Several years ago (more than I care to admit), where I work, the mainframe manufacturer offered free hardware if we would continue to pay the software licenses. Free hardware meant an entirely new mainframe, ten years younger than what we already were running on. Now we're running on Unix, and saving money. Bill's just blowing smoke, telling us his dreams.
1. "you could always sell your sharky legal dept"... Actually, I think the sharks own Darl, not the other way around. I mean, who's gonna get shredded into bloody bits in this lawsuit? 2. That's not a tan, that's smoke and scorch marks from all the bridges he's burning behind him. 3. He could start while he's in prison. Unless he has a 300-lb roommate that calls him Cindy.
In accordance with the DMCA, Ellison's lawyer sent AOL an email with notification of infringement. AOL ignored the email. Actually, Ellison was kinder to AOL than the RIAA has been to file sharers. This is the same thing, only it wasn't music, it was literature. The judge ruled that the lower court was wrong to issue summary judgement that infringement did not occur, even though the facts were accepted by both parties that the copyrighted material was posted.
Well,that about says it. I hooked up to a phone once to try to get some pay-per-view, but it wouldn't even try. Never got it to work, so after a week or so I disconnected it.
An unclassified, shuttle mission in 1996 deployed an Inflatable(!) antenna 14 meters (46 feet) across. They talked about making it ten times that size, but I don't know if they ever did. I'll bet the big one could hear your microwave beeping, and tell the gov't how many "pizza bites" you're having for lunch. A radio antenna only needs to be heavy steel to stand up in a gravity well. A properly shaped blimp will do in space - just metallize the kevlar. Time for you to go do some research: the news story: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0008/10spacein flate/ And here's how they're gonna make it even better: http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:M6nn r0KsoDUJ: www.nasatechnology.com/sampe_docs/2003/Showcase4.p pt+space+%22inflatable+antenna+%22&hl=en&lr=lang_e n&ie=UTF-8
If anyone's still interested or gives a rat's *, my promised journal update is up. I didn't post here cuz I knew it would be late, and I knew it would be long. So in case anyone wants it, there it is. Sorry it's late.
I have worked at NASA since before the first shuttle launch. I will post in my journal some added insight to this after work. Obviously, I can not post from work. What I post will be my opinion only, and not that of Nasa or my employer. Look this evening, around 8 pm central time.
Patents replace the old "guild" system, where every industrial process and device was a trade secret, handed down from father to son, guild master to guild apprentices. Knowledge gets lost this way almost as fast as it gets discovered. Nothing can be written down - documentation can be stolen. Workers aren't allowed to change jobs - they would taek secrets with them. In fact, in some places, guild members could not even move from one town to another, due to economic competition between similar guilds in neighboring towns. By patenting the idea, it's in writing, backed by government and witnesses, who thought of it first. This makes it possible for the "guild" (company) to make money, while protecting the company in case the worker kick it. The company can keep making money off the idea, the idea itself doesn't get lost, just because one worker was. This also makes licenses possible, as an added revenue from the same idea. That's what patents are for, and that's why the company doesn't try to "just keep it a secret".
Why don't you make a list of the apps they like (like the calendar) find an open source or otherwise free/nocost equivalent that doesn't have the adtrojan, and suggest it (with link) when they complain? As time goes by, and your list of free-as-in-I'm-in-control-of-my-computer and free-as-in-beer apps gets longer, you'll be able make more and more users happy.
It prohibits computers "a video signal that produces entertainment or business applications" So if you're wardriving, and you call it research or education (depends on whether you have a gov't grant), you're exempt from this law. So do all your school reports in social studies and English on the kind of geeks that wardrive and the jargon they use. Did I read that right?
To state the obvious: polls affect public opinion just as much as public opinion affects the polls. I'm not talking about the "talking head" effect (CNN reporting a poll as if it were news) - I think that hass minimal impact. But since the politicians use the polls to shape their campaigns, the whole system is a positive feedback loop. The political campaigns during election years suck up nearly all the bandwidth in terms of what the voters are allowed to hear. As a result, things that voters think are real issues get buried or not addressed at all. One really debatable example: I think most slashdotters and other tech people would feel that the area of IP law needs some serious legislative attention. But since politicians follow money, and more money is coming from big business, this gets near zero air time in front of the voters. Sure, you can find it on back pages and dig a little on the internet. Changes in IP law, good or bad, will have profound affect on many industries for decades to come. It affects big business's abilities to compete (witness M$'s fear of tiny Linux), it affects 12 year old girls who just want to listen to their favorite songs. It affects everyone in between. This should be a hot issue. But it's not. Chicken-egg arguments always come up if you try to evaluate only one part of a feedback loop. Take a step back, however, and the pattern becomes clear. Young people used to vote. Registering to vote used to be somewhat like getting a driver's license today. It wa taken as a sign that a young man (and later, a young woman) was maturing into a productive member of society. So it's not that young people don't care, but that they have been disenfranchised by the system. IMHO, it's because the system can't control them, the way M$ can't control Linux.
Exclusion of a particular socioeconomic, political, racial, geographic or other group can skew poll results, because a reliable poll must draw responses at random from as wide a field as possible.
"If enough people have no chance of being included, survey results will be invalid," said the National Council on Public Polls
Their polls are already skewed, and always have been. The polls ignore the demographic group that: A> Lets the machine answer the phone OR B> Hangs up immediately on ALL automated calls OR C> Hangs up immediately when they realize it's a survey / sales pitch.
The existence of this group of people is completely ignored by pollsters - they don't even acknowledge such a group may exist or may have different responses than the people who are more generous or wasteful with their time. Surveys and telemarketers use a tone of voice and method of speech that immediately says to me "huckster - hang up and don't waste time". I know of a lot of other people who react the same way to sales pitches. My suspicion - purely unbiased, I assure you;) - is that this group tends to include more of the higher intelligent and more productive members of society. Why? Because they have the self-awareness and assertiveness to spend their time the way they want to, and not how marketers / survey takers want people to spend their time. Of course, this would explain an awful lot about American society - everything from politics to the trash on TV. (Or was that redundant?)
For political polls, this might result in more accurate polling.
False. Accuracy is based on how close the prediction is to reality, repeatedly and repeatably. A smart bomb's guidance system is may be very inaccuracte even if it hits the target dead center every now and then. If the polling method gets lucky in one instance, but fails miserably other times, it's not accurate, it's lucky. If a political issue is ever allowed to come up that young people are very interested in, things could get out of hand very quickly. (As the politicians learned in the 1960's). My unsupported suspicion is that there is a close correlation between what the media and the politicians are presenting as the issues, and what the pollsters are able to poll about. This is a sort of self-designed, self-fulfilling prophecy: Those demographics that can't be measured by polls and controlled by mass-media hyper-hype blasting are disenfranchised because they are dangerously unpredictable wildcards. Things important to those demographics are ignored by the media and politicians, because the politicians/media can't control it.
"The consumer has a personal responsibility to investigate such "too good to be true" advertising schemes." Yes, that's called caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. It doesn't mean "Let the buyer protect the business interests of the seller". It means the buyer should play it smart and not get taken in by Nigerian 419 schemes and the like.
"perhaps the consumers should've doubted the claims of the company now in control of Replay considering its bankrupted the two prior companies that owned it." I get a flyer in the mail and I'm supposed to research the history of the company selling a $149 product? Pull up SEC filings, court bankruptcy records, etc? Just how much research do you do when buying, say, a microwave oven? Besides, most customers, once they did find out, would probably figure that if the new company goes bankrupt, the next owners will be required by law to honor the contracts the company has agreed to.
"Microsoft, with its $50 billion + money in the bank did not do such a promotion with "UltimateTV; and TiVo has increased their subscription prices over the years in an effort to break even. Therefore, the offer is too good to be true." By that reasoning, Linux is too good to be true. Any customer who knows even a little about Microsoft will know beyond a reasonable doubt that MS does not have the customer's business interests at heart. Does the price of Windows tell you anything at all about the viability of Linux? So what MS is doing with UltimateTV doesn't really tell you much about Replay.
"Would you have bought a Beta VCR if the writing on the wall was that Sony was going to dump it?" Actually, Sony didn't dump Beta. They did somewhat like RedHat is doing now - they got beat in the home market, so they focused on the business market. For many years, it was the standard equipment used in the TV industry for bulk work, like local news sotries, commercials, raw tape footage, "file footage" often shown on the news. I think most of the portable TV cameras also used Beta until satellite feeds became the norm. It's only been recently that tape has started disappearing altogether from TV production studios.
...more analysis of the business end of Replay and its industry. I agree that this effect whether a business in that industry will succeed or fail...but that's not the customer's concern when buying appliances, even ones that require continuous broadcast data from the supplier. The customer should not have to launch an SEC investigation before going to Best Buy to purchase home entertainment electronics. Even if the customer does, you know businesses try their best to cover up, deny, obfuscate negative market info about themselves. The sale would definitely be over by the time the customer finishes the investigation.
"4: Stuff about Replay's competition: Irrelevant." Quite the opposite. I stand by this, still. The customer can not be fully informed about every industry involved in every product they purchase. Customers should be able to rely on businesses being honest in their advertisements. Businesses should have the fricken foresight to use a calculator before plaster "3 years free" stickers on a big chunk of their product line. If the company is too stupid to do the math, the company should be forced to pay for it.
To answer your comments, one by one: 1: "trying to get a steal of a deal". The customers are NOT trying to steal. They want what was prominently advertised in more than one place, from supplier and retailer. 2: "Offering 3 years of free service.... is a business model that won't work". What the offer means to the business bottom line is irrelevant to the customer. If the supplier advertises it, the supplier must be prepared to deliver it. Besides you can't know this "won't work" unless you're an employee for the company making the offer. HMMMMM????? 3: "It sounds like a tactic to just empty the inventory... or drive up the installed user base" You may be right. That doesn't make it OK to lie to the customers. 4: Stuff about Replay's competition: Irrelevant. 5: "For those slashdotters....please spread the word that TiVo...." Why?
If anything is found in Linux that doesn't belong there, swarms of Penguin lovers will remove it and replace it with working original code. Darl has already said that's what he's afraid of. Probably weeks, at most a few months. That's how it's always been. That's how it always will be. If even the tiniest shred of improper software is found, Linux will be fixed faster than Microsoft can fight an anti-trust suit.
Actually, that may not be far wrong. Think of it: Whoever answers this survey as if it were realistic may also be gullible enough to fall for an RIAA-like lawsuit from SCO. All MS has to do is enter into some kind, any kind of "business partnership" with SCO, then they're free to share any data confidentially without the slightest fear of any taint or PR disaster. OH WAIT - they're already business partners with SCO to the tune of $6 million for "Linux licenses". PS: What kind of ActiveX crap does the survey download? What settings on Windows does it change? I'm afraid to even follow the link. What MS does to Windows machines, IMHO, is just as evil as anything done by virii / blackhats.
But I'll answer instead.
* "More mod down than up." Maybe there are more trolls than interesting or informative people. I can easily believe this. Also, If something is well said, several people may mod it up at the same time - remember there's a time lag between post, mod, post score change, other people do stuff, etc.
* "logged in are modded down faster then AC." This is cuz when a user first gets mod points, they may not change their preferences. I go in and set "threshold" and "highlight threshold" to -1 when I get mod points. Then I put it back to 2,3 like I normally use. But some moderators may not change their thresholds, and may have AC modded DOWN -1 in their prefs. This would result in what you're seeing.
* "Once your karma hits -4 or -5, your posts are -1 and no one mods you down anymore. AC is 0". AC is higher than bad karma cuz it's not nice to assume the worst of a stranger. As for low karma users being ignored, well of course. See previous answer.
* "some posts modded down are clever but off topic....news site like/." Yup. There's an "Offtopic" choice when the moderator justifies his mod. PS: This ain't a news site. It's a gossip site where the topic is often something in the news.
* "digging deep..." You can this stuff right on the surface in a cow pasture. The motto here is "news for nerds. Stuff that matters", NOT "Fair and balanced". You don't want to hear about how great linux is? Try this.
* "I thank you for your time". You're welcome.
Concerning Xerox and Corel Presentations - "far superior to ppt" - Exactly my point. Better ideas aren't getting a fair trial. I haven't seen these products, and I fully accept your assessment that they are superior. Because MS is a monopoly, I and the PHBs who might benefit have had less opportunity to learn alternatives.
Concerning "I hate curved walls..." Again, exactly my point. I hate nearly square rooms in my house. Why? Cuz if something doesn't fit in one room, it doesn't fit in any room.
This confusion between the type of product and the brand of the product is exactly what Microsoft wants. That's why their flagship products have names like "Windows" for a windowing GUI and "Access" for a database access tool and "Word" for a word processor and "Flight Simulator" for a flight simulator... . If they wanted their brands of the products to stand alone, they'd use non-descriptive words, or make up their own, like "Ford" for cars, "Apple" for computers, "Jimmy Dean" for sausage, etc. The reason Powerpoint is taking the heat for dumbing down presentations is because Microsoft is a monopoly. If presentations were produced by 4-20 products that approximately shared the market space, the article would have used the term "Presentation or Slideshow software" instead of "Powerpoint". One aspect of this that you didn't mention, though, is that because Powerpoint has so little in the way of competitive products, new ways and ideas for presenting data are not being turned into products to compete. This results in the cookie-cutter presentation design - all presentations look alike and have a common weakness because they're all built using the same tool. It's like houses: They're nearly all built with vertical rectangular walls. This isn't the best way to enclose a living space - it uses more material, it's not as stable in high winds, it is less pleasing to the eye than other shapes. But most building codes are written around this idea, and superior designs like geodesics, curved walls, etc, are actually illegal in many many places in USA. Sorry, didn't really mean to rant here. You are mostly correct, but consider that/. crowd is basically a slice of the "power user" part of the industry, and is not really that exclusive a crowd.
Slashdot Mirror
Several years ago (more than I care to admit), where I work, the mainframe manufacturer offered free hardware if we would continue to pay the software licenses. Free hardware meant an entirely new mainframe, ten years younger than what we already were running on.
Now we're running on Unix, and saving money. Bill's just blowing smoke, telling us his dreams.
1. "you could always sell your sharky legal dept"... Actually, I think the sharks own Darl, not the other way around. I mean, who's gonna get shredded into bloody bits in this lawsuit?
2. That's not a tan, that's smoke and scorch marks from all the bridges he's burning behind him.
3. He could start while he's in prison. Unless he has a 300-lb roommate that calls him Cindy.
In accordance with the DMCA, Ellison's lawyer sent AOL an email with notification of infringement. AOL ignored the email.
Actually, Ellison was kinder to AOL than the RIAA has been to file sharers. This is the same thing, only it wasn't music, it was literature.
The judge ruled that the lower court was wrong to issue summary judgement that infringement did not occur, even though the facts were accepted by both parties that the copyrighted material was posted.
Well,that about says it. I hooked up to a phone once to try to get some pay-per-view, but it wouldn't even try. Never got it to work, so after a week or so I disconnected it.
An unclassified, shuttle mission in 1996 deployed an Inflatable(!) antenna 14 meters (46 feet) across. They talked about making it ten times that size, but I don't know if they ever did. I'll bet the big one could hear your microwave beeping, and tell the gov't how many "pizza bites" you're having for lunch.n flate/n r0KsoDUJ: www.nasatechnology.com/sampe_docs/2003/Showcase4.p pt+space+%22inflatable+antenna+%22&hl=en&lr=lang_e n&ie=UTF-8
A radio antenna only needs to be heavy steel to stand up in a gravity well. A properly shaped blimp will do in space - just metallize the kevlar.
Time for you to go do some research:
the news story: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0008/10spacei
And here's how they're gonna make it even better:
http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:M6n
Don't forget your tinfoil hat.
If anyone's still interested or gives a rat's *, my promised journal update is up. I didn't post here cuz I knew it would be late, and I knew it would be long. So in case anyone wants it, there it is. Sorry it's late.
I have worked at NASA since before the first shuttle launch. I will post in my journal some added insight to this after work. Obviously, I can not post from work.
What I post will be my opinion only, and not that of Nasa or my employer. Look this evening, around 8 pm central time.
Patents replace the old "guild" system, where every industrial process and device was a trade secret, handed down from father to son, guild master to guild apprentices. Knowledge gets lost this way almost as fast as it gets discovered. Nothing can be written down - documentation can be stolen. Workers aren't allowed to change jobs - they would taek secrets with them. In fact, in some places, guild members could not even move from one town to another, due to economic competition between similar guilds in neighboring towns. By patenting the idea, it's in writing, backed by government and witnesses, who thought of it first. This makes it possible for the "guild" (company) to make money, while protecting the company in case the worker kick it. The company can keep making money off the idea, the idea itself doesn't get lost, just because one worker was.
This also makes licenses possible, as an added revenue from the same idea.
That's what patents are for, and that's why the company doesn't try to "just keep it a secret".
Why don't you make a list of the apps they like (like the calendar) find an open source or otherwise free/nocost equivalent that doesn't have the adtrojan, and suggest it (with link) when they complain?
As time goes by, and your list of free-as-in-I'm-in-control-of-my-computer and free-as-in-beer apps gets longer, you'll be able make more and more users happy.
No, it's more like an episode of "Jeopardy" where Beavis and Butthead are the contestants.
''We always pray for large margins,'' said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore.
Keep using unverifiable voting machines and you'll get your wish. G W will win by a landslide this time.
It prohibits computers "a video signal that produces entertainment or business applications"
So if you're wardriving, and you call it research or education (depends on whether you have a gov't grant), you're exempt from this law. So do all your school reports in social studies and English on the kind of geeks that wardrive and the jargon they use.
Did I read that right?
To state the obvious: polls affect public opinion just as much as public opinion affects the polls. I'm not talking about the "talking head" effect (CNN reporting a poll as if it were news) - I think that hass minimal impact. But since the politicians use the polls to shape their campaigns, the whole system is a positive feedback loop.
The political campaigns during election years suck up nearly all the bandwidth in terms of what the voters are allowed to hear. As a result, things that voters think are real issues get buried or not addressed at all.
One really debatable example: I think most slashdotters and other tech people would feel that the area of IP law needs some serious legislative attention. But since politicians follow money, and more money is coming from big business, this gets near zero air time in front of the voters. Sure, you can find it on back pages and dig a little on the internet.
Changes in IP law, good or bad, will have profound affect on many industries for decades to come. It affects big business's abilities to compete (witness M$'s fear of tiny Linux), it affects 12 year old girls who just want to listen to their favorite songs. It affects everyone in between. This should be a hot issue. But it's not.
Chicken-egg arguments always come up if you try to evaluate only one part of a feedback loop. Take a step back, however, and the pattern becomes clear. Young people used to vote. Registering to vote used to be somewhat like getting a driver's license today. It wa taken as a sign that a young man (and later, a young woman) was maturing into a productive member of society. So it's not that young people don't care, but that they have been disenfranchised by the system.
IMHO, it's because the system can't control them, the way M$ can't control Linux.
Exclusion of a particular socioeconomic, political, racial, geographic or other group can skew poll results, because a reliable poll must draw responses at random from as wide a field as possible.
;) - is that this group tends to include more of the higher intelligent and more productive members of society. Why? Because they have the self-awareness and assertiveness to spend their time the way they want to, and not how marketers / survey takers want people to spend their time.
"If enough people have no chance of being included, survey results will be invalid," said the National Council on Public Polls
Their polls are already skewed, and always have been. The polls ignore the demographic group that:
A> Lets the machine answer the phone OR
B> Hangs up immediately on ALL automated calls OR
C> Hangs up immediately when they realize it's a survey / sales pitch.
The existence of this group of people is completely ignored by pollsters - they don't even acknowledge such a group may exist or may have different responses than the people who are more generous or wasteful with their time.
Surveys and telemarketers use a tone of voice and method of speech that immediately says to me "huckster - hang up and don't waste time". I know of a lot of other people who react the same way to sales pitches. My suspicion - purely unbiased, I assure you
Of course, this would explain an awful lot about American society - everything from politics to the trash on TV. (Or was that redundant?)
For political polls, this might result in more accurate polling.
False. Accuracy is based on how close the prediction is to reality, repeatedly and repeatably. A smart bomb's guidance system is may be very inaccuracte even if it hits the target dead center every now and then. If the polling method gets lucky in one instance, but fails miserably other times, it's not accurate, it's lucky.
If a political issue is ever allowed to come up that young people are very interested in, things could get out of hand very quickly. (As the politicians learned in the 1960's).
My unsupported suspicion is that there is a close correlation between what the media and the politicians are presenting as the issues, and what the pollsters are able to poll about. This is a sort of self-designed, self-fulfilling prophecy: Those demographics that can't be measured by polls and controlled by mass-media hyper-hype blasting are disenfranchised because they are dangerously unpredictable wildcards. Things important to those demographics are ignored by the media and politicians, because the politicians/media can't control it.
"The consumer has a personal responsibility to investigate such "too good to be true" advertising schemes."
...more analysis of the business end of Replay and its industry.
Yes, that's called caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. It doesn't mean "Let the buyer protect the business interests of the seller". It means the buyer should play it smart and not get taken in by Nigerian 419 schemes and the like.
"perhaps the consumers should've doubted the claims of the company now in control of Replay considering its bankrupted the two prior companies that owned it."
I get a flyer in the mail and I'm supposed to research the history of the company selling a $149 product? Pull up SEC filings, court bankruptcy records, etc? Just how much research do you do when buying, say, a microwave oven? Besides, most customers, once they did find out, would probably figure that if the new company goes bankrupt, the next owners will be required by law to honor the contracts the company has agreed to.
"Microsoft, with its $50 billion + money in the bank did not do such a promotion with "UltimateTV; and TiVo has increased their subscription prices over the years in an effort to break even. Therefore, the offer is too good to be true."
By that reasoning, Linux is too good to be true. Any customer who knows even a little about Microsoft will know beyond a reasonable doubt that MS does not have the customer's business interests at heart. Does the price of Windows tell you anything at all about the viability of Linux? So what MS is doing with UltimateTV doesn't really tell you much about Replay.
"Would you have bought a Beta VCR if the writing on the wall was that Sony was going to dump it?"
Actually, Sony didn't dump Beta. They did somewhat like RedHat is doing now - they got beat in the home market, so they focused on the business market. For many years, it was the standard equipment used in the TV industry for bulk work, like local news sotries, commercials, raw tape footage, "file footage" often shown on the news. I think most of the portable TV cameras also used Beta until satellite feeds became the norm. It's only been recently that tape has started disappearing altogether from TV production studios.
I agree that this effect whether a business in that industry will succeed or fail...but that's not the customer's concern when buying appliances, even ones that require continuous broadcast data from the supplier. The customer should not have to launch an SEC investigation before going to Best Buy to purchase home entertainment electronics. Even if the customer does, you know businesses try their best to cover up, deny, obfuscate negative market info about themselves. The sale would definitely be over by the time the customer finishes the investigation.
"4: Stuff about Replay's competition: Irrelevant."
Quite the opposite.
I stand by this, still. The customer can not be fully informed about every industry involved in every product they purchase. Customers should be able to rely on businesses being honest in their advertisements. Businesses should have the fricken foresight to use a calculator before plaster "3 years free" stickers on a big chunk of their product line. If the company is too stupid to do the math, the company should be forced to pay for it.
To answer your comments, one by one: .... is a business model that won't work". What the offer means to the business bottom line is irrelevant to the customer. If the supplier advertises it, the supplier must be prepared to deliver it. Besides you can't know this "won't work" unless you're an employee for the company making the offer. HMMMMM????? ... or drive up the installed user base" You may be right. That doesn't make it OK to lie to the customers. ....please spread the word that TiVo ...." Why?
1: "trying to get a steal of a deal". The customers are NOT trying to steal. They want what was prominently advertised in more than one place, from supplier and retailer.
2: "Offering 3 years of free service
3: "It sounds like a tactic to just empty the inventory
4: Stuff about Replay's competition: Irrelevant.
5: "For those slashdotters
If anything is found in Linux that doesn't belong there, swarms of Penguin lovers will remove it and replace it with working original code. Darl has already said that's what he's afraid of. Probably weeks, at most a few months.
That's how it's always been.
That's how it always will be.
If even the tiniest shred of improper software is found, Linux will be fixed faster than Microsoft can fight an anti-trust suit.
Let's see now...Open Source...Chili....
You know what's in it, so you know how bad it's gonna burn...
SCO's had a big steaming bowlful, I think.
Actually, that may not be far wrong. Think of it: Whoever answers this survey as if it were realistic may also be gullible enough to fall for an RIAA-like lawsuit from SCO.
All MS has to do is enter into some kind, any kind of "business partnership" with SCO, then they're free to share any data confidentially without the slightest fear of any taint or PR disaster.
OH WAIT - they're already business partners with SCO to the tune of $6 million for "Linux licenses".
PS: What kind of ActiveX crap does the survey download? What settings on Windows does it change? I'm afraid to even follow the link. What MS does to Windows machines, IMHO, is just as evil as anything done by virii / blackhats.
I answered the survey...with random answers that didn't reflect reality
NNNOOOOOOOO!!!
That's how they designed Windows in the first place!!!
But I'll answer instead. /." Yup. There's an "Offtopic" choice when the moderator justifies his mod. PS: This ain't a news site. It's a gossip site where the topic is often something in the news.
* "More mod down than up." Maybe there are more trolls than interesting or informative people. I can easily believe this. Also, If something is well said, several people may mod it up at the same time - remember there's a time lag between post, mod, post score change, other people do stuff, etc.
* "logged in are modded down faster then AC." This is cuz when a user first gets mod points, they may not change their preferences. I go in and set "threshold" and "highlight threshold" to -1 when I get mod points. Then I put it back to 2,3 like I normally use. But some moderators may not change their thresholds, and may have AC modded DOWN -1 in their prefs. This would result in what you're seeing.
* "Once your karma hits -4 or -5, your posts are -1 and no one mods you down anymore. AC is 0". AC is higher than bad karma cuz it's not nice to assume the worst of a stranger. As for low karma users being ignored, well of course. See previous answer.
* "some posts modded down are clever but off topic....news site like
* "digging deep..." You can this stuff right on the surface in a cow pasture. The motto here is "news for nerds. Stuff that matters", NOT "Fair and balanced". You don't want to hear about how great linux is? Try this.
* "I thank you for your time". You're welcome.
Concerning Xerox and Corel Presentations - "far superior to ppt" - Exactly my point. Better ideas aren't getting a fair trial. I haven't seen these products, and I fully accept your assessment that they are superior. Because MS is a monopoly, I and the PHBs who might benefit have had less opportunity to learn alternatives.
..." Again, exactly my point. I hate nearly square rooms in my house. Why? Cuz if something doesn't fit in one room, it doesn't fit in any room.
Concerning "I hate curved walls
It's all about choice, and the lack of it.
This confusion between the type of product and the brand of the product is exactly what Microsoft wants. That's why their flagship products have names like "Windows" for a windowing GUI and "Access" for a database access tool and "Word" for a word processor and "Flight Simulator" for a flight simulator... . If they wanted their brands of the products to stand alone, they'd use non-descriptive words, or make up their own, like "Ford" for cars, "Apple" for computers, "Jimmy Dean" for sausage, etc. /. crowd is basically a slice of the "power user" part of the industry, and is not really that exclusive a crowd.
The reason Powerpoint is taking the heat for dumbing down presentations is because Microsoft is a monopoly. If presentations were produced by 4-20 products that approximately shared the market space, the article would have used the term "Presentation or Slideshow software" instead of "Powerpoint".
One aspect of this that you didn't mention, though, is that because Powerpoint has so little in the way of competitive products, new ways and ideas for presenting data are not being turned into products to compete. This results in the cookie-cutter presentation design - all presentations look alike and have a common weakness because they're all built using the same tool.
It's like houses: They're nearly all built with vertical rectangular walls. This isn't the best way to enclose a living space - it uses more material, it's not as stable in high winds, it is less pleasing to the eye than other shapes. But most building codes are written around this idea, and superior designs like geodesics, curved walls, etc, are actually illegal in many many places in USA.
Sorry, didn't really mean to rant here. You are mostly correct, but consider that