Has Gates even given away 5% of his wealth? How about 1%?
and how much of his wealth did he give away before the anti-trust trials, which dragged him kicking and screaming into the public spotlight?
he's gotten WAY more visibly "generous" since recognizing how politically important it is to be viewed as a nice guy by the rabble. i still can't stomach that picture of gates personally administering polio vaccine to an african child, with that big, fake goony smile spread across is face for the cameras.
And, BTW, from where did that excess come?
exactly - from predatory business practices that crush competition and extort huge sums of money from businesses - large, medium, and small - across the globe.
Furthermore, this is quite an innovative restriction mechanism: previous mechanisms for making so-called "open" standards such as win32 non-open included deliberate underdocumentation. The use of patent law is new and should be raising red flags all over the place, especially as it's for something as vital as an XML schema.
No one is making work visas for foreign IT people, even if they are willing to work for peanuts. That's the usual trend here, instead of blaming your own government you blame the foreign people. Wake up.
what in the world does this have to do with our government?
and i wasn't blaming anyone for anything. i just stated a pretty well-known fact about those ads which look for high-tech skills for absurdly low wages, by our country's standards.
if you see any truly unbelievably low pay rates, you can bet they're placing the ad just to fulfill a legal requirement before hiring a foreign worker for peanuts.
It should be obvious (although these assumptions are dangerous when dealing with mindless Linux fanboys such as you) that I don't believe Windows "sucks donkey-balls," which is another subjective classification.
well, apparently my experience has been quite different from yours. we spent about eighteen months moving our servers from windows, exchange server, sql-server, iis, COM server-side apps and all the rest to linux, courier-mta, postgresql, apache, and java servlets running under tomcat. i'm not going to say the migration was effortless, but once accomplished the reduction in maintenance and software costs are quite real and repeatable year after year.
and yes, i'd say that, overall, the security merry-go-round, upgrade treadmill, and just shitty software design could be collectively described as "sucking donkey-balls." a linux fanboy i may be, but it's not without cause.
Maybe then we'd see less people here (and elsewhere) resorting to sick and degrading humor whenever the subject comes up.
i think some of it is nervous reaction, because it's so ghastly.
but then there is that other camp who actually has a "that's what you get for being a criminal" attitude. it's those people that make it a bit easier to despise humankind.
Kinda like how Americans have been sponsoring overseas terrorism for decades, but go nuts and put stickers everywhere when the World Trade Center gets attacked.
the Soldier Systems Center recently added the Vietnam-style Tomahawk [americantomahawk.com] to the Army infantryman's basic load.
as a hand-to-hand combat weapon, it looks like it would suck.
anyone who has trained with a small-edged weapon knows that overhead swings are basically an invitation to lose and get killed. they're relatively easily blocked and countered. it's much more effective to get in close with forward-stabbing and slashing moves.
frankly, i'd put a skilled filipino with a balisong up against a ranger with one of these "tomahawks" any day.
there's always the chance that this is a psychological weapon, i guess. a US ranger of native american descent swooping down on you with one of those warcries swinging a tomahawk? hmmm. maybe...
In general I'm much more passionatle about Open Standard than Open Source.
I think open standards are a prerequisite for open source. and open source results in open standards, since there is far less mystery about what the code is doing with the data it receives.
open standards and open source are mutually reinforcing.
while open standards are important, to focus on them to the exclusion of open source isn't a good idea. getting stuck with a piece of proprietary software within a set of protocol boundaries is still a possibility if there is any single critical aspect of the system that is non-open.
examples abound in the microsoft world. a piece of ms software may "support" a "standard", but then you find it uses that standard in a non-compatible way, or that another critical aspect of the software is non-standard, or will only work as written with other microsoft software.
it's also important for organizations to not only use products that support open protocols, but to actually use the open protocols and avoid features of the package that are not open.
these are all common trick of the trade in the proprietary softare industry (microsoft first and foremost among them all). it's the natural inclination to try to wrap up your customer base like a fly in a spider's web. open source guards against this by ultimately making every aspect of a system at least discoverable, even if not a bonafide standard.
Here is the state of MA's recommended browser list:
http://www.mtpc.org/browsers.htm
Standards Compliant Browser list: (no particular order)
Internet Explorer versions: 5, 5.5, 6 (6 being the most compliant version)
IE 5 Macintosh Edition
Netscape 6.2 Available for a small variety of operating systems.
Mozilla Open source browser which Netscape 6.x is base on. Also available for many operating systems.
Opera 6 Also available for many operating systems.
Konqueror Full featured Linux browser for the K desktop environment.
IBM Web Browser IBM's OS2/Warp browser based on Mozilla (see above)
Nice to see mozilla and konqueror get some respect!
Meanwhile, the university where i work is slipping into the grasp of the borg from redmond. maybe i should start looking for jobs in MA state government...
The problem is with their programming more than it is with the OS. As much fun as it is to bash Microsoft, this sounds like it's mostly Diebold's fault.
True, but it boggles the mind that they'd select windows for voting machines.
But then, it boggles the mind that this is proprietary software to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
and how much of his wealth did he give away before the anti-trust trials, which dragged him kicking and screaming into the public spotlight?
he's gotten WAY more visibly "generous" since recognizing how politically important it is to be viewed as a nice guy by the rabble. i still can't stomach that picture of gates personally administering polio vaccine to an african child, with that big, fake goony smile spread across is face for the cameras.
And, BTW, from where did that excess come?
exactly - from predatory business practices that crush competition and extort huge sums of money from businesses - large, medium, and small - across the globe.
Microsoft innovates again!
what in the world does this have to do with our government?
and i wasn't blaming anyone for anything. i just stated a pretty well-known fact about those ads which look for high-tech skills for absurdly low wages, by our country's standards.
if you see any truly unbelievably low pay rates, you can bet they're placing the ad just to fulfill a legal requirement before hiring a foreign worker for peanuts.
if this isn't a prime example of the dangers of a computing monoculture, i don't know what is.
say it with me:
repeat forever.well, apparently my experience has been quite different from yours. we spent about eighteen months moving our servers from windows, exchange server, sql-server, iis, COM server-side apps and all the rest to linux, courier-mta, postgresql, apache, and java servlets running under tomcat. i'm not going to say the migration was effortless, but once accomplished the reduction in maintenance and software costs are quite real and repeatable year after year.
and yes, i'd say that, overall, the security merry-go-round, upgrade treadmill, and just shitty software design could be collectively described as "sucking donkey-balls." a linux fanboy i may be, but it's not without cause.
so you believe that that being a subjectively "modern" OS is justification for sucking donkey-balls?
why is it that when anyone points out one of the myriad ways that microsoft os's suck donkey-balls, someone claims this is because it's a "modern" os?
i think some of it is nervous reaction, because it's so ghastly.
but then there is that other camp who actually has a "that's what you get for being a criminal" attitude. it's those people that make it a bit easier to despise humankind.
WOOHOO! My cock is bigger than a killer whale's!
oh wait - that's *diameter*, isn't it...
Douchebag.
at least you'll have the knowledge that you were delicious.
yeah, i've long thought that this whole internet thing is going to blow over.
yo, keep dat old jew away from my bling-bling.
as a hand-to-hand combat weapon, it looks like it would suck.
anyone who has trained with a small-edged weapon knows that overhead swings are basically an invitation to lose and get killed. they're relatively easily blocked and countered. it's much more effective to get in close with forward-stabbing and slashing moves.
frankly, i'd put a skilled filipino with a balisong up against a ranger with one of these "tomahawks" any day.
there's always the chance that this is a psychological weapon, i guess. a US ranger of native american descent swooping down on you with one of those warcries swinging a tomahawk? hmmm. maybe...
I think open standards are a prerequisite for open source. and open source results in open standards, since there is far less mystery about what the code is doing with the data it receives.
open standards and open source are mutually reinforcing.
while open standards are important, to focus on them to the exclusion of open source isn't a good idea. getting stuck with a piece of proprietary software within a set of protocol boundaries is still a possibility if there is any single critical aspect of the system that is non-open.
examples abound in the microsoft world. a piece of ms software may "support" a "standard", but then you find it uses that standard in a non-compatible way, or that another critical aspect of the software is non-standard, or will only work as written with other microsoft software.
it's also important for organizations to not only use products that support open protocols, but to actually use the open protocols and avoid features of the package that are not open.
these are all common trick of the trade in the proprietary softare industry (microsoft first and foremost among them all). it's the natural inclination to try to wrap up your customer base like a fly in a spider's web. open source guards against this by ultimately making every aspect of a system at least discoverable, even if not a bonafide standard.
Jeez, spikes and smack - those socialist northern european junkies will never change.
or: how much explosives can it hold? and is it cool with allah?
Yeesh. Sorry.
OK, let the wrangling continue!
MapQuest was bought by Microsoft. I don't use it anymore.
hey, i'm on linux - i'd settle for a working gamestation.
Meanwhile, the university where i work is slipping into the grasp of the borg from redmond. maybe i should start looking for jobs in MA state government...
though in this case THERE ISN'T EVEN A PROBLEM, for christ's sake.
True, but it boggles the mind that they'd select windows for voting machines.
But then, it boggles the mind that this is proprietary software to begin with.
military.