For Pink Floyd this is about artistic integrity, not profit. They've already made their money. For EMI it's all about profit, and that's why Pink Floyd put that provision in the contract.
This is a win for Pink Floyd, and a loss for labels who think they can do whatever they want.
Oh please. Pink Floyd has every right to do this, but they're being either very weird or just plain hypocritical. For all of the talk of artistic integrity, and about how the songs are a seamless whole, they have no problem with the individual songs being played as singles on radio stations to sell the albums, do they?
I think this has more to do with "make people buy the whole album" than it does with any artistic vision.
Then both the Bush and Obama administrations are guilty of stupidity on this one. Loran was relatively cheap, and what do you do if ASAT's from a hostile power start taking out GPS satellites? You're basically back to pre-1940's navigation methods. Hope your pilots are up on their starlight navigation skills. Hope your mariners haven't tossed their sextants.
"So, they made a single error (not releasing Solaris under the GPL 10 years earlier) and wound up losing one battle because of it. "
Why would that have helped? All it would have done was drag Sun down even sooner. The GPL is good for knowledge, and it's good for ensuring that your code stays active and free, but it's horrible for making money. The companies that do it almost always find ways to make actually getting their software hard. Yeah, Apple likes to brag that most of their source code is open. Good luck actually turning it into a usuable operating system on your own. Same for Red Hat. Sure, here's the source code. Now compile it yourself, with no support. Dowloadable OS binaries? Oh, you're a funny guy.
The GPL-as-business-model is a largely utopian idea. Good for lots of smaller niche companies. Bad for any enterprise of a large size. Giving away your product doesn't make you any money. If you haven't learned that since the tech bubble burst, you never will. Red Hat has milked the support model about as far as it can go. This is why, if they wished, IBM or Apple could buy Red Hat with spare pocket change if they wanted to. And before anyone screams "But what about Google?", they're a service. Software, as we presently know it, is still a product. Again, good luck getting anyone to use an operating system that's supported by ads in the margins of the GUI.
Sun declined for a number of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons was Schwartz himself. When he was promoted to CEO, a collective "WTF?" was heard throughout Sun's HQ. Sun made some big mistakes... trying to compete on the low end, not investing enough to make SPARC competitive, not seeking a merger with the hardware side of Fujitsu... but hiring Schwartz was their biggest head scratcher of all. This is not a guy that will ever find employment as an executive at a significant company. Among tech executives, even Carly Fiorina shines in comparison.
Finally. One daring little company, and we finally move forward. Thumbs up for the Colorado mavericks.
Medical history is replete with "mavericks" that hawked miracle cures. The common thread was their claim that the Man was engaged in a conspiracy to surpress their wonderful new miracle treatment. You may or may not be too young to remember the whole Hydrazine Sulfate scam. Bob Guccione (the publisher of Penthouse) sent his wife to a quack named Dr. Joseph Gold, who sold them on Hydrazine Sulfate... formerly an industrial chemical... as a miracle cancer treatment. Guccione railed in Penthouse about how the National Cancer Institute was suppressing this vital new treatment out of greed and jealousy. His wife took the stuff anyway, telling everyone how much better she was feeling.
She died of breast cancer soon afterwards. And to this day, the FDA says there's no evidence for the benefit of that compound.
I'm well aware that sometimes a clique mentality can settle in among scientists. They're human, after all, and are as fallible as anyone else. And in the end, perhaps these stem cell guys will be hailed as heroes. But when someone is crying "conspiracy!", I'd at least be careful before taking what they're selling.
This may have a wonderful ending, and maybe it wont, but you know, there's a reason that the FDA takes a long time to approve treatments. You might want to consider that before you try to beat the system, so to speak. Now, if you're going to definitely die without it, then I could see taking the risk. Otherwise, I'd be vary wary.
You think the nuclear family already hasn't fallen apart from the '50s when it was - arguably - perfect?;) Its about equality not tradition, tradition is the shield bigots hide behind.
It was never "perfect", but they were arguably in better shape before the 60's rolled around, and we got our first taste of "throw out the system"... which resulted in record divorce, single parent households, and latch-key kids.
It's not about "tradition"... did you even read my post? It's about a structure that works. Tradition is a by-product of practice.
When you have two consenting adults living and loving each other and then telling them they cannot get life insurance on each other to cover their mutual home in case of tragedy is bigotry.
Why is it bigotry? No one else gets those privileges either. It's exclusively for marriage. You can't go out and get insurance with your best friend, or your grandmother, or your favorite teacher. You're making the same mistake most others do... thinking that marriage has something to do with love. Bunk. Marriage is two things... a religious/cultural tradition and legal privilege for the protection and encouragement of the nuclear family unit. This is why marriage leads to tax privileges; thousands of years of experience show the wisdom of a cultural and legal structure for the continuation of family lines, with a father and mother in a stable family structure, and laws to ensure inheritance. It's better when we follow this model then when we do not. It's nice if we remain in love with our spouse for the rest of our lives. But realize that the myth of love/marriage is why we both have modern high divorce rates, and that gay marriage debate. Love is not the purpose of marriage. Procreation, legal familial privilege, and inheritance is. Marriage, in short, is all about kids, and the role of culture and state in keeping the kids coming.
Now, if you want to make the argument that couples that choose not to have kids shouldn't have the legal priveleges of those that do, that's one argument. But what you're talking about is literally throwing out thousands of years of a practice that has served humanity very, very well. Ostensibly because you, and people like you, suddenly think you have a better model, a better way of doing things. Suddenly, you want to throw out that father + mother + kids model, and replace it with one that literally has interchangeable parts. And all because, at the core of your argument, it's not because of civil rights, but because of "love".
Do you honestly think there will be no consequences to throwing that model out? The way humanity has continued procreation and family structure literally since before humans had what we now call civilization?
You'd better be sure. Because while you think you're talking about civil rights, you're really talking about completely changing the way humanity makes families. That is not to be taken lightly.
I don't know what kind of insurance you have, but I think you need to look for a different provider. I have what is probably pretty run-of-the-mill Blue Cross, and I've been through a couple of surgeries, my wife has been through a couple, and we both have prescriptions, as well as two kids that occasionally get hurt and need emergency room visits, etc. And in all those years, I've filled out very little paperwork. The only thing I pay for up front is a co-pay for visits, surgeries, and drugs. The claim filing process is all automated. Blue Cross sends me an email when a claim is processed.
I work in academia, which is in many ways culturally similar to working in government. I wonder how many of these inefficiencies persist in order to placate an aged workforce that refuses to embrace technology and learn to do anything in a new way.
I see a lot of people around here just sort of "running out the clock" - I can't imagine we're unique.
--saint
It's not just the age of the workers... there are plenty of younger workers in the Federal Government. It's also a matter of jobs. Government unions are arguably the most powerful in the country, and thus are resistant to anything that would bring business-like efficiencies. Keep in mind that in the private sector, technological improvements allow you to do more with less. Why would Federal unions want that? Slowpoke paper operations keep more people on the payroll. If you brought modern information management and paperless office techniques to the government, you'd literally take away the only reason for the existence of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"Objectively speaking its a pretty decent effort. And re The comments Firefox has been "poached", the start screen is firefox, and i feel they renamed it only.Lets face it, what does "Firefox" mean?"
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it?:)
Do you really think the North Korean government is all that concerned about western copyrights? They steal commercial technology all the time. What makes you think they fear the FSF? Honestly, what would Richard Stallman do about it?
Mormons aren't creationists in the usual sense of the word.
They're not Christian in the usual sense of the word, either.
That depends on your definition of Christian. If you define Christian as strictly adhering to the Nicene Creed, then no, they're not. But neither are many other churches by that standard. There are more non-Trinitarian Christian churches then you'd think out there.
No, it's obvious that we need even less government regulation so that the free market can allow doctors and sick patients to reach stable equilibrium with the bacterial hordes! There's a basic game theory model that proves my position!!!
The bacterial hordes were going to catch up eventually anyway. We just hastened the process a bit by taking antibiotics everytime our kids caught the sniffles. All of the government regulations in the world weren't going to prevent this form of life from defending itself by adapting. We're simply going to have to find other ways to hold back that horde a little sooner, and accept that we're in an arms race for the rest of our existence.
I'm really sick of this "I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils" crap. If you actually believe there is a lesser of two evils, I'd say it's your duty as an American to vote for it. Abstination from voting is an expression of cynicism...nothing more.
I used to be one of those guys that told friends and family "Don't waste your right to vote... people died so that you could keep it". But after years of watching politics, I've come to the conclusion that if you don't give a damn, if you can't even be bothered to know who the candidates are and what the basic outline of the issues of the day are, then no, by all means, don't vote. Do your country a favor and stay home on election day, and leave the voting to people that actually give a damn.
I'd be delighted and encouraged if more people got involved with the issues and thus more voted because of that. But under no circumstances do I want unmotivated, uncaring people wandering into a booth and choosing the first name on the list just because they were told they should vote. In a free country, the decision not to give a crap is a valid one, like it or not.
I motion before the assembled citizens that Texas have it's state status revoked with immediate effect.
Do you honestly think that's a threat? Texas was a republic before it was a state, and its citizens are arguably the most independence-minded folk in the union, moreso even than Alaska and Vermont, both which have ongoing independence drives. This spirit is sewn into the very fabric of the state. Remember "Texas: it's a whole 'nother country"? They take that rather seriously down there. Threatening to throw them out of the union would quite literally only encourage Texans. It'd be like Bri'er Rabbit: "Oh please, Union, don't throw us out!".
Lately it seems like every legal ruling and precident that comes out of that state is a violation of one human right or another, or at least criminally stupid.
Funny how Texans think the same thing about other state and federal court rulings, eh? And they're not alone.
We beat them once, I'm sure we can do it again!:(
Well, now they're certainly quivering in their boots.
"Curiously, upgrades to the Service's computers are being championed by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut "
What's curious about that? It's not like the guy is a Luddite or something. The Secret Service, at the forefront of protecting POTUS, is a national security issue, and Lieberman is very involved in those issues. If the author threw that in because he doesn't like Lieberman's politics, then that's kind of lame. One would think that issues like keeping government IT systems up to date would transcend party politics.
soon: OpenSolaris and if Larry Ellison has a bad dream: Solaris
:-(
As far as Ellison is concerned, OpenSolaris probably doesn't equal Solaris. A lot of people thought that GPL'ing Solaris was a stupid marketing stunt that wasn't going to make Sun any money. Ellison has repeatedly stated that he wants to pump money into both Solaris and Sparc. The difference is that he's not going to fool around with the low end. He's going to refocus Sun/Sparc on the high end, which is where you can make a decent business case for a Sparc CPU like the T2. None of Sun's lower end processors... stuff like the UltraSparc III line... can possibly compete.
Sparc is still popular in Japan, and considering Ellison's fondness for Japan and its industrial culture, don't be terribly surprised if a deal is struck with Fujitstu to eventually produce Sun's hardware for them, with Oracle/Sun basically just doing most of the design and development work. If you ARE going to commit yourself to Sun/Sparc, then spinning off Fujitsu's semiconductor business and merging it with Oracle/Sun makes a lot of sense; a melding of Silicon Valley marketing/software/design with Japanese hardware industry. Since the T1 and T2's designs were GPL'd by the previous failed regime... yes, Schwartz... we're probably going to see a new CPU design in the coming years that will decidedly not be open sourced... and again, focused almost completely on the business high end.
Can somebody show me something good to come from the Oracle-Sun deal? Anything?
Are you serious? Sun was slowly dying. Solaris was on the path to extinction. There are valid reasons to no want a GPL'd operating system, so if you wanted to run a commercially supported Unix in the enterprise, you'd be down to IBM, who seemingly is more enamored with Linux than with their own AIX (not to knock Apple; OSX is a fine server product, but Apple really isn't aiming for the same market that the Microsoft's/IBM's/Sun's are). Larry Ellison seems thus far geniunely interested in not only keeping solaris and sparc alive, but growing and developing them and growing their market.
What good did it do? It keeps us from having to pick Linux or Windows or zOS. It gives business another processor platform choice besides Intel and Power. Isn't choice a good enough reason for you?
After WWII, you'd have never known that the eugenics movement was so popular in Europe and the US. But everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to Margaret Sanger to Lenin thought the idea was just dandy, that a glorious new scientific dawn had arrived that would bring the perfectibility of man. Hitler simply took the idea to its inevitable conclusion. Thus the rush to whitewash the west's involvement after the war.
That would be too sensible for the USA to do. We should allow drinking alcohol at age 16/18 and driving at age 21.
I think we should make up our minds either way. Either we're men at 18, or we're men at 21, but quit mixing the criteria up. It's patently silly to tell an 18 year old that he's old enough to be entrusted with weapons that can kill scores of people at a time in the defense of his country... and then tell him he can't have a beer for another 3 years. We can choose the leader of the free world at 18, but can't use tobacco for another three years. Just give people more consistency, please. Either tell them they've got an extended childhood into their twenties, and treat them accordingly... or tell them they've got to man up early... and treat them accordingly. If you're going to demand responsibility, then with that should come personal power and privilege as well.
While I'm sympathetic to Southwest's customers on this, and I understand Smith's embarrassment, we're going to see a lot more of this because both airlines and passengers are at fault. People are getting fatter... not just in the US either... and at the same time, airlines are trying to squeeze every last penny of profit out of a flight. That means cramming as many paying customers into one plane as possible. People complain "why do airlines treat us like cattle in a truck"? Because they make more money that way. People aren't willing to fly at premium prices unless they're rich. That means that if airlines want the general public as customers, they have to offer lower fares, but they have to make it up on passenger volume.
When the new Airbus superjumbo was being designed, the company bragged about how much room it would have for passengers to stretch out. But as soon as the airlines got a look at it, they immediately started planning on how they could cram more seats in. The Asian airlines in particular talked about how they were going to shoehorn in 800 seats.
With fatter people and smaller seats, it's going to get to the point where non-fats are going to want to buy two seats, just for self comfort.
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For Pink Floyd this is about artistic integrity, not profit. They've already made their money. For EMI it's all about profit, and that's why Pink Floyd put that provision in the contract.
This is a win for Pink Floyd, and a loss for labels who think they can do whatever they want.
Oh please. Pink Floyd has every right to do this, but they're being either very weird or just plain hypocritical. For all of the talk of artistic integrity, and about how the songs are a seamless whole, they have no problem with the individual songs being played as singles on radio stations to sell the albums, do they?
I think this has more to do with "make people buy the whole album" than it does with any artistic vision.
Then both the Bush and Obama administrations are guilty of stupidity on this one. Loran was relatively cheap, and what do you do if ASAT's from a hostile power start taking out GPS satellites? You're basically back to pre-1940's navigation methods. Hope your pilots are up on their starlight navigation skills. Hope your mariners haven't tossed their sextants.
"So, they made a single error (not releasing Solaris under the GPL 10 years earlier) and wound up losing one battle because of it. "
Why would that have helped? All it would have done was drag Sun down even sooner. The GPL is good for knowledge, and it's good for ensuring that your code stays active and free, but it's horrible for making money. The companies that do it almost always find ways to make actually getting their software hard. Yeah, Apple likes to brag that most of their source code is open. Good luck actually turning it into a usuable operating system on your own. Same for Red Hat. Sure, here's the source code. Now compile it yourself, with no support. Dowloadable OS binaries? Oh, you're a funny guy.
The GPL-as-business-model is a largely utopian idea. Good for lots of smaller niche companies. Bad for any enterprise of a large size. Giving away your product doesn't make you any money. If you haven't learned that since the tech bubble burst, you never will. Red Hat has milked the support model about as far as it can go. This is why, if they wished, IBM or Apple could buy Red Hat with spare pocket change if they wanted to. And before anyone screams "But what about Google?", they're a service. Software, as we presently know it, is still a product. Again, good luck getting anyone to use an operating system that's supported by ads in the margins of the GUI.
Sun declined for a number of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons was Schwartz himself. When he was promoted to CEO, a collective "WTF?" was heard throughout Sun's HQ. Sun made some big mistakes... trying to compete on the low end, not investing enough to make SPARC competitive, not seeking a merger with the hardware side of Fujitsu... but hiring Schwartz was their biggest head scratcher of all. This is not a guy that will ever find employment as an executive at a significant company. Among tech executives, even Carly Fiorina shines in comparison.
Finally. One daring little company, and we finally move forward. Thumbs up for the Colorado mavericks.
Medical history is replete with "mavericks" that hawked miracle cures. The common thread was their claim that the Man was engaged in a conspiracy to surpress their wonderful new miracle treatment. You may or may not be too young to remember the whole Hydrazine Sulfate scam. Bob Guccione (the publisher of Penthouse) sent his wife to a quack named Dr. Joseph Gold, who sold them on Hydrazine Sulfate... formerly an industrial chemical... as a miracle cancer treatment. Guccione railed in Penthouse about how the National Cancer Institute was suppressing this vital new treatment out of greed and jealousy. His wife took the stuff anyway, telling everyone how much better she was feeling.
She died of breast cancer soon afterwards. And to this day, the FDA says there's no evidence for the benefit of that compound.
I'm well aware that sometimes a clique mentality can settle in among scientists. They're human, after all, and are as fallible as anyone else. And in the end, perhaps these stem cell guys will be hailed as heroes. But when someone is crying "conspiracy!", I'd at least be careful before taking what they're selling.
This may have a wonderful ending, and maybe it wont, but you know, there's a reason that the FDA takes a long time to approve treatments. You might want to consider that before you try to beat the system, so to speak. Now, if you're going to definitely die without it, then I could see taking the risk. Otherwise, I'd be vary wary.
You think the nuclear family already hasn't fallen apart from the '50s when it was - arguably - perfect? ;) Its about equality not tradition, tradition is the shield bigots hide behind.
It was never "perfect", but they were arguably in better shape before the 60's rolled around, and we got our first taste of "throw out the system"... which resulted in record divorce, single parent households, and latch-key kids.
It's not about "tradition"... did you even read my post? It's about a structure that works. Tradition is a by-product of practice.
When you have two consenting adults living and loving each other and then telling them they cannot get life insurance on each other to cover their mutual home in case of tragedy is bigotry.
Why is it bigotry? No one else gets those privileges either. It's exclusively for marriage. You can't go out and get insurance with your best friend, or your grandmother, or your favorite teacher. You're making the same mistake most others do... thinking that marriage has something to do with love. Bunk. Marriage is two things... a religious/cultural tradition and legal privilege for the protection and encouragement of the nuclear family unit. This is why marriage leads to tax privileges; thousands of years of experience show the wisdom of a cultural and legal structure for the continuation of family lines, with a father and mother in a stable family structure, and laws to ensure inheritance. It's better when we follow this model then when we do not. It's nice if we remain in love with our spouse for the rest of our lives. But realize that the myth of love/marriage is why we both have modern high divorce rates, and that gay marriage debate. Love is not the purpose of marriage. Procreation, legal familial privilege, and inheritance is. Marriage, in short, is all about kids, and the role of culture and state in keeping the kids coming.
Now, if you want to make the argument that couples that choose not to have kids shouldn't have the legal priveleges of those that do, that's one argument. But what you're talking about is literally throwing out thousands of years of a practice that has served humanity very, very well. Ostensibly because you, and people like you, suddenly think you have a better model, a better way of doing things. Suddenly, you want to throw out that father + mother + kids model, and replace it with one that literally has interchangeable parts. And all because, at the core of your argument, it's not because of civil rights, but because of "love".
Do you honestly think there will be no consequences to throwing that model out? The way humanity has continued procreation and family structure literally since before humans had what we now call civilization?
You'd better be sure. Because while you think you're talking about civil rights, you're really talking about completely changing the way humanity makes families. That is not to be taken lightly.
I don't know what kind of insurance you have, but I think you need to look for a different provider. I have what is probably pretty run-of-the-mill Blue Cross, and I've been through a couple of surgeries, my wife has been through a couple, and we both have prescriptions, as well as two kids that occasionally get hurt and need emergency room visits, etc. And in all those years, I've filled out very little paperwork. The only thing I pay for up front is a co-pay for visits, surgeries, and drugs. The claim filing process is all automated. Blue Cross sends me an email when a claim is processed.
I work in academia, which is in many ways culturally similar to working in government. I wonder how many of these inefficiencies persist in order to placate an aged workforce that refuses to embrace technology and learn to do anything in a new way.
I see a lot of people around here just sort of "running out the clock" - I can't imagine we're unique.
--saint
It's not just the age of the workers... there are plenty of younger workers in the Federal Government. It's also a matter of jobs. Government unions are arguably the most powerful in the country, and thus are resistant to anything that would bring business-like efficiencies. Keep in mind that in the private sector, technological improvements allow you to do more with less. Why would Federal unions want that? Slowpoke paper operations keep more people on the payroll. If you brought modern information management and paperless office techniques to the government, you'd literally take away the only reason for the existence of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"Objectively speaking its a pretty decent effort. And re The comments Firefox has been "poached", the start screen is firefox, and i feel they renamed it only.Lets face it, what does "Firefox" mean?"
"Our Country" is no more silly than "Iceweasel".
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
Do you really think the North Korean government is all that concerned about western copyrights? They steal commercial technology all the time. What makes you think they fear the FSF? Honestly, what would Richard Stallman do about it?
Personally I wonder if the Blue Screen of Death is replaced with a Red Screen of Dissention.
No, it's the Red Screen of Death. This is North Korea, after all. "Take that, Hans Brix!"
As long as it's not presenting a danger to neighbors, they should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it.
They're not Christian in the usual sense of the word, either.
That depends on your definition of Christian. If you define Christian as strictly adhering to the Nicene Creed, then no, they're not. But neither are many other churches by that standard. There are more non-Trinitarian Christian churches then you'd think out there.
No, it's obvious that we need even less government regulation so that the free market can allow doctors and sick patients to reach stable equilibrium with the bacterial hordes! There's a basic game theory model that proves my position!!!
The bacterial hordes were going to catch up eventually anyway. We just hastened the process a bit by taking antibiotics everytime our kids caught the sniffles. All of the government regulations in the world weren't going to prevent this form of life from defending itself by adapting. We're simply going to have to find other ways to hold back that horde a little sooner, and accept that we're in an arms race for the rest of our existence.
I was wondering why several places were having earthquakes. Damn you, mad scientists!
I'm really sick of this "I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils" crap. If you actually believe there is a lesser of two evils, I'd say it's your duty as an American to vote for it. Abstination from voting is an expression of cynicism...nothing more.
I used to be one of those guys that told friends and family "Don't waste your right to vote... people died so that you could keep it". But after years of watching politics, I've come to the conclusion that if you don't give a damn, if you can't even be bothered to know who the candidates are and what the basic outline of the issues of the day are, then no, by all means, don't vote. Do your country a favor and stay home on election day, and leave the voting to people that actually give a damn.
I'd be delighted and encouraged if more people got involved with the issues and thus more voted because of that. But under no circumstances do I want unmotivated, uncaring people wandering into a booth and choosing the first name on the list just because they were told they should vote. In a free country, the decision not to give a crap is a valid one, like it or not.
I motion before the assembled citizens that Texas have it's state status revoked with immediate effect.
Do you honestly think that's a threat? Texas was a republic before it was a state, and its citizens are arguably the most independence-minded folk in the union, moreso even than Alaska and Vermont, both which have ongoing independence drives. This spirit is sewn into the very fabric of the state. Remember "Texas: it's a whole 'nother country"? They take that rather seriously down there. Threatening to throw them out of the union would quite literally only encourage Texans. It'd be like Bri'er Rabbit: "Oh please, Union, don't throw us out!".
Lately it seems like every legal ruling and precident that comes out of that state is a violation of one human right or another, or at least criminally stupid.
Funny how Texans think the same thing about other state and federal court rulings, eh? And they're not alone.
We beat them once, I'm sure we can do it again! :(
Well, now they're certainly quivering in their boots.
The market will indeed fix it. Cap-n-trade isn't a market.
I particularly liked how the parent post complained about flamebait and then.... proceeded to flamebait.
"Curiously, upgrades to the Service's computers are being championed by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut "
What's curious about that? It's not like the guy is a Luddite or something. The Secret Service, at the forefront of protecting POTUS, is a national security issue, and Lieberman is very involved in those issues. If the author threw that in because he doesn't like Lieberman's politics, then that's kind of lame. One would think that issues like keeping government IT systems up to date would transcend party politics.
soon: OpenSolaris
and if Larry Ellison has a bad dream: Solaris
As far as Ellison is concerned, OpenSolaris probably doesn't equal Solaris. A lot of people thought that GPL'ing Solaris was a stupid marketing stunt that wasn't going to make Sun any money. Ellison has repeatedly stated that he wants to pump money into both Solaris and Sparc. The difference is that he's not going to fool around with the low end. He's going to refocus Sun/Sparc on the high end, which is where you can make a decent business case for a Sparc CPU like the T2. None of Sun's lower end processors... stuff like the UltraSparc III line... can possibly compete.
Sparc is still popular in Japan, and considering Ellison's fondness for Japan and its industrial culture, don't be terribly surprised if a deal is struck with Fujitstu to eventually produce Sun's hardware for them, with Oracle/Sun basically just doing most of the design and development work. If you ARE going to commit yourself to Sun/Sparc, then spinning off Fujitsu's semiconductor business and merging it with Oracle/Sun makes a lot of sense; a melding of Silicon Valley marketing/software/design with Japanese hardware industry. Since the T1 and T2's designs were GPL'd by the previous failed regime... yes, Schwartz... we're probably going to see a new CPU design in the coming years that will decidedly not be open sourced... and again, focused almost completely on the business high end.
Can somebody show me something good to come from the Oracle-Sun deal? Anything?
Are you serious? Sun was slowly dying. Solaris was on the path to extinction. There are valid reasons to no want a GPL'd operating system, so if you wanted to run a commercially supported Unix in the enterprise, you'd be down to IBM, who seemingly is more enamored with Linux than with their own AIX (not to knock Apple; OSX is a fine server product, but Apple really isn't aiming for the same market that the Microsoft's/IBM's/Sun's are). Larry Ellison seems thus far geniunely interested in not only keeping solaris and sparc alive, but growing and developing them and growing their market.
What good did it do? It keeps us from having to pick Linux or Windows or zOS. It gives business another processor platform choice besides Intel and Power. Isn't choice a good enough reason for you?
After WWII, you'd have never known that the eugenics movement was so popular in Europe and the US. But everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to Margaret Sanger to Lenin thought the idea was just dandy, that a glorious new scientific dawn had arrived that would bring the perfectibility of man. Hitler simply took the idea to its inevitable conclusion. Thus the rush to whitewash the west's involvement after the war.
That would be too sensible for the USA to do. We should allow drinking alcohol at age 16/18 and driving at age 21.
I think we should make up our minds either way. Either we're men at 18, or we're men at 21, but quit mixing the criteria up. It's patently silly to tell an 18 year old that he's old enough to be entrusted with weapons that can kill scores of people at a time in the defense of his country... and then tell him he can't have a beer for another 3 years. We can choose the leader of the free world at 18, but can't use tobacco for another three years. Just give people more consistency, please. Either tell them they've got an extended childhood into their twenties, and treat them accordingly... or tell them they've got to man up early... and treat them accordingly. If you're going to demand responsibility, then with that should come personal power and privilege as well.
While I'm sympathetic to Southwest's customers on this, and I understand Smith's embarrassment, we're going to see a lot more of this because both airlines and passengers are at fault. People are getting fatter... not just in the US either... and at the same time, airlines are trying to squeeze every last penny of profit out of a flight. That means cramming as many paying customers into one plane as possible. People complain "why do airlines treat us like cattle in a truck"? Because they make more money that way. People aren't willing to fly at premium prices unless they're rich. That means that if airlines want the general public as customers, they have to offer lower fares, but they have to make it up on passenger volume.
When the new Airbus superjumbo was being designed, the company bragged about how much room it would have for passengers to stretch out. But as soon as the airlines got a look at it, they immediately started planning on how they could cram more seats in. The Asian airlines in particular talked about how they were going to shoehorn in 800 seats.
With fatter people and smaller seats, it's going to get to the point where non-fats are going to want to buy two seats, just for self comfort.