I think he was referring to Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. And of course the right wing wacko "institutes" like the RAND institute and the CATO institute.
The vast majority of the country are heterosexual. The homosexual minority is not allowed to marry or serve in the military which are two rights that the homosexuals have but deny to others.
So clearly a majority can and does deny rights to a minority. You can't say "it can't happen" when it is happening right before your eyes.
Only if you believe in moral relativism. According to the bible there is only one truth. One set of morals. Those morals are dictated by god on everybody. If you don't follow those laws then you will goto hell. God will punish you for not following his morality.
Most people (like you) believe that morals are relative. Your morals are different then my morals. I may think stealing is wrong, you may think it's OK under some circumstances. I may think homosexuality is OK you may think it's evil. So I suppose for those people an over abundence of morals might be bad.
"By the way, when you refer to vendor lock-in do you mean some vendors and not others? "
All vendor lock is bad. That is why you must strive to have access to the code of everything in your enterprise. Whether that's done with open source or by actually purchasing it does not matter. Vendors routinely drop products, get bought and sold, change strategies or simply die without warning. In any case you are left holding the bag unless you have access to the source code.
"Actually, large organisations have more clout with Microsoft than you might believe, and are not as locked in as you think. Think of Telstra, or the government of India."
I believe telstra is one of the first companies to sign up for the new sun "java desktop" linux distribution. India is clearly heading down the linux path. Appatently they both agree with me.
why? What did they have to do with 9/11? Did they ever attack us? Were they a threat to American citizens?
If the Iraqi govt was the target then we must be the most inept military in the world because we sure killed an awful lot of innocent civilians.
"Yeah. War is fun. Even when it is wrong, the decision to send troops anywhere in harm's way is not taken lightly, moron. Right or wrong, "they" made the decision thinking it would benefit the US in the long term."
It is fun and profitable too. It wins elections and it lands fat conctracts for your buddies. The decision to send troops is taken very lightly. Nobody in the white house gives a flying fuck about the deaths of US soldiers or Iraqi civillians. It's all about the election and profit. Only a fool would think otherwise.
"If all it takes is a small (relative to the Japanese population) group of aggressors to justify retribution from the US government, how is attacking coutries where live terrorist different? (A rhetorical question.) You can claim that Japan as a people supported their government, and I would argue that a great many Iraqis support violence against the US. But, no, knowing what I know (which I trust is little compared to US intelligence) I still would not have invaded Iraq."
Man you must be really proud of your ignorance because you sure love to display it. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 . The American education system must really be falling to pieces if morons like you keep confusing this one very simple fact. Why do keep justifying the invasion of Iraq by refering to terrorists? All the terrorists came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Do you read the newspapers? Do you know how to read?
You can't just invade countries because "terrorists live there". A bunch of the terrorists came from Germany should we bomb germany? A bunch were living in Canada should we invade canada, A shitload lived in pakistan should we invade pakistan?
OK. Let's pretend monkeys are flying out of your butt. Let's also pretend that I am a millionaire who has regular anal sex with Britney Spears. Ooooh this game is fun!.
No lets pretend that you are a nincompoop and that you are utterly without sense and without any sense of reality. Ooops wait a minute that's not pretend that's the truth!
You keep bringing up the straw man arguments but I am not going to play that game. If you are not going to argue what I have said don't make up stupid examples OK. Did I ever say people should not be allowed to buy used cars? Did I ever say that older cars should be taken off the road? Did I ever say that poor people should be forced to buy new cars?
Why don't you fucking read the post you are replying to? You can't just make up shit, pretend I said it and then argue against it. What are you some sort of a multiple personality nutcase?
You will never be a 100% sure. You are not 100% sure that the sun will rise tommorrow.
In the mean time you can do things that can not only mitigate whatever is causing global warming but can also lead to cleaner air and save you money. Are you telling me we should not all concerve more energy, drive smaller cars, carpool more often, bike and walk more places?
We should do everything that does not cause harm. We should start a massive public education campaign to increase the usage of public transportation and phsical activity like walking and biking. Now only can we mitigate global warming a little but we can have an healtier society.
Along with that we should pressure industry to run cleaner, we should mandate higher gas mileage in cars. These things cost a little and have massive benefits.
The more drastic stuff you can put off till later.
" A century ago an overwhelming majority of physicists believed in the ether. So what's your point?"
Ah yes. Because a century ago an overwhelming majority of scintists were wrong about one thing we should completely ignore the overwhelming majority of all scientists on all subjects. I get is now.
"And I'm continually baffled by the polls that say 70% of all Americans think Saddam had something to do with 9/11. I don't know *anybody* who thinks that."
That's what the polls say. I suspect you live in a city. If you lived out in the country then you'd probably encounter some of those people. Look at the red-green states from the last election.
"BTW, 3000 people died at Pearl Harbor. Do you think the US should have just let that slide, too?"
Ok I am going to say in a way that even you can understand. Pay attention now.
In Pearl Harbor the Japanese attacked us. We attacked Japan as retribution. You see how that works? A country attacks you and you attack that country back. I am going to say it again because I am sure you didn't understand it the first time. A country attacks you and you attack that country back.
Now to the present. Some terrorist attack us. We attack a country some of those terrorists live in. We don't actually kill those terrorists we kill other people who lived in that country.
Then just for fun we also attack some other country. A country that had nothing to do with the terrorists at all. Once again I am sure you didn't get it so I will repeat it. We attacked a country that had nothing to with the people who attacked us.
Do you see how this is different from Pearl Harbor. I hope you do. The problem is that people like you don't seem to know the difference between one arab and another. You seem perfectly willing to kill any old arab from any old country to seek venegance against some terrorists.
An overwhelming majority of climatologist are convinced that a global climactic change is afoot. They have come this conclusion after decades of study and research.
Idiots like you think that we should kill over 3000 innocent civillians in afghanistan and over 9000 innocent civillians in Iraq to avenge the death of 3000 innocent civilians in New York. Furthermore gullable fools like you think that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for funding and co-ordinating the attacks on 9-11. The retards like you have come to that conclusion despite not having any evidence for it whatsoever.
I don't really expect a person with the mental capacity of two dead flies to be able understand what I just said so don't worry your pretty little head too much about it. Just turn that country music up way loud and replace that tattered flag hanging out your winshield because your neighbor down the street not only has a bigger flag but his is in better shape. Besides he is better then you because he doesn't eat french fries.
Reading your post I get the impression that you are unaware of some important facts. For example you seem to think that open office is not scriptable. I can assure that it is. It can be scripted in java or basic (not VBA) or even python. Both the Open office variant of BASIC and Python are open source languages and Java is available from many vendors. What open office can't do is to implement VBA which could get them arrested or sued. BTW most people who have knowledge of multiple programming languages seem to agree that python and Java are vastly superior to VBA.
Now getting back to the point which you seem intent on ignoring.
No matter how much you spend, no matter how complex your application if as a result of buying something you become a slave to your vendor then you lose. Vendor lock is bad for business. It's doubly bad if your competition is not also locked in.
In business you have to have to control your vendors, you have to play them against each other, you have to constantly keep them on their toes by threatening to drop them and move on to somebody else. A business has to cowtow to clients and has to bully their vendors not the other way around.
Your CIO is locked by Microsoft. He can't leave, if he threatens to leave MS will laugh in his face, audit him and then charge him double just for fun.
I shudder to think what CIO thought that a multi million dollar application built on office macros was a good deal though. When I hear of stuff like this I wish there was a law that forced you to tell me what company he works for. I would like to know so that I don't have any stock in a company that is being managed so badly. A CIO who is that clueless is probably making bad decisions left and right and obviously the CEO or the board of directors are too stupid to call him on it.
Lots of people willingly lock themselves to one vendor. The people you speak of have willingly lead themselves down a dark and expensive path. Every two years not only do they have to upgrade office but also have to upgrade the app written in office macros due to slight differences in the VBA. In all honesty there is no hope for companies with CIOs that stupid.
Having said all that none of what you say in your post adresses the real issue. I will say it again. Open source developers will are not allowed to duplicate that functionality. They can get arrested or sued. They can and have implemented IP free languages in open office. Your stupid ass CIO is not able to extricate himself or his company from the clutches of MS but their competitor just might. I suspect the competitor which is able to shift vendors will save money and eventually win in the marketplace.
That's the way capitalism works. You are not supposed to be a slave to your vendors, it's supposed to go the other way.
"It has no easy migration path for the millions of users who open documents with useful macros and scripts."
First of all this is a really bad idea. If you are opening up documents with scripts in them stop right now.
Secondly this can never happen. MS has patents and copyrights on VBA. Open source people will never be allowed to implement that functionality. At best they can implement their own scripting which they have. Unlike MS though they let you choose your own language.
"At this point in time, there's no reason to switch from Microsoft Office to another office suite simply because this new suite uses XML"
It looks like you will never switch no matter what. You set criterea for switching so high that the open source developers would be sued or jailed if tried to please people like you.
It may be done for nefarious reasons but it may also be a product of pure stupidity.
For example the management at Symantech may truly and honestly believe that if reporting bugs were illegal then all hacking would stop. Hackers would not trade information and the world would be virus free.
" Nobody besides Sun who is selling Linux will offer any indemnification at all. Why doesn't that bother you? Why does it bother you that Sun is indemnifying people that use their Linux desktop solution? Indemnification is potentially a serious problem for Linux."
Just mentioning this is FUD. Linux does not need imdenification. Sun is spreading this FUD in order to scare CIOs from going with a Linux solution and to give credibility to their lapdog SCO.
What are they imdenifying in the first place? SCO sues IBM so that means I need imdenification? From what? For what? What exactly does sun give me anyway? Will they defend me in court if SCO sues me? Will they fund my defence team? Will they volunteer themselves as defendents?
No they will give me my money back big fucking whoop.
Sun needs to stop this indemnification FUD. It makes them look desparate and stupid.
Most likely this is because the democrats are the only ones raising a stink about it while the republicans by and large defend it. There are exceptions of course but generally that's the case.
Other then a few improvished countries most countries have strict immigration laws. Besides which Americans are not well liked just about anywhere now. I would not be surprised to see other countries putting in legislation specifically to hinder migration from the US.
I keep hearing that there is an exodus of highly educated and relatively well off people out of the US. Does anybody have any stats on this? It could be the beginning of a "brain drain" on the US.
Although this letter is very thoughful and serious it still shows how much of disparity exists between professionals and amateurs.
This letter was released on a Saturday when no CIO is at work. Since ZDNET only updates their web site on M-F they will probably not even report on it. The mainstream press which is already hostile to open source also will not pick up on it. Finally I guarantee you that nobody in the financial press will even notice it let alone post it for investors to see.
It would have been better to analyze the "slow news" days of various publications and make sure nothing else of import was going on at them time hen releasing this letter. It would have also been good to release it directly to the mainstream press first even if they will in all likelyhood surpress it. After submitting it to a hostile press then you can submit it to the friendly press who then has an opportunity to hold the hostile press accountable.
I call bullshit. A 10 hour call for 5 or six people for $300.00? I don't think so. I bet you have already paid through the nose for some sort of a yearly contract. That's $5.00 per hour per person for god's sake. Even McDOnalds pays more.
If not please provide a URL where microsoft promises to solve any problem no matter how long it takes, no matter how many people it takes for $300.00.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he was referring to Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. And of course the right wing wacko "institutes" like the RAND institute and the CATO institute.
I don't know about slavery but consider this.
The vast majority of the country are heterosexual. The homosexual minority is not allowed to marry or serve in the military which are two rights that the homosexuals have but deny to others.
So clearly a majority can and does deny rights to a minority. You can't say "it can't happen" when it is happening right before your eyes.
Tell that to the palestenians.
Only if you believe in moral relativism. According to the bible there is only one truth. One set of morals. Those morals are dictated by god on everybody. If you don't follow those laws then you will goto hell. God will punish you for not following his morality.
Most people (like you) believe that morals are relative. Your morals are different then my morals. I may think stealing is wrong, you may think it's OK under some circumstances. I may think homosexuality is OK you may think it's evil. So I suppose for those people an over abundence of morals might be bad.
He is a liar. He knows he is a liar. He does not care.
Jesus is rolling over in his grave. Ooops I forget he is not in a grave. Jesus is mad in the heavens.
To think that an over abundance of morality can be seen as a weakness.
"By the way, when you refer to vendor lock-in do you mean some vendors and not others? "
All vendor lock is bad. That is why you must strive to have access to the code of everything in your enterprise. Whether that's done with open source or by actually purchasing it does not matter. Vendors routinely drop products, get bought and sold, change strategies or simply die without warning. In any case you are left holding the bag unless you have access to the source code.
"Actually, large organisations have more clout with Microsoft than you might believe, and are not as locked in as you think. Think of Telstra, or the government of India."
I believe telstra is one of the first companies to sign up for the new sun "java desktop" linux distribution. India is clearly heading down the linux path. Appatently they both agree with me.
" The Iraqi government was the intended target. "
why? What did they have to do with 9/11? Did they ever attack us? Were they a threat to American citizens?
If the Iraqi govt was the target then we must be the most inept military in the world because we sure killed an awful lot of innocent civilians.
"Yeah. War is fun. Even when it is wrong, the decision to send troops anywhere in harm's way is not taken lightly, moron. Right or wrong, "they" made the decision thinking it would benefit the US in the long term."
It is fun and profitable too. It wins elections and it lands fat conctracts for your buddies. The decision to send troops is taken very lightly. Nobody in the white house gives a flying fuck about the deaths of US soldiers or Iraqi civillians. It's all about the election and profit. Only a fool would think otherwise.
"If all it takes is a small (relative to the Japanese population) group of aggressors to justify retribution from the US government, how is attacking coutries where live terrorist different? (A rhetorical question.) You can claim that Japan as a people supported their government, and I would argue that a great many Iraqis support violence against the US. But, no, knowing what I know (which I trust is little compared to US intelligence) I still would not have invaded Iraq."
Man you must be really proud of your ignorance because you sure love to display it. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 . The American education system must really be falling to pieces if morons like you keep confusing this one very simple fact. Why do keep justifying the invasion of Iraq by refering to terrorists? All the terrorists came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Do you read the newspapers? Do you know how to read?
You can't just invade countries because "terrorists live there". A bunch of the terrorists came from Germany should we bomb germany? A bunch were living in Canada should we invade canada, A shitload lived in pakistan should we invade pakistan?
" Let's play pretend."
OK. Let's pretend monkeys are flying out of your butt. Let's also pretend that I am a millionaire who has regular anal sex with Britney Spears. Ooooh this game is fun!.
No lets pretend that you are a nincompoop and that you are utterly without sense and without any sense of reality. Ooops wait a minute that's not pretend that's the truth!
You keep bringing up the straw man arguments but I am not going to play that game. If you are not going to argue what I have said don't make up stupid examples OK. Did I ever say people should not be allowed to buy used cars? Did I ever say that older cars should be taken off the road? Did I ever say that poor people should be forced to buy new cars?
Why don't you fucking read the post you are replying to? You can't just make up shit, pretend I said it and then argue against it. What are you some sort of a multiple personality nutcase?
Fucking moron.
You will never be a 100% sure. You are not 100% sure that the sun will rise tommorrow.
In the mean time you can do things that can not only mitigate whatever is causing global warming but can also lead to cleaner air and save you money. Are you telling me we should not all concerve more energy, drive smaller cars, carpool more often, bike and walk more places?
We should do everything that does not cause harm. We should start a massive public education campaign to increase the usage of public transportation and phsical activity like walking and biking. Now only can we mitigate global warming a little but we can have an healtier society.
Along with that we should pressure industry to run cleaner, we should mandate higher gas mileage in cars. These things cost a little and have massive benefits.
The more drastic stuff you can put off till later.
" A century ago an overwhelming majority of physicists believed in the ether. So what's your point?"
Ah yes. Because a century ago an overwhelming majority of scintists were wrong about one thing we should completely ignore the overwhelming majority of all scientists on all subjects. I get is now.
"And I'm continually baffled by the polls that say 70% of all Americans think Saddam had something to do with 9/11. I don't know *anybody* who thinks that."
That's what the polls say. I suspect you live in a city. If you lived out in the country then you'd probably encounter some of those people. Look at the red-green states from the last election.
"BTW, 3000 people died at Pearl Harbor. Do you think the US should have just let that slide, too?"
Ok I am going to say in a way that even you can understand. Pay attention now.
In Pearl Harbor the Japanese attacked us. We attacked Japan as retribution. You see how that works? A country attacks you and you attack that country back. I am going to say it again because I am sure you didn't understand it the first time. A country attacks you and you attack that country back.
Now to the present. Some terrorist attack us. We attack a country some of those terrorists live in. We don't actually kill those terrorists we kill other people who lived in that country.
Then just for fun we also attack some other country. A country that had nothing to do with the terrorists at all. Once again I am sure you didn't get it so I will repeat it. We attacked a country that had nothing to with the people who attacked us.
Do you see how this is different from Pearl Harbor. I hope you do. The problem is that people like you don't seem to know the difference between one arab and another. You seem perfectly willing to kill any old arab from any old country to seek venegance against some terrorists.
An overwhelming majority of climatologist are convinced that a global climactic change is afoot. They have come this conclusion after decades of study and research.
Idiots like you think that we should kill over 3000 innocent civillians in afghanistan and over 9000 innocent civillians in Iraq to avenge the death of 3000 innocent civilians in New York. Furthermore gullable fools like you think that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for funding and co-ordinating the attacks on 9-11. The retards like you have come to that conclusion despite not having any evidence for it whatsoever.
I don't really expect a person with the mental capacity of two dead flies to be able understand what I just said so don't worry your pretty little head too much about it. Just turn that country music up way loud and replace that tattered flag hanging out your winshield because your neighbor down the street not only has a bigger flag but his is in better shape. Besides he is better then you because he doesn't eat french fries.
Yes. We should all sit on our asses and do nothing until we are 100% sure.
The only problem with the knoppix installer is that it installs everything. I would like to choose the packages I want install.
Reading your post I get the impression that you are unaware of some important facts. For example you seem to think that open office is not scriptable. I can assure that it is. It can be scripted in java or basic (not VBA) or even python. Both the Open office variant of BASIC and Python are open source languages and Java is available from many vendors. What open office can't do is to implement VBA which could get them arrested or sued. BTW most people who have knowledge of multiple programming languages seem to agree that python and Java are vastly superior to VBA.
Now getting back to the point which you seem intent on ignoring.
No matter how much you spend, no matter how complex your application if as a result of buying something you become a slave to your vendor then you lose. Vendor lock is bad for business. It's doubly bad if your competition is not also locked in.
In business you have to have to control your vendors, you have to play them against each other, you have to constantly keep them on their toes by threatening to drop them and move on to somebody else. A business has to cowtow to clients and has to bully their vendors not the other way around.
Your CIO is locked by Microsoft. He can't leave, if he threatens to leave MS will laugh in his face, audit him and then charge him double just for fun.
I shudder to think what CIO thought that a multi million dollar application built on office macros was a good deal though. When I hear of stuff like this I wish there was a law that forced you to tell me what company he works for. I would like to know so that I don't have any stock in a company that is being managed so badly. A CIO who is that clueless is probably making bad decisions left and right and obviously the CEO or the board of directors are too stupid to call him on it.
Lots of people willingly lock themselves to one vendor. The people you speak of have willingly lead themselves down a dark and expensive path. Every two years not only do they have to upgrade office but also have to upgrade the app written in office macros due to slight differences in the VBA. In all honesty there is no hope for companies with CIOs that stupid.
Having said all that none of what you say in your post adresses the real issue. I will say it again. Open source developers will are not allowed to duplicate that functionality. They can get arrested or sued. They can and have implemented IP free languages in open office. Your stupid ass CIO is not able to extricate himself or his company from the clutches of MS but their competitor just might. I suspect the competitor which is able to shift vendors will save money and eventually win in the marketplace.
That's the way capitalism works. You are not supposed to be a slave to your vendors, it's supposed to go the other way.
"It has no easy migration path for the millions of users who open documents with useful macros and scripts."
First of all this is a really bad idea. If you are opening up documents with scripts in them stop right now.
Secondly this can never happen. MS has patents and copyrights on VBA. Open source people will never be allowed to implement that functionality. At best they can implement their own scripting which they have. Unlike MS though they let you choose your own language.
"At this point in time, there's no reason to switch from Microsoft Office to another office suite simply because this new suite uses XML"
It looks like you will never switch no matter what. You set criterea for switching so high that the open source developers would be sued or jailed if tried to please people like you.
What is China proposing that is proprietary?
It may be done for nefarious reasons but it may also be a product of pure stupidity.
For example the management at Symantech may truly and honestly believe that if reporting bugs were illegal then all hacking would stop. Hackers would not trade information and the world would be virus free.
Trust me PHBs are really THAT stupid.
" Nobody besides Sun who is selling Linux will offer any indemnification at all. Why doesn't that bother you? Why does it bother you that Sun is indemnifying people that use their Linux desktop solution? Indemnification is potentially a serious problem for Linux."
Just mentioning this is FUD. Linux does not need imdenification. Sun is spreading this FUD in order to scare CIOs from going with a Linux solution and to give credibility to their lapdog SCO.
What are they imdenifying in the first place? SCO sues IBM so that means I need imdenification? From what? For what? What exactly does sun give me anyway? Will they defend me in court if SCO sues me? Will they fund my defence team? Will they volunteer themselves as defendents?
No they will give me my money back big fucking whoop.
Sun needs to stop this indemnification FUD. It makes them look desparate and stupid.
"Weather SCO will back down out of this or weather they will keep"
"Weather" is about meteorology. You meant to say "whether"
Most likely this is because the democrats are the only ones raising a stink about it while the republicans by and large defend it. There are exceptions of course but generally that's the case.
Other then a few improvished countries most countries have strict immigration laws. Besides which Americans are not well liked just about anywhere now. I would not be surprised to see other countries putting in legislation specifically to hinder migration from the US.
I keep hearing that there is an exodus of highly educated and relatively well off people out of the US. Does anybody have any stats on this? It could be the beginning of a "brain drain" on the US.
Although this letter is very thoughful and serious it still shows how much of disparity exists between professionals and amateurs.
This letter was released on a Saturday when no CIO is at work. Since ZDNET only updates their web site on M-F they will probably not even report on it. The mainstream press which is already hostile to open source also will not pick up on it. Finally I guarantee you that nobody in the financial press will even notice it let alone post it for investors to see.
It would have been better to analyze the "slow news" days of various publications and make sure nothing else of import was going on at them time hen releasing this letter. It would have also been good to release it directly to the mainstream press first even if they will in all likelyhood surpress it. After submitting it to a hostile press then you can submit it to the friendly press who then has an opportunity to hold the hostile press accountable.
I call bullshit. A 10 hour call for 5 or six people for $300.00? I don't think so. I bet you have already paid through the nose for some sort of a yearly contract. That's $5.00 per hour per person for god's sake. Even McDOnalds pays more.
If not please provide a URL where microsoft promises to solve any problem no matter how long it takes, no matter how many people it takes for $300.00.