I believe in Free Enterprise. Being able to offer any product you'd like for sale at any price you'd like. I contribute by buying software that I feel is a good value to me, and I don't buy software that's not a good value to me. So far this seems to have been working pretty well. Software today is a hell of a lot better than it was even a few years ago, and it's helping to drive what's left of the US economy. Is there a good reason to support the Anti-Free Enterprise Foundation?
PR department for MS? I've *never* seen a positive article here about anything MS. Even this one has a jab about OpenGL. PR department it ain't. On the other hand, every time there's a new Linux x.xxxx.xxx.xxx or Mozilla 0.xxxxx release, it's announced as the "MS killer". I don't know what you've been reading kiddo.
Besides, believe it or not, geeks actually use MS stuff all the time. And kid, let me suggest that if you're so utterly offended, that you just set your preferences to ignore all MS related articles. You'd think that suck a l33t Linux h4x0r such as yourself would have figured this out already.
I nominate the stampede of users rushing away from Windows to some flavor of Linux. Every other article here is something like, "Company x is installing Linux on xxx,xxx boxes!! Linux is winning! So, how much longer do you think Microsoft will be around?" Yet somehow, this hasn't even begun to happen.
You got *spanked* in this argument. Just stop posting. You've probably already set the records for # of non-modded posts against a series of 5's. You're wrong. Incredibly wrong. And obviously, lots and lots of people feel the same way.
What I'm trying to understand is why does everybody and their brother build a brand new P2P network (or try to)? What's the point? There's exactly $0 to be made off of it. More network just mean that each one is not as good, since files are spread out across multiple networks, not just one. Kazaalite works just fine. Why switch? This is another geek vs. businessman thing where a bunch of geeks are creating things for no apparent reason whatsoever other than the fact they may think it's "cool".
Jesus christ, if you think an education is so important, go get one. You obviously can't put two and two together and come up with a coherent thought. The dot-com bubble burst by people with poor coding skills? Jesus, kid, go to a decent university, and maybe, just maybe, you'll learn how to think.
What's with all of the funny posts tonight? Did a lot of people get their hands on some good weed or something? If so, why wasn't I invited?
FastTrack already has a mechanism in place for this. KazaaLite v 2+ has a "participation level" that's determined by number of files uploaded and quality. Supposedly those with higher participation levels will also be able to download faster and more files (people with high participation levels can download from other people with high participation levels). It doesn't seem to be working, though. I've got a very high participation level on one computer, and I still have people with zero participation downloading from me. Maybe it's not activated yet... I dunno... but it's definitely there. If it gets switched on, then all of those people who can't upload will be left swapping files with each other (ie: no files to swap).
Room for one provider? No market? Says who? If people want it, there's a market, period. What are these "slots"? You're not making sense. If even one person wants an ISP that allows servers, there's a market. Whether or not the market is viable for a business depends on the size and type of market (ie: how many people will be willing to pay $xx for y services?).
Luckily, leechers like yourself will start to have real trouble on the FastTrack (Kazaa) network. The latest incarnation rates users based on how much they upload. The more you upload, the faster/better your downloads. The less you upload, the slower/fewer downloads you get.
No, this has nothing to do with whose attorneys are better. It has to do with the fact that when you signed up for service, you signed a legally binding contract saying that you won't run a server. Even the best attorney in the world couldn't defend against this. You agreed to use their service under their conditions. You break the conditions. The contract is null and void. They don't have to provide you service. Don't like it? Find an ISP that allows server usage.
So then, a company making life-saving drugs shouldn't have any more say than a wacko who espouses "the laying on of hands" for healing? If that were the case, in parts of the US, we'd all be going to "preachers" for medicine, since I'm sure the majority of citizens in some areas would vote for religious shit over science. It happens all of the time.
No, companies are inherently more important than any one citizen. They generate products, large sums of money for the government, the owners, and employees. Companies keep modern society alive. Joe Blow dies, and life goes on normally for 99.9999999999999% of all people. GE up and dies, well there go hundreds of thousands of jobs, and several points of the GDP. Oh yeah, and no more CD's/DVD's (GE makes Lexan), no more jet engines (GE, too), etc. Companies *are* more important than individual citizens.
Agreed. They are also NOT entitled in a free market society to guaranteed profits. They are not gods, they are not our saviors, they are not offering a solution for world peace or feeding the hungry or curing disease, they are MERELY ENTERTAINERS and if we happen to like the performance, we might feel inclined to throw them a few coins for their troubles. They are definitely not entitled to cripple technological innovation in order to secure profits for themselves. If the creators of Britney-slut don't like that then they should find something else to do.
No, but they're guaranteed to be able to sell their product, not have it stolen from them. In no way should any kind of technological advance preclude private ownership. That's bullshit. Private ownership is why first world countries are first world countries. There is no technology that isn't crippled. Technology is not any kind societal goal. Private ownership is. Technology comes and goes. If you take away private ownership, you have anarchy.
It will never happen. Most people only *need* to work about 5 hours a week to live according to living standards, say, 100 years ago and still survive. But the thing is that people always *want* bigger and better. There's always going to be competition. There's always going to be scarcity of the newest gizmo, driving up the price, thus forcing people to work more, etc. etc. As far as scarcity goes, there's very little true scarcity in the US today. You can grow & buy what you need for food for next to nothing. That and a tent and you're alive. No scarcity. But that isn't realistic. It'll never happen. Sure, Linux isn't scare. If you *need* an OS, you can get Linux for free. You can download it for free. But the point is that people *want* better. People are willing to work to earn money to *buy* a usable OS.
As is, over time, through this economic model, standards of living have continued to increase. You can have instant entertainment of any kind at home for many years for the cost of a few hours or work (TV). You can speak to anyone on the planet at any time from anywhere for the cost of a few hours' work (cellphone).
Standards of living continue to increase. Anyone who says that scarcity doesn't work is a fool.
Because Wi-Fi will do to cell phones what cable/dsl did to land-line dial-up.
Which is what... let people get porn a bit faster? Let people shop faster? You were right the first time. Cell phones were a life-changing technology. Broadband everywhere is just a luxury.
That's only in a few places, like New York City, where the mayor decided that it was the city's job to change it's residents' daily habits. Down here in dixieland the good ones are at most $3/pack. You can get el-cheapo's for something like $1.25/pack.
Although the system isn't perfect yet, I know a place where you don't get *nearly* so many (if any at all), due to an advanced system for automatic filtering of such pages.
Survival of the fittest shows Microsoft being the fittest of all software developers. In the same time that MS went from MS-DOS to massive profitablity with Windows (and MS-DOS), only *one* purely OSS company is making any profit, and that's only a few hundred grand.
As far as I can tell to watch over and tap your phone or letter authroity need a special judge writing.
Although this isn't really an English sentence, I'll respond. You missed it. Several laws have been enacted in the past few months so that law enforcement people don't even need a warrant (aka: "special judge writing"). They can already listen to/watch anything we say/do without any kind of warrant or even reason. Orwell's 1984 arrived several months ago, they're just tidying up the details now.
...all they'll see is "hot transgender midget interracial teen hardcore asian bukkake!!" That's fine. Bush and Ashcroft are passing laws that are so ridiculous I can't really care any more. I only hope that there are some judges or politicians that have balls enough to take a stand on this. After all, that's what they're supposedly there for. Either I throw up my hands and laugh or I drive myself nuts watching these assholes.
All I've been reading about on Slashdot is that "the *only* reason that our company is still using Windows is because Office file formats are proprietary. We're tied to Office and Windows." Now, at least at this stage, this is the BEST possible fucking news, and everybody is still bitching. Nothing is more open than XML. That's all we know right now. Office data may be in completely open, standard XML. There's no telling what it'll look like, but there's no possible better news to hear than the Office formats may be wide open.
Yet, everybody's still bitching. I have a feeling that what it is is that all you l33t *nix gurus are finally gonna have to put your money where your big fucking mouths are when the format is open, and you're gonna have to actually move to OSS/StarOffice, etc., and you're still looking for reasons not to.
Why I won't buy a Mac. Ever.
on
Build Your Own Mac
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
When you buy a Mac, you have exactly one option: buy a full machine, hardware and software from Apple. At least with W2K I can put it on any Intel-based platform. Apple products are the most closed, inflexible PC's out there. There's no way I'd get a PC where virtually every part and every piece of software was tied to *one* company. MS's stuff is *VERY* open by comparison, and considering how well W2K works with countless hardware configurations, is pretty fucking impressive. Apple only guarantees that their software will work on the hardware that they make and sell. That's it. Talk about not having any choice!
In addition with using wi-fi, which the vast majority of average people still don't have on their PC's, this thing isn't practical. Most people have DVD's on... surprise DVD's! This means, you want to put in a movie? Go to the computer, boot it up, put the DVD in, and walk back to the living room. The only people who'd like this would be uber-geeks with money to blow on huge hard drives to store movies, broadband to download those movies (since most people don't rip DVD's onto hard drives, and the few who do are pretty stupid), and wi-fi in the computer. I predict this product will sell... to about 100 people. In fact, if it even actually hits the shelves, I nominate this product for The Biggest Flop of the Year.
Ah, you're new here. Here at Slashdot, every tiny thing is something to pontificate about, and every tiny problem is a major conspiracy/security hole in which The Man can exploit you/invade your privacy. "No big deal" isn't a very common phrase here.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe in Free Enterprise. Being able to offer any product you'd like for sale at any price you'd like. I contribute by buying software that I feel is a good value to me, and I don't buy software that's not a good value to me. So far this seems to have been working pretty well. Software today is a hell of a lot better than it was even a few years ago, and it's helping to drive what's left of the US economy. Is there a good reason to support the Anti-Free Enterprise Foundation?
PR department for MS? I've *never* seen a positive article here about anything MS. Even this one has a jab about OpenGL. PR department it ain't. On the other hand, every time there's a new Linux x.xxxx.xxx.xxx or Mozilla 0.xxxxx release, it's announced as the "MS killer". I don't know what you've been reading kiddo.
Besides, believe it or not, geeks actually use MS stuff all the time. And kid, let me suggest that if you're so utterly offended, that you just set your preferences to ignore all MS related articles. You'd think that suck a l33t Linux h4x0r such as yourself would have figured this out already.
I nominate the stampede of users rushing away from Windows to some flavor of Linux. Every other article here is something like, "Company x is installing Linux on xxx,xxx boxes!! Linux is winning! So, how much longer do you think Microsoft will be around?" Yet somehow, this hasn't even begun to happen.
You got *spanked* in this argument. Just stop posting. You've probably already set the records for # of non-modded posts against a series of 5's. You're wrong. Incredibly wrong. And obviously, lots and lots of people feel the same way.
What I'm trying to understand is why does everybody and their brother build a brand new P2P network (or try to)? What's the point? There's exactly $0 to be made off of it. More network just mean that each one is not as good, since files are spread out across multiple networks, not just one. Kazaalite works just fine. Why switch? This is another geek vs. businessman thing where a bunch of geeks are creating things for no apparent reason whatsoever other than the fact they may think it's "cool".
Jesus christ, if you think an education is so important, go get one. You obviously can't put two and two together and come up with a coherent thought. The dot-com bubble burst by people with poor coding skills? Jesus, kid, go to a decent university, and maybe, just maybe, you'll learn how to think.
What's with all of the funny posts tonight? Did a lot of people get their hands on some good weed or something? If so, why wasn't I invited?
Hahahaha... You dumb shit. Wow. I can't stop laughing. hahahahaha must hit submit... side hurting... hahahaha
FastTrack already has a mechanism in place for this. KazaaLite v 2+ has a "participation level" that's determined by number of files uploaded and quality. Supposedly those with higher participation levels will also be able to download faster and more files (people with high participation levels can download from other people with high participation levels). It doesn't seem to be working, though. I've got a very high participation level on one computer, and I still have people with zero participation downloading from me. Maybe it's not activated yet... I dunno... but it's definitely there. If it gets switched on, then all of those people who can't upload will be left swapping files with each other (ie: no files to swap).
Room for one provider? No market? Says who? If people want it, there's a market, period. What are these "slots"? You're not making sense. If even one person wants an ISP that allows servers, there's a market. Whether or not the market is viable for a business depends on the size and type of market (ie: how many people will be willing to pay $xx for y services?).
Luckily, leechers like yourself will start to have real trouble on the FastTrack (Kazaa) network. The latest incarnation rates users based on how much they upload. The more you upload, the faster/better your downloads. The less you upload, the slower/fewer downloads you get.
No, this has nothing to do with whose attorneys are better. It has to do with the fact that when you signed up for service, you signed a legally binding contract saying that you won't run a server. Even the best attorney in the world couldn't defend against this. You agreed to use their service under their conditions. You break the conditions. The contract is null and void. They don't have to provide you service. Don't like it? Find an ISP that allows server usage.
So then, a company making life-saving drugs shouldn't have any more say than a wacko who espouses "the laying on of hands" for healing? If that were the case, in parts of the US, we'd all be going to "preachers" for medicine, since I'm sure the majority of citizens in some areas would vote for religious shit over science. It happens all of the time.
No, companies are inherently more important than any one citizen. They generate products, large sums of money for the government, the owners, and employees. Companies keep modern society alive. Joe Blow dies, and life goes on normally for 99.9999999999999% of all people. GE up and dies, well there go hundreds of thousands of jobs, and several points of the GDP. Oh yeah, and no more CD's/DVD's (GE makes Lexan), no more jet engines (GE, too), etc. Companies *are* more important than individual citizens.
Agreed. They are also NOT entitled in a free market society to guaranteed profits. They are not gods, they are not our saviors, they are not offering a solution for world peace or feeding the hungry or curing disease, they are MERELY ENTERTAINERS and if we happen to like the performance, we might feel inclined to throw them a few coins for their troubles. They are definitely not entitled to cripple technological innovation in order to secure profits for themselves. If the creators of Britney-slut don't like that then they should find something else to do.
No, but they're guaranteed to be able to sell their product, not have it stolen from them. In no way should any kind of technological advance preclude private ownership. That's bullshit. Private ownership is why first world countries are first world countries. There is no technology that isn't crippled. Technology is not any kind societal goal. Private ownership is. Technology comes and goes. If you take away private ownership, you have anarchy.
It will never happen. Most people only *need* to work about 5 hours a week to live according to living standards, say, 100 years ago and still survive. But the thing is that people always *want* bigger and better. There's always going to be competition. There's always going to be scarcity of the newest gizmo, driving up the price, thus forcing people to work more, etc. etc. As far as scarcity goes, there's very little true scarcity in the US today. You can grow & buy what you need for food for next to nothing. That and a tent and you're alive. No scarcity. But that isn't realistic. It'll never happen. Sure, Linux isn't scare. If you *need* an OS, you can get Linux for free. You can download it for free. But the point is that people *want* better. People are willing to work to earn money to *buy* a usable OS.
As is, over time, through this economic model, standards of living have continued to increase. You can have instant entertainment of any kind at home for many years for the cost of a few hours or work (TV). You can speak to anyone on the planet at any time from anywhere for the cost of a few hours' work (cellphone).
Standards of living continue to increase. Anyone who says that scarcity doesn't work is a fool.
Because Wi-Fi will do to cell phones what cable/dsl did to land-line dial-up.
Which is what... let people get porn a bit faster? Let people shop faster? You were right the first time. Cell phones were a life-changing technology. Broadband everywhere is just a luxury.
That's only in a few places, like New York City, where the mayor decided that it was the city's job to change it's residents' daily habits. Down here in dixieland the good ones are at most $3/pack. You can get el-cheapo's for something like $1.25/pack.
Although the system isn't perfect yet, I know a place where you don't get *nearly* so many (if any at all), due to an advanced system for automatic filtering of such pages.
Survival of the fittest shows Microsoft being the fittest of all software developers. In the same time that MS went from MS-DOS to massive profitablity with Windows (and MS-DOS), only *one* purely OSS company is making any profit, and that's only a few hundred grand.
In remembrance of the programmer and the game, I'll smoke an extra pack of Camels today.
As far as I can tell to watch over and tap your phone or letter authroity need a special judge writing.
Although this isn't really an English sentence, I'll respond. You missed it. Several laws have been enacted in the past few months so that law enforcement people don't even need a warrant (aka: "special judge writing"). They can already listen to/watch anything we say/do without any kind of warrant or even reason. Orwell's 1984 arrived several months ago, they're just tidying up the details now.
Suck me off and swallow, Ashcroft.
...all they'll see is "hot transgender midget interracial teen hardcore asian bukkake!!" That's fine. Bush and Ashcroft are passing laws that are so ridiculous I can't really care any more. I only hope that there are some judges or politicians that have balls enough to take a stand on this. After all, that's what they're supposedly there for. Either I throw up my hands and laugh or I drive myself nuts watching these assholes.
Suck my cock, Bush.
All I've been reading about on Slashdot is that "the *only* reason that our company is still using Windows is because Office file formats are proprietary. We're tied to Office and Windows." Now, at least at this stage, this is the BEST possible fucking news, and everybody is still bitching. Nothing is more open than XML. That's all we know right now. Office data may be in completely open, standard XML. There's no telling what it'll look like, but there's no possible better news to hear than the Office formats may be wide open.
Yet, everybody's still bitching. I have a feeling that what it is is that all you l33t *nix gurus are finally gonna have to put your money where your big fucking mouths are when the format is open, and you're gonna have to actually move to OSS/StarOffice, etc., and you're still looking for reasons not to.
When you buy a Mac, you have exactly one option: buy a full machine, hardware and software from Apple. At least with W2K I can put it on any Intel-based platform. Apple products are the most closed, inflexible PC's out there. There's no way I'd get a PC where virtually every part and every piece of software was tied to *one* company. MS's stuff is *VERY* open by comparison, and considering how well W2K works with countless hardware configurations, is pretty fucking impressive. Apple only guarantees that their software will work on the hardware that they make and sell. That's it. Talk about not having any choice!
In addition with using wi-fi, which the vast majority of average people still don't have on their PC's, this thing isn't practical. Most people have DVD's on... surprise DVD's! This means, you want to put in a movie? Go to the computer, boot it up, put the DVD in, and walk back to the living room. The only people who'd like this would be uber-geeks with money to blow on huge hard drives to store movies, broadband to download those movies (since most people don't rip DVD's onto hard drives, and the few who do are pretty stupid), and wi-fi in the computer. I predict this product will sell... to about 100 people. In fact, if it even actually hits the shelves, I nominate this product for The Biggest Flop of the Year.
Ah, you're new here. Here at Slashdot, every tiny thing is something to pontificate about, and every tiny problem is a major conspiracy/security hole in which The Man can exploit you/invade your privacy. "No big deal" isn't a very common phrase here.