Well, there was a point (and I am talking DOS here) where some PCs did.
Because I used to own the little punch thingy and did it. I did not own an Apple.
I honestly don't recall the disk sizes, so I could be wrong about that.
But, since I had a PC in around 1984/1985 which did this, I can tell you that some of them did use single sided floppies. Granted, it was a crappy Tandy PC, so it was extra useless and special. I had a whole 256K of RAM, so 640K seemed like so much.:-P
On a machine running DOS, I most definitely punched floppies to get extra capacity. That I can guarantee you.
So, you remember what you remember, and I'll remember what I do.
At the time, owning one of those punches was kind of a geek badge of honor when it wasn't cool at all to be a geek.:-P
Cuba's failures have nothing to do with Cuba seizing and redistributing the property of its people.
The property which was seized was mostly owned by foreign countries, and benefited the existing dictatorship of Bautista -- who was a brutal bastard, but friendly to the US so America was fine with it. America only objects to dictators who dislike them.
When Baustista was in power, the average Cuban worker was pretty much a serf, and all of the economy benefited only a few.
I'm glad you are keeping up with the DNC memo's and talking points.
You're a drooling idiot.
I'm not an American, and I have no idea of what the DNCs talking points are on this. But your childish little hamster brain apparently needs to make this a Republican v Democrat issue, so you're only capable of seeing thatg.
I've been to Cuba a bunch of times. I've read books my Castro and Che, as well as the history of how the Platt Amendment came to be foisted on Cuba despite their not wanting it. I've also read about the history from non-Cuban sources so try to see the whole picture.
The vast majority of Americans really have no clue about Cuban history. They boil it down to about a 10 year period, and then haven't bothered to learn anything which happened before or since. Cuba and Casto are just the bogeymen to get yourselves worked up about.
So, it's tragic you're so ill informed and are tied to whatever idiotic talking points you're repeating.
Because clearly don't know a damned thing about it you haven't been spoon fed.
So what your saying is that if we took all the illegal -- uh "undocumented" immigrants from third-world countries that Obama lets in and dump them into the socialist paradise of Cuba that America's healthcare statistics will look massively better than Cuba's.
No, America would probably still rank lower than most third world countries on that front.
In the U.S. they bend over backwards to save babies but since they aren't always successful, the statistics get skewed.
Yes, they bend over backwards to ensure they don't get aborted, and then they decide that the raising of them is someone else's problem. As soon as it's born, doing anything to take care of it would be socialism.
'Cuz that works well in the long run. Mostly it lets the church ladies moralize, and then they can move on to ignoring poverty and crime and focusing on prisons for all the poor people.
What do you mean? The country was then conquered within months by us. Saddam Hussein himself was then captured, tried publicly, and executed deservingly.
My god, are you that delusional?
You toppled a government, but you sure as hell didn't "conquer" them.
You barely got out of there with your asses intact, and every single justification for going in there in the first place was provably false before anybody got sent in. Oh, and your inept fumbling about led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians -- far far more than were killed in 9/11.
The entire reason for being in Iraq the second time was a colossal lie perpetuated by a chimpanzee of a president trying to finish what daddy started.
You were in the wrong fucking country, because Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11. And now you've left a giant power vacuum which has destabilized the entire region.
Being in Iraq was such an epic failure that only people who can call it a success were the private companies who made huge profits, and the lying bastards who got you in there in the first place.
If you think that's a template for how to fix the worlds problems... the world doesn't want any more of your "help".
Why the heck not, exactly? The evil needs to be destroyed â" both to end it, and to discourage future evil.
I'm sorry, but increasingly it's hard not to see the US as evil.
Because they've decided it's their right to spy on everyone else on the planet, bomb civilians as collateral damage, and engage in some pretty nasty crap. America has become the enemy of the freedom and rights of everyone else on the planet, but you keep acting like you're the fucking saviors of man kind, and the Champions of Liberty and Justice. That's completely delusional.
This moronic "Yarg, teh communists are teh evil and god said we must kill them" is getting tired.
Are you seriously saying "hey, let's destroy the lives of all Cubans so we can get regime change"? because if that's the case, suddenly I think America needs a regime change
The hysteria of the 60s is 5 decades behind you. Why don't you learn a little about the facts instead of just spouting gibberish?
I used to smoke cigars, and I live in a country where you can readily buy Cuban ones. They're not illegal for me, but they were damned fine cigars... much much better than some of the other countries.
And, real Cuban rum... also tasty stuff, and something they're quite good at making. In Cuba, it's affectionately called "Vitamin R".
Maybe to Americans they're better because they're illegal. But to the rest of the world they're better because they're better.
Cuba has pretty much an awesome climate for growing both tobacco and sugar cane.
Nah, focus groups will say that the logo for the surveillance state should look all happy and stuff. They want the public to see it as a benevolent force, become accustomed to it, and feel scared when they can't see it because the bad men could get them.
The eye of Sauron would work against that.
I'm beginning to think Reg the Blank from Max Headroom was a very prophetic character.
I hope someone figures out how to take one of these down.
What has to be remembered here is whatever they publicly tell us it does, secretly it does a shit load more, and will be used in ways they claim it won't be.
Mark my words, before long it will come out that they can track your car from the moment you leave your house. And it will be able to simultaneously do it with a lot of cars. And this information will abused by spy agencies. And some government lawyer in front of a secret court will argue that they need this and that it needs to remain a secret.
What they'll be able to tell about you incidentally and with just "the metadata" will scare the shit out of you. What they can do when they're specifically looking for you will make Enemy of the State look like amateur hour.
There is simply no way they wouldn't at this point, because this stuff has developed its own intertia.
This will get abused. This will get expanded in scope. This will be used by the spy agencies to do massive, warrantless surveillance. The government will claim they're allowed to monitor everything because terrorists, kiddie fiddlers, and copyright. Despite what they say, I assume this has as much capability as they can cram into it.
This is just more crap in the ever growing ubiquitous surveillance state, and yet more ways they'll find to make sure Big Brother has his boot firmly on our necks.
*sigh* There isn't enough tinfoil in the world for this to be spun in a way that isn't terrifying.
I remember punching the side of 360K floppies to get another 360K on the other side.
Now you can buy a couple of gigs of USB drive next to the gum in the express lane at Wal Mart.
This stuff is awesome and all, but sometimes it's hard to really wrap my head around that pretty much everything about computers (except for physical size) is a billion times bigger than when I started using computers.
It really is hard to explain to people that at one point your entire digital life was about 20 floppy disks in a plastic case, and that what was once a completely hypothetical amount of storage is commonplace.
Well, it's kind of like Snowden. Everybody knew they were doing something wrong. The sheer magnitude of it is slowly coming to light. Nobody started off with the illusion they were innocent before this.
I'm torn, I really am. On the one hand, yes, hacking and extortion bad.
On the other hand, I find multinational corporations like Sony to be complete douchebags, who will do anything to advance their own goals, at the expense of everyone else on the planet, and with the assistance of governments who have been willing to stick it to their citizens to protect corporate interests, largely because the politicians are on the fucking payroll.
And then I want to go all Tyler Durden on them because I'm getting tired of the oligarchy and the asshole politicians enabling it.
You don't keep a free society by making it beholden to corporations who tell us what we can and can't do.
There should be plenty of ways to deal with hosted content on someone's server without resorting to breaking core functionality of Internet services like DNS!
Unfortunately, to the asshole lawyers these companies employ... the core functionality of the internet be damned.
They simply don't care about anything but their own profits. They just want to be in charge of how all technology is used.
"A takedown notice program, therefore, could threaten ISPs with potential secondary liability in the event that they do not cease connecting users to known infringing material through their own DNS servers,"
What they want is pretty much the nuclear option. Because they say so, something needs to be removed from the internet, and anybody who doesn't gets squashed like a bug.
Who gives a crap about analogies? The MPAA have one goal here: to make every piece of digital technology on the planet be only usable in ways defined and approved by them.
Fuck that. Having media companies in charge of this crap is a terrible idea.
This is why ISPs need to be classed as a common carrier.. what happens on their network is none of their business, and they don't have liability for it. This takes away the bullshit ability of corporations like Sony from being able to dictate how technology is used.
This whole notion of secondary liability is crap.
But for any Anonymous hackers out there, maybe all executives at the MPAA or any of their law firms... they now have secondary liability for being douchebags and assholes, and have forfeited their right to privacy.
This is just corporate control of way too many aspects of the internet. So fuck Sony and the other guys in the MPAA. I sincerely hope they all get this treatment.
The idiotic DMCA was a terribly written piece of legislation which put far too much power in the hands of multinational corporations. And idiot governments around the world have been entrenching it in law.
At this point, I think Sony has more rights than I do.
So to hell with them. I say start punishing them, and cause as much economic damage to them as can be done.
The goals of the MPAA et al do not coincide with the goals of the rest of society. And they shouldn't be having their business model entrenched in law. They're just a bunch of parasites who feel entitled to revenue.
The MPAA et al feel they have the right to undermine every bit of technology to server their purposes. They want veto over all new technology to ensure that it aligns with their goals, and makes sure their rent seeking is entrenched in law.
Sony was more than willing to spread malware, and as a cartel these clowns have way too much sway over governments, and seem to think they can act with impunity.
Want the sure file way to the shitty oligarchy of the future? Keep letting these bastards call the shots.
I don't know who actually is behind this attack, but I'm starting to applaud them.
Sony and the other members of the MPAA are out of control, and pretty much deserve to be burned to the ground for the crap they do.
So, why all of a sudden are we taking input from Microsoft and Google on the education system?
These are companies, with their own agendas, and who only see the world through their own myopic view of making money with technology.
In what way do we consider either Google or Microsoft to be qualified to be involved in education?
The same clowns who are driving usage of foreign workers are suddenly going to cure the world by making sure more girls know how to code? Why, so they can not get hired because they expect a higher wage than someone in Mumbai?
Sorry, but taken as a whole, Microsoft is doing as much to undermine the point of getting an education in CS.. because they're actively part of the bits of using H1Bs, colluding to keep wages down, and making it more difficult for workers to be mobile.
So you'll excuse me if I see this as little more than some self serving PR.
Because technology changes much more quickly than real world analogs, and sometimes everyone suddenly decides "OMG, if we don't have teh new stuff we're gonna die".
I've seen a lot of money thrown at fads which took resources away from things which actually add business value or generated revenue.
A brick and mortar business doesn't have the huge shifts which happen in tech, where all of a sudden completely unproven stuff becomes perceived as completely mandatory.
I've seen entire development teams pulled off core products which generated money in order to implement some crap buzzword technology which, in the end, nobody ever actually wanted and which didn't add business value. And by the time anybody realized that, the core technology which generated money had been left to rot for a period of time.
And, of course, unlike other industries.. management in tech frequently have no clue about tech, and therefore have no way of understanding the consequences of their stupid choices. They just think it's all interchangeable and subject to whatever idiotic whims they come up with.
Back when companies used to have roadmaps (do they still have those?), it was not uncommon for a bunch of tech people to be rolling their eyes saying "yeah, right, like we'll be making those in a year" as management told them about the wonderful (and completely meaningless) future of the company, only to be told something completely different in six months.
The people in the concrete business? They don't suddenly get told they'll be making stuffed talking animals in a few months.
I consider it a sad fact of reality that most tech execs are completely delusional, and truly believe that just because they say something based on whatever crap Gartner is selling, that in six months time it will be reality. And they're often too short sighted to realize that the crap we abandoned from six months ago isn't any more true than the stuff we'll abandon six months from now.
Because tech execs consider themselves visionaries, and visionaries aren't constrained by pesky things like reality.
Me, I'm betting anybody who has worked in tech long enough has a whole litany of stories about how the "exciting new future" turned out to be "yet another dud championed by idiots".
Yet beyond monetary damages, the case has zero bearing on the modern technology industry, as both the MP3 music file format and the iPod itself have waned in popularity
Wait, what? People no longer use MP3s? They don't buy iPods?
This sounds like an odd claim... I've got way more MP3s now that I did in 2005, and it's the primary way I listen to music. When I buy a CD (yes, I still do that) the first thing I do is rip it.
Sure, there are streaming services. But I'm betting lots of people still play MP3s on portable players.
It's not as glamorous, but saying MP3s have no bearing on the modern technology industry? I'm not buying that.
Or completely gone, and people will realize they've been bilked.
I believe they are going to realize that legally they aren't what they've been claiming they are, and that valuing them at however many billions of dollars is idiotic.
Between the extortionate prices they gouged Australians for to escape the shooting, and crap like this... it couldn't happen to a bigger bunch of assholes.
From what I've seen over the last few months, I wouldn't trust these clowns, and wouldn't do business with them.
They're an overhyped startup with delusions of grandeur.
I'm not arguing that you are "wrong" merely that your argument omits the crucial element of property ownership in play.
Property ownership of a legal corporate entity doesn't mean that the parent entity can compel the owned entity to break the law. Corporations exist entirely under national laws of incorporation.
And Microsoft, the parent, cannot absolve Microsoft, the child, from the applicable laws.
So if it would be illegal for an Irish citizen to comply with this order without an order from an Irish court... then Microsoft Ireland if it breaks the laws in Ireland would be pretty much screwed. Microsoft USA can't do an end-run around Irish law just because they can get someone outside of Ireland to do it.
I would sincerely hope Microsoft Ireland would face giant fines, and someone would be sent to jail.
Wholly owned subsidiary is the not the same as property. That wholly owned subsidiary is a legal entity in Ireland which is 100% subject to Irish laws.
Some American court doesn't have the jurisdiction to make that legal entity violate local laws. It's delusional to think otherwise.
Mere whim of the US courts doesn't mean Irish law can be ignored.
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Well, there was a point (and I am talking DOS here) where some PCs did.
Because I used to own the little punch thingy and did it. I did not own an Apple.
I honestly don't recall the disk sizes, so I could be wrong about that.
But, since I had a PC in around 1984/1985 which did this, I can tell you that some of them did use single sided floppies. Granted, it was a crappy Tandy PC, so it was extra useless and special. I had a whole 256K of RAM, so 640K seemed like so much. :-P
On a machine running DOS, I most definitely punched floppies to get extra capacity. That I can guarantee you.
So, you remember what you remember, and I'll remember what I do.
At the time, owning one of those punches was kind of a geek badge of honor when it wasn't cool at all to be a geek. :-P
Unless it's static of an image of a school bus, these things sound utterly useless.
According to TFS, Charlie Brown is a schoolbus.
It's OK, if AI is this stupid, we need not worry about it taking over any time soon.
The property which was seized was mostly owned by foreign countries, and benefited the existing dictatorship of Bautista -- who was a brutal bastard, but friendly to the US so America was fine with it. America only objects to dictators who dislike them.
When Baustista was in power, the average Cuban worker was pretty much a serf, and all of the economy benefited only a few.
You're a drooling idiot.
I'm not an American, and I have no idea of what the DNCs talking points are on this. But your childish little hamster brain apparently needs to make this a Republican v Democrat issue, so you're only capable of seeing thatg.
I've been to Cuba a bunch of times. I've read books my Castro and Che, as well as the history of how the Platt Amendment came to be foisted on Cuba despite their not wanting it. I've also read about the history from non-Cuban sources so try to see the whole picture.
The vast majority of Americans really have no clue about Cuban history. They boil it down to about a 10 year period, and then haven't bothered to learn anything which happened before or since. Cuba and Casto are just the bogeymen to get yourselves worked up about.
So, it's tragic you're so ill informed and are tied to whatever idiotic talking points you're repeating.
Because clearly don't know a damned thing about it you haven't been spoon fed.
-- Ghandi
No, America would probably still rank lower than most third world countries on that front.
Yes, they bend over backwards to ensure they don't get aborted, and then they decide that the raising of them is someone else's problem. As soon as it's born, doing anything to take care of it would be socialism.
'Cuz that works well in the long run. Mostly it lets the church ladies moralize, and then they can move on to ignoring poverty and crime and focusing on prisons for all the poor people.
My god, are you that delusional?
You toppled a government, but you sure as hell didn't "conquer" them.
You barely got out of there with your asses intact, and every single justification for going in there in the first place was provably false before anybody got sent in. Oh, and your inept fumbling about led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians -- far far more than were killed in 9/11.
The entire reason for being in Iraq the second time was a colossal lie perpetuated by a chimpanzee of a president trying to finish what daddy started.
You were in the wrong fucking country, because Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11. And now you've left a giant power vacuum which has destabilized the entire region.
Being in Iraq was such an epic failure that only people who can call it a success were the private companies who made huge profits, and the lying bastards who got you in there in the first place.
If you think that's a template for how to fix the worlds problems ... the world doesn't want any more of your "help".
I'm sorry, but increasingly it's hard not to see the US as evil.
Because they've decided it's their right to spy on everyone else on the planet, bomb civilians as collateral damage, and engage in some pretty nasty crap. America has become the enemy of the freedom and rights of everyone else on the planet, but you keep acting like you're the fucking saviors of man kind, and the Champions of Liberty and Justice. That's completely delusional.
This moronic "Yarg, teh communists are teh evil and god said we must kill them" is getting tired.
Are you seriously saying "hey, let's destroy the lives of all Cubans so we can get regime change"? because if that's the case, suddenly I think America needs a regime change
The hysteria of the 60s is 5 decades behind you. Why don't you learn a little about the facts instead of just spouting gibberish?
No, it's the Platt Amendment (the one which allows Guantanamo) and the American embargo which has made Cuba a failed state.
You seem to know nothing at all about Cuba.
America has been fucking with Cuba for over 100 years, and seldom to the benefit of the Cubans.
Cuban cigars are desired because they're good.
I used to smoke cigars, and I live in a country where you can readily buy Cuban ones. They're not illegal for me, but they were damned fine cigars ... much much better than some of the other countries.
And, real Cuban rum ... also tasty stuff, and something they're quite good at making. In Cuba, it's affectionately called "Vitamin R".
Maybe to Americans they're better because they're illegal. But to the rest of the world they're better because they're better.
Cuba has pretty much an awesome climate for growing both tobacco and sugar cane.
Nah, focus groups will say that the logo for the surveillance state should look all happy and stuff. They want the public to see it as a benevolent force, become accustomed to it, and feel scared when they can't see it because the bad men could get them.
The eye of Sauron would work against that.
I'm beginning to think Reg the Blank from Max Headroom was a very prophetic character.
I hope someone figures out how to take one of these down.
What has to be remembered here is whatever they publicly tell us it does, secretly it does a shit load more, and will be used in ways they claim it won't be.
Mark my words, before long it will come out that they can track your car from the moment you leave your house. And it will be able to simultaneously do it with a lot of cars. And this information will abused by spy agencies. And some government lawyer in front of a secret court will argue that they need this and that it needs to remain a secret.
What they'll be able to tell about you incidentally and with just "the metadata" will scare the shit out of you. What they can do when they're specifically looking for you will make Enemy of the State look like amateur hour.
There is simply no way they wouldn't at this point, because this stuff has developed its own intertia.
Now, where the hell did I put my Guy Fawkes mask?
Soon Big Brother will have these everywhere.
This will get abused. This will get expanded in scope. This will be used by the spy agencies to do massive, warrantless surveillance. The government will claim they're allowed to monitor everything because terrorists, kiddie fiddlers, and copyright. Despite what they say, I assume this has as much capability as they can cram into it.
This is just more crap in the ever growing ubiquitous surveillance state, and yet more ways they'll find to make sure Big Brother has his boot firmly on our necks.
*sigh* There isn't enough tinfoil in the world for this to be spun in a way that isn't terrifying.
Unless of course it's a lighthouse. ;-)
I remember punching the side of 360K floppies to get another 360K on the other side.
Now you can buy a couple of gigs of USB drive next to the gum in the express lane at Wal Mart.
This stuff is awesome and all, but sometimes it's hard to really wrap my head around that pretty much everything about computers (except for physical size) is a billion times bigger than when I started using computers.
It really is hard to explain to people that at one point your entire digital life was about 20 floppy disks in a plastic case, and that what was once a completely hypothetical amount of storage is commonplace.
Well, it's kind of like Snowden. Everybody knew they were doing something wrong. The sheer magnitude of it is slowly coming to light. Nobody started off with the illusion they were innocent before this.
I'm torn, I really am. On the one hand, yes, hacking and extortion bad.
On the other hand, I find multinational corporations like Sony to be complete douchebags, who will do anything to advance their own goals, at the expense of everyone else on the planet, and with the assistance of governments who have been willing to stick it to their citizens to protect corporate interests, largely because the politicians are on the fucking payroll.
And then I want to go all Tyler Durden on them because I'm getting tired of the oligarchy and the asshole politicians enabling it.
You don't keep a free society by making it beholden to corporations who tell us what we can and can't do.
Unfortunately, to the asshole lawyers these companies employ ... the core functionality of the internet be damned.
They simply don't care about anything but their own profits. They just want to be in charge of how all technology is used.
What they want is pretty much the nuclear option. Because they say so, something needs to be removed from the internet, and anybody who doesn't gets squashed like a bug.
Who gives a crap about analogies? The MPAA have one goal here: to make every piece of digital technology on the planet be only usable in ways defined and approved by them.
Fuck that. Having media companies in charge of this crap is a terrible idea.
This is why ISPs need to be classed as a common carrier .. what happens on their network is none of their business, and they don't have liability for it. This takes away the bullshit ability of corporations like Sony from being able to dictate how technology is used.
This whole notion of secondary liability is crap.
But for any Anonymous hackers out there, maybe all executives at the MPAA or any of their law firms ... they now have secondary liability for being douchebags and assholes, and have forfeited their right to privacy.
This is just corporate control of way too many aspects of the internet. So fuck Sony and the other guys in the MPAA. I sincerely hope they all get this treatment.
The idiotic DMCA was a terribly written piece of legislation which put far too much power in the hands of multinational corporations. And idiot governments around the world have been entrenching it in law.
At this point, I think Sony has more rights than I do.
So to hell with them. I say start punishing them, and cause as much economic damage to them as can be done.
The goals of the MPAA et al do not coincide with the goals of the rest of society. And they shouldn't be having their business model entrenched in law. They're just a bunch of parasites who feel entitled to revenue.
The MPAA et al feel they have the right to undermine every bit of technology to server their purposes. They want veto over all new technology to ensure that it aligns with their goals, and makes sure their rent seeking is entrenched in law.
Sony was more than willing to spread malware, and as a cartel these clowns have way too much sway over governments, and seem to think they can act with impunity.
Want the sure file way to the shitty oligarchy of the future? Keep letting these bastards call the shots.
I don't know who actually is behind this attack, but I'm starting to applaud them.
Sony and the other members of the MPAA are out of control, and pretty much deserve to be burned to the ground for the crap they do.
Airships? Floating cities?
Hell yeah!! Space exploration has needed to take a steampunk turn for a while now. We totally need more brass goggles and leather aviator jackets.
I for one welcome our new Cloud City overlords.
So, why all of a sudden are we taking input from Microsoft and Google on the education system?
These are companies, with their own agendas, and who only see the world through their own myopic view of making money with technology.
In what way do we consider either Google or Microsoft to be qualified to be involved in education?
The same clowns who are driving usage of foreign workers are suddenly going to cure the world by making sure more girls know how to code? Why, so they can not get hired because they expect a higher wage than someone in Mumbai?
Sorry, but taken as a whole, Microsoft is doing as much to undermine the point of getting an education in CS .. because they're actively part of the bits of using H1Bs, colluding to keep wages down, and making it more difficult for workers to be mobile.
So you'll excuse me if I see this as little more than some self serving PR.
Begun, the water wars have.
And what is going to happen when California doesn't get 11 trillion gallons of water?
Things go to hell quickly when you start running out of water.
Because technology changes much more quickly than real world analogs, and sometimes everyone suddenly decides "OMG, if we don't have teh new stuff we're gonna die".
I've seen a lot of money thrown at fads which took resources away from things which actually add business value or generated revenue.
A brick and mortar business doesn't have the huge shifts which happen in tech, where all of a sudden completely unproven stuff becomes perceived as completely mandatory.
I've seen entire development teams pulled off core products which generated money in order to implement some crap buzzword technology which, in the end, nobody ever actually wanted and which didn't add business value. And by the time anybody realized that, the core technology which generated money had been left to rot for a period of time.
And, of course, unlike other industries .. management in tech frequently have no clue about tech, and therefore have no way of understanding the consequences of their stupid choices. They just think it's all interchangeable and subject to whatever idiotic whims they come up with.
Back when companies used to have roadmaps (do they still have those?), it was not uncommon for a bunch of tech people to be rolling their eyes saying "yeah, right, like we'll be making those in a year" as management told them about the wonderful (and completely meaningless) future of the company, only to be told something completely different in six months.
The people in the concrete business? They don't suddenly get told they'll be making stuffed talking animals in a few months.
I consider it a sad fact of reality that most tech execs are completely delusional, and truly believe that just because they say something based on whatever crap Gartner is selling, that in six months time it will be reality. And they're often too short sighted to realize that the crap we abandoned from six months ago isn't any more true than the stuff we'll abandon six months from now.
Because tech execs consider themselves visionaries, and visionaries aren't constrained by pesky things like reality.
Me, I'm betting anybody who has worked in tech long enough has a whole litany of stories about how the "exciting new future" turned out to be "yet another dud championed by idiots".
Wait, what? People no longer use MP3s? They don't buy iPods?
This sounds like an odd claim ... I've got way more MP3s now that I did in 2005, and it's the primary way I listen to music. When I buy a CD (yes, I still do that) the first thing I do is rip it.
Sure, there are streaming services. But I'm betting lots of people still play MP3s on portable players.
It's not as glamorous, but saying MP3s have no bearing on the modern technology industry? I'm not buying that.
Or completely gone, and people will realize they've been bilked.
I believe they are going to realize that legally they aren't what they've been claiming they are, and that valuing them at however many billions of dollars is idiotic.
Between the extortionate prices they gouged Australians for to escape the shooting, and crap like this ... it couldn't happen to a bigger bunch of assholes.
From what I've seen over the last few months, I wouldn't trust these clowns, and wouldn't do business with them.
They're an overhyped startup with delusions of grandeur.
Are you putting this forth as evidence you're an expert on racism? Really?
That's kind of like me saying "I know the struggles of blacks, because I own a Public Enemy album".
Seriously, WTF??? What the hell does playing a video game have to do with anything?
Property ownership of a legal corporate entity doesn't mean that the parent entity can compel the owned entity to break the law. Corporations exist entirely under national laws of incorporation.
And Microsoft, the parent, cannot absolve Microsoft, the child, from the applicable laws.
So if it would be illegal for an Irish citizen to comply with this order without an order from an Irish court ... then Microsoft Ireland if it breaks the laws in Ireland would be pretty much screwed. Microsoft USA can't do an end-run around Irish law just because they can get someone outside of Ireland to do it.
I would sincerely hope Microsoft Ireland would face giant fines, and someone would be sent to jail.
Wholly owned subsidiary is the not the same as property. That wholly owned subsidiary is a legal entity in Ireland which is 100% subject to Irish laws.
Some American court doesn't have the jurisdiction to make that legal entity violate local laws. It's delusional to think otherwise.
Mere whim of the US courts doesn't mean Irish law can be ignored.