"Your post was mostly half truths and no I still don't feel like going through it point by point.
and that pretty much says it all about your position, why defend your (indefensible and inchoate) position when you can just spout cheap ad hominem personal attacks without ever having to support your claims?
nice try, but it won't fool too many people, you can ran around screaming "conservative" or "Republican" all you want, but it's just cheap demagoging.
And has absolutely nothing to do with supporting or defending your position and the your so-called claims.
The DATA that you don't wish to address are simple and consistent.
The VAST MAJORITY of the American people are relatively-to-very happy with George Bush and their own financial circumstances. They have some worries about Wall Street, the economy and the state of education across America. Some worries, some even increasing worries (the economy) not anywhere near either a crisis state or even prominent concern.
The "Left-Right" War rubbish you are talking about is disproved by two simple (and recent) votes of Congress.
The OVERWHELMINGLY BIPARTISAN vote for their own pay raise and the vote for next year's Federal budget.
Both overwhelmingly approved by both parties.
Yep, some Left-Right split. The Dems who control the Senate are so worried about their Republican "opposition" that they voted for Bush's Tax Cut and Bush's Budget and the Patriot Act and the DMCA and UCITA.
And the Republicans who control the House are so worried about the Congressional Dems that they have gone along with EVERY redistricting plan controlled by a Democratic state legislature, all across America. The Republicans have no plans to challenge ANY redistricting across America, even though the net gain will go to the Dems (about 2-4 seats in the next Congress)
And the Congressional Dems are so worried about their Republican counterparts they cut deal after deal with them for their own priorities in the current budget AND VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY with the Republicans for the Patriot Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Copyright Reform, et al...(and i certainly don't need to mention the "Under God" Pledge votes LEAD by Democratic Congressional Leaders Daschle and Gephardt, do I?)
Or are you asserting that the Democrats and all the major polling organizations are in league with your much-detested Republicans?
Both Parties have the ability (with a split Congress) to bring the legislative process to a complete halt. Gee, strange then in a political/idealogical "War" that neither side is doing that. They are (with a few exceptions) merrily holding hands and passing budgets and spending authorizations and all sorts of other legislation with nary a discouraging word.
So, our elected officials don't perceive a "War", the American People don't perceive a "War", the Pollsters can't find a "War".
So, where is it?
You can give all the anecdotal myths you want, and for every one there's a counter-example. Like your hypothetical "Greenpeace Sticker in Montana", which anyone can respond to with a "NRA Sticker in Berkely" example.(That's the "One-to-Many Fallacy", and bigoted to the eyeballs, btw. Even should both hypotheticals evince reality, so what? No shortages of jerks in this world. One asshole just proves that he/she's one asshole.)
I've had Cali Dems tell me that I "helped get George Bush elected" by voting for Ralph Nader, here in the state where Gore rec'd 2.4M votes MORE than Bush. That called zealotry AND self-delusion.
there's more GENUINE drama on "General Hospital" than in our politics...or as was said long ago, by another 3rd party Presidential candidate, "There ain't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties."
"I would go through it point by point but that would be kind of long so I will instead point out the following.
See my reply doesn't actually qualify as a rant, because in addition to using emotional neutral and adult language, i also provide data and sources and external references to validate the data.
And, OF COURSE, you WOULD go through it, but of course you won't -- because having to make a reasoned, rational, thoughtful case, rather than just spewing irrational, secular partisan rhetoric would require that you marshal facts, arrange data and make a convincing reasoned counter-argument.
Which you, of course, can't do.
Fortunately, I can. Let's do it again, shall we?
"You are obviously anti union"
Strike One; Grandpa was an AFL-CIO shop steward. I think the American worker is getting screwed and that Big Labor is helping. The rising tax burden (back up to total marginal rates of 50% in Cali, NY, Mass, et al) is eroding his buying power, and ability to put together a decent retirement package or estate for his children. In my neighborhood 100K homes sell for 1M. Inflation is destroying the real income of the middle-class.
you blame the "trial lawyers" for the countries ills
Strike Two; Gross misstatement, and wrong at that. I don't "blame" the trial lawyers for anything. "Blame" is both a childish and over-emotive term. That's Grade School talk.
I assign to the trial lawyers their responsibility for the mess they are making of our legal system and product liability laws. No more, no less. There's plenty of people helping them.
"and you don't think Bill O'Reilly is a conservative. Yea that sounds like a republican to me. I don't believe for one second that you voted for Nader."
Strike Three; No one with a brain thinks Bill O'Reilly is anything but an loud-mouthed entertainer. Even Limbaugh is more thoughtful (not to mention consistent) about his political positions. In between hawking his; website, newsletter, appearences, etc (figure about 60M/year gross take).
O'Reilly appeals to the great mass of fed up Americans, by taking their pent-up frustations at the "forces beyond their control", and putting on the entertainment equivalent of the old Soviet "show trials".
O'Reilly's show is driven by pop opinion polls. He rants, He raves. He beats up the Left. He beats up the Right. And then he pimps the vast range of O'Reilly Products, from his books through his radio show. Then he and his "victim du jour" hop in his limo and go have a cosmo together at jean georges.
Like you, he's rarely thoughtful, rarely considered and frequently just says stuff for the attention.
I been a registered Independent for over a decade. Am one of about the 3 1/2 people who actually voted for Kathy Brown for Gov of Cali (She was a twit, but at least she was a principled twit. Most of my registered Democrat friends wouldn't even vote for her. Wilson PO'd me with his support of the blatantly anti-immigrant Prop 187, without bothering to explain to us what the Cali economy would do without all those illegal immigrants that do much of the state's dirty work. Clear political scapegoating by the state's Republicans).
There is NO Left-Right War. There is no Left-Right anything is this country. There is a ruling political class, beholden to Big Business, Big Labor and well-heeled Special Interest Groups.
The Dems have their Patrons. The Right has its.
And the average American is caught between them. The average American finds both sides distasteful and extreme, and justs wants them to steer the car down the middle of the road.
But, I don't suppose that you read opinion polls either.
It seems unlikely a group will gain "super stardom" solely by online means.
The Music Industry has INTENTIONALLY built a business model based upon certain assumptions, these include;
1. Artists should sell 500K+ on their 1st album
2. Artists need to "Borrow" money from the label for pricey production and some touring related costs to be paid back later (can you say "Company Store"?)
3. The label needs to put huge amounts of (recoverable) expenses into each artist, and the contract with the artist will make sure that the label recovers ALL it expenses FIRST.
All of these business practices (and numerous others, like the fact that most artists NEED to tour to make any real money) ensure (exactly as they are meant to) that any artist that can't routinely sell 2-5 million copies over a 3-album contract NEED NOT APPLY.
This is very similar to the early Movie Business and 60's and 70's aerospace industry.
You "create" a cost-structure that is expensively prohibitive for newcomers (think "high entry barriers"), so that, simultaneously, competitive new labels won't be formed every week and so that your artists are permanently in debt to the label. Combine that with 10 or 11 year contracts and you effectively OWN your artists.
The entire music business has been intentionally engineered to limit the number of viable music companies and to limit the number of successful artists and lower the artists' ability to control their careers.
The labels can afford to put 10 million dollars(or more) into a marketing campaign for a Britney Spears, N'Stink, Christina Aguilera, ad nauseam
With a ten million dollar marketing campaign my Grandmother could go Platinum (and she's DEAD)....
This simultaneously locks out equally talented artists who don't have someone willing to spend 10 million dollars on them AND......simultaneously indebts the artist to the label.
Best of all worlds,right?
Artificially high cost structure and indentured talent. With the successful artists fully aware that there are 100 equally talented artists ready to take their place if they get "out of line".
Why don't they want usful digital distribution?
Because ANY EFFICIENT means of digital production and distribution THREATENS THAT BUSINESS MODEL BY LOWERING THE VISIBLE COSTS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRBUTION BY EXPONENTIAL FACTORS, therefore...
From your previous post, i rather suspected that you're (formally or informally) trolling for the Dems, but this one proves it. As much as i dislike this phony and destructive Left-Right political paradigm, people like you (and that right-wing idiot who didn't do any fact checking) insist on keeping the ball rolling.
My Sincere Apologies to the thinking/rational members of the/. Community for the excesive length, but "tossed off" facts require real context. SORRY!
Let's deconstruct some of the above post, why don't we?
"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans.
In the last two Federal cycles, Republicans received about 625 million dollars and Democrats received 449 million, or the Democrats recieved about 70% of revenues the Republicans received. Don't know about where you live, but around here, 449 MILLION DOLLARS is a lot of money.
here are some links to real data, you can find verified numbers for just about anything, if you look;
You also neglected to mention some rather important things. Especially as you seem to be attempting to tie the current economic probs to a particular party.
1. The vast majority of Technology CEOs supported Clinton and Gore, and routinely give big donations to the Democratic Party.
2. The vast majority of CEOs in the Finance sectors (stock brokerages, investment banks, bond houses) are also Democrats and are amongst the Dems biggest contributors
3. The Republican Party gets much more of its money from individual "grass roots" contributors (i.e., people sending in twenty or fifty bucks) than the Democratic Party does.
Whereas, the Democratic Party gets the vast majority of its donations from corporations, with very few dollars coming from "grass roots" donations. That's a kinda important point in this discussino, since you seem to be so wound about corporate donations.
4. The two largest contributor groups of the Democratic Party are two of the most regressive and damaging special interests in America. Teachers Unions (NOT the teachers themselves -- for whom i have HUGE respect by and large) and Trial Lawyers.
Teachers Unions have gutted and stalled any meaningful educational reform in this country for 30 years, while students' test scores have plummeted (and they continue to actively obstruct schoool reform) and Trial Lawyers are making it virtually impossible for anyone to start a new business in America without hugely expensive liability insurance (which many entrepeneurs cannot afford). I've done several tech startups in Cali -- next one WON'T be here, i'm done with this messed up state.
Trial lawyers are also increasing the price of virtually every product we buy with frivolous deep pockets liability lawsuits.
The key determinent in politcal fundraising actually seems to be, not so much supposed politcal affiliation, but rather who has control of the House. When the Dems had control of the House (and the White House) they outraised the Republicans by about an average of 20%.
The actual reality is that corporations will give money to whoever can deliver the goods. That will always favor the Party in the Majority. We have the best legislators money can (and does) buy. But, why would any corporation want to waste money on a legislator in the Minority??? What sense does that make? You spend money to buy influence, PERIOD.
When the Republicans took control of the House, they found that they could outraise the Dems, especially in "party building" monies. The reason is generally held to be that whoever controls the House, controls the purse strings. If you're looking for bucks, you go to the Majority Party.
"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans."
nice troll! actually cops and firefighters vote mostly republican (about 68% nationwide), teachers do indeed vote mostly democrat (about 82% nationwide -- though that's starting to change -- there's been nearly a 10% increase nationwide of teachers who are voting republican in the last decade, whoda thunk it?)
(i have no idea how plumbers vote), you're sidestepping the fact that it's actually police and fire unions who give big amounts of their members' dues to far-left candidates.
"All of this adds up to the grim fact that republicans get a ton more money then democrats over all.
True kinda/sorta, but certainly NOT "..a ton more", through the next election cycle, there will probably be about 18-22% advantage for the Republicans. Or about the same numbers that the Dems had over the Republicans when they controlled the House and Senate.
A significant difference, but certainly not fatal. Clearly the Dems aren't attacting voters the way they used to. The Republicans are (and have always been) the "Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight", when it comes to image projection. So, that pretty much suggests that the Dems are just losing their appeal. The Republicans are usually not adroit enough at attack politics, they're too busy blowing off their own media toes. (Look at Bill Simon in Cali,-- this guy couldn't get a BJ in a whorehouse, what were the Republicans thinking????)
From about the 1960's to the late 1980's, the Dems had an (by your standards "large") advantage in money raising. When the Republicans and Gingrich took over the Congress in the '94 mid-terms, the money gap started favoring the Republicans.
My favorite though is "...Combine that with the conservative media and you can explain how they control the country."
Where would this conservatie media be? You've got the looney-tunes Washington Times, the spooky strange FoxNewsChannel and that's about it.
Meanwhile, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washingpost, Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS, and most big city newspapers might as well just print the DNC's "Message of the Day".
Limbaugh gives the Republicans a pretty large presence on talk radio. (despite a decade of dire predictions by the Left about Limbaugh fading away, he's still do quite well, fascinating. i woulda never thunk it.)
But the most successful "politics" shows on TV are O'Reilly (yeech, i'm waiting for Bill to allow a guest to complete a sentence before he starts screaming at them) and Larry King, who spends more time discussing his own opinons than his guests. I can't watch EITHER of them without getting a headache. So, I don't.
O'Reilly is hardly a conservative, and while King is technically a liberal, as O'Reilly continues to pummel King in the ratings, King has drifted back to the center.
So the vast majority of media in this country is pretty much Center-Left.
It is also boring, trite and doesn't spend any real time discussing any alternatives to the obviously dysfunctional Left-Right paradigm that has captured the votes of the majority of the few voting Americans and turned off/over about half the eligble voters in America.
I voted for Nader before, and it looks like i'll be doing it again in '04.
"Actually, hollywood is mostly the Jackass Party's grounds
You're right, BUT, not mostly, almost entirely, i live/work there and there's no faster way to find yourself out of a job or unemployable than identify yourself as a non-liberal (they hate independents/Naderites/libertarians nearly as much as Republicans here - i voted for Nader in the last cycle and was savaged by a number of my friends).
Malcontent (who i modded down and some know-nothing modded back up), reflects the fashionable political ignorance of people who don't bother to look it up...
the vast majority of IP and content controls have always been sponsored by and promoted by Democratic lawmakers (and always will be).
Liberal stalwarts like Hollings, Biden, Kennedy and Lieberman tend to lead the way in Entertainment's dream legislation in Congress.
the overwhelming majority of Big Donors to the Democratic Party are from the Entertainment Industry. (What did Streisand give in the last cycle 8 or 12 million? Spielberg another 6 or 8 million? The Bloodworth/Thomasons several more million. Fred Bijan will have given the DNC about 40 million over the last few years, including buying their new HQ building for them.
Clearly a "vast right-wing plot".
There are a small handful of non-liberals (like Milius, Mann, Heston) and you will note that they aren't big campaign contributors and they are all over 50 (except Valente who's about 250).
You will also note, if you look at the voting records of such legislation, that usually far more Republicans vote AGAINST tightening content controls, and that very few-to-no Democrats vote against them.
WAIT! What am i thinking? Introducing facts into a/. knee jerk anti-Republican screed --- SORRY! lost my head there.
As a diehard political centrists and independent it's people who don't bother to fact check that cause more grief and protect the scoundrels who pass crap UCITA and the DMCA....
Just remember - When MP3s are illegal, only criminals will have MP3s
Having spent some small amount of time with him at the last PDC (in Ellay) and Lord O'Reilly's P2P in San Fran, i respect Mr. Hardt and really, really like AS' products (having Big Pimped them out to a large # of my consulting clients, who have both ordered and used them).
If you have never had any experience with scripting on Windows (you Lucky Dog), and you have had such experience on *NIX, than you will find AS' scripting solutions a GODSEND, and an absolute vital add-on to VSE....
It's fashionable to assume that any time a CEO/Founder steps down that the vulture capitialists have pressured them to do so for some B-School suit that can't tell a computer from a kumquat, but who give good meeting...
Dick (and his Krewe) have done fine job on bringing both effective scripting and a very productive development environment to the Windows environment.
AS (along with others like Don Box) have been instrumental in making MS take the independent developer community seriously. AS has particularly been our community's advocate in bringing adult scripting to the platform. If it weren't for people like Dick and companies like Active State, we might all still be using DOS batch commands and the WSH.
Maybe (GASP!) Dick is telling the truth. And AS has a chance (in this rather difficult growth environment) to make some BigNoyz and accompanying BigBuks for all the people that have worked so hard to make useful scripting a reality on a OS that was NEVER designed to be efficiently scripted.
Maybe for once, we could all skip the requisite/. cynicism and wish them all GOOD LUCK!
"Which is taken directly from Sun's framework, and improved it just a bit."
actually ALL services frameworks will need to look pretty much alike (call it services "plug compatabilty"). BUT, it is much more likely that.NET is more inspired by WebSphere than by J2EE, since J2EE wasn't fully spec'd when the design of.NET started
"Sun's way is much better."
bearing in mind that ALL the services platforms are still much more "vapor" (in terms of their "long term" design goals) than reality, WHY is Sun's way much better?
I know hardcore developers who work with all 3 plaftforms and they find that there ARE huge problems with cross-platform compatability (most esp the various clients' JVMs) with J2EE. They've told me that WebSphere is the most stable, albeit the least-featured(HMMMM). Many of them like ASP.NET and the CLR quite a bit, but hate C# desperately. As usual, YMMV.
"So,.NET will never be cross platform."
Who said it would be cross-platform? I've be to a number of big.NET events and EVERY MS employee i've spoken to has told me it will NEVER be cross-platform.
If you're think of MONO as the cross-platform version of.NET, you shared the kool-aid with Miguel.
MS will NEVER support ANY cross-platform technology that is competitive with their own.
Sun is trying to do the same thing with J2EE, Blue with 'Sphere, HP's is off in the vapor...
Currenty, ALL WEB SERVICES PLATFORMS ARE ABOUT VENDOR LOCK-IN.
They are not about; technology, developer support or customer facilitation.
We just have to pick the best for each specific customer/job/spec we develop and hope that one of these technologies (or another) matures past the "competitive advantage" stage of development.
"I see most of their current actions as nothing more than a bid for some quick good faith.
I see it more as a WagEd/Bldg 8 PR gimmick, and it is probably also aimed establishing MS' "Stret Cred" at the Court of Appeals and beyond...
"Gee, look we even tried to implement the Settlement BEFORE it was Official, and our Evil, No Good, Court-manipulating Foes wouldn't even accept our 'Good Will' gesture."
"I think that they're trying to force a quick image makeover so that people will be less likely to look at their plans in a "worst case scenario" kind of way.
Closer, but Microsoft has won every round of this so far, so everything they do here will be based upon on the notion that they are going to just keep "going up the ladder" and burning more time until some future (and distant) Supreme Court takes the case.
This is just another "Brick in the Wall" of their legal defensive strategy. It's been incredibly pricey (both in their rep and actuall $$$$$), but they won everywhere they've need to win.
It has little (or nothing) to do with any internal movement towards "openess" or towards the OSF world.
Just more guys in tassle-loafers doing their thing, stalling this process until it becomes even more irrelevant to the Real World.
Re:You Ask "WHY?"..try these
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Future of Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2
"Now on that basis why do you feel that "every time the governemt decides to regulate something, the average person usually ends up getting screwed"?
1. Telco Utilities - the MOST regulated businesses in America, slightly freed up (to compete with each other) by the Courts over a decade ago, they STILL can't find a way to make a buck in the marketplace, with one of the most used and desired products in the world.
2. Public Broadcasters - the SECOND MOST regulated industry in America. HUGE conglomerates, unimaginably rich and powerful, all taking turns absorbing as many media-type companies as possible. From which we have shit news, shit programming and networks like ABC spend all their time big pimping their owner's (Disney, et al) other shit products. There's no technological reason for the current spectrum divisions, other than to keep their Fat Cat campaign contributors wealthy. We have long had the technical ability to have local microbroadcasters. Their Big Three (and Little Two) don't want the competition.
3. Wireless Providers - If you own a cellphone, i don't have to say anything else.
4. Big City Public Schools - Despite the frequently heroic efforts of many caring and dedicated people, the school districts of urban areas all across America are producing ill-disciplined, ill-trained illiterates who are unlikely to ever have decent employment all their lives. That's a tragedy of Biblical proportions.
5. The EPA - created by Nixon to secure his reputation as caring about the environment. There are DOZENS of Toxic "Supersites" across America, THEY WERE IDENTIFIED TWO DECADES AGO, STILL haven't been cleaned up. In addition to the "Supersites", there are HUNDREDS of dangerously polluted other that have been closed down by the EPA and not many cleanups there, either.
"It doesn't make sense. Either your government is that greatest in the world or they are sold-out money grabbing pigs. You can't have both."
Don't be simplistic, OF COURSE, you can have both. You project a "two state" or "bipolar" logical system where something where "A must is/is not equal to B" (see Duns Scotus).
The American system is the BEST in world at some things, OK at others, Terrible at others. The FSU is much more polluted than America, the EU has huge growth and econmic problems, Eastern Europe is fifty years behind Western Europe. Africa is a bleeding wound. Asia is beset with dictators and failed political experiments. Arabia is ruled by despots and corrupted religions.
Wi-Fi will be regulated by the Feds NOT for any technological reasons, but because Federal law enforcement, Federal intelligence agencies, and large media campaign contributors (such as the RIAA and MPAA) are embarking on a process to control the deployment of ANY new communications technologies that they perceive could have an impact their own turf.
Face it, Jack Valente and Hillary Rosen have much more real power and influence than the vast bulk of American voters. They will have much more profound influence on technological regulation than every member of/. put together.
"Chances are HP isn't losing much of anything (if at all) by selling to another distributor.
It's (potentially) better than that (for printer buyers and users)..
1. Dell detects that HP/Canon/Epson are keeping margins artificially high on printers. Dell does a gut check to see if they can undercut the BigBoyz in the marketplace. Dell decides they can.
2. HP sees a new competitor with money, knowledge and resources in the PC arena, decides that rather than allow Dell to transition smoothly to offering their Dell-branded printers, "We can offer you a Dell brand printer 25% cheaper than the comparable HP and give you free extended support.", HP decides to deprive Dell of some printer customers.
3. Dell now has to scramble to get their printers to market, maybe they make some "entry mistakes" maybe they don't (i'd bet don't), regardless, now Dell has to explain WHY they can't offer the customer (most esp CORPORATE buyers who have been told EXACTLY what model HP printer to buy) the world's best-selling printers.
4. HP now goes DIRECTLY to the big Dell corporate accoutants and attempts to undercut Dell's nascent printer biz, the most common technique will be reduced prices.
5. Dell responds with further price drops across their new printer line to gain and retain sales.
Should it actually work that way, that just the "Capitialism Classic" approach to business.
"...Have I limited your computing experience? Perhaps, but it's a trade off for potential upsides.
AHHH! Nice selection of examples to demonstrate my point. THANKS, that's more like it.
Anything that causes a computer user to change their hardware and/or software and/or usage patterns to accomodate other available features/technologies/data/???? has a cost/benefit ratio associated with it. In your example, it's my deploying gpg, a s/w package i may/may not have already deployed. I already don't open most of the encrypted mail get, unless i know who it's from and WHY. IOW, i need to have a firm REASON to accept the added inconvienence, or else the "Delete" key wins.
However, you note; "...Today, limited content "gives" me a broader library from which to choose. And, of course, that's a non-sequiteur that won't be accurate for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps someday (5-10 years) it MIGHT be true (though i tend to doubt it), but right now the VAST MAJORITY of content from legally published works of art/science/research to the innumerable warez and pr()n HAVE no effective content controls. You can't unring the bell.
To reach that "broader library" of FUTURE content of which you speak, a strong majority of the all the content producers, market segment by market segment, will have to agree to use/maintain/cooperate with each other for the sake of maintaing the credibility of any DRM platform.
I have a useful amount of XPerience with and relationships in music and film production/distribution, and somewhat less with TV, little-to-none with cable. That necessary cooperation is a LONG way off. These folk are tougher competitors than the s/w biz. They won't be changing their competitive habits very quickly (if at all).
Remember, USERS don't need DRM, content producers need DRM......and unless MS decides to use their power as a market maker to force adoption of Palladium (something that would be an unmitigated PR diaster for them), widespread deployment of Palladium will be no greater than its; user transparency, convienence and user PRIVACY protection.
To the degree that Palladium is designed to render XP's self-imposed "Raw Sockets" security flaws harmless......Windows ISVs will quickly fix that problem without requiring ANY sweeping DRM solutions. Less complex solutions usually win.
With the vaporously mythical TCPA/Palladium it will be the tradeoff of whatever security it might offer (it's hardly unfair to point out that BillCo's HX of security is less than, ahem, stellar), versus whatever restrictions it might offer.
If (as the most neurotically anti-MS watchers fear) Palladium should eventually enable scans of the average machine's filesystem for; MP3s, DVDs, WMAs, JPEGs, et al and forces users to either catalog ALL existing content and use Palladium and or Windows DRM controls via the codecs/players/whatever OR accept either lower quality or greater UI difficulties......than Palladium will fail with consumers, small biz, education and will have limited success with mid-sized and larger corporations (where it will have to compete with existing and future IP control systems).
To the degree that Palladium is designed to be a secure, DRM solution for future content, Palladium's future will be dependent much more on content pricing models, MS's street cred and download ease/availability.
Re:Nitpick...not ONE but TWO Fawlty Analogies!!!!!
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The Power of Palladium
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· Score: 2
While some others want to parse the automoblie "top speed" comment let's look at the actual point that was said...
"...The content is all that will be limited, not the computer. The computer will not be limited in any way. You can boot into untrusted mode and use whatever you want. The content, on the other hand, may require the use of trusted mode. That simple."
If pre-Palladium you can download/exchange/manipulate any content you want in any fashion your computer is capable of, and post-Palladium you CANNOT....
VOILA', YOUR computing experience has just been LIMITED.
It is artificial to separate a current category of computing behavior, subject it to technological controls and then say "You haven't really lost anything."
While exchanging some freedom for some security (the essence of the Social Contract) is a common practice it's misleading to claim that the act of putting a "content regulator" on a my computer doesn't alter the the machine's abilities...
BECAUSE ALTERING THE MACHINE'S ABILITIES IS THE ***PURPOSE*** OF THE CONTENT REGULATOR (in this case, the proposed Palladium technologies)
so, as with any tradeoff of freedom or liberty, the question must be what do we GET in exchange for what we GIVE?????
PS, what was it Cringely said about the possible strategic purpose of implementing "raw sockets" in XP, i forget?
TRUE the smallest Districts would have to struggle with making legal fees for any PROTRACTED legal battle, and TRUE that would be draining if there was a "tooth and nail" battle, BUT...
...there won't be any such legal battle(s) here, BECAUSE these types of licensing issue(s) have been litigated to death, and long ago became "Black Letter Law", well before the personal computer and MS....
thus far, and virtually without meaningful legal exception, Courts (trial and review) have told contractual entities (over and over and over again) that they are responsible for understanding and upholding ALL the provisions of the contracts they affirm
if the District(s) involved here could demonstrate that MS is either misconstruing or wilfully misinterpreting the EULA, a trial Court just might void the contract(s), leaving the District without ANY MS products...
but, i'm assuming you've read (and understand) the MS EULA...it is one of the most amazing licenses i've ever read....it is clear, concise, brillantly constructed and written and gives EVERY right imaginable to MS and simultaneously relieves them from EVERY form of liability....
The chances of sucessfully (i.e., surviving judicial review) litigating a licensing violation of the MS EULA AGAINST MS are roughly the on the same odds as RIAA stopping MP3 piracy....
sure they exist, but don't hold your breath
so, the District(s) involved won't even seriously litigate this, because any reasonable (and responsible) law firm will tell their clients "suck this one up, and next time don't sign contracts you don't want to adhere to"
interestingly, this might well be a strong selling point for a Red Hat/Mandrake/???, if they are smart enough to hit the K12 market really hard..
"I wonder if this ep was an involuted apology by CC, and his attempt to do right by the Gunmen?
...maybe, and/or he wanted to make sure that we wouldn't be seeing unauthorized or really bad spinoffs of the Gunmen by anybody else...
if we can believe Duchovny's claims, CC is a man who likes COMPLETE control of the characters he creates and most esp, doesn't like anybody else to profit from merchandising or marketing them....
THOUGH, that said, REMEMBER, it WAS a "closed casket" funeral...
..and THAT leaves the door open to some hokey way to bring them back at a later time....(ala' what he did with Mulder when CC "killed" him off and brought him "back" for ratings' sweeps)....
"I wonder if someone could challenge this 'right to audit' in court. A comment in the earlier story on the GPL [slashdot.org] mentioned possible contract problems with license terms that you cannot read until you open or install the software.
sadly, that's the rough equivalent of pissing up a rope
the "Contracting Entity", in this case the School District is responsible for being aware (and proactively enforcing) of ALL requirements of a contractual agreement, in this case the EULA....
Worse yet, unlike an individual user, they are considered to be in complete "control" of the software at ALL times...
so, if you or i as end-users leave a copy of a S/W product out at home and the baby sitter dupes it, it would be nearly impossible for a s/w mfgr to get legal sanctions against us...(though they COULD revoke our license and take the s/w away)
not so a multi-user licensed corporate environment...
if Jane Blow HATES Office 2009 and brings in her own copy of Office 97 into work and installs it, and it gets copied to a few other machines...GUESS WHAT
...the emmployer will have to pay (fines + license) for ALL the copies of Jane's s/w as well...
"Especially troubling is that MS seems to picking on organizations without much money to defend themselvs in court..."
Careful now, even smaller municipal entites like a School District have LOTS of legal services available to them.....EVEN IF they'd rather spend it elsewhere
I'm more fascinated that Ballmer, who is one very smart cookie, would allow a "bad press" item like this to go forward while the Antitrust Trial is still ongoing..."picking on" a school district is a GUARANTEE of bad vibes, and you would think MS would be trying to lower the volume on the "Borg" stories...
and most especially, with Bill on the Witness Stand, this type of thing will NOT endear them to the Courts when all their competitors are claiming what hardballers they are....
It shows that they are clearly "forces" at work in MS that are NOT completely in touch with what's happening in the "Real World"
i know you were trying to make an important point and i got it, BUT....
the more generalized form of the application would be...
"Nobody Knows What They Don't Know"
so the belief in Western intellectual tradition is that in evaluating information given to us be complete strangers, we would use our analytical and reasoning skills to separate the likely from the probable from the improbable from the "Are you smoking rock?" You neatly point out that the average public elementary education in America blows chunks, BUT, you still talking ONLY about our Western set of preconceptions and perceptions
many other traditions do not embrace Western rationalism as anything more (and frequently less) than just another modality of thought
The mystic/spiritual tradtions such as Zen, Shinto and other Buddhist variants, as well as Sufism, and YES, ISLAM...do not necessarily perceive and analyze the world the way we do in the West
This goes well beyond the superfical disconnection of "suicide bomber" versus "homocide bomber", those are both viewing the act through the Western pardigm of "terrorism" and "national liberation struggles"
from the earliest and most malignant days of Western Colonialism, most citizens of the West have always assumed that our idealized model of democratic, pluralistic and cosumer/technologically saturated nations as being the current "Best Practices" for ALL the peoples of the world
yet, in the lengthy and well-documented history of the Middle East and Asia, NOT ONE democracy has spontaneously arisen the way they did in Europe and North America
Not to be percieved as biased, the same holds true of Latin America....
The few extent democracies that arose (say Monrovia and Israel) were exports from other countries and cultures and many of the extent democracies in the world are struggling.
Face it, there are approximately 300 nations in this world, and depending on how generous you are with your defintions, there are only between 2 and 3 dozen democracies...
yet virtually ALL of these nations have their own national/local media, whether print, radio or TV...
you can be sure that most of the countries in the world have highly controlled and contrived media and that they will publish or broadcast those items that serve the purposes and goals of the ruling hierarchy....
the American and European media sure do, why would we expect the media in a "42nd world" country to do any better...
Welcome to Babel...
it will be getting worse before it gets better....
Re:Wine Mainstream..Smaller is Better??
on
Wired Talks Wine
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· Score: 2
anandrajan, NICE post! Thanks.
"When more and more people in non-Western countries find that the latest version of Windows and Office is too expensive, an appropriately packaged version of linux (or the BSDs) will become more attractive."
=TRUE, IFF the shrink wrap packaged version gives them 1. the same or better functionality as that month's version of MS OFFICE and 2. That packaged version installs as or more easily(?) than that month's version of Windows. Otherwise, they'll keep cracking and copying MS products, it's not as though these countries will have any truly effective IP policing in the next 20 years, they're too poor and have other priorities, regardless of how much the US, EU, WTO, IMF, WB whine about it
"...could be an opportunity for distributed and free.Net-like services."
=TRUE, IFF the major content providers and software vendors don't use their clout to embrace and extend the DMCA to those "types or categories" of services AND some altruists are willing to set up the server farms that could serve and type of medium-high demand that such free services could generate. You should read the IP related sections of the.NET EULA, you might find them stimulating
"3. Future developments in the PDA and handheld space: While Pocket PC is gaining now, linux could play a role here which may eventually affect what we mean by "the desktop".
right on...when you get past the number one social use for the Net (low cost pr()n distribution), most Net users today AREN'T Geeks, they really need/want wireless web browsing, organizer software, wireless email and some voice and other audio capacity (MP3 player, voice recorder, alarm clock), my color Prism or iPAQ can do MOST of that now, and are just a LITTLE BIT slower and kludgier than i'd like...
MS' tools in the embedded space have become much better in the last year, but there are still gaps in their approach to embedded developer tools
specifically, their tools are basically centered on VSE (a great development environment for "full sized" apps), and this makes them a little bloated in the embedded space and there are still some pieces missing (CE is still a little too big for most ultra light weight applications, and limited on processor type support)
LINUX could score BIG here if they someone can provide a superior development environment for the device space and a compact, stable device kernel across a wide variety of device processors
as i have continually said to my g'frnds, "Smaler is Better!"
Re:Wine Mainstream..If you can't beat it...beat it
on
Wired Talks Wine
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"I really think that with the advent of StarOffice 6.0, Mozilla 1.0, and Ximian Connector, combined with a great, well-refined WINE, we may finally see the beginnings of the Year of Linux on the Desktop(TM)"
while i seriously hope you are right, it isn't merely a question of "equaling" the features of MS Office or of the Windows Desktop (Bleech!), or bringing native Win32 code over to the LINUX platform (look at the history of Win emulators on the Mac), even if WINE is perfect, thunking is not free, performance wise, and Bill's Thing will be shipping on MILLIONS of new PCs every month for the foreseeable future
we in the community have to offer a significantly betteruser experience, with LINUX native apps
we come in strong on price, free support and passion
we come in weak on marketing, abilty to tie our LINUX products to a "Big Name" tech provider (like AOL) and we have no ability to make the OEM Mafia (Dell, Compaq, Gateway, HP, Sony, et al) dual boot enable any large portion of their new machines
also, "The Curse of *NIX", which i have been dealing in my work since before the widespread release of SRV, continues to haunt us....especially in the area of idiot proof desktop setup and functionality
X continues to be less than perfect and hard to get going really smoothly without SOME user experience and intervention
...and although I have great hopes that in the mid-term plus (18-36 months) the battle/conflict/thing between Gnome and KDE will result in KILLER desktop functionality, in the short term, the desktop setup continues to be a real weakness in selling LINUX to anyone not comfortable with at least a little diddling, twiddling and fiddling with their OS setup (and that is a LOT of people)
It's about Michae'ls ETHICS and RESPONSIBLITY
on
Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: 2
FINE, let's do some value checking, why don't we?
"This story is an important story..."
you think so? all over america chemical companies continue to illegally dump toxic chemical wastes, including PCB's and very little is done about it, IF this story turns out to be true (and if you actually read the WashPost story, it's just a report at this point, the WashPost isn't exactly the EPA or WHO, is it?), monsanto then joins the long list of chemical companies who have continuously polluted communities across america...and will probably receive little more than a slap on the wrist, just how important is PCB dumping when we let it happen over and over and over again?..i don't know how old you are, but in the last 20 years in SoCal, i remember DOZENS of JUST PCB dumping stories..i expect to see dozens more in the next 20 years
that's actually a problem with our POLITICAL, judicial and enforcement systems, but most American's (like most/.'rs) would rather waste their time on fabricated controversies like abortion, gun control, Lewinski, butterfly ballots, and the rest of the tabloid crap, while the real (i.e. difficult) problems go unsolved
"By creating self-destructing vegetables, farmers are lured into being forced to pay for seed year after year after year. Instead of being able to save a small amount of seed for the next year's crop and becoming self sufficient, Monsanto is forcing farmers in these poor countries to come back to them year after year and beg for more seed.
so what's YOUR solution?
monsanto has to make a profit to pay its employees, its suppliers, its stockholders, the employees need money to support themselves and their families, if monsanto doesn't charge for their products their employees will leave and this "corporate legal entity" that everyone keeps talking about will have no one left to do the work, stockholders will dump the stock, the market will walk away from anything monsanto does, and BINGO, no more ag products from monsanto AT any price...
if YOU don't like monsanto's policies, YOU can go out, put together a company to compete with them, and if monsanto does indeed have inflated prices you will have no problem beating monsanto in the market, vastly cheaper prices will always prevail
"They have entrusted Michael with editorial powers and the ability to post stories. If you do not like this fact, then I suggest you should probably take it up with the owners, instead of the readership at large.
DUH! what exactly do you think i'm doing?
Michael has the journalistic ethics of a whore, he's done more to damage/.'s reputation with the geeks i know (a moderate # of my coworkers will read nothing posted by him) since there's NO other cannnel/mechanism built in to moderate/grade/give feedback on the editors...
i don't ALWAYS agree with Taco/Hemos/Cliff, but i RESPECT THEM AND THEIR JUDGEMENT...Michael has no connection with either journalistic or even community ethics...he's using/. to purely and obviously serve his own ends
i'm as politically agnostic and independent as you can get, and if/. wants to turn their site into "News for Socialist/Leftist Geeks, News that Matters to Our Point of View", GOD BLESS, that's their right as the people who are PAYING for it (just like Monsanto, eh?)...btw, in a capitialist country they have that right, in the vast majority of socialist countries they'd publish what they were told
so lacking any other alternative, here's MY feedback to the rest of the/. editors is, everytime Michael goes trolling to satisfy his political agenda, my opinion of/. goes down, and then i find myself spending less reading/posting/discussing...
these are the very things that/. cannot afford to have happen, because when you extract the responsible people, you leave the WIPO Troll, the BSD Troll, the Stephen King Troll, The Line Space Troll, The ASCII Art Troll and legions of First Post Trolls and MS v LINUX Trolls and then a bunch of politically correct fellow travelers who want to view everything technological through a political paradigm, NO THANKS
how long do you think/. will remain important after that happens, eh?
ALL XYZ'S are ALWAYS ZZZZ
on
Monsanto and PCBs
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
what Monsanto (and numerous other chemical companies') employees have done, by exposing millions of people all around the world with excessive and illegal exposures to a whole rash of toxic and carcinogenics substances is:
immoral
illegal
unethical
and deserves the harshest possible punishment,
JUST LIKE MICHAEL deserves the harshest possible censure for dumping stories like this on/., and then pumping them up with his own personal political perspective
ONE, MICHAEL shows himself to be a bigot...
monsanto is not a person, it is a bunch of people, some good, some obviously bad, and many somewhere in the middle, micheal tries here to lump in all the monsanto employees into the same category...hundreds of thousands or millions of people in 3rd world countries have nutrition they wouldn't otherwise have, thanks to genetically engineered foods
but, apparently Michael would rather have these people subjected to malnutrtion and stravation, in order to satisfy his personal beliefs..
TWO, by michael using/. as a polemic device to further his politics, he lowers the quality of/. discussion
whether or not this story belongs on/. is subject to the decision of the majority
Michael's personal political agenda surfaces (yet again), in order for him to stroke his own ego, by starting another round of trolling and flamebating on another story that have very little connection to computers, computing or computing technology
"And don't start on whether most OSS projects value advice on interfaces. That's the major hurdle to overcome"
while i don't know if that's THE major hurdle, but it is a BIG ONE.
however, the next generation of UI design, as is mentioned in the the parent will have to be deep, as opposed to wide (which is what we have now)
but your target user makes all the difference in the design approach...
right now most LINUX GUI/Desktop installs assume that the user is a geek, somewhere between a newbie and Linus...
as designers, we could ALL do a lot more, even with the current desktops and installs, if we would assume that some users want the choice of a "i'm a complete idiot, make all my decisions for me" , similar to the way that Mandrake and RedHat attempt to do with the base install...and then load up our designs with context-senstive "help for dummies", but well thought out contextual help, that we test against new, non-geek users for value and effectiveness
so, maybe if we stopped assuming in the design phase that everybody wants to be just like us and play around with all the bells and whistles and just bite the bullet and make some complete sets of install choices, it might make it easier for the completely non-geek to use our products????
I'll expedite my answer, because i'm time impaired.
"It's also becoming increasingly clear that the only honest-to-gods challenge to Windows desktops is going to be as it always was, Apple.
as a serious OG Apple user (Apple II and a 128K Beige Toaster, have a G4 Tower 2' away from me right now, so please keep your flames to yourself)
It's actually becoming increasingly clear that Apple is on Microsoft's Life Support System, probably for antitrust reasons.
The high-end home/soho/small biz market that has kept Apple going would bail in legions if MS withdrew Microsoft Office from the Mac platform. That's why Steve's Funny Fruit Machine Company has been on MS' tip these last few years...
for one example, where's Apple's own great browser, the number one most important app for ANY consumer platform?
"Apple's finally rising to the challenge, with the -support- of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit"
this would be how many times in the last decade that Apple has "fully committed" itself to the business market?
i remember 3 major announcements on this, and one of my coworkers remembers 5.
for just one biz sector example, Where's Apple's Killer SQL Server RDBMS? that's the biz equivalent of the browser, the key app that would sell to midrange businesses....
"Instead of considering Apple a closed-source evil, look at them as a company that knows how to do three things well. They know how to design killer hardware, they know how to create a user interface that doesn't suck, and they know how to -survive-. You don't get bitch-slapped in the marketplace by Microsoft for nearly two decades and remain in business by living on your stock inflation alone."
i COMPLETELY agree with all 3 points.
None of which has anything to do with what the business market wants.
1. Commodity Prices on H/W
2. Near-Commodity Prices on S/W
3. Readily available VAR/Integrator/Consultant services at competitive prices.
4. Huge accumulation of shrink wrapped biz apps with minimum expenditures on data conversion
5. Off-the-shelf mid-tier solutions that are installable/operable/maintainable by lower-cost employees
I've loved virtually all my Mac's over the years. (except one LC and one Performa) Just about slept with my 840 and my VX, but Steve and Apple are NOT driven by consumer needs
they are driven by the "Neat Factor", it's given me a lot enjoyment over the years, but it's not a perspective that will earn you a big consumer and mid-sized biz market share, they care much more about the "Cost Factor"
I was pretty sure that ALL of them had to do with LINUX, even if not directly...
#'s 1,2,3,6,7,8 and 10 are directly about LINUX
and #'s 4, 5 and 9 are about the competitive PC/ MS v LINUX marketplace...
though i suppose that you could argue that even though number 9, the Darker Image is about taking a shot at MS too, it's principally a good natured poke at some of the less "user friendly" members of our community....
after all guys, it IS LINUX WORLD magazine....
IMHO, i'd say that #'s 2,3 and 7 are serious blue sky
"Now, I don't know about you, but to me, $66 million is a fair amount of money..."
while $66 Million is a large amount to me personally, from a corporate point of view, esp the Global 2000, it's lunch money....
and Apple is a small, boutique computer maker, that had gone down from nearly $10 billion in sales to nearly $1 billion in sales....if the iMac hadn't come along when it did??????
(keep the flames to yourself, i support both Apple and wider PC choice by buying them...i'v bought (just for my personal business) 6 in the last 12 months...)
what exactly can Apple do with the $66 million?
is it enough to start a whole bunch of R&D programs into Natural Language or Data Mining?
maybe a few small R&D programs could be started with that money, but what do you do about bonuses for your best workers, rebates to your best channel partners, R&D into improving current generation products, cash payments to Motorola for G5 production, etc, etc.
Blue makes THE VAST MAJORITY OF ITS ****PROFITIBILITY**** on SERVICES...it's estimated by industry insiders that Blue lost ***20 billion dollars*** on OS/2 alone (though they won't admit to more than 10-15 billions lost), and more billions were lost on the MCA-PS/2 desktops
about 3 years ago, there had been a push from Global Services inside Blue to dump ALL the h/w (except big iron) and just concentrate on their highly profitiable services and consulting efforts...
the ThinkPad line was restored to prove that they could do it, (i've owned 3 in a row, 770ED, 770Z and an A22P, they ROCK) they've restored their rep in laptops and now many inside Blue want to move on...as seen by IBM's really strong $$$$$ committment to LINUX and Java....
the Wintel PC, from the standpoint of the much debated ***innovation*** is D-E-A-D...that doesn't mean that many, many billions more won't be sold, but each year the margins will get thinner and thinner as the PC falls into the "home appliances" category...with appropriate accompanying (much, much lower) commodity hardware margins
that's why the Wintel Boyz are pushing the upcoming Tablet PC so hard, to try to maintain their eroding margins on CPU's (i owned the original Tablet PC, the Grid Convertible, even if the thing had worked as designed, it's one of those ideas that look better on paper, it's a niche machine design, and will stay that way, all marketing hype aside)
another view on Apple's 66 million dollars profit...if the story is true (about a one billion dollar loss for ibm on PC desktops last year)....
IBM lost ***FIFTEEN TIMES AS MUCH MONEY**** in one year as Apple made, and for IBM, the loss wasn't even noticeably in either their stock values/market cap or overall analysts' buy recommendations
Really? so if you pay any attention at all to ***REALITY****, which appears to escape you, you might have noticed the following:
1. The Linux market share on the PC desktop is so small to almost unmeasurable (as related HERE on/. a few days ago)
2. That a key component to getting mindshare on new desktop users or those desktop users who are thinking about getting away from Windoze is the browser and the related email/chat/IM clients
3. That a browser needs to support ALL the MIME data types that IE does AND offer a better browsing experience than IE, Zilla is close but not their yet
4. Every new generation of MS OS provides additional "lock in" from the OS to the hardware and the apps and that means that it becomes harder with each generation to offer an alternative paradigm and get it accepted....both O2K and OXP have substantially better OS integration than they have ever had...making a steeper hill for any other product to climb
TO THE *NIX POLITICAL CORRECTNESS BIGOT(S) who wrote the above post and the asshole who modded my parent post as "Flamebait"
"Making all athoratitive statements like that leads only to flame wars and not better browsing
NO, making rational discussive statements about the REALITY of a product leads to further discussion about the product
further discussion leads to an open exchange of viewpoints
and that can lead to involved parties reassessing their approach and priorities and, if they're smart enough, making changes that lead to an even better product
The Stallmanian Political Correctness, *NIX Style you would insist on leads to the inane belief that "If you build it, they will come."
Microsoft, whom i know very, very well, loves having fools and cheerleaders on other products development teams.....
....because while everybody on some other project is reassuring each other with heartwarming "Shit, man. This thing is Da Bomb!"
MS just quietly goes out and locks in another market.
From a market share point of view, if ALL the users and readers of/. went to Mozilla, Opera, NS 6.2, SmengeBrowse 3.1, whatever and NEVER used or discussed IE, EVER AGAIN...
MS would throw a party and have a large laugh at the people who don't seem to understand that they have just deprived MS of a whooping.001% of the total browser market
I have had 3 customers of mine call me in the last month INSISTING that they had to upgrade to XP NOW!
i explained to them that XP is pretty much a simple dot upgrade to 2K and there was absolutely no reason to upgrade if they were having no problems with 2K and that, in 2 of the 3 cases, that XP doesn't have certified drivers for some of their h/w...they all DIDN'T BELIEVE that XP isn't the "greatest new OS of all time" and that their systems wouldn't work so much better with XP installed
THAT'S the mentality that Zilla, et al have to suceed against and that won't happen unless the products are way better than the competition (sa, "Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen)
My respect and admiration goes out to all those actually working on Zilla/Opera/Netscape..i've spoken to number of them...they actually making a difference and fighting the good fight
Bigots like you just make rational and reasonable discussion either difficult or impossible
BTW, it's bad enough that you're a narrow minded anti free speech bigot, please learn how to touch type
Slashdot Mirror
and that pretty much says it all about your position, why defend your (indefensible and inchoate) position when you can just spout cheap ad hominem personal attacks without ever having to support your claims?
nice try, but it won't fool too many people, you can ran around screaming "conservative" or "Republican" all you want, but it's just cheap demagoging.
And has absolutely nothing to do with supporting or defending your position and the your so-called claims.
The DATA that you don't wish to address are simple and consistent.
The VAST MAJORITY of the American people are relatively-to-very happy with George Bush and their own financial circumstances. They have some worries about Wall Street, the economy and the state of education across America. Some worries, some even increasing worries (the economy) not anywhere near either a crisis state or even prominent concern.
No one has to take my word for it, it's easy enough to verify;
The Zogby Poll
The Field Poll
The Gallup Poll
The Los Angeles Times Poll
PollingReportdotCom -- Great Polling Summary Site
The Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CNN's AllPolitics website, frequent has latest polls
CBS News Polls
The "Left-Right" War rubbish you are talking about is disproved by two simple (and recent) votes of Congress.
The OVERWHELMINGLY BIPARTISAN vote for their own pay raise and the vote for next year's Federal budget.
Both overwhelmingly approved by both parties.
Yep, some Left-Right split. The Dems who control the Senate are so worried about their Republican "opposition" that they voted for Bush's Tax Cut and Bush's Budget and the Patriot Act and the DMCA and UCITA.
And the Republicans who control the House are so worried about the Congressional Dems that they have gone along with EVERY redistricting plan controlled by a Democratic state legislature, all across America. The Republicans have no plans to challenge ANY redistricting across America, even though the net gain will go to the Dems (about 2-4 seats in the next Congress)
And the Congressional Dems are so worried about their Republican counterparts they cut deal after deal with them for their own priorities in the current budget AND VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY with the Republicans for the Patriot Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Copyright Reform, et al...(and i certainly don't need to mention the "Under God" Pledge votes LEAD by Democratic Congressional Leaders Daschle and Gephardt, do I?)
Or are you asserting that the Democrats and all the major polling organizations are in league with your much-detested Republicans?
Both Parties have the ability (with a split Congress) to bring the legislative process to a complete halt. Gee, strange then in a political/idealogical "War" that neither side is doing that. They are (with a few exceptions) merrily holding hands and passing budgets and spending authorizations and all sorts of other legislation with nary a discouraging word.
So, our elected officials don't perceive a "War", the American People don't perceive a "War", the Pollsters can't find a "War".
So, where is it?
You can give all the anecdotal myths you want, and for every one there's a counter-example. Like your hypothetical "Greenpeace Sticker in Montana", which anyone can respond to with a "NRA Sticker in Berkely" example.(That's the "One-to-Many Fallacy", and bigoted to the eyeballs, btw. Even should both hypotheticals evince reality, so what? No shortages of jerks in this world. One asshole just proves that he/she's one asshole.)
I've had Cali Dems tell me that I "helped get George Bush elected" by voting for Ralph Nader, here in the state where Gore rec'd 2.4M votes MORE than Bush. That called zealotry AND self-delusion.
there's more GENUINE drama on "General Hospital" than in our politics...or as was said long ago, by another 3rd party Presidential candidate, "There ain't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties."
AMEN
See my reply doesn't actually qualify as a rant, because in addition to using emotional neutral and adult language, i also provide data and sources and external references to validate the data.
And, OF COURSE, you WOULD go through it, but of course you won't -- because having to make a reasoned, rational, thoughtful case, rather than just spewing irrational, secular partisan rhetoric would require that you marshal facts, arrange data and make a convincing reasoned counter-argument.
Which you, of course, can't do.
Fortunately, I can. Let's do it again, shall we?
"You are obviously anti union"
Strike One; Grandpa was an AFL-CIO shop steward. I think the American worker is getting screwed and that Big Labor is helping. The rising tax burden (back up to total marginal rates of 50% in Cali, NY, Mass, et al) is eroding his buying power, and ability to put together a decent retirement package or estate for his children. In my neighborhood 100K homes sell for 1M. Inflation is destroying the real income of the middle-class.
you blame the "trial lawyers" for the countries ills
Strike Two; Gross misstatement, and wrong at that. I don't "blame" the trial lawyers for anything. "Blame" is both a childish and over-emotive term. That's Grade School talk.
I assign to the trial lawyers their responsibility for the mess they are making of our legal system and product liability laws. No more, no less. There's plenty of people helping them.
"and you don't think Bill O'Reilly is a conservative. Yea that sounds like a republican to me. I don't believe for one second that you voted for Nader."
Strike Three; No one with a brain thinks Bill O'Reilly is anything but an loud-mouthed entertainer. Even Limbaugh is more thoughtful (not to mention consistent) about his political positions. In between hawking his; website, newsletter, appearences, etc (figure about 60M/year gross take).
O'Reilly appeals to the great mass of fed up Americans, by taking their pent-up frustations at the "forces beyond their control", and putting on the entertainment equivalent of the old Soviet "show trials".
O'Reilly's show is driven by pop opinion polls. He rants, He raves. He beats up the Left. He beats up the Right. And then he pimps the vast range of O'Reilly Products, from his books through his radio show. Then he and his "victim du jour" hop in his limo and go have a cosmo together at jean georges.
Like you, he's rarely thoughtful, rarely considered and frequently just says stuff for the attention.
I been a registered Independent for over a decade. Am one of about the 3 1/2 people who actually voted for Kathy Brown for Gov of Cali (She was a twit, but at least she was a principled twit. Most of my registered Democrat friends wouldn't even vote for her. Wilson PO'd me with his support of the blatantly anti-immigrant Prop 187, without bothering to explain to us what the Cali economy would do without all those illegal immigrants that do much of the state's dirty work. Clear political scapegoating by the state's Republicans).
There is NO Left-Right War. There is no Left-Right anything is this country. There is a ruling political class, beholden to Big Business, Big Labor and well-heeled Special Interest Groups.
The Dems have their Patrons. The Right has its.
And the average American is caught between them. The average American finds both sides distasteful and extreme, and justs wants them to steer the car down the middle of the road.
But, I don't suppose that you read opinion polls either.
It seems unlikely a group will gain "super stardom" solely by online means.
...simultaneously indebts the artist to the label.
The Music Industry has INTENTIONALLY built a business model based upon certain assumptions, these include;
1. Artists should sell 500K+ on their 1st album
2. Artists need to "Borrow" money from the label for pricey production and some touring related costs to be paid back later (can you say "Company Store"?)
3. The label needs to put huge amounts of (recoverable) expenses into each artist, and the contract with the artist will make sure that the label recovers ALL it expenses FIRST.
All of these business practices (and numerous others, like the fact that most artists NEED to tour to make any real money) ensure (exactly as they are meant to) that any artist that can't routinely sell 2-5 million copies over a 3-album contract NEED NOT APPLY.
This is very similar to the early Movie Business and 60's and 70's aerospace industry.
You "create" a cost-structure that is expensively prohibitive for newcomers (think "high entry barriers"), so that, simultaneously, competitive new labels won't be formed every week and so that your artists are permanently in debt to the label. Combine that with 10 or 11 year contracts and you effectively OWN your artists.
The entire music business has been intentionally engineered to limit the number of viable music companies and to limit the number of successful artists and lower the artists' ability to control their careers.
The labels can afford to put 10 million dollars(or more) into a marketing campaign for a Britney Spears, N'Stink, Christina Aguilera, ad nauseam
With a ten million dollar marketing campaign my Grandmother could go Platinum (and she's DEAD)....
This simultaneously locks out equally talented artists who don't have someone willing to spend 10 million dollars on them AND...
Best of all worlds,right?
Artificially high cost structure and indentured talent. With the successful artists fully aware that there are 100 equally talented artists ready to take their place if they get "out of line".
Why don't they want usful digital distribution?
Because ANY EFFICIENT means of digital production and distribution THREATENS THAT BUSINESS MODEL BY LOWERING THE VISIBLE COSTS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRBUTION BY EXPONENTIAL FACTORS, therefore...
The Internet (as we know it) MUST DIE.
From your previous post, i rather suspected that you're (formally or informally) trolling for the Dems, but this one proves it. As much as i dislike this phony and destructive Left-Right political paradigm, people like you (and that right-wing idiot who didn't do any fact checking) insist on keeping the ball rolling.
/. Community for the excesive length, but "tossed off" facts require real context. SORRY!
My Sincere Apologies to the thinking/rational members of the
Let's deconstruct some of the above post, why don't we?
"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans.
In the last two Federal cycles, Republicans received about 625 million dollars and Democrats received 449 million, or the Democrats recieved about 70% of revenues the Republicans received. Don't know about where you live, but around here, 449 MILLION DOLLARS is a lot of money.
here are some links to real data, you can find verified numbers for just about anything, if you look;
Common Cause
Judical Watch
Federal Election Commission
Roll Call Magazine
Library of Congress' THOMAS legislative info site
Vote dot Com
TownHall dot Com
Pew Research Center (reasonably balanced/verified poll data)
You also neglected to mention some rather important things. Especially as you seem to be attempting to tie the current economic probs to a particular party.
1. The vast majority of Technology CEOs supported Clinton and Gore, and routinely give big donations to the Democratic Party.
2. The vast majority of CEOs in the Finance sectors (stock brokerages, investment banks, bond houses) are also Democrats and are amongst the Dems biggest contributors
3. The Republican Party gets much more of its money from individual "grass roots" contributors (i.e., people sending in twenty or fifty bucks) than the Democratic Party does.
Whereas, the Democratic Party gets the vast majority of its donations from corporations, with very few dollars coming from "grass roots" donations. That's a kinda important point in this discussino, since you seem to be so wound about corporate donations.
4. The two largest contributor groups of the Democratic Party are two of the most regressive and damaging special interests in America. Teachers Unions (NOT the teachers themselves -- for whom i have HUGE respect by and large) and Trial Lawyers.
Teachers Unions have gutted and stalled any meaningful educational reform in this country for 30 years, while students' test scores have plummeted (and they continue to actively obstruct schoool reform) and Trial Lawyers are making it virtually impossible for anyone to start a new business in America without hugely expensive liability insurance (which many entrepeneurs cannot afford). I've done several tech startups in Cali -- next one WON'T be here, i'm done with this messed up state.
Trial lawyers are also increasing the price of virtually every product we buy with frivolous deep pockets liability lawsuits.
The key determinent in politcal fundraising actually seems to be, not so much supposed politcal affiliation, but rather who has control of the House. When the Dems had control of the House (and the White House) they outraised the Republicans by about an average of 20%.
The actual reality is that corporations will give money to whoever can deliver the goods. That will always favor the Party in the Majority. We have the best legislators money can (and does) buy. But, why would any corporation want to waste money on a legislator in the Minority??? What sense does that make? You spend money to buy influence, PERIOD.
When the Republicans took control of the House, they found that they could outraise the Dems, especially in "party building" monies. The reason is generally held to be that whoever controls the House, controls the purse strings. If you're looking for bucks, you go to the Majority Party.
"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans."
nice troll! actually cops and firefighters vote mostly republican (about 68% nationwide), teachers do indeed vote mostly democrat (about 82% nationwide -- though that's starting to change -- there's been nearly a 10% increase nationwide of teachers who are voting republican in the last decade, whoda thunk it?)
(i have no idea how plumbers vote), you're sidestepping the fact that it's actually police and fire unions who give big amounts of their members' dues to far-left candidates.
"All of this adds up to the grim fact that republicans get a ton more money then democrats over all.
True kinda/sorta, but certainly NOT "..a ton more", through the next election cycle, there will probably be about 18-22% advantage for the Republicans. Or about the same numbers that the Dems had over the Republicans when they controlled the House and Senate.
A significant difference, but certainly not fatal. Clearly the Dems aren't attacting voters the way they used to. The Republicans are (and have always been) the "Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight", when it comes to image projection. So, that pretty much suggests that the Dems are just losing their appeal. The Republicans are usually not adroit enough at attack politics, they're too busy blowing off their own media toes. (Look at Bill Simon in Cali,-- this guy couldn't get a BJ in a whorehouse, what were the Republicans thinking????)
From about the 1960's to the late 1980's, the Dems had an (by your standards "large") advantage in money raising. When the Republicans and Gingrich took over the Congress in the '94 mid-terms, the money gap started favoring the Republicans.
My favorite though is "...Combine that with the conservative media and you can explain how they control the country."
Where would this conservatie media be? You've got the looney-tunes Washington Times, the spooky strange FoxNewsChannel and that's about it.
Meanwhile, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washingpost, Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS, and most big city newspapers might as well just print the DNC's "Message of the Day".
Limbaugh gives the Republicans a pretty large presence on talk radio. (despite a decade of dire predictions by the Left about Limbaugh fading away, he's still do quite well, fascinating. i woulda never thunk it.)
But the most successful "politics" shows on TV are O'Reilly (yeech, i'm waiting for Bill to allow a guest to complete a sentence before he starts screaming at them) and Larry King, who spends more time discussing his own opinons than his guests. I can't watch EITHER of them without getting a headache. So, I don't.
O'Reilly is hardly a conservative, and while King is technically a liberal, as O'Reilly continues to pummel King in the ratings, King has drifted back to the center.
So the vast majority of media in this country is pretty much Center-Left.
It is also boring, trite and doesn't spend any real time discussing any alternatives to the obviously dysfunctional Left-Right paradigm that has captured the votes of the majority of the few voting Americans and turned off/over about half the eligble voters in America.
I voted for Nader before, and it looks like i'll be doing it again in '04.
You're right, BUT, not mostly, almost entirely, i live/work there and there's no faster way to find yourself out of a job or unemployable than identify yourself as a non-liberal (they hate independents/Naderites/libertarians nearly as much as Republicans here - i voted for Nader in the last cycle and was savaged by a number of my friends).
Malcontent (who i modded down and some know-nothing modded back up), reflects the fashionable political ignorance of people who don't bother to look it up...
the vast majority of IP and content controls have always been sponsored by and promoted by Democratic lawmakers (and always will be).
Liberal stalwarts like Hollings, Biden, Kennedy and Lieberman tend to lead the way in Entertainment's dream legislation in Congress.
the overwhelming majority of Big Donors to the Democratic Party are from the Entertainment Industry. (What did Streisand give in the last cycle 8 or 12 million? Spielberg another 6 or 8 million? The Bloodworth/Thomasons several more million. Fred Bijan will have given the DNC about 40 million over the last few years, including buying their new HQ building for them.
Clearly a "vast right-wing plot".
There are a small handful of non-liberals (like Milius, Mann, Heston) and you will note that they aren't big campaign contributors and they are all over 50 (except Valente who's about 250).
You will also note, if you look at the voting records of such legislation, that usually far more Republicans vote AGAINST tightening content controls, and that very few-to-no Democrats vote against them.
WAIT! What am i thinking? Introducing facts into a
As a diehard political centrists and independent it's people who don't bother to fact check that cause more grief and protect the scoundrels who pass crap UCITA and the DMCA....
Just remember - When MP3s are illegal, only criminals will have MP3s
Having spent some small amount of time with him at the last PDC (in Ellay) and Lord O'Reilly's P2P in San Fran, i respect Mr. Hardt and really, really like AS' products (having Big Pimped them out to a large # of my consulting clients, who have both ordered and used them).
If you have never had any experience with scripting on Windows (you Lucky Dog), and you have had such experience on *NIX, than you will find AS' scripting solutions a GODSEND, and an absolute vital add-on to VSE....
It's fashionable to assume that any time a CEO/Founder steps down that the vulture capitialists have pressured them to do so for some B-School suit that can't tell a computer from a kumquat, but who give good meeting...
Dick (and his Krewe) have done fine job on bringing both effective scripting and a very productive development environment to the Windows environment.
AS (along with others like Don Box) have been instrumental in making MS take the independent developer community seriously. AS has particularly been our community's advocate in bringing adult scripting to the platform. If it weren't for people like Dick and companies like Active State, we might all still be using DOS batch commands and the WSH.
Maybe (GASP!) Dick is telling the truth. And AS has a chance (in this rather difficult growth environment) to make some BigNoyz and accompanying BigBuks for all the people that have worked so hard to make useful scripting a reality on a OS that was NEVER designed to be efficiently scripted.
Maybe for once, we could all skip the requisite
(besides Lori is a serious Marketing Goddess!)
"Which is taken directly from Sun's framework, and improved it just a bit."
.NET is more inspired by WebSphere than by J2EE, since J2EE wasn't fully spec'd when the design of .NET started
.NET will never be cross platform."
.NET events and EVERY MS employee i've spoken to has told me it will NEVER be cross-platform.
.NET, you shared the kool-aid with Miguel.
actually ALL services frameworks will need to look pretty much alike (call it services "plug compatabilty"). BUT, it is much more likely that
"Sun's way is much better."
bearing in mind that ALL the services platforms are still much more "vapor" (in terms of their "long term" design goals) than reality, WHY is Sun's way much better?
I know hardcore developers who work with all 3 plaftforms and they find that there ARE huge problems with cross-platform compatability (most esp the various clients' JVMs) with J2EE. They've told me that WebSphere is the most stable, albeit the least-featured(HMMMM). Many of them like ASP.NET and the CLR quite a bit, but hate C# desperately. As usual, YMMV.
"So,
Who said it would be cross-platform? I've be to a number of big
If you're think of MONO as the cross-platform version of
MS will NEVER support ANY cross-platform technology that is competitive with their own.
Sun is trying to do the same thing with J2EE, Blue with 'Sphere, HP's is off in the vapor...
Currenty, ALL WEB SERVICES PLATFORMS ARE ABOUT VENDOR LOCK-IN.
They are not about; technology, developer support or customer facilitation.
We just have to pick the best for each specific customer/job/spec we develop and hope that one of these technologies (or another) matures past the "competitive advantage" stage of development.
"I see most of their current actions as nothing more than a bid for some quick good faith.
I see it more as a WagEd/Bldg 8 PR gimmick, and it is probably also aimed establishing MS' "Stret Cred" at the Court of Appeals and beyond...
"Gee, look we even tried to implement the Settlement BEFORE it was Official, and our Evil, No Good, Court-manipulating Foes wouldn't even accept our 'Good Will' gesture."
"I think that they're trying to force a quick image makeover so that people will be less likely to look at their plans in a "worst case scenario" kind of way.
Closer, but Microsoft has won every round of this so far, so everything they do here will be based upon on the notion that they are going to just keep "going up the ladder" and burning more time until some future (and distant) Supreme Court takes the case.
This is just another "Brick in the Wall" of their legal defensive strategy. It's been incredibly pricey (both in their rep and actuall $$$$$), but they won everywhere they've need to win.
It has little (or nothing) to do with any internal movement towards "openess" or towards the OSF world.
Just more guys in tassle-loafers doing their thing, stalling this process until it becomes even more irrelevant to the Real World.
1. Telco Utilities - the MOST regulated businesses in America, slightly freed up (to compete with each other) by the Courts over a decade ago, they STILL can't find a way to make a buck in the marketplace, with one of the most used and desired products in the world.
2. Public Broadcasters - the SECOND MOST regulated
industry in America. HUGE conglomerates, unimaginably rich and powerful, all taking turns absorbing as many media-type companies as possible. From which we have shit news, shit programming and networks like ABC spend all their time big pimping their owner's (Disney, et al) other shit products. There's no technological reason for the current spectrum divisions, other than to keep their Fat Cat campaign contributors wealthy. We have long had the technical ability to have local microbroadcasters. Their Big Three (and Little Two) don't want the competition.
3. Wireless Providers - If you own a cellphone, i don't have to say anything else.
4. Big City Public Schools - Despite the frequently heroic efforts of many caring and dedicated people, the school districts of urban areas all across America are producing ill-disciplined, ill-trained illiterates who are unlikely to ever have decent employment all their lives. That's a tragedy of Biblical proportions.
5. The EPA - created by Nixon to secure his reputation as caring about the environment. There are DOZENS of Toxic "Supersites" across America, THEY WERE IDENTIFIED TWO DECADES AGO, STILL haven't been cleaned up. In addition to the "Supersites", there are HUNDREDS of dangerously polluted other that have been closed down by the EPA and not many cleanups there, either.
"It doesn't make sense. Either your government is that greatest in the world or they are sold-out money grabbing pigs. You can't have both."
Don't be simplistic, OF COURSE, you can have both. You project a "two state" or "bipolar" logical system where something where "A must is/is not equal to B" (see Duns Scotus).
The American system is the BEST in world at some things, OK at others, Terrible at others. The FSU is much more polluted than America, the EU has huge growth and econmic problems, Eastern Europe is fifty years behind Western Europe. Africa is a bleeding wound. Asia is beset with dictators and failed political experiments. Arabia is ruled by despots and corrupted religions.
Wi-Fi will be regulated by the Feds NOT for any technological reasons, but because Federal law enforcement, Federal intelligence agencies, and large media campaign contributors (such as the RIAA and MPAA) are embarking on a process to control the deployment of ANY new communications technologies that they perceive could have an impact their own turf.
Face it, Jack Valente and Hillary Rosen have much more real power and influence than the vast bulk of American voters. They will have much more profound influence on technological regulation than every member of
Democracy Costs, How Many Senators Can You Buy?
It's (potentially) better than that (for printer buyers and users)..
1. Dell detects that HP/Canon/Epson are keeping margins artificially high on printers. Dell does a gut check to see if they can undercut the BigBoyz in the marketplace. Dell decides they can.
2. HP sees a new competitor with money, knowledge and resources in the PC arena, decides that rather than allow Dell to transition smoothly to offering their Dell-branded printers, "We can offer you a Dell brand printer 25% cheaper than the comparable HP and give you free extended support.", HP decides to deprive Dell of some printer customers.
3. Dell now has to scramble to get their printers to market, maybe they make some "entry mistakes" maybe they don't (i'd bet don't), regardless, now Dell has to explain WHY they can't offer the customer (most esp CORPORATE buyers who have been told EXACTLY what model HP printer to buy) the world's best-selling printers.
4. HP now goes DIRECTLY to the big Dell corporate accoutants and attempts to undercut Dell's nascent printer biz, the most common technique will be reduced prices.
5. Dell responds with further price drops across their new printer line to gain and retain sales.
Should it actually work that way, that just the "Capitialism Classic" approach to business.
The Egyptians did it 4000 years ago.
"...Have I limited your computing experience? Perhaps, but it's a trade off for potential upsides.
...and unless MS decides to use their power as a market maker to force adoption of Palladium (something that would be an unmitigated PR diaster for them), widespread deployment of Palladium will be no greater than its; user transparency, convienence and user PRIVACY protection.
...Windows ISVs will quickly fix that problem without requiring ANY sweeping DRM solutions. Less complex solutions usually win.
...than Palladium will fail with consumers, small biz, education and will have limited success with mid-sized and larger corporations (where it will have to compete with existing and future IP control systems).
AHHH! Nice selection of examples to demonstrate my point. THANKS, that's more like it.
Anything that causes a computer user to change their hardware and/or software and/or usage patterns to accomodate other available features/technologies/data/???? has a cost/benefit ratio associated with it. In your example, it's my deploying gpg, a s/w package i may/may not have already deployed. I already don't open most of the encrypted mail get, unless i know who it's from and WHY. IOW, i need to have a firm REASON to accept the added inconvienence, or else the "Delete" key wins.
However, you note; "...Today, limited content "gives" me a broader library from which to choose. And, of course, that's a non-sequiteur that won't be accurate for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps someday (5-10 years) it MIGHT be true (though i tend to doubt it), but right now the VAST MAJORITY of content from legally published works of art/science/research to the innumerable warez and pr()n HAVE no effective content controls. You can't unring the bell.
To reach that "broader library" of FUTURE content of which you speak, a strong majority of the all the content producers, market segment by market segment, will have to agree to use/maintain/cooperate with each other for the sake of maintaing the credibility of any DRM platform.
I have a useful amount of XPerience with and relationships in music and film production/distribution, and somewhat less with TV, little-to-none with cable. That necessary cooperation is a LONG way off. These folk are tougher competitors than the s/w biz. They won't be changing their competitive habits very quickly (if at all).
Remember, USERS don't need DRM, content producers need DRM...
To the degree that Palladium is designed to render XP's self-imposed "Raw Sockets" security flaws harmless...
With the vaporously mythical TCPA/Palladium it will be the tradeoff of whatever security it might offer (it's hardly unfair to point out that BillCo's HX of security is less than, ahem, stellar), versus whatever restrictions it might offer.
If (as the most neurotically anti-MS watchers fear) Palladium should eventually enable scans of the average machine's filesystem for; MP3s, DVDs, WMAs, JPEGs, et al and forces users to either catalog ALL existing content and use Palladium and or Windows DRM controls via the codecs/players/whatever OR accept either lower quality or greater UI difficulties...
To the degree that Palladium is designed to be a secure, DRM solution for future content, Palladium's future will be dependent much more on content pricing models, MS's street cred and download ease/availability.
"...The content is all that will be limited, not the computer. The computer will not be limited in any way. You can boot into untrusted mode and use whatever you want. The content, on the other hand, may require the use of trusted mode. That simple."
If pre-Palladium you can download/exchange/manipulate any content you want in any fashion your computer is capable of, and post-Palladium you CANNOT....
VOILA', YOUR computing experience has just been LIMITED.
It is artificial to separate a current category of computing behavior, subject it to technological controls and then say "You haven't really lost anything."
While exchanging some freedom for some security (the essence of the Social Contract) is a common practice it's misleading to claim that the act of putting a "content regulator" on a my computer doesn't alter the the machine's abilities...
BECAUSE ALTERING THE MACHINE'S ABILITIES IS THE ***PURPOSE*** OF THE CONTENT REGULATOR (in this case, the proposed Palladium technologies)
so, as with any tradeoff of freedom or liberty, the question must be what do we GET in exchange for what we GIVE?????
PS, what was it Cringely said about the possible strategic purpose of implementing "raw sockets" in XP, i forget?
TRUE the smallest Districts would have to struggle with making legal fees for any PROTRACTED legal battle, and TRUE that would be draining if there was a "tooth and nail" battle, BUT...
...there won't be any such legal battle(s) here, BECAUSE these types of licensing issue(s) have been litigated to death, and long ago became "Black Letter Law", well before the personal computer and MS....
thus far, and virtually without meaningful legal exception, Courts (trial and review) have told contractual entities (over and over and over again) that they are responsible for understanding and upholding ALL the provisions of the contracts they affirm
if the District(s) involved here could demonstrate that MS is either misconstruing or wilfully misinterpreting the EULA, a trial Court just might void the contract(s), leaving the District without ANY MS products...
but, i'm assuming you've read (and understand) the MS EULA...it is one of the most amazing licenses i've ever read....it is clear, concise, brillantly constructed and written and gives EVERY right imaginable to MS and simultaneously relieves them from EVERY form of liability....
The chances of sucessfully (i.e., surviving judicial review) litigating a licensing violation of the MS EULA AGAINST MS are roughly the on the same odds as RIAA stopping MP3 piracy....
sure they exist, but don't hold your breath
so, the District(s) involved won't even seriously litigate this, because any reasonable (and responsible) law firm will tell their clients "suck this one up, and next time don't sign contracts you don't want to adhere to"
interestingly, this might well be a strong selling point for a Red Hat/Mandrake/???, if they are smart enough to hit the K12 market really hard..
"I wonder if this ep was an involuted apology by CC, and his attempt to do right by the Gunmen?
...maybe, and/or he wanted to make sure that we wouldn't be seeing unauthorized or really bad spinoffs of the Gunmen by anybody else...
if we can believe Duchovny's claims, CC is a man who likes COMPLETE control of the characters he creates and most esp, doesn't like anybody else to profit from merchandising or marketing them....
THOUGH, that said, REMEMBER, it WAS a "closed casket" funeral...
..and THAT leaves the door open to some hokey way to bring them back at a later time....(ala' what he did with Mulder when CC "killed" him off and brought him "back" for ratings' sweeps)....
"I wonder if someone could challenge this 'right to audit' in court. A comment in the earlier story on the GPL [slashdot.org] mentioned possible contract problems with license terms that you cannot read until you open or install the software.
sadly, that's the rough equivalent of pissing up a rope
the "Contracting Entity", in this case the School District is responsible for being aware (and proactively enforcing) of ALL requirements of a contractual agreement, in this case the EULA....
Worse yet, unlike an individual user, they are considered to be in complete "control" of the software at ALL times...
so, if you or i as end-users leave a copy of a S/W product out at home and the baby sitter dupes it, it would be nearly impossible for a s/w mfgr to get legal sanctions against us...(though they COULD revoke our license and take the s/w away)
not so a multi-user licensed corporate environment...
if Jane Blow HATES Office 2009 and brings in her own copy of Office 97 into work and installs it, and it gets copied to a few other machines...GUESS WHAT
...the emmployer will have to pay (fines + license) for ALL the copies of Jane's s/w as well...
"Especially troubling is that MS seems to picking on organizations without much money to defend themselvs in court..."
Careful now, even smaller municipal entites like a School District have LOTS of legal services available to them.....EVEN IF they'd rather spend it elsewhere
I'm more fascinated that Ballmer, who is one very smart cookie, would allow a "bad press" item like this to go forward while the Antitrust Trial is still ongoing..."picking on" a school district is a GUARANTEE of bad vibes, and you would think MS would be trying to lower the volume on the "Borg" stories...
and most especially, with Bill on the Witness Stand, this type of thing will NOT endear them to the Courts when all their competitors are claiming what hardballers they are....
It shows that they are clearly "forces" at work in MS that are NOT completely in touch with what's happening in the "Real World"
"Americans don't know what they don't know"
i know you were trying to make an important point and i got it, BUT....
the more generalized form of the application would be...
"Nobody Knows What They Don't Know"
so the belief in Western intellectual tradition is that in evaluating information given to us be complete strangers, we would use our analytical and reasoning skills to separate the likely from the probable from the improbable from the "Are you smoking rock?" You neatly point out that the average public elementary education in America blows chunks, BUT, you still talking ONLY about our Western set of preconceptions and perceptions
many other traditions do not embrace Western rationalism as anything more (and frequently less) than just another modality of thought
The mystic/spiritual tradtions such as Zen, Shinto and other Buddhist variants, as well as Sufism, and YES, ISLAM...do not necessarily perceive and analyze the world the way we do in the West
This goes well beyond the superfical disconnection of "suicide bomber" versus "homocide bomber", those are both viewing the act through the Western pardigm of "terrorism" and "national liberation struggles"
from the earliest and most malignant days of Western Colonialism, most citizens of the West have always assumed that our idealized model of democratic, pluralistic and cosumer/technologically saturated nations as being the current "Best Practices" for ALL the peoples of the world
yet, in the lengthy and well-documented history of the Middle East and Asia, NOT ONE democracy has spontaneously arisen the way they did in Europe and North America
Not to be percieved as biased, the same holds true of Latin America....
The few extent democracies that arose (say Monrovia and Israel) were exports from other countries and cultures and many of the extent democracies in the world are struggling.
Face it, there are approximately 300 nations in this world, and depending on how generous you are with your defintions, there are only between 2 and 3 dozen democracies...
yet virtually ALL of these nations have their own national/local media, whether print, radio or TV...
you can be sure that most of the countries in the world have highly controlled and contrived media and that they will publish or broadcast those items that serve the purposes and goals of the ruling hierarchy....
the American and European media sure do, why would we expect the media in a "42nd world" country to do any better...
Welcome to Babel...
it will be getting worse before it gets better....
"When more and more people in non-Western countries find that the latest version of Windows and Office is too expensive, an appropriately packaged version of linux (or the BSDs) will become more attractive."
=TRUE, IFF the shrink wrap packaged version gives them 1. the same or better functionality as that month's version of MS OFFICE and 2. That packaged version installs as or more easily(?) than that month's version of Windows. Otherwise, they'll keep cracking and copying MS products, it's not as though these countries will have any truly effective IP policing in the next 20 years, they're too poor and have other priorities, regardless of how much the US, EU, WTO, IMF, WB whine about it
"...could be an opportunity for distributed and free
=TRUE, IFF the major content providers and software vendors don't use their clout to embrace and extend the DMCA to those "types or categories" of services AND some altruists are willing to set up the server farms that could serve and type of medium-high demand that such free services could generate. You should read the IP related sections of the
"3. Future developments in the PDA and handheld space: While Pocket PC is gaining now, linux could play a role here which may eventually affect what we mean by "the desktop".
right on...when you get past the number one social use for the Net (low cost pr()n distribution), most Net users today AREN'T Geeks, they really need/want wireless web browsing, organizer software, wireless email and some voice and other audio capacity (MP3 player, voice recorder, alarm clock), my color Prism or iPAQ can do MOST of that now, and are just a LITTLE BIT slower and kludgier than i'd like...
MS' tools in the embedded space have become much better in the last year, but there are still gaps in their approach to embedded developer tools
specifically, their tools are basically centered on VSE (a great development environment for "full sized" apps), and this makes them a little bloated in the embedded space and there are still some pieces missing (CE is still a little too big for most ultra light weight applications, and limited on processor type support)
LINUX could score BIG here if they someone can provide a superior development environment for the device space and a compact, stable device kernel across a wide variety of device processors
as i have continually said to my g'frnds, "Smaler is Better!"
"I really think that with the advent of StarOffice 6.0, Mozilla 1.0, and Ximian Connector, combined with a great, well-refined WINE, we may finally see the beginnings of the Year of Linux on the Desktop(TM)"
while i seriously hope you are right, it isn't merely a question of "equaling" the features of MS Office or of the Windows Desktop (Bleech!), or bringing native Win32 code over to the LINUX platform (look at the history of Win emulators on the Mac), even if WINE is perfect, thunking is not free, performance wise, and Bill's Thing will be shipping on MILLIONS of new PCs every month for the foreseeable future
we in the community have to offer a significantly better user experience, with LINUX native apps
we come in strong on price, free support and passion
we come in weak on marketing, abilty to tie our LINUX products to a "Big Name" tech provider (like AOL) and we have no ability to make the OEM Mafia (Dell, Compaq, Gateway, HP, Sony, et al) dual boot enable any large portion of their new machines
also, "The Curse of *NIX", which i have been dealing in my work since before the widespread release of SRV, continues to haunt us....especially in the area of idiot proof desktop setup and functionality
X continues to be less than perfect and hard to get going really smoothly without SOME user experience and intervention
...and although I have great hopes that in the mid-term plus (18-36 months) the battle/conflict/thing between Gnome and KDE will result in KILLER desktop functionality, in the short term, the desktop setup continues to be a real weakness in selling LINUX to anyone not comfortable with at least a little diddling, twiddling and fiddling with their OS setup (and that is a LOT of people)
"This story is an important story..."
you think so? all over america chemical companies continue to illegally dump toxic chemical wastes, including PCB's and very little is done about it, IF this story turns out to be true (and if you actually read the WashPost story, it's just a report at this point, the WashPost isn't exactly the EPA or WHO, is it?), monsanto then joins the long list of chemical companies who have continuously polluted communities across america...and will probably receive little more than a slap on the wrist, just how important is PCB dumping when we let it happen over and over and over again?..i don't know how old you are, but in the last 20 years in SoCal, i remember DOZENS of JUST PCB dumping stories..i expect to see dozens more in the next 20 years
that's actually a problem with our POLITICAL, judicial and enforcement systems, but most American's (like most
"By creating self-destructing vegetables, farmers are lured into being forced to pay for seed year after year after year. Instead of being able to save a small amount of seed for the next year's crop and becoming self sufficient, Monsanto is forcing farmers in these poor countries to come back to them year after year and beg for more seed.
so what's YOUR solution?
monsanto has to make a profit to pay its employees, its suppliers, its stockholders, the employees need money to support themselves and their families, if monsanto doesn't charge for their products their employees will leave and this "corporate legal entity" that everyone keeps talking about will have no one left to do the work, stockholders will dump the stock, the market will walk away from anything monsanto does, and BINGO, no more ag products from monsanto AT any price...
if YOU don't like monsanto's policies, YOU can go out, put together a company to compete with them, and if monsanto does indeed have inflated prices you will have no problem beating monsanto in the market, vastly cheaper prices will always prevail
"They have entrusted Michael with editorial powers and the ability to post stories. If you do not like this fact, then I suggest you should probably take it up with the owners, instead of the readership at large.
DUH! what exactly do you think i'm doing?
Michael has the journalistic ethics of a whore, he's done more to damage
i don't ALWAYS agree with Taco/Hemos/Cliff, but i RESPECT THEM AND THEIR JUDGEMENT...Michael has no connection with either journalistic or even community ethics...he's using
i'm as politically agnostic and independent as you can get, and if
so lacking any other alternative, here's MY feedback to the rest of the
these are the very things that
how long do you think
immoral
illegal
unethical
and deserves the harshest possible punishment,
JUST LIKE MICHAEL deserves the harshest possible censure for dumping stories like this on
ONE, MICHAEL shows himself to be a bigot...
monsanto is not a person, it is a bunch of people, some good, some obviously bad, and many somewhere in the middle, micheal tries here to lump in all the monsanto employees into the same category...hundreds of thousands or millions of people in 3rd world countries have nutrition they wouldn't otherwise have, thanks to genetically engineered foods
but, apparently Michael would rather have these people subjected to malnutrtion and stravation, in order to satisfy his personal beliefs..
TWO, by michael using
whether or not this story belongs on
Michael's personal political agenda surfaces (yet again), in order for him to stroke his own ego, by starting another round of trolling and flamebating on another story that have very little connection to computers, computing or computing technology
while i don't know if that's THE major hurdle, but it is a BIG ONE.
however, the next generation of UI design, as is mentioned in the the parent will have to be deep, as opposed to wide (which is what we have now)
but your target user makes all the difference in the design approach...
right now most LINUX GUI/Desktop installs assume that the user is a geek, somewhere between a newbie and Linus...
as designers, we could ALL do a lot more, even with the current desktops and installs, if we would assume that some users want the choice of a "i'm a complete idiot, make all my decisions for me" , similar to the way that Mandrake and RedHat attempt to do with the base install...and then load up our designs with context-senstive "help for dummies", but well thought out contextual help, that we test against new, non-geek users for value and effectiveness
so, maybe if we stopped assuming in the design phase that everybody wants to be just like us and play around with all the bells and whistles and just bite the bullet and make some complete sets of install choices, it might make it easier for the completely non-geek to use our products????
"It's also becoming increasingly clear that the only honest-to-gods challenge to Windows desktops is going to be as it always was, Apple.
as a serious OG Apple user (Apple II and a 128K Beige Toaster, have a G4 Tower 2' away from me right now, so please keep your flames to yourself)
It's actually becoming increasingly clear that Apple is on Microsoft's Life Support System, probably for antitrust reasons.
The high-end home/soho/small biz market that has kept Apple going would bail in legions if MS withdrew Microsoft Office from the Mac platform. That's why Steve's Funny Fruit Machine Company has been on MS' tip these last few years...
for one example, where's Apple's own great browser, the number one most important app for ANY consumer platform?
"Apple's finally rising to the challenge, with the -support- of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit"
this would be how many times in the last decade that Apple has "fully committed" itself to the business market?
i remember 3 major announcements on this, and one of my coworkers remembers 5.
for just one biz sector example, Where's Apple's Killer SQL Server RDBMS? that's the biz equivalent of the browser, the key app that would sell to midrange businesses....
"Instead of considering Apple a closed-source evil, look at them as a company that knows how to do three things well. They know how to design killer hardware, they know how to create a user interface that doesn't suck, and they know how to -survive-. You don't get bitch-slapped in the marketplace by Microsoft for nearly two decades and remain in business by living on your stock inflation alone."
i COMPLETELY agree with all 3 points.
None of which has anything to do with what the business market wants.
1. Commodity Prices on H/W
2. Near-Commodity Prices on S/W
3. Readily available VAR/Integrator/Consultant services at competitive prices.
4. Huge accumulation of shrink wrapped biz apps with minimum expenditures on data conversion
5. Off-the-shelf mid-tier solutions that are installable/operable/maintainable by lower-cost employees
I've loved virtually all my Mac's over the years. (except one LC and one Performa) Just about slept with my 840 and my VX, but Steve and Apple are NOT driven by consumer needs
they are driven by the "Neat Factor", it's given me a lot enjoyment over the years, but it's not a perspective that will earn you a big consumer and mid-sized biz market share, they care much more about the "Cost Factor"
I was pretty sure that ALL of them had to do with LINUX, even if not directly...
#'s 1,2,3,6,7,8 and 10 are directly about LINUX
and #'s 4, 5 and 9 are about the competitive PC/ MS v LINUX marketplace...
though i suppose that you could argue that even though number 9, the Darker Image is about taking a shot at MS too, it's principally a good natured poke at some of the less "user friendly" members of our community....
after all guys, it IS LINUX WORLD magazine....
IMHO, i'd say that #'s 2,3 and 7 are serious blue sky
#'s 1,6 and 8 are mulligans
and that 4 and 7 are karma bets
9's a gag and
10 is probably the most accurate of them all
BTW, Joe, stay away from Theo for a while
while $66 Million is a large amount to me personally, from a corporate point of view, esp the Global 2000, it's lunch money....
and Apple is a small, boutique computer maker, that had gone down from nearly $10 billion in sales to nearly $1 billion in sales....if the iMac hadn't come along when it did??????
(keep the flames to yourself, i support both Apple and wider PC choice by buying them...i'v bought (just for my personal business) 6 in the last 12 months...)
what exactly can Apple do with the $66 million?
is it enough to start a whole bunch of R&D programs into Natural Language or Data Mining?
maybe a few small R&D programs could be started with that money, but what do you do about bonuses for your best workers, rebates to your best channel partners, R&D into improving current generation products, cash payments to Motorola for G5 production, etc, etc.
Blue makes THE VAST MAJORITY OF ITS ****PROFITIBILITY**** on SERVICES...it's estimated by industry insiders that Blue lost ***20 billion dollars*** on OS/2 alone (though they won't admit to more than 10-15 billions lost), and more billions were lost on the MCA-PS/2 desktops
about 3 years ago, there had been a push from Global Services inside Blue to dump ALL the h/w (except big iron) and just concentrate on their highly profitiable services and consulting efforts...
the ThinkPad line was restored to prove that they could do it, (i've owned 3 in a row, 770ED, 770Z and an A22P, they ROCK) they've restored their rep in laptops and now many inside Blue want to move on...as seen by IBM's really strong $$$$$ committment to LINUX and Java....
the Wintel PC, from the standpoint of the much debated ***innovation*** is D-E-A-D...that doesn't mean that many, many billions more won't be sold, but each year the margins will get thinner and thinner as the PC falls into the "home appliances" category...with appropriate accompanying (much, much lower) commodity hardware margins
that's why the Wintel Boyz are pushing the upcoming Tablet PC so hard, to try to maintain their eroding margins on CPU's (i owned the original Tablet PC, the Grid Convertible, even if the thing had worked as designed, it's one of those ideas that look better on paper, it's a niche machine design, and will stay that way, all marketing hype aside)
another view on Apple's 66 million dollars profit...if the story is true (about a one billion dollar loss for ibm on PC desktops last year)....
IBM lost ***FIFTEEN TIMES AS MUCH MONEY**** in one year as Apple made, and for IBM, the loss wasn't even noticeably in either their stock values/market cap or overall analysts' buy recommendations
Really? so if you pay any attention at all to ***REALITY****, which appears to escape you, you might have noticed the following:
1. The Linux market share on the PC desktop is so small to almost unmeasurable (as related HERE on
2. That a key component to getting mindshare on new desktop users or those desktop users who are thinking about getting away from Windoze is the browser and the related email/chat/IM clients
3. That a browser needs to support ALL the MIME data types that IE does AND offer a better browsing experience than IE, Zilla is close but not their yet
4. Every new generation of MS OS provides additional "lock in" from the OS to the hardware and the apps and that means that it becomes harder with each generation to offer an alternative paradigm and get it accepted....both O2K and OXP have substantially better OS integration than they have ever had...making a steeper hill for any other product to climb
TO THE *NIX POLITICAL CORRECTNESS BIGOT(S) who wrote the above post and the asshole who modded my parent post as "Flamebait"
"Making all athoratitive statements like that leads only to flame wars and not better browsing
NO, making rational discussive statements about the REALITY of a product leads to further discussion about the product
further discussion leads to an open exchange of viewpoints
and that can lead to involved parties reassessing their approach and priorities and, if they're smart enough, making changes that lead to an even better product
The Stallmanian Political Correctness, *NIX Style you would insist on leads to the inane belief that "If you build it, they will come."
Microsoft, whom i know very, very well, loves having fools and cheerleaders on other products development teams.....
....because while everybody on some other project is reassuring each other with heartwarming "Shit, man. This thing is Da Bomb!"
MS just quietly goes out and locks in another market.
From a market share point of view, if ALL the users and readers of
MS would throw a party and have a large laugh at the people who don't seem to understand that they have just deprived MS of a whooping
I have had 3 customers of mine call me in the last month INSISTING that they had to upgrade to XP NOW!
i explained to them that XP is pretty much a simple dot upgrade to 2K and there was absolutely no reason to upgrade if they were having no problems with 2K and that, in 2 of the 3 cases, that XP doesn't have certified drivers for some of their h/w...they all DIDN'T BELIEVE that XP isn't the "greatest new OS of all time" and that their systems wouldn't work so much better with XP installed
THAT'S the mentality that Zilla, et al have to suceed against and that won't happen unless the products are way better than the competition (sa, "Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen)
My respect and admiration goes out to all those actually working on Zilla/Opera/Netscape..i've spoken to number of them...they actually making a difference and fighting the good fight
Bigots like you just make rational and reasonable discussion either difficult or impossible
BTW, it's bad enough that you're a narrow minded anti free speech bigot, please learn how to touch type