The only countries that seem to be looking at this type of thing are extremely socialist or totalitarian in nature (Vietnam, China, European Union, etc.).
And which category does Germany fall into: extremely socialist or totalitarian?
Providing excellent business productivity software like Office is a good thing.
Why are so many people so pissed of at Microsoft changing file formats with more-or-less every release, then?
We shouldn't discourage companies from producing quality software by threatening to boycott them.
It's not boycotting, is it, when people choose to use different software that better meets their needs? I thoughg that that was the essence of free market competition.
The whole of the parent post reeks of protectionism. If the American software industry requires protectionism to survive, either directly by government fiat, or indirectly through monopoly abuse, then admit it, but don't confuse it with the operation of a the free market.
If this was some crazy government conspiracy and they were trying to hide the information, why would they put it on their website? Could be any number of reasons they have done this perhaps they were getting loads of hits from google about iraq related things but if anyone really wants the information surely they can just visit it.
Actually, the motivation around this could be to prevent caching of the documents, so that it's not so easy to compare differently dated versions of the same document. See this piece at Caltech for an example of how things change with time.
Anyone else find the humor in the spreadsheet being an XLS file?
Oh, what a wasted opportunity! You could have said it was ironic, end been the very first person ever on Slashdot to have correctly made that assertion!
Agree totally. Radiohead were one of the bands who were insisting that IMS only allow complete album downloads, rather than individual tracks (along with Jewel), saying that you had to listen to the whole album to be able to appreciate it. If that's so, why didn't they release the whole album as s single track?
But there IS a limit (currently undefined, AFAICT: they will warn you when you exceed it, though) to how many you can download in a given period. I am going away on a trip to Europe and wanted to load up my MP3 player with 20Gb of new stuff for me to listen to. I downloaded a couple of thousand songs in a few days, then got a message from eMusic warning me that I was exceeding their limits.
Or the researchers for pharmacuticals... where if you find that drug X doesn't help cure Y, then you shouldn't expect any grant money next year. Yeah, not fired, but certainly the same net result.
Can't let this go. I'm afraid this is utter crap. I've been in the pharma industry for nearly two decades, and I can assure you it doesn't work this way in the slightest. There are many, many cases of promising potential drugs getting canned each year in just about all but the smallest pharma company. I have never seen or heard about anybody's career being harmed by serendipitous failure. Hell, the company I work for was doing work around PDE V inhibitors about 15 years ago, and we got really close to sildenafil (Viagra), but stopped work in the area. Nobody got canned or carpeted or anything. It just happens. This year already we've had two major compounds drop out of development. Sure, people get pissed off, but so what? That's the way pharma works.
Pharma research just doesn't work in the way you describe. Sorry, but your comment is -1, Bullshit
In the footsteps of several other registries that have done the same, we recently deployed a wildcard in the.com and.net zones.
You need to know what's going on to understand this bit. What they want people to think is that other registries are also deploying wildcards in the.com and.net zones, but in actuality what they are saying is "Other registries have deployed wildcards, and we are doing the same, but in the.com and.net domains".
However, most people who are unhappy with VeriSlime will easily see through this piece of doublespeak.
Re:Looking forward... mostly
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Neal, hard drives have logic boards with chips... and swapping those doesn't usually work, either.
Last time I checked, noone in the united states is prevented from legally acquiring any information they desire... you can get government records, money trails, electronic information, anything.
Oh yeah? Well how about the government's attempts to stop this happening: in this report you can see how John Ashcrofy has been trying to undermine the FOIA. Choice quotes, one from the reporter:
" In a memo that slipped beneath the political radar, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft vigorously urged federal agencies to resist most Freedom of Information Act requests made by American citizens."
and a quote from Ashcroft's memo, which memo is the subject of the article:
"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."
Huge, Huge, Huge Problem for Microsoft
on
Ford To Move To Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This is just the beginning of a whole slew of major players announcing the move to Linux. For each one that is announcing, there have got to be at least a dozen or more looking.
The fact that companies of the size of Ford are switching, rather than just using the threat of Linux as a stick with which to beat Microsoft, will be sending real shivers of fear up the spine of the Beast of Redmond. This is the point at which they have to start changing their business model, and fast, unless they want to spend a few years in the wilderness like IBM did after their business model died. They really don't have much time left...
I'm torn on whether to be surprised by this--the Economist has run stories before (there was one last issue on the SCO deal) that seem to be subtly, quietly favoring GNU/Linux.
Where The Economist, Forbes, Newsweek, etc., score over lots of other publications is that they are mainstream enough (i.e. far enough removed from Geekdom) for them to be able to be truly neutral. It doesn't matter a wet slap what ANY computer mag says: all of them have a bias either for or against OSS, and people know it and it shows. The Economist, et. al. can genuinely be more objective than every single computer trade rag.
Quote from the article: Jason Matusow, Microsoft's shared-source manager, says that developing software requires leadership and an understanding of customer needs?both areas where proprietary-software companies excel.
This is one of the factors that ensure that Microsoft will ultimately lose the battle against open source: in many cases, the developer is the customer, and in every case the customer can become the developer. No proprietary-software company can win against this. Why is it that otherwise very smart people can spout nonsense like this as soon as they work for Microsoft. To a lesser extent it happens with Oracle, Sun or IBM, but it seems to me that critical faculties disappear very quickly once somebody is in the belly of the Beast of Redmond.
No, not necessarily. The H-1B is actually classified as a dual-intent visa by the BCIS (what used to be the INS). Anybody on an H-1B can come with the intent to gain permanent resident status. The visa itself is temporary, and a given application can be renewed up to a total of six years, but that does not mean that somebody can not travel to the US on an H-1B, intending to use it as a means of attaining permanent resident status.
OTOH, it nice to see people and companies rallying behind this girl to cover the settlement - it shows who the real good guys are in this.
Now, I'm not sure about this. I think this is a ploy to tar P2P users as paedophiles. After all, who else would anonymously give money to a 12-year-old girl?
This might not be (just) about being against SCOs ethics - given Darl's track record, there might be a very real possibility that if someone hires one of "his" people, he could come after that company and somehow claim that they have stolen "his" property (the intellectual property inside that person's head).
But the hiring ban only relates to people employed after May 2003. People who may have quit on April 30 2003 are just as likely to be contaminated with SCO "IP"...
Yes, I know it's not "hep" to RTFA, but the following struck me as interesting:
think we really need to groom a new type of student who is responsible for their computer security," said Kathy Gillette, manager of George Mason University's beleaguered tech support center. "A lot of them lived at home and mom or dad took care of the computer so they've never learned how to fix them, but hopefully we'll be able to teach them that too."
This raised two points in my mind:
1. Young people raised on a MS Windows software monoculture are going to be dificult to instill responsibility for security into.
2. Does this person really believe that a lot of the students arriving now are not at least as technically savvy as their parents.
I noticed that the article said that freshmen were required to have their PCs checked, but upper classmen were not, simply being handed the latest AV software, and required to sign a document confirming that their computers were clean. If anybody claims that they are free, but then go on to infect the network, what happens to them? Do they have their head nailed to a coffee table or similar? I would assume that anybody who asked, freshman or not, could have got a free check-up in necessary: I certainly hope so...
Slashdot Mirror
The only countries that seem to be looking at this type of thing are extremely socialist or totalitarian in nature (Vietnam, China, European Union, etc.).
And which category does Germany fall into: extremely socialist or totalitarian?
Providing excellent business productivity software like Office is a good thing.
Why are so many people so pissed of at Microsoft changing file formats with more-or-less every release, then?
We shouldn't discourage companies from producing quality software by threatening to boycott them.
It's not boycotting, is it, when people choose to use different software that better meets their needs? I thoughg that that was the essence of free market competition.
The whole of the parent post reeks of protectionism. If the American software industry requires protectionism to survive, either directly by government fiat, or indirectly through monopoly abuse, then admit it, but don't confuse it with the operation of a the free market.
What's the big deal? That's only five 8mm tapes, isn't it?
If this was some crazy government conspiracy and they were trying to hide the information, why would they put it on their website? Could be any number of reasons they have done this perhaps they were getting loads of hits from google about iraq related things but if anyone really wants the information surely they can just visit it.
Actually, the motivation around this could be to prevent caching of the documents, so that it's not so easy to compare differently dated versions of the same document. See this piece at Caltech for an example of how things change with time.
Anyone else find the humor in the spreadsheet being an XLS file?
Oh, what a wasted opportunity! You could have said it was ironic, end been the very first person ever on Slashdot to have correctly made that assertion!
Reportedly VAG had 24x7 shifts of teams working to get things fixed as absolutely fast as possible...
Any company that names itself after a slang word for one of the female genitalia deserves to get fucked!
This comes just a couple of years after the flood in Orissa. Wonder what the Orissans have done to piss off Jesus/Allah/Krishna so much?
Agree totally. Radiohead were one of the bands who were insisting that IMS only allow complete album downloads, rather than individual tracks (along with Jewel), saying that you had to listen to the whole album to be able to appreciate it. If that's so, why didn't they release the whole album as s single track?
there's NO LIMIT to how many you can get.
But there IS a limit (currently undefined, AFAICT: they will warn you when you exceed it, though) to how many you can download in a given period. I am going away on a trip to Europe and wanted to load up my MP3 player with 20Gb of new stuff for me to listen to. I downloaded a couple of thousand songs in a few days, then got a message from eMusic warning me that I was exceeding their limits.
Stephen Hawking said that MC Frontalot had talent.... and by golly, he was right.
You mean MC Hawking? Yo. check out his crib
Well, what if someone sets up a company solely dedicated to selling these things at the lowest price possible?
Great. They could then send emails to everyone on the internet so that they know not to buy from the spammers...
Down 17% since midday. Guess IBM has some Wall Street cred...
Or the researchers for pharmacuticals... where if you find that drug X doesn't help cure Y, then you shouldn't expect any grant money next year. Yeah, not fired, but certainly the same net result.
Can't let this go. I'm afraid this is utter crap. I've been in the pharma industry for nearly two decades, and I can assure you it doesn't work this way in the slightest. There are many, many cases of promising potential drugs getting canned each year in just about all but the smallest pharma company. I have never seen or heard about anybody's career being harmed by serendipitous failure. Hell, the company I work for was doing work around PDE V inhibitors about 15 years ago, and we got really close to sildenafil (Viagra), but stopped work in the area. Nobody got canned or carpeted or anything. It just happens. This year already we've had two major compounds drop out of development. Sure, people get pissed off, but so what? That's the way pharma works.
Pharma research just doesn't work in the way you describe. Sorry, but your comment is -1, Bullshit
The word is shining, not shinning.
You've obviously never seen this.
The RIAA is a lose cannon at the moment
There is a god! I have finally seen "loose" misspelled as "lose"!!
In the footsteps of several other registries that have done the same, we recently deployed a wildcard in the .com and .net zones.
.com and .net zones, but in actuality what they are saying is "Other registries have deployed wildcards, and we are doing the same, but in the .com and .net domains".
You need to know what's going on to understand this bit. What they want people to think is that other registries are also deploying wildcards in the
However, most people who are unhappy with VeriSlime will easily see through this piece of doublespeak.
Neal, hard drives have logic boards with chips... and swapping those doesn't usually work, either.
.
You must be new around here. .
Last time I checked, noone in the united states is prevented from legally acquiring any information they desire... you can get government records, money trails, electronic information, anything.
Oh yeah? Well how about the government's attempts to stop this happening: in this report you can see how John Ashcrofy has been trying to undermine the FOIA. Choice quotes, one from the reporter:
" In a memo that slipped beneath the political radar, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft vigorously urged federal agencies to resist most Freedom of Information Act requests made by American citizens."
and a quote from Ashcroft's memo, which memo is the subject of the article:
"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."
This is just the beginning of a whole slew of major players announcing the move to Linux. For each one that is announcing, there have got to be at least a dozen or more looking.
The fact that companies of the size of Ford are switching, rather than just using the threat of Linux as a stick with which to beat Microsoft, will be sending real shivers of fear up the spine of the Beast of Redmond. This is the point at which they have to start changing their business model, and fast, unless they want to spend a few years in the wilderness like IBM did after their business model died. They really don't have much time left...
I'm torn on whether to be surprised by this--the Economist has run stories before (there was one last issue on the SCO deal) that seem to be subtly, quietly favoring GNU/Linux.
Where The Economist, Forbes, Newsweek, etc., score over lots of other publications is that they are mainstream enough (i.e. far enough removed from Geekdom) for them to be able to be truly neutral. It doesn't matter a wet slap what ANY computer mag says: all of them have a bias either for or against OSS, and people know it and it shows. The Economist, et. al. can genuinely be more objective than every single computer trade rag.
Quote from the article: Jason Matusow, Microsoft's shared-source manager, says that developing software requires leadership and an understanding of customer needs?both areas where proprietary-software companies excel.
This is one of the factors that ensure that Microsoft will ultimately lose the battle against open source: in many cases, the developer is the customer, and in every case the customer can become the developer. No proprietary-software company can win against this. Why is it that otherwise very smart people can spout nonsense like this as soon as they work for Microsoft. To a lesser extent it happens with Oracle, Sun or IBM, but it seems to me that critical faculties disappear very quickly once somebody is in the belly of the Beast of Redmond.
the job is temporary
No, not necessarily. The H-1B is actually classified as a dual-intent visa by the BCIS (what used to be the INS). Anybody on an H-1B can come with the intent to gain permanent resident status. The visa itself is temporary, and a given application can be renewed up to a total of six years, but that does not mean that somebody can not travel to the US on an H-1B, intending to use it as a means of attaining permanent resident status.
OTOH, it nice to see people and companies rallying behind this girl to cover the settlement - it shows who the real good guys are in this.
Now, I'm not sure about this. I think this is a ploy to tar P2P users as paedophiles. After all, who else would anonymously give money to a 12-year-old girl?
This might not be (just) about being against SCOs ethics - given Darl's track record, there might be a very real possibility that if someone hires one of "his" people, he could come after that company and somehow claim that they have stolen "his" property (the intellectual property inside that person's head).
But the hiring ban only relates to people employed after May 2003. People who may have quit on April 30 2003 are just as likely to be contaminated with SCO "IP"...
I wonder if they got permission from him to use it?
At the bottom of the web page you point to it says:
"Original UNIX history chart created by Eric Levenez. Copyright (C) 1996-2003, Eric Levenez. January 2, 2003. Used with permission."
Yes, I know it's not "hep" to RTFA, but the following struck me as interesting:
think we really need to groom a new type of student who is responsible for their computer security," said Kathy Gillette, manager of George Mason University's beleaguered tech support center. "A lot of them lived at home and mom or dad took care of the computer so they've never learned how to fix them, but hopefully we'll be able to teach them that too."
This raised two points in my mind:
1. Young people raised on a MS Windows software monoculture are going to be dificult to instill responsibility for security into.
2. Does this person really believe that a lot of the students arriving now are not at least as technically savvy as their parents.
I noticed that the article said that freshmen were required to have their PCs checked, but upper classmen were not, simply being handed the latest AV software, and required to sign a document confirming that their computers were clean. If anybody claims that they are free, but then go on to infect the network, what happens to them? Do they have their head nailed to a coffee table or similar? I would assume that anybody who asked, freshman or not, could have got a free check-up in necessary: I certainly hope so...