[...] but P2P is the perfect way for a lot of markets to advertise.
As a corollary, bands used to use radio as a medium to do just that (before Payola, "promoters", A&R men, ClearChannel, and all the BS that comes along with it). This is why you've always been able to record radio music onto tape legally.
(and before anyone begins throwing around the "perfect digital copy" argument, consider that back in the day, quality was roughly equal in both recording media and transmitting media... unless you had a shedload of cash for Hi-Fi, the consumer-grade record player wasn't exactly an audiophile's dream, ne?)
Here's a quickie list of employers who check backgrounds for very legit reasons:
* School Districts (to check for lots of things, from sex offenses to educational background)
* Banks (lots of money in them thar institutions)
* Mortgage/Title/Insurance type companies (and other bonded, notary-public type jobs)
* Civil Service (even w/o the clearance requirement... ferinstance, the quickest way for an ex-convict to clear his own name is to work for the state criminal records department, no?)
I'm sure the list can get much, much longer.
But then, I've been a teacher, worked for a DoD contractor, and have had more fingerprinting and drug testing done than I could ever care to count. *shrug* No biggie...
If this critter has WiFi, and someone ports Skype to it, a damned fine radical shift in cell communications is very possible. While it wouldn't work outside of large metro areas (ones with lots of free WiFi, anyway), it would make phone companies, contracts, and all the BS that goes with 'em rather obsolete, methinks.
(then again, we'd likely see folks like Verizon et al start lobbying city councils to stop putting in free wifi, like Qwest and Comcast did when Utah began it's UTOPIA project of multiple city-funded fiber-to-the-doorstep projects all linked together).
Dunno; Gimme the ability to run Skype on an iPhone, and I bet you all the WiFi antennae in Portland Oregon Metro area that it'll damned sure change the way a huge chunk of us around here view our cell phone carriers...;)
I know you're just a troll, but, it's kinda hard to hit "terr'ists" with WMDs.
You could, but it would bring down a whole lot of bad mojo when you did... Take for example Islamic Fanaticism. A couple of megatons in the Makah-Madinah area, and you'd wipe out a HUGE chunk of the symbology right there - or wipe out Madinah and threaten Makah... and see how fast the faithful will turn against the extremists amongst them to save what's left. (Before anyone screams - this is actually a tactic straight out of the 13th Century, with every flaw and problem that arises from it, so I wouldn't really recommend actually doing it).
But then, you'd have about a billion very pissed-off Muslims wanting a good hard piece of your arse carved and served on a platter, too...
As for the latter half of your comment, I kind of agree - the EU's GDP is big enough for them to defend themselves. The US has no further business (at this time) with having any serious military presence there. Let Brussels build their own army and save us taxpayers over here some dough.
Huh? A new one starts at about $22K, whereas a new Camry starts at $20K, and nearly every full-size SUV starts around $26K-28K. And forget the $40K plus luxury SUVs. In short, a Prius is about median when compared with other new car prices.
For a guy who refuses to pay more than $10K for a car... any car, $22K is expensive. I just bought a 2003 Pontiac Sunfire for $8k USD(which gets ~35 MPG hwy, judging by the 500-mile round trip I took and the 14 gallons of gas to do it). I expect it to last (with reasonable maintenance) for at least 5-7 years. My old 1991 Jeep Wrangler (which gets 18-20 MPG hwy if the highway is flat and you have a strong tailwind) I still have, and expect to keep it for a few years longer (I bought it in 2000).
...I recall when DSL had been out for a few years, and I had inquired about getting a hookup to it. I remember being told by Qwest (after a LOT of pressing for details) that while I was close enough to a CO, the neighborhood trunk operated on what was called "integrated pair gain", which they (at the time) did not have the ability to do DSL over. I asked them for some sort of ETA on upgrading it, but was told that it wasn't profitable enough, and that "maybe in a few years...". I eventually went with Sprint Broadband Wireless, which was available (it required an antenna). After three months and roughly half the neighborhood doing the same (cable Internet wasn't available back then in that area either), Qwest suddenly announced that "hey! we can give you 128k DSL now!" - to which most of the neighborhood went "pfffth!" because we were all enjoying an average of 1.5Mb/sec up and down (with a bit of lag, but for most no big deal). It's interesting to note that most other areas in that part of Utah enjoyed 7Mb/sec or so d/l speeds.
So... question is, is this just some stopgap crapola that they can announce, but in reality will only be available to a few selected areas and that's it?
First, the current high gas prices are almost exclusively due to lack of refinery capacity, and the oil companies have a major disincentive in increasing it. You see, by investing money in refinery capacity and increasing supply they'd be expected to "reduce" prices. What idiot would spend money to make less?
Err, a smaller oil company (or a new one) wanting a (bigger) piece of the pie?
It wouldn't take much to do on a corporate scale - invest w/ venture capital, build a refinery or two out in, say, Idaho or Nevada where no one will complain too awful much and regulations are easier, and make a shedload in returns.
Nasty ol' Free Market n' stuff. (...though IMHO, I suspect that prices are due in majority to increased usage from up-and-comers such as China and India).
Second, efficiency would do most of it. We can drive five Priuses for the amount of gasoline used by one Hummer or Escalade or Yukon.
Forget the big SUV vs. little Prius bullshit argument for a moment. No, seriously - it's bullshit, mostly due to the numbers involved. This is a more useful comparison for y'all if you're willing to read it - the expensive-as-hell Prius vs. the hordes of cheap old gas suckers that the majority of folks around here drive to work and the grocery store. A mid 1980's car eats almost as much gasoline per mile as a shiny new Hummer does, and there are LOT of 80's vintage cars around. They're cheap, they're in huge numbers, and that is what you have to tackle.
The average family w/ a car cannot simply go out and buy a Hummer, Escalade, or whatever... they buy used 6-cylinder minivans, 10-year-old sedans that are likely way out of tune, old 1970's "rebuilds" that have fire-breathing and badly carbuerated 8-bangers in 'em, and a whole host of vehicles that smoke, leak fuel, and otherwise are the absolute worst in efficiency. Oh, and pickup trucks - the 4 MPG second-hand wonders that exist in gargantuan numbers.
You wanna make a more efficient group of car owners? THAT is the demographic you have to entice and change... and a pretty hybrid car that costs the average schmuck up to a year's wages ain't gonna do it. Tax breaks? Oh, sure... too bad they won't realize those for up to a year later. Why not just make it cheaper in the first place, or do a real tax incentive and say "you buy this car, and if your yearly income is only five figures or less, you can exempt up to two times the sticker price on federal and state income taxes, amortized over two years if you like..." For an average family, that would let 'em live tax-free for up to two years, and damned near everybody would fall all over themselves to get one for the cash boost. Car companies would shift to building 'em as fast as they can. Competition takes over and larger supplies would lower the cost. But... that's just a nice dream of mine.
Breaking News: Animal control was able to tame the wild shaven ape aka "the ballmosapien", by using it's natural mating call "developers, developers, developers!".
"sapien"? In reference to Steve Ballmer? Surely you jest!
When you go to the Kia dealership to test drive a car, and then go to drive the Hyundai, you are going to find all the major controls for both vehicles in the same place. Not true with software.
Not so fast...
Most basic software is likely to have the standard controls in roughly the same place on a given UI, and the window manager is going to pretty much enforce consistency on the basic dash-box-Ex controls on the window holding it; there is usually some base-level consistency there, even if there are different feature sets.
Also, not all cars have the major controls in the same place once you get past the steering wheel and foot pedals. Some have the transmission shift lever on the column, others have it on the floor. The emergency brake mechanism can be under the dash or in the center console. The turn signal indicator can be on either side of the steering column, and the windshield wipers and headlamp controls can be almost anywhere.
To top that off, feature sets vary from car to car - GPS, in-car DVD, radio/CD/mp3/etc, cruise control... stuff like that.
Also, after you've decided the Kia isn't for you... you don't have to try to figure out how to uninstall the damn thing because it is sucking up resources.
Now this I can (partially) agree with, though once you decide you don't want a given car and want another, you're still going to have to 'uninstall' (e.g. sell or trade-in) the thing, no? While not hard to do technically, it is a PITA to actually do, and until you do, it still eats resources - in this case fiscal resources. Also, why not use a distro's default software management package to do the install/uninstall?
"Something like 22,000+ packages available in the Ubuntu repositories today, all of them precompiled. "
This is also a major hurdle to people. How is Joe User going to know which of the 30 browsers he should use, or 20 file management utilities, or 20 calculators?
Umm, the same way he picks wheat to drive - a Chevy Aveo, or a Kia Sportage, a Hyundai Sonata, a Porsche 911 Carrara, or a used Jeep Wrangler, or...? The only real difference being that cost is no longer a factor in choosing software.
Now don't get me wrong - I grok the idea you're getting at, in that most folks don't want to sit down and actually do this for each and every proggie they want/need/desire. But then again, if (as is the case anyway) most distros provide a set of solid defaults, then the rest is up to curiosity and desire of the user. Much like most users are fat and happy with the 'Baby's first GUI' look of Windows XP's desktop, yet there is a whole niche market of desktop modification programs out there for those who want things to look and behave a bit differently.
The point it that, yes the drug may take away the inhibition to do those horrible things, but the will to do it is already there.
Actually, the desire to do it is generated by the addiction; one that is both physical and mental.
Blaming the drug is an out is all too easy to use when one does something wrong. People need to take responsibility for their actions. The Netherlands have areas of legal drug use and the country enjoys a crime / murder rate much lower than quite a lot of the civilized world.
I agree that addiction can be conquered, but I sincerely doubt that it would be as easy to do as it would if one didn't already have the chemical cravings. Also, IIRC the Netherlands did set it up so that those areas of legal use are heavily patrolled, and the drugs are somewhat subsidized by the gov't, lessening the need to do something drastic to afford the next fix, no?
A drug causes someone to do something about as much as a gun causes a person to shoot someone. The potential for the thing is already there.
No. The difference is the craving. I have a safe full of firearms here at home, yet I have zero desire to use them against other people. If I were a junkie coming down off a high, I would likely have a burning desire to maintain that high... and would have a decreased resistance towards doing whatever I could to reach that goal.
That doesn't really matter. The person with that normal brain made the concious, voluntary decision to take a drug knowing full well what it may cause them to do.
Considering that a huge number of them start as teenagers, I sincerely doubt that statement is anywhere near a full truth, let alone a constant.
The ratio of catastrophic house fires seems about 1:610,000, if not higher... so why even bother with smoke alarms, fire policies on your home insurance, stuff like that? The odds of getting killed in a plane crash is damned astronomical by comparison... and yet every time there is one, a whole lot of people decide to avoid the airline in question for awhile unless they have non-refundable tickets - permanently if the airline is a small regional one.
Yep - the odds are low alright; I'd like to make 'em even lower, thanks./P
Well, that is the point of the sex offender lists. Whether you agree with them or not, it is plainly obvious that the lists were designed to help generate vigilante behavior.
Umm, you're not a parent, are you?
(This is coming from a guy who has actually referred to and researched said sex offender lists during a recent search w/ the fiancee' to purchase a new home. And yes, it IS relevant given the fact that the kid had endured abuse from his biological father. I'd rather he not have to have such a thing happen to him again).
...and if your brother/cousin/son/etc decides to become an undercover cop?
By the time you find out about a family member working as an undercover anything, you'll likely be dodging bullets. It's not as if you go to the annual family reunion and Uncle Steve says "What am I doing these days? Why, I'm an undercover cop."
Aside from alcohol (which is --surprise!-- a drug), how many of the non-drug-related crimes were aggravated/incited by a deep unquenchable chemical-induced craving and a non-stop desire to obtain the chemicals in question?
I think that's what most folks arguing this tend to miss. Sure, people can be cold sober and still commit crime - usually as the result of mental retardation, ignorance, stupidity, or an over-sized ego. OTOH, when an otherwise normal brain is soaked in a narcotic, burns through it, and suddenly that brain cries out for more? All bets are off.
Thanks to the dumbasses who want to out the "rats" so bad, good luck finding out (much less prosecuting) anyone who commits a crime against you or your property in the future. Folks aren't going to be so eager to be a witness on your behalf if the odds are good that the perpetrator looked like some sort of psycho or gangster type, and potential witnesses stood a solid chance of facing bad mojo for the simple act of telling the truth in a court of law.
It wouldn't take much to munge up the/etc/hosts or 'doze LMHOSTS file to make a certain ".bank" name redirect to whatever you want...
While admittedly it would take a compromise of the user's computer to do it, it still points out the one big, fat inherent weakness of a new TLD: The fact that sites aren't specifically identified by DNS name per se, but by a translation mechanism that points to the real site identifier (IP).
('course, the "safety toolbar" could then do a WHOIS check and such, but now we're just adding layers of complexity... and where would that end?)
Well lets see. You proposed a strategy for a new CEO and retrenchment. SOP for a company in financial difficulty. You bring a hachet man to break the company up, close loss making divisions and sack half the workforce to reduce costs.
Eh? When did I mention sacking "half the workforce"?
Its just astonishing to me that Wall Street does not concur with your vision of what MS needs but then they are ususally loathe to break up successful organisations with proven leadership. Perhaps you know something about Microsoft's accounts that no one else does.
I'm only looking at the basics - MSFT has exactly two money-making divisions - Windows and Office. Everything else is losing money to various degrees. R&D and new ventures I have no problems with, but obvious flops like the Zune? C'mon... you can't possibly justify keeping that thing alive. MSN Internet? Even AOL is getting out of that business, and if it weren't for Qwest and the likes of Best Buy dragging it along as a bundle or rebate bennie, it would've died a natural death years ago.
Perhaps its because IBM, Novell and Apple had fundamental market change forced upon them while Microsoft are moving along quite nicely and the revenue keeps streaming in. Is it? According to their marketing blather they're loving life and swimming in dough. OTOH, considering that PC sales have gone far higher (as shown in TFA), Vista should've kept up - it's been five years, and that R&D money they poured into the thing isn't going to pay itself back, you know.
Microsoft are in the business of selling software and judging by the fact they have shipped 10s of millions of copies of Vista in an acknowledged slow adopter market, that business appears to be going quite well for them.
"acknowledged slow adopter market"? Really? Then how come Macs are selling like hotcakes, and Dell decided that Joe Sixpack would actually go for Ubuntu on a Dell... let alone actually defy their lords and masters in Redmond and start selling XP boxes again in spite of being told not to?* Methinks the problem isn't people not willing to try New Things, but rather a large distaste of what appears to be a warmed-over bloated-out Old Thing.
...also, 40m copies of an OS, spread over nearly seven months (Vista launched in November 2006, after all), in a market where MSFT could literally dictate (until recently) what gets sold on the vast majority of OEM PCs? I'm almost willing to wager that RHEL would look good by that metric. According to TFA, only half of the PC's shipped came w/ Vista licenses... 50%. Compared to astronomically higher percentages of the whole for XP, Win2k, 98, 95...
MSFT isn't going to die next week, but maybe, just maybe, they should sit down and take a hard look at why their latest product isn't selling as well as previous ones.
Cogent enough for you or do you just interpret all dissenting opinions as sniveling attempts at sarcasm ?
Better; and no, I only interpret sniveling attempts at sarcasm as sniveling attempts at sarcasm.;)
* Brings up a slightly interesting caveat: Dell (and most other big OEM) was forced to sell only Vista licenses on desktops and laptops for a huge chunk of the time period in question, which would naturally inflate the numbers a bit - Hobson's Choice is not exactly an indicator of success, y'know? Will Vista still sell at the same rates now that you can buy Dells with XP on 'em? And what happens when HP and Gateway follow suit? Taken together, I don't hold out much hope for MSFT in the long term if they intend to keep playing the same tunes, y'know?
Now, if Microsoft can recover from this or not is hard to say, they could be on a downhill trend (although it's a very big hill, so they won't hit bottom for a VERY long time), or they may turn around and actually provide some compelling reasons to stay with their software.
Inertia will keep 'em alive for quite a long time, and it's true that they may never really die off completely. Unisys once was an 800-lb computing gorilla. Towards the end, the most influence they had in the IT world was the GIF patent (among a handful of others), but aside from legacy systems here and there, no one gave a damn about them - they got passed by. What do they do nowadays? Tandem was once a big player, as was Amdahl, Cray, Wang, Texas Instruments, and lots of other companies who made their name off of business computing and/or hardware in the '70s and '80s.
Microsoft may well end up like one of those - a once big and proud company that drowned in its own hubris.
Of course, in order for the later to become a possibility they will need to sink some more capital into R&D, but considering the amount of capital they have, that shouldn't be a problem. So, no, they should not jettison all departments operating at a loss, they should however ask themselves what the goal of those departments is going to be.
Fair enough; prolly typed that in way too fast anyway when I wrote it. MSN could be kept, if the guys running that department can get off their butts and actually do something innovative with it, instead of just providing a money-losing "me-too" Google+AOL rig-up. X-Box is still losing money per-unit IIRC, though it prolly wouldn't take too awful much to make that department begin to break even, perhaps make a profit. Zune? Heh... should've ditched that bomb by now; if they got rid of the DRM and made the thing compelling, it might've had a chance (esp. with WiFi in it), but I don't see how they can recover it.
R&D I have no kick against - the home entertainment / content meme thingy they're working with looks promising (like ferinstance - what if X-Box had a TV tuner in the thing and some basic DVR abilities a'la MythTV? No more monthly payment to Comcast or DirecTV for that, and shows could be exported to the PC under WMP for later viewing on desktop or laptop. I know they got slapped down with "UltimateTV", but this time they can try to do it in a way that works w/o violating a half dozen TiVO patents, or at least license 'em this time?)
OTOH, 'Son of Tablet PC' is a bad bet - the market said "no!" twice to three times now; someone in Redmond needs to take the hint.
But yeah... somebody in MSFT has to stop sniffing the marketing gas and realize that they're about to get their collective lunch money taken by the competition. I'm not exactly MSFT's biggest fan or anything, but I do remember when they were still lean and hungry... now they just seem bloated and out-of-touch.
Seriously - marketing gets paid to put a happy face on any sales news - be it wonderful, good, bad, evil, or SCO-Unix style.
Twisting statistics, taking 'em out of context, anything, anything at all to make things look good. IMHO, Vista sales aren't drastically bad, but they aren't meeting (let alone exceeding) the hype, either.
Thing is though, marketing could literally kill MSFT in the long run. Right now, IMHO, Ballmer need to be fired, and whoever takes his place need to sit down, figure out what all MSFT is spending cash on, and jettison all departments that aren't making money. Instead, we see MSFT believing its own delirious hype, and may well end up deluding itself clean into oblivion.
Slashdot Mirror
As a corollary, bands used to use radio as a medium to do just that (before Payola, "promoters", A&R men, ClearChannel, and all the BS that comes along with it). This is why you've always been able to record radio music onto tape legally.
(and before anyone begins throwing around the "perfect digital copy" argument, consider that back in the day, quality was roughly equal in both recording media and transmitting media... unless you had a shedload of cash for Hi-Fi, the consumer-grade record player wasn't exactly an audiophile's dream, ne?)
(The real scary part is, I can't even tell for myself if I'm just kidding or not, now that I think about it...)
* School Districts (to check for lots of things, from sex offenses to educational background)
* Banks (lots of money in them thar institutions)
* Mortgage/Title/Insurance type companies (and other bonded, notary-public type jobs)
* Civil Service (even w/o the clearance requirement... ferinstance, the quickest way for an ex-convict to clear his own name is to work for the state criminal records department, no?)
I'm sure the list can get much, much longer.
But then, I've been a teacher, worked for a DoD contractor, and have had more fingerprinting and drug testing done than I could ever care to count. *shrug* No biggie...
If this critter has WiFi, and someone ports Skype to it, a damned fine radical shift in cell communications is very possible. While it wouldn't work outside of large metro areas (ones with lots of free WiFi, anyway), it would make phone companies, contracts, and all the BS that goes with 'em rather obsolete, methinks.
(then again, we'd likely see folks like Verizon et al start lobbying city councils to stop putting in free wifi, like Qwest and Comcast did when Utah began it's UTOPIA project of multiple city-funded fiber-to-the-doorstep projects all linked together).
Either way, it'd be damned cool, IMHO.
You could, but it would bring down a whole lot of bad mojo when you did... Take for example Islamic Fanaticism. A couple of megatons in the Makah-Madinah area, and you'd wipe out a HUGE chunk of the symbology right there - or wipe out Madinah and threaten Makah... and see how fast the faithful will turn against the extremists amongst them to save what's left. (Before anyone screams - this is actually a tactic straight out of the 13th Century, with every flaw and problem that arises from it, so I wouldn't really recommend actually doing it).
But then, you'd have about a billion very pissed-off Muslims wanting a good hard piece of your arse carved and served on a platter, too...
As for the latter half of your comment, I kind of agree - the EU's GDP is big enough for them to defend themselves. The US has no further business (at this time) with having any serious military presence there. Let Brussels build their own army and save us taxpayers over here some dough.
Huh? A new one starts at about $22K, whereas a new Camry starts at $20K, and nearly every full-size SUV starts around $26K-28K. And forget the $40K plus luxury SUVs. In short, a Prius is about median when compared with other new car prices.
For a guy who refuses to pay more than $10K for a car... any car, $22K is expensive. I just bought a 2003 Pontiac Sunfire for $8k USD(which gets ~35 MPG hwy, judging by the 500-mile round trip I took and the 14 gallons of gas to do it). I expect it to last (with reasonable maintenance) for at least 5-7 years. My old 1991 Jeep Wrangler (which gets 18-20 MPG hwy if the highway is flat and you have a strong tailwind) I still have, and expect to keep it for a few years longer (I bought it in 2000).
That is what you're up against :)
So... question is, is this just some stopgap crapola that they can announce, but in reality will only be available to a few selected areas and that's it?
Err, a smaller oil company (or a new one) wanting a (bigger) piece of the pie?
It wouldn't take much to do on a corporate scale - invest w/ venture capital, build a refinery or two out in, say, Idaho or Nevada where no one will complain too awful much and regulations are easier, and make a shedload in returns.
Nasty ol' Free Market n' stuff. (...though IMHO, I suspect that prices are due in majority to increased usage from up-and-comers such as China and India).
Second, efficiency would do most of it. We can drive five Priuses for the amount of gasoline used by one Hummer or Escalade or Yukon.Forget the big SUV vs. little Prius bullshit argument for a moment. No, seriously - it's bullshit, mostly due to the numbers involved. This is a more useful comparison for y'all if you're willing to read it - the expensive-as-hell Prius vs. the hordes of cheap old gas suckers that the majority of folks around here drive to work and the grocery store. A mid 1980's car eats almost as much gasoline per mile as a shiny new Hummer does, and there are LOT of 80's vintage cars around. They're cheap, they're in huge numbers, and that is what you have to tackle.
The average family w/ a car cannot simply go out and buy a Hummer, Escalade, or whatever... they buy used 6-cylinder minivans, 10-year-old sedans that are likely way out of tune, old 1970's "rebuilds" that have fire-breathing and badly carbuerated 8-bangers in 'em, and a whole host of vehicles that smoke, leak fuel, and otherwise are the absolute worst in efficiency. Oh, and pickup trucks - the 4 MPG second-hand wonders that exist in gargantuan numbers.
You wanna make a more efficient group of car owners? THAT is the demographic you have to entice and change... and a pretty hybrid car that costs the average schmuck up to a year's wages ain't gonna do it. Tax breaks? Oh, sure... too bad they won't realize those for up to a year later. Why not just make it cheaper in the first place, or do a real tax incentive and say "you buy this car, and if your yearly income is only five figures or less, you can exempt up to two times the sticker price on federal and state income taxes, amortized over two years if you like..." For an average family, that would let 'em live tax-free for up to two years, and damned near everybody would fall all over themselves to get one for the cash boost. Car companies would shift to building 'em as fast as they can. Competition takes over and larger supplies would lower the cost. But... that's just a nice dream of mine.
"sapien"? In reference to Steve Ballmer? Surely you jest!
Not so fast...
Most basic software is likely to have the standard controls in roughly the same place on a given UI, and the window manager is going to pretty much enforce consistency on the basic dash-box-Ex controls on the window holding it; there is usually some base-level consistency there, even if there are different feature sets.
Also, not all cars have the major controls in the same place once you get past the steering wheel and foot pedals. Some have the transmission shift lever on the column, others have it on the floor. The emergency brake mechanism can be under the dash or in the center console. The turn signal indicator can be on either side of the steering column, and the windshield wipers and headlamp controls can be almost anywhere.
To top that off, feature sets vary from car to car - GPS, in-car DVD, radio/CD/mp3/etc, cruise control... stuff like that.
Also, after you've decided the Kia isn't for you... you don't have to try to figure out how to uninstall the damn thing because it is sucking up resources.Now this I can (partially) agree with, though once you decide you don't want a given car and want another, you're still going to have to 'uninstall' (e.g. sell or trade-in) the thing, no? While not hard to do technically, it is a PITA to actually do, and until you do, it still eats resources - in this case fiscal resources. Also, why not use a distro's default software management package to do the install/uninstall?
This is also a major hurdle to people. How is Joe User going to know which of the 30 browsers he should use, or 20 file management utilities, or 20 calculators?
Umm, the same way he picks wheat to drive - a Chevy Aveo, or a Kia Sportage, a Hyundai Sonata, a Porsche 911 Carrara, or a used Jeep Wrangler, or ...? The only real difference being that cost is no longer a factor in choosing software.
Now don't get me wrong - I grok the idea you're getting at, in that most folks don't want to sit down and actually do this for each and every proggie they want/need/desire. But then again, if (as is the case anyway) most distros provide a set of solid defaults, then the rest is up to curiosity and desire of the user. Much like most users are fat and happy with the 'Baby's first GUI' look of Windows XP's desktop, yet there is a whole niche market of desktop modification programs out there for those who want things to look and behave a bit differently.
Actually, the desire to do it is generated by the addiction; one that is both physical and mental.
Blaming the drug is an out is all too easy to use when one does something wrong. People need to take responsibility for their actions. The Netherlands have areas of legal drug use and the country enjoys a crime / murder rate much lower than quite a lot of the civilized world.I agree that addiction can be conquered, but I sincerely doubt that it would be as easy to do as it would if one didn't already have the chemical cravings. Also, IIRC the Netherlands did set it up so that those areas of legal use are heavily patrolled, and the drugs are somewhat subsidized by the gov't, lessening the need to do something drastic to afford the next fix, no?
No. The difference is the craving. I have a safe full of firearms here at home, yet I have zero desire to use them against other people. If I were a junkie coming down off a high, I would likely have a burning desire to maintain that high... and would have a decreased resistance towards doing whatever I could to reach that goal.
Considering that a huge number of them start as teenagers, I sincerely doubt that statement is anywhere near a full truth, let alone a constant.
The ratio of catastrophic house fires seems about 1:610,000, if not higher... so why even bother with smoke alarms, fire policies on your home insurance, stuff like that? The odds of getting killed in a plane crash is damned astronomical by comparison... and yet every time there is one, a whole lot of people decide to avoid the airline in question for awhile unless they have non-refundable tickets - permanently if the airline is a small regional one.
Yep - the odds are low alright; I'd like to make 'em even lower, thanks. /P
Umm, you're not a parent, are you?
(This is coming from a guy who has actually referred to and researched said sex offender lists during a recent search w/ the fiancee' to purchase a new home. And yes, it IS relevant given the fact that the kid had endured abuse from his biological father. I'd rather he not have to have such a thing happen to him again).
By the time you find out about a family member working as an undercover anything, you'll likely be dodging bullets. It's not as if you go to the annual family reunion and Uncle Steve says "What am I doing these days? Why, I'm an undercover cop."
meant for GP. My bad.
I think that's what most folks arguing this tend to miss. Sure, people can be cold sober and still commit crime - usually as the result of mental retardation, ignorance, stupidity, or an over-sized ego. OTOH, when an otherwise normal brain is soaked in a narcotic, burns through it, and suddenly that brain cries out for more? All bets are off.
Thanks to the dumbasses who want to out the "rats" so bad, good luck finding out (much less prosecuting) anyone who commits a crime against you or your property in the future. Folks aren't going to be so eager to be a witness on your behalf if the odds are good that the perpetrator looked like some sort of psycho or gangster type, and potential witnesses stood a solid chance of facing bad mojo for the simple act of telling the truth in a court of law.
Feel safer now?
While admittedly it would take a compromise of the user's computer to do it, it still points out the one big, fat inherent weakness of a new TLD: The fact that sites aren't specifically identified by DNS name per se, but by a translation mechanism that points to the real site identifier (IP).
('course, the "safety toolbar" could then do a WHOIS check and such, but now we're just adding layers of complexity... and where would that end?)
Eh? When did I mention sacking "half the workforce"?
Its just astonishing to me that Wall Street does not concur with your vision of what MS needs but then they are ususally loathe to break up successful organisations with proven leadership. Perhaps you know something about Microsoft's accounts that no one else does.I'm only looking at the basics - MSFT has exactly two money-making divisions - Windows and Office. Everything else is losing money to various degrees. R&D and new ventures I have no problems with, but obvious flops like the Zune? C'mon... you can't possibly justify keeping that thing alive. MSN Internet? Even AOL is getting out of that business, and if it weren't for Qwest and the likes of Best Buy dragging it along as a bundle or rebate bennie, it would've died a natural death years ago.
Perhaps its because IBM, Novell and Apple had fundamental market change forced upon them while Microsoft are moving along quite nicely and the revenue keeps streaming in. Is it? According to their marketing blather they're loving life and swimming in dough. OTOH, considering that PC sales have gone far higher (as shown in TFA), Vista should've kept up - it's been five years, and that R&D money they poured into the thing isn't going to pay itself back, you know. Microsoft are in the business of selling software and judging by the fact they have shipped 10s of millions of copies of Vista in an acknowledged slow adopter market, that business appears to be going quite well for them."acknowledged slow adopter market"? Really? Then how come Macs are selling like hotcakes, and Dell decided that Joe Sixpack would actually go for Ubuntu on a Dell... let alone actually defy their lords and masters in Redmond and start selling XP boxes again in spite of being told not to?* Methinks the problem isn't people not willing to try New Things, but rather a large distaste of what appears to be a warmed-over bloated-out Old Thing.
MSFT isn't going to die next week, but maybe, just maybe, they should sit down and take a hard look at why their latest product isn't selling as well as previous ones.
Cogent enough for you or do you just interpret all dissenting opinions as sniveling attempts at sarcasm ?Better; and no, I only interpret sniveling attempts at sarcasm as sniveling attempts at sarcasm. ;)
* Brings up a slightly interesting caveat: Dell (and most other big OEM) was forced to sell only Vista licenses on desktops and laptops for a huge chunk of the time period in question, which would naturally inflate the numbers a bit - Hobson's Choice is not exactly an indicator of success, y'know? Will Vista still sell at the same rates now that you can buy Dells with XP on 'em? And what happens when HP and Gateway follow suit? Taken together, I don't hold out much hope for MSFT in the long term if they intend to keep playing the same tunes, y'know?
Inertia will keep 'em alive for quite a long time, and it's true that they may never really die off completely. Unisys once was an 800-lb computing gorilla. Towards the end, the most influence they had in the IT world was the GIF patent (among a handful of others), but aside from legacy systems here and there, no one gave a damn about them - they got passed by. What do they do nowadays? Tandem was once a big player, as was Amdahl, Cray, Wang, Texas Instruments, and lots of other companies who made their name off of business computing and/or hardware in the '70s and '80s.
Microsoft may well end up like one of those - a once big and proud company that drowned in its own hubris.
Of course, in order for the later to become a possibility they will need to sink some more capital into R&D, but considering the amount of capital they have, that shouldn't be a problem. So, no, they should not jettison all departments operating at a loss, they should however ask themselves what the goal of those departments is going to be.Fair enough; prolly typed that in way too fast anyway when I wrote it. MSN could be kept, if the guys running that department can get off their butts and actually do something innovative with it, instead of just providing a money-losing "me-too" Google+AOL rig-up. X-Box is still losing money per-unit IIRC, though it prolly wouldn't take too awful much to make that department begin to break even, perhaps make a profit. Zune? Heh... should've ditched that bomb by now; if they got rid of the DRM and made the thing compelling, it might've had a chance (esp. with WiFi in it), but I don't see how they can recover it.
R&D I have no kick against - the home entertainment / content meme thingy they're working with looks promising (like ferinstance - what if X-Box had a TV tuner in the thing and some basic DVR abilities a'la MythTV? No more monthly payment to Comcast or DirecTV for that, and shows could be exported to the PC under WMP for later viewing on desktop or laptop. I know they got slapped down with "UltimateTV", but this time they can try to do it in a way that works w/o violating a half dozen TiVO patents, or at least license 'em this time?)
OTOH, 'Son of Tablet PC' is a bad bet - the market said "no!" twice to three times now; someone in Redmond needs to take the hint.
But yeah... somebody in MSFT has to stop sniffing the marketing gas and realize that they're about to get their collective lunch money taken by the competition. I'm not exactly MSFT's biggest fan or anything, but I do remember when they were still lean and hungry... now they just seem bloated and out-of-touch.
In the large view - it is. IBM did it (and in some ways are still doing it), Novell had to do it, Apple had to do it... what makes MSFT so immune?
(so how about something cogent next time - or are sniveling attempts at sarcasm all that you're capable of?)
Twisting statistics, taking 'em out of context, anything, anything at all to make things look good. IMHO, Vista sales aren't drastically bad, but they aren't meeting (let alone exceeding) the hype, either.
Thing is though, marketing could literally kill MSFT in the long run. Right now, IMHO, Ballmer need to be fired, and whoever takes his place need to sit down, figure out what all MSFT is spending cash on, and jettison all departments that aren't making money. Instead, we see MSFT believing its own delirious hype, and may well end up deluding itself clean into oblivion.