What exactly is the difference between setting up an account with Live or setting one up with an online game provider and then putting in the DVD or double clicking on an icon. You really don't know what you're talking about - millions of non-technical people play online games from MMORPGs to Poker.
Being able to script IE when you have to fill in the same web form several times with almost the same information held in an Excel spreadsheet is incredibly useful. It's the ability to run malicious code that should be stomped on not that superbly useful aspect of the tool.
It's the same sort of doublespeak as the German Democratic Republic (communist dictatorship), the People's Republic (fascist dictatorship) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (a bit of a mess run by various soldiers at various times). War is peace, freedom is slavery etc.
If you believe everyone hates you, then don't you think it would be a good idea to find out why (and no it isn't jealousy) and to do something about it? Not that most people described as US haters hate every single American - merely the US overclass who actually deserve it.
Agreed, although it's extremely hard to feel sorry for such a scummy industry. Perhaps if they did ethics and were about the music more than the money attitudes might be different. Having said that stealing from scumbags still doesn't make it right.
They haven't missed that connection, they're just not interested in it because it relates to the long-term and is incompatible with their goal of reducing corporate costs at all costs irrespective of any long-term consequences. Economists got it wrong with downsizing and with business process re-engineering, so my assertion that they're ignoring the long-term yet again has basis in historical analysis of economists' and business theorists' behaviour in the past. Again you've failed to point me to an argument that making your customers poorer is a good idea when you want to sell them things. Comparing me to creationists doesn't count as anything but a pointless attack especially when I've backed my opinion up with arguments that you are welcome to refute with logic, not with some specious article from some guy who has zero clue about the real effects of outsourcing on real people and just talks about the advantage that Filipinos have gained from that which although good for the individual Filipinos is not a lot of use to their economy or to ours and any advantage they've gained will be removed very quickly once somewhere cheaper comes along. Dirt cheap labour has never led to economic growth since most of the consumers will only buy the things they need to survive, not the consumer goods that have caused the explosive growth in Western economies in the last 75 years or so. Economics is not the exact science you seem to think it is. It's more like psychotherapy where some things are known but there are a lot of egos and a lot of conflicting opinions and a hell of a lot more study required yet.
Just because everyone in a particular field believe something doesn't mean it's true, see flat earth, illness caused by bad smells, use of leeches in medicine, the earth is the center of the universe etc etc. I say economists are wrong because they forget that employees are also consumers and that making them poorer and not enriching the third-worlders who now do their jobs is a recipe for disaster. You on the other hand keep banging on about Walmart which was a very small part of my argument. What part of that article do you want me to refute, since it isn't on the same level as me. I agree that sweatshop jobs are better than abject poverty, but people living on subsistence wages with no disposable income will not buy the products that drive economic growth. Can you point me to an economist who can tell me otherwise? Economists are not idiots, I think they're actually very clever, selling observations as established fact, and then changing their minds after making a mint on booksales. You might want to look up downsizing and business process re-engineering as an example of economic and business theorists getting it very wrong and admitting it. That's why I don't trust economists, I've seen what a crock the whole business theory industry is. You've yet to produce a single study or argument that proves that decreasing Western customers' disposable income and not increasing Far Eastern customers' is a good way to sell more products. If you can I'm willing to change my mind. We do agree on one thing; creationism is ridiculous.
Microsoft didn't have a monopoly in the server market (and you're also forgetting that Samba's reimplementaion of the SMB protocol helped a fair bit with Linux making inroads) and I'm at a loss to see where Google have shifted Microsoft from either total control of Office or Desktop markets. I know Win32 sucks big time but like or not we're stuck with it. The first question anyone asks me if I talk about Linux is "does it run application X" and I have to tell them no, there might be an equivalent but it doesn't have all the features and it can't read the files created by application X. So they stick with Windows, despite hating it because there is no realistic alternative. A re-implemention of Win32 is not illegal and indeed Codeweavers, Cedega and the Wine team have done sterling work in doing just that. Your last sentence has completely undermined the rest of your argument though as that is exactly what Microsoft have done and will continue to do unless forced to license Win32 to others as Intel felt the need to do with x86 to avoid anti-trust action. Now we have two major x86 manufacturers and a few minor ones instead of just one. In short, it doesn't matter how good the Linux desktop becomes; unless switching from Windows to it is close to painless very few people will switch, the utter crappiness of Win32 notwithstanding.
Well like the bespoke Windows-only apps I use every day at work, the games I play that are Windows-only (and no I'm not prepared to stop playing games I enjoy), a MS Office-compatible suite that isn't as slow as a slug, an email client that interfaces seamlessly with Exchange server, etc etc ad nauseum. Saying that Linux needs a Win32 compatibility layer is only common sense, given the huge inertia that the monopoly has created. As a similar example what is the first thing a customer would look for in a word processor? Intuitive interface, speed, price or ability to open all the documents they've already created in Word? Believing that a better product will automatically shift Microsoft on merit alone is incredibly naive, unless you believe that businesses will commit to billions of dollars of rewriting code and retraining staff for very little productivity benefit. I like Linux, I've used it since 1998, but in the desktop market, where one company has such a stranglehold, the only realistic way to loosen that stranglehold is to allow seamless migration away, much like Amdahl successfully challenged IBM's dominance in the mainframe market by offering a way to carry on running all the current mainframe systems with more power at a cheaper price.
Wrong. It's all the apps that don't have a Linux equivalent, including the bespoke ones, that are currently the roadblock. Any OS that wants to compete effectively with Windows needs to be able to run Win32 apps (or have enough realistic equivalents like Mac OS X) in order to make any headway in the monoculture that is the desktop market.
At the moment I pay £5.99 for the privilege of watching 3 dvds a month, or £2.50 per dvd hire from the local shop. I'd be delighted to pay £1.99 for stuff that I want to see whenever I want, my only option at the moment is to break the law for bittorrents which never seem to work anyway. I don't even agree with piracy, but sometimes I just wanted to watch stuff without waiting for the TV stations here to deign to show them again. If I can pay £1.99 a time for stuff that I want to watch ad-free at my convenience I'll be biting Steve Job's hand off. I doubt I'm alone in this.
And an economic crash is exactly what making their customers unable to afford their products is what is scarily possible. I'm confused as to why you're arguing a point that I didn't make about Walmart. They will do well no matter how poor their customers become because they sell very cheaply. I never said they wouldn't be able to adapt to a richer consumer, what I said was that it's convenient for them for the poor to remain poor since they will only be able to buy from Walmart or any other large volume retailers, not from any retailers further upmarket, requiring zero change to their business model. My point is that transferring well-paid jobs to sweatshops benefits neither us, who lose our disposable income, or the sweatshop workers who are exploited due to their desperation. Neither will be able to afford anything but the cheapest goods, which is not a good thing for the world economy. The history of the 20th century shows very obviously that when people were paid enough to afford the produce of the capitalist economy it grew astronomically, delivering all sorts of social and technological improvements as well. Capitalism started with the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century but nothing much changed for the ordinary person for about 150 years afterwards until corps were forced by unions to start sharing the wealth a bit more. Now the neo-liberals want to throw the baby out with the bathwater by 'flexible labour' practices. I also fail to see anything any less right-wing from your 'non-right' economist than I see everyday from the usual short termists that currently set world economic policy. Sweatshop jobs may be better than no jobs, but they certainly don't lead to economic growth, since economic growth comes from people having enough money to buy things they don't need to survive, like new cars, their own home, new furniture, electrical goods etc. How many of the average Filipino sweatshop workers can do that? Not to mention that as soon as somewhere else becomes cheaper those jobs vanish and they're no better off than they were before.
It's better for a company like Walmart for the population to stay poor as their business model is selling low margin goods as cheaply as possible. If people were richer they'd be shopping at more upmarket shops. I'm using Henry Ford as an example because, whatever his views on other things, he was a very successful businessman even though he paid his workers a decent wage. The current neo-liberal economic model of reducing labour costs by shipping well-paid or even averagely-paid jobs to third world countries has ignored the fact that workers in the West are not just an inconvenient drain on corporate profits they're also the people that buy the products produced. Walmart are unlikely to suffer the disastrous long-term consequences of making the average customer poorer since they sell stuff that even the poorest can afford, but makers and sellers of more expensive items are going to be in real trouble really soon. Don't hate the trade unions, my country (the UK) is a far less pleasant place to work without the protection they used to provide.
Walmart want the poor to stay poor since they will be unable to afford to shop anywhere else. I'm at a loss to see how that's good for the US (or the world) economy as a whole though. That arch-communist Henry Ford said something on the lines of "if you pay your workers a good wage they'll buy what you produce", but that sort of intelligent thought seems anathema to the ordinary worker-hating right.
I would say that the vast costs of cleaning up the various malware that only was able to propogate due to Microsoft's incompetence has hurt many industries including the IT one. They also encourage sloppy practices which makes us all look like fools. Having a common platform is a good idea. Having a bunch of greedy, unethical arseholes controlling it is not. Why licensing Win32 and Office to other vendors wasn't imposed on Microsoft as part of the anti-trust is a mystery to me. Intel licensing their technology to AMD actually improved matters in that area.
That was the attitude of the US car makers in the 50s and 60s. The Japanese wiped the floor with them. You can make a profit that way, just not the ridiculous monopoly billions that Microsoft have.
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly is the difference between setting up an account with Live or setting one up with an online game provider and then putting in the DVD or double clicking on an icon. You really don't know what you're talking about - millions of non-technical people play online games from MMORPGs to Poker.
Being able to script IE when you have to fill in the same web form several times with almost the same information held in an Excel spreadsheet is incredibly useful. It's the ability to run malicious code that should be stomped on not that superbly useful aspect of the tool.
It's the same sort of doublespeak as the German Democratic Republic (communist dictatorship), the People's Republic (fascist dictatorship) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (a bit of a mess run by various soldiers at various times). War is peace, freedom is slavery etc.
If you believe everyone hates you, then don't you think it would be a good idea to find out why (and no it isn't jealousy) and to do something about it? Not that most people described as US haters hate every single American - merely the US overclass who actually deserve it.
Agreed, although it's extremely hard to feel sorry for such a scummy industry. Perhaps if they did ethics and were about the music more than the money attitudes might be different. Having said that stealing from scumbags still doesn't make it right.
It can be uninstalled very easily. Try doing that with IE.
Does Solaris have to be called GNU/Solaris nowadays then?
They haven't missed that connection, they're just not interested in it because it relates to the long-term and is incompatible with their goal of reducing corporate costs at all costs irrespective of any long-term consequences. Economists got it wrong with downsizing and with business process re-engineering, so my assertion that they're ignoring the long-term yet again has basis in historical analysis of economists' and business theorists' behaviour in the past.
Again you've failed to point me to an argument that making your customers poorer is a good idea when you want to sell them things. Comparing me to creationists doesn't count as anything but a pointless attack especially when I've backed my opinion up with arguments that you are welcome to refute with logic, not with some specious article from some guy who has zero clue about the real effects of outsourcing on real people and just talks about the advantage that Filipinos have gained from that which although good for the individual Filipinos is not a lot of use to their economy or to ours and any advantage they've gained will be removed very quickly once somewhere cheaper comes along. Dirt cheap labour has never led to economic growth since most of the consumers will only buy the things they need to survive, not the consumer goods that have caused the explosive growth in Western economies in the last 75 years or so.
Economics is not the exact science you seem to think it is. It's more like psychotherapy where some things are known but there are a lot of egos and a lot of conflicting opinions and a hell of a lot more study required yet.
Neither do most corporate projects, what's your point?
Microsoft don't pay any tax anyway.
Just because everyone in a particular field believe something doesn't mean it's true, see flat earth, illness caused by bad smells, use of leeches in medicine, the earth is the center of the universe etc etc. I say economists are wrong because they forget that employees are also consumers and that making them poorer and not enriching the third-worlders who now do their jobs is a recipe for disaster. You on the other hand keep banging on about Walmart which was a very small part of my argument.
What part of that article do you want me to refute, since it isn't on the same level as me. I agree that sweatshop jobs are better than abject poverty, but people living on subsistence wages with no disposable income will not buy the products that drive economic growth. Can you point me to an economist who can tell me otherwise?
Economists are not idiots, I think they're actually very clever, selling observations as established fact, and then changing their minds after making a mint on booksales. You might want to look up downsizing and business process re-engineering as an example of economic and business theorists getting it very wrong and admitting it. That's why I don't trust economists, I've seen what a crock the whole business theory industry is.
You've yet to produce a single study or argument that proves that decreasing Western customers' disposable income and not increasing Far Eastern customers' is a good way to sell more products. If you can I'm willing to change my mind.
We do agree on one thing; creationism is ridiculous.
Microsoft didn't have a monopoly in the server market (and you're also forgetting that Samba's reimplementaion of the SMB protocol helped a fair bit with Linux making inroads) and I'm at a loss to see where Google have shifted Microsoft from either total control of Office or Desktop markets. I know Win32 sucks big time but like or not we're stuck with it. The first question anyone asks me if I talk about Linux is "does it run application X" and I have to tell them no, there might be an equivalent but it doesn't have all the features and it can't read the files created by application X. So they stick with Windows, despite hating it because there is no realistic alternative.
A re-implemention of Win32 is not illegal and indeed Codeweavers, Cedega and the Wine team have done sterling work in doing just that.
Your last sentence has completely undermined the rest of your argument though as that is exactly what Microsoft have done and will continue to do unless forced to license Win32 to others as Intel felt the need to do with x86 to avoid anti-trust action. Now we have two major x86 manufacturers and a few minor ones instead of just one.
In short, it doesn't matter how good the Linux desktop becomes; unless switching from Windows to it is close to painless very few people will switch, the utter crappiness of Win32 notwithstanding.
I've not noticed journalists who do this being sacked in the UK, the US media must be very truthful and unbiased.
Well like the bespoke Windows-only apps I use every day at work, the games I play that are Windows-only (and no I'm not prepared to stop playing games I enjoy), a MS Office-compatible suite that isn't as slow as a slug, an email client that interfaces seamlessly with Exchange server, etc etc ad nauseum. Saying that Linux needs a Win32 compatibility layer is only common sense, given the huge inertia that the monopoly has created.
As a similar example what is the first thing a customer would look for in a word processor? Intuitive interface, speed, price or ability to open all the documents they've already created in Word?
Believing that a better product will automatically shift Microsoft on merit alone is incredibly naive, unless you believe that businesses will commit to billions of dollars of rewriting code and retraining staff for very little productivity benefit.
I like Linux, I've used it since 1998, but in the desktop market, where one company has such a stranglehold, the only realistic way to loosen that stranglehold is to allow seamless migration away, much like Amdahl successfully challenged IBM's dominance in the mainframe market by offering a way to carry on running all the current mainframe systems with more power at a cheaper price.
Wrong. It's all the apps that don't have a Linux equivalent, including the bespoke ones, that are currently the roadblock. Any OS that wants to compete effectively with Windows needs to be able to run Win32 apps (or have enough realistic equivalents like Mac OS X) in order to make any headway in the monoculture that is the desktop market.
The average person is not a network engineer.
Assembly is really just human-readable machine code.
For a certain value of $HUMAN
Until you remember that the Irish tell more Irish jokes than anyone else and don't really give a shit about the prejudice they used to suffer.
At the moment I pay £5.99 for the privilege of watching 3 dvds a month, or £2.50 per dvd hire from the local shop. I'd be delighted to pay £1.99 for stuff that I want to see whenever I want, my only option at the moment is to break the law for bittorrents which never seem to work anyway. I don't even agree with piracy, but sometimes I just wanted to watch stuff without waiting for the TV stations here to deign to show them again. If I can pay £1.99 a time for stuff that I want to watch ad-free at my convenience I'll be biting Steve Job's hand off. I doubt I'm alone in this.
And an economic crash is exactly what making their customers unable to afford their products is what is scarily possible.
I'm confused as to why you're arguing a point that I didn't make about Walmart. They will do well no matter how poor their customers become because they sell very cheaply. I never said they wouldn't be able to adapt to a richer consumer, what I said was that it's convenient for them for the poor to remain poor since they will only be able to buy from Walmart or any other large volume retailers, not from any retailers further upmarket, requiring zero change to their business model.
My point is that transferring well-paid jobs to sweatshops benefits neither us, who lose our disposable income, or the sweatshop workers who are exploited due to their desperation. Neither will be able to afford anything but the cheapest goods, which is not a good thing for the world economy.
The history of the 20th century shows very obviously that when people were paid enough to afford the produce of the capitalist economy it grew astronomically, delivering all sorts of social and technological improvements as well.
Capitalism started with the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century but nothing much changed for the ordinary person for about 150 years afterwards until corps were forced by unions to start sharing the wealth a bit more. Now the neo-liberals want to throw the baby out with the bathwater by 'flexible labour' practices.
I also fail to see anything any less right-wing from your 'non-right' economist than I see everyday from the usual short termists that currently set world economic policy. Sweatshop jobs may be better than no jobs, but they certainly don't lead to economic growth, since economic growth comes from people having enough money to buy things they don't need to survive, like new cars, their own home, new furniture, electrical goods etc. How many of the average Filipino sweatshop workers can do that? Not to mention that as soon as somewhere else becomes cheaper those jobs vanish and they're no better off than they were before.
It's better for a company like Walmart for the population to stay poor as their business model is selling low margin goods as cheaply as possible. If people were richer they'd be shopping at more upmarket shops. I'm using Henry Ford as an example because, whatever his views on other things, he was a very successful businessman even though he paid his workers a decent wage.
The current neo-liberal economic model of reducing labour costs by shipping well-paid or even averagely-paid jobs to third world countries has ignored the fact that workers in the West are not just an inconvenient drain on corporate profits they're also the people that buy the products produced. Walmart are unlikely to suffer the disastrous long-term consequences of making the average customer poorer since they sell stuff that even the poorest can afford, but makers and sellers of more expensive items are going to be in real trouble really soon.
Don't hate the trade unions, my country (the UK) is a far less pleasant place to work without the protection they used to provide.
Walmart want the poor to stay poor since they will be unable to afford to shop anywhere else. I'm at a loss to see how that's good for the US (or the world) economy as a whole though. That arch-communist Henry Ford said something on the lines of "if you pay your workers a good wage they'll buy what you produce", but that sort of intelligent thought seems anathema to the ordinary worker-hating right.
And how many of the ignorant Yanks on here could even point to any of those countries on a map (aaagh my poor karma).
I would say that the vast costs of cleaning up the various malware that only was able to propogate due to Microsoft's incompetence has hurt many industries including the IT one.
They also encourage sloppy practices which makes us all look like fools.
Having a common platform is a good idea. Having a bunch of greedy, unethical arseholes controlling it is not. Why licensing Win32 and Office to other vendors wasn't imposed on Microsoft as part of the anti-trust is a mystery to me. Intel licensing their technology to AMD actually improved matters in that area.
That was the attitude of the US car makers in the 50s and 60s. The Japanese wiped the floor with them. You can make a profit that way, just not the ridiculous monopoly billions that Microsoft have.