I've had more issues with WordPerfect 10 than I've had with any version of WordPerect since 6.0 for Windows
Whoa. That's saying something. I was a 100% rock-ribbed Word Perfect user up until 5.2. Then they came out with that HORRIBLE 6.0 release, and it drove me try out Word. The rest is history... Word was a much, much better product.
The only resin Quicken exists is b/c MS lets them exist.
Oh man, look at this history of Quicken. Microsoft tried damn hard to kill Quicken. Damn hard. In fact, they were going to just give and buy out Quicken, but the DOJ blocked the buyout.
Don't you think they would just bundle Money with the OS if they wanted to stomp out Quicken?
Sure, if they wanted to screw themselves in the process. The point isn't to destroy Quicken, the point is to maximize profit. And giving away "Money for nothing" (heh) doesn't maximize profit. It's hard to start selling something again after you give it away.
If you think MS plays nice-nice for the benefit of the other company, then think again.
Microsoft is smart enough to realize that the biggest advantage they have is their range of applications. That's why they treat their developers so well.
On top of that, I think MS now owns Viso.
That's called being a successful Windows developer. If only I could create product that Microsoft would want to pay 100s of millions of dollars for.:)
Transmeta took the risk in having a very specialized chip--that is...it's very low power but not as fast as others
Actually, they took a different risk. They never thought the performance would suck as much as it does. They thought they could take a very wide core and implement software emulation such that it would be faster than pure hardware solutions by making the software "smarter".
They failed.
Which is really not surprising. It's exactly the same delusion that makes people still think that "compilers are so smart nowadays that they can easily create better assembly code that humans" when that is and always has been patently untrue. People always underestimate the complexity of optimization.
We will never have optimizers as good as humans until we solve the "great question" of human AI. They go hand in hand, but people just don't want to accept that.
If your business model needs MS, then you're already done.
Yeah, because NO ONE has EVER made a lot of money hitching themselves to the Windows platform... (*cough*Quicken, Visio, Norton, McAfee, Innumerable Games, etc, etc, etc*cough)
Sheesh, dude, get a clue. Microsoft is dominant exactly BECAUSE they make it easy for people to develop for the platform and make lots of money. Review the history of OS/2 to see what happens when you rape the developers.
That's like asking "can God add 1 and 1 and get 3". The answer is no, but the problem isn't with God, it's with the question. The nature of omnipotence isn't being able to "do" things that are logical fallacies.
The answer to whether God can make a rock so big that he couldn't lift it is Yes, as I described. The "out" is creating a scenerio such that lifting is a logical fallacy.
God is omnipotent yet it would be impossible for him to create a rock he could not lift. Therefore, God does not exist. Right? Right? Is that a paradox?:-)
Since I moonlight in my spare time as God, let me answer this one for you. It's child's play.
I simply would create a rock exactly the size of the universe. I wouldn't be able to lift the rock, because by definition there would be no room for the rock to move.
Maybe not, but we do have a constitutionally protected right to free speech. That right is infringed upon when the speaker (or listener) is concerned about repercussions from an oppressive government.
There is a balance between free speech and responsible speech. In an oppressive government, there is certainly an interest in having anonymous speech be protected. But in most western governments, IMO the potential for abuse of anonymous speech (e.g., false accusations) outweighs the value of anonymous speech.
In other words, you have very little fear in the United States for being prosecuted by the government for your beliefs*. Therefore, it's more in the interest of society for you to take responsibility for your speech.
*And please, don't quote me obscure cases where government abuse might have occured. All that shows is that the exceptions prove the rule.
What is being put into place to insure that Microsoft actually hands over real code?
Sheesh, I'm sorry, but this is really a lame question. Have you ever heard of "contempt of court"? People can go to jail for that. Do you really think that people (yes, they are people like you and me, not satanic demons) are going to risk going to jail just so they can have some undocumented APIs?
A lot of people really, really, really need to get a grip when it comes to Microsoft.
Microsoft could just unilaterally declare that the contract doesn't apply to them because God doesn't like it, but that doesn't mean the argument is going to fly.
Even Microsoft can't willy-nilly redefine language so that dogs are really cats. In this case, no one is going to argue that middleware is an entire operating system.
A long time ago I used to write software for computerized gambling games, such as draw poker. One of the features of the software was being able to dial in a certain payback percentage. The way it worked was that when it drew the final hand (after the cards were held), it would decide on a random basis to redraw the hand if it was a winner. If it was paying out too much, it would gradually redraw the hand more often until it was back to the right payback.
Anyway, one of the problems we had was that our payout amount field was only 4 digits for a maximum of 9999 coins. The problem was that you had the option to play up to 50 coins at a time, and the highest payout odds were 500 to 1. So management had me make the machine NEVER pay out the big winner if you bet 20 coins or more to avoid the problem.
The latter was probably illegal, but this company was pretty shady. I didn't work there for very long, and they went bankrupt not long after.
I still look at the machines in Vegas with suspicion, though.:)
There was a Scientific American (I think) article a couple years back discussing some theories about how quantum teleportation might be feasible.
Those are quantum-level effects on particles, not macro effects on large bodies. If we're going to talk about transporters, I want people-sized objects beaming hundreds of miles!
For pretty much every piece of technology that has ever been the show [...] someone somewhere has a viable theory as to making something like that work.
Huh? An obvious example would be Warp Drive (wormholes are not FTL travel). Unless I haven't seen it, I haven't seen any viable theories about usurping Einstein.
Also as far as I know, there is no viable theory as to how to make a transporter work (quantum-level effects notwithstanding).
Starting yesterday, we received a bunch of story submissions about a performance comparison between J2EE and.Net. It didn't seem all that exciting, and we sort of ignored the story. But as usual, it appears that some people take issue with the methodology and conclusions.
So let me get this straight. A report comes out (that looked pretty fair to my eyes) where.Net kicks the crap out of Java, but that's not interesting. But as soon as someone puts out a (pretty silly IMO) refutation of said report it's suddenly interesting?
Yeah, yeah, I know -- it's Michael and it's Slashdot. But sheesh, come on.
Anyway, is anyone really surprised that.Net is going to be much faster than Java? It would be hard to make it slower, and if I were in charge of the.Net project, that would be one of the first issues I would address if I was making a competitor to Java.
Damn, and here's me thinking that it had more to do with the fact that the US is pissing away about 50%(!!!) fof it's national budget on the military.
I hate to ruin a perfectly good point made with triple exclamation marks by introducing pesky facts, but the military budget is only $336 billion out of $2,052 billion, or 16.4%. If you want to find the waste in federal government, look at social programs, not the military.
53 percent of poor households have air conditioning;
91 percent own a color TV and 29 percent own two or more color TVs;
64 percent own a car and 14 percent own two or more cars;
56 percent own a microwave oven; and
40 percent own their home, with 71,000 owning homes worth more than $300,000.
in the new show FMC the brits often lose and find it all rather funny and are very self-deprecating. but the americans sometimes cry!
As an American, I feel a strange sort of pride at this. Yeah, it's just a TV show, but dammit, I've always felt that if you're going to commit to something, then commit yourself to doing the best job you can.
Lindows was not sued because they were trying to make a Windows work-alike, they were (legitimately, IMO) sued because the name sounded too much like Windows.
How long before......MS decide this is illegal and start suing?
How about sometime after Microsoft actually uses a lawsuit as a weapon? Microsoft has zero history of suing people who write lookalikes of their software (Samba, WINE, That NT-workalike project, etc).
Apparently, you're thinking of Apple who really is truly evil when it comes to suing people.
Is the company to blame if its employees are using P2P applications to share files?
If they don't know about it, probably not. On the other hand, if they are aware that illegal activities are going on using their resources, and do nothing about it, then damn right they're responsible.
Or to put it another way, if your employees are using a spare room in your business to produce crack, and you're totally aware of it, you're going to be in a heap o' trouble (even if you think drugs should be legalized).
Will the RIAA set its sights upon the ISP's?
The difference is that you are a consumer of the service, not an employee of the ISP. Or to put it another way, AT&T is not responsible for criminals using the telephone, but would be responsible if they know that their employees are engaging in criminal activity.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had more issues with WordPerfect 10 than I've had with any version of WordPerect since 6.0 for Windows
Whoa. That's saying something. I was a 100% rock-ribbed Word Perfect user up until 5.2. Then they came out with that HORRIBLE 6.0 release, and it drove me try out Word. The rest is history... Word was a much, much better product.
You seem to be under the ludicrous impression that being purchased by Microsoft for outlandish amounts of money is a bad thing...
How quickly do you think I would be arrested and charged with terrorism?
Never. In fact, take a look at some of the radical Islamic web sites sometime. You'll see that this is not an uncommon theme.
They only thing that will put a knock on your door is threats to the President, which by law they have to take seriously.
The only resin Quicken exists is b/c MS lets them exist.
Oh man, look at this history of Quicken. Microsoft tried damn hard to kill Quicken. Damn hard. In fact, they were going to just give and buy out Quicken, but the DOJ blocked the buyout.
Don't you think they would just bundle Money with the OS if they wanted to stomp out Quicken?
Sure, if they wanted to screw themselves in the process. The point isn't to destroy Quicken, the point is to maximize profit. And giving away "Money for nothing" (heh) doesn't maximize profit. It's hard to start selling something again after you give it away.
If you think MS plays nice-nice for the benefit of the other company, then think again.
Microsoft is smart enough to realize that the biggest advantage they have is their range of applications. That's why they treat their developers so well.
On top of that, I think MS now owns Viso.
That's called being a successful Windows developer. If only I could create product that Microsoft would want to pay 100s of millions of dollars for. :)
Transmeta took the risk in having a very specialized chip--that is...it's very low power but not as fast as others
Actually, they took a different risk. They never thought the performance would suck as much as it does. They thought they could take a very wide core and implement software emulation such that it would be faster than pure hardware solutions by making the software "smarter".
They failed.
Which is really not surprising. It's exactly the same delusion that makes people still think that "compilers are so smart nowadays that they can easily create better assembly code that humans" when that is and always has been patently untrue. People always underestimate the complexity of optimization.
We will never have optimizers as good as humans until we solve the "great question" of human AI. They go hand in hand, but people just don't want to accept that.
If your business model needs MS, then you're already done.
Yeah, because NO ONE has EVER made a lot of money hitching themselves to the Windows platform... (*cough*Quicken, Visio, Norton, McAfee, Innumerable Games, etc, etc, etc*cough)
Sheesh, dude, get a clue. Microsoft is dominant exactly BECAUSE they make it easy for people to develop for the platform and make lots of money. Review the history of OS/2 to see what happens when you rape the developers.
therefore he can't do something
That's like asking "can God add 1 and 1 and get 3". The answer is no, but the problem isn't with God, it's with the question. The nature of omnipotence isn't being able to "do" things that are logical fallacies.
The answer to whether God can make a rock so big that he couldn't lift it is Yes, as I described. The "out" is creating a scenerio such that lifting is a logical fallacy.
God is omnipotent yet it would be impossible for him to create a rock he could not lift. Therefore, God does not exist. Right? Right? Is that a paradox?:-)
Since I moonlight in my spare time as God, let me answer this one for you. It's child's play.
I simply would create a rock exactly the size of the universe. I wouldn't be able to lift the rock, because by definition there would be no room for the rock to move.
Happy to clear that up for you.
Maybe not, but we do have a constitutionally protected right to free speech. That right is infringed upon when the speaker (or listener) is concerned about repercussions from an oppressive government.
There is a balance between free speech and responsible speech. In an oppressive government, there is certainly an interest in having anonymous speech be protected. But in most western governments, IMO the potential for abuse of anonymous speech (e.g., false accusations) outweighs the value of anonymous speech.
In other words, you have very little fear in the United States for being prosecuted by the government for your beliefs*. Therefore, it's more in the interest of society for you to take responsibility for your speech.
*And please, don't quote me obscure cases where government abuse might have occured. All that shows is that the exceptions prove the rule.
What is being put into place to insure that Microsoft actually hands over real code?
Sheesh, I'm sorry, but this is really a lame question. Have you ever heard of "contempt of court"? People can go to jail for that. Do you really think that people (yes, they are people like you and me, not satanic demons) are going to risk going to jail just so they can have some undocumented APIs?
A lot of people really, really, really need to get a grip when it comes to Microsoft.
What the hell, I'll ask you, too: Name one privacy or control that you will lose with this. Just one.
Hint: you will be able to turn it off, since it would break backward compatibility if you couldn't.
Microsoft could just unilaterally declare that the contract doesn't apply to them because God doesn't like it, but that doesn't mean the argument is going to fly.
Even Microsoft can't willy-nilly redefine language so that dogs are really cats. In this case, no one is going to argue that middleware is an entire operating system.
Any first year law student could argue that any linux/BSD/otherOS replaces the Windows OS UI, thus no OEM can install an alternate OS.
Sheesh, what part of "Non-Microsoft Middleware" don't you understand?
A long time ago I used to write software for computerized gambling games, such as draw poker. One of the features of the software was being able to dial in a certain payback percentage. The way it worked was that when it drew the final hand (after the cards were held), it would decide on a random basis to redraw the hand if it was a winner. If it was paying out too much, it would gradually redraw the hand more often until it was back to the right payback.
Anyway, one of the problems we had was that our payout amount field was only 4 digits for a maximum of 9999 coins. The problem was that you had the option to play up to 50 coins at a time, and the highest payout odds were 500 to 1. So management had me make the machine NEVER pay out the big winner if you bet 20 coins or more to avoid the problem.
The latter was probably illegal, but this company was pretty shady. I didn't work there for very long, and they went bankrupt not long after.
I still look at the machines in Vegas with suspicion, though. :)
There was a Scientific American (I think) article a couple years back discussing some theories about how quantum teleportation might be feasible.
Those are quantum-level effects on particles, not macro effects on large bodies. If we're going to talk about transporters, I want people-sized objects beaming hundreds of miles!
For pretty much every piece of technology that has ever been the show [...] someone somewhere has a viable theory as to making something like that work.
Huh? An obvious example would be Warp Drive (wormholes are not FTL travel). Unless I haven't seen it, I haven't seen any viable theories about usurping Einstein.
Also as far as I know, there is no viable theory as to how to make a transporter work (quantum-level effects notwithstanding).
Starting yesterday, we received a bunch of story submissions about a performance comparison between J2EE and .Net. It didn't seem all that exciting, and we sort of ignored the story. But as usual, it appears that some people take issue with the methodology and conclusions.
So let me get this straight. A report comes out (that looked pretty fair to my eyes) where .Net kicks the crap out of Java, but that's not interesting. But as soon as someone puts out a (pretty silly IMO) refutation of said report it's suddenly interesting?
Yeah, yeah, I know -- it's Michael and it's Slashdot. But sheesh, come on.
Anyway, is anyone really surprised that .Net is going to be much faster than Java? It would be hard to make it slower, and if I were in charge of the .Net project, that would be one of the first issues I would address if I was making a competitor to Java.
Damn, and here's me thinking that it had more to do with the fact that the US is pissing away about 50%(!!!) fof it's national budget on the military.
I hate to ruin a perfectly good point made with triple exclamation marks by introducing pesky facts, but the military budget is only $336 billion out of $2,052 billion, or 16.4%. If you want to find the waste in federal government, look at social programs, not the military.
In fact, the AC's point is so interesting, I think I'll make it my new sig.
Ah, what the hell. Here's a reference...
Check it...
53 percent of poor households have air conditioning;
91 percent own a color TV and 29 percent own two or more color TVs;
64 percent own a car and 14 percent own two or more cars;
56 percent own a microwave oven; and
40 percent own their home, with 71,000 owning homes worth more than $300,000.
Mainly it's just because it's one country covering a lot of territory with pretty decent natural resources.
Certainly natural resources don't hurt, but it's not that big a help. If that were true, South America would rule the world.
On the other hand, the British Empire and Japan have done pretty well with small, relatively resource poor islands.
in the new show FMC the brits often lose and find it all rather funny and are very self-deprecating. but the americans sometimes cry!
As an American, I feel a strange sort of pride at this. Yeah, it's just a TV show, but dammit, I've always felt that if you're going to commit to something, then commit yourself to doing the best job you can.
Lindows was not sued because they were trying to make a Windows work-alike, they were (legitimately, IMO) sued because the name sounded too much like Windows.
How long before... ...MS decide this is illegal and start suing?
How about sometime after Microsoft actually uses a lawsuit as a weapon? Microsoft has zero history of suing people who write lookalikes of their software (Samba, WINE, That NT-workalike project, etc).
Apparently, you're thinking of Apple who really is truly evil when it comes to suing people.
Is the company to blame if its employees are using P2P applications to share files?
If they don't know about it, probably not. On the other hand, if they are aware that illegal activities are going on using their resources, and do nothing about it, then damn right they're responsible.
Or to put it another way, if your employees are using a spare room in your business to produce crack, and you're totally aware of it, you're going to be in a heap o' trouble (even if you think drugs should be legalized).
Will the RIAA set its sights upon the ISP's?
The difference is that you are a consumer of the service, not an employee of the ISP. Or to put it another way, AT&T is not responsible for criminals using the telephone, but would be responsible if they know that their employees are engaging in criminal activity.