Any businessman or financial analyst will tell you that any corporation has only one objective: profit. The aquirement of financial wealth is the first and foremost responsiblilty of a company. Producing its product or delivering its service are just means of achieving profit: if they could turn a great profit without selling anything they would. What they provide to the consumer is secondary and only important insofar as it makes money. Sadly, this holds true for open source as well. As soon as a group of people who believe in the ideas and principles of open source come together, for effeciency reasons, they run the risk of becoming a company. Gradually the financial necessity of upkeeping a corporation becomes their primary motive. This takes much longer in such a rigidly principled market as open source, but eventually it will happen. That doesn't say anything about the future of open source though. As long as there are individuals who believe in it and work on it, not as members of a corporation, but because they think it is a good thing, corporations may depart from the movement as they please, and while devastating to open source, it will never be fatal.
(A little hint on the unofficial rules of slashdot arguementation);->
Wherever Microsoft is concerned, it is always their fault. They are condemned by their mere existance and because Windows is a bad OS. People have already become addicted to it through the pure evil of Microsoft's influence. (Microsoft was born a monopoly for all practical arguementative purposes) In this particular case they are attempting an evil and insidious plot to addict and enslave our children. It will never cease to be their fault as they (and the love of money (one and the same)) are the root of all kinds of evil. Please don't ask such embarrassing questions.
The malicious kiddie and no-one but. All legality aside, I'm sure that the FBI would love to take responsibility for the virus and accept full blame for introducing it. But on the legal side of things I'm sure they'll be forced to reluctantly admit that they never misused it, that only when used abusively was it dangerous. (There are other loopholes and in the case of M. Kiddie Vs. FBI) I have no questions whatsoever pertaining to the result.
And what happens if this "happens" to get on a foreign government's computer? Can we say "espionage"?
You'd have a dickens of a time trying to prove how it got there, how long it was there for, and who was in fact responsible. The nation involved would be powerless to do anything except pout, and would be persuaded to not raise the issue. (History fails to provide us with good examples of nations condemning and punishing the US for its misdeeds) The entire issue would fade into oblivion, and before you or I could say "espionage" it would already have been replaced by a new scandal ready to be made forgotten.
What you're suggesting, is that rather than trying to make machines as linguistically competent as we are, we should instead adjust to fit their convenience. (I'd never have thought I'd see the day that we began to negotiate compromises with machines, but that's offtopic). The problem is, that besides it being very useful and effecient, it would restrict the versatility of our communication, and make surfing a lot less fun. No longer would we ever find great web sites by accident. Where would we be without our great and ambiguous language, which allows us to say:
Time flies like an arrow.
And yet does not exclude
Fruit flies like a banana.
Go figure.
Hear, Hear! I don't know what cross section of the/. population I represent, but I certainly know that if I ever get spam, I just delete it due to my naturally lazy and apathetic nature. It would take a whole lot to convince me that I could make a difference against spam, and that I should take the trouble to do anything about it.
(But I never make my bed);)
I'm surprised that video games are only ever rated according to objectionable content. They should be rated according to addictiveness as well! Becoming addicted to a fantastic game (RPGs in particular are famous for this) and ignoring schoolwork, friends, and the real world, can have just as detrimental an effect on a child as the content of the game they are playing will on them. I know I've experienced first hand what happens when one only lives to play a certain game and lets the world revolve on past....
In the strip, Calvin's dad was bluffing an answer in order to maintain his ego and to not let on that he had no clue how they derived the maximum bridge load. It is an undisputably impractical method.
That being said, what level of detrimental effect is considered unacceptable? What would you consider to be a violent/sexual offence? Would you take the oldest child who murdered someone? Or would you take the oldest child who hit someone at school? Or would verbal abuse, agressiveness, and excessive beligerence be enough to merit rating the game one year higher? The simple fact is, if a game is unsuitable in content for a certain age, it does not have to drive them to murder in order to produce a detrimental effect on them. I'm afraid, "Yes, That would be wrong."
It still doesn't seem to solve the problems of tendonitis and carpal tunnel. People won't necessarily type with better hand on a table than on a keyboard. My bets for the keyboard of the future will be placed on a concept which eliminates the typing motion completely, or at least drastically reduces it. It's a great concept, but it solves a problem of convenience and not the major reason keyboards will one day become extinct.
Just bear with me and imagine a PG rated "Braveheart",or perhaps "Gladiator" . They would be, what, 3-5 minutes long with all the violence taken out? This seems a good idea for those films which are good films but which are unfortuately cheapened by gratuitous foul language or nudity which is thrown in for no purpose. The ablility to omit objectionable content in a film I would find extrememly useful. There are many films I would really enjoy, if I didn't have to sift through an ocean of trash to be able to appreciate their good cinematography, plot, or acting. However, there are those films (like Braveheart) which would be absolutely ruined if objectionable scenes were cut out. There are many great films which use violence, sex, or language, to great purpose and with a definate intent or message, where the usage of said vices is absolutely critical to the film. To edit a film like Braveheart, Gladiator, or Amistad would absoulutely cripple it. So If you're worried about your child's exposure to objectionable content, this is a useful means of allowing them to watch good films without the garbage. But for those great films: don't even think about giving your kids the "Lite" version. Wait until they're old enough to handle a bit of violence and then let them watch the film in it's intirety, as the director intended.
It's definately refreshing to see Linux getting some mainstream advertising, and it surely raises some hopes as to the future of Linux distribution. Unfortuately, whether or not this is significant in any way and whether or not it is representative of any sort of development can only be seen through time. Breaking open the OS market is something that Linux isn't going to do anytime soon. Possibly in some years, we might see this happen, but I'm afraid it's the sort of thing that, barring any absolutely huge events which completely revolutionize the OS market, will take a very long time and I remain unconvinced as to how important this actually is.
If it's "irresponsible" to expect them to produce a patch within a few days, how would they describe the act of releasing unsafe, buggy software for sale to the public?
Fossil's new "watch" really makes me wonder how long we will revel in gagetry like this before reality kicks in. The simple fact of the matter is, that once the "boys with toys" effect has worn off, functionality becomes an issue. To be brutally honest, wearing a computer on my wrist makes precious little sense if I can't read the screen. If I can't enter information comfortably and quickly (which I don't see happening here: it's the size of a wristwatch) then what's the use? And if transfering information on and off of it is a problem, I'm not sure how much use it really is. In PDAs, use of styluses and infrared ports have helped make convenience actually convenient, overcoming these obstacles to some extent, but in a wristwatch its simply not possible. I'll save my $145.
I'm afraid that, theory aside, the the level of evil and wickedness associated with a crime is inversely porportional to the number of people who commit that crime. What can I say? "Everyone uses Napster."
The last time I checked, a 20% voter turnout meant that your vote held 5 times the power that it should. How is this "cheapened and weakened"? If only 80% of people consider it too much trouble to even bother to vote, the odds are that very few people get on their get on the AG's case about any issues at all. The ones who do have that much more power of influence. Why should he listen to you? Because you have the power to contribute to his opponent during the next election, and he knows that you voted (I assume you'll tell him). He didn't get elected by all those people who never vote, but by those 20% who do. It's a lot easier to get your friends together and fire him now than it would be with a 90% turnout. Unless you know 45% of the people in the state.
The question is how much impact will this have on the glitz-greedy public? They don't all use iPaqs, and in this day and age games are sold on the basis of glitz- good gameplay is a bonus, not a requirement.
Please, curb your insensitivity... Antarctic tanners everywhere are heartbroken! Now to get the same bronze glow, they have to stay out longer, which is never easy as I'm sure you'll appreciate....
I wish! If MS ostracized everyone who took offense to their business tactics, maybe we'd see a lot less of the blue screen of death...
Given that the state government has already taken this much of a stance, I'm not sure how easily they'd buckle.
Obviously, whichever 3 people you choose, no matter who they are, you will never have an objective viewpoint regarding Microsoft's actions. And a careful look at the situation will tell you why there are only 3 people appointed. The Bush administration came to power with Microsoft already found to have broken Anti-Trust Law.
In Bush's beautiful Republican world, there would have been no lawsuit to begin with, much less a vigourously prosecuted lawsuit resulting in the dissection of Microsoft, so he was faced with somewhat of a challenge. How to save Microsoft?(At this point in time, to be technical,we might attempt to say that the President has no influence over the Legal system, but let's be realistic instead) There was little chance of reversing the decision and finding Microsoft innocent. So for the Bush Administration, the next best choice would be to come up with a punishment that was entirely ineffective, uninfluential and would quietly dispose of the issue in a matter that would be acceptable for Republicans nationwide. And so here we see that this is a quiet resolution of the lawsuit, designed to keep Microsoft strong. Consequently, when Microsoft is being regulated by three people only, the probablility that this incedent will be forgotten is infinately more than if Microsoft were really kept under an effective guard. Which is exactly the point.
Large groups of people only really come together if they have extensive media support and a governing body to co-ordinate their efforts. There are numerous examples of absolutely scandalous events that are ignored daily by the media because the media themselves have no incentive to cover them. Future Microsoft Misdeeds will be largely ignored in this way as the media will not find it in their best interests to make a big deal out of them, and our famous 3 friends (whomever they are) may not keep up as vigilant a watch as some might hope.
In anything, there must be huge amounts media coverage to raise the apathetic public's ire and unfortuately, this is something that will never happen in this situtation. Sorry, narfbot, you're absoultely correct.
Re:Little content, little meaning...
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
I definately find it very hard to believe that Microsoft, or anyone else, for that matter, will ever be able to replace the command prompt and replace it with a completely graphical system(no matter how graphically inspired they are). The simple fact of the matter is, that most number of buttons on a mouse I've ever seen is three, and there are 26 letters on a keyboard, not counting symbols, numbers, or capitals.... Try as you may, it is impossible to graphically provide the same versatility provided by a command prompt. Stability matters aside, there are always(and there will always be) tasks for which Windows fails to provide the opportunity to directly issue a command. For tasks where I know precisely what I want to do, and which could be done with a single instruction at a command prompt, the inadequacy of Windows makes it hard for me to ever take their graphical inspiration seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Any businessman or financial analyst will tell you that any corporation has only one objective: profit. The aquirement of financial wealth is the first and foremost responsiblilty of a company. Producing its product or delivering its service are just means of achieving profit: if they could turn a great profit without selling anything they would. What they provide to the consumer is secondary and only important insofar as it makes money. Sadly, this holds true for open source as well. As soon as a group of people who believe in the ideas and principles of open source come together, for effeciency reasons, they run the risk of becoming a company. Gradually the financial necessity of upkeeping a corporation becomes their primary motive. This takes much longer in such a rigidly principled market as open source, but eventually it will happen. That doesn't say anything about the future of open source though. As long as there are individuals who believe in it and work on it, not as members of a corporation, but because they think it is a good thing, corporations may depart from the movement as they please, and while devastating to open source, it will never be fatal.
(A little hint on the unofficial rules of slashdot arguementation) ;->
Wherever Microsoft is concerned, it is always their fault. They are condemned by their mere existance and because Windows is a bad OS. People have already become addicted to it through the pure evil of Microsoft's influence. (Microsoft was born a monopoly for all practical arguementative purposes) In this particular case they are attempting an evil and insidious plot to addict and enslave our children. It will never cease to be their fault as they (and the love of money (one and the same)) are the root of all kinds of evil. Please don't ask such embarrassing questions.
The malicious kiddie and no-one but. All legality aside, I'm sure that the FBI would love to take responsibility for the virus and accept full blame for introducing it. But on the legal side of things I'm sure they'll be forced to reluctantly admit that they never misused it, that only when used abusively was it dangerous. (There are other loopholes and in the case of M. Kiddie Vs. FBI) I have no questions whatsoever pertaining to the result.
You'd have a dickens of a time trying to prove how it got there, how long it was there for, and who was in fact responsible. The nation involved would be powerless to do anything except pout, and would be persuaded to not raise the issue. (History fails to provide us with good examples of nations condemning and punishing the US for its misdeeds) The entire issue would fade into oblivion, and before you or I could say "espionage" it would already have been replaced by a new scandal ready to be made forgotten.
Pardon my cynicism.
What you're suggesting, is that rather than trying to make machines as linguistically competent as we are, we should instead adjust to fit their convenience. (I'd never have thought I'd see the day that we began to negotiate compromises with machines, but that's offtopic). The problem is, that besides it being very useful and effecient, it would restrict the versatility of our communication, and make surfing a lot less fun. No longer would we ever find great web sites by accident. Where would we be without our great and ambiguous language, which allows us to say: Time flies like an arrow. And yet does not exclude Fruit flies like a banana. Go figure.
Hear, Hear! I don't know what cross section of the /. population I represent, but I certainly know that if I ever get spam, I just delete it due to my naturally lazy and apathetic nature. It would take a whole lot to convince me that I could make a difference against spam, and that I should take the trouble to do anything about it.
(But I never make my bed) ;)
I'm surprised that video games are only ever rated according to objectionable content. They should be rated according to addictiveness as well! Becoming addicted to a fantastic game (RPGs in particular are famous for this) and ignoring schoolwork, friends, and the real world, can have just as detrimental an effect on a child as the content of the game they are playing will on them. I know I've experienced first hand what happens when one only lives to play a certain game and lets the world revolve on past....
In the strip, Calvin's dad was bluffing an answer in order to maintain his ego and to not let on that he had no clue how they derived the maximum bridge load. It is an undisputably impractical method. That being said, what level of detrimental effect is considered unacceptable? What would you consider to be a violent/sexual offence? Would you take the oldest child who murdered someone? Or would you take the oldest child who hit someone at school? Or would verbal abuse, agressiveness, and excessive beligerence be enough to merit rating the game one year higher? The simple fact is, if a game is unsuitable in content for a certain age, it does not have to drive them to murder in order to produce a detrimental effect on them. I'm afraid, "Yes, That would be wrong."
It still doesn't seem to solve the problems of tendonitis and carpal tunnel. People won't necessarily type with better hand on a table than on a keyboard. My bets for the keyboard of the future will be placed on a concept which eliminates the typing motion completely, or at least drastically reduces it. It's a great concept, but it solves a problem of convenience and not the major reason keyboards will one day become extinct.
Just bear with me and imagine a PG rated "Braveheart",or perhaps "Gladiator" . They would be, what, 3-5 minutes long with all the violence taken out? This seems a good idea for those films which are good films but which are unfortuately cheapened by gratuitous foul language or nudity which is thrown in for no purpose. The ablility to omit objectionable content in a film I would find extrememly useful. There are many films I would really enjoy, if I didn't have to sift through an ocean of trash to be able to appreciate their good cinematography, plot, or acting. However, there are those films (like Braveheart) which would be absolutely ruined if objectionable scenes were cut out. There are many great films which use violence, sex, or language, to great purpose and with a definate intent or message, where the usage of said vices is absolutely critical to the film. To edit a film like Braveheart, Gladiator, or Amistad would absoulutely cripple it. So If you're worried about your child's exposure to objectionable content, this is a useful means of allowing them to watch good films without the garbage. But for those great films: don't even think about giving your kids the "Lite" version. Wait until they're old enough to handle a bit of violence and then let them watch the film in it's intirety, as the director intended.
It's definately refreshing to see Linux getting some mainstream advertising, and it surely raises some hopes as to the future of Linux distribution. Unfortuately, whether or not this is significant in any way and whether or not it is representative of any sort of development can only be seen through time. Breaking open the OS market is something that Linux isn't going to do anytime soon. Possibly in some years, we might see this happen, but I'm afraid it's the sort of thing that, barring any absolutely huge events which completely revolutionize the OS market, will take a very long time and I remain unconvinced as to how important this actually is.
If it's "irresponsible" to expect them to produce a patch within a few days, how would they describe the act of releasing unsafe, buggy software for sale to the public?
Fossil's new "watch" really makes me wonder how long we will revel in gagetry like this before reality kicks in. The simple fact of the matter is, that once the "boys with toys" effect has worn off, functionality becomes an issue. To be brutally honest, wearing a computer on my wrist makes precious little sense if I can't read the screen. If I can't enter information comfortably and quickly (which I don't see happening here: it's the size of a wristwatch) then what's the use? And if transfering information on and off of it is a problem, I'm not sure how much use it really is. In PDAs, use of styluses and infrared ports have helped make convenience actually convenient, overcoming these obstacles to some extent, but in a wristwatch its simply not possible. I'll save my $145.
I'm afraid that, theory aside, the the level of evil and wickedness associated with a crime is inversely porportional to the number of people who commit that crime. What can I say? "Everyone uses Napster."
It certainly is a stroke of genius, isn't it. All NASA needs now is a gutsy entrepreneur with $400 million......
The last time I checked, a 20% voter turnout meant that your vote held 5 times the power that it should. How is this "cheapened and weakened"? If only 80% of people consider it too much trouble to even bother to vote, the odds are that very few people get on their get on the AG's case about any issues at all. The ones who do have that much more power of influence. Why should he listen to you? Because you have the power to contribute to his opponent during the next election, and he knows that you voted (I assume you'll tell him). He didn't get elected by all those people who never vote, but by those 20% who do. It's a lot easier to get your friends together and fire him now than it would be with a 90% turnout. Unless you know 45% of the people in the state.
The question is how much impact will this have on the glitz-greedy public? They don't all use iPaqs, and in this day and age games are sold on the basis of glitz- good gameplay is a bonus, not a requirement.
Please, curb your insensitivity... Antarctic tanners everywhere are heartbroken! Now to get the same bronze glow, they have to stay out longer, which is never easy as I'm sure you'll appreciate....
I wish! If MS ostracized everyone who took offense to their business tactics, maybe we'd see a lot less of the blue screen of death... Given that the state government has already taken this much of a stance, I'm not sure how easily they'd buckle.
Obviously, whichever 3 people you choose, no matter who they are, you will never have an objective viewpoint regarding Microsoft's actions. And a careful look at the situation will tell you why there are only 3 people appointed. The Bush administration came to power with Microsoft already found to have broken Anti-Trust Law. In Bush's beautiful Republican world, there would have been no lawsuit to begin with, much less a vigourously prosecuted lawsuit resulting in the dissection of Microsoft, so he was faced with somewhat of a challenge. How to save Microsoft?(At this point in time, to be technical,we might attempt to say that the President has no influence over the Legal system, but let's be realistic instead) There was little chance of reversing the decision and finding Microsoft innocent. So for the Bush Administration, the next best choice would be to come up with a punishment that was entirely ineffective, uninfluential and would quietly dispose of the issue in a matter that would be acceptable for Republicans nationwide. And so here we see that this is a quiet resolution of the lawsuit, designed to keep Microsoft strong. Consequently, when Microsoft is being regulated by three people only, the probablility that this incedent will be forgotten is infinately more than if Microsoft were really kept under an effective guard. Which is exactly the point. Large groups of people only really come together if they have extensive media support and a governing body to co-ordinate their efforts. There are numerous examples of absolutely scandalous events that are ignored daily by the media because the media themselves have no incentive to cover them. Future Microsoft Misdeeds will be largely ignored in this way as the media will not find it in their best interests to make a big deal out of them, and our famous 3 friends (whomever they are) may not keep up as vigilant a watch as some might hope. In anything, there must be huge amounts media coverage to raise the apathetic public's ire and unfortuately, this is something that will never happen in this situtation. Sorry, narfbot, you're absoultely correct.
I definately find it very hard to believe that Microsoft, or anyone else, for that matter, will ever be able to replace the command prompt and replace it with a completely graphical system(no matter how graphically inspired they are). The simple fact of the matter is, that most number of buttons on a mouse I've ever seen is three, and there are 26 letters on a keyboard, not counting symbols, numbers, or capitals.... Try as you may, it is impossible to graphically provide the same versatility provided by a command prompt. Stability matters aside, there are always(and there will always be) tasks for which Windows fails to provide the opportunity to directly issue a command. For tasks where I know precisely what I want to do, and which could be done with a single instruction at a command prompt, the inadequacy of Windows makes it hard for me to ever take their graphical inspiration seriously.