I can't think of why this wouldn't sell, especially if you live in a college town
And just how is he supposed to get this past the FCC? (or whatever they have that is like the fcc)
Do the research, if you find something viable that can be used in the US for a "little guy" to offer wireless internet on, then let me know. I have yet to find it. -
Well what more should you have to do to type in a document?
My point was that the adept will lead the inept.
They don't need to know any more than they do, since all they want is a glorified typewriter and calculator. Those people will use whatever OS is put in front of them. For them, Linux will be very easy to use, because someone else will have done all the configuration and installation. -
It's not yet at the level where secretaries/grandmas can use it, and although I sincerely hope that it reaches that level soon, there's no reason to wish misery on the majority of computer users.
That has some validity to it. I think that there are a lot of people who could use open source though, but just have not yet because they have had no compelling need to leave their familiar MS world.
Learning to use Linux or BSD is about as hard as learning to use DOS. Millions of people learned about DOS when it was the main option, learned how to make a boot disk to get their games to work, etc. I think if MS makes their offerings too obnoxious, people will get over their laziness and learn a new system.
There will of course always be people who know nothing except how to click on the word processor icon and type in a document. Those people were the same people who had to have someone set up their apps for them in DOS. Those people also couldn't probably install windows by themselves either.
All in all, I think all MS has to do is alienate the adept, that will be enough to do them in. -
They already told us what they have up their sleeve really:
The Microsoft spokeswoman emphasized that the company remains "committed to the subscription model and definitely plan(s) to continue with plans to deliver subscription offerings worldwide. She described Microsoft's new strategy as a "more metered approach," with the company "rolling out subscription offerings on a country-by-country basis."
So basically, "We will try this out in more oppressed countries first that have people in them that are used to being screwed over."
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We'd sell people the right to sell web sites in those regions
Good idea getting a lawyer. Illegal pyramids are defined by requiring payment for the right to recruit new members. Now, it really depends on exactly how they had this structured, but it sounds on the dark side of a grey area.:)
Thanks for the follow up, it's amazing the amount of iffy schemes that economic bubbles create. Everyone talks about how terrible this economic downturn is, but I think it's a good think, sort of like pruning a tree, to cut off the dead branches, and the more sickly branches, that contribute little to society, and could actually cause harm if left to grow unchecked. -
You don't just get $1 million in stock for a few hundred dollars and expect that there will be no financial effects. Call an accountant and find out what they are.
You are missing my point. I am not arguing that people shoudn't be held responsible for things already done. I am calling for a change in the way things are done in the future. -
Funny how many would whore out including the staff of eEye
I don't know if anyone remembers, but eEye pulled this same shit about a year and a half ago. They found some vulernability, and used it just to promote their (then shitty, havn't checked it lately) security scanner.
I think they spend more time trying to find exploits than they do working on their product. They really are in it just for the publicity. -
Why? You were just given $100 a share of profit, as far as I can tell. If you are too short-sighted/greedy to capture some of that profit to offset your tax liability, then you're risking the value will go down and you're left holding the bag.
I'm not out for "protecting" anyone from themselves. I'm a Libertarian, check my.sig.
I just don't think the IRS should be charging an income tax on money that isn't income (yet). As someone pointed out, when they put this in the code they never intended it to affect Joe Schmoe anyway. It promotes things that are contrary to one of the IRS's goals, that is holding long term investments for retirement. It creates motivation to sell out immediately, increases stock volitility and dilution, and in general is a bad thing.
Of course, I think the common person should be able to use the Mark-to-market election for normal capital gains too, but that is just my opinion. -
Logically correct, but it's in fact a trick question. if a sinner would leave the village willingly, Microsoft would have been leaving computer industry long time ago. This question is to test your common understanding of Microsoft..
Hehe, I agree that it is a badly written question though. It never said that the villagers, a) act rationally, or b) they would leave willingly once they knew they were sinners.
Which of course would lead me to what I would answer, "It's impossible to know", which would be correct, unless you make assumptions about their behavior.
Anyone that answered three, I would count wrong. Nice logic, but logic based on assumptions without basis is only as valid as those assumptions. -
. But we definitely need the right to strike to protest irrational decision making. "You want a global e-commerce system in 3 days? Sorry, you'll have to take that nonsense up with the union".
Well, OK. But there have been a bunch of people left a lot worse off than him, like the poor slobs with the worthless stock options who owe thousands of dollars they don't have on the Alternative Minimum Tax.
That is a very good an often overlooked point. For those non-tax savvy out there, basically, if you exercise an "in the money" option, you owe the AMT the year you exercise the option, on the difference between the option price and the market price when you exercise, even if you don't sell the stock.
So Bob Geek gets options that let him get the super high-flyer stock that is worth 134 bucks for 4 bucks a share. Generally, he will have to pay tax on $130 per share, the year he exercises the options, whether he sells the stock or not. Stock then drops to $3 a share, and he is left with tons of taxes on money he never saw. Even if he sells all the stock now, it won't cover the taxes owed on it.
This is part of the tax code that MUST be changed. The only way around it currently is to sell the stock as soon as you exercise the options, something people generally don't want to do if they believe in their company's future. This is also not good for other investors, as this will increase dilution.
It also brings up issues about this budget surplus we have been seeing in the US. Once people are burned a few times on options, they won't want them anymore and the employers will just stop offering them. This will cause a lot of tax revenue to disappear. I sure hope that congress takes this into account when they give dubya his big tax cut, otherwise we will end up like we did with Reagan, cutting taxes without reducing spending enough to cover it. -
Re:New economy, new cynicism, new faking
on
Coder on the Cross
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· Score: 1
About the writer
David Wadler is a writer, performer and techie in New York.
My thoughts exactly. He seems like a pretty creative writer, with a basic knowledge of the computer industry. Interesting that he doesn't mention any specifics about the software at all, only dangling the "paper clip" comment about how revolutionary the software is. A nice work of fiction, but likely just that, no more. -
Packet radio is still mostly point-to-point. I mean, there are many things that are a little like broadcasting, such as when you host a net where people all listen and call in, in a round table sort of thing, but in the end, you can't just broadcast your opinions without talking to anyone in particular, legally. The law specifically prohibits such broadcasting on ham. -
Just because half of the FCC, the single-source news media and all the other usual gangs of moneyed buffons question the practicality of LPFM doesn't mean we have to.
LPFM is dead. NPR and the NAB went to congress and got them to pass a bill that gutted the original LPFM provisions, reducing the number of available licenses from hundreds, to a handful. I think there are only something like 10 LPFM slots left now. They convinced a technically ignorant congress that the FCC engineers were wrong.
Even as LPFM was written before it was gutted, it would have been of little use to most people. An individual could not get a LPFM license, only community groups. This community group must have a local presence, within something like 10 miles of the transmitter. Former radio pirates would not be allowed to get LPFM licenses under any circumstances. One also had to get type-certified equipment, running in the thousands of dollars for a 100 watt transmitter, in addition to an Emergency Alert System reciever.
I know, because I was going to apply on behalf of a group I belong to. The hundreds of pages of red tape made it nearly impossible, and now congress has nearly killed it. -
The Amateur Radio Service goodbye. THIS service is microbroadcasting at
Not quite. It is illegal to broadcast on the ham radio bands. Note the distinction between broadcast, (one to many), and transmit (emit energy).
We only have very limited things we can broadcast, such as what's necessary to initiate a point to point communication (calling CQ), or broadcasting things only of interest to the Ham Radio community in general (ARRL bullitins, and CW practice broadcasts). Ham is not a soapbox, it does not allow you to diseminate your opinions to a mass audience. It exists solely as a one to one medium for hobbyists. -
One last portion is given out to the public to do whatever they please with.
Yeah, we got that, it's called CB radio. The FCC has long stopped enforcement of all but the most flagrent violators on the CB bands. Tune it in some day and listen to what happens to bands with no regulation. It isn't pretty. -
Right now, we could have high speed wireless Internet.
The FCC auctioned off large blocks of microwave bandwidth, then Worldcom bought most of them from the auction winners. Most of these frequency allocations are just sitting idle now.
I've talked to people wanting to start wireless Internet ISPs, and I have to tell them "good luck". It's not that we don't have the technology, it's that the FCC has made it all but impossible for little players to get bandwidth in the microwave ranges for commercial use.
Note that I am talking about fixed point-to-point use, not the mobile wireless data technology that is being developed. -
I log in the next day and my karma is at 0 agian. Yeeaaaa. This is how to encourage people to use the moderation system to help better the quality of posts on/.?
Yeah, I know... It makes one not want to moderate.
I've given some thought to the moderation system, I don't know if you ever read the Motley Fool over at www.fool.com, but they have a positive-only moderation system. Anyone that reads can "recommend" a post. The top rated posts go into a "Best of" feature. The problem I see with doing that on Slashdot is that people would inevitably use proxies and fake accounts to abuse the system. I think it has a lot to do with the expected maturity level of the audience.
The Fool also does have "censorship" style moderation of spam posts, the admins go through and decide whether to remove a post that has been reported as a problem.
This involves trust of the admins, and I think that the assumption of untrustworthiness is what leads to some of this immature behavior we see on Slashdot and on the Internet in general. We lock our doors in real life, sure, but we don't put up huge walls around our house, and claim it to be totally secure, to do so entices people to try to break in to see just what is so important in there anyway. I think that this escalation of non-trust leads to people trying to break the system just to prove they can.
Over on the Fool, the total recommendations you have received are listed on your profile, but I don't think anyone sees it as a competition. You get a little trinket by your name, Ebay style, after certain numbers of posts, no matter how good or bad they are.
Thanks to the moderators that modded up the other post, I'm glad I'm not the only person that is willing to lose Karma to question the system. -
Slashdot Mirror
And just how is he supposed to get this past the FCC? (or whatever they have that is like the fcc)
Do the research, if you find something viable that can be used in the US for a "little guy" to offer wireless internet on, then let me know. I have yet to find it.
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Sounds like Billy G.
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My point was that the adept will lead the inept.
They don't need to know any more than they do, since all they want is a glorified typewriter and calculator. Those people will use whatever OS is put in front of them. For them, Linux will be very easy to use, because someone else will have done all the configuration and installation.
-
That has some validity to it. I think that there are a lot of people who could use open source though, but just have not yet because they have had no compelling need to leave their familiar MS world.
Learning to use Linux or BSD is about as hard as learning to use DOS. Millions of people learned about DOS when it was the main option, learned how to make a boot disk to get their games to work, etc. I think if MS makes their offerings too obnoxious, people will get over their laziness and learn a new system.
There will of course always be people who know nothing except how to click on the word processor icon and type in a document. Those people were the same people who had to have someone set up their apps for them in DOS. Those people also couldn't probably install windows by themselves either.
All in all, I think all MS has to do is alienate the adept, that will be enough to do them in.
-
The Microsoft spokeswoman emphasized that the company remains "committed to the subscription model and definitely plan(s) to continue with plans to deliver subscription offerings worldwide. She described Microsoft's new strategy as a "more metered approach," with the company "rolling out subscription offerings on a country-by-country basis."
So basically, "We will try this out in more oppressed countries first that have people in them that are used to being screwed over."
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This is bad news really. Just remember the worse MS is, the better Open Source starts looking.
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Good idea getting a lawyer. Illegal pyramids are defined by requiring payment for the right to recruit new members. Now, it really depends on exactly how they had this structured, but it sounds on the dark side of a grey area. :)
Thanks for the follow up, it's amazing the amount of iffy schemes that economic bubbles create. Everyone talks about how terrible this economic downturn is, but I think it's a good think, sort of like pruning a tree, to cut off the dead branches, and the more sickly branches, that contribute little to society, and could actually cause harm if left to grow unchecked.
-
You are missing my point. I am not arguing that people shoudn't be held responsible for things already done. I am calling for a change in the way things are done in the future.
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Yeah, just look at Marijuana prohibition. Oh, wait a minute.
Never underestimate the power of government working with corporations. Its like crossing the streams on Ghostbusters.
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Then we are in total agreement, we both think eEye is sleezy. :)
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I don't know if anyone remembers, but eEye pulled this same shit about a year and a half ago. They found some vulernability, and used it just to promote their (then shitty, havn't checked it lately) security scanner.
I think they spend more time trying to find exploits than they do working on their product. They really are in it just for the publicity.
-
I'm not out for "protecting" anyone from themselves. I'm a Libertarian, check my .sig.
I just don't think the IRS should be charging an income tax on money that isn't income (yet). As someone pointed out, when they put this in the code they never intended it to affect Joe Schmoe anyway. It promotes things that are contrary to one of the IRS's goals, that is holding long term investments for retirement. It creates motivation to sell out immediately, increases stock volitility and dilution, and in general is a bad thing.
Of course, I think the common person should be able to use the Mark-to-market election for normal capital gains too, but that is just my opinion.
-
What was this, some MLM scam?
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Hehe, I agree that it is a badly written question though. It never said that the villagers, a) act rationally, or b) they would leave willingly once they knew they were sinners.
Which of course would lead me to what I would answer, "It's impossible to know", which would be correct, unless you make assumptions about their behavior.
Anyone that answered three, I would count wrong. Nice logic, but logic based on assumptions without basis is only as valid as those assumptions.
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We don't need a union, we have root access. :)
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That is a very good an often overlooked point. For those non-tax savvy out there, basically, if you exercise an "in the money" option, you owe the AMT the year you exercise the option, on the difference between the option price and the market price when you exercise, even if you don't sell the stock.
So Bob Geek gets options that let him get the super high-flyer stock that is worth 134 bucks for 4 bucks a share. Generally, he will have to pay tax on $130 per share, the year he exercises the options, whether he sells the stock or not. Stock then drops to $3 a share, and he is left with tons of taxes on money he never saw. Even if he sells all the stock now, it won't cover the taxes owed on it.
This is part of the tax code that MUST be changed. The only way around it currently is to sell the stock as soon as you exercise the options, something people generally don't want to do if they believe in their company's future. This is also not good for other investors, as this will increase dilution.
It also brings up issues about this budget surplus we have been seeing in the US. Once people are burned a few times on options, they won't want them anymore and the employers will just stop offering them. This will cause a lot of tax revenue to disappear. I sure hope that congress takes this into account when they give dubya his big tax cut, otherwise we will end up like we did with Reagan, cutting taxes without reducing spending enough to cover it.
-
My thoughts exactly. He seems like a pretty creative writer, with a basic knowledge of the computer industry. Interesting that he doesn't mention any specifics about the software at all, only dangling the "paper clip" comment about how revolutionary the software is. A nice work of fiction, but likely just that, no more.
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Yes, but not quite. It's hard to link more than a few nodes in a row before you start getting massive dropped packets.
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Packet radio is still mostly point-to-point. I mean, there are many things that are a little like broadcasting, such as when you host a net where people all listen and call in, in a round table sort of thing, but in the end, you can't just broadcast your opinions without talking to anyone in particular, legally. The law specifically prohibits such broadcasting on ham.
-
LPFM is dead. NPR and the NAB went to congress and got them to pass a bill that gutted the original LPFM provisions, reducing the number of available licenses from hundreds, to a handful. I think there are only something like 10 LPFM slots left now. They convinced a technically ignorant congress that the FCC engineers were wrong.
Even as LPFM was written before it was gutted, it would have been of little use to most people. An individual could not get a LPFM license, only community groups. This community group must have a local presence, within something like 10 miles of the transmitter. Former radio pirates would not be allowed to get LPFM licenses under any circumstances. One also had to get type-certified equipment, running in the thousands of dollars for a 100 watt transmitter, in addition to an Emergency Alert System reciever.
I know, because I was going to apply on behalf of a group I belong to. The hundreds of pages of red tape made it nearly impossible, and now congress has nearly killed it.
-
Not quite. It is illegal to broadcast on the ham radio bands. Note the distinction between broadcast, (one to many), and transmit (emit energy).
We only have very limited things we can broadcast, such as what's necessary to initiate a point to point communication (calling CQ), or broadcasting things only of interest to the Ham Radio community in general (ARRL bullitins, and CW practice broadcasts). Ham is not a soapbox, it does not allow you to diseminate your opinions to a mass audience. It exists solely as a one to one medium for hobbyists.
-
Yeah, we got that, it's called CB radio. The FCC has long stopped enforcement of all but the most flagrent violators on the CB bands. Tune it in some day and listen to what happens to bands with no regulation. It isn't pretty.
-
Thanks for the link! No problem, that's a pretty good site.
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The FCC auctioned off large blocks of microwave bandwidth, then Worldcom bought most of them from the auction winners. Most of these frequency allocations are just sitting idle now.
I've talked to people wanting to start wireless Internet ISPs, and I have to tell them "good luck". It's not that we don't have the technology, it's that the FCC has made it all but impossible for little players to get bandwidth in the microwave ranges for commercial use.
Note that I am talking about fixed point-to-point use, not the mobile wireless data technology that is being developed.
-
Yeah, I know... It makes one not want to moderate.
I've given some thought to the moderation system, I don't know if you ever read the Motley Fool over at www.fool.com, but they have a positive-only moderation system. Anyone that reads can "recommend" a post. The top rated posts go into a "Best of" feature. The problem I see with doing that on Slashdot is that people would inevitably use proxies and fake accounts to abuse the system. I think it has a lot to do with the expected maturity level of the audience.
The Fool also does have "censorship" style moderation of spam posts, the admins go through and decide whether to remove a post that has been reported as a problem.
This involves trust of the admins, and I think that the assumption of untrustworthiness is what leads to some of this immature behavior we see on Slashdot and on the Internet in general. We lock our doors in real life, sure, but we don't put up huge walls around our house, and claim it to be totally secure, to do so entices people to try to break in to see just what is so important in there anyway. I think that this escalation of non-trust leads to people trying to break the system just to prove they can.
Over on the Fool, the total recommendations you have received are listed on your profile, but I don't think anyone sees it as a competition. You get a little trinket by your name, Ebay style, after certain numbers of posts, no matter how good or bad they are.
Thanks to the moderators that modded up the other post, I'm glad I'm not the only person that is willing to lose Karma to question the system.
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