All of those points are true, but that goes a tad beyond the scope of my original post.
The parent of my first post implied that the states are arguing that users have no choice of Internet browser. Like I said, the efforts of MS against and ramifications of using another browser (as you pointed out) are certainly factors in the decision, but my point is that despite all that, the decision remains in the hands of the users.
Now if MS downright disallowed the installation of another Internet browser, the states would have a more solid argument.
Perhaps I'm taking you a bit too literally, but what is stopping people from installing and using another browser? Just because IE is always present doesn't necessarily mean that one HAS to use it (no matter how hard M$ tries to prevent you from using another browser, which is another matter altogether).
The fact now is that you CAN use another browser, and if the states are arguing that people have no choice in the matter, they are doomed to failure.
You can be pleasant and compassionate all you like, but chances are that you'll be the guy management decides they can walk all over, because you are the least likely to put up a fight.
Contrary to what you've likely read on this site, being ambitious (and wanting to be successful/make money) doesn't make you an evil person. Showing a little heart, in fact, could be the one factor that lets you keep your job.
If you want to be the mild-mannered, unemployed nice guy, that's fine. Personally, I'd prefer to do whatever I can to keep my job.
That, and in the uncut version, Spike yells "SHIT!" when he and Bumblebee fail to blow up Unicron... but i don't think that version ever got to the US theaters, and I wouldn't have known about it if it weren't for that nice special edition DVD that Rhino released about a y ear ago.
But when an entertainer (artist isn't an accurate term, IMHO) chooses B, they have no business complaining about the actions of the RIAA.
People who argue against the RIAA (and rightfully so, I believe) have to realize that in doing so, they are also opposing many of the artists they claim to be fighting for.
"When will she realize that there's more to creating music than money? Artists create because they enjoy doing so."
But if they weren't, in fact, in it for the money, and just creating their music just "because they enjoy doing so," they wouldn't be signing multi-million dollar contracts with these labels, now would they?
"Do you honestly think people with hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s would have bought all that music if they couldn't pirate it for free?"
First of all, I don't think that most of the people we're talking about have "hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s". I'm talking about the more-common person who has, say, 20 GB of MP3s.
Knowing some of the CD collections my friends have, it's certainly not a stretch to say that alot of people can afford to maintain large (100+) CD collections.
If my friend chose, instead, to copy those CD's from someone else, that's a good chunk of change he's saving (and the record labels are losing).
The problem isn't in the one person copying the $2,000,000 piece of software or hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s, because we all know that most people couldn't normally afford that.
The problem is the majority who copy a moderate amount of CD's, and download a moderate amoung of MP3s, that COULD otherwise afford paying for the music legitimately.
It's not a large profit at first, but someone who copies a CD off of a friend, for his own enjoyment, is profitting about $15.00 - $20.00... the cost of buying the CD himself.
Now compound this by, for example, that this person copies 20 CD's from his friends, all for his own enjoyment, he has made a profit between $300.00 and $400.00.
Re:Becuase of Stupidity of course
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"It's becoming more and more common that the "Internet" is just Internet Explorer to most people."
Very true! I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the first contact many people had with "The Internet" was Internet Explorer... which was conveniently disguised by that "The Internet" icon in early versions of Windows 9x.
It's no wonder why people use Internet Explorer and The Internet synonymously.
I gotta say, reading that almost made my fall out of my seat laughing. Flamebait, yes, but it should get a balancing "Funny" moderation as well, because come on, folks, that shit is funny!
I suggest you direct your question to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution - "Congressional Authority to Establish Uniform Rules of Naturalization"
Is the right of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to be here now considered an "essential liberty"? People have used that phrase to justify alot, and frankly, I'm not buying it this time either.
The problem is that we have identified our vulnerabilities (a huge one of which is illegal immigrants) but refuse to confront them out of fear of the PC crowd. Toss out everyone who is here illegally, and we wouldn't have need of this crackpot National ID card.
I know I'll probably be modded down for this, even though fundamentally I wholeheartedly disagree with a National ID card, but it has to be said by someone.
"The Seattle Times is reporting that Mark Forman, associate director of information technology at the White House (or 'America's CIO', as he bills himself) has said the feds are considering the use of Microsoft's Passport technology to ID every citizen and every business seeking access to government services online."
Besides those doing taxes online, this pertains to a remarkably few individuals.
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with some fabled Microsoft National ID Card. You really should read things more carefully before launching paranoid rants based on a limited understanding of the topic at hand.
The companies did not give a price but said it would depend partly on how much equipment was already on board. Many planes already have some satellite communication gear for passenger seat-back telephones and for the cockpit crew to use to communicate with the airline or maintenance base.
And you thought those seat-back telephones were expensive...
"In this case, it's more like the crooked Quickie-Mart mart employee walking up to random 16 year old and trying to sell her some cigarettes and then getting busted."
I completely disagree with this. This is about the police trying to trick people into committing a crime they otherwise MAY not.
Sure, it's likely that these people would just be stealing other cars, but the law doesn't operate on the likelihood of a person to commit a crime.
Sounds like entrapment to me, but the police get away with this all the time.
I'm not sure how common this is in other states, but here in Pennsylvania, it is a standard practice for the police to send a 16-yr old into a Quickie-Mart to try to get the clerk to (illegally) sell them cigarettes.
Do the police not have enough real crimes to solve that they have to manufacture them? Comon now...
That's an interesting point. If any good can come from this, it may encourage the Government (TM) to keep a tighter leash on Microsoft and require them to work on other OS's.
If Passport only worked on machines with a Microsoft OS, that would be breaking all sorts of accessibility laws.
20 cents, last I checked (about 1 minute ago) was about 9.8 rupees. Sounds like a good chunk of change to be paying for music over in India, if you ask me.
This type of comment doesn't really reflect a whole lot of intelligence or common sense, and here's why.
Your post starts by praising AMD for its quality products and valuable market role. After reading the rest of the post, however, it's hard to understand why you would want to boycott AMD simply because of their agreeing with Microsoft, regardless of whether or not AMD produces a superior product.
I really don't mean this to be a troll, but does AMD's support of Microsoft really make that much of a difference?
If I recall correctly, AMD was once hailed as the Linux of CPU's because they provided an inexpensive and valid competition to the (then evil) Intel juggernaught, who at the time had a rather strong relationship with Microsoft. Apparently the Slashdot community is now prepared to completely reverses that sentiment, condemning AMD and praising Intel.
If your perception of a product's quality depends solely on it's relationship with Microsoft, you really need to be more critical of the product itself, and less concerned with their affiliations.
I saw a few complaints that the site was Slashdotted, so here it is for the mega-bandwidth-impaired:
Work from Home. There are about 23,958 of these signs in Sacramento. That is an exaggeration, but they really are everywhere. They are nailed to telephone poles and zip-tied to chain-link fences. There are new designs all the time. All of them have a mysterious lack of information regarding what company or scheme they are promoting.
I was always sure they were promoting a scam, I mean, people with a real money-making opportunity don't have to post it on telephone poles. They guard it with encrypted emails, copyrights and lawyers. I never bothered calling the numbers, although I was curious. When I was working at MCI back in 1998, I learned that all toll-free numbers reveal your phone number when you call them, so I didn't want to call from my home phone.
While taking photos for the "Why would anyone want to visit Sacramento" story, I was spending a lot of time driving around taking photos. I tore down a bunch of these signs, but it seemed like a hopeless endeavor...there were hundreds of them, and they've been around for years.
Finally, one night on Yahoo Messenger, my friend Ross suggested that I do some investigation and report on what I find. He suggested that I call them up from a pay phone & track down what they were all about. I wasn't too excited about it, after all, I was sure it was a scam.
The very next day, I wrote down seven of the toll-free phone numbers and called them.
The first one was 800-326-2016.
I was sure I would just be listening to message-machines, so I wasn't nervous about calling them. The first one was a message about how mail order is the best business in the world, how it wasn't a "get-rich-quick scheme", and about how they "need help in their business". It asked me to leave my address at the tone, so they could send me a 14-page report. The message didn't say what the company was...just that it was a Fortune 500 company, described as the "fastest growing company in the industry".
Alright, well, I hung up without leaving a message. Then I called the next three numbers. 800-756-8424, 800-296-7519, and 800-213-6421.
They all had the SAME message. It was a woman's voice, and she started the message with a distinctive "Ya know". In the upcoming days of phone number investigation, I heard this message dozens of times. The next one was a wrong number, the sixth number was the "ya know" message. The seventh number had a different message, but it had some aspects of the first message, "20-year industry leader" and "tap into mail-order". This message, too, was an effort to send me a 14-page booklet.
Well. I was stunned. These signs were all over town, in scores of different designs, and they were all the work of one company. A super-secret Fortune 500 company that never put it's name of it's ugly ever-present signs. I walked down to the mini-mart with my head spinning. All of these signs...all of this trash...all over Sacramento. One company was responsible. I had to track them down & I had to expose them! Also, I had to get photos of the offending signs & start keeping track of the numbers so I could build a convincing case and find the whole story. Maybe my sign-sample just happened to have one source.
On the way back from the mini-mart, I found a little one of these dumb mini-fliers taped to a news stand. It had the tell-tale figures of my mystery company, $500-$3,000/mo pt, $3,000-$10,000/mo ft. I immediately knew...it was the same people.
It was exciting... I was almost scared. This company obviously had lots of people working in all sorts of ways trying to recruit new people into the business. I figured it must be a multi-level marketing company, like Amway, but I wasn't sure what the company was yet.
The next day I woke up early and took more photo of signs, making note of the phone numbers. This isn't hard in Sacramento...they are all over the place. I found about 15 varieties in West Sacramento and Downtown. I also photographed bunch of "lose weight now" and "I lost 30lbs. in 30 days" signs, and one "Sal's Tacos" sign.
While I have little first-hand experience in the corporate IT world, I would expect that many private-sector employees are faced with the same difficulties you described: substandard hardware, long workdays. Let's not forget the seemingly constant corporate downsizing that must present its own staffing issues to those spared by the axe, and the added stress of fearing you may be next.
I believe you and I are on the same side here, but the headline implied that government jobs were far inferior to private sector jobs. In terms of raw salary, you're probably right. But until the private sector can offer the same job security and benefits I'm getting from the government, I have no intention of hopping the fence to the grass that might be greener, but more likely to turn brown and die in the event of another economic drought.
As I've posted before, I'm a government IT employee. My brother just so happens to be on the corporate side of that fence.
I have a stable job, get paid regularly, and have a decent benefits package. My brother, on the other hand, got shafted on a stock option package, is owed several weeks' pay (with little promise of ever getting it), and works for a company that is on the edge of bankruptcy.
When the author of the headline says "until perhaps, the government IT workers realize the grass really is greener on the corporate side of the fence..." he obviously is very ignorant of the current private sector conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
What other piece of buggy software in history ever caused as much widespread collective apoplexy? :)
The parent of my first post implied that the states are arguing that users have no choice of Internet browser. Like I said, the efforts of MS against and ramifications of using another browser (as you pointed out) are certainly factors in the decision, but my point is that despite all that, the decision remains in the hands of the users.
Now if MS downright disallowed the installation of another Internet browser, the states would have a more solid argument.
The fact now is that you CAN use another browser, and if the states are arguing that people have no choice in the matter, they are doomed to failure.
Contrary to what you've likely read on this site, being ambitious (and wanting to be successful/make money) doesn't make you an evil person. Showing a little heart, in fact, could be the one factor that lets you keep your job.
If you want to be the mild-mannered, unemployed nice guy, that's fine. Personally, I'd prefer to do whatever I can to keep my job.
That, and in the uncut version, Spike yells "SHIT!" when he and Bumblebee fail to blow up Unicron... but i don't think that version ever got to the US theaters, and I wouldn't have known about it if it weren't for that nice special edition DVD that Rhino released about a y ear ago.
People who argue against the RIAA (and rightfully so, I believe) have to realize that in doing so, they are also opposing many of the artists they claim to be fighting for.
But if they weren't, in fact, in it for the money, and just creating their music just "because they enjoy doing so," they wouldn't be signing multi-million dollar contracts with these labels, now would they?
First of all, I don't think that most of the people we're talking about have "hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s". I'm talking about the more-common person who has, say, 20 GB of MP3s.
Knowing some of the CD collections my friends have, it's certainly not a stretch to say that alot of people can afford to maintain large (100+) CD collections.
If my friend chose, instead, to copy those CD's from someone else, that's a good chunk of change he's saving (and the record labels are losing).
The problem isn't in the one person copying the $2,000,000 piece of software or hundreds of gigabytes of MP3s, because we all know that most people couldn't normally afford that.
The problem is the majority who copy a moderate amount of CD's, and download a moderate amoung of MP3s, that COULD otherwise afford paying for the music legitimately.
Now compound this by, for example, that this person copies 20 CD's from his friends, all for his own enjoyment, he has made a profit between $300.00 and $400.00.
Very true! I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the first contact many people had with "The Internet" was Internet Explorer... which was conveniently disguised by that "The Internet" icon in early versions of Windows 9x.
It's no wonder why people use Internet Explorer and The Internet synonymously.
Let's not forget how disruptive it would be for all of the technically-declined people who would suddenly not know how to use their computers.
Sure, it COULD be done, but would it really be doing the users of those computers any favors?
I gotta say, reading that almost made my fall out of my seat laughing. Flamebait, yes, but it should get a balancing "Funny" moderation as well, because come on, folks, that shit is funny!
I suggest you direct your question to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution - "Congressional Authority to Establish Uniform Rules of Naturalization"
The problem is that we have identified our vulnerabilities (a huge one of which is illegal immigrants) but refuse to confront them out of fear of the PC crowd. Toss out everyone who is here illegally, and we wouldn't have need of this crackpot National ID card.
I know I'll probably be modded down for this, even though fundamentally I wholeheartedly disagree with a National ID card, but it has to be said by someone.
"The Seattle Times is reporting that Mark Forman, associate director of information technology at the White House (or 'America's CIO', as he bills himself) has said the feds are considering the use of Microsoft's Passport technology to ID every citizen and every business seeking access to government services online."
Besides those doing taxes online, this pertains to a remarkably few individuals.
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with some fabled Microsoft National ID Card. You really should read things more carefully before launching paranoid rants based on a limited understanding of the topic at hand.
And you thought those seat-back telephones were expensive...
I completely disagree with this. This is about the police trying to trick people into committing a crime they otherwise MAY not.
Sure, it's likely that these people would just be stealing other cars, but the law doesn't operate on the likelihood of a person to commit a crime.
I'm not sure how common this is in other states, but here in Pennsylvania, it is a standard practice for the police to send a 16-yr old into a Quickie-Mart to try to get the clerk to (illegally) sell them cigarettes.
Do the police not have enough real crimes to solve that they have to manufacture them? Comon now...
If Passport only worked on machines with a Microsoft OS, that would be breaking all sorts of accessibility laws.
This sort of puts that in perspective, doesn't it? :)
You're quite welcome. :)
Your post starts by praising AMD for its quality products and valuable market role. After reading the rest of the post, however, it's hard to understand why you would want to boycott AMD simply because of their agreeing with Microsoft, regardless of whether or not AMD produces a superior product.
I really don't mean this to be a troll, but does AMD's support of Microsoft really make that much of a difference?
If I recall correctly, AMD was once hailed as the Linux of CPU's because they provided an inexpensive and valid competition to the (then evil) Intel juggernaught, who at the time had a rather strong relationship with Microsoft. Apparently the Slashdot community is now prepared to completely reverses that sentiment, condemning AMD and praising Intel.
If your perception of a product's quality depends solely on it's relationship with Microsoft, you really need to be more critical of the product itself, and less concerned with their affiliations.
Work from Home.
There are about 23,958 of these signs in Sacramento. That is an exaggeration, but they really are everywhere. They are nailed to telephone poles and zip-tied to chain-link fences. There are new designs all the time. All of them have a mysterious lack of information regarding what company or scheme they are promoting.
I was always sure they were promoting a scam, I mean, people with a real money-making opportunity don't have to post it on telephone poles. They guard it with encrypted emails, copyrights and lawyers. I never bothered calling the numbers, although I was curious. When I was working at MCI back in 1998, I learned that all toll-free numbers reveal your phone number when you call them, so I didn't want to call from my home phone.
While taking photos for the "Why would anyone want to visit Sacramento" story, I was spending a lot of time driving around taking photos. I tore down a bunch of these signs, but it seemed like a hopeless endeavor...there were hundreds of them, and they've been around for years.
Finally, one night on Yahoo Messenger, my friend Ross suggested that I do some investigation and report on what I find. He suggested that I call them up from a pay phone & track down what they were all about. I wasn't too excited about it, after all, I was sure it was a scam.
The very next day, I wrote down seven of the toll-free phone numbers and called them.
The first one was 800-326-2016.
I was sure I would just be listening to message-machines, so I wasn't nervous about calling them. The first one was a message about how mail order is the best business in the world, how it wasn't a "get-rich-quick scheme", and about how they "need help in their business". It asked me to leave my address at the tone, so they could send me a 14-page report. The message didn't say what the company was...just that it was a Fortune 500 company, described as the "fastest growing company in the industry".
Alright, well, I hung up without leaving a message. Then I called the next three numbers.
800-756-8424, 800-296-7519, and 800-213-6421.
They all had the SAME message. It was a woman's voice, and she started the message with a distinctive "Ya know". In the upcoming days of phone number investigation, I heard this message dozens of times. The next one was a wrong number, the sixth number was the "ya know" message. The seventh number had a different message, but it had some aspects of the first message, "20-year industry leader" and "tap into mail-order". This message, too, was an effort to send me a 14-page booklet.
Well. I was stunned. These signs were all over town, in scores of different designs, and they were all the work of one company. A super-secret Fortune 500 company that never put it's name of it's ugly ever-present signs.
I walked down to the mini-mart with my head spinning. All of these signs...all of this trash...all over Sacramento. One company was responsible. I had to track them down & I had to expose them! Also, I had to get photos of the offending signs & start keeping track of the numbers so I could build a convincing case and find the whole story. Maybe my sign-sample just happened to have one source.
On the way back from the mini-mart, I found a little one of these dumb mini-fliers taped to a news stand. It had the tell-tale figures of my mystery company, $500-$3,000/mo pt, $3,000-$10,000/mo ft. I immediately knew...it was the same people.
It was exciting... I was almost scared.
This company obviously had lots of people working in all sorts of ways trying to recruit new people into the business. I figured it must be a multi-level marketing company, like Amway, but I wasn't sure what the company was yet.
The next day I woke up early and took more photo of signs, making note of the phone numbers. This isn't hard in Sacramento...they are all over the place. I found about 15 varieties in West Sacramento and Downtown. I also photographed bunch of "lose weight now" and "I lost 30lbs. in 30 days" signs, and one "Sal's Tacos" sign.
I believe you and I are on the same side here, but the headline implied that government jobs were far inferior to private sector jobs. In terms of raw salary, you're probably right. But until the private sector can offer the same job security and benefits I'm getting from the government, I have no intention of hopping the fence to the grass that might be greener, but more likely to turn brown and die in the event of another economic drought.
I have a stable job, get paid regularly, and have a decent benefits package. My brother, on the other hand, got shafted on a stock option package, is owed several weeks' pay (with little promise of ever getting it), and works for a company that is on the edge of bankruptcy.
When the author of the headline says "until perhaps, the government IT workers realize the grass really is greener on the corporate side of the fence..." he obviously is very ignorant of the current private sector conditions.