The purpetrators of this attrocity are the faceless, and I would suggest faithless (because no one could truthfully commit such acts in the name of any God) terrorists, and their aim is to spread, rather obviously, terror.
Or their aim was to get the media to stop covering the topics under negotiation at the G8 summit.
The WTO meetings a few years ago were similarly done in the media. The media in the US said not a word about what the meetings were about, yet had time daily to focus on the arrests.
More recently, many countries have had huge protests condemning the current war US vs Iraq. Two years ago, in some countries there were record turnouts for each successive protest. The city I was in had about 17% of the population out on the streets for one, yet no coverage was given except that Bush cancelled visits to cities with protests.
Body scanners aren't going to help anything except the bottom line of the scanner companies. They may even increase general tension and anxiety through longer lines, delays and safety factors. Anyway, it's all a distraction from the G8 summit's agenda which covers notably discussion about climate change, sustainable development, peace and stability in Africa and the Middle East, etc.
As for the X number of reboots comment, I guess you've never installed any software, downloaded any patches, changed any security settings, etc..
Windows users have become desensitized to those. Both MS fanboys and even average non-technical users need that concept defined explicitly if you expect to make any progress in a discussion. Most are so used to reboots/restarts that they become oblivious to it.
From time to time I've explained the stability of some Debian based servers. When I state that they've had 100% availability or no down time whatsoever, I usually get blank stares from the non-techs and a "me, too" from the Windows fanboys. Then when I go on to clarify that this means no crashes, reboots, restarts, warm boots, cold boots or power cycles (neither scheduled nor unscheduled) that usually makes a positive impression. You just have to make sure you're using the same definition.
I don't use it [MS-Office] often, since my job requires more design based software (read: Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Dreamweaver, etc..) However every year my work spends quite a lot of money making sure I have the newest version, yet I don't really know what changes.
Then, unless your company has a site license for MS-Office, you're probably a prime candidate for using OpenOffice.org. As a casual user, you're probably never going to run across the remaining differences in functionality more than occasionally, in which case a spare MS machine can be used for that occasion. It's worth looking into as it may save time and money.
OpenOffice.org does a very good job at reading / writing MS-Office formats and usually does a better job with the older versions than MS-Office itself. If nothing else, since it costs nothing while MS-Office does and since you wouldn't use either often, it's worth a test.
Oh, and OpenOffice.org can make your PDF files for you, no extra tools needed.
I read the problem as the Uni wanting to give students easily accessible space so they could store presentations and the like for easy retrieval in the classroom, dorm, or cluster.
If that's the case, then giving each faculty member or course directory a special folder to which Apache has read access to would do the trick. The file sharing beneath that can be Samba, AFS, or Netware. All work well in an heterogeneous environment and can be tied to OpenLDAP, Kerberos or both.
For students, it's the same thing. Each student gets a home directory and in their, along side the standards like a drop box and a shared folder, would be a folder serving as the student's home directory on the web server. This is very easy to set up with Apache, it just needs read access to the directory.
Now if you're trying to archive or permanently store the material, then maybe something like dspace would be more appropriate. Note that dpsace is for archiving and later retrieving finished works not a collaborative tool.
"Windows" itself is not a single operating system, especially from the point of those easily confused end users you refer to. Think about it. If you're going to change from Win95/WinNT/Win2000/WinXP/Win2003/etc it's not like you can keep all the programs, configurations and user interfaces the same while upgrading the operating system or kernel underneath. The whole thing changes including interface behaviors.
In short, it's not as simple as just dropping a new kernel or new OS under KDE.
Most MS-Windows users I've talked with, those who don't actually sell MS software or develop for it, can't stand the changes between versions. They put up with it because Bill's catamites in their so-called IT department says for them to and their bosses back up the so-called IT department. If their IT departments and bosses threw as much weight behind putting out KDE on all the desktops they'd get used to that, too. But in the future, the IT department could then drop a new kernel or even a new OS behind KDE without disturbing the users. It's a rare bird that uses more than e-mail, web, and productivity tools.
Dude, you're confusing FUD with fact. I appreciate that you want to defend your employer (or employer's employer), so here is a break down of the details:
1. In the US, MS has been found guilty, even after appeal, in USDOJ vs MS of illegally leveraging its desktop monopoly to stifle competition and extend the monopoly into new markets.
2. In Europe, MS has been found guilty of illegally leveraging its desktop monopoly to stifle competition and try to extend the monopoly into new markets. WMP, which is the only player to use WMA and WMV formats, is at the heart of this case.
3. Ostensibly, MS is supposed to be under punishment for these violations.
4. The new "Napster" is a MS-Windows only service and relies on the WMA format.
1 and 2 establish a pattern of behavior, but there many other examples.
2 establishes the relevance to the WMA format.
If universities actively use their resources to push the Napster service, they are actively using their resources to help MS break the law in two ways: extend the desktop monopoly and break into the audio/video market.
The captive market for music already exists. Their options are to either spend a lot of time blocking packets to unclog their network, spend more money on better networking, or subscribe to this service, which unclogs the network and removes fear of legal liability if they can make it work.
The universities in the US are moving to Internet2 which will alleviate the traffic problem for quite some time. Another approach would be for universities, as far as their networks go, adopt the role of a Common Carrier just like any other ISP. Since, in that context the universities are operating like an ISP and should not be the parent. Students are presumably of age of majority (though I argue for raising that from 18 to 25) and therefore at least in theory responsible for their own behavior. That would remove the need for fear of legal liability, too.
Or the MPAA/RIAA could modernize its business. Being a bottleneck in distribution of entertainment doesn't work once you go beyond distribution fof physical media and enter the world of networked computing. Nor does the current move towards extortion seem to be either popular nor sustainable. Just because they once had a model that used to be profitable doesn't mean the world owes them a handout to keep them in money once that model becomes antiquated. The times don't fit the MPAA/RIAA's outmoded business model, they need to adapt or die.
The rest of your post is just anti-MS FUD.
Regarding part about DRM, if there is a way to install the DRM on a Windows machine so that it is only available to the audio player and not the video player or any other applications, then by all means please post the link. All articles I've seen to date indicate that it affects the whole machine.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's FUD. And just because it doesn't favor MS doesn't mean it's FUD either. MS has worked hard over many years to earn the poor reputation it has among the tech community for it's shoddy software and predatory business methods.
Don't reinvent the wheel, unless you absolutely want to. It may be simpler to go with exactly what you are asking for: Apache+WebDAV, Samba, LDAP/Kerberos.
Content management systems like Knowledge Tree may be great, if that's what you want to do -- complex content management with document metadata and expiry dates, etc. However, keep in mind that it is something extra for your users to figure out and something extra to be monitored or repaired when things go south.
Samba will let your clients connect to the file server in a way they're presumably already familiar with: their desktop's file system. Nothing new to learn except how to connect and, maybe, which folder to put things in if they are to be visible on the web.
Mod_WebDAV can be added to Apache so users have an alternate route to edit their files.
Both Samba and Apache can be tied to LDAP and/or Kerberos so that you can use your existing authentication and directory services.
I've set up a small number of Apache,WebDAV,Samba, Kerberos systems. The main drawback is that once users know how to connect, it's too easy for them compared to the old CMS which was being used as a file management system. That may make them feel they are missing something. They may even forget they have a "file management" system even while they are using it. No joke. So plan on scheduling time at the end of the project to make sure the users know what they have and that the management appreciates how smooth it is to use. And that you get credit for not having to go to heroic effort to fix things every time a student wants to upload a file. Otherwise it may end up like the proverbial walled-in Netware server.
Kerberos is a network authentication service while LDAP is a directory service. In fact, access to LDAP should be restricted using Kerberos in that case for better security given the environment IMHO
That's the way it's usually done from what I've seen, not counting stuff set up by MSCEs.
Universities are theoretically in the business of providing advanced education and doing research. I fail to see where providing a captive market for private companies benefits either of these.
Furthermore, doing so would involve at least some staff time and other university resources which could be used instead to further the main goals of research and education.
This new services has nothing to do with the old napster except the name and the universities would be hurting themselves by allowing this sort of encroachment.
Can you play Napster WMAs on an iPod? No. On my old IRiver with hacked firmware? No. On my CD-MP3 player that works fantastically? No.
Can you play Napster on a platform other than DRM'd versions of MS-Windows? No. And when DRM is installed, it affects the whole machine, not just the music player. That's another two strikes against the idea.
Then there's the WMA format itself. Many universities are funded at least in part by federal and state money. As such they should not be party to helping a recidivist company illegally leverage it's desktop monopoly to break into new markets, even by proxies like Dell and Napster. WMA is part of the core of major anti-trust legal trouble in Europe already. Don't drag the universities into that mess.
Not just a precedent. MS has been trying to put out fires in Finland for some time and has a sizable group of staff and contractors working full time already. The Nordic countries tend to follow each other's trends closely and very nearly operate as a block in some things. So, eventually, the cat is going to get out of the bag and everything will tip at once.
Even in Sweden, there have been attempts to drop MS from time to time. However, there is significantly less solidarity or nationalism there than in the neighboring countries so the result is usually a heavy discount in exchange for digging deeper into the mire. Uppsala University for example, used the threat of open formats (via open source) to get a 90% discount on MS-Office.
Nemi was awesome. I'll have to look at some recent strips to see if it has peaked. That would suck if it has. Trudeau took time off from Doonesbury way back when to prevent total burn out. Waterson and Breathed decided to call it quits, too. Though Waterson did it in time and Breathed waited too long. Rocky must have improved a lot. I used to check it from time to time to see if it stopped sucking so bad, but then tastes differ and that's why there's usually more than one strip in any given paper.
As a feeble attempt to draw this back on topic, the web versions of all those strips already use open formats. Perhaps that fact could be used to leverage more activity with other open formats, especially sound. SR, DR, NRK, BBC and others are all publicly funded, at least what's left of them, so there's no reason not to offer audio in an open format, even if it's only just parallel to one of the legacy formats.
As far as blocking the production of applications, a clear illustration of how newer operating systems are shut out of the applications market is the way MS handled IBM's OS/2. NDA agreements for MS-Windows NT developers prohibited them from working on OS/2. Also, MS itself had promised IBM to provide a number of key applications for OS/2, but backed out of the deal very, very late in the game. So late that it can only appear as pre-meditated sabotage of the deal with IBM. MS' own Windows95 was not a technical competitor, though it was aimed at many of the same markets.
Another reason is that OEMs didn't distribute BeOS in any meaningful way. First, MS' OEM contracts blocked vendors from providing non-MS OSes pre-installed on new hardware. Be took MS to court and won, getting that shot down. However, it was only a pyrrhic victory. When the OEMs finally did start distributing BeOS, they did so as dual boot, but without BeOS showing up in the bootloader.
MS has obviously been aware of the bootloader since then. Pretty much any upgrade to the MS OS on machines with multiple OSes munges the bootloader so that only the MS OS shows up.
AC troll,
let's tear down *your* arguments quickly.
1) There is no such thing as race. Researchers studying the human genome have shown that conclusively.
Racist in current usage means coming down on a culture or culture(s) based on hatred, ignorance and prejudice, which is what the GP was doing.
2) Ignorance and prejudice about a culture pretty much encompasses the term racism as it is used in modern language.
The GP was doing just that.
3) Criticism is not racism. However, criticism based on prejudice is. Which is what the GP was doing
Finally, in counter to your illustrations, the Africans brought to the US where of many cultures. The Jews suffering at the hands of Hitler are hardly a single race, unless one wants to redefine race as a religion or culture. Likewise the Ukranians suffering at the hands of Stalin are a nation and culture, but not a race. Invoking Godwin's Law makes your argument all that much more weaker.
Anyway, chill out. The larger part of 1 billion people in and near India find milk and milk products to be central to their cultures for economic, nutritional and religious reasons. Argue with them. I'm not saying you have to eat milk products, though I do agree that the large agribusinesses are quite harmful and inhumane and that the more efficient, small scale farming should be restored.
Milk ISN'T good for you period, humans weren't supposed to drink another animals milk
What are you racist? Many cultures have had milk and milk products as staples for thousands of years, many others have used them to supplement their diet. And that's not just Indo-European cultures. Finno-Ugric and some asiatic / siberian cultures depend on milk and milk products over the millenia. Get over it.
You may not like milk or may be allergic, but that's fine. It's not a one size-fits-all world.
However, if you were to be more specific and say perhaps that humans were not intended to drink processed milk (e.g. homogenized or powdered milk) then you may have a point.
...todays production techniques whereby they pump growth hormones into the cows so they produce milk far longer than they are normally capable of. Plus all the other shit they do in order to meet their quotas.
As far off as you were in the first part of your post, you're right on with this one. Most current production techniques are inhumane and in the long term inefficient, unhealthy and environmentally unsound. Going back to local production would give higher quality product in most cases as well.
Actually a some of the countries pinged for being "socialist" did an exceptionally good job in most measurable factors while actually following a middle path between capitalism and socialism. There are things that it makes more sense to have run by the government, there are things where it makes more sense to run as a business. There is no need to force a once-size-fits-all ideology where it doesn't belong.
Take a case study of the Scandinavian countries during the period back when they followed a middle path between capitalism and socialism. For a few decades they had the best of everything, including plenty of services (post, day care, pensions, health care, land management), high standards of living, low unemployment, and a budget surplus. Now look at them and compare policies and the fallout from those policies. e.g 1975 vs 2005.
Back to the GPL. If one wants to take a different spin on things. Then all the red, white and blue patriotic stuff like "don't tread on me" , "live free or die", "liberty or death", etc. really overlap with GPL which has at it's core the concept of Freedom. Or has Freedom somehow become 'unamerican' these days?
How about a localized version of the Open CD with the stars and stripes on a color label and slathered in quotes from John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, etc. in the context of the freedoms layed out by the GPL? It could be handed out at state or county fairs this summer. [note to self: shit! is it July already?]
So revenge is the goal? Yikes. No wonder your prisons are overflowing.
They are also privatized. So profit motive is another factor in keeping the prisons over full capacity, and in making laws to ensure a steady supply of occupants.
It's stupid though. It's cheaper to send someone to a good college for a year than keep them in prison for a year, at least in the US. Yet, the taxpayers get to foot the bill for the latter and not the former which would probably improve not just the GNP, but quality of life for everyone else.
Umm, Last time I checked Microsoft has no monopoly in the Anti-Virus market.
Yes. And it would be illegal for MS to leverage its desktop monopoly to create one, or even establish dominance, in the AV market.
Besides who really needs a AV for unix anyway ?
People still stuck with legacy MS systems. They'd still have to worry about their legacy systems, but if the AV software runs on the unix server, then that's one less thing to have to worry about.
Aside from running slower and hotter, the only other factor I could think of for a move to Intel would be lining Apple up for support for DRM via La Grande or whatever it's called. Will a DRM'd BIOS be involved?
What are you talking about? the market will decide. Right now there are quite a few browsers available, some of them are free.
Yes, but none of them are bundled by OEMs. Since a large majority of people leave every thing default, that rules out those better browsers for a large portion of the population.
Another factor is MS' mantra of "re-format and re-install". Each time that happens, those excellent browsers hit the bit bucket and MSIE pops back up. Some small percentage is going to fail to re-install the better browsers -- they forget, or run out of time, or get tired of doing it, etc. Since we're talking about such a large population size, even a small percentage works out to be a large number of users.
Until the install CDs/DVDs automatically install other browsers (or don't install MSIE automatically) there is little point in philosophizing about a free market. When it comes to desktop computers, a free market is still a ways off.
MS still needs constant tinkering, it's not for amateurs or home users. Use OS X, BSD or Linux instead.
Oh yea, because BSD and Linux don't requiring tinkering.
No. Read the post again. They don't require constant tinkering like XP and other Windows variants do. You set them up once and they run. It's several orders of magnitude different.
If your time is not valuable or you're not concerned about actually getting work done, than MS-Windows is just fine. It'll keep you off the street. If, on the other hand, you are more concerned about the computer as a means to get work done, than look elsewhere than MS
Anti-virus and firewalls don't help much. If your application or operating system can't live securely in a networked environment w/o a firewall then it shouldn't be connected to the network anyway. Besides, many (most?) of exploits nowadays come through ports the firewall must leave open. e.g. outgoing port 80 for MSIE.
MS won't back port anything, those sales are already made. The services packs for the remaining, supported versions are another problem. If they included only the patches needed to improve security, that's one thing. But they usually include all kinds of undesirable changes to configurations and to licensing.
You forgot (4) Older people are more efficient in skilled movements.
Strength, raw speed, and reflexes slowly get worse, but timing and coordination get better as you age. Odds are that if they tried a similar contest using only CW, but with the same age difference as in this contest, the older group would win again.
Would'nt this approach cause MS to loose its lock-in ability based on file format?
No. The lock-in continues via DRM and ties to "Office Servers". MS is really pushing the server based aspects of Office 12, so there will be hooks to the server like crazy. MS is also really pushing the DRM encumberance in Office 12. In all likelihood, the XML files will still have key components encrypted so as to support MS' DRM and as a 'side effect' lock out competitors.
The interesting thing is that all this server based control and logging of DMR'd functions gives an enormous boost to the type of information available for international and corporate espionage. Through backdoors, security holes or escrow keys it was possible before to get only the documents themselves for the most part. Now it's possible to monitor who's collaborating with who, and see everyone in the distribution chain.
That much can be guessed even now during the vaporware stages. However, as more technical information becomes available it will be possible to guess whether these same functions can be used for more than monitoring and can actually be used to stifle or suppress dissent or specific individuals or groups.
Slashdot Mirror
The WTO meetings a few years ago were similarly done in the media. The media in the US said not a word about what the meetings were about, yet had time daily to focus on the arrests.
More recently, many countries have had huge protests condemning the current war US vs Iraq. Two years ago, in some countries there were record turnouts for each successive protest. The city I was in had about 17% of the population out on the streets for one, yet no coverage was given except that Bush cancelled visits to cities with protests.
Body scanners aren't going to help anything except the bottom line of the scanner companies. They may even increase general tension and anxiety through longer lines, delays and safety factors. Anyway, it's all a distraction from the G8 summit's agenda which covers notably discussion about climate change, sustainable development, peace and stability in Africa and the Middle East, etc.
From time to time I've explained the stability of some Debian based servers. When I state that they've had 100% availability or no down time whatsoever, I usually get blank stares from the non-techs and a "me, too" from the Windows fanboys. Then when I go on to clarify that this means no crashes, reboots, restarts, warm boots, cold boots or power cycles (neither scheduled nor unscheduled) that usually makes a positive impression. You just have to make sure you're using the same definition.
OpenOffice.org does a very good job at reading / writing MS-Office formats and usually does a better job with the older versions than MS-Office itself. If nothing else, since it costs nothing while MS-Office does and since you wouldn't use either often, it's worth a test.
Oh, and OpenOffice.org can make your PDF files for you, no extra tools needed.
For students, it's the same thing. Each student gets a home directory and in their, along side the standards like a drop box and a shared folder, would be a folder serving as the student's home directory on the web server. This is very easy to set up with Apache, it just needs read access to the directory.
Now if you're trying to archive or permanently store the material, then maybe something like dspace would be more appropriate. Note that dpsace is for archiving and later retrieving finished works not a collaborative tool.
In short, it's not as simple as just dropping a new kernel or new OS under KDE.
Most MS-Windows users I've talked with, those who don't actually sell MS software or develop for it, can't stand the changes between versions. They put up with it because Bill's catamites in their so-called IT department says for them to and their bosses back up the so-called IT department. If their IT departments and bosses threw as much weight behind putting out KDE on all the desktops they'd get used to that, too. But in the future, the IT department could then drop a new kernel or even a new OS behind KDE without disturbing the users. It's a rare bird that uses more than e-mail, web, and productivity tools.
If universities actively use their resources to push the Napster service, they are actively using their resources to help MS break the law in two ways: extend the desktop monopoly and break into the audio/video market.
The universities in the US are moving to Internet2 which will alleviate the traffic problem for quite some time. Another approach would be for universities, as far as their networks go, adopt the role of a Common Carrier just like any other ISP. Since, in that context the universities are operating like an ISP and should not be the parent. Students are presumably of age of majority (though I argue for raising that from 18 to 25) and therefore at least in theory responsible for their own behavior. That would remove the need for fear of legal liability, too.Or the MPAA/RIAA could modernize its business. Being a bottleneck in distribution of entertainment doesn't work once you go beyond distribution fof physical media and enter the world of networked computing. Nor does the current move towards extortion seem to be either popular nor sustainable. Just because they once had a model that used to be profitable doesn't mean the world owes them a handout to keep them in money once that model becomes antiquated. The times don't fit the MPAA/RIAA's outmoded business model, they need to adapt or die.
Regarding part about DRM, if there is a way to install the DRM on a Windows machine so that it is only available to the audio player and not the video player or any other applications, then by all means please post the link. All articles I've seen to date indicate that it affects the whole machine.Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's FUD. And just because it doesn't favor MS doesn't mean it's FUD either. MS has worked hard over many years to earn the poor reputation it has among the tech community for it's shoddy software and predatory business methods.
Content management systems like Knowledge Tree may be great, if that's what you want to do -- complex content management with document metadata and expiry dates, etc. However, keep in mind that it is something extra for your users to figure out and something extra to be monitored or repaired when things go south.
Samba will let your clients connect to the file server in a way they're presumably already familiar with: their desktop's file system. Nothing new to learn except how to connect and, maybe, which folder to put things in if they are to be visible on the web.
Mod_WebDAV can be added to Apache so users have an alternate route to edit their files.
Both Samba and Apache can be tied to LDAP and/or Kerberos so that you can use your existing authentication and directory services.
I've set up a small number of Apache,WebDAV,Samba, Kerberos systems. The main drawback is that once users know how to connect, it's too easy for them compared to the old CMS which was being used as a file management system. That may make them feel they are missing something. They may even forget they have a "file management" system even while they are using it. No joke. So plan on scheduling time at the end of the project to make sure the users know what they have and that the management appreciates how smooth it is to use. And that you get credit for not having to go to heroic effort to fix things every time a student wants to upload a file. Otherwise it may end up like the proverbial walled-in Netware server.
This new services has nothing to do with the old napster except the name and the universities would be hurting themselves by allowing this sort of encroachment.
Can you play Napster on a platform other than DRM'd versions of MS-Windows? No. And when DRM is installed, it affects the whole machine, not just the music player. That's another two strikes against the idea.Then there's the WMA format itself. Many universities are funded at least in part by federal and state money. As such they should not be party to helping a recidivist company illegally leverage it's desktop monopoly to break into new markets, even by proxies like Dell and Napster. WMA is part of the core of major anti-trust legal trouble in Europe already. Don't drag the universities into that mess.
Even in Sweden, there have been attempts to drop MS from time to time. However, there is significantly less solidarity or nationalism there than in the neighboring countries so the result is usually a heavy discount in exchange for digging deeper into the mire. Uppsala University for example, used the threat of open formats (via open source) to get a 90% discount on MS-Office.
Oil found in Venezuela! Look out Norway, you're next.
Though, I've pointed out from time to time offline since the just before the War on Freedom^H^H^H^H^H^H Iraq.
As a feeble attempt to draw this back on topic, the web versions of all those strips already use open formats. Perhaps that fact could be used to leverage more activity with other open formats, especially sound. SR, DR, NRK, BBC and others are all publicly funded, at least what's left of them, so there's no reason not to offer audio in an open format, even if it's only just parallel to one of the legacy formats.
Another reason is that OEMs didn't distribute BeOS in any meaningful way. First, MS' OEM contracts blocked vendors from providing non-MS OSes pre-installed on new hardware. Be took MS to court and won, getting that shot down. However, it was only a pyrrhic victory. When the OEMs finally did start distributing BeOS, they did so as dual boot, but without BeOS showing up in the bootloader.
MS has obviously been aware of the bootloader since then. Pretty much any upgrade to the MS OS on machines with multiple OSes munges the bootloader so that only the MS OS shows up.
1) There is no such thing as race. Researchers studying the human genome have shown that conclusively. Racist in current usage means coming down on a culture or culture(s) based on hatred, ignorance and prejudice, which is what the GP was doing.
2) Ignorance and prejudice about a culture pretty much encompasses the term racism as it is used in modern language. The GP was doing just that.
3) Criticism is not racism. However, criticism based on prejudice is. Which is what the GP was doing
Finally, in counter to your illustrations, the Africans brought to the US where of many cultures. The Jews suffering at the hands of Hitler are hardly a single race, unless one wants to redefine race as a religion or culture. Likewise the Ukranians suffering at the hands of Stalin are a nation and culture, but not a race. Invoking Godwin's Law makes your argument all that much more weaker.
Anyway, chill out. The larger part of 1 billion people in and near India find milk and milk products to be central to their cultures for economic, nutritional and religious reasons. Argue with them. I'm not saying you have to eat milk products, though I do agree that the large agribusinesses are quite harmful and inhumane and that the more efficient, small scale farming should be restored.
You may not like milk or may be allergic, but that's fine. It's not a one size-fits-all world.
However, if you were to be more specific and say perhaps that humans were not intended to drink processed milk (e.g. homogenized or powdered milk) then you may have a point.
As far off as you were in the first part of your post, you're right on with this one. Most current production techniques are inhumane and in the long term inefficient, unhealthy and environmentally unsound. Going back to local production would give higher quality product in most cases as well.Take a case study of the Scandinavian countries during the period back when they followed a middle path between capitalism and socialism. For a few decades they had the best of everything, including plenty of services (post, day care, pensions, health care, land management), high standards of living, low unemployment, and a budget surplus. Now look at them and compare policies and the fallout from those policies. e.g 1975 vs 2005.
Back to the GPL. If one wants to take a different spin on things. Then all the red, white and blue patriotic stuff like "don't tread on me" , "live free or die", "liberty or death", etc. really overlap with GPL which has at it's core the concept of Freedom. Or has Freedom somehow become 'unamerican' these days?
How about a localized version of the Open CD with the stars and stripes on a color label and slathered in quotes from John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, etc. in the context of the freedoms layed out by the GPL? It could be handed out at state or county fairs this summer. [note to self: shit! is it July already?]
It's stupid though. It's cheaper to send someone to a good college for a year than keep them in prison for a year, at least in the US. Yet, the taxpayers get to foot the bill for the latter and not the former which would probably improve not just the GNP, but quality of life for everyone else.
I'm still not sure of why Apple is switching processors and which of Intel's processors they will actually use. La Grande?
Aside from running slower and hotter, the only other factor I could think of for a move to Intel would be lining Apple up for support for DRM via La Grande or whatever it's called. Will a DRM'd BIOS be involved?
Another factor is MS' mantra of "re-format and re-install". Each time that happens, those excellent browsers hit the bit bucket and MSIE pops back up. Some small percentage is going to fail to re-install the better browsers -- they forget, or run out of time, or get tired of doing it, etc. Since we're talking about such a large population size, even a small percentage works out to be a large number of users.
Until the install CDs/DVDs automatically install other browsers (or don't install MSIE automatically) there is little point in philosophizing about a free market. When it comes to desktop computers, a free market is still a ways off.
If your time is not valuable or you're not concerned about actually getting work done, than MS-Windows is just fine. It'll keep you off the street. If, on the other hand, you are more concerned about the computer as a means to get work done, than look elsewhere than MS
Anti-virus and firewalls don't help much. If your application or operating system can't live securely in a networked environment w/o a firewall then it shouldn't be connected to the network anyway. Besides, many (most?) of exploits nowadays come through ports the firewall must leave open. e.g. outgoing port 80 for MSIE.
MS won't back port anything, those sales are already made. The services packs for the remaining, supported versions are another problem. If they included only the patches needed to improve security, that's one thing. But they usually include all kinds of undesirable changes to configurations and to licensing.
Strength, raw speed, and reflexes slowly get worse, but timing and coordination get better as you age. Odds are that if they tried a similar contest using only CW, but with the same age difference as in this contest, the older group would win again.
The interesting thing is that all this server based control and logging of DMR'd functions gives an enormous boost to the type of information available for international and corporate espionage. Through backdoors, security holes or escrow keys it was possible before to get only the documents themselves for the most part. Now it's possible to monitor who's collaborating with who, and see everyone in the distribution chain.
That much can be guessed even now during the vaporware stages. However, as more technical information becomes available it will be possible to guess whether these same functions can be used for more than monitoring and can actually be used to stifle or suppress dissent or specific individuals or groups.