Anyone who chose to go with VB.NET did it only within the last few years while there are many real cross-platform options (Python, Java, even C++). No one chose.NET and then complained it wasn't cross-platform. It wasn't advertised as cross-platform. It was chosen for Windows-only development and therefore isn't something many people are interested in.
No one is dumb enough to choose a Microsoft technology without assuming it almost certainly means lock-in. Today they're simply lucky some of their apps can now be ported to other OSs.
This is exactly right. Ballmer is the mob boss threatening to kill you if you don't pay up. The mob boss knows it's bad for business to actually kill everyone who owes you money, because then they can't pay. But Ballmer's words are even less intimidating because everyone knows that if they had any case legally they would have used it by now. Their stock has been relatively flat for more than 5 years and profits were barely higher last year. The only event investors look forward to is new releases of their 2 cash cows. If they actually had IP to leverage they could rake in billions. There's no reason to wait years to do it.
All of his talk it hot air. He's hoping to convince investors to bump up his stock. That's why he's trying to convince analysts to raise their estimates. Fortunately most seem to be smart enough to wait for an actual significant lawsuit before reporting that MSFT is set to raise a fortune leveraging this IP.
Both Visa and MasterCard have been operating for-profit for over 10 years. Visa started first, then MasterCard decided they needed to fill their coffers to keep up. I was working at MasterCard when they started to focus more on profits. The change really became a focus at the company after MasterCard lost their application with the US government to be considered a non-profit organization to avoid paying taxes.
Commercials and/or product placement. I can imagine some "internet shows" having commercials, but we know someone will cut them out and re-upload them. So I image they'll go the other route that currently pays: product placement within the show. If Coke will pay one of your actors to sip a soda during a show you get money and no one will cut it and redistribute. If the show needs a car, and Toyota is willing to pay to have it be one of their cars, then that's great. As long as it doesn't obstruct the actual presentation I believe product placements are the way to go for online content.
My guess is Google is betting on real user content. If they get enough high quality "home-made videos" they believe they'll still get a huge viewership without any copyright infringement issues. And some shows will still put up some limited content to get people interested in tuning in on traditional TV.
One of the nice things we see in music these days is the little guy creating and distributing high-quality audio. I'd like to see the same for video. The problem so far is that only these behemoth companies own the current content and can afford large production and distribution. If finally we'd see some significant competition from startups then Viacom and others might be forced to let go a little. If some hot new show distributed freely over the internet took eyeballs away from Viacom content maybe they'd be forced to come to their senses. Maybe.
I think its pretty stupid of Dell not to have offered this before.
At least until 2001 Microsoft threatened to completely revoke their OEM licenses if Dell offered any other OS. Microsoft was forced to lighten up just a little bit in their conduct after the anti-trust trial.
Probably like "The Club" for cars. It'll slow someone down and may prevent some casual theft. But if someone really wants it they'll still be able to steal and use it.
How is not being a democracy a bad thing? They could become a democracy and still do all of the other things you listed. We're a democracy and yet we give weapons to our enemies, give away jobs, have a crappy human rights record, and pollute. Democracy isn't automatically the best government for every country.
IBM and Microsoft (and maybe Ford, I don't know) have adjusted their accounting practices in the wake of Enron. Microsoft stock was affected (and hasn't grown much since). IBM still has a great balance sheet after adjustments and so their stock is still high. Ford's stock is in the toilet.
So there have been consequences. You're correct that none have gone out of business, but that certainly doesn't mean they didn't pay some price.
That's exactly my point. There are sometimes consequences, whether by the market or the government. Once their questionable activities were realized by investors they all ran and the stock collapsed.
To blindly say there are never any consequences is wrong. There are rare legal and often economic consequences.
Do you have a longer-lasting cost effective backup solution for truely massive amounts of information? Just the migration from a system that's been in place for decades would cost millions.
That's fantastic (seriously). It's commendable. And now I've heard of one such person. Now if he'd be kind enough to educate the rest of the US christians...
that's why we study the original languages as well and scrutinize that.
I've never met or heard of a christian who knows ancient hebrew well enough to study the bible like a jewish scholar. And I've also never met a christian who quotes such scholars to validate their understanding of the bible. Therefore I don't see how they can know the original meaning of your "Old Testament".
The fact that humans speak different languages doesn't invalidate the original meaning of the text.
That's right. It means that no one who has read it in a translated form can know the original meaning if not educated by someone who can read the original. In the footnotes of every translated Jewish bible are explanations of the multiple meanings of Hebrew words and phrases. I've never seen anything similar in translations of the "Old Testament" of the Christian bible. The English language simply does not have the capacity to clearly convey the original text without much explanation. Therefore a direct translation is simply never sufficient.
Many of the Christians who claim to fully understand their bible have no knowledge of what was lost in translation from the original texts. Congratulations if you're educated on the subject. How about helping out the rest?
It's interesting that both Jews and Christians study the same story and come to different conclusions. Many Jews believe that the story can really be just a story and still use it to learn about god. They don't have to take it literally to get its meaning. So Adam and Eve teach sin and evolution is possible, all without losing faith in god.
I never completely understand why people argue "God says it". Even if people want to believe that god wrote the books of the bible, the christian bible was put together by humans. No one argues that the chapters put into the bible were selected by people. So god may have said lots of other things, but these people have chosen not to listen. Maybe another text which wasn't included describes evolution.
And if these people believe the bible was written by humans, then everything "god says" is hearsay and could be misquoted.
And let's not even get started on the fact that the bible Americans read has been translated. There are many phrases which can be translated multiple ways. Plus with the old testiment the English language can't properly represent the multiple meanings of Hebrew words, and so much is lost in translation.
Anybody else tired of stupid journalists trying to stir up trouble or create a conflict where there really isn't one?
Nope, that's why I still read slashdot.;)
is anybody truly upset that IBM made a bunch of money cuz they threw a bunch of code and developer time at OSS projects?
That's exactly why I don't mind they profit from open source. They contribute. Not only do they contribute code, but many educational articles on various technical details.
Stevens introduced S.49... on the opening day of the legislative session.
Yes, because it's just that important. There really is no other crisis or issue which needs legislative attention before this. At least someone is thinking of the children. *rolls eyes*
A lot of web sites that started out with small MySQL databases are now using replication. It can be a tough transition if not accounted for in the original development of the site. But if those sites started out with something that's "grid-based" maybe it would be much easier to grow (maybe). I have the feeling the market may be bigger than many people realize, especially if they start with something free.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, hey, hey! There is NO higher priority than posting to slashdot!
That's why no work is getting done in my office right now.
Anyone who chose to go with VB.NET did it only within the last few years while there are many real cross-platform options (Python, Java, even C++). No one chose .NET and then complained it wasn't cross-platform. It wasn't advertised as cross-platform. It was chosen for Windows-only development and therefore isn't something many people are interested in.
No one is dumb enough to choose a Microsoft technology without assuming it almost certainly means lock-in. Today they're simply lucky some of their apps can now be ported to other OSs.
This is exactly right. Ballmer is the mob boss threatening to kill you if you don't pay up. The mob boss knows it's bad for business to actually kill everyone who owes you money, because then they can't pay. But Ballmer's words are even less intimidating because everyone knows that if they had any case legally they would have used it by now. Their stock has been relatively flat for more than 5 years and profits were barely higher last year. The only event investors look forward to is new releases of their 2 cash cows. If they actually had IP to leverage they could rake in billions. There's no reason to wait years to do it.
All of his talk it hot air. He's hoping to convince investors to bump up his stock. That's why he's trying to convince analysts to raise their estimates. Fortunately most seem to be smart enough to wait for an actual significant lawsuit before reporting that MSFT is set to raise a fortune leveraging this IP.
Translation:
/. post.)
It's FUD that you need more RAM.
I always need more RAM.
(Yeah, another logical
Both Visa and MasterCard have been operating for-profit for over 10 years. Visa started first, then MasterCard decided they needed to fill their coffers to keep up. I was working at MasterCard when they started to focus more on profits. The change really became a focus at the company after MasterCard lost their application with the US government to be considered a non-profit organization to avoid paying taxes.
Commercials and/or product placement. I can imagine some "internet shows" having commercials, but we know someone will cut them out and re-upload them. So I image they'll go the other route that currently pays: product placement within the show. If Coke will pay one of your actors to sip a soda during a show you get money and no one will cut it and redistribute. If the show needs a car, and Toyota is willing to pay to have it be one of their cars, then that's great. As long as it doesn't obstruct the actual presentation I believe product placements are the way to go for online content.
My guess is Google is betting on real user content. If they get enough high quality "home-made videos" they believe they'll still get a huge viewership without any copyright infringement issues. And some shows will still put up some limited content to get people interested in tuning in on traditional TV.
One of the nice things we see in music these days is the little guy creating and distributing high-quality audio. I'd like to see the same for video. The problem so far is that only these behemoth companies own the current content and can afford large production and distribution. If finally we'd see some significant competition from startups then Viacom and others might be forced to let go a little. If some hot new show distributed freely over the internet took eyeballs away from Viacom content maybe they'd be forced to come to their senses. Maybe.
I think its pretty stupid of Dell not to have offered this before.
At least until 2001 Microsoft threatened to completely revoke their OEM licenses if Dell offered any other OS. Microsoft was forced to lighten up just a little bit in their conduct after the anti-trust trial.
Probably like "The Club" for cars. It'll slow someone down and may prevent some casual theft. But if someone really wants it they'll still be able to steal and use it.
How is not being a democracy a bad thing? They could become a democracy and still do all of the other things you listed. We're a democracy and yet we give weapons to our enemies, give away jobs, have a crappy human rights record, and pollute. Democracy isn't automatically the best government for every country.
IBM and Microsoft (and maybe Ford, I don't know) have adjusted their accounting practices in the wake of Enron. Microsoft stock was affected (and hasn't grown much since). IBM still has a great balance sheet after adjustments and so their stock is still high. Ford's stock is in the toilet.
So there have been consequences. You're correct that none have gone out of business, but that certainly doesn't mean they didn't pay some price.
That's exactly my point. There are sometimes consequences, whether by the market or the government. Once their questionable activities were realized by investors they all ran and the stock collapsed.
To blindly say there are never any consequences is wrong. There are rare legal and often economic consequences.
Do you have a longer-lasting cost effective backup solution for truely massive amounts of information? Just the migration from a system that's been in place for decades would cost millions.
Which is why Enron is still around...
That's fantastic (seriously). It's commendable. And now I've heard of one such person. Now if he'd be kind enough to educate the rest of the US christians...
that's why we study the original languages as well and scrutinize that.
I've never met or heard of a christian who knows ancient hebrew well enough to study the bible like a jewish scholar. And I've also never met a christian who quotes such scholars to validate their understanding of the bible. Therefore I don't see how they can know the original meaning of your "Old Testament".
The fact that humans speak different languages doesn't invalidate the original meaning of the text.
That's right. It means that no one who has read it in a translated form can know the original meaning if not educated by someone who can read the original. In the footnotes of every translated Jewish bible are explanations of the multiple meanings of Hebrew words and phrases. I've never seen anything similar in translations of the "Old Testament" of the Christian bible. The English language simply does not have the capacity to clearly convey the original text without much explanation. Therefore a direct translation is simply never sufficient.
Many of the Christians who claim to fully understand their bible have no knowledge of what was lost in translation from the original texts. Congratulations if you're educated on the subject. How about helping out the rest?
It's interesting that both Jews and Christians study the same story and come to different conclusions. Many Jews believe that the story can really be just a story and still use it to learn about god. They don't have to take it literally to get its meaning. So Adam and Eve teach sin and evolution is possible, all without losing faith in god.
I never completely understand why people argue "God says it". Even if people want to believe that god wrote the books of the bible, the christian bible was put together by humans. No one argues that the chapters put into the bible were selected by people. So god may have said lots of other things, but these people have chosen not to listen. Maybe another text which wasn't included describes evolution.
And if these people believe the bible was written by humans, then everything "god says" is hearsay and could be misquoted.
And let's not even get started on the fact that the bible Americans read has been translated. There are many phrases which can be translated multiple ways. Plus with the old testiment the English language can't properly represent the multiple meanings of Hebrew words, and so much is lost in translation.
Anybody else tired of stupid journalists trying to stir up trouble or create a conflict where there really isn't one?
;)
Nope, that's why I still read slashdot.
is anybody truly upset that IBM made a bunch of money cuz they threw a bunch of code and developer time at OSS projects?
That's exactly why I don't mind they profit from open source. They contribute. Not only do they contribute code, but many educational articles on various technical details.
Stevens introduced S.49... on the opening day of the legislative session.
Yes, because it's just that important. There really is no other crisis or issue which needs legislative attention before this. At least someone is thinking of the children. *rolls eyes*
A lot of web sites that started out with small MySQL databases are now using replication. It can be a tough transition if not accounted for in the original development of the site. But if those sites started out with something that's "grid-based" maybe it would be much easier to grow (maybe). I have the feeling the market may be bigger than many people realize, especially if they start with something free.
Because then it would be even MORE like Mac OS X.
its innards have been significantly beefed up, as it is a 64 bit operating system
So was XP. What else about it is "beefy" without also being labeled "cruft"?
But... but... it's the ultimate. No price is too high!