...RAM (which I expect to start seeing in cereal boxes)....
Just have to say that was funny. And it wasn't designed to karma whore either...I like it. Someone being clever on Slashdot for the sake of being clever. Whaddya know.
Do you work on a 200 mhz pentium? Trust me...i have to deal with some crappy slow machines...and 200 mhz just izn't enough balls to do anything at any sort of "speed". Trust me, you notice the difference.
My AthlonC 1.4 can boot win98 unbelievably fast. And, it's noticable: ever waited 2 minutes for your computer to boot, and watch your friend's comp boot up faster than you can say the ABC's?
I always notice slowdown. Sure, i'm a power user...and sure, hardware can keep up with all the 'basics': Email, web browsing, media processing, etc. But we can always want it to be faster. Always want Winamp to stop skipping. Always want your program to load faster. And who doesn't play games?
Sure. keep your box all nice and neat, few apps, no crap running in the background. Be a power user.
But power users notice speed changes, they always want better.
And average Joe User runs all the crap that slows a pc down...all the background apps...and he notices when IE takes 15 seconds to get up. When windows takes 3 minutes to boot on his new gateway with all the crap they package.
Dual booting isn't hard. For average Joe, or grandma and grandpa, they can launch win by default. Or, if they are smart, make a customized linux for cheap, and support only that...can you say, no more BSOD's?
Seriously, the other day a guy told me that someone got into his computer and changed the time on him, and it reported it on the screen when he first booted. Daylight savings...izn't it wonderful?
Think: this person would never notice no windows. Call it DellOS and let it run basic Dell apps (email, mp3, etc.) and linux programs...some would never notice the difference. others would love it...linux. The rest could always change the default back to win.
Ok, i know this guy is a troll who obviously doesn't quite get it, and he has been responded to. But this provides a great way to put in my two cents.
HARDWARE. DOESN'T. MATTER.
Got it? Hardware doesn't matter. Remember the PSX vs. N64? who won it? PSX. hands down. But it didn't really have the balls-out hardware compared to N64. Exact stats don't matter, but it's obvious that the N64 didn't win, with better hardware. Other things are more important.
Like: Games to be had. Hardware reliability. Company loyalty. Price. GAMES.
Games are what make a system. Always. Hardware is nice, yah, but it doesn't make great games to play. And you can take a lesser-powered system and crank out great games, because of many things.
For me, i'm waiting for a GCN.
Ok, so we talk about the philosophy and the this_product v. that_product side of things. But what i'm interested in is this: Transgaming's WineX seems to be trying to be able to accept all of the calls from a win32 game. As it gets better and better, accepting more and more calls, shouldn't it snowball..so that eventually it will properly accept them all/most? Is WineX customizing it's processing to the particular game? Shouldn't things get a lot better as we go along?
Ok, sherman, set the time machine to 97. We're going back to the pre-launch days of windows 98 today.
Now, I'm a young guy, I was MS-DOS and Norton Commander for years...up until I bought my own win98 system (athlon 500, still have to smile). I don't remember the win98 release, I just remember a bunch of idiots running to get on the bandwagon. you remember that? Remember the crouds? I hope you do. I did, and i was...14 then? yeah. i know it makes me young.
Point is: MS hyped it up..internet, the killer app was a browser, email integration, yadda yadda yadda...but guess what? people bought the idea, and the product. Win98 was revolutionary. It was buggy, it crashed, yes...but it was set up as being great and the latest thing and everything. And people bought it.
Flash back to the present day. Read the news. People aren't thrilled. I believe it was The Reg that talkd about IT people who weren't thrilled with MS's subscriptions, activations, and too few new features (over Win2K) to upgrade...they were happy and the cost was too high.
But it was ZDNet that talked about the IT guys looking at Linux as an alternative for new pc's and servers. It just isn't worth it for them. Linux still has a place, and WinXP isn't a Linux-killer, by any means. Free and stable and the nerd-appeal will never go away.
This is just another MS release. It is over-hyped. It will most likely have its own bugs, problems, and complaints. People already can guess what they might be... security and compatibility issues perhaps? Just wait...
you could do that with Win98...I've gone back to earlier registries several times with '98...you just have to know how to do it. In XP it seems (from what others have said) to present itself to you nicely...although if your OS craps out you probably will need tech help anyways...and good tech help should know about the '98 go back. Although, IMHO, a nice clean wipe of Win98 is really the only way to go for a power user...every 6 months baby, yeah. Just partition your stuff so you have a nice Win98 partition, a nice Linux partition, and a nice p0rn/mp3s/movies/docs/personal stuff partition.
I hate to be repetetive, but...
did you even read the article? That data was from an independant voluntary bug-reporting app. Not from when people turn their stations off for the day. The point of uptime is stability, and if it will stay up _forever_ than that means it must be stable...if it has a critical crash every 233 hours as statistically reported than that must mean the OS isn't quite so stable. hence the comparison, and the point.
They would do anything they could. It's war between AOL and MS, and if AOL could bring a new OS or anything out to the Hammer that people would go for, AOL would do it.
Imagine, new AOL cd: "New! 1000 hours free! Comes complete with AOLinux, for your new Hammer system!"
something like that. The idea is, if they can fight MS, and Microsoft's MSN internet service, that is a Good Thing for AOL. Both companies see a fight coming, and if AOL/TW have their act together, something like this would be brilliant...
Right now, people have to deal with Windows being dominant in the OS market...80-90% dominant at that. But if people find that the non-MS supported Hammer is that much better than P4's...which you have to admit it probably will be...and almost as cheap...there might be a spot, a crack in the wall as it were.
Consoles are supposed to work. My original SNES, Gameboys, and N64 all work, despite being early models. They are consoles, consumer hardware...the first PS2's that everyone stood in line for all worked...they might have been stupid for staying up all night and all...but they weren't stupid for buying first systems. I am not sure what you mean, exactly..but hardware should be rock-solid stable (see: Nintendo products) and these X-Boxes are crappy. Very crappy. This reminds me of an bit i read on Penny Arcade about a friend of a friend who worked in an X-Box factory, with no QA at all. Searched PA, can't find the article, sorry...anyone else know?
But continuing...I think you are thinking more of 1.0's of software...sure they crash. A lot of times, companies just use the public as a testing pool for early releases. But not hardware...you can rewrite software, but if you sell someone a boat anchor for $400, they get mad.
October 22, 2001 Posted: 3:53 PM EDT (1953 GMT)
Redmond, Washington (CNN)
In a public speech today, Microsoft executive Bill Gates apologized to the friends and families who died on American Flight 213, one of many test planes for Microsoft's PilotXP computerized pilot program. The flight crashed Wednesday, with no survivors. While the cause of the crash is still unknown, the new software is probably to blame. Gates' comment was, "If they had properly patched the software, this never would have happened. We can't be expected to sell a stable, secure product, right out of the box? That's ridiculous!"
So...what if M$ built something that crashed and killed people? What then? Should Microsoft be held responsible for the software they sell, or should they blame other people for pointing out the gaping holes?
Re:Mozilla is the BEST browser!
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
·
· Score: 1
I'm not trying to attack Linux users because I'm one, I just happen to know what Windows users want, They WANT bloat, thats why IE is bloated, thats why AOL is bloated, but they want USEFUL bloat, as long as these features are useful to them they dont care how complex the code gets. Of course WE care, but we can just do a custom install and 0 bloat.
Hey! Hold up! I'm a windows user...i've only logged about 15 minutes of linux...but Just because i've been on DOS/WIN products since I was 8 doesn't mean that I'm a big fan of code bloat. I know that crappy programs carry way too much around with them because someone doesn't intelligently optimize and minimalize their programs. I hate how big IE is and I hate how it crashes my system everytime it dies on Win98. On the other hand, other browsers have other benefits and problems...But I don't like bloat and I don't like the Browser-as-an-mp3-player, the browser-as-an-IM Client, the browser-as-an-email client. I want to quickly, stably go places on the web. IE does it most of the time...5.01 on win2kAS runs nice and smooth...but for win98 i'm looking for something else. But I hate bloat, features or no, I want a simple program to do 1 thing: browse pages.
(Hurray for Norton Commander! Sorry...couldn't help myself)
We could make laws simpler...because if you look at the early law, it was short and simple. Ever check out the constitution? A real democracy, without the republican part, could be done now, because of technology. The Law-making bodies we have are corrupt and simply reacting to polls anyways. A well-regulated, secure democracy would reflect what real people want. Then, we could hate each other, instead of politicians. And the only people who would vote would be the ones who cared...it's an interesting idea, anyways.
Unfortunately for us the people thinking of freedoms aren't the ones in the majority. Most people want to "fight terrorism" which means doing whatever they can to fight. now, sacrificing self for a good cause is usually a good thing...but when you sacrifice the rights that make your country free to "fight terrorism" in a knee-jerk reaction, that is foolish.
The average Joe and Jane Person just want to feel safe and terrorist-free. They want to go back to their munchies and their pop-culture and their nightly-boring-grey-news. They don't worry much about rights or losing the freedom to talk about what they want these days...they are sheeps who just wanna float along, munching on their government-ok'd grass and thinking about how a certain celebrity is cool or troubled or had a boob job. They don't care now.
Which means, in short, that the rep's don't care about the thinkers, people who care about rights. even in a state of war. They care about their majority of votes...sheep.
The elected officials have nothing to do with keeping people from getting killed. The military does that. Did you ever take American Government in High School? No, probably not, it isn't required any more.
Elected officials, specifically Representatives and Senators, are still supposed to pass laws. And when they pass laws that restrict our freedoms, any of them, laws that we as citizens don't agree with, it is our duty to let them know we don't like it.
I care about these issues, these freedoms. Thinking, intelligent people care. So should you. So should our Reps and Senators.
We also would build sets of lincoln-log forts, big complicated things, and put up two different "armies" of army men on them. Then, we would shoot rubber bands at the army men, one rubber-band for each man left in the "army". Great stuff.
Back in the day, my cousins and I built lego cars that were designed to last with a lego person in them throughout numerous crashes. the rules were, it had to have wheels and carry the guy to still be operational. We would crash our cars into each other...legos would fly everywhere and it was great fun, seeing whose would last the longest. My best car had wheels on the top and bottom, and the guy was layered in. It was a beautiful thing...my cousins all had plain cars with one really reinforced set of wheels. guess who won....
#if_unsaid// to avoid repeating the things someone else already said
#say:
MS products are more expensive than linux. MS products are more commonly used than linux, especially proprietary office/etc. MS is raising prices and pushing for its
winXP to get out, to make it the de facto standard, to again force people to buy the "standard".
We know that MS products are more user-friendly but less functional than Linux to Person Off_the_street. i.e. they look pretty and stuff are easy to navigate, but only because we are used to them perhaps? Linux stuff is stable, robust,and cheap. why not choose it? Compatibility. If enough people push another standard, then ground can be made, perhaps.
MS is obviously doing what any semi-intelligent company would do in its position. et on top, and fight-to-kill all challengers. That is the point. Survival. Real just wants money, too. Neither company really cares about consumers. Real isn't perfect either...remember the privacy issue? Consumerism is like voting, you have to deal with the decisions of others. If big companies choose MS over better solutions, that is their stupidity. If MS really benefits the customer, then so be it, everyone who chooses Microsoft will benefit.
For myself, I'll use some of both, to suit my needs, while paying a minimum because of my small, non-business budget. What has MS done, really, to hurt consumers? Provide integrated tools that eliminate the need for other software. This is beneficial, in a way...free instead of paid-for. However, it eliminates something very important to a free market economy: freedom. Eventually, when there is no choice but MS, it can start charging for these "free" integrations, like IE and WMP and TCP/IP, for that matter, which I hear used to cost money to use (I'm only 19 now...). At that point, MS will be such a standard that there will be no competition, and so integrated that it cannot be removed from technology. That is what MS is aiming for, the ultimate for any business: to be a necessity.
I think MS has hurt consumers and needs to be punished strongly, to let the people in charge there know that this will not be tolerated. Their monopolizing efforts have hurt many companies, and can do nothing but continue to hurt everyone. MS, in a way, is already neccessary...try playing a videogame or buying a PC from a big-name company without an MSN product. But their actions can be curbed, and that is what is needed.
This was an email, I don't know if it is factual, but the ideas are true, so here it is:
America: The Good Neighbor.
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."
The only effective answer to violence is violence. Peace-loving is fine, but just taking it only encourages more attacks. The reason why the US has an army and nuclear weapons is because without them, we would have no response when any group: communists, muslems, or anyone, tries to harm us. Again, the only answer to violence is violence. We have to be cautious, yes. We have to be careful with our targets, of course. But we can't just let this one slide...and I'm glad I live in a country where people still care, where people are outraged and heartsick when people they have no connection to, just fellow countrymen, are killed and hurt. An attack wouldn't be about revenge. A retaliatory strike would be punishment, retribution, yes, and also a warning: don't hurt the U.S.
Actually, the WT buildings were designed to withstand fire, earthquake, and impacts, even planes An MSN article discusses this. They say that basically, the jet fuel burned too fast and too hot, and the building softened and was destroyed. Why we didn't see smoke, I don't know...and I can't rule out secondary explosions, either (aka another bomb on the plane or in the building).
I can't believe you! I can imagine it now:
Terrorists: "Oh yeah, now that Bush is prez we are free to blow up the U.S."
Blame it on the Prez...
clinton couldn't even face up to what he had done ("I never had sex with that woman...")...stronger man, ha! We don't need you people, and we don't need comments like this splitting us up and trying to tell us our leaders are weak...did you even read what Bush was doing when he heard about the attacks? He was in a school. Reading a book to kids. Clinton would probably have been busy "not having sex"
free enterprise and democracy are inseperable. You must have self-rule to have freedom to buy and sell what you want. If you want to communize, fine... but capitalism has nothing to do with what happened today...it was probably our relations with the Israeli's and the world...
Slashdot Mirror
...RAM (which I expect to start seeing in cereal boxes)....
Just have to say that was funny. And it wasn't designed to karma whore either...I like it. Someone being clever on Slashdot for the sake of being clever. Whaddya know.
*cough* *cough*
Do you work on a 200 mhz pentium? Trust me...i have to deal with some crappy slow machines...and 200 mhz just izn't enough balls to do anything at any sort of "speed". Trust me, you notice the difference.
My AthlonC 1.4 can boot win98 unbelievably fast. And, it's noticable: ever waited 2 minutes for your computer to boot, and watch your friend's comp boot up faster than you can say the ABC's?
I always notice slowdown. Sure, i'm a power user...and sure, hardware can keep up with all the 'basics': Email, web browsing, media processing, etc. But we can always want it to be faster. Always want Winamp to stop skipping. Always want your program to load faster. And who doesn't play games?
Sure. keep your box all nice and neat, few apps, no crap running in the background. Be a power user.
But power users notice speed changes, they always want better.
And average Joe User runs all the crap that slows a pc down...all the background apps...and he notices when IE takes 15 seconds to get up. When windows takes 3 minutes to boot on his new gateway with all the crap they package.
Trust me, we always need more speed.
Dual booting isn't hard. For average Joe, or grandma and grandpa, they can launch win by default. Or, if they are smart, make a customized linux for cheap, and support only that...can you say, no more BSOD's?
Seriously, the other day a guy told me that someone got into his computer and changed the time on him, and it reported it on the screen when he first booted. Daylight savings...izn't it wonderful?
Think: this person would never notice no windows. Call it DellOS and let it run basic Dell apps (email, mp3, etc.) and linux programs...some would never notice the difference. others would love it...linux. The rest could always change the default back to win.
Ok, i know this guy is a troll who obviously doesn't quite get it, and he has been responded to. But this provides a great way to put in my two cents.
HARDWARE. DOESN'T. MATTER.
Got it? Hardware doesn't matter. Remember the PSX vs. N64? who won it? PSX. hands down. But it didn't really have the balls-out hardware compared to N64. Exact stats don't matter, but it's obvious that the N64 didn't win, with better hardware. Other things are more important.
Like: Games to be had. Hardware reliability. Company loyalty. Price. GAMES.
Games are what make a system. Always. Hardware is nice, yah, but it doesn't make great games to play. And you can take a lesser-powered system and crank out great games, because of many things.
For me, i'm waiting for a GCN.
Ok, so we talk about the philosophy and the this_product v. that_product side of things. But what i'm interested in is this: Transgaming's WineX seems to be trying to be able to accept all of the calls from a win32 game. As it gets better and better, accepting more and more calls, shouldn't it snowball..so that eventually it will properly accept them all/most? Is WineX customizing it's processing to the particular game? Shouldn't things get a lot better as we go along?
Ok, sherman, set the time machine to 97. We're going back to the pre-launch days of windows 98 today. Now, I'm a young guy, I was MS-DOS and Norton Commander for years...up until I bought my own win98 system (athlon 500, still have to smile). I don't remember the win98 release, I just remember a bunch of idiots running to get on the bandwagon. you remember that? Remember the crouds? I hope you do. I did, and i was...14 then? yeah. i know it makes me young.
Point is: MS hyped it up..internet, the killer app was a browser, email integration, yadda yadda yadda...but guess what? people bought the idea, and the product. Win98 was revolutionary. It was buggy, it crashed, yes...but it was set up as being great and the latest thing and everything. And people bought it.
Flash back to the present day. Read the news. People aren't thrilled. I believe it was The Reg that talkd about IT people who weren't thrilled with MS's subscriptions, activations, and too few new features (over Win2K) to upgrade...they were happy and the cost was too high.
But it was ZDNet that talked about the IT guys looking at Linux as an alternative for new pc's and servers. It just isn't worth it for them. Linux still has a place, and WinXP isn't a Linux-killer, by any means. Free and stable and the nerd-appeal will never go away.
This is just another MS release. It is over-hyped. It will most likely have its own bugs, problems, and complaints. People already can guess what they might be... security and compatibility issues perhaps? Just wait...
you could do that with Win98...I've gone back to earlier registries several times with '98...you just have to know how to do it. In XP it seems (from what others have said) to present itself to you nicely...although if your OS craps out you probably will need tech help anyways...and good tech help should know about the '98 go back.
Although, IMHO, a nice clean wipe of Win98 is really the only way to go for a power user...every 6 months baby, yeah. Just partition your stuff so you have a nice Win98 partition, a nice Linux partition, and a nice p0rn/mp3s/movies/docs/personal stuff partition.
I hate to be repetetive, but... did you even read the article? That data was from an independant voluntary bug-reporting app. Not from when people turn their stations off for the day. The point of uptime is stability, and if it will stay up _forever_ than that means it must be stable...if it has a critical crash every 233 hours as statistically reported than that must mean the OS isn't quite so stable. hence the comparison, and the point.
They would do anything they could. It's war between AOL and MS, and if AOL could bring a new OS or anything out to the Hammer that people would go for, AOL would do it.
Imagine, new AOL cd: "New! 1000 hours free! Comes complete with AOLinux, for your new Hammer system!" something like that. The idea is, if they can fight MS, and Microsoft's MSN internet service, that is a Good Thing for AOL. Both companies see a fight coming, and if AOL/TW have their act together, something like this would be brilliant...
Right now, people have to deal with Windows being dominant in the OS market...80-90% dominant at that. But if people find that the non-MS supported Hammer is that much better than P4's...which you have to admit it probably will be...and almost as cheap...there might be a spot, a crack in the wall as it were.
But continuing...I think you are thinking more of 1.0's of software...sure they crash. A lot of times, companies just use the public as a testing pool for early releases. But not hardware...you can rewrite software, but if you sell someone a boat anchor for $400, they get mad.
I think we should just run *nix on it.
Go to The AT&T Telemarketing Revenge to laugh a bit about telemarketers. It's an old joke but on-topic here. Enjoy.
Hey! Hold up! I'm a windows user...i've only logged about 15 minutes of linux...but Just because i've been on DOS/WIN products since I was 8 doesn't mean that I'm a big fan of code bloat. I know that crappy programs carry way too much around with them because someone doesn't intelligently optimize and minimalize their programs. I hate how big IE is and I hate how it crashes my system everytime it dies on Win98. On the other hand, other browsers have other benefits and problems...But I don't like bloat and I don't like the Browser-as-an-mp3-player, the browser-as-an-IM Client, the browser-as-an-email client. I want to quickly, stably go places on the web. IE does it most of the time...5.01 on win2kAS runs nice and smooth...but for win98 i'm looking for something else. But I hate bloat, features or no, I want a simple program to do 1 thing: browse pages.
(Hurray for Norton Commander! Sorry...couldn't help myself)
We could make laws simpler...because if you look at the early law, it was short and simple. Ever check out the constitution? A real democracy, without the republican part, could be done now, because of technology. The Law-making bodies we have are corrupt and simply reacting to polls anyways. A well-regulated, secure democracy would reflect what real people want. Then, we could hate each other, instead of politicians. And the only people who would vote would be the ones who cared...it's an interesting idea, anyways.
The average Joe and Jane Person just want to feel safe and terrorist-free. They want to go back to their munchies and their pop-culture and their nightly-boring-grey-news. They don't worry much about rights or losing the freedom to talk about what they want these days...they are sheeps who just wanna float along, munching on their government-ok'd grass and thinking about how a certain celebrity is cool or troubled or had a boob job. They don't care now.
Which means, in short, that the rep's don't care about the thinkers, people who care about rights. even in a state of war. They care about their majority of votes...sheep.
Elected officials, specifically Representatives and Senators, are still supposed to pass laws. And when they pass laws that restrict our freedoms, any of them, laws that we as citizens don't agree with, it is our duty to let them know we don't like it.
I care about these issues, these freedoms. Thinking, intelligent people care. So should you. So should our Reps and Senators.
We also would build sets of lincoln-log forts, big complicated things, and put up two different "armies" of army men on them. Then, we would shoot rubber bands at the army men, one rubber-band for each man left in the "army". Great stuff.
Back in the day, my cousins and I built lego cars that were designed to last with a lego person in them throughout numerous crashes. the rules were, it had to have wheels and carry the guy to still be operational. We would crash our cars into each other...legos would fly everywhere and it was great fun, seeing whose would last the longest. My best car had wheels on the top and bottom, and the guy was layered in. It was a beautiful thing...my cousins all had plain cars with one really reinforced set of wheels. guess who won....
#say:
MS products are more expensive than linux. MS products are more commonly used than linux, especially proprietary office/etc. MS is raising prices and pushing for its winXP to get out, to make it the de facto standard, to again force people to buy the "standard".
We know that MS products are more user-friendly but less functional than Linux to Person Off_the_street. i.e. they look pretty and stuff are easy to navigate, but only because we are used to them perhaps? Linux stuff is stable, robust,and cheap. why not choose it? Compatibility. If enough people push another standard, then ground can be made, perhaps.
MS is obviously doing what any semi-intelligent company would do in its position. et on top, and fight-to-kill all challengers. That is the point. Survival. Real just wants money, too. Neither company really cares about consumers. Real isn't perfect either...remember the privacy issue? Consumerism is like voting, you have to deal with the decisions of others. If big companies choose MS over better solutions, that is their stupidity. If MS really benefits the customer, then so be it, everyone who chooses Microsoft will benefit.
For myself, I'll use some of both, to suit my needs, while paying a minimum because of my small, non-business budget. What has MS done, really, to hurt consumers? Provide integrated tools that eliminate the need for other software. This is beneficial, in a way...free instead of paid-for. However, it eliminates something very important to a free market economy: freedom. Eventually, when there is no choice but MS, it can start charging for these "free" integrations, like IE and WMP and TCP/IP, for that matter, which I hear used to cost money to use (I'm only 19 now...). At that point, MS will be such a standard that there will be no competition, and so integrated that it cannot be removed from technology. That is what MS is aiming for, the ultimate for any business: to be a necessity.
I think MS has hurt consumers and needs to be punished strongly, to let the people in charge there know that this will not be tolerated. Their monopolizing efforts have hurt many companies, and can do nothing but continue to hurt everyone. MS, in a way, is already neccessary...try playing a videogame or buying a PC from a big-name company without an MSN product. But their actions can be curbed, and that is what is needed.
#endif
America: The Good Neighbor.
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.
I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times and safely home again.
You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.
I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."
Stand proud, America!
The only effective answer to violence is violence. Peace-loving is fine, but just taking it only encourages more attacks. The reason why the US has an army and nuclear weapons is because without them, we would have no response when any group: communists, muslems, or anyone, tries to harm us. Again, the only answer to violence is violence.
We have to be cautious, yes. We have to be careful with our targets, of course. But we can't just let this one slide...and I'm glad I live in a country where people still care, where people are outraged and heartsick when people they have no connection to, just fellow countrymen, are killed and hurt.
An attack wouldn't be about revenge. A retaliatory strike would be punishment, retribution, yes, and also a warning: don't hurt the U.S.
Actually, the WT buildings were designed to withstand fire, earthquake, and impacts, even planes An MSN article discusses this. They say that basically, the jet fuel burned too fast and too hot, and the building softened and was destroyed. Why we didn't see smoke, I don't know...and I can't rule out secondary explosions, either (aka another bomb on the plane or in the building).
I can't believe you! I can imagine it now: ...stronger man, ha! We don't need you people, and we don't need comments like this splitting us up and trying to tell us our leaders are weak...did you even read what Bush was doing when he heard about the attacks? He was in a school. Reading a book to kids. Clinton would probably have been busy "not having sex"
Terrorists: "Oh yeah, now that Bush is prez we are free to blow up the U.S."
Blame it on the Prez...
clinton couldn't even face up to what he had done ("I never had sex with that woman...")
free enterprise and democracy are inseperable. You must have self-rule to have freedom to buy and sell what you want. If you want to communize, fine... but capitalism has nothing to do with what happened today...it was probably our relations with the Israeli's and the world...