Oh please, that's such bullshit. According to your ass-backwards philosophy, nothing is ever really in the public domain, because people can just start copyrighting "interpretations of it". In any case, I challenge your assertion that "most" performances are copyrighted.
Even if so, so what? There is an enormous portion -- the vast majority -- of any performance which is public domain; thus, it would be easily defensible in a court to distribute it. In any case, classical musicians (composers and orchestra members) make their money from the tickets sold at live performances.
You don't get to do an end-run around public-domain material simply by saying that you've created some insignificant "variation" on that public domain material (and believe me, most of the performances out there are very much insignificant variations).
0.53 errors per 1000 for Apache, vs. 0.51 per 1000 for "commercial equivalents" (note, that they fail to say how many equivalents were used to generate the average, nor which ones)? That's definately within the margin of error. Not only that, but Apache is a less mature FS/OSS project, so the comparison seems to favor the FS/OSS model.
Furthermore, while presumely many commercial equivalents were used to generate the commercial average, only one Apache was used to generate the FS/OSS average error density. Again, very crappy statistics.
Even if 100 different FS/OSS projects like Apache and Apache were used to generate that 0.53 average, and 100 different commercial equivalents used to generate the commercial average, it's probably still within the margin of error (or standard deviation).
In short, this study = completely insignificant. Likewise, so was their previous study showing that FS/OSS has a lower bug-density, as it only used one FS/OSS project. To get useful statistics, you need hundreds of data-points -- not one.
Openheimer claims that P2P can't be used for political speech?
What about someone who types in Xenu? That sure as hell isn't available online (not without alot of hastle from clambake).
Not sure, but I believe that P2P networks could easily be configured to allow for searching the text of documents.
Oh yea, he claims that there is little potential for non-infringing use and that there is little non-infringing use, and most of it infringes music copyright? Bullshit. I had my entire hard-drive offering on Kazaa. Guess what the most common upload items were? Anything and everythingg rated triple-X.
Oh yea, there happens to be these guys called Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. Beethoven -- some 200 pieces. Mozart -- some 600. Bach -- some 1,200 pieces. That's a hell of alot of very popular non-infringing music (all of which is better than the best of the modern crap that you can get now).
Aside from that, Openheimer continued to fail to meet on the playing field. He always tried to make this interview about P2P apps like Kazaa. It was about FreeNode, not Kazaa. FreeNode is particularly designed for anonymous communication, not file-sharing...until it gets a search engine that's relatively fast, it will be poor for file-sharing.
I need to know more...I must know more . . . seriously though, is this really a bad thing? you could do worse than being addicted to the acquisition of knowledge.
If you want to call your personal OS KDE/XFree86/GNU/Linux, then go ahead. But no-one needs to use -- and many don't -- KDE or XFree86 for their FS OS. Everyone, however, uses the Linux kernel and the GNU toolset.
However, when talking about GNU/Linux distros like RedHat, credit should be given to others as well. Linus started the kernel, the FSF created the GNU tools, and others created XFree86 and the various WMs and everything else. It is, in short, intellectually dishonest to say that anyone "created" what we think of as the OS. Many people worked together to create it.
No, you don't just "chill" in response to plaguarism and intellectual dishonesty. That is a pretty serious thing, and it's going on all over the place. This is the second fuck-nut (the guy who wrote the article) who has said that Linus invented the "Linux OS". Whether this is by ignorance or malice is irrelevant -- ignorance of intellectual dishonesty is no excuse. No, the world isn't going to come to an end because people are being intellectually dishonest. The world also wouldn't come to an end if I said that I invented the airplane. It would not, however, be right.
You can also use a car-engine without the body-frame, tires, and seats that make up the entire car, as well. Try getting anything useful done with it.
It is true that you can make a Linux-based OS without the GNU toolset. There is precisely one Linux-based OS, to my knowledge, that doesn't use the GNU toolset. So get real. Also, since the vast vast majority of them do, calling the set of OS' GNU/Linux is reasonable.
It is relatively clear to us that Linus was taking credit for starting the Linux kernel. Obviously not so clear to the interviewer, nor anyone else who read that article, since he kept on making parallels between the UNIX set of OS' and the Linux kernel -- which is analagous to UNIX kernels, not UNIX OS'.
Try getting any work done with just the Linux kernel.
In the modern world, "Operating System" means the kernel and all tools needed to manage files on your computer, install software, etc. You can't even partition your hard-drive with just the Linux kernel.
There is a fucking reason why there are two different words -- Operating System and Kernel. It's because they describe TWO separate things, one of which is a sub-set of the other.
It's pretty clear that Linus is talking about the Linux kernel to US. But not to most people. The problem is the interviewer keeps on referring to Linux as if it's a clone of UNIX -- an entire set of OS' -- when it's really a drop-in replacement for UNIX kernels, to be used with FS/OSS (e.g., GNU). Linus never corrects him in that regard.
Yep, it's true that Linus didn't claim credit for the entire OS in that article. But he did nothing to clarify the matter either. UNIX describes a set of traditional operating systems, not kernels. Linus never clarified the difference between the kernel he started and the entire OS.
Sorry, but the kernel is not the OS. It is true that you can use the Linux kernel without the GNU toolset, and use other toolsets instead, to function as an OS, but *no one does*. To my knowledge, there is precisely *one* Linux-based OS that doesn't use the GNU toolset. Lifting something someone else said without crediting them, and then saying, "I could have wrote an original line myself" is no justification for plaguarism, which is what you seem to be supporting.
The problem with this article is that the interviewer continues to say that Linux is a clone of UNIX. UNIX is an entire OS, however. Linux is just a kernel. Linus should have corrected the interviewer, saying that Linux is a GPL'ed kernel that replaces traditional UNIX kernels for FS/OSS.
It is amazing to me how dolts like you can completely disregard the problems that such unclarity cause. Many of the problems with the SCO lawsuit arise directly because SCO confuses the Linux kernel with the entire OS purposefully, to scare people more. People think SCO is alleging that the entire GNU/Linux set of OS' was copied from it's code; but what they're really claiming is just the kernel was.
Your lame rationalizations for disregarding intellectual honesty are duely noted. It is my opinion that you should have been flunked out of at least one college course for your flagrant and obvious disregard of intellectual honesty.
The whole point of corporations is to do what's best for their stock-holders. A corporation's one and only legal obligation is to do what's best for the shareholders, while staying within the law.
This is good for MS share-holders. MS is no longer growing. They can't grow -- the markets are saturated for the most part, and they monopolize most of them. They are also facing stiff competition from Free Software, which will make it difficult if not impossible for them to penetrate into the 5-billion person markets of China and India. MS is also most certainly not a value stock. They are selling at many times their earnings.
Their stock-performance has been abysmal lately. If you invested 10k in MS 5 years ago, it would be worth...10k today. MS obviously is failing as a corporation: they aren't doing good by their shareholders. (forget all this BS about monopolies, market-share, etc...the only thing that determines if a corporation is a success or not is if they are benefitting their share-holders). MS clearly isn't. Nor is there any considerable potential for them to do so in the near future, neither as a growth nor value stock.
Thus, the only way MS can fulfill its only legal obligation is to start paying out dividents. If MS doesn't pay out dividents, there is no reason why anyone would conceivably want to own MS stock, unless it's price sunk so low that it would be a value buy in P/E terms. MS has an outrageous P/E right now, with shares selling at roughly 30 times the earnings per share. It's PEG is 2, so it is clearly not growing into it's price. Furthermore, it's Price/Sales is about 33% higher than the industry P/S.
Now, if you want a good stock in terms of growth and value, you might want to check out Pre Paid Legal (PPD). They are selling at avery low P/E and have huge room to grow. Pre-Paid Legal sells legal insurance: an industry that is essentially like health-care insurance before it became a multi-billion dollar industry.
In short, by most indications, MSFT is a crappy stock. I certainly wouldn't invest in it. No way. The only thing MS stock can offer investors is dividents. If you go to Quicken.com, it fails all evaluation strategies. Neither Motley's Fool's Foolish 8, Geraldine Weiss' Blue-Chip Value, Robert Hagstrom's The Warren Buffet Way, nor the NAIC's Established Growth evaluation strategies show any interest in MSFT. Worse than that, for such a large supposedly rock-solid company, MS' stock is disturbingly volatile. MS stock is almost as volatile as the Nasdaq index -- terrible. It barely outperformed the Nasdaq over the past 5 years.
After all, it's $10 billion that Microsoft can't use to harass the cause of Free Software.
Furthermore, isn't this what the entire stock market is about? Getting dividents? The entire idea of "owning a company" with stocks is kind of ridiculous. How does the average person benefit from owning a corporation, especially since they have next to nill say? The only way the money made on Wall-Street can be rationalized is by the premise that ultimately, it's all about someone eventually getting stocks with dividents. The upward quest of stocks is a quest that is only possible because, eventually, someone wants a stock that pays dividents.
If I am allowed to run an md5sum check on another multi-player's binary from my computer -- using my run-times -- then how is that exploitable? Hacker's can't alter my run-times.
As far as game-play goes, I basically want more of the same, which is what Eidos is giving, with better graphics and better scenery.
But, having read about the slow-downs and what-not, I don't think it's for me until I get a better graphics card. And I'm not going to spend $250 to get the latest GeForce 5 or Radeon 9600 Pro just to play Tomb Raider. Once I can get the upgrade needed to play it for around $50, I'll probably do it (at that point, the game will probably be around $10).
It sounds like Eidos has released another unfinished game. Even as a real fan of the series, I have to question them releasing buggy unfinished products. This one seems like it should have been kept in the oven a bit longer. Bug-fixes for what I've heard is horrendous controls will probably come out, but they still shouldn't released an unfinished product.
I think it's about time they stopped hyping release dates, being unable to meet their own time-frames, having to push back the release dates, and then releasing crappy products due to the pressure to release, which they themselves created by hyping the release date unrealistically too soon. Whatever they estimate to be the release date, they ought to add 18 months to that in any press releases.
Really? Hotmail -- crap. Slow, crap. Most people have ISP's, and can get e-mail through those ISP's, as well as web-access. MS Passport -- privacy-violating crap. MSN -- more crap, with moderators who act like little nazi's. IIS -- crap which I don't need and never will. Intenret Explorer -- crap. IE does not remember forums like Phoenix, and if you go forward/backward, it forget anything you entered in a forum; furthermore, it uses non-standard's compliant web-rendering. Outlook is ok, but hardly innovative. There is little logic in bundling a calendar, daily plannar, etc, in with an e-mail program. They should be separate programs. MSN IM is ok, I suppose; though it was not the first, and offers nothing of significance over any other IM's.
There are better browsers, chat-rooms, e-mail progs, and IM's out there than the one MS provides; and MS hasn't been a leader in any of these areas, but simply a follower.
Internet browsers and e-mail programs have been around for many many years. Chat-rooms -- them too. It's called IRC. IM's are relatively new, but not an MS creation.
Outside of IM programs, the real great apps on the internet are things MS has nothing to do with, and seems to have no plans of getting involved in. Look at the internet radio stations (see Yahoo's radio station). Look at P2P programs and other file-sharing programs. The FreeNet. Distributed computing to spread parallel work out accross the internet (see SETI).
So, we've established that MS isn't really an innovator, nor really a leader, in any categories of significance (nope, not even office progs...they're just standard and ordinary). MS is not good at innovating and creating superior software. They have yet to do either so far.
What MS is good at is getting people to accept crappy product over better ones: advertising and behind closed-doors corporate agreements.
we should thank their moronic asses. It's a zero sum game. The only reason we can make off so well, getting such an exceptional price/performance ratio, is because they are so fucking dumb that they are willing to blow 3k of salary (which could, btw, be contributed to a RothIRA, and 20 years later buy them 10 or so of the best computers at that time).
I am thankful that there are morons out there willing to pay twice the price for 5-10% of extra performance. Thank god for such stupidity.
I could only hope for more retards like them, obviously trying to make up for their small dicks, so that the latest greatest systems of just 3 months ago, instead of 6, will now be deemed nearly worthless.
For only an extra $200 or so dollars over a GeForce 4, you can crank out 10% more FPS. Wow! Real good value.
Sometimes I wonder at the nerve of these companies to charge so much extra, for products that are only marginally better than that which they just released 6 months ago.
People don't just login to slashdot from their home, where they have GNU/Linux installed. They login from public libraries, almost all of which run Winblows, and work, which is usually Winblows.
Try thinking next time.
see Debian Thread, "Are We Losing Users to Gentoo"
on
Introduction to Debian
·
· Score: 1
Someone wrote a comment along the lines of, "since Gentoo has appeared, all the fucking morons haven't been here on Debian so much".
Don't give me this "society has" crap. Society didn't decide nothing. Did we ever vote on such decryption laws? No, we didn't. We also didn't vote on the DMCA, the USAPA, or numerous other draconian laws, such as the Copyright Extention Act, laws against sodomy, other laws regulating sexual behavior between consenting adults in private, and witch-craft laws. Greedy politicians were bribed into passing those laws by special interest groups (like the MPAA, RIAA, and broadcasting industry). The people had no say, since the only individuals that have had reasonable chances of winning elections are Dems and Republicans, each of which is equally corrupt and bribeable (proof: they vote on how much to raise their own salary by each year).
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please, that's such bullshit. According to your ass-backwards philosophy, nothing is ever really in the public domain, because people can just start copyrighting "interpretations of it". In any case, I challenge your assertion that "most" performances are copyrighted.
Even if so, so what? There is an enormous portion -- the vast majority -- of any performance which is public domain; thus, it would be easily defensible in a court to distribute it. In any case, classical musicians (composers and orchestra members) make their money from the tickets sold at live performances.
You don't get to do an end-run around public-domain material simply by saying that you've created some insignificant "variation" on that public domain material (and believe me, most of the performances out there are very much insignificant variations).
is that if Beethoven had been alive today, he probably still would have been only middle or upper middle class, while Eminem is richer than rich.
0.53 errors per 1000 for Apache, vs. 0.51 per 1000 for "commercial equivalents" (note, that they fail to say how many equivalents were used to generate the average, nor which ones)? That's definately within the margin of error. Not only that, but Apache is a less mature FS/OSS project, so the comparison seems to favor the FS/OSS model.
Furthermore, while presumely many commercial equivalents were used to generate the commercial average, only one Apache was used to generate the FS/OSS average error density. Again, very crappy statistics.
Even if 100 different FS/OSS projects like Apache and Apache were used to generate that 0.53 average, and 100 different commercial equivalents used to generate the commercial average, it's probably still within the margin of error (or standard deviation).
In short, this study = completely insignificant. Likewise, so was their previous study showing that FS/OSS has a lower bug-density, as it only used one FS/OSS project. To get useful statistics, you need hundreds of data-points -- not one.
Openheimer claims that P2P can't be used for political speech?
What about someone who types in Xenu? That sure as hell isn't available online (not without alot of hastle from clambake).
Not sure, but I believe that P2P networks could easily be configured to allow for searching the text of documents.
Oh yea, he claims that there is little potential for non-infringing use and that there is little non-infringing use, and most of it infringes music copyright? Bullshit. I had my entire hard-drive offering on Kazaa. Guess what the most common upload items were? Anything and everythingg rated triple-X.
Oh yea, there happens to be these guys called Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. Beethoven -- some 200 pieces. Mozart -- some 600. Bach -- some 1,200 pieces. That's a hell of alot of very popular non-infringing music (all of which is better than the best of the modern crap that you can get now).
Aside from that, Openheimer continued to fail to meet on the playing field. He always tried to make this interview about P2P apps like Kazaa. It was about FreeNode, not Kazaa. FreeNode is particularly designed for anonymous communication, not file-sharing...until it gets a search engine that's relatively fast, it will be poor for file-sharing.
I need to know more...I must know more
.
.
.
seriously though, is this really a bad thing? you could do worse than being addicted to the acquisition of knowledge.
If you want to call your personal OS KDE/XFree86/GNU/Linux, then go ahead. But no-one needs to use -- and many don't -- KDE or XFree86 for their FS OS. Everyone, however, uses the Linux kernel and the GNU toolset.
However, when talking about GNU/Linux distros like RedHat, credit should be given to others as well. Linus started the kernel, the FSF created the GNU tools, and others created XFree86 and the various WMs and everything else. It is, in short, intellectually dishonest to say that anyone "created" what we think of as the OS. Many people worked together to create it.
No, you don't just "chill" in response to plaguarism and intellectual dishonesty. That is a pretty serious thing, and it's going on all over the place. This is the second fuck-nut (the guy who wrote the article) who has said that Linus invented the "Linux OS". Whether this is by ignorance or malice is irrelevant -- ignorance of intellectual dishonesty is no excuse. No, the world isn't going to come to an end because people are being intellectually dishonest. The world also wouldn't come to an end if I said that I invented the airplane. It would not, however, be right.
You can also use a car-engine without the body-frame, tires, and seats that make up the entire car, as well. Try getting anything useful done with it.
It is true that you can make a Linux-based OS without the GNU toolset. There is precisely one Linux-based OS, to my knowledge, that doesn't use the GNU toolset. So get real. Also, since the vast vast majority of them do, calling the set of OS' GNU/Linux is reasonable.
It is relatively clear to us that Linus was taking credit for starting the Linux kernel. Obviously not so clear to the interviewer, nor anyone else who read that article, since he kept on making parallels between the UNIX set of OS' and the Linux kernel -- which is analagous to UNIX kernels, not UNIX OS'.
Try getting any work done with just the Linux kernel.
In the modern world, "Operating System" means the kernel and all tools needed to manage files on your computer, install software, etc. You can't even partition your hard-drive with just the Linux kernel.
There is a fucking reason why there are two different words -- Operating System and Kernel. It's because they describe TWO separate things, one of which is a sub-set of the other.
It's pretty clear that Linus is talking about the Linux kernel to US. But not to most people. The problem is the interviewer keeps on referring to Linux as if it's a clone of UNIX -- an entire set of OS' -- when it's really a drop-in replacement for UNIX kernels, to be used with FS/OSS (e.g., GNU). Linus never corrects him in that regard.
Yep, it's true that Linus didn't claim credit for the entire OS in that article. But he did nothing to clarify the matter either. UNIX describes a set of traditional operating systems, not kernels. Linus never clarified the difference between the kernel he started and the entire OS.
Sorry, but the kernel is not the OS. It is true that you can use the Linux kernel without the GNU toolset, and use other toolsets instead, to function as an OS, but *no one does*. To my knowledge, there is precisely *one* Linux-based OS that doesn't use the GNU toolset. Lifting something someone else said without crediting them, and then saying, "I could have wrote an original line myself" is no justification for plaguarism, which is what you seem to be supporting.
The problem with this article is that the interviewer continues to say that Linux is a clone of UNIX. UNIX is an entire OS, however. Linux is just a kernel. Linus should have corrected the interviewer, saying that Linux is a GPL'ed kernel that replaces traditional UNIX kernels for FS/OSS.
It is amazing to me how dolts like you can completely disregard the problems that such unclarity cause. Many of the problems with the SCO lawsuit arise directly because SCO confuses the Linux kernel with the entire OS purposefully, to scare people more. People think SCO is alleging that the entire GNU/Linux set of OS' was copied from it's code; but what they're really claiming is just the kernel was.
Your lame rationalizations for disregarding intellectual honesty are duely noted. It is my opinion that you should have been flunked out of at least one college course for your flagrant and obvious disregard of intellectual honesty.
The whole point of corporations is to do what's best for their stock-holders. A corporation's one and only legal obligation is to do what's best for the shareholders, while staying within the law.
This is good for MS share-holders. MS is no longer growing. They can't grow -- the markets are saturated for the most part, and they monopolize most of them. They are also facing stiff competition from Free Software, which will make it difficult if not impossible for them to penetrate into the 5-billion person markets of China and India. MS is also most certainly not a value stock. They are selling at many times their earnings.
Their stock-performance has been abysmal lately. If you invested 10k in MS 5 years ago, it would be worth...10k today. MS obviously is failing as a corporation: they aren't doing good by their shareholders. (forget all this BS about monopolies, market-share, etc...the only thing that determines if a corporation is a success or not is if they are benefitting their share-holders). MS clearly isn't. Nor is there any considerable potential for them to do so in the near future, neither as a growth nor value stock.
Thus, the only way MS can fulfill its only legal obligation is to start paying out dividents. If MS doesn't pay out dividents, there is no reason why anyone would conceivably want to own MS stock, unless it's price sunk so low that it would be a value buy in P/E terms. MS has an outrageous P/E right now, with shares selling at roughly 30 times the earnings per share. It's PEG is 2, so it is clearly not growing into it's price. Furthermore, it's Price/Sales is about 33% higher than the industry P/S.
Now, if you want a good stock in terms of growth and value, you might want to check out Pre Paid Legal (PPD). They are selling at avery low P/E and have huge room to grow. Pre-Paid Legal sells legal insurance: an industry that is essentially like health-care insurance before it became a multi-billion dollar industry.
In short, by most indications, MSFT is a crappy stock. I certainly wouldn't invest in it. No way. The only thing MS stock can offer investors is dividents. If you go to Quicken.com, it fails all evaluation strategies. Neither Motley's Fool's Foolish 8, Geraldine Weiss' Blue-Chip Value, Robert Hagstrom's The Warren Buffet Way, nor the NAIC's Established Growth evaluation strategies show any interest in MSFT. Worse than that, for such a large supposedly rock-solid company, MS' stock is disturbingly volatile. MS stock is almost as volatile as the Nasdaq index -- terrible. It barely outperformed the Nasdaq over the past 5 years.
After all, it's $10 billion that Microsoft can't use to harass the cause of Free Software.
Furthermore, isn't this what the entire stock market is about? Getting dividents? The entire idea of "owning a company" with stocks is kind of ridiculous. How does the average person benefit from owning a corporation, especially since they have next to nill say? The only way the money made on Wall-Street can be rationalized is by the premise that ultimately, it's all about someone eventually getting stocks with dividents. The upward quest of stocks is a quest that is only possible because, eventually, someone wants a stock that pays dividents.
Your checking the integrity of *their* m35sum. So you can refuse to play w/ them if they have a hacked version.
If I am allowed to run an md5sum check on another multi-player's binary from my computer -- using my run-times -- then how is that exploitable? Hacker's can't alter my run-times.
Which is why you include a protocol that allows one person to remotely check another's md5sum.`
The solution is to do an md5sum ofthe binary for the game. Players should be allowed to ban non-standard md5-sums from joining.
substantial goodwill and good reputation" of their meat product, Spam
Huh? What? What goodwill and good reputation? Spam is fucking crap. I would eat dog-shit before I ate spam.
The reason they call it Spam is because after you spit it out, what you say is a combination of "shit" and "damn".
But I might have to skip this one.
As far as game-play goes, I basically want more of the same, which is what Eidos is giving, with better graphics and better scenery.
But, having read about the slow-downs and what-not, I don't think it's for me until I get a better graphics card. And I'm not going to spend $250 to get the latest GeForce 5 or Radeon 9600 Pro just to play Tomb Raider. Once I can get the upgrade needed to play it for around $50, I'll probably do it (at that point, the game will probably be around $10).
It sounds like Eidos has released another unfinished game. Even as a real fan of the series, I have to question them releasing buggy unfinished products. This one seems like it should have been kept in the oven a bit longer. Bug-fixes for what I've heard is horrendous controls will probably come out, but they still shouldn't released an unfinished product.
I think it's about time they stopped hyping release dates, being unable to meet their own time-frames, having to push back the release dates, and then releasing crappy products due to the pressure to release, which they themselves created by hyping the release date unrealistically too soon. Whatever they estimate to be the release date, they ought to add 18 months to that in any press releases.
Really? Hotmail -- crap. Slow, crap. Most people have ISP's, and can get e-mail through those ISP's, as well as web-access. MS Passport -- privacy-violating crap. MSN -- more crap, with moderators who act like little nazi's. IIS -- crap which I don't need and never will. Intenret Explorer -- crap. IE does not remember forums like Phoenix, and if you go forward/backward, it forget anything you entered in a forum; furthermore, it uses non-standard's compliant web-rendering. Outlook is ok, but hardly innovative. There is little logic in bundling a calendar, daily plannar, etc, in with an e-mail program. They should be separate programs. MSN IM is ok, I suppose; though it was not the first, and offers nothing of significance over any other IM's.
There are better browsers, chat-rooms, e-mail progs, and IM's out there than the one MS provides; and MS hasn't been a leader in any of these areas, but simply a follower.
Internet browsers and e-mail programs have been around for many many years. Chat-rooms -- them too. It's called IRC. IM's are relatively new, but not an MS creation.
Outside of IM programs, the real great apps on the internet are things MS has nothing to do with, and seems to have no plans of getting involved in. Look at the internet radio stations (see Yahoo's radio station). Look at P2P programs and other file-sharing programs. The FreeNet. Distributed computing to spread parallel work out accross the internet (see SETI).
So, we've established that MS isn't really an innovator, nor really a leader, in any categories of significance (nope, not even office progs...they're just standard and ordinary). MS is not good at innovating and creating superior software. They have yet to do either so far.
What MS is good at is getting people to accept crappy product over better ones: advertising and behind closed-doors corporate agreements.
we should thank their moronic asses. It's a zero sum game. The only reason we can make off so well, getting such an exceptional price/performance ratio, is because they are so fucking dumb that they are willing to blow 3k of salary (which could, btw, be contributed to a RothIRA, and 20 years later buy them 10 or so of the best computers at that time).
I am thankful that there are morons out there willing to pay twice the price for 5-10% of extra performance. Thank god for such stupidity.
I could only hope for more retards like them, obviously trying to make up for their small dicks, so that the latest greatest systems of just 3 months ago, instead of 6, will now be deemed nearly worthless.
Thank god for such stupidity.
For only an extra $200 or so dollars over a GeForce 4, you can crank out 10% more FPS. Wow! Real good value.
Sometimes I wonder at the nerve of these companies to charge so much extra, for products that are only marginally better than that which they just released 6 months ago.
People don't just login to slashdot from their home, where they have GNU/Linux installed. They login from public libraries, almost all of which run Winblows, and work, which is usually Winblows.
Try thinking next time.
Someone wrote a comment along the lines of, "since Gentoo has appeared, all the fucking morons haven't been here on Debian so much".
Don't give me this "society has" crap. Society didn't decide nothing. Did we ever vote on such decryption laws? No, we didn't. We also didn't vote on the DMCA, the USAPA, or numerous other draconian laws, such as the Copyright Extention Act, laws against sodomy, other laws regulating sexual behavior between consenting adults in private, and witch-craft laws. Greedy politicians were bribed into passing those laws by special interest groups (like the MPAA, RIAA, and broadcasting industry). The people had no say, since the only individuals that have had reasonable chances of winning elections are Dems and Republicans, each of which is equally corrupt and bribeable (proof: they vote on how much to raise their own salary by each year).