"In other words, nobody had a monopoly on system software... not even IBM, who had several operating systems and application platforms."
I hate to break it to you, but the fact that IBM's monopoly was spread out over multiple operating systems, doesn't make them any less of a monopolist.
"Three Microsoft rivals that have reviewed the group's pricing scheme extensively - understood to be IBM, Sun and Oracle - come to the same conclusion: "The prices charged by Microsoft are prohibitive and would not allow them to develop products that would be viable from a business perspective," the Commission charge sheet says."
It looks like these 3 companies won't have to worry about emerging competition from MS in the server space. The EU can sleep peacefully knowing that prices won't drop.
"I could count on one hand the number of professors that were truly interesting when I was in college, and the ones that were most certainly were selling you on the ideas they were presenting."
I don't agree that "selling" is required to make an interesting lecture, but at least you've established a category of presentation (unintersting lectures by bad professors) that isn't selling.
"The only time a sales person NEEDS to be dishonest is when the person they're talking to isn't listening, and ususaly (but not always) that's the fault of the sales person for not knowing how to sell."
Your making the assumption that everything that can be sold has value. When the product is worthless, dishonesty is required to sell it. I think most people would score salesman as below average on an honesty scale.
You've never attended a lecture in college I take it? The professor is tenured and doesn't give a crap about whether you find him credible or not. Both your tuition and his salary have been paid and the money is in the bank, never to be returned. No selling is required.
In a broader context, there are those who simply wish to believe that everything is about selling to justify the dishonesty that often is part of the selling process.
"Its more like a sales presentation than all too many lecturers want to think; the fundamental techniques of getting people to retain the ideas you are presenting aren't that much different."
Selling isn't really about "retaining ideas". In fact, ideas aren't even required to sell something.
Not everyone is interested in presenting. Note also that unless you're speaking to naked pigmy mole rats in the hopes of starting a kinky intimate relationship with them, a lecture is not in general a sales effort.
Despite being the allegedly stupid guy, stupidity is a more reasonable conclusion to a statement that starts with "Your misinterpretation of the situation suggests.." than drawing conclusions about flamebaiting and misdirection.
The links don't provide any details on how the study was performed or the detailed results. So based on what we know from the links, it's just some guy's opinion.
"While millions of unskilled illegals flood our borders every year, stressing our social safety net, the people we want in this country can't get in"
Given that few Americans are interested in the kind of unskilled work illegals do and there's no shortage of unemployed engineers and programmers who are US citizens and willing to work, I'd say we need the unskilled a lot more than the skilled.
".. fewer unskilled workers who end up with a free ride at taxpayer's--mine and your--expense."
The system used neural nets. Generally you try NN's when you don't really understand the problem well enough to try a conventional approach. The problem with NN's is you really don't know what they are actually "learning".
Working in tech support, you're naturally going to encounter people with problems. This population isn't representative of typical users, so it doesn't make sense to draw broad conclusions based on your experience with them.
My "ego masterbation" comment was harsh, but I tire of the superior attitude some geeks have. If it wasn't for "Lusers" we'd all have to actually work for a living. Given that many of us don't have good people skills, or good selling skills, and are not particalarly coordinated, something like dishwashing seems like a feasible plan B.
RMS (channeling is inner Inigo): "I just work in Henry V's office pay to bills. There's not a lot of money in arrogance and self-righteous indignation."
What's with all this talk about normal users needing a geek. There aren't enough geeks on the planet to support all the normal users. This is just geek ego masturbation, many normal users do just fine without our help.
"Java apps can be very fast. It's the best desktop software development system in existence right now, and would be ideal for writing an office suite."
I'm not a big fan of Java and I don't recall seeing any high-performance Java apps, but I certainly wouldn't proclaim any other languages/libraries/frameworks as "the best desktop software development system in existence". You want to justify that conclusion a bit, or should we just take your word for it.
I think servers are best at storing data that needs to be centralized or is too large to store locally, but you don't need a browser-based application to access it.
I see what you're saying, but to the extent the GPLed code is finished code, it's also not very interesting to incorporate into something else. When that is the case no "infection" is involved because there's no new code to infect. It's only when you wish to substantially add functionality to an existing GPL'd work does the issue come up.
"Mandating a term of use like that would be struck down in court faster than Viacom can post takedown notices. It hinders freespeech & destroys the right of anonymous speech."
This would be a decision made by YouTube which is not required under the constitution or any law to promote anonymous speech or any kind of speech. It's like claiming that the company you work for can't fire you for telling your Boss to F**k off because it hinders free speech. Good luck with making that case.
"True, but it does show the viral nature of proprietry software very well, doesn't it?
No. The proprietary license restricts only the code in the library, not the code you build on it. In the case of the GPL, the code you add gets "infected" too. It's a philosphy that says "In exchange for incorporating my code in your application I get to control the licensing of your code even though I didn't contribute anything to that part of your application." Nobody is forced to accept those terms, but what's the point in denying their essential nature?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't buy that argument simply because the companies that stand to gain the most from the EU effort are American companies: e.g. IBM, Sun etc.
"In other words, nobody had a monopoly on system software... not even IBM, who had several operating systems and application platforms."
I hate to break it to you, but the fact that IBM's monopoly was spread out over multiple operating systems, doesn't make them any less of a monopolist.
"Three Microsoft rivals that have reviewed the group's pricing scheme extensively - understood to be IBM, Sun and Oracle - come to the same conclusion: "The prices charged by Microsoft are prohibitive and would not allow them to develop products that would be viable from a business perspective," the Commission charge sheet says."
It looks like these 3 companies won't have to worry about emerging competition from MS in the server space. The EU can sleep peacefully knowing that prices won't drop.
"I would argue that as an officer of the court, and one who (I hope) believes in the system, she should in this case seek service."
She's not a lawyer, right? What makes her an "officer of the court"?
"I could count on one hand the number of professors that were truly interesting when I was in college, and the ones that were most certainly were selling you on the ideas they were presenting."
I don't agree that "selling" is required to make an interesting lecture, but at least you've established a category of presentation (unintersting lectures by bad professors) that isn't selling.
"The only time a sales person NEEDS to be dishonest is when the person they're talking to isn't listening, and ususaly (but not always) that's the fault of the sales person for not knowing how to sell."
Your making the assumption that everything that can be sold has value. When the product is worthless, dishonesty is required to sell it. I think most people would score salesman as below average on an honesty scale.
You've never attended a lecture in college I take it? The professor is tenured and doesn't give a crap about whether you find him credible or not. Both your tuition and his salary have been paid and the money is in the bank, never to be returned. No selling is required.
In a broader context, there are those who simply wish to believe that everything is about selling to justify the dishonesty that often is part of the selling process.
"Its more like a sales presentation than all too many lecturers want to think; the fundamental techniques of getting people to retain the ideas you are presenting aren't that much different."
Selling isn't really about "retaining ideas". In fact, ideas aren't even required to sell something.
"If those people would receive a better pay, and pay more taxes, guess who has to pay for them getting payed better"
The same people who pay more now so that we can receive above average salaries sitting on our asses all day programming?
Not everyone is interested in presenting. Note also that unless you're speaking to naked pigmy mole rats in the hopes of starting a kinky intimate relationship with them, a lecture is not in general a sales effort.
Despite being the allegedly stupid guy, stupidity is a more reasonable conclusion to a statement that starts with "Your misinterpretation of the situation suggests.." than drawing conclusions about flamebaiting and misdirection.
"Your misinterpretation of the situation suggests that you are, in fact, simply flamebaiting since that level of misdirection can only be deliberate."
I'm impressed. You're drawing conclusions from your unsupported statements. Most people stop at the first level.
So what?
Jobs is a salesman and Gates a geek.
The links don't provide any details on how the study was performed or the detailed results. So based on what we know from the links, it's just some guy's opinion.
"While millions of unskilled illegals flood our borders every year, stressing our social safety net, the people we want in this country can't get in"
Given that few Americans are interested in the kind of unskilled work illegals do and there's no shortage of unemployed engineers and programmers who are US citizens and willing to work, I'd say we need the unskilled a lot more than the skilled.
".. fewer unskilled workers who end up with a free ride at taxpayer's--mine and your--expense."
What "free ride" are you referring to?
The system used neural nets. Generally you try NN's when you don't really understand the problem well enough to try a conventional approach. The problem with NN's is you really don't know what they are actually "learning".
Working in tech support, you're naturally going to encounter people with problems. This population isn't representative of typical users, so it doesn't make sense to draw broad conclusions based on your experience with them.
My "ego masterbation" comment was harsh, but I tire of the superior attitude some geeks have. If it wasn't for "Lusers" we'd all have to actually work for a living. Given that many of us don't have good people skills, or good selling skills, and are not particalarly coordinated, something like dishwashing seems like a feasible plan B.
RMS (channeling is inner Inigo): "I just work in Henry V's office pay to bills. There's not a lot of money in arrogance and self-righteous indignation."
What's with all this talk about normal users needing a geek. There aren't enough geeks on the planet to support all the normal users. This is just geek ego masturbation, many normal users do just fine without our help.
"Java apps can be very fast. It's the best desktop software development system in existence right now, and would be ideal for writing an office suite."
I'm not a big fan of Java and I don't recall seeing any high-performance Java apps, but I certainly wouldn't proclaim any other languages/libraries/frameworks as "the best desktop software development system in existence". You want to justify that conclusion a bit, or should we just take your word for it.
Q: Is that new version of Windows called Windows ME, 100% stable now or should I switch to Linux?
A: Why bother, Linux isn't 100% stable either.
The issue when deciding which to use is their relative compatibility.
I think servers are best at storing data that needs to be centralized or is too large to store locally, but you don't need a browser-based application to access it.
I see what you're saying, but to the extent the GPLed code is finished code, it's also not very interesting to incorporate into something else. When that is the case no "infection" is involved because there's no new code to infect. It's only when you wish to substantially add functionality to an existing GPL'd work does the issue come up.
"Mandating a term of use like that would be struck down in court faster than Viacom can post takedown notices. It hinders freespeech & destroys the right of anonymous speech."
This would be a decision made by YouTube which is not required under the constitution or any law to promote anonymous speech or any kind of speech. It's like claiming that the company you work for can't fire you for telling your Boss to F**k off because it hinders free speech. Good luck with making that case.
"True, but it does show the viral nature of proprietry software very well, doesn't it?
No. The proprietary license restricts only the code in the library, not the code you build on it. In the case of the GPL, the code you add gets "infected" too. It's a philosphy that says "In exchange for incorporating my code in your application I get to control the licensing of your code even though I didn't contribute anything to that part of your application." Nobody is forced to accept those terms, but what's the point in denying their essential nature?