North Korea is a communist nation. North Korea has a chronic famine problem.
The United States is a capitalist nation. The United States doesn't have a famine problem.
Conclusion: Communism causes famine.
Sorry, but thanks for playing. There are plenty of heavily socialized countries that don't have any problems feeding themselves. Democratic institutions and a free press appear to be more important.
Personally, I don't care if someone is only out to serve their own best interests. Doing so can often serve others every bit as well as selfless sacrifice. The limit comes when people become willing to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
Don't you think Bill Gates has better things to do than post to Slashdot? Like training his army of genetically enhanced monkey ninjas? Obviously he does, and obviously you do not.
I repeat, *THIS GUY IS NOT BILL GATES*!!! I'll bet he doesn't even own *one* monkey ninja!
I've never MUD'ed, and I've never seen any documentation of the fact. But somehow, I just have this suspicion that Emacs has some killer MUDing features.
Yep, there's a mud.el file available (or, rather, several different ones). If you're not one of those evil Vi heretics, it might be worth playing with.:)
"Good venture capitalists understand [that your idea probably isn't unique], and many will refuse to sign an NDA before looking at a business plan."
Later:
More importantly, think of what the entrepreneur is giving up by insisting on excessive secrecy: feedback from others in the industry, including prospective customers, and others who may have tried (and failed at) similar ideas. The opportunity to "debug" a business model or idea at an earlier stage before mistakes are too expensive. A productive exchange of ideas with other industry experts who may be sympathetic, but can't join you for one reason or another.
"He fails to state how NDAs harm the chances of a technology startup?"
Re:Open Source is anathema to profit
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The Cult of the NDA
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Ford is an anomaly because--unlike 95% of the startups that had their eyes on world domination a few years back--he really did have a novel idea.
Even so, did Ford use NDAs to protect his revolutionary idea of "mass production?" Did he even tell his employees to keep the process a secret until his cars were actually on the market? I don't know, but somehow I suspect not.
I also suspect that you didn't read the article, as your original comments are point for point the ideas the article was trying to knock down. You don't even provide any evidence as to why he's wrong.
Here's what it actually said: Being first to market isn't critical (he cites several examples of successful dot coms that waltzed right past the sandblasted corpses of the companies who hit the market first). Secrecy is not essential.
Chances are, whatever idea it is that you're playing so close to the vest really isn't that good an idea. Certainly, if you're working in a fairly glutted field, the advantages of secrecy are outweighed by the loss of input from people who know about the industry. Execution is usually far more important than uniqueness, and that's something nobody can sneak out of HQ in a looseleaf binder.
Re:Yet another way to turn the nickle
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The Borg MegaCube
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· Score: 1
I was going to respond with a fairly long treatise about the limits and pitfalls of free-market capitalism. Then I saw your user number. Holy crap!
The Greeks had the right idea: Don't mess with the minor deities, or they'll mess you up in a bad way.
Re:Yet another way to turn the nickle
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The Borg MegaCube
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Could you please enlighten the curious: Given that you already own copies of all seven seasons, what possible add-ons could they stuff in this cube that would make it worth $500-$1000 to you? How many hours of "never-before-heard commentaries"--that you'll never listen to--add up to $1000 in value? How many hours of "never-before-seen-deleted-scenes"--which were too crappy to make the first batch of "never-before-seen-deleted-scenes"--will satisfy your lust for Trek arcana? How many hours of blooper footage--mostly consisting of "Dr. Crusher flubbing her lines and everyone laughing" and "Worf running into the door that should have opened"--can you have before another hour of same adds no value?
Unless you are really rich and plan on giving your old collection away as Christmas gifts, or are expecting that one of the "add-ons" is a coupon for sexual favors from the crew members of your choice, then I'm saddened that you would consider buying it under any circumstances.
I don't mean to be blasting you in particular. It's your money, not mine. It's just that I see this as the as-yet-most-absurd example of the already absurd "special edition DVD" craze. It reminds me of the re-release of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". At the beginning, the director stands up in front of an audience to explain how wonderful it is to have all these deleted scenes back in. One audience member shoots back, "If they were so wonderful, why did you delete them in the first place?"
My brother managed to snag "The Fellowship of the Ring" for $10 the first day the DVD was available. Nevertheless, when the "full six-DVD collection" came out, with its hours upon hours of deleted scenes and other goodies, he went out and bought it again. To this day, he's only watched about an hour's worth of all those "goodies," which makes for damned expensive entertainment.
It's all a ploy to get the maximum amount of money from fans with a minimum of actual effort. I'd bet good money that, when George Lucas finally allows Episodes 4-6 out on DVD, there will be a "Special Edition" release (they never start with just a "regular edition"), then a "Director's Cut" edition, then throw in a "Directors Cut Gold," and so on up to "Director's Cut Gold Alpha Turbo Xtreme Edition" ($109.95, and includes deleted extended sequences and cameos by Jar-Jar).
All these releases and re-releases don't add anything of value to the economy. It's all plastic and cardboard. At least with normal DVDs, you're paying for the content, but with re-releases, they've found a way to turn worthless behind-the-scenes footage into gold by using it as an excuse to sell us the same thing over again.
In the end, it's up to the individual to decide whether or not the re-release adds enough value to warrant a separate purchase. But please think about the game they're asking you to play before you get roped into playing it.
Note: The dude who was talking about putting seven seasons on four discs probably meant using some sort of DivX encoding.
I'm not even going to touch the Moss/Portman "debate" except to say that it's all about personal preferences (personally, I thought the sex scene blew goat).
You believe Reloaded was just a crappy action flick with ten minutes of fake pseudo-philosophical banter thrown in. I don't understand why. As an action flick, it takes the prize for taking what should have been entirely implausible sequences, and setting them in a world where they were entirely believable. The action scenes themselves were pretty good (except for the Neo/Seraph fight, which struck me as gratuitous).
The "random banter" about the nature of free will is simply a continuation of the themes in the original. "The Matrix" was set as a series of choices Neo makes: Cooperate with Smith or protect Morpheus? Stay in the car-full-o-freaks or go home? Red pill, blue pill? Stay on the ship or go back into the Matrix for Morpheus? Run from Smith or stand and fight?
Each choice was critical to Neo becoming "The One," and at the end of Matrix, it seemed like his journey was complete. He had chosen freedom, and was now sovereign over the system.
Then comes Reloaded, which goes deeper into the nature of free will, and reveals some serious limitations to the portrayal of free will in the first film. Yes, Neo was making all these choices, but why? There are serious limitations upon our free will, even if we refuse to recognize them. The machines of Zion aren't sentient, but the brute fact of their existence constrains the free will of the inhabitants. They have no choice but to keep them running. The characters continue to obey the Oracle, even though Neo knows that she is using them for her own ends, which may or may not agree with theirs. In the Architect scene, Neo discovers that he comes from a long line of (programs?) which were created to serve a purpose, just as the agents and the Keymaker were. He is given an ultimatum: Serve, or choose the destruction of everything. He rejects the purpose which was chosen for him, setting the scene for Revolutions.
If you don't recognize that the entire movie was simply putting the discussions into practice, then I can see how the discussions might have a "shoehorned in" feel. But I was thoroughly impressed with how well it was mixed in. I've only touched on a few of the dominant themes. I desperately want to see how Morpheus handles his role as fallen prophet/disappointed idealist, as well as Smith's continued transition from servant of the system to corruptor of the system.
I think the message of the first film is that we crave freedom, and that our choices can make us free. Reloaded lays out the opposing argument. Revolutions, I believe, will come to some sort of compromise between the two positions.
I would also remind you, Reloaded/Revolutions has been described as a four hour movie with a six month intermission. I think we need to see how it ends before we can fully judge what was done with the first half.
I was about to go all psycho-ninja on you for claiming that Rob Bishop was from Utah. But it turns out he is. Now I'm just scratching my head and thinking, "When the hell did we elect this guy?"
I could understand someone in a state like California not knowing all of their representatives, but Utah only has three. So I blame the Diebold machines.
I'm confused. If you only call people who have asked you to call them, then how does the Do Not Call list even apply to you?
The canvassing law can't be compared to the DNC list. In fact, that law would be more comparable to passing a law making all telemarketing calls illegal. If you think of signing up for the DNC list as being equivalent to putting up a "No Solicitors" sign, then it should be perfectly legal, just as it is legal for a city to require door-to-door salespeople to respect the sign.
I take a different view. For every person who is just sick and tired of the calls, there is probably another person who signed up because he was a sucker for every sales pitch that came down the line, and probably another elderly parent signed up by her kids.
Considering the sheer volume of phone numbers, if I were a telemarketer I would at least do some test runs of a few thousand numbers, and see what the results were like.
Generally, people fail to vote because they don't think that their vote really means anything. Knowing that these voting systems are built tamper-enabled doesn't do anything to assuage that feeling.
So that's what OpenOffice has been missing all this time. I knew there was something a bit off about it, but I could never put my finger on it.
The answer, my friends, is an integrated E-mail/Calendar suite. Integrated right into OpenOffice. This is what will finally drive a stake through Microsoft's undead heart.
Integrated E-mail. Integrated Calendaring. Right in the office suite. All integrated and everything. You all know you want it. Now go, my toiling minions! Build! Build, I say!
I thought the first article was pretty balanced, but the second one (from worldtechtribune.com) was the quality of "reporting" that The Register would refuse to publish.
The writer (Scott McCollum) basically takes for granted that everyone who criticizes the policies of broadband providers are 1) ignorant of basic economics, 2) whiny geeks who don't know how good they have it, and 3) shroud the ineffectiveness of their arguments with tech-speak (which they simply make up on the spot).
His superiority complex would be more palatable if he at least gave the impression that he actually understood the economics of broadband better than the average geek. But then he tries to compare the price of broadband to the price of dialup, and says that broadbanders must be getting one hell of a deal. In fact, they're totally different situations.
First, comparing bandwidth-for-bandwidth, a $20/month dialup account is quite pricy. Why is it that, even though the price of bandwidth has dropped enormously over the last five years, the cost of the average dialup account has held constant?
One reason is that there's no reason to drop prices when $20 is what everyone is used to paying. But more important, I doubt bandwidth is the major cost for any dialup service. I'm guessing the cost of the T1 line going out is dwarfed by the cost of the 100+ phone lines going in. The dialup service I had before switching over was about $8/month, and they're still in business (and probably doing even better now that I'm gone).
If you assume that a T1 line costs $1500/month, then the maximum monthly bandwidth provided is about 486 gigs. Let's assume that traffic patterns drive effective usage down to about 300 gigs a month. If the provider caps a $40/month service at 5 gigs, then the line would be supporting a minimum of 60 customers and bringing in $2400 a month. More likely, there are at least two regular users for every power user, so they should be able to support a good amount of traffic from power users without raising prices. But it's cheaper to kick off their biggest users than to actually build more infrastructure to provide the amount of service demanded.
Basically, the whole story came across as whining about other peoples' whining, and was insulting to the geeks who are most likely to be reading it.
Oh, and worldtechtribune's decision to redirect the story back to their hideous front page after about five minutes isn't making me any happier.
We protest what affects us. We protest what we care about. If I lived in Australia and spent a signifcant part of my life playing Second Life, you'd better believe that I would be far more interested in changes in Second Life than in America's laws.
Sadly, I think you can pretty well do away with the "if I lived in Australia" caveat. A glut of entertainment is leaving most of us Americans very complacent and distrustful of anyone who is too politically involved.
Wow, and I thought I was being borderline trollish. I can't believe I'm going to bother responding to someone who doesn't even bother to capitalize his sentences. Obviously my priorities are a bit out of whack.
now we know that you wouldnt work if you had that kind of money, but its obvious that others do.
The fact is, I never said that I would stop working if I had that much money. Nor did I say that Bill Gates should retire to the Camaroons and spend the rest of his days sipping overpriced martinis. What I did say is that he has enough money to cover not just all his needs for the rest of his life, but all his desires, and a great many very expensive whims.
Bill Gates could triple his fortune today, and that wouldn't fundamentally change. All that would change is that one individual's ability to distort the economic landscape would be tripled.
Not everyone works merely for finacial gain.
Funny you should say this, since the next thing you're going to do is argue that not allowing individuals to amass multi-billion dollar fortunes destroys all incentive to innovate and create jobs.
Do you really think the public would have donated the billions to charity that Bill has donated simply because every few years they had a little extra money in their pocket?
Yes. As someone pointed out, Bill's donation was equivalent to a person making $50,000 donating $170 to charity. Wake me when he makes a donation large enough to actually impact his lifestyle.
'allowing' others to amass fortunes? wow you have no clue. if you didnt allow people to get rich from their work, if you limit the possibilities, there would be no incentive to invest money and take risks and create jobs. Welcome to the former USSR comrade.
As you said earlier, there are other reasons for working than financial ones. Anyways, I'm not proposing communism. What I am proposing is akin to a tax rate that asymptotically approaches 100% of income. Depending on the precise details, relatively large fortunes could still be made. But if somebody refuses to work because society refuses to give them more than $20M a year for their efforts, I wouldn't shed a tear for them.
If making the MS bosses rich has been solely through them overcharging us, then many many millions of people have had money to burn, otherwise they would learned to work with other systems
In other words, there is no such thing as monopoly power, and any price a monopolist sets is inherently fair because people are still paying it.
... lindows is cheap isnt it? it has some of that linux crap in it that makes it all holy above all doesnt it? why aren't you using that?
So, who says I'm not? Actually, I'm a RedHat guy, but you couldn't have known that.
... thats what i thought. No one has forced you to put money in Bill's pocket, if you run windows it was your choice and yours alone. (at least that must be the case since we all know Linux is the best thing to walk the Earth since the year 0)
See, that's a good working definition of "monopoly": When even somebody who hates the idea of giving Microsoft a single penny is forced to use their products, then they have a monopoly. And I am. My current CS classes demand that all assignments be turned in as Microsoft Visual Studios.NET solutions, and I have to choose between having a Microsoft OS and IDE at home, or commuting forty miles to college even on my off days. My brother demands the latest games, so I have to keep a Windows partition around. There are lots of businesses that would love to get off the upgrade treadmill, but can't because they've grown dependent on some platform-dependent
Couldn't agree more. As far as I'm concerned, if you have $187 million to drop just to make yourself feel better about having billions while so many get by on less than a dollar a day, then yes, you are no good to us.
Last I checked, Microsoft still had a virtual monopoly on desktop operating systems. So all those millions that Bill Gates is able to funnel into his pet causes came from overcharging the public. Also, while it's easy to count the number of people employed by Microsoft, what we don't know is how many jobs would have been created had they not used their monopoly position to lay utter waste to any potential competition.
Personally, I don't see how allowing single individuals to amass multi-billion dollar fortunes provides any incentive for them to create jobs. Quite the contrary, at this point people like Gates and Ellison have no financial incentive to work at all. Perhaps by the time you reach that level, it becomes a game where money and market share are used to keep score. But as games go, it's an expensive and a stupid one. I say take away their toys.
Microsoft is giving us the opportunity to activate the much-anticipated Windows RM technology on our computers--absolutely free--enabling "certain features of the software," and they've given us their word that they won't collect any personally identifiable information. Isn't that enough for you people?
Man, if Microsoft started handing out bags of money on the street while nursing sick puppies back to health, you guys still wouldn't trust them.
Me, I'm going to install it right now. I can't wait to see what sort of new and exciting functionality is added to my com--[PLEASE ENTER A VALID CREDIT CARD NUMBER TO COMPLETE THIS POST]
Even if the complaint was reasonable, the damages being sought are beyond absurd. Triple the profits the hotel has made since it opened? First, I can't imagine how the OCLC was damaged beyond the loss of revenue they would have gotten from a license. Second, I can't imagine that every cent of profit the hotel made over the last three years was a direct result of their use of the Dewey Decimal system. Perhaps some of it came from, I dunno, being conveniently placed in the middle of New York?
It would only make sense that they should have to prove that every customer who stayed there wouldn't have were it not for their use of the Dewey Decimal system.
It sounds like this non-profit actually serves a useful purpose, but I really hope that if this goes to court, their damages get capped at around $4500 (triple the money the hotel saved by not buying a license).
The way I understand it, AMD's x86-64 architecture extends the original x86 architecture, so no recompilation is necessary. So even with no recompile, you still get a bit of a performance boost just from the fact that the Opeteron has more registers to play with.
Of course, I learned it from Slashdot. So take it with a grain of salt.
"What really made our day, and blew away all our expectations, occurred when we mentioned the word "Linux" to Sturdy's assistant; "ah, happy Penguins!" she said, and our faces lit up."
I tell you what, Tux has always been the secret weapon of Linux. One of my old co-workers, an adorably technophobic lady who couldn't quite grasp the concept of the "operating system", calls him "The Penguin Buddha". He does give off an aura of serene cuteness that makes the Windows logo appear bland and forgettable by comparison.
It's simple marketing: See the penguin. He is happy. Use Linux, and you will be happy.
Slashdot Mirror
North Korea is a communist nation.
North Korea has a chronic famine problem.
The United States is a capitalist nation.
The United States doesn't have a famine problem.
Conclusion: Communism causes famine.
Sorry, but thanks for playing. There are plenty of heavily socialized countries that don't have any problems feeding themselves. Democratic institutions and a free press appear to be more important.
Personally, I don't care if someone is only out to serve their own best interests. Doing so can often serve others every bit as well as selfless sacrifice. The limit comes when people become willing to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
Yeah, like this guy is really Bill Gates.
Don't you think Bill Gates has better things to do than post to Slashdot? Like training his army of genetically enhanced monkey ninjas? Obviously he does, and obviously you do not.
I repeat, *THIS GUY IS NOT BILL GATES*!!! I'll bet he doesn't even own *one* monkey ninja!
Thank you.
I've never MUD'ed, and I've never seen any documentation of the fact. But somehow, I just have this suspicion that Emacs has some killer MUDing features.
:)
[consults The Oracle]
Yep, there's a mud.el file available (or, rather, several different ones). If you're not one of those evil Vi heretics, it might be worth playing with.
Ford is an anomaly because--unlike 95% of the startups that had their eyes on world domination a few years back--he really did have a novel idea.
Even so, did Ford use NDAs to protect his revolutionary idea of "mass production?" Did he even tell his employees to keep the process a secret until his cars were actually on the market? I don't know, but somehow I suspect not.
I also suspect that you didn't read the article, as your original comments are point for point the ideas the article was trying to knock down. You don't even provide any evidence as to why he's wrong.
Here's what it actually said: Being first to market isn't critical (he cites several examples of successful dot coms that waltzed right past the sandblasted corpses of the companies who hit the market first). Secrecy is not essential.
Chances are, whatever idea it is that you're playing so close to the vest really isn't that good an idea. Certainly, if you're working in a fairly glutted field, the advantages of secrecy are outweighed by the loss of input from people who know about the industry. Execution is usually far more important than uniqueness, and that's something nobody can sneak out of HQ in a looseleaf binder.
I was going to respond with a fairly long treatise about the limits and pitfalls of free-market capitalism. Then I saw your user number. Holy crap!
The Greeks had the right idea: Don't mess with the minor deities, or they'll mess you up in a bad way.
Could you please enlighten the curious: Given that you already own copies of all seven seasons, what possible add-ons could they stuff in this cube that would make it worth $500-$1000 to you? How many hours of "never-before-heard commentaries"--that you'll never listen to--add up to $1000 in value? How many hours of "never-before-seen-deleted-scenes"--which were too crappy to make the first batch of "never-before-seen-deleted-scenes"--will satisfy your lust for Trek arcana? How many hours of blooper footage--mostly consisting of "Dr. Crusher flubbing her lines and everyone laughing" and "Worf running into the door that should have opened"--can you have before another hour of same adds no value?
Unless you are really rich and plan on giving your old collection away as Christmas gifts, or are expecting that one of the "add-ons" is a coupon for sexual favors from the crew members of your choice, then I'm saddened that you would consider buying it under any circumstances.
I don't mean to be blasting you in particular. It's your money, not mine. It's just that I see this as the as-yet-most-absurd example of the already absurd "special edition DVD" craze. It reminds me of the re-release of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". At the beginning, the director stands up in front of an audience to explain how wonderful it is to have all these deleted scenes back in. One audience member shoots back, "If they were so wonderful, why did you delete them in the first place?"
My brother managed to snag "The Fellowship of the Ring" for $10 the first day the DVD was available. Nevertheless, when the "full six-DVD collection" came out, with its hours upon hours of deleted scenes and other goodies, he went out and bought it again. To this day, he's only watched about an hour's worth of all those "goodies," which makes for damned expensive entertainment.
It's all a ploy to get the maximum amount of money from fans with a minimum of actual effort. I'd bet good money that, when George Lucas finally allows Episodes 4-6 out on DVD, there will be a "Special Edition" release (they never start with just a "regular edition"), then a "Director's Cut" edition, then throw in a "Directors Cut Gold," and so on up to "Director's Cut Gold Alpha Turbo Xtreme Edition" ($109.95, and includes deleted extended sequences and cameos by Jar-Jar).
All these releases and re-releases don't add anything of value to the economy. It's all plastic and cardboard. At least with normal DVDs, you're paying for the content, but with re-releases, they've found a way to turn worthless behind-the-scenes footage into gold by using it as an excuse to sell us the same thing over again.
In the end, it's up to the individual to decide whether or not the re-release adds enough value to warrant a separate purchase. But please think about the game they're asking you to play before you get roped into playing it.
Note: The dude who was talking about putting seven seasons on four discs probably meant using some sort of DivX encoding.
I'm not even going to touch the Moss/Portman "debate" except to say that it's all about personal preferences (personally, I thought the sex scene blew goat).
You believe Reloaded was just a crappy action flick with ten minutes of fake pseudo-philosophical banter thrown in. I don't understand why. As an action flick, it takes the prize for taking what should have been entirely implausible sequences, and setting them in a world where they were entirely believable. The action scenes themselves were pretty good (except for the Neo/Seraph fight, which struck me as gratuitous).
The "random banter" about the nature of free will is simply a continuation of the themes in the original. "The Matrix" was set as a series of choices Neo makes: Cooperate with Smith or protect Morpheus? Stay in the car-full-o-freaks or go home? Red pill, blue pill? Stay on the ship or go back into the Matrix for Morpheus? Run from Smith or stand and fight?
Each choice was critical to Neo becoming "The One," and at the end of Matrix, it seemed like his journey was complete. He had chosen freedom, and was now sovereign over the system.
Then comes Reloaded, which goes deeper into the nature of free will, and reveals some serious limitations to the portrayal of free will in the first film. Yes, Neo was making all these choices, but why? There are serious limitations upon our free will, even if we refuse to recognize them. The machines of Zion aren't sentient, but the brute fact of their existence constrains the free will of the inhabitants. They have no choice but to keep them running. The characters continue to obey the Oracle, even though Neo knows that she is using them for her own ends, which may or may not agree with theirs. In the Architect scene, Neo discovers that he comes from a long line of (programs?) which were created to serve a purpose, just as the agents and the Keymaker were. He is given an ultimatum: Serve, or choose the destruction of everything. He rejects the purpose which was chosen for him, setting the scene for Revolutions.
If you don't recognize that the entire movie was simply putting the discussions into practice, then I can see how the discussions might have a "shoehorned in" feel. But I was thoroughly impressed with how well it was mixed in. I've only touched on a few of the dominant themes. I desperately want to see how Morpheus handles his role as fallen prophet/disappointed idealist, as well as Smith's continued transition from servant of the system to corruptor of the system.
I think the message of the first film is that we crave freedom, and that our choices can make us free. Reloaded lays out the opposing argument. Revolutions, I believe, will come to some sort of compromise between the two positions.
I would also remind you, Reloaded/Revolutions has been described as a four hour movie with a six month intermission. I think we need to see how it ends before we can fully judge what was done with the first half.
I was about to go all psycho-ninja on you for claiming that Rob Bishop was from Utah. But it turns out he is. Now I'm just scratching my head and thinking, "When the hell did we elect this guy?"
I could understand someone in a state like California not knowing all of their representatives, but Utah only has three. So I blame the Diebold machines.
I want July 4, 2004. I think they can stretch it out at least that long, and it would be quite appropriate.
For bonus points, predict SCO's stock price on the day you've chosen. I'm going with $0.06/share.
I'm confused. If you only call people who have asked you to call them, then how does the Do Not Call list even apply to you?
The canvassing law can't be compared to the DNC list. In fact, that law would be more comparable to passing a law making all telemarketing calls illegal. If you think of signing up for the DNC list as being equivalent to putting up a "No Solicitors" sign, then it should be perfectly legal, just as it is legal for a city to require door-to-door salespeople to respect the sign.
I take a different view. For every person who is just sick and tired of the calls, there is probably another person who signed up because he was a sucker for every sales pitch that came down the line, and probably another elderly parent signed up by her kids.
Considering the sheer volume of phone numbers, if I were a telemarketer I would at least do some test runs of a few thousand numbers, and see what the results were like.
You know, that sounds like a really good idea. Does anyone know how I would disable the backspace key in Emacs?
Generally, people fail to vote because they don't think that their vote really means anything. Knowing that these voting systems are built tamper-enabled doesn't do anything to assuage that feeling.
So that's what OpenOffice has been missing all this time. I knew there was something a bit off about it, but I could never put my finger on it.
The answer, my friends, is an integrated E-mail/Calendar suite. Integrated right into OpenOffice. This is what will finally drive a stake through Microsoft's undead heart.
Integrated E-mail. Integrated Calendaring. Right in the office suite. All integrated and everything. You all know you want it. Now go, my toiling minions! Build! Build, I say!
I thought the first article was pretty balanced, but the second one (from worldtechtribune.com) was the quality of "reporting" that The Register would refuse to publish.
The writer (Scott McCollum) basically takes for granted that everyone who criticizes the policies of broadband providers are 1) ignorant of basic economics, 2) whiny geeks who don't know how good they have it, and 3) shroud the ineffectiveness of their arguments with tech-speak (which they simply make up on the spot).
His superiority complex would be more palatable if he at least gave the impression that he actually understood the economics of broadband better than the average geek. But then he tries to compare the price of broadband to the price of dialup, and says that broadbanders must be getting one hell of a deal. In fact, they're totally different situations.
First, comparing bandwidth-for-bandwidth, a $20/month dialup account is quite pricy. Why is it that, even though the price of bandwidth has dropped enormously over the last five years, the cost of the average dialup account has held constant?
One reason is that there's no reason to drop prices when $20 is what everyone is used to paying. But more important, I doubt bandwidth is the major cost for any dialup service. I'm guessing the cost of the T1 line going out is dwarfed by the cost of the 100+ phone lines going in. The dialup service I had before switching over was about $8/month, and they're still in business (and probably doing even better now that I'm gone).
If you assume that a T1 line costs $1500/month, then the maximum monthly bandwidth provided is about 486 gigs. Let's assume that traffic patterns drive effective usage down to about 300 gigs a month. If the provider caps a $40/month service at 5 gigs, then the line would be supporting a minimum of 60 customers and bringing in $2400 a month. More likely, there are at least two regular users for every power user, so they should be able to support a good amount of traffic from power users without raising prices. But it's cheaper to kick off their biggest users than to actually build more infrastructure to provide the amount of service demanded.
Basically, the whole story came across as whining about other peoples' whining, and was insulting to the geeks who are most likely to be reading it.
Oh, and worldtechtribune's decision to redirect the story back to their hideous front page after about five minutes isn't making me any happier.
The fact is, I never said that I would stop working if I had that much money. Nor did I say that Bill Gates should retire to the Camaroons and spend the rest of his days sipping overpriced martinis. What I did say is that he has enough money to cover not just all his needs for the rest of his life, but all his desires, and a great many very expensive whims.
Bill Gates could triple his fortune today, and that wouldn't fundamentally change. All that would change is that one individual's ability to distort the economic landscape would be tripled.
Funny you should say this, since the next thing you're going to do is argue that not allowing individuals to amass multi-billion dollar fortunes destroys all incentive to innovate and create jobs.
Yes. As someone pointed out, Bill's donation was equivalent to a person making $50,000 donating $170 to charity. Wake me when he makes a donation large enough to actually impact his lifestyle.
As you said earlier, there are other reasons for working than financial ones. Anyways, I'm not proposing communism. What I am proposing is akin to a tax rate that asymptotically approaches 100% of income. Depending on the precise details, relatively large fortunes could still be made. But if somebody refuses to work because society refuses to give them more than $20M a year for their efforts, I wouldn't shed a tear for them.
In other words, there is no such thing as monopoly power, and any price a monopolist sets is inherently fair because people are still paying it.
So, who says I'm not? Actually, I'm a RedHat guy, but you couldn't have known that.
See, that's a good working definition of "monopoly": When even somebody who hates the idea of giving Microsoft a single penny is forced to use their products, then they have a monopoly. And I am. My current CS classes demand that all assignments be turned in as Microsoft Visual Studios.NET solutions, and I have to choose between having a Microsoft OS and IDE at home, or commuting forty miles to college even on my off days. My brother demands the latest games, so I have to keep a Windows partition around. There are lots of businesses that would love to get off the upgrade treadmill, but can't because they've grown dependent on some platform-dependent
Couldn't agree more. As far as I'm concerned, if you have $187 million to drop just to make yourself feel better about having billions while so many get by on less than a dollar a day, then yes, you are no good to us.
Last I checked, Microsoft still had a virtual monopoly on desktop operating systems. So all those millions that Bill Gates is able to funnel into his pet causes came from overcharging the public. Also, while it's easy to count the number of people employed by Microsoft, what we don't know is how many jobs would have been created had they not used their monopoly position to lay utter waste to any potential competition.
Personally, I don't see how allowing single individuals to amass multi-billion dollar fortunes provides any incentive for them to create jobs. Quite the contrary, at this point people like Gates and Ellison have no financial incentive to work at all. Perhaps by the time you reach that level, it becomes a game where money and market share are used to keep score. But as games go, it's an expensive and a stupid one. I say take away their toys.
The Right to Read. Double-plus ironic.
Microsoft is giving us the opportunity to activate the much-anticipated Windows RM technology on our computers--absolutely free--enabling "certain features of the software," and they've given us their word that they won't collect any personally identifiable information. Isn't that enough for you people?
Man, if Microsoft started handing out bags of money on the street while nursing sick puppies back to health, you guys still wouldn't trust them.
Me, I'm going to install it right now. I can't wait to see what sort of new and exciting functionality is added to my com--[PLEASE ENTER A VALID CREDIT CARD NUMBER TO COMPLETE THIS POST]
I heard somewhere that there is a way to do this with Emacs. I wish I could remember how it was supposed to work.
Even if the complaint was reasonable, the damages being sought are beyond absurd. Triple the profits the hotel has made since it opened? First, I can't imagine how the OCLC was damaged beyond the loss of revenue they would have gotten from a license. Second, I can't imagine that every cent of profit the hotel made over the last three years was a direct result of their use of the Dewey Decimal system. Perhaps some of it came from, I dunno, being conveniently placed in the middle of New York?
It would only make sense that they should have to prove that every customer who stayed there wouldn't have were it not for their use of the Dewey Decimal system.
It sounds like this non-profit actually serves a useful purpose, but I really hope that if this goes to court, their damages get capped at around $4500 (triple the money the hotel saved by not buying a license).
The way I understand it, AMD's x86-64 architecture extends the original x86 architecture, so no recompilation is necessary. So even with no recompile, you still get a bit of a performance boost just from the fact that the Opeteron has more registers to play with.
Of course, I learned it from Slashdot. So take it with a grain of salt.
It's simple marketing: See the penguin. He is happy. Use Linux, and you will be happy.
Happy penguins to all, and to all a good night.