This is brilliant - by changing your arguments just a bit I can state:
The leader of the US is a moron, thus anyone living in the US are either stupid or moron's.
And no I did not refer to you - I said it seems, and since the parent of this thread refered to the stance of the entire thread it makes sense that my reply did as well.
You however are saying "anyone associed with, linking to, or otherwise referring to someone with whom I disagree is a shill or misguided".
Perhaps you should reconsider who is using the good or bad discussion tactics here.
Likewise you should consider whether your sources can stand up to equal scrutiny - most cannot.
What the reports did say was the following in regard to germany: Despite Germany effectively trying to find evidence of any crime from CoS for over 10 years no-one was ever indicted. The same story with the almost 40 years the IRS tried the same in the USA - no one was convicted of any crimes despite the IRS best efforts to find something.
The reports as such accept the fact that scientology, along with jehovas witnesses and others are in fact religious denominations, faiths, religions or what else you would see fit to call it.
Now regarding my other statement - no I did not say that you claimed/everyone/ supporting religions are "apologists". However google searches will hint that that is indeed what these "anti-apologists" sites seem to infer.
In fact your argument that because someone whom attack someone (and their site on-top seemingly had been legally taken down) makes their arguments invalid is just non-sense. Regardless the articles I originally linked to is not made by the person, but by respected scholars who happened to be at a conference held by the organization we are discussing in texas last year.
Well - apparently everyone who doesn't attack every religion is labelled an apologist, and thus the attacker believes that negates what the person has to say.
I checked google like you suggested - and the first webpage I found actually admitted to have been taken down - this usually only happens if there is a legal reason to do so (or they had a very bad webhotel provider - of course I cannot say for sure).
However will you also say that the UN is an apologist?
It is true that the documents are available in a norwegian court library (amazingly I actually remember this case from the papers).
I don't buy it - the dutch attorney general claims that "it is not necessary for the author of the work to have given his consent to publication."
This by the berne convention is not true - however I obviously cannot say whether dutch copyright law conforms with the berne convention - tho it should since else it would be in violation of EU copyright directives OR they have made a loophole by interpretating the EU directives in such a way that this would be possible.
Consider the ramifications if this is legally sound - this would mean that one could publish something unpublished on a website, and if the owner threatened to sue, you would counter-threaten that you would just submit the work to the court, thus in effect publishing it.
This will also mean that all sealed court documents are in fact published, so you could always argue that the work has been published but has been sealed by a court.
You have a valid point, however I do not buy the argument from the attorney general. On that note we should remember that this is a ½ page summary of a 82 page document so obviously both our comments might be answered if we could read dutch and thus the entire document:)
I have karma to burn so I just want to correct a few errors from the previous posters:
The materials pertaining to this case have never been released. This means that according to the http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html the berne convention no-one but the author and/or owner of the work has/ANY/ rights to it.
In regards to music it goes as far as that no-one but the sing/songwriter is allowed to even listening to the song (of course the sing/songwriter can give you that right if they want).
This means that the only way this material can be posted on the net is if it is illegally obtained (ie stolen and since scanned), which is also the case.
Thus the argument that if you have views against an organization you can then link to illegally obtained materials which the berne convention insists no-one but the owner has any rights to then it is also perfectly legal in the netherlands to link to the stolen source code for windows 2000 (if the argument is valid, and not just because the person saying this has a personal beef against the complaining entity).
Also some people don't understand why Scientology does not want to broadly disseminate this material - their claim is, that no-one would be able to fully understand this material unless they had been spiritually enlightened enough. The same argument that buddhist monks have for keeping certain texts secret. In other words if you don't agree with the scientologists on this you also say that it's fine to steal the sacred and secret texts of buddhist monks and put them on the internet (probably that is a bit of a worse crime since some buddhist texts only exist in 1 copy and thus you would also make the texts unavailable to the owners).
Some people mentioned that L. Ron Hubbard made a lot of money - however all copyrights and trademarks are not owned by any Hubbard: http://www.rtc.org/
Some people ask if the organization can be deemed terrorist or illegal - well the FDA and IRS tried this and failed: http://opposing.scientology.org/31-irs.htm Of course xenu.net and others would have you believe something else, but do they produce links and scans for the legal documents going back from 1952? No, only the IRS agreement between the church, it's organizations and the IRS. In fact this agreement constitutes an acknowledgement of IRS wrongdoings, which in xenu speak is just "if there ever where any" [in other words, the forgot to actively check that...].
If anyone wants to know what Scientology is they should consult CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, which is an international network of associations of scholars working in the field of new religious movements.
Reading this post AND the links (guess thats too much to ask for on/. considering people seldom RTFA:P) should atleast give you a more balanced view about this story then anything elsa on this site.
Support hotlines and executive IT positions (equal opportunity for both sexes means atleast 50% female execs regardless of whether skill or the rest of the areas workforce mandates it). Webdesign is probably a big one too.
Maybe somoeone counts computergraphics and design too - if soo that would probably be a big one too.
Now that is for amateur rankings. There is a professional ranking system that starts at 1 dan pro and goes to 9 dan pro. I have heard that a 1 dan pro is roughly the same strength as a 7 dan amateur.
Actually the amateur rankings only goes to 7 dan - however since the pro's goes up to 9 dan some systems use that for amateur rating too.
Anyway a toplevel amateur is regarded as a little below a shodan (1 dan) pro player.
I just checked and confirmed on the SuSE site that the up to date version is 9.2 Professional. The personal distribution has been dropped.
I suppose the idea is that if people only need the personal part buy NLD or SUN JDS [both are based on SuSE].
Some people mentioned quirks in SuSE - what is worth noting as that SuSE Professional is both LSB and UnitedLinux compliant - the professional version isnt officially UL compliant (because SuSE would have to pay the UL group to put the logo on, and the 1st cd would have to be the same as in the server releases - however for all intent and purposes the dir structure and everything else is the same). This means that hardware vendors and proprietary software vendors actually check if their hard-/software works on UL and thus SuSE.
Regarding the article, if SuSE isn't the newest then a previous release of the other systems should've been tested for fairness, SuSE 9.2 is different then 9.1 - 9.0 and 9.1 are also a good bit apart.
One thing worth mentioning about SuSE is that if you want the newer versions of packages you will either have to buy the upgrades or download manually since to a certain point SuSE YOU does not give you these updates - for example for SuSE 9.1 the newest version of Mozilla suite is 1.6 and KDE is at 3.2.
I hope this gets better in the future though with the corporate backing Novell gives SuSE now.
Didn't you read? Both his friends bought the game, but couldn't use it due to steam problems, so he got them cracks which apparently works.
This has always been my beef with copy-protection, anyone getting an illegal copy are much better off then are the ones who pay.
They don't have to locate a manual, or check key-codes, or log-in to somé bogus webservice. They dont have a problem making a backup and they dont have a problem installing on a second machine so they can play with a friend (actually, blizzard handled this nicely in StarCraft - punch in your cd key once, and if you want to play with a friend you can install network play copies).
Basically these people tried to do the right thing and it didn't work, and I'm guessing they can't get their money back.
When you have a theory, and it, in your opinion, makes the most sense compared to whats out there, and you are working in this field, you observations will invariable support the theory you believed in unless you come up with a better one.
The evolution theory is debated - one reason is that it's basic assumption is the following: During one lucky momemt mass, substance and energy functioning in time-space, during one incredible lucky moment combined to form a self-propagating unit and that this element by chance grew and grew and then someday up the line man stood there.
Set up in that context how good odds would this get in a bet?
Of course religous people believing a soul have a hard time with this theory since it excludes and denies the presence of a soul and as such has formed the basis for people who believe that there is no soul, that we are basically just lucky to have mutated this way from mud.
I don't believe it, not even fairy tales are this illogical.
However since the theory is prevalant and since it's the only explicitly scientific theory I agree it should be taught in schools - but stating on the books that it is A) A theory and B) should be read with a critical mind is just common sense, you should note this about almost any theory and proposed idea.
Movies are $2.50 to see here for kids, $3.00 for adults.
Most expensive I've seen in a 150mi radius is $7.50 both.
Well I was thinking about future pricing, and I probably wasn't clear about that - however here is the current pricing of DVD's and theater tickets in DKK:
Theater normal ticket: 85 dkk
Theater cheap ticket: 70 dkk
Normal release DVD price: 199 dkk
Normal dvd offer price: 149 dkk
DVD Release with some goodies: 249 dkk
Retail price for LOTR:FotR SE: 449-600 dkk
Currently 100usd are 560 dkk.
My guess for BD/HD-DVD releases:
Normal release BD price first year: 249-269 dkk
Normal release BD price 2nd year: 299-329 dkk
Normal theater ticket 2005: 105 dkk
Normal theater ticket 2007 135 dkk
Even if the figures you supplied were accurate, it doesn't justify piracy.
I didn't promote piracy, I was however predicting that the MPAA will blame the lower sales on piracy.
It is released - check out the actual retail products here: http://www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-13604/In dex.htm l Also Disney and 20th century fox will start releasing BD movies no later then 2006 (though maybe late 2005 already).
This completely negates any reason for the movie companies to:
Increase prices for the new formats since:
They can combine the products and thus will not sell fewer units
Consumers will, once again be annoyed if they have to decide which format to buy
Try to get consumers to buy the same movie twice, so they can get the BD/HD-DVD enhanced version - it's the same disc, so they will have access to the new parts when they replace their dvd player.
Of course I'm not too optimistic - this will probably cost up to 10 cents extra a disc and the movie companies will of course use this to raise prices - just like they did twice with DVDs.
First they'll raise the prices because it's a new format, and the pr will go because it can have more material, and then, just like with DVD's the usefull extra material will only go on more expensive discs with the tag:
"Limited Edition"
"Special Edition"
"Extended Edition"
"Deluxe Edition"
"Directors Cut Edition"
"We Buttfuck You Edition"
Of course this will be around the same time the MPAA will start blaming all their problems on pirates. Because it's obviously not because theater tickets are 18-30usd and movies are 65-90usd a pop.
Depends on who you ask, I saw several exit polls saying that GWB would've won Ohio - then again, I'm european so what do I know.
I do know that statistically only 3 counties in Ohio seemed to have any problems: http://computerworld.com/governmenttopi cs/governme nt/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html?SKC=home9761 4
Of course left-wing conspirators dont like stuff like that:D
Hardly - between 0 and 15% slower - what bogs java down is the excessive ram it uses - generally speaking you need 1/3 more ram for a java app then you would the same app compiled in binary for your OS.
And considering that windowsxp alone gladly eats 256MB this is an impediment for some.
I'm just wondering how come the OS stat shows windows having "only" 90% marketshare (actually 89.7 but I'm giving ME 0.3% and thus don't need to round up).
Isn't that a pretty good argument for making java app's rather then binary packages for X platform? If ca. 10% of all internet users does not use windows and almost any platform has java.
Also it begs the question how many of those 90% windows users are actually other OS users with an incorrect agent string (ie how valid is the data these stats are collected from).
Saying this I'm aware that the w3schools users does not represent the generel public - however considering the fact that both linux and Mac OS has both gained approx 1% during the period definitely begs the question.
The university of wollongong's site stats show a similar picture: 92,85% windows users total. http://staff.uow.edu.au/web/browsers/stats _200411. html http://www.radok.com/internet-statistics.htm l concurs with 92% windows users.
Yes you can see if the author or editors are online - and yes you can initiate IM or group conferences directly from the document.
On the fly translation is AFAIK not part of any standards packages - however most companies untill now has solved that with a corporate working language. I'm not sure anyone has made such a function yet - though someone definitely will in the future. Voice to text is already here though - however not in a state functional enough to integrate in such an environment.
Did I say that? I think not - I'm just saying that Notes can do a hell of a lot more than a wiki and a cms can - all the while giving a business functions that can improve speed, efficiency and/or give better control of these functions.
Domino is not a message board system (though it does provide that functionality too) - it is mostly a stack you can build upon.
Voice/video/IM/dashboard functions, provided together in a authenticated and controlled environment does have its merit. With regards to Yahoo and MSN - im sorry, but I doubt they'll be more scalable then Domino. Domino is not new technology, it is not something someone just made up and it does scale from 5 to countless users - how many people you think work in IBM or Maersk?
Why integrate VOIP with your mail calendering? I thought that was obvious - you want to be able to recieve your messages everywhere - you want to be able to control your busy hours in an easy and understood manner and you want to be able to transfer the calls to a person who can answer the questions and is there.
HVAC control has nothing to do with it - but it's not unlikely that TIVOLI could provide the function if one should so desire - tho I'm guessing that very few considers it meaningfull to do so.
NSF wont disappear - there is a relatively clear path and the lines will probably be merged from Lotus Workplace 5 and Domino 9 - that said, the only 'bad' thing about that, is that Workplace has a Linux client and Notes will never get on Linux, so I just say thumbs up to that actually:D
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of bugmenot, am I the only one whom the bugmenot firefox plugin doesn't work for?
This is brilliant - by changing your arguments just a bit I can state:
The leader of the US is a moron, thus anyone living in the US are either stupid or moron's.
And no I did not refer to you - I said it seems, and since the parent of this thread refered to the stance of the entire thread it makes sense that my reply did as well.
You however are saying "anyone associed with, linking to, or otherwise referring to someone with whom I disagree is a shill or misguided".
Perhaps you should reconsider who is using the good or bad discussion tactics here.
Likewise you should consider whether your sources can stand up to equal scrutiny - most cannot.
What the reports did say was the following in regard to germany:
Despite Germany effectively trying to find evidence of any crime from CoS for over 10 years no-one was ever indicted. The same story with the almost 40 years the IRS tried the same in the USA - no one was convicted of any crimes despite the IRS best efforts to find something.
I didn't notice anything about it being a US host - but true, US webproviders do have to consider the DMCA - the rest of the world luckily does not.
The reports as such accept the fact that scientology, along with jehovas witnesses and others are in fact religious denominations, faiths, religions or what else you would see fit to call it.
/everyone/ supporting religions are "apologists". However google searches will hint that that is indeed what these "anti-apologists" sites seem to infer.
Now regarding my other statement - no I did not say that you claimed
In fact your argument that because someone whom attack someone (and their site on-top seemingly had been legally taken down) makes their arguments invalid is just non-sense. Regardless the articles I originally linked to is not made by the person, but by respected scholars who happened to be at a conference held by the organization we are discussing in texas last year.
Well - apparently everyone who doesn't attack every religion is labelled an apologist, and thus the attacker believes that negates what the person has to say.
s ite%3Aunhchr.ch&btnG=S%C3%B8g&meta=
I checked google like you suggested - and the first webpage I found actually admitted to have been taken down - this usually only happens if there is a legal reason to do so (or they had a very bad webhotel provider - of course I cannot say for sure).
However will you also say that the UN is an apologist?
If not you can browse the following:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=da&q=Scientology+
A list of documents from the UN on human rights.
Of course the UN also accepts scientology as a religious faith - so what they have to say is to be discounted as well?
It is true that the documents are available in a norwegian court library (amazingly I actually remember this case from the papers).
:)
I don't buy it - the dutch attorney general claims that "it is not necessary for the author of the work to have given his consent to publication."
This by the berne convention is not true - however I obviously cannot say whether dutch copyright law conforms with the berne convention - tho it should since else it would be in violation of EU copyright directives OR they have made a loophole by interpretating the EU directives in such a way that this would be possible.
Consider the ramifications if this is legally sound - this would mean that one could publish something unpublished on a website, and if the owner threatened to sue, you would counter-threaten that you would just submit the work to the court, thus in effect publishing it.
This will also mean that all sealed court documents are in fact published, so you could always argue that the work has been published but has been sealed by a court.
You have a valid point, however I do not buy the argument from the attorney general. On that note we should remember that this is a ½ page summary of a 82 page document so obviously both our comments might be answered if we could read dutch and thus the entire document
I have karma to burn so I just want to correct a few errors from the previous posters:
w .html the berne convention no-one but the author and/or owner of the work has /ANY/ rights to it.
/. considering people seldom RTFA :P) should atleast give you a more balanced view about this story then anything elsa on this site.
The materials pertaining to this case have never been released. This means that according to the http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overvie
In regards to music it goes as far as that no-one but the sing/songwriter is allowed to even listening to the song (of course the sing/songwriter can give you that right if they want).
This means that the only way this material can be posted on the net is if it is illegally obtained (ie stolen and since scanned), which is also the case.
Thus the argument that if you have views against an organization you can then link to illegally obtained materials which the berne convention insists no-one but the owner has any rights to then it is also perfectly legal in the netherlands to link to the stolen source code for windows 2000 (if the argument is valid, and not just because the person saying this has a personal beef against the complaining entity).
Also some people don't understand why Scientology does not want to broadly disseminate this material - their claim is, that no-one would be able to fully understand this material unless they had been spiritually enlightened enough. The same argument that buddhist monks have for keeping certain texts secret. In other words if you don't agree with the scientologists on this you also say that it's fine to steal the sacred and secret texts of buddhist monks and put them on the internet (probably that is a bit of a worse crime since some buddhist texts only exist in 1 copy and thus you would also make the texts unavailable to the owners).
Some people mentioned that L. Ron Hubbard made a lot of money - however all copyrights and trademarks are not owned by any Hubbard:
http://www.rtc.org/
Some people ask if the organization can be deemed terrorist or illegal - well the FDA and IRS tried this and failed:
http://opposing.scientology.org/31-irs.htm
Of course xenu.net and others would have you believe something else, but do they produce links and scans for the legal documents going back from 1952? No, only the IRS agreement between the church, it's organizations and the IRS. In fact this agreement constitutes an acknowledgement of IRS wrongdoings, which in xenu speak is just "if there ever where any" [in other words, the forgot to actively check that...].
If anyone wants to know what Scientology is they should consult CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, which is an international network of associations of scholars working in the field of new religious movements.
They have the following 3 articles on scientology which could be of interest:
http://www.cesnur.org/2004/waco_davis.htm
http://www.cesnur.org/2004/waco_cowan.htm
http://www.cesnur.org/2004/waco_rigal.htm
Reading this post AND the links (guess thats too much to ask for on
Support hotlines and executive IT positions (equal opportunity for both sexes means atleast 50% female execs regardless of whether skill or the rest of the areas workforce mandates it). Webdesign is probably a big one too.
Maybe somoeone counts computergraphics and design too - if soo that would probably be a big one too.
Actually the amateur rankings only goes to 7 dan - however since the pro's goes up to 9 dan some systems use that for amateur rating too. Anyway a toplevel amateur is regarded as a little below a shodan (1 dan) pro player.
Guess it's time to restart based on the brand spanking new L5 kernel then? :P
I just checked and confirmed on the SuSE site that the up to date version is 9.2 Professional.
The personal distribution has been dropped.
I suppose the idea is that if people only need the personal part buy NLD or SUN JDS [both are based on SuSE].
Some people mentioned quirks in SuSE - what is worth noting as that SuSE Professional is both LSB and UnitedLinux compliant - the professional version isnt officially UL compliant (because SuSE would have to pay the UL group to put the logo on, and the 1st cd would have to be the same as in the server releases - however for all intent and purposes the dir structure and everything else is the same). This means that hardware vendors and proprietary software vendors actually check if their hard-/software works on UL and thus SuSE.
Regarding the article, if SuSE isn't the newest then a previous release of the other systems should've been tested for fairness, SuSE 9.2 is different then 9.1 - 9.0 and 9.1 are also a good bit apart.
One thing worth mentioning about SuSE is that if you want the newer versions of packages you will either have to buy the upgrades or download manually since to a certain point SuSE YOU does not give you these updates - for example for SuSE 9.1 the newest version of Mozilla suite is 1.6 and KDE is at 3.2.
I hope this gets better in the future though with the corporate backing Novell gives SuSE now.
maybe, just maybe I'm missing something here - but e-mail hosting for 5 pop5 accounts (or is it alias')?
/.
/.
WHY would this question not be rejected with a "google is your friend" reply?
Seriously there are plenty of e-mail hosts out there just check up on them dont waste space on
Note: I know this isnt exactly constructive, but sheesh this is most likely the least usefull ask slashdot article I've seen while using
Didn't you read? Both his friends bought the game, but couldn't use it due to steam problems, so he got them cracks which apparently works.
This has always been my beef with copy-protection, anyone getting an illegal copy are much better off then are the ones who pay.
They don't have to locate a manual, or check key-codes, or log-in to somé bogus webservice. They dont have a problem making a backup and they dont have a problem installing on a second machine so they can play with a friend (actually, blizzard handled this nicely in StarCraft - punch in your cd key once, and if you want to play with a friend you can install network play copies).
Basically these people tried to do the right thing and it didn't work, and I'm guessing they can't get their money back.
I seriously wish I could atleast.
I have karma to burn so lets just use some here:
When you have a theory, and it, in your opinion, makes the most sense compared to whats out there, and you are working in this field, you observations will invariable support the theory you believed in unless you come up with a better one.
The evolution theory is debated - one reason is that it's basic assumption is the following:
During one lucky momemt mass, substance and energy functioning in time-space, during one incredible lucky moment combined to form a self-propagating unit and that this element by chance grew and grew and then someday up the line man stood there.
Set up in that context how good odds would this get in a bet?
Of course religous people believing a soul have a hard time with this theory since it excludes and denies the presence of a soul and as such has formed the basis for people who believe that there is no soul, that we are basically just lucky to have mutated this way from mud.
I don't believe it, not even fairy tales are this illogical.
However since the theory is prevalant and since it's the only explicitly scientific theory I agree it should be taught in schools - but stating on the books that it is A) A theory and B) should be read with a critical mind is just common sense, you should note this about almost any theory and proposed idea.
Well, between 2010 and 2015 the EU's economy will be bigger then the US economy - likely closer to 2010 then 2015.
That said, I have no doubt something comparable will happen in the US with regards to movie pricing.
Movies are $2.50 to see here for kids, $3.00 for adults.
Most expensive I've seen in a 150mi radius is $7.50 both.
Well I was thinking about future pricing, and I probably wasn't clear about that - however here is the current pricing of DVD's and theater tickets in DKK:
Currently 100usd are 560 dkk.
My guess for BD/HD-DVD releases:
Even if the figures you supplied were accurate, it doesn't justify piracy.
I didn't promote piracy, I was however predicting that the MPAA will blame the lower sales on piracy.
It is released - check out the actual retail products here:n dex.htm l
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-13604/I
Also Disney and 20th century fox will start releasing BD movies no later then 2006 (though maybe late 2005 already).
AFAIK there are still no HD-DVD products yet tho.
This completely negates any reason for the movie companies to:
Of course I'm not too optimistic - this will probably cost up to 10 cents extra a disc and the movie companies will of course use this to raise prices - just like they did twice with DVDs.
First they'll raise the prices because it's a new format, and the pr will go because it can have more material, and then, just like with DVD's the usefull extra material will only go on more expensive discs with the tag:
Of course this will be around the same time the MPAA will start blaming all their problems on pirates. Because it's obviously not because theater tickets are 18-30usd and movies are 65-90usd a pop.
Depends on who you ask, I saw several exit polls saying that GWB would've won Ohio - then again, I'm european so what do I know.
i cs/governme nt/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html?SKC=home9761 4
:D
I do know that statistically only 3 counties in Ohio seemed to have any problems:
http://computerworld.com/governmenttop
Of course left-wing conspirators dont like stuff like that
Hardly - between 0 and 15% slower - what bogs java down is the excessive ram it uses - generally speaking you need 1/3 more ram for a java app then you would the same app compiled in binary for your OS.
And considering that windowsxp alone gladly eats 256MB this is an impediment for some.
I'm just wondering how come the OS stat shows windows having "only" 90% marketshare (actually 89.7 but I'm giving ME 0.3% and thus don't need to round up).
s _200411. htmlm l concurs with 92% windows users.
Isn't that a pretty good argument for making java app's rather then binary packages for X platform? If ca. 10% of all internet users does not use windows and almost any platform has java.
Also it begs the question how many of those 90% windows users are actually other OS users with an incorrect agent string (ie how valid is the data these stats are collected from).
Saying this I'm aware that the w3schools users does not represent the generel public - however considering the fact that both linux and Mac OS has both gained approx 1% during the period definitely begs the question.
The university of wollongong's site stats show a similar picture: 92,85% windows users total.
http://staff.uow.edu.au/web/browsers/stat
http://www.radok.com/internet-statistics.ht
Yes you can see if the author or editors are online - and yes you can initiate IM or group conferences directly from the document.
On the fly translation is AFAIK not part of any standards packages - however most companies untill now has solved that with a corporate working language. I'm not sure anyone has made such a function yet - though someone definitely will in the future. Voice to text is already here though - however not in a state functional enough to integrate in such an environment.
Did I say that? I think not - I'm just saying that Notes can do a hell of a lot more than a wiki and a cms can - all the while giving a business functions that can improve speed, efficiency and/or give better control of these functions.
Domino is not a message board system (though it does provide that functionality too) - it is mostly a stack you can build upon.
Voice/video/IM/dashboard functions, provided together in a authenticated and controlled environment does have its merit. With regards to Yahoo and MSN - im sorry, but I doubt they'll be more scalable then Domino. Domino is not new technology, it is not something someone just made up and it does scale from 5 to countless users - how many people you think work in IBM or Maersk?
Why integrate VOIP with your mail calendering? I thought that was obvious - you want to be able to recieve your messages everywhere - you want to be able to control your busy hours in an easy and understood manner and you want to be able to transfer the calls to a person who can answer the questions and is there.
HVAC control has nothing to do with it - but it's not unlikely that TIVOLI could provide the function if one should so desire - tho I'm guessing that very few considers it meaningfull to do so.
NSF wont disappear - there is a relatively clear path and the lines will probably be merged from Lotus Workplace 5 and Domino 9 - that said, the only 'bad' thing about that, is that Workplace has a Linux client and Notes will never get on Linux, so I just say thumbs up to that actually :D