I'm sure the CIA has thought of this, but if you can transmit sound through stuff like desks, why can't you also build a device that will listen to the vibrations and record sound from the room. It would be the ultimate listening device (aka bug).
In addition, to make a good sound, you need a rather sturdy surface that will affect the air around it for the sound waves. Attaching it to a monitor would only bounce around the monitor because it is absorbing much of the energy and not really transferring it to the air as in sound waves.
Sound travels in waves. So, I wonder how other stuff on the desk can affect the sound coming from it. I mean, my desk has 2 monitors, a laptop, books, beer bottles, papers. To use this, do I have to clear all that stuff off?
Two reasons why this shouldn't matter
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 3, Informative
1) Google is the company with the highest number of Phd graduates. I'm sure they can find an algorithm to cancel out this affect
2) Whenever you do a search, unless it is very specific, you automatically know not to trust the first couple results. It's a fact with all search engines. What makes google even better is that it shows you the text that links to it. So you can tell if it is a relevant link or not.
Re:This is a non-problem.
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 2
Let's say this...somebody google bombed "Linux Kernel Howto" and points it to Microsoft... Does that become a problem? Or "Ford Mustang" and points it to Toyota's website?
Let's just say I have a geocities website. Who owns that domain? Not me. Or another instance, if I'm an author of a book, my website is run by my publisher, what happens?
I'm sure they have something in the formula to take into account free webhosting. But to use this formula on top of that won't work.
Re:Weblog Advertising Network
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 2
Good idea, but a couple corrections:
It's guerilla, as in "guerilla warfare" not gorilla
Secondly, $5000 for 1000 links is incredibily high. I would be absolutely surprised if ads can actually get that much. Even advertising in a national magazine is approximately $1000 (for a relatively small ad), and you get to reach millions of eyeballs. The typical on the net is probably 5 cents per clickthrough, and 1 cent per view (if you can even get that much). Typical customer acquisition costs are about 10-20/new customer. So for a company to pay 5000 a week (20K a month), is asking a great deal for something that is not guaranteed or that google can fix and cancel out on their end (I mean they are the company with the most PHd employees).
The bad things that I mention are things such as the Saudi Royalty paying off the Islamic fundamentalist so that they can still stay in power. Or George Bush, Sr in business deals with BinLadin Group. The majority of the terrorist flying the planes on 9/11 were Saudi nationals. Many of the Saudi fundamentalists were allowed to travel back and forth to Afghanistan to train. etc, etc, etc. There's still a lot of dirty dealings with our "partners"
Yes, it is cheaper to import oil rather than from the domestic supply. Part of the reason is because there has been an emphasis on saving domestic supply in case something happens and we no longer are able to import. Secondly, a number of environmental regulations and other stuff makes it more expensive to drill. I don't have hte numbers in front of me, but it's something like 75% import and 25% domestic.
Incendiary devices are actually more effective on the cave networks than nuclear weapons. They are actually being used now over in Afghanistan. The great thing about them is that when you drop the bomb on an area, it seaps either a liquid or a gas throughout the area. What happens after that is it builds off of oxygen in the air to send a giant fireball. In the caves, it pretty much sucks out all the oxygen, killing the people, but leaving the caves pretty much intact, allowing them to go in afterwards and pick up intelligence.
Granted it may be bad. My point isn't that we must sign it. My point is that the administration is unwilling to discuss any changes or effective proposals on a level with the world community. In fact, the only thing that they have done is walked away. I think last week or something, they presented their own proposal. I've read somewhere that it has be analyzed and it turned out that the Bush proposal will actually do more harm to the environment than not doing anything at all. [But now, we're getting offtopic. My point was just that you can't turn your back to the world and decide to go at something alone]
We need to have the capacity to use nukes against any country who has weapons of mass destruction or the capability to make them
It is called deterence
Right, nobody is arguing you on that point. The thing is, a good majority of the names on that list do not currently have nuclear weapons are have the capability to create them. Now, think about it this way. You have a water guy, I tell you I'm going to bring a super soaker when we play. Are you going to say..ok..He'll bring the super soaker that can shoot 20 feet and mine can shoot 3, no problem? No, I think what you would do is get a super soaker also. Now in the real world analogy. Countries like Libya, Iran, and Syria who don't currently have nuclear weapons are going to seek out nuclear weapons for their own defense.
>>World peace is a pipe dream. There are bad people in the world, and they don't always get nicer if we ignore them.
Nobody said anything about World Peace. I agree, it's a pipe dream because of the fact that people want more than their share of the world. But what we had before this is a somewhat stable situation. The fear of MAD (mutually assured destruction) prevented people from actually using their weapons of mass destruction. In the last couple years, Israel/Palestine and North and South Korea were at the table discussing. (It may or may not have actually developed a peace plan, but the important part was the ability to discuss).. now since the 9/11 and the "Axis of Evil" both of these situations are on edge.
Saudi Arabia is one of the very few nations in the Middle East that we are somewhat friendly with. They do a lot of bad things that we don't like, but the government usually covers that up because Saudi Arabia provides the US with military bases and oil. If we were to become enemies with Saudi Arabia, our stronghold in the region would disappear and your gas prices will rise by about $1 or $2
The problem with this is that ever since the cold war era and afterwards, the greatest deterrent against the use of nuclear weapons is the fact of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Knowing this and the idiocy behinds the huge arms race, there was a feeling of peace in that your enemy would not use nuclear weapons against use and you wouldn't use it against them. It was at an equilibrium (maybe not an ideal one, but still maintain stability in the world)
Now with this new release, other countries are not so sure that the US will be holding back on the use of nuclear weapons. The only smart thing that they can do knowing this news is to build up their current stockpile and for those that don't have it, acquire it. The result of this is that it leads to greater instability in the world
Let's think about it this way. Let's just say for example if "Australia" comes out tomorrow and announce that the US is a great terrorist nation and a part of the "Axis of Badpeople" and that at some point later on, the US has to be dealt accordingly. Do you think the US is going to sit back and wait until "Australia" attacks? No, the US will attack "Australia" preemptively because you pretty much know a battle is coming, why wait for the enemy to attack you.
In my personal opinion, the current administration has done a great amount of damage to the world in terms of lodging it off of the fragile stability that it once was. Just to name a few events, the refusal to sign the Kyoto Pact, the refusal of signing the ban on Biological Weapons and Chemical Warfare, the withdrawal from the ARMS Control treaty with Russia, etc. I mean, how can the US morally attack countries like Iraq for producing Chemical weapons if the US is also producing (or "researching") Biological warfare. [Again, I'm in no way defending Iraq or any other nation..but it's just something to think about]
Yes, September 11th was an horrible event. I live only 5 miles away from the WTC and unfortunately watched it happen. But what I find even more horrendous is the fact that the administration is using this as a scapegoat to attack people that were not directly involved, and along the way kill innocent civilians and/or detain the thousands of innocent people in this country
Again, I am in no way condoning what was done on September 11th. But it is times like this that we have to step back and make sure that the people that are leading the nation are doing the right thing, and not just blindly follow like sheeps. That is what the core part of democracy is: the power of the people. Throughout history, we have seen situation where entire nations blindly followed the policies of its leaders (take WWII or Communism for example)
Isn't the whole point with external antenna to spread the EMF radiation away from your brain? If the plastic is part of the antenna, wouldn't it just bring it closer?
What is more worrying is that the slight advantage China may have is due to their lack of ethical regulation and disregard of human rights. While different cultures have different ethical standards the fact that these women were not fully consulted on the fate of their eggs and that human animal hybrids have been created is a real concern.
From the Article:
But regulations are far less restrictive in China. Lu, who directs a large fertility clinic, simply asked some of the dozens of women who walked through her door each day to donate their leftover eggs. She claims that now five per cent of her cloned embryos develop to blastocysts.
So, I'm not sure where you are getting that the women were not fully consulted and also the part about human animal hybrids. Sounds like FUD to me... The article specifically said that the women were asked if they would like to donate the leftover eggs.
Secondly, the "animal hybrid" that you mention is rather inaccurate. US Scientists have been using all types of mammals eggs to test human DNA. In addition, there are a number of Human-Animal testing that are currently taking place. Read here So it's not unusual for this to occur in the scientific field.
Lastly, I agree with your last statement in that "we cannot hold back other countries technical progress." The main thing is that the East Asian culture has bred a totally different belief system that is not centralized on Christianity and/or a single god. There is very little stigmata towards donating unused eggs to research (It would otherwise be thrown out anyways) The belief is that it would probably benefit the society and science more through donating than from trashing the unused eggs.
Other Human-Animal Articles
http://cronkite.pp.asu.edu/med/Pages/clonself.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/monkey 010111.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/r abbit000918.html
I think your view on this is rather narrow. The problem isn't that the US government is not going to fund your stem cell research. The fact is, they are NOT going to fund anything done at your lab if there is stem cell research going on in it. This would be a MAJOR loss to a lab to lose federal funding on all of its research.
Universities would lose a great portion of their grants if they were to even consider stem cell research. Major companies still rely on federal funding. It is only the smaller ones or the ones located in other countries that's going to succeed.
The problem with this is this. Let's just say China does research and finds a cure for cancer (per se). Now 1) would the FDA approve this treatment? 2) Would you be willing to try a treatment that was not FDA approved? 3) Would the US respect the patent on this treatment (if there was one) or if Bush and his people are in power, will they just ignore the patent laws? (Look what they were considering to do with Cipro - allowing another company to produce a generic version at a cheaper price. And Cipro was produced in the US and is protected by US laws)
that's great. But if you noticed that the flash components are a small part of the site. In other words, it is used to help/show people something in greater details. The article is geared towards creating an entire site out of flash. Do you still think that the science mag article would work out better if the entire article was within a flash container?
The key aspect of any UI is intuitiveness. There is no standard method of UI in flash. One developer might do it one way and another might do it another way. How would you like the UI if the back button on your browser doesn't take you to the previous page, but rather the root page of a website? And on another browser it does something totally different.
I don't think it's a problem of the standards, but rather of non-conforming browsers. This has resulted in that developers are swaying away from using DHTML in their sites.
As a side effect, Flash has picked up in popularity...
Flash is great...but only for certain things. Flash is not made for presenting information. It is more of a linear time animation. It is the same as saying storing an encyclopedia on a VHS tape. It's a pain in the neck to find what you want.
From what I see flash lacks:
Uniform Printing ability
Search functionality
Basic navigation (forward/back)
I'm sure some flash developers can add this to theirs, but the problem still exists in that a user cannot fully control what he is seeing. For example, a flash site may only want you to see the information in order. When you hit back on this site, it doesn't go to the last screen, but to the beginning or somewhere else.
Hey..maybe this is how the media is going to control the web...
Re:See you and raise
on
iWarez
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Hmm...this is like saying "Look at me. I just stole water":-)
Why would you go through all that trouble to steal MP3s when you can also steal them off of other online sources?
NOBODY is EVER forced into buying a particular product. Every product has a competitor that you could go with. Just because the majority of the market uses a certain product doesn't mean that there are no choices. It becomes an argument of the benefits of each product (compatibility, security, features, etc) and what best suits your and your companies needs. If you don't agree, argue with a linux guru that Windows is the ONLY operating system available because 95.9% of the market uses it. If there is a problem with a certain product, you are not bound to it. You are free to choose the alternative.
Liability is always something hard to pinpoint. Every producer is liable for every product that he produces. Just because there is a problem with a product doesn't mean that it is automatic grounds for lawsuits. What is important in the long run is what steps the producer goes about resolving the problem. In the case of the car company that found that it was economically wiser to let a problem exist then resolve it, they are liable for their lack of action in an accident. However, in both Nimbda and Code Red (2 recent events that come to mind), MS has release patches and solutions for it months ahead of time. They followed the correct procedure in these two incidents of identifying the problem, notifying the users of the problem, and producing a fix for the problem. The reason that these vulnerabilities still existed was that the administrators and users ignored the patches and bug reports. How can MS be held liable for the inaction of its customers. It is like saying that Ford should pay for your medical bills because you got into an accident with a car that they recalled months ago. In this case, it is your responsibility to take the car back to get it serviced.
One thing that we all must remember is that a law cannot be created targetted at a specific company. So if any laws are produce regarding liability, the people it would hurt the most are the individual developers and the medium to small companies. Microsoft has a couple billion dollars in the bank. They can easily settle a lawsuit that some of you have talked about. But for smaller companies, it is a major issue. Take for example SSH. In recent months, there was found to be a vulnerability in one of the older SSH clients. If they were held liable for the problem that results into stolen data, it would most likely bankrupt the company or at least cause it to be in a situation where it had to be bought up by a bigger company.
Now this one is a stretch. But seeing the way that Congress has been leaning towards big corporation over the consumers [don't believe me? look at DMCA], they would most likely butcher this law in support of big business. Secondly, there is no reason why a law must be put in place where there is no problem that cannot be resolved by the market. The market and consumers are strong force. They are the ones that can make or break a company. If the security problems of MS was enough of a issue, a big chunk of the market could shift over to a competitor product.
Do you really think this is a good idea? If this were actually implemented, the Open Source industry would just dry up in the corporate environment.
Look at it this way. A company is not willing to put product that has no guarantees of operation on a mission critical application (mission critical can mean Office Suite...if a CEO can't read his email, that is mission critical). You must admit that EVERY piece of software produce will have a problem, whether it is an inherent problem, or just a dumb enduser that thinks the Garbage Can is just another folder. Now when a company comes across a problem, they are not going to spend time reading pages and pages of document for a solution. They would want to be able to talk to someone and make sure that the problem gets resolved.
Now look at it this way. If there is a major security flaw in an application that the publisher knows about and does not resolve, he is liable for any damages that have incurred. The company using this product has at least one way of trying to recoup its losses. Now, (according to you) if they were to use Open Source product, they now cannot sue the company for damages incurred. Knowing this, when the CIO, CTO, C-etc are doing budgeting for software purchases, are they willing to gamble on something that does not come with a warranty? Or will they pony up the extra cash to get something that may or may not have a problem, but will be liable and available to resolve the problem. This will lead the people up top to choose the MS / or big company/non-open source solution.
Want another way to look at it? You're going out to buy a computer. One store is offering a 30 day unconditional return policy/3 service. Another store is offering 7 day return and 6 month service. Which one would you buy? Would you be willing to pay a little extra for the comfort that you will not be liable for a problem with your computer?
One thing that we all must remember is this. Open Source is not the panacea for software problems. I have seen a lot of good Open Source programs and I have seen a lot of bad open source programs. What is important is how comfortable your customer is with the solution that you are providing. Can you guarantee to him that you will be able to support it? Are you accountable for the problems that might occur?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure the CIA has thought of this, but if you can transmit sound through stuff like desks, why can't you also build a device that will listen to the vibrations and record sound from the room. It would be the ultimate listening device (aka bug).
In addition, to make a good sound, you need a rather sturdy surface that will affect the air around it for the sound waves. Attaching it to a monitor would only bounce around the monitor because it is absorbing much of the energy and not really transferring it to the air as in sound waves.
Sound travels in waves. So, I wonder how other stuff on the desk can affect the sound coming from it. I mean, my desk has 2 monitors, a laptop, books, beer bottles, papers. To use this, do I have to clear all that stuff off?
1) Google is the company with the highest number of Phd graduates. I'm sure they can find an algorithm to cancel out this affect
2) Whenever you do a search, unless it is very specific, you automatically know not to trust the first couple results. It's a fact with all search engines. What makes google even better is that it shows you the text that links to it. So you can tell if it is a relevant link or not.
Let's say this...somebody google bombed "Linux Kernel Howto" and points it to Microsoft... Does that become a problem? Or "Ford Mustang" and points it to Toyota's website?
Let's just say I have a geocities website. Who owns that domain? Not me. Or another instance, if I'm an author of a book, my website is run by my publisher, what happens?
I'm sure they have something in the formula to take into account free webhosting. But to use this formula on top of that won't work.
Good idea, but a couple corrections:
It's guerilla, as in "guerilla warfare" not gorilla
Secondly, $5000 for 1000 links is incredibily high. I would be absolutely surprised if ads can actually get that much. Even advertising in a national magazine is approximately $1000 (for a relatively small ad), and you get to reach millions of eyeballs. The typical on the net is probably 5 cents per clickthrough, and 1 cent per view (if you can even get that much). Typical customer acquisition costs are about 10-20/new customer. So for a company to pay 5000 a week (20K a month), is asking a great deal for something that is not guaranteed or that google can fix and cancel out on their end (I mean they are the company with the most PHd employees).
The bad things that I mention are things such as the Saudi Royalty paying off the Islamic fundamentalist so that they can still stay in power. Or George Bush, Sr in business deals with BinLadin Group. The majority of the terrorist flying the planes on 9/11 were Saudi nationals. Many of the Saudi fundamentalists were allowed to travel back and forth to Afghanistan to train. etc, etc, etc. There's still a lot of dirty dealings with our "partners"
Yes, it is cheaper to import oil rather than from the domestic supply. Part of the reason is because there has been an emphasis on saving domestic supply in case something happens and we no longer are able to import. Secondly, a number of environmental regulations and other stuff makes it more expensive to drill. I don't have hte numbers in front of me, but it's something like 75% import and 25% domestic.
it was only invented 3 months ago...
Incendiary devices are actually more effective on the cave networks than nuclear weapons. They are actually being used now over in Afghanistan. The great thing about them is that when you drop the bomb on an area, it seaps either a liquid or a gas throughout the area. What happens after that is it builds off of oxygen in the air to send a giant fireball. In the caves, it pretty much sucks out all the oxygen, killing the people, but leaving the caves pretty much intact, allowing them to go in afterwards and pick up intelligence.
For more info: Thermobaric Bombs
Granted it may be bad. My point isn't that we must sign it. My point is that the administration is unwilling to discuss any changes or effective proposals on a level with the world community. In fact, the only thing that they have done is walked away. I think last week or something, they presented their own proposal. I've read somewhere that it has be analyzed and it turned out that the Bush proposal will actually do more harm to the environment than not doing anything at all. [But now, we're getting offtopic. My point was just that you can't turn your back to the world and decide to go at something alone]
>>World peace is a pipe dream. There are bad people in the world, and they don't always get nicer if we ignore them.
Nobody said anything about World Peace. I agree, it's a pipe dream because of the fact that people want more than their share of the world. But what we had before this is a somewhat stable situation. The fear of MAD (mutually assured destruction) prevented people from actually using their weapons of mass destruction. In the last couple years, Israel/Palestine and North and South Korea were at the table discussing. (It may or may not have actually developed a peace plan, but the important part was the ability to discuss).. now since the 9/11 and the "Axis of Evil" both of these situations are on edge.
Saudi Arabia is one of the very few nations in the Middle East that we are somewhat friendly with. They do a lot of bad things that we don't like, but the government usually covers that up because Saudi Arabia provides the US with military bases and oil. If we were to become enemies with Saudi Arabia, our stronghold in the region would disappear and your gas prices will rise by about $1 or $2
The problem with this is that ever since the cold war era and afterwards, the greatest deterrent against the use of nuclear weapons is the fact of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Knowing this and the idiocy behinds the huge arms race, there was a feeling of peace in that your enemy would not use nuclear weapons against use and you wouldn't use it against them. It was at an equilibrium (maybe not an ideal one, but still maintain stability in the world)
Now with this new release, other countries are not so sure that the US will be holding back on the use of nuclear weapons. The only smart thing that they can do knowing this news is to build up their current stockpile and for those that don't have it, acquire it. The result of this is that it leads to greater instability in the world
Let's think about it this way. Let's just say for example if "Australia" comes out tomorrow and announce that the US is a great terrorist nation and a part of the "Axis of Badpeople" and that at some point later on, the US has to be dealt accordingly. Do you think the US is going to sit back and wait until "Australia" attacks? No, the US will attack "Australia" preemptively because you pretty much know a battle is coming, why wait for the enemy to attack you.
In my personal opinion, the current administration has done a great amount of damage to the world in terms of lodging it off of the fragile stability that it once was. Just to name a few events, the refusal to sign the Kyoto Pact, the refusal of signing the ban on Biological Weapons and Chemical Warfare, the withdrawal from the ARMS Control treaty with Russia, etc. I mean, how can the US morally attack countries like Iraq for producing Chemical weapons if the US is also producing (or "researching") Biological warfare. [Again, I'm in no way defending Iraq or any other nation..but it's just something to think about]
Yes, September 11th was an horrible event. I live only 5 miles away from the WTC and unfortunately watched it happen. But what I find even more horrendous is the fact that the administration is using this as a scapegoat to attack people that were not directly involved, and along the way kill innocent civilians and/or detain the thousands of innocent people in this country
Again, I am in no way condoning what was done on September 11th. But it is times like this that we have to step back and make sure that the people that are leading the nation are doing the right thing, and not just blindly follow like sheeps. That is what the core part of democracy is: the power of the people. Throughout history, we have seen situation where entire nations blindly followed the policies of its leaders (take WWII or Communism for example)
Isn't the whole point with external antenna to spread the EMF radiation away from your brain? If the plastic is part of the antenna, wouldn't it just bring it closer?
Sorry to tell you, but this has been and is currently a widely used Western Science technique. Read Here or Here
So, I'm not sure where you are getting that the women were not fully consulted and also the part about human animal hybrids. Sounds like FUD to me... The article specifically said that the women were asked if they would like to donate the leftover eggs.
Secondly, the "animal hybrid" that you mention is rather inaccurate. US Scientists have been using all types of mammals eggs to test human DNA. In addition, there are a number of Human-Animal testing that are currently taking place. Read here So it's not unusual for this to occur in the scientific field.
Lastly, I agree with your last statement in that "we cannot hold back other countries technical progress." The main thing is that the East Asian culture has bred a totally different belief system that is not centralized on Christianity and/or a single god. There is very little stigmata towards donating unused eggs to research (It would otherwise be thrown out anyways) The belief is that it would probably benefit the society and science more through donating than from trashing the unused eggs.
Other Human-Animal Articles
http://cronkite.pp.asu.edu/med/Pages/clonself.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/monke
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/
I think your view on this is rather narrow. The problem isn't that the US government is not going to fund your stem cell research. The fact is, they are NOT going to fund anything done at your lab if there is stem cell research going on in it. This would be a MAJOR loss to a lab to lose federal funding on all of its research.
Universities would lose a great portion of their grants if they were to even consider stem cell research. Major companies still rely on federal funding. It is only the smaller ones or the ones located in other countries that's going to succeed.
The problem with this is this. Let's just say China does research and finds a cure for cancer (per se). Now 1) would the FDA approve this treatment? 2) Would you be willing to try a treatment that was not FDA approved? 3) Would the US respect the patent on this treatment (if there was one) or if Bush and his people are in power, will they just ignore the patent laws? (Look what they were considering to do with Cipro - allowing another company to produce a generic version at a cheaper price. And Cipro was produced in the US and is protected by US laws)
Not trying to be flamebait, but the fact is that a majority of the country did not vote for our president. Makes you wonder doesn't it?
that's great. But if you noticed that the flash components are a small part of the site. In other words, it is used to help/show people something in greater details. The article is geared towards creating an entire site out of flash. Do you still think that the science mag article would work out better if the entire article was within a flash container?
The key aspect of any UI is intuitiveness. There is no standard method of UI in flash. One developer might do it one way and another might do it another way. How would you like the UI if the back button on your browser doesn't take you to the previous page, but rather the root page of a website? And on another browser it does something totally different.
I don't think it's a problem of the standards, but rather of non-conforming browsers. This has resulted in that developers are swaying away from using DHTML in their sites.
As a side effect, Flash has picked up in popularity...
From what I see flash lacks:
- Uniform Printing ability
- Search functionality
- Basic navigation (forward/back)
I'm sure some flash developers can add this to theirs, but the problem still exists in that a user cannot fully control what he is seeing. For example, a flash site may only want you to see the information in order. When you hit back on this site, it doesn't go to the last screen, but to the beginning or somewhere else.Hey..maybe this is how the media is going to control the web...
Hmm...this is like saying "Look at me. I just stole water" :-)
Why would you go through all that trouble to steal MP3s when you can also steal them off of other online sources?
Do you really think this is a good idea? If this were actually implemented, the Open Source industry would just dry up in the corporate environment.
/non-open source solution.
Look at it this way. A company is not willing to put product that has no guarantees of operation on a mission critical application (mission critical can mean Office Suite...if a CEO can't read his email, that is mission critical). You must admit that EVERY piece of software produce will have a problem, whether it is an inherent problem, or just a dumb enduser that thinks the Garbage Can is just another folder. Now when a company comes across a problem, they are not going to spend time reading pages and pages of document for a solution. They would want to be able to talk to someone and make sure that the problem gets resolved.
Now look at it this way. If there is a major security flaw in an application that the publisher knows about and does not resolve, he is liable for any damages that have incurred. The company using this product has at least one way of trying to recoup its losses. Now, (according to you) if they were to use Open Source product, they now cannot sue the company for damages incurred. Knowing this, when the CIO, CTO, C-etc are doing budgeting for software purchases, are they willing to gamble on something that does not come with a warranty? Or will they pony up the extra cash to get something that may or may not have a problem, but will be liable and available to resolve the problem. This will lead the people up top to choose the MS / or big company
Want another way to look at it? You're going out to buy a computer. One store is offering a 30 day unconditional return policy/3 service. Another store is offering 7 day return and 6 month service. Which one would you buy? Would you be willing to pay a little extra for the comfort that you will not be liable for a problem with your computer?
One thing that we all must remember is this. Open Source is not the panacea for software problems. I have seen a lot of good Open Source programs and I have seen a lot of bad open source programs. What is important is how comfortable your customer is with the solution that you are providing. Can you guarantee to him that you will be able to support it? Are you accountable for the problems that might occur?