Why should some spammer get to steal your money? It's your choice who you give your number/address to. It's your service, you pay for it, and you decide to whom you give the number/address.
If I want to receive messages I want I have to get messages I don't.
Why? Tell me why you have to get messages that you don't want. What was it in the contract that said "random third parties will be legally permitted to send you ads at your expense"?
You pay for a phone, I assume, or your mommy and daddy do. Do you think that each person on Slashdot has a right to call you on that phone, day or night, and tell you what an idiot they think you are? If so, what's the phone number.
The "spammer" has a legitimate business activity. You may not like it, but he has a right to advertise.
If that's how you feel, then I'm going to advertise my auto glass service by tying an ad to a brick and throwing it through your car's windshield.
If you don't want to receive his advertisements, then stop being so tight fisted and get some blocking software.
If you don't want to receive my ad-bricks, then quit being so tight fisted and get a garage.
All this company had to do was publically list all valid email addresses. Then the spammer would be able to read that, and only send to names on the list. This would benefit both parties, due to there being fewer lost emails for DoCoMo, and the advertiser would be sure that every one of his messages went to a valid account. This way everyone wins.
Just how does some guy "win" when his cell phone is spammed? How does he win when it wakes him up at 2:30AM to tell him about herbal viagra, multi-level marketing schemes, or "miracle" diets? How does he win when he is billed several dollars a month to receive the ads? How does he win when he can't have his phone turned on because it announces a new spam ever 26.3 seconds?
Once you are pretty sure that you've really tested everything, submit your server to a blacklist that does thorough relay testing. If you really want to play it safe, bring it up on an IP with no MX pointer to it. After they verify that everything is kosher, bring the server live.
I have done this and I have a lot of peace of mind as a result. If my server does somehow get compromised, I have records to show that I've done everything reasonable to assure that it is secure.
If this were really true, then Adobe wouldn't screw users over by releasing "upgrades" that completely f*ck up everything you know about the program, from short cuts to menu commands, to tool behavior.
I have used multiple versions of Photoshop and I have found the upgrades, in general, to be intelligently engineered enhancements. I did not feel that they radically altered the user interface.
Anyways, you could allow photoshop plugins if you wrote the appropriate framework into Gimp - programs such as After Effects and Premiere can use Photoshop plugins. In fact, such a plugin has been discussed [codeweavers.com] on the codeweavers site...
Discussing the theoretical possibility and actually writing the code are two different things. I'd be a billionaire if I had coded half of the stuff that I have discussed over the years.
If GIMP does the same job without having to keep changing and throwing users off stride, and without having to keep charging upgrade fees, AND supports Photoshop-style tools, behaviors, and plugins... well hell, why use Photoshop?
Because it works better.
A better question: If GIMP is comparable to Photoshop, then why do businesses and individuals keep buying Photoshop? Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars per copy and individual graphic designers all the way to large corporations keeps shelling out the money to buy it.
As Deep Throat (the Watergate informant, not the porn movie) said, "Follow the money!" What's in it for Apple to spend a fortune developing and enhancing GIMP? How do they realize a return on their investment? Thanks to the GPL, they aren't going to turn it into a $700 package since anyone will be able to download it for free. Adobe is not in competition with Apple, but they could sink Apple tomorrow if Apple crossed them. All Adobe would have to do is cease selling Mac versions of its software or even just keep them a revision or two behind the PC versions. In the business arena, graphics design and publishing are the only major areas where Macs are still holding their own. Piss off that community and Apple will be reduced to selling low-end iMacs to home users that want something to match their 1960s chrome and glass living room decor.
This is pretty much what Apple's doing with Safari, and it seems to be working out quite well. They're using KDE's KHTML renderer (which is under GPL), submitting changes back to KDE, and selling a product built around it. Why wouldn't this work for GIMP?
I see several possible reasons:
1. Safari uses a GPL rendering engine and the product that they build is proprietary. I don't believe that GIMP has an "engine" to speak of, so any changes to GIMP are given away.
2. A good browser is a must-have to compete with Microsoft. When Microsoft ships "MSPaint", you don't need to do much to compete.
3. GUIs are a lot simpler than high-end image processing and Apple already has a team in-house that understands GUIs.
What's #3?
Sorry about that, but I hit submit rather than preview.
3. Graphics designers continue to use Macs because they are satisfied with the platform and the performance and there are no mass defections.
Actually, this is far more likely to cause Apple to start working on The Gimp and adding the features that Photoshop has that The Gimp lacks.
And GM will switch to hovercraft designs because Goodyear said nice things about Ford.
The GIMP is no competitor to Photoshop. Sure, it's an impressive piece of free software, but graphics professionals are not going to switch from Photoshop. On average, each user has years of experience, probably has taken courses in using Photoshop's advanced features, and may have a considerable investment in plug-ins on which they rely to do their job. They would sooner switch personal computers before they would switch image processing software.
Allow them to add features that Adobe does not see fit to add
Apple's software developers don't work for free. The GIMP is under the GPL which means that Apple would have to give away all of the code that they develop for it. They would not be able to sell it (they could try -- and become the next Mandrake). Thus, they would be paying software developers to add features to a Free Software program so that Apple could have a substandard Photoshop replacement that would still run faster on PCs. That's hardly going to result in massive sales of Macs.
In short, this could be a good thing for Free Software.
This has nothing to do with Free Software. There are only three possible outcomes for this and neither of them involve Free Software:
1. Graphics designers switch to PCs. 2. Apple switches to x86 architecture CPUs.
Jesus, some of the people that get moderator status on here are so stupid that it's amazing that they can operate the big red button to turn on their computer.
The first amendment states the GOVERNMENT cannot pass a law to shut you up.
So the government cannot pass a law against yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater, child pornography, using a bullhorn at 2AM to express yourself, or spray painting "Bush Sucks!" onto the walls of the Jefferson Memorial?
The First Amendment expresses a basic principle, not an absolute rule of law.
This has to be the stupidest and most misleading Slashdot story I have seen in ages. Amazon is not selling IPAQs for $10 as the headline read. You wrote the headline, so if they are selling them at that price, then let's see a shipping receipt, michael. The headline should have been Amazon Typo Discovered.
This is just journalistic sensationalism and Amazon should sue Slashdot for publishing something that misleading and damaging. Now Amazon customer service will have to deal with every bottom-feeder that read the story on Slashdot and then demanded an IPAQ for $10. The end result: No one gets an IPAQ for $10 and Amazon just raises prices to cover the expense of handling the mess that Slashdot's inaccurate headline generated.
There would be no point in saying "you can download all our content and then terminate your subscription as long as you don't give it to anyone else", and it seems pretty clear that is not what they're saying in any of the verbage you quoted. Care to try again?
No, I don't want to "try again" since you just ignored the part of my previous post that showed conclusively that you were wrong:
All that their "Terms of Use" document states is: Displaying, storing, copying, or otherwise making available any content from the Site on another website without the prior written permission of uclick is expressly prohibited."
There are no prohibiitions of copying material to your own computer, e-mailing selected comics to friends, etc.
There is nothing in the agreement which prohibits you from saving the content to your own computer or showing it to a friend. Period. End of story.
Now do one of the following:
1. Prove that the agreement prohibits saving the content to your hard drive and showing it to friends.
2. Be a man and admit that your wild-assed guesses about the prohibitions in the agreement were wrong.
3. Be a worm and silently slink away.
I don't give a rat's ass about which one you choose, but I'm sick of wasting my time composing replies only to have you ignore anything for which you don't have an answer (examples: burden of proof, straw man argument, copying 20-year old paperback books on flatbed scanners, relevence of the cartoons, Berke Breathed interview referring to plagiarism, etc.).
Well, the rest of the world does not want their blood sucked either, so they will eventually react.
It's already happening. Many countries are considering open source alternatives to Microsoft products and I'm glad that they are doing so.
When that day comes, it will be irrelevant if Microsoft wants or does not want to use Indian workers, they will have no choice:-)
Sure they will have a choice. Microsoft could cut the price of Windows and Office by 50% and still be wildly profitable. They are greedy bastards. They have more money than many small countries and, instead of using it to keep U.S. workers employed, they are bringing in H1-B visa workers to exploit with below-market wages.
Microsoft is not only sucking USA blood...they are sucking everyone's blood.
Ignoring the ethical questions and being totally pragmatic, that's how it should work. The best thing for U.S. citizens is U.S. companies selling goods and services to foreign countries and using the money from those foreign sales to pay U.S. workers. Those workers then spend the money in the U.S. to buy other goods and services. That keeps the economy humming along nicely.
They have branches in any country, you can't force them to hire more americans.
I believe that they should be given economic disincentives to moving software development and support jobs out of the U.S. It could be in higher premiums for unemployment insurance. It could be in the form of higher Social Security contributions -- calculated based on the number of foreign developers. This could be in the form of government preferential purchasing for software developed solely in the U.S. (excluding open source portions). It could even be exclusion from consideration for systems used for national defense (and there's good reason for the DoD to avoid extremely complex code created in countries that are hotbeds of terrorism).
I think it's fine for them to have sales branches all over the world, but I don't want to see a U.S. company selling goods and services to U.S. consumers and giving the jobs to create those goods and provide those services to overseas workers.
Well, in the case of Microsoft it could work, though Microsoft cannot be forced to develop in the US.
Why? We can stop the importation of H1-B and L-1 visa workers. We can impose taxes on companies that export jobs. We can make U.S. companies that export jobs conform to U.S. OSHA and environmental regulations in their off-shore facilities.
Of course you can't compete, they do have lower costs (in terms of dollars). That's the problem with having a highly powered currency.
It's not a "highly powered currency." It's a good standard of living. If we lower our standard of living, we can accept lower wages. But why should some seven-figure-CEO be allowed to fire U.S. workers just so that he can get a new corporate jet? That's insanity. It just makes the rich richer while ruining the standard of living for the workers in the U.S.
Of course it works, but Americans now have to buy motorcycles that cost 1.45 times the optimal price.
Untrue. The tariff was lifted in 1987 when Harley Davidson got back on solid financial footing. In fact, Harley Davidson requested that the tariff be lifted in 1987, one year earlier than it was scheduled to expire.
The end result is that your costs are higher that in the rest of the world
But that's okay as long as a company is profitable. I'm not pissed off at companies that go overseas in order to keep their business viable. I am pissed off at U.S. companies (like Microsoft) which are wildly profitable and choose to replace U.S. workers in order to realize even higher profits.
, you can't compete and have to start hiring elsewhere...
You use phrases like "can't compete" and "have to." This is not the absolute that you would make it out to be. Look at Harley. While I hate their products, by 1999, they commanded a 56% share of large motorcycle sales. Even in Japan, Harley is the sales leader for large motorcycles, outselling such brands as Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha in that segment. They they did not "have to start hiring elsewhere." Their bikes are largely assembled right in the U.S.A.
Care to show me where I said that? Which part of "buy the complete works" says "and don't use any electronic version"?
Quit grasping for straws and playing with semantics. Your message didn't say 'buy it in book form, too.' Further messages from you have downplayed the value of the electronic form. Your meaning was clear.
So the licensing agreement lets you make copies for whatever purpose you want?
Try going to the page and you will find things like:
My Comics Page lets you create the comics page of your dreams -- on the Web or by e-mail.
On My Comics Page You Can...
Build and view custom comic pages on the Web, and have them e-mailed to yourself daily with all your comics on ONE page.
Save collections of your favorite comics so you can read them again and again.
All that their "Terms of Use" document states is: Displaying, storing, copying, or otherwise making available any content from the Site on another website without the prior written permission of uclick is expressly prohibited.
There are no prohibiitions of copying material to your own computer, e-mailing selected comics to friends, etc.
Since I have done your research for you, perhaps you can stop pontificating about what you believe might be in their agreements.
You seem hot to sign up, so if there is no such agreement, go sign up and tell me so already.
You are the one making claims about what is in the license agreement. The burden of proof is on you.
"You have to pay for access to this content but then you can give it for free to all your friends and also put up your own web page of everything and make local copies of it" is not a commonly working business model, certainly not for comics.
Did I suggest giving all of the content out? No. Did I suggest putting all of the content (or even any of it) on a web page? No. That's what we refer to as a Straw Man argument.
And just in case your intellectual superiority misses it (I'm banking on that actually)
Don't. You'll lose money.
, I'm talking about the entire body of work here. If you haven't copied the entire thing, my point that if they go out of business you lose access still stands.
So why wouldn't you copy the entire thing? I, and others, seem to get that.
You're kidding, aren't you? It's a friggin' 20 year old comic strip, not the latest copy of Adobe Photoshop. Do you report your coworkers for having photocopies of Dilbert strips that are in violation of copyright law? We are talking about the the same thing.
Ah, right. Look in the mirror, monkey, that ain't no philosopher there.
That would have really stung if I had any respect for your opinion.
Suddenly the Bloom County Spirit takes me over, and I must show my friend that strip right now. Lucky for me, this supernatural event also enables me to redraw the strip perfectly from memory.
You're a sad little man. I, on the other hand, am frequently reminded in conversation of humorous cartoons and quotes and like to be able to share them when they come to mind.
I can loan a book to a friend too, instead of asking them to pay $10 themselves or violate the likely license agreement.
What license agreement is preventing you from showing your friend something on a computer screen? You seem to know so much about the "license" that will apply to this venture, so tell me.
If you've read anything Breathed has said [pvponline.com] about the topic, and have any respect for him and his opinion, you know it's not going to be as free as you claim to share strips.
If you had understood the interview at the link you provided, you would have seen that Berke Breathed was against plagiarism, not some guy photocopying or e-mailing a particular strip to a friend:
Scott and Chris: Any cartoonist that grew up in the 80's was probably influenced by Bloom County. However, as more and more people publish their work to the net, we're amazed at how blatantly people will borrow from your work and present it as their own. How do you feel about that?
Berke: Show me. I'll sue their little asses.
Or were you referring to some other passage?
it's a damn shame someone so intellectually superior can't understand the idea of an "example" wherein you list one or two items that fit a general class
Are you referring to your inability to understand my "examples" of e-mailing a cartoon to a friend or showing it to him on his computer (these being examples of where an online version would be preferable to a printed one)?
I meant just you were being an idiot, because you talk as if by stating one thing I'm denying all other things.
You wrote: Go buy the complete works, you can probably even find them used for less than cover price. You presented that as the answer for everyone -- and, in fact, encouraged people to forego the electronic version, never considering that it might have advantages for many people.
You sound like an idiot who can't read what I wrote.
What sound like a self-impressed, myopic jerk who cannot understand that others might not want to read Bloom County the same way that you do. But since you brought it up, my reading comprehension is fine and I am probably your intellectual superior.
Unless this company stays in business forever (fat freaking chance), I pay my subscription and oops, they go out of business and I lose access to everything.
Ever heard of the save option in your browser? Ever seen a web crawler? You subscribe when they have $10 worth of Bloom County (whatever that is to you) and then save it to your hard drive. Then, every so often, go back and get more -- all of which is just gravy since you already got your $10 worth the first time.
Unless I have a laptop and wifi, I can't read bloom county on the pot or in the kitchen, for example, unless I print it out.
Maybe you like to carry stacks of books between where you gorge yourself and where you excrete the results, but many others do not. Suppose you are at a friend's house and want to show him a Bloom County? Are you going to drive home, dig our the books from under your stack of toilet paper rolls in the bathroom, and then return to his house?
I fail to see how I need to read bloom county at work
So you need to read it in the kitchen or while on the toilet, but can't possibly see a time when you would want to read it at work, say at lunch, when taking a break, etc.? You are as shortsighted as you are rude.
it seems unlikely that much of it is going to be so wonderfully relevant that I suddenly feel a need to email that one strip to my friends.
If it's not funny enough to share with friends, then why do you want to read it at all? Bloom County was not a collection of cartoons from the editorial pages. It had everything from parodies of creationists to Mick Jagger being interviewed by a "Farm Report" TV show. How is any of that less relevent today than it was at the time?
And if for some reason I do, I don't have to rip pages out of my book to scan it.
Right. You can just mash the spine of a 20 year old paperback book down flat on your scanner. Those books will hold up just great that way.
Next time, don't assume that you have the only "proper" way to do something and that everyone should share your values. If someone has limited shelf space, the books are not as good an option. If someone wants to share Bloom County with physically distant friends and family, the books are useless. If a person wants a copy that will never deteriorate, never become damaged by water, and is in chronological order, there are no books that will work.
Slashdot Mirror
You are so fucking clueless that I'm exasperated.
Why should some spammer get to steal your money? It's your choice who you give your number/address to. It's your service, you pay for it, and you decide to whom you give the number/address.
If I want to receive messages I want I have to get messages I don't.
Why? Tell me why you have to get messages that you don't want. What was it in the contract that said "random third parties will be legally permitted to send you ads at your expense"?
You pay for a phone, I assume, or your mommy and daddy do. Do you think that each person on Slashdot has a right to call you on that phone, day or night, and tell you what an idiot they think you are? If so, what's the phone number.
The "spammer" has a legitimate business activity. You may not like it, but he has a right to advertise.
If that's how you feel, then I'm going to advertise my auto glass service by tying an ad to a brick and throwing it through your car's windshield.
If you don't want to receive his advertisements, then stop being so tight fisted and get some blocking software.
If you don't want to receive my ad-bricks, then quit being so tight fisted and get a garage.
All this company had to do was publically list all valid email addresses. Then the spammer would be able to read that, and only send to names on the list. This would benefit both parties, due to there being fewer lost emails for DoCoMo, and the advertiser would be sure that every one of his messages went to a valid account. This way everyone wins.
Just how does some guy "win" when his cell phone is spammed? How does he win when it wakes him up at 2:30AM to tell him about herbal viagra, multi-level marketing schemes, or "miracle" diets? How does he win when he is billed several dollars a month to receive the ads? How does he win when he can't have his phone turned on because it announces a new spam ever 26.3 seconds?
What a fucktard you are.
Once you are pretty sure that you've really tested everything, submit your server to a blacklist that does thorough relay testing. If you really want to play it safe, bring it up on an IP with no MX pointer to it. After they verify that everything is kosher, bring the server live.
I have done this and I have a lot of peace of mind as a result. If my server does somehow get compromised, I have records to show that I've done everything reasonable to assure that it is secure.
If this were really true, then Adobe wouldn't screw users over by releasing "upgrades" that completely f*ck up everything you know about the program, from short cuts to menu commands, to tool behavior.
I have used multiple versions of Photoshop and I have found the upgrades, in general, to be intelligently engineered enhancements. I did not feel that they radically altered the user interface.
Anyways, you could allow photoshop plugins if you wrote the appropriate framework into Gimp - programs such as After Effects and Premiere can use Photoshop plugins. In fact, such a plugin has been discussed [codeweavers.com] on the codeweavers site...
Discussing the theoretical possibility and actually writing the code are two different things. I'd be a billionaire if I had coded half of the stuff that I have discussed over the years.
If GIMP does the same job without having to keep changing and throwing users off stride, and without having to keep charging upgrade fees, AND supports Photoshop-style tools, behaviors, and plugins... well hell, why use Photoshop?
Because it works better.
A better question: If GIMP is comparable to Photoshop, then why do businesses and individuals keep buying Photoshop? Photoshop costs hundreds of dollars per copy and individual graphic designers all the way to large corporations keeps shelling out the money to buy it.
As Deep Throat (the Watergate informant, not the porn movie) said, "Follow the money!" What's in it for Apple to spend a fortune developing and enhancing GIMP? How do they realize a return on their investment? Thanks to the GPL, they aren't going to turn it into a $700 package since anyone will be able to download it for free. Adobe is not in competition with Apple, but they could sink Apple tomorrow if Apple crossed them. All Adobe would have to do is cease selling Mac versions of its software or even just keep them a revision or two behind the PC versions. In the business arena, graphics design and publishing are the only major areas where Macs are still holding their own. Piss off that community and Apple will be reduced to selling low-end iMacs to home users that want something to match their 1960s chrome and glass living room decor.
This is pretty much what Apple's doing with Safari, and it seems to be working out quite well. They're using KDE's KHTML renderer (which is under GPL), submitting changes back to KDE, and selling a product built around it. Why wouldn't this work for GIMP?
I see several possible reasons:
1. Safari uses a GPL rendering engine and the product that they build is proprietary. I don't believe that GIMP has an "engine" to speak of, so any changes to GIMP are given away.
2. A good browser is a must-have to compete with Microsoft. When Microsoft ships "MSPaint", you don't need to do much to compete.
3. GUIs are a lot simpler than high-end image processing and Apple already has a team in-house that understands GUIs.
What's #3?
Sorry about that, but I hit submit rather than preview.
3. Graphics designers continue to use Macs because they are satisfied with the platform and the performance and there are no mass defections.
Actually, this is far more likely to cause Apple to start working on The Gimp and adding the features that Photoshop has that The Gimp lacks.
And GM will switch to hovercraft designs because Goodyear said nice things about Ford.
The GIMP is no competitor to Photoshop. Sure, it's an impressive piece of free software, but graphics professionals are not going to switch from Photoshop. On average, each user has years of experience, probably has taken courses in using Photoshop's advanced features, and may have a considerable investment in plug-ins on which they rely to do their job. They would sooner switch personal computers before they would switch image processing software.
Allow them to add features that Adobe does not see fit to add
Apple's software developers don't work for free. The GIMP is under the GPL which means that Apple would have to give away all of the code that they develop for it. They would not be able to sell it (they could try -- and become the next Mandrake). Thus, they would be paying software developers to add features to a Free Software program so that Apple could have a substandard Photoshop replacement that would still run faster on PCs. That's hardly going to result in massive sales of Macs.
In short, this could be a good thing for Free Software.
This has nothing to do with Free Software. There are only three possible outcomes for this and neither of them involve Free Software:
1. Graphics designers switch to PCs.
2. Apple switches to x86 architecture CPUs.
Jesus, some of the people that get moderator status on here are so stupid that it's amazing that they can operate the big red button to turn on their computer.
and here is another : bill clinton takes a course on sexual faithfulness.
It's sure not going to be taught by adultering Republicans like Bob Barr, Dan Burton, Helen Chenoweth, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, or Bob Livingston. They will be teaching Hypocrisy 101.
Spirited Away? That wasn't half as funny as The Simpsons, Futurama, Sealab 2021, or even King of the Hill. Yeesh, what a rip-off!
The first amendment states the GOVERNMENT cannot pass a law to shut you up.
So the government cannot pass a law against yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater, child pornography, using a bullhorn at 2AM to express yourself, or spray painting "Bush Sucks!" onto the walls of the Jefferson Memorial?
The First Amendment expresses a basic principle, not an absolute rule of law.
This has to be the stupidest and most misleading Slashdot story I have seen in ages. Amazon is not selling IPAQs for $10 as the headline read. You wrote the headline, so if they are selling them at that price, then let's see a shipping receipt, michael. The headline should have been Amazon Typo Discovered.
This is just journalistic sensationalism and Amazon should sue Slashdot for publishing something that misleading and damaging. Now Amazon customer service will have to deal with every bottom-feeder that read the story on Slashdot and then demanded an IPAQ for $10. The end result: No one gets an IPAQ for $10 and Amazon just raises prices to cover the expense of handling the mess that Slashdot's inaccurate headline generated.
No, I don't want to "try again" since you just ignored the part of my previous post that showed conclusively that you were wrong:
There is nothing in the agreement which prohibits you from saving the content to your own computer or showing it to a friend. Period. End of story.
Now do one of the following:
1. Prove that the agreement prohibits saving the content to your hard drive and showing it to friends.
2. Be a man and admit that your wild-assed guesses about the prohibitions in the agreement were wrong.
3. Be a worm and silently slink away.
I don't give a rat's ass about which one you choose, but I'm sick of wasting my time composing replies only to have you ignore anything for which you don't have an answer (examples: burden of proof, straw man argument, copying 20-year old paperback books on flatbed scanners, relevence of the cartoons, Berke Breathed interview referring to plagiarism, etc.).
Well, the rest of the world does not want their blood sucked either, so they will eventually react.
:-)
It's already happening. Many countries are considering open source alternatives to Microsoft products and I'm glad that they are doing so.
When that day comes, it will be irrelevant if Microsoft wants or does not want to use Indian workers, they will have no choice
Sure they will have a choice. Microsoft could cut the price of Windows and Office by 50% and still be wildly profitable. They are greedy bastards. They have more money than many small countries and, instead of using it to keep U.S. workers employed, they are bringing in H1-B visa workers to exploit with below-market wages.
Microsoft is not only sucking USA blood...they are sucking everyone's blood.
Ignoring the ethical questions and being totally pragmatic, that's how it should work. The best thing for U.S. citizens is U.S. companies selling goods and services to foreign countries and using the money from those foreign sales to pay U.S. workers. Those workers then spend the money in the U.S. to buy other goods and services. That keeps the economy humming along nicely.
They have branches in any country, you can't force them to hire more americans.
I believe that they should be given economic disincentives to moving software development and support jobs out of the U.S. It could be in higher premiums for unemployment insurance. It could be in the form of higher Social Security contributions -- calculated based on the number of foreign developers. This could be in the form of government preferential purchasing for software developed solely in the U.S. (excluding open source portions). It could even be exclusion from consideration for systems used for national defense (and there's good reason for the DoD to avoid extremely complex code created in countries that are hotbeds of terrorism).
I think it's fine for them to have sales branches all over the world, but I don't want to see a U.S. company selling goods and services to U.S. consumers and giving the jobs to create those goods and provide those services to overseas workers.
Well, in the case of Microsoft it could work, though Microsoft cannot be forced to develop in the US.
Why? We can stop the importation of H1-B and L-1 visa workers. We can impose taxes on companies that export jobs. We can make U.S. companies that export jobs conform to U.S. OSHA and environmental regulations in their off-shore facilities.
Of course you can't compete, they do have lower costs (in terms of dollars). That's the problem with having a highly powered currency.
It's not a "highly powered currency." It's a good standard of living. If we lower our standard of living, we can accept lower wages. But why should some seven-figure-CEO be allowed to fire U.S. workers just so that he can get a new corporate jet? That's insanity. It just makes the rich richer while ruining the standard of living for the workers in the U.S.
Of course it works, but Americans now have to buy motorcycles that cost 1.45 times the optimal price.
Untrue. The tariff was lifted in 1987 when Harley Davidson got back on solid financial footing. In fact, Harley Davidson requested that the tariff be lifted in 1987, one year earlier than it was scheduled to expire.
The end result is that your costs are higher that in the rest of the world
But that's okay as long as a company is profitable. I'm not pissed off at companies that go overseas in order to keep their business viable. I am pissed off at U.S. companies (like Microsoft) which are wildly profitable and choose to replace U.S. workers in order to realize even higher profits.
, you can't compete and have to start hiring elsewhere...
You use phrases like "can't compete" and "have to." This is not the absolute that you would make it out to be. Look at Harley. While I hate their products, by 1999, they commanded a 56% share of large motorcycle sales. Even in Japan, Harley is the sales leader for large motorcycles, outselling such brands as Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha in that segment. They they did not "have to start hiring elsewhere." Their bikes are largely assembled right in the U.S.A.
I misread.
Thanks for the reply. We all goof occasionally, but I was just left scratching my head on that one.
Your comment took me ages to grok. I assume you meant they're and not their.
Since "they're" is a contraction for "they are" (e.g., "They're going to see Chicago."), you thought he meant to say:
Huh? they mentioned they are extremely high selling live cards too.
Now I am really confused. What does "they" refer to in that sentence?
I understood it when he referred to "their" Live cards, since "their" is the possessive form of "they" and the Live cards are owned by Creative, also.
Care to show me where I said that? Which part of "buy the complete works" says "and don't use any electronic version"?
Quit grasping for straws and playing with semantics. Your message didn't say 'buy it in book form, too.' Further messages from you have downplayed the value of the electronic form. Your meaning was clear.
Try going to the page and you will find things like:
All that their "Terms of Use" document states is: Displaying, storing, copying, or otherwise making available any content from the Site on another website without the prior written permission of uclick is expressly prohibited.
There are no prohibiitions of copying material to your own computer, e-mailing selected comics to friends, etc.
Since I have done your research for you, perhaps you can stop pontificating about what you believe might be in their agreements.
You seem hot to sign up, so if there is no such agreement, go sign up and tell me so already.
You are the one making claims about what is in the license agreement. The burden of proof is on you.
"You have to pay for access to this content but then you can give it for free to all your friends and also put up your own web page of everything and make local copies of it" is not a commonly working business model, certainly not for comics.
Did I suggest giving all of the content out? No. Did I suggest putting all of the content (or even any of it) on a web page? No. That's what we refer to as a Straw Man argument.
And just in case your intellectual superiority misses it (I'm banking on that actually)
Don't. You'll lose money.
, I'm talking about the entire body of work here. If you haven't copied the entire thing, my point that if they go out of business you lose access still stands.
So why wouldn't you copy the entire thing? I, and others, seem to get that.
Or maybe, just maybe, stay with me now: You save all of the strips and burn them to disc.
And he wondered why I was not in awe of his technical prowess...
You're kidding, aren't you? It's a friggin' 20 year old comic strip, not the latest copy of Adobe Photoshop. Do you report your coworkers for having photocopies of Dilbert strips that are in violation of copyright law? We are talking about the the same thing.
Ah, right. Look in the mirror, monkey, that ain't no philosopher there.
That would have really stung if I had any respect for your opinion.
Suddenly the Bloom County Spirit takes me over, and I must show my friend that strip right now. Lucky for me, this supernatural event also enables me to redraw the strip perfectly from memory.
You're a sad little man. I, on the other hand, am frequently reminded in conversation of humorous cartoons and quotes and like to be able to share them when they come to mind.
I can loan a book to a friend too, instead of asking them to pay $10 themselves or violate the likely license agreement.
What license agreement is preventing you from showing your friend something on a computer screen? You seem to know so much about the "license" that will apply to this venture, so tell me.
If you've read anything Breathed has said [pvponline.com] about the topic, and have any respect for him and his opinion, you know it's not going to be as free as you claim to share strips.
If you had understood the interview at the link you provided, you would have seen that Berke Breathed was against plagiarism, not some guy photocopying or e-mailing a particular strip to a friend: Or were you referring to some other passage?
it's a damn shame someone so intellectually superior can't understand the idea of an "example" wherein you list one or two items that fit a general class
Are you referring to your inability to understand my "examples" of e-mailing a cartoon to a friend or showing it to him on his computer (these being examples of where an online version would be preferable to a printed one)?
I meant just you were being an idiot, because you talk as if by stating one thing I'm denying all other things.
You wrote: Go buy the complete works, you can probably even find them used for less than cover price. You presented that as the answer for everyone -- and, in fact, encouraged people to forego the electronic version, never considering that it might have advantages for many people.
You sound like an idiot who can't read what I wrote.
What sound like a self-impressed, myopic jerk who cannot understand that others might not want to read Bloom County the same way that you do. But since you brought it up, my reading comprehension is fine and I am probably your intellectual superior.
Unless this company stays in business forever (fat freaking chance), I pay my subscription and oops, they go out of business and I lose access to everything.
Ever heard of the save option in your browser? Ever seen a web crawler? You subscribe when they have $10 worth of Bloom County (whatever that is to you) and then save it to your hard drive. Then, every so often, go back and get more -- all of which is just gravy since you already got your $10 worth the first time.
Unless I have a laptop and wifi, I can't read bloom county on the pot or in the kitchen, for example, unless I print it out.
Maybe you like to carry stacks of books between where you gorge yourself and where you excrete the results, but many others do not. Suppose you are at a friend's house and want to show him a Bloom County? Are you going to drive home, dig our the books from under your stack of toilet paper rolls in the bathroom, and then return to his house?
I fail to see how I need to read bloom county at work
So you need to read it in the kitchen or while on the toilet, but can't possibly see a time when you would want to read it at work, say at lunch, when taking a break, etc.? You are as shortsighted as you are rude.
it seems unlikely that much of it is going to be so wonderfully relevant that I suddenly feel a need to email that one strip to my friends.
If it's not funny enough to share with friends, then why do you want to read it at all? Bloom County was not a collection of cartoons from the editorial pages. It had everything from parodies of creationists to Mick Jagger being interviewed by a "Farm Report" TV show. How is any of that less relevent today than it was at the time?
And if for some reason I do, I don't have to rip pages out of my book to scan it.
Right. You can just mash the spine of a 20 year old paperback book down flat on your scanner. Those books will hold up just great that way.
Next time, don't assume that you have the only "proper" way to do something and that everyone should share your values. If someone has limited shelf space, the books are not as good an option. If someone wants to share Bloom County with physically distant friends and family, the books are useless. If a person wants a copy that will never deteriorate, never become damaged by water, and is in chronological order, there are no books that will work.