Yes, IE vs. Netscape was actually one of the very instances when Microsoft defeated a competitor from actually being better. Of course, then they proceeded to rest of their laurels and eventually foisted that steaming turd called IE6 on the world and didn't budge on it for years until Firefox, Opera, etc., forced them to bring their browser out of the Dark Ages.
Not only is being a monopoly against the spirit and letter of the law, but it's easy to see that it promotes mediocrity. We are in the same boat when it comes to Office, which is the best state-of-the-art early 90s technology had to offer. Again, no competition means the products have been largely stagnant since the 90s. Yes, there's the ribbon bar, which unlike most people, I don't hate, but honestly, it's a pretty minor innovation in the scheme of things. It certainly doesn't, for instance, make Word any less arbitrary and capricious (and invisibly modal). It doesn't keep Excel from telling you a spreadsheet you just successfully saved and immediately attempted to reopen is corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Was forcing Metro down the throats of desktop users done for any reason other than Microsoft's own benefit? Yes, their monopoly is still strong and still does tremendous damage to the state-of-the-art. Microsoft is an anchor that's holding technology back and stifling innovation. Thankfully, their utter incompetence in the tablet and phone realms means those areas are starting to really thrive with respect to innovation and real improvements by Google, Apple, Samsung, Mozilla and others.
You would think, but Obama has never backed down on anything. It's not in his mindset.
It's not that he wouldn't think he was wrong, but that the idea couldn't possibly ever occur to him. After all, he's been surrounded by Yes Men his whole life. Who can blame him?
Obamacare is ideologically-driven, and the only thought that was put into the possibility of its failure was that it could facilitate the call to go all out and implement a single-payer system. One could say this is a cynical observation, but it's been admitted to by more than a few Democrats. That's been the real endgame since the 1930s.
Or for a few key states to say "You're not allowed to call the button 'buy', or to advertise using terms such as 'own it Tuesday', unless the license is perpetual."
Half of the commerce engaged in in the U.S. relies on having details the customer is not aware of. There's no way a precedent like this would be set.
The problem isn't that you can't legislate morality. Any legislation is essentially legislating morality. We legislate that you must abide by licenses, honor contracts, etc. But legislation is finite and loopholes will always exist. You can and should legislate morality, but what you can't legislate is good intentions, and as long as we live in a society that praises "you earn what you can get away with" this will happen. No matter how many byzantine laws are passed (laws that are usually compromised by special interests in the first place, but that's another matter), it's not going to stop the problem completely.
Amazon isn't a monopoly, but they are huge and it would be hard to compete with them. However one way would be for company X to say up front and explicitly... when you buy from us, we will never revoke your license for this material (such as by not using DRM in the first place, etc.) Naturally, the next step is that that company won't be able to get stuff from the likes of Disney. You can blame Amazon all you want, and perhaps they should not allow content providers to dictate this kind of licensing, but the alternative is to not be able to sell it at all. However, in their case it's a middle-man decision. Their hands are tied if they want to provide material from Disney. Should they refuse to deal with Disney? Perhaps. But I lay the majority of the blame on Disney, who has shown time and time again that they are completely ruthless with the intellectual rights they own and will use those rights in a way that hurts customers, and even society at large through their lobbying for harmful legislation.
I do buy lots of non-DRM music from Amazon because the price is good, the content is what I want and the licensing is one I can accept. I own the rights to use the music in perpetuity, and know it can't be revoked unless I physically lose all my backups.
Right, but it doesn't matter what the seller says or the buyer believes. I'm sure everything to excuse this is perfectly plain language buried in a EULA that no one except Amazon's and Disney's lawyers has ever read (or could likely understand).
A suit that can be warn for longer, but you'd have to go back inside to take breaks for biological reasons should make the suit cheaper and much more maneuverable.
Nothing is fast in space. I'm sure you would use up much more time in ingress/egress than you would ever save.
Of course, then there's the obvious failsafe scenario... if your suit can keep you alive for 24 hours instead of, say, 2 and some emergency forces you to need that extra support, it's there.
On the other hand, the lighted heating/cooling lines would be super cool.
Congrats, I think you've come up with more solid ideas than the MS marketing department has in the last 5 years.
No, _you_ came up with more solid ideas than the MS marketing department has in the last 5 years. The GP came up with more solid ideas than the MS marketing department has ever come up with.
I would argue that people buy Windows PCs because that's the only thing thing 99% of people are aware exists, except for Apple, which costs twice as much. Period. Legacy apps drive this somewhat, but the primary driving force is still that MS is a monopoly.
And as we've seen Microsoft simply cannot compete because everything they do is targeted towards their own goals regardless of what consumers wants, which is what really would allow them to do better. Regardless of the reasons (and good marketing plus the Jobs reality distortion field) people buy Apple because they want it. People buy Windows because that's the default.
When Jesse Jackson was running for President, a frequent (and valid) criticism was that the Presidency is not an entry-level position. It's a shame that 30 years later we elected an entry-level executive. It's shown since Day One.
As I've been saying for about 10 years now, the Republicans usually talk a good game, but almost never live up to what they say they are going to do, and do stupid things instead. The Democrats simply promise to do stupid things, and then do them.
Both parties have lousy track records with respect to making the government actually be useful. Both are too beholden to the oligarchy and are too wedded to increasing government control and power, regardless of what the end result will be.
It's the Party of Big Government vs. the Party of A Little Bit Bigger Government. In the Republican Party, the actual "small-government" conservatives are a minority who are constantly marginalized by the party leadership. Yes, they made a big to-do with the government shutdown and everything, but the end result was never in doubt. It was purely a symbolic gesture, for better or worse. In the Democrat Party, they have been very effective in establishing much more unity in terms of policy goals and political principles. The end result however, is that whoever is in charge erodes our rights and increases government debt. It's only the rate of these things getting worse that changes.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, we don't want to see Microsoft destroyed, because we need someone to keep Google and Apple and whoever else comes along in check.
Yes, IE vs. Netscape was actually one of the very instances when Microsoft defeated a competitor from actually being better. Of course, then they proceeded to rest of their laurels and eventually foisted that steaming turd called IE6 on the world and didn't budge on it for years until Firefox, Opera, etc., forced them to bring their browser out of the Dark Ages.
Not only is being a monopoly against the spirit and letter of the law, but it's easy to see that it promotes mediocrity. We are in the same boat when it comes to Office, which is the best state-of-the-art early 90s technology had to offer. Again, no competition means the products have been largely stagnant since the 90s. Yes, there's the ribbon bar, which unlike most people, I don't hate, but honestly, it's a pretty minor innovation in the scheme of things. It certainly doesn't, for instance, make Word any less arbitrary and capricious (and invisibly modal). It doesn't keep Excel from telling you a spreadsheet you just successfully saved and immediately attempted to reopen is corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Was forcing Metro down the throats of desktop users done for any reason other than Microsoft's own benefit? Yes, their monopoly is still strong and still does tremendous damage to the state-of-the-art. Microsoft is an anchor that's holding technology back and stifling innovation. Thankfully, their utter incompetence in the tablet and phone realms means those areas are starting to really thrive with respect to innovation and real improvements by Google, Apple, Samsung, Mozilla and others.
Since when do the Libertarians have any say about what goes on?
For 50 years minus one day. Big whoop.
If not for propaganda, why?
Because as bad as things are in the U.S., it's still better than most of the world?
You would think, but Obama has never backed down on anything. It's not in his mindset.
It's not that he wouldn't think he was wrong, but that the idea couldn't possibly ever occur to him. After all, he's been surrounded by Yes Men his whole life. Who can blame him?
Obamacare is ideologically-driven, and the only thought that was put into the possibility of its failure was that it could facilitate the call to go all out and implement a single-payer system. One could say this is a cynical observation, but it's been admitted to by more than a few Democrats. That's been the real endgame since the 1930s.
With a website that's only usable with Internet Explorer.
Version 6!
Or for a few key states to say "You're not allowed to call the button 'buy', or to advertise using terms such as 'own it Tuesday', unless the license is perpetual."
I would agree with that 100%.
Half of the commerce engaged in in the U.S. relies on having details the customer is not aware of. There's no way a precedent like this would be set.
The problem isn't that you can't legislate morality. Any legislation is essentially legislating morality. We legislate that you must abide by licenses, honor contracts, etc. But legislation is finite and loopholes will always exist. You can and should legislate morality, but what you can't legislate is good intentions, and as long as we live in a society that praises "you earn what you can get away with" this will happen. No matter how many byzantine laws are passed (laws that are usually compromised by special interests in the first place, but that's another matter), it's not going to stop the problem completely.
Amazon isn't a monopoly, but they are huge and it would be hard to compete with them. However one way would be for company X to say up front and explicitly... when you buy from us, we will never revoke your license for this material (such as by not using DRM in the first place, etc.) Naturally, the next step is that that company won't be able to get stuff from the likes of Disney. You can blame Amazon all you want, and perhaps they should not allow content providers to dictate this kind of licensing, but the alternative is to not be able to sell it at all. However, in their case it's a middle-man decision. Their hands are tied if they want to provide material from Disney. Should they refuse to deal with Disney? Perhaps. But I lay the majority of the blame on Disney, who has shown time and time again that they are completely ruthless with the intellectual rights they own and will use those rights in a way that hurts customers, and even society at large through their lobbying for harmful legislation.
I do buy lots of non-DRM music from Amazon because the price is good, the content is what I want and the licensing is one I can accept. I own the rights to use the music in perpetuity, and know it can't be revoked unless I physically lose all my backups.
Right, but it doesn't matter what the seller says or the buyer believes. I'm sure everything to excuse this is perfectly plain language buried in a EULA that no one except Amazon's and Disney's lawyers has ever read (or could likely understand).
I'm surprised Dr. Seuss' estate cares, seeing all the horrible ways they've whored out his legacy since he passed on.
That language always bugged me. But what are you going to do? Might (i.e., money) makes right in the courts.
A suit that can be warn for longer, but you'd have to go back inside to take breaks for biological reasons should make the suit cheaper and much more maneuverable.
Nothing is fast in space. I'm sure you would use up much more time in ingress/egress than you would ever save.
Of course, then there's the obvious failsafe scenario... if your suit can keep you alive for 24 hours instead of, say, 2 and some emergency forces you to need that extra support, it's there.
On the other hand, the lighted heating/cooling lines would be super cool.
Considering most, if not all, country music played on the radio today is little more than rock/pop with a southern accent
Funny, I was saying that in the 80s. It's just moreso now.
None of those jobs are executive jobs. Therefore "entry-level executive" is an accurate description.
Good point. Doubling down on a bad decision is a Microsoft trademark.
And Windows itself (NT, i.e., the good one) used to run on PowerPC, Alpha and MIPS.
Congrats, I think you've come up with more solid ideas than the MS marketing department has in the last 5 years.
No, _you_ came up with more solid ideas than the MS marketing department has in the last 5 years. The GP came up with more solid ideas than the MS marketing department has ever come up with.
I would argue that people buy Windows PCs because that's the only thing thing 99% of people are aware exists, except for Apple, which costs twice as much. Period. Legacy apps drive this somewhat, but the primary driving force is still that MS is a monopoly.
And as we've seen Microsoft simply cannot compete because everything they do is targeted towards their own goals regardless of what consumers wants, which is what really would allow them to do better. Regardless of the reasons (and good marketing plus the Jobs reality distortion field) people buy Apple because they want it. People buy Windows because that's the default.
When Jesse Jackson was running for President, a frequent (and valid) criticism was that the Presidency is not an entry-level position. It's a shame that 30 years later we elected an entry-level executive. It's shown since Day One.
Reminds me of the classic response I got from an Australian when I asked him what the benefit of being a Commonwealth of the Crown was.
His response was "It's worth 3/5 of Bugger Off".
I dunno... those campaign commercials from The Onion for Zombie Reagan a few years ago were mighty convincing...
That was originally a John Lennon song, BTW.
As I've been saying for about 10 years now, the Republicans usually talk a good game, but almost never live up to what they say they are going to do, and do stupid things instead. The Democrats simply promise to do stupid things, and then do them.
Both parties have lousy track records with respect to making the government actually be useful. Both are too beholden to the oligarchy and are too wedded to increasing government control and power, regardless of what the end result will be.
It's the Party of Big Government vs. the Party of A Little Bit Bigger Government. In the Republican Party, the actual "small-government" conservatives are a minority who are constantly marginalized by the party leadership. Yes, they made a big to-do with the government shutdown and everything, but the end result was never in doubt. It was purely a symbolic gesture, for better or worse. In the Democrat Party, they have been very effective in establishing much more unity in terms of policy goals and political principles. The end result however, is that whoever is in charge erodes our rights and increases government debt. It's only the rate of these things getting worse that changes.
Very pithy and insightful. Consider this comment an upmod.