Having to had provide tech support to many people over the years (One of my favorites: But how do I double-click the mouse?), I found the Assisted Computer Facility living place to be a wonderful idea. Just think - an environment where people could/safetly/ learn about the difference between a drink coaster and the CD-ROM drive.
Having to had communicate with many people over the years, I found the High School living place to be a wonderful idea. Just think - an environment where 'journalist' could/safetly/ learn to spell and form a coherent sentence.
Microsoft has played the gaming business better than anyone else ever has.
The may eventually win, and possibly make a profit, but I don't think they've necessarilly played the game all that well.
Let's take an analogy. I wrestle. The last tournament I was in, I ended up wrestling a gentleman 20lbs lighter than me. I didn't have to wrestle 'well' in order to win, because I could 'muscle' my way out of bad situations. Futhermore, everything I did looked smoother because I didn't have apply as much force as he did.
Microsoft is able to 'win' in the same way. With huge cash reserves already built up, the can stumble, fall, and roll around in the mud a while and still get up and win. They can bleed cash for years and still pull it out of their asses.
I don't think Microsoft has 'played' the gaming business at all. They've just bought up a lot of companies with their huge cash reserves.
that there are only five providers. It bothers me that there is only one provider in my area. Five is plenty enough if there is actual competition. In fact, five is possibly better than 500 since is allows efficiency of the network effects. But what we have now is more realistically classified as 1 provider since I can't call up PacBell and get service from them here in NC.
When you buy something at a store, it is covered by a contract...an implied contract. The purchase is covered by a set of laws that nearly all the states have agreed on (sorry, I'm talking from an American point of view here). Overall, this is a good thing because it sets a base understanding to the transaction that provides a good starting point. Every facet of the negotiation doesn't need to be covered in excruciating detail, because it is understood that anything that isn't covered will be taken care of by the default 'contract'.
Techies as a whole should promote this sort of contract until it becomes the default, maybe even pushing for legislative backing. The alternative is to read contract that are laid out in excruciating detail (ie, legalese) and are construed to take all your rights without you knowing it. A contract that only has one line:
The default, except All your code are belong to us.
Libranet seems to be following the same path as Mandrake, which began as a better RedHat than RedHat and then found its own niche. Libranet is doing the better Debian than Debian thing. Let's all hope that Libranet continues to follow in Mandrakes footsteps and produces all sorts of useful software for the community.
The great thing about Linux is that a anyone can start a new project/distribution that competes and builds on the old, and everyone eventually benefits. For instance, I'm looking for time to do a better Mandrake than Mandrake distro. Mandrake has been pushing the 'ease of installation' envelope. I'd like to push it even further with a distro called 'Tutor Linux', that will be guaranteed to take a week to install. Each step of the installation would be accompanied by indepth analysis and discussion of why things are being done the way they are being done. Upon completion, the end user would have a complete understand of how and why the system works the way it does. Instead of hiding the difficulties of installation behind a graphical interface that mask the details, the aim of my distro will be to expose and explain the details so the user understands them, and is therefore no longer intimidated by them.
the use of the "sniffer" software violated his client's right to privacy
BWHAAHAAHA! Right to privacy! That's a good one guys!
"The cop just sat there and watched as I walked into the bank. You can't just sit there and watch criminal who are minding their own business. That's invading their privacy!"
Idiots. The courts have upheld that if a police officer believes there is sufficient probability to support that evidence may be destroyed, they may take steps to protect that evidence. Like they can stop drug dealers from flushing during a raid.
These jerks are BUSTED, plain an simple. Good going FBI with the human engineering!!
The judge ruled that 2Mart.com didn't provide enough evidence that the chatters were implicated. How does this provide 'guidance' for anyone? The judge just said, "You don't have enough evidence." He didn't say what enough evidence would be (or did he, and the sound bite article didn't bother to mention that.) The lawyer at the bottom of the article seems a little to optimistic. If this 2Mart had a little more clout than a bankrupt dot-com, we could look forward to an immediate overturn on the appeal. The company probably hasn't decided if they will appeal because they haven't been able to convince their lawyers that there will be a payday even if they do win.
I still have two more questions, though:
1)Where does the First Admendment guarantee the right to be anonymous? I understood that it gives everyone the right to speak, not the right to not suffer any repurcussions from what they have to say.
2)How do you profit from someone's stock tanking unless you're a competitor? If the price goes down, and you hold stock, don't you lose money regardless of how much anyone else loses?
I agree. Just think how much more bonding we would have among our employees as they have to wait for each other in meeting rooms to discuss a problem, instead of just sending a email to several recipients which they all can read at their own leisure. Of course, since the points are documented in a nice compact format, the engineers and all will get to meet a second time when one forgot.
For the/.s that don't understand sarcasm: People have a lot of email because it is often better than discussing stuff in the halls.
what the photon density of sunlight is in my pocket?
They've had solar powered calculators for year, but a PDA would seem to use quite a bit more power. I would assume that the PDA would charge a battery that would work for peak usage. Unfortunately, how do I get a charge with the thing in my pocket?
This genome map thing is useless. And it's not the only one. When I was in high school the chemistry teacher tried to show me this 'periodic table' thing. It was totally useless. All it did was tell you where certain elements were. It didn't do anything useful, like showing you how to create a bomb in your basement. I don't know why scientist waste their time on things like "genome maps" and "periodic tables". They should all get real jobs, like studying how to give me gills like Kevin Costner in that movie where he was a fish.
Just add voice recognition, and then you can move on to grunt navigation. It has taken years, but now my wife know that when she is helping me work on the car, "unhh" means "hand me that rachet". "SHIT" means "get me a bandaid".
Michael Angelo, Picasso and all those other painters sued Italian paintbrush makers in their day.
"How can an artist expect to make a living when our paintings and styles are so easily copied by these young upstarts? Everyone who is able to afford a brush considers himself and artist," one notable but whiney famous artist was quoted as saying in a poor rendition of an Italian accent.
But most copyrighted material is now distributed by giant media conglomerates.
And very little of it is worth wasting time on. It's just entertainment. A simple diversion. Once the "giant media conglomerates" make the medium too onerous or inconvenient, it will cease to be entertaining or diverting and people will move on to other things. I think that will be a good thing.
At this point, fact are not copyrightable. As long as that remains true, our civilization is in no trouble. Who, other than his mother, really gives a shit if Ricky Martin disappears from the face of history in five years, as long as we have records of what laws have been passed?
So what if people can't download the latest track from Britney Spears for free. Maybe they'll take the time to go down the street and listen to a local band. Maybe, after a while, we'll actually see some creativity being introduced back into the music business. Maybe the public will wake up, realize that we're all artist, and that the self-centered corporatist can buy their own pablum.
The current model has been built by years of 'free' music over the radio. It was convenient and entertaining (to most). The populace has tried to continue that model through the Internet. The moguls are rebelling at this, because the music never was 'free' to begin with; the cost was simply re-distributed through higher cost on goods that were advertised. The model now requires that people pay directly instead of letting the cost be deferred.
I don't see a problem with that. It's their 'content' let them do with it what they may. Let them lock it away in a vault and only allow people willing to pay their first born to see it. Maybe people will wake up and realize that the stuff they're asking money for is crap. Maybe people will discover that a local play is more interesting that another Jean Claude VanDam 'jump-n-kick' movie. Maybe people will find that there is 'free' music at a local bar (where they drink expensive drinks.)
Maybe this whole 'copyright laws are lopsided' debate is bullshit. Disney owns Mickey Mouse. Let them own it forever. If you don't like that, ignore the mouse and all the movies that the company makes. The world will go on fine without either of them.
I have a 3 foot fresnel lens that can melt *granite* on a sunny day.
And what is the distance of the focal point? The energy density at the focal point is inversely proportional to the square of the distance is it not? Will the huge sail even have a distinquishable focal point?
So Sprint will advertise 2.4Mb connection speeds, and then oversell it. The end result will be a 9.6Kb connection, IF you're lucky. Remember that collisions and retransmits are really costly.
Yesterday's interview with Mr. Young. People don't want to run an operating system. They want applications. Keep it up M$. Linux, BSD, et.al. continues to grow daily.
So some scientist tried to scare the public into diverting more funds into their pet projects. The public said, "Ho-hum. More Chicken Littles proclaiming that the sky is falling." So the scientist try a publicity stunt.
"I know what we can do, Dr. Bubba. Let's do some math that very few of the people understand that'll show how we can use nukes to alter the path of an asteroid so that it'll blow up an insignificant little town. That'll scare the bejeesus out of 'em fer sure."
"But Dr. Dufus, we don't have the technology to target asteroids. Remember, if it were that easy, we could just deflect them when they got close enough to be noticed."
"Yeah, you're right. But remember, people are DUMB. They'll never notice if we put enough equations and other mathy stuff into the presentation. Then we could do this neat graphical thing where a space shuttle has to blow up because the nukes don't do their job right."
"You're right. Let's do it, Dufus."
Nothing to see here but some scientist who aren't getting their pet projects funded trying to scare up some support.
Add to this the concept that if you make enough laws, then everyone is a criminal, and you can see how we have appointed ourselves tyrants to rule over us.
I get upset when I hear the media crow about how "Congress is at an impasse" and "can't get anything done." In my opinion, they've done enough. I don't want them doing anymore. I'd like to see quite a bit of what they have done, undone. I'd like to see the air conditioners removed from Congressional buildings so that they would all go home in the summer like they did before the 1940's. Then they would have to live like normal citizens and could become criminals too.
Note than in history, when a king wanted to consolidate his power, he would remove the aristocracy from the countryside and make them all live close to him. Notice where all the congressional 'delegates' now live.
Funny thing is, these people are most likely more productive with this setup than they would be with brand new 1.7GHz Pentiums running Windows 2000 or the lastest dist of Redhat.
Why? The most efficient tool is always the one that you know how to use.
A democracy, a so called 'free society', can easily be manipulated and controlled by the person controlling the information. What happens when all information, except what comes from 'authorities' is suspect because it is so easily fabricated?
It reminds me of the Arnold Swarzen...(?) movie, "The Running Man". He's a police helicopter pilot who refuses to shoot unarmed people involved in a food riot. The powers that be manipulate the video tape evidence to make it appear that he massacres the people instead. People are shown the tape and cry for his death in a game show type fashion until some revolutionaries are able to show the real tape by hacking into the communications channel.
The temporality of public records has very serious implications for our social structure. If the only record of your speeding ticket is an entry in a database, what happens when a glitch makes you a drunken sloth who doesn't pay child support. If the entry showing Bush's drug convictions get deleted, will there be no other record. Trust me on this, email is a politician's dream. Everything from here on has plausible deniability.
How is Microsoft resting? 80s technology? Where the hell have you been for the last 20 years?
Excuse me, Mr. Clueless. Windows 95/98 are nothing more that and updated DOS that boots directly to a graphical console. They took EARLY 80's technology and painted a pretty picture in front of it. I guess it is innovative...if you consider animations of flying paper that lock you out of using your computer when deleting files innovative.
Last time I checked, Microsoft has been innovating in many, many areas (notably Outlook and COM+). Let us not forget that they were first to bring professional quality desktop publishing and ease of use to the PC either.
Is Outlook part of the OS now? And I thought COM+ was and extension of OLE, which is nothing more than runtime linking, which was developed in mid 80's? And tell me again how developing a DP program advances the state of the art in operating systems?
I may be living in a dream world as you say, but at least people don't walk around with their heads up their asses there.
Many people are incredulous that such a row is made over a simple apology. I'm incredulous that they could be so clueless.
An apology in diplomatic matters such as these is the same as pleading guilty to a criminal offense. By apologizing, Bush would be proclaiming to the world that the spy plane should not be there in the first place, that the fighter pilot had the right to be buzzing an American plane in international air-space, and that China would have free go to continue such behavior in the future.
Yes we want our people back, but they are soldiers. They have sworn an oath to die for their country if called upon. An apology now, even to save their lives, would make it much more dangerous for military personnel patrolling in international waters around our eastern allies. At any point in the future, China, who is reported to have growing international ambitions, could scuttle any of our vessles and just say, "Now apologize."
Bush hasn't apologized yet. He should not. He should make it clear that the US will not be bullied. He should state the case clearly that the Chinese pilot is at fault here, and make it clear that the US will continue to spy on countries around the world from international waters. He should then demand the return of the crew and reparations for the aircraft, with threats to cut off all diplomatic relations as his club.
Anything else is giving in to a bully and will only lead to more pain in the future.
It removes the greed/growth that fuels our economy, our sandwich shops and our luxury goods, and replaces that with a communistic ideal which leaves no potential for any advancement.
You're not an engineer, are you?
In just about every system you design, the problem is not producing force or power. The problem is always how to efficiently control the energy of the system to do useful work. You can throw a 5,000Hp engine into a Honda Civic, but without a extremely well engineered drive train, all you will ever do is replace tires and CV joints as the engine rips both to shreds.
And so it is with capitalism. Unmitigated capitalism doesn't provide for the best society. It allows for certain parts of the system to destroy other parts. If one part of the system is broke, the whole thing is broke. Open source can be a mitigating/controlling factor, ensuring that commercial software houses continue to advance the state of the art. Why should M$ be able to rest on their collective laurels, reselling the same tired '80s technology? If a group of hobbyist can produce an OS as good as M$' flagship product in their spare time, why should I pay M$ anything? Linux has pushed them to feverishly develope better alternatives.
The greed/growth that fuels our economy has not been destroyed by open source. I has only been controlled.
Anyway, lost revenue for M$ means more revenue for my company, and eventually me (I hope). How does that damage society? I buy coffee, too!!
I keep hearing you M$ apologist repeat over and over that if other companies were any good, they would be able to compete in the marketplace.
Problem is, the fair playing field of the marketplace has been warped by M$ market dominance. They have been able to bend standards to make other products incompatible, and since they are the dominant players everyone bends to their standard. If another company starts gaining ground by winning a major contract, they buy out the other party. That is, competitors never have a chance to gain market momentum(sp?) no matter how good their products are!!
That's the point. That is always, has always been, the point. M$ gained market dominance early in the race, and through careful manipulation of the 'network effect', has worked to insure that no competitor can get a foothold in the market.
Futhermore, regardless of who is selling the product, there are laws that say a product must work as advertised or the purchaser is due a refund. Advertising that something is easy and cures cancer, then denying it in legalese on a tiny slip of paper hinden deep in the packaging is not considered kosher.
I regret that I don't live in one of the listed states so that I could add my name to the list. I'd like to receive a refund for DOS 6.0 and Win3.1 (last version I bought), 'cause it never did work right and there was no way in hell for me to get a refund until now. I had to replace that combo with OS/2 to get real work done.
Maybe this won't kill M$, but it will weaken them enough that they don't have the cash on hand to immediately kill every competitor that pops up. At some point, people will start to realize that M$ product aren't really all that great after all, and THEN the market will start working. And that is what WILL kill M$.
Slashdot Mirror
Having to had provide tech support to many people over the years (One of my favorites: But how do I double-click the mouse?), I found the Assisted Computer Facility living place to be a wonderful idea. Just think - an environment where people could /safetly/ learn about the difference between a drink coaster and the CD-ROM drive.
/safetly/ learn to spell and form a coherent sentence.
Having to had communicate with many people over the years, I found the High School living place to be a wonderful idea. Just think - an environment where 'journalist' could
Microsoft has played the gaming business better than anyone else ever has.
The may eventually win, and possibly make a profit, but I don't think they've necessarilly played the game all that well.
Let's take an analogy. I wrestle. The last tournament I was in, I ended up wrestling a gentleman 20lbs lighter than me. I didn't have to wrestle 'well' in order to win, because I could 'muscle' my way out of bad situations. Futhermore, everything I did looked smoother because I didn't have apply as much force as he did.
Microsoft is able to 'win' in the same way. With huge cash reserves already built up, the can stumble, fall, and roll around in the mud a while and still get up and win. They can bleed cash for years and still pull it out of their asses.
I don't think Microsoft has 'played' the gaming business at all. They've just bought up a lot of companies with their huge cash reserves.
to fall for this?
***At your request a letter can be sent to the issuing Company clarifying Microsoft licensing policies.
...and pissing off the potential customer so bad that you are guaranteed NOT receive the contract.
that there are only five providers. It bothers me that there is only one provider in my area. Five is plenty enough if there is actual competition. In fact, five is possibly better than 500 since is allows efficiency of the network effects. But what we have now is more realistically classified as 1 provider since I can't call up PacBell and get service from them here in NC.
When you buy something at a store, it is covered by a contract...an implied contract. The purchase is covered by a set of laws that nearly all the states have agreed on (sorry, I'm talking from an American point of view here). Overall, this is a good thing because it sets a base understanding to the transaction that provides a good starting point. Every facet of the negotiation doesn't need to be covered in excruciating detail, because it is understood that anything that isn't covered will be taken care of by the default 'contract'.
Techies as a whole should promote this sort of contract until it becomes the default, maybe even pushing for legislative backing. The alternative is to read contract that are laid out in excruciating detail (ie, legalese) and are construed to take all your rights without you knowing it. A contract that only has one line:
The default, except All your code are belong to us.
is much more likely to set off red flags.
Libranet seems to be following the same path as Mandrake, which began as a better RedHat than RedHat and then found its own niche. Libranet is doing the better Debian than Debian thing. Let's all hope that Libranet continues to follow in Mandrakes footsteps and produces all sorts of useful software for the community.
The great thing about Linux is that a anyone can start a new project/distribution that competes and builds on the old, and everyone eventually benefits. For instance, I'm looking for time to do a better Mandrake than Mandrake distro. Mandrake has been pushing the 'ease of installation' envelope. I'd like to push it even further with a distro called 'Tutor Linux', that will be guaranteed to take a week to install. Each step of the installation would be accompanied by indepth analysis and discussion of why things are being done the way they are being done. Upon completion, the end user would have a complete understand of how and why the system works the way it does. Instead of hiding the difficulties of installation behind a graphical interface that mask the details, the aim of my distro will be to expose and explain the details so the user understands them, and is therefore no longer intimidated by them.
Expect to see my distro in stores, RSN!! 8*)
the use of the "sniffer" software violated his client's right to privacy
BWHAAHAAHA! Right to privacy! That's a good one guys!
"The cop just sat there and watched as I walked into the bank. You can't just sit there and watch criminal who are minding their own business. That's invading their privacy!"
Idiots. The courts have upheld that if a police officer believes there is sufficient probability to support that evidence may be destroyed, they may take steps to protect that evidence. Like they can stop drug dealers from flushing during a raid.
These jerks are BUSTED, plain an simple. Good going FBI with the human engineering!!
The judge ruled that 2Mart.com didn't provide enough evidence that the chatters were implicated. How does this provide 'guidance' for anyone? The judge just said, "You don't have enough evidence." He didn't say what enough evidence would be (or did he, and the sound bite article didn't bother to mention that.) The lawyer at the bottom of the article seems a little to optimistic. If this 2Mart had a little more clout than a bankrupt dot-com, we could look forward to an immediate overturn on the appeal. The company probably hasn't decided if they will appeal because they haven't been able to convince their lawyers that there will be a payday even if they do win.
I still have two more questions, though:
1)Where does the First Admendment guarantee the right to be anonymous? I understood that it gives everyone the right to speak, not the right to not suffer any repurcussions from what they have to say.
2)How do you profit from someone's stock tanking unless you're a competitor? If the price goes down, and you hold stock, don't you lose money regardless of how much anyone else loses?
I agree. Just think how much more bonding we would have among our employees as they have to wait for each other in meeting rooms to discuss a problem, instead of just sending a email to several recipients which they all can read at their own leisure. Of course, since the points are documented in a nice compact format, the engineers and all will get to meet a second time when one forgot.
/.s that don't understand sarcasm: People have a lot of email because it is often better than discussing stuff in the halls.
For the
what the photon density of sunlight is in my pocket?
They've had solar powered calculators for year, but a PDA would seem to use quite a bit more power. I would assume that the PDA would charge a battery that would work for peak usage. Unfortunately, how do I get a charge with the thing in my pocket?
This genome map thing is useless. And it's not the only one. When I was in high school the chemistry teacher tried to show me this 'periodic table' thing. It was totally useless. All it did was tell you where certain elements were. It didn't do anything useful, like showing you how to create a bomb in your basement. I don't know why scientist waste their time on things like "genome maps" and "periodic tables". They should all get real jobs, like studying how to give me gills like Kevin Costner in that movie where he was a fish.
Just add voice recognition, and then you can move on to grunt navigation. It has taken years, but now my wife know that when she is helping me work on the car, "unhh" means "hand me that rachet". "SHIT" means "get me a bandaid".
Michael Angelo, Picasso and all those other painters sued Italian paintbrush makers in their day.
"How can an artist expect to make a living when our paintings and styles are so easily copied by these young upstarts? Everyone who is able to afford a brush considers himself and artist," one notable but whiney famous artist was quoted as saying in a poor rendition of an Italian accent.
But most copyrighted material is now distributed by giant media conglomerates.
And very little of it is worth wasting time on. It's just entertainment. A simple diversion. Once the "giant media conglomerates" make the medium too onerous or inconvenient, it will cease to be entertaining or diverting and people will move on to other things. I think that will be a good thing.
At this point, fact are not copyrightable. As long as that remains true, our civilization is in no trouble. Who, other than his mother, really gives a shit if Ricky Martin disappears from the face of history in five years, as long as we have records of what laws have been passed?
So what if people can't download the latest track from Britney Spears for free. Maybe they'll take the time to go down the street and listen to a local band. Maybe, after a while, we'll actually see some creativity being introduced back into the music business. Maybe the public will wake up, realize that we're all artist, and that the self-centered corporatist can buy their own pablum.
The current model has been built by years of 'free' music over the radio. It was convenient and entertaining (to most). The populace has tried to continue that model through the Internet. The moguls are rebelling at this, because the music never was 'free' to begin with; the cost was simply re-distributed through higher cost on goods that were advertised. The model now requires that people pay directly instead of letting the cost be deferred.
I don't see a problem with that. It's their 'content' let them do with it what they may. Let them lock it away in a vault and only allow people willing to pay their first born to see it. Maybe people will wake up and realize that the stuff they're asking money for is crap. Maybe people will discover that a local play is more interesting that another Jean Claude VanDam 'jump-n-kick' movie. Maybe people will find that there is 'free' music at a local bar (where they drink expensive drinks.)
Maybe this whole 'copyright laws are lopsided' debate is bullshit. Disney owns Mickey Mouse. Let them own it forever. If you don't like that, ignore the mouse and all the movies that the company makes. The world will go on fine without either of them.
I have a 3 foot fresnel lens that can melt *granite* on a sunny day.
And what is the distance of the focal point? The energy density at the focal point is inversely proportional to the square of the distance is it not? Will the huge sail even have a distinquishable focal point?
So Sprint will advertise 2.4Mb connection speeds, and then oversell it. The end result will be a 9.6Kb connection, IF you're lucky. Remember that collisions and retransmits are really costly.
Yesterday's interview with Mr. Young. People don't want to run an operating system. They want applications. Keep it up M$. Linux, BSD, et.al. continues to grow daily.
you have to rachet it up a bit.
So some scientist tried to scare the public into diverting more funds into their pet projects. The public said, "Ho-hum. More Chicken Littles proclaiming that the sky is falling." So the scientist try a publicity stunt.
"I know what we can do, Dr. Bubba. Let's do some math that very few of the people understand that'll show how we can use nukes to alter the path of an asteroid so that it'll blow up an insignificant little town. That'll scare the bejeesus out of 'em fer sure."
"But Dr. Dufus, we don't have the technology to target asteroids. Remember, if it were that easy, we could just deflect them when they got close enough to be noticed."
"Yeah, you're right. But remember, people are DUMB. They'll never notice if we put enough equations and other mathy stuff into the presentation. Then we could do this neat graphical thing where a space shuttle has to blow up because the nukes don't do their job right."
"You're right. Let's do it, Dufus."
Nothing to see here but some scientist who aren't getting their pet projects funded trying to scare up some support.
Add to this the concept that if you make enough laws, then everyone is a criminal, and you can see how we have appointed ourselves tyrants to rule over us.
I get upset when I hear the media crow about how "Congress is at an impasse" and "can't get anything done." In my opinion, they've done enough. I don't want them doing anymore. I'd like to see quite a bit of what they have done, undone. I'd like to see the air conditioners removed from Congressional buildings so that they would all go home in the summer like they did before the 1940's. Then they would have to live like normal citizens and could become criminals too.
Note than in history, when a king wanted to consolidate his power, he would remove the aristocracy from the countryside and make them all live close to him. Notice where all the congressional 'delegates' now live.
Funny thing is, these people are most likely more productive with this setup than they would be with brand new 1.7GHz Pentiums running Windows 2000 or the lastest dist of Redhat.
Why? The most efficient tool is always the one that you know how to use.
A democracy, a so called 'free society', can easily be manipulated and controlled by the person controlling the information. What happens when all information, except what comes from 'authorities' is suspect because it is so easily fabricated?
It reminds me of the Arnold Swarzen...(?) movie, "The Running Man". He's a police helicopter pilot who refuses to shoot unarmed people involved in a food riot. The powers that be manipulate the video tape evidence to make it appear that he massacres the people instead. People are shown the tape and cry for his death in a game show type fashion until some revolutionaries are able to show the real tape by hacking into the communications channel.
The temporality of public records has very serious implications for our social structure. If the only record of your speeding ticket is an entry in a database, what happens when a glitch makes you a drunken sloth who doesn't pay child support. If the entry showing Bush's drug convictions get deleted, will there be no other record. Trust me on this, email is a politician's dream. Everything from here on has plausible deniability.
How is Microsoft resting? 80s technology? Where the hell have you been for the last 20 years?
Excuse me, Mr. Clueless. Windows 95/98 are nothing more that and updated DOS that boots directly to a graphical console. They took EARLY 80's technology and painted a pretty picture in front of it. I guess it is innovative...if you consider animations of flying paper that lock you out of using your computer when deleting files innovative.
Last time I checked, Microsoft has been innovating in many, many areas (notably Outlook and COM+). Let us not forget that they were first to bring professional quality desktop publishing and ease of use to the PC either.
Is Outlook part of the OS now? And I thought COM+ was and extension of OLE, which is nothing more than runtime linking, which was developed in mid 80's? And tell me again how developing a DP program advances the state of the art in operating systems?
I may be living in a dream world as you say, but at least people don't walk around with their heads up their asses there.
Many people are incredulous that such a row is made over a simple apology. I'm incredulous that they could be so clueless.
An apology in diplomatic matters such as these is the same as pleading guilty to a criminal offense. By apologizing, Bush would be proclaiming to the world that the spy plane should not be there in the first place, that the fighter pilot had the right to be buzzing an American plane in international air-space, and that China would have free go to continue such behavior in the future.
Yes we want our people back, but they are soldiers. They have sworn an oath to die for their country if called upon. An apology now, even to save their lives, would make it much more dangerous for military personnel patrolling in international waters around our eastern allies. At any point in the future, China, who is reported to have growing international ambitions, could scuttle any of our vessles and just say, "Now apologize."
Bush hasn't apologized yet. He should not. He should make it clear that the US will not be bullied. He should state the case clearly that the Chinese pilot is at fault here, and make it clear that the US will continue to spy on countries around the world from international waters. He should then demand the return of the crew and reparations for the aircraft, with threats to cut off all diplomatic relations as his club.
Anything else is giving in to a bully and will only lead to more pain in the future.
It removes the greed/growth that fuels our economy, our sandwich shops and our luxury goods, and replaces that with a communistic ideal which leaves no potential for any advancement.
You're not an engineer, are you?
In just about every system you design, the problem is not producing force or power. The problem is always how to efficiently control the energy of the system to do useful work. You can throw a 5,000Hp engine into a Honda Civic, but without a extremely well engineered drive train, all you will ever do is replace tires and CV joints as the engine rips both to shreds.
And so it is with capitalism. Unmitigated capitalism doesn't provide for the best society. It allows for certain parts of the system to destroy other parts. If one part of the system is broke, the whole thing is broke. Open source can be a mitigating/controlling factor, ensuring that commercial software houses continue to advance the state of the art. Why should M$ be able to rest on their collective laurels, reselling the same tired '80s technology? If a group of hobbyist can produce an OS as good as M$' flagship product in their spare time, why should I pay M$ anything? Linux has pushed them to feverishly develope better alternatives.
The greed/growth that fuels our economy has not been destroyed by open source. I has only been controlled.
Anyway, lost revenue for M$ means more revenue for my company, and eventually me (I hope). How does that damage society? I buy coffee, too!!
I keep hearing you M$ apologist repeat over and over that if other companies were any good, they would be able to compete in the marketplace.
Problem is, the fair playing field of the marketplace has been warped by M$ market dominance. They have been able to bend standards to make other products incompatible, and since they are the dominant players everyone bends to their standard. If another company starts gaining ground by winning a major contract, they buy out the other party. That is, competitors never have a chance to gain market momentum(sp?) no matter how good their products are!!
That's the point. That is always, has always been, the point. M$ gained market dominance early in the race, and through careful manipulation of the 'network effect', has worked to insure that no competitor can get a foothold in the market.
Futhermore, regardless of who is selling the product, there are laws that say a product must work as advertised or the purchaser is due a refund. Advertising that something is easy and cures cancer, then denying it in legalese on a tiny slip of paper hinden deep in the packaging is not considered kosher.
I regret that I don't live in one of the listed states so that I could add my name to the list. I'd like to receive a refund for DOS 6.0 and Win3.1 (last version I bought), 'cause it never did work right and there was no way in hell for me to get a refund until now. I had to replace that combo with OS/2 to get real work done.
Maybe this won't kill M$, but it will weaken them enough that they don't have the cash on hand to immediately kill every competitor that pops up. At some point, people will start to realize that M$ product aren't really all that great after all, and THEN the market will start working. And that is what WILL kill M$.