"However, if you are Atheist (great point on the faith issue), then you have nothing to pursue, "
I disagree completely. If you believe in god then you know the answer. It's right there in the bible. There is no further need to pursue anything. you have been handed down your answer in a neatly bound volume and anybody who disagrees with you is an agent fo satan.
If you an atheists you have answer and have to seek one on your own.
" There's plenty of suffering and death caused by atheists in similar positions -- or have you not learned of the facts of history, e.g. read the Black Book of Communism?"
The difference is suble yet important. When the communists (who were atheists) killed it was not because they were atheists. They did not kill only the religous for example they were indiscriminate. In the case of religion inspired killings (take osama bin laden for example) he kills because he is a muslim and his target is christians. He is channeling his god and his god apparently is telling him to kill infidels. This type of behaviour is not limited to muslims and as I said before christians have done the same thing over and over agian throughout history.
"For example, I'm a member of a smallish, yet international, Christian group that neither believes in "an invisible man in the sky""
What does this mean. How can you be a christian and not believe in God? In order to be a christian you have to believe in god who is invisible and lives in the sky. Not only that but you also have to believe that Jesus Christ was his son, that jesus was born of a virgin mother mother, and the jesus was resurected. You also have to accept that the bible represents the word of god. Without all this you not a christian. So you are either a chistian or you don't believe in the invisible man in the sky.
BTW when you say "other denominations" do you mean being married by muslim clerics, budhist clerics, perhaps wiccan or druid clerics? How about a cleric of the church of sata? Or do you mean another denomination of the christian church?
Atheist is someone who does not believe in god. An agnostic is not so sure. That is the main difference. Agnostism is simply straddling the fence. Neither one can be classified as a religion by any test. They have no religous text, no hierarcy, no churches, no white guys in funny hats passing down edicts.
"Depending on how you define religion (whichever definition you pick it's widely disputed), atheism qualifies. After all noone has ever shown the non existance of god with anything even remotely resembling a rigorous proof. "
I guess I would like to hear one definition of religion which would include the atheists and not the boy scouts or the american bar association. If you define religion so broadly that it would include the atheists then you would also include the AMA, the republican party, and the national gay and lesbian alliance. Come to think of it that would be a good idea. If homosexuals declared homosexuality a religion they would have constitutional protection why haven't they thought of that yet?
By the way after you graduate from high school and go to collage if you take a logic course you will learn that it's impossible to prove a negative. It's impossible to prove the non existance of something. Besides which the burden of proof lies with the person claiming that an invisible man lives in the sky, this man created the universe, he also put a man in the belly of a whale, he also said to kill homosexuals, and he also disaproves of you walking around naked and masturbating. In other words you not only have to prove that god exists but that he also created the universe and wrote the bible. While you are at it maybe you can explain his obsession with the human sexual practices.
"While Budhism is technically a non-theistic religion in practice many adherants treat the various Budhasa and Bodhisatvas as deities. They are looked to for guidance and frequently asked to intervene on the behalf of humans."
There is a large contingent of people who have taken the elements of budhism and hindusim as a body of religion. By and large they have convinced themselves that the hindu gods were different incarnations of the budha. Budha himself never affirmed the concept of reincarnation nor did he advocate any deity. Once when pressed about reincarnation he said something like the following.
"If a nightwatchmen lights a candle and at the end of his shift snuffs out the candle. If the relieving nightwatchment relights the candle is it the same flame?"
Who has the resources to sue MS and win and collect? Nobody that's who. Even if you won in the early going MS can drag the case on till you are dead or broke whichever comes first.
What is it with these religious nuts. Why do keep insisting that atheism is somehow a religion or even a body of thought or philosophy. Atheism is nothing more or nothing less then a non belief in god. To say that I belong in a religion called atheism because I don't believe in god is just stupid. What religion do I belong in if I don't belive in UFOs? What religion do I belong in if I don't believe that the moon is made of green cheese? Please refrain from this kind of bullshit it makes it very hard for people to even listen to you after you make such a stupid remark.
Having said all that.
Most people take their religion lightly. If pressed they may claim to be a christian or jew only because their parents were or they were born into a religion. For the vast majority of the world god is someone you pray to when you want your team to score a touchdown. These are normal people you meet everyday with their diversity of opinions on just about any subject.
There are a minority of people who actually make a stab at actually practising their religion. These people go to church regularly and read the bible and whatnot. Since it's just about impossible to practice any religion faithfully (especially in this modern world) they do what they can and ignore the rest. I have always said that if these people were actually practising christians (as opposed to church going christians) there would be no poverty or hunger in the united states.
And then you have the vocal wacko contingent. I don't have to tell you about them. They go from town to town preaching that homosexuals ought to be killed and that abortion clinics ought to be bombed. Of course none of the churchgoing christians condemn them and the football praying christians don't really care that much anyways.
Now of the above people groups two and three clearly believe that there is a "us" who are saved and will go to heaven and the them who are doomed to burn in satans flame forever. To them world is pretty much black and white and good and bad. They believe in some "absolute truth" which just happens to coincide with their religion. Like it or not it's these people who are in charge of any religion and it's these people who cause untold suffering and death in the world. Go look around and see much misery this silly and irrational belief in some invisible man in the sky has caused (and is still causing). Christian or Moslem or Jew all of them are convinced that the others are to be converted or killed but never ever left alone to live as they want.
As I said before the only exception to is Budhism which is by and large a non theistic religion (they don't belive in an invisible man in the sky).
"I don't seem to have problems communicating with people in areas with lots of other people."
Rally? You never have to shout? to repeat yourself? To explain something you said again because the person you are speaking to misheard or misunderstood?
Human speech recognition is full of fraught and peril. Humans are very inneficient at communicating with each other. Why take that same route when speaking with a computer.
Now try ordering a drink once every minute in the same bar. Imagine spending eight hours a day yelling your order at the top of your lungs. How many drinks could you order in a day? how many of them would be the right drink.
Sure you can order a drink after waiting five or ten minutes to get the bartenders attention and repeating yourself three times but I would not want to do that just to type in an email. It would never work in a business setting.
"It is religion which civilises us, which encultures us, which teaches us that just maybe slaying our neighbour is not the best of ideas. It is civilisation which codifies and restricts murder to the few."
You were kidding with this comment right? Religion is to divide people. To put people into two categories; us (the chosen ones) and them (heathens). With the possible exception of budhism all religions have a word meaning "not us".
Israel kills 10 to 20 palestenians for every israeli. It doesn't seem to do them any good.
As long as palestenians would rather die then live under israeli occupation they will keep attacking. As long as israel would rather kill palestenians then let them have their own country they will keep attacking. There is no solution except genocide. The good news is that there will still be israelis lest when all the palestenians are dead.
It's also much harder to raise $10,000.00 and hand deliver to your congress critter. That's why the corporations get heard and you don't despite your mail. Such is our democracy. We went from Jim Crow laws to legalized bribery. In the end it's the same result put barriers between the people and power.
It depend on the industry you are in. Generally speaking you get a truckload of money but it could come in many forms.
For example. Let's say you are a bank and you happen to be in a state which bans payday loans. You give some money to some people and the state (or the federal govt) removes the offending laws from the books (or better yet rewrites them so that only you can set it up) and voila a billion or two in your pocket.
Here is another example: Say you are an aluminum processing factory in a rural western state. You spend a few thousand at the local legislature and they pass a law authorising tax breaks for "any aluminum processing plant located in the western part of the state which employs more then 300 people".
So far people who have paid bush have gotten the rights to drill for oil in previously forbidden places, rights to log in previously forbidden places, rights to mine in previously forbidden places and of course made lots and lots of money from the "energy crisis". There are also a slew of people who got well paying govt jobs and the spouses and children of supreme court justices have gotten very senior positions in the white house.
These are just a few examples of things that actually happened.
Remember Rich people are not stupid. Bill gates is not going to give a million or two away to politicians and not get anything in return for it.
"For example, there is evidence that man (ya, homo-us) was alive at the same time dinos roamed the earth"
Really? where? has it been peer reviewed? is it incontravertible? is there more then one piece of evidence to support it? can the evidence be explained in other ways? This is facinating. What you are sying is that the entire curriculum of every high chool and collage is wrong. I am looking forward to reading about this could you please provide a link (preferably to a site not run by religous zealots or kooks).
If the govt did not release the code under the GPL it would simply be a form of corporate welfare. Under the GPL the greatest beneficieries would be the public under the BSD the corporations would benefit the most.
I think the govt should do what is best for the public not what is best for Microsoft or Sun.
BTW you don't have to agree with the philosophy to use the applications. The GPL should not bother you unless you intend to modify the code AND distribute it. Most people will never modify the code and most people will never distribute it. For the vast majority of the human beings in the US the GPL is absolutely harmless.
The money that didn't go to MS or SUN would simply go elsewhere. Jobs lost by MS would be offset by jobs gained elsewhere. Maybe the govt could pay down the debt, or better educate our children or maybe even spend the money fighting terrorism. The loss of a thousand or two MS employees (who would find other jobs soon enough) would be nothing if we could prevent a biological terrorist act.
Right now the Govt is spending your tax dollars to make the richest man in the world even richer surely it can spend that money in better ways.
Every computer manufacturer does that's who. Could Dell, gateway, compaq, ibm or anybody else afford to lose the ability sell PCs with windows on it? Of course not. That's what MS threatened them with. If you pre-install BEOS (or even netscape) then we will yank your licence and you will have to sell your PCs without windows.
Re:beOS is NOT a niche operating system.
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Niche Operating Systems
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· Score: 3, Insightful
MS simply threatened computer manufacturers not to pre-install BeOS. If anybody pre-installed it they would lose the legal right to install windows. Just your typical mafioso tactic from MS.
Re:How about OS's that should be brought back?
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Niche Operating Systems
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· Score: 3, Funny
Blow up the bridges leading into manhattan (and the tunnel) and see what happens?.
These guys are not idiots. They have never done the same thing twice and the chances of them using airplanes again is almost zero.
The targets chosen were chosen for their symbolic value more then anything else. It is for this reason that I predict the next wave of attacks will be on west coast. Nothing says America like hollywood or Microsoft. If I lived in LA or Redmond I would think very hard about how much my job was worth to me.
"- Liability: is there someone to blame when things go wrong? (like it or not) "
I am sure there exists in some business school or some corporate brainwashing seminar or maybe a crack den someplace where people are told that they can hold software manufacturers responsible for crappy code. What frightens me more then anything else of course are CIOs (or perhaps some middle level drones such as yourself) actually make decisions based on this premise. One presumes of course that they are not only willing to bet the company on such a shaky understanding of reality but are also willing to go to court and sue MS because the server crashed.
So do me and all the other slashdot readers a favor and tell us the company you work for. I for one want to make sure I don't own any stock in a company that has such stupid management. I certainly want to avoid investing in companies that are willing to waste their shareholders money trying to sue Microsoft or Oracle. Besides it will be awfully embarrassing when the court documents show that not one person in the IT dept ever read a EULA.
All I know is that when I upgraded my IE to 5.5 it killed the scheduler in NT4.0 server. All the AT jobs silently failed leaving no trace of their failure in the event log or anyplace else. For a couple of weeks none of the routine jobs that I took for granted ran causing all kinds of troubles. I found a fix on some NT board and it involved rebooting the server.
Any OS which disables a crucial service like scheduler when you upgrade a browser is crap. I can't believe that my company bets their business on a platform like this. On the desktops upgrading to IE5.5 rendered a significant number of office97 apps completely useless and we had to go from desktop to desktop undoing the damage that did (who wants to talk about TCO?).
So yes maybe it great that you can embed your shiny graph in your spreadsheet in the meanwhile the corporate server hasn't been running a backup in weeks.
To me this fiasco more then anything numda every did (and it did plenty all around the world) illustrates just exactly what kind of a heap of crap MS operating systems are.
Go ahead and justify how installing a browser should break the server that your company is depending on, the desktop apps your employees are depending on, and require rebooting of hundreds of machines.
I am sure for a MS cult member all of these are perfectly justifiable and reasonable side effects of upgrading a browser, just as having biweekly patches to your OS (and rebooting it), your webserver, and your browser are considered a lower TCO but to us in the real world who have this crap shoved down our throats it's no picnic.
The only saving grace is that when I explain to my boss that upgrading IE broke his server he just shrugs and doesn't blame me for it. He understands that MS makes crappy products all too well by now and he certainly knows what the consequences of not upgrading every two weeks and rebooting are too.
When the terrorists hit the US they went after symbols. They attacked the WTC and the pentagon because they represent the power of the US. The WTC represents our economic power and the pentagon represents our military power.
Now ask yourself this. Can you think of a couple of other things that represent pervasive influence of the United States? Here I'll name two.
Microsoft and Hollywood.
The entire world uses windows and Bill Gates is the richest man in the universe. This makes Microsoft a primary target of attack for anyone wanting to put a dent into the technological edge the US has over the rest of the world. If I were a MS employee I would take a hard look at where I work and just how much those options are worth.
Hollywood also represents the pervasive influence of American Culture. American TV and Movies are shown all over the world and are seen as disruptive and ungodly influences in other cultures. If I lived in LA I would take a hard look at other places that might be pleasant to live in.
Now I am not saying that this *should* happen or that it would be good thing if it did happen. To me they just seem like logical targets for any zealots wanting to "punish" America.
My point is this. Nobody in the US is able or willing to "teach them some history.". Certainly not our govt nor the sheeple consumers. If a lesson is to be delivered it will most likely come from foreign agents.
I repeat. If I was an MS employee right now I would be shitting bricks.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be great! More incentive to switch to the now much improved free OS.
In other words it would be exactly like the rest of the corporations int he world.
What does this mean? Surely an atheists believes in japan or pluto. I have never heard an atheist say they don't believe grass does not exist.
"However, if you are Atheist (great point on the faith issue), then you have nothing to pursue, "
I disagree completely. If you believe in god then you know the answer. It's right there in the bible. There is no further need to pursue anything. you have been handed down your answer in a neatly bound volume and anybody who disagrees with you is an agent fo satan.
If you an atheists you have answer and have to seek one on your own.
" There's plenty of suffering and death caused by atheists in similar positions -- or have you not learned of the facts of history, e.g. read the Black Book of Communism?"
The difference is suble yet important. When the communists (who were atheists) killed it was not because they were atheists. They did not kill only the religous for example they were indiscriminate. In the case of religion inspired killings (take osama bin laden for example) he kills because he is a muslim and his target is christians. He is channeling his god and his god apparently is telling him to kill infidels. This type of behaviour is not limited to muslims and as I said before christians have done the same thing over and over agian throughout history.
"For example, I'm a member of a smallish, yet international, Christian group that neither believes in "an invisible man in the sky""
What does this mean. How can you be a christian and not believe in God? In order to be a christian you have to believe in god who is invisible and lives in the sky. Not only that but you also have to believe that Jesus Christ was his son, that jesus was born of a virgin mother mother, and the jesus was resurected. You also have to accept that the bible represents the word of god. Without all this you not a christian. So you are either a chistian or you don't believe in the invisible man in the sky.
BTW when you say "other denominations" do you mean being married by muslim clerics, budhist clerics, perhaps wiccan or druid clerics? How about a cleric of the church of sata? Or do you mean another denomination of the christian church?
Atheist is someone who does not believe in god. An agnostic is not so sure. That is the main difference. Agnostism is simply straddling the fence. Neither one can be classified as a religion by any test. They have no religous text, no hierarcy, no churches, no white guys in funny hats passing down edicts.
"Depending on how you define religion (whichever definition you pick it's widely disputed), atheism qualifies. After all noone has ever shown the non existance of god with anything even remotely resembling a rigorous proof. "
I guess I would like to hear one definition of religion which would include the atheists and not the boy scouts or the american bar association. If you define religion so broadly that it would include the atheists then you would also include the AMA, the republican party, and the national gay and lesbian alliance. Come to think of it that would be a good idea. If homosexuals declared homosexuality a religion they would have constitutional protection why haven't they thought of that yet?
By the way after you graduate from high school and go to collage if you take a logic course you will learn that it's impossible to prove a negative. It's impossible to prove the non existance of something. Besides which the burden of proof lies with the person claiming that an invisible man lives in the sky, this man created the universe, he also put a man in the belly of a whale, he also said to kill homosexuals, and he also disaproves of you walking around naked and masturbating. In other words you not only have to prove that god exists but that he also created the universe and wrote the bible. While you are at it maybe you can explain his obsession with the human sexual practices.
"While Budhism is technically a non-theistic religion in practice many adherants treat the various Budhasa and Bodhisatvas as deities. They are looked to for guidance and frequently asked to intervene on the behalf of humans."
There is a large contingent of people who have taken the elements of budhism and hindusim as a body of religion. By and large they have convinced themselves that the hindu gods were different incarnations of the budha. Budha himself never affirmed the concept of reincarnation nor did he advocate any deity. Once when pressed about reincarnation he said something like the following.
"If a nightwatchmen lights a candle and at the end of his shift snuffs out the candle. If the relieving nightwatchment relights the candle is it the same flame?"
Who has the resources to sue MS and win and collect? Nobody that's who. Even if you won in the early going MS can drag the case on till you are dead or broke whichever comes first.
What is it with these religious nuts. Why do keep insisting that atheism is somehow a religion or even a body of thought or philosophy. Atheism is nothing more or nothing less then a non belief in god. To say that I belong in a religion called atheism because I don't believe in god is just stupid. What religion do I belong in if I don't belive in UFOs? What religion do I belong in if I don't believe that the moon is made of green cheese? Please refrain from this kind of bullshit it makes it very hard for people to even listen to you after you make such a stupid remark.
Having said all that.
Most people take their religion lightly. If pressed they may claim to be a christian or jew only because their parents were or they were born into a religion. For the vast majority of the world god is someone you pray to when you want your team to score a touchdown. These are normal people you meet everyday with their diversity of opinions on just about any subject.
There are a minority of people who actually make a stab at actually practising their religion. These people go to church regularly and read the bible and whatnot. Since it's just about impossible to practice any religion faithfully (especially in this modern world) they do what they can and ignore the rest. I have always said that if these people were actually practising christians (as opposed to church going christians) there would be no poverty or hunger in the united states.
And then you have the vocal wacko contingent. I don't have to tell you about them. They go from town to town preaching that homosexuals ought to be killed and that abortion clinics ought to be bombed. Of course none of the churchgoing christians condemn them and the football praying christians don't really care that much anyways.
Now of the above people groups two and three clearly believe that there is a "us" who are saved and will go to heaven and the them who are doomed to burn in satans flame forever. To them world is pretty much black and white and good and bad. They believe in some "absolute truth" which just happens to coincide with their religion. Like it or not it's these people who are in charge of any religion and it's these people who cause untold suffering and death in the world. Go look around and see much misery this silly and irrational belief in some invisible man in the sky has caused (and is still causing). Christian or Moslem or Jew all of them are convinced that the others are to be converted or killed but never ever left alone to live as they want.
As I said before the only exception to is Budhism which is by and large a non theistic religion (they don't belive in an invisible man in the sky).
"I don't seem to have problems communicating with people in areas with lots of other people."
Rally? You never have to shout? to repeat yourself? To explain something you said again because the person you are speaking to misheard or misunderstood?
Human speech recognition is full of fraught and peril. Humans are very inneficient at communicating with each other. Why take that same route when speaking with a computer.
Now try ordering a drink once every minute in the same bar. Imagine spending eight hours a day yelling your order at the top of your lungs. How many drinks could you order in a day? how many of them would be the right drink.
Sure you can order a drink after waiting five or ten minutes to get the bartenders attention and repeating yourself three times but I would not want to do that just to type in an email. It would never work in a business setting.
"It is religion which civilises us, which encultures us, which teaches us that just maybe slaying our neighbour is not the best of ideas. It is civilisation which codifies and restricts murder to the few."
You were kidding with this comment right? Religion is to divide people. To put people into two categories; us (the chosen ones) and them (heathens). With the possible exception of budhism all religions have a word meaning "not us".
Israel kills 10 to 20 palestenians for every israeli. It doesn't seem to do them any good.
As long as palestenians would rather die then live under israeli occupation they will keep attacking. As long as israel would rather kill palestenians then let them have their own country they will keep attacking. There is no solution except genocide. The good news is that there will still be israelis lest when all the palestenians are dead.
It's also much harder to raise $10,000.00 and hand deliver to your congress critter. That's why the corporations get heard and you don't despite your mail. Such is our democracy. We went from Jim Crow laws to legalized bribery. In the end it's the same result put barriers between the people and power.
It depend on the industry you are in. Generally speaking you get a truckload of money but it could come in many forms.
For example. Let's say you are a bank and you happen to be in a state which bans payday loans. You give some money to some people and the state (or the federal govt) removes the offending laws from the books (or better yet rewrites them so that only you can set it up) and voila a billion or two in your pocket.
Here is another example: Say you are an aluminum processing factory in a rural western state. You spend a few thousand at the local legislature and they pass a law authorising tax breaks for "any aluminum processing plant located in the western part of the state which employs more then 300 people".
So far people who have paid bush have gotten the rights to drill for oil in previously forbidden places, rights to log in previously forbidden places, rights to mine in previously forbidden places and of course made lots and lots of money from the "energy crisis". There are also a slew of people who got well paying govt jobs and the spouses and children of supreme court justices have gotten very senior positions in the white house.
These are just a few examples of things that actually happened.
Remember Rich people are not stupid. Bill gates is not going to give a million or two away to politicians and not get anything in return for it.
"For example, there is evidence that man (ya, homo-us) was alive at the same time dinos roamed the earth"
Really? where? has it been peer reviewed? is it incontravertible? is there more then one piece of evidence to support it? can the evidence be explained in other ways? This is facinating. What you are sying is that the entire curriculum of every high chool and collage is wrong. I am looking forward to reading about this could you please provide a link (preferably to a site not run by religous zealots or kooks).
and recruited him too.
If the govt did not release the code under the GPL it would simply be a form of corporate welfare. Under the GPL the greatest beneficieries would be the public under the BSD the corporations would benefit the most.
I think the govt should do what is best for the public not what is best for Microsoft or Sun.
BTW you don't have to agree with the philosophy to use the applications. The GPL should not bother you unless you intend to modify the code AND distribute it. Most people will never modify the code and most people will never distribute it. For the vast majority of the human beings in the US the GPL is absolutely harmless.
The money that didn't go to MS or SUN would simply go elsewhere. Jobs lost by MS would be offset by jobs gained elsewhere. Maybe the govt could pay down the debt, or better educate our children or maybe even spend the money fighting terrorism. The loss of a thousand or two MS employees (who would find other jobs soon enough) would be nothing if we could prevent a biological terrorist act.
Right now the Govt is spending your tax dollars to make the richest man in the world even richer surely it can spend that money in better ways.
"Who cares about MS as a threat?"
Every computer manufacturer does that's who. Could Dell, gateway, compaq, ibm or anybody else afford to lose the ability sell PCs with windows on it? Of course not. That's what MS threatened them with. If you pre-install BEOS (or even netscape) then we will yank your licence and you will have to sell your PCs without windows.
MS simply threatened computer manufacturers not to pre-install BeOS. If anybody pre-installed it they would lose the legal right to install windows. Just your typical mafioso tactic from MS.
Yea it's called NT now.
Even better.
Blow up the bridges leading into manhattan (and the tunnel) and see what happens?.
These guys are not idiots. They have never done the same thing twice and the chances of them using airplanes again is almost zero.
The targets chosen were chosen for their symbolic value more then anything else. It is for this reason that I predict the next wave of attacks will be on west coast. Nothing says America like hollywood or Microsoft. If I lived in LA or Redmond I would think very hard about how much my job was worth to me.
"- Liability: is there someone to blame when things go wrong? (like it or not) "
I am sure there exists in some business school or some corporate brainwashing seminar or maybe a crack den someplace where people are told that they can hold software manufacturers responsible for crappy code. What frightens me more then anything else of course are CIOs (or perhaps some middle level drones such as yourself) actually make decisions based on this premise. One presumes of course that they are not only willing to bet the company on such a shaky understanding of reality but are also willing to go to court and sue MS because the server crashed.
So do me and all the other slashdot readers a favor and tell us the company you work for. I for one want to make sure I don't own any stock in a company that has such stupid management. I certainly want to avoid investing in companies that are willing to waste their shareholders money trying to sue Microsoft or Oracle. Besides it will be awfully embarrassing when the court documents show that not one person in the IT dept ever read a EULA.
All I know is that when I upgraded my IE to 5.5 it killed the scheduler in NT4.0 server. All the AT jobs silently failed leaving no trace of their failure in the event log or anyplace else. For a couple of weeks none of the routine jobs that I took for granted ran causing all kinds of troubles. I found a fix on some NT board and it involved rebooting the server.
Any OS which disables a crucial service like scheduler when you upgrade a browser is crap. I can't believe that my company bets their business on a platform like this. On the desktops upgrading to IE5.5 rendered a significant number of office97 apps completely useless and we had to go from desktop to desktop undoing the damage that did (who wants to talk about TCO?).
So yes maybe it great that you can embed your shiny graph in your spreadsheet in the meanwhile the corporate server hasn't been running a backup in weeks.
To me this fiasco more then anything numda every did (and it did plenty all around the world) illustrates just exactly what kind of a heap of crap MS operating systems are.
Go ahead and justify how installing a browser should break the server that your company is depending on, the desktop apps your employees are depending on, and require rebooting of hundreds of machines.
I am sure for a MS cult member all of these are perfectly justifiable and reasonable side effects of upgrading a browser, just as having biweekly patches to your OS (and rebooting it), your webserver, and your browser are considered a lower TCO but to us in the real world who have this crap shoved down our throats it's no picnic.
The only saving grace is that when I explain to my boss that upgrading IE broke his server he just shrugs and doesn't blame me for it. He understands that MS makes crappy products all too well by now and he certainly knows what the consequences of not upgrading every two weeks and rebooting are too.
When the terrorists hit the US they went after symbols. They attacked the WTC and the pentagon because they represent the power of the US. The WTC represents our economic power and the pentagon represents our military power.
Now ask yourself this. Can you think of a couple of other things that represent pervasive influence of the United States? Here I'll name two.
Microsoft and Hollywood.
The entire world uses windows and Bill Gates is the richest man in the universe. This makes Microsoft a primary target of attack for anyone wanting to put a dent into the technological edge the US has over the rest of the world. If I were a MS employee I would take a hard look at where I work and just how much those options are worth.
Hollywood also represents the pervasive influence of American Culture. American TV and Movies are shown all over the world and are seen as disruptive and ungodly influences in other cultures. If I lived in LA I would take a hard look at other places that might be pleasant to live in.
Now I am not saying that this *should* happen or that it would be good thing if it did happen. To me they just seem like logical targets for any zealots wanting to "punish" America.
My point is this. Nobody in the US is able or willing to "teach them some history.". Certainly not our govt nor the sheeple consumers. If a lesson is to be delivered it will most likely come from foreign agents.
I repeat. If I was an MS employee right now I would be shitting bricks.