While I agree, there is no eye on the long-term, I am hard pressed to find the "good old days" you are refering to.
I'm not sure there was a time period that was actually "good", but there were time periods where companies themselves were more responsible. Probably the closest thing to what we are experiencing today is the 1920's. However, coming out of the great depression, companies were more responsible than they are today. The 1950's Cold War didn't really have much impact no fiscal responsibility of businesses. The 1960's was OK as far as businesses go, too, but some of the things that went one may have launched the hyper-inflation of the 70's. I believe that the 90's launched a new era similar to the 20's.
The simple fact is that, while Diebold does indeed care about producing accurate voting results, they are more concerned with making money. If Diebold is forced to choose between increasing their profit and making the system better, they'll choose profit.
If you put voting machines in the hands of the private sector, the private sector will try to maximize profit. Corners will be cut. There simply isn't any way to avoid this, so long as the people making the machines are doing so to make money off the venture.
The problem isn't really with having the machines in the hands of the private sector. Moving them to the public sector just opens up other motivation to cut corners or alter results (think political). The real issue is that the driving force behind the private sector no longer has the strong balancing factor that was historically attributed to investors. A few decades ago, businesses had to carefully plan for long-term viability. Investors held them to that, and a company that made short-term gains was not necessarily considered a good investment. Enter the day trader, and everything changes. Now companies are motivated to make decisions that yield short-term gains in profits because investors unwisely jump on the short-term gains. Look at how quickly a CEO comes and goes and it becomes obvious. The incentive provided to a CEO is short-term. They come in, make a quick gain, get their compensation, and then head off to destroy another company. It doesn't matter that three years later the company they left will be in the toilet when the irregular accounting and outright lies to the public are noticed.
I'm not sure what the solution to the problem is, but somehow investors need to start holding corporations responsible for long-term success, and long-term sacrifices to yield short-term gains need to be severely punished. Believe me, if the management at Diebold knew that regardless of how much money they make now, it could all be taken away from them for unethical business practices, they would focus on quality and customer satisfaction.
But I cannot think of any internationnal body UN sized that could "have teeth" by itself - for the moment. Because if someone was suggesting such a thing, neither the Chinese nor the US nor, probably, the French would accept a supranational body overseing them.
I definitely agree. If this weren't the case, none of the nations involved would have veto-power. They would just have a vote like every other nation.
The UN is imperfect but it exists, which is a victory in itself because, at least, is this a place to talk.
Agreed. Although it would be nice if sometimes the discussion had a little more force behind it.
Better some talks than nothing or just schrapnel. I wonder if GWB have any better idea for the foreseable future. Do you?
I definitely have no better ideas. But as I said before, I think the cat and mouse games that took place in Iraq were allowed to go on for far too long. Most of the resolutions from the UN on this matter were very strong ones, so it is really a mystery to me that it went on for as long as it did.
BTW, although I made a rather strong statement before about the UN being a non-entity, I didn't mean to indicate that they have achieved that status. I just meant that their influence has been weakened. Somehow, that needs to be shored up a bit, but I haven't any ideas as to how they should go about it.
While I agree that the US had impact on what the UN was able to accomplish, so did every other veto-wielding nation. My biggest complaint about the UN involvement stems around the lack of teeth to any of its decisions. When the UN decides that something needs to be done, it should be executed quickly. Failure to do so should result in rather severe consequences. By not actively enforcing its policies, it begins to become a non-entity. The effects of the decade-long lack of action on Iraq can already clearly be seen in the other countries that ignore UN resolutions and play games with inspectors.
Regarding the 10% bribe, that doesn't sound so bad -- sort of the cost of doing business. However, although much of the proceeds from the "oil for food program" were used to purchase useful things, only a small percentage of these things ever found their way to the general population. Based on the huge warehouses of food and supplies that were found as Saddam was ousted, it is obvious that much of it was being used to serve the ruling party and the military.
You may only require knowing which AREA of the brain to connect. It has this neat ability to adapt to things.
Yeah, there was this cool experiment some time ago with a mouse where they severed the spinal cord and "encouraged" the nerve tissue to grow back together. Although everything was cross-connected, the mouse's brain adapted and mobility began to be restored. The researchers did not expect this kind of success. They were only looking to see if they could make the neurons grow back, thus the reason why the reconnection was haphazard.
Does your car have an airbag? If so, you most likely have the black box, too.
Should I be forced to install one, presumably at my own expense, just because I don't want to buy a new car?
I think this is highly unlikely. It's more likely that all NEW cars will be required to have them, with the expectation that the majority of the population will have a newer model within the next decade. Anybody know what the statistics are for cars on the road with airbags?
Nor do I like the assumption that the government has the right to know what I'm doing and how I'm driving.
I partly disagree with you on this one. I don't think that the government has a right to keep tabs on every second of your driving record, but if you're involved in an accident, I think they have a perfect right to see the last four or five seconds of driving data, which is all the black box records. The only differences between this and having a police car sitting at the accident site are mostly addressed by your next questions...
How was the black box calibrated? When was it last calibrated? what are the error margins on its measurements? What safeguards are there to prevent the data being tampered with after the accident?
In my mind, these are the most pertinent questions, and should be taken into consideration when admitting black-box data as evidence. I wonder if anybody knows the answers. The other really important thing, from a legal standpoint, is that owners need to be explicitly notified that their automobile records this kind of data. If black boxes are mandatory on all cars, there is no reason for failing to notify the consumer. If owners know that their automobile contains equipment that may convict them, they are less likely to be driving at three times the speed limit, thus stopping a deadly accident BEFORE it happens rather than sentencing them after someone has been killed.
Now, I personally draw the line at collecting more than the last few seconds of data or transmitting the data to some authority on some periodic basis. There have been plenty of reasons why I was forced to drive at substantially above the speed limit (although not thrice) and it would be very unfair for any authority to make judgements on how safe of a driver I am without being able to see first-hand the situations I was in.
They have a great business plan, and are making tons of money in this economy. Whether or not you like it.
No... What they have is a risky business plan that is working well right now. The courts have never decided where to draw the line on the insidious behavior of foistware. I think it's pretty clear that if you download some software and in the clickable EULA you agree to have Gator installed as a payload, they have a right to install their junk on your machine. However, the only time I've been infected with Gator is through an ActiveX exploit. There was nothing that I agreed to, and there was no notification that their stuff was being installed. I didn't even realize it until later on when some of the "utilities" that are supposed to make people like Gator were automatically installed. The "fun" I had cleaning this all up and installing Ad-aware and Spybot S&D is what finally convinced me to never use IE again unless it was on my corporate intranet. And I firmly believe that given a real test in the courts, this will be classified as breaking into a private computer system and/or malicious hacking. Once this happens, you can expect them to die a quick death from the subsequent lawsuits.
... I am still puzzled as to what is so objectionable about the human breast. Find me someone who has never seen one.
You're missing a couple points, although with cultural differences I don't expect you to completely understand.
Point 1: Like it or not, nudity is not considered appropriate for view until adulthood within the United States culture. Television provided on broadcast channels (over the airwaves) is expected to live up to a certain generally-agreed-upon standard regarding harsh language and nudity during hours when children may be watching. Given that many children were watching during the Super Bowl in which this took place, the expected standard was violated, which eliminates the trust that parents were able to place in broadcast television.
Point 2: It's not like there was merely a brief shot of artistic nudity going on. In this case, Janet was involved in a rough sexual embrace and the top part of her outfit was literally ripped off to expose (however briefly) her breast. I know of several parents who had to deal with five and six year olds asking "what was that?" and "what did he do to her?" questions. That's what generated the outrage.
Now, a couple other things. It was the News Media that kept the whole thing going. When it happened, some parents were very upset and wrote letters or placed phone calls to express their sentiments. The FCC also was expected to do their job by fining CBS and/or MTV for violation of the standards. If the News had not been obsessed by it, the whole thing would have blown over in a week or so. Also, bear in mind that there are three levels of television available in the US: Broadcast, Cable/Satellite and Premium. Because Broadcast TV can be obtained at no fee by anyone who has a TV and an antenna, it has the strictest rules on it. Cable and Satellite have less strict rules and can generally be seen showing brief top nudity. Premium channels can show just about anything. This kind of tier system generally provides a viewing experience that is acceptable to most of the people in the country. As such, the standards must be enforced, whether everybody agrees or not.
That's not really accurate either. It probably depends on where you live. Where I live, people were really angry about it before any of the politicians said a word. They got even angrier when the news stations had to keep playing the darn thing over and over in slow motion.
About three days after I started my job at the company I'm at now, they brought all my equipment in and unpacked it. Brand new Thinkpad laptop with docking station, keyboard and mouse. Then they plopped in this monstrous 22" trinitron monitor. I had to resist the urge for the next several weeks to bow to it each morning when I came into the office. Sure, there are bigger monitors out there, but I've never seen anything like it given to a software developer without a really solid business case.
Why is the person outside of your country - probably also the head of a household - less deserving than the person in your country?
Sorry, that's not a moral argument.
The argument was perfectly valid and moral. You just didn't actually read what was written. Michaelmalak's argument centers on the wrongness of laying off someone already holding a job and feeding a family just to hire someone else at a lower cost. As I recall, that was what was happening about 15 years ago in the United States without outsourcing, and it met with the same outrage then. The argument doesn't make any implication that people in another country are any less deserving. In fact, it goes so far as to make the critical distinction between laying off to outsource and diverting new job opportunities to other countries.
It's ok for you to have a positive opinion of outsourcing, but you really need to open your eyes to the pain felt by families who are impacted by it. If the US government decided to provide some sort of monster tax incentive for companies to move jobs back into the local market, there would be all kinds of banter about how those American bastards were ripping jobs away from Indian and Chinese families. And such opinions would be just as right as opposing the current loss of jobs in the US.
People may adopt this for the same reason that they refuse to switch from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice -- familiarity. Even though OpenOffice provides all the functionality the vast majority of people will ever use, they stay with what they are familiar with, and at rather high costs. There is a rather large group of users who "grew up" on Wordperfect, and that's still what they prefer today. If this crowd decides to transition to Linux, and the price for WP on Linux is right, they may choose to use it.
Now, my personal opinion is that this attempt to re-enter the market will be unsuccessful. First off, the number of Wordperfect users has dwindled. Second, the adoption rate of Linux on the desktop is still too low. My guess is that the number of Wordperfect users who are switching to Linux is very low (although not non-existant). The second barrier to success comes, as you said, from OpenOffice. But more importantly, Sun offers Star Office. With Star Office, you get all the features of Open Source (a la OpenOffice) with commercial-level refinement and the backing of a large company. Those who want free can choose OpenOffice, and those who want support (or don't trust free) can choose Star Office for a reasonable price.
I think the only chance WP for Linux has is if Linux adoption on the desktop gains some serious momentum -- probably exactly what they are hedging their bets on. That will allow them to take advantage of the non-techie users who are a little apprehensive already about switching, and promise them that at least SOMETHING about the new environment will be familiar. Good places for them to start are with Linux distributions that have made it into the retail space at stores that target the thiry- and forty-something crowds, as well as some of the distributions that stores like Wal-Mart are offering on their low-cost PC's. Another possible idea is to approach retail stores like K-Mart or Target, and then team up with a Linux vendor and hardware vendor to offer a low-cost PC that includes WordPerfect. Finally, if they can conquer the internationalization problems that others have mentioned, they may have a real chance for market penetration in some of the developing countries.
Splitting off the patent infringement into another lawsuit will just drag this out for another year...
Yeah, but wouldn't it truly be justice if SCO loses their case, then by their own request gets the patent infringement issues transferred to a separate lawsuit and loses that as well? Man, that would feel like sinking a three-pointer, scoring a goal with a bicycle kick, or getting a monster spike in volleyball.
How are they still around? I seriously thought they'd have been gone six months ago. SCO isn't that big of a company, how are they able to afford all those lawyers and lawsuits?
Microsoft. Check out some of the older stories on Microsoft's "encouragement" of investment companies to channel some of their funds into SCO. I'm too tired to provide the links tonight, but you can find it by searching for SCO under "Old Stories".
If *you* violate the law, your arrest records are a matter of public record. It's funny how you types hate it when PUBLIC records are held back by authorities, but GEEZ, when you don't like it, PUBLIC records should be restricted?
Nice of you to stereotype when you know almost NOTHING about me. After you get done putting ice on that knot that appeared on your forehead when your knee slammed into it, try considering the fact that someone who has just been arrested has NOT yet been convicted of a crime and therefore should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. In the case referred to by the article, the person who was arrested was never even charged with a crime; he was arrested because they suspected him of being on drugs. I personally have no problem with making the records of a convicted criminal public, but I draw the line at broadcasting sensitive information about someone who hasn't even been formally charged with a crime. Whether legal or not, my "ethics alarm" says it's just plain wrong.
Don't you sleep? If so, why not run the update just before you go to bed?
You're assuming that my computer isn't doing useful things while I'm asleep. I can handle an occasional instance of extended downtime (which will be required to switch distributions anyway), but not regular downtimes. Besides, on my slow machine it took over a week to build everything for just an office workstation. Even if the primary computer is five times as fast, it will still take more than a day. I'll probably have to do some testing to see how useable the machine is during an EMERGE. If it is still useable, then I'm OK even if a build takes a couple days.
Umm... dude, there's nothing *forcing* you to download Fedora Core 2 Test 2.
I wasn't referring to just Core 2 testing. My impression of even Core 1 was that it wasn't as stable as the RedHat releases I was previously using. And just for the record, I got the same impression with Mandrake version 9.0.
I love how Gentoo is currently and I don't think they should start changing to try and pull in more users.
I agree. What might be better is if someone created a re-packaged version of Gentoo with a nice installer. Heck, maybe something like this already exists.
This is so true. There is nothing wrong with what these lawyers are doing, it is no more or less than anyone with a skill to sell would do if they wanted to eat well and have nice shoes.
You're right. And really the issue isn't with the lawyers. Somebody who is actually looking for a lawyer might actual appreciate this "service." There are really at least five other issues:
Law enforcement should be required to get the approval of someone they arrest prior to sharing this information.
The amount of personal information that is shared with prospective legal representation needs to be regulated in some way -- someone needs to decide how much is too much.
The quality of service provided by those receiving the arrest publications needs to be assessed and the assessment scores need to be available to prospective clients. (Turn about is fair play, right?)
There needs to be some regulations to ensure that arrest information is kept private by those receiving the publication -- at least until the point where there is a conviction.
No arrest information should EVER be broadcasted under any circumstances until a reasonable attempt has been made to notify legal guardians and/or responsible parties that their ward is in custody. If a responsible party is contacted, they should also have the ability to say "no" to broadcasting the arrest information.
All of these issues are relatively simple to address, and there's no excuse for not doing so.
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I'm not sure there was a time period that was actually "good", but there were time periods where companies themselves were more responsible. Probably the closest thing to what we are experiencing today is the 1920's. However, coming out of the great depression, companies were more responsible than they are today. The 1950's Cold War didn't really have much impact no fiscal responsibility of businesses. The 1960's was OK as far as businesses go, too, but some of the things that went one may have launched the hyper-inflation of the 70's. I believe that the 90's launched a new era similar to the 20's.
If you put voting machines in the hands of the private sector, the private sector will try to maximize profit. Corners will be cut. There simply isn't any way to avoid this, so long as the people making the machines are doing so to make money off the venture.
The problem isn't really with having the machines in the hands of the private sector. Moving them to the public sector just opens up other motivation to cut corners or alter results (think political). The real issue is that the driving force behind the private sector no longer has the strong balancing factor that was historically attributed to investors. A few decades ago, businesses had to carefully plan for long-term viability. Investors held them to that, and a company that made short-term gains was not necessarily considered a good investment. Enter the day trader, and everything changes. Now companies are motivated to make decisions that yield short-term gains in profits because investors unwisely jump on the short-term gains. Look at how quickly a CEO comes and goes and it becomes obvious. The incentive provided to a CEO is short-term. They come in, make a quick gain, get their compensation, and then head off to destroy another company. It doesn't matter that three years later the company they left will be in the toilet when the irregular accounting and outright lies to the public are noticed.
I'm not sure what the solution to the problem is, but somehow investors need to start holding corporations responsible for long-term success, and long-term sacrifices to yield short-term gains need to be severely punished. Believe me, if the management at Diebold knew that regardless of how much money they make now, it could all be taken away from them for unethical business practices, they would focus on quality and customer satisfaction.
I definitely agree. If this weren't the case, none of the nations involved would have veto-power. They would just have a vote like every other nation.
The UN is imperfect but it exists, which is a victory in itself because, at least, is this a place to talk.
Agreed. Although it would be nice if sometimes the discussion had a little more force behind it.
Better some talks than nothing or just schrapnel. I wonder if GWB have any better idea for the foreseable future. Do you?
I definitely have no better ideas. But as I said before, I think the cat and mouse games that took place in Iraq were allowed to go on for far too long. Most of the resolutions from the UN on this matter were very strong ones, so it is really a mystery to me that it went on for as long as it did.
BTW, although I made a rather strong statement before about the UN being a non-entity, I didn't mean to indicate that they have achieved that status. I just meant that their influence has been weakened. Somehow, that needs to be shored up a bit, but I haven't any ideas as to how they should go about it.
While I agree that the US had impact on what the UN was able to accomplish, so did every other veto-wielding nation. My biggest complaint about the UN involvement stems around the lack of teeth to any of its decisions. When the UN decides that something needs to be done, it should be executed quickly. Failure to do so should result in rather severe consequences. By not actively enforcing its policies, it begins to become a non-entity. The effects of the decade-long lack of action on Iraq can already clearly be seen in the other countries that ignore UN resolutions and play games with inspectors.
Regarding the 10% bribe, that doesn't sound so bad -- sort of the cost of doing business. However, although much of the proceeds from the "oil for food program" were used to purchase useful things, only a small percentage of these things ever found their way to the general population. Based on the huge warehouses of food and supplies that were found as Saddam was ousted, it is obvious that much of it was being used to serve the ruling party and the military.
Yes, and the UN had a full DECADE in which to implement any one of these options. Funny how they weren't able to accomplish it.
Don't forget...Hostess Twinkies. After all, the cockroaches need something to eat while driving around.
There has already been successful research in this area both with and without stem cells. As just one example, see this article.
Yeah, there was this cool experiment some time ago with a mouse where they severed the spinal cord and "encouraged" the nerve tissue to grow back together. Although everything was cross-connected, the mouse's brain adapted and mobility began to be restored. The researchers did not expect this kind of success. They were only looking to see if they could make the neurons grow back, thus the reason why the reconnection was haphazard.
Does your car have an airbag? If so, you most likely have the black box, too.
Should I be forced to install one, presumably at my own expense, just because I don't want to buy a new car?
I think this is highly unlikely. It's more likely that all NEW cars will be required to have them, with the expectation that the majority of the population will have a newer model within the next decade. Anybody know what the statistics are for cars on the road with airbags?
Nor do I like the assumption that the government has the right to know what I'm doing and how I'm driving.
I partly disagree with you on this one. I don't think that the government has a right to keep tabs on every second of your driving record, but if you're involved in an accident, I think they have a perfect right to see the last four or five seconds of driving data, which is all the black box records. The only differences between this and having a police car sitting at the accident site are mostly addressed by your next questions...
How was the black box calibrated? When was it last calibrated? what are the error margins on its measurements? What safeguards are there to prevent the data being tampered with after the accident?
In my mind, these are the most pertinent questions, and should be taken into consideration when admitting black-box data as evidence. I wonder if anybody knows the answers. The other really important thing, from a legal standpoint, is that owners need to be explicitly notified that their automobile records this kind of data. If black boxes are mandatory on all cars, there is no reason for failing to notify the consumer. If owners know that their automobile contains equipment that may convict them, they are less likely to be driving at three times the speed limit, thus stopping a deadly accident BEFORE it happens rather than sentencing them after someone has been killed.
Now, I personally draw the line at collecting more than the last few seconds of data or transmitting the data to some authority on some periodic basis. There have been plenty of reasons why I was forced to drive at substantially above the speed limit (although not thrice) and it would be very unfair for any authority to make judgements on how safe of a driver I am without being able to see first-hand the situations I was in.
No... What they have is a risky business plan that is working well right now. The courts have never decided where to draw the line on the insidious behavior of foistware. I think it's pretty clear that if you download some software and in the clickable EULA you agree to have Gator installed as a payload, they have a right to install their junk on your machine. However, the only time I've been infected with Gator is through an ActiveX exploit. There was nothing that I agreed to, and there was no notification that their stuff was being installed. I didn't even realize it until later on when some of the "utilities" that are supposed to make people like Gator were automatically installed. The "fun" I had cleaning this all up and installing Ad-aware and Spybot S&D is what finally convinced me to never use IE again unless it was on my corporate intranet. And I firmly believe that given a real test in the courts, this will be classified as breaking into a private computer system and/or malicious hacking. Once this happens, you can expect them to die a quick death from the subsequent lawsuits.
You're missing a couple points, although with cultural differences I don't expect you to completely understand.
Point 1: Like it or not, nudity is not considered appropriate for view until adulthood within the United States culture. Television provided on broadcast channels (over the airwaves) is expected to live up to a certain generally-agreed-upon standard regarding harsh language and nudity during hours when children may be watching. Given that many children were watching during the Super Bowl in which this took place, the expected standard was violated, which eliminates the trust that parents were able to place in broadcast television.
Point 2: It's not like there was merely a brief shot of artistic nudity going on. In this case, Janet was involved in a rough sexual embrace and the top part of her outfit was literally ripped off to expose (however briefly) her breast. I know of several parents who had to deal with five and six year olds asking "what was that?" and "what did he do to her?" questions. That's what generated the outrage.
Now, a couple other things. It was the News Media that kept the whole thing going. When it happened, some parents were very upset and wrote letters or placed phone calls to express their sentiments. The FCC also was expected to do their job by fining CBS and/or MTV for violation of the standards. If the News had not been obsessed by it, the whole thing would have blown over in a week or so. Also, bear in mind that there are three levels of television available in the US: Broadcast, Cable/Satellite and Premium. Because Broadcast TV can be obtained at no fee by anyone who has a TV and an antenna, it has the strictest rules on it. Cable and Satellite have less strict rules and can generally be seen showing brief top nudity. Premium channels can show just about anything. This kind of tier system generally provides a viewing experience that is acceptable to most of the people in the country. As such, the standards must be enforced, whether everybody agrees or not.
That's not really accurate either. It probably depends on where you live. Where I live, people were really angry about it before any of the politicians said a word. They got even angrier when the news stations had to keep playing the darn thing over and over in slow motion.
Ooops. Missed that entirely. Thanks for breaking it to me gently. :-)
About three days after I started my job at the company I'm at now, they brought all my equipment in and unpacked it. Brand new Thinkpad laptop with docking station, keyboard and mouse. Then they plopped in this monstrous 22" trinitron monitor. I had to resist the urge for the next several weeks to bow to it each morning when I came into the office. Sure, there are bigger monitors out there, but I've never seen anything like it given to a software developer without a really solid business case.
It looks like they still have it online.
Sorry, that's not a moral argument.
The argument was perfectly valid and moral. You just didn't actually read what was written. Michaelmalak's argument centers on the wrongness of laying off someone already holding a job and feeding a family just to hire someone else at a lower cost. As I recall, that was what was happening about 15 years ago in the United States without outsourcing, and it met with the same outrage then. The argument doesn't make any implication that people in another country are any less deserving. In fact, it goes so far as to make the critical distinction between laying off to outsource and diverting new job opportunities to other countries.
It's ok for you to have a positive opinion of outsourcing, but you really need to open your eyes to the pain felt by families who are impacted by it. If the US government decided to provide some sort of monster tax incentive for companies to move jobs back into the local market, there would be all kinds of banter about how those American bastards were ripping jobs away from Indian and Chinese families. And such opinions would be just as right as opposing the current loss of jobs in the US.
People may adopt this for the same reason that they refuse to switch from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice -- familiarity. Even though OpenOffice provides all the functionality the vast majority of people will ever use, they stay with what they are familiar with, and at rather high costs. There is a rather large group of users who "grew up" on Wordperfect, and that's still what they prefer today. If this crowd decides to transition to Linux, and the price for WP on Linux is right, they may choose to use it.
Now, my personal opinion is that this attempt to re-enter the market will be unsuccessful. First off, the number of Wordperfect users has dwindled. Second, the adoption rate of Linux on the desktop is still too low. My guess is that the number of Wordperfect users who are switching to Linux is very low (although not non-existant). The second barrier to success comes, as you said, from OpenOffice. But more importantly, Sun offers Star Office. With Star Office, you get all the features of Open Source (a la OpenOffice) with commercial-level refinement and the backing of a large company. Those who want free can choose OpenOffice, and those who want support (or don't trust free) can choose Star Office for a reasonable price.
I think the only chance WP for Linux has is if Linux adoption on the desktop gains some serious momentum -- probably exactly what they are hedging their bets on. That will allow them to take advantage of the non-techie users who are a little apprehensive already about switching, and promise them that at least SOMETHING about the new environment will be familiar. Good places for them to start are with Linux distributions that have made it into the retail space at stores that target the thiry- and forty-something crowds, as well as some of the distributions that stores like Wal-Mart are offering on their low-cost PC's. Another possible idea is to approach retail stores like K-Mart or Target, and then team up with a Linux vendor and hardware vendor to offer a low-cost PC that includes WordPerfect. Finally, if they can conquer the internationalization problems that others have mentioned, they may have a real chance for market penetration in some of the developing countries.
OK. I'm out of breath now. :-)
Yeah, but wouldn't it truly be justice if SCO loses their case, then by their own request gets the patent infringement issues transferred to a separate lawsuit and loses that as well? Man, that would feel like sinking a three-pointer, scoring a goal with a bicycle kick, or getting a monster spike in volleyball.
Both. They first had to play out just enough rope for SCO to essentially hang themselves. Let's hope the rope doesn't break.
Microsoft. Check out some of the older stories on Microsoft's "encouragement" of investment companies to channel some of their funds into SCO. I'm too tired to provide the links tonight, but you can find it by searching for SCO under "Old Stories".
Nice of you to stereotype when you know almost NOTHING about me. After you get done putting ice on that knot that appeared on your forehead when your knee slammed into it, try considering the fact that someone who has just been arrested has NOT yet been convicted of a crime and therefore should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. In the case referred to by the article, the person who was arrested was never even charged with a crime; he was arrested because they suspected him of being on drugs. I personally have no problem with making the records of a convicted criminal public, but I draw the line at broadcasting sensitive information about someone who hasn't even been formally charged with a crime. Whether legal or not, my "ethics alarm" says it's just plain wrong.
You're assuming that my computer isn't doing useful things while I'm asleep. I can handle an occasional instance of extended downtime (which will be required to switch distributions anyway), but not regular downtimes. Besides, on my slow machine it took over a week to build everything for just an office workstation. Even if the primary computer is five times as fast, it will still take more than a day. I'll probably have to do some testing to see how useable the machine is during an EMERGE. If it is still useable, then I'm OK even if a build takes a couple days.
I wasn't referring to just Core 2 testing. My impression of even Core 1 was that it wasn't as stable as the RedHat releases I was previously using. And just for the record, I got the same impression with Mandrake version 9.0.
I love how Gentoo is currently and I don't think they should start changing to try and pull in more users. I agree. What might be better is if someone created a re-packaged version of Gentoo with a nice installer. Heck, maybe something like this already exists.
You're right. And really the issue isn't with the lawyers. Somebody who is actually looking for a lawyer might actual appreciate this "service." There are really at least five other issues:
- Law enforcement should be required to get the approval of someone they arrest prior to sharing this information.
- The amount of personal information that is shared with prospective legal representation needs to be regulated in some way -- someone needs to decide how much is too much.
- The quality of service provided by those receiving the arrest publications needs to be assessed and the assessment scores need to be available to prospective clients. (Turn about is fair play, right?)
- There needs to be some regulations to ensure that arrest information is kept private by those receiving the publication -- at least until the point where there is a conviction.
- No arrest information should EVER be broadcasted under any circumstances until a reasonable attempt has been made to notify legal guardians and/or responsible parties that their ward is in custody. If a responsible party is contacted, they should also have the ability to say "no" to broadcasting the arrest information.
All of these issues are relatively simple to address, and there's no excuse for not doing so.