I beg to differ on this. Microsoft understood from day one the market effects that are created by the tie between the OS and applications. They did everthing in their power (both legal and illegal) to create and maintain exactly the monopoly that they have. These network effects ("network" in economic terms) can be just as powerful in terms of maintaining monopoly control of a market as other forces, such as cornering supply, production and distribution of a natural resource.
I conceed your point & agree but I would say that while those network effects are very powerful and give Microsoft most of the characteristics of a monopoly (and are more than enough to get them busted for abusing their monopoly power) they aren't strictly speaking the dictionary definition. M$ don't have exclusive control over the means to create or sell a competing product, which is in fact fairly easy. It's just very hard to overcome the network advantages. That said I think someone with a significantly better solution could (and I look forward to Linux actually doing so)
Even our lowest tech enemies make occasional use of technology. An EMP pulse would be mighty useful against a dusty, camel riding Afghan Mujahedeen with a scimitar in one hand and an old Stinger anti-aircraft launcher in the other. And even third world despts only slightly up the technological ladder from there can buy modern weapons. If they can't buy American the French are always happy to sell, or if you're strapped for cash there's always Russian wares. Besides which there are plenty of potential threats out there that may involve much more advanced enemies. The world is not static, the enemies we face today will not be the enemies we face tomorrow. If things had been just a little different 9/11 could have seen us at war with a nuclear power (Pakistan) rather than just their stone-age cousins/allies in Afghanistan (In fact I think that possibility was so likely at the time that it was probably a topic of discussion with Musherif and explains why he was so eager to please and pleaded with his people that Pakistans survival depended on cooperating with the USA - the ties between the Pakistani security apparatus and Al Quada were quite substantial.) A few missteps over Tiawan could see us in a war with a technologically sophisticated (in parts) China. Even Iran is not the technological backwater that North Korea is. Sure none of these potential adversaries is on the technological level of the first world but their militaries are using increasingly sophisticated technologies.
I saw one in Rhode Island last thursday night around 7:00. It was very dim and at first I just thought it was light pollution I always notice from the town north of me. But after a while it became more distinct and had that characteristic aurora shimmering and shifting. It was still so dim that I was half convinced it was only my over active imagination until a friend called to tell me to go out an look at it.
I've always wanted to see an aurora but live too far south (in Rhode Island) and with a lot of light pollution (especially to the north). I finally saw one last thursday night. At first I thought it was just a low, thin cloud reflecting back light pollution that's always to the north of me. But a bit later it got much better defined & easier to see and started to shift and shimmer with some color shifts from red to green. It was still so dim that it was hard to make out but it really made my night. Sadly my kids missed it - maybe tonight they'll be able to see one. Sadly it's supposed to be cloudy & it looks like these solar storms aren't going to hit us strong enough to bring aurora's this far south anyway.
It was the conclusion of a period of war between the Saxons and the Normans, and the start of the Anglo-Saxon race that would eventually found a little colony called America...
Norman and Saxon, BTW, are shorthands of the ancient terms for northman and southman.
Well at least you have the date and the names of the leaders right. And half credit for Norman coming from "north man"
Monopoly != popularity. Monopoly is taking market share by force rather than by normal market behavior.
No, monopoly means "exclusive control by one group of the manufacture, or production, or selling of a comodity" whether that monopoly was gained by the popularity of the product or by "force" is irrelevant. The behaviour you are talking about isn't "monopoly" it is the abuse of a monopoly, or in anti-trust law "unfair business practices". Also, those business practices are only "unfair" IF you have a monopoly. So Microsoft was perfectly fine writing those "lock in" contracts with OEM's before they had a monopoly. It was perfectly fair to sign exclusive contracts in an attempt to lock out the competition and gain market-share. It is even fine for them to have become a monopoly, but once they are they are forbiden such practices which used to be perfectly legal.
Microsoft does have overwhelming marketshare, their network of exclusive sales contracts, when it was fully in force, probably made them a monopoly by virtue of the fact that they had something close enough to exclusive control of the sale of operating systems. I think such a virtual monopoly was sufficient for anti-trust law to kick in and forbid their use of otherwise legal practices. But strictly speaking Microsoft isn't a monopoly in the sense that DeBeers or OPEC are, or Standard Oil was.
The NYT and Washington Post "left-leaning"? You have to be kidding.
No, i am not kidding. Certainly there is a spectrum from left to right and the Guardian is further to the left than NYT which is to the left of the Washington Post. It's important to remember that "left" and "right" are relative terms. The only way to use them objectively is to compare any individual or institution as being left if it is to the left of population as a whole or right if it is to the right of the same. It is easy for a partisan to lose perspective and think of anyone to their left or right to on the left or right in some objective sense.
An easy way to find out if you are suffering from this lack of perspective is to see if you consistently label elected officials with broad support, papers, magazines & TV chanels with broad circulations or viewerships and broad influence, as "far right" rather than merely "right". Or, more to the point, do you describe politicians, papers, magazines etc. that are consistently on the left of any policy dipute as centrist or unbiased? Is G.W. Bush "far right"? and if so what terms remains to describe the fairly large number of people that complain that he is too liberal? or even *is* a "liberal" (See this loss of perspective afflicts both sides)
The New York Times consistently editorializes in favor of the more liberal side of the dispute du jour. It consistently endorses the more liberal of any two major candidates for election, when in "crusading" mode its news pages are consistently crusading for a liberal cause (witness the reporting on the Augusta National Golf Club). As often as not when subjected to public opinion polls or democratic decision making either in elections or votes by elected politicians the (reliably more liberal) position or candidate endorsed by the NYT fails to meet (more conservative) public approval. By any objective standard that makes them a liberal paper even if they are more conservative than you are.
That's not true. William Safire, the founding editor of the freaking National Review, is a frequent regular contributor to what many consider the most "liberal" paper in the country, the New York Times.
Conservative complaints about liberal bias are not about the editorial page which as you point out often have conservative columnists even when the "official" opinions in the unsigned editorials are reliably liberal (as with the NYT). These are after all the *opinion* pages and are supposed to have a partisan point of view.
The real complaint is that the news pages have a liberal bias. Most conservatives don't think that this bias is self-conscious nor is it (usually) "in your face" in the way that the conservative media tends to be but it is ever present. I think this is a pretty fair criticism, every single survey of the policial opinions and voting habits of reporters, anchors and managers of the major media show that they are overwhelmingly liberal as compared to the population at large. This can't help but to show up in their reporting, and it does in measurable ways such as how liberal politicians, groups and organizations are identified or cited as opposed to their conservative counterparts.
That being said the conservative alternatives are self-consciously and (usually) unapologetically conservative and wear their biases much more on their sleeve. They also tend to have come from tabloid(y) backgrounds since those tabloids saw the frustration of conservative half of the population as a market oppurtunity - so you get Fox news, and the New York Post - self-consciously conservative and rather trashy.
In either case you are much more likely bias in the news when it is your ox that is being gored.
Sure, some papers may lean left (like the Washington Post,) but they don't compare to the wacko right wing-ness of papers like the Washington Times.
I should point out that while the Post does "lean left" as you say most conservatives consider it to be much fairer and more balanced in it's reporting when compared to the New York Times. Many conservatives have written pieces encouraging the Washington Post to make a play for the national market currently dominated by the Times. As for the Washington Times being "wacko right" that's too true -but then there are plenty of papers that are just as wacky on the left (for instance the Boston Globe)
The biggest reason I think FrontPage is so widely disliked is the tendency for people to use the built-in "themes"
No. The biggest reason it is so widely disliked is that it produces really crappy, bloated html. You might think that doesn't matter since the end user isn't looking at the ugly code but at the (usually ugly) page. Who cares about the ugly code as long as it works, right? I suppose thats true if you make the page once and then leave it alone. The problem is when you go back in and are using Frontpage to constantly change and maintain the page. When you delete an element it doesn't always delete all the funky tags around it, things start getting *really* ugly with the page all loaded up with bits of old html that (hopefully!) aren't doing anything. Eventually something breaks, weird things start to happen and Frontpage loses track of the crap it has created and even someone who knows html can't fix it because it's such a massive screwed up mess.
I agree that there's no reason that there can't be a decent WYSIWYG editor, FrontPage just isn't it. DreamWeaver creates nice code but it's a pro tool with a much steeper learning curve.
As for handwritten code - well, no canned solution will ever have the flexibility that you have if you do it yourself. There are plenty of text editors that will write the tags for you much like (and just as efficient as) the WYSIWYG tools. The main difference is that you are looking at the source rather than at the rendered page - for someone who does know html it really is better (more flexible & powerful) and often more efficient than a "user-friendly" tool. When I use DreamWeaver I use it the opposite of how they intended - instead of using the WYSIWIG tool and occasionally using the text editor, I use the text editor and occasionally use the WYSIWIG tool (it can be nice for quickly creating roll overs & such).
I agree with your dissent to the thoughtless bashing of "intellectual property" that occurs on slashdot. However as far as I understand it the SCO lawsuit isn't a case of an inventor defending his invention from a cheap knock-off. IBM is the "inventor" with the R&D costs in this situation. SCO is claiming that IBM's "invention" should belong to SCO because of a contract that supposedly grants SCO total ownership rights to any work that IBM's does to UNIX into perpetuity. SCO's contribution, to the degree that it even exists, is minimal and a long time gone. IBM could just as easily have developed their software for linux first but since they initially developed it for UNIX SCO is arguing that it is a derivative work and according to their contract belongs to SCO by virtue of their contract, not by virtue of any actual intellectual contribution by SCO.
Also, while there is a lot of truth to the idea that linux is a generic knock-off of other people's innovations there are other dynamics that are at work. First off, much of what linux is doing isn't really "knocking off" any unique innovations but simply implementing (well) the basics that are well established and already common to all operating systems - if that is "knocking-off" other peoples innovations Microsoft, Apple, et al. are just as guilty.
Another dynamic that is moving linux beyond being a generic knock-off is the degree to which increasingly companies and individuals are for their own reasons contributing original innovations. IBM's contributions attest to this, whatever SCO wins by virtue of their contract everybody agrees that IBM did the original work in this instance. The open-source/free-software system is a sort of ad-hoc joint venture where anyone that isn't planning on selling the software as such contributes what they need to to the system. Some of those contributions are certainly merely "knocking-off" linux's proprietary competitors but increasingly (as they have done a good job imlementing their "knock-off") people are contributing truly original stuff. There are lots of companies (and a lot more individuals) that stand to benefit from free software and are willing to contribute a sizeable R&D investment into it. Hardware companies, service companies, anyone who uses the software as an integral part of their business and is credibly threatened by Microsofts monopoly position has an interest in throwing real money and time at Linux. It has become a informal consortium of (and a weapon in the hand of) those that compete with, or fear, or could benefit from the fall of, Microsoft. That includes a very long list of very big companies that have a whole lot of R&D resources.
There is equipment that will detect when the line from the power company is down, and will disconnect itself so as to not try to power the grid (just your house). I've seen them on sites that also sell wind turbines, solar cells, etc.
Indeed, I think such equipment is mandatory so as not to fry linesmen working on downed lines and such.
One of Apple's spokesmen acknowledged that iTMS didn't make any profit but called it a "trojan horse" to promote iPods and also Quicktime, MPEG4 and AAC. iTMS isn't intended to be a cash cow (at least not at present) but a component in a larger strategy. First and most obviously it drives iPod sales. Secondly, and in the long run more importantly, it will hamper Microsoft from using it's monopoly to dominate media formats the way they currently dominate office document formats.
I understand your opinion but the bible does make a distinction between an individual who is commanded "Though shalt not kill" and "to love his neighbor" and the government which has not only the authority but a responsiblity to execute justice and to protect it's populace. The relevant New Testament passage is Romans 13:1-4 specifically vs. 4 which is talking about the ruler "...For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
As for Jesus' personal teaching in the issue there isn't much specific about the government responsiblity (aside for the responisiblities of citizens *too* the government) but it's worth noting that in his encounter with the Roman Soldier in Matthew 8 He commends the soldier for his faith and makes no comment on his career as a high ranking soldier (of an occupying army oppressing Jesus' own people at that). Also, when he himself was under the death penalty Pilate asked him if he understood that he (Pilate) had the authority to have him executed - Jesus' acknowledged his authority to do so and further noted that this authority was granted to Pilate (as the "ruler"/government) by God Himself (with the clear implication that such authority was under a higher authority which would itself judge how it had been used or misused. The entire exchange is perfectly consistent with Romans 13.
I'm not arguing that the current war is just or right, only that the argument "the bible says 'thou shalt not kill'" or "love your neighbor" is grossly simplistic and just plain ignorant of what the bible, Jesus and historic christianity teach on the subject.
Just rubber stamping 'no' on things, or (even worse) assuming that YOU know better than the end user how to do his job, just leads to the kind of IT that *should* be outsourced to India.
Amen! Aside from working for something like an ISP the entire IT department is a "one-off" activity that is there to support whatever the real work of the business is. Sorry folks but fas often as not your job just isn't as important as the job of the stupid "luser" that is requesting the tool we wants (or perhaps needs) to get that job done. This explains why IT is often understaffed but it is also why the IT department should be bending over backwards to actually support users (i.e. make their job easier) rather than vise versa.
The problem is that the fastest G5 available on-market runs at 2.0 Ghz, and the fastest available P4 on-market runs at 3.2 Ghz. So the G5 loses if we measure by absolute fastest possible speed.
Oh, come on - I don't really believe that Apple has caught up with PeeCee's quite yet but you know very well that MHz is not equivelent to "absolute fastest possible speed" becuase processor design is so much more complex than that - To make a very simplified example which has a "faster absolute possible speed" a 3GHz machine that processes 1 instruction per cycle or a 2GHz machine that processes 2? Or a 3GHz machine with a deeper pipeline that requires 10 stages to produce a result or a 2GHz machine that only requires 5? In both cases of course the 2GHz* machine has a MUCH faster "absolute possible speed". This is roughly the situation between PowerPC and X86 - the processor designers for the PowerPC have tended to favor slower chips that do more in each cycle, while the X86 designers have always preferred to go faster but do less. While it may not be *quite* the case when comparing the 2GHz PowerPC and the 3GHz Pentium or Xeon it is as far as I can see pretty darn close. Apple (or more accurately IBM) have definetly gotten themselves back into the ballpark after several years of falling further and further behind.
*(Pretending a myriad of other factors doesn't enter into the equation)
If you want to show off 8GB of memory, you need either some high-end workstation applications or some server applications. The G5 should be able to run some of this stuff, though I don't know how widely available the software is. Once Linux is somewhat more functional on the G5, we might see some more comparisons.
I agree that most benchmarks have been for Photoshop but it is certainly NOT because other more memory intensive software isn't available (though if you're editing a big enough image & I'm sure Photoshop is benefiting from the RAM - it isn't exactly frugal in it's use of system resources). Apple has a *lot* of high end film & video software which is probably one of the most memory intensive software categories. Even lowly iMovie would benefit from this and you know real tools like FCP & Shake & Commotion etc. would all benefit from the additional RAM.
Apple is making a big play on capturing the Hollywood market & the memory benefits of a 64-bit processor are a big asset to that effort.
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts?
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Tech Rich Get Richer
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The problem is that by definition, rich people are rich because they can buy whatever they want. Reducing their taxes is thus NOT going to have any impact on the economy because these people have no real incentive to spend more, the extra little bit of money is not going to have any impact.
No, they won't spend more but they will invest it which is MUCH better for the economy than mere consumer spending. It's the taxes on that additional money they might or might not *make* above and beyond what they already have that has a big impact the economy. Rich people have a lot of flexibility in what they do with their money. Let's use an example of a rich guy that likes boats. He has a nice big nest egg and he has a choice. He can buy a decent yacht now (which helps the economy a little) OR he can invest that money (which helps the economy a lot) in the hopes of making even more money, becoming even richer and buying an even bigger yacht. How *additional* income he may or may not make is taxed is very important to his decision to either help the economy a little (buying a yacht) or a lot (investing). The higher the taxes the less likely he is to invest his existing money to make additional income since the return on investment is all taxed away while the cost to him (a yacht right now) is the same.
Umm... read the article, one of it's main points is that it does NOT lower cost in the short-term. going off-shore can actually increase costs for the short term. It is *long-term* savings that are the real potential benefit. After the transition has been paid for, the kinks worked out and the off-shore staff trained and familiar with the processes and applications and the disruption (including the dissatisfaction of the remaining staff) worked through *then* it can save you a bunch of money. Not as much as it might seem at first but still a bunch. One of the companies was saving 20% - that's a lot of money and can certainly be said to be "working" for them. Over that long term of 20% savings the IT department survivors are either replaced or get over it. As for the rest of the workforce low morale may be a problem in some situations but I'm sure the DHL truck driver isn't that worried about his route being outsourced to India because IT guys he is only vaguely aware exists are now in India.
It was the code-name of the 7100 one of the first powermac models. The reason Sagan was offended rather than flattered was because that particular round of machines were all named for famous scientific frauds (the other two were "cold fusion" and "Piltdown Man"). Sagan succeeded in blocking the unflattering use of his name. But the new name was "BHA" and as you said was widely known to stand for "butt head astronomer". The legal department again asked the engineers to change the code-name so it was changed to "LAW" which stood for "Lawyers are wimps". Despite the new name Sagan sued over "BHA" and lost(!) since "Butt-Head" was an opinion and not implied as a statement of fact.
There can be no question that the use of the
figurative term 'Butt-Head' negates the impression that Defendant was
seriously implying an assertion of fact. It strains reason to conclude that
Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency
as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a
scientist using the undefined phrase 'butt-head.' Thus, the figurative
language militates against implying an assertion of fact....
Furthermore, the tenor of any communication of the information, especially
the phrase 'Butt-Head Astronomer,' would negate the impression that
Defendant was implying an assertion of fact."
From judge J. Baird's published opinion dismissing the libel suit
"The sky is blue" is meta-data about skies and blueness at this level. Such a definition is meaningless.
The sky is not data, nor for that matter is "blueness" data (unless you believe that The Matrix was a documentary rather than a work of fiction). "The sky is blue" therefore is not meta-data about the sky but simply data about the sky. If we are storing bits of data about the sky (ie "it's blue", "it has clouds" etc.) we may also want to store data about the data about the sky. If we also store the citation "by alext" and the date "sept. 5, 2003" that is not data about the sky, it is data about the data - it's "meta-data" in our sky-facts database.
Obviously there are some people (or at least you) that don't like that broad definition of meta-data, that think it is confusing or unhelpful. I will concede that this broad definition *can* occasionally be problematic - for instance if our database is not about sky-facts but is a database of quotations then the citation "by alext" would probably be considered to change in character from "meta-data" to data itself.
Ultimately despite that "problem" my usage is the common one, the one found in dictionaries and even accords with the latin terms that make up the word. Perhaps at one time your narrower definition was the common and accepted usage (I frankly wasn't aware of it) but in a living language things change. Usage dictates the definition of a word, "awful" is no longer a synonym of "awsome" no matter how correct that would be. "Meta-data" is now commonly accepted as a broad term meaning "data about data" and is subdivided from there into "essential meta-data", "intrinsic meta-data", even "categorization meta-data" and so on. I would argue the shift (if there was one) was like almost all such shifts - because the new usage *IS* useful. It's useful to have a broad term for "data about data" that distinguishes the primary data we are concerned with in any given database and the auxilary data about that data.
It's logically incorrect (and perhaps rather pretentious) to refer to categorization information in general as "meta-data".
Only information essential to the interpretation of an object, such as its Latin-1 text encoding or a.C vs..java file extension, could conceivably be classed as meta-data in an IT system.
Your definition is incorrect (and perhaps rather pretentious?). Meta-data is data about data. (Thus the prefix "meta" whose relavent translation is "about") There is no implication that the meta-data is essential or merely informative. So file type which is essential and modification date which is merely useful are both meta-data they are not the data itself but data about the data as is the author and title of a song. They are not the song they are information about the song - they are the songs meta-data.
meta-data/me't*-day`t*/, or combinations of/may'-/ or
(Commonwealth)/mee'-/;/-dah`t*/ (Or "meta data") Data about
data. In data processing, meta-data is definitional data
that provides information about or documentation of other data
managed within an application or environment.
For example, meta-data would document data about data
elements or attributes, (name, size, data type, etc) and
data about records or data structures (length, fields,
columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how it
is associated, ownership, etc.). Meta-data may include
descriptive information about the context, quality and
condition, or characteristics of the data.
True users won't generally fill out a bunch of meta data. BUT, a lot of useful meta-data won't require the users input.
First off a lot of meta-data can be generated from the raw data itself or is already generated and present in the files but not available to the file system. For instance it might be nice to sort images by orientation, or by width, or total pixel size rather than by file size. With a little work most graphic apps could probably automatically add dominant color.
Second, data that is professionally produced for you would come with rich meta-data. If you bought your digital copy of E.T. legitimately it would know it's by Steven Spielberg. Tivo has the meta-data on the TV show you are recording. The PDF you downloaded from the IRS or from a corporate web site would also have good meta-data. Or just like CD's and the cddb you probably *can* get that info "from the file itself" (with a little help from an outside data source). I have yet to put a CD into my machine that iTunes didn't automagically know what it was and have fairly decent meta-data for.
Finally, some very useful meta-data could be added semi-automatically or forced on the user. For instance with a db based file system I may no longer be forced to put it into a "directory" (since there would be no such thing) but I may be forced to give it a minimal set of more useful information like what project(s) or client(s) it is associated with.
Democrats are too honest to monkey with it. Leave the system as it is.:P
Hahahahahah.... hahahahah..... *wipes away tears of mirth* You don't actually know any Democrats (or at least Democratic Pols) do you? As a resident of a Union dominated Democratic state I can tell you there is a *reason* Democrats fought so hard with the motor-votor bill and other "reforms" to strip the election laws of any security features.
Slashdot Mirror
Even our lowest tech enemies make occasional use of technology. An EMP pulse would be mighty useful against a dusty, camel riding Afghan Mujahedeen with a scimitar in one hand and an old Stinger anti-aircraft launcher in the other. And even third world despts only slightly up the technological ladder from there can buy modern weapons. If they can't buy American the French are always happy to sell, or if you're strapped for cash there's always Russian wares. Besides which there are plenty of potential threats out there that may involve much more advanced enemies. The world is not static, the enemies we face today will not be the enemies we face tomorrow. If things had been just a little different 9/11 could have seen us at war with a nuclear power (Pakistan) rather than just their stone-age cousins/allies in Afghanistan (In fact I think that possibility was so likely at the time that it was probably a topic of discussion with Musherif and explains why he was so eager to please and pleaded with his people that Pakistans survival depended on cooperating with the USA - the ties between the Pakistani security apparatus and Al Quada were quite substantial.) A few missteps over Tiawan could see us in a war with a technologically sophisticated (in parts) China. Even Iran is not the technological backwater that North Korea is. Sure none of these potential adversaries is on the technological level of the first world but their militaries are using increasingly sophisticated technologies.
I saw one in Rhode Island last thursday night around 7:00. It was very dim and at first I just thought it was light pollution I always notice from the town north of me. But after a while it became more distinct and had that characteristic aurora shimmering and shifting. It was still so dim that I was half convinced it was only my over active imagination until a friend called to tell me to go out an look at it.
I've always wanted to see an aurora but live too far south (in Rhode Island) and with a lot of light pollution (especially to the north). I finally saw one last thursday night. At first I thought it was just a low, thin cloud reflecting back light pollution that's always to the north of me. But a bit later it got much better defined & easier to see and started to shift and shimmer with some color shifts from red to green. It was still so dim that it was hard to make out but it really made my night. Sadly my kids missed it - maybe tonight they'll be able to see one. Sadly it's supposed to be cloudy & it looks like these solar storms aren't going to hit us strong enough to bring aurora's this far south anyway.
Monopoly != popularity. Monopoly is taking market share by force rather than by normal market behavior.
No, monopoly means "exclusive control by one group of the manufacture, or production, or selling of a comodity" whether that monopoly was gained by the popularity of the product or by "force" is irrelevant. The behaviour you are talking about isn't "monopoly" it is the abuse of a monopoly, or in anti-trust law "unfair business practices". Also, those business practices are only "unfair" IF you have a monopoly. So Microsoft was perfectly fine writing those "lock in" contracts with OEM's before they had a monopoly. It was perfectly fair to sign exclusive contracts in an attempt to lock out the competition and gain market-share. It is even fine for them to have become a monopoly, but once they are they are forbiden such practices which used to be perfectly legal.
Microsoft does have overwhelming marketshare, their network of exclusive sales contracts, when it was fully in force, probably made them a monopoly by virtue of the fact that they had something close enough to exclusive control of the sale of operating systems. I think such a virtual monopoly was sufficient for anti-trust law to kick in and forbid their use of otherwise legal practices. But strictly speaking Microsoft isn't a monopoly in the sense that DeBeers or OPEC are, or Standard Oil was.
The NYT and Washington Post "left-leaning"? You have to be kidding.
No, i am not kidding. Certainly there is a spectrum from left to right and the Guardian is further to the left than NYT which is to the left of the Washington Post. It's important to remember that "left" and "right" are relative terms. The only way to use them objectively is to compare any individual or institution as being left if it is to the left of population as a whole or right if it is to the right of the same. It is easy for a partisan to lose perspective and think of anyone to their left or right to on the left or right in some objective sense.
An easy way to find out if you are suffering from this lack of perspective is to see if you consistently label elected officials with broad support, papers, magazines & TV chanels with broad circulations or viewerships and broad influence, as "far right" rather than merely "right". Or, more to the point, do you describe politicians, papers, magazines etc. that are consistently on the left of any policy dipute as centrist or unbiased? Is G.W. Bush "far right"? and if so what terms remains to describe the fairly large number of people that complain that he is too liberal? or even *is* a "liberal" (See this loss of perspective afflicts both sides)
The New York Times consistently editorializes in favor of the more liberal side of the dispute du jour. It consistently endorses the more liberal of any two major candidates for election, when in "crusading" mode its news pages are consistently crusading for a liberal cause (witness the reporting on the Augusta National Golf Club). As often as not when subjected to public opinion polls or democratic decision making either in elections or votes by elected politicians the (reliably more liberal) position or candidate endorsed by the NYT fails to meet (more conservative) public approval. By any objective standard that makes them a liberal paper even if they are more conservative than you are.
That's not true. William Safire, the founding editor of the freaking National Review, is a frequent regular contributor to what many consider the most "liberal" paper in the country, the New York Times.
Conservative complaints about liberal bias are not about the editorial page which as you point out often have conservative columnists even when the "official" opinions in the unsigned editorials are reliably liberal (as with the NYT). These are after all the *opinion* pages and are supposed to have a partisan point of view.
The real complaint is that the news pages have a liberal bias. Most conservatives don't think that this bias is self-conscious nor is it (usually) "in your face" in the way that the conservative media tends to be but it is ever present. I think this is a pretty fair criticism, every single survey of the policial opinions and voting habits of reporters, anchors and managers of the major media show that they are overwhelmingly liberal as compared to the population at large. This can't help but to show up in their reporting, and it does in measurable ways such as how liberal politicians, groups and organizations are identified or cited as opposed to their conservative counterparts.
That being said the conservative alternatives are self-consciously and (usually) unapologetically conservative and wear their biases much more on their sleeve. They also tend to have come from tabloid(y) backgrounds since those tabloids saw the frustration of conservative half of the population as a market oppurtunity - so you get Fox news, and the New York Post - self-consciously conservative and rather trashy.
In either case you are much more likely bias in the news when it is your ox that is being gored.
Sure, some papers may lean left (like the Washington Post,) but they don't compare to the wacko right wing-ness of papers like the Washington Times.
I should point out that while the Post does "lean left" as you say most conservatives consider it to be much fairer and more balanced in it's reporting when compared to the New York Times. Many conservatives have written pieces encouraging the Washington Post to make a play for the national market currently dominated by the Times. As for the Washington Times being "wacko right" that's too true -but then there are plenty of papers that are just as wacky on the left (for instance the Boston Globe)
I've been using Desktop Manager for the past week or so and am pretty happy with it.
The biggest reason I think FrontPage is so widely disliked is the tendency for people to use the built-in "themes"
No. The biggest reason it is so widely disliked is that it produces really crappy, bloated html. You might think that doesn't matter since the end user isn't looking at the ugly code but at the (usually ugly) page. Who cares about the ugly code as long as it works, right? I suppose thats true if you make the page once and then leave it alone. The problem is when you go back in and are using Frontpage to constantly change and maintain the page. When you delete an element it doesn't always delete all the funky tags around it, things start getting *really* ugly with the page all loaded up with bits of old html that (hopefully!) aren't doing anything. Eventually something breaks, weird things start to happen and Frontpage loses track of the crap it has created and even someone who knows html can't fix it because it's such a massive screwed up mess.
I agree that there's no reason that there can't be a decent WYSIWYG editor, FrontPage just isn't it. DreamWeaver creates nice code but it's a pro tool with a much steeper learning curve.
As for handwritten code - well, no canned solution will ever have the flexibility that you have if you do it yourself. There are plenty of text editors that will write the tags for you much like (and just as efficient as) the WYSIWYG tools. The main difference is that you are looking at the source rather than at the rendered page - for someone who does know html it really is better (more flexible & powerful) and often more efficient than a "user-friendly" tool. When I use DreamWeaver I use it the opposite of how they intended - instead of using the WYSIWIG tool and occasionally using the text editor, I use the text editor and occasionally use the WYSIWIG tool (it can be nice for quickly creating roll overs & such).
I agree with your dissent to the thoughtless bashing of "intellectual property" that occurs on slashdot. However as far as I understand it the SCO lawsuit isn't a case of an inventor defending his invention from a cheap knock-off. IBM is the "inventor" with the R&D costs in this situation. SCO is claiming that IBM's "invention" should belong to SCO because of a contract that supposedly grants SCO total ownership rights to any work that IBM's does to UNIX into perpetuity. SCO's contribution, to the degree that it even exists, is minimal and a long time gone. IBM could just as easily have developed their software for linux first but since they initially developed it for UNIX SCO is arguing that it is a derivative work and according to their contract belongs to SCO by virtue of their contract, not by virtue of any actual intellectual contribution by SCO.
Also, while there is a lot of truth to the idea that linux is a generic knock-off of other people's innovations there are other dynamics that are at work. First off, much of what linux is doing isn't really "knocking off" any unique innovations but simply implementing (well) the basics that are well established and already common to all operating systems - if that is "knocking-off" other peoples innovations Microsoft, Apple, et al. are just as guilty.
Another dynamic that is moving linux beyond being a generic knock-off is the degree to which increasingly companies and individuals are for their own reasons contributing original innovations. IBM's contributions attest to this, whatever SCO wins by virtue of their contract everybody agrees that IBM did the original work in this instance. The open-source/free-software system is a sort of ad-hoc joint venture where anyone that isn't planning on selling the software as such contributes what they need to to the system. Some of those contributions are certainly merely "knocking-off" linux's proprietary competitors but increasingly (as they have done a good job imlementing their "knock-off") people are contributing truly original stuff. There are lots of companies (and a lot more individuals) that stand to benefit from free software and are willing to contribute a sizeable R&D investment into it. Hardware companies, service companies, anyone who uses the software as an integral part of their business and is credibly threatened by Microsofts monopoly position has an interest in throwing real money and time at Linux. It has become a informal consortium of (and a weapon in the hand of) those that compete with, or fear, or could benefit from the fall of, Microsoft. That includes a very long list of very big companies that have a whole lot of R&D resources.
There is equipment that will detect when the line from the power company is down, and will disconnect itself so as to not try to power the grid (just your house). I've seen them on sites that also sell wind turbines, solar cells, etc.
Indeed, I think such equipment is mandatory so as not to fry linesmen working on downed lines and such.
One of Apple's spokesmen acknowledged that iTMS didn't make any profit but called it a "trojan horse" to promote iPods and also Quicktime, MPEG4 and AAC. iTMS isn't intended to be a cash cow (at least not at present) but a component in a larger strategy. First and most obviously it drives iPod sales. Secondly, and in the long run more importantly, it will hamper Microsoft from using it's monopoly to dominate media formats the way they currently dominate office document formats.
I understand your opinion but the bible does make a distinction between an individual who is commanded "Though shalt not kill" and "to love his neighbor" and the government which has not only the authority but a responsiblity to execute justice and to protect it's populace. The relevant New Testament passage is Romans 13:1-4 specifically vs. 4 which is talking about the ruler " ...For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
As for Jesus' personal teaching in the issue there isn't much specific about the government responsiblity (aside for the responisiblities of citizens *too* the government) but it's worth noting that in his encounter with the Roman Soldier in Matthew 8 He commends the soldier for his faith and makes no comment on his career as a high ranking soldier (of an occupying army oppressing Jesus' own people at that). Also, when he himself was under the death penalty Pilate asked him if he understood that he (Pilate) had the authority to have him executed - Jesus' acknowledged his authority to do so and further noted that this authority was granted to Pilate (as the "ruler"/government) by God Himself (with the clear implication that such authority was under a higher authority which would itself judge how it had been used or misused. The entire exchange is perfectly consistent with Romans 13.
I'm not arguing that the current war is just or right, only that the argument "the bible says 'thou shalt not kill'" or "love your neighbor" is grossly simplistic and just plain ignorant of what the bible, Jesus and historic christianity teach on the subject.
Just rubber stamping 'no' on things, or (even worse) assuming that YOU know better than the end user how to do his job, just leads to the kind of IT that *should* be outsourced to India.
Amen! Aside from working for something like an ISP the entire IT department is a "one-off" activity that is there to support whatever the real work of the business is. Sorry folks but fas often as not your job just isn't as important as the job of the stupid "luser" that is requesting the tool we wants (or perhaps needs) to get that job done. This explains why IT is often understaffed but it is also why the IT department should be bending over backwards to actually support users (i.e. make their job easier) rather than vise versa.
The problem is that the fastest G5 available on-market runs at 2.0 Ghz, and the fastest available P4 on-market runs at 3.2 Ghz. So the G5 loses if we measure by absolute fastest possible speed.
Oh, come on - I don't really believe that Apple has caught up with PeeCee's quite yet but you know very well that MHz is not equivelent to "absolute fastest possible speed" becuase processor design is so much more complex than that - To make a very simplified example which has a "faster absolute possible speed" a 3GHz machine that processes 1 instruction per cycle or a 2GHz machine that processes 2? Or a 3GHz machine with a deeper pipeline that requires 10 stages to produce a result or a 2GHz machine that only requires 5? In both cases of course the 2GHz* machine has a MUCH faster "absolute possible speed". This is roughly the situation between PowerPC and X86 - the processor designers for the PowerPC have tended to favor slower chips that do more in each cycle, while the X86 designers have always preferred to go faster but do less. While it may not be *quite* the case when comparing the 2GHz PowerPC and the 3GHz Pentium or Xeon it is as far as I can see pretty darn close. Apple (or more accurately IBM) have definetly gotten themselves back into the ballpark after several years of falling further and further behind.
*(Pretending a myriad of other factors doesn't enter into the equation)
If you want to show off 8GB of memory, you need either some high-end workstation applications or some server applications. The G5 should be able to run some of this stuff, though I don't know how widely available the software is. Once Linux is somewhat more functional on the G5, we might see some more comparisons.
I agree that most benchmarks have been for Photoshop but it is certainly NOT because other more memory intensive software isn't available (though if you're editing a big enough image & I'm sure Photoshop is benefiting from the RAM - it isn't exactly frugal in it's use of system resources). Apple has a *lot* of high end film & video software which is probably one of the most memory intensive software categories. Even lowly iMovie would benefit from this and you know real tools like FCP & Shake & Commotion etc. would all benefit from the additional RAM.
Apple is making a big play on capturing the Hollywood market & the memory benefits of a 64-bit processor are a big asset to that effort.
The problem is that by definition, rich people are rich because they can buy whatever they want. Reducing their taxes is thus NOT going to have any impact on the economy because these people have no real incentive to spend more, the extra little bit of money is not going to have any impact.
No, they won't spend more but they will invest it which is MUCH better for the economy than mere consumer spending. It's the taxes on that additional money they might or might not *make* above and beyond what they already have that has a big impact the economy. Rich people have a lot of flexibility in what they do with their money. Let's use an example of a rich guy that likes boats. He has a nice big nest egg and he has a choice. He can buy a decent yacht now (which helps the economy a little) OR he can invest that money (which helps the economy a lot) in the hopes of making even more money, becoming even richer and buying an even bigger yacht. How *additional* income he may or may not make is taxed is very important to his decision to either help the economy a little (buying a yacht) or a lot (investing). The higher the taxes the less likely he is to invest his existing money to make additional income since the return on investment is all taxed away while the cost to him (a yacht right now) is the same.
Does it lower cost in the short-term? Yes.
Umm... read the article, one of it's main points is that it does NOT lower cost in the short-term. going off-shore can actually increase costs for the short term. It is *long-term* savings that are the real potential benefit. After the transition has been paid for, the kinks worked out and the off-shore staff trained and familiar with the processes and applications and the disruption (including the dissatisfaction of the remaining staff) worked through *then* it can save you a bunch of money. Not as much as it might seem at first but still a bunch. One of the companies was saving 20% - that's a lot of money and can certainly be said to be "working" for them. Over that long term of 20% savings the IT department survivors are either replaced or get over it. As for the rest of the workforce low morale may be a problem in some situations but I'm sure the DHL truck driver isn't that worried about his route being outsourced to India because IT guys he is only vaguely aware exists are now in India.
"The sky is blue" is meta-data about skies and blueness at this level. Such a definition is meaningless.
The sky is not data, nor for that matter is "blueness" data (unless you believe that The Matrix was a documentary rather than a work of fiction). "The sky is blue" therefore is not meta-data about the sky but simply data about the sky. If we are storing bits of data about the sky (ie "it's blue", "it has clouds" etc.) we may also want to store data about the data about the sky. If we also store the citation "by alext" and the date "sept. 5, 2003" that is not data about the sky, it is data about the data - it's "meta-data" in our sky-facts database.
Obviously there are some people (or at least you) that don't like that broad definition of meta-data, that think it is confusing or unhelpful. I will concede that this broad definition *can* occasionally be problematic - for instance if our database is not about sky-facts but is a database of quotations then the citation "by alext" would probably be considered to change in character from "meta-data" to data itself.
Ultimately despite that "problem" my usage is the common one, the one found in dictionaries and even accords with the latin terms that make up the word. Perhaps at one time your narrower definition was the common and accepted usage (I frankly wasn't aware of it) but in a living language things change. Usage dictates the definition of a word, "awful" is no longer a synonym of "awsome" no matter how correct that would be. "Meta-data" is now commonly accepted as a broad term meaning "data about data" and is subdivided from there into "essential meta-data", "intrinsic meta-data", even "categorization meta-data" and so on. I would argue the shift (if there was one) was like almost all such shifts - because the new usage *IS* useful. It's useful to have a broad term for "data about data" that distinguishes the primary data we are concerned with in any given database and the auxilary data about that data.
Only information essential to the interpretation of an object, such as its Latin-1 text encoding or a
Your definition is incorrect (and perhaps rather pretentious?). Meta-data is data about data. (Thus the prefix "meta" whose relavent translation is "about") There is no implication that the meta-data is essential or merely informative. So file type which is essential and modification date which is merely useful are both meta-data they are not the data itself but data about the data as is the author and title of a song. They are not the song they are information about the song - they are the songs meta-data. From Dictionary.com
True users won't generally fill out a bunch of meta data. BUT, a lot of useful meta-data won't require the users input.
First off a lot of meta-data can be generated from the raw data itself or is already generated and present in the files but not available to the file system. For instance it might be nice to sort images by orientation, or by width, or total pixel size rather than by file size. With a little work most graphic apps could probably automatically add dominant color.
Second, data that is professionally produced for you would come with rich meta-data. If you bought your digital copy of E.T. legitimately it would know it's by Steven Spielberg. Tivo has the meta-data on the TV show you are recording. The PDF you downloaded from the IRS or from a corporate web site would also have good meta-data. Or just like CD's and the cddb you probably *can* get that info "from the file itself" (with a little help from an outside data source). I have yet to put a CD into my machine that iTunes didn't automagically know what it was and have fairly decent meta-data for.
Finally, some very useful meta-data could be added semi-automatically or forced on the user. For instance with a db based file system I may no longer be forced to put it into a "directory" (since there would be no such thing) but I may be forced to give it a minimal set of more useful information like what project(s) or client(s) it is associated with.
Methinks it was a joke, retard
Yes, but methinks he intended the humor to be derived from exageration rather than from sarcasm.
Oh yeah, I forgot... retard
Democrats are too honest to monkey with it. Leave the system as it is. :P
Hahahahahah.... hahahahah..... *wipes away tears of mirth* You don't actually know any Democrats (or at least Democratic Pols) do you? As a resident of a Union dominated Democratic state I can tell you there is a *reason* Democrats fought so hard with the motor-votor bill and other "reforms" to strip the election laws of any security features.