Seriously folks, this is a slashdot tradition here! It may not be a good tradition, but many traditions aren't. The admins here have been doing this for over ten years, if the whining didn't work in the 90's, it sure as hell ain't gonna get you anywhere now, so STFU and come back tomorrow!
Isn't this kind of pointless? I mean, the guy is dead for fuck's sake. The only ones potentially hurt by selling this guy's ashes is his newer family. As for the deceased, it won't hurt him at all, it's like burning someone's trash and saying, "Take that, I burned something for wich you have no use, that'll show you!"
Ah well, I still can't decide wether it's pettiness, or mere stupidity that is more prevalent in the general poulation.
No, it really isn't, not in the short term at least. Making your customers wait longer when there are four or five other resteraunts within a few blocks is not a viable option. As for automation, I grant you that in several years, after massive amounts of time, money, research and testing, it could have a negative effect. OTOH, talking to employees at fast food joints today, I've noticed that the level of automation hasn't really changed much in the fifteen years since I, at sixteen, got my first fast food job.
How is it helpful that the minimum wage encourages (and result in) McDonald's cutting back on employees?
Because that fact doesn't affect the workers making the minimum wage. It takes a certain number of employees to run a McD's, wether they are beig paid $2 or $6. If they cut too many of their minimum wage staff, then they will be paying the rest more in overtime.
They are not citizens and as such are not afforded the right of citizens.
They are, however, human beings, and should be afforded the rights of human beings.
Do you realize how it totally discounts anything you say when you go off the deap end and say that they are being treated worse then the viet cong treated our soldiers.
I'll conceed that I may have exagerrated there, as there really is no way of knowing exactly how they ARE being treated.
From what I've seen it isn't a vaction getaway but it isn't hell either.
But you really haven't seen all that much, have you?
And your yet another in a string of lifeless retards who always think the government is in the wrong...
Oh, so now I'm a 'lifeless retard' simply because I honestly don't trust my government? So tell me, would I be less retarded if I were to ignore the last thirty years or so of US history?
So tell us are you arab or a part of the islamic fundamentalists?
Interesting choice of words. If you had only asked, "are you part of the islamic fundamenalists?" , you wouldn't have shown your're racism so clearly. I am neither arab nor islamic, in fact, and if it matters so much to you, I'm probably whiter than you.
Its a prison camp full of people who were trying to massacre Americans.
No, actually it is not. It's predominately full of Taliban soldiers who were defending their country from an US invasion. In other words, POW's.
Some of the rest are indeed, "card carrying" members of Al Qaeda, and some are merely suspected of being terrorists.
Did you somehow miss this or feel like it was an unimportant tid bit?
We're treating POW's every bit as badly as the Viet Cong did. But that's OK, because their really "terrorists".
We're holding criminal suspects without so much as giving them access to council. But that's OK, because we already know there guilty, after all the government told us they are, and their never wrong.
Yes, it certainly would be a good sign... if Adobe's own vector animation authoring tool would actually support SVG. And helpful too, since there doesn't seem to be any major SVG authoring tool around (one that graphically oriented web designers might consider using.)
So web designers wouldn't use Illustrator?
Why not? Adobe markets it as "The industry-standard vector graphics software".
Are you kidding?
Read the book of Job, Satan is God's lawyer, and Hell is God's legal department (why do you think people get sent there for punishment?)
Mandrake puts out a beta, and it gets front-page coverage, but Debian Woody finally goes gold, and Rob isn't all over it? I know there was a Debian article last week and all, but I'd think that after almost 2 years this would be a significant cause for cheerleading and celebration!
Well, if you had searched before asking that question, you would have found this at the top of the results, and it was on the front page.
They put out the press release for plausible deniability, all the while encouraging it, unofficially, of course.
Unoffficially my ass, my parents(their picture belongs beside the definition of sucker, btw) are just getting started in thier 'business'. I've flipped through some of the (Herb-a-Life)training manuals, and they specifically describe how to make the signs. Also, they even mention that they should be handwritten, not printed, to ensure a better response.
NO, the US is attacking them. Someone committed a crime, not and act of war, and the US is responding by making war.
You're only partially correct, it's true the WTC bombings were, in fact, a crime, not an act of war. However, the main suspect for the planning and execution of this crime( the most heinous crime ever committed on US soil, I might add) is being harbored by the Afghan government, and that could easily be construed as an act of war.
If, say, a militant group from Mexico had been found to be responsible for the WTC attacks, would we be invading Mexico right now?
Well, if the Mexican government turned the members of that group over to the US, then the answer would be no. If, however, the Mexican government refused to cooperate with the US, and threatend war if the US took any measures to extract the member of this hypothetical militant group, you had better believe that we'd be at war with them.
Islam is a religion build on conquest and conversion at the point of the sword. You may hear otherwise from islam scholars and the media, but all you have to do is look at history.
Really? That's odd, I could, and often do, say the same thing about Christianity. Look, for instance, at how Charlamagne treated the Saxons- i.e. conversion by the sword. Or maybe you would like to look at the practices of Martin Luther- i.e. conversion by torture. Hell, the entire conversion of Europe was acomplished by conquest, slaughter, torture and oppression not to mention the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the witch hunts.
Does that mean all modern Christians are war-mongering, imperialistic monsters? Didn't think so. The history of all organized religions is stained with the blood of the innocent, it is not fair make broad assumptions about any relgion based on the atrocities that have been commited in its name in the past, or the present for that matter.
You obviously don't have small children.
Actually, I do have a small child, and I would nomore allow her to watch 'Barney' than, say, the Playboy channel. Why? Because I don't allow my child to watch shows that encourage stupidity(btw- 'Blues Clues' is out for the same reason, as is almost everything made by Disney since circa 1993). An alternative to TV in general is to actually talk and play with one's children.
You really have no clue, do you. Getting caught for possesion of marijuana will, on one's first offense, lead to probation, for most of the "hard" drugs, first offens possesion only lead to an extended term of probation, and drug counseling w/ a liberal dose of community service thrown in for good measure. Even on subsequent arrests, unless one is carrying a large quantity, one is generally sent to jail, not prison. There is a world of difference between jail and prison.
Manufacturing is the bootstrap by which the third world pulls itself to prosperity. Those manufacturing jobs Nike provides... Ever wonder why they can still keep people employed? Do you know what the alternative to working in the "sweat-shop" is? It's backbreaking agricultural work in the fields as a means of producing enough food to sustain a family, much less having a surplus to sell at the marketplace. It's starvation. It's utter squalor. In short, it's all of the things those people had to put up with prior to Nike creating those new jobs, new jobs that you would never undertake yourself, but jobs that represent progress in that part of the world. If you think working at the Nike plant is bad, try driving a Yakk around a soggy rice paddy with a plow tied behind it. I've never done it myself, but it sure doesn't look like alot of fun.
What a load of apologist tripe! Nike is taking those poor Maylasians out of a fire and placing them in a frying pan. How noble!! How humanitarian!!
As for More Expensive = Honorable, that's simply ridiculous.
I never said that, I said that a more honorable alternitive, like at least providing air-conitioning in their factories, would be more expensive. I did not say that spending more money is automatically more honorable.The converse of a true statement isn't necessarily true.
"What world do you live in? People are motivated by irrational paranoia.
"How is the boss/wife/husband/friend/social group/government going to react if I
do this? Can I get away with it?""
Well, that's an interesting outlook. I probably wouldn't answer the question
that way If I were at a job interview. It may be a little too revealing a look
at your character.
Typical, canned/. response. "If you observe something negative about others that I don't agree with, it must be that you exhibit that negative quality yourself and only project your view onto others." It's a copout at best. However, in this case, you are absolutely correct, there is a motivation within my character based on irrational paranoia, as there is within the characters of most of the people I have observed in my life, but I, for one, am not a slave to that, or any other, part of my character.
The basic fact that you are missing is that human beings are driven by the same fundemental instincts that drive animals, namely survival of the organism and survival of the species. To presume otherwise is naive at best. The only thing that makes us different is the ability to question and the ability to choose, and the vast majority of people that I've encountered rarely, if ever, qeustion much of anything.
One last thought on the idea of rational behavior. Try this expierement; take any non-smoking person off the street, hypnotize them and tell them that every time they hear the word "bacon" that they will immediately feel an uncontrollable urge to smoke a cigarette. Next, tell them not to consciously remeber being hypnotized and wake them up. Now, drive them to a 7-11 and as soon as you get there, look at them and say,"bacon", after they run in and buy a pack of cigarettes and light up, ask them why they did it. You'll hear a quite an elaborate rationalization, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the real motivation for their action, i.e.- a subconscious, post-hypnotic suggestion.
Your premise seems to be that left to themselves, people will do the wrong thing, most of the time.
I don't believe that for a minute, and I certainly don't go about lying and cheating as a means of conducting my affairs. Further, I don't expect that most of the people I interact with in the course of everyday life are out to cheat me.
That belies your naivate. The simple truth of the matter is that most people "want" to do the right thing, and "try" to do the right thing, but in practice, utterly fail.Most people, left to themselves, do the wrong thing and rationalize it to themselves as the "right" thing, or at least as something they "had" to do.
As one example(I couls provide many), I worked for a man in North Carolina who considered himself a godly, caring individual, always willing to lend someone a hand. However, this man cheated his customers, employess, and subcontractors, as well he defamed his competitors. He caught me pointing out these salient flaws in his charachter to a fellow employee, at wich point he denied everything and said to the other employees, "Don't listen to him!! He's eeevvvilll!!!". Those were his exact words, he then fired me and tried to dick me out of my last paycheck.
You can argue that people like the one I descibed are the exception, not the rule, but you would be wrong. I admit it is an extreme example, but people do similar thing every day to a lesser extent.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Libertarian Party, but not because I have some naive belief in the "fundamental goodess of humanty". There is a fundemtal of humanty, there is also, however, a fundemtal base animal selfishness of humanity, and the majority of humans are far more controlled by the latter that the former.
You're ideas make good sense, in theory. Unfortunately, they have little basis in the real world.
The "powerful/rich" do not necessarily profit at the expense of the "weak/poor," dispite what John Keynes might have thought.
This line of thinking stems from the idea that economics is a zero-sum game, which any Econ 101 student can tell you is clearly false. There need be no loser for there to be a winner.
This is correct, the "powerful/rich" don't have to step on the backs of anyone to increase their wealth. However, it is much easier for them to do so. It is easier for Nike to expand their wealth if they run sweatshops in Third-World countries than to find an honorable(read: more expensive) alternative. It is easier to use marketing and FUD to cover up the bugs in one's OS than it is to debug hundreds of thousands of line of code. It is easier, in fact, to make money in any business if one simply leaves one's conscience at home. Until that simple fact changes, government intervetion is still a necessary evil.
People are motivated by a rational self-interest. "What is best for me, and for those I care about?"
What world do you live in?
People are motivated by irrational paranoia. "How is the boss/wife/husband/friend/social group/government going to react if I do this? Can I get away with it?"
The War on Poverty has been a dismal failure. With every dollar spent on social programs, why has the membership at or below "the poverty level" not diminished? Because every wealth redistribution plan concieved takes money out of the hands of they can and do make a beneficial contribution to society in the form of economic opportunity, and places it into the hands of those that can't.
WTF? Many of the most useless exscuses for human beings that I have ever met have been "poor little rich kids" who have never learned the value of anything, least of all basic human compassion.
I agree that the govrnment isn't, and shouldn't be, the cure-all that many seem to think it could be, however, oversimplifying the problems that we, as a society, face is not the answer either.
Xybernaut's wearables are designed to withstand a drop of 3ft. I can't find the damn URL that mentions that, but I know I've encounterd it several times in the past
IBM isn't selling a wearable at all. They are doing just what they agreed on, which is manufacturing the wearable for Xybernaut. As well IBM is helping Xybernaut market it's products to existing IBM customers
We do not harm children, we love children
Well asshole, my father "loved" me the way you "love" children, and it took me fifteen long years, 3 of them spent on the street, to overcome the guilt, pain, and feelings of worthlessness that my father's "love" brought me, so fuck you, and fuck all your kind, I have an 8 mo old daughter, and if anyone, ever tries to "love" her like you would, I'll slit 'em from scortum to sternum and leave they're carcass to rot on the street. Oh, btw, did I say FUCK you, I meant to say FUCK YOU!!!!
Re:Articles and errors
on
IT Olympics
·
· Score: 1
Every empire falls eventually. It doesn't matter if it is a military or financial empire, it will one day fall. No matter how 'great' M$ product may presently be, no matter if the OSS community dies tommorrow. Someday, someone will exploit a weakness in M$ and the empire will come down. I hate to rain on your 'fantasy happy land', but financial empires are not built on 'quality products', but on exposure and branding. Coke, Kellogs, Kraft, Calvin Klein, Intel, all have and/or have had competitor's with better or equal products that have failed b/c of the almighty advertising dollar. Maybe the OSS community isn't presently the one to do it and maybe they never will be. But if you think M$ will always be king, then you're just as short sighted as those who thought that their empire would last forever, and were wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously folks, this is a slashdot tradition here! It may not be a good tradition, but many traditions aren't. The admins here have been doing this for over ten years, if the whining didn't work in the 90's, it sure as hell ain't gonna get you anywhere now, so STFU and come back tomorrow!
Isn't this kind of pointless? I mean, the guy is dead for fuck's sake. The only ones potentially hurt by selling this guy's ashes is his newer family. As for the deceased, it won't hurt him at all, it's like burning someone's trash and saying, "Take that, I burned something for wich you have no use, that'll show you!"
Ah well, I still can't decide wether it's pettiness, or mere stupidity that is more prevalent in the general poulation.
The # of employees required is variable.
No, it really isn't, not in the short term at least. Making your customers wait longer when there are four or five other resteraunts within a few blocks is not a viable option. As for automation, I grant you that in several years, after massive amounts of time, money, research and testing, it could have a negative effect. OTOH, talking to employees at fast food joints today, I've noticed that the level of automation hasn't really changed much in the fifteen years since I, at sixteen, got my first fast food job.
How is it helpful that the minimum wage encourages (and result in) McDonald's cutting back on employees?
Because that fact doesn't affect the workers making the minimum wage. It takes a certain number of employees to run a McD's, wether they are beig paid $2 or $6. If they cut too many of their minimum wage staff, then they will be paying the rest more in overtime.
They are not citizens and as such are not afforded the right of citizens.
They are, however, human beings, and should be afforded the rights of human beings.
Do you realize how it totally discounts anything you say when you go off the deap end and say that they are being treated worse then the viet cong treated our soldiers.
I'll conceed that I may have exagerrated there, as there really is no way of knowing exactly how they ARE being treated.
From what I've seen it isn't a vaction getaway but it isn't hell either.
But you really haven't seen all that much, have you?
And your yet another in a string of lifeless retards who always think the government is in the wrong...
Oh, so now I'm a 'lifeless retard' simply because I honestly don't trust my government? So tell me, would I be less retarded if I were to ignore the last thirty years or so of US history?
So tell us are you arab or a part of the islamic fundamentalists?
Interesting choice of words. If you had only asked, "are you part of the islamic fundamenalists?" , you wouldn't have shown your're racism so clearly. I am neither arab nor islamic, in fact, and if it matters so much to you, I'm probably whiter than you.
Its a prison camp full of people who were trying to massacre Americans.
No, actually it is not. It's predominately full of Taliban soldiers who were defending their country from an US invasion. In other words, POW's.
Some of the rest are indeed, "card carrying" members of Al Qaeda, and some are merely suspected of being terrorists.
Did you somehow miss this or feel like it was an unimportant tid bit?
We're treating POW's every bit as badly as the Viet Cong did. But that's OK, because their really "terrorists".
We're holding criminal suspects without so much as giving them access to council. But that's OK, because we already know there guilty, after all the government told us they are, and their never wrong.
Yes, it certainly would be a good sign... if Adobe's own vector animation authoring tool would actually support SVG. And helpful too, since there doesn't seem to be any major SVG authoring tool around (one that graphically oriented web designers might consider using.)
So web designers wouldn't use Illustrator?
Why not? Adobe markets it as "The industry-standard vector graphics software".
Where's he going to get the lawyers?
Are you kidding?
Read the book of Job, Satan is God's lawyer, and Hell is God's legal department (why do you think people get sent there for punishment?)
Mandrake puts out a beta, and it gets front-page coverage, but Debian Woody finally goes gold, and Rob isn't all over it? I know there was a Debian article last week and all, but I'd think that after almost 2 years this would be a significant cause for cheerleading and celebration!
Well, if you had searched before asking that question, you would have found this at the top of the results, and it was on the front page.
Probably not until the transition to gcc-3.x is finished.
They put out the press release for plausible deniability, all the while encouraging it, unofficially, of course.
Unoffficially my ass, my parents(their picture belongs beside the definition of sucker, btw) are just getting started in thier 'business'. I've flipped through some of the (Herb-a-Life)training manuals, and they specifically describe how to make the signs. Also, they even mention that they should be handwritten, not printed, to ensure a better response.
goddamnit I didn't mean to mod this as off topic, now I hav to lose all the mods I've made on the whole goddamned topic!
NO, the US is attacking them. Someone committed a crime, not and act of war, and the US is responding by making war.
You're only partially correct, it's true the WTC bombings were, in fact, a crime, not an act of war. However, the main suspect for the planning and execution of this crime( the most heinous crime ever committed on US soil, I might add) is being harbored by the Afghan government, and that could easily be construed as an act of war.
If, say, a militant group from Mexico had been found to be responsible for the WTC attacks, would we be invading Mexico right now?
Well, if the Mexican government turned the members of that group over to the US, then the answer would be no.
If, however, the Mexican government refused to cooperate with the US, and threatend war if the US took any measures to extract the member of this hypothetical militant group, you had better believe that we'd be at war with them.
Really? That's odd, I could, and often do, say the same thing about Christianity. Look, for instance, at how Charlamagne treated the Saxons- i.e. conversion by the sword. Or maybe you would like to look at the practices of Martin Luther- i.e. conversion by torture. Hell, the entire conversion of Europe was acomplished by conquest, slaughter, torture and oppression not to mention the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the witch hunts.
Does that mean all modern Christians are war-mongering, imperialistic monsters? Didn't think so.
The history of all organized religions is stained with the blood of the innocent, it is not fair make broad assumptions about any relgion based on the atrocities that have been commited in its name in the past, or the present for that matter.
You obviously don't have small children.
Actually, I do have a small child, and I would nomore allow her to watch 'Barney' than, say, the Playboy channel. Why? Because I don't allow my child to watch shows that encourage stupidity(btw- 'Blues Clues' is out for the same reason, as is almost everything made by Disney since circa 1993). An alternative to TV in general is to actually talk and play with one's children.
You really have no clue, do you. Getting caught for possesion of marijuana will, on one's first offense, lead to probation, for most of the "hard" drugs, first offens possesion only lead to an extended term of probation, and drug counseling w/ a liberal dose of community service thrown in for good measure. Even on subsequent arrests, unless one is carrying a large quantity, one is generally sent to jail, not prison. There is a world of difference between jail and prison.
What a load of apologist tripe! Nike is taking those poor Maylasians out of a fire and placing them in a frying pan.
How noble!! How humanitarian!!
As for More Expensive = Honorable, that's simply ridiculous.
I never said that, I said that a more honorable alternitive, like at least providing air-conitioning in their factories, would be more expensive. I did not say that spending more money is automatically more honorable.The converse of a true statement isn't necessarily true.
"What world do you live in? People are motivated by irrational paranoia. "How is the boss/wife/husband/friend/social group/government going to react if I do this? Can I get away with it?""
Well, that's an interesting outlook. I probably wouldn't answer the question that way If I were at a job interview. It may be a little too revealing a look at your character.
Typical, canned /. response. "If you observe something negative about others that I don't agree with, it must be that you exhibit that negative quality yourself and only project your view onto others." It's a copout at best. However, in this case, you are absolutely correct, there is a motivation within my character based on irrational paranoia, as there is within the characters of most of the people I have observed in my life, but I, for one, am not a slave to that, or any other, part of my character.
The basic fact that you are missing is that human beings are driven by the same fundemental instincts that drive animals, namely survival of the organism and survival of the species. To presume otherwise is naive at best. The only thing that makes us different is the ability to question and the ability to choose, and the vast majority of people that I've encountered rarely, if ever, qeustion much of anything.
One last thought on the idea of rational behavior. Try this expierement; take any non-smoking person off the street, hypnotize them and tell them that every time they hear the word "bacon" that they will immediately feel an uncontrollable urge to smoke a cigarette. Next, tell them not to consciously remeber being hypnotized and wake them up. Now, drive them to a 7-11 and as soon as you get there, look at them and say,"bacon", after they run in and buy a pack of cigarettes and light up, ask them why they did it. You'll hear a quite an elaborate rationalization, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the real motivation for their action, i.e.- a subconscious, post-hypnotic suggestion.
That belies your naivate. The simple truth of the matter is that most people "want" to do the right thing, and "try" to do the right thing, but in practice, utterly fail.Most people, left to themselves, do the wrong thing and rationalize it to themselves as the "right" thing, or at least as something they "had" to do.
As one example(I couls provide many), I worked for a man in North Carolina who considered himself a godly, caring individual, always willing to lend someone a hand. However, this man cheated his customers, employess, and subcontractors, as well he defamed his competitors. He caught me pointing out these salient flaws in his charachter to a fellow employee, at wich point he denied everything and said to the other employees, "Don't listen to him!! He's eeevvvilll!!!". Those were his exact words, he then fired me and tried to dick me out of my last paycheck.
You can argue that people like the one I descibed are the exception, not the rule, but you would be wrong. I admit it is an extreme example, but people do similar thing every day to a lesser extent.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Libertarian Party, but not because I have some naive belief in the "fundamental goodess of humanty". There is a fundemtal of humanty, there is also, however, a fundemtal base animal selfishness of humanity, and the majority of humans are far more controlled by the latter that the former.
You're ideas make good sense, in theory. Unfortunately, they have little basis in the real world.
The "powerful/rich" do not necessarily profit at the expense of the "weak/poor," dispite what John Keynes might have thought. This line of thinking stems from the idea that economics is a zero-sum game, which any Econ 101 student can tell you is clearly false. There need be no loser for there to be a winner.
This is correct, the "powerful/rich" don't have to step on the backs of anyone to increase their wealth. However, it is much easier for them to do so. It is easier for Nike to expand their wealth if they run sweatshops in Third-World countries than to find an honorable(read: more expensive) alternative. It is easier to use marketing and FUD to cover up the bugs in one's OS than it is to debug hundreds of thousands of line of code. It is easier, in fact, to make money in any business if one simply leaves one's conscience at home. Until that simple fact changes, government intervetion is still a necessary evil.
People are motivated by a rational self-interest. "What is best for me, and for those I care about?"
What world do you live in?
People are motivated by irrational paranoia. "How is the boss/wife/husband/friend/social group/government going to react if I do this? Can I get away with it?"
The War on Poverty has been a dismal failure. With every dollar spent on social programs, why has the membership at or below "the poverty level" not diminished? Because every wealth redistribution plan concieved takes money out of the hands of they can and do make a beneficial contribution to society in the form of economic opportunity, and places it into the hands of those that can't.
WTF? Many of the most useless exscuses for human beings that I have ever met have been "poor little rich kids" who have never learned the value of anything, least of all basic human compassion.
I agree that the govrnment isn't, and shouldn't be, the cure-all that many seem to think it could be, however, oversimplifying the problems that we, as a society, face is not the answer either.
Xybernaut's wearables are designed to withstand a drop of 3ft. I can't find the damn URL that mentions that, but I know I've encounterd it several times in the past
IBM isn't selling a wearable at all. They are doing just what they agreed on, which is manufacturing the wearable for Xybernaut. As well IBM is helping Xybernaut market it's products to existing IBM customers
We do not harm children, we love children Well asshole, my father "loved" me the way you "love" children, and it took me fifteen long years, 3 of them spent on the street, to overcome the guilt, pain, and feelings of worthlessness that my father's "love" brought me, so fuck you, and fuck all your kind, I have an 8 mo old daughter, and if anyone, ever tries to "love" her like you would, I'll slit 'em from scortum to sternum and leave they're carcass to rot on the street. Oh, btw, did I say FUCK you, I meant to say FUCK YOU!!!!
see "The Principia Discordia or How I Found The Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her" by Malaclypse the Younger
Every empire falls eventually. It doesn't matter if it is a military or financial empire, it will one day fall. No matter how 'great' M$ product may presently be, no matter if the OSS community dies tommorrow. Someday, someone will exploit a weakness in M$ and the empire will come down. I hate to rain on your 'fantasy happy land', but financial empires are not built on 'quality products', but on exposure and branding. Coke, Kellogs, Kraft, Calvin Klein, Intel, all have and/or have had competitor's with better or equal products that have failed b/c of the almighty advertising dollar. Maybe the OSS community isn't presently the one to do it and maybe they never will be. But if you think M$ will always be king, then you're just as short sighted as those who thought that their empire would last forever, and were wrong.