Sure, Windows is expensive. It may indeed be hard to administer and unreliable. But get this: they're managing to use it!
Just because they can manage to use it does not imply that it is the best or most efficent tool tool for the job. As for the expensive part I've never heard of anyone who actually likes paying taxes.
I think people greatly underestimate the amount of effort, blood, sweat, and tears it would take to "switch" (so to speak) a government agency (let alone a whole government) to Linux.
At the same time plenty appear to under estimate the amount of effort required to "stay" with Microsoft.
The old adage applies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. While some would no doubt argue that Windows-based systems are "broke", the fact is that government agencies somehow manage to make their computers crunch numbers and store data on Windows machines.
They need to be able to retrieve this data for decades, in some cases time periods in the order of 120 years. Commercial business rarely has to use data for such long periods of time. But this is essential if civil government is to function effectivly.
In general, taking down a running, working system in order to replace it with something else is always a risky move. It is never something to be taken lightly.
Microsoft's business model relys on people doing this every 18-36 months.
Its incorporated, legally, in the US hence its ability to hide behind US law even as it is protected by US law (which means foreign governments cannot punish Microsoft for actions which are illegal in that country but legal in the US, unless those actions actually OCCUR in that foriegn country.
Even in the latter case there is still the possibility of the US applying "diplomatic" preasure. Where the issue of who has the biggest army can be a major factor. Could you seriously imagine Syria or Iran attempting to prosecute Microsoft?
Actually, women in Iran have it comparatively good, for an islamic state anyway.
As with the other versions of "The religion of Abraham" a lot of what goes on in an "Islamic State" is dependent on human interpretations.
Iranian femenists have managed to make compelling religious arguments based on the Koran that demands, if not full equality, at least a very fair and kind treatment, where fair in many cases not specifically mentioned elsewhere in the Koran amounts to equality before the law. By western standardsn it is still quite lacking, but women are surprisingly far better off in fundamentalist Iran than they are in most of the rest of the islamic world.
Since Arab and Persian traditions and gender roles might well not be the same as those from the "West" it's quite possible that Iranians could claim that the US is lacking in some way or other.
OTOH our good friends in Saudi Arabia are the worst offendors. You should read the book "Princess" sometime for a real insite into the dirty secrets of Saudi culture and its treatment of women.
One important thing to remember is that this is Saudi it isn't Islamic or Arab.
We live in a global economy of corporations now. It is irrelevant in what country a corporation resides in. Microsoft exists everywhere, and offers their coin to any government that will listen.
If Microsoft was headquartered in some little third world country they'd be far less able to annoy any significent national government.
Britian, France, Japan, Peru, China and Germany are all moving to Linux and open source. Hell, some are even writing up legislation that gives incentives to businesses that do so as well. Why aren't we (the United States)?
Because in the case of the US the money involved stays within the US economy, even if it does all head in the direction of Washington state first. For the rest of the planet it involves money leaving for foreign shores.
The series was shit. Tacky, dated, sci-fi at its' worst - with the opening premise ripped off from Clarke's "Childhood's End", and everything going downhill from there.
Clarke admits that "Childhood's End" isn't entirely original. Anyway just about any story is "ripped off" from something or other anyway.
After V: The Series was cancelled, NBC told Johnson "You were right, we should've done it your way" (this is according to Johnson - same magazine article).
The real suprise is that the apologied to him. Not that TV companies appear to have changed that much in the last 20 years when it comes to leaving talented people to just do their stuff.
Europa might have a plentiful supply of water, and in all fairness, they might have grabbed all of that too, but Earth has more, and it's in a form that's probably easier to obtain.
There is a huge quantity of water in solar orbit. That is a lot easier to get hold off that taking it off the surface of a planet of any substantial size. Any aliens who can consider Earth to be an environment they can walk around in without elaborate protection probably come from somewhere with a similar environment. Thus their star system is unlikely to be fundermentally different from the Sol system. So if they want water why not mine their own cometry ice.
They also were looking for food, slaves, and soldiers,
They can easily farm food animals on their own planet. Slaves and soldiers can just as easily come from their own species.
And they go to so much trouble sneaking around wearing rubber human suits, and secretly pumping the water off the planet (which, btw, water is easily made by combining hyrodgen and oxygen under pressure, both elements plentilly available everywhere, and so pumping it is more work than just making it)
Why bother making it. Why not just mine it from comets? Rather than waste all that energy hauling it out of a 1G gravity well.
And V too of course. They come to earth looking for water but (somehow) manage to miss all those huge Gas Giants full of water, Europa, and the Asteroid belt. It makes - literally - no sense for them to invade earth for "Water" and expend the delta-v when they could just grab it from anywhere else in the solar system.
Or for that matter their own planetry system. Water is hardly an exotic compound.
Just about every Alien Invasion movie has this problem... they all expect the aliens to come to Earth to grab our "resources" but the fact is earth is a piss poor place to get resources.
It dosn't make sense for Aliens to come to Earth just to cart off resources. What would make sense is if the aliens wanted the planet to live on...
So they're saying this alien race can build these huge inter-stellar vehicles but we can't figure out how to generate water
Why would they need to generate water? All they need do is capture some comets.
and farm food animals? That somehow its easier to mind f*** an entire planet and dress up like humans than just flat out invade?
Sentient creatures make bad prey. Sentient creatures who are top predators and have put a substantial part of their history developing weapons make a very bad choice of prey.
In the UK "V" was shown at the same time as a national miners strike. Britain's mining communities quickly warmed to the theme - for them the UK was in the grip of an evil alien she-monster and they went arount scrawling red 'V's everywhere.
Though the actual reason for the broadcast as another industrial dispute. Otherwise it would have been coverage of the olympics instead.
If I remember Alien Nation also starts the same way, although in AN the aliens are more or less just like us, some good some not so good. Plus Alien Nation has bald poeple with spots and the males got pregnant. which makes it so much better than anything else.
One of the best things about Alien nation is that the Aliens were actual aliens. Rather that 3 dimensional human stereotypes in suits.
I don't remember AirWolf having a laser, BUT, it was _heavily_ armored, unlike Blue Thunder. Also, its weapons pod could turn side to side, making any evasive maneuver by BT pretty much pointless. That and the turbo thruster advantage gives it all to AirWolf.
Being able to fly supersonic is a definite advantage if people start setting off nukes.
The average user doesn't know the difference between Windows/Lindows, except the fact that there is no Word, Excel,
For such a user Open/Star Office will work fine as a "drop in" replacement. Since they are highly unlikely to be using the more obsure "features" of the MS programs.
Outlook (Express), etc yet
You mean they might actually miss those email viruses:)
I would have to explain why Kazaa doesn't work...and they don't care about alternatives - its Kazaa or bust.
But they can run Kazaa-lite, which is exactly the same thing except no spyware and some possibly useful addons.
Not sure how the law is in the UK but in the US you can buy OEM copies of software as long as you buy "hardware" with it. One store I go to defines "hardware" as something as simple as a CPU fan.
Odds on it would cost Microsoft too much to bring a claim to court. Given that judges will only rarely award costs for lawyers in a small claims case.
There is only a violation if they modified existing GPL code. It doesn't sound like they'd be stupid enough to do that.
The conditions of the GPL apply to anyone who distributes GPL code. Unmodified GPL code is still covered by the GPL. Modified GPL code is covered by the GPL since it is a "dervied work".
If the GPL is too restrictive, why not release under the LGPL?
Only if it's your code. If what you are supplying is either GPL or a derived work of GPL then either you follow the GPL, negotiate with the copyright holder(s) or take the risk of being caught pirating the software.
Capitalism is all about letting businesses squeeze every penny out of consumers. Maximizing for the consumer would be socialism, you commie bastard.
Actually "capitalism" assumes that both supplier and customer will attempt to act out of self interest. The former as well as the idea that businesses have a devine right to profit is better described as "corporate socialism".
Here's an idea -- instead of inconveniencing millions of innocent passengers, how about securing the cockpits instead? So long as the pilots remain in control of the plane, it's a flying prison for anyone who commits any criminal act back in the passenger compartment.
It would drastically increase the weight of the plane to make the passenger cabin (and any part of the plane accessable from the cabin) into a jail. There are more places than just the cockpit you don't want hijackers going.
The system relies on a false premise. Terrorists don't have "careers" anymore. If you were planning a terrorist attack, you could easily find 20 guys with no records whose names appear on no lists in any form.
These need not actaully be their real identities. Remember that 7 of those accused of being involved in 911 were proven to have used stolen identities.
That algorithm is so fundamentally broken as to be practically useless for anything but as an aid in simple searches. Why anyone would use soundex in a mission critical application designed to positively identify individuals is beyond me. What, was the 'No Fly' database written by 1st year comp sci major or something?
It dosn't matter how good the algorithm is. Sicne the vast majority of people are not terrorists false positives are always going to be the majority of those any such system will pick out.
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Sure, Windows is expensive. It may indeed be hard to administer and unreliable. But get this: they're managing to use it!
Just because they can manage to use it does not imply that it is the best or most efficent tool tool for the job. As for the expensive part I've never heard of anyone who actually likes paying taxes.
I think people greatly underestimate the amount of effort, blood, sweat, and tears it would take to "switch" (so to speak) a government agency (let alone a whole government) to Linux.
At the same time plenty appear to under estimate the amount of effort required to "stay" with Microsoft.
The old adage applies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. While some would no doubt argue that Windows-based systems are "broke", the fact is that government agencies somehow manage to make their computers crunch numbers and store data on Windows machines.
They need to be able to retrieve this data for decades, in some cases time periods in the order of 120 years. Commercial business rarely has to use data for such long periods of time. But this is essential if civil government is to function effectivly.
In general, taking down a running, working system in order to replace it with something else is always a risky move. It is never something to be taken lightly.
Microsoft's business model relys on people doing this every 18-36 months.
Its incorporated, legally, in the US hence its ability to hide behind US law even as it is protected by US law (which means foreign governments cannot punish Microsoft for actions which are illegal in that country but legal in the US, unless those actions actually OCCUR in that foriegn country.
Even in the latter case there is still the possibility of the US applying "diplomatic" preasure. Where the issue of who has the biggest army can be a major factor.
Could you seriously imagine Syria or Iran attempting to prosecute Microsoft?
Actually, women in Iran have it comparatively good, for an islamic state anyway.
As with the other versions of "The religion of Abraham" a lot of what goes on in an "Islamic State" is dependent on human interpretations.
Iranian femenists have managed to make compelling religious arguments based on the Koran that demands, if not full equality, at least a very fair and kind treatment, where fair in many cases not specifically mentioned elsewhere in the Koran amounts to equality before the law. By western standardsn it is still quite lacking, but women are surprisingly far better off in fundamentalist Iran than they are in most of the rest of the islamic world.
Since Arab and Persian traditions and gender roles might well not be the same as those from the "West" it's quite possible that Iranians could claim that the US is lacking in some way or other.
OTOH our good friends in Saudi Arabia are the worst offendors. You should read the book "Princess" sometime for a real insite into the dirty secrets of Saudi culture and its treatment of women.
One important thing to remember is that this is Saudi it isn't Islamic or Arab.
We live in a global economy of corporations now. It is irrelevant in what country a corporation resides in. Microsoft exists everywhere, and offers their coin to any government that will listen.
If Microsoft was headquartered in some little third world country they'd be far less able to annoy any significent national government.
Britian, France, Japan, Peru, China and Germany are all moving to Linux and open source. Hell, some are even writing up legislation that gives incentives to businesses that do so as well. Why aren't we (the United States)?
Because in the case of the US the money involved stays within the US economy, even if it does all head in the direction of Washington state first. For the rest of the planet it involves money leaving for foreign shores.
The series was shit. Tacky, dated, sci-fi at its' worst - with the opening premise ripped off from Clarke's "Childhood's End", and everything going downhill from there.
Clarke admits that "Childhood's End" isn't entirely original. Anyway just about any story is "ripped off" from something or other anyway.
After V: The Series was cancelled, NBC told Johnson "You were right, we should've done it your way" (this is according to Johnson - same magazine article).
The real suprise is that the apologied to him. Not that TV companies appear to have changed that much in the last 20 years when it comes to leaving talented people to just do their stuff.
Europa might have a plentiful supply of water, and in all fairness, they might have grabbed all of that too, but Earth has more, and it's in a form that's probably easier to obtain.
There is a huge quantity of water in solar orbit. That is a lot easier to get hold off that taking it off the surface of a planet of any substantial size.
Any aliens who can consider Earth to be an environment they can walk around in without elaborate protection probably come from somewhere with a similar environment. Thus their star system is unlikely to be fundermentally different from the Sol system. So if they want water why not mine their own cometry ice.
They also were looking for food, slaves, and soldiers,
They can easily farm food animals on their own planet. Slaves and soldiers can just as easily come from their own species.
And they go to so much trouble sneaking around wearing rubber human suits, and secretly pumping the water off the planet (which, btw, water is easily made by combining hyrodgen and oxygen under pressure, both elements plentilly available everywhere, and so pumping it is more work than just making it)
Why bother making it. Why not just mine it from comets? Rather than waste all that energy hauling it out of a 1G gravity well.
And V too of course. They come to earth looking for water but (somehow) manage to miss all those huge Gas Giants full of water, Europa, and the Asteroid belt. It makes - literally - no sense for them to invade earth for "Water" and expend the delta-v when they could just grab it from anywhere else in the solar system.
Or for that matter their own planetry system. Water is hardly an exotic compound.
Just about every Alien Invasion movie has this problem... they all expect the aliens to come to Earth to grab our "resources" but the fact is earth is a piss poor place to get resources.
It dosn't make sense for Aliens to come to Earth just to cart off resources. What would make sense is if the aliens wanted the planet to live on...
So they're saying this alien race can build these huge inter-stellar vehicles but we can't figure out how to generate water
Why would they need to generate water? All they need do is capture some comets.
and farm food animals? That somehow its easier to mind f*** an entire planet and dress up like humans than just flat out invade?
Sentient creatures make bad prey. Sentient creatures who are top predators and have put a substantial part of their history developing weapons make a very bad choice of prey.
Since the Iraqi's are now liberated
Assuming they don't notice all those foreign soldiers in the country.
and free to form their own democracy
Like the foreign soldiers are going to leave anytime soon...
which will inevitably lead to a much more open and accountable economy
Like the Bush plans for "reconstruction" of Iraq are open and accountable to anyone.
In the UK "V" was shown at the same time as a national miners strike. Britain's mining communities quickly warmed to the theme - for them the UK was in the grip of an evil alien she-monster and they went arount scrawling red 'V's everywhere.
Though the actual reason for the broadcast as another industrial dispute. Otherwise it would have been coverage of the olympics instead.
If I remember Alien Nation also starts the same way, although in AN the aliens are more or less just like us, some good some not so good. Plus Alien Nation has bald poeple with spots and the males got pregnant. which makes it so much better than anything else.
One of the best things about Alien nation is that the Aliens were actual aliens. Rather that 3 dimensional human stereotypes in suits.
I don't remember AirWolf having a laser, BUT, it was _heavily_ armored, unlike Blue Thunder. Also, its weapons pod could turn side to side, making any evasive maneuver by BT pretty much pointless. That and the turbo thruster advantage gives it all to AirWolf.
Being able to fly supersonic is a definite advantage if people start setting off nukes.
The average user doesn't know the difference between Windows/Lindows, except the fact that there is no Word, Excel,
:)
For such a user Open/Star Office will work fine as a "drop in" replacement. Since they are highly unlikely to be using the more obsure "features" of the MS programs.
Outlook (Express), etc yet
You mean they might actually miss those email viruses
I would have to explain why Kazaa doesn't work...and they don't care about alternatives - its Kazaa or bust.
But they can run Kazaa-lite, which is exactly the same thing except no spyware and some possibly useful addons.
Not sure how the law is in the UK but in the US you can buy OEM copies of software as long as you buy "hardware" with it. One store I go to defines "hardware" as something as simple as a CPU fan.
Odds on it would cost Microsoft too much to bring a claim to court. Given that judges will only rarely award costs for lawyers in a small claims case.
That's the non-OEM versions. The OEM versions are around £65 inc VAT or £106 inc VAT for XP Pro. £65 is around $99.
Even at the lowest price Microsoft are still making money on it...
There is only a violation if they modified existing GPL code. It doesn't sound like they'd be stupid enough to do that.
The conditions of the GPL apply to anyone who distributes GPL code. Unmodified GPL code is still covered by the GPL. Modified GPL code is covered by the GPL since it is a "dervied work".
If the GPL is too restrictive, why not release under the LGPL?
Only if it's your code. If what you are supplying is either GPL or a derived work of GPL then either you follow the GPL, negotiate with the copyright holder(s) or take the risk of being caught pirating the software.
Capitalism is all about letting businesses squeeze every penny out of consumers. Maximizing for the consumer would be socialism, you commie bastard.
Actually "capitalism" assumes that both supplier and customer will attempt to act out of self interest. The former as well as the idea that businesses have a devine right to profit is better described as "corporate socialism".
Here's an idea -- instead of inconveniencing millions of innocent passengers, how about securing the cockpits instead? So long as the pilots remain in control of the plane, it's a flying prison for anyone who commits any criminal act back in the passenger compartment.
It would drastically increase the weight of the plane to make the passenger cabin (and any part of the plane accessable from the cabin) into a jail. There are more places than just the cockpit you don't want hijackers going.
The system relies on a false premise. Terrorists don't have "careers" anymore. If you were planning a terrorist attack, you could easily find 20 guys with no records whose names appear on no lists in any form.
These need not actaully be their real identities. Remember that 7 of those accused of being involved in 911 were proven to have used stolen identities.
That algorithm is so fundamentally broken as to be practically useless for anything but as an aid in simple searches. Why anyone would use soundex in a mission critical application designed to positively identify individuals is beyond me. What, was the 'No Fly' database written by 1st year comp sci major or something?
It dosn't matter how good the algorithm is. Sicne the vast majority of people are not terrorists false positives are always going to be the majority of those any such system will pick out.