Corporate data leaks and phishing were going strong pre-9/11 too, it's just that now we have a Republican president to blame everything on.
Wow - way to provide an object lesson for the problem of a polarized political view. Go back and read what you replied to. You'll notice that the poster was not blaming data leaks and fishing on a Republican president. He was stating that the euphoric state is over. People now have concerns. And so Government naturally steps in to create laws in response.
Note again - no talk of Republican or Democrats. No blame for the issues at hand. And while specific legal subjects are mentioned, there isn't even any indication on how the author views them.
The huge majority of people who will sit down Monday morning and fire up their copy of Outlook to swap mail with their friends about this, and then pass around Excel sheets and PowerPoint slides about rates of giving, etc, just simply don't have the same bizarre, abiding hatred for Bill that a small, rabid corner of the IT world does.
Because anyone who would question Microsoft's impact on the industry must be part of "a small, rabid corner of the IT world", right? Not just a minimal percentage of the population. But a rabid one. And by implication, obviously wrong.
Not that you don't have a fair point. A vast majority of the world doesn't have the background or interest to debate this... much less realize there's an issue to begin with. Just as a vast majority of the world also won't consider how Warren Buffett or any other past philanthropist conducted themselves in their given industries / business dealings. But ignorance of a question doesn't answer it.
A known, unhealthy habit which contains known addictive poisons was compared to a normally healthy food doped with poison.
Alright - fair enough. Analogies are rarely accurate and prone to extremes to make the point. However, fried chicken could only be called "healthy" when compared to something extremely unhealthy... such as smoking. And there are very few brands of cigarettes that don't include additives (ranging from the benign to very questionable). As bad analogies go, I don't think mine was THAT far off.
There's a difference between "I know this piece of fried chicken is bad for me" and "wow - this piece of fried chicken was prepared with rat poison because Fried Chicken Inc's research showed that rat poison would make me crave it more".
I would imagine the zone had some special importance. Perhaps it was the zone itself (I know folks who spend a lot of time there). Maybe it was the look of the place (different zones have very different appearances). Maybe they wanted somewhere neutral. Who knows. I would imagine that someone who put the effort to organizing the event would have had the sense to pick a faction-friendly zone if that particular point was a requirement.
You're playing a video game where you can kill and destroy. That's the game. Your virtual character can do anything you want to do in the game that the game allows. Some want to sit around making a political statement, others want to wreck havoc. The only "rules" in a video game is what the programmers write into it. Other than that, anything goes.
Sure. The mechanics allow you to be a complete ass. Have at it. But don't feign confusion when people point out that you're being an ass.
WoW is an interesting example. The mechanics of the game feeds hate. And not just because of PvP fighting. Blizzard goes out of their way to make it very difficult for enemy factions to even communicate (forgoing such language barriers with neutral factions able to communicate across the board). Yet I have fought against some very honorable individuals. I may ultimately hate their guts for pulling off some particular attack that thrashed my faction or my character. But I can respect them as enemies for not going beyond the pale and showing some degree of class. I respect them even more because this behavior is clearly their choice - they don't HAVE to.
Totally agree, every time I see players have a total hissy fit about cheating I wonder what they heck is wrong with them.
Games are defined by the rules of that game. If you do not follow those rules... if you cheat... you are no longer playing the game. If you don't want to play the game, go find something else to do.
Having said that - I could do without the idiots who scream "cheater" every time some encounter in a game doesn't go the way they want or expected.
I think Rosen's position is interesting considering that even Slashdot back in 2000 was very adamant that the RIAA should go after infringers (mostly because everyone thought it couldn't be done, so it was a safe position to take).
If I remember right "Slashdot" also noted that the RIAA should give up trying to sue services that didn't actually maintain copies of the works and member companies should adopt electronic distribution using open formats and reasonable rates while dropping the price of CDs. None of that happened. Trust the RIAA to pick the gonzo suggestion .
Microsoft is not spying on you. This is a safety feature that I'm glad is included. Did you know your computer also checks with them daily to update your time with the atomic clock? Where's the Slashdot story for that?
Windows' default settings syncs time with a time server to keep my local clock up to date. I can see why I would want that. Now... what's the advantage in "Genuine Advantage"?
Let's face it, MS have been supporting software in enterprises longer than any Linux disto (save for Novell, but to them it's still new, right) and so their organisation is probably better equiped right now that anyone else.
IBM?
Distros don't support enterprises... companies with support contracts do.
This is simply the same, reliable marketing tactic Microsoft has always used. The cycle goes something along the lines of...
Check out our new stuff! Wow! It will change your life!
Check out our current stuff! It's really amazing. It changed people's lives! Absolutely better than anything else out there... no problems with it at all... nobody else could do this!
Wow. What WERE we thinking with that old crap? Hooo boy. Talk about junk. Everyone was really suffering trying to use that stuff, huh? Bet you can't wait to get rid of it... which is a good thing because....
Check out our new stuff! Wow! It will change your life!
Although - this one is an interesting variation. Instead of referring to the old product as junk, they're referring to their current lines as obviously broken and selling a service to help shore it up. That involves quite a balancing act.
HD Radio has many many problems, notably that its sideband transmission scheme crowds out adjacent low-power FM stations. Basically, it's Clear Channel's master plan to finally kill off the local competition. Oh, and guess who is a major investor in iBiquity and its patent portfolio? Yeah, Clear Channel.
When I read HD Radio being described as something not many people know about, I figured it must be because the author has the luck of not listening to any Clear Channel radio stations. Little wonder Clear Channel is a major invester - reminds me of the time they pushed their.cc registrar hard. However, the really telling thing here is when you couple these "HD Radio" promotion slots (and they take on all forms - from "new cool content from your favorite station" to "BigStereoShop sells HD Radio recievers") with CC's run of "radio - you shouldn't have to pay for it" slots they ran earlier.
Clearly, satalite radio has put pressure on someone's business model.
Sess, Baby... can I call you "Sess"?... anyway... Sess... what you clearly don't understand here is that "fidelity" is so nineteen-sixties. This is a new age! And we're not talking Aquarius. Har! Sess, Baby... the consumer is hip and modern. Its the Information Age and they want new, new, new. "High definition" is a term they already know. It's all the rage in television and that's just the bleeding-edge, early adopter, high-profit target in consumer electronics that we want to tap in to!
It's overpriced printer cartridge division is carrying the company now. Frankly, selling most of it's patent portfolio, shaving off it's server and desktop divisions and becoming an printer, camera and ink seller (in other words being more of an office supply company) might actually be more healthy for the company. Let them invest some seed money in smaller business who still need to innovate to survive. Complaining about a company who is beholden to it's stock holders for pushing for the bottom line makes no sense. If I had the choice of listening to the market that rewards my efficency, or random folk who bemoan my lack of innovation, I'll go for the dollar signs every time. Make innovation profitable and I'm the first one knocking that door down.
HP did not spring from the famous garage as "an office supply company". They have been innovators from their inception and I would judge from the growth the company had over the years that it was indeed profitable.
Shedding R&D staff and patents are boxing HP in to its current form. They are evolving in to a business entity highly dependent on the current environment. As you noted, their printer cartridge business is over-priced. That's a market poised to be underbid. And when that happens and the profits are drained from the one division "carrying the company" what do they do? Where is the next step?
MS gives the same discount to all of the top tier OEM producers, they have to as they were forced to do so during the settlement. If they were offering lenovo anything extra then DELL, Toshiba, ACER and every other large OEM in the world would be screaming to the government to force MS to stick to there settlement.
Right. And Microsoft has done SO well at complying with various settlements.
Don't get me wrong - I agree with you in so far as we're not seeing any proof that Microsoft is behind this. But what you counter with is hardly a convincing reason against it.
What is even more stupid is that Linux people don't realize that Linux is only supplanting other Unices (in particular Solaris). Windows is gaining share in the server realm (it is also supplanting other Unices), but of course around here the Slashbot reality distortion field blocks that info.
I guess it depends on your environment. In mine, Linux is supplanting Solaris systems. And it is taking up roles that would otherwise go to Windows systems. Sun and Microsoft both lose out. And vendors who can not offer a Linux version are at a considerable disadvantage.
Sorry if that doesn't fit comfortably within your particular version of "reality". Though I can understand where you're coming from. My environment also has another group who are a militant Windows shop; anything that they deploy must be Windows. Anything they are assigned that is not already Windows must be migrated to Windows. I'm sure the perception that Linux doesn't affect Windows is quite at home in such a mindset.
Given what Oracle's problem _is_, probably what they _really_ want isn't regulation of the "you must prove that your software passes this and that criteria to be allowed to sell it." (Which would also raise entry barriers for competitors.) I mean, really, if you were a company which takes five fucking _years_ to bother patching a security hole, and even then only when an exploit was widely publicized, you're not going to ask for a regulation that'll ask you to pull the product off the market until you fix it.
The kind of regulation they want is more like "you're an evil irresponsible hacker and going to jail if you disclose bugs in someone else's product." Yes, it's security by obscurity. But that way Oracle can happily spew bullshit about being secure and unbreakable, and never have to fix any bugs.
I agree. I would also like to point out that regulatory bureaucracy can do a wonderful job at diverting attention away from real technical issues. Depending on how the regulatory requirements read, you can spend a lot of time and effort at compliance without actually solving anything practical. But you will look good on paper.
Looking good on paper despite the technical issues involved is the real bait-and-switch. Technical issues are difficult to understand without the right background. Many "bean counters" don't have that background. But they do understand bureaucracy. And so one can divert attention away from technical criticism if one can show the mountain of paperwork proving compliance with some regulatory specification.
This strikes me as part of an environment Oracle would like. Couple that with squelching critics that point out technical issues... and that environment becomes even more attractive.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow - way to provide an object lesson for the problem of a polarized political view. Go back and read what you replied to. You'll notice that the poster was not blaming data leaks and fishing on a Republican president. He was stating that the euphoric state is over. People now have concerns. And so Government naturally steps in to create laws in response.
Note again - no talk of Republican or Democrats. No blame for the issues at hand. And while specific legal subjects are mentioned, there isn't even any indication on how the author views them.
Because anyone who would question Microsoft's impact on the industry must be part of "a small, rabid corner of the IT world", right? Not just a minimal percentage of the population. But a rabid one. And by implication, obviously wrong.
Not that you don't have a fair point. A vast majority of the world doesn't have the background or interest to debate this... much less realize there's an issue to begin with. Just as a vast majority of the world also won't consider how Warren Buffett or any other past philanthropist conducted themselves in their given industries / business dealings. But ignorance of a question doesn't answer it.
Alright - fair enough. Analogies are rarely accurate and prone to extremes to make the point. However, fried chicken could only be called "healthy" when compared to something extremely unhealthy... such as smoking. And there are very few brands of cigarettes that don't include additives (ranging from the benign to very questionable). As bad analogies go, I don't think mine was THAT far off.
Amazing! I have the exact same password on my online storage account!
There's a difference between "I know this piece of fried chicken is bad for me" and "wow - this piece of fried chicken was prepared with rat poison because Fried Chicken Inc's research showed that rat poison would make me crave it more".
I would imagine the zone had some special importance. Perhaps it was the zone itself (I know folks who spend a lot of time there). Maybe it was the look of the place (different zones have very different appearances). Maybe they wanted somewhere neutral. Who knows. I would imagine that someone who put the effort to organizing the event would have had the sense to pick a faction-friendly zone if that particular point was a requirement.
Are you implying there can be only one?
Microsoft is a marketing organization that does business in various technology-related markets.
Sure. The mechanics allow you to be a complete ass. Have at it. But don't feign confusion when people point out that you're being an ass.
WoW is an interesting example. The mechanics of the game feeds hate. And not just because of PvP fighting. Blizzard goes out of their way to make it very difficult for enemy factions to even communicate (forgoing such language barriers with neutral factions able to communicate across the board). Yet I have fought against some very honorable individuals. I may ultimately hate their guts for pulling off some particular attack that thrashed my faction or my character. But I can respect them as enemies for not going beyond the pale and showing some degree of class. I respect them even more because this behavior is clearly their choice - they don't HAVE to.
Games are defined by the rules of that game. If you do not follow those rules... if you cheat... you are no longer playing the game. If you don't want to play the game, go find something else to do.
Having said that - I could do without the idiots who scream "cheater" every time some encounter in a game doesn't go the way they want or expected.
And the irony is, of course, that the unauthorized versions are likely to be more functional than the full-price official production.
Interesting point. But you ignore the entire market for these cheat codes... books, magazines, TV shows, web sites, etc.
And having said that... just how much of that driver code comes from Microsoft and how much comes from their OEM partners?
If I remember right "Slashdot" also noted that the RIAA should give up trying to sue services that didn't actually maintain copies of the works and member companies should adopt electronic distribution using open formats and reasonable rates while dropping the price of CDs. None of that happened. Trust the RIAA to pick the gonzo suggestion .
Windows' default settings syncs time with a time server to keep my local clock up to date. I can see why I would want that. Now... what's the advantage in "Genuine Advantage"?
IBM?
Distros don't support enterprises... companies with support contracts do.
Although - this one is an interesting variation. Instead of referring to the old product as junk, they're referring to their current lines as obviously broken and selling a service to help shore it up. That involves quite a balancing act.
There's also http://qdb.us/
When I read HD Radio being described as something not many people know about, I figured it must be because the author has the luck of not listening to any Clear Channel radio stations. Little wonder Clear Channel is a major invester - reminds me of the time they pushed their
Clearly, satalite radio has put pressure on someone's business model.
Sess, Baby... can I call you "Sess"?... anyway... Sess... what you clearly don't understand here is that "fidelity" is so nineteen-sixties. This is a new age! And we're not talking Aquarius. Har! Sess, Baby... the consumer is hip and modern. Its the Information Age and they want new, new, new. "High definition" is a term they already know. It's all the rage in television and that's just the bleeding-edge, early adopter, high-profit target in consumer electronics that we want to tap in to!
HP did not spring from the famous garage as "an office supply company". They have been innovators from their inception and I would judge from the growth the company had over the years that it was indeed profitable.
Shedding R&D staff and patents are boxing HP in to its current form. They are evolving in to a business entity highly dependent on the current environment. As you noted, their printer cartridge business is over-priced. That's a market poised to be underbid. And when that happens and the profits are drained from the one division "carrying the company" what do they do? Where is the next step?
Right. And Microsoft has done SO well at complying with various settlements.
Don't get me wrong - I agree with you in so far as we're not seeing any proof that Microsoft is behind this. But what you counter with is hardly a convincing reason against it.
There's a difference between working for someone and being on their beck-and-call (unless, of course, that's the job).
I guess it depends on your environment. In mine, Linux is supplanting Solaris systems. And it is taking up roles that would otherwise go to Windows systems. Sun and Microsoft both lose out. And vendors who can not offer a Linux version are at a considerable disadvantage.
Sorry if that doesn't fit comfortably within your particular version of "reality". Though I can understand where you're coming from. My environment also has another group who are a militant Windows shop; anything that they deploy must be Windows. Anything they are assigned that is not already Windows must be migrated to Windows. I'm sure the perception that Linux doesn't affect Windows is quite at home in such a mindset.
I agree. I would also like to point out that regulatory bureaucracy can do a wonderful job at diverting attention away from real technical issues. Depending on how the regulatory requirements read, you can spend a lot of time and effort at compliance without actually solving anything practical. But you will look good on paper.
Looking good on paper despite the technical issues involved is the real bait-and-switch. Technical issues are difficult to understand without the right background. Many "bean counters" don't have that background. But they do understand bureaucracy. And so one can divert attention away from technical criticism if one can show the mountain of paperwork proving compliance with some regulatory specification.
This strikes me as part of an environment Oracle would like. Couple that with squelching critics that point out technical issues... and that environment becomes even more attractive.