He attacked "faith run amok". The problem isn't that people have this faith. The problem is that some of them try to pass it off as science and to make laws out of it. Their zealotry goes against what this country stands for.
I disagree with that they'll only used for special purposes. So what if they have limited power? They're infinitely more powerful than what was available before.
When Tandy introduced the Model 100 with a z80 and about 32k ram, most people used them for the built in PDA, word processing and comms programs. But others found very unusual and creative ways to deploy them. In many ways, the fact that it was such a lightweight made it more valuable.
"its always about linux, OSS, and being evil with you people"
You people? You must be referring to those of us who don't have our heads buried in the sand. We're talking about MS and you think that Linux, OSS and evil are irrelevant? Their actions prove otherwise.
"The distributor COULD just continue selling the product at the old price"
As you point out, he would be undercut by the competition, but he might just take the money and sit on the stock until the market surplus is reduced. Or, he could pass along a small portion of the refund to help keep his own stock levels in control.
The distributor and the manufacturer are driven by different factors, so the manufacturer cannot expect the distributor to act in their best interests.
I think there is a legitimate reason for rebates. It allows the manufacturer to offer price incentives/adjustments *after* the product has been sold to distributors.
If warehouses are overstocked with product that's not moving they won't be placing restock orders. The manufacturer needs to alleviate the situation, but doesn't want to buy the stuff back. If they give the price difference back to the distributor, they have no guarantee that the distributor will actually hand it off to the consumer.
The rebate system used to work pretty well, but then a bunch of companies learned that they could take advantage of people by not honoring the offer. I avoid them like the plague.
Someone has to go through the trouble of locating a car (which is probably being hidden), take the risk of dealing with a violent person, maintain an expensive tow vehicle, store and protect the vehicle, do a bunch of paperwork, and you think $300-$500 is exorbitant?
I'm sure they hit a home run on the easy jobs, but on the whole I think the repo man earns his dollars.
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said "The commonwealth is very pleased with Microsoft's progress in creating an open document format. If Microsoft follows through as planned, we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards for acceptable open formats."
Romney, for those who don't know, seems to be positioning himself for a run at the 2008 Republican nomination for president. Those MS campaign dollars must look very tempting to him. But political corruption is being uncovered on an almost daily basis.
Better watch your step watch, Mitt. You're not in Utah anymore. This is the land of the Patriots. We'll tar and feather your ass. You'll be romney.tfz
It peaked during the Carter years, but inflation was already a major problem while Jerry Ford was in office. You must remember those stupid WIN (Whip Inflation Now) pins.
For Pete's sake, it says right in the summary that this is a "must have". It's not an option, you MUST HAVE it. YOU MUST! Repeat after me, "I must have the product".
"the crashes themselves look better than atari 2600 games"
--- A Ballmerable Snowman ---
Steve Ballmer is led onto a stage in chains and shackles. The audience looks aghast at the hideous creature. Although he is clearly dangerous, he seems to be pacified by a rather large contingent of middle managers.
On the other side of the stage, Bill Gates is demonstrating the XBOX 360. The press is eating it up. The audience is on its feet. Suddenly the XBOX bursts into flames. Ballmer sees the flames and reacts with a violent primal rage. He explodes from his restraints with the strength of a hundred men. Rampaging through the audience, he effortlessly tears up rows of chairs, heaving them in every direction. Then, he turns on the people. He grabs each person by their ankles, turns them upside-down, and shakes the money out of their pockets. Bill Gates is speaking over the public adress "Please remain calm. The situation is under control." It's of no use. Panic has ensued.
By this time, Ballmer is stomping around the arena, masturbating wildly, and crushing everyone and everything. Few survive. Finally, sweat-drenched and exhausted, he returns to the stage where he cuddles with his harem of developers.
You mention Active-X, I think about Java and the tricks MS played to kill it and replace it with their own product. They cheated on the Sun license and deceived their own customers about the viability of Java as a platform for web apps. Web users got stuck with an inherently insecure solution. Web publishers got stuck with technology that cannot serve significant parts of their user base.
Web publishers don't aim to exclude users, but they do fall victim to the tools they use. They are the ones who end up having to fix, and sometimes reinvent their sites.
With regard to malice, it doesn't really matter, although it's hard to imagine that there isn't any. What really matters is learning from history and not repeating mistakes.
MS has billions of compelling reasons to stack the deck and the cannot deny their past bad deeds. The ones who are undecided are the ones who need to take a hard look at who they're dealing with.
"open source definately has had a major effect on the industry over its lifetime"
MS has certainly taken notice. But let's face it, this move is just one more misdirection in their shell game. If they had any intention of playing fair, they would have started before now.
They'll use this to convince governments to stick with MSOffice and that everything will be fine because the formats will be open. But as soon as OpenOffice has the format covered, MSWord will start hiding the document's content inside some secret extension. They've been using dirty tricks for 30 years so I'd be more than a little surprised if they stopped tomorrow.
Open Source has helped to expose them as dishonest proprietors. Now it must expose them as Open Source imposters.
Or, they could simply secure the cockpit. You can't bring down buildings with boxcutters unless your enemy is willing to cooperate by giving you easy access to a guided missile.
Slashdot Mirror
"...nanny'ing pressure groups in the US need to be treated to a little more questioning, and perhaps brought down a peg or two"
That could be tough because god works for *them*. Or do they work for god? I always forget which way that goes.
"attacking a given faith"
He attacked "faith run amok". The problem isn't that people have this faith. The problem is that some of them try to pass it off as science and to make laws out of it. Their zealotry goes against what this country stands for.
Worship Christ or be a second class citizen. Happy B'Day Mr. "I'm the son of God".
I disagree with that they'll only used for special purposes. So what if they have limited power? They're infinitely more powerful than what was available before.
When Tandy introduced the Model 100 with a z80 and about 32k ram, most people used them for the built in PDA, word processing and comms programs. But others found very unusual and creative ways to deploy them. In many ways, the fact that it was such a lightweight made it more valuable.
"a program that's going to remain strong for the foreseeable future"
One of the basic concepts of science and engineering is time. What comes later has no effect on what's happening now.
If MIT or CalTech were to blow up tomorrow, would it mean that last year's grads will suddenly lose their knowledge? Of course not.
If you're serious about doing your engineering job correctly, then you should never favor perception over reality. I find your post highly ironic.
"its always about linux, OSS, and being evil with you people"
You people? You must be referring to those of us who don't have our heads buried in the sand. We're talking about MS and you think that Linux, OSS and evil are irrelevant? Their actions prove otherwise.
"The distributor COULD just continue selling the product at the old price"
As you point out, he would be undercut by the competition, but he might just take the money and sit on the stock until the market surplus is reduced. Or, he could pass along a small portion of the refund to help keep his own stock levels in control.
The distributor and the manufacturer are driven by different factors, so the manufacturer cannot expect the distributor to act in their best interests.
I think there is a legitimate reason for rebates. It allows the manufacturer to offer price incentives/adjustments *after* the product has been sold to distributors.
If warehouses are overstocked with product that's not moving they won't be placing restock orders. The manufacturer needs to alleviate the situation, but doesn't want to buy the stuff back. If they give the price difference back to the distributor, they have no guarantee that the distributor will actually hand it off to the consumer.
The rebate system used to work pretty well, but then a bunch of companies learned that they could take advantage of people by not honoring the offer. I avoid them like the plague.
"exorbitant (300-500 dollars)"
Someone has to go through the trouble of locating a car (which is probably being hidden), take the risk of dealing with a violent person, maintain an expensive tow vehicle, store and protect the vehicle, do a bunch of paperwork, and you think $300-$500 is exorbitant?
I'm sure they hit a home run on the easy jobs, but on the whole I think the repo man earns his dollars.
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said "The commonwealth is very pleased with Microsoft's progress in creating an open document format. If Microsoft follows through as planned, we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards for acceptable open formats."
Romney, for those who don't know, seems to be positioning himself for a run at the 2008 Republican nomination for president. Those MS campaign dollars must look very tempting to him. But political corruption is being uncovered on an almost daily basis.
Better watch your step watch, Mitt. You're not in Utah anymore. This is the land of the Patriots. We'll tar and feather your ass. You'll be romney.tfz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_and_feather
"Carter CAUSED the prime rate of 18%"
It peaked during the Carter years, but inflation was already a major problem while Jerry Ford was in office. You must remember those stupid WIN (Whip Inflation Now) pins.
"I use the reference in a more generic fashion... to refer to one who ignores their own moral sense and agrees to further the goals of another"
So what inspired you to use this reference in response to my original post?
"What would that language be?"
/ducks
Ada.
huh?
A 1985 Cray-2 could do about 4 GFLOPS. That's about the same as today's most powerful CPUs.
I guess we need to include the Osborne 1 too.
Indeed, another dupe.
"insert adequate sound!"
How about the sound of inadequacy?
Brando: I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am.
For Pete's sake, it says right in the summary that this is a "must have". It's not an option, you MUST HAVE it. YOU MUST! Repeat after me, "I must have the product".
"the crashes themselves look better than atari 2600 games"
--- A Ballmerable Snowman ---
Steve Ballmer is led onto a stage in chains and shackles. The audience looks aghast at the hideous creature. Although he is clearly dangerous, he seems to be pacified by a rather large contingent of middle managers.
On the other side of the stage, Bill Gates is demonstrating the XBOX 360. The press is eating it up. The audience is on its feet. Suddenly the XBOX bursts into flames. Ballmer sees the flames and reacts with a violent primal rage. He explodes from his restraints with the strength of a hundred men. Rampaging through the audience, he effortlessly tears up rows of chairs, heaving them in every direction. Then, he turns on the people. He grabs each person by their ankles, turns them upside-down, and shakes the money out of their pockets. Bill Gates is speaking over the public adress "Please remain calm. The situation is under control." It's of no use. Panic has ensued.
By this time, Ballmer is stomping around the arena, masturbating wildly, and crushing everyone and everything. Few survive. Finally, sweat-drenched and exhausted, he returns to the stage where he cuddles with his harem of developers.
You mention Active-X, I think about Java and the tricks MS played to kill it and replace it with their own product. They cheated on the Sun license and deceived their own customers about the viability of Java as a platform for web apps. Web users got stuck with an inherently insecure solution. Web publishers got stuck with technology that cannot serve significant parts of their user base.
Web publishers don't aim to exclude users, but they do fall victim to the tools they use. They are the ones who end up having to fix, and sometimes reinvent their sites.
With regard to malice, it doesn't really matter, although it's hard to imagine that there isn't any. What really matters is learning from history and not repeating mistakes.
MS has billions of compelling reasons to stack the deck and the cannot deny their past bad deeds. The ones who are undecided are the ones who need to take a hard look at who they're dealing with.
Naw, wrong again city-slicker. Primes is a grade of beef steak.
"open source definately has had a major effect on the industry over its lifetime"
MS has certainly taken notice. But let's face it, this move is just one more misdirection in their shell game. If they had any intention of playing fair, they would have started before now.
They'll use this to convince governments to stick with MSOffice and that everything will be fine because the formats will be open. But as soon as OpenOffice has the format covered, MSWord will start hiding the document's content inside some secret extension. They've been using dirty tricks for 30 years so I'd be more than a little surprised if they stopped tomorrow.
Open Source has helped to expose them as dishonest proprietors. Now it must expose them as Open Source imposters.
Only in this particular galaxy.
Or, they could simply secure the cockpit. You can't bring down buildings with boxcutters unless your enemy is willing to cooperate by giving you easy access to a guided missile.