Can't even begin with where this is so wrong. I have yet to find an office suite that comes anywhere close to what MS offers. True, not much has really changed from Office 95 (I have 97 and I don't plan on upgrading to 2000, maybe the new one with voice), but it's still the best. I use Outlook religiously. For browsers, I prefer IE over Netscape any day. NN4 is incredibly buggy and NN5 takes forever for anything. IE5.5 works well, though Opera is still by far the best of the bunch. I hardly call the industry stagnate, let alone MS being the cause of it.
Perhaps, but it is due to M$ stifling competition that this is true. Netscape in my humble opinion is more stable, I recently upgraded to IE5.5 and I am having trouble keeping it from crashing my system. (Any ideas on the cause of this would be greatly appreciated BTW.) As for Office, I find that all the added features bog the software down to the point of unusability. I would rather use something that will not modify my text without my consent. My real problem is in the operating systems themselves. They haven't released anything worth tainting a system since DOS 6.2, and I stick by that.
As far as 10% owning 90% of the wealth, what would you suggest? Everyone owning the same amount of wealth? That would hardly seem fair either. Bill Gates deserves everything he has. He did it. I didn't. You didn't. MS has done a lot for this industry, and if they didn't have the wealth someone else would. Would Apple or IBM having it be any different? Somebody had to, and it just happens that MS got it this time. If you want it, work for it, and get it!
You have to draw the line somewhere. How much wealth is too much, and at what point does one's wealth begin to violate others rights? 10% owning 90% in my opinion is too much. The rich will tell you otherwise, but they are rich and have a vested interest, right? Many people in the lower class would love to get thier hands on just a tiny fraction of that wealth, so that they might feed thier familys. It hardly seems fair that the poor suffer dearly while Bill Gates has enough money to feed entire nations.
As for Bill deserving this? You don't seriously believe that he deserves this, do you? He got his money by lieing, cheating, and stealing. He is no more then a common thief. Only he does this through unethical buisness practices that our selfish government protects. Only now do we realize what has happened, but it is too late. My father worked hard for forty years only to have his employer pack up and move to Mexico where his 15 buck an hour job is worth 4 bucks a day. These are the kind of buisness practices that make people shitloads of money, but they are hardly helping the working class.
Long live Open Source. I'm working on some projects right now. But, when I graduate from college, I dream of making 6 figures, which isn't too far-fetched. That money has to come from somewhere and it's not open source! In my off time I can afford to do Open Source for fun...
As for your involvement in open source. Excellent, you are doing the world a service, and good luck when you graduate, but remember this above all; money isn't everything. It is attitude like that that make people suffer.
I don't know whose numbers you were using, but during the Reagan era, there was far more "class mobility" (people moving up the economic ladder) than ever before him. Trickle-down actually did work.
Noted, but do you have any evidence to back that up. Unfortunately, trickle down economics benefits the wealthy class far more then the middle class, and it does nothing to help the poor.
There is nothing more important than wealth creation. Wealth creation allows for true redistribution of wealth. Companies such as Microsoft have made tons of money and now Bill Gates is giving billions away.
How so? This is a misconception that represents all that is wrong with modern capitalism. We assume that big buisness will help the economy, and this economic prosperity will, in turn, benefit the middle class. This is called "Trickle Down" economics, and as was seen during the Reagan era, it doesn't work. The truth is, the rich will keep getting richer, and the poor will keep getting poorer.
The kind of socialist ideal implied by open source, where no-one makes pits of money is very bad for the country. If this happens, you get barely affluent people - people such as yourself, who in the main don't pursue any philanthropic activity.
Open source is by no means socialist. Look up the definition of socialism. Open source is not controlled by the government. People control open source. Open source could not be further from socialism. I am not affluent in the least. I struggle from week to week to put myself through college so that maybe sometime in the future I will be moderately affluent. A touch of philantropy would be welcome at this stage, but I certainly don't see any coming. In fact, the least amount of philantropy occurs from the upper class. You want philantropy, go look for the nearest social worker, and I don't see them getting big paychecks. As for Bill Gates... I wouldn't look there. I think you've got your view of reality screwed.
Furthermore, just as communism doesn't encourage people to work harder or innovate (which results in stagnation), so it is with open source. Without the upgrade cycle made necessary by needing to sell more product, innovation doesn't happen.
Then how do you explain the recent advances of the KDE or GNOME desktop enviornments. These people aren't after profit at all, they do it as a hobby, and when one person decides to leave the project, he is easily replaced with someone else who is willing to work. There is no shortage of competent programmers out there. The knowledge pool that works on open souce is Microsoft's dream. Just as two heads are better then one, several thousand heads, are better then whatever Microsoft can muster.
That's why open source products such as KDE have copied all their ideas off Microsoft and Apple. They have neither the money (R & D) nor the capitalist need to be better to incentivize innovation.
The incentive for innovation is to give the world a stable, secure, and powerful OS that can be freely used and modified to meet the worlds' changing needs. Everyone steals from everyone. Microsoft from Apple, Apple from Xerox. At least the open source community, makes this practice more or less ethical.
The problem is with Microsoft, not open source. Microsoft is the thing that stagnates the industry. They release inferior products, and discourage competition. The only way to combat this is with open source. Capitalism has suffered due to the practises of Microsoft and similar entities, and as a result the top 10% own 90% of the worlds wealth, and this is wrong.
I haven't been able to find a good recipe for Marijuana tea on the net. They do itin amsterdam all the time, but I can't find a credible recipe for tea, and I don't want to waste a quarter ounce, because the shit is expensive here. Any ideas/.?
What I find interesting is that the seeds were already paid for in some way shape or form. Either his neighbor or the distributer who operated the trucks has already paid for the genetically engineered seed, and they just happened to lose a few. If this story is true, then he didn't actually steal anything, and Monsanto has been paid in full for thier product. I see no reason to pursue this further.
Also, I would like to know how this was discovered in the first place, did someone in the know see his crops and report him, and if so, are genetically engineered canola plants that easy to spot. This has already been going on for quite some time. He is not allow to use seeds from his '97 and '98 crop, so this has been going on for at least 4 years.
Now that Monsanto has the 'Terminator' seeds, I see no reason to punish people who use seeds that have come from previous crops. If Monsanto wants to keep making profits, they should have to sell those seed instead. Otherwise, the Canadian government is being criminal in it's treatment of farmers.
Lastly, how can a farmer be forced to destroy his crop in the first place. Every genetically engineered seed that blows onto his land, germinates, and grows, is wasting that piece of his land, and making it unusable to plant legal crop for that season. Not to mention the labor costs of going through the entire farm to check for these renegade plants. Farmers should have the right to sue Monsanto for crop contamination in this case. I'm sorry Canada, but what the hell kind of legal system do you people have anyway. Whoever made this decision obvioulsy didn't put any thought into it.
This is slightly off-topic, but it is interesting.
Here at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth we have a program called SHARE that deals with computer accesability to disabled people.
They have been currently testing a model of a mouse device that operates solely on brainwave, or in conjunction with eye movement.
Its called the "Mind Mouse" and details can be found on this page (near the bottom)
http://www.share.umassd.edu/share/products/product s.htm
While I am not directly involved, Several of my friends have tested it, and have had limited success. It induces a terrible headache, but It does work fairly well.
It definitely needs some tweaking, but I believe brainwave controlled input devices will be available in the next decade.
I remember eatin bratwurst and wienershnitzel out of German tresure chests. Games have come a long way. Wolfenstien in particular, but at least in the past they had substance. Now there are all the same. No real plotline.
This is true, however the capacity can be increased not by increasing the latency, but by increasing the buffer size of the routers, and by increasing the number of routers. The side effect of this increase would be increased latency. Doing this would put a certain percentage of the data on the fiber network, and a certain percentage in the buffers.
For instance, 10 gigs/sec with a latency of 100 ms would result in 1 gig of data, but put ten routers with a (hypothetical) gig of buffer, and you have 101 gigs of space at a latency 10.1 seconds. There is sort of a space/speed ratio that has to be met. Increase the speed, and you lose space on the network. However, increase the speed of the connections (100 gig/sec if thats possible) and you can bypass this restriction.
Slashdot Mirror
You are paranoic I agree!
Communism and socialism are dirty words in this country. They are used as propoganda to discourage things that threaten the wealthy.
- Perhaps, but it is due to M$ stifling competition that this is true. Netscape in my humble opinion is more stable, I recently upgraded to IE5.5 and I am having trouble keeping it from crashing my system. (Any ideas on the cause of this would be greatly appreciated BTW.) As for Office, I find that all the added features bog the software down to the point of unusability. I would rather use something that will not modify my text without my consent. My real problem is in the operating systems themselves. They haven't released anything worth tainting a system since DOS 6.2, and I stick by that.
As far as 10% owning 90% of the wealth, what would you suggest? Everyone owning the same amount of wealth? That would hardly seem fair either. Bill Gates deserves everything he has. He did it. I didn't. You didn't. MS has done a lot for this industry, and if they didn't have the wealth someone else would. Would Apple or IBM having it be any different? Somebody had to, and it just happens that MS got it this time. If you want it, work for it, and get it!- You have to draw the line somewhere. How much wealth is too much, and at what point does one's wealth begin to violate others rights? 10% owning 90% in my opinion is too much. The rich will tell you otherwise, but they are rich and have a vested interest, right? Many people in the lower class would love to get thier hands on just a tiny fraction of that wealth, so that they might feed thier familys. It hardly seems fair that the poor suffer dearly while Bill Gates has enough money to feed entire nations.
-
As for Bill deserving this? You don't seriously believe that he deserves this, do you? He got his money by lieing, cheating, and stealing. He is no more then a common thief. Only he does this through unethical buisness practices that our selfish government protects. Only now do we realize what has happened, but it is too late. My father worked hard for forty years only to have his employer pack up and move to Mexico where his 15 buck an hour job is worth 4 bucks a day. These are the kind of buisness practices that make people shitloads of money, but they are hardly helping the working class.
Long live Open Source. I'm working on some projects right now. But, when I graduate from college, I dream of making 6 figures, which isn't too far-fetched. That money has to come from somewhere and it's not open source! In my off time I can afford to do Open Source for fun...- How so? This is a misconception that represents all that is wrong with modern capitalism. We assume that big buisness will help the economy, and this economic prosperity will, in turn, benefit the middle class. This is called "Trickle Down" economics, and as was seen during the Reagan era, it doesn't work. The truth is, the rich will keep getting richer, and the poor will keep getting poorer.
The kind of socialist ideal implied by open source, where no-one makes pits of money is very bad for the country. If this happens, you get barely affluent people - people such as yourself, who in the main don't pursue any philanthropic activity.- Open source is by no means socialist. Look up the definition of socialism. Open source is not controlled by the government. People control open source. Open source could not be further from socialism. I am not affluent in the least. I struggle from week to week to put myself through college so that maybe sometime in the future I will be moderately affluent. A touch of philantropy would be welcome at this stage, but I certainly don't see any coming. In fact, the least amount of philantropy occurs from the upper class. You want philantropy, go look for the nearest social worker, and I don't see them getting big paychecks. As for Bill Gates... I wouldn't look there. I think you've got your view of reality screwed.
Furthermore, just as communism doesn't encourage people to work harder or innovate (which results in stagnation), so it is with open source. Without the upgrade cycle made necessary by needing to sell more product, innovation doesn't happen.- Then how do you explain the recent advances of the KDE or GNOME desktop enviornments. These people aren't after profit at all, they do it as a hobby, and when one person decides to leave the project, he is easily replaced with someone else who is willing to work. There is no shortage of competent programmers out there. The knowledge pool that works on open souce is Microsoft's dream. Just as two heads are better then one, several thousand heads, are better then whatever Microsoft can muster.
That's why open source products such as KDE have copied all their ideas off Microsoft and Apple. They have neither the money (R & D) nor the capitalist need to be better to incentivize innovation.- The incentive for innovation is to give the world a stable, secure, and powerful OS that can be freely used and modified to meet the worlds' changing needs. Everyone steals from everyone. Microsoft from Apple, Apple from Xerox. At least the open source community, makes this practice more or less ethical.
The problem is with Microsoft, not open source. Microsoft is the thing that stagnates the industry. They release inferior products, and discourage competition. The only way to combat this is with open source. Capitalism has suffered due to the practises of Microsoft and similar entities, and as a result the top 10% own 90% of the worlds wealth, and this is wrong.I haven't been able to find a good recipe for Marijuana tea on the net. They do itin amsterdam all the time, but I can't find a credible recipe for tea, and I don't want to waste a quarter ounce, because the shit is expensive here. Any ideas /.?
Now that Monsanto has the 'Terminator' seeds, I see no reason to punish people who use seeds that have come from previous crops. If Monsanto wants to keep making profits, they should have to sell those seed instead. Otherwise, the Canadian government is being criminal in it's treatment of farmers.
Lastly, how can a farmer be forced to destroy his crop in the first place. Every genetically engineered seed that blows onto his land, germinates, and grows, is wasting that piece of his land, and making it unusable to plant legal crop for that season. Not to mention the labor costs of going through the entire farm to check for these renegade plants. Farmers should have the right to sue Monsanto for crop contamination in this case. I'm sorry Canada, but what the hell kind of legal system do you people have anyway. Whoever made this decision obvioulsy didn't put any thought into it.
This is slightly off-topic, but it is interesting. Here at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth we have a program called SHARE that deals with computer accesability to disabled people. They have been currently testing a model of a mouse device that operates solely on brainwave, or in conjunction with eye movement. Its called the "Mind Mouse" and details can be found on this page (near the bottom) http://www.share.umassd.edu/share/products/product s.htm
While I am not directly involved, Several of my friends have tested it, and have had limited success. It induces a terrible headache, but It does work fairly well.
It definitely needs some tweaking, but I believe brainwave controlled input devices will be available in the next decade.
I remember eatin bratwurst and wienershnitzel out of German tresure chests. Games have come a long way. Wolfenstien in particular, but at least in the past they had substance. Now there are all the same. No real plotline.
This is true, however the capacity can be increased not by increasing the latency, but by increasing the buffer size of the routers, and by increasing the number of routers. The side effect of this increase would be increased latency. Doing this would put a certain percentage of the data on the fiber network, and a certain percentage in the buffers.
For instance, 10 gigs/sec with a latency of 100 ms would result in 1 gig of data, but put ten routers with a (hypothetical) gig of buffer, and you have 101 gigs of space at a latency 10.1 seconds. There is sort of a space/speed ratio that has to be met. Increase the speed, and you lose space on the network. However, increase the speed of the connections (100 gig/sec if thats possible) and you can bypass this restriction.