We've had reports of racial profiling in the USA, female inmates raped by corrections officers, peaceful black immigrants beaten and shot for getting their wallet out, high school students shooting each other, Japanese fishing boats destroyed by American subs, bombing the Chinese embassy, government politicians having affairs with interns, a mother drowning her five children one by one...damn where do I stop?
Just to be clear about the intent of your parallel parody of the original post - are you suggesting that the state of human rights in the US are comparable to those in China?
Microsoft has a monopoly because of what people choose and what people choose is Microsoft.
Nice to see you admit MS has a monopoly.
Regardless of the origin of its initial monopoly on the desktop, MS is using that monopoly to exterminate competition in other markets, which it then goes on to dominate.
I'm no MS lover, but StarOffice(OpenOffice, whatever) pales in comparision to Office 2000
"It's the LICENSE, stupid."
Office 2K could be ten times better than its free equivalents. It still has that ass-disgusting, soul-sucking, self-respecting-intelligent-life-form-insulting LICENSE.
Coastal forts, anti-air defense, domestic air force, and a reserve-based army, navy patrols, sub patrols, border patrols should go a long way towards defending U.S. All those blitz wars in foreign countries has nothing to do with defense.
OK, let's say the US withdraws to its borders. It's now a sitting duck. Take out its foreign oil imports and the US is starved into a pre-industrial economic state.
"Coastal forts"? Jesus, what will you recommend next? Cavalry saber charges?
Re:You mean they use real guns with real bullets?!
on
MilSpec Biotech
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· Score: 1
Those barrels were heavy and strong enough to penetrate several hundred feet into the ground (through reinforced concrete) to destroy a bunker.
Several HUNDRED feet?? Do you have a reference for this?
Re:You mean they use real guns with real bullets?!
on
MilSpec Biotech
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· Score: 1
Yes... Think how much worse Vietnam could have been if the US wouldn't have intervened... Oh wait...
Oh yeah, it was a regular worker's paradise in Vietnam when the US left town.
Maybe we'll see an end to those absolutely fucking idiotic dot-com TV commercials slathered in incomprehensible visual metaphors.
Oooooh, the "D" generation. Wearing a sherpa cap and zipping around the office on a Razor scooter is a sure sign of brilliance.
Ahhhhh... "Bubble Technology" - complete with computer-generated bubbles. That tells me a lot, and really makes me want to invest.
"Lucent. We're a bunch of really brainy fellows, as you can tell by our marketing. What we produce is so sophisticated that we can't actually describe it, but instead, here are some tantalizing visuals of... well, nothing really."
A shake-out was necessary, and unavoidable, but it's too bad so many people are getting hurt. Maybe the "D" generation will end up standing for "Disillusioned".
But seriously - good riddance to the ads. I wish it were the ad weasels living in cardboard boxes instead.
Remember the forced video-watching scene? It's getting a lot like that with commercials.
I'm sure the Ad-Man would jump at the chance to do something like that.
After resisting for a long time in the face of many positive reviews, I was just about ready to throw in and buy one of these things, and now this. Forget it, there's no way I would buy from a company that pulls this kind of stuff.
Yep, describes me too.
I think I'm getting to the point that doing without is preferable than being someone's subscription bitch.
The extra things are added for the advancement of the web standards.
Do you honestly want Microsoft driving internet standards? That's insane.
Heaven is when one browser has 100% of the market share, works cross-platform, and could bring newer, more modern, and more useful features to the public.
First: you have incredibly low expectations of heaven.
Second: is IE cross-platform? No. Mozilla is.
Third: your idea of heaven - zero choice of browsers - looks very much like heaven from the perspective of a web designer, instead of those you serve - those browsing your site.
Sorry about the rant, but I do get tired of writing, checking my code in six different browsers (Have to check in Op4 and NS3..*shudder*) all the time.
Why bother? Run your site through W3C's HTML validator, and if it's compliant, you're done. Fuck 'em if they're using non-standard browsers.
Not a damn thing cool about it. The only really - (++puke++) - "innovative" - thing about this is the fucking cahones it takes to propose a centralized store of HUGE amounts of personal and financial data under the auspices of one soulless megalomaniacal corporation that will do literally anything to maintain its dominance. And all that with a totally straight face and complete lack of second thoughts or introspection.
I guess it's cool that way. Like, the earth getting hit by an asteroid is cool in the movies; it just wouldn't be so "cool" if it actually happened.
If you do business with a vendor who uses hailstorm, even if you don't use the hailstorm "service", do other distributed components of the vendor's back-end system funnel your data to a hailstorm server?
Just inform the government that you will continue conduct all business with them using paper forms, filled out in smudgy pencil and/or leaky fountain pens until they make the website standards-compliant.
Yeah, but tell that to some non-technical person that is in charge of getting a web site (inexpensively) done for their office. You are preaching to the choir here... Most Slashdot readers know that M$ FrontPage may not be worth much, but most office personnel don't read (nor heard of, for that matter) Slashdot. If all someone has to do is point and click to create a (cheap) web site with a bunch of links that glow when you move the mouse over them, then that's what they will do, regardless of the quality of the site. Like many non-technical people, they want it done *now*, they want it done *cheap*, and they want it by any means possible.
Exactly. And while some may view this as the fault of the clueless non-technical person for whom the Linux community has such contempt, I view it as a failing of the Linux community.
I mean, come on - Linux should have half a dozen easy-to-use graphical web page builders that generate decent code. It's shameful.
what alternative business model can the Open Source offer. As has been pointed in earlier posts, the audience is not going to be interested in freedom, cooperation etc.. RMS has to deliver the dough.
If he were speaking to an audience of commercial software developers this statement would make sense. Since he's talking to an audience that will (presumably) include people destined for a wide variety of roles in life, most of whom will have to use software on a regular basis, the argument is quite simple:
Do you want to have control over the software you use, or do you want to be at the mercy of a corporation's licensing whims?
The argument applies to everyone except those who profit from the insane licensing agreements that are becoming the norm, a trend currently driven by your friends at Microsoft.
MS wasn't always like this. But they are now, and that's what matters.
I disagree. Stallman is actually a good advocate. When you first see him, you immediately form a preconception of what he is like. This actually disarms you psychologically. He then makes some very lucid, well-structured and persuasive arguments, forcing you to think about software in a different way than you are used to.
If you sent a suit up there, it might carry a little more weight initially because it caters to people's expectations. The challenge is to get people to think outside their conventional expectations.
Whom do you think businesses are going to listen to, a company they've done business with for years and know (for good and for ill, in the case of MS), or some guy who will very likely come across as a zealot, as he has numerous times in the past?
It doesn't matter who they listen to. The important thing is that it will get them *thinking* about free software. To many people - especially business folk - the concept is entirely alien.
This is a one-way conversion opportunity in favor of free software. It's not as if there will be free software advocates in the audience who will be influenced to give up free software. The only minds that will be changed are those to whom free software is incomprehensible. Some of them may become enlightened.
RIDICULOUS. Man, Eazel goes tits-up and people are predicting the demise of the Linux desktop.
Maybe Eazel failed because Nautilus was simply not that great? I installed it twice - I wanted to like this darling of the Linux press - and I uninstalled it twice. Did nothing for me. If it hadn't been given all the early press and hype, would anyone even notice that Eazel went under? I doubt it.
The Linux desktop is not dead, it's not old, it's not even middle-aged. At most, it's just moved out of mom and dad's house. Give it a little time.
Slashdot Mirror
Rolling This Fattie, Laughing?
Just to be clear about the intent of your parallel parody of the original post - are you suggesting that the state of human rights in the US are comparable to those in China?
No, the objection is that it's done by a monopoly.
Nice to see you admit MS has a monopoly.
Regardless of the origin of its initial monopoly on the desktop, MS is using that monopoly to exterminate competition in other markets, which it then goes on to dominate.
"It's the LICENSE, stupid."
Office 2K could be ten times better than its free equivalents. It still has that ass-disgusting, soul-sucking, self-respecting-intelligent-life-form-insulting LICENSE.
OK, let's say the US withdraws to its borders. It's now a sitting duck. Take out its foreign oil imports and the US is starved into a pre-industrial economic state.
"Coastal forts"? Jesus, what will you recommend next? Cavalry saber charges?
Several HUNDRED feet?? Do you have a reference for this?
Oh yeah, it was a regular worker's paradise in Vietnam when the US left town.
For beach property in Hawaii, I'd more than happy to live in a geekleper colony.
Oooooh, the "D" generation. Wearing a sherpa cap and zipping around the office on a Razor scooter is a sure sign of brilliance.
Ahhhhh... "Bubble Technology" - complete with computer-generated bubbles. That tells me a lot, and really makes me want to invest.
"Lucent. We're a bunch of really brainy fellows, as you can tell by our marketing. What we produce is so sophisticated that we can't actually describe it, but instead, here are some tantalizing visuals of... well, nothing really."
A shake-out was necessary, and unavoidable, but it's too bad so many people are getting hurt. Maybe the "D" generation will end up standing for "Disillusioned".
But seriously - good riddance to the ads. I wish it were the ad weasels living in cardboard boxes instead.
Remember the forced video-watching scene? It's getting a lot like that with commercials. I'm sure the Ad-Man would jump at the chance to do something like that.
Yep, describes me too.
I think I'm getting to the point that doing without is preferable than being someone's subscription bitch.
Any cabins in the woods available cheap?
Do you honestly want Microsoft driving internet standards? That's insane.
Heaven is when one browser has 100% of the market share, works cross-platform, and could bring newer, more modern, and more useful features to the public.
First: you have incredibly low expectations of heaven.
Second: is IE cross-platform? No. Mozilla is.
Third: your idea of heaven - zero choice of browsers - looks very much like heaven from the perspective of a web designer, instead of those you serve - those browsing your site.
Sorry about the rant, but I do get tired of writing, checking my code in six different browsers (Have to check in Op4 and NS3..*shudder*) all the time.
Why bother? Run your site through W3C's HTML validator, and if it's compliant, you're done. Fuck 'em if they're using non-standard browsers.
Not a damn thing cool about it. The only really - (++puke++) - "innovative" - thing about this is the fucking cahones it takes to propose a centralized store of HUGE amounts of personal and financial data under the auspices of one soulless megalomaniacal corporation that will do literally anything to maintain its dominance. And all that with a totally straight face and complete lack of second thoughts or introspection.
I guess it's cool that way. Like, the earth getting hit by an asteroid is cool in the movies; it just wouldn't be so "cool" if it actually happened.
Where have you been? Haven't you heard the term "subscription model" bandied about here and there over the last several months?
If you do business with a vendor who uses hailstorm, even if you don't use the hailstorm "service", do other distributed components of the vendor's back-end system funnel your data to a hailstorm server?
Creepy.
They actually want to copyright a DATA STRUCTURE so that no one else can use it. That's just insane.
I'm going to copyright the following data structure immediately:
If I come across ANYONE using ANYTHING even REMOTELY like this, I'm gonna sue you and you will be owned.
Just inform the government that you will continue conduct all business with them using paper forms, filled out in smudgy pencil and/or leaky fountain pens until they make the website standards-compliant.
Exactly. And while some may view this as the fault of the clueless non-technical person for whom the Linux community has such contempt, I view it as a failing of the Linux community.
I mean, come on - Linux should have half a dozen easy-to-use graphical web page builders that generate decent code. It's shameful.
If he were speaking to an audience of commercial software developers this statement would make sense. Since he's talking to an audience that will (presumably) include people destined for a wide variety of roles in life, most of whom will have to use software on a regular basis, the argument is quite simple:
Do you want to have control over the software you use, or do you want to be at the mercy of a corporation's licensing whims?
The argument applies to everyone except those who profit from the insane licensing agreements that are becoming the norm, a trend currently driven by your friends at Microsoft.
MS wasn't always like this. But they are now, and that's what matters.
I disagree. Stallman is actually a good advocate. When you first see him, you immediately form a preconception of what he is like. This actually disarms you psychologically. He then makes some very lucid, well-structured and persuasive arguments, forcing you to think about software in a different way than you are used to.
If you sent a suit up there, it might carry a little more weight initially because it caters to people's expectations. The challenge is to get people to think outside their conventional expectations.
It doesn't matter who they listen to. The important thing is that it will get them *thinking* about free software. To many people - especially business folk - the concept is entirely alien.
This is a one-way conversion opportunity in favor of free software. It's not as if there will be free software advocates in the audience who will be influenced to give up free software. The only minds that will be changed are those to whom free software is incomprehensible. Some of them may become enlightened.
Maybe Eazel failed because Nautilus was simply not that great? I installed it twice - I wanted to like this darling of the Linux press - and I uninstalled it twice. Did nothing for me. If it hadn't been given all the early press and hype, would anyone even notice that Eazel went under? I doubt it.
The Linux desktop is not dead, it's not old, it's not even middle-aged. At most, it's just moved out of mom and dad's house. Give it a little time.
All your big-mouth billy bass are belong to us.
Hmm, I watched your lips and they looked exactly the same both times.