I guess when he says your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush, Or Al Qaeda I don't take that as an endorsement of Kerry. Being holed up in the mountains of Afghanistan he must be out of touch because from what Kerry says he would more apt to go after OBL and Al Qaeda than trying to avenge one of his father's mistakes...but I digress.
You've (for effect perhaps?) left off a lot of people in the free world who would love to see some regime change in the good 'ol USA. Take a poll in Europe or even your neighbors and see what they think of Dubya and his policies...it isn't just the terrorists and commies who want him out.
Where exactly did OBL actually say he wanted Kerry to win? From what he said last week I gathered it did not matter who won but that attacks would continue if US poilicy in Arab nations did not change.
Copyright, patents and some of the ridiculous laws and penalties we've seen out of the US recently simply are not on the radar screen of most Americans. It isn't until more laws like this are passed and little Janie and Jimmy (hopefully the offspring of one of the braindead Congressman) go to prison for trading the latest Britney song that someone will stand up and say 'WTF have you been doing in the Senate?'. One of these laws will eventually be the straw the breaks the camel's back.
That's great and all. Let's just put this to the American people and see if they're satisfied with the rate of success compared to the amount of money they're dumping into maintaining a fat-cat bureaucracy. I'm a huge fan of space exploration but seeing what great thing NASA did early on, with much less, compared to the blunders they've made lately really makes me wonder.
So if you hate WinME so much why do you still have it on your machine? You've got lots of options dude...leaving an OS on your PC that behaves in the manner you describe probably says more about you than it does MS.
"There's also a quite a bit of ego clashing because some of the CS profs feel that they could do a better job if they were in charge..."
...and the IT department could probably do a much better job if they had more money to work with. In my experience it's not that people *want* to cut corners it has more to do with project realities. You don't always get to do what you'd like.
I agree with your 'cop out' arguement, people are not pirating as a protest to record companies feeding us bad music. I believe they do it because it's easy and it's cheap. Personally I download music either from aritsts I don't know of and want to 'try out', CDs I know only have one or two good songs on them, or to see what a fav bands new album sounds like before it hits the stores. Case in point - I'm a huge fan of slipknot and Tool. I purchased both of these artists new releases when they came out BUT I d/l'ed the mp3s I found on p2p networks before I could purchase the CD. I purchased them too because upon release they were a reasonable $14.99CDN. I've seen lots of CD priced at $24.99 which for some reason I will not buy no matter how many songs I actually like on the CD. I realize there are some moral and logical inconsistencies in my buying patterns but that's what they are. There is a price and quality (quality being to MY tastes, certainly no everyone's) point at which I find a CD to be a good buy. The little goodies like downloadable videos and bonus tracks available to CD purchasers are a good idea too IMO...adding value to the purchased product, that's a step in the right direction.
In my opinion most of those saying they buy all the CDs from which they pirate or attempt to take the moral high ground are generally liars. Admit it people...you just like getting something for nothing.
There's another argument too...could it not be that p2p and other forms of filesharing are simply capitalism at work bringing music to it's true value. Maybe in the future musical artists don't get to be multi-millionaires maybe making music people enjoy doesn't make you fabulously rich, jsut comfortable? Without a monopoly on distribution the record industry cannot as easily fix the price of a given CD but there is a price the consumer will pay for a value added product even if there is a near-free alternative.
It seems to me I've said this before here but I really don't get why studios give a damn about this problem. Maybe its just me but I don't kow why anyone would prefer to watch a monoaural and sort-of-focussed 'copy' from a video camera in their living room (or even worse, on their PC) over a Dolby Digital version of the same film for $8 in a theatre. I can see where digital copy pirated DVDs are an issue but the 'shaky cam'...hell even steady cam versions taped with video cameras aren't in no way a replacement for seeing a film in the theatre IMO...
Why is it lame to include it as an 'ask slashdot'? RTFH[eader]...there's a "Stuff that matters" part in there dude. Apparently someone screening the submissions thought this fit those criteria. Frankly I'd agree - I've found this discussion interesting...much moreso than the usual MS FUD or what stupid legal trick SCO was trying to pull this week. Personally I don't think ANY topic of discussion should be off limits here on good 'ol/. I would caution anyone from taking advice given here as gospel without conferring with someone with an educated and informed opinion.
All jokes aside when did iD become the butt of jokes for promising *anything*. They have never promised any release date aside from 'when it's done'. Yeah D3 has been in development a while but not *that* long. From what I'm reading gamers better get used to long development cycles for cutting edge games. The content for this stuff is getting ever more difficult and time consuming to create - especially for smaller shops...ala iD.
I'm typing this on my Dell D800 (1.6GHz P-M, 1GB RAM, nVidia GF4-4200) and I have to say since I bought this I haven't used my desktop a whole lot. This thing plays BF1942 great (as well as all the other FPS games I tried on it), compiles code quickly, and has a gorgeous 1920x1200 LCD that's very bright and doesn't display any image ghosting from what I can tell. This is the first notebook PC I've had that I would call a true desktop replacement. They've come a long way in the last couple of years.
They must have neglected to mention their new 'Fuel Cell Killer' tech that uses Plutonium rods to keep the thing powered up. S'pose? Honestly though I'm wondering why it weighs that much. I'm not one to quibble about the weight - my D800, which I love btw, has a lot of those features with a fsk'ing gorgeous display, and although a little on the heavy side for a notebook PC is not lacking in traditional desktop PC features at all. This is the first notebook I've had that I'd really call a desktop replacement.
"The rules at the time were that any Cuban who made it to USA soil was eligible for asylum."
Rules be damned...the truth is a little kid probably doesn't give a flying fuck about your immigration law and would rather be with his Dad than a pawn in some international pissing match to advance the agendas of people who down't even know him.
And are these 'horrid monsters in sereious need of redesign' actually running the whole company? I seriously doubt it. Access has its place. I've worked in several medium-sized businesses where Access was used as a front end to a more serious DB and and with Excel as an input tool to a more 'serious' backend DB. Yeah...even though they were produced by MS they worked and saved a lot of time and money. The important thing is to use the proper tool for the job...if you're looking for high-availability and multi-million record tables MS Access ought NOT be your choice. If you need to do some quick and dirty analysis of some data it could very well be an easy way to get your answer. The person handing their corporate DBA responsibilities to 'Joe' in accounting is the person at fault in your scenario mentioned above...not MS. They produced a tool...what you do with it is up to you. Just like any other piece of productivity software, if you think it's the hammer for every nail you're going to get a nasty surprise before too long.
'Wake up, RIAA. The whole friggin' INTERNET "could" have pr0n on it, so why don't we shut it down, for the good of mankind?'
I'm sure the RIAA is fully aware of this - which is probably why they *don't* mention the entire Internet as a problem. All a lot of people know of the Internet is the great 'Information Superhighway' and how wonderful it is. It is in the RIAA's best interest to separate out the P2P networks as the seedy underbelly that needs to be dealt with. Their task now is convincing Joe Senator/Jane Congressperson of it. The RIAA is playing the game and doing it effectively. They're playing politicians, courts, and media to get what they want and so far everything seems to be going their way...with the exception of stopping file sharing. You don't see anyone on Fox News Sunday or Tim Russert's show questioning exactly how the RIAA got the authority to go into anyone's PC and poke around to gain evidence to sue it's user but that's what needs to happen. People need to understand just how much power has been handed to corporate entities and how much influence their lobby groups have. I imagine it is going to have to get a lot worse before it gets better though...
When you invite comparisons such as you have you dilute the significance of what really happened as a result of Hitler's regime. Either you are ignorant of the true atrocities that occurred in that era or you wrote it trolling for a response. I do have an undergrad in history and I'm aware of what went on then. Let me tell you MS is not Hitler - like many successful corporations they want dominance IN THEIR MARKETS not over what I say and do. I don't think they want to kill me for using Linux or going to a church that Bill doesn't attend. I've yet to hear any cogent or otherwise sensible argument that explains to me how MS wants to control what I read, eat, drive, live, the women I can date, etc, etc, etc. I'd wager most companies in IT (Sun, Oracle, and even some of/.'s beloved OSS brethern) aspire to have the power MS does and, if able, would resort to many of the same tactics to get there.
BS. The US military has been paid for by MS and their lobbying goons. There was no choice about it, it was a higher up decision that was paid for by MS.
BS? Really? When the story actually appeared on/. some 'in the know' people actually said the choice to replace some of this stuff (some of it Sun Solaris) would be cost effective and *good* for the end user experience. Do you have any proof MS' lobbying goons paid for this and there was no choice or is this more anything-but-MS FUD we see so often?
I don't feel MS has taken any of my freedoms I can write on/. about how misguided you are and read about how you think I wear panties (...I don't btw). I use RH, W2k, and Solaris everyday. They all have their good part and bad parts - Linux ain't the hammer for every nail. I just don't think denying some Philadelphia kid access to a PC because the people donating it are monopolists is a good thing. I do think contributing to a new school is better than subsidizing 1 million more Xbox-en.
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I guess when he says your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush, Or Al Qaeda I don't take that as an endorsement of Kerry. Being holed up in the mountains of Afghanistan he must be out of touch because from what Kerry says he would more apt to go after OBL and Al Qaeda than trying to avenge one of his father's mistakes...but I digress.
You've (for effect perhaps?) left off a lot of people in the free world who would love to see some regime change in the good 'ol USA. Take a poll in Europe or even your neighbors and see what they think of Dubya and his policies...it isn't just the terrorists and commies who want him out.
Where exactly did OBL actually say he wanted Kerry to win? From what he said last week I gathered it did not matter who won but that attacks would continue if US poilicy in Arab nations did not change.
Copyright, patents and some of the ridiculous laws and penalties we've seen out of the US recently simply are not on the radar screen of most Americans. It isn't until more laws like this are passed and little Janie and Jimmy (hopefully the offspring of one of the braindead Congressman) go to prison for trading the latest Britney song that someone will stand up and say 'WTF have you been doing in the Senate?'. One of these laws will eventually be the straw the breaks the camel's back.
Ciao Hotmail! Access from OE was the only reason I've kept Hotmail now that I've got a Gmail account. Thanks MS though for catchin' the spam.
That's great and all. Let's just put this to the American people and see if they're satisfied with the rate of success compared to the amount of money they're dumping into maintaining a fat-cat bureaucracy. I'm a huge fan of space exploration but seeing what great thing NASA did early on, with much less, compared to the blunders they've made lately really makes me wonder.
So if you hate WinME so much why do you still have it on your machine? You've got lots of options dude...leaving an OS on your PC that behaves in the manner you describe probably says more about you than it does MS.
I have this on my resume [sysadmin and scientific software in Antarctica, along with much more]. But it apparently it doesn't impress employers
You thought writing on your resume you were sysadmin to a system left open and compromised 2x would impress someone?
"There's also a quite a bit of ego clashing because some of the CS profs feel that they could do a better job if they were in charge..."
...and the IT department could probably do a much better job if they had more money to work with. In my experience it's not that people *want* to cut corners it has more to do with project realities. You don't always get to do what you'd like.
I agree with your 'cop out' arguement, people are not pirating as a protest to record companies feeding us bad music. I believe they do it because it's easy and it's cheap. Personally I download music either from aritsts I don't know of and want to 'try out', CDs I know only have one or two good songs on them, or to see what a fav bands new album sounds like before it hits the stores. Case in point - I'm a huge fan of slipknot and Tool. I purchased both of these artists new releases when they came out BUT I d/l'ed the mp3s I found on p2p networks before I could purchase the CD. I purchased them too because upon release they were a reasonable $14.99CDN. I've seen lots of CD priced at $24.99 which for some reason I will not buy no matter how many songs I actually like on the CD. I realize there are some moral and logical inconsistencies in my buying patterns but that's what they are. There is a price and quality (quality being to MY tastes, certainly no everyone's) point at which I find a CD to be a good buy. The little goodies like downloadable videos and bonus tracks available to CD purchasers are a good idea too IMO...adding value to the purchased product, that's a step in the right direction.
In my opinion most of those saying they buy all the CDs from which they pirate or attempt to take the moral high ground are generally liars. Admit it people...you just like getting something for nothing.
There's another argument too...could it not be that p2p and other forms of filesharing are simply capitalism at work bringing music to it's true value. Maybe in the future musical artists don't get to be multi-millionaires maybe making music people enjoy doesn't make you fabulously rich, jsut comfortable? Without a monopoly on distribution the record industry cannot as easily fix the price of a given CD but there is a price the consumer will pay for a value added product even if there is a near-free alternative.
It seems to me I've said this before here but I really don't get why studios give a damn about this problem. Maybe its just me but I don't kow why anyone would prefer to watch a monoaural and sort-of-focussed 'copy' from a video camera in their living room (or even worse, on their PC) over a Dolby Digital version of the same film for $8 in a theatre. I can see where digital copy pirated DVDs are an issue but the 'shaky cam'...hell even steady cam versions taped with video cameras aren't in no way a replacement for seeing a film in the theatre IMO...
Dude...It's spelled S A R C A S M
Why is it lame to include it as an 'ask slashdot'? RTFH[eader]...there's a "Stuff that matters" part in there dude. Apparently someone screening the submissions thought this fit those criteria. Frankly I'd agree - I've found this discussion interesting...much moreso than the usual MS FUD or what stupid legal trick SCO was trying to pull this week. Personally I don't think ANY topic of discussion should be off limits here on good 'ol /. I would caution anyone from taking advice given here as gospel without conferring with someone with an educated and informed opinion.
All jokes aside when did iD become the butt of jokes for promising *anything*. They have never promised any release date aside from 'when it's done'. Yeah D3 has been in development a while but not *that* long. From what I'm reading gamers better get used to long development cycles for cutting edge games. The content for this stuff is getting ever more difficult and time consuming to create - especially for smaller shops...ala iD.
I'm typing this on my Dell D800 (1.6GHz P-M, 1GB RAM, nVidia GF4-4200) and I have to say since I bought this I haven't used my desktop a whole lot. This thing plays BF1942 great (as well as all the other FPS games I tried on it), compiles code quickly, and has a gorgeous 1920x1200 LCD that's very bright and doesn't display any image ghosting from what I can tell. This is the first notebook PC I've had that I would call a true desktop replacement. They've come a long way in the last couple of years.
They must have neglected to mention their new 'Fuel Cell Killer' tech that uses Plutonium rods to keep the thing powered up. S'pose? Honestly though I'm wondering why it weighs that much. I'm not one to quibble about the weight - my D800, which I love btw, has a lot of those features with a fsk'ing gorgeous display, and although a little on the heavy side for a notebook PC is not lacking in traditional desktop PC features at all. This is the first notebook I've had that I'd really call a desktop replacement.
"The rules at the time were that any Cuban who made it to USA soil was eligible for asylum."
Rules be damned...the truth is a little kid probably doesn't give a flying fuck about your immigration law and would rather be with his Dad than a pawn in some international pissing match to advance the agendas of people who down't even know him.
And are these 'horrid monsters in sereious need of redesign' actually running the whole company? I seriously doubt it. Access has its place. I've worked in several medium-sized businesses where Access was used as a front end to a more serious DB and and with Excel as an input tool to a more 'serious' backend DB. Yeah...even though they were produced by MS they worked and saved a lot of time and money. The important thing is to use the proper tool for the job...if you're looking for high-availability and multi-million record tables MS Access ought NOT be your choice. If you need to do some quick and dirty analysis of some data it could very well be an easy way to get your answer. The person handing their corporate DBA responsibilities to 'Joe' in accounting is the person at fault in your scenario mentioned above...not MS. They produced a tool...what you do with it is up to you. Just like any other piece of productivity software, if you think it's the hammer for every nail you're going to get a nasty surprise before too long.
Last time I checked MS didn't make processors...maybe you meant Intel?
...or synergy...gawd I hate that word.
Uuhhhhh...a little over 2.2lbs in 1kg dude...
Hmmm, I wonder if Carly would care that they can replace him for less than 1/10th his salary and probably do as good of a job
Pssst...I won't tell anyone else...but he's a SHE!
Generalizations such as those spouted in the quoted article are always proven false when you look into them further.
Why is it when I read things like 'The Real Truth About ' I feel like I'm reading another propaganda piece by someone with an axe to grind?
'Wake up, RIAA. The whole friggin' INTERNET "could" have pr0n on it, so why don't we shut it down, for the good of mankind?'
I'm sure the RIAA is fully aware of this - which is probably why they *don't* mention the entire Internet as a problem. All a lot of people know of the Internet is the great 'Information Superhighway' and how wonderful it is. It is in the RIAA's best interest to separate out the P2P networks as the seedy underbelly that needs to be dealt with. Their task now is convincing Joe Senator/Jane Congressperson of it. The RIAA is playing the game and doing it effectively. They're playing politicians, courts, and media to get what they want and so far everything seems to be going their way...with the exception of stopping file sharing. You don't see anyone on Fox News Sunday or Tim Russert's show questioning exactly how the RIAA got the authority to go into anyone's PC and poke around to gain evidence to sue it's user but that's what needs to happen. People need to understand just how much power has been handed to corporate entities and how much influence their lobby groups have. I imagine it is going to have to get a lot worse before it gets better though...
When you invite comparisons such as you have you dilute the significance of what really happened as a result of Hitler's regime. Either you are ignorant of the true atrocities that occurred in that era or you wrote it trolling for a response. I do have an undergrad in history and I'm aware of what went on then. Let me tell you MS is not Hitler - like many successful corporations they want dominance IN THEIR MARKETS not over what I say and do. I don't think they want to kill me for using Linux or going to a church that Bill doesn't attend. I've yet to hear any cogent or otherwise sensible argument that explains to me how MS wants to control what I read, eat, drive, live, the women I can date, etc, etc, etc. I'd wager most companies in IT (Sun, Oracle, and even some of /.'s beloved OSS brethern) aspire to have the power MS does and, if able, would resort to many of the same tactics to get there.
/. some 'in the know' people actually said the choice to replace some of this stuff (some of it Sun Solaris) would be cost effective and *good* for the end user experience. Do you have any proof MS' lobbying goons paid for this and there was no choice or is this more anything-but-MS FUD we see so often?
/. about how misguided you are and read about how you think I wear panties (...I don't btw). I use RH, W2k, and Solaris everyday. They all have their good part and bad parts - Linux ain't the hammer for every nail. I just don't think denying some Philadelphia kid access to a PC because the people donating it are monopolists is a good thing. I do think contributing to a new school is better than subsidizing 1 million more Xbox-en.
BS. The US military has been paid for by MS and their lobbying goons. There was no choice about it, it was a higher up decision that was paid for by MS.
BS? Really? When the story actually appeared on
I don't feel MS has taken any of my freedoms I can write on