No, terrorism is a tool that involves murder, physical injury or destruction or direct threat of such. If it doesn't involve that, it ain't terrorism. "Economic terrorism" is a null phrase, used by people who define "terrorism" as "stuff I don't like".
>> I think people used that arguement when cable TV was in its infancy.
> Ummm..No. The draw for cable TV in its infancy was watching movies without commercials (HBO), and get more than the 3 broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, CBS). Cable TV offered value above and beyond broadcast TV that I lusted for but never attained as a child. (Now that I'm grown, I don't sit still long enough to watch TV 8*)
And note that Pay TV was never given away (except as part of a clearly marked promotionals). That's Piro's main point: giving it away to build up an audience doesn't work because you get massive backlash when you try to introduce mandatory payment, expecially if you didn't give people signing up for free any warning that they might have to pay to keep getting it later on.
> This action makes no sense. Battle.Net is not a money-maker for Blizzard;
Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Battle.Net is Blizzard's copy protection. You can pirate a copy of a Blizzard game, install it, give it a made-up CD Key, and run it just fine--single player. But Battle.Net has a list of valid CD keys. You can't play on Battle.Net without a valid CD key, which *only* comes with a legitimate copy. In order to play on Battle.Net, you must have a CD key associated with a legitimate copy of game, since the only CD keys on file with Battle.Net are keys that were issued with legitimate copies of the game. bnetd, of course, checks none of this. bnetd strikes at the heart of Blizzard's revenue model. Expect Blizzard to fight bnetd to the death.
From northern English town of that name, best known for the battle there between Henry Hotspur and Earl Douglas in 1388, commemorated in the ballad of the same name. "Chevy Chase" means "Cheviots Field", the Cheviots being the hills the battlefield was located in. A good discussion of the history of the term can be found here: http://www.chevychasewest.org/history.htm. Try doing a Google search on "Chevy Chase" Otterburn England; you'll find some interesting stuff.
> IANAL so I'd like to know hoe people can
> ensure, if the code is released, that it'll
> stay private and confidential and that the
> copyright won't be screwed over.
No kidding YANAL. IANAL either, but this line of reasoning (making copywrited material public invalidates the copywrite) means that nobody could ever copywrite a published book.
> I believe this is something we can blame on the
> Romans -- somehow or other they created two
> very similar prefixes, one meaning "not" and
> the other meaning "very". So as they carried
> over into English, they are quite confusing:
>
> Inflammable = capable of burning very much
> Inadmissible = not admissible
Not quite; you had the prefix "in-", not, and the preposition "in", in, into. Hence, "inflammable", something that tends to burst *into* flames. The rest of your post, including the need to see to the safety of the illiterate, is correct, though.
> Intel just aren't as good at being monopolists
> as are Microsoft.
Actually, Intel is considerably better at being monopolists than Microsoft. They don't play the kind of piss-everybody-off hardball MS does, which is why Intel is not having the kind of legal troubles Microsoft is having. There was a federal investigation of Intel's monopoly that started about the same time as the current round of Microsoft's legal troubles. Intel was cooperative, and the whole thing was wrapped up with a minimum of fuss, and very little harm to Intel.
As for why they're not as big as MS, you have to remember, Microsoft has an absolute hammerlock on Windows. It is very, very difficult to make an OS that can run Windows programs without infringing MS's legal rights. Intel does *not* have that kind of control of the x86 architecture. Anybody can make a processor that will run x86 software (and numerous people have, the most notable at the moment being AMD).
Dingdingdingding! We have a winner! After reading much bullshit about, "Well, the government buys MS software", and other stuff that misses the point, someone Gets It.
And you know what? I wouldn't have had much of a problem with it *if those opposed to Bork had been honest about their motives*. Why couldn't one of the Senate panel memebers have simply said, "Sir, in 1973, President Nixon fired both the attorney general and the assistant attorney general in an attempt to find someone who would fire Special Prosecutor Cox for him, an unlawful use of political pressure to achieve his own ends. You, sir, were the person who fired Mr. Cox for him. I do not regard a person who so knuckles under to improper political pressure as a person of the calibre we seek to have serve on the Supreme Court."? But no, nobody said that. Instead, we got dishonest bullshit.
> IANAL, but there must be more to
> consumer 'benefit' that simply tomorrow's
> retail prices.
Why?
> What good does it do for consumers to pay lower
> prices tomorrow, but inflated monopoly or
> collusion prices 5 years from now become some
> anti-trust decision deemed that lower prices
> tomorrow was in the 'consumer interest'.
What good does it do for consumers to pay inflated prices *now* because there might be some highly theoretical price collusion five years from now? Deal with the monopoly price collusion when it occurs!
> Actually, neither z/OS or z/VM is a Unix. VM
> isn't even remotely Unixy (can't speak for z/OS
> since I've never used it). It's adding a Unix-
> like OS to a machine that never had one.
z/OS is the latest incarnation of IBM's traditional mainframe OS (OS/VS, MVS, OS/390, z/OS, what do we call it today?) It's even less Unixy than VM, being basically a batch-oriented system with time-sharing slathered on top with TSO and several optional transaction-processing software packages.
> Would you say that a horse was a "self-sustaining unit"?
No.
> If not, why not?
Because it requires periodic input of fuel (food) to continue running.
> If you have a convincing reason why not, why do
> you assume that someone else shares your
> definition of a self-sustaining unit, based on
> no evidence that this is the case.
Uh, my definition of a "self-sustaining" unit would be *a unit that sustains itself*, i.e., had no need for periodic inputs to keep running. What other definition would there be? What different definition do *you* use?
> My gut feeling is that these people are a bunch
> of california nut jobs, but who knows. We used
> to think that smoking was safe too, you know.
Um, no, we didn't. Check up the term "coffin nails". It goes back much further than the Surgeon General's warning, y'know. Miriam-Webster dates it back to 1888. There's been suspicions that smoking isn't good for you as long as there's been smoking: it doesn't take a genius to figure out that breathing in large quantities of burning smoke on a daily basis might not be good for your lungs.
> According to the CIA world factbook it's a
> constitutional monarchy. Of 10,000 people.
Technically, yeah, but read down a little further and you find out their constitutional monarch is--Queen Elizabeth II! So the local prime minister/parliament really are running the show; difficult to tell from the Factbook entry how democratic they are; current prime minister took over because last one dropped dead of a heart attack (best rule of thumb to how much true democracy there is in a "democracy" is to see how often the head honcho changes because of an election).
Slashdot Mirror
> You do know that there are plea bargains in criminal trials, as well, right?
Uh, plea bargains are generally arranged *before* the defendant is convicted.
Chris Mattern
> Is terrorism a tool only used by minorities?
No, terrorism is a tool that involves murder, physical injury or destruction or direct threat of such. If it doesn't involve that, it ain't terrorism. "Economic terrorism" is a null phrase, used by people who define "terrorism" as "stuff I don't like".
Chris Mattern
> > The best solution for this particular problem IMO would be setting up some central email server.
> I bet Microsoft would volunter to set up the central server.
They could call it, oh, maybe "hotmail" would be a good name. Yes, that kind of central server would definitely help keep down the spam.
Chris Mattern
> Sorry, just one of my hobby horses...
That's *amateur* horses!
Chris Mattern
"Nice little website ya have here. Be a shame if it got slashdotted, ya know?"
Chris Mattern
>> I think people used that arguement when cable TV was in its infancy.
> Ummm..No. The draw for cable TV in its infancy was watching movies without commercials (HBO), and get more than the 3 broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, CBS). Cable TV offered value above and beyond broadcast TV that I lusted for but never attained as a child. (Now that I'm grown, I don't sit still long enough to watch TV 8*)
And note that Pay TV was never given away (except as part of a clearly marked promotionals). That's Piro's main point: giving it away to build up an audience doesn't work because you get massive backlash when you try to introduce mandatory payment, expecially if you didn't give people signing up for free any warning that they might have to pay to keep getting it later on.
Chris Mattern
> What /. needs is a "Nani Naze /." page...
I can see it now--Cmdr. Taco gets the little boy overalls and CowboyNeal gets the rabbit suit...
Chris Mattern
> This action makes no sense. Battle.Net is not a money-maker for Blizzard;
Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Battle.Net is Blizzard's copy protection. You can pirate a copy of a Blizzard game, install it, give it a made-up CD Key, and run it just fine--single player. But Battle.Net has a list of valid CD keys. You can't play on Battle.Net without a valid CD key, which *only* comes with a legitimate copy. In order to play on Battle.Net, you must have a CD key associated with a legitimate copy of game, since the only CD keys on file with Battle.Net are keys that were issued with legitimate copies of the game. bnetd, of course, checks none of this. bnetd strikes at the heart of Blizzard's revenue model. Expect Blizzard to fight bnetd to the death.
Chris Mattern
Bravo! Funny and to the point. We have enough *real* problems to worry about without this sort of half-baked article.
Chris Mattern
From northern English town of that name, best known for the battle there between Henry Hotspur and Earl Douglas in 1388, commemorated in the ballad of the same name. "Chevy Chase" means "Cheviots Field", the Cheviots being the hills the battlefield was located in. A good discussion of the history of the term can be found here: http://www.chevychasewest.org/history.htm. Try doing a Google search on "Chevy Chase" Otterburn England; you'll find some interesting stuff.
Chris Mattern
> IANAL so I'd like to know hoe people can
> ensure, if the code is released, that it'll
> stay private and confidential and that the
> copyright won't be screwed over.
No kidding YANAL. IANAL either, but this line of reasoning (making copywrited material public invalidates the copywrite) means that nobody could ever copywrite a published book.
Chris Mattern
> Anyone else amazed by the fact that there is a place called Chevy Chase, Maryland?!
Why? It was there first. In fact, Chevy Chase the comedian probably named himself after it; his birth name was Cornelius Crane Chase, you know.
Chris Mattern
> The CIA factbook is dead wrong.
I'll trust the CIA factbook over figures that apparently come from thin air. Source, please?
Chris Mattern
>> I think there are several things that we as
>> the richest nation on Earth should focus on
>> going forward:
> The richest nation on Earth is actually Switzerland.
GDP per capital for 2000 (est.), from the CIA Factbook: US--$36,200, Switzerland--$28,600. Try again.
Chris Mattern
> Geocities has no honor! We should kill them where they stand!
They denied the site its honorable death in battle, fighting against overwhelming page-hits! Death is too good for them!
Chris Mattern
> I believe this is something we can blame on the
> Romans -- somehow or other they created two
> very similar prefixes, one meaning "not" and
> the other meaning "very". So as they carried
> over into English, they are quite confusing:
>
> Inflammable = capable of burning very much
> Inadmissible = not admissible
Not quite; you had the prefix "in-", not, and the preposition "in", in, into. Hence, "inflammable", something that tends to burst *into* flames. The rest of your post, including the need to see to the safety of the illiterate, is correct, though.
Chris Mattern
I imagine it would really grate on anybody with perfect pitch.
Chris Mattern
> Intel just aren't as good at being monopolists
> as are Microsoft.
Actually, Intel is considerably better at being monopolists than Microsoft. They don't play the kind of piss-everybody-off hardball MS does, which is why Intel is not having the kind of legal troubles Microsoft is having. There was a federal investigation of Intel's monopoly that started about the same time as the current round of Microsoft's legal troubles. Intel was cooperative, and the whole thing was wrapped up with a minimum of fuss, and very little harm to Intel.
As for why they're not as big as MS, you have to remember, Microsoft has an absolute hammerlock on Windows. It is very, very difficult to make an OS that can run Windows programs without infringing MS's legal rights. Intel does *not* have that kind of control of the x86 architecture. Anybody can make a processor that will run x86 software (and numerous people have, the most notable at the moment being AMD).
Chris Mattern
Dingdingdingding! We have a winner! After reading much bullshit about, "Well, the government buys MS software", and other stuff that misses the point, someone Gets It.
Chris Mattern
And you know what? I wouldn't have had much of a problem with it *if those opposed to Bork had been honest about their motives*. Why couldn't one of the Senate panel memebers have simply said, "Sir, in 1973, President Nixon fired both the attorney general and the assistant attorney general in an attempt to find someone who would fire Special Prosecutor Cox for him, an unlawful use of political pressure to achieve his own ends. You, sir, were the person who fired Mr. Cox for him. I do not regard a person who so knuckles under to improper political pressure as a person of the calibre we seek to have serve on the Supreme Court."? But no, nobody said that. Instead, we got dishonest bullshit.
Chris Mattern
> IANAL, but there must be more to
> consumer 'benefit' that simply tomorrow's
> retail prices.
Why?
> What good does it do for consumers to pay lower
> prices tomorrow, but inflated monopoly or
> collusion prices 5 years from now become some
> anti-trust decision deemed that lower prices
> tomorrow was in the 'consumer interest'.
What good does it do for consumers to pay inflated prices *now* because there might be some highly theoretical price collusion five years from now? Deal with the monopoly price collusion when it occurs!
Chris Mattern
> Actually, neither z/OS or z/VM is a Unix. VM
> isn't even remotely Unixy (can't speak for z/OS
> since I've never used it). It's adding a Unix-
> like OS to a machine that never had one.
z/OS is the latest incarnation of IBM's traditional mainframe OS (OS/VS, MVS, OS/390, z/OS, what do we call it today?) It's even less Unixy than VM, being basically a batch-oriented system with time-sharing slathered on top with TSO and several optional transaction-processing software packages.
Chris Mattern
> Would you say that a horse was a "self-sustaining unit"?
No.
> If not, why not?
Because it requires periodic input of fuel (food) to continue running.
> If you have a convincing reason why not, why do
> you assume that someone else shares your
> definition of a self-sustaining unit, based on
> no evidence that this is the case.
Uh, my definition of a "self-sustaining" unit would be *a unit that sustains itself*, i.e., had no need for periodic inputs to keep running. What other definition would there be? What different definition do *you* use?
Chris Mattern
> My gut feeling is that these people are a bunch
> of california nut jobs, but who knows. We used
> to think that smoking was safe too, you know.
Um, no, we didn't. Check up the term "coffin nails". It goes back much further than the Surgeon General's warning, y'know. Miriam-Webster dates it back to 1888. There's been suspicions that smoking isn't good for you as long as there's been smoking: it doesn't take a genius to figure out that breathing in large quantities of burning smoke on a daily basis might not be good for your lungs.
Chris Mattern
> According to the CIA world factbook it's a
> constitutional monarchy. Of 10,000 people.
Technically, yeah, but read down a little further and you find out their constitutional monarch is--Queen Elizabeth II! So the local prime minister/parliament really are running the show; difficult to tell from the Factbook entry how democratic they are; current prime minister took over because last one dropped dead of a heart attack (best rule of thumb to how much true democracy there is in a "democracy" is to see how often the head honcho changes because of an election).
Chris Mattern