Why? The Russians aren't exactly known for their peaceful ways, and their empire broke up in a totally amicable fashion with zero violence (except maybe for the South Ossetia issue years later). They didn't run around parroting any idiotic slogans like "united we stand! divided we fall!".
You really think all the redneck Southerners are going to break out their rifles and form militias so they can keep New York City as part of their country?
I'm not really talking about an outside company hiring a BB team; I'm talking about some company buying BB, and what the intact teams of existing employees would be worth to that company. When one company buys another, generally one of the "assets" is the existing base of employees. Suppose, for instance, I wanted to have a company making Android phones. I could either form my own new company and try to hire employees with expertise in that, or I could just amass a little cash and buy out HTC. With the latter, I don't need to find new employees, I already have a bunch of them assembled into teams and a whole company, already knowledgeable and experienced in the thing I'm wanting to do: build Android phones. If I took that money and bought Blackberry instead, it wouldn't be the same; they have expertise making phones, but not Android phones, and instead their own crappy proprietary OS, so it wouldn't be quite as easy for me to start making Android phones by buying up Blackberry as if I bought up HTC, since HTC already is in the business of making Android phones.
I think whoever buys up Blackberry is probably going to just break the company apart, use the non-human assets (patents mainly) for their own purposes, and most of the employees will be sent on their way.
IIRC, all those WebOS developers had to go find new jobs. Yes, their skills transferred without too much trouble and I'm sure they were able to learn new OSes without much trouble, but when you're talking about companies buying intact teams, they don't care much about that. They only care if they have an intact team ready to go right away on some project they're interested in; they're not interested in retraining employees. No one does that any more these days.
The OS ecosystem is completely worthless; remember, the reason they're failing is because no one wants their OS, they want iOS or Android (or in rare cases, WinPhone). The only things they have that are worth anything are 1) their workforce, which isn't worth much since they're experts in a dead OS, but their hardware design teams might be valuable and maybe the software teams can be retrained for Android, and 2) their patents.
Huh? It really shouldn't take 3 years to develop an Android port. Android is already out there and available, and better yet you can use the CyanogenMod version which is also freely available. The only thing that'd be a problem is getting all the drivers for the hardware, but how much of the hardware is different from other phones and doesn't already have Android drivers available from the silicon mfgrs? If they got serious about it, and hired some consultants with Android expertise, they really should be able to get something ready within 3 months.
That probably only works for Canada because (I'm guessing, if it's anything like jury selection in the US) people are selected to be jurors and are required to serve; it's not voluntary.
Moderating on Slashdot is entirely voluntary. If I don't want to moderate, I just don't. Or I do, but then I decide to make a post and my moderations are undone. It's not like it forces you to moderate while preventing you from taking part in a discussion.
Finally, the analogy isn't very good. When you serve on a jury, you're (according to you and your link) not supposed to discuss the deliberations. What about the happenings in the courtroom? What about your opinion of the way the people in the audience were dressed? What about what happened when you drove to the courtroom? What about your conversation with a fellow juror about the previous night's sports game? Slashdot conversations are not restricted to the article and closely-related topics; people go off on tangents all the time. Just because you moderate a post in one thread doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to make another post in a different thread that's gone off on another tangent.
I think my idea does have a chance of being enacted. There have been historical examples of nations falling apart under too much internal strain; a very recent example is the Soviet Union which collapsed and broke apart only about 20 years ago.
We don't need to 'break up,' but rather go back to the loosely affiliated union with a weak federal government and strong emphasis on states rights as the founders intended.
We tried that; it was called the "Articles of Confederation". It didn't work. Confederations rarely work out in practice because it's too hard to get the member states to agree enough on anything and the central government is too weak to overrule them. Just look at all the problems the EU is having today.
What are you talking about? Just look at voting trends: there's clear and large differences between different states and regions; these are largely urban vs. rural, but even so peoples' stances on issues do vary a lot between different parts of the country, even urban vs. urban and rural vs. rural. Rural Vermont or Maine residents do not share the same values as rural Mississippi residents, for instance. It's obvious to me that people in this country just don't get along any more, and really they've had giant problems from day one, and many of those were "solved" by brutally putting down an attempt to secede 160 years ago. But the differences never really went away, though the differences and the issues have changed over the decades. These days, instead of trying to hold it all together, it would be better I think if we all amicably decided to break up and go our separate ways instead of constantly arguing over the same issues.
We're talking about giving books to a public library here. A public library does NOT need the latest version of Programming Perl; the basic stuff has not changed at all, and it's completely possible to type out the examples there in the latest Perl interpreter and run them. The latest version will have some updates for the latest version of the language, but nothing really huge. It's much better that the library have some version of this book, rather than no version at all. Someone interested in Perl can borrow this book and learn from it, and if they decide they want to pursue Perl further, they can go buy the latest version for themselves.
The same goes for the PostgreSQL book; the basics of working with SQL databases haven't changed in ages. If the library doesn't have any PostgreSQL books, a 10-year-old one is much better than nothing.
This isn't like, for instance, Adobe Photoshop how-to books, which are totally useless after a couple of years because no one runs a 10-year-old version of that program and it's changed so much over that time. Or worse, "Windows ME for Dummies" or something like that, which is obviously totally useless.
Well you're sadly mistaken: those comments are representative of the pulse of a large part of the nation. That's why the country needs to break apart into separate republics, so that those of us in more progressive regions can be free of the people of that ilk who live in the more backwards regions.
Discussion isn't useless when everyone already has a bias and a predetermined opinion. There's always a chance a minority member will be able to sway the opinion of the majority. Otherwise, the majority can at least discuss among themselves why they feel that way and further explore their opinions on the issue, in greater depth and detail. Suppose a bunch of concentration camp survivors get together to discuss their experience; they sure as hell don't want to hear the opposite "side", the guards and other people who put them there, speak on the issue and give their opinion, but the discussion is certainly of use to those survivors.
The simple answer is that there is no perfect moderation system; they all suck in different ways. Democratic systems like that on Reddit give the power of moderation to the users, and democracy is frequently called "tyranny of the majority" for a good reason: unpopular, minority opinions are always suppressed because the majority doesn't like them. The alternative is non-democratic moderation, where the moderation is done by a group of elites, which is what you usually see on sites like newpaper sites. The problem there, of course, is that you're subject not to the biases of the majority of the users, but the biases of the elites or the owners of the websites (so comments the newpaper owners don't like get deleted). Or, you can try to have a hybrid system somewhat like Slashdot has, where there's some elites who have super-moderation capabilities but the users also have powers, and also some of the users are given more powers (metamoderation). This sounds good in theory, but doesn't seem to work out in practice any better than the alternatives, it's just different.
Personally, I think the big problems with moderation on Slashdot are 1) users don't have many opportunities to moderate (they're only given points once in a while), unlike on Reddit where any user can mod any post at any time, and 2) users aren't allowed to moderate posts in the same discussion as one they post in, which leads to many users (like myself) not bothering to use the moderation points they're given. I don't feel like being restricted from speaking my mind just because I tried to mod up someone's post.
It sounds like you and I are mostly agreeing, it's just that I'm being more cynical (though I call it realistic). As you said, things have gotten worse, thanks to deregulation and also poorer enforcement, which of course is indicative of systemic corruption. But I don't see it getting any better any time soon, or really ever. The Roman government got more and more corrupt too, and it never did get better, and we all know what happened there. I think the same is going to happen here. In the meantime, Apple is going to get away with its shenanigans, and while there might be some slaps on the wrist, those don't amount to anything, they're really just for show so the corrupt minions in government can show they're "doing something" when in fact they're not (the fines involved are so pitifully small the company just considers them the price of doing business). They're not going to get busted "big time", ever, at least in the US; when was the last time any company got busted "big time"? Not in the last 10-15 years, that's for sure.
I already stated the grounds: anti-competitive practices.
Anti-competetive practices aren't usually illegal. Just look all the anti-competitive practiced that lots of other companies have gotten away with for the last few decades. Heck, look at the infamous Microsoft trial; they basically got off scot-free, and it couldn't get much more blatant than that. Computing companies have been practicing customer lock-in for ages with no recourse from the government. Where was the DoJ when Intel tried to force everyone to buy RAMBUS memory? The only reason they stopped was because much-smaller AMD went with much-cheaper SDRAM and Intel was forced by their customers to follow suit. And don't get me started on "enterprise" computing software, where lock-in is the norm. What about MS and their closed, proprietary file formats for Office? In fact, every software company that ever uses closed, proprietary file formats is practing lock-in, but you never see any lawsuits over it.
The former is generally considered good, and the latter is generally considered bad.
Being "bad" isn't illegal, and in this country rarely results in any kind of government intervention or successful lawsuit.
Depending on how egregious the "lock in" is, it is sometimes ruled to be illegal.
Like when? As I pointed out with MS before, even if somehow it is found illegal, it only results in a slap on the wrist. Just look at Exxon and the Valdez disaster; that was what? 30 years ago? They still haven't paid the fines for that clean-up, and are still in court contesting them!
But what if there were only 2 or 3 brands of cars available? Peoples' choices are reduced.
Yes, it sucks, but what are you going to do about it? Sue them? Haha, good luck with that. Petition Obama to send the DoJ after them? Haha, good luck with that. Just look at Texas: they've actually banned Tesla from selling cars there, because Tesla can't/won't sell through dealerships. That's obviously anti-competitive, but do you see the government doing anything about it? Of course not. (And funnily enough, it was GOP politicians, the guys always screaming about "free markets!!!!", who got Tesla sales banned in TX.)
But if they keep it up, sooner or later they are bound to cross the line.
No they aren't. The US government is far more corrupt now than it was in the late 90s during the Microsoft trial; there's no way Apple will ever face any government scrutiny for its actions. Your only hope is that the EU will do something about it.
Part of the reason titanium has become so cheap is because the Soviet Union collapsed, and their immense supply of titanium became available on the global market. They used to build submarines out of the stuff because they didn't have many other domestic uses for it and they didn't trade with other nations, but now they'll sell it to the highest bidder, so with much greater supply comes much lower prices.
For every article you find like that, I can find dozens and dozens showing out-of-control cops shooting people and murdering people's dogs. You're the one who's dishonest, trying to paint American cops in a favorable light when in fact they're a menace to society.
Take the average police standoff, in which there are no hostages, and no lives at stake other than the suspect and the police. The cops MAY fire thousands of rounds into the vicinity of the suspect - OR, they MAY just wait him out.
I don't know how these things are done in your country, but here in the USA, cops always go for the "fire thousands of rounds into the vicinty of the suspect" route. With many of our cops being doped up on steroids, they don't want to bother waiting for a suspect to get tired and hungry and surrender, they'd rather get the adrenalin rush that comes from opening fire on someone.
I have to agree. "Fugly" needs to be reserved for truly hideous cars, such as the Pontiac Aztek. The Leaf is nowhere near that bad, it's just boring and dowdy.
Some automotive journalists have even credited the Aztek with being one of the largest causes of Pontiac's demise. It wasn't just an ugly car, it was a car so horrible it caused an entire car brand to be shut down.
IANAL, so take this advice with a grain of salt. You could release this bit of software as open-source, under a new name (and use a pseudonym for yourself just in case, so it's hard for them to figure out it's you). It's very unlikely this law firm will even notice it (is this software specifically for the law field, or something else entirely?). More importantly, however, is they don't even have the original source code: how can they prove that your open-source software is actually owned by them? You could make some cosmetic changes so that, upon running the two programs side-by-side, it's not immediately obvious they're the same, and then you can just claim that yours is a clone of theirs. Since they don't have any source code, they have no way to prove otherwise.
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Why? The Russians aren't exactly known for their peaceful ways, and their empire broke up in a totally amicable fashion with zero violence (except maybe for the South Ossetia issue years later). They didn't run around parroting any idiotic slogans like "united we stand! divided we fall!".
You really think all the redneck Southerners are going to break out their rifles and form militias so they can keep New York City as part of their country?
I'm not really talking about an outside company hiring a BB team; I'm talking about some company buying BB, and what the intact teams of existing employees would be worth to that company. When one company buys another, generally one of the "assets" is the existing base of employees. Suppose, for instance, I wanted to have a company making Android phones. I could either form my own new company and try to hire employees with expertise in that, or I could just amass a little cash and buy out HTC. With the latter, I don't need to find new employees, I already have a bunch of them assembled into teams and a whole company, already knowledgeable and experienced in the thing I'm wanting to do: build Android phones. If I took that money and bought Blackberry instead, it wouldn't be the same; they have expertise making phones, but not Android phones, and instead their own crappy proprietary OS, so it wouldn't be quite as easy for me to start making Android phones by buying up Blackberry as if I bought up HTC, since HTC already is in the business of making Android phones.
I think whoever buys up Blackberry is probably going to just break the company apart, use the non-human assets (patents mainly) for their own purposes, and most of the employees will be sent on their way.
IIRC, all those WebOS developers had to go find new jobs. Yes, their skills transferred without too much trouble and I'm sure they were able to learn new OSes without much trouble, but when you're talking about companies buying intact teams, they don't care much about that. They only care if they have an intact team ready to go right away on some project they're interested in; they're not interested in retraining employees. No one does that any more these days.
The OS ecosystem is completely worthless; remember, the reason they're failing is because no one wants their OS, they want iOS or Android (or in rare cases, WinPhone). The only things they have that are worth anything are 1) their workforce, which isn't worth much since they're experts in a dead OS, but their hardware design teams might be valuable and maybe the software teams can be retrained for Android, and 2) their patents.
Huh? It really shouldn't take 3 years to develop an Android port. Android is already out there and available, and better yet you can use the CyanogenMod version which is also freely available. The only thing that'd be a problem is getting all the drivers for the hardware, but how much of the hardware is different from other phones and doesn't already have Android drivers available from the silicon mfgrs? If they got serious about it, and hired some consultants with Android expertise, they really should be able to get something ready within 3 months.
That probably only works for Canada because (I'm guessing, if it's anything like jury selection in the US) people are selected to be jurors and are required to serve; it's not voluntary.
Moderating on Slashdot is entirely voluntary. If I don't want to moderate, I just don't. Or I do, but then I decide to make a post and my moderations are undone. It's not like it forces you to moderate while preventing you from taking part in a discussion.
Finally, the analogy isn't very good. When you serve on a jury, you're (according to you and your link) not supposed to discuss the deliberations. What about the happenings in the courtroom? What about your opinion of the way the people in the audience were dressed? What about what happened when you drove to the courtroom? What about your conversation with a fellow juror about the previous night's sports game? Slashdot conversations are not restricted to the article and closely-related topics; people go off on tangents all the time. Just because you moderate a post in one thread doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to make another post in a different thread that's gone off on another tangent.
I think my idea does have a chance of being enacted. There have been historical examples of nations falling apart under too much internal strain; a very recent example is the Soviet Union which collapsed and broke apart only about 20 years ago.
We don't need to 'break up,' but rather go back to the loosely affiliated union with a weak federal government and strong emphasis on states rights as the founders intended.
We tried that; it was called the "Articles of Confederation". It didn't work. Confederations rarely work out in practice because it's too hard to get the member states to agree enough on anything and the central government is too weak to overrule them. Just look at all the problems the EU is having today.
What are you talking about? Just look at voting trends: there's clear and large differences between different states and regions; these are largely urban vs. rural, but even so peoples' stances on issues do vary a lot between different parts of the country, even urban vs. urban and rural vs. rural. Rural Vermont or Maine residents do not share the same values as rural Mississippi residents, for instance. It's obvious to me that people in this country just don't get along any more, and really they've had giant problems from day one, and many of those were "solved" by brutally putting down an attempt to secede 160 years ago. But the differences never really went away, though the differences and the issues have changed over the decades. These days, instead of trying to hold it all together, it would be better I think if we all amicably decided to break up and go our separate ways instead of constantly arguing over the same issues.
We're talking about giving books to a public library here. A public library does NOT need the latest version of Programming Perl; the basic stuff has not changed at all, and it's completely possible to type out the examples there in the latest Perl interpreter and run them. The latest version will have some updates for the latest version of the language, but nothing really huge. It's much better that the library have some version of this book, rather than no version at all. Someone interested in Perl can borrow this book and learn from it, and if they decide they want to pursue Perl further, they can go buy the latest version for themselves.
The same goes for the PostgreSQL book; the basics of working with SQL databases haven't changed in ages. If the library doesn't have any PostgreSQL books, a 10-year-old one is much better than nothing.
This isn't like, for instance, Adobe Photoshop how-to books, which are totally useless after a couple of years because no one runs a 10-year-old version of that program and it's changed so much over that time. Or worse, "Windows ME for Dummies" or something like that, which is obviously totally useless.
Well you're sadly mistaken: those comments are representative of the pulse of a large part of the nation. That's why the country needs to break apart into separate republics, so that those of us in more progressive regions can be free of the people of that ilk who live in the more backwards regions.
tl;dr; Most of "Real America" just mindlessly parrots what they see and hear in the media.
Yes, but that's really irrelevant: Those are the opinions of all those Americans, regardless of where they got those opinions.
Well that's a good indication that your locality is full of racists and bigots. Maybe you should consider relocating to a new city or state.
Discussion isn't useless when everyone already has a bias and a predetermined opinion. There's always a chance a minority member will be able to sway the opinion of the majority. Otherwise, the majority can at least discuss among themselves why they feel that way and further explore their opinions on the issue, in greater depth and detail. Suppose a bunch of concentration camp survivors get together to discuss their experience; they sure as hell don't want to hear the opposite "side", the guards and other people who put them there, speak on the issue and give their opinion, but the discussion is certainly of use to those survivors.
The simple answer is that there is no perfect moderation system; they all suck in different ways. Democratic systems like that on Reddit give the power of moderation to the users, and democracy is frequently called "tyranny of the majority" for a good reason: unpopular, minority opinions are always suppressed because the majority doesn't like them. The alternative is non-democratic moderation, where the moderation is done by a group of elites, which is what you usually see on sites like newpaper sites. The problem there, of course, is that you're subject not to the biases of the majority of the users, but the biases of the elites or the owners of the websites (so comments the newpaper owners don't like get deleted). Or, you can try to have a hybrid system somewhat like Slashdot has, where there's some elites who have super-moderation capabilities but the users also have powers, and also some of the users are given more powers (metamoderation). This sounds good in theory, but doesn't seem to work out in practice any better than the alternatives, it's just different.
Personally, I think the big problems with moderation on Slashdot are 1) users don't have many opportunities to moderate (they're only given points once in a while), unlike on Reddit where any user can mod any post at any time, and 2) users aren't allowed to moderate posts in the same discussion as one they post in, which leads to many users (like myself) not bothering to use the moderation points they're given. I don't feel like being restricted from speaking my mind just because I tried to mod up someone's post.
It sounds like you and I are mostly agreeing, it's just that I'm being more cynical (though I call it realistic). As you said, things have gotten worse, thanks to deregulation and also poorer enforcement, which of course is indicative of systemic corruption. But I don't see it getting any better any time soon, or really ever. The Roman government got more and more corrupt too, and it never did get better, and we all know what happened there. I think the same is going to happen here. In the meantime, Apple is going to get away with its shenanigans, and while there might be some slaps on the wrist, those don't amount to anything, they're really just for show so the corrupt minions in government can show they're "doing something" when in fact they're not (the fines involved are so pitifully small the company just considers them the price of doing business). They're not going to get busted "big time", ever, at least in the US; when was the last time any company got busted "big time"? Not in the last 10-15 years, that's for sure.
I already stated the grounds: anti-competitive practices.
Anti-competetive practices aren't usually illegal. Just look all the anti-competitive practiced that lots of other companies have gotten away with for the last few decades. Heck, look at the infamous Microsoft trial; they basically got off scot-free, and it couldn't get much more blatant than that. Computing companies have been practicing customer lock-in for ages with no recourse from the government. Where was the DoJ when Intel tried to force everyone to buy RAMBUS memory? The only reason they stopped was because much-smaller AMD went with much-cheaper SDRAM and Intel was forced by their customers to follow suit. And don't get me started on "enterprise" computing software, where lock-in is the norm. What about MS and their closed, proprietary file formats for Office? In fact, every software company that ever uses closed, proprietary file formats is practing lock-in, but you never see any lawsuits over it.
The former is generally considered good, and the latter is generally considered bad.
Being "bad" isn't illegal, and in this country rarely results in any kind of government intervention or successful lawsuit.
Depending on how egregious the "lock in" is, it is sometimes ruled to be illegal.
Like when? As I pointed out with MS before, even if somehow it is found illegal, it only results in a slap on the wrist. Just look at Exxon and the Valdez disaster; that was what? 30 years ago? They still haven't paid the fines for that clean-up, and are still in court contesting them!
But what if there were only 2 or 3 brands of cars available? Peoples' choices are reduced.
Yes, it sucks, but what are you going to do about it? Sue them? Haha, good luck with that. Petition Obama to send the DoJ after them? Haha, good luck with that. Just look at Texas: they've actually banned Tesla from selling cars there, because Tesla can't/won't sell through dealerships. That's obviously anti-competitive, but do you see the government doing anything about it? Of course not. (And funnily enough, it was GOP politicians, the guys always screaming about "free markets!!!!", who got Tesla sales banned in TX.)
But if they keep it up, sooner or later they are bound to cross the line.
No they aren't. The US government is far more corrupt now than it was in the late 90s during the Microsoft trial; there's no way Apple will ever face any government scrutiny for its actions. Your only hope is that the EU will do something about it.
Class-action lawsuit on what grounds? If you don't like the company's practices, don't buy their products; it's that simple.
Your attitude reminds me of people who stay with abusive spouses: "But you don't know him like I do!" "I love him, except for the times he hits me!"
Part of the reason titanium has become so cheap is because the Soviet Union collapsed, and their immense supply of titanium became available on the global market. They used to build submarines out of the stuff because they didn't have many other domestic uses for it and they didn't trade with other nations, but now they'll sell it to the highest bidder, so with much greater supply comes much lower prices.
For every article you find like that, I can find dozens and dozens showing out-of-control cops shooting people and murdering people's dogs. You're the one who's dishonest, trying to paint American cops in a favorable light when in fact they're a menace to society.
Take the average police standoff, in which there are no hostages, and no lives at stake other than the suspect and the police. The cops MAY fire thousands of rounds into the vicinity of the suspect - OR, they MAY just wait him out.
I don't know how these things are done in your country, but here in the USA, cops always go for the "fire thousands of rounds into the vicinty of the suspect" route. With many of our cops being doped up on steroids, they don't want to bother waiting for a suspect to get tired and hungry and surrender, they'd rather get the adrenalin rush that comes from opening fire on someone.
I have to agree. "Fugly" needs to be reserved for truly hideous cars, such as the Pontiac Aztek. The Leaf is nowhere near that bad, it's just boring and dowdy.
It seems like the G coupes have really gone down the toilet in recent years, styling-wise.
Some automotive journalists have even credited the Aztek with being one of the largest causes of Pontiac's demise. It wasn't just an ugly car, it was a car so horrible it caused an entire car brand to be shut down.
IANAL, so take this advice with a grain of salt. You could release this bit of software as open-source, under a new name (and use a pseudonym for yourself just in case, so it's hard for them to figure out it's you). It's very unlikely this law firm will even notice it (is this software specifically for the law field, or something else entirely?). More importantly, however, is they don't even have the original source code: how can they prove that your open-source software is actually owned by them? You could make some cosmetic changes so that, upon running the two programs side-by-side, it's not immediately obvious they're the same, and then you can just claim that yours is a clone of theirs. Since they don't have any source code, they have no way to prove otherwise.