They're under no obligation to, no doubt. But neither was IBM under any obligation to release the code for SWT, Eclipse, Derby and others. IBM has stepped up and released code under an open source license. As a programmer, I like working in Java far more than I do working in C#. For that reason, I want Java to become as ubiquitous as possible. Opening up the source would go a long way towards making that happen.
I could make just as ludicrous a statement as "IBM should allow itself to be acquired by Sun to improve Java". You need to backup your statement. It's not a self-evident truth like you make it out to be.
Bzzt. Wrong. SWT was created in response to criticisms of Swing and AWT on the part of developers. Developers wanted an API that was easy enough to use and made their apps look native. AWT failed the first part, and if Swing ever does meet the second criteria, it will be because SWT pushed it to do so. And if you don't like working in SWT, try JFace. It is designed to be developer friendly and is, IMHO, much easier to develop in than Swing.
The fact is that SWT works far better in Windows than in Linux or anything other OS. Therefore it defeats the cross-platform purpose of Java. Explain to me why NetBeans for OS X, which was never designed for Intel Mac, worked out of the box for my new Intel iMac whereas I had to hack an SWT jar for Eclipse, a change which still hasn't been integrated into the main Eclipse build, after almost half a year of Intel Macs.
SWT was originally written long before Swing or AWT were anything but laughable. If you're going to bash SWT, do it on its merits (there are some), but to claim that IBM was trying to do anything besides solving a serious problem for developers just isn't true.
By breaking a cross-platform standard and corrupting a language spec without the consent of the JCP. This falls just short of Microsoft's attempts to wreck the Java spec.
Like the way that Eclipse had support for Java 5 language changes almost a year before NetBeans? For a company that is steering the direction of the language spec, that's pretty bad.
I suppose you can prove this?
This kind of absolute statement shows more than anything else that you know very little about this subject. You've probably given Eclipse a cursory glance, decided that it isn't NetBeans, and decided it was shit because you couldn't grok its way of doing things.
That's awfully presumptuous and utter fallacious of you. I run Eclipse at work every single day. My company has not approved NetBean, so I can only use it at home.
Of course the fact that every IDE forces you to adapt to its way of doing things and requires a substantial time investment in order to be able to use it well. I've spent considerable time using NetBeans, IDEA and Eclipse. And each time, the process of learning the new IDE was a serious pain.
Yeah, you have to learn new technologies every day. Sucks to be a programmer, doesn't it? Perhaps you should consider changing careers.
Welcome to the real world. Spend more than 5 minutes with Eclipse and you'll realize that it does a ton of stuff better than NetBeans and a bunch of stuff poorer than NetBeans.
I've spent...oh....at least two years running Eclipse and about six months running NetBeans, so perhaps you should refrain from making stupid assumptions before you post.
Wow...that's functionality that takes all of 5 minutes to setup using Ant. That's all NetBeans is actually doing anyways. Of course if my build script is called build.xml (like > 90% of them are), NetBeans can't use it.
I call bullshit on this one, and I seriously doubt you know what you're talking about. NetBeans integrates totally with ant. All I have to do is right-click on my project and choose the ant task I want to run. NetBeans does this far more seamlessly than Eclipse. Also, explain to me how an ant script can su
Sun paid tons of money and spent years writing the class libraries. Why should they give their work away for free? They license this code to IBM, Oracle and BAE for a significant sum. Why should they give up this revenue?
Sun has changed the licensing for the JRE to allow it to more easily be integrated into Linux distros. The parent is either ignorant of that fact or deliberately omitting it.
Sun is less likely to maintain to maintain the standard if they open source the code. What kind of ass backasswards reasoning is this?
Why embrace SWT? This is IBM's attempt to bastardize the JDK. What's more, it's not pure Java. For instance, when I bought my Intel iMac, NetBeans 5.0(pure Java Swing) worked immediately, whereas an SWT library needed to be replaced for Eclipse. Why should Sun integrate a less than fully platform independent competitor's attempt to break a standard?
The jury is out on whether SWT is technically superior to Swing.
If you think Eclipse makes Java development easy, you obviously haven't used NetBeans 5.0, which is significantly superior to Eclipse in every way. It includes functionality out of the box (JSP compilation) that you need to pay for (MyEclipse) with Eclipse.
You obviously have an IBM bias with the following stated positions:
1) Open Source Java so IBM doesn't have to license class library source from Sun. 2) SWT should be included in JDK, thus polluting the standard. 3) Eclipse is the best IDE and makes developing Java "easy", with no mention whatsoever of the clearly superior NetBeans 5.0, or, for that matter, IntelliJ.
Writing a fully compliant JVM takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, especially the class libraries. Sun spent years writing that code, and none of the JCP partners can be bothered re-writing it themselves.
IBM, BEA, Oracle, etc pay Sun to license their source code so they can release compliant JVMs.
So, it should be no suprised the the open *cough*IBM*cough* source community "demands" that Sun open source Java. Guess how much money a certain company would save getting free source code that they're paying to license now? In the same of "the open source community", they'd like nothing better than to get the #1 competitor's hard work for free so they stop having to pay them for it.
The Java spec is open for anybody the re-implement, the source code is viewable by all, and the JDK is a free download. Sun has stated that they won't stand in the way of Apache Harmony or any other open source project that aims for a full open source implementation of the JVM/JDK spec.
I was going to blog about this, but I'm feeling lazy tonight.
First of all, like RMS, I hate applying the term "piracy" to non-commercial copyright violations, so I won't use that term. Instead, I'll call it what it is, unauthorized copying.
Unauthorized copying is to the RIAA what "terrorism" is to the Bush Adminstration, namely, a scapegoat and a straw man argument with which to justify draconian legislation and to garner (barely) sufficient public support for any new legislation favoured by both institutions.
As the Bush Adminstration maintains the conditions (ex: War on Iraq) to indirectly promote terrorism, it justifies renewing the Patriot Act on the basis that it will "help stop terrorism". To make a blatantly obvious statement, the goal of the Patriot Act does not in any way, shape, or form have anything whatsoever to do with stop terrorists, but is instead intended to grant the government the ability to further spy on and control its citizens.
In the same vein, I believe that the RIAA wishes to maintain a certain level of unauthorized copying because it will allow them to justify legislation such as the DMCA and the broadcast flag. The goal of such legislation is not to eliminate or even substantially reduce unauthorized copying, but to maintain control over the industry and keep out fledging competitors, such as independent artists who would have otherwise been promoted through P2P, and to maintain their antiquated business models, which for all intents and purposes should have become obsolete.
So, it's all an elaborate shell game on their part.
How did we go from McNealy leaving Sun to Sun going out of business and Java being "abandoned". Do I sense wishful thinking on your part? And you get moded "insightful"?
How did you infer that Sun was going out of business? They're not consistently profitable, but they're not bleeding red ink either. The company also has healthy cash reserves.
As for Java, the spec is wide open for anybody to implement, which the Apache Harmony project is in the process of doing. Sun may head the JCP, but other companies like IBM, Oracle, and BAE would pick up the slack, as they have too much invested in Java to abandon it.
One of the discs they like to watch (and I forget which one it is) has a 10 MINUTE advertisement for "Madagascar" which can't be skipped.
Is there a website that catalogues DVD titles with un-skippable ads? I own DVDs with ads, but I can either skip through them with the "next scene" button or the "menu" button. This is annoying, but barely acceptable.
I absolutely do not want to buy a DVD with un-skippable ads, and if I happen to buy one, I will definitely try to return it.
KOffice 2.0 will run natively on Unix, Windows and MacOS X...
Do you have a link that mentions OS X specifically?
By "native" do you mean through X11, or built with Cocao and running natively on Apple's proprietary Aqua GUI?
I'm not accusing you of anything, I just want clarification. Given the sorry state of free/open office suites on Mac right now, I would LOVE to run KOffice natively on OS X, if that will become possible.
"I refuse to divulge my PGP private key & passphrase."... and then you get sent to jail. This is the law in the UK, and I imagine it will soon become a matter of legal precendence in the U.S.
I'm sure I'm going to be modded down for being off-topic, but screw it! AOL, MSN and Yahoo! capitulated to the Alberto Gonzales Gestap^H^H^H^H^H^H Department of Justice's fishing expidition for "evidence" to revive its non-existant case for reinstating a 1988 child porn law. These search engines betrayed their customers by handing search results over an unspecified period of time. Yahoo! claims to have "stripped out all identifying information", which is phantom "compromise" since there are many search terms that contain identifying information in the text of the search itself.
Only Google stood up to this travesty, on the basis that it was legitimately defending its trade secrets.
I was a moderator for a Yahoo! Canadian politics group, in addition to using Yahoo! Mail, Briefcase, Messenger and Chat. After I found out about the DoJ capitulation, I resolved to boycott all services from all search engines that complied with the subpoenas.
So AOL can do whatever the hell it wants. It's all irrelevant to me.
I don't mean to troll or even to necessarily disagree with the submitter, but I have another perspective to offer.
Does Visual Studio rot the brain, or is Visual Studio designed for less l337 programmers? (I don't want to say that it's for rotten brains:) )
Microsoft's strategy is to provide easy to use development tools (ex VisualBasic) and innondate the world with cheap MCSE's trained in 6 month courses to use them. Microsoft can then go to PHBs and tell them their solutions don't require them to hire expensive developers, just these cheaper code monkey MCSE's. I'm not saying all or even most MCSE's are idiots, but from what I read this is a major part of Microsoft's sales pitch.
This seems to go hand in hand with one of the submitter's conclusions, which is that these tools promote or even enforce rapid application development at the expense of robust maintainable applications.
Mark my words: Yahoo! will be pressured to ban chatting altogether by various child rights groups. First they got rid of the public user created rooms. Now this "age restriction". It will be condemned as insufficient and Yahoo! will have to follow in MSN's footsteps.
Considering that I met several of friends on chat and went to several real life meeting chat parties, this would indeed be unfortunate.
I'd say you might be on to something, though TigerDirect seems to be making two arguments: 1. The media blitz involving the word "Tiger" is hurting our ability to reach out to customers, and 2. We should own the trademark to "Tiger"
I think they should put TigerDirect's lawyers in a cage with a bunch of real tigers and fight it out. Whoever makes it out alive will be awarded the trademark:)
When Firefox was our own little secret, no sites bothered trying to circumvent pop-up blocking and ad blocking. Now, they are. For instance, last night I got three pop-unders while visiting a couple of sites that I trust. Adblock removed the images from those pop-unders, but I still got them anyway.
Bottom line: The more popular Firefox gets, the more sites will try and succeed at circumventing Firefox's ad blocking features.
I should know. My company runs an Exchange mail server, and I use Thunderbird everyday as my mail client. I get hundreds of messages a day, and Thunderbird is substantially superior to Outlook.
I still have to use Outlook for my calendar, though:( I'd love it if I could use Sunbird instead.
How do I set up Thunderbird to run with Exchange, you ask? Simple. Just go into server settings and set your IMAP server name to "exchange", along with your Exchange username. Yes, it's THAT easy!
I have a 40 GB iPod, and all this time I wasn't sure how in God's name I was going to fill it. Now I can!
Microsoft: The Epitome of Corporate Pathology
on
Keeping Microsoft Happy
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Microsoft represents the very worst, most pathological elements of corporations in general.
Microsoft takes standard coporate psychopathy, and amplifies it.
This situation is a perfect case in point. They ask for more from more from governments, pay less, and rationalize this greedy behaviour by arguing they "create jobs".
This is the same kind of arrogance demonstrated by companies that outsource IT jobs. Corporations are mere guests of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they no longer make their fair contribution to society, then they should be forced to pony up their share.
We have to pay our share of taxes, despite the skills and labour we offer society. Why shouldn't corporations be held to the same standards and given the same societal responsibilities as individuals?
I could easily fill up a 100 GB account. All I need to do is try to get as much spam to my account as possible, putting that email address on as many sites as I can think of.
Granted, this is assuming the mail account doesn't have any sophisticated spam filtering.
I could also just zip up half the files in my harddrive, and keep forwarding the message to myself over and over again.
Slashdot Mirror
They're under no obligation to, no doubt. But neither was IBM under any obligation to release the code for SWT, Eclipse, Derby and others. IBM has stepped up and released code under an open source license. As a programmer, I like working in Java far more than I do working in C#. For that reason, I want Java to become as ubiquitous as possible. Opening up the source would go a long way towards making that happen.
I could make just as ludicrous a statement as "IBM should allow itself to be acquired by Sun to improve Java". You need to backup your statement. It's not a self-evident truth like you make it out to be.
Bzzt. Wrong. SWT was created in response to criticisms of Swing and AWT on the part of developers. Developers wanted an API that was easy enough to use and made their apps look native. AWT failed the first part, and if Swing ever does meet the second criteria, it will be because SWT pushed it to do so. And if you don't like working in SWT, try JFace. It is designed to be developer friendly and is, IMHO, much easier to develop in than Swing.
The fact is that SWT works far better in Windows than in Linux or anything other OS. Therefore it defeats the cross-platform purpose of Java. Explain to me why NetBeans for OS X, which was never designed for Intel Mac, worked out of the box for my new Intel iMac whereas I had to hack an SWT jar for Eclipse, a change which still hasn't been integrated into the main Eclipse build, after almost half a year of Intel Macs.
SWT was originally written long before Swing or AWT were anything but laughable. If you're going to bash SWT, do it on its merits (there are some), but to claim that IBM was trying to do anything besides solving a serious problem for developers just isn't true.
By breaking a cross-platform standard and corrupting a language spec without the consent of the JCP. This falls just short of Microsoft's attempts to wreck the Java spec.
Like the way that Eclipse had support for Java 5 language changes almost a year before NetBeans? For a company that is steering the direction of the language spec, that's pretty bad.
I suppose you can prove this?
This kind of absolute statement shows more than anything else that you know very little about this subject. You've probably given Eclipse a cursory glance, decided that it isn't NetBeans, and decided it was shit because you couldn't grok its way of doing things.
That's awfully presumptuous and utter fallacious of you. I run Eclipse at work every single day. My company has not approved NetBean, so I can only use it at home.
Of course the fact that every IDE forces you to adapt to its way of doing things and requires a substantial time investment in order to be able to use it well. I've spent considerable time using NetBeans, IDEA and Eclipse. And each time, the process of learning the new IDE was a serious pain.
Yeah, you have to learn new technologies every day. Sucks to be a programmer, doesn't it? Perhaps you should consider changing careers.
Welcome to the real world. Spend more than 5 minutes with Eclipse and you'll realize that it does a ton of stuff better than NetBeans and a bunch of stuff poorer than NetBeans.
I've spent...oh....at least two years running Eclipse and about six months running NetBeans, so perhaps you should refrain from making stupid assumptions before you post.
Wow...that's functionality that takes all of 5 minutes to setup using Ant. That's all NetBeans is actually doing anyways. Of course if my build script is called build.xml (like > 90% of them are), NetBeans can't use it.
I call bullshit on this one, and I seriously doubt you know what you're talking about. NetBeans integrates totally with ant. All I have to do is right-click on my project and choose the ant task I want to run. NetBeans does this far more seamlessly than Eclipse. Also, explain to me how an ant script can su
The parent is a troll (possibly an IBM troll).
Sun paid tons of money and spent years writing the class libraries. Why should they give their work away for free? They license this code to IBM, Oracle and BAE for a significant sum. Why should they give up this revenue?
Sun has changed the licensing for the JRE to allow it to more easily be integrated into Linux distros. The parent is either ignorant of that fact or deliberately omitting it.
Sun is less likely to maintain to maintain the standard if they open source the code. What kind of ass backasswards reasoning is this?
Why embrace SWT? This is IBM's attempt to bastardize the JDK. What's more, it's not pure Java. For instance, when I bought my Intel iMac, NetBeans 5.0(pure Java Swing) worked immediately, whereas an SWT library needed to be replaced for Eclipse. Why should Sun integrate a less than fully platform independent competitor's attempt to break a standard?
See this blog for more analysis on SWT vs Swing:
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t18544.html
The jury is out on whether SWT is technically superior to Swing.
If you think Eclipse makes Java development easy, you obviously haven't used NetBeans 5.0, which is significantly superior to Eclipse in every way. It includes functionality out of the box (JSP compilation) that you need to pay for (MyEclipse) with Eclipse.
You obviously have an IBM bias with the following stated positions:
1) Open Source Java so IBM doesn't have to license class library source from Sun.
2) SWT should be included in JDK, thus polluting the standard.
3) Eclipse is the best IDE and makes developing Java "easy", with no mention whatsoever of the clearly superior NetBeans 5.0, or, for that matter, IntelliJ.
Writing a fully compliant JVM takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, especially the class libraries. Sun spent years writing that code, and none of the JCP partners can be bothered re-writing it themselves.
IBM, BEA, Oracle, etc pay Sun to license their source code so they can release compliant JVMs.
So, it should be no suprised the the open *cough*IBM*cough* source community "demands" that Sun open source Java. Guess how much money a certain company would save getting free source code that they're paying to license now? In the same of "the open source community", they'd like nothing better than to get the #1 competitor's hard work for free so they stop having to pay them for it.
The Java spec is open for anybody the re-implement, the source code is viewable by all, and the JDK is a free download. Sun has stated that they won't stand in the way of Apache Harmony or any other open source project that aims for a full open source implementation of the JVM/JDK spec.
So what exactly is the problem?
I was going to blog about this, but I'm feeling lazy tonight.
First of all, like RMS, I hate applying the term "piracy" to non-commercial copyright violations, so I won't use that term. Instead, I'll call it what it is, unauthorized copying.
Unauthorized copying is to the RIAA what "terrorism" is to the Bush Adminstration, namely, a scapegoat and a straw man argument with which to justify draconian legislation and to garner (barely) sufficient public support for any new legislation favoured by both institutions.
As the Bush Adminstration maintains the conditions (ex: War on Iraq) to indirectly promote terrorism, it justifies renewing the Patriot Act on the basis that it will "help stop terrorism". To make a blatantly obvious statement, the goal of the Patriot Act does not in any way, shape, or form have anything whatsoever to do with stop terrorists, but is instead intended to grant the government the ability to further spy on and control its citizens.
In the same vein, I believe that the RIAA wishes to maintain a certain level of unauthorized copying because it will allow them to justify legislation such as the DMCA and the broadcast flag. The goal of such legislation is not to eliminate or even substantially reduce unauthorized copying, but to maintain control over the industry and keep out fledging competitors, such as independent artists who would have otherwise been promoted through P2P, and to maintain their antiquated business models, which for all intents and purposes should have become obsolete.
So, it's all an elaborate shell game on their part.
How did we go from McNealy leaving Sun to Sun going out of business and Java being "abandoned". Do I sense wishful thinking on your part? And you get moded "insightful"?
How did you infer that Sun was going out of business? They're not consistently profitable, but they're not bleeding red ink either. The company also has healthy cash reserves.
As for Java, the spec is wide open for anybody to implement, which the Apache Harmony project is in the process of doing. Sun may head the JCP, but other companies like IBM, Oracle, and BAE would pick up the slack, as they have too much invested in Java to abandon it.
One of the discs they like to watch (and I forget which one it is) has a 10 MINUTE advertisement for "Madagascar" which can't be skipped.
Is there a website that catalogues DVD titles with un-skippable ads? I own DVDs with ads, but I can either skip through them with the "next scene" button or the "menu" button. This is annoying, but barely acceptable.
I absolutely do not want to buy a DVD with un-skippable ads, and if I happen to buy one, I will definitely try to return it.
KOffice 2.0 will run natively on Unix, Windows and MacOS X...
Do you have a link that mentions OS X specifically?
By "native" do you mean through X11, or built with Cocao and running natively on Apple's proprietary Aqua GUI?
I'm not accusing you of anything, I just want clarification. Given the sorry state of free/open office suites on Mac right now, I would LOVE to run KOffice natively on OS X, if that will become possible.
(Phone rings)
(Me) Hello?
(Fax machine) BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP!
(Me) Ugh!
(Phone rings again 5 seconds later)
(Me) Hello?
(Fax machine) BEEEEEP! BEEEEEEP!
(Me) DAMMIT!
(Phone rings again 5 seconds later)
(Me)That's it, I'm unpugging my phone!
... Who's your daddy now?
"I refuse to divulge my PGP private key & passphrase." ... and then you get sent to jail. This is the law in the UK, and I imagine it will soon become a matter of legal precendence in the U.S.
Needless to say, this makes Dvorak look like even more of an idiot before by completely refuting his moronic Apple switching to Windows prediction.
It's obvious that the Slashdot story approvers are applying for jobs at the USPTO :)
I'm sure I'm going to be modded down for being off-topic, but screw it! AOL, MSN and Yahoo! capitulated to the Alberto Gonzales Gestap^H^H^H^H^H^H Department of Justice's fishing expidition for "evidence" to revive its non-existant case for reinstating a 1988 child porn law. These search engines betrayed their customers by handing search results over an unspecified period of time. Yahoo! claims to have "stripped out all identifying information", which is phantom "compromise" since there are many search terms that contain identifying information in the text of the search itself.
Only Google stood up to this travesty, on the basis that it was legitimately defending its trade secrets.
I was a moderator for a Yahoo! Canadian politics group, in addition to using Yahoo! Mail, Briefcase, Messenger and Chat. After I found out about the DoJ capitulation, I resolved to boycott all services from all search engines that complied with the subpoenas.
So AOL can do whatever the hell it wants. It's all irrelevant to me.
For some reason neither zdnet nor the submitter give a link to the site and article they are talking about:
:)
an openrights.org blog entry.
Hello. You must be new here.
Did you think somebody would actually RTFA and notice that the submitter posted the wrong link?
I don't mean to troll or even to necessarily disagree with the submitter, but I have another perspective to offer.
:) )
Does Visual Studio rot the brain, or is Visual Studio designed for less l337 programmers? (I don't want to say that it's for rotten brains
Microsoft's strategy is to provide easy to use development tools (ex VisualBasic) and innondate the world with cheap MCSE's trained in 6 month courses to use them. Microsoft can then go to PHBs and tell them their solutions don't require them to hire expensive developers, just these cheaper code monkey MCSE's. I'm not saying all or even most MCSE's are idiots, but from what I read this is a major part of Microsoft's sales pitch.
This seems to go hand in hand with one of the submitter's conclusions, which is that these tools promote or even enforce rapid application development at the expense of robust maintainable applications.
Mark my words: Yahoo! will be pressured to ban chatting altogether by various child rights groups. First they got rid of the public user created rooms. Now this "age restriction". It will be condemned as insufficient and Yahoo! will have to follow in MSN's footsteps.
Considering that I met several of friends on chat and went to several real life meeting chat parties, this would indeed be unfortunate.
There's no way in hell Star Wars should be in the list ahead of, or instead of the Empire Strikes Back.
:)
Empire is the best Star Wars film, and best of all, it wasn't directed or screenplayed by Lucas
I'd say you might be on to something, though TigerDirect seems to be making two arguments:
:)
1. The media blitz involving the word "Tiger" is hurting our ability to reach out to customers, and
2. We should own the trademark to "Tiger"
I think they should put TigerDirect's lawyers in a cage with a bunch of real tigers and fight it out. Whoever makes it out alive will be awarded the trademark
Bet he's sorry now htat he sent those penis enlargement pill e-mails to incarcerated felons.
:D
He'll be even sorrier if he actually sold those penis enlargement pills to those felons, especially if one of them happens to be his cellmate
I'm not trolling.
When Firefox was our own little secret, no sites bothered trying to circumvent pop-up blocking and ad blocking. Now, they are. For instance, last night I got three pop-unders while visiting a couple of sites that I trust. Adblock removed the images from those pop-unders, but I still got them anyway.
Bottom line: The more popular Firefox gets, the more sites will try and succeed at circumventing Firefox's ad blocking features.
I'm wondering if the grandstand would withstand the weight of a 17" CRT monitor, like what I have now.
This would save a lot of space on my desk.
On the other hand, the minitower might be a good idea too.
I should know. My company runs an Exchange mail server, and I use Thunderbird everyday as my mail client. I get hundreds of messages a day, and Thunderbird is substantially superior to Outlook.
:( I'd love it if I could use Sunbird instead.
I still have to use Outlook for my calendar, though
How do I set up Thunderbird to run with Exchange, you ask? Simple. Just go into server settings and set your IMAP server name to "exchange", along with your Exchange username. Yes, it's THAT easy!
I have a 40 GB iPod, and all this time I wasn't sure how in God's name I was going to fill it. Now I can!
Microsoft represents the very worst, most pathological elements of corporations in general.
Microsoft takes standard coporate psychopathy, and amplifies it.
This situation is a perfect case in point. They ask for more from more from governments, pay less, and rationalize this greedy behaviour by arguing they "create jobs".
This is the same kind of arrogance demonstrated by companies that outsource IT jobs. Corporations are mere guests of the jurisdictions in which they operate. If they no longer make their fair contribution to society, then they should be forced to pony up their share.
We have to pay our share of taxes, despite the skills and labour we offer society. Why shouldn't corporations be held to the same standards and given the same societal responsibilities as individuals?
I could easily fill up a 100 GB account. All I need to do is try to get as much spam to my account as possible, putting that email address on as many sites as I can think of.
Granted, this is assuming the mail account doesn't have any sophisticated spam filtering.
I could also just zip up half the files in my harddrive, and keep forwarding the message to myself over and over again.