I (staunchly conservative) told my mom (staunchly Republican) that this was the third term of the Bush presidency. She looked horrified until I asked her to list some ways how Obama differed from Bush, and gave her almost exactly your reasons as evidence that they were alike.
She sat quietly for a few long seconds.
"Well, I guess Bush was pro-life. I can't think of anything else."
Change? The name on the office door, but not a whole lot else as far as I can tell.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
I see the fine art of analogy is lost one you. I never suggested that TiVo involved optical media in any way.
TiVo is great. It works great. It does cool things. But if a less-popular company like Microsoft discovered the same algorithms, about the time that hardware had finally reached necessary performance levels and everyone else was working on the same obvious problem, and they locked up the whole market for the next quarter century, people would be calling for heads to roll. TiVo gets a free pass because they're TiVo, but their behavior is despicable for any organization.
The Web became popular at the same time, largely because computers and network connections reached the levels needed to support it. Why not patent that, too?
First, TiVo is not a troll for at least the reason that they actual manufacture products embodying the patent, have done so for a long time, and actually have revenue related to both hardware and subscription fees. [citation needed;)].
They're trolls because I'm not aware of any hardware patents involved. If they invented something, fine. If they figured out a new way to arrange pre-existing software components in a general-purpose computer and are trying to get rich from a monopoly on that particular arrangement, then to hell with 'em.
If I came up with the concept of burning media files onto removable optical media for later replay and create hardware to implement it, then I should be able to patent the hardware but not the concept. TiVo did the same. They combined pre-existing technologies (hard drives, video capture cards) at a time when those technologies were just becoming powerful enough to work together. There's nothing whatsoever novel or clever about that idea. Everyone was trying the same thing, but TiVo managed to get it working marginally quicker. Why do they deserve an eternal monopoly on it?
Then they use terms like "proprietary Word formats" when all Word formats - both OOXML and DOC - are fully documented, as mandated by federal court.
Bullshit. A spec that includes unspecified tags like useWord97LineBreakRules is not fully documented. The correct handling would have been to either specify what those settings actually mean, or to have Word re-write documents needing those settings using legitimate, documented, tags. That's no better than defining a document as a single tag comprising a dump of Word's heap.
Regarding the ISO debacle, the last thing Microsoft would want is to have their behavior examined in a court of law. There's no way they're likely to risk filing a case against a group so willing to vocally defend themselves as the FSF.
That works both ways. After using a Mac at home, Linux at work and on my netbook, and even an iTouch, Windows has the most constricted, barely-functional desktop around. Most of the software I want to use works poorly, if it all, and you have to buy or download sketchy utilities to do the most trivial things.
I've tried using Windows before, but it's just so lacking in software and basic usability when compared to KDE or OS X (or even the iTouch) that I've never been able to stick with it very long.
It is naive. Suppose the article was complaining that he got mugged while walking through the hood with money taped to his back. He had ideas of why that might be, including theories like "maybe they thought I was handing out free money". I replied with a more likely explanation involving socioeconomics and criminality.
Have I said that mugging is OK? No. I just offered reasons the muggers might've used to rationalize their actions.
Same here. Market segmentation in software (or in hardware in the way other posters in this thread have described) is painfully stupid. You've already sunk the expense of developing the extra features, so why not sell them to everyone? Even Apple follows that approach; there's no "premium" or "lite" version of OS X. Still, a pack of MBAs will use the concept of market segmentation as justification for intentionally crippling some releases, and my goal was to point that out.
You're missing the point. It's rude. It's unnecessary.
You're missing that I wouldn't say it because I can see how it could be construed as racist. When people do say it, though, they mean it as a compliment. Most people don't try to keep compliments to themselves.
Trademarks must never be used in possessive form.
CORRECT: The new features in Adobe® Photoshop® software are impressive.
INCORRECT: Photoshop's features are impressive.
That one doesn't even make sense. When did proper nouns lose their identity when used in the possessive form?
Lots, actually. "He's so well-spoken." You hear it applied to black people far more often than white people.
I understand why that would be offensive - "why, did you expect me to be unintelligible?" - but that has some basis in reality. A higher percentage of whites than blacks are middle or upper class, and income seems to correlate with speaking standard English, so I'd dare say that a greater percentage of whites than blacks speak standard English.
Imagine that 100% of blacks spoke the same dialect as most whites. No one would say that a black was well-spoken for doing so. Now imagine that almost 0% of blacks spoke that dialect. People would definitely notice a black person who did because it would be so unusual. Somewhere, then, there's a point at which people switch from noticing to not noticing.
If you wanted to involve racism in the subject, then put it on the media that tends to portray most blacks under the age of 40 as hip, slang-talking urbanites.
I have a DVR but don't use it since the Super VHS VCR provides better quality video.
What?
COMMODORE AMIGA USER - Surfing the net with just 25 megahertz and 8 meg of RAM.
Ah.
If you're recording analog, SVHS might be superior than your particular DVR model. If you're recording digital, there's no way that a raw stream capture will be worse.
The only cost in software production isn't disk pressing.
And lemons are yellow, but that's not what we're talking about. The marginal cost of copying and distributing two different versions of the same OS, assuming similar packaging, is nil. The only reason to ship cheap limited versions is to segment the market.
Vista jokes aside, 64GB of RAM should really be in the for servers not desktops. That can be the thinking behind the 4GB of RAM limit for 32 bit desktop operating systems. Most people who use them will not have a need for more then that.
Not understanding how CPU architecture works and the implications of "32-bit" aside, many people need more than 4GB of RAM, even if they don't realize it. You don't have to be an ubergeek to edit home movies on a desktop system these days. Witness the popularity of flash-based video cameras, like the Flip, and how cheap they're becoming. I'll bet that even as I type this, some kid is trying to edit a skateboarding video he just recorded and loaded onto his parents' 512MB XP machine. When it comes to image or video manipulation, there's almost no such thing as "too much RAM", and more is almost always better.
Also when the 4GB of RAM limit was set, RAM was really expensive.
To the tune of $1,000 a MB. That's approximately what it was going for when I bought my first 32-bit computer. That still has nothing to do with why they "set" a 4GB limit.
And in other news, it costs precisely the same to press a copy of Vista Home Crippled versus Vista L337 OMG, and yet Microsoft charges differently based on which bits are enabled on the particular copy that HP installed on your laptop. This called "market segmentation". If you think a proprietary software company's going to give the cheap version all the same features as the expensive one, just because it wouldn't directly cost them more to do so, then you are hopelessly naive.
I decided to educate myself on anti-depressants, and what I found was, well, depressing: not a single anti-depressant on sale is safe to use. They all have side effects that are either nasty or very nasty. But psylocibin and THC are both excellent anti-depressants (practically the most effective ones), and have NO side effects.
That's just not true. I'm pro-legalization because I think the War On Drugs is silly and unwinnable and incompatible with a free society, but let's get realistic. You're reading a drug warning label, which has to list pretty much every adverse reaction that anyone has ever had, however rarely or even if not proven to be directly related. By those standards, every drug has sever side effects. Tylenol is very safe - unless you take too much and burn out your liver. Aspirin is very safe - unless you take too much and bleed out (note to hippies: same goes for your "natural" willow bark, so don't go there). THC is very safe - unless you take too much and develop delusions and paranoia. To generalize: all bioactive chemicals have the potential to cause adverse reactions, without exception. Casting one as perfectly safe really damages your credibility, so be careful with that.
It's news for nerds, not news strictly about nerds. Anyway, part two of the slogan is "stuff that matters". Whether you're for or against this, it's definitely important.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't think it was that funny.
I (staunchly conservative) told my mom (staunchly Republican) that this was the third term of the Bush presidency. She looked horrified until I asked her to list some ways how Obama differed from Bush, and gave her almost exactly your reasons as evidence that they were alike.
She sat quietly for a few long seconds.
"Well, I guess Bush was pro-life. I can't think of anything else."
Change? The name on the office door, but not a whole lot else as far as I can tell.
So, her sample of *Stanford* students says we're in a writing revolution eh? Since Stanford's $36,000 a year [...]
No kidding. It was a cheap state college with no admission standards just 20 short years ago.
-- Plato, quoting Socrates (allegedly)
I see the fine art of analogy is lost one you. I never suggested that TiVo involved optical media in any way.
TiVo is great. It works great. It does cool things. But if a less-popular company like Microsoft discovered the same algorithms, about the time that hardware had finally reached necessary performance levels and everyone else was working on the same obvious problem, and they locked up the whole market for the next quarter century, people would be calling for heads to roll. TiVo gets a free pass because they're TiVo, but their behavior is despicable for any organization.
The Web became popular at the same time, largely because computers and network connections reached the levels needed to support it. Why not patent that, too?
Um, that's the definition of market segmentation.
First, TiVo is not a troll for at least the reason that they actual manufacture products embodying the patent, have done so for a long time, and actually have revenue related to both hardware and subscription fees. [citation needed ;)].
They're trolls because I'm not aware of any hardware patents involved. If they invented something, fine. If they figured out a new way to arrange pre-existing software components in a general-purpose computer and are trying to get rich from a monopoly on that particular arrangement, then to hell with 'em.
If I came up with the concept of burning media files onto removable optical media for later replay and create hardware to implement it, then I should be able to patent the hardware but not the concept. TiVo did the same. They combined pre-existing technologies (hard drives, video capture cards) at a time when those technologies were just becoming powerful enough to work together. There's nothing whatsoever novel or clever about that idea. Everyone was trying the same thing, but TiVo managed to get it working marginally quicker. Why do they deserve an eternal monopoly on it?
Then they use terms like "proprietary Word formats" when all Word formats - both OOXML and DOC - are fully documented, as mandated by federal court.
Bullshit. A spec that includes unspecified tags like useWord97LineBreakRules is not fully documented. The correct handling would have been to either specify what those settings actually mean, or to have Word re-write documents needing those settings using legitimate, documented, tags. That's no better than defining a document as a single tag comprising a dump of Word's heap.
"bribing officials" (libel ahoy!)
Regarding the ISO debacle, the last thing Microsoft would want is to have their behavior examined in a court of law. There's no way they're likely to risk filing a case against a group so willing to vocally defend themselves as the FSF.
That works both ways. After using a Mac at home, Linux at work and on my netbook, and even an iTouch, Windows has the most constricted, barely-functional desktop around. Most of the software I want to use works poorly, if it all, and you have to buy or download sketchy utilities to do the most trivial things.
I've tried using Windows before, but it's just so lacking in software and basic usability when compared to KDE or OS X (or even the iTouch) that I've never been able to stick with it very long.
It is naive. Suppose the article was complaining that he got mugged while walking through the hood with money taped to his back. He had ideas of why that might be, including theories like "maybe they thought I was handing out free money". I replied with a more likely explanation involving socioeconomics and criminality.
Have I said that mugging is OK? No. I just offered reasons the muggers might've used to rationalize their actions.
Same here. Market segmentation in software (or in hardware in the way other posters in this thread have described) is painfully stupid. You've already sunk the expense of developing the extra features, so why not sell them to everyone? Even Apple follows that approach; there's no "premium" or "lite" version of OS X. Still, a pack of MBAs will use the concept of market segmentation as justification for intentionally crippling some releases, and my goal was to point that out.
You're missing the point. It's rude. It's unnecessary.
You're missing that I wouldn't say it because I can see how it could be construed as racist. When people do say it, though, they mean it as a compliment. Most people don't try to keep compliments to themselves.
Trademarks must never be used in possessive form.
CORRECT: The new features in Adobe® Photoshop® software are impressive.
INCORRECT: Photoshop's features are impressive.
That one doesn't even make sense. When did proper nouns lose their identity when used in the possessive form?
Lots, actually. "He's so well-spoken." You hear it applied to black people far more often than white people.
I understand why that would be offensive - "why, did you expect me to be unintelligible?" - but that has some basis in reality. A higher percentage of whites than blacks are middle or upper class, and income seems to correlate with speaking standard English, so I'd dare say that a greater percentage of whites than blacks speak standard English.
Imagine that 100% of blacks spoke the same dialect as most whites. No one would say that a black was well-spoken for doing so. Now imagine that almost 0% of blacks spoke that dialect. People would definitely notice a black person who did because it would be so unusual. Somewhere, then, there's a point at which people switch from noticing to not noticing.
If you wanted to involve racism in the subject, then put it on the media that tends to portray most blacks under the age of 40 as hip, slang-talking urbanites.
I don't know where you all got the idea that I'm in favor of it. I never said or implied that I liked the idea.
In this case, Vista is the "cheap" version, while Server 2008 is the "full" version.
Crap. I thought "Linux" and wrote "Windows".
I have a DVR but don't use it since the Super VHS VCR provides better quality video.
What?
COMMODORE AMIGA USER - Surfing the net with just 25 megahertz and 8 meg of RAM.
Ah.
If you're recording analog, SVHS might be superior than your particular DVR model. If you're recording digital, there's no way that a raw stream capture will be worse.
The only cost in software production isn't disk pressing.
And lemons are yellow, but that's not what we're talking about. The marginal cost of copying and distributing two different versions of the same OS, assuming similar packaging, is nil. The only reason to ship cheap limited versions is to segment the market.
Vista jokes aside, 64GB of RAM should really be in the for servers not desktops. That can be the thinking behind the 4GB of RAM limit for 32 bit desktop operating systems. Most people who use them will not have a need for more then that.
Not understanding how CPU architecture works and the implications of "32-bit" aside, many people need more than 4GB of RAM, even if they don't realize it. You don't have to be an ubergeek to edit home movies on a desktop system these days. Witness the popularity of flash-based video cameras, like the Flip, and how cheap they're becoming. I'll bet that even as I type this, some kid is trying to edit a skateboarding video he just recorded and loaded onto his parents' 512MB XP machine. When it comes to image or video manipulation, there's almost no such thing as "too much RAM", and more is almost always better.
Also when the 4GB of RAM limit was set, RAM was really expensive.
To the tune of $1,000 a MB. That's approximately what it was going for when I bought my first 32-bit computer. That still has nothing to do with why they "set" a 4GB limit.
Many 32-bit apps don't run very well (or at all) under a 64-bit OS.
...for the set of values of "OS" equal to "Windows". 32-bit apps run just fine on 64-bit Windows and OS X.
And in other news, it costs precisely the same to press a copy of Vista Home Crippled versus Vista L337 OMG, and yet Microsoft charges differently based on which bits are enabled on the particular copy that HP installed on your laptop. This called "market segmentation". If you think a proprietary software company's going to give the cheap version all the same features as the expensive one, just because it wouldn't directly cost them more to do so, then you are hopelessly naive.
I decided to educate myself on anti-depressants, and what I found was, well, depressing: not a single anti-depressant on sale is safe to use. They all have side effects that are either nasty or very nasty. But psylocibin and THC are both excellent anti-depressants (practically the most effective ones), and have NO side effects.
That's just not true. I'm pro-legalization because I think the War On Drugs is silly and unwinnable and incompatible with a free society, but let's get realistic. You're reading a drug warning label, which has to list pretty much every adverse reaction that anyone has ever had, however rarely or even if not proven to be directly related. By those standards, every drug has sever side effects. Tylenol is very safe - unless you take too much and burn out your liver. Aspirin is very safe - unless you take too much and bleed out (note to hippies: same goes for your "natural" willow bark, so don't go there). THC is very safe - unless you take too much and develop delusions and paranoia. To generalize: all bioactive chemicals have the potential to cause adverse reactions, without exception. Casting one as perfectly safe really damages your credibility, so be careful with that.
Why is this news for nerds?
It's news for nerds, not news strictly about nerds. Anyway, part two of the slogan is "stuff that matters". Whether you're for or against this, it's definitely important.
bolsters the notion that keeping 1 in 25 Americans in prison
That's 1 in 100 adults, or about 1 in 130 Americans. Not that this is a good number, but it's not nearly so high as 1 in 25.