I seriously doubt it. There is just too much pressure from openoffice which is free and has a completely open XML file format. Sure some CIOs will stick with MS office but little by little that monoply will fade. It will start at the small business level because they can least afford office. As those businesses grow they will continue to use openoffice just out of momentum if nothing else. Also there will be tremendous amount of foreign countries which can not afford msoffice.
Unfortumately for MS their twin monopolies are being threatened by free competitors which are pretty damned good. Given a choice between pretty-good-and-free and better-but-expensive most rational people will will choose the former.
" Microsoft is switching to XML because it will become the standard data exchange format of all things.NET (other than source code, obviously), and because it is faster and simpler to parse."
This makes no sense on two levels.
One is that you are presuming that the.NET platform (or whatever the fuck it is today) is incapable of exchanging binary formats. In fact it is probably more efficient to send.doc files back and forth instead of streaming them to text and back.
Two is that the MS-XML that office will be using will not be interchangable with any body elses parser. If you are going to embed binary data into the XML document then you are going to have the incompatible documents.
"I don't trust the business world to police itself enough to propose a true laissez-faire system, but neither do I think it's a good idea to give government unlimited power to meddle in business affairs."
But the govt does not have unlimited power. There has to be a trial and endless appeals first. Besides MS had 50 billion to spend on this trial which is much less then the budget the justice dept allocated for it.
Who said anything about the govt? Unless of course you mean that the govt should not provide courts so that people can sue each other or that there should be no laws so that people can't be tried.
If this device (or a similar device) is able to encrypt your hard drive then it would be an effective combat against some of the more intrusive aspects of the patriot act. In that legislation there are clauses that allow the FBI to enter your home when you are not in and bug your place and place trojans in your computer while you are not home and without letting you know about it.
My point is that automatically encrypting your hard drive is more effective then having a password protected system especially if that encryption is done with huge keys that are stored on the watch.
"There is a lot more supply then demand for teachers in the US"
Bullshit. In most districts there is a severe shortage and unfotunately it is these districts that need the good teachers because they are poor.
"As for elections, they counted the number of votes, not the number of dollars spent, to decide who won."
It takes money to organize and to get out the vote. It also takes money to send out brochures that "educate" the black voters that their phone bills must be paid up before they can vote, that such and such a politician has been endorsed by the communist party, and of course to round up homeless people and bus them to the polling place.
Only an ignoramous would claim that the impact of money on our political system in negligable.
Ok let me quote you again in case you missed your own post. you said.
" That is to say, since the corporation is not a real person, it has no interest in hording money."
Now apparently you think that having 5 billion in cash and 45 billion in almost cash (short term investments) is not hoarding cash. That's 50 billion dollars in very liquid assets. More then the gross national product of many countries. On what planet is this not hoarding cash?
Corporations are legally bound to give that money back to the shareholders. The problem here is that a handful of people hold the majority of MS stock. For them getting paid dividents would mean nothing because they are already billionaires. Either that or Bill Gates and his cohorts know something we don't and need that much cash on hand in the very near future.
Agreed. What are really needed are good judges who are willing to throw out frivolous cases.
Re:Using PHP on a professional site
on
Professional PHP4
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The links you point out all refer to the fact that php does not act exactly like C++ or Java. Once you actually learn the way php works those particular things don't bother you anymore.
Yes php does not work like C++ or java I don't think anybody is arguing the opposite. I suppose lisp, smalltalk, ocaml, python and perl also don't work like C++ or Java. That's life.
On the other side neither C++ nor Java allow you add methods or attributes to objects at runtime and PHP does. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe not, but I like it and whenever I use a language like java It makes me loose my hair when I can't do it. You have to take each language as it comes.
"I can teach kids reading and math without a huge budget if they want to learn."
And yet you don't. Why is that? Let me guess. You don't want to teach kids because it would mean giving up your high paying job for a job which pays slave wages and requires an enormous amount of your time.
"All the money in the world can't legally buy you one single vote on election day. Politicians do what the voters want in the end. Although money influences politics, voting citizens opinions influence politics much more. Otherwise, the tax system in the US wouldn't punish the rich for succeeding, for instance."
Well this part is just silly.
Re:Using PHP on a professional site
on
Professional PHP4
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"And PHP doesn't have the greatest OO built in that most architects drool over."
Actually it has "pretty good" OO. In some ways it has "pretty advanced" OO like mix-ins. PHP5 will have "even more advanced" OO.
Anybody who uses J2EE for a "less then enterprise" web site is just asking for pain. Better to stick needles in your eyes it would hurt less.
If you really want to use java go with webobjects.
Re:Using PHP on a professional site
on
Professional PHP4
·
· Score: 2
I see php in lots of very busy sites.
Just today I noticed that Insight is using php. I am pretty sure they were not using that before and migrated to php from something else.
"Further, as I mentioned in my previous post, it is bad practice for a company to hord lots of cash (in terms of opportunity cost) so corporations tend to spend the profits."
Have you ever heard of Microsoft? They are a corporation and they have over fourty billion dollars in cash with no debt. There goes your theory.
"He's saying that whoever decides the criteria for passing a particular grade should not dumb down the material to make it easier for kids to pass, "
It's impossible to educate kids with underpaid teachers, in overcrowded schools, with substandard books and materials, and buildings that are falling apart. Either you spend money to fix all that or you dumb down the kids.
"Pretend donations to govt. count more than votes on election day."
What do you mean pretend? Does anybody dispute this?
"On Immigration, he's talking about keeping out illegal immigrants,"
You want to know how to stop illegal immegration? Jail any business owner who hires an illegal. The reason so many illegal immigrants are in the US is because the US business need them. Who else is going to pick your apples and cucumbers?
"Two, the wealthy already have an enormous tax burden."
Actually that's false. The top 5% of the country controls 95% of the wealth of the country. Despite that they only pay something like 75% of the taxes. the top 5% of this country should pay 95% of the taxes. They are undertaxed.
Do you know if the CIA, FBI and the rest of the spooks are under the defense slice? How about the newly created homeland defense dept. I think they should all be lumped under the defense portion of the budget.
Presumably the security guard is a trained professional. I for one believe that guns should be child proof. We have child proof lighters yet any two year old can set off a gun. Guns need to be made much safer.
I think it's [retty obvious by now that this presidency has a healthy disdain for democracy. They come from a corporate world which are run in a dictotarial style and democracy is just too inconvenient for them.
Are you suggesting that the palestenians are not motivated or that they are incapable of shceming up tactics? Only if you were in palestine you could destroy the israeli tanks with molotv cocktails? Are you really saying that?
"The PA operates against Civilians instead of military targets. "
that's because the weapons they have inflict no real damage on the military targets.
"At times Hamas and Hezbollah have scored major hits against IDF forces, the recent destruction of two Merkava Mk IIIs was a major victory, but it wasn't followed up."
Was that done with sidearms? rifles?
"If you look at the new Intafatah, you might see that the PA is on the verge of winning, I mean they currently have an autonomy."
Now you are really stretching it here. There are almost a million palestenians living under curfew, the IDF marches into and out of palestine at will, a thousand palestenians are killed every year by the IDF, more settlements are built every year and existing ones are expanded, it's almost legal for settlers to kill any palestenian that wanders near a settlement. The PA has no real authority, the palestenians are no closer to freedom then they were 10 years ago.
"Iraq can't stop the bombing campaign because thier military sucks, they are run by a mad dictator and thier military sucks."
Neither can their populace armed or not. It takes more then rifles to bring down stealth bombers.
"Afghanistan 1979-1988. Vietnam 1954 and 1973 (Draw) Somalia 1992-94 Beruit 1982-83 South Lebannon 1982-2000 Israel 1948-49 Yugoslavia 1941-45"
Sorry none of the above. All those conflicts involved the support of external forces, anti aircraft weapons, tanks, rockets and organized armies. Hardly the romantized ideal of a citizen militia repelling an armed invation.
Slashdot Mirror
I seriously doubt it. There is just too much pressure from openoffice which is free and has a completely open XML file format. Sure some CIOs will stick with MS office but little by little that monoply will fade. It will start at the small business level because they can least afford office. As those businesses grow they will continue to use openoffice just out of momentum if nothing else. Also there will be tremendous amount of foreign countries which can not afford msoffice.
Unfortumately for MS their twin monopolies are being threatened by free competitors which are pretty damned good. Given a choice between pretty-good-and-free and better-but-expensive most rational people will will choose the former.
"You'll have to ask Microsoft why they hav a suddern desire to switch everything to XML, I have no idea."
Mmm very interesting. Either they are stupid or evil.
Do you really think they can force everybody else to stream their version of XML into office files?
" Microsoft is switching to XML because it will become the standard data exchange format of all things .NET (other than source code, obviously), and because it is faster and simpler to parse."
.NET platform (or whatever the fuck it is today) is incapable of exchanging binary formats. In fact it is probably more efficient to send .doc files back and forth instead of streaming them to text and back.
This makes no sense on two levels.
One is that you are presuming that the
Two is that the MS-XML that office will be using will not be interchangable with any body elses parser. If you are going to embed binary data into the XML document then you are going to have the incompatible documents.
"I don't trust the business world to police itself enough to propose a true laissez-faire system, but neither do I think it's a good idea to give government unlimited power to meddle in business affairs."
But the govt does not have unlimited power. There has to be a trial and endless appeals first. Besides MS had 50 billion to spend on this trial which is much less then the budget the justice dept allocated for it.
Who said anything about the govt? Unless of course you mean that the govt should not provide courts so that people can sue each other or that there should be no laws so that people can't be tried.
Then why even bother with XML? Why pretend that it's some kind of an open format? Why not just stick with the proprietary format they have now?
"Why should I fork out cash for this?"
Here is one possible reason.
If this device (or a similar device) is able to encrypt your hard drive then it would be an effective combat against some of the more intrusive aspects of the patriot act. In that legislation there are clauses that allow the FBI to enter your home when you are not in and bug your place and place trojans in your computer while you are not home and without letting you know about it.
My point is that automatically encrypting your hard drive is more effective then having a password protected system especially if that encryption is done with huge keys that are stored on the watch.
"There is a lot more supply then demand for teachers in the US"
Bullshit. In most districts there is a severe shortage and unfotunately it is these districts that need the good teachers because they are poor.
"As for elections, they counted the number of votes, not the number of dollars spent, to decide who won."
It takes money to organize and to get out the vote. It also takes money to send out brochures that "educate" the black voters that their phone bills must be paid up before they can vote, that such and such a politician has been endorsed by the communist party, and of course to round up homeless people and bus them to the polling place.
Only an ignoramous would claim that the impact of money on our political system in negligable.
Ok let me quote you again in case you missed your own post. you said.
" That is to say, since the corporation is not a real person, it has no interest in hording money."
Now apparently you think that having 5 billion in cash and 45 billion in almost cash (short term investments) is not hoarding cash. That's 50 billion dollars in very liquid assets. More then the gross national product of many countries. On what planet is this not hoarding cash?
Corporations are legally bound to give that money back to the shareholders. The problem here is that a handful of people hold the majority of MS stock. For them getting paid dividents would mean nothing because they are already billionaires. Either that or Bill Gates and his cohorts know something we don't and need that much cash on hand in the very near future.
Agreed. What are really needed are good judges who are willing to throw out frivolous cases.
The links you point out all refer to the fact that php does not act exactly like C++ or Java. Once you actually learn the way php works those particular things don't bother you anymore.
Yes php does not work like C++ or java I don't think anybody is arguing the opposite. I suppose lisp, smalltalk, ocaml, python and perl also don't work like C++ or Java. That's life.
On the other side neither C++ nor Java allow you add methods or attributes to objects at runtime and PHP does. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe not, but I like it and whenever I use a language like java It makes me loose my hair when I can't do it. You have to take each language as it comes.
Screw the tickets how many people have been sprung from jail after spending ten years there because DNA evidense proved they were not guilty.
"I can teach kids reading and math without a huge budget if they want to learn."
And yet you don't. Why is that? Let me guess. You don't want to teach kids because it would mean giving up your high paying job for a job which pays slave wages and requires an enormous amount of your time.
"All the money in the world can't legally buy you one single vote on election day. Politicians do what the voters want in the end. Although money influences politics, voting citizens opinions influence politics much more. Otherwise, the tax system in the US wouldn't punish the rich for succeeding, for instance."
Well this part is just silly.
"And PHP doesn't have the greatest OO built in that most architects drool over."
Actually it has "pretty good" OO. In some ways it has "pretty advanced" OO like mix-ins. PHP5 will have "even more advanced" OO.
Anybody who uses J2EE for a "less then enterprise" web site is just asking for pain. Better to stick needles in your eyes it would hurt less.
If you really want to use java go with webobjects.
I see php in lots of very busy sites.
Just today I noticed that Insight is using php. I am pretty sure they were not using that before and migrated to php from something else.
DBI/DBD is a library written on top of PERL just as ADO, ODBC, JDBC etc are libraries written on top of other languages.
PHP has many such libraries to choose from. Here is a short list (you can google for the exact locations)
ADODB, Metabase, PEAR, PHPLib.
Please do some research before you post lest you look like an ignorant fool.
Why does a corporation need to vote? They can simply buy any congressman they want.
"Further, as I mentioned in my previous post, it is bad practice for a company to hord lots of cash (in terms of opportunity cost) so corporations tend to spend the profits."
Have you ever heard of Microsoft? They are a corporation and they have over fourty billion dollars in cash with no debt. There goes your theory.
The upper 50% of the income earners account for almost a 100% of the income earned, of course they should pay almost all the taxes.
The top 5% earn 95% of the income but pay only about 75% of the taxes.
You have to take into account the money earned not just the money paid in taxes.
"He's saying that whoever decides the criteria for passing a particular grade should not dumb down the material to make it easier for kids to pass, "
It's impossible to educate kids with underpaid teachers, in overcrowded schools, with substandard books and materials, and buildings that are falling apart. Either you spend money to fix all that or you dumb down the kids.
"Pretend donations to govt. count more than votes on election day."
What do you mean pretend? Does anybody dispute this?
"On Immigration, he's talking about keeping out illegal immigrants,"
You want to know how to stop illegal immegration? Jail any business owner who hires an illegal. The reason so many illegal immigrants are in the US is because the US business need them. Who else is going to pick your apples and cucumbers?
"Two, the wealthy already have an enormous tax burden."
Actually that's false. The top 5% of the country controls 95% of the wealth of the country. Despite that they only pay something like 75% of the taxes. the top 5% of this country should pay 95% of the taxes. They are undertaxed.
Do you know if the CIA, FBI and the rest of the spooks are under the defense slice? How about the newly created homeland defense dept. I think they should all be lumped under the defense portion of the budget.
Presumably the security guard is a trained professional. I for one believe that guns should be child proof. We have child proof lighters yet any two year old can set off a gun. Guns need to be made much safer.
I think it's [retty obvious by now that this presidency has a healthy disdain for democracy. They come from a corporate world which are run in a dictotarial style and democracy is just too inconvenient for them.
"Obviously it takes tactics and modivation."
Are you suggesting that the palestenians are not motivated or that they are incapable of shceming up tactics? Only if you were in palestine you could destroy the israeli tanks with molotv cocktails? Are you really saying that?
"The PA operates against Civilians instead of military targets. "
that's because the weapons they have inflict no real damage on the military targets.
"At times Hamas and Hezbollah have scored major hits against IDF forces, the recent destruction of two Merkava Mk IIIs was a major victory, but it wasn't followed up."
Was that done with sidearms? rifles?
"If you look at the new Intafatah, you might see that the PA is on the verge of winning, I mean they currently have an autonomy."
Now you are really stretching it here. There are almost a million palestenians living under curfew, the IDF marches into and out of palestine at will, a thousand palestenians are killed every year by the IDF, more settlements are built every year and existing ones are expanded, it's almost legal for settlers to kill any palestenian that wanders near a settlement. The PA has no real authority, the palestenians are no closer to freedom then they were 10 years ago.
"Iraq can't stop the bombing campaign because thier military sucks, they are run by a mad dictator and thier military sucks."
Neither can their populace armed or not. It takes more then rifles to bring down stealth bombers.
"Afghanistan 1979-1988.
Vietnam 1954 and 1973 (Draw)
Somalia 1992-94
Beruit 1982-83
South Lebannon 1982-2000
Israel 1948-49
Yugoslavia 1941-45"
Sorry none of the above. All those conflicts involved the support of external forces, anti aircraft weapons, tanks, rockets and organized armies. Hardly the romantized ideal of a citizen militia repelling an armed invation.