I think this change will be mostly symbolic. Many things in Windows, for example IE and WMP, are functionally profit centers. Other features such as networking and the like are necessities. People will still purchase unlicensed copies rather that live without the critical features.
But the changes are necessary. MS cannot sell a product for 1/10 the price in one part of the world and still say the product is worth the full price. So my suspicion is that the features will be disabled similar to the way some shareware is sold. Upgrading will enable all the features. There will probably be a hack to enable all features without paying the license fee. In any case, MS can now sell what is effectively the full product at a small fraction of list without running to dumping, monopoly, and other accusations.
It is difficult to make lots of money without letting go of absolute honesty. Some in the porn industry may have ties to the international slave trade. The same may be true for some in the meat packing industry. We don't know if all persons who work in the so-called sweat shops are there willingly. Many companies may pay off politicians to keep regulations off the books, even though they know the regulations will save lives. It is ignorant to assign the sins of a few people to an entire industry.
You may believe that sex is an immoral act. You may believe that showing people having appropriate mutualy satisfying sex is worse than showing a people bashing each others heads in, but that would be what you believe. Other people may believe it also, but that is not relevent either.
Addiction is critical to music. That is why the labels build up an artist instead of just hiring session musicians to play and sing related songs. Wide exposure on radio and TV to these artists makes them believe that the music is desirable. Exposure to the drug increasing the need for the drug.
Movies are the same way. In the early days, movies immitated each other with studio talent in the lead parts. Now we have franchises to satisfy the publics never ending quest for the exact same thing.
When people in the industry talk of copyright, there is none of the grand speechifying about revering artists and rewarding creativity, and the near-tearful paeans to the yeoman key grips and stunt men, as is favored by movie and record executives. Instead, there is just this: We spent a lot of money to get this stuff out to the market. Somebody else is making money off of it. We want the money.
Plain, simple, understandable, and honest. What else do we need.
There is really nothing new about this. It has nothing to do with alleged copyright violations or lack of sales or even the economy. It has to do with discounts given to large purchasers and abuse of those discounts.
Ten years ago the victims were the very small sole-proprietor shop. The record companies would sell the CDs at wholesale list while the bigger chain shops would get a deep discount. The small shop could never afford to put discs on sale, so people would go the big shops. You went to these very small shops for independent music, which was more reasonable priced, but seldom bought anything from a major label.
Now we have even bigger stores wanting bigger discount. One problem with the huge stores is that they want a price for the anticipated number of discs shipped to all their warehouses. As I saw when i did some wholesale stuff, smaller stores can often only get the discount for actual product shipped to each warehouse. This creates a huge disparity in price, and the merely big store cannot compete.
To me, the fact that the music chains are going out of bussiness is irrelevent. Whether I buy music at Tower or Sam Goody or Target or Walmart is meaningless. They all employ the same teenager at minimum wage. Most of the useful music stores are already gone.
I would like to buy physical media. However, is the physical media going to work the way I need it to work? Will it be of The Standard Format that works equaly well with all devices that are meant to convert the data in that format.
If I cannot be certain of that, then why buy the format. This goes for downloads and physicals discs. If I can get a higher quality unlicensed product, one that is not encumbered by devices that do unknown things to the quality, then why pay money?
For the record I do buy cds and pay iTunes for tracks. However, neither of these, given the aggressive copy protection, can compete with unlicensed downloads for popular stuff.
Which is really the point. The school has them for 6.5 to 7 hours. In that time an american school will teach them standard english, math, science, and how to effectively socialize with other kids. The rest of the time, the summers, and vacations, parents are expected to educate the child. I was lucky because I had a good public school education and good parents and a good religious community. I probably learned as much at home as at school.
The problem with school is that the school is increasingly being expect to provide all the education, which is impossible. School provide an exposure to diverse opportunities and opinions with must be expanded upon at home. The second problem is that shcool is increasingly becoming a profit center for corporations and religious entities.
At home the kid can play, which really means simulating social situations and non-threating problem solving. This, however, requires the parent to kick the kid off the TV or video game.
First, it is common that if you do something, you will get better at it. Therefore, if you spend your time writing you will get better at it. I think this is globally true because we naturally want people to understand what we are saying, and such understanding requires that we write in a commonly understandable fashion.
As far as education is concerned, many people will learn no matter what. They will be curious. They will be inquisitive. They will get their parents to teach them everything their parents know. For many people this will be enough. For many people school will interfere with this process. Which is what school is supposed to do, and at it's best the results are great.
In the US school can even out the rough edges of a child, integrate that child into the dominant culture, and provide the uniformity the child needs to succeed. I know, the implications of some of this is scary, and I find it sort of scary, but it is probably necessary to maintain a single country.
As the most base level, if I am running a business, I need a predictable set of employees. At elite levels, these employees are obviously trained through prep school and elite colleges to meet uniform expectations. For the blue collar worker, much of this is done through the public school. These schools make sure that the worker can speak and understand the dominant dialect. These schools make sure the worker understands that his or her religious beliefs need to be mellowed in the work place. These schools make sure that the worker understands that bathroom breaks are to be few and far between. These schools make sure the worker can work with a diverse group of people.
Is there other ways to do this, sure. But if a child is getting exposure only to a limited set of opinions, a limited set of social standards, and a limited set language, then that child, unless blessed with other advantages, is going to find it hard to fit into the US as an adult.
Finally, one hope the child and parent understands that education does not necessary happen and is definitely not limited to the school. The child spends maybe 30 or so hours in school a week. There are double that number of hours left over each week, not to mention the summer. This time is there for the parent and student to use or waste.
My guess is that if it were possible to buy SCO at market cap, it would have been done. It is probably not possible because there are relatively few stocks owned by private investors. Furthermore, one can surmise, based on the original IBM lawsuit, that the insiders believe the company to be worth a few hundred million dollars. Therefore, any friendly takeover would involve paying twice as much for the company as it is worth. While such things are done, it does not appear to be in any of the current players best interest to do so.
The bottom line is that SCO is probably worthless. The values of the stock is to a few insiders, and the strategy is to keep the charade going so the stock will continue to be an attractive item to a few high end gamblers. By the time the SCO crashes, they will no longer be a problem because they will not be able to pay the lawyers
One of the big changes is that people do not take responsibility for their impact on the internet. To be sure, some of it is not the users responsibility. The ISP sacrifices out of the box security for profit. MS is only just now actively making their OS secure out of the box. But many of the problems occur because computer users are held by the hand and coddled, which is, realistically speaking, what one does for a customer.
But perhaps tough love is sometimes OK. For instance, when I was in the school almost everyone would forget to log out their account at least once. The standard procedure, which I noticed have been formalized into nice documentation on the net, was to edit their login.com to automatically log them off next time then tried to log in. This was a non-destructive instrument to help them learn to log off. It embarrassed the user by forcing them to ask for technical help, but did no damage to the account.
Of course, if all the viruses, worms, and DDOS attacked have not embarrassed MS or Windows users, it means they have no shame and probably cannot be rehabilitated. For the rest of the world, there is hope.
All one needs to do to hack the encryption is get a job at a liquor store, or at worst steal the device from a liquor store. It is not like these places are never robbed.
Now all you have to do is encrypt the new information with the known encrption.
Or better yet, just make sure the barcode on the altered document is illegible to the reader. A person should be able to find some store that will be willing to lose a sale simply because of defective equipment.
Re:What I think will be interesting is...
on
Google v. Microsoft
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· Score: 1
I think you are assuming a single search engine will work for all people. To paraphrase another response, conservatives tend to think there is exactly one good solution for every problem and they have it.
The MS search engine will be good and will fill a need. It may well be better in many ways than google. However, history tells us that MS will not be happy creating a good product, but will want to marginalize google into extinction. This will not be a good thing.
I would welcome anyone who creates a quality search engine. I worry that google controls what is known on the net. However, history also tells us that MS tends to exert a much more draconian control over information.
Re:It's like Netscape v. Microsoft in that...
on
Google v. Microsoft
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The quality issue is moot as well. IE was a piece of crap. Netscape was not so nearly a piece of crap. However, IE was everywhere. People designed for IE. Designed tools designed for IE. A lot of people had only used IE and thought that browsers were supposed to work that way. Therefore things appeared to work better on IE even though objectively IE was barely functional.
The battle is exactly the same. Google currently does not return the high quality results as it once did. To use google in IE requires some effort. Many people have only used MS, and do not know that there are other ways to do things. MS search is enable automatically. In fact, last time I checked it was very difficult not to have everything go through MS search.
Google will lose if MS is allowed to leverage it's platform. It would probably take very little to significantly impair the google tool bar in IE. MS can make it's search engine the only one that will work with the IE search button. MS can force all user connections, even fully qualified URLs, to pass through MS search engine.
Google can only win if MS follows the spirit on the settlement with the US goverment. If MS follows on the letter of the law, google could be in serious trouble by the end of the year.
The money is the issue. Sending a person to mars or the moon is more than just building a capsule. It is building infrastructure to make sure that the exploration can be done safely and as inexpensively as possible.
I do not believe it is resonable to design a single vehicle that will transport people from the earths gravity well to the rest of the solar system. We need to have vehicle that deliver people to LEO, vehicles that can transport cargo from the earth or LEO to the planets, vehicles that can trasport people from LEO to the moon and planets. Until we can get it to a few thousand dollars per kg, eveything is really too expensive to do on a large scale.
The US government will not fund these things. They want us to duplicate efforts of 40 years ago. we have been there and done that. We need infrastructure. It isn't sexy, but it is neccesary.
The Super Bowl is happening on Super Sunday. The National Football League(NFL), American Football Conference(AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC) will hold this contrived event to determine who is the best Football team in the world. Of course the rest of the world in not invited.
In this contest, between Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots, extremely wealthy men will forgo their normal environment and put on many pounds of gear to play whimped down version of Rugby. The winner of the game will be the champion.
Of course, this is entertainment so the true relevance is the demographic that it delivers to the advertisers. In this sense, the Super Bowl will once again fulfill it's primary mission.
One also suspects that many Americans, for the first time, will know the existence and location of Carolina.
Questionable Industries welcomes all Super Bowl guests to Houston. We will be scalping tickets on the corner of Fannin and Holly Hall. We will also be offering certified disease free hookers along Holly Hall and Murworth, conveniently grouped by age. The 18 year olds will be in the Excalades, the 19-21 year olds will be in the Explorers, and 21-25 will be in the Durangos. Hookers over this age will be conveniently located in their normal environment of the Holly Hall apartments. The males will be in the blue cars and females in the pink cars. Please do not be racist and expect certain ethnic types. We are a class operation!
A limited number of 12-18 year olds will be available in the customized vans. Younger hookers are available with 24 hours request, as they must be brought in from Mexico.
Re:Who else _isn't_ intrigued by the Super Bowl?
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
The biggest problem with the superbowl is the influx of the unwashed masses. Driving after a sporting event is dangerous enough with the drunken fans. Can you imagine what the impact of these uber fans are going to have.
As far as the light rail is concerned, people will just have to learn, and some people are just too stupid to learn these simple skills. Trains have been intersecting traffic for a very long time. Those of us with sense know how to avoid accidents. Those of us without sense die. Driving is dangerous. People Die.
All the accidents so far are caused because of driver error. The signs have been up for months. I have been practicing and learning how to deal with the tracks for months. I have seen others ignoring the signs and tracks. For example, on the second day the train was running I saw a police car stop on the tracks. Stupid behavior and stupid modeling for fellow citizens. And you know those white lines across the road? Those that tell the drivers where to stop and when pedestrian can walk? Drivers ignore them because the pedestrians aren't big enough to do any damage to the car. Ignore the lines now and you probably will die. No sympathy from anyone. Another rude person gone.
There is one place of serious danger to cars, a few stops that are dangerous to pedestrian, and few places of some confusion. In additions, some stations do not sufficiently protect the waiting passengers from passing trains. However, all in all, we are expected a significant increase in the intelligence of the remaining drivers in the next year.
This gets to the question of what a defense is responsible for. Groklaw, as it can be viewed as site for the defense against the SCO scourge, is not going to be fair and unbiased. No one should expect it to be.
In fact, no one is unbiased or fair. Fairness is for elementary students, mentally undeveloped high school and college students, and extremely stunted adults. The rest of us know that the world is not fair, and get really concern when a person in leadership requires things to be fair. In fact the fairness thing has come out lately because we are often subject to a single monolithic media which claims to deliver fair and unbiased news and views. Of course, since there is no such thing, such media is lying. Intelligent people gather information from a number of biased sources and then integrate them into personal opinions.
What can be said about groklaw is that they appear to be very professional. As such, it is unlikely that they would make statements that are indefensible. Also, because I assume they do not have a quid pro quo situation against SCO, they would have little reason to actively formulate misleading opinions. If anyone is looking for truth, go ask what you consider a deity.
It is arguable that Mac BU is the driving part of MS, at least since the mid 80's.
As I said before, the one innovative thing MS has ever done is creating Excel. It was a briliant intergration. It was the beginning of office. It was for the Mac. It took years for MS to generate a somewhat useful WIMP interface and then apply that interface to products for thier own platform, while the Mac interfaces were immidiately developed enough to allow MS to create the new Excel and Word. To this day, the Mac Office is the superior product.(Except for a time when they tries to destroy by imposing the Windows methodology).
It is also quite arguable that the experience designing programs for the Mac filtered into the large corporate body and allowed them to recreate the WIMP model in what is now Windows.
It is also interesting to note that some of the best books on programming came out of the Mac BU. MS does know how to program big, and the poeple doing it for the Mac are some the best of the best.
God, what have you been smokin'? Or perhaps you grew up in a private school in the suburbs?
Just to be clear, I somewhat agree with you, except for the religious babble. If a person can keep his or her nose, clean, study hard, and ignore all the negative forces then there is a good chance he or she can succeed.
However there are two issue. First, education is harder for some people to get than others. If you are lucky enough to have been born into money, or have a parent that is willing to advocate for you, then a good public education can be had. Unfortunately for many kids, their potential is destroyed by being in bad classes. I see it all the time. One or two good smart kids in a classroom filled with twenty other not so good and not so smart kids. The other kids are yelling, playing, doing anything to avoid getting an education. The few smart kids are penalized for not having the right parents. It is extremely difficult to learn in such a situation. The best of the best succeed. But they face obstacles later on.
The main one being that the leaders all go to prep schools and certain colleges. Again, the best of the best can raise themselves to the prep school and the college. I have seen it. It happens. The kids who succeed are brilliant beyond imagination. They have managed to avoid the gangsters who want to steal books and money on the way to school, the police who will incarcerate a kid and destroy his or her life for a tiny amount of drugs, and the stigma of doing badly on a test that no one prepared you for.
Of course, if you are rich all these problems disappear. Private schools in which the teachers must make sure the kids pass or lose their jobs(read that as you wish). Private neighborhood police who will take a drunk adolescent home instead of to the police station. SAT prep courses. Drug rehab programs that never get listed on the kids record. Money to pay for college, or build a wing for a building, or whatever.
And of course religion is very civilizing. I spent many years in the toughest public schools. The only time I ever got beat up was in a private baptist school. When i reported the beating, a series of events transpired which resulted in the principle of the school beating me for a transgression committed by the boys who beat me up. All because it was clear I was not the proper religion. And let's not forget those religious people on TV that spout bigotry and hate in exchange for money. I mean really, would Jesus wear a Rolex?
We all can be made better through education. Unfortunately, in the US a good education is getting harder to come by, and those that need it the most brag that all they ever read is a fishing magazine.
Finally, poverty happens. Some people can spend their childhood on drugs, sleeping with every pussy around, dodge the draft, and extort money from the public coffers, and still end up the most powerful person in the world. Others have the unfortunate luck to born to a mother who is clueless, and whose husband gets put in jail for posing a small amount of dope. Perhaps it is true that god just like some of us more than others. Which is fine with me. I am going to be with feynman and einstien and ghandi and all the other cool people. You can heaven with hitler and the other happy, healthy and compansionate christians.
That is your mistake. You put it on you arm or waist belt. That way you look more sexy.
What we really need in the review is some objective data on whether an Apple or Dell is better at helping you pick up the evening's companion at the gym.
So what. Education costs money. A cheap college charges 3K a year and it is very easy to reach $11K. What, really, is another 1K on top of this.
As far the usefulness of such books, that is really up to the student. College is not high school. The professor is not there to hold your hand and walk you though the books. The professor has less than three hours a week to teach a class. That time is not enough time for the student to learn. That is why it is recommended that the student review all pertinent material before class. Such material may include books, CDs, etc, much of which will never be covered in the class. Not all students will need to do this. Not all students have the skill or discipline to do this. In either case, as long as the professor is communicating effectively, it is not the professor's fault.
As far as new editions are concerned, the faculty has all the power. If the faculty so chooses, they can recommend an old edition. They can then talk about the updates in class or have additional resources for the students. Of course this costs the professor time that might be better used. And how much is this going to save? $300 a year. Perhaps if you are at some university in which the students have no money, or are not going to be motivated to use the book, this is a significant savings. But if the student is paying the $10K average tuition and fees? It would be like buying a top of line computer and then putting in the cheapest no name memory upgrade.
There is an Steve Harvey show in which he is trying to start class and none of he students pencils or paper. He says something like 'I see 5000 worth of shoes and not a pencil among you.' And i see this all the time. Kids who always have a dollar every day for candy, but can't come up with 50 cents for a pack of paper or 25 cents for a pencil. I have also seen a documentary on college kids in Britain complaining about high tuition while chain smoking the incredible expensive cigarettes.
If education has little value to you, you will always complain about the costs. If you have gone throug life expecting knowlelege to be spoon fed to you, then you will always complain when you have to earn you knowlege.
Will you pay more the simple customized stuff?
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KISS
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· Score: 1
I don't think the author has a clue about what goes into mass market electronics or what is really needed.
First if you buy a mass market electronic, it probably has a commodity base. This means that there are a few standard chipsets, or whatever, that give the basic functionality to the unit. it doesn't matter if the manufacturer does not want the feature, it would be expensive to not have the feature and make little sense not to implement the feature once you have it. This is why every TV has a sleep function. This is why most every camera has digital zoom. This is why almost every modern cell phone has a clock.
Then there are the profit driven motives. With phones these include text messaging, web browsing, and customized rings. Many customers do not want these. However, the phone company is not going to want to sell a phone without these features. Such a phone represents lost revenue potential.
The stupidest thing in the article is the assertion that simple things cannot be bought. This is absolutely wrong. Simple things are often more expensive, but they can be had. These simple products generally represent a high quality factor and tend to fall outside the realm of mass market consumer product. If any of y'all remember the discussion of cameras a while back, you will remember that a digital point and shoot is around the same price as a traditional Nikon camera body. Most people who are going to spend that kind of money will have the digital camera and ignore the useless features. Complaining about this is like complaining about a kitchen you never use.
It does change every time, but the essence is the same. The aggressive word play. The constant irreverence to the world and the norms. Jesus being refereed to as a guy nailed to a pole(or the like). Mice and dolphins ruling the world. The human character being the least important person in the galaxy. The earth is destroyed and no one cares.
This kind of self depreciation is not American, and certainly not hollywood. If Arthur suddenly becomes a noble person, or there is grief over the loss of the planet, or, god forbid, it becomes Arthur's duty to redeem Ford and Zaphod, or even worse he gets Trillian, then the whole things falls apart.
If this was mirimax, I might be more hopeful. But it is disney. Disney is all about the conventional status quo. It is why they have to have Pixar do their animation, even though Disney was once the greatest animation studio in the world. It is why they might lose Pixar, unless Eisner crawls to Jobs on his hand and knees.
I hope is does change. I have mentioned some changes I would like. But I don't want to see this movie as another example where the studio bought the rights only to use the familiar name to sell tickets, while ignoring the fundamentals of the story.
Slashdot Mirror
But the changes are necessary. MS cannot sell a product for 1/10 the price in one part of the world and still say the product is worth the full price. So my suspicion is that the features will be disabled similar to the way some shareware is sold. Upgrading will enable all the features. There will probably be a hack to enable all features without paying the license fee. In any case, MS can now sell what is effectively the full product at a small fraction of list without running to dumping, monopoly, and other accusations.
but don't take moderation to excess
You may believe that sex is an immoral act. You may believe that showing people having appropriate mutualy satisfying sex is worse than showing a people bashing each others heads in, but that would be what you believe. Other people may believe it also, but that is not relevent either.
Movies are the same way. In the early days, movies immitated each other with studio talent in the lead parts. Now we have franchises to satisfy the publics never ending quest for the exact same thing.
Plain, simple, understandable, and honest. What else do we need.
Ten years ago the victims were the very small sole-proprietor shop. The record companies would sell the CDs at wholesale list while the bigger chain shops would get a deep discount. The small shop could never afford to put discs on sale, so people would go the big shops. You went to these very small shops for independent music, which was more reasonable priced, but seldom bought anything from a major label.
Now we have even bigger stores wanting bigger discount. One problem with the huge stores is that they want a price for the anticipated number of discs shipped to all their warehouses. As I saw when i did some wholesale stuff, smaller stores can often only get the discount for actual product shipped to each warehouse. This creates a huge disparity in price, and the merely big store cannot compete.
To me, the fact that the music chains are going out of bussiness is irrelevent. Whether I buy music at Tower or Sam Goody or Target or Walmart is meaningless. They all employ the same teenager at minimum wage. Most of the useful music stores are already gone.
If I cannot be certain of that, then why buy the format. This goes for downloads and physicals discs. If I can get a higher quality unlicensed product, one that is not encumbered by devices that do unknown things to the quality, then why pay money?
For the record I do buy cds and pay iTunes for tracks. However, neither of these, given the aggressive copy protection, can compete with unlicensed downloads for popular stuff.
The problem with school is that the school is increasingly being expect to provide all the education, which is impossible. School provide an exposure to diverse opportunities and opinions with must be expanded upon at home. The second problem is that shcool is increasingly becoming a profit center for corporations and religious entities.
At home the kid can play, which really means simulating social situations and non-threating problem solving. This, however, requires the parent to kick the kid off the TV or video game.
As far as education is concerned, many people will learn no matter what. They will be curious. They will be inquisitive. They will get their parents to teach them everything their parents know. For many people this will be enough. For many people school will interfere with this process. Which is what school is supposed to do, and at it's best the results are great.
In the US school can even out the rough edges of a child, integrate that child into the dominant culture, and provide the uniformity the child needs to succeed. I know, the implications of some of this is scary, and I find it sort of scary, but it is probably necessary to maintain a single country.
As the most base level, if I am running a business, I need a predictable set of employees. At elite levels, these employees are obviously trained through prep school and elite colleges to meet uniform expectations. For the blue collar worker, much of this is done through the public school. These schools make sure that the worker can speak and understand the dominant dialect. These schools make sure the worker understands that his or her religious beliefs need to be mellowed in the work place. These schools make sure that the worker understands that bathroom breaks are to be few and far between. These schools make sure the worker can work with a diverse group of people.
Is there other ways to do this, sure. But if a child is getting exposure only to a limited set of opinions, a limited set of social standards, and a limited set language, then that child, unless blessed with other advantages, is going to find it hard to fit into the US as an adult.
Finally, one hope the child and parent understands that education does not necessary happen and is definitely not limited to the school. The child spends maybe 30 or so hours in school a week. There are double that number of hours left over each week, not to mention the summer. This time is there for the parent and student to use or waste.
The bottom line is that SCO is probably worthless. The values of the stock is to a few insiders, and the strategy is to keep the charade going so the stock will continue to be an attractive item to a few high end gamblers. By the time the SCO crashes, they will no longer be a problem because they will not be able to pay the lawyers
But perhaps tough love is sometimes OK. For instance, when I was in the school almost everyone would forget to log out their account at least once. The standard procedure, which I noticed have been formalized into nice documentation on the net, was to edit their login.com to automatically log them off next time then tried to log in. This was a non-destructive instrument to help them learn to log off. It embarrassed the user by forcing them to ask for technical help, but did no damage to the account.
Of course, if all the viruses, worms, and DDOS attacked have not embarrassed MS or Windows users, it means they have no shame and probably cannot be rehabilitated. For the rest of the world, there is hope.
All one needs to do to hack the encryption is get a job at a liquor store, or at worst steal the device from a liquor store. It is not like these places are never robbed.
Now all you have to do is encrypt the new information with the known encrption.
Or better yet, just make sure the barcode on the altered document is illegible to the reader. A person should be able to find some store that will be willing to lose a sale simply because of defective equipment.
The MS search engine will be good and will fill a need. It may well be better in many ways than google. However, history tells us that MS will not be happy creating a good product, but will want to marginalize google into extinction. This will not be a good thing.
I would welcome anyone who creates a quality search engine. I worry that google controls what is known on the net. However, history also tells us that MS tends to exert a much more draconian control over information.
The battle is exactly the same. Google currently does not return the high quality results as it once did. To use google in IE requires some effort. Many people have only used MS, and do not know that there are other ways to do things. MS search is enable automatically. In fact, last time I checked it was very difficult not to have everything go through MS search.
Google will lose if MS is allowed to leverage it's platform. It would probably take very little to significantly impair the google tool bar in IE. MS can make it's search engine the only one that will work with the IE search button. MS can force all user connections, even fully qualified URLs, to pass through MS search engine.
Google can only win if MS follows the spirit on the settlement with the US goverment. If MS follows on the letter of the law, google could be in serious trouble by the end of the year.
I do not believe it is resonable to design a single vehicle that will transport people from the earths gravity well to the rest of the solar system. We need to have vehicle that deliver people to LEO, vehicles that can transport cargo from the earth or LEO to the planets, vehicles that can trasport people from LEO to the moon and planets. Until we can get it to a few thousand dollars per kg, eveything is really too expensive to do on a large scale.
The US government will not fund these things. They want us to duplicate efforts of 40 years ago. we have been there and done that. We need infrastructure. It isn't sexy, but it is neccesary.
That way, those who want to support indies can more easily buy the music.
In this contest, between Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots, extremely wealthy men will forgo their normal environment and put on many pounds of gear to play whimped down version of Rugby. The winner of the game will be the champion.
Of course, this is entertainment so the true relevance is the demographic that it delivers to the advertisers. In this sense, the Super Bowl will once again fulfill it's primary mission.
One also suspects that many Americans, for the first time, will know the existence and location of Carolina.
Questionable Industries welcomes all Super Bowl guests to Houston. We will be scalping tickets on the corner of Fannin and Holly Hall. We will also be offering certified disease free hookers along Holly Hall and Murworth, conveniently grouped by age. The 18 year olds will be in the Excalades, the 19-21 year olds will be in the Explorers, and 21-25 will be in the Durangos. Hookers over this age will be conveniently located in their normal environment of the Holly Hall apartments. The males will be in the blue cars and females in the pink cars. Please do not be racist and expect certain ethnic types. We are a class operation!
A limited number of 12-18 year olds will be available in the customized vans. Younger hookers are available with 24 hours request, as they must be brought in from Mexico.
As far as the light rail is concerned, people will just have to learn, and some people are just too stupid to learn these simple skills. Trains have been intersecting traffic for a very long time. Those of us with sense know how to avoid accidents. Those of us without sense die. Driving is dangerous. People Die.
All the accidents so far are caused because of driver error. The signs have been up for months. I have been practicing and learning how to deal with the tracks for months. I have seen others ignoring the signs and tracks. For example, on the second day the train was running I saw a police car stop on the tracks. Stupid behavior and stupid modeling for fellow citizens. And you know those white lines across the road? Those that tell the drivers where to stop and when pedestrian can walk? Drivers ignore them because the pedestrians aren't big enough to do any damage to the car. Ignore the lines now and you probably will die. No sympathy from anyone. Another rude person gone.
There is one place of serious danger to cars, a few stops that are dangerous to pedestrian, and few places of some confusion. In additions, some stations do not sufficiently protect the waiting passengers from passing trains. However, all in all, we are expected a significant increase in the intelligence of the remaining drivers in the next year.
In fact, no one is unbiased or fair. Fairness is for elementary students, mentally undeveloped high school and college students, and extremely stunted adults. The rest of us know that the world is not fair, and get really concern when a person in leadership requires things to be fair. In fact the fairness thing has come out lately because we are often subject to a single monolithic media which claims to deliver fair and unbiased news and views. Of course, since there is no such thing, such media is lying. Intelligent people gather information from a number of biased sources and then integrate them into personal opinions.
What can be said about groklaw is that they appear to be very professional. As such, it is unlikely that they would make statements that are indefensible. Also, because I assume they do not have a quid pro quo situation against SCO, they would have little reason to actively formulate misleading opinions. If anyone is looking for truth, go ask what you consider a deity.
As I said before, the one innovative thing MS has ever done is creating Excel. It was a briliant intergration. It was the beginning of office. It was for the Mac. It took years for MS to generate a somewhat useful WIMP interface and then apply that interface to products for thier own platform, while the Mac interfaces were immidiately developed enough to allow MS to create the new Excel and Word. To this day, the Mac Office is the superior product.(Except for a time when they tries to destroy by imposing the Windows methodology).
It is also quite arguable that the experience designing programs for the Mac filtered into the large corporate body and allowed them to recreate the WIMP model in what is now Windows.
It is also interesting to note that some of the best books on programming came out of the Mac BU. MS does know how to program big, and the poeple doing it for the Mac are some the best of the best.
Just to be clear, I somewhat agree with you, except for the religious babble. If a person can keep his or her nose, clean, study hard, and ignore all the negative forces then there is a good chance he or she can succeed.
However there are two issue. First, education is harder for some people to get than others. If you are lucky enough to have been born into money, or have a parent that is willing to advocate for you, then a good public education can be had. Unfortunately for many kids, their potential is destroyed by being in bad classes. I see it all the time. One or two good smart kids in a classroom filled with twenty other not so good and not so smart kids. The other kids are yelling, playing, doing anything to avoid getting an education. The few smart kids are penalized for not having the right parents. It is extremely difficult to learn in such a situation. The best of the best succeed. But they face obstacles later on.
The main one being that the leaders all go to prep schools and certain colleges. Again, the best of the best can raise themselves to the prep school and the college. I have seen it. It happens. The kids who succeed are brilliant beyond imagination. They have managed to avoid the gangsters who want to steal books and money on the way to school, the police who will incarcerate a kid and destroy his or her life for a tiny amount of drugs, and the stigma of doing badly on a test that no one prepared you for.
Of course, if you are rich all these problems disappear. Private schools in which the teachers must make sure the kids pass or lose their jobs(read that as you wish). Private neighborhood police who will take a drunk adolescent home instead of to the police station. SAT prep courses. Drug rehab programs that never get listed on the kids record. Money to pay for college, or build a wing for a building, or whatever.
And of course religion is very civilizing. I spent many years in the toughest public schools. The only time I ever got beat up was in a private baptist school. When i reported the beating, a series of events transpired which resulted in the principle of the school beating me for a transgression committed by the boys who beat me up. All because it was clear I was not the proper religion. And let's not forget those religious people on TV that spout bigotry and hate in exchange for money. I mean really, would Jesus wear a Rolex?
We all can be made better through education. Unfortunately, in the US a good education is getting harder to come by, and those that need it the most brag that all they ever read is a fishing magazine.
Finally, poverty happens. Some people can spend their childhood on drugs, sleeping with every pussy around, dodge the draft, and extort money from the public coffers, and still end up the most powerful person in the world. Others have the unfortunate luck to born to a mother who is clueless, and whose husband gets put in jail for posing a small amount of dope. Perhaps it is true that god just like some of us more than others. Which is fine with me. I am going to be with feynman and einstien and ghandi and all the other cool people. You can heaven with hitler and the other happy, healthy and compansionate christians.
What we really need in the review is some objective data on whether an Apple or Dell is better at helping you pick up the evening's companion at the gym.
As far the usefulness of such books, that is really up to the student. College is not high school. The professor is not there to hold your hand and walk you though the books. The professor has less than three hours a week to teach a class. That time is not enough time for the student to learn. That is why it is recommended that the student review all pertinent material before class. Such material may include books, CDs, etc, much of which will never be covered in the class. Not all students will need to do this. Not all students have the skill or discipline to do this. In either case, as long as the professor is communicating effectively, it is not the professor's fault.
As far as new editions are concerned, the faculty has all the power. If the faculty so chooses, they can recommend an old edition. They can then talk about the updates in class or have additional resources for the students. Of course this costs the professor time that might be better used. And how much is this going to save? $300 a year. Perhaps if you are at some university in which the students have no money, or are not going to be motivated to use the book, this is a significant savings. But if the student is paying the $10K average tuition and fees? It would be like buying a top of line computer and then putting in the cheapest no name memory upgrade.
There is an Steve Harvey show in which he is trying to start class and none of he students pencils or paper. He says something like 'I see 5000 worth of shoes and not a pencil among you.' And i see this all the time. Kids who always have a dollar every day for candy, but can't come up with 50 cents for a pack of paper or 25 cents for a pencil. I have also seen a documentary on college kids in Britain complaining about high tuition while chain smoking the incredible expensive cigarettes.
If education has little value to you, you will always complain about the costs. If you have gone throug life expecting knowlelege to be spoon fed to you, then you will always complain when you have to earn you knowlege.
First if you buy a mass market electronic, it probably has a commodity base. This means that there are a few standard chipsets, or whatever, that give the basic functionality to the unit. it doesn't matter if the manufacturer does not want the feature, it would be expensive to not have the feature and make little sense not to implement the feature once you have it. This is why every TV has a sleep function. This is why most every camera has digital zoom. This is why almost every modern cell phone has a clock.
Then there are the profit driven motives. With phones these include text messaging, web browsing, and customized rings. Many customers do not want these. However, the phone company is not going to want to sell a phone without these features. Such a phone represents lost revenue potential.
The stupidest thing in the article is the assertion that simple things cannot be bought. This is absolutely wrong. Simple things are often more expensive, but they can be had. These simple products generally represent a high quality factor and tend to fall outside the realm of mass market consumer product. If any of y'all remember the discussion of cameras a while back, you will remember that a digital point and shoot is around the same price as a traditional Nikon camera body. Most people who are going to spend that kind of money will have the digital camera and ignore the useless features. Complaining about this is like complaining about a kitchen you never use.
This kind of self depreciation is not American, and certainly not hollywood. If Arthur suddenly becomes a noble person, or there is grief over the loss of the planet, or, god forbid, it becomes Arthur's duty to redeem Ford and Zaphod, or even worse he gets Trillian, then the whole things falls apart.
If this was mirimax, I might be more hopeful. But it is disney. Disney is all about the conventional status quo. It is why they have to have Pixar do their animation, even though Disney was once the greatest animation studio in the world. It is why they might lose Pixar, unless Eisner crawls to Jobs on his hand and knees.
I hope is does change. I have mentioned some changes I would like. But I don't want to see this movie as another example where the studio bought the rights only to use the familiar name to sell tickets, while ignoring the fundamentals of the story.