As a veteran of selling on TCO, I've always got a kick out of these studies because they are so disconnected from reality. How can something that is like getting a five course buffet-style dinner for free somehow cost more than buying a meal a la carte, one dish at a time? I suppose it's the fact you've got to help yourself at the Linux buffet while they'll spoon feed you over at MS (and they really don't spoonfeed).
Linux has five advantages that simply render the conversation moot:
Cost of licenses Customizability Training Costs Security Out of box functionality
Linux licensing costs are self-explanatory. Hard to beat zero.
Linux is completely customizable. You can change anything and everything to fit your need.
MCSE certs are expensive. Linux certs are less so. Conversions from windows end users to linux are fairly painless. Sorry, Yankee, but learning how to operate a one windowing user interface is pretty easy when you are familiar with another.
Linux Security isn't perfect - but it's a quantum leap from Windows.
Where Windows cannot compete is with the out of the box capabilites of most every Linux distro. With Windows, you have to purchase thousands of dollars of software licenses to do what I can with my free download of Mephis or whatever. End user software is included. So is Server software. I'm out a minimum of $300 just to be able to do basic productivity. All those CALs add up with Windows.
One obvious reason is that the GPL is slightly too restrictive for OpenSolaris - not all hardware vendors want to have to release source, which coding to a GPL'd driver interface would almost certainly require.
What flavor Kool-Aid are you drinking?
Hardware manufacturers will be highly unlikely to even care about Solaris on x86 because it has a market share that is a rounding fo OS/2 let alone Linux. Sun is simply using fear of GPL to hide the fact they sat on their butts when the battle for market share was being waged. At least they have handled it better than SCO.
Reality is that Sun's Unix license probably eliminates them directly open sourcing Solaris. Sun should be where they are today 5 or six years ago back when Linux had immense unrealized potential that Solaris could deliver on. Today, there's very little of consequence that I can't do on Linux or BSD that I can on Solaris. Don't even start on "high-end this" and "high-end that". Look what IBM's been doing with Linux for high end.
Sun lost this battle in 1998 and they will lose their independence or morph into a professional services company.
Connect easy to get api exposed information from system A to easy to pass information to web service b
WITH AN AMAZING ON SCREEN BUTTON! ONE CLICK!
and it's somehow novel and patentable? Come on. It's an obvious use of a general purpose computing system that is designed exclusively to move data around at the click of an on screen button.
I use AdBlock to selectively stop ads I find offensive. If internet advertisers didn't offend my sensibilities (i.e. Click the monkey... kiss brad pitt and win... Viagra for cheap...) I wouldn't block them.
Most creationists (and you appear to one of them) are hellbent on 'disproving' evolution and 'proving' 'Intelligent Design' (newspeak for Creation) using nothing more than the bible (itself a text of debatable origin).
There's a way to make friends and influence people:
* tell someone they are wrong. * justify it using something that the party in the wrong does not believe. * turn the argument into a game of uh-huh, nuh-huh.
It reminds me of people using the Monster of Jekyll Island to tell their creditors why they don't really owe them money. The book might be right about the banking system, but that doesn't mean it's right about the law.
On the first day, God created the world" is the first sentence of the bible, and to deny that is to deny everything they believe.
Actually, many of the Catholics and other Christians I know have no issue with evolution. Many of them are professors, doctors and professional scientists and engineers. Evolution is viewed by them as natual process. It's part of the nature that God created. So far as the seven day thing, what is "seven days" to a being that is eternal? Perhaps we are not done with the seven days yet? Who knows. It's not an essential part of the faith to believe rigidly that everything was created directly by God saying "Let There Be" and deciding "It Was Good" in seven 24 hour days, no more, no less.
On the other hand, the hardcore fundamentalists who intrepet all things in the bible literally have great issues with evolution. It's unfortunate because by accepting something that they have to know is patently against nature they create a zero sum game in believer's minds where either creationism is correct or evolution is correct. The resulting cognitive dissonance has to eventually cause thier faithful to have doubts about their entire faih. Better to rest on the other less fun truths the Bible teaches: forgiveness, humility, carring for others, compassion, love, etc... Those truths often permiate far deeper than does a tale told thousands of years ago to children to explain why we are here.
They were blown away because they didn't realize it had a desktop and all the fancy programs that Windows has.
You are so right about this. The perception is that Linux is hard to use. KDE and Gnome desktops are not. Distros like Ubuntu, Mephis, SuSE desktop all are a great user experience - and very, very clean and easy. Why not steal a line from Apple and name the UI/desktoop suite something cool like Quartz... Or Crystal... The theme and icon guys are really onto something with their naming.
You could almost agree with the guy if it were not for the fact that Windows alone doesn't have what it takes. Only when combined with a couple other essential MS software packages does it even get close. When comparing platforms, you have to compare the whole stack - and that's where the *ixes are much better prepared to play. Look what's in the box:
Windows: Not much other than IE, Outlook Express and the Accessories. You have to buy other apps and server software to get that vaunted MS platform. Buy Office, Exchange, Windows Server, etc.. before you even get close to having all the goodies. And when you do have them look out - you are locked in.
Linux: Very deep pool of applications, apis and development tools for whatever you pay or not up front.
The reason why MS is vunerable is that the platform does not cost $200 (cost of XP Pro license). It actually is more in the neighborhood of $450-$700 per workstation once you add the server side CALs and the office licenses. When you start looking at TCO, it's not even close unless you buy into using a false premise or start adding in soft cost guestimates to close the chasm between Linux and MS or for that matter Sun.
If Google can be gamed, I shudder to think what kind of crap you could feed the profs program.
LOL. Tenure.
The only thing worse than a spammer is an RBL scam
on
Should You Trust MAPS?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What do you do when you find out that a domain that gets used is blacklisted by someone for no reason, and they won't take you off the list unless you give them $250?
Unrealistic residual values can bight you depending upon the terms of the lease. If you have to guarantee the residual value and its too high you end up paying the lessor an unexpected sum at the end of the contract. This is a technique used by unscrupulous operators to con people.
It's not an unscrupulous trick. It's buyer stupidity - it is not a win to have to go to court over settlement fees. Leasing companies REALLY DON'T WANT THIS BUSINESS. Smart lessors are banking on you rolling in new gear at the end of the lease and having cash flow from you for another three years. I can't tell you how often I'd have this conversation with CFOs and CIOsat fairly large companies:
Q: Can't you get me a higher residual? A: Yes, we can but you will pay dearly for it at the end of the lease. You don't think the leasing company is going to let you lie to them about the value of what they are leasing you do you?
Q: Caveat Emptor? A: Yes, but the leasing company is going to protect themselves from being lied to up front and from how well you care for their gear.
Q: What do you care you get the commission now. A: Yes I do, but I won't get the commission next time out because you'll hate my guts.
People don't get it. Computers do no work like leasing a car where you get to drive $50,000 car for $399/month for two years instead of buying a $25,000 one on a five year loan. If that Hummer depricieated from $50K to $0 in three years, you would be paying $1200+ per month.
Buy what appreciates, lease what depreciates. Nothing depreciates faster than computers (except possibly fresh vegetables). I can only think of about two scenarios for computers where it makes sense to buy instead of lease:
1) You user fund accounting where everything is purchased based on grants of earmarked funds and your funding source is paying a lump sum so you can buy new computers.
2) The computer will be in service for more than 5 years (think that old 1980s HP box in the back of the data center that runs the ammortization and billing on some ancient capital expenditure). Midrange and mainframes often do this.
When I've sold on lease:
1) Client wants the purchase to be 100% business expense. Lease is rent, and you get no asset back for your money until year 2 or 3 buyout - and when you do it's a laptop you paid $1 or $40 for...
2) Client wants to ammortize a large project over time. I.E. $500,000K in hardware and $500,000K in services for a rollout.
3) Client wants to eliminate disposal issues.
5) IT wants to enforce a lifecycle policy to keep worn out obsolete junk.
A few notes:
Data is where the real value is... not on desktops and laptops. If it were not what was on the hard drive for sub $1000 machines.
Leasing has nothing to do with who fixes the gear. You can roll your own by having a bank or leasing company do the paper and someone else sell/install. It's managed services, not leasing where you buy installation, support, PC etc... all from one vendor for a low monthly fee:) Managed services can rock and can suck - it all hinges on allowing your vendor to operate in a way where they win (make a profit) and you win (get reliability and fast response). Negotiating the margin to the bone with managed service companies is really really stupid - it will always cost you because the managed service company staffs based on budget, not on mean time before failure and incident rate.
Dollar buyout or 5%, 7% and 15% residual buyout programs make lost/damaged equipment no big deal. I did a rollout once where we replaced laptops. If an old laptop wasn't turned in the fee was a whopping $40. The cost of boxing and shipping the laptop was $30.
If you do lease and opt for a high residual value, you have to be very good at asset management. If your company culture is loosey-goosey with property or money, don't lease. It really sucks to have to buy out a bunch of obsolete $1400 laptops for $500 a piece.
Yesterday I was discussing this case with a friend who is a VP at a major broadcast media company based out of Indianapolis. His perspective on the case was chilling:
Peer to Peer has the potential to eventually make it possible for individuals to run their own broadcast media because it makes the cost of bandwidth trivial. We could be put out of business by hundreds of people running media outlets out of their basements.
This whole battle never made sense until he explained the major media perpective - they are very afraid of what happens when you are able to bake yur own shows and then stream or podcast them. Right now, most individuals can't afford the bandwidth... but as the newer P2Ps become more popular... the cost of the bandwidth isn't the issue any more. And when anyone can crank out a program... at decent quality... it becomes very hard for large corporations to compete successfully.
Vietnam was not actually a defensive war for the US, though it was sold as that, and we fought to get rid of the North Vietnamese government.
Selective history. Viet Nam was a proxy war gone wrong between the communist east and the west. When America went in, the Chinese and Russians were supporting the enemy. Syria and Iran are NOT EVEN IN THE SAME LEAGUE AS THE COMMUNIST BLOCK OF OLD. We were dealing with a well funded, well equipped enemy. Then there's the fact the North Vietnamese were revolutionaries - not the standing government. which was not present in Iraq at all.
Iraq != Viet Nam
You really have drunk the koolaid. People didn't heckle Vietnam soldiers in public.
That's why my Dad has a uniform in the closet that is ruined from having excrement and paint dumped on him when he got home in 1970.
We are losing this war. What makes you say otherwise? This war was lost before it started because it's just like Vietnam: an excuse for a longterm regional military action, run by delusional, unaccountable incompetents.
Nice proof there. I'd say we are winning hands down at this point - The fact elections were held. The fact that the Iraqis are fielding a competent army now. The fact that Saddam is not in power. The fact the best the enemy can muster is a roadside bomb that kills civilians and turns them on the enemy. Incidentally, anyone who gets elected President of the United States two terms straight is plenty competent - weather you like them personally or not.
As for the no crying Cronkite - there's not one because this is not a Vietnam war in any way.
As far as "support" goes, remember that Nixon won in 1972 by a landslide, before his crimes (including the war) turned the public against him
Yeah, and that reason was that it finished it's plotline.
Agreed. The plotline was the reason that you could watch B5 week after week. It made up for the occasional bad episode or cringe inducing incident. It also led to rabid fans who kept the show going an extra two years. The reason year 5 wasn't the best is that it was uncertain that there was to be a year 5 so JMS sped up the plotline in year 4 leading to... the last season being kind of weak.
We're not going to see the hundreds-thousands strong marches on Washington that we saw in 1970, but that's because Americans don't communicate that way any more. Instead, we're going to see Republicans take a big hit in Congress in 2006.
here's why we don't have protests in the streets:
Iraq != VietNam
Nothing is the same:
* Viet Nam was a defensive war (keep the commies out). Iraq is offensive (get rid of Saddam) * Casualties are an order of magnitude different. The rate at which people are dying in Iraq is much, much lower. * Iraq is a war, VietNam was never an official war. * We are winning this war. In Viet Nam, the war was lost before it started because we were defending a hated governement. * Americans are supporting our soldiers, airmen and sailors - and treating them like the young heroes they are. Go heckle a soldier in a public place - and this time, the crowd will kik your ass instead of joining in.
Comparing Iraq and Vietnam doesn't work. They simply not the same thing and the public dynamics are totally different.
So far as the Democrats go, they are still precieved as being out of the mainstream and far too liberal on social issues to do more than win a few seats. Impeaching Bush is pipe dream. Approval rating does not indicate support for a President - it only is a measure of how people think he's doing. I might not like the job he's doing, but it does not mean that people want him out.
Why is it that that the government always wants a magic back door into any digital communication method ? the crypto horse left the barn ten years ago and has had three generations of kids now. It's a little late.
This guy acts like they were stealing the money from him.
Had they not been caught, it is likely that they may have stuck the cardholder with the bill in the end. Merchants don't roll over that easily anymore.
Somehow, I am reminded of the to date larges IP issue in software ever: The GIF patent. And it was not an open source issue.
There is no logic in assuming that open source software is any more or less likely to infringe on a patent. With open source, at least you know what you are getting, and there is an accessible history of development - meaning that you are more likely to have a prior art defense - or show that there is nothing novel about whatever idea is in question.
Even though you have a patent it does not mean that patent is valid.
Nobody who understands PKI (and is being honest) actually believes in it, just clueless media providers (and the techies who take advantage of them by building DRM).
What is sad is that this is true. The entire content industry has lost it's collective marbles and wasted every dollar spent. Interesting point, too that the techies building DRM are not ethically sound. DRM really is a massive excercise in snake oil sales.
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As a veteran of selling on TCO, I've always got a kick out of these studies because they are so disconnected from reality. How can something that is like getting a five course buffet-style dinner for free somehow cost more than buying a meal a la carte, one dish at a time? I suppose it's the fact you've got to help yourself at the Linux buffet while they'll spoon feed you over at MS (and they really don't spoonfeed).
Linux has five advantages that simply render the conversation moot:
Cost of licenses
Customizability
Training Costs
Security
Out of box functionality
Linux licensing costs are self-explanatory. Hard to beat zero.
Linux is completely customizable. You can change anything and everything to fit your need.
MCSE certs are expensive. Linux certs are less so. Conversions from windows end users to linux are fairly painless. Sorry, Yankee, but learning how to operate a one windowing user interface is pretty easy when you are familiar with another.
Linux Security isn't perfect - but it's a quantum leap from Windows.
Where Windows cannot compete is with the out of the box capabilites of most every Linux distro. With Windows, you have to purchase thousands of dollars of software licenses to do what I can with my free download of Mephis or whatever. End user software is included. So is Server software. I'm out a minimum of $300 just to be able to do basic productivity. All those CALs add up with Windows.
One obvious reason is that the GPL is slightly too restrictive for OpenSolaris - not all hardware vendors want to have to release source, which coding to a GPL'd driver interface would almost certainly require.
What flavor Kool-Aid are you drinking?
Hardware manufacturers will be highly unlikely to even care about Solaris on x86 because it has a market share that is a rounding fo OS/2 let alone Linux. Sun is simply using fear of GPL to hide the fact they sat on their butts when the battle for market share was being waged. At least they have handled it better than SCO.
Reality is that Sun's Unix license probably eliminates them directly open sourcing Solaris. Sun should be where they are today 5 or six years ago back when Linux had immense unrealized potential that Solaris could deliver on. Today, there's very little of consequence that I can't do on Linux or BSD that I can on Solaris. Don't even start on "high-end this" and "high-end that". Look what IBM's been doing with Linux for high end.
Sun lost this battle in 1998 and they will lose their independence or morph into a professional services company.
Is anyone else sick of this kind of patent:
Connect easy to get api exposed information from system A
to easy to pass information to web service b
WITH AN AMAZING ON SCREEN BUTTON! ONE CLICK!
and it's somehow novel and patentable? Come on. It's an obvious use of a general purpose computing system that is designed exclusively to move data around at the click of an on screen button.
I use AdBlock to selectively stop ads I find offensive. If internet advertisers didn't offend my sensibilities (i.e. Click the monkey... kiss brad pitt and win... Viagra for cheap...) I wouldn't block them.
Most creationists (and you appear to one of them) are hellbent on 'disproving' evolution and 'proving' 'Intelligent Design' (newspeak for Creation) using nothing more than the bible (itself a text of debatable origin).
There's a way to make friends and influence people:
* tell someone they are wrong.
* justify it using something that the party in the wrong does not believe.
* turn the argument into a game of uh-huh, nuh-huh.
It reminds me of people using the Monster of Jekyll Island to tell their creditors why they don't really owe them money. The book might be right about the banking system, but that doesn't mean it's right about the law.
What could possibly go wrong here:
Putting a battery powered electronic trigger locking device on a police officer's sidearm that can be remotely disabled.
Making a consumer product with a built in self destruct mechanism!
Creating a Movie player that can be disabled by using it to watch a movie!
Making a DVD player where you can buy a disc and watch it three times! Profit$!
Let's make a product with known defects and then not back the warranty!
On the first day, God created the world" is the first sentence of the bible, and to deny that is to deny everything they believe.
Actually, many of the Catholics and other Christians I know have no issue with evolution. Many of them are professors, doctors and professional scientists and engineers. Evolution is viewed by them as natual process. It's part of the nature that God created. So far as the seven day thing, what is "seven days" to a being that is eternal? Perhaps we are not done with the seven days yet? Who knows. It's not an essential part of the faith to believe rigidly that everything was created directly by God saying "Let There Be" and deciding "It Was Good" in seven 24 hour days, no more, no less.
On the other hand, the hardcore fundamentalists who intrepet all things in the bible literally have great issues with evolution. It's unfortunate because by accepting something that they have to know is patently against nature they create a zero sum game in believer's minds where either creationism is correct or evolution is correct. The resulting cognitive dissonance has to eventually cause thier faithful to have doubts about their entire faih. Better to rest on the other less fun truths the Bible teaches: forgiveness, humility, carring for others, compassion, love, etc... Those truths often permiate far deeper than does a tale told thousands of years ago to children to explain why we are here.
They were blown away because they didn't realize it had a desktop and all the fancy programs that Windows has.
You are so right about this. The perception is that Linux is hard to use. KDE and Gnome desktops are not. Distros like Ubuntu, Mephis, SuSE desktop all are a great user experience - and very, very clean and easy. Why not steal a line from Apple and name the UI/desktoop suite something cool like Quartz... Or Crystal... The theme and icon guys are really onto something with their naming.
You could almost agree with the guy if it were not for the fact that Windows alone doesn't have what it takes. Only when combined with a couple other essential MS software packages does it even get close. When comparing platforms, you have to compare the whole stack - and that's where the *ixes are much better prepared to play. Look what's in the box:
Windows: Not much other than IE, Outlook Express and the Accessories. You have to buy other apps and server software to get that vaunted MS platform. Buy Office, Exchange, Windows Server, etc.. before you even get close to having all the goodies. And when you do have them look out - you are locked in.
Linux: Very deep pool of applications, apis and development tools for whatever you pay or not up front.
The reason why MS is vunerable is that the platform does not cost $200 (cost of XP Pro license). It actually is more in the neighborhood of $450-$700 per workstation once you add the server side CALs and the office licenses. When you start looking at TCO, it's not even close unless you buy into using a false premise or start adding in soft cost guestimates to close the chasm between Linux and MS or for that matter Sun.
If Google can be gamed, I shudder to think what kind of crap you could feed the profs program.
LOL. Tenure.
What do you do when you find out that a domain that gets used is blacklisted by someone for no reason, and they won't take you off the list unless you give them $250?
Unrealistic residual values can bight you depending upon the terms of the lease. If you have to guarantee the residual value and its too high you end up paying the lessor an unexpected sum at the end of the contract. This is a technique used by unscrupulous operators to con people.
It's not an unscrupulous trick. It's buyer stupidity - it is not a win to have to go to court over settlement fees. Leasing companies REALLY DON'T WANT THIS BUSINESS. Smart lessors are banking on you rolling in new gear at the end of the lease and having cash flow from you for another three years. I can't tell you how often I'd have this conversation with CFOs and CIOsat fairly large companies:
Q: Can't you get me a higher residual?
A: Yes, we can but you will pay dearly for it at the end of the lease. You don't think the leasing company is going to let you lie to them about the value of what they are leasing you do you?
Q: Caveat Emptor?
A: Yes, but the leasing company is going to protect themselves from being lied to up front and from how well you care for their gear.
Q: What do you care you get the commission now.
A: Yes I do, but I won't get the commission next time out because you'll hate my guts.
People don't get it. Computers do no work like leasing a car where you get to drive $50,000 car for $399/month for two years instead of buying a $25,000 one on a five year loan. If that Hummer depricieated from $50K to $0 in three years, you would be paying $1200+ per month.
Buy what appreciates, lease what depreciates. Nothing depreciates faster than computers (except possibly fresh vegetables). I can only think of about two scenarios for computers where it makes sense to buy instead of lease:
:) Managed services can rock and can suck - it all hinges on allowing your vendor to operate in a way where they win (make a profit) and you win (get reliability and fast response). Negotiating the margin to the bone with managed service companies is really really stupid - it will always cost you because the managed service company staffs based on budget, not on mean time before failure and incident rate.
1) You user fund accounting where everything is purchased based on grants of earmarked funds and your funding source is paying a lump sum so you can buy new computers.
2) The computer will be in service for more than 5 years (think that old 1980s HP box in the back of the data center that runs the ammortization and billing on some ancient capital expenditure). Midrange and mainframes often do this.
When I've sold on lease:
1) Client wants the purchase to be 100% business expense. Lease is rent, and you get no asset back for your money until year 2 or 3 buyout - and when you do it's a laptop you paid $1 or $40 for...
2) Client wants to ammortize a large project over time. I.E. $500,000K in hardware and $500,000K in services for a rollout.
3) Client wants to eliminate disposal issues.
5) IT wants to enforce a lifecycle policy to keep worn out obsolete junk.
A few notes:
Data is where the real value is... not on desktops and laptops. If it were not what was on the hard drive for sub $1000 machines.
Leasing has nothing to do with who fixes the gear. You can roll your own by having a bank or leasing company do the paper and someone else sell/install. It's managed services, not leasing where you buy installation, support, PC etc... all from one vendor for a low monthly fee
Dollar buyout or 5%, 7% and 15% residual buyout programs make lost/damaged equipment no big deal. I did a rollout once where we replaced laptops. If an old laptop wasn't turned in the fee was a whopping $40. The cost of boxing and shipping the laptop was $30.
If you do lease and opt for a high residual value, you have to be very good at asset management. If your company culture is loosey-goosey with property or money, don't lease. It really sucks to have to buy out a bunch of obsolete $1400 laptops for $500 a piece.
America is a country where companies don't make anything anymore.
Agriculture, entertainment and industry account for a huge chunk of the US economy.
It's twilight of the empire, folks. If you're young, start learning another language.
Half empty, eh?
With the ad analogy, what is the difference between SEO companies and spam?
A true SEO company does nothing other than ensure a client website is highly ranked for the keyphrases that really do cover the content of the webite.
A Search Engine Spammer gets sites ranked for terms that get lots of traffic but are not necisarily related.
One of the most powerful negotiating tools known to man is the takeaway. That's where you simply say I can't do this and start packing up.
9 out of 10 times they blink. The other one time, you were really going to get screwed.
Yesterday I was discussing this case with a friend who is a VP at a major broadcast media company based out of Indianapolis. His perspective on the case was chilling:
Peer to Peer has the potential to eventually make it possible for individuals to run their own broadcast media because it makes the cost of bandwidth trivial. We could be put out of business by hundreds of people running media outlets out of their basements.
This whole battle never made sense until he explained the major media perpective - they are very afraid of what happens when you are able to bake yur own shows and then stream or podcast them. Right now, most individuals can't afford the bandwidth... but as the newer P2Ps become more popular... the cost of the bandwidth isn't the issue any more. And when anyone can crank out a program... at decent quality... it becomes very hard for large corporations to compete successfully.
Vietnam was not actually a defensive war for the US, though it was sold as that, and we fought to get rid of the North Vietnamese government.
Selective history. Viet Nam was a proxy war gone wrong between the communist east and the west. When America went in, the Chinese and Russians were supporting the enemy. Syria and Iran are NOT EVEN IN THE SAME LEAGUE AS THE COMMUNIST BLOCK OF OLD. We were dealing with a well funded, well equipped enemy. Then there's the fact the North Vietnamese were revolutionaries - not the standing government. which was not present in Iraq at all.
Iraq != Viet Nam
You really have drunk the koolaid. People didn't heckle Vietnam soldiers in public.
That's why my Dad has a uniform in the closet that is ruined from having excrement and paint dumped on him when he got home in 1970.
We are losing this war. What makes you say otherwise? This war was lost before it started because it's just like Vietnam: an excuse for a longterm regional military action, run by delusional, unaccountable incompetents.
Nice proof there. I'd say we are winning hands down at this point - The fact elections were held. The fact that the Iraqis are fielding a competent army now. The fact that Saddam is not in power. The fact the best the enemy can muster is a roadside bomb that kills civilians and turns them on the enemy. Incidentally, anyone who gets elected President of the United States two terms straight is plenty competent - weather you like them personally or not.
As for the no crying Cronkite - there's not one because this is not a Vietnam war in any way.
As far as "support" goes, remember that Nixon won in 1972 by a landslide, before his crimes (including the war) turned the public against him
We'll see if history repeats itself.
Folks don't mind paying $50+ per hour for their vehicle repairs, but nobody wants to pay that sort of money to get their operating system de-loused.
It's not the $50 per hour - it's the fact I paid $25K for my car and $500 for my PC that is the issue here.
PCs are at a disposable price point. The only thing fueling PC repair is the value of the data stored on a computer.
Yeah, and that reason was that it finished it's plotline.
Agreed. The plotline was the reason that you could watch B5 week after week. It made up for the occasional bad episode or cringe inducing incident. It also led to rabid fans who kept the show going an extra two years. The reason year 5 wasn't the best is that it was uncertain that there was to be a year 5 so JMS sped up the plotline in year 4 leading to... the last season being kind of weak.
We're not going to see the hundreds-thousands strong marches on Washington that we saw in 1970, but that's because Americans don't communicate that way any more. Instead, we're going to see Republicans take a big hit in Congress in 2006.
here's why we don't have protests in the streets:
Iraq != VietNam
Nothing is the same:
* Viet Nam was a defensive war (keep the commies out). Iraq is offensive (get rid of Saddam)
* Casualties are an order of magnitude different. The rate at which people are dying in Iraq is much, much lower.
* Iraq is a war, VietNam was never an official war.
* We are winning this war. In Viet Nam, the war was lost before it started because we were defending a hated governement.
* Americans are supporting our soldiers, airmen and sailors - and treating them like the young heroes they are. Go heckle a soldier in a public place - and this time, the crowd will kik your ass instead of joining in.
Comparing Iraq and Vietnam doesn't work. They simply not the same thing and the public dynamics are totally different.
So far as the Democrats go, they are still precieved as being out of the mainstream and far too liberal on social issues to do more than win a few seats. Impeaching Bush is pipe dream. Approval rating does not indicate support for a President - it only is a measure of how people think he's doing. I might not like the job he's doing, but it does not mean that people want him out.
Why is it that that the government always wants a magic back door into any digital communication method ? the crypto horse left the barn ten years ago and has had three generations of kids now. It's a little late.
This guy acts like they were stealing the money from him.
Had they not been caught, it is likely that they may have stuck the cardholder with the bill in the end. Merchants don't roll over that easily anymore.
Somehow, I am reminded of the to date larges IP issue in software ever: The GIF patent. And it was not an open source issue.
There is no logic in assuming that open source software is any more or less likely to infringe on a patent. With open source, at least you know what you are getting, and there is an accessible history of development - meaning that you are more likely to have a prior art defense - or show that there is nothing novel about whatever idea is in question.
Even though you have a patent it does not mean that patent is valid.
Nobody who understands PKI (and is being honest) actually believes in it, just clueless media providers (and the techies who take advantage of them by building DRM).
What is sad is that this is true. The entire content industry has lost it's collective marbles and wasted every dollar spent. Interesting point, too that the techies building DRM are not ethically sound. DRM really is a massive excercise in snake oil sales.
Information still wants to be free.