I doubt that Microsoft high command thought they would be found guilty until they actually read the verdict. I suspect that the groupthink phenomenon has taken serious hold in the ivory tower.
God created the universe. Gates created BASIC, and bought or stole everything else, starting with QDOS.
Churches ask for voluntary contributions. Microsoft levies a tax.
Christ heals the lame; Gates makes your computer lame.
Christ once pulled money out of the mouth of a fish; Microsoft is constantly finding ways to pull money out of you from a different orifice.
The Pope is spending this year confessing the sins of the Catholic Church; Microsoft either won't admit that it has done any wrongdoing at all, or doesn't understand it.
Christ was crucified because the political powers of the day couldn't control him; today, we're not sure if Gates will get crucified by the political powers, or simply co-opted.
Finally, have you ever seen a church enter the Blue Screen of Damnation?
That's an interesting idea you give, and it would explain much. But do you have any defense of it, or can you at least point me to same? It's not particularly a statement I can believe on its own.
Especially when it comes to privacy, the problem isn't the government as an abstract entity. The problem is, for me to trust the government with private data, I really have to trust a whole bunch of individuals with that data.
If the FBI has a file on me with private information, my problem isn't that the FBI might want to screw me over. My problem is that there are ten thousand FBI officers with the magic passwords, and if one of them is crooked, he's going to want to screw me over.
I can trust the FBI. I can't trust 10,000 of its officers, when it only takes one.
I think the intelligent half of Slashdotters could put together a better system than the FBI is today
Oh, really. I doubt it, severely.
Whatever the problems in the FBI, and there are a slew and a half of them, they have one thing that is in short supply among the intelligent half of Slashdot.
That commodity is real experience with law enforcement and the criminal element.
We don't even have more theory than the FBI does, and theory is always subordinate to real-world experience.
The FBI does a lot of things wrong, but they do a lot more things right; it's only the former that we notice. The FBI's main job is interstate law enforcement, and they do a much better job of that than a bunch of Slashdot geeks would.
Because of our different perspective on things global, we could teach them a lot. But that doesn't mean that we could replace them.
When I argue with this particular type of Republican, I note that we will always be spending money on social programs. Law enforcement and the penal systems are social programs. I just figure that it is the most expensive alternative.
You seem to be requiring a very high level of abnormality before you would classify someone as honestly sick,
Abnormality has nothing to do with sickness. Functional failure has everything to do with sickness.
I have met some very abnormal people in my life that have no sign of illness. They are certainly not your average Joe, but do not appear to be suffering from any condition, and function well within society. OTOH, in a society where everyone was manic-depressive, the one who isn't is quite abnormal and quite healthy.
To me, this is a very important distinction. I don't believe I have any particular psychological condition, but I am abnormal. I think that all the best geeks are abnormal in some way because of the ways you have to twist your mind to do your job.
For a good example of quite-abnormal-but-quite-healthy, I present "Weird Al" Yankovic. Face it; the man is odd. Imagine just trying to have a normal conversation with the man. But then again, what disease does he have? The man is perfectly functional, as far as we can tell.
The other difference is, at least in the US, the government is at least nominally out to serve us. The corporation is out to serve the stockholders, period. The fact that it is hard to do that without customers makes customers a secondary concern. And if you're not a customer, they don't even have to be nice to you.
Get your hands on the O'Reilly book PGP: Pretty Good Privacy. Not only does it technically explain PGP, but it gives a lot of history on it. It goes into detail about the reasons Zimmerman wrote it (specifically to make a protocol we can use and the Fed can't crack), the history and ramifications of that, and a decent deal about the NSA. You will get a bit of social commentary here.
There isn't a better tool that the government has.
Someday, enough of us will realize that the role of government is not to solve our social problems, but to keep us in our respective corners until we can work them out ourselves. That is, governments cannot create love, but only cease-fires. People problems can only be solved by people.
I believe that the former Yugoslavia is showing us exactly how well removing the symptoms of prejudice work over time. Once the legislation was removed, everybody has been making up for lost time.
Only it's no longer who can sit at the front of the bus or get into the good schools.
Governments can remove the symptoms by legislation. To a degree, this is a good idea--it stalls for time and keeps people from, say, shooting at each other. When such legislation promotes prejudice (a point that is in debate in the US with affirmative action and quotas), it may well be counterproductive.
What the government cannot do is cure prejudice. It is still hard for a government to reach into the minds of all the populace. However, the people themselves can do something about it.
When the government legislates around this problem, they are buying time for people in the prejudiced groups themselves to get together and stop the prejudice. IMHO, it can happen. Often, it doesn't, and the government is stuck with ugly legislation and no cure for the real problem. Fine; that's the best governments can do. It's not their job, it's ours.
Sounds like it's time to resurrect Hacker's Dream #49832: Put a huge barge out in the middle of the Pacific, declare your own statehood, and build software under your own laws.
Or, let me suggest a slightly more feasible alternative. Given the capital flowing into Open Source stuff now, buy an island. Preferably, one of those little islands that is really destitute because nobody goes there on vacation and they have no exports.
The infrastructure is relatively simple. You need a port and airport, the ability to ship over a good standard of living (that is, make sure the Mountain Dew ship comes by every two weeks...), get your connectivity through a sattelite uplink, and have some sort of power source to generate electricity (you should be able to get geothermal energy if there's a volcano nearby).
There is no need for a real defense force if you play it right. You cut a few treaties with some key powers in the area, and make them dependant on your software ("We're under attack! Send planes quick, or you don't bug patch 203 goes down with us!").
This would be a desperate strategy, but may be persued by a consortium of geek houses if litigation gets so bad one can't operate here any more. Geeks fly out and make money under their own rules, other countries get to import better software than their own laws would let them make, and the natives get a serious economy boost.
Source code is free speech, but compiling and running it is another story.
To execute a program is to order a non-human subordinate to do something. Before computers, the only non-human subordinates we really had were animals. Thus, running a program is functionally equivalent to giving a trained pet an order.
I can own a German Shepherd (IMHO, a dangerous/deadly weapon), and I can even train it to attack people on command. If the dog gets loose and starts attacking people on command, I am at least civilly responsible for the damages and could face criminal charges based on harboring a dangerous animal.
If, OTOH, I see you on the street, drop the leash and say "Sic 'em!", I have committed assault on you. I am criminally liable for the assault/murder the dog performs.
I can own a program that does damage, possibly even fatal damage (perhaps a virus that infects hospital ICU systems or passenger liner avionics suites--not suggesting that it's technologically feasible). That's free speech. Running it, unleashing it, with full knowledge of the likely consequences, is criminally equivalent to doing the same damage with my own hands.
Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre is a bit of a different situation. We are not allowed to do that because even our constitutionally protected rights are not absolute. They can't be absolute because two peoples' rights often conflict with each other. The rest of the theatre patrons have a fundamental right to live that overwhelms your right to yell "Fire!" and cause a deadly stampede.
I just installed Forte (Community Edition 1.0) over here on both my boxen (I have an NT and a SPARC). The problem that I have is that it has a Godzilla footprint. According to my Solaris "top" monitor, booting up Forte takes up 107MB. When you only have 128MB, this can leave you feeling a bit cramped.
they'd seem to be the ingredients for a positive-feedback abuse loop.
That's a scary phrase: positive-feedback abuse loop. At least for those of us schooled in feedback theory, that sums up a very large chunk of the problem. Frankly, I think that this term itself can change the minds of some people in the psychology/stop-the-shootings biz.
When somebody is trapped in such a loop, the abuse increases until something snaps in that person. Some will jump out windows, others will start on drug binges, yet others will get an AK-47 and literally go postal. I don't think you can tell which ones will snap which way; the solution is to stop the snapping. And a positive-feedback abuse loop is almost guaranteed to do so.
There are some people out there that just want to make money on the "going postal" problem (remember, it's not just kids). For those who are really into solving the problem, avoiding these positive-feedback abuse loops solves part of the problem and saves lives.
That's just it. A settlement is not a legal admission of guilt, but a way for plaintiff and defendent to come to an agreement without the court's intervention. Often, settlement means "It's easier for me to pay you than to go through the legal stuff". It may imply guilt, but that's another story.
Actually, MS is in more hot water with the court decision. Private outfits can sue MS for illegal tactics. Before, they would have to prove to the court that MS was an illegal monopoly (and consider how hard the DOJ worked to do exactly that). Now, private entiies need only refer to DOJ vs. Microsoft and the onus is on MS to prove that they aren't a monopoly.
Side note: there is a law on the books that says that plaintiffs can push appeals on antitrust decisions straight to the Supreme Court, precisely to prevent a monopolist to go into appeal limbo.
I don't believe that anything says the Supremes have to hear the case, and they might not want to touch such a live wire. However, if they do, the buck stops there.
(2) Nonetheless, de Aquino claims that the null mass of the photon (the vanishing of its inertial rest mass) implies that it is outside the effects of gravity. I argue that the way de Aquino referred to the mass of the photon as having to do with gravity is simply wrong.
As might be evidenced by one or two "black holes" out there...
No, justice is not a popularity contest. But in this country, it is a capitalization context. The golden rule applies, in spades: he who has the gold makes the rules.
Which would give the White House all the excuse it needs to bring in the Army to break us up. A million-node Beowulf cluster would be the most powerful computer in existance. Given export restrictions on supercomputers (they're weapons, don't you know), the cluster would probably be considered equivalent to a fusion bomb...
I'm not sure an attempt to shut down.com would work. We geeks are just too individualistic. In many cases, we define ourselves by our contempt for authority, even our own. How many would follow union bosses?
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt that Microsoft high command thought they would be found guilty until they actually read the verdict. I suspect that the groupthink phenomenon has taken serious hold in the ivory tower.
God created the universe. Gates created BASIC, and bought or stole everything else, starting with QDOS.
Churches ask for voluntary contributions. Microsoft levies a tax.
Christ heals the lame; Gates makes your computer lame.
Christ once pulled money out of the mouth of a fish; Microsoft is constantly finding ways to pull money out of you from a different orifice.
The Pope is spending this year confessing the sins of the Catholic Church; Microsoft either won't admit that it has done any wrongdoing at all, or doesn't understand it.
Christ was crucified because the political powers of the day couldn't control him; today, we're not sure if Gates will get crucified by the political powers, or simply co-opted.
Finally, have you ever seen a church enter the Blue Screen of Damnation?
"Oh please boot please boot please stay up for over an hour oh please oh please oh please..."
That's an interesting idea you give, and it would explain much. But do you have any defense of it, or can you at least point me to same? It's not particularly a statement I can believe on its own.
If the FBI has a file on me with private information, my problem isn't that the FBI might want to screw me over. My problem is that there are ten thousand FBI officers with the magic passwords, and if one of them is crooked, he's going to want to screw me over.
I can trust the FBI. I can't trust 10,000 of its officers, when it only takes one.
Oh, really. I doubt it, severely.
Whatever the problems in the FBI, and there are a slew and a half of them, they have one thing that is in short supply among the intelligent half of Slashdot.
That commodity is real experience with law enforcement and the criminal element.
We don't even have more theory than the FBI does, and theory is always subordinate to real-world experience.
The FBI does a lot of things wrong, but they do a lot more things right; it's only the former that we notice. The FBI's main job is interstate law enforcement, and they do a much better job of that than a bunch of Slashdot geeks would.
Because of our different perspective on things global, we could teach them a lot. But that doesn't mean that we could replace them.
When I argue with this particular type of Republican, I note that we will always be spending money on social programs. Law enforcement and the penal systems are social programs. I just figure that it is the most expensive alternative.
Abnormality has nothing to do with sickness. Functional failure has everything to do with sickness.
I have met some very abnormal people in my life that have no sign of illness. They are certainly not your average Joe, but do not appear to be suffering from any condition, and function well within society. OTOH, in a society where everyone was manic-depressive, the one who isn't is quite abnormal and quite healthy.
To me, this is a very important distinction. I don't believe I have any particular psychological condition, but I am abnormal. I think that all the best geeks are abnormal in some way because of the ways you have to twist your mind to do your job.
For a good example of quite-abnormal-but-quite-healthy, I present "Weird Al" Yankovic. Face it; the man is odd. Imagine just trying to have a normal conversation with the man. But then again, what disease does he have? The man is perfectly functional, as far as we can tell.
The other difference is, at least in the US, the government is at least nominally out to serve us. The corporation is out to serve the stockholders, period. The fact that it is hard to do that without customers makes customers a secondary concern. And if you're not a customer, they don't even have to be nice to you.
It's also nice to know of the availability of Kevlar drywall.
Get your hands on the O'Reilly book PGP: Pretty Good Privacy. Not only does it technically explain PGP, but it gives a lot of history on it. It goes into detail about the reasons Zimmerman wrote it (specifically to make a protocol we can use and the Fed can't crack), the history and ramifications of that, and a decent deal about the NSA. You will get a bit of social commentary here.
Someday, enough of us will realize that the role of government is not to solve our social problems, but to keep us in our respective corners until we can work them out ourselves. That is, governments cannot create love, but only cease-fires. People problems can only be solved by people.
Only it's no longer who can sit at the front of the bus or get into the good schools.
Governments can remove the symptoms by legislation. To a degree, this is a good idea--it stalls for time and keeps people from, say, shooting at each other. When such legislation promotes prejudice (a point that is in debate in the US with affirmative action and quotas), it may well be counterproductive.
What the government cannot do is cure prejudice. It is still hard for a government to reach into the minds of all the populace. However, the people themselves can do something about it.
When the government legislates around this problem, they are buying time for people in the prejudiced groups themselves to get together and stop the prejudice. IMHO, it can happen. Often, it doesn't, and the government is stuck with ugly legislation and no cure for the real problem. Fine; that's the best governments can do. It's not their job, it's ours.
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, money is a better defense.
Or, let me suggest a slightly more feasible alternative. Given the capital flowing into Open Source stuff now, buy an island. Preferably, one of those little islands that is really destitute because nobody goes there on vacation and they have no exports.
The infrastructure is relatively simple. You need a port and airport, the ability to ship over a good standard of living (that is, make sure the Mountain Dew ship comes by every two weeks...), get your connectivity through a sattelite uplink, and have some sort of power source to generate electricity (you should be able to get geothermal energy if there's a volcano nearby).
There is no need for a real defense force if you play it right. You cut a few treaties with some key powers in the area, and make them dependant on your software ("We're under attack! Send planes quick, or you don't bug patch 203 goes down with us!").
This would be a desperate strategy, but may be persued by a consortium of geek houses if litigation gets so bad one can't operate here any more. Geeks fly out and make money under their own rules, other countries get to import better software than their own laws would let them make, and the natives get a serious economy boost.
"Boxen". Plural of box (computer). Sort of like Vaxen (multiple VAX machines) or oxen. See the Jargon File.
To execute a program is to order a non-human subordinate to do something. Before computers, the only non-human subordinates we really had were animals. Thus, running a program is functionally equivalent to giving a trained pet an order.
I can own a German Shepherd (IMHO, a dangerous/deadly weapon), and I can even train it to attack people on command. If the dog gets loose and starts attacking people on command, I am at least civilly responsible for the damages and could face criminal charges based on harboring a dangerous animal.
If, OTOH, I see you on the street, drop the leash and say "Sic 'em!", I have committed assault on you. I am criminally liable for the assault/murder the dog performs.
I can own a program that does damage, possibly even fatal damage (perhaps a virus that infects hospital ICU systems or passenger liner avionics suites--not suggesting that it's technologically feasible). That's free speech. Running it, unleashing it, with full knowledge of the likely consequences, is criminally equivalent to doing the same damage with my own hands.
Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre is a bit of a different situation. We are not allowed to do that because even our constitutionally protected rights are not absolute. They can't be absolute because two peoples' rights often conflict with each other. The rest of the theatre patrons have a fundamental right to live that overwhelms your right to yell "Fire!" and cause a deadly stampede.
I just installed Forte (Community Edition 1.0) over here on both my boxen (I have an NT and a SPARC). The problem that I have is that it has a Godzilla footprint. According to my Solaris "top" monitor, booting up Forte takes up 107MB. When you only have 128MB, this can leave you feeling a bit cramped.
That's a scary phrase: positive-feedback abuse loop. At least for those of us schooled in feedback theory, that sums up a very large chunk of the problem. Frankly, I think that this term itself can change the minds of some people in the psychology/stop-the-shootings biz.
When somebody is trapped in such a loop, the abuse increases until something snaps in that person. Some will jump out windows, others will start on drug binges, yet others will get an AK-47 and literally go postal. I don't think you can tell which ones will snap which way; the solution is to stop the snapping. And a positive-feedback abuse loop is almost guaranteed to do so.
There are some people out there that just want to make money on the "going postal" problem (remember, it's not just kids). For those who are really into solving the problem, avoiding these positive-feedback abuse loops solves part of the problem and saves lives.
Actually, MS is in more hot water with the court decision. Private outfits can sue MS for illegal tactics. Before, they would have to prove to the court that MS was an illegal monopoly (and consider how hard the DOJ worked to do exactly that). Now, private entiies need only refer to DOJ vs. Microsoft and the onus is on MS to prove that they aren't a monopoly.
I don't believe that anything says the Supremes have to hear the case, and they might not want to touch such a live wire. However, if they do, the buck stops there.
As might be evidenced by one or two "black holes" out there...
No, justice is not a popularity contest. But in this country, it is a capitalization context. The golden rule applies, in spades: he who has the gold makes the rules.
Which would give the White House all the excuse it needs to bring in the Army to break us up. A million-node Beowulf cluster would be the most powerful computer in existance. Given export restrictions on supercomputers (they're weapons, don't you know), the cluster would probably be considered equivalent to a fusion bomb...
I'm not sure an attempt to shut down .com would work. We geeks are just too individualistic. In many cases, we define ourselves by our contempt for authority, even our own. How many would follow union bosses?