Here in south fla Bell South basically petitioned for a monopoly on DSL services. They were being forced to share the last mile access at the same rates that they charged themselves. This allowed competing DSL providers to use Bell Souths last mile and provide a competing DSL service.
The new law would let them charge whatever they liked. And in exchange Bell South promissed to spend the resulting profits on laying in a new high speed fiber optic system.
The law passed and most of the competing DSL services basically called it a day. Mine was telocity. I had great service and a fixed IP for about $40 a month. I don't remember what Bell South wanted for fixed IP but I remember it was rediculous. And regular service was bumped up to about $50.
Low and behold after the competition thined out and everyone was comfortable with the new situation Bell South anounced that they weren't going to lay the fiber. There was no repercusion.
Nice!!
Point being that telcos don't operate like normal a bussiness. They have exclusive rights to thier lines (which were paid for by public funds, but thats a different gripe).
The food, water situation would be more accurate if each neighborhood could only get their food, water only from their localy designated monopolistic supplier.
There are people that cannot get DSL because the telcos that control thier last mile do not feel its profitable to do so for their area. So yeah, people would die. At least they would here in South Fla.
"You know, for someone who likes to mock people for being uninformed, you sure get a lot of facts wrong."
Oh to hell with it.
Flame on:
Ummm.. Please realize that various parts of Africa have been experiencing famine, drought, sickness, etc for over 30 years now that I'm aware of.
It's not like they are being ignored. We have been pumping in money, food, doctors, etc. It is just as the guy says, focusing on symptoms while morally satisfying doesn't seem to be fixing the problem. At this point it is undeniable that the tactics we have taken are not helping.
Negroponte is trying to get the next african generation up to speed with the rest of the world. THATS ALL. He's not going to feed people with laptops, or clean drinking water with LCD screens. He is just trying to break the cycle of abject poverty and complete dependence on humanitarian aid.
His project will do nothing (yes, nothing) for the african people until maybe another 10 - 15 years down the road. He knows it, we know it, but it seems that you don't.
If you are concerned with people getting clean water, getting food, recieving medical attention, etc then do something about it. You join the efforts that are already under way. But dont trash the one project that may actually help solve Africas issues instead of just prolonging the suffering till the next famine, drought, sickness, etc.
Nobody is saying cut off the humanitarian aid, but don't pretend humanitarian aid is all they need. Africa is a problem and Negroponte is proposing a solution. Till you come up with something better, maybe you should let him try his out without all the trolling, flamebaiting and the caterwalling.
If it helps, think of the folks looking for the cure for childhood diseases. What would you think if someone went ranting and raving about how it would be better to spend the money on hospital beds, at home nursing, special services. The things these children really need! How dare they pump money into scientists and reasearch that could go on for decades without success, instead of enhancing care facilities which are needed NOW!
A greedy CEO dumps the life savings of over 20,000 employees into worthless stock so he could make a personal profit.
This is classified as psychopathic behaviour by a leading criminal psychologist.
You state that the comparison is 'silly' because you could work for a different employer or invest in a different company.
I show you some of the effects on peoples lives that have resulted from greedy CEOs. And that they have invested their lives into these pensions, there is no 'going to work for someone else'. The CEO's didn't care.
And again you state that if the CEO is a crook, don't work for him.
I'm sorry for being rude earlier, you clearly are not a troll as I first thought. But I really am not seeing your logic. In what way does a free market have anything to do with CEOs exhibiting psychopathic behaviour being classified as psychopaths?
It's not so much the change as it is the speed of change that is worrying scientists.
Going down in an elevator is survivable whereas a freefall from the top floor is not. If change occurs too rapidly, animal and plant life can't adapt quickly enough to survive.
The question is what happens in a worse case senario where natural global warming combines with man made global warming. Will it tip some balance?
It's a silly comparison. If a CEO screws a company, it's none of my business. I can choose to work for them, or I can choose to invest in them.
Here here, Spoken like an ignorant teenager. Or maybe you are destined to be one of the psychopathic CEOs being discussed?
Do you know what a pension plan is?
Tim Ramsey, age 55, 33 years with PGE: $995,000 loss.
Roy Rinard, age 53, 22 years with PGE: $472,000 loss.
Al Kaseweter, age 43, 21 years with PGE: $318,000 loss.
Joe and Diane Rinard, age 47, 12 years with PGE: $300,000-plus loss.
Dave Covington, age 42, 22 years with PGE: $300,000 loss.
Tom Klein, age 55, 30 years with PGE: $188,000 loss.
Mike Schlenker, age 41, 10 years with PGE: $177,000 loss.
Patti Klein, age 47, 24 years with PGE: $132,000 loss.
I'm sure these individuals will be glad to know that they can "just get another job". Or just "invest in another company". Try to see it from the point of view of the victim. One who has spent most of their life investing in a pension plan. A pension plan now made worthless by a greedy psychopathic CEO who leveraged the plan without regard to the risks or the safety of the investors.
The point of the comparison wasn't that the CEOs are murderers, but rather that they are psychopaths with the same lack of conscious that murderers have.
Well, I once heard it said that a psychopath is someone who doesn't know the difference between right and wrong, and a socipath is someone who does know... but just doesn't care. Balmer is probably in the latter category, which puts him right up there with the rest of corporate leadership worldwide.
You have no idea how true that is. Heres what an expert in criminal psychology states about mafia hitmen, rapists and CEOs.
According to the Canadian Press and Toronto Sun reporters who rescued the moment from obscurity, Hare began by talking about Mafia hit men and sex offenders, whose photos were projected on a large screen behind him. But then those images were replaced by pictures of top executives from WorldCom, which had just declared bankruptcy, and Enron, which imploded only months earlier. The securities frauds would eventually lead to long prison sentences for WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and Enron CFO Andrew Fastow.
"These are callous, cold-blooded individuals," Hare said.
"They don't care that you have thoughts and feelings. They have no sense of guilt or remorse." He talked about the pain and suffering the corporate rogues had inflicted on thousands of people who had lost their jobs, or their life's savings. Some of those victims would succumb to heart attacks or commit suicide, he said.
Then Hare came out with a startling proposal. He said that the recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs were screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"
...
"I always said that if I wasn't studying psychopaths in prison, I'd do it at the stock exchange," Hare told Fast Company.
Don't give credit where it isn't due. Our Management is as bone headed and dim as any. They did not approve the time for the training. People take the classes during their lunch hours. Thats why it's voluntary. Management likes what were doing but pushing the use of Open Source is as far as it goes. Their motivation is merely cost savings
But I'm still distributing printed 8-page Excel analyses to fourteen people rather than posting them in a shared folder... so why even bother?
The best part about using past actions to predict future events is you can choose which past actions prove your case. The "get rich quick in the stock market" folks have been doing this for decades.
That cuts both ways, where is the history of MS working WITH standard makers in an open and fair manor. I hear what you are saying but it sounds like rhetoric until you back up your criticisms with some substance.
We had a lady like that who refused to use anything except Wordperfect.
Note the word 'had'.
To further encourage the conversions, we are now holding training sessions for the employees in the use of Thunderbird, OO, and Firefox. It's voluntary, but even the people who habitually resist changes attend. I guess that once it's clear the migration is gonna happen regardless of their whining, they begin to realize it's better to not be left behind.
Staple crops also provide bettter nutrition and allow people to reach puberty eariler, which means more babies.
I have no background in anthropology, but I do remember something about how general health declining when hunter-gatherers initially became farmers. Something about a healthy, varied diet becoming constrained to one type of crop causing borderline malnutrition. And that without crop rotation techniques the soil eventually produced substandard crops. I was wondering if this theory was still valid.
Oh and btw, the act of breastfeeding is a natural contraceptive. Very effective for about 6 months and mildly effective after that. So the hunter gatherers would be limited in the number of offspring regardless of their wishes.
-- Jews did not and do not believe a "son of God" is coming back. Some do believe in a messiah, but that's completely different.
No, it's not. It's a belief.
Are you Jewish?
I ask because I've asked one of my 'Jewish' friend about this and he says he agrees with the first quote. You seem to think differently, but is this as a Jew or as a Christian?
My friends take on this is that the Romans were persecuting the Jews so they were looking for a Messiah/Saviour to lead them out from under the Romans, much like Moses did with the Egyptians.
To me, this makes sense. If the jews were expecting Jesus to lead them away, I bet they were severly dissapointed if not downright pissed off with the whole 'turn the other cheek' thing. Enough for Judas to turn him over to the Romans to make way for a real leader and enough for the Jews to pick a criminal to release rather than Jesus as some serious payback for false hopes.
My company's CAD/CAE/CAM application used to be 1+ million lines of code (C,C++, and FORTRAN) back in 2000, so 35K lines of Java isn't that much at all
I think that that was why he was impressed. It is very small incomparison to other software in the same arena.
Go to www.dell.com and go through the process of purchasing a new server (or servers) and show me how Dell somehow encourages sales of Windows. I just don't see it.
That because you keep focusing on Servers. A couple of servers without windows won't hurt the numbers, but the bread and butter for volume sales is the consumer level hardware. With that made clear, I want the Dell Ultimate Gaming Rig.
I can customize it 6 ways from Sunday, but I CANT get it without Windows.. This is not a unique example, pretty much the only consumer level boxs available without windows are the Dimension 5150, 3100 or 1100 series. Why? Because Dell is pushing Windows on majority consumers to keep its volume high and margin more profitable.
This is not conspiracy or even some hidden MS coercion, it's just plain business.
Amazingly enough for the first time ever that I've ever seen, you can get a real discount of $30 by going linux from Dell (but only the previously mentioned models). Last time I checked (about 6 months ago), the linux boxs had the exact same price as an equivelant hardware version with Windows XP home (you have to fiddle with the customization to get them the same) indicating that even the Linux box had the price of Windows tacked on.
OEM's do it because they get really good discount, otherwise they pay the retail and couldn't compete with other OEMs that do bundle. You aren't aware of the price increase because they just bundle it in the price. The OEM's don't tell you because it's in their best interest to keep you ignorant. You must be young, just Google for "microsoft tax".
The DOJ made it illegal for MS to give 'special' pricing to select vendors. Now MS's pricing list is public and all vendors have the same deal. But that deal is still based on volume of windows sold. IE. The OEM's aren't coerced into selling more windows licenses, but it is in their best interest to bundle, get the best prices, and increase their profit margin.
Example, Find a standard consumer level (high volume, low margin) box from Dell that is cheaper than the same spec box without windows. You wont, and now you know why.
Subpoenas are routinely issued to innocent parties, for very good reasons, and the parties comply.
This is when a law has been broken. This is not the case now.
This fishing attempt is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law which was struck down over two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Google has always worked with officials when the law has been broken and Google is correctly contesting this attempt to seize its data.
Actually when he wasn't put under Oath, members of congress did put up a fuss, someone asked why the prior three times he was put put under oath but not now?. The one in charge (I forget who), stated he did not feel it was necessary, and it simply wasn't going to happen.
Don't blame all of congress the the actions of one well placed Bush croney.
Slashdot Mirror
The new law would let them charge whatever they liked. And in exchange Bell South promissed to spend the resulting profits on laying in a new high speed fiber optic system.
The law passed and most of the competing DSL services basically called it a day. Mine was telocity. I had great service and a fixed IP for about $40 a month. I don't remember what Bell South wanted for fixed IP but I remember it was rediculous. And regular service was bumped up to about $50.
Low and behold after the competition thined out and everyone was comfortable with the new situation Bell South anounced that they weren't going to lay the fiber. There was no repercusion.
Nice!!
Point being that telcos don't operate like normal a bussiness. They have exclusive rights to thier lines (which were paid for by public funds, but thats a different gripe).
The food, water situation would be more accurate if each neighborhood could only get their food, water only from their localy designated monopolistic supplier.
There are people that cannot get DSL because the telcos that control thier last mile do not feel its profitable to do so for their area. So yeah, people would die. At least they would here in South Fla.
Ummm.. Please realize that various parts of Africa have been experiencing famine, drought, sickness, etc for over 30 years now that I'm aware of.
It's not like they are being ignored. We have been pumping in money, food, doctors, etc. It is just as the guy says, focusing on symptoms while morally satisfying doesn't seem to be fixing the problem. At this point it is undeniable that the tactics we have taken are not helping.
Negroponte is trying to get the next african generation up to speed with the rest of the world. THATS ALL. He's not going to feed people with laptops, or clean drinking water with LCD screens. He is just trying to break the cycle of abject poverty and complete dependence on humanitarian aid.
His project will do nothing (yes, nothing) for the african people until maybe another 10 - 15 years down the road. He knows it, we know it, but it seems that you don't.
If you are concerned with people getting clean water, getting food, recieving medical attention, etc then do something about it. You join the efforts that are already under way. But dont trash the one project that may actually help solve Africas issues instead of just prolonging the suffering till the next famine, drought, sickness, etc.
Nobody is saying cut off the humanitarian aid, but don't pretend humanitarian aid is all they need. Africa is a problem and Negroponte is proposing a solution. Till you come up with something better, maybe you should let him try his out without all the trolling, flamebaiting and the caterwalling.
If it helps, think of the folks looking for the cure for childhood diseases. What would you think if someone went ranting and raving about how it would be better to spend the money on hospital beds, at home nursing, special services. The things these children really need! How dare they pump money into scientists and reasearch that could go on for decades without success, instead of enhancing care facilities which are needed NOW!
Unless that really is how you feel.
A greedy CEO dumps the life savings of over 20,000 employees into worthless stock so he could make a personal profit.
This is classified as psychopathic behaviour by a leading criminal psychologist.
You state that the comparison is 'silly' because you could work for a different employer or invest in a different company.
I show you some of the effects on peoples lives that have resulted from greedy CEOs. And that they have invested their lives into these pensions, there is no 'going to work for someone else'. The CEO's didn't care.
And again you state that if the CEO is a crook, don't work for him.
I'm sorry for being rude earlier, you clearly are not a troll as I first thought. But I really am not seeing your logic. In what way does a free market have anything to do with CEOs exhibiting psychopathic behaviour being classified as psychopaths?
Going down in an elevator is survivable whereas a freefall from the top floor is not. If change occurs too rapidly, animal and plant life can't adapt quickly enough to survive.
The question is what happens in a worse case senario where natural global warming combines with man made global warming. Will it tip some balance?
Here here, Spoken like an ignorant teenager. Or maybe you are destined to be one of the psychopathic CEOs being discussed?
Do you know what a pension plan is?
Tim Ramsey, age 55, 33 years with PGE: $995,000 loss.
Roy Rinard, age 53, 22 years with PGE: $472,000 loss.
Al Kaseweter, age 43, 21 years with PGE: $318,000 loss.
Joe and Diane Rinard, age 47, 12 years with PGE: $300,000-plus loss.
Dave Covington, age 42, 22 years with PGE: $300,000 loss.
Tom Klein, age 55, 30 years with PGE: $188,000 loss.
Mike Schlenker, age 41, 10 years with PGE: $177,000 loss.
Patti Klein, age 47, 24 years with PGE: $132,000 loss.
I'm sure these individuals will be glad to know that they can "just get another job". Or just "invest in another company". Try to see it from the point of view of the victim. One who has spent most of their life investing in a pension plan. A pension plan now made worthless by a greedy psychopathic CEO who leveraged the plan without regard to the risks or the safety of the investors.
The point of the comparison wasn't that the CEOs are murderers, but rather that they are psychopaths with the same lack of conscious that murderers have.
You have no idea how true that is. Heres what an expert in criminal psychology states about mafia hitmen, rapists and CEOs.
From here:
According to the Canadian Press and Toronto Sun reporters who rescued the moment from obscurity, Hare began by talking about Mafia hit men and sex offenders, whose photos were projected on a large screen behind him. But then those images were replaced by pictures of top executives from WorldCom, which had just declared bankruptcy, and Enron, which imploded only months earlier. The securities frauds would eventually lead to long prison sentences for WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and Enron CFO Andrew Fastow.
"These are callous, cold-blooded individuals," Hare said.
"They don't care that you have thoughts and feelings. They have no sense of guilt or remorse." He talked about the pain and suffering the corporate rogues had inflicted on thousands of people who had lost their jobs, or their life's savings. Some of those victims would succumb to heart attacks or commit suicide, he said.
Then Hare came out with a startling proposal. He said that the recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs were screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"
"I always said that if I wasn't studying psychopaths in prison, I'd do it at the stock exchange," Hare told Fast Company.
Can't stand most MS crap, but they did pretty good with Win2K.
But I'm still distributing printed 8-page Excel analyses to fourteen people rather than posting them in a shared folder... so why even bother?
I hear ya..
That cuts both ways, where is the history of MS working WITH standard makers in an open and fair manor. I hear what you are saying but it sounds like rhetoric until you back up your criticisms with some substance.
We had a lady like that who refused to use anything except Wordperfect.
Note the word 'had'.
To further encourage the conversions, we are now holding training sessions for the employees in the use of Thunderbird, OO, and Firefox. It's voluntary, but even the people who habitually resist changes attend. I guess that once it's clear the migration is gonna happen regardless of their whining, they begin to realize it's better to not be left behind.
I have no background in anthropology, but I do remember something about how general health declining when hunter-gatherers initially became farmers. Something about a healthy, varied diet becoming constrained to one type of crop causing borderline malnutrition. And that without crop rotation techniques the soil eventually produced substandard crops. I was wondering if this theory was still valid.
Oh and btw, the act of breastfeeding is a natural contraceptive. Very effective for about 6 months and mildly effective after that. So the hunter gatherers would be limited in the number of offspring regardless of their wishes.
No, it's not. It's a belief.
Are you Jewish?
I ask because I've asked one of my 'Jewish' friend about this and he says he agrees with the first quote. You seem to think differently, but is this as a Jew or as a Christian?
My friends take on this is that the Romans were persecuting the Jews so they were looking for a Messiah/Saviour to lead them out from under the Romans, much like Moses did with the Egyptians.
To me, this makes sense. If the jews were expecting Jesus to lead them away, I bet they were severly dissapointed if not downright pissed off with the whole 'turn the other cheek' thing. Enough for Judas to turn him over to the Romans to make way for a real leader and enough for the Jews to pick a criminal to release rather than Jesus as some serious payback for false hopes.
Are you sure? Sometimes they support HDCP across the HDMI with out advertisnig the fact.
I think that that was why he was impressed. It is very small incomparison to other software in the same arena.
That because you keep focusing on Servers. A couple of servers without windows won't hurt the numbers, but the bread and butter for volume sales is the consumer level hardware. With that made clear, I want the Dell Ultimate Gaming Rig.
I can customize it 6 ways from Sunday, but I CANT get it without Windows.. This is not a unique example, pretty much the only consumer level boxs available without windows are the Dimension 5150, 3100 or 1100 series. Why? Because Dell is pushing Windows on majority consumers to keep its volume high and margin more profitable.
This is not conspiracy or even some hidden MS coercion, it's just plain business.
Amazingly enough for the first time ever that I've ever seen, you can get a real discount of $30 by going linux from Dell (but only the previously mentioned models). Last time I checked (about 6 months ago), the linux boxs had the exact same price as an equivelant hardware version with Windows XP home (you have to fiddle with the customization to get them the same) indicating that even the Linux box had the price of Windows tacked on.
The DOJ made it illegal for MS to give 'special' pricing to select vendors. Now MS's pricing list is public and all vendors have the same deal. But that deal is still based on volume of windows sold. IE. The OEM's aren't coerced into selling more windows licenses, but it is in their best interest to bundle, get the best prices, and increase their profit margin.
Example, Find a standard consumer level (high volume, low margin) box from Dell that is cheaper than the same spec box without windows. You wont, and now you know why.
Would China object?
Funny, all I did was google for it.
This is when a law has been broken. This is not the case now.
This fishing attempt is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law which was struck down over two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Google has always worked with officials when the law has been broken and Google is correctly contesting this attempt to seize its data.
Bush states that warantless wiretapping on US citizens is okay and now this?
You're being sacastic right?
Don't blame all of congress the the actions of one well placed Bush croney.
I guess you've never seen a Government redacted document on it's own questionable activities.
Didn't the other search engines already cave in?
They already have data! Google's data has no relevance because it is no longer necessary.
So why force Google to give in if that's the case, unless they have other motives?
Appreciated, Thanks!
I can only speak for myself but I'm an American and pronounce it with the hard G (as in Game).