I think the power of a boycott lies in the poptential to raise public awareness and to influence public opinion. A boycott like this probably will have a negligable influence on XP sales in the short term, I agree on that. In the long run however influence on public opinion actually might cause sales to drop. I'm a bit skeptical about a boycott but I would be interested to see how much a strong, united, well organized anti-MS/XP campaign can influence public opinion.
yeah, you're right, I'm the one that didn't take close enough of a look, I thought it was still the old site...
it was some sort of trendy online clothing store. I remember reading some stuff about it in the newspapers, iirc boo was one of the first.coms that actually made people think about the sanity of the whole "e"-hype. I recall that they went out of business real fast, even for a.com at the height of the.com wave.
yup, that's right, I helped my ex-gf to get a hotmail account. The name she used was something like @hotmail.com. She got porno spam almost immediately after she had signed up. I don't think she even knew how to use the web then, so she couldn't have given her e-mail address out to some dodgy site or ng.
Whilst other "search engines" have or are trying to become portals google is still a search engine only. That's a difference... I didn't move to google because everyone was using it, I moved to Google because it consistently gives me the best search results. And their search technology *is* different...
uuuhhh, so how would you value a "revolutionary" idea ? Anyhow, what's so revolutionary about Linux ? It's just an OS isn't it, the way in which it proliferates amongst it's users might be different (ie. not sold but freely distributed) and it's users might have access to the source code but how does that make the OS itself revolutionary ?
I'm no expert on this but I do numerical analysis type stuff at the office. It involves serious number crunching. I've got a temperature sensor on the CPU, it appears to get hotter when it has to do lots of calculations. Wouldn't that indicate that the power consumption goes up with CPU load ?
What sells music is MARKETING. Not talent. Not the music itself.
Yeah same thing that sells clothes, shoes etc... How much in raw manufacturing costs do you think a typical sports shoe costs as a percentage of the price you pay for it ? What percentage of that price paid for the advertising to convince you to buy that shoe ? Advertising; *you* pay for someone to convince *you* to buy *their* product. Not bad...
Providing us with quality music. Have you heard what passes for music in the 'indie' 'community'? Do you really want to hear that? I think not. Thank the RIAA.
Wondering what the new Poo Diddily (I may have got that wrong) album is like? Buy the single!
I see, that's what you call 'quality music'. How about other 'quality acts' like all these boy/girl bands whatever their names may be ? What about Britney Spears and clones ? I think that I might just prefer indie music.... And you know something about indie music ? It's not marketed like crazy... So there's noone wanting to earn back their investment in all the marketing... I know that a lot of indie bands sound like utter noise but there are some very cool ones too. Just go out to some bar that has bands playing live and you'll find plenty of good music.
Yes, they can be made to work in average weather and winds - but expecting this to keep them safe is about as intelligent as expecting building a seaside house at the same level as the average high tide and expecting it to therefore stay dry - and tides are considerably more predictable than sudden changes in the weather.
That's the thing the aerodynamic forces on such a large ship would be incredible.
do you think that *fewer* connections will get *better* results ? The more connections you got the more hosts you can search so it should get better with more connections. I've never found anything useful on Gnutella.
I can still find what I want on Opennap et al.
I don't like gnutella, I've got a 10Mb internet connection and even if I keep a hundred gnutella connections open it takes forever to find something useful.
I think it is interesting that the views about the C-chip are remarkable similar to the views of some paranoid Christian groups. These groups are basically afraid that the government will eventually be able to check up on it's citizens through the internet. (a la 1984) Some of them actually believe the internet is the antichrist IIRC
Although I'm not paranoid (I am a Christian) I can see a bit what they and the author of the parent are worried about.
I think that copyright laws may always have been unreasonable. The technology to enforce them just didn't exist. Now that the techonoly is advancing people are beginning to notice how unreasonable the laws actually are.
For free speech you might have the same situation. I live in Europe and here it's illegal to say some things (about racism etc.) Although I can understand where it comes from I also think it's a dangerous principle. I prefer the free-speech type laws you have in the US. Although I don't think that downloading kiddy-porn in a public library can be defended by free-speech principles.
I was quite surprised to find out many big companies are using linux. I think it just doesn't get a lot of publicity. I know of at least one Shell (the oil company) division that is using linux.
I think it makes sense business-wise to use linux in companies, it's a decent OS and it's free (Instead of paying for thousands of licenses).... The only problem is that secretaries and marketing people probably can't use it too well.
Microsoft's motive is to produce a product which people want to buy.
I think their motive is to make as much money as they can for their owners (shareholders). Customer satisfaction and market share are just a means to create shareholder value. Most companies work that way, so Microsoft is no different in that respect.
I'm really starting to get sick of businesses' schemes to extract money from customers, take for instance the practice of price differentiation. With software it costs basically nothing to copy a product so the pricing of a product is quite flexible in theory. If I don't need MS VC++ for instance I won't buy it at $200, however I might buy it at $10 just to have it. This is extra income for MS since it costs them basically nothing to make an extra cd. Off course they can't sell VC for $10 in the shops because then they lose money to the people that are willing to pay more for it. It would seem nice if they could sell to me individually a copy for $10. (and were going there as soon as the internet matures as a place to buy stuff) The downside of this whole thing is off course that if I really need VC, then it will cost me an arm and a leg... I understand that it's just common business practice and I would probably do the same thing in their position etc. etc. but sometimes the whole attitude of scientifically extracting as much money as you can from people seems so sickening. I'm by no means a communist or something like that, I don't think a government could/should try to force people to change... However sometimes it all seems so screwed.
It's interesting how this keeps popping up in the media. Supercavitating projectiles and vessels have been in use for over 40 years. Yet the world hasn't really stopped to take note of this technology the way it would seem to merit. Kind of like the turbine engine (like jet engines used on commercial airliners) when it was used on vehicles -- got great results in the indy 500 in the 1950's but never went into production because the engine had no crankshaft, no valves, no pistons, no transmission -- not much need for lubricants.
Supercavitating vessels been in use for over 40 years ? Can you give an example ? I think you might mean ships with supercavitating propellers ?
About gas-turbines, gas-turbines have a small thermodynamic efficiency compared to piston engines. I'm not sure about the reason but it might have something to do with the compression ratios. The reason that airplanes and (some) racecars and some navy ships use gas-turbines for power generation is that gas turbines have a superior power/weight ratio compared to pistion engines.
afaik humans are the only species that worry about the wellbeing of other species. (ok there might be some exceptions but I can't think of any besides Lassie right now).By worrying over another species, our species distinguishes itself.
stealing and copyright infringement are two different things, they are both illegal and argueably wrong but different nevertheless.
I think some form of copyright control is good. (I think that the watermarking of DVDs is not such a bad thing) But it seems that with advancing media technologies and legislation (dmca) we are moving (we're not there yet) to extreme forms of copyright control with pay-per-view/listen/read/use. I think that that kind of extreme copyright control is bad for society. It hinders the availability of information and the free availabilty of information is IMO something that helps a civilization advance.
Regardless of what you think, no country should tell me as an individual what the hell I can and cannot do. I am responsible unto myself, if I am responsible for hurting another, then I have myself to blame and should be punished accordingly.
You are a part of society, everything you do and are affects society to some degree. That's just part of being human. Whether you like it or not humans are social beings. Hurt yourself and you hurt others, it's as simple as that. Btw, it's usually easy to translate you hurting yourself into real economic loss for society.
Whether governments should be able to tell you what to do as an individual is a matter of opinion. For the reasons I just stated I'm not wholly against some degree of government interference.
I never said that Christiana was in Denmark, my comment was about Denmark in general.
About Amsterdam, my comment on that was not about the Dutch having problems with laws on drugs, it was about 2 things:
I don't like seeing sleazy coffeshops and stoned tourists taking over the town (it's a matter of opinion)
The city of Amsterdam realizing that they can make more money off rich older tourists that aren't so interested in smoking weed but have lots to spend in Hotels, museums etc. etc. than they can make money off weed smoking teenage backpackers.
Regarding me backing up my claims, exactly which claim do you want me to back up ? How about you back up your claims about Dutch drug laws "working just fine" ? I'm Dutch and I now for a fact that the drug laws are not working "just fine" and that violent alcohol related crime *is* on the increase.
The Danish although they have a reputation for being liberal appear to be a bit xenophobic too. IIRC one of the main issues at a recent referendum about joining the EU was concern over immigration.
About Amsterdam, I really dislike what is happening to that city, the city itself is quite beautiful but I'm appaled by all the sleazy coffeshops and drug-smoking-thinking-it's-soooo-cool tourists. Interestingly enough the city recently realized that they weren't making a lot of money off the whole soft-drugs thing. They realized that it would be more profitable to have older (richer) tourists that have lots to spend coming to the city to see the museums/architecture etc then having a bunch of teenage American backpackers walking around spending all their money on weed.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the power of a boycott lies in the poptential to raise public awareness and to influence public opinion. A boycott like this probably will have a negligable influence on XP sales in the short term, I agree on that. In the long run however influence on public opinion actually might cause sales to drop. I'm a bit skeptical about a boycott but I would be interested to see how much a strong, united, well organized anti-MS/XP campaign can influence public opinion.
What features that you need are missing from GNUcash or Kapital?
is it seriously called "Kapital" with a K ? That would make me feel uneasy...
yeah, you're right, I'm the one that didn't take close enough of a look, I thought it was still the old site...
.coms that actually made people think about the sanity of the whole "e"-hype. I recall that they went out of business real fast, even for a .com at the height of the .com wave.
it was some sort of trendy online clothing store. I remember reading some stuff about it in the newspapers, iirc boo was one of the first
it appears that their site is still up. Why don't you check that out first...
yup, that's right, I helped my ex-gf to get a hotmail account. The name she used was something like @hotmail.com. She got porno spam almost immediately after she had signed up. I don't think she even knew how to use the web then, so she couldn't have given her e-mail address out to some dodgy site or ng.
Whilst other "search engines" have or are trying to become portals google is still a search engine only. That's a difference... I didn't move to google because everyone was using it, I moved to Google because it consistently gives me the best search results. And their search technology *is* different...
uuuhhh, so how would you value a "revolutionary" idea ? Anyhow, what's so revolutionary about Linux ? It's just an OS isn't it, the way in which it proliferates amongst it's users might be different (ie. not sold but freely distributed) and it's users might have access to the source code but how does that make the OS itself revolutionary ?
I'm no expert on this but I do numerical analysis type stuff at the office. It involves serious number crunching. I've got a temperature sensor on the CPU, it appears to get hotter when it has to do lots of calculations. Wouldn't that indicate that the power consumption goes up with CPU load ?
the first thing that catches your eye on that page is a huge slashdot image/link. How is that to slashdot's disadvantage ?
Chris asserts that Clear Channel
scientology channel ?
What sells music is MARKETING. Not talent. Not the music itself.
Yeah same thing that sells clothes, shoes etc... How much in raw manufacturing costs do you think a typical sports shoe costs as a percentage of the price you pay for it ? What percentage of that price paid for the advertising to convince you to buy that shoe ? Advertising; *you* pay for someone to convince *you* to buy *their* product. Not bad...
Providing us with quality music. Have you heard what passes for music in the 'indie' 'community'? Do you really want to hear that? I think not. Thank the RIAA.
Wondering what the new Poo Diddily (I may have got that wrong) album is like? Buy the single!
I see, that's what you call 'quality music'. How about other 'quality acts' like all these boy/girl bands whatever their names may be ? What about Britney Spears and clones ? I think that I might just prefer indie music.... And you know something about indie music ? It's not marketed like crazy... So there's noone wanting to earn back their investment in all the marketing... I know that a lot of indie bands sound like utter noise but there are some very cool ones too. Just go out to some bar that has bands playing live and you'll find plenty of good music.
maybe the guy that invented these melons was a Mac-nut ?
Yes, they can be made to work in average weather and winds - but expecting this to keep them safe is about as intelligent as expecting building a seaside house at the same level as the average high tide and expecting it to therefore stay dry - and tides are considerably more predictable than sudden changes in the weather.
That's the thing the aerodynamic forces on such a large ship would be incredible.
do you think that *fewer* connections will get *better* results ? The more connections you got the more hosts you can search so it should get better with more connections. I've never found anything useful on Gnutella.
I can still find what I want on Opennap et al. I don't like gnutella, I've got a 10Mb internet connection and even if I keep a hundred gnutella connections open it takes forever to find something useful.
I think it is interesting that the views about the C-chip are remarkable similar to the views of some paranoid Christian groups. These groups are basically afraid that the government will eventually be able to check up on it's citizens through the internet. (a la 1984) Some of them actually believe the internet is the antichrist IIRC
Although I'm not paranoid (I am a Christian) I can see a bit what they and the author of the parent are worried about.
I think that copyright laws may always have been unreasonable. The technology to enforce them just didn't exist. Now that the techonoly is advancing people are beginning to notice how unreasonable the laws actually are.
For free speech you might have the same situation. I live in Europe and here it's illegal to say some things (about racism etc.) Although I can understand where it comes from I also think it's a dangerous principle. I prefer the free-speech type laws you have in the US. Although I don't think that downloading kiddy-porn in a public library can be defended by free-speech principles.
I was quite surprised to find out many big companies are using linux. I think it just doesn't get a lot of publicity. I know of at least one Shell (the oil company) division that is using linux.
I think it makes sense business-wise to use linux in companies, it's a decent OS and it's free (Instead of paying for thousands of licenses).... The only problem is that secretaries and marketing people probably can't use it too well.
Microsoft's motive is to produce a product which people want to buy.
I think their motive is to make as much money as they can for their owners (shareholders). Customer satisfaction and market share are just a means to create shareholder value. Most companies work that way, so Microsoft is no different in that respect.
I'm really starting to get sick of businesses' schemes to extract money from customers, take for instance the practice of price differentiation. With software it costs basically nothing to copy a product so the pricing of a product is quite flexible in theory. If I don't need MS VC++ for instance I won't buy it at $200, however I might buy it at $10 just to have it. This is extra income for MS since it costs them basically nothing to make an extra cd. Off course they can't sell VC for $10 in the shops because then they lose money to the people that are willing to pay more for it. It would seem nice if they could sell to me individually a copy for $10. (and were going there as soon as the internet matures as a place to buy stuff) The downside of this whole thing is off course that if I really need VC, then it will cost me an arm and a leg... I understand that it's just common business practice and I would probably do the same thing in their position etc. etc. but sometimes the whole attitude of scientifically extracting as much money as you can from people seems so sickening. I'm by no means a communist or something like that, I don't think a government could/should try to force people to change... However sometimes it all seems so screwed.
It's interesting how this keeps popping up in the media. Supercavitating projectiles and vessels have been in use for over 40 years. Yet the world hasn't really stopped to take note of this technology the way it would seem to merit. Kind of like the turbine engine (like jet engines used on commercial airliners) when it was used on vehicles -- got great results in the indy 500 in the 1950's but never went into production because the engine had no crankshaft, no valves, no pistons, no transmission -- not much need for lubricants.
Supercavitating vessels been in use for over 40 years ? Can you give an example ? I think you might mean ships with supercavitating propellers ?
About gas-turbines, gas-turbines have a small thermodynamic efficiency compared to piston engines. I'm not sure about the reason but it might have something to do with the compression ratios. The reason that airplanes and (some) racecars and some navy ships use gas-turbines for power generation is that gas turbines have a superior power/weight ratio compared to pistion engines.
afaik humans are the only species that worry about the wellbeing of other species. (ok there might be some exceptions but I can't think of any besides Lassie right now).By worrying over another species, our species distinguishes itself.
stealing and copyright infringement are two different things, they are both illegal and argueably wrong but different nevertheless.
I think some form of copyright control is good. (I think that the watermarking of DVDs is not such a bad thing) But it seems that with advancing media technologies and legislation (dmca) we are moving (we're not there yet) to extreme forms of copyright control with pay-per-view/listen/read/use. I think that that kind of extreme copyright control is bad for society. It hinders the availability of information and the free availabilty of information is IMO something that helps a civilization advance.
Regardless of what you think, no country should tell me as an individual what the hell I can and cannot do. I am responsible unto myself, if I am responsible for hurting another, then I have myself to blame and should be punished accordingly.
You are a part of society, everything you do and are affects society to some degree. That's just part of being human. Whether you like it or not humans are social beings. Hurt yourself and you hurt others, it's as simple as that. Btw, it's usually easy to translate you hurting yourself into real economic loss for society.
Whether governments should be able to tell you what to do as an individual is a matter of opinion. For the reasons I just stated I'm not wholly against some degree of government interference.
About Amsterdam, my comment on that was not about the Dutch having problems with laws on drugs, it was about 2 things:
I don't like seeing sleazy coffeshops and stoned tourists taking over the town (it's a matter of opinion)
The city of Amsterdam realizing that they can make more money off rich older tourists that aren't so interested in smoking weed but have lots to spend in Hotels, museums etc. etc. than they can make money off weed smoking teenage backpackers.
Regarding me backing up my claims, exactly which claim do you want me to back up ? How about you back up your claims about Dutch drug laws "working just fine" ? I'm Dutch and I now for a fact that the drug laws are not working "just fine" and that violent alcohol related crime *is* on the increase.
The Danish although they have a reputation for being liberal appear to be a bit xenophobic too. IIRC one of the main issues at a recent referendum about joining the EU was concern over immigration.
About Amsterdam, I really dislike what is happening to that city, the city itself is quite beautiful but I'm appaled by all the sleazy coffeshops and drug-smoking-thinking-it's-soooo-cool tourists. Interestingly enough the city recently realized that they weren't making a lot of money off the whole soft-drugs thing. They realized that it would be more profitable to have older (richer) tourists that have lots to spend coming to the city to see the museums/architecture etc then having a bunch of teenage American backpackers walking around spending all their money on weed.