"The fact that Canada's government is such a major employer is a sign of inefficiency and of graft, and that the government perhaps does too much."
Yes they should be more like us. Pay less in taxes and make up for it by paying more for health insurance, cancer therapy, deformed children, and of course the higest crime rate in the world. It's better to pay a little less and get nothing in return then to pay a bit more and get safety, education, and wellness.
Of course judges would be reluctant to punish corporations for stealing code but maybe juries might be less sypathetic to corps.
Unfortunately the concept of punishment fitting the crime does not apply in the world of coporations. An offence that would get you or me the death penalty (say killing a hundred or so people) would merely cost firestone a few millions in settlements. No human being gets tried let alone jailed. Of course the corporation itself also does not get tried criminally and what's the use anyways you can't jail it or kill it.
I say use the DMCA and other draconian laws against them. Put really really insane terms in your shrinkwrap and then force the judges to invalidate shrinkwrap contracts once and for all. That would be better then anything else.
Of course they probably never did an actual audit nor do I think they audit every service pack or DLL. It would not surpirse me one bit to know that some foreign nationals or subcranted employee put in all kinds of crap into not only the kernel but the thousands of DLLs and activeX controls that make up windows.
Corporations are soul-less immortal beings. They are summoned by elite priests which know arcane knowledge and incantations. By performing a ritual using these incantations these priests summon into existance a being which serves them and which they in turn serve. This being once summoned can only be banished by incantations of priests which are more powerful or clever then the beings who serve it. A corporation of course can not be killed in any other way.
A corporation having no soul is not bound by any religious, philosophical or more-related ethical system. No god nor mortal can inflict judgement upon it. The corporation has great power to grant riches and rewards to the people who summon it and serve it. This way the corporation is easaliy able to corrupt even the most stalvart souled being. The corporation also is extremely powerful and routinely exerts influence and power over all beings weather or not they serve it, even those beings which are supposed to watch over it. For example a corporation may kill hundreds or thousands of human beings without being subject to criminal prosecution.
In short. A corporation most closely resembles demons as described by most of the religions of the world. For a true understanding of these soul-less immortal beings I suggest you pick up a bible, koran, vedic literature, or a book of ancient demons and pay special attention to the denizens of hell.
The problem is that they will simply stop making the PIII and you will be forced to get a P4 (if you want an intel chip). Seeing as how Dell for example only sells intel machines if your company had standardised on Dell computers you will be using the p4 like it or not. Since most business don't give a flying donut about streaming media performance (you don't need that for a spreadsheet do you?) they will end up getting the short end of the stick. This is what happened when the PIII came out. If you wanted a PII from Dell you were out of luck.
My hope is that AMD takes this opportunity to make a name for themselves and convince the Dells of the world to sell computers with AMD chips too. Unfortunately AMD seems to have a knack for blowing opportunities.
"Its interesting to note that after five years, Java still hasn't "made it""
I don't know what you mean by "hasn't made it". It's widely used by the business world from fortune 100 down to mom and pop type businesses. There are millions of programmers with increasing demand (and corresponding increasing salaries). It's embedded as a language in most databases. It's become the most used language to teach progamming in schools. It's got several magazines and hundreds of web sites dedicated to it. It's got a whole bookshelf on barnes and noble.
By what measure are saying that it hasn't made it? It's an industry that's worth billions of dollars for goodnes sake. Just because there are no games or packaged apps it does not mean it hasn't made it. I'd say that java has done in 5 years what most languages never even dreamed of.
Absolutely right.
It's open source and cross platform and free. Insist that all documents must be in the star office format and you have solved the problem
"Let's face it,.doc is not about to go to the wayside anytime soon."
Until the next version of office.
Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio
on
Copy Protection Galore
·
· Score: 1
They sell a lot but for every one they sell there are 10 pirated copies. A minute percentage of the people in china, africa, middle east, south america etc actually pay for windows or office. The same with most home users. If all of a sudden these people cound not pirate their software most would switch to something else. That would be great! Almost overnight the market share of smartsuite, word perfect office and staroffice would skyrocket. MS would have to reply by either eliminating copy protection and encouraging people to pirate their own software rather then to use the competition or drop the price of office to nothing (or next to nothing).
Either way another cash cow for MS gone! It would be a better world because people would not be stealing anymore and ms would not be gauging the consumers anymore.
Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio
on
Copy Protection Galore
·
· Score: 1
Most computers come with windows preinstalled but not office pre-installed.
Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio
on
Copy Protection Galore
·
· Score: 1
This will indeed be huge boon for open source software. Right now millions of people all over the world pirate any software they want. Most of these people would never buy ms-office if they actually had to buy it and most of them live in third world countries where they could not afford it even if they wanted to buy it. Right now MS will not pursue them because this pirating prevents cheaper or free alternatives like word-perfect office or staroffice from gaining market share. Lets imagine a world where people are not allowed to pirate software.
1) The rate of adoption of new upgrades declines dramatically. People continue to use older versions that they pirated because it works and is/was free.
2) People switch to lower cost alternative commercial software which provides downward price pressure to ms-office. Office now has to either cost less or assume a lower market share.
3) People switch to open source software.
To me all this is wonderful news. It means that prices of software will drop to almost nothing because there is already plenty of software that costs nothing. The commercial software will either have to be so superior that somebody will be willing to pay big bucks and deal with the headaches or it will have to cost much less.
Re:When the Martians Land
on
Perl and .NET
·
· Score: 1
I think the JVM supports more languages AND as an added bonus it runs on more then one platform. Really now If I am willing to lock myself into an MS OS why would I bother with.NET when I can write activeX objects in any language and call them from any language. Doesn't ActiveX already give me that option? As an added bonus it compiles down to native Code.
You may also want to rephrase that bit about "Sun chose CORBA as its distributed application platform" as well. It's so much easier to write RMI then corba apps in fact it's probably easier to write a RMI app then a.NET app. Java also supports of course EJB and J2EE platforms both of which are easier to implement then CORBA.
Re:Playing devil's advocate here...
on
Nazis on Napster
·
· Score: 1
In america there is no shortage of hatred or people to hate. The loggers, miners, ranchers and the farmers hate the enviromentalists enough to actually gun them down. The baptists hate the catholics and they both hate abortion doctors enough to actually gun them down. Most of the inland united states hates the coastal residents so much that they can not get themselves to mention them without cursing. Of course everybody hates the gays and moslems.
Amerca is a country driven by hate if you don't believe me just watch MSNBC, Foxnews, CNBC, CNN or listen to any AM radio anywhere in America. Trust me we will not run out of hate any time soon.
Re:no advantage of .NET over Java
on
Perl and .NET
·
· Score: 1
Wasn't activeX supposed to deliver up language independence? I can already code objects in C++ and call them from perl right? So why would I give up native code compilation, speed and access to the system and write objects in.NYET/C#.
If cross platform AND cross language is a goal then use the JVM if you don't care about cross platform and want to lock yourself to windows platforms then use activeX. I see no real place for.NYET myself.
+1 Please mod up parent.
on
Perl and .NET
·
· Score: 1
Deadly accurate my friend. With every single type of horribly implemented app going over 80 it's the end of the firewall as we know it.
Re:Playing devil's advocate here...
on
Nazis on Napster
·
· Score: 1
Of course everybody is racist. There is an old joke it goes like this.
"why are the catholics and the protestants fighting in ireland?"
"Because that's what happens in a country with no blacks, puerto ricans or jews". People are generally racist and will find somebody to hate for whatever reason.
The real question is not who is racist and who is not but who has the power to act on their racism. A black man living in the unner city maybe a racist but so what he can't to nothing to you. If OTOH a rich and powerful white man is racist then he can make life miserable for the people he hates. It becomes especially bad if the racist person is a cop, mayor, politician, radio show host etc.
The GPL does not apply to you unless you use GPLed code in your work. If you insist on profiting from other peoples labor then you can choose from public domain or BSD code that way you get to profit from other people's work and still keep your code hidden from the public so that only you can derive benefit from it. The GPL will not in any way effect you at that point. If on the other hand you insist on using using sombodies code AND that author does nto wish you to profit from their code you are obligated to respect their wishes (that's what IP is all about).
BTW I will join the liberterian party if and only if the CEO of firestone (or any other person in that corporation) gets the electric chair for murdering hundreds of people. Killing just one human is bad enough and usually ends up with a life sentence but most mass murderers get the death penalty.
Wow what a convoluted argument. What makes you think that the south would have ever come that epipheny? How long would it have taken? You are arguing that it would have been better for blacks to be slaves for another 10, 20 or 100 years so that the south could come to grips with it's evil and free them on their own free will. What a crock! How many blacks would have been bought, sold, whipped, raped and killed in those years?
Sure blacks went from being property to being animals to being the second class citizens that they are today but don't think for a minute that each step in the middle wasn't a step forward. Your argument that only if blacks stayed property for a unknown number of years they would have avoided lynchings and terror is just assinine.
Please let us know by what historical measure or evidence you contend that blacks would be better off today if slavery persisted for a number of years more?
You can't force people to be good but you sure as hell can punish them severely for being evil. If the society decides that slavery is evil and immoral then it has an OBLIGATION to wipe it out. Even though we can't stop people from wanting kill, raping, molesting children, stealing etc we still punish them when they do it. What should we do just let the criminals free till they come to an epipheny about their evil ways?
OK for the 2% of people who need more power then a mac but less power then a alpha AND who are willing to forgo the ease of use of a mac AND who are willing to deal with DLL hell, hardware problems etc windows is a good choice. For the 98% of other people though it's a bad choice.
No the number one rule of karma whoring is to say something nice about Microsoft. Pro microsoft posts always get moderated up to 5. Those MS employees are very diligent about modding each other up.
Who the hell is going to put in a $100.00 operating system on a $50.00 box? Oh I get it you are going to steal the operating system and teach your kids the value of stealing something. Can you even buy win98 anymore? Is it for sale anywhere. It's illegal for you to use the windows 98 that came with that used computer you bought Microsoft says so. Sure if you want to be a criminal, if you want to teach your kids to steal, if you want to risk legal action go ahead and do it. Stealing software is wrong and illegal what would happen if everybody in the world stole their copy of windows? how would microsoft make money?
Slashdot Mirror
"The fact that Canada's government is such a major employer is a sign of inefficiency and of graft, and that the government perhaps does too much."
Yes they should be more like us. Pay less in taxes and make up for it by paying more for health insurance, cancer therapy, deformed children, and of course the higest crime rate in the world. It's better to pay a little less and get nothing in return then to pay a bit more and get safety, education, and wellness.
Of course judges would be reluctant to punish corporations for stealing code but maybe juries might be less sypathetic to corps.
Unfortunately the concept of punishment fitting the crime does not apply in the world of coporations. An offence that would get you or me the death penalty (say killing a hundred or so people) would merely cost firestone a few millions in settlements. No human being gets tried let alone jailed. Of course the corporation itself also does not get tried criminally and what's the use anyways you can't jail it or kill it.
I say use the DMCA and other draconian laws against them. Put really really insane terms in your shrinkwrap and then force the judges to invalidate shrinkwrap contracts once and for all. That would be better then anything else.
Of course they probably never did an actual audit nor do I think they audit every service pack or DLL. It would not surpirse me one bit to know that some foreign nationals or subcranted employee put in all kinds of crap into not only the kernel but the thousands of DLLs and activeX controls that make up windows.
Corporations are soul-less immortal beings. They are summoned by elite priests which know arcane knowledge and incantations. By performing a ritual using these incantations these priests summon into existance a being which serves them and which they in turn serve. This being once summoned can only be banished by incantations of priests which are more powerful or clever then the beings who serve it. A corporation of course can not be killed in any other way.
A corporation having no soul is not bound by any religious, philosophical or more-related ethical system. No god nor mortal can inflict judgement upon it. The corporation has great power to grant riches and rewards to the people who summon it and serve it. This way the corporation is easaliy able to corrupt even the most stalvart souled being. The corporation also is extremely powerful and routinely exerts influence and power over all beings weather or not they serve it, even those beings which are supposed to watch over it. For example a corporation may kill hundreds or thousands of human beings without being subject to criminal prosecution.
In short. A corporation most closely resembles demons as described by most of the religions of the world. For a true understanding of these soul-less immortal beings I suggest you pick up a bible, koran, vedic literature, or a book of ancient demons and pay special attention to the denizens of hell.
spoken like a man whose registry has never been corrupted. I could tell you stories....
The problem is that they will simply stop making the PIII and you will be forced to get a P4 (if you want an intel chip). Seeing as how Dell for example only sells intel machines if your company had standardised on Dell computers you will be using the p4 like it or not. Since most business don't give a flying donut about streaming media performance (you don't need that for a spreadsheet do you?) they will end up getting the short end of the stick. This is what happened when the PIII came out. If you wanted a PII from Dell you were out of luck.
My hope is that AMD takes this opportunity to make a name for themselves and convince the Dells of the world to sell computers with AMD chips too. Unfortunately AMD seems to have a knack for blowing opportunities.
"Its interesting to note that after five years, Java still hasn't "made it""
I don't know what you mean by "hasn't made it". It's widely used by the business world from fortune 100 down to mom and pop type businesses. There are millions of programmers with increasing demand (and corresponding increasing salaries). It's embedded as a language in most databases. It's become the most used language to teach progamming in schools. It's got several magazines and hundreds of web sites dedicated to it. It's got a whole bookshelf on barnes and noble.
By what measure are saying that it hasn't made it? It's an industry that's worth billions of dollars for goodnes sake. Just because there are no games or packaged apps it does not mean it hasn't made it. I'd say that java has done in 5 years what most languages never even dreamed of.
Wrong movie.
Maybe it was because of the overtly political sig line.
Absolutely right.
It's open source and cross platform and free. Insist that all documents must be in the star office format and you have solved the problem
"Let's face it, .doc is not about to go to the wayside anytime soon."
Until the next version of office.
They sell a lot but for every one they sell there are 10 pirated copies. A minute percentage of the people in china, africa, middle east, south america etc actually pay for windows or office. The same with most home users. If all of a sudden these people cound not pirate their software most would switch to something else. That would be great! Almost overnight the market share of smartsuite, word perfect office and staroffice would skyrocket. MS would have to reply by either eliminating copy protection and encouraging people to pirate their own software rather then to use the competition or drop the price of office to nothing (or next to nothing).
Either way another cash cow for MS gone! It would be a better world because people would not be stealing anymore and ms would not be gauging the consumers anymore.
Most computers come with windows preinstalled but not office pre-installed.
This will indeed be huge boon for open source software. Right now millions of people all over the world pirate any software they want. Most of these people would never buy ms-office if they actually had to buy it and most of them live in third world countries where they could not afford it even if they wanted to buy it. Right now MS will not pursue them because this pirating prevents cheaper or free alternatives like word-perfect office or staroffice from gaining market share. Lets imagine a world where people are not allowed to pirate software.
1) The rate of adoption of new upgrades declines dramatically. People continue to use older versions that they pirated because it works and is/was free.
2) People switch to lower cost alternative commercial software which provides downward price pressure to ms-office. Office now has to either cost less or assume a lower market share.
3) People switch to open source software.
To me all this is wonderful news. It means that prices of software will drop to almost nothing because there is already plenty of software that costs nothing. The commercial software will either have to be so superior that somebody will be willing to pay big bucks and deal with the headaches or it will have to cost much less.
I think the JVM supports more languages AND as an added bonus it runs on more then one platform. Really now If I am willing to lock myself into an MS OS why would I bother with .NET when I can write activeX objects in any language and call them from any language. Doesn't ActiveX already give me that option? As an added bonus it compiles down to native Code.
You may also want to rephrase that bit about "Sun chose CORBA as its distributed application platform" as well. It's so much easier to write RMI then corba apps in fact it's probably easier to write a RMI app then a .NET app. Java also supports of course EJB and J2EE platforms both of which are easier to implement then CORBA.
In america there is no shortage of hatred or people to hate. The loggers, miners, ranchers and the farmers hate the enviromentalists enough to actually gun them down. The baptists hate the catholics and they both hate abortion doctors enough to actually gun them down. Most of the inland united states hates the coastal residents so much that they can not get themselves to mention them without cursing. Of course everybody hates the gays and moslems.
Amerca is a country driven by hate if you don't believe me just watch MSNBC, Foxnews, CNBC, CNN or listen to any AM radio anywhere in America. Trust me we will not run out of hate any time soon.
Wasn't activeX supposed to deliver up language independence? I can already code objects in C++ and call them from perl right? So why would I give up native code compilation, speed and access to the system and write objects in .NYET/C#.
.NYET myself.
If cross platform AND cross language is a goal then use the JVM if you don't care about cross platform and want to lock yourself to windows platforms then use activeX. I see no real place for
Deadly accurate my friend. With every single type of horribly implemented app going over 80 it's the end of the firewall as we know it.
Of course everybody is racist. There is an old joke it goes like this.
"why are the catholics and the protestants fighting in ireland?"
"Because that's what happens in a country with no blacks, puerto ricans or jews". People are generally racist and will find somebody to hate for whatever reason.
The real question is not who is racist and who is not but who has the power to act on their racism. A black man living in the unner city maybe a racist but so what he can't to nothing to you. If OTOH a rich and powerful white man is racist then he can make life miserable for the people he hates. It becomes especially bad if the racist person is a cop, mayor, politician, radio show host etc.
The GPL does not apply to you unless you use GPLed code in your work. If you insist on profiting from other peoples labor then you can choose from public domain or BSD code that way you get to profit from other people's work and still keep your code hidden from the public so that only you can derive benefit from it. The GPL will not in any way effect you at that point. If on the other hand you insist on using using sombodies code AND that author does nto wish you to profit from their code you are obligated to respect their wishes (that's what IP is all about).
BTW I will join the liberterian party if and only if the CEO of firestone (or any other person in that corporation) gets the electric chair for murdering hundreds of people. Killing just one human is bad enough and usually ends up with a life sentence but most mass murderers get the death penalty.
Wow what a convoluted argument. What makes you think that the south would have ever come that epipheny? How long would it have taken? You are arguing that it would have been better for blacks to be slaves for another 10, 20 or 100 years so that the south could come to grips with it's evil and free them on their own free will. What a crock! How many blacks would have been bought, sold, whipped, raped and killed in those years?
Sure blacks went from being property to being animals to being the second class citizens that they are today but don't think for a minute that each step in the middle wasn't a step forward. Your argument that only if blacks stayed property for a unknown number of years they would have avoided lynchings and terror is just assinine.
Please let us know by what historical measure or evidence you contend that blacks would be better off today if slavery persisted for a number of years more?
You can't force people to be good but you sure as hell can punish them severely for being evil. If the society decides that slavery is evil and immoral then it has an OBLIGATION to wipe it out. Even though we can't stop people from wanting kill, raping, molesting children, stealing etc we still punish them when they do it. What should we do just let the criminals free till they come to an epipheny about their evil ways?
OK for the 2% of people who need more power then a mac but less power then a alpha AND who are willing to forgo the ease of use of a mac AND who are willing to deal with DLL hell, hardware problems etc windows is a good choice. For the 98% of other people though it's a bad choice.
No the number one rule of karma whoring is to say something nice about Microsoft. Pro microsoft posts always get moderated up to 5. Those MS employees are very diligent about modding each other up.
Who the hell is going to put in a $100.00 operating system on a $50.00 box? Oh I get it you are going to steal the operating system and teach your kids the value of stealing something. Can you even buy win98 anymore? Is it for sale anywhere. It's illegal for you to use the windows 98 that came with that used computer you bought Microsoft says so. Sure if you want to be a criminal, if you want to teach your kids to steal, if you want to risk legal action go ahead and do it. Stealing software is wrong and illegal what would happen if everybody in the world stole their copy of windows? how would microsoft make money?