You're probably right about the hypothetical headline, but the problem - as others here have pointed out - is a fundamental one with closed-source software. Whenever compatibility is broken, users are forced to upgrade apps to restore compatibility with the OS. Since users are unable to do this themselves, vendors can (and do) exploit it as a revenue opportunity. It is also a drag on the development of the OS, because Microsoft is forced to kludge back-compatibility in order to make new Windows versions acceptable to customers with irreplaceable legacy software.
In the Open Source world you can just recompile, or download new binaries from someone who's done it for you. I've been running Linux for something like 10 years now. Upgrading has never slowed me down for more than a day or so, and I have never lost the use of any software that I needed or wanted to continue using.
But, at the same time, to settle a civil disagreement through criminal prosecution seems to be abuse of power at most naked.
Which should be a lesson to all of the conservatives out there who think that unlimited police power is only a threat to those who are doing something illegal. In reality, unchecked police power is a threat to anyone who annoys it, whatever the reason.
Well, you're right, it's not impossible to be an institutional Microsoft customer if you're vewwy, vewwy caweful and keep stwict wecords of evwything you do.
But in a world with choices, this kind of exposure should maybe impact yours, don't you think?
Then Microsoft will have very little to fight Linux with. They can join the linux world or die like the rest of the greedy software companies.
This is just silly. There will continue to be a place for Windows, and it will continue to compete alongside Linux distributions that are no longer free themselves because of support and add-ons (and "greedy software companies"). Microsoft will have to make some concessions to hold on, though, and this process has already begun. They will simply do what they have to do, much of it even legal. Committed Windows-users can already thank Linux and the Open Source movement for making Microsoft a much easier beast to deal with than they otherwise would be.
If so, why would the likes of Darl McBride and his cronies commit, what I believe, career-suicide?
What wouldn't you do if you could be Microsoft's bitch? If the latest memo is correct, they've already gotten about $100 million from Redmond. What would SCO stock be worth now if not for that?
Microsoft needs third parties to say and do the stuff that they can't say and do themselves for liability and antitrust reasons. They won't have any trouble recruiting them.
It seems so long ago... I remember very well back in the late 80s and early 90s when spam was virtually unheard of. There was very strong community pressure against any commercial/promotional use of the Internet. What's remarkable is that this was so effective for so long.
Seriously... Don't underestimate the power of this forum to shine the bright light of day on scams like this. SCO and their lawyers did, and this may turn out to be one of their greatest miscalculations.
Worry about ballot boxes stuffed by corrupt election officials working for political machines.
Or, conversely, imagine truckloads of ballots diverted on the way to counting stations and deliberately spoiled. Shortly after the last presidential elections I remember hearing media reports of at least one truckload in Florida disappearing overnight on its way to a counting station only a few blocks away. I have no idea how many chads were hanging in that batch - and the story was never followed up on, AFAIK - but the opportunity for fraud obviously exists.
What is needed is a way for every voter to go online and verify how his/her vote was finally registered. If I can check online to see where my FedEx package is at any time, this shouldn't be rocket science.
I disagree. Branding decreases risk, and consumers dislike risk in general and are willing to pay a premium for it.
That's pretty much what I said in my first paragraph. Branded products aren't always manufactured by the branding company, though; often the same underlying commodity will be packaged and sold under different brands for widely diverging prices. Brands themselves are often bought and sold independently of the products to which they're affixed. They are essentially a license to sell a product at a premium (deservedly so or not) and as such have value in themselves that are listed on corporate balance sheets as "Goodwill". Image advertising is aimed directly at increasing that value.
Does the brand really mean anything with respect to quality? Sometimes it do, sometimes it don't. As in all things, we use our best judgement.
That is true as far as it goes; if nothing else a brand gives some reasonable assurance of product uniformity and a repeatable consumer experience. That's what you're looking for in your Honda; if your neighbor had a good experience with his/hers and recommends it to you, you'd like to be able to expect to duplicate that experience.
However, brands can also be surrogates for rational decision making. They are often favored simply because they are familiar, and of course marketers go to great expense to make them that way through advertising and other forms of exposure. It's easy to go into a grocery store and find branded breakfast cereal - cereal! - selling for $4 or $5 per pound, right next to virtually identical store brands at $2 or less. It's the consumer's choice, of course, but nearly all of the "information" and influence reaching the average consumer supports the more expensive option. In poorer (e.g., inner city) areas where large supermarkets are scarce, the cheaper option is often not accessible at all.
In general I've personally gotten into the habit of avoiding heavily advertised brands where possible, and cooking from scratch whenever I have the time (it takes less than most people think, if you keep a few basic ingredients on hand). I've found that cheaper is often better, and I'm not bothered at all that I don't see happy people using my toothpaste on TV a dozen times a day. That's not worth an extra penny.
I think right now at this time and this place the greatest threat to American liberty comes from Bush and their sympathizers rather than from Al-Qaida.
Apparently you haven't heard that the American Federation of Teachers is now a "terrorist organization", according to Bush's Secretary of Education. Since there are many more teachers than Al-Qaida members, I'd say that makes them the biggest threat...
Umm, you obviously don't do much with your portable.
No, it's really just a travel machine. E-mail, Web, mp3s, Open Office (it runs Linux), programming, etc.. If I was using it as a desktop replacement, then yes, it would be far too slow and I would have replaced it long ago.
And no, I wasn't suggesting that nobody needs >2 GHz on a laptop; for video work and the like, you clearly do. But for many (most?) people processor speed has become more of a dick-wagging thing, like horsepower in automobiles or the number of blades in your razor. We want it even if we don't have a use for it, and even if it penalizes us in power consumption and battery life. That's just the consumer culture we all live in.
Now, if someone wants to give me a G5 to prove me wrong, I'll gladly accept it...
This is sure to get modded down by this crowd, but...
This (usually baseless) need to have more and more power on a laptop - and to pay top dollar for it - has to be the marketing triumph of the century (well, maybe after bottled water). My old 400MHz IBM still does everything I ask of it, and if I had the choice I'd rather double the battery life than the processor speed.
But thanks, anyway, for creating a plentiful secondary market for nice laptops. That's how I got mine...
if a photo didn't come out as intended that was money down the drain, so I very rarely dug out the camera and used it.
My 35mm had been gathering dust for at least a year when I finally bought a digital a couple of years ago. Since then I've saved enough on film and processing to pay for the thing about 10 times over. I never print anything, because frankly the images look better on my monitor than on a standard-size print, and it's more convenient to view them that way as well.
Meanwhile, the SLR continues to gather dust, and I still have a lot of old prints tucked away in shoeboxes, somewhere...
Slashdot Mirror
I met a biologist once who was kind of a jerk...
That's what Small Claims courts are for. No lawyers, just present your case to the judge. Check the laws in your state.
In the Open Source world you can just recompile, or download new binaries from someone who's done it for you. I've been running Linux for something like 10 years now. Upgrading has never slowed me down for more than a day or so, and I have never lost the use of any software that I needed or wanted to continue using.
Which should be a lesson to all of the conservatives out there who think that unlimited police power is only a threat to those who are doing something illegal. In reality, unchecked police power is a threat to anyone who annoys it, whatever the reason.
I wouldn't mind giving him a good dope-slap, though...
But in a world with choices, this kind of exposure should maybe impact yours, don't you think?
This is just silly. There will continue to be a place for Windows, and it will continue to compete alongside Linux distributions that are no longer free themselves because of support and add-ons (and "greedy software companies"). Microsoft will have to make some concessions to hold on, though, and this process has already begun. They will simply do what they have to do, much of it even legal. Committed Windows-users can already thank Linux and the Open Source movement for making Microsoft a much easier beast to deal with than they otherwise would be.
What wouldn't you do if you could be Microsoft's bitch? If the latest memo is correct, they've already gotten about $100 million from Redmond. What would SCO stock be worth now if not for that?
Microsoft needs third parties to say and do the stuff that they can't say and do themselves for liability and antitrust reasons. They won't have any trouble recruiting them.
It seems so long ago... I remember very well back in the late 80s and early 90s when spam was virtually unheard of. There was very strong community pressure against any commercial/promotional use of the Internet. What's remarkable is that this was so effective for so long.
It was fusion...
Seriously... Don't underestimate the power of this forum to shine the bright light of day on scams like this. SCO and their lawyers did, and this may turn out to be one of their greatest miscalculations.
Or, conversely, imagine truckloads of ballots diverted on the way to counting stations and deliberately spoiled. Shortly after the last presidential elections I remember hearing media reports of at least one truckload in Florida disappearing overnight on its way to a counting station only a few blocks away. I have no idea how many chads were hanging in that batch - and the story was never followed up on, AFAIK - but the opportunity for fraud obviously exists.
What is needed is a way for every voter to go online and verify how his/her vote was finally registered. If I can check online to see where my FedEx package is at any time, this shouldn't be rocket science.
But when we're done bitching we pretty much just line up for more of the same...
Maybe they'll sue someone who's already agreed to lose the case in exchange for...?
That's pretty much what I said in my first paragraph. Branded products aren't always manufactured by the branding company, though; often the same underlying commodity will be packaged and sold under different brands for widely diverging prices. Brands themselves are often bought and sold independently of the products to which they're affixed. They are essentially a license to sell a product at a premium (deservedly so or not) and as such have value in themselves that are listed on corporate balance sheets as "Goodwill". Image advertising is aimed directly at increasing that value.
Does the brand really mean anything with respect to quality? Sometimes it do, sometimes it don't. As in all things, we use our best judgement.
The other reason is that the ref doesn't have to worry about looking klutzy if he fails to catch it properly...
You'll get 7 or better out of 10 correct about 17.2% of the time just by chance if there's no bias at all...
That is true as far as it goes; if nothing else a brand gives some reasonable assurance of product uniformity and a repeatable consumer experience. That's what you're looking for in your Honda; if your neighbor had a good experience with his/hers and recommends it to you, you'd like to be able to expect to duplicate that experience.
However, brands can also be surrogates for rational decision making. They are often favored simply because they are familiar, and of course marketers go to great expense to make them that way through advertising and other forms of exposure. It's easy to go into a grocery store and find branded breakfast cereal - cereal! - selling for $4 or $5 per pound, right next to virtually identical store brands at $2 or less. It's the consumer's choice, of course, but nearly all of the "information" and influence reaching the average consumer supports the more expensive option. In poorer (e.g., inner city) areas where large supermarkets are scarce, the cheaper option is often not accessible at all.
In general I've personally gotten into the habit of avoiding heavily advertised brands where possible, and cooking from scratch whenever I have the time (it takes less than most people think, if you keep a few basic ingredients on hand). I've found that cheaper is often better, and I'm not bothered at all that I don't see happy people using my toothpaste on TV a dozen times a day. That's not worth an extra penny.
The lottery industry is proof that people will act on very low probablilities if the stakes are high. The stakes here are high.
Except that Billy is a 300 pound behemoth and will beat the crap out of any kid that complains.
Apparently you haven't heard that the American Federation of Teachers is now a "terrorist organization", according to Bush's Secretary of Education. Since there are many more teachers than Al-Qaida members, I'd say that makes them the biggest threat...
No, it's really just a travel machine. E-mail, Web, mp3s, Open Office (it runs Linux), programming, etc.. If I was using it as a desktop replacement, then yes, it would be far too slow and I would have replaced it long ago.
And no, I wasn't suggesting that nobody needs >2 GHz on a laptop; for video work and the like, you clearly do. But for many (most?) people processor speed has become more of a dick-wagging thing, like horsepower in automobiles or the number of blades in your razor. We want it even if we don't have a use for it, and even if it penalizes us in power consumption and battery life. That's just the consumer culture we all live in.
Now, if someone wants to give me a G5 to prove me wrong, I'll gladly accept it...
This (usually baseless) need to have more and more power on a laptop - and to pay top dollar for it - has to be the marketing triumph of the century (well, maybe after bottled water). My old 400MHz IBM still does everything I ask of it, and if I had the choice I'd rather double the battery life than the processor speed.
But thanks, anyway, for creating a plentiful secondary market for nice laptops. That's how I got mine...
The thick atmosphere would protect the surface from meteoric impacts, even more than ours does...
My 35mm had been gathering dust for at least a year when I finally bought a digital a couple of years ago. Since then I've saved enough on film and processing to pay for the thing about 10 times over. I never print anything, because frankly the images look better on my monitor than on a standard-size print, and it's more convenient to view them that way as well.
Meanwhile, the SLR continues to gather dust, and I still have a lot of old prints tucked away in shoeboxes, somewhere...