Amen. Money = Free speech, which means Microsoft has about 40 billion more things to say than I do.
If you were a legislator, who would you listen to? Some guy who will vote for you once, or the guy who will send out an email to his thousands of workers saying that Uncle Bill wants you to vote for X, because that will make your stock options value go up, and backs that up with big donations of soft money so you can run ads saying Vote for Me.
The view that the representatives serve the will of the people is short-sighted and overly simplistic. Don't believe everything they teach you in grade school.
Wow, that story is just so unbeleivable it's not even close to sounding right. 3 days to recover the admin password on Win XP Pro? First of all, XP setup makes you type in the admin password when you set it up, so Dell not sending you the password makes perfect sense since YOU TYPED IT IN. Second, if the box is on the domain, then the Domain Admin account was added to the Local Administrators group when it joined the domain. So just log in as domain administrator. Plus there is no account called "Computer Administrator." Third, it's a workstation, and you're at a fortune 500 company, so just re-image the thing. You're a fortune 500 company, I hope you have a better way of rolling out workstations than installing all those apps by hand. Hell you could get Dell to install the image of your choice on those boxes, troll. Fourth, Windows XP doesn't by default check the "Automatically adjust my clock for daylight savings time" checkbox under the date and time control panel, so it was probably only 2 days and 23 hours that you were without your precious little Dells. Time enough for me to read your post again and actually emit a tiny little peep of laughter.
That thing about the daylight saving time is true, by the way. Sucks.
That's an interesting point and I think there is something to be said for it. Capitalism tends to highlight the opportunities of the individual, and individualism works well with Democracy. Looks good, but it's too simplistic.
Take a look at America. We've been Capitalist and a Democracy from the get-go, yet we are known throughout the world more for the success of capitalism than for the success of democracy. It's easy to see that the primary function of our government is to create an environment in which American capitalists can thrive. I believe that is what the Founders had in mind, and they've succeeded.
Except maybe they've succeeded too well. Just look at the massive consolidation of power by American media corporations over the past 20 years, the dwindling diversity on the airwaves. How antithetical is that to the Democratic ideal of giving everyone a voice? On the other hand, Econ 101 teaches that free markets tend towards monopoly. Hell, even the electorate has moved this way, we've only got two political parties in this country, whereas in Europe there's dozens. Maybe Capitalism ins't the good friend of Democracy it makes itself out to be.
Just looking outside our borders, for every example you can provide of successful capitalist ventures outside of the USA, I can point to repressive governments backed by the USA to bolster American business interests. It just so happens that in China the Chinese government already takes care of repression, and they sure as hell don't need any help from America to keep their populous at bay. (But they love our money, and they're happy to make the plastic crap on sale at your nearby Wal-Mart.)
Bringing Dole Pineapple to Hawaii may have ultimately brought Democracy to Hawaiians (after 50 years of foreign occupation), but who says they needed it? Weren't they a soverign people, with the same right of self-determination as you and I, and didn't they have a right to live under a King if they so desire? Are you really going to tell me that the life of a typical Hawaiian is better now than before America conquered^H^H^H freed them? Strange how Democracy, the "free will of the people," and Capitalism, the freedom to produce and consume as one sees fit, don't seem to be able to accept the existence of alternate political and economic realities.
Next: The World Bank and The IMF. Frequently their austerity programs are contingent upon the privatization of state-run functions such as the electric grid or municipal water supplies. Well, we all saw how great that worked in California just the other summer. Add to that the Enron mess and suddenly Capitalism doesn't look like it's the best solution all of the time. And don't give me any of that idealistic crap about how those Enron guys were crooked and those California deregulators didn't do it right, because this is the real world we live in. So please explain how the IMF's requirements of privatization of state-run services do a damn thing to help the citizens of a struggling country.
There's another problem when you bring Democracy and Capitalism together: We're all fat, dumb, and happy, and too lazy to vote. Look at who makes the decisions, who gets involved in politics. Americans with their freedom to vote and freedom to carry guns and freedom to drive SUVs and freedom to trade MP3s are too busy being thrilled by their consumption and enjoying all their shiny possesions to get involved in the political scene. Take a look at who's on the board of any local or regional government, and it's mostly real estate developers and lawyers. They are the only people who can be bothered to care, since they have a direct stake in the outcome. For them, it's really part of their job description to get those zoning easements and exemptions so they can put up more tract houses. I don't have the time to care about such things because I've got an Exchange server to look after.
A presidential election in this country can't even draw half of the people who've bothered to register out to the polls. The number is about 12% for primaries or smaller municipal elections. That is absolutely pathetic, and it's at that local level where so many important decisions get made. Hell most of the people aren't even informed about what goes on in their local government. In my town you have to read the Alternative weekly papers to get any in-depth coverage of local government, and this is suppposed to be a hotbed of community involvement and activistm.
So maybe Capitalism will open the door for greater Democracy. Great. Democracy politely steps back and says, "No, I insist, you first."
I hope this has given you some things to think about, because your last statement, I must say, is completely asinine. You seem to argue that I'm wrong to not reward a country that oppresses its people, because by supporting individual entrepreneurs in [INSERT COUNTRY NAME HERE] I somehow pave the way for Democracy. Well, I've put a hell of a lot of gas in my car over the years and last I checked Saudi Arabia is still a Kingdom, Iraq is ruled by a dictator, and Iran and Kuwait aren't any better. Venezuela's democratically elected President was almost deposed in a coup driven by the oilmen, and Russia is no better off twelve years after the demise of the Soviet. Again, it would be different in the ideal situation, where we truly had free markets, and capitalists didn't break the law when the cost-benefit analysis shows it's cheaper to dump the toxic waste into the river and occasionally get caught than to dispose of it properly, all the time.
So here's some food for thought for you: Let's say that I agree, and I can kind of see your point, that bringing global trade to a repressive society will push that society towards democracy. Let's say it works, and now that country has democracy and free markets.
What happens then? What's the next evolutionary step in the political or economic structure?
My approach is this: I vote with my wallet. There's more to a purchasing decision than efficiency and utility. Country of origin is something that matters to me, because certain countries suck and I don't want to support them. Same goes for companies.
Try donating your time (or money) to charity some time, you might find that it's rewarding in spite of how it looks on your balance sheet.
I see a lot of what you're getting at, really I do. But here's where we part ways. You wrote If Wal-Mart would only stock albums from publishers who would not sell to K-Mart (aka Microsoft in reverse), that would be an abuse of a monopoly
Well, what about the situation when Wal-Mart and K-Mart both just happen to decide that neither of them are going to sell your CD. Maybe after Sam Walton and Charles Conaway play a round of golf or something.
Abuse of monopoly power is not just what you do to your competition. When monopolies abuse their power, consumers suffer. The case where Wal-Mart refuses to stock a CD because it contains lyrics offensive to Wal-Mart is bothersome because, as so many in this thread have pointed out, Wal-Mart is the de facto shopping experience for so many Americans. The fact that Wal-Mart offered to sell the CD if the lyrics were changed is pretty alarming, if you ask me. Wal-Mart is not just selling products anymore, they are selling a world view, one in which complaints about Wal-Mart (you know, free speech and all that) are censored. K-Mart did the same thing, they pulled the National Enquirer from the checkout stands for a week because it had an article which cast Martha Stewart in a not so pretty light.
Where is the boundary between the freedom of a corporation to do as it pleases and the freedom of a vendor to bring their goods to market? Taking a few examples from TV: The recent ads put together by the Saudi government, ads saying that the Saudis are with us in the War on Terrorism. None of the cable channels would play them because it was "inconsistent with their vision" or some such nonsense. Or, look at how hard it has been for AdBusters to get their anti-commercials to be played by any of the big networks. The reason for the refusal? "too political." Well, how is it that it's not political to say "Buy product X," yet it's suddenly political to say "Don't buy product X."
You see, it's not as simple as "A company has the right to sell what they want, period." To suggest that this is the case ignores the cultural and societal implications of how restrictions on a free market harm the consumer. And that's exactly what Wal-Mart is doing, restricting the free market, when they become so big that noone has any other place to shop, then they decide not to carry certain products that are "inconsistet with the values Wal-Mart customers hold dear" or whatever excuse their legal team comes up with.
To not see this is to miss the Active Directory forest because you're so focused on the Microsoft.com tree.
I'm not all gloom and doom. I do believe in the power of the free market, but I also believe that companies that get too big tend to abuse the forces they have in the marketplace. Like Republicans and Democrats, you don't see them doing much to let some weird Third Party (like that Librarian or whatever) sidle up to the slop trough of American Democracy. Those in power tend to like being there, and they will use that power to remain powerful. That's why you have to watch 'em.
Re: during the first 2.5 minutes of every shuttle launch, there are NO abort modes that are survivable
Respectfully, it is my opinion that the facts do not support your conclusion. The Challenger crew very likely survived the initial explosion and died when the crew compartment hit the Atlantic Ocean, 2:45 minutes later. You can, and should read the Kerwin Report here.
A few juicy bits from the report: Four PEAP's were recovered, and there is evidence that three had been activated... The estimated breakup forces would not in themselves have broken the windows...
My take is that had there been a big ass parachute which somehow survived Challenger's energetic disassembly and rapid oxidation, that they might all be alive today, major downrange malfunction notwithstanding.
Since when does copyright law force you to read anything you don't want to?
When you put a DVD in your DVD player and you can't fast-forward the FBI warning or other "mandatory content." You could burn your own personal copy of the DVD, sans "mandatory content," but you'd have to decrypt it first. At which point you would be in violation if the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Based on Wal-Mart's love of Chinese factories to mass produce all that plastic crap they sell, they should be bundling *Red Flag Linux* with these boxes.
It's funny/sad/lame to me that eveyone here hates MS for being predatory and abusing their monopoly power, but nobody is taking Wal-Mart to task. Remember, Wal-Mart got to be Wal-Mart by rolling their mega-stores into town and putting Mom and Pop out of business. They are hostile to their wage-slave workers' attempts to unioninze. Many of their products are made in sweatshop factories in China. (Consider that your queue, Libertarians.)
If you think that Wal-Mart gives a shit about the intellectual agenda behind Linux then you are either ignorant or stupid.
Wal-Mart just might be the force big enough to combat MS on the "MS Tax" OEM issue (since Dell etc. have all rolled over), but that does NOT mean that they are Pro-Linux. It means they can get the box put together cheaply in China and appear to sell it for less. I bet they eke out a higher margin selling Win XP Retail Box version to those who forgot they need an OS than if they preinstalled the OEM version from MS.
I thought Windows XP home version did drop TCP/IP from the LAN choices
You're kinda right, but your terminology is getting murky. Either you don't use Windows, so you simply don't know the lingo, or you are a Windows User, which means you are clueless;-)
WinXP Hemos Edition has TCP/IP. (Maybe that's just becuase IE is part of the OS, and TCP/IP be the language of the Internet...) What it doesn't have is the ability to take part in a Windows Domain. (you know, the thing with the PDC and the BDC or maybe just some DCs. That thing that I do at work when I'm not on slashdot.)
Yep, with XP Home Ed. you're in perma-Workgroup mode, which has the effect of making Windows XP Home Edition utterly useless in any decent sized (as in more than ten WinBoxen) office.
It also makes it pretty hard to save about $300 by buying a Dell Refurbished for the office, because 95% of them have either Windows ME (barf) or Windows XP Home Ed (not compatible). But I have to admit, I kinda enjoy the challenge of ferreting out the occasional Dell refurb system with XP Pro or 2K.
wow you are an early adopter. i didn't become a grammer troll until liike my a80th post.
i did notice that though. it had to come right at the end of a nice long rant, with all these hard words spelled right. really kind of an anticlimactic ending. bummer.
I tend to doubt that there is anything preventing a port of SAMBA to Win32, other than demand. the only reason that a user would look for an alternative is that there is a bug that prevents the user from accomplishing whatever task SMB/Samba is required to accomplish.
Just like Internet Explorer, people accept it as "default" and don't care. Hell I'm guilty! But Samba is cool, smb://servername/sharename really impressed the shit out of me when I typed it into the Gnome windowey-thingey and it actually worked. I would venture to say that any organization involved in the development of a computer program will need Samba someday. Microsoft won't crush it, it helps them interoperate. (Though I think that's called synthesis these days.)
You wanna break exchange? Try what this employee did. He put all his MP3s into one big.zip file. Then he emailed it to his home account.
The file was about 800 MegaBytes. The exchange server had about 512 MB RAM. It got the 800 MB file, and then it couldn't figure out what to do with it. All the exchange services stopped and I had to do something annoying to get it to start back up without barfing on the 800 MB attachment.
Why didn't I put limits on attachment size? Hey, this was a dot-com, and there was a killer StarCraft session goin' on in the programmer's hideaway!
Here ends the legendary story about the User and the 800 MB Attachment.
Personally I would recommend you don't sell the product with anything less than a one year support contract. And then send them several letters as that year ends explaining that it will cost more to renew their contract after it lapses.
If you have ever actually read anything by Harlan Ellison, you would realize how funny you sound right now.
Yeah, he called your tender impressionable friend an idiot. Thank you, Mr. Ellison. There's been a swirl of controversy surrounding your name on the "Internet" lately, but I'm glad to hear that you've still got it!
I'm laughing just thinking about cranky wizened old Harlan, getting his mail each day, and telling little whipper-snappers to stuff it.
I wonder if your friend's story was as good as this.
Word. Those people who think books are going away just don't make sense. I see the trend towards electronic-only documentation and it sucks. Our company, we deliver a 450-page PDF file with our product. Can you imagine having to read 450 pages of documentation online? And we don't print it to save twenty or thirty bucks, on a multi-thousand dollar product.
Yeah, you could print out the manual, but books aren't 8.5x11, and not everyone has a duplex printer. And laser paper doesn't feel so nice on your fingers. I mean really, electronic documentation has its uses, but as a replacement for a 400-page reference manual it mostly sucks. I certainly think it's worth printing, ideally you'd get both the book and the e-book, but if i had to choose only one I would take the real book every time.
Why should you need a computer to read a book? That adds an unnecessary technological impediment.
You know, it just pisses me off that we have all these leet mp3 doodz who are ripping all this great music, and they INSIST ON USING THE CRAPPY MP3 FORMAT. Listen to that stuff long enough and it scrambles your freakin' brain.
I have seen a few.shn files back in the day on Napster, cleverly named song.shn.mp3. But really, if there are such better-sounding formats available, why is everyone stuck on MP3???
Don't say it's to account for not making an illegal "exact" copy, (like with analog tape) because that's not the reason. It's like MP3 is the Windows of audio formats, and everybody just accepts it as the freakin' default.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. Money = Free speech, which means Microsoft has about 40 billion more things to say than I do.
If you were a legislator, who would you listen to? Some guy who will vote for you once, or the guy who will send out an email to his thousands of workers saying that Uncle Bill wants you to vote for X, because that will make your stock options value go up, and backs that up with big donations of soft money so you can run ads saying Vote for Me.
The view that the representatives serve the will of the people is short-sighted and overly simplistic. Don't believe everything they teach you in grade school.
Don't worry about it getting slashdotted. noone reads the articles anymore.
Wow, that story is just so unbeleivable it's not even close to sounding right. 3 days to recover the admin password on Win XP Pro? First of all, XP setup makes you type in the admin password when you set it up, so Dell not sending you the password makes perfect sense since YOU TYPED IT IN. Second, if the box is on the domain, then the Domain Admin account was added to the Local Administrators group when it joined the domain. So just log in as domain administrator. Plus there is no account called "Computer Administrator." Third, it's a workstation, and you're at a fortune 500 company, so just re-image the thing. You're a fortune 500 company, I hope you have a better way of rolling out workstations than installing all those apps by hand. Hell you could get Dell to install the image of your choice on those boxes, troll. Fourth, Windows XP doesn't by default check the "Automatically adjust my clock for daylight savings time" checkbox under the date and time control panel, so it was probably only 2 days and 23 hours that you were without your precious little Dells. Time enough for me to read your post again and actually emit a tiny little peep of laughter.
That thing about the daylight saving time is true, by the way. Sucks.
so how many servers doe slashdot have, that they never seem to get slashdotted?
I am now waiting 20 seconds.
That's an interesting point and I think there is something to be said for it. Capitalism tends to highlight the opportunities of the individual, and individualism works well with Democracy. Looks good, but it's too simplistic.
Take a look at America. We've been Capitalist and a Democracy from the get-go, yet we are known throughout the world more for the success of capitalism than for the success of democracy. It's easy to see that the primary function of our government is to create an environment in which American capitalists can thrive. I believe that is what the Founders had in mind, and they've succeeded.
Except maybe they've succeeded too well. Just look at the massive consolidation of power by American media corporations over the past 20 years, the dwindling diversity on the airwaves. How antithetical is that to the Democratic ideal of giving everyone a voice? On the other hand, Econ 101 teaches that free markets tend towards monopoly. Hell, even the electorate has moved this way, we've only got two political parties in this country, whereas in Europe there's dozens. Maybe Capitalism ins't the good friend of Democracy it makes itself out to be.
Just looking outside our borders, for every example you can provide of successful capitalist ventures outside of the USA, I can point to repressive governments backed by the USA to bolster American business interests. It just so happens that in China the Chinese government already takes care of repression, and they sure as hell don't need any help from America to keep their populous at bay. (But they love our money, and they're happy to make the plastic crap on sale at your nearby Wal-Mart.)
Bringing Dole Pineapple to Hawaii may have ultimately brought Democracy to Hawaiians (after 50 years of foreign occupation), but who says they needed it? Weren't they a soverign people, with the same right of self-determination as you and I, and didn't they have a right to live under a King if they so desire? Are you really going to tell me that the life of a typical Hawaiian is better now than before America conquered^H^H^H freed them? Strange how Democracy, the "free will of the people," and Capitalism, the freedom to produce and consume as one sees fit, don't seem to be able to accept the existence of alternate political and economic realities.
Next: The World Bank and The IMF. Frequently their austerity programs are contingent upon the privatization of state-run functions such as the electric grid or municipal water supplies. Well, we all saw how great that worked in California just the other summer. Add to that the Enron mess and suddenly Capitalism doesn't look like it's the best solution all of the time. And don't give me any of that idealistic crap about how those Enron guys were crooked and those California deregulators didn't do it right, because this is the real world we live in. So please explain how the IMF's requirements of privatization of state-run services do a damn thing to help the citizens of a struggling country.
There's another problem when you bring Democracy and Capitalism together: We're all fat, dumb, and happy, and too lazy to vote. Look at who makes the decisions, who gets involved in politics. Americans with their freedom to vote and freedom to carry guns and freedom to drive SUVs and freedom to trade MP3s are too busy being thrilled by their consumption and enjoying all their shiny possesions to get involved in the political scene. Take a look at who's on the board of any local or regional government, and it's mostly real estate developers and lawyers. They are the only people who can be bothered to care, since they have a direct stake in the outcome. For them, it's really part of their job description to get those zoning easements and exemptions so they can put up more tract houses. I don't have the time to care about such things because I've got an Exchange server to look after.
A presidential election in this country can't even draw half of the people who've bothered to register out to the polls. The number is about 12% for primaries or smaller municipal elections. That is absolutely pathetic, and it's at that local level where so many important decisions get made. Hell most of the people aren't even informed about what goes on in their local government. In my town you have to read the Alternative weekly papers to get any in-depth coverage of local government, and this is suppposed to be a hotbed of community involvement and activistm.
So maybe Capitalism will open the door for greater Democracy. Great. Democracy politely steps back and says, "No, I insist, you first."
I hope this has given you some things to think about, because your last statement, I must say, is completely asinine. You seem to argue that I'm wrong to not reward a country that oppresses its people, because by supporting individual entrepreneurs in [INSERT COUNTRY NAME HERE] I somehow pave the way for Democracy. Well, I've put a hell of a lot of gas in my car over the years and last I checked Saudi Arabia is still a Kingdom, Iraq is ruled by a dictator, and Iran and Kuwait aren't any better. Venezuela's democratically elected President was almost deposed in a coup driven by the oilmen, and Russia is no better off twelve years after the demise of the Soviet. Again, it would be different in the ideal situation, where we truly had free markets, and capitalists didn't break the law when the cost-benefit analysis shows it's cheaper to dump the toxic waste into the river and occasionally get caught than to dispose of it properly, all the time.
So here's some food for thought for you: Let's say that I agree, and I can kind of see your point, that bringing global trade to a repressive society will push that society towards democracy. Let's say it works, and now that country has democracy and free markets.
What happens then? What's the next evolutionary step in the political or economic structure?
My approach is this: I vote with my wallet. There's more to a purchasing decision than efficiency and utility. Country of origin is something that matters to me, because certain countries suck and I don't want to support them. Same goes for companies.
Try donating your time (or money) to charity some time, you might find that it's rewarding in spite of how it looks on your balance sheet.
So long as you don't care that your American Flag was made in China, go for it.
I see a lot of what you're getting at, really I do. But here's where we part ways. You wrote
If Wal-Mart would only stock albums from publishers who would not sell to K-Mart (aka Microsoft in reverse), that would be an abuse of a monopoly
Well, what about the situation when Wal-Mart and K-Mart both just happen to decide that neither of them are going to sell your CD. Maybe after Sam Walton and Charles Conaway play a round of golf or something.
Abuse of monopoly power is not just what you do to your competition. When monopolies abuse their power, consumers suffer. The case where Wal-Mart refuses to stock a CD because it contains lyrics offensive to Wal-Mart is bothersome because, as so many in this thread have pointed out, Wal-Mart is the de facto shopping experience for so many Americans. The fact that Wal-Mart offered to sell the CD if the lyrics were changed is pretty alarming, if you ask me. Wal-Mart is not just selling products anymore, they are selling a world view, one in which complaints about Wal-Mart (you know, free speech and all that) are censored. K-Mart did the same thing, they pulled the National Enquirer from the checkout stands for a week because it had an article which cast Martha Stewart in a not so pretty light.
Where is the boundary between the freedom of a corporation to do as it pleases and the freedom of a vendor to bring their goods to market? Taking a few examples from TV: The recent ads put together by the Saudi government, ads saying that the Saudis are with us in the War on Terrorism. None of the cable channels would play them because it was "inconsistent with their vision" or some such nonsense. Or, look at how hard it has been for AdBusters to get their anti-commercials to be played by any of the big networks. The reason for the refusal? "too political." Well, how is it that it's not political to say "Buy product X," yet it's suddenly political to say "Don't buy product X."
You see, it's not as simple as "A company has the right to sell what they want, period." To suggest that this is the case ignores the cultural and societal implications of how restrictions on a free market harm the consumer. And that's exactly what Wal-Mart is doing, restricting the free market, when they become so big that noone has any other place to shop, then they decide not to carry certain products that are "inconsistet with the values Wal-Mart customers hold dear" or whatever excuse their legal team comes up with.
To not see this is to miss the Active Directory forest because you're so focused on the Microsoft.com tree.
I'm not all gloom and doom. I do believe in the power of the free market, but I also believe that companies that get too big tend to abuse the forces they have in the marketplace. Like Republicans and Democrats, you don't see them doing much to let some weird Third Party (like that Librarian or whatever) sidle up to the slop trough of American Democracy. Those in power tend to like being there, and they will use that power to remain powerful. That's why you have to watch 'em.
Re: during the first 2.5 minutes of every shuttle launch, there are NO abort modes that are survivable
Respectfully, it is my opinion that the facts do not support your conclusion. The Challenger crew very likely survived the initial explosion and died when the crew compartment hit the Atlantic Ocean, 2:45 minutes later. You can, and should read the Kerwin Report here.
A few juicy bits from the report:
Four PEAP's were recovered, and there is evidence that three had been activated...
The estimated breakup forces would not in themselves have broken the windows...
My take is that had there been a big ass parachute which somehow survived Challenger's energetic disassembly and rapid oxidation, that they might all be alive today, major downrange malfunction notwithstanding.
Since when does copyright law force you to read anything you don't want to?
When you put a DVD in your DVD player and you can't fast-forward the FBI warning or other "mandatory content." You could burn your own personal copy of the DVD, sans "mandatory content," but you'd have to decrypt it first. At which point you would be in violation if the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
I thought you were wrong at first, but you are right!
Windows 2000 release date: Feb 17 2000
Windows ME relase date: Sep 14 2000
(From the little timeline in MCP Magazine May 2002.)
Based on Wal-Mart's love of Chinese factories to mass produce all that plastic crap they sell, they should be bundling *Red Flag Linux* with these boxes.
It's funny/sad/lame to me that eveyone here hates MS for being predatory and abusing their monopoly power, but nobody is taking Wal-Mart to task. Remember, Wal-Mart got to be Wal-Mart by rolling their mega-stores into town and putting Mom and Pop out of business. They are hostile to their wage-slave workers' attempts to unioninze. Many of their products are made in sweatshop factories in China. (Consider that your queue, Libertarians.)
If you think that Wal-Mart gives a shit about the intellectual agenda behind Linux then you are either ignorant or stupid.
Wal-Mart just might be the force big enough to combat MS on the "MS Tax" OEM issue (since Dell etc. have all rolled over), but that does NOT mean that they are Pro-Linux. It means they can get the box put together cheaply in China and appear to sell it for less. I bet they eke out a higher margin selling Win XP Retail Box version to those who forgot they need an OS than if they preinstalled the OEM version from MS.
Wal-Mart: Watch for falling ethics!
I think a map of New Mexico should be enough to get the esteemed Doctor back on the right path.
"As in Helsinki, Sweden."
Microsoft provides for stronger passwords in Win9x. All you have to do is upgrade to XP.
I thought Windows XP home version did drop TCP/IP from the LAN choices
;-)
You're kinda right, but your terminology is getting murky. Either you don't use Windows, so you simply don't know the lingo, or you are a Windows User, which means you are clueless
WinXP Hemos Edition has TCP/IP. (Maybe that's just becuase IE is part of the OS, and TCP/IP be the language of the Internet...) What it doesn't have is the ability to take part in a Windows Domain. (you know, the thing with the PDC and the BDC or maybe just some DCs. That thing that I do at work when I'm not on slashdot.)
Yep, with XP Home Ed. you're in perma-Workgroup mode, which has the effect of making Windows XP Home Edition utterly useless in any decent sized (as in more than ten WinBoxen) office.
It also makes it pretty hard to save about $300 by buying a Dell Refurbished for the office, because 95% of them have either Windows ME (barf) or Windows XP Home Ed (not compatible). But I have to admit, I kinda enjoy the challenge of ferreting out the occasional Dell refurb system with XP Pro or 2K.
Steven says: Dude, you're getting a Dell!
I think a better saying is:
"Apology accepted, Linus Torvalds."
wow you are an early adopter. i didn't become a grammer troll until liike my a80th post.
i did notice that though. it had to come right at the end of a nice long rant, with all these hard words spelled right. really kind of an anticlimactic ending. bummer.
I tend to doubt that there is anything preventing a port of SAMBA to Win32, other than demand. the only reason that a user would look for an alternative is that there is a bug that prevents the user from accomplishing whatever task SMB/Samba is required to accomplish.
Just like Internet Explorer, people accept it as "default" and don't care. Hell I'm guilty! But Samba is cool, smb://servername/sharename really impressed the shit out of me when I typed it into the Gnome windowey-thingey and it actually worked. I would venture to say that any organization involved in the development of a computer program will need Samba someday. Microsoft won't crush it, it helps them interoperate. (Though I think that's called synthesis these days.)
--I don't pay for sex or my operating system
I'm gonna need you to move your desk a little bit.
You wanna break exchange? Try what this employee did. He put all his MP3s into one big .zip file. Then he emailed it to his home account.
The file was about 800 MegaBytes. The exchange server had about 512 MB RAM. It got the 800 MB file, and then it couldn't figure out what to do with it. All the exchange services stopped and I had to do something annoying to get it to start back up without barfing on the 800 MB attachment.
Why didn't I put limits on attachment size? Hey, this was a dot-com, and there was a killer StarCraft session goin' on in the programmer's hideaway!
Here ends the legendary story about the User and the 800 MB Attachment.
Personally I would recommend you don't sell the product with anything less than a one year support contract. And then send them several letters as that year ends explaining that it will cost more to renew their contract after it lapses.
I think the best solution would be to omit the apostrophe altoghether and write
current world chess champion.
There is no need to use the apostrophe in the original sentence. Though I do like the idea of their being a chess champion of, say, Mars.
If you have ever actually read anything by Harlan Ellison, you would realize how funny you sound right now.
Yeah, he called your tender impressionable friend an idiot. Thank you, Mr. Ellison. There's been a swirl of controversy surrounding your name on the "Internet" lately, but I'm glad to hear that you've still got it!
I'm laughing just thinking about cranky wizened old Harlan, getting his mail each day, and telling little whipper-snappers to stuff it.
I wonder if your friend's story was as good as this.
"At Disney, nobody fucks with the mouse"
Word. Those people who think books are going away just don't make sense. I see the trend towards electronic-only documentation and it sucks. Our company, we deliver a 450-page PDF file with our product. Can you imagine having to read 450 pages of documentation online? And we don't print it to save twenty or thirty bucks, on a multi-thousand dollar product.
Yeah, you could print out the manual, but books aren't 8.5x11, and not everyone has a duplex printer. And laser paper doesn't feel so nice on your fingers. I mean really, electronic documentation has its uses, but as a replacement for a 400-page reference manual it mostly sucks. I certainly think it's worth printing, ideally you'd get both the book and the e-book, but if i had to choose only one I would take the real book every time.
Why should you need a computer to read a book? That adds an unnecessary technological impediment.
You know, it just pisses me off that we have all these leet mp3 doodz who are ripping all this great music, and they INSIST ON USING THE CRAPPY MP3 FORMAT. Listen to that stuff long enough and it scrambles your freakin' brain.
.shn files back in the day on Napster, cleverly named song.shn.mp3. But really, if there are such better-sounding formats available, why is everyone stuck on MP3???
I have seen a few
Don't say it's to account for not making an illegal "exact" copy, (like with analog tape) because that's not the reason. It's like MP3 is the Windows of audio formats, and everybody just accepts it as the freakin' default.
Just another useless rant. Thank you.