I agree with this. If they want to place legal restrictions on us, it's fully reasonable for us to impose restrictions on them in return. When they complain about it, someone in power should point out that it's only fair, and they always have the option of asking for the DCMA to be repealed.
Oh, it's a blast, but it's not really capitalism. Microsoft can, and does, coerce its customers into buying what it wants to sell, when it wants to sell it. That's hardly a free market at work, so I'm not sure it qualifies as capitalism.
Now that they've discontinued non-XP products, everything requires product activation. This means, no cloning, which means, lots and lots of set-up time. Currently, it takes me about 10 minutes to roll out a new desktop wih all the software, because I keep one up-to-date master clone image, with all the latest patches, drivers, etc. on it. This makes my life easy. We still pay for licenses for everything. With "XP," I can't clone. This means about 4-6 hours per machine to get the Company Standard Software set up. Installation costs go way up.
"Open License" products bypass the product activation, which helps, but it means that I have to buy TWO licenses for each machine, because PC makers (in our case, Dell), will not sell PCs without software, and have no provision for wirking with Open Licensees. This is retarded. Plus, Microsoft says that (according to the sales lackey I just spoke with) cloning is illegal unless we have a "Select" or "Enterprise" agreement, which requires 250+ desktops.
MSFT is not selling Office 2000 anymore, so I have to buy XP and downgrade, because I don't want to go through the expense and hassle of upgrading every machine to Office XP, just because Microsoft wants me to.
I'll get to repeat the experience with Windows 2000 in the near future, it seems.
So my choices are:
1) Pay more and suffer more hassle 2) Suffer mroe hassle and pay more
Oh, I'm LOVING this. Macs are looking better and better for the corporate desktop... except that we require certain Windows software, like our accounting system, some data processing software, etc.
[...] the idea that the FBI and Microsoft will keep the root passwords for personal computers, and not let you have them, has not been proposed. This is an extrapolation from the Clipper chip and similar US government key-escrow proposals, together with a long-term trend: computer systems are increasingly set up to give absentee operators control over the people actually using the computer system.
But we are coming steadily closer to that point. In 2001, Disney-funded Senator Hollings proposed a bill called the SSSCA that would require every new computer to have mandatory copy-restriction facilities that the user cannot bypass.
Well, it's been proposed now. It's called "Palladium." What's a good non-computer career that pays well?
Once they lock down electronic media, they will want to plug "the analog hole."
We are in the middle of a slow descent back into illiteracy. It's no economics and lack of education driving it. It's the people in control. They want to control you, the information you can get, and how you can use that information.
Broadcast news is insipid, but print is a little better, for now. This is largely because it's easier to spot stupidity in written form, when you're not distracted by boobies, animated graphics and short sound/video clips.
Once you can't control your electronic entertainment anymore, because of DRM, broadcast tags, Fritz Hollings's legislation, Palladium, etc., what will you do?
Newspapers and books? How long will those be allowed to exist in their current forms? Paper?!?! How insecure! There will be e-books and e-paper, as in Minority Report. And you won't have control over those either.
In Minority Report, there was scene of a guy on a train reading an "E-USA Today." The front page, which he was reading, changed to the Official Story about the A-Large PreCriminal without the reader requesting it. The reader was told what to read.
Who doubts that this will not be turned into reality?
The problem with science fiction is that it's pretty depressing. So much of it depicts a totalitarian future of some sort. These stories capture and guide the imaginations and creative energy of the current and future generations of designers and engineers. How long have people been working on making things they've seen in Star Trek and Star Wars? And more depressing works, like Minority report?
It's all very anti-freedom, anti-citizen, and stupid.
There's also a trend towards companies not wanting you to tinker with their stuff (that you paid them for). This goes hand-in-glove with shorter manuals and "disposable" products.
Citizens would want to know about their long-lasting products. Consumers don't give a shit. Corporations prefer consumers.
A lot of morons are pointing to all the corporate collapses saying it's the fault of the "Clinton Era" for de-regulation. Wrong. People are fucking greedy.
I would say, "right." When the government turns its back on its duty to ensure a fair and free market (as opposed to ensuring anarchy), then people get to act on their greed in destructive ways. Just read the business section of any newspaper, or as Doonesbury calls it, "the crime pages."
I remember a two-panel political cartoon from a year or so ago, around the "transition-team" time. The left panel had Clinton sizing up a horse labeled "the economy," and writing "thouroughbred" on an inventory sheet. The right panel had Bush looking at the same horse, but writing "broken down nag" on his inventory sheet.
I think Bush (in the cartoon) was right. Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Xerox, Vivendi, dot dot dot
It's almost like Clinton was a Republican (free trade, gutted government regulations, etc.) and Bush is a Democrat (protectionism, tariffs, deficit/pork spending, etc.). Of course, it's more confused than that, and both politicans and parties are actually very corrupt.
Sheesh. No wonder keep voting for exactly neither of the two major parties... I'm waiting for a Free Trade with and Iron Fist kind of candidate, who will promote both free trade AND corporate accountability, regulation, oversight, etc. I don't want socialism, and I don't want corporate feudalism. I want capitalism -- you know, free trade, free markets, and strong government regulation and oversight to keep the market a level playing field, and keep fraud out of the picture.
"Screw-you Net," because of arrogance and poor management, not price.
And it's not as it ISPs have a choice about paying for bandwidth. They get a connection to a teir1 carrier, or they suck; two choices. It's entirely different than me at home wanting to pay less for a DSL line.
Me sitting at home wanting to pay less for a DSL line is a good thing. Consumers exert downward pressure on prices; they want to pay less. That's how markets work. Producers want more, of course, so they try to raise prices. That's also how free markets work. If screwyounet was not charging enough to cover its costs, then they were boneheads. This is not my fault for wanting to pay less for broadband at home, and it's not my ISP's fault for wanting to pay less for its T3 connections. It's screwyounet's fault for being morons and giving away their product.
The more I think about it, the more I think you're totally wrong. There was a huge buildout of network capacity in the 90s. Many of the businesses who were buying it are now defunct. So there's vast overcapacity, and it's even cheaper, now, because the telecoms market has crashed.
I wonder how screwyounet is doing, separate from WorldCom? WorldCom seemed (to me) to be a criminal organization from the get-go -- jus an aggregator rather than a producer. Like the 90's T. Bonne Pickens kind of corporation. Screwyounet may have just been dragged down with WorldCom's "accounting irregularities" (i.e. lying, fraud, etc.), which has exactly nothing to do with me wanting to pay less for a DSL line, or even what scrweyounet charges for bandwidth.
since they have 50% of the eyes, and are still going under. So it is not a non-competitive issue.
Dotcoms all went for market share over profits. So what's your point?
I think we, the users, are not paying for what we use. The lowest level carriers seem to be knocking these people out of business. The telcos, or whoever.
This is retarded. We're paying what they charge for it, if we feel it's worth it. We are under no obligation to pay more for something just to save their butts. They can try charging more, if that's the problem. If they charge more than the public thinks their product is worth, they sell less of it. There's a sweet spot there somewhere that some guy named Laffer had something to say about.
Screw-you-net indeed, but they obviously didn't screw you good enough
No, they're obviously morons for not civerign their costs, if that's the problem they had.
so now you will have to deal with other companies that will [...] start charging you what they are charged.
The difference is that, cell phones are billed by the minute, and land lines are fixed-cost. You don't pay more to get a marketing call at home, but you do pay more to get one on a cell phone.
I would bill them for the minutes. If they refuse to identify themselves, report them immediately to your provider for making harassing calls, and demand to know who it was so that you can (1) bill them and (2) block them.
Another alternative: never answer your phone unless you recognize the number. Everyone else cal leave a message in your voicemail and get a call back.
I would like to see a PGP-type authentication system in phones, where you can elect to have people you know ring the phone and others not. You give a key or token to people you want to be able to call you, that uniquely identifies them to you. Their phone signals your phone with thay key.
I wouldn't mind seeing a law requiring caller-id on telemarketing calls, and accompanying hardware to automatically clock telemarketing calls. The phone companies can log EVERY call, so if there was a special code I could dial after getting an unwanted call -- *99 or something -- and the phone company logs it as such, that would be good, as well. I'd like to get a list of companies flagged on my bill each month.
Naturally, the power and popularity of relics was dependent upon the saintliness of the original "owner." The ultimate source of relics, of course, was Jesus himself. But there was just one problem: it is clear in the New Testament that after his resurrection, Jesus was "carried up to Heaven." Thus, there just wasn't any possibility of a church acquiring Jesus' head or foot, as happened with various saints. For the most part, the only Jesus relics available were things like his crown of thorns, his robe, his sandals, or even pieces of the "True Cross."
But then some astute theologian - or was it a businessman? - realized that not all of Jesus' body could have been actually transported up to Heaven. Jesus was, after all, a faithful Jew, and as such, he would have been circumcised like every other boy. So where was his foreskin? Whatever happened to that bit of divine flesh?
And thus began a search for a very odd "Holy Grail" which resulted in not one, but up to a dozen different holy foreskins, each competing to be the genuine article. Of course, one presumes that they could not all be genuine and I am not aware of anyone who tried to argue that the unusual bounty was a miracle akin to the loaves and fishes.
http://atheism.about.com/library/weekly/aa051000 b. htm
In "Carrying the cross" -- Christ's broken nose is attributed to the impact of his face hitting the ground as he fell while carrying the cross.
In "Death" -- The Gospel of John concludes that paragraph saying, "this was done so that scripture would be fulfilled that not one bone of His body be broken." And indeed, throughout the entire passion of Jesus, despite the extraordinary atrocities done to him, not one of his bones were broken.
I's like to touch on a point not raised by the Shroud site. It stands to reason that Jesus was circumcised, being Jewish. so, when he rose to heaven, did he leave his foreskin behind?
chump change (200k max) -- versus getting their highly compensated programmers on this
MSFT could run Linux on the XBox any time they want -- they control the system, and know exactly how it works. Doing it themselves -- just turning off the various cripples -- would certainly be cheaper.
The only ones "enforcing" their beliefs here are the atheists.
That's just wrong, and for several reasons. Firstly, "the atheists" are not making anyone do anything, this court case is about not endorsing a religion.
Second, you refer to "the atheists" like they are some organized group, but that's not the case.
Maybe if this case gets overturned, a Muslim will then sue to change the Pledge to "one Nation, under Allah." We'll see the Bible thumpers squeak, then, I imagine.
Why? Because it throws gasoline on the fire of the paranoid delusions of many Christians in this country that they are somehow a persecuted minority squaring off with an evil govenrment committed to state-enforced atheism.
You're right -- this is delusional. Just because they can't use the power of the State to enforce and promote their beliefs, they think they're being persecuted. Riiiiight. I suppose they won't complain about, say, the Taliban, then, since they were using the power of the state to enforce and promote their religious beliefs.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with this. If they want to place legal restrictions on us, it's fully reasonable for us to impose restrictions on them in return. When they complain about it, someone in power should point out that it's only fair, and they always have the option of asking for the DCMA to be repealed.
You never test in commonly-used browsers? For shame!
Home Depot's website is picky about its clients.
"And she dressed like a slut, too."
-- Pig Hogger
Given the political, cultural and technological trends of the previous 50-100 years, convince me that I should not assume the worst.
Oh, it's a blast, but it's not really capitalism. Microsoft can, and does, coerce its customers into buying what it wants to sell, when it wants to sell it. That's hardly a free market at work, so I'm not sure it qualifies as capitalism.
Now that they've discontinued non-XP products, everything requires product activation. This means, no cloning, which means, lots and lots of set-up time. Currently, it takes me about 10 minutes to roll out a new desktop wih all the software, because I keep one up-to-date master clone image, with all the latest patches, drivers, etc. on it. This makes my life easy. We still pay for licenses for everything. With "XP," I can't clone. This means about 4-6 hours per machine to get the Company Standard Software set up. Installation costs go way up.
"Open License" products bypass the product activation, which helps, but it means that I have to buy TWO licenses for each machine, because PC makers (in our case, Dell), will not sell PCs without software, and have no provision for wirking with Open Licensees. This is retarded. Plus, Microsoft says that (according to the sales lackey I just spoke with) cloning is illegal unless we have a "Select" or "Enterprise" agreement, which requires 250+ desktops.
MSFT is not selling Office 2000 anymore, so I have to buy XP and downgrade, because I don't want to go through the expense and hassle of upgrading every machine to Office XP, just because Microsoft wants me to.
I'll get to repeat the experience with Windows 2000 in the near future, it seems.
So my choices are:
1) Pay more and suffer more hassle
2) Suffer mroe hassle and pay more
Oh, I'm LOVING this. Macs are looking better and better for the corporate desktop... except that we require certain Windows software, like our accounting system, some data processing software, etc.
GRrrrrr
From the notes at the end of "Right to Read": Well, it's been proposed now. It's called "Palladium." What's a good non-computer career that pays well?
Where are you?
Once they lock down electronic media, they will want to plug "the analog hole."
We are in the middle of a slow descent back into illiteracy. It's no economics and lack of education driving it. It's the people in control. They want to control you, the information you can get, and how you can use that information.
Broadcast news is insipid, but print is a little better, for now. This is largely because it's easier to spot stupidity in written form, when you're not distracted by boobies, animated graphics and short sound/video clips.
Once you can't control your electronic entertainment anymore, because of DRM, broadcast tags, Fritz Hollings's legislation, Palladium, etc., what will you do?
Newspapers and books? How long will those be allowed to exist in their current forms? Paper?!?! How insecure! There will be e-books and e-paper, as in Minority Report. And you won't have control over those either.
In Minority Report, there was scene of a guy on a train reading an "E-USA Today." The front page, which he was reading, changed to the Official Story about the A-Large PreCriminal without the reader requesting it. The reader was told what to read.
Who doubts that this will not be turned into reality?
The problem with science fiction is that it's pretty depressing. So much of it depicts a totalitarian future of some sort. These stories capture and guide the imaginations and creative energy of the current and future generations of designers and engineers. How long have people been working on making things they've seen in Star Trek and Star Wars? And more depressing works, like Minority report?
It's all very anti-freedom, anti-citizen, and stupid.
All of the ads on
There's also a trend towards companies not wanting you to tinker with their stuff (that you paid them for). This goes hand-in-glove with shorter manuals and "disposable" products.
Citizens would want to know about their long-lasting products. Consumers don't give a shit. Corporations prefer consumers.
I'd like to see a virus that deletes or corrupts the WPA database...
A lot of morons are pointing to all the corporate collapses saying it's the fault of the "Clinton Era" for de-regulation. Wrong. People are fucking greedy.
I would say, "right." When the government turns its back on its duty to ensure a fair and free market (as opposed to ensuring anarchy), then people get to act on their greed in destructive ways. Just read the business section of any newspaper, or as Doonesbury calls it, "the crime pages."
I remember a two-panel political cartoon from a year or so ago, around the "transition-team" time. The left panel had Clinton sizing up a horse labeled "the economy," and writing "thouroughbred" on an inventory sheet. The right panel had Bush looking at the same horse, but writing "broken down nag" on his inventory sheet.
I think Bush (in the cartoon) was right. Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Xerox, Vivendi, dot dot dot
It's almost like Clinton was a Republican (free trade, gutted government regulations, etc.) and Bush is a Democrat (protectionism, tariffs, deficit/pork spending, etc.). Of course, it's more confused than that, and both politicans and parties are actually very corrupt.
Sheesh. No wonder keep voting for exactly neither of the two major parties... I'm waiting for a Free Trade with and Iron Fist kind of candidate, who will promote both free trade AND corporate accountability, regulation, oversight, etc. I don't want socialism, and I don't want corporate feudalism. I want capitalism -- you know, free trade, free markets, and strong government regulation and oversight to keep the market a level playing field, and keep fraud out of the picture.
"Screw-you Net," because of arrogance and poor management, not price.
And it's not as it ISPs have a choice about paying for bandwidth. They get a connection to a teir1 carrier, or they suck; two choices. It's entirely different than me at home wanting to pay less for a DSL line.
Me sitting at home wanting to pay less for a DSL line is a good thing. Consumers exert downward pressure on prices; they want to pay less. That's how markets work. Producers want more, of course, so they try to raise prices. That's also how free markets work. If screwyounet was not charging enough to cover its costs, then they were boneheads. This is not my fault for wanting to pay less for broadband at home, and it's not my ISP's fault for wanting to pay less for its T3 connections. It's screwyounet's fault for being morons and giving away their product.
The more I think about it, the more I think you're totally wrong. There was a huge buildout of network capacity in the 90s. Many of the businesses who were buying it are now defunct. So there's vast overcapacity, and it's even cheaper, now, because the telecoms market has crashed.
I wonder how screwyounet is doing, separate from WorldCom? WorldCom seemed (to me) to be a criminal organization from the get-go -- jus an aggregator rather than a producer. Like the 90's T. Bonne Pickens kind of corporation. Screwyounet may have just been dragged down with WorldCom's "accounting irregularities" (i.e. lying, fraud, etc.), which has exactly nothing to do with me wanting to pay less for a DSL line, or even what scrweyounet charges for bandwidth.
since they have 50% of the eyes, and are still going under. So it is not a non-competitive issue.
Dotcoms all went for market share over profits. So what's your point?
I think we, the users, are not paying for what we use. The lowest level carriers seem to be knocking these people out of business. The telcos, or whoever.
This is retarded. We're paying what they charge for it, if we feel it's worth it. We are under no obligation to pay more for something just to save their butts. They can try charging more, if that's the problem. If they charge more than the public thinks their product is worth, they sell less of it. There's a sweet spot there somewhere that some guy named Laffer had something to say about.
Screw-you-net indeed, but they obviously didn't screw you good enough
No, they're obviously morons for not civerign their costs, if that's the problem they had.
so now you will have to deal with other companies that will [...] start charging you what they are charged.
A company like that would NOT be run by morons.
At hte ISP I used to work at, we called them "Screw-You Net." I guess that's still apropos.
The difference is that, cell phones are billed by the minute, and land lines are fixed-cost. You don't pay more to get a marketing call at home, but you do pay more to get one on a cell phone.
I would bill them for the minutes. If they refuse to identify themselves, report them immediately to your provider for making harassing calls, and demand to know who it was so that you can (1) bill them and (2) block them.
Another alternative: never answer your phone unless you recognize the number. Everyone else cal leave a message in your voicemail and get a call back.
I would like to see a PGP-type authentication system in phones, where you can elect to have people you know ring the phone and others not. You give a key or token to people you want to be able to call you, that uniquely identifies them to you. Their phone signals your phone with thay key.
I wouldn't mind seeing a law requiring caller-id on telemarketing calls, and accompanying hardware to automatically clock telemarketing calls. The phone companies can log EVERY call, so if there was a special code I could dial after getting an unwanted call -- *99 or something -- and the phone company logs it as such, that would be good, as well. I'd like to get a list of companies flagged on my bill each month.
http://atheism.about.com/library/weekly/aa05100
So did he have any broken bones, or not?
In "Carrying the cross" --
Christ's broken nose is attributed to the impact of his face hitting the ground as he fell while carrying the cross.
In "Death" --
The Gospel of John concludes that paragraph saying, "this was done so that scripture would be fulfilled that not one bone of His body be broken." And indeed, throughout the entire passion of Jesus, despite the extraordinary atrocities done to him, not one of his bones were broken.
I's like to touch on a point not raised by the Shroud site. It stands to reason that Jesus was circumcised, being Jewish. so, when he rose to heaven, did he leave his foreskin behind?
It does work in OutLook. I'm using it right now.
Go get it here:
http://www3.gdata.de/gpg/
How about:
i tarianware
Slaveware
Prisonware
Totalitarianware
Author
BigBrotherWare
Controlware
...Beware!
chump change (200k max) -- versus getting their highly compensated programmers on this
MSFT could run Linux on the XBox any time they want -- they control the system, and know exactly how it works. Doing it themselves -- just turning off the various cripples -- would certainly be cheaper.
Really. If an employee isn't performing, fire him. If he is, then net access and use doesn't matter so much, does it?
If there was no net, he'd jsut be on the phone or something anyway -- there were distractions in the workplace before the internet, after all.
The only ones "enforcing" their beliefs here are the atheists.
That's just wrong, and for several reasons. Firstly, "the atheists" are not making anyone do anything, this court case is about not endorsing a religion.
Second, you refer to "the atheists" like they are some organized group, but that's not the case.
Maybe if this case gets overturned, a Muslim will then sue to change the Pledge to "one Nation, under Allah." We'll see the Bible thumpers squeak, then, I imagine.
Why? Because it throws gasoline on the fire of the paranoid delusions of many Christians in this country that they are somehow a persecuted minority squaring off with an evil govenrment committed to state-enforced atheism.
You're right -- this is delusional. Just because they can't use the power of the State to enforce and promote their beliefs, they think they're being persecuted. Riiiiight. I suppose they won't complain about, say, the Taliban, then, since they were using the power of the state to enforce and promote their religious beliefs.
I tell people that stands for:
"What Would Judas Do?"
hehehe
Okay, Theme People, get busy! :)
...
...
... and while you're at it, come up with a way to make GTK1 and GTK2 themes match
... and since KDE can import GTK themes, make those match as well
:)