MS won't refuse to sell windows licences to Dell, they'll simply charge them a little more than Compaq if, say, Dell starts selling Linux PCs or PCs without an OS. You realize they have actually done that, right? The parent went a bit far by saying they could "shut down" a company, I think, but the point still stands that they have more than enough power to influence (or coerce) companies into helping maintain their monopoly.
The problem with MS isn't really that they think they know what's best for us, it's that they *do* know what's best for them, and will break interoperability, force out smaller companies, etc. for their bottom line.
Reminds me of when the RIAA was quoting figures to show their sales declining, and the figures were for singles, not full albumns. Slashdot was up in arms, of course.
IANAPsychiatrist, but I know people with mental disorders. Disorganized speech, fidgeting, and, of course, paranoia are all symptoms of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, which affects 1-2% of the population at some point in their lives. It sounds like this guy was schizo.
He probably wasn't stupid. In fact, I've heard (although it was a long time ago, so I'm not entirely sure) schizophrenia disproportionately affects people of above average intelligence.
I'm not one for playing the mindless patriotism card, but I really do feel that (for the Americans out there) it is our duty to do something about this.
Mindless patriots support the government, while real patriots support the people, and challenge the government to do what's right for everyone. The implementation Diebold has come up with is not good for any of us, and is not right.
One of the reasons why the French and Italians do so well with a lot of wine is because they're been drinking it for hundreds of generations.
That sounds reasonable, and raises an interesting question: what happens when you mix the genes of all these different regions together? Is it a coincidence that America, the world's melting pot, has the highest rate of obesity in the world? Not only are people from so many different genetic backgrounds mixing together and eating the same food, but many people are of mixed ethnicity (I'm eight different types of European, myself).
Perhaps America's obesity problem is, in part, due to our lack of cultural food that we've all evolved process efficiently.
My body may not be designed that way, but societies have relied heavily on food that must be extensively processed. For example, a southwestern Native American tribe (Utes?) had a diet that revolved around acorns because it was the only food that was plentiful in the area. It took the women all day to make them edible, but they did. It isn't suprising that southwestern Native American tribes have one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. Societies evolved to subsist on what was around, so there is no one diet that will work for people of all genetic backgrounds.
Because of their diet, or because lack of medicine/poor shelter/unsanitary living conditions? The days when people died from the flu aren't that far behind us.
Please, show me some perfect code that does something useful. It's not just Microsoft. This even gives an advantage to OSS, since OSS has at least the potential for peer review, and the imperfections that will exist can be found better by many pairs of eyes.
Re:Well, since the conclusion of his last book
on
Human Accomplishment
·
· Score: 1
I believe he meant the NHL, not the NFL, which would support the assertion that a disproportionate racial population engaging in an activity is often at least partially due to cultural self selection.
I also think it's worth pointing out how apt your analogy of different dog breeds to different human races is in one sense: a plausible reason blacks have dominated sports in the United States (after they began to play and it became culturally acceptable) is because they were bred for physical superiority by slavers. Many modern breeds of dogs were specifically bred for hunting/racing/show/the hell of it. It's odd I've never seen these dubious statistical analyses try to control for the affects of slavery by seperating Africans with a history of being enslaved from Africans without that influence, although I admit that would be hard.
Yes, that's the *real* definition of addiction. We also have some basterdized versions of that definition floating around, e.g. chocolate/food addiction thanks to Oprah. As a result people have started applying "addiction" to any behavior done compulsively which is hard to stop, as opposed to the more rigorous definition you gave. The grandparent's point is that, since drugs make you feel good, you won't want to stop, and that leads to them being labeled "addictive."
CW: Your 1993 story in Computerworld estimates the cost of fixing Y2K at between $50 billion and $70 billion. That's way below the Gartner Group number of between $300 billion and $600 billion having been spent, or the IDC estimate of $280 billion. So in fact you were initially on the conservative side.
De Jager: Very conservative. And one of the things I keep getting asked is, you know, was it all hype, and did we really need to do anything. And I find that really bizarre.
So, I'm confused. He points out the Y2K problem in 1993 and distances himself from the chicken little types later in the decade, makes very conservative estimates of the cost to fix, while maintaining a rational view of the problem that did actually exist, and he would like us to forget that? Maybe he would like it more if we remembered it accurately.
I guess you don't mind spending your money on more police and more jails.
In fact, a murder can occur simply because someone was attempted to get $20 for his next high
The most addictive substance out there is cigarettes, yet no one uses this argument when the government taxes the hell out of them. Also, why are all the homeless people I see on the street holding up "I just want a beer" signs not out raping and pillaging like some sort of addict Vikings?
The cause would be an ineffective work force
Any evidence of this? Specifically with regards to alcoholism or nicotine addiction, and why they aren't killing our precious work force? Also, why on earth can't I smoke some pot or do a little e on the weekends? I just don't see how that would affect the quality of my work. Finally, are you posting to slashdot from work?:) (I'm on lunch right now, so you can't use the same argument)
The fourth point, is that sentences for selling to minors would be just as lax as they are now with alcohol and cigarettes. Society's view would be one of "well he's just acting more [g]rown up" because drug usage would be considered an "adult act".
When I was 18 in college, it was harder to get alocohol than pot, so it seems stores are actually less lax than drug dealers (after all, they have more to lose). Also, wrt that second sentence, I don't know a single person who thinks that way about cigarettes and alcohol.
Interesting anecdote from a Native American Studies class I took a while back:
My professor lived on a reservation when she was a child. Alcohol was strictly forbidden, but people drank anyway. The way they drank, however, was much different from the two or three beers/glasses of wine I usually have at parties or while hanging out.
Firstly, alcohol was obviously more expensive, and the Native Americans were more poor; therefore, the type of alcohol they drank was the cheapest for the alcohol content: hard liqour, usually tequila or vodka. Secondly, they couldn't drink at home or in an establishment because getting caught would, in addition to the normal penalties, jepordize custody of the kids or the business, so they drank in alleys, and they drank quickly. Quickly, as in drinking straight from the bottle, passing it around until it was gone (can't exactly carry it around). Third, they couldn't go to rehab without jepordizing custody of their kids.
If that doesn't contribute to alcoholism instead of preventing it, I don't know what would.
Complain, in an eloquent way, about how all non anti-M$ post get modded down
Defend P2P software
Complain, eloquently again, about how many/.ers are stealing copyrighted works
Talk about installing linux on your microwave/dishwasher/ceiling fan
Make virgin/no girlfriend/parents' basement joke at poster of above
Copy article text
Give legal advice, prefaced with IANAL, of course.
Grammar, spelling, dupe alerts
I, for one, welcome the slashdot joke, which, in Soviet Russia, welcomes ME with petrified Natalie Portman and hot grits down my pants until Outlook not so good, which I do not think means what you think it means.
Create a near exhaustive list of jokes, starting with the parent post's
It would also be good for bicycles, I assume, although you can buy nice magnetic thingies (IANA physicist) to stick on the [motor]bike to trip the sensor. I ride a bike to work a lot, and before I got one I avoided a lot of intersections where I needed to make a left and had to wait for a car.
My actions may be public, but I should not be forced to carry a black box, or prevented from removing or tampering with it (as it is my property), as long as I don't attempt to pass off a tampered black box as evidence in my favor.
Being forced to posses something that may provide evidence against me is a violation of the 5th amendment. (This all being said, the 30-60 seconds of recorded time is not a big deal, and I have no real objection to the box I'm sure is on my car.)
The last time I weighed myself on a metric scale, it gave me the weight in kilograms. Should I say I massed myself instead?
The parent makes perfect sense, of course, because you can choose to correlate units of mass and units of weight as long the gravitational force is kept constant. Or did you think he was giving the weight of the book on another planet?
I knew some people who had very strict parents. Guess what they did when took off to college? A lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol, and a lot of other people.
Reminds me of the junior high school I went to. Hats were banned under the pretense they could be used as gang signs. The computer geeks and stright A nerds laughed hysterically in contempt when they found out they couldn't wear hats. The gang members laughed hysterically in contempt, since they already knew who was affiliated with what gang, and could just use there hands or words to declare their affiliation. (You can't take away their fingers, right?)
Therefore, it is clear such policies should be celebrated as a way to bring people together through their lack of respect for stupidity.
There is somewhat of a difference between the school allowing coke machines on their property and letting the MPAA use classrooms as a Soapbox
Yes, and that difference is this: when the MPAA comes and takes over their history class for a day, they know it. It's obvious they're being preached to, so hopefully the red flags are thrown and their critical thinking processes* start.
When a school has only Coke machines and Coke drinks in the cafeteria, it's not so obvious. I didn't realize my school did this until my junior year, when a topic for the required speech class was whether it was okay for schools to offer these exclusive contracts; it dawned on me during the middle of a classmate's "against" presentation, when he asked "imagine if this was our school." Heh, guess what? It slipped past our collective attention there wasn't a Pepsi product in the entire school.
*Contrary to popular belief most kids (and people) have reasonable critical thinking processes, at least to the point where they can tell they're being lied to or manipulated; the problem is activating them, which is what most marketing/social engineering tries to avoid.
Slashdot Mirror
MS won't refuse to sell windows licences to Dell, they'll simply charge them a little more than Compaq if, say, Dell starts selling Linux PCs or PCs without an OS. You realize they have actually done that, right? The parent went a bit far by saying they could "shut down" a company, I think, but the point still stands that they have more than enough power to influence (or coerce) companies into helping maintain their monopoly.
The problem with MS isn't really that they think they know what's best for us, it's that they *do* know what's best for them, and will break interoperability, force out smaller companies, etc. for their bottom line.
I think you meant
LPCSTRZ fork(HWND hwnd,
PWND pwnd,
PWPARAM pwparam,
DONT_YOU_HATE_IT_WHEN_WE_MAKE up_datatypes_and_name_all_params_after_them = ITS_REALLY_JUST_AN_UNSIGNED_CHAR_ANYWAY)
Reminds me of when the RIAA was quoting figures to show their sales declining, and the figures were for singles, not full albumns. Slashdot was up in arms, of course.
Thanks for pointing this out.
IANAPsychiatrist, but I know people with mental disorders. Disorganized speech, fidgeting, and, of course, paranoia are all symptoms of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, which affects 1-2% of the population at some point in their lives. It sounds like this guy was schizo.
He probably wasn't stupid. In fact, I've heard (although it was a long time ago, so I'm not entirely sure) schizophrenia disproportionately affects people of above average intelligence.
we don't have cheap CDs here, either.
I'm not one for playing the mindless patriotism card, but I really do feel that (for the Americans out there) it is our duty to do something about this.
Mindless patriots support the government, while real patriots support the people, and challenge the government to do what's right for everyone. The implementation Diebold has come up with is not good for any of us, and is not right.
Perhaps America's obesity problem is, in part, due to our lack of cultural food that we've all evolved process efficiently.
My body may not be designed that way, but societies have relied heavily on food that must be extensively processed. For example, a southwestern Native American tribe (Utes?) had a diet that revolved around acorns because it was the only food that was plentiful in the area. It took the women all day to make them edible, but they did. It isn't suprising that southwestern Native American tribes have one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. Societies evolved to subsist on what was around, so there is no one diet that will work for people of all genetic backgrounds.
Because of their diet, or because lack of medicine/poor shelter/unsanitary living conditions? The days when people died from the flu aren't that far behind us.
In other words, your point is meaningless.
Please, show me some perfect code that does something useful. It's not just Microsoft. This even gives an advantage to OSS, since OSS has at least the potential for peer review, and the imperfections that will exist can be found better by many pairs of eyes.
I believe he meant the NHL, not the NFL, which would support the assertion that a disproportionate racial population engaging in an activity is often at least partially due to cultural self selection.
I also think it's worth pointing out how apt your analogy of different dog breeds to different human races is in one sense: a plausible reason blacks have dominated sports in the United States (after they began to play and it became culturally acceptable) is because they were bred for physical superiority by slavers. Many modern breeds of dogs were specifically bred for hunting/racing/show/the hell of it. It's odd I've never seen these dubious statistical analyses try to control for the affects of slavery by seperating Africans with a history of being enslaved from Africans without that influence, although I admit that would be hard.
Yes, that's the *real* definition of addiction. We also have some basterdized versions of that definition floating around, e.g. chocolate/food addiction thanks to Oprah. As a result people have started applying "addiction" to any behavior done compulsively which is hard to stop, as opposed to the more rigorous definition you gave. The grandparent's point is that, since drugs make you feel good, you won't want to stop, and that leads to them being labeled "addictive."
With my money? I think not!
:) (I'm on lunch right now, so you can't use the same argument)
I guess you don't mind spending your money on more police and more jails.
In fact, a murder can occur simply because someone was attempted to get $20 for his next high
The most addictive substance out there is cigarettes, yet no one uses this argument when the government taxes the hell out of them. Also, why are all the homeless people I see on the street holding up "I just want a beer" signs not out raping and pillaging like some sort of addict Vikings?
The cause would be an ineffective work force
Any evidence of this? Specifically with regards to alcoholism or nicotine addiction, and why they aren't killing our precious work force? Also, why on earth can't I smoke some pot or do a little e on the weekends? I just don't see how that would affect the quality of my work. Finally, are you posting to slashdot from work?
The fourth point, is that sentences for selling to minors would be just as lax as they are now with alcohol and cigarettes. Society's view would be one of "well he's just acting more [g]rown up" because drug usage would be considered an "adult act".
When I was 18 in college, it was harder to get alocohol than pot, so it seems stores are actually less lax than drug dealers (after all, they have more to lose). Also, wrt that second sentence, I don't know a single person who thinks that way about cigarettes and alcohol.
Did you just makes this stuff up?
Interesting anecdote from a Native American Studies class I took a while back:
My professor lived on a reservation when she was a child. Alcohol was strictly forbidden, but people drank anyway. The way they drank, however, was much different from the two or three beers/glasses of wine I usually have at parties or while hanging out.
Firstly, alcohol was obviously more expensive, and the Native Americans were more poor; therefore, the type of alcohol they drank was the cheapest for the alcohol content: hard liqour, usually tequila or vodka. Secondly, they couldn't drink at home or in an establishment because getting caught would, in addition to the normal penalties, jepordize custody of the kids or the business, so they drank in alleys, and they drank quickly. Quickly, as in drinking straight from the bottle, passing it around until it was gone (can't exactly carry it around). Third, they couldn't go to rehab without jepordizing custody of their kids.
If that doesn't contribute to alcoholism instead of preventing it, I don't know what would.
No, but it does matter if it's dog shit or elephant shit.
It's at college, but you may have to go outside to get it. I await liquid over telephone lines.
I thought the whole point of having the Internet was to get free stuff.
/me hopes Orrin Hatch doesn't blow up his computer.*
*Sarcasm. All in good fun, Mr Hatch!
It would also be good for bicycles, I assume, although you can buy nice magnetic thingies (IANA physicist) to stick on the [motor]bike to trip the sensor. I ride a bike to work a lot, and before I got one I avoided a lot of intersections where I needed to make a left and had to wait for a car.
My actions may be public, but I should not be forced to carry a black box, or prevented from removing or tampering with it (as it is my property), as long as I don't attempt to pass off a tampered black box as evidence in my favor.
Being forced to posses something that may provide evidence against me is a violation of the 5th amendment. (This all being said, the 30-60 seconds of recorded time is not a big deal, and I have no real objection to the box I'm sure is on my car.)
The last time I weighed myself on a metric scale, it gave me the weight in kilograms. Should I say I massed myself instead?
The parent makes perfect sense, of course, because you can choose to correlate units of mass and units of weight as long the gravitational force is kept constant. Or did you think he was giving the weight of the book on another planet?
I knew some people who had very strict parents. Guess what they did when took off to college? A lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol, and a lot of other people.
Reminds me of the junior high school I went to. Hats were banned under the pretense they could be used as gang signs. The computer geeks and stright A nerds laughed hysterically in contempt when they found out they couldn't wear hats. The gang members laughed hysterically in contempt, since they already knew who was affiliated with what gang, and could just use there hands or words to declare their affiliation. (You can't take away their fingers, right?)
Therefore, it is clear such policies should be celebrated as a way to bring people together through their lack of respect for stupidity.
When a school has only Coke machines and Coke drinks in the cafeteria, it's not so obvious. I didn't realize my school did this until my junior year, when a topic for the required speech class was whether it was okay for schools to offer these exclusive contracts; it dawned on me during the middle of a classmate's "against" presentation, when he asked "imagine if this was our school." Heh, guess what? It slipped past our collective attention there wasn't a Pepsi product in the entire school.
*Contrary to popular belief most kids (and people) have reasonable critical thinking processes, at least to the point where they can tell they're being lied to or manipulated; the problem is activating them, which is what most marketing/social engineering tries to avoid.