Um, weren't we saying this to IBM a decade or two ago?
IBM seems to have gotten the message. Instead of rolling over everything in their path, they're playing from a position of pure self-interest - *and they aren't making any bones about it*. No bullshit, no used-car salesman tactics, just a "it's good for you, it's good for us, everyone wins and we make a nice fat profit in the process" attitude.
This is a refreshing reversal of past IBM business practices, and one I was quite suspicious of when I first saw it crop up. But they haven't dipped into the bullshit well, they haven't taken a nauseating 'higher goals' ground, they haven't done any of the things that would make me stop and say "okay, what the fuck is really going on here?"
Just honest capitalism from start to finish. Honest capitalism generated purely out of self-interest which - contrary to the socialist party line - results in benefits for both IBM AND folks who use Linux. Who'da thunk it?
If IBM can learn new tricks (admittedly, over the course of two decades) perhaps Microsoft can do. I seriously doubt it since Microsoft seems to be even slimier than IBM was at its worst, but there's no harm in trying.
No, it limits it's portability. I could give you the source code for a Star Trek game I wrote in APL for an old IBM mainframe which discontinued production over 25 years ago; despite the fact that the source would be open (even free, if I gave it away) it wouldn't be portable in the slightest.
Portability has nothing to do with whether or not the source is open.
Bullshit. Open source means the source is open. This 'definition' you provide mixes the idea of open source and free software in an unacceptable manner.
They did so in part to better protect their consumer, but also to dodge the baseless accusation made above.
I don't know how they do business nowadays, but this was the way things were done when I contracted for them. I know, I was there. You can say whatever you want about this being a "hoax" or a "baseless accusation", but it doesn't change what I know to be true.
The only thing I'll say further on the matter is that this occurred over seven years ago. It's possible that the company changed it's modus operandi since then. I don't know if they have, and I don't really care; Symantec was such a corrupt little shit-hole of a company I pledged I'd never work for them again no matter how lucrative the contract, and I haven't.
Some years ago I contracted with Symantec for about five months and worked closely with several of their departments, including the folks who did tech support for their anti-virus software. During that time Symantec offered a cash bounty to any techie who brought in a virus 'from the wild' that wasn't covered by the their antivirus software.
It was common knowledge that many of these 'wild' viruses were actually, in fact, written by the support staff themselves in order to collect on the bounty. But Symantec didn't care because this just allowed them to enlarge their virus definition file and show their customers why it was important to subscribe to their update service. From my point of view it was a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" sort of thing.
This was one of just many things about Symantec which disgusted me so much that after that contract I refused to work with them ever again. I don't know if they still have an update service for their anti-virus software, but it wouldn't surprise me if many of our future 64-bit viruses came directly from employees of Symantec itself.
It's a great business model: release the viruses, then sell the software that combats those viruses. Unethical and illegal, but a solid money-maker for those who don't care about such trivial things.
Mouse gestures... well I still don't see the point.
To each his own. I can't live without 'em now. In fact, I use the gestures so much I'll often try to open new windows, go back, etc. in my file manager and other apps via mouse gesture and wonder why the hell it isn't working.
I expect within five years other programs will also incorporate mouse gestures as well, for those of us who happen to like them.
And yet in terms of RAM footprint Opera kicks the asses of both browsers. But since slashdot is typically a haven for mozilla zealots, we don't see that popping up as a reason to use Opera over mozilla, now do we?
I'm no mensa member, but I can spot a pattern here.
If you were a Mensa member you'd be spending so much time praising your own intellect and insulting your 'inferiors' the pattern would make a 'whooshing' sound as it flew over your head, unnoticed in the neon glare of your ego.
The only reason I rented ep 2 on video was to watch the luscious Natalie Portman. Since eps 7, 8, and 9 won't have this little hottie in them strutting her stuff, what exactly is supposed to be the draw?
Most European nations are even less free than America is. It won't be Europe that's laughing all the way to the bank, but up-and-coming nations with little to lose and even less to gain by listening to the U.S. or some European former great power, e.g., Brazil or Indonesia.
However, these means are the primary ways of detecting terrorist chatter.
So we're told. Where are the statistics? How many so-called 'terrorists' have been caught via tapping phones and reading email in the last three years? I want *hard evidence* with *court convictions*, not just some bullshit handed to me by the very government with a vested interest in spying on it's citizenry.
And please, let's cut the 'terrorist' crap. These so-called terrorists are just criminal nutbags, like any other criminal nutbag. If a guy climbs the clock tower and starts gunning down students we don't call him a 'terrorist' and go 'oooh, he must want to destroy our way of life!', we call him a FUCKING NUTBAG - BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HE IS.
Terrorists aren't a special form of psychopath, with grand conspiracies and special superpowers. They're just crazy assholes, no different than all the other crazy assholes in the world.
It's that in a capitalist economy, power comes along with money. This is a universal constant.
You forgot the primary difference between government and players in the free market: the government enforces its will on you whether you like it or not, through the threat or actual use of violence.
All laws issue from the point of a gun. Government rules by force. Businesses do not. The free market is free because you can refuse to have dealings with player A and instead choose to dicker with player B. With government, refusal to deal with the only player on the field will end up with you either in jail or dead.
It's one of the biggest arguments for a weak, heavily restricted government. Not only is the ability of the government to inflict violence on its citizenry limited, but the ability of businesses to buy government violence is similarly curtailed.
The electricity accelerates the process. But the fact is you can just drop concrete tubes in appropriate places and coral will grow on them, unaided. It's being done right now in many countries, the U.S. being one of them.
I'm not trying to flame such people, as I honestly feel I don't understand them
There's nothing to understand. They're religious nutbags like any other, with some vague 'Mother Earth' or 'Gaia' as their god.
What really amuses the hell out of me are the ones who think that we should not only freeze-frame the entire planet in stasis as it exists right now, but also give up technology altogether and go back to "the good ol' days", when humans died at the age of 35 and starved one out of every three years.
We can thank the various and sundry non-Gaian gods that these genetic disasters are just a tiny minority of the population, if a rather loud and whiny one. Can you even begin to imagine what they'd do to the rest of us if they had any power at all? They'd make the Crusaders look like a knitting circle.
They don't just die down everyone once in awhile, they're wiped out completely. After a few million years another coral-like life form evolves and new reefs pop up.
Corals have a history of going extinct and then evolving again.
But within the lifetime of any single coral species, they also have sudden and dramatic diebacks whenever conditions change (sometimes just slightly).
inviting the response, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth:
"O Evil capitalists of the First World! Indulging in such wasteful light pollution! Bow your heads in shame!"
Left-wing socialist nutbags, if there's one thing you're good for it's pissing on *anyone's* parade, any time, for any reason. You boys are the reason Prozac was invented.
And let's not forget they're also a bunch of unwashed savages whose continental pastime seems to be having a go at one another with machetes over tribal or religious differences.
Slashdot Mirror
perhaps MS is changing, it's the Linux zealots who are so blinded by their religion that they can't see it.
Yes, and we can see how your impartial view of the matter is worth considering. And your sig just impresses us further.
Max
Um, weren't we saying this to IBM a decade or two ago?
IBM seems to have gotten the message. Instead of rolling over everything in their path, they're playing from a position of pure self-interest - *and they aren't making any bones about it*. No bullshit, no used-car salesman tactics, just a "it's good for you, it's good for us, everyone wins and we make a nice fat profit in the process" attitude.
This is a refreshing reversal of past IBM business practices, and one I was quite suspicious of when I first saw it crop up. But they haven't dipped into the bullshit well, they haven't taken a nauseating 'higher goals' ground, they haven't done any of the things that would make me stop and say "okay, what the fuck is really going on here?"
Just honest capitalism from start to finish. Honest capitalism generated purely out of self-interest which - contrary to the socialist party line - results in benefits for both IBM AND folks who use Linux. Who'da thunk it?
If IBM can learn new tricks (admittedly, over the course of two decades) perhaps Microsoft can do. I seriously doubt it since Microsoft seems to be even slimier than IBM was at its worst, but there's no harm in trying.
Max
If it's not portable, that limits its open-ness.
No, it limits it's portability. I could give you the source code for a Star Trek game I wrote in APL for an old IBM mainframe which discontinued production over 25 years ago; despite the fact that the source would be open (even free, if I gave it away) it wouldn't be portable in the slightest.
Portability has nothing to do with whether or not the source is open.
Max
Bullshit. Open source means the source is open. This 'definition' you provide mixes the idea of open source and free software in an unacceptable manner.
Max
They did so in part to better protect their consumer, but also to dodge the baseless accusation made above.
I don't know how they do business nowadays, but this was the way things were done when I contracted for them. I know, I was there. You can say whatever you want about this being a "hoax" or a "baseless accusation", but it doesn't change what I know to be true.
The only thing I'll say further on the matter is that this occurred over seven years ago. It's possible that the company changed it's modus operandi since then. I don't know if they have, and I don't really care; Symantec was such a corrupt little shit-hole of a company I pledged I'd never work for them again no matter how lucrative the contract, and I haven't.
Max
Some years ago I contracted with Symantec for about five months and worked closely with several of their departments, including the folks who did tech support for their anti-virus software. During that time Symantec offered a cash bounty to any techie who brought in a virus 'from the wild' that wasn't covered by the their antivirus software.
It was common knowledge that many of these 'wild' viruses were actually, in fact, written by the support staff themselves in order to collect on the bounty. But Symantec didn't care because this just allowed them to enlarge their virus definition file and show their customers why it was important to subscribe to their update service. From my point of view it was a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" sort of thing.
This was one of just many things about Symantec which disgusted me so much that after that contract I refused to work with them ever again. I don't know if they still have an update service for their anti-virus software, but it wouldn't surprise me if many of our future 64-bit viruses came directly from employees of Symantec itself.
It's a great business model: release the viruses, then sell the software that combats those viruses. Unethical and illegal, but a solid money-maker for those who don't care about such trivial things.
Max
Opera 6.06 is a bit old. All of these pages work just fine in any recent version of Opera (tried it on both the Linux and Windows version to be sure).
Completely off-topic: really like the first set. I don't think I've seen anything quite like them before.
Max
Mouse gestures... well I still don't see the point.
To each his own. I can't live without 'em now. In fact, I use the gestures so much I'll often try to open new windows, go back, etc. in my file manager and other apps via mouse gesture and wonder why the hell it isn't working.
I expect within five years other programs will also incorporate mouse gestures as well, for those of us who happen to like them.
Max
I have Win2000 for my gaming partition and would never in a million years consider WinXP to be an 'upgrade'.
Max
And yet in terms of RAM footprint Opera kicks the asses of both browsers. But since slashdot is typically a haven for mozilla zealots, we don't see that popping up as a reason to use Opera over mozilla, now do we?
Max
Having a better browser will never make Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror/Safari/Nets cape/Mosaic get a bigger piece of the pie.
Opera's been growing every year since its initial release, getting a "bigger piece of the pie" regardless.
Max
I'm no mensa member, but I can spot a pattern here.
If you were a Mensa member you'd be spending so much time praising your own intellect and insulting your 'inferiors' the pattern would make a 'whooshing' sound as it flew over your head, unnoticed in the neon glare of your ego.
Max
The only reason I rented ep 2 on video was to watch the luscious Natalie Portman. Since eps 7, 8, and 9 won't have this little hottie in them strutting her stuff, what exactly is supposed to be the draw?
Max
Uh, yeah - one word for you arrogant US asshole: AFRICA
And this matters how?
Max
Most European nations are even less free than America is. It won't be Europe that's laughing all the way to the bank, but up-and-coming nations with little to lose and even less to gain by listening to the U.S. or some European former great power, e.g., Brazil or Indonesia.
Max
US != rest of the world
We are aware of that fact, and are proud that we've yet to become another socialist shit-hole like so many other 'civilized' countries have.
The part that you're missing is this:
if != US,
then x = probably not worth noticing
unless x = Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or Canada
Max
However, these means are the primary ways of detecting terrorist chatter.
So we're told. Where are the statistics? How many so-called 'terrorists' have been caught via tapping phones and reading email in the last three years? I want *hard evidence* with *court convictions*, not just some bullshit handed to me by the very government with a vested interest in spying on it's citizenry.
And please, let's cut the 'terrorist' crap. These so-called terrorists are just criminal nutbags, like any other criminal nutbag. If a guy climbs the clock tower and starts gunning down students we don't call him a 'terrorist' and go 'oooh, he must want to destroy our way of life!', we call him a FUCKING NUTBAG - BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HE IS.
Terrorists aren't a special form of psychopath, with grand conspiracies and special superpowers. They're just crazy assholes, no different than all the other crazy assholes in the world.
Max
It's that in a capitalist economy, power comes along with money. This is a universal constant.
You forgot the primary difference between government and players in the free market: the government enforces its will on you whether you like it or not, through the threat or actual use of violence.
All laws issue from the point of a gun. Government rules by force. Businesses do not. The free market is free because you can refuse to have dealings with player A and instead choose to dicker with player B. With government, refusal to deal with the only player on the field will end up with you either in jail or dead.
It's one of the biggest arguments for a weak, heavily restricted government. Not only is the ability of the government to inflict violence on its citizenry limited, but the ability of businesses to buy government violence is similarly curtailed.
Max
Hey, that's great! I can't wait until my government gives me a list of "officially allowed" software too! Must be fine to live in such a free country!
Max
The electricity accelerates the process. But the fact is you can just drop concrete tubes in appropriate places and coral will grow on them, unaided. It's being done right now in many countries, the U.S. being one of them.
Max
I'm not trying to flame such people, as I honestly feel I don't understand them
There's nothing to understand. They're religious nutbags like any other, with some vague 'Mother Earth' or 'Gaia' as their god.
What really amuses the hell out of me are the ones who think that we should not only freeze-frame the entire planet in stasis as it exists right now, but also give up technology altogether and go back to "the good ol' days", when humans died at the age of 35 and starved one out of every three years.
We can thank the various and sundry non-Gaian gods that these genetic disasters are just a tiny minority of the population, if a rather loud and whiny one. Can you even begin to imagine what they'd do to the rest of us if they had any power at all? They'd make the Crusaders look like a knitting circle.
Max
They don't just die down everyone once in awhile, they're wiped out completely. After a few million years another coral-like life form evolves and new reefs pop up.
Corals have a history of going extinct and then evolving again.
But within the lifetime of any single coral species, they also have sudden and dramatic diebacks whenever conditions change (sometimes just slightly).
Max
"Check out the cool NASA pic"
inviting the response, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth:
"O Evil capitalists of the First World! Indulging in such wasteful light pollution! Bow your heads in shame!"
Left-wing socialist nutbags, if there's one thing you're good for it's pissing on *anyone's* parade, any time, for any reason. You boys are the reason Prozac was invented.
Max
The US alone wastes over a billion dollars a year on energy wasted due to bad lighting fixtures.
Yeah, and so what? It's our energy to waste, as we please.
Max
And let's not forget they're also a bunch of unwashed savages whose continental pastime seems to be having a go at one another with machetes over tribal or religious differences.
Max