I don't know about you guys, but when I see a single company which controls 96% of the desktop market, about 50% of the low- to mid-end server market, and has an awful security record (from the standpoint of evidence, not design) I don't see a wonderful example of capitalism in action.
Although this has been hashed out of/. before, Capitalism and the Free Market are not the same thing. Microsoft is a great example of Capitalism in action. They took some capital, and using labour and energy, they increased it.
What Microsoft is not a wonderful example of is free market economics. In an environment where politicians looked out for the free-market rather than capitalism, Microsoft would hardly be the monopoly abuser that it is today. This is a symptom of the market moving faster than bureaucratic processes, allowing Microsoft to use illegal (but hard to recognize for a bureaucrat), tactics to eliminate competition early in the companies life.
Now that competition has come in the form of Linux, and Microsoft can no longer use unethical or illegal tactics effectively against the competition, it wants the government to assist them in anti-competitive behaviour. And as the US government is a government for the corporations, of the corporations and by the corporations, it's doing it's best to lend a hand.
Luce, among others, believed the way to save post-war China from Moscow was to support Chiang, which, was a major blunder and typical of the disconnected-from-reality idealism of the time. I seem to recall two diplomats returning their assesments on both the suitability and likelihood of success of Chang Kai Shek and the Nationalists. Their assesments were negative, and Henry Luce successfully lobbied to have both men fired from the diplomatic service. That the Administration was ignoring the advice it's own diplomatic staff and listening to Luce and (you are right) T.V. Soong makes me shake my head.....
Yeast will at best get a corn mash up to about 20% ABV (Alcohol by Volume) To get this any higher, you need to distill it which requires lots and lots of heat (look up the specific heat of water and remember that 80% of your mother liquor is water).
I don't know about corn, but ethanol can also be produced from sugar cane. In Australia, the cane is burned in the sugar refineries to supply all the energy they need. This does produce greenhouse gas, but does not require fossil fuels.
Back in the 30's and 40's Time and Life Magazine publisher, Harry Luce, overlooked the realities of Chaing kai-Shek's brutal regime in China, choosing to believe Chiang was a christian and a good leader, while Mao was a monster backed by the godless communists of Moscow. Luce's publications were the word. Too bad he had it wrong and couldn't see it. This guy is about as blind to reality.
First of all, it was Henry Luce. He and Charlie Soong were making an absolute fortune from printing and selling bibles in China. Charlie Soong was well connected with the Kuo Min Tang and eventually one of his daughters married Chiang Kai Shek, and another married Sun Yat Sen.
The Kuo Min Dang however was not really considered a 'brutal regime' until the communist movement arrived in the cities (ShangHai in particular) after which it cracked down brutally on Communist and the infant Trade Union Movement. Before that however, the Kuo Min Dang was the political successor to a criminal organisation known as the Green Gang, who eventually came to distribute nearly half of the opium in China. Chang Kai Shek rose to a position of power in the Green Gang before joining the military. Once the Kuo Min Dang was in power, they assisted the Green Gang in distributing opium and eliminating competitors.
Later, when the Nationalist army was fighting the Communists, Henry Luce and Charlie Soong lobbied in Washington to support 'christian' Chang Kai Shek. Many millions of dollars were funneled from Washington, but very little of it reached the troops fighting on the ground. Most of the money appears to have ended in Charlie Soong's sons and Chang Kai Shek's bank accounts.
Chang Kai Shek and Charlie Soong were probably the richest and most successful 'rice christians' in history.
Sounds like FUD to me. Perhaps you should check out.NET's security model and then give us a proper analysis instead of a cynical dismissal.
Security models don't make computer software secure. Like encryption, a model or platform or technique is only secure until it is broken. After that, it is no longer secure. This process is not predictive, because it is not forseeable how something may be broken in the future. As Bruce Schneier wrote in Applied Cryptography,"... no can prove that hard problems are actually hard. Most everyone assumes that factoring[primes] is hard, but is has never been mathematically proven one way or the other."
Likewise with security models. Most everyone assumes that good security models make good security, but as one cannot prove a negative, the only dis-proof of that is for someone to break a good security model. After which most no longer refer to the model as 'good'.
Really, after doing some side programming on the Palm for 3+ years, I've never seen anyone who's had as much trouble as this guy's said he had. Heck, I've got a better dev enviroment, docs, etc, for Palm, than the solaris & linux systems that I use at my full time job.
Do you still have to join (sorry APPLY to join) their shitty developer programme. Or can you download and code now?
Times are changing. Maybe considering India as a future isn't such a bad idea.
I read an article the other day (can't find it with Google at the moment) about how high-tech immigration TO India has really been picking up lately.
With all of the outsourcing, Indian IT companies are experiencing skills shortages in some specialised areas. Even though the salaries are not that high after the exchange rate, compared to the cost of living, foreign IT workers live high on the hog.
Our govt has let the multinationals "sell the farm" to openly hostile foriegn governments in the name of "free trade" and "stock market viability"...and it's costing us our jobs too!
Wahhh!!!! The sky is falling, the reds are under my bed, where's my tinfoil hat???
As to the ACCC, yes they do have teeth. Most of their work isn't noticed until it is a high-profile case.
That said, I don't really feel that fraud or slander/libel/defamation is really in their jurisdiction.
You are correct. If it is securities fraud, then it's the SEC (quite powerful), and if it is demands with menaces (which describes SCO's position most accurately) then it is the DPP, and if it is in breach of the Trade Practices Act, then it would be the Department of Fair Trading.
The ACCC would only step in if it was proven that Microsoft were behind SCO's antics in order to illegally eliminate a competitor.
Which brings to mind the next questions:
1) What would it take to start a Class Action against SCO in Oz? 1000 claimants with $100 (initially) and $100-200 in the longer term. The same to start any class action suit.
2) How many other Australian companies, consultants, tall poppies and what-not, will get behind such a class action to really shove it up them?
Companies? Probably none. Australian companies are, on the whole, gutless arseholes, or criminals in the same league as SCO.
As for consultants and tall-poppies, see my answer to question 1.
I would argue there are two reasons broadband is more expensive in the US than in Canada...
The first is the labor cost....
The second reason it is more expensive is the regulatory cost of doing business in the US....
That's interesting. Do you have any references, internet or otherwise, that I can further research the comparative cost of doing business in both countries?
Maybe you could try rebutting my post instead of dismissing it as an idiotic religious rant. For your reference, the two points I made were:
Sorry to take so long to reply, been busy. Anyway, on to rebut your rebuttal.
Christianity is based on the assumption of written facts and not faith alone.
I believe that is a modern fundamentalist assumption, not an assumption of Christianity as a whole. The most devout Christian I have met said that "The basis of Christianity is that Jesus rose from the dead, for Paul said 'If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then all of my faith is nothing'". It sounds to me like Paul believed that his faith was based on his belief on what events transpired after the Romans nailed JC up. Not on written facts.
I acknowledged that Buddhism is an example of one that is not. No,you did not. You said Buddhism was based on the hallucinations of one man, which it certainly is not. The majority of Buddhism is based on the teachings of one Buddha, the Gautama Buddha, but there are many forms of Buddhism that are not. Chan and Zen for example.
To support my first claim, I cited 1 Corinthians. Now mind you, this is solely a proof text for my statement that Christians base their beliefs on the assumption that scripture is accurate - I'm not using circular reasoning to prove biblical accuracy.
Since I am not a Hebrew or Greek scholar, I cannot verify if 1 Corinthians is a Christian assumption, or a Church assumption added later.
On the contrary - people have felt this way for centuries. You might want to crack a history book.
If you read my words carefully, you would have seen that I said 'Only in the modern world...'
Out of all people, I would never expect to hear that from a Southern Baptist. I'm sure you're a fine churchgoer, and you even give lip-service to the pastor and elders when necessary. If you don't think that Christianity is based on fact, then you're in the wrong religion. You need to pick up something like Buddhism, based on the fantasy of one man. Maybe you should read what the apostle Paul had to say on this topic.
ROTFLMAO!!! I know slashdot is hardly the forum for religious debate, but that has to be one of the more idiotic religious rants I've heard for some time. I think only in the modern world could an American or an Arab have such a bizzare world view.
"Back" to hard-line communism? The last time people in China felt that they could speak their mind in public, they were assaulted by tanks.
Horseshit. Every time I have been to China (last time 2000), everybody complains about the government, in public, all the time. The government doesn't care.
China still jails their citizens for the slightest criticism of government policy
Horseshit. Only the really vocal critics are jailed, and generally only if they are published.
The ones treated the worst right now are the Falun Gong people. But interestingly enough, they are not jailed. They are taken to mental hospitals, drugged and 'reverse brainwashed'. Despicable behaviour, but probably no worse than was done in Western societies until about 20-30 years ago.
regularly suppresses religious freedom by putting leaders of congregations in jail.
Yes. They still do that. Wish they did it elsewhere occaisonally too.
Their one-child policy (whatever the perceived need) takes away the fundamental human right of reproduction
All rights are granted by humans. There are no fundamental rights.
requires (REQUIRES!!) abortions in many, many situations.
Actually, it was more like economic pressure than force. Have more than one child and you lose your food coupons (which means you starve). These days prosperity is taking care of the one child policy all by itself in the big cities. In the country, peasants are still having more than one child... often.
pay only the slightest lip service to international law and systematically, institutionally, defy legitimate and reasonable copyright and patent laws
Well, the Chinese invented gunpowder, paper and modern agriculture, so start paying the fuck up already.
Oh did you mean the European version of intellectual property rights where your rights are protected but fuck everyone else?
You may not realize that in the UK we have already lived with terrorism for thirty years and suffered numerous horrifying atacks without either attempting to drag the rest of the world into it, or attempting to invade any other sovereign country.
One could say that Northern Ireland was under military occupation, even though it wasn't 'invaded'.
I'm not spouting FUD, I'm speaking from personal experience. Using the nVidia-supplied driver for a GeForce 256 (and later, a GeForce3) caused repeatable crashes when using XVideo, as well as when changing resolutions. Both problems went away when I switched to the XFree86 (2D-only) nVidia driver.
I had a weird problem with a Riva TNT2. I downloaded and installed the official nVIDIA drivers and everything was good. Desktop responsive, could play Tux Racer and so forth. But when I opened a certain number of tabs in any browser such as Opera, Mozilla the whole system froze. And I mean dead in the water. It would need a hardware reset.
Anyway, 8 months later, I download the most recent drivers and all seems to be well.
So while it would seem that nVIDIA's linux drivers start out being sucky and lame, they don't necessarily stay that way.
Cyash mwoney you say? Power? No, you're kidding, right? Wait, I know, you are one of those geniuses, right?
Yes, I am, but that is irrelevant. You seem to be getting smarter too, maybe you are one of those government astroturfers.
Aww, diddums? Poor Saddam has no rights? Under military law, I think cowardice is often punishable by death. I agree lets give him back to "his people", so they can give him his Geneva convention rights.
Great idea! We finally agree on something. Still, might be too much pride to swallow on the part of the US forces. How will the Iraqi's try him? They don't have a constitution, a justice system or a government yet.
Finding WMDs? Who cares, it was suppose to be a ticket and a wink wink nudge nudge with the security council.
I am starting to see some light.
The US is the big dog on this planet, and have interests everywhere. The US didn't get to be number one, by not protecting those interests.
And the truth shall set you FREE !!.
So now it's clear that going into Iraq is in America's interest not Iraq's interest.
>Iraqi engineers are astonished at the size of the construction contracts which >have been handed out to US companies. Since they are orders of magnitude greater >than their own estimates to fix the damage.
Yeah, but I bet the Iraqi engineers are even worse than Irish pikeys! I'm assuming that the stuff that is rebuilt should work for more than a few days.
You moron. What do you think the US army used to get to Bhagdad, Basra and Mosul. Yes, bridges, built by Iraqi engineers, that took hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about you guys, but when I see a single company which controls 96% of the desktop market, about 50% of the low- to mid-end server market, and has an awful security record (from the standpoint of evidence, not design) I don't see a wonderful example of capitalism in action.
/. before, Capitalism and the Free Market are not the same thing. Microsoft is a great example of Capitalism in action. They took some capital, and using labour and energy, they increased it.
Although this has been hashed out of
What Microsoft is not a wonderful example of is free market economics. In an environment where politicians looked out for the free-market rather than capitalism, Microsoft would hardly be the monopoly abuser that it is today. This is a symptom of the market moving faster than bureaucratic processes, allowing Microsoft to use illegal (but hard to recognize for a bureaucrat), tactics to eliminate competition early in the companies life.
Now that competition has come in the form of Linux, and Microsoft can no longer use unethical or illegal tactics effectively against the competition, it wants the government to assist them in anti-competitive behaviour. And as the US government is a government for the corporations, of the corporations and by the corporations, it's doing it's best to lend a hand.
You can not call that Java because it's sun's trademark
Gee, the Indonesians are in for a surprise then.
Luce, among others, believed the way to save post-war China from Moscow was to support Chiang, which, was a major blunder and typical of the disconnected-from-reality idealism of the time. .....
I seem to recall two diplomats returning their assesments on both the suitability and likelihood of success of Chang Kai Shek and the Nationalists. Their assesments were negative, and Henry Luce successfully lobbied to have both men fired from the diplomatic service.
That the Administration was ignoring the advice it's own diplomatic staff and listening to Luce and (you are right) T.V. Soong makes me shake my head
Yeast will at best get a corn mash up to about 20% ABV (Alcohol by Volume) To get this any higher, you need to distill it which requires lots and lots of heat (look up the specific heat of water and remember that 80% of your mother liquor is water).
I don't know about corn, but ethanol can also be produced from sugar cane. In Australia, the cane is burned in the sugar refineries to supply all the energy they need.
This does produce greenhouse gas, but does not require fossil fuels.
Back in the 30's and 40's Time and Life Magazine publisher, Harry Luce, overlooked the realities of Chaing kai-Shek's brutal regime in China, choosing to believe Chiang was a christian and a good leader, while Mao was a monster backed by the godless communists of Moscow. Luce's publications were the word. Too bad he had it wrong and couldn't see it. This guy is about as blind to reality.
First of all, it was Henry Luce. He and Charlie Soong were making an absolute fortune from printing and selling bibles in China. Charlie Soong was well connected with the Kuo Min Tang and eventually one of his daughters married Chiang Kai Shek, and another married Sun Yat Sen.
The Kuo Min Dang however was not really considered a 'brutal regime' until the communist movement arrived in the cities (ShangHai in particular) after which it cracked down brutally on Communist and the infant Trade Union Movement.
Before that however, the Kuo Min Dang was the political successor to a criminal organisation known as the Green Gang, who eventually came to distribute nearly half of the opium in China. Chang Kai Shek rose to a position of power in the Green Gang before joining the military. Once the Kuo Min Dang was in power, they assisted the Green Gang in distributing opium and eliminating competitors.
Later, when the Nationalist army was fighting the Communists, Henry Luce and Charlie Soong lobbied in Washington to support 'christian' Chang Kai Shek. Many millions of dollars were funneled from Washington, but very little of it reached the troops fighting on the ground. Most of the money appears to have ended in Charlie Soong's sons and Chang Kai Shek's bank accounts.
Chang Kai Shek and Charlie Soong were probably the richest and most successful 'rice christians' in history.
Sounds like FUD to me. Perhaps you should check out .NET's security model and then give us a proper analysis instead of a cynical dismissal.
,"... no can prove that hard problems are actually hard. Most everyone assumes that factoring[primes] is hard, but is has never been mathematically proven one way or the other."
Security models don't make computer software secure. Like encryption, a model or platform or technique is only secure until it is broken. After that, it is no longer secure. This process is not predictive, because it is not forseeable how something may be broken in the future.
As Bruce Schneier wrote in Applied Cryptography
Likewise with security models. Most everyone assumes that good security models make good security, but as one cannot prove a negative, the only dis-proof of that is for someone to break a good security model. After which most no longer refer to the model as 'good'.
Really, after doing some side programming on the Palm for 3+ years, I've never seen anyone who's had as much trouble as this guy's said he had. Heck, I've got a better dev enviroment, docs, etc, for Palm, than the solaris & linux systems that I use at my full time job.
Do you still have to join (sorry APPLY to join) their shitty developer programme. Or can you download and code now?
Times are changing. Maybe considering India as a future isn't such a bad idea.
....
I read an article the other day (can't find it with Google at the moment) about how high-tech immigration TO India has really been picking up lately.
With all of the outsourcing, Indian IT companies are experiencing skills shortages in some specialised areas. Even though the salaries are not that high after the exchange rate, compared to the cost of living, foreign IT workers live high on the hog.
Now let me see if I can find that article
Our govt has let the multinationals "sell the farm" to openly hostile foriegn governments in the name of "free trade" and "stock market viability"...and it's costing us our jobs too!
Wahhh!!!! The sky is falling, the reds are under my bed, where's my tinfoil hat???
Grow up.
As to the ACCC, yes they do have teeth. Most of their work isn't noticed until it is a high-profile case.
That said, I don't really feel that fraud or slander/libel/defamation is really in their jurisdiction.
You are correct. If it is securities fraud, then it's the SEC (quite powerful), and if it is demands with menaces (which describes SCO's position most accurately) then it is the DPP, and if it is in breach of the Trade Practices Act, then it would be the Department of Fair Trading.
The ACCC would only step in if it was proven that Microsoft were behind SCO's antics in order to illegally eliminate a competitor.
Which brings to mind the next questions:
1) What would it take to start a Class Action against SCO in Oz?
1000 claimants with $100 (initially) and $100-200 in the longer term. The same to start any class action suit.
2) How many other Australian companies, consultants, tall poppies and what-not, will get behind such a class action to really shove it up them?
Companies? Probably none. Australian companies are, on the whole, gutless arseholes, or criminals in the same league as SCO.
As for consultants and tall-poppies, see my answer to question 1.
I would argue there are two reasons broadband is more expensive in the US than in Canada... ....
The first is the labor cost....
The second reason it is more expensive is the regulatory cost of doing business in the US
That's interesting. Do you have any references, internet or otherwise, that I can further research the comparative cost of doing business in both countries?
As BOB would say, "Fuck em if they can't take a joke"
Maybe you could try rebutting my post instead of dismissing it as an idiotic religious rant. For your reference, the two points I made were:
...'
Sorry to take so long to reply, been busy. Anyway, on to rebut your rebuttal.
Christianity is based on the assumption of written facts and not faith alone.
I believe that is a modern fundamentalist assumption, not an assumption of Christianity as a whole. The most devout Christian I have met said that "The basis of Christianity is that Jesus rose from the dead, for Paul said 'If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then all of my faith is nothing'".
It sounds to me like Paul believed that his faith was based on his belief on what events transpired after the Romans nailed JC up. Not on written facts.
I acknowledged that Buddhism is an example of one that is not.
No,you did not. You said Buddhism was based on the hallucinations of one man, which it certainly is not. The majority of Buddhism is based on the teachings of one Buddha, the Gautama Buddha, but there are many forms of Buddhism that are not. Chan and Zen for example.
To support my first claim, I cited 1 Corinthians. Now mind you, this is solely a proof text for my statement that Christians base their beliefs on the assumption that scripture is accurate - I'm not using circular reasoning to prove biblical accuracy.
Since I am not a Hebrew or Greek scholar, I cannot verify if 1 Corinthians is a Christian assumption, or a Church assumption added later.
On the contrary - people have felt this way for centuries. You might want to crack a history book.
If you read my words carefully, you would have seen that I said 'Only in the modern world
Jebus Crisp, not this again. Democratic republic is a subset of democracy. How hard is that to understand?
It's difficult to understand things that are not true.
According to Groklaw [find your own damn link] SCO needs to reply by 1/11/04 and the hearing on the Motions to Compel will be on 1/23/04.
Just curious, what name does the 23rd month of the year go by?
Frankly, we don't need advice from the Europeans on running a stable, pluralistic democracy.
Except of course that the USA is a democratic republic, not a democracy as we understand it.
Out of all people, I would never expect to hear that from a Southern Baptist. I'm sure you're a fine churchgoer, and you even give lip-service to the pastor and elders when necessary. If you don't think that Christianity is based on fact, then you're in the wrong religion. You need to pick up something like Buddhism, based on the fantasy of one man. Maybe you should read what the apostle Paul had to say on this topic.
ROTFLMAO!!! I know slashdot is hardly the forum for religious debate, but that has to be one of the more idiotic religious rants I've heard for some time.
I think only in the modern world could an American or an Arab have such a bizzare world view.
Not only haven't heard a complaint since, but my parents are now official Microsoft-haters. :)
Two birds, one stone!
Excellent !!
Off-topic philosophical point: could it be that all rights are fundimental and humans decide which to take away (ultimately by force)?
Good question. In order to be fundamental, they would have to exist seperately to the humans that they apply to. That is, in a vacuum.
If there was some way to measure those rights, sans humans, then not only would I concede your point, it would also be philosophical dynamite!
"Back" to hard-line communism? The last time people in China felt that they could speak their mind in public, they were assaulted by tanks.
... often.
Horseshit. Every time I have been to China (last time 2000), everybody complains about the government, in public, all the time. The government doesn't care.
China still jails their citizens for the slightest criticism of government policy
Horseshit. Only the really vocal critics are jailed, and generally only if they are published.
The ones treated the worst right now are the Falun Gong people. But interestingly enough, they are not jailed. They are taken to mental hospitals, drugged and 'reverse brainwashed'. Despicable behaviour, but probably no worse than was done in Western societies until about 20-30 years ago.
regularly suppresses religious freedom by putting leaders of congregations in jail.
Yes. They still do that. Wish they did it elsewhere occaisonally too.
Their one-child policy (whatever the perceived need) takes away the fundamental human right of reproduction
All rights are granted by humans. There are no fundamental rights.
requires (REQUIRES!!) abortions in many, many situations.
Actually, it was more like economic pressure than force. Have more than one child and you lose your food coupons (which means you starve). These days prosperity is taking care of the one child policy all by itself in the big cities. In the country, peasants are still having more than one child
pay only the slightest lip service to international law and systematically, institutionally, defy legitimate and reasonable copyright and patent laws
Well, the Chinese invented gunpowder, paper and modern agriculture, so start paying the fuck up already.
Oh did you mean the European version of intellectual property rights where your rights are protected but fuck everyone else?
Good post. Just one thing ....
You may not realize that in the UK we have already lived with terrorism for thirty years and suffered numerous horrifying atacks without either attempting to drag the rest of the world into it, or attempting to invade any other sovereign country.
One could say that Northern Ireland was under military occupation, even though it wasn't 'invaded'.
Is this the BSA? Or is this the RIAA? Is this the MPAA? I thought it was the USA! Or just another country....
...... an anarchy?
And Iiiiiiiii wanna be
I'm not spouting FUD, I'm speaking from personal experience. Using the nVidia-supplied driver for a GeForce 256 (and later, a GeForce3) caused repeatable crashes when using XVideo, as well as when changing resolutions. Both problems went away when I switched to the XFree86 (2D-only) nVidia driver.
I had a weird problem with a Riva TNT2. I downloaded and installed the official nVIDIA drivers and everything was good. Desktop responsive, could play Tux Racer and so forth. But when I opened a certain number of tabs in any browser such as Opera, Mozilla the whole system froze. And I mean dead in the water. It would need a hardware reset.
Anyway, 8 months later, I download the most recent drivers and all seems to be well.
So while it would seem that nVIDIA's linux drivers start out being sucky and lame, they don't necessarily stay that way.
Cyash mwoney you say? Power? No, you're kidding, right? Wait, I know, you are one of those geniuses, right?
Yes, I am, but that is irrelevant. You seem to be getting smarter too, maybe you are one of those government astroturfers.
Aww, diddums? Poor Saddam has no rights? Under military law, I think cowardice is often punishable by death. I agree lets give him back to "his people", so they can give him his Geneva convention rights.
Great idea! We finally agree on something. Still, might be too much pride to swallow on the part of the US forces. How will the Iraqi's try him? They don't have a constitution, a justice system or a government yet.
Finding WMDs? Who cares, it was suppose to be a ticket and a wink wink nudge nudge with the security council.
I am starting to see some light.
The US is the big dog on this planet, and have interests everywhere. The US didn't get to be number one, by not protecting those interests.
And the truth shall set you FREE !!.
So now it's clear that going into Iraq is in America's interest not Iraq's interest.
>Iraqi engineers are astonished at the size of the construction contracts which
>have been handed out to US companies. Since they are orders of magnitude greater
>than their own estimates to fix the damage.
Yeah, but I bet the Iraqi engineers are even worse than Irish pikeys! I'm assuming that the stuff that is rebuilt should work for more than a few days.
You moron. What do you think the US army used to get to Bhagdad, Basra and Mosul. Yes, bridges, built by Iraqi engineers, that took hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops.