Microsoft has made no illusions about trying to create a walled garden with MSN, much like AOL. AOL has been doing similar things for sometime with Instant Messaging. It's suspect blocking specific browsers, but I can see the logic in wanting to develop websites for only one platform. There is a definate cost benefit.
Have you ever tried negotiating with Microsoft or Oracle or Verisign for that matter? I have. It's not much fun for a company with "only" 100m in annual revenue.
Yeah some HUGE companies can do it, but small and medium sized companies are SOL.
Lots of small and medium sized companies would love to get away from fom paying big money to the moonpolists, but they don't have the money to hire new staff to support open source products, or the money to re-train their existing staff.
You have to make a choice to specialize, and lets face there are a lot more readily available support resources for Oracle and Microsoft than for MySQL and Linux.
Bottom line: Most companies aren't capable of supporting the staff to maintain redundant/diversified software.
I will not try to defend 50 years of American foreign policy in this forum.
But I will say that American policy has often been based upon a choice of evils: Iraq vs. Iran for example.
Again we are faced with a choice of evils: inaction vs. action. For all of it's failures America has tried negotiation and diplomacy to end the conflicts in Palestine, and to bring the culprits for the actions of 9/11/01 to trial in American courts. BTW the idea of trying them in an international court is ridiculous; they are responsible 6000 murders on United States soil and should face justice in the United States.
We know inaction will not prevent further violence. What are we left with? We are left with the use of violence to disrupt their activities. Bombing will never end terrorism we know this, the American government knows this, and has said as much.
We have again chosen most palatable solution, not perfect, maybe not even good, but better than any other option.
US Army helicopter pilots fly too fast and low for a Taliban soldier to get a good shot anyway.
Yeah that's what happened in Somalia.
I acknowledge that flying helicopters in an urban area is different from a dessert, but it wouldn't be substantially different from flying in mountainous terrain. Lower speeds and less manueverability.
BTW the Afgans were most successful shooting down Hinds from above. They would place Stingers on peaks and fire down on the helicopters as they navigated the through the terrain.
Re:What can 60 billion dollars buy?
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A New Kind of War
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· Score: 1
Thank you for more unsubstantiated rumors. Some sources might be nice.
1) Security doors to the cockpit which do not allow access from the cabin.
Do you really think the pilots would stay inside their locked cockpit as the passengers and flight attendants were tortured to death until the pilots opened the doors?
2) Sky marshals (i.e) armed guards who sit on the plane to act as a deterrent to hijackings. Do you really think that a bunch of guys with box cutters would have tried something against a guy with a gun? (They used to have these guys about 10 years ago, BTW...)
If the terrorists even get on the plane/train/bus it's already too late. 10 Knife wielding terrorists, already intent on suicide, could easily overpower 1 or 2 gun wielding Sky Marshalls.
Drawing parallels between terrorists and Hitler are inappropriate.
Hitler was the leader of a nation, therefore the nation of Germany was a legitmate target for military strikes.
There are some nations that sponsor terorist activities and those government should be targeted, but the terrorist organizations are self appointed, and not representatives of any specific nation or nationality.
Also quit the lets invade BS. That sort of rhetoric is easy when you're not the one on the ground with a weapon in your hand. I'm a soldier (infantry) and I will be. If my commanders order me to go I will, and I do believe we should retaliate, but when a 17 year old computer geek screams invade all he/she does is look like ignorant asshole.
Actaully WWII was started by the harsh penalties imposed upon Germany by the Allies after WWI.
If Germany had been allowed to rejoin Europe peacefully without those vindictive penalties Hitler probably wouldn't have found such fertile ground for his hateful political views.
I have a degree in Political Science and in my studies I have not discovered a better system of Government than that of the U.S. It's not perfect, but its closer than any other form of government that has ever existed.
The United States Constitution is the most perfect document ever written. If you haven't read it do so.
I could go on a long diatribe about the virtues of the American Presidential democracy over Palimentary democracies, but I won't. This isn't the place.
Just realize that with it's flaws, violence, and political partisanship among them, the U.S., and its government are better than any alternative I've observed. Despite it flaws we're blessed to merely be able to have this discourse. Throughout our lives we take the gifts the U.S. has given us for granted.
Content driven web sites need to learn the same lesson that remote controls taught TV.
If you want to keep a viewer from changing channels make the ads entertaining. Or at least interesting.
Because most people still access the net with modems providing add with Flash or Shockwave isn't a real solution yet, but as DSL/Cable gains in market share that will change.
Ads on the internet may become as entertaining or as informative as the content they support.
IMHO: As a nonprogramming member of an IT deparment. I take certain umbrage with your logic, and attitude.
First of all the leavemethehellalone attitude is why "nonIT" people are in the IT departments. If more IT professionals took the time to communicate with the operations side of a company, and not take the IT is better than (Insert any other department) attitude. This sort of oversight wouldn't be viewed as necessary by CEOs.
This arguement goes both ways. It is important for people from every part of a company to have at least a cursory understanding of what the other departments do including IT.
Fundamentally what is important is to be able to communicate among departments, and having "nonIT" people in IT and "IT" people in operations helps this.
The attitude of: we can also read your email and disclose your interest in collecting lesbian-albino-midget p0rn... if not, we can frame you.
Is the exact attitude that requires "nonIT" the thing that you so passionately hate.
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Microsoft has made no illusions about trying to create a walled garden with MSN, much like AOL.
AOL has been doing similar things for sometime with Instant Messaging.
It's suspect blocking specific browsers, but I can see the logic in wanting to develop websites for only one platform. There is a definate cost benefit.
Have you ever tried negotiating with Microsoft or Oracle or Verisign for that matter? I have. It's not much fun for a company with "only" 100m in annual revenue.
Yeah some HUGE companies can do it, but small and medium sized companies are SOL.
Lots of small and medium sized companies would love to get away from fom paying big money to the moonpolists, but they don't have the money to hire new staff to support open source products, or the money to re-train their existing staff.
You have to make a choice to specialize, and lets face there are a lot more readily available support resources for Oracle and Microsoft than for MySQL and Linux.
Bottom line: Most companies aren't capable of supporting the staff to maintain redundant/diversified software.
I think you miss the point.
I will not try to defend 50 years of American foreign policy in this forum.
But I will say that American policy has often been based upon a choice of evils: Iraq vs. Iran for example.
Again we are faced with a choice of evils: inaction vs. action. For all of it's failures America has tried negotiation and diplomacy to end the conflicts in Palestine, and to bring the culprits for the actions of 9/11/01 to trial in American courts. BTW the idea of trying them in an international court is ridiculous; they are responsible 6000 murders on United States soil and should face justice in the United States.
We know inaction will not prevent further violence. What are we left with? We are left with the use of violence to disrupt their activities. Bombing will never end terrorism we know this, the American government knows this, and has said as much.
We have again chosen most palatable solution, not perfect, maybe not even good, but better than any other option.
US Army helicopter pilots fly too fast and low for a Taliban soldier to get a good shot anyway.
Yeah that's what happened in Somalia.
I acknowledge that flying helicopters in an urban area is different from a dessert, but it wouldn't be substantially different from flying in mountainous terrain.
Lower speeds and less manueverability.
BTW the Afgans were most successful shooting down Hinds from above. They would place Stingers on peaks and fire down on the helicopters as they navigated the through the terrain.
Thank you for more unsubstantiated rumors. Some sources might be nice.
1) Security doors to the cockpit which do not allow access from the cabin.
Do you really think the pilots would stay inside their locked cockpit as the passengers and flight attendants were tortured to death until the pilots opened the doors?
2) Sky marshals (i.e) armed guards who sit on the plane to act as a deterrent to hijackings. Do you really think that a bunch of guys with box cutters would have tried something against a guy with a gun? (They used to have these guys about 10 years ago, BTW...)
If the terrorists even get on the plane/train/bus it's already too late. 10 Knife wielding terrorists, already intent on suicide, could easily overpower 1 or 2 gun wielding Sky Marshalls.
Drawing parallels between terrorists and Hitler are inappropriate.
Hitler was the leader of a nation, therefore the nation of Germany was a legitmate target for military strikes.
There are some nations that sponsor terorist activities and those government should be targeted, but the terrorist organizations are self appointed, and not representatives of any specific nation or nationality.
Also quit the lets invade BS. That sort of rhetoric is easy when you're not the one on the ground with a weapon in your hand. I'm a soldier (infantry) and I will be. If my commanders order me to go I will, and I do believe we should retaliate, but when a 17 year old computer geek screams invade all he/she does is look like ignorant asshole.
First of all when will the recording and movie industries stop treating EVERYONE like a criminal!!!
Secondly I wonder if this will create a black market for older "noncompliant" hard drives?
I'd go out of my way to prevent those bastard from getting access to my hard drive.
With all that fiber, what a LAN party to be had. :)
Last I knew Google was run off of Linux servers.
My company just spent $200k on 2 servers with Solaris 2.6. If you know what you're doing with Linux it can save you a lot of cash.
Actually, the Vatican is an European country and completely controlled by the church.
Actaully WWII was started by the harsh penalties imposed upon Germany by the Allies after WWI.
If Germany had been allowed to rejoin Europe peacefully without those vindictive penalties Hitler probably wouldn't have found such fertile ground for his hateful political views.
I have a degree in Political Science and in my studies I have not discovered a better system of Government than that of the U.S. It's not perfect, but its closer than any other form of government that has ever existed.
The United States Constitution is the most perfect document ever written. If you haven't read it do so.
I could go on a long diatribe about the virtues of the American Presidential democracy over Palimentary democracies, but I won't. This isn't the place.
Just realize that with it's flaws, violence, and political partisanship among them, the U.S., and its government are better than any alternative I've observed. Despite it flaws we're blessed to merely be able to have this discourse. Throughout our lives we take the gifts the U.S. has given us for granted.
And yes I realize I biased.
Content driven web sites need to learn the same lesson that remote controls taught TV. If you want to keep a viewer from changing channels make the ads entertaining. Or at least interesting. Because most people still access the net with modems providing add with Flash or Shockwave isn't a real solution yet, but as DSL/Cable gains in market share that will change. Ads on the internet may become as entertaining or as informative as the content they support.
IMHO: As a nonprogramming member of an IT deparment. I take certain umbrage with your logic, and attitude.
First of all the leavemethehellalone attitude is why "nonIT" people are in the IT departments. If more IT professionals took the time to communicate with the operations side of a company, and not take the IT is better than (Insert any other department) attitude. This sort of oversight wouldn't be viewed as necessary by CEOs.
This arguement goes both ways. It is important for people from every part of a company to have at least a cursory understanding of what the other departments do including IT.
Fundamentally what is important is to be able to communicate among departments, and having "nonIT" people in IT and "IT" people in operations helps this.
The attitude of:
we can also read your email and disclose your interest in collecting lesbian-albino-midget p0rn... if not, we can frame you.
Is the exact attitude that requires "nonIT" the thing that you so passionately hate.