It could be the same reason that after three weeks from the start of moving my Yahoo! Group (EJB Developer) of over 2,300 members to SmartGroups, fewer than 200 have moved over so far. Inertia.
The thing is, Libertarians, if they were honest, wouldn't actually want the world they would get if their desires were met.
I prefer using the tools of democracy to find a common-sense balance between security and liberty.
Still incompatible with Netscape 6.x
on
Mozilla 1.0 RC2 is out
·
· Score: 3, Informative
As a web site developer who needs to test his web sites on multiple browsers, it would be nice if Netscape 6.2 and Mozilla 1.0 RC2 could coexist on the same machine. But they don't. Image display and CSS utilization goes awry. CPU utilization is high. Mozilla's quick loader cancels out the one for Netscape.
However, when I installed Mozilla on a system without Netscape, I could only see one bug: Named anchors without an href got the CSS a:hover setting applied when hovering, even though that shouldn't happen.
Let's get real here. Change happens. I'm a former IBMer who worked for that company before their big (and badly needed) changes in the 1990's. Do I lament the tons of dead wood IBM had on staff? Do I lament the socialist society IBM built within? Do I lament the multitudes of poor quality products IBM produced due to extremely poor management practices (and the aforementioned dead wood)? Of course not. The "HP Way" is dead. Who gives a shit?!?
The purpose of trademarks is to protect consumers...
Actually, trademarks, like copyrights, are supposed to provide balanced protections. A business should have the right to market their goods with a brand name that's unique within a class of products or services. It's an important and established tool for businesses of all sizes, not just corporations (of course, socialists hate any size of private business). And likewise, as you say, consumers know that if they're buying Brand X, they're getting what they've come to expect from Brand X.
gTLD's, if left uncontrolled, will produce the effect of ordinarily smart people not being able to easily tell if a trademark is being hijacked or not. In addition, the "free market" is not the only force that we humans have to reckon with; there's democracy, precedent, the rule of law and common sense too!
But this "artificial scarcity" of TLD's helps small business maintain/secure their trademarks. It's that simple. On top of that, we have to be concerned about enabling market confusion (more than it's already enabled).
In response to Red Hat's announcement, I sent the following email to the technology director of Jefferson County (KY) Public Schools:
Greetings Dr. Whitworth,
I found your email address online at the JCPS site. As a citizen of Louisville who is deeply concerned not only about the education of children, but also the costs of doing so, I am sending you a link (http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2002/pres s_education2.html) to a new program being offered by Red Hat to bring open source software into the schools to replace proprietary (read: very expensive) software by Microsoft. This is not a marketing letter, and I have no affiliation with Red Hat whatsoever. I'm simply a local software developer who can attest that the Linux operating system can do everything that Microsoft Windows can do (with few exceptions), with a lot more reliability and requiring fewer hardware resources.
I hope that JCPS will be a technology leader and simultaneously fiscally responsible enough to consider all the possibilities that working with Red Hat and other open source software providers will bring to the table.
California should take a hard look at Firebird. Hopefully, CA develops their software in a database-independent manner so that another db can be essentially slipped in to replace Oracle or whatever else they're using.
Gates: I'm the richest man on Earth, made all my money from the software business, and I'm asking you all to acquire or develop software in such a way as to make me, an *American*, even richer.
Gates: I'm the richest man on Earth, made all my money from the software business, and I'm asking you all to acquire or develop software in such a way as to make me, an *American*, even richer.
Even if programming work is largely not "life and death," certainly this work has become mission-critical for businesses, especially the larger ones. The life and death of the economy can indeed translate to actual life and death. In other words, we hold the balls of business in our hands.:)
give the best performers a pay raise and perhaps a raise in stature or position, then do an across-the-board temporary pay cut that includes executives.
Risking the loss of Divine's best people using such a Draconion pay cut measure is pure stupidity.
Well, there is the [American] Programmers Guild. It's not a trade union, but probably the next best thing to it. If you live in Washington State, however, there's a tech union that's a part of the CWA.
I'm not promoting unionization in most cases, but I recognize there are some egregious situations (like that at Divine.com) where it might make sense. A democracy of the worker pool is sometimes, sadly, the only way to counteract anti-employee decisionmaking by corporate executives. The shareholders certainly won't stand up for the employees!
I'm posting this to ensure that everyone here is aware that there's a "Team Slashdot" group on SETI@home. Click here to see the latest team results. This team is actually not far away from reaching the one-millionth result.
Someone should teach Mexican politicans about Microsoft's penchant for money-grubbing on the inevitable software upgrades. Further, someone should teach them that Microsoft's upgrades usually add very little or no new functional value, unless you consider eye-popping graphics to be an essential new feature. And the upgrades usually contain a lot of bug/security fixes to problems that shouldn't have been there in the first place. If Mexico wants to have its financial pants pulled down, then teaming up with Microsoft is the quickest way to do it.
In my situation, while the jobs have been sparse, and while I remain underemployed, I've been gearing the extra time I have toward learning new technologies as well as starting development on a system for expanded civic participation (that I call Democracy 2.0). And I've discovered something: Passion about one's projects is really as much of a discipline-enhancer and energy-driver as cold hard cash. When the economy picks up, this ideal will definitely be a factor in how I decide on future jobs. I hope that employers will work harder to create positions that programmers will actually want to take because they result in good karma (if you will) for the world; otherwise, I'll have to consider my career essentially over in the corporate sense.
I suspect that Portland Schools are screwed. However, all the other school systems in the U.S. have to be taking notice. They will have the time to make appropriate decisions about their machines, hopefully including the installation of Linux and the removal of all MS crap. But it's too bad that Portland has to pay the price for the upcoming revolt against MS.
Have you downloaded Netscape lately? It actually works quite nicely now (i.e., it loads decently fast now). Meanwhile, Mozilla 1.0RC1 is chock-full of bugs and incompatible with Netscape on the same machine. For those of us web authors who like to ensure that our sites run well on most browsers, being able to play well with other browsers on the same box is a requisite.
Gates: I'm the richest man on Earth, made all my money from the software business, and I'm asking you all to develop software in such a way as to make me, an *American*, even richer.
It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. If a company or individual donates a machine to your school, it must be donated with the operating system that was installed on the PC.
This is one of the most outrageous, egregious things I've ever seen Microsoft spew out of its venomous corporate lips. Please tell me this is not true. If it is a legal requirement, then the law must be changed.
Of course, the big minus will be if the government goes with Microsoft software. Does the government really want this buggy nightmare of constant security problems? Hope not.
On the bright side, technology like this could prove very useful for expanding civic participation (that is, more direct democracy) in the forming of public policy. A while back, there was a failed effort in California (site no longer exists, sorry) to provide for online signature of citizen-sponsored ballot initiative petitions. Passport-like technology would aid immensely in people participating in the initiative process. Further, this technology could prove useful in the creation of committees of concerned citizens to develop public policy together using the Internet as a catalyst (of course, with offline meetings always being an option).
As much power as Passport-like technology gives to the "big, bad government," it also can give ordinary citizens a lot more power as well.
While installing software, don't bother with reading the EULA (unless that gives you kicks, or you're required to), but run the installation as you normally would, making sure that whenever you have the option to *not* install adware or spyware, take it.
Scan your system with Ad-aware or other comparable software. Note: I don't work for Lavasoft.
If the previously installed software still works, Great! If not, uninstall it.
Slashdot Mirror
It could be the same reason that after three weeks from the start of moving my Yahoo! Group (EJB Developer) of over 2,300 members to SmartGroups, fewer than 200 have moved over so far. Inertia.
I say something similar about democracy:
The thing is, Libertarians, if they were honest, wouldn't actually want the world they would get if their desires were met.
I prefer using the tools of democracy to find a common-sense balance between security and liberty.
As a web site developer who needs to test his web sites on multiple browsers, it would be nice if Netscape 6.2 and Mozilla 1.0 RC2 could coexist on the same machine. But they don't. Image display and CSS utilization goes awry. CPU utilization is high. Mozilla's quick loader cancels out the one for Netscape.
However, when I installed Mozilla on a system without Netscape, I could only see one bug: Named anchors without an href got the CSS a:hover setting applied when hovering, even though that shouldn't happen.
Let's get real here. Change happens. I'm a former IBMer who worked for that company before their big (and badly needed) changes in the 1990's. Do I lament the tons of dead wood IBM had on staff? Do I lament the socialist society IBM built within? Do I lament the multitudes of poor quality products IBM produced due to extremely poor management practices (and the aforementioned dead wood)? Of course not. The "HP Way" is dead. Who gives a shit?!?
Actually, trademarks, like copyrights, are supposed to provide balanced protections. A business should have the right to market their goods with a brand name that's unique within a class of products or services. It's an important and established tool for businesses of all sizes, not just corporations (of course, socialists hate any size of private business). And likewise, as you say, consumers know that if they're buying Brand X, they're getting what they've come to expect from Brand X.
gTLD's, if left uncontrolled, will produce the effect of ordinarily smart people not being able to easily tell if a trademark is being hijacked or not. In addition, the "free market" is not the only force that we humans have to reckon with; there's democracy, precedent, the rule of law and common sense too!
But this "artificial scarcity" of TLD's helps small business maintain/secure their trademarks. It's that simple. On top of that, we have to be concerned about enabling market confusion (more than it's already enabled).
In response to Red Hat's announcement, I sent the following email to the technology director of Jefferson County (KY) Public Schools:
Greetings Dr. Whitworth,
I found your email address online at the JCPS site. As a citizen of Louisville who is deeply concerned not only about the education of children, but also the costs of doing so, I am sending you a link (http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2002/pres s_education2.html) to a new program being offered by Red Hat to bring open source software into the schools to replace proprietary (read: very expensive) software by Microsoft. This is not a marketing letter, and I have no affiliation with Red Hat whatsoever. I'm simply a local software developer who can attest that the Linux operating system can do everything that Microsoft Windows can do (with few exceptions), with a lot more reliability and requiring fewer hardware resources.
I hope that JCPS will be a technology leader and simultaneously fiscally responsible enough to consider all the possibilities that working with Red Hat and other open source software providers will bring to the table.
Best regards,
Steve Magruder
[Street Address]
[City,State,Zip]
California should take a hard look at Firebird. Hopefully, CA develops their software in a database-independent manner so that another db can be essentially slipped in to replace Oracle or whatever else they're using.
Gates: I'm the richest man on Earth, made all my money from the software business, and I'm asking you all to acquire or develop software in such a way as to make me, an *American*, even richer.
Peru: Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Gates: I'm the richest man on Earth, made all my money from the software business, and I'm asking you all to acquire or develop software in such a way as to make me, an *American*, even richer.
Peru: Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Even if programming work is largely not "life and death," certainly this work has become mission-critical for businesses, especially the larger ones. The life and death of the economy can indeed translate to actual life and death. In other words, we hold the balls of business in our hands. :)
give the best performers a pay raise and perhaps a raise in stature or position, then do an across-the-board temporary pay cut that includes executives.
Risking the loss of Divine's best people using such a Draconion pay cut measure is pure stupidity.
Well, there is the [American] Programmers Guild. It's not a trade union, but probably the next best thing to it. If you live in Washington State, however, there's a tech union that's a part of the CWA.
I'm not promoting unionization in most cases, but I recognize there are some egregious situations (like that at Divine.com) where it might make sense. A democracy of the worker pool is sometimes, sadly, the only way to counteract anti-employee decisionmaking by corporate executives. The shareholders certainly won't stand up for the employees!
I'm posting this to ensure that everyone here is aware that there's a "Team Slashdot" group on SETI@home. Click here to see the latest team results. This team is actually not far away from reaching the one-millionth result.
By the way, I'm ranked #174. Kewl. :)
Someone should teach Mexican politicans about Microsoft's penchant for money-grubbing on the inevitable software upgrades. Further, someone should teach them that Microsoft's upgrades usually add very little or no new functional value, unless you consider eye-popping graphics to be an essential new feature. And the upgrades usually contain a lot of bug/security fixes to problems that shouldn't have been there in the first place. If Mexico wants to have its financial pants pulled down, then teaming up with Microsoft is the quickest way to do it.
In my situation, while the jobs have been sparse, and while I remain underemployed, I've been gearing the extra time I have toward learning new technologies as well as starting development on a system for expanded civic participation (that I call Democracy 2.0). And I've discovered something: Passion about one's projects is really as much of a discipline-enhancer and energy-driver as cold hard cash. When the economy picks up, this ideal will definitely be a factor in how I decide on future jobs. I hope that employers will work harder to create positions that programmers will actually want to take because they result in good karma (if you will) for the world; otherwise, I'll have to consider my career essentially over in the corporate sense.
We should never allow any malicious software or company to ever take away our right to properly install software.
I suspect that Portland Schools are screwed. However, all the other school systems in the U.S. have to be taking notice. They will have the time to make appropriate decisions about their machines, hopefully including the installation of Linux and the removal of all MS crap. But it's too bad that Portland has to pay the price for the upcoming revolt against MS.
Have you downloaded Netscape lately? It actually works quite nicely now (i.e., it loads decently fast now). Meanwhile, Mozilla 1.0RC1 is chock-full of bugs and incompatible with Netscape on the same machine. For those of us web authors who like to ensure that our sites run well on most browsers, being able to play well with other browsers on the same box is a requisite.
Gates: I'm the richest man on Earth, made all my money from the software business, and I'm asking you all to develop software in such a way as to make me, an *American*, even richer.
World: Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Now, where can I buy the fake stickers that read:
This is one of the most outrageous, egregious things I've ever seen Microsoft spew out of its venomous corporate lips. Please tell me this is not true. If it is a legal requirement, then the law must be changed.
Of course, the big minus will be if the government goes with Microsoft software. Does the government really want this buggy nightmare of constant security problems? Hope not.
On the bright side, technology like this could prove very useful for expanding civic participation (that is, more direct democracy) in the forming of public policy. A while back, there was a failed effort in California (site no longer exists, sorry) to provide for online signature of citizen-sponsored ballot initiative petitions. Passport-like technology would aid immensely in people participating in the initiative process. Further, this technology could prove useful in the creation of committees of concerned citizens to develop public policy together using the Internet as a catalyst (of course, with offline meetings always being an option).
As much power as Passport-like technology gives to the "big, bad government," it also can give ordinary citizens a lot more power as well.