to a major IT installation.
2. Tapes like this are shipped all over the country all the time. Most folks use couriers, but UPS is not unheard of. And a courier could lose it just as easily....
3. As to the posters complaining that no one tracks what a good customer is, yes they do. There is a number that combines your credit score, number and balance of accounts, and general activity into what a bank would call a profibility rating. That's how YOUR bank would decide what sort of card to offer you. But since most
Damn straight.
Bush keeps the Major League Baseball mind control operations there. You think he got that last win only because his opponent was made by Dr. Frankenstein?
They're basically just consolidating current contracts, people. This will very likely SAVE the .gov money by bringing their PC support costs into one buy.
In other words, someone actually used some brain cells. This should be applauded!
I was never really worried about this bill.
Quite frankly, it's new media vs. old media, and each side has their pet legislators and lobbyists.
And, in the game of law-passing, it's easier to stall something to death than it is to pass it through. Do Nothings always beat Do Somethings.
Especially in government.
Aren't those thingies usually mounted on the walls?
Maybe those angry gamers were practicing kung-foo.