What you say is true now but AMD could do some real damage though by launching a series of commercials with some catch phrase (think "Intel inside") that plays up the fact that Intel chips are based on a standard developed by AMD. Something to effect of "Why pay more for a processor based on AMD's standard when you could be paying a lot less and using the real McCoy?"
Yep, great idea, and I fully agree. Too bad AMD is the most marketing illiterate company in the world (and this is coming from someone who's been an AMD fan since the first days of the K6). AMD has had literally hundreds or thousands of opportunities to really boost up its public image and brand identity, and they've never capitalized on a single one. Instead we get brilliant ideas like the "2500+" speed rating system, which only confuses instead of clarifies.
All it would take for AMD to increase their worth are a few short, poignant, and well-aimed (network TV) ads to help them ship a few million more units. But for whatever reason, marketing has never been a priority to AMD, and it continues to show in their abysmal market share year after year after year. I really wish they'd change, but they don't show any signs of a desire to do so.
At least it's GSM...albeit at frequencies incompatible with most of the rest of the world.
I get pretty tired of people (mostly Europeans, it seems) constantly talking about GSM as though it were the save-all solution to wireless. It isn't, and it never has been. GSM is good, but it isn't great. CDMA (such as used in the US by Sprint, Qwest, and a few others) is great. GSM runs on TDMA technology, and CDMA is almost always more efficient for splitting up the airwaves than TDMA, since you're packet-tagging transmissions on a frequency instead of time-sharing it. GSM is somewhat less suitable for data transmissions. GSM also gets touted for its 'encryption,' though the A5 encryption is provably broken and flawed (much like WEP for 802.11x).
Moral of story: just because most of the world uses GSM doesn't mean it's ambrosia from the gods. I'd be more interested in seeing a move towards more ubiquitous CDMA (and I'd be most interested in ubiquitous WiFi...*sigh*)
Seriously, when in the history of PCs has this [value rising as parts become rare] ever happened?
All the time. Go look at the price of an "old" Mac G4 cube. Go check out the price of PC100 SODIMM memory at Crucial (approaching $100 for a 256MB stick!). Go check out the price of "old" controller-based modems (i.e. not Winmodems). Just because it happens rarely doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all.
Given this news, I also can't help but wonder if C. S. Lewis's magnum opusTill We Have Faces will ever be turned into a movie. In some ways I think it would be a very very difficult translation; on the other hand, it's a story beyond description. The Lord of the Rings moves imagination and emotion, but Till We Have Faces moves the soul. I don't know if the book could be synthesized into a coherent movie (the ending would take a good deal of finessing by a screen writer), but it would be a sight to behold if it could be done.
Till We Have Faces is one of Lewis's lesser known books, but virtually everyone who has read it agrees it was Lewis's finest book, and perhaps one of the finest books of the 20th century (and an undiscovered jewel at that).
It also looks like HarperCollins is spinning this as a way of exploiting the Harry Potter popularity and is planning 'revised' Cristianity-free versions of the books as well.
Last I heard the rumor wasn't true. This would anger more than just Lewis fans. I would expect and hope that any serious literary scholars would flood the publisher's inbox with angry letters, as revisionism like this is a Very Bad Thing. It's the sort of thing that Orwell alluded to in 1984; although the motives would be drastically different, the end product would be sinister nonetheless.
Revisionism isn't taken lightly, especially not when the author is as prominent as Lewis. HarperCollins probably isn't too serious about this, though. They'd alienate their Zondervan wing (the largest Christian publisher in the world) and without a doubt invite copyright lawsuits galore from the keepers of Lewis's estate.
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing--and I'm a longtime atheist--but it seemed a lot less like "fantasy" and a lot more like "religious propaganda."
I hear this a lot, and I'm genuinely curious (not flamebaiting) about something: if you see the Narnia chronicles as "religious propaganda," would you also grant that Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy is "atheist (or secularist) propaganda"? If so, we have no quarrel. If not, I'm again genuinely curious as to why not, if you've the time to entertain my question.
Xtian
One other small thing: It should be 'Xian,' not 'Xtian.' The 't' in the latter is redundant, as the 'X' abbreviation is for Christ (from the greek 'Christos,' which begins in a chi [Roman letter X]). I've found that many atheists and Christian fundamentalists alike are disappointed when they learn that words like 'Xmas' are not a removal of 'Christ' from the word but that the X is an old and oft-used shorthand for Christ, including in numerous Christian sources (Christ is frequently denoted as 'Xp' or chi rho in Christian iconography).
Cool! This is good news. As a fan of C. S. Lewis' work generally and also the Narnia chronicles specifically, I think this will give these books the same rich setting enjoyed by LOTR. Tolkien and Lewis did weave much of the same setting into their books. As I was watching LOTR:ROTK last night (what an **awesome** movie) I did think to myself several times, "Wow, if they can make LOTR look this beautiful, the Narnia chronicles could be made just as beautiful."
This is also good news because it means the movies are finally taking shape. They were announced almost two years ago, but there hasn't been much word on them since.
This will, of course, lend to one major disclaimer for all Tolkien and LOTR fans who haven't read the Narnia chronicles: the movies will seem similar in setting, goal, and underlying theme. That having been said, they're drastically different stories. While there will be numerous similarities (which ignorant reviewers will peck at Narnia for, unfortunately) Tolkien was setting out to tell a story, create a world, and totally immerse the reader in Middle Earth. Lewis had more apologetic aims with his books, and this is by no means a secret fact. Hopefully they don't temper this angle too much with the movies. Certainly not everybody is thrilled by an underlying Christian theme, but removing it would make the story anemic.
Even so, Lewis' books are strong strong works on their own, and they deserve as rich a treatment as LOTR received. The two books/series are widely regarded as some of the best fantasy work written in the 20th century. That Lewis and Tolkien were friends sweetens the deal.
Employees' only compulsions to work there are their own personal preferences.
Wrong. You're assuming an open availability of jobs, which doesn't exist either in the real world or any theoretical ones. The job market is terrible, especially for people who lack education or skills to get a modestly paying job (>$18000/yr).
There are several reasons a person might have to work for Wal-Mart or a supplier. They may have no useful education or job skills to work anywhere else in their area, there may be no other employer in their area that is hiring, or Wal-Mart might be (believe it or not) the highest paying employer they can work at. And before you say, "Ah, but they could move!" no, they very well may not be able to. They may lack the money to move, they may not want to remove their children from their school, they may need to care for sick/elderly friends or family members, etc.
It is possible to be "forced" to have to work somewhere. Wal-Mart knows this applies to more than a small percentage of its employees, and treats them accordingly.
Wal-Mart's low prices sustain development in third world countries.
That's an equivocation that conservatives often make. Jobs being produced in third world countries and factories being built does not mean "development" is taking place, if the jobs being created do not pay a high enough wage that employees are bettering their lives through working there, or if the factories are not running cleanly enough that they are polluting the area and causing health and environmental harm to the area.
Because dealing with Dell's offshore support people is a nightmare. I have an Inspiron 8100 and a few months ago the AC adaptor died. Pretty frickin' easy to diagnose IMHO. Unfortunately, Dell didn't think so. I was literally on the phone for 45 minutes talking to a girl who made me jump through EVERY hoop possible.
Hmm, that sucks. It pays to get good warranties and know the exact legal protections to which you are entitled. Two and a half years ago when I bought my Inspiron 4000 (~$2000) I paid an additional $500 for Dell's most expensive support package. Among other things, I'm entitled to on-site no-questions-asked replacement of a part in 48-72 hours. I've talked to Indian phone support, but they ask me, "Would you be willing to go through a diagnostic test first?" If I say yes, the on-site techs get dispatched quicker. But I have the option of saying "No, I want a technician dispatched to my location right away" and get it. Since Dell is nice enough to provide legal documents with their warranties, it would be a quick and easy trip to the local courthouse should Dell ever fail to honor their guarantee. "Well, you see, judge, Dell's own lawyers say right here in Clause III.A.3 that their coverage is..."
Umm, Slash already uses gzip, as Taco has said a couple dozen times in the past. Even so, if you get bandwidth savings with XHTML/CSS over HTML 3.2, you'll get more savings when it's gzipped. People can want CSS support without being "fetishists" and gzip isn't the solve-all solution to bandwidth issues. Proper code + gzip equals big savings, as most major sites have discovered.
If you want your old HTML 3.2 version, I'm sure the Palm version will stay available for a while.
It's important to note that the offending company did not even have the slightest amount of decency to apologize, not that I'm surprised.
So what happens to the company now? Do they just get off scott free having harassed this guy for a few months with advertisements for snake oil? Doesn't Canada have an equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate their deceptive advertising? I say give the guy who made the threats some community service time and some anger management classes, but then have the Canadian authorities haul the asses of the company into court.
Besides, everybody knows the only reliable penis enhancement device is a Penis Mightier.
This is long long long long long overdue. Just because HTML 3.2 "worked" didn't make it good, or right. A proper application of [X]HTML and CSS can be a huge bandwidth saver. It looks like Google also updated their design yesterday or today - no doubt to subtly cut down on the huge amounts of bandwidth they serve out. More importantly for Slashdot, however, is that writing their code in an open and updated fashion really opens up the market for the kinds of people that can access the site, and that's never a bad thing. So congratulations on starting this project, and I hope it gets underway soon!
> The GSM mobile telephony system (used everywhere > but except in USA and colonies, may God protect > their industries from competition), does indeed > support cryptography since its very design.
Hmm...Too bad the GSM A5 encryption is terribly flawed and easily cracked. From the linked article:
In this paper we describe a new attack on A5/1, which is based on subtle flaws in the tap structure of the registers, their noninvertible clocking mechanism, and their frequent resets. The attack can find the key in less than a second on a single PC with 128 MB RAM and two 73 GB hard disks, by analysing the output of the A5/1 algorithm in the first two minutes of the
conversation.
And you're apparently also under the impression that GSM is better. Just because Europe uses it doesn't mean it's the best, and just because a few U.S. companies have gone with the superior CDMA technology doesn't make them monopolies.
Forbes is a Microsoft shill anyway...so no need to worry about what they say, as all the corporate and business types who read this know this too, and are vividly aware of the licensing fights going on, and are anti-Microsoft themselves, and are vividly aware that Cisco is doing a bad thing and that those poor kids in the FSF are really getting portrayed in a bad light.
Yeah, real good attitude. Keep ignoring Forbes: it's that mentality that keeps Forbes readers ignoring Linux and free software.
The free software community really needs to understand that when you're the underdog, you want to ALWAYS be portraying yourself in the best light possible and holding your head up high, even when people take really cheap shots at you. If the free software movement keeps miring itself in the mud and digging in its heels, it's going to continue to have a very difficult time growing.
This article will be met with much dispute on Slashdot, and rightly so, to an extent. However, there are a few well-made points in the article, and there are some things that the FSF has clearly gone overboard (again) with. Take this quote from FSF Director Bradley Kuhn:
"And if they [Cisco] balk? Kuhn raises the threat of legal action. 'We defend the rights protected by the GPL license,' he says. 'We have legal teeth, so if someone does not share and share alike, we can make them obey the rules.'"
Make them obey the rules? Yes, technically that's what legal enforcement of a license does, but Brad could definetely have phrased it in a way that didn't make the FSF look like a schoolyard bully. A better way to say this would be: "We would, if necessary, defend the code-sharing clauses of the GPL, but we would of course want to work with Cisco before that to have them see the benefits of voluntarily sharing this code, as many other companies have done."
I've met Brad before, and while he's a decent and friendly guy, he's pretty deeply into the free software zealotry. As has been hashed and rehashed multiple times, the zealotry that exists within certain wings of the free software movement is a prime reason why many businesses are still extremely skeptical about the whole free software/Linux thing. Making wild-eyed threats like this and having them appear in Forbes (which more than a few CFOs and CIOs read) is a pretty big black eye for the FSF and the free software movement...
The XBox is not a business success. Microsoft loses money on the whole XBox operation, even after collecting fees from game developers. Lots of money.
Every time this gets discussed, people forget something important: Microsoft has all the money in the world to burn. Going into the console market, Microsoft knew that it would lose money on the first XBox. And the second. Maybe even the third. But Microsoft has way more staying power than Sony or Nintendo, and they can literally run the clock out on their competition. Here's how it goes for Microsoft:
1) Enter the console market, round #1. 1a) Acknowledge you will lose all your money, which you can cover, because you have tens of billions of dollars in liquid cash assets, plus your normal multi-billion dollar profits from year-to-year operations (which alone can easily cover all the losses incurred by entering this market). 2) By doing 1, you've split the market up and taken away from competitors A and B (Sony and Nintendo). 3) By doing 2, you've taken money and time away from competitors A and B. 3a) Because of 2, Competitors A and B now have significantly smaller marketshare than before you entered, and must invest more of their own money to try to keep up. 4) Acknowledge that the console market is far and away the biggest revenue source for Competitors A and B. Acknowledge that the console market is not your own biggest revenue source, and thus can sustain short-term injury. 5) Enter the console market, round #2 (XBox 2, PlayStation 3, GameCube 2). 6) By doing 5, you've even further split the market up and taken away from competitors A and B (Sony and Nintendo). 6a) By doing 5, you've taken away even more money and time away from competitors A and B. 7) Because of 2, Competitors A and B now have even smaller marketshares than before you entered, and must invest more of their own money to try to keep up. 7a) Because of fierce competition in round #1, Competitors A and B are making less money per console and game sale and spending more money than before trying to remain competitive. 8) Repeat steps 1-7a indefinetely 8a) Continue to be able to fund your efforts from other, larger revenue chains (computer software sales) and your liquid cash assets. 9) Competitor A or B runs out of money, and loses. 10) Repeat steps 1-8a 11) Remaining Competitor from step 9 runs out of money, and loses. 12) Victory.
It's a very simple, precise, and terrifying business model. And it will be effective.
GSM is simply the best in international terms. Very few countries use CDMA whether it's better or not and that number (apart from Iraq) is dropping. I expect that in the US most will eventually switch over to GSM eventually.
Probably not. The GSM Consortium is eventually going to have to get off its ass and release a GSM 2 spec. CDMA is a superior technology, hands down. It always has been. GSM uses TDMA, which is more ubiquitous but far far far less efficient. GSM works in much of the world because with most companies there's a small physical space and the populated areas are densely packed. But time-sharing the radio waves rather than packet-tagging them is archaic; c.f. Sprint PCS in the U.S. providing far superior Internet and messaging capabilities than its GSM competitors (too bad their customer service sucks).
GSM isn't the holy grail of mobile technology, as many Europeans and Asians want to believe. I'm not trying to sound condescending, but just because what you have works doesn't mean its good.
And of course, all of this could be rendered moot if a cellular-over-802.11x ever gets rolling. That would really be something, but there are many hurdles to clear yet...
Because the mass media has no interest in overthrowing the corrupt big-business driven world blah blah blah
Parsing error: Too many typical conspiracy/Slashdot-cynicism words in one sentence. Please remove the ad hominem text cited above and try again, proceeding with logic this time instead of hysterics.
Seriously, is this the best we can do? Of course there are vile reasons behind Diebold's getting away with this, but do you have to resort to this tired, adolescent "mass media loves big corporations loves evil government" schtick to get your point across?
I'll give you a hint: when you start your arguments like this, absolutely nobody listens to what follows.
The holdup in the fed was over a foreign business interest owning and operating a piece of "critical infrastructure" like a fibre optic grid. Big deal. There are two relevant counter-points to such an argument:
First, there are several other large backbone companies that are still very much U.S.-owned: Qwest, Level3, UUNet/WorldCom/MCI, C&W, etc. In fact, a handy breakdown of major backbone providers is available at http://navigators.com/isp.html. Global Crossing is a small piece in a big pie.
Second, regardless of who "owns" the network, what finally matters is who has access to the physical equipment. If, in some bizarre act of twisted politics the government of Singapore decides to use STT to hijack the American telecom system, all the U.S. government has to do is break down the doors of the buildings housing all the routers. It's impossible for a foreign company to provide "remote" cable connectivity because of the physical element - all they're really doing is paying people to run the network and taking in the profits.
Regardless, however, it's reasonably certain that whatever "deal" was brokered between the U.S. government and STT probably involves an open-ended permit for monitoring traffic on the wire. Yet another gift brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security...
Dear Damage Studios,
Thank you for providing some clarity regarding your company's overall attitude and leadership. I was pleased to read Chris DiBona's proud announcement to Slashdot about your company's two-cent contribution to the SCO and Linux fiasco, in the form of refusing to hire any SCO employees. Rest assured, due to your childish stand, you have just guaranteed that I will never spend a dime of my money on a single product your company ever produces. (Unless, of course, you wish to revoke your stance and offer an apology, or something else that equally proves you collectively to have an ounce of maturity in this matter.)
Why is it that every time these "high-end" power supplies get compared, the most high-end one always gets ignored? PC Power and Cooling has long manufactured the world's best power supplies. They're the Ferrari or the Moto Guzzi of the power supply world. Yeah, lots of Asian manufacturing firms make OK power supplies, but PCP&C's stuff is the only company that makes boards that the major motherboard manufacturers highly recommend and use exclusively in their own tests. Why does such an obvious high-quality product always get ignored?
As an ex-journalist who started out as a newspaper reporter/photographer
Flamebait. Stepping back to think for a minute, however, you might realize it would be trivial to set up a laptop as a basestation that the camera could talk to, and then have that go a microwave uplink or a line connection for transmission back to your editor's office. The AP's swarming team of photographers would like to have this option, especially if it allows for what would essentially be limitless capacity for shooting (speed of CF card and 802.11b connection notwithstanding).
It's a good technical solution, and one that people in your field will probably find a lot of uses for. I bet you'll be carrying one in a year's time.
The issue of e-mail privacy is a modestly serious one. I was stung by this in a bad way two months ago. I sent an angry personal e-mail to the president of a fundamentalist Christian 'family rights group,' who in turn took the verbatim contents of that e-mail and published them in a press release from his organization (because I'm the editor of a small but well-known newspaper).
Suddenly my personal e-mail to him was circulating in the inboxes of thousands of the group's members, and I started getting calls from the media, family rights groups, etc. Several other 'family rights' groups published the story on their websites; it went national rather quickly. I later apologized for the e-mail, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. The issue is likely to haunt me for a while, even though the hubbub from it has died down now.
Now, it's quite true that I should have known full well that if I send something out in e-mail, it could get re-distributed; it's the nature of the beast. So I'm not really too upset at anybody but myself. Even so, the flippancy of people in dealing with personal e-mail is quite striking. You also see this when people CC or BCC to people other than the primary recipient.
I feel sorry for the journalist (although her e-mail was fascinating to read!). There ought to be a higher level of trust allowed in e-mail, but since there isn't, we ought to watch what we write.
Slashdot Mirror
What you say is true now but AMD could do some real damage though by launching a series of commercials with some catch phrase (think "Intel inside") that plays up the fact that Intel chips are based on a standard developed by AMD. Something to effect of "Why pay more for a processor based on AMD's standard when you could be paying a lot less and using the real McCoy?"
Yep, great idea, and I fully agree. Too bad AMD is the most marketing illiterate company in the world (and this is coming from someone who's been an AMD fan since the first days of the K6). AMD has had literally hundreds or thousands of opportunities to really boost up its public image and brand identity, and they've never capitalized on a single one. Instead we get brilliant ideas like the "2500+" speed rating system, which only confuses instead of clarifies.
All it would take for AMD to increase their worth are a few short, poignant, and well-aimed (network TV) ads to help them ship a few million more units. But for whatever reason, marketing has never been a priority to AMD, and it continues to show in their abysmal market share year after year after year. I really wish they'd change, but they don't show any signs of a desire to do so.
At least it's GSM...albeit at frequencies incompatible with most of the rest of the world.
I get pretty tired of people (mostly Europeans, it seems) constantly talking about GSM as though it were the save-all solution to wireless. It isn't, and it never has been. GSM is good, but it isn't great. CDMA (such as used in the US by Sprint, Qwest, and a few others) is great. GSM runs on TDMA technology, and CDMA is almost always more efficient for splitting up the airwaves than TDMA, since you're packet-tagging transmissions on a frequency instead of time-sharing it. GSM is somewhat less suitable for data transmissions. GSM also gets touted for its 'encryption,' though the A5 encryption is provably broken and flawed (much like WEP for 802.11x).
Moral of story: just because most of the world uses GSM doesn't mean it's ambrosia from the gods. I'd be more interested in seeing a move towards more ubiquitous CDMA (and I'd be most interested in ubiquitous WiFi...*sigh*)
Seriously, when in the history of PCs has this [value rising as parts become rare] ever happened?
All the time. Go look at the price of an "old" Mac G4 cube. Go check out the price of PC100 SODIMM memory at Crucial (approaching $100 for a 256MB stick!). Go check out the price of "old" controller-based modems (i.e. not Winmodems). Just because it happens rarely doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all.
Given this news, I also can't help but wonder if C. S. Lewis's magnum opus Till We Have Faces will ever be turned into a movie. In some ways I think it would be a very very difficult translation; on the other hand, it's a story beyond description. The Lord of the Rings moves imagination and emotion, but Till We Have Faces moves the soul. I don't know if the book could be synthesized into a coherent movie (the ending would take a good deal of finessing by a screen writer), but it would be a sight to behold if it could be done.
Till We Have Faces is one of Lewis's lesser known books, but virtually everyone who has read it agrees it was Lewis's finest book, and perhaps one of the finest books of the 20th century (and an undiscovered jewel at that).
It also looks like HarperCollins is spinning this as a way of exploiting the Harry Potter popularity and is planning 'revised' Cristianity-free versions of the books as well.
Last I heard the rumor wasn't true. This would anger more than just Lewis fans. I would expect and hope that any serious literary scholars would flood the publisher's inbox with angry letters, as revisionism like this is a Very Bad Thing. It's the sort of thing that Orwell alluded to in 1984; although the motives would be drastically different, the end product would be sinister nonetheless.
Revisionism isn't taken lightly, especially not when the author is as prominent as Lewis. HarperCollins probably isn't too serious about this, though. They'd alienate their Zondervan wing (the largest Christian publisher in the world) and without a doubt invite copyright lawsuits galore from the keepers of Lewis's estate.
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing--and I'm a longtime atheist--but it seemed a lot less like "fantasy" and a lot more like "religious propaganda."
:-)
I hear this a lot, and I'm genuinely curious (not flamebaiting) about something: if you see the Narnia chronicles as "religious propaganda," would you also grant that Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy is "atheist (or secularist) propaganda"? If so, we have no quarrel. If not, I'm again genuinely curious as to why not, if you've the time to entertain my question.
Xtian
One other small thing: It should be 'Xian,' not 'Xtian.' The 't' in the latter is redundant, as the 'X' abbreviation is for Christ (from the greek 'Christos,' which begins in a chi [Roman letter X]). I've found that many atheists and Christian fundamentalists alike are disappointed when they learn that words like 'Xmas' are not a removal of 'Christ' from the word but that the X is an old and oft-used shorthand for Christ, including in numerous Christian sources (Christ is frequently denoted as 'Xp' or chi rho in Christian iconography).
Just a nitpick from an old Greek student...
Cool! This is good news. As a fan of C. S. Lewis' work generally and also the Narnia chronicles specifically, I think this will give these books the same rich setting enjoyed by LOTR. Tolkien and Lewis did weave much of the same setting into their books. As I was watching LOTR:ROTK last night (what an **awesome** movie) I did think to myself several times, "Wow, if they can make LOTR look this beautiful, the Narnia chronicles could be made just as beautiful."
This is also good news because it means the movies are finally taking shape. They were announced almost two years ago, but there hasn't been much word on them since.
This will, of course, lend to one major disclaimer for all Tolkien and LOTR fans who haven't read the Narnia chronicles: the movies will seem similar in setting, goal, and underlying theme. That having been said, they're drastically different stories. While there will be numerous similarities (which ignorant reviewers will peck at Narnia for, unfortunately) Tolkien was setting out to tell a story, create a world, and totally immerse the reader in Middle Earth. Lewis had more apologetic aims with his books, and this is by no means a secret fact. Hopefully they don't temper this angle too much with the movies. Certainly not everybody is thrilled by an underlying Christian theme, but removing it would make the story anemic.
Even so, Lewis' books are strong strong works on their own, and they deserve as rich a treatment as LOTR received. The two books/series are widely regarded as some of the best fantasy work written in the 20th century. That Lewis and Tolkien were friends sweetens the deal.
I'm looking forward to it!
Employees' only compulsions to work there are their own personal preferences.
Wrong. You're assuming an open availability of jobs, which doesn't exist either in the real world or any theoretical ones. The job market is terrible, especially for people who lack education or skills to get a modestly paying job (>$18000/yr).
There are several reasons a person might have to work for Wal-Mart or a supplier. They may have no useful education or job skills to work anywhere else in their area, there may be no other employer in their area that is hiring, or Wal-Mart might be (believe it or not) the highest paying employer they can work at. And before you say, "Ah, but they could move!" no, they very well may not be able to. They may lack the money to move, they may not want to remove their children from their school, they may need to care for sick/elderly friends or family members, etc.
It is possible to be "forced" to have to work somewhere. Wal-Mart knows this applies to more than a small percentage of its employees, and treats them accordingly.
Wal-Mart's low prices sustain development in third world countries.
That's an equivocation that conservatives often make. Jobs being produced in third world countries and factories being built does not mean "development" is taking place, if the jobs being created do not pay a high enough wage that employees are bettering their lives through working there, or if the factories are not running cleanly enough that they are polluting the area and causing health and environmental harm to the area.
Your points are all so easy to refute.
Tu quoque.
Because dealing with Dell's offshore support people is a nightmare. I have an Inspiron 8100 and a few months ago the AC adaptor died. Pretty frickin' easy to diagnose IMHO. Unfortunately, Dell didn't think so. I was literally on the phone for 45 minutes talking to a girl who made me jump through EVERY hoop possible.
Hmm, that sucks. It pays to get good warranties and know the exact legal protections to which you are entitled. Two and a half years ago when I bought my Inspiron 4000 (~$2000) I paid an additional $500 for Dell's most expensive support package. Among other things, I'm entitled to on-site no-questions-asked replacement of a part in 48-72 hours. I've talked to Indian phone support, but they ask me, "Would you be willing to go through a diagnostic test first?" If I say yes, the on-site techs get dispatched quicker. But I have the option of saying "No, I want a technician dispatched to my location right away" and get it. Since Dell is nice enough to provide legal documents with their warranties, it would be a quick and easy trip to the local courthouse should Dell ever fail to honor their guarantee. "Well, you see, judge, Dell's own lawyers say right here in Clause III.A.3 that their coverage is..."
You get what you pay for.
Show me the difference with gzip, oh clueful one.
Umm, Slash already uses gzip, as Taco has said a couple dozen times in the past. Even so, if you get bandwidth savings with XHTML/CSS over HTML 3.2, you'll get more savings when it's gzipped. People can want CSS support without being "fetishists" and gzip isn't the solve-all solution to bandwidth issues. Proper code + gzip equals big savings, as most major sites have discovered.
If you want your old HTML 3.2 version, I'm sure the Palm version will stay available for a while.
It's important to note that the offending company did not even have the slightest amount of decency to apologize, not that I'm surprised.
So what happens to the company now? Do they just get off scott free having harassed this guy for a few months with advertisements for snake oil? Doesn't Canada have an equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate their deceptive advertising? I say give the guy who made the threats some community service time and some anger management classes, but then have the Canadian authorities haul the asses of the company into court.
Besides, everybody knows the only reliable penis enhancement device is a Penis Mightier.
This is long long long long long overdue. Just because HTML 3.2 "worked" didn't make it good, or right. A proper application of [X]HTML and CSS can be a huge bandwidth saver. It looks like Google also updated their design yesterday or today - no doubt to subtly cut down on the huge amounts of bandwidth they serve out. More importantly for Slashdot, however, is that writing their code in an open and updated fashion really opens up the market for the kinds of people that can access the site, and that's never a bad thing. So congratulations on starting this project, and I hope it gets underway soon!
.sig!
Now maybe I'll finally be able to change my
> but except in USA and colonies, may God protect
> their industries from competition), does indeed
> support cryptography since its very design.
Hmm...Too bad the GSM A5 encryption is terribly flawed and easily cracked. From the linked article:
And you're apparently also under the impression that GSM is better. Just because Europe uses it doesn't mean it's the best, and just because a few U.S. companies have gone with the superior CDMA technology doesn't make them monopolies.
Mod parent up now - first valid Windows Firebird 0.7 link yet today. ftp.mozilla.org is totally thrashed.
Forbes is a Microsoft shill anyway ...so no need to worry about what they say, as all the corporate and business types who read this know this too, and are vividly aware of the licensing fights going on, and are anti-Microsoft themselves, and are vividly aware that Cisco is doing a bad thing and that those poor kids in the FSF are really getting portrayed in a bad light.
Yeah, real good attitude. Keep ignoring Forbes: it's that mentality that keeps Forbes readers ignoring Linux and free software.
The free software community really needs to understand that when you're the underdog, you want to ALWAYS be portraying yourself in the best light possible and holding your head up high, even when people take really cheap shots at you. If the free software movement keeps miring itself in the mud and digging in its heels, it's going to continue to have a very difficult time growing.
This article will be met with much dispute on Slashdot, and rightly so, to an extent. However, there are a few well-made points in the article, and there are some things that the FSF has clearly gone overboard (again) with. Take this quote from FSF Director Bradley Kuhn:
"And if they [Cisco] balk? Kuhn raises the threat of legal action. 'We defend the rights protected by the GPL license,' he says. 'We have legal teeth, so if someone does not share and share alike, we can make them obey the rules.'"
Make them obey the rules? Yes, technically that's what legal enforcement of a license does, but Brad could definetely have phrased it in a way that didn't make the FSF look like a schoolyard bully. A better way to say this would be: "We would, if necessary, defend the code-sharing clauses of the GPL, but we would of course want to work with Cisco before that to have them see the benefits of voluntarily sharing this code, as many other companies have done."
I've met Brad before, and while he's a decent and friendly guy, he's pretty deeply into the free software zealotry. As has been hashed and rehashed multiple times, the zealotry that exists within certain wings of the free software movement is a prime reason why many businesses are still extremely skeptical about the whole free software/Linux thing. Making wild-eyed threats like this and having them appear in Forbes (which more than a few CFOs and CIOs read) is a pretty big black eye for the FSF and the free software movement...
The XBox is not a business success. Microsoft loses money on the whole XBox operation, even after collecting fees from game developers. Lots of money.
Every time this gets discussed, people forget something important: Microsoft has all the money in the world to burn. Going into the console market, Microsoft knew that it would lose money on the first XBox. And the second. Maybe even the third. But Microsoft has way more staying power than Sony or Nintendo, and they can literally run the clock out on their competition. Here's how it goes for Microsoft:
1) Enter the console market, round #1.
1a) Acknowledge you will lose all your money, which you can cover, because you have tens of billions of dollars in liquid cash assets, plus your normal multi-billion dollar profits from year-to-year operations (which alone can easily cover all the losses incurred by entering this market).
2) By doing 1, you've split the market up and taken away from competitors A and B (Sony and Nintendo).
3) By doing 2, you've taken money and time away from competitors A and B.
3a) Because of 2, Competitors A and B now have significantly smaller marketshare than before you entered, and must invest more of their own money to try to keep up.
4) Acknowledge that the console market is far and away the biggest revenue source for Competitors A and B. Acknowledge that the console market is not your own biggest revenue source, and thus can sustain short-term injury.
5) Enter the console market, round #2 (XBox 2, PlayStation 3, GameCube 2).
6) By doing 5, you've even further split the market up and taken away from competitors A and B (Sony and Nintendo).
6a) By doing 5, you've taken away even more money and time away from competitors A and B.
7) Because of 2, Competitors A and B now have even smaller marketshares than before you entered, and must invest more of their own money to try to keep up.
7a) Because of fierce competition in round #1, Competitors A and B are making less money per console and game sale and spending more money than before trying to remain competitive.
8) Repeat steps 1-7a indefinetely
8a) Continue to be able to fund your efforts from other, larger revenue chains (computer software sales) and your liquid cash assets.
9) Competitor A or B runs out of money, and loses.
10) Repeat steps 1-8a
11) Remaining Competitor from step 9 runs out of money, and loses.
12) Victory.
It's a very simple, precise, and terrifying business model. And it will be effective.
GSM is simply the best in international terms. Very few countries use CDMA whether it's better or not and that number (apart from Iraq) is dropping. I expect that in the US most will eventually switch over to GSM eventually.
Probably not. The GSM Consortium is eventually going to have to get off its ass and release a GSM 2 spec. CDMA is a superior technology, hands down. It always has been. GSM uses TDMA, which is more ubiquitous but far far far less efficient. GSM works in much of the world because with most companies there's a small physical space and the populated areas are densely packed. But time-sharing the radio waves rather than packet-tagging them is archaic; c.f. Sprint PCS in the U.S. providing far superior Internet and messaging capabilities than its GSM competitors (too bad their customer service sucks).
GSM isn't the holy grail of mobile technology, as many Europeans and Asians want to believe. I'm not trying to sound condescending, but just because what you have works doesn't mean its good.
And of course, all of this could be rendered moot if a cellular-over-802.11x ever gets rolling. That would really be something, but there are many hurdles to clear yet...
Because the mass media has no interest in overthrowing the corrupt big-business driven world blah blah blah
Parsing error: Too many typical conspiracy/Slashdot-cynicism words in one sentence. Please remove the ad hominem text cited above and try again, proceeding with logic this time instead of hysterics.
Seriously, is this the best we can do? Of course there are vile reasons behind Diebold's getting away with this, but do you have to resort to this tired, adolescent "mass media loves big corporations loves evil government" schtick to get your point across?
I'll give you a hint: when you start your arguments like this, absolutely nobody listens to what follows.
The holdup in the fed was over a foreign business interest owning and operating a piece of "critical infrastructure" like a fibre optic grid. Big deal. There are two relevant counter-points to such an argument:
First, there are several other large backbone companies that are still very much U.S.-owned: Qwest, Level3, UUNet/WorldCom/MCI, C&W, etc. In fact, a handy breakdown of major backbone providers is available at http://navigators.com/isp.html. Global Crossing is a small piece in a big pie.
Second, regardless of who "owns" the network, what finally matters is who has access to the physical equipment. If, in some bizarre act of twisted politics the government of Singapore decides to use STT to hijack the American telecom system, all the U.S. government has to do is break down the doors of the buildings housing all the routers. It's impossible for a foreign company to provide "remote" cable connectivity because of the physical element - all they're really doing is paying people to run the network and taking in the profits.
Regardless, however, it's reasonably certain that whatever "deal" was brokered between the U.S. government and STT probably involves an open-ended permit for monitoring traffic on the wire. Yet another gift brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security...
Why is it that every time these "high-end" power supplies get compared, the most high-end one always gets ignored? PC Power and Cooling has long manufactured the world's best power supplies. They're the Ferrari or the Moto Guzzi of the power supply world. Yeah, lots of Asian manufacturing firms make OK power supplies, but PCP&C's stuff is the only company that makes boards that the major motherboard manufacturers highly recommend and use exclusively in their own tests. Why does such an obvious high-quality product always get ignored?
As an ex-journalist who started out as a newspaper reporter/photographer
Flamebait. Stepping back to think for a minute, however, you might realize it would be trivial to set up a laptop as a basestation that the camera could talk to, and then have that go a microwave uplink or a line connection for transmission back to your editor's office. The AP's swarming team of photographers would like to have this option, especially if it allows for what would essentially be limitless capacity for shooting (speed of CF card and 802.11b connection notwithstanding).
It's a good technical solution, and one that people in your field will probably find a lot of uses for. I bet you'll be carrying one in a year's time.
Slashdot editor, before seeing the movie, on The Matrix Reloaded:
I'll hold judgement until the closing credits myself.
Slashdot editor, before seeing the movie, on any new Star Wars movie:
Bitch bitch bitch George Lucas sucks insulting blah blah suck suck bitch bitch.
The issue of e-mail privacy is a modestly serious one. I was stung by this in a bad way two months ago. I sent an angry personal e-mail to the president of a fundamentalist Christian 'family rights group,' who in turn took the verbatim contents of that e-mail and published them in a press release from his organization (because I'm the editor of a small but well-known newspaper).
Suddenly my personal e-mail to him was circulating in the inboxes of thousands of the group's members, and I started getting calls from the media, family rights groups, etc. Several other 'family rights' groups published the story on their websites; it went national rather quickly. I later apologized for the e-mail, but the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. The issue is likely to haunt me for a while, even though the hubbub from it has died down now.
Now, it's quite true that I should have known full well that if I send something out in e-mail, it could get re-distributed; it's the nature of the beast. So I'm not really too upset at anybody but myself. Even so, the flippancy of people in dealing with personal e-mail is quite striking. You also see this when people CC or BCC to people other than the primary recipient.
I feel sorry for the journalist (although her e-mail was fascinating to read!). There ought to be a higher level of trust allowed in e-mail, but since there isn't, we ought to watch what we write.