Rarely has someone made my "friend" list so quickly, and by having said so little. Bravo! That's the funniest (and most accurate) thing I've seen yet in this forum.
That's why I added "(list)" in my original post. $199 is what I pay if I order online [microsoft.com] from Microsoft for a full version of Windows XP Home. I'm aware that I can get better deals than that, but even $75 is still $75. There's no way I can legally get it for free, like I can with a Linux or BSD distro. The best price I've found locally is around $100 where I live, btw - importing from the US is about as expensive because of taxes and overseas shipping.
And again you miss the point: "free" is a very relative term. Sure, you can download it for free and install it for free. Just in case you didn't get it the first time, what about support? Sure, you're capable of supporting the box yourself, just as I'm able to run my company's Linux/Apache/Tomcat setup, but what if the company has no Linux talent on staff? Implementation would require the company to add staff, or fire someone and then add staff. This is far from "free" in my book. Do not, as so many OSS advocates do, overlook the costs that happen after the OS is installed.
I think everyone who has ever done a Linux/BSD installation is very aware of that.
Funny, you didn't mention it. In fact, the point of your paragraph implied the exact opposite. Shall I repost it? "For those not running Windows...the usual installation hassles, like drivers for equipment which isn't included on the CD." You made it sound like Windows is the only OS that suffers this "hassle". On the face of it, if both OS's have the same issues (and, by your admission, Windows has better handling of it when it does come up), then why did you hold it out as a reason to avoid Windows? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Here I disagree. I'm in the business long enough to remember when it was impossible to buy a PC from any of the major vendors without paying for a Microsoft operating system license. This is not the case anymore, thanks to the antitrust cases.
I was referring more to your buzzword usage than the actual content of your argument. Call it what it is -- a licensing fee. It's not some evil document requiring you to sign over your soul, so stop making it sound so odious. It colors your argument to the point where you cannot be considered objective.
Sure, no problem with it. Whenever I feel that some commercial software I own has an upgrade that's worth its money, I pay for it. I still can't remember when apt-get has ever asked me to pay for new versions of packages (with useful features), though
I sure can't remember the last time I had to pay for an update to Office 2000, which added security features and a host of other things that were outside the standard "bugfix" category. Same goes for Windows XP. And again, I'll point out that after installation is where the real costs of software come into play. Ever installed an RPM that totally fscked up some other application? Who do you turn to for support? Windows has its share of screwed up installers and patches, but you still need only go to one place to get it fixed, and they'll hang with you until it IS fixed. OSS can do the same, but there's absolutely no obligation on the part of the software supplier to do so, and Murphy's Law pretty much guarantees that the one thing you need from them is the one thing you can't get. Sure, you have the code and can fix it yourself -- if you have the time, skills, and inclination to do so. Most of the rest of the world has a job to do besides patching someone else's code, regardless of how free it is.
That's true. The company I work for can continue to use Windows NT 4.0 for as long as they like. The catch is that Microsoft is retiring the OS, so there will be no updates, no support and no security patches if we choose to go that route. Since we can't take the associated risks, we're practically forced to upgrade to Windows XP.
Risks? What risks? There are thousands of companies across the nation (and millions worldwide) that are run
For those not running Windows, the Word viewer comes "free" with a $199.- (list price) version of Windows
Which, I'll point out, is the highest possible price you could pay. Even a token amount of effort would reveal that you can get WinXP Pro for under $100, and WinXP Home for under $75. Just check Pricewatch. No, these are not educational licenses, they are real licenses.
a good sized chunk of your system disk (not that it really matters much given today's HD prices and capacities)
Good. You got that one right. With 80GB disks being common, who cares if the OS uses 1GB to install. Of course, you can make a WinXP installation fit into something much smaller if you'd like.
and the usual installation hassles, like drivers for equipment which isn't included on the CD etc
You're completely bypassing the fact that you have to do the exact same damned thing with Linux if the drivers aren't on the CD. Further, if the drivers aren't in some handy, pre-compiled form, you've got to compile them, or compile a new kernel with the drivers in them, or a new module. You have to worry about dependency hell, which makes DLL hell look like paradise in comparison. That's a far greater "hassle" for most folks than getting a Windows driver...which, by the way, about 100% of products sold today come with Windows drivers on a CD or floppy. How many come with Linux drivers out of the box? Precious few (although it is growing).
Even if you got Windows "free" with your PC from the manufacturer, you just paid the Microsoft tax up front
First off, the "Microsoft Tax" is propaganda at its worst. You paid a licensing fee for software, the same as if you paid for any other bundled software with any PC, whether it's "free" or not. At the end of the day, OEM's pay roughly $20-$30 per PC for these licenses, which is a damn tiny cost for a modern OS. Sure, you can download RedHat for free...what about support? That costs extra unless you're willing to wade through newsgroups that can be rude, uninformative, and daunting to new users. Then there's the poor documentation that ships with most open source software -- it's either out of date, not yet finished, poorly organized, or not applicable to your situation. Most people, yourself included obviously, grossly underestimate the total cost of a system, support being the thing that most folks leave out. Linux folks think "hey, if I can do it, so can everybody else", forgetting that "the rest of the world" has something better to do with their time than wade through documentation that was written by a programmer, for a programmer. "End users? Who's that?", say most programmers. "They should get a clue and learn Java/C++/Perl/PHP and then they can do this." Yeah...right.
and will continue to pay if you want to keep your system up to date.
Really? I don't know about you, but the entire rest of the world gets Windows Update and Office Update for free. I'm not sure why you're paying for such things, but I would suspect that you're simply making this up to further your argument. Sorry, it doesn't wash. Updates are free.
If you're talking about upgrades, that's different, and upgrades should cost you something if useful features are added. It's up to the user to decide if the new functions warrant additional costs, but MS isn't holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to upgrade. I can run Office 97 for as long as I like, even after offical support of it is dropped, so long as it does what I like. Sure, MS would like you to upgrade, but you don't have to. Millions of Windows 95/Office95 users worldwide haven't upgraded, which is testimony enough.
That's like saying the Grappa I got offered after shelling out $150.- for dinner with a date last Saturday was "free". Sure, I didn't pay for it, but you can't get it without buying dinner first.
Yes, I know there are solutions for reading MS Office documents on Li
That's why there's something called life insurance.
No, that's called managing the estate of a deceased person. Life insurance isn't some Get Rich Quick policy that's designed to keep heirs in money for the rest of their lives. Life insurance is primarily aimed at sudden, unexpected death. Even in that, it won't keep many people going long, even with absurdly huge policies. After taxes, a lot of that goes away. If you have enough life insurance to keep your heirs rolling in dough for the next thirty years, you've got WAY too much insurance.
I'm digressing here a bit, but the point is, life insurance is not a method to keep your family afloat if you have other means to do so. If you have investments and property, they are there for your heirs. It doesn't matter whether it's physical or intellectual property, it's still yours to do with as you will. If it has value, so much the better.
Why does there need to be a "life plus" term at all for those works?
I don't think that there should be. On that we are in agreement.
So do you think a copyright should last 20 years like a patent? And have you expressed these views to your representatives in the legislature (Parliament, Congress, Diet, whatever they call it in your country)?
Yes, on both counts. The extensions granted to Disney by Sonny Bono were absolutely infuriating. They might as well have given a lifetime copyright on that damned mouse, since every time it comes up for expiration, Congress gives them another twenty years or so.
Intellectual property is not property in the real sense...It is simply an imposed rule, not a real thing in itself.
Really? Why? You make a grand sweeping statement and have absolutely nothing to back it up save your opinion. What's your reasoning? Simply because you can't touch it? How purile.
There's such a thing as supply and demand. I'm sure you've heard of it, even the in logical vacuum you seem to operate in. If someone wants something, it now has value. The value is in direct proportion to the want. If I have something that no one else has (like a superlative singing voice), and people want it, the value is tremendous. If many people have that same talent, the value is still there, but diminished. But no matter how many people may or may not have the talent, if nobody wants the products of that talent, it's likely to be worthless. That is how supply and demand works, and it's how the world functions on a daily basis. Thank you for attending Econ 101.
But according to your world-view, anoyone who decides that they want to make money by engaging in any business model, whether it be realistically feasible or not, should be paid.
That's a complete fabrication on your part, because I never said any such thing. In fact, I said just the opposite. Anyone should (and does) have the right to get paid whatever the market will pay for their talents, services, or products. The key item here is whatever the market will pay, just in case you missed it last time. That's how a free market system works. If you produce something that other people value, be it a program, a song, or a piece of dung sculpted into the shape of Don King, if people value it, it has value. If they don't, it doesn't. I simply can't understand why you cannot grasp such a simple concept.
Value is, and always will be, an entirely relative concept. To someone here in America, a diamond may be worth $2,000, but to someone stranded on a deserted island with no food or water, it's completely worthless. Your time, just like a musician's time, is worth whatever the market deems it to be worth at that particular time. Witness the incredible devaluation of I.T. skillsets in the last two years, and you have a concrete example staring you in the face. To claim otherwise would be to declare yourself a blind, deaf, mute idiot.
Why is anyone needed to appoint power? I, and everyone else can use our own judgement... some would say God gave us that.
You're the one making such sweeping proclamations as to the worth of things, not I. I'm simply asking you to explain your views, something you seem to be avoiding. You can use your judgement all you want, so long as you realize that you have absolutely no right to expect anyone else to follow it or pay heed to it without logical reasoning.
One more thing, don't take out your frustration at your inability to have to world think the way you want it to (perish the thought) on me, you uncouth little twerp. That is all.
It has nothing to do with me taking out frustrations on you for not thinking like me. On the contrary, it has everything to do with people (like yourself) who make grand pronouncements like "there's no such thing as IP rights" and then just (figuratively) walk away, as if the statement alone is enough to support your bombastic claim. I'm sorry, but you're either going to have to (a) defend your claim with some logical reasoning, based upon facts and provable statistics or (b) run away and act like you're right simply because you can't imagine anyone else being bold enough as to question you. The fact that the majority of people choose plan B is the source of my frustration, my oh-so-eloquent non-thinker, and you have done precious little other than offer more opinions without facts.
Because the artist, inventor, or whatever has an estate, heirs, a family to support, or an image to maintain, even after death. Take, for example, images of John Wayne, or Martin Luther King. Ad companies have tried to use images of these well known people to boost their products or messages, and the estates of those people have (rightly) objected to their usage in certain situations. I, for one, would not like to see MLK hawking Pepsi, or John Wayne trying to sell me a Ford. It's debasing. Thus, IP rights extend beyond the grave.
For corporations, it's a slightly different but no less relevant matter. It can take quite some time to recoup the costs of R&D, therefore it's silly to tie the length of IP rights to a human lifespan. What if the head researcher made a massive discovery and died the next day? Should all the time and money spent on the research be thrown away because somebody died? Of course not. There needs to be a reasonable length of time you can hold a copyright. That being said, I think the current terms are, indeed, far too long.
It isn't stealing because it's copying not stealing, so there's no tangible or easily precieved loss.
I've heard this argument so many times I'm about ready to throw up.
Get this through your thick, obtuse skull: intangible things can have a tangible value!!!! Intellectual property is just that -- property! Just because nothing physical is involved doesn't mean it's free and clear, where just anyone can do anything they want with it.
Further, you're not paying for the musical notes, or bits and bytes, or any vibrations in the air. You're paying the artist for their time and talent, which has a value. If you've got a talent that can't be matched by anyone else, that talent is worth something. Suppose you were the best programmer there was, and could come up with algorithms better and faster than anyone else. Would it be right for a company to employ you to write code for them, but then have them refuse to pay you for your time and talent? Of course it wouldn't be right, especially if you were expressly contracted to be paid for such work. Song artists expect to be paid for their work, otherwise they wouldn't work. I'm not sure what other careers some of those misfits might get into, but that's immaterial -- people have to work to make money, and they have a right to expect to be paid for their efforts in accordance to what the fair market value is for their skillsets.
That, of course, leads many to think that artists and music executives are vastly overpaid. To that, I say that: who in the hell annointed you with the power to say who is worth what? Nobody annointed you, that's who. It is not your place to decide how much money any person may make, any more than it is up to me to decide that you need to be making minimum wage instead of whatever it is you are making. Collectively, if consumers decide an artist sucks, they sell no albums and thus make no money. While I must admit that some musical tastes defy comprehension, the fact is that even Justin Timberlake has millions of screaming fans buying his execrable music. Who are you to tell them that their tastes are wrong? Nobody, that's who. You are not special.
Information, despite the current trendy tagline, is not free, nor does it want to be free. Information is valued in direct proportion to how unique it is. If you remove the carrot, that being a financial payoff to making a unique creation, from the system, you will destroy the largest motivating factor to innovation and creation. France tried this back in the 1800's. All inventions and creations were made public domain, and it failed miserably. People had no incentive to create! Why should they toil and sweat, the equivalent of modern R&D, when some fool down the street can quickly and easily copy my work with no effort at all? You see this today in how many countries shy away from investment in China due to lax copyright enforcement. People go where money is, and until something better than money comes along, you've no right to condemn them for it.
You can hate the RIAA and MPAA all you want. I hate them, too. But abolition of property rights is ridiculous, and copyrights are inherently linked to property rights. If you'd think a bit more about the implications of the socialist utopia you're proposing, you'd realize that it doesn't work, hasn't worked, and won't work.
Ok. My Mom is the type of person who would never steal anything from anyone. Totally good soul.
Good for her.
But even she sees no problem with getting CDs copied or songs downloaded form the Internet, in fact she gets me to do it all the time.
Well, there goes that "never steal from anyone" thing. Of course, she's co-opted you into doing her stealing for her. Sounds a lot like "contributing to the delinquency of a minor", but then again you probably introduced her to the who MP3-share concept.
Why? Because for decades the radio stations have convinced the general populace that music is free (after all, if you can listen to it wherever you want for no charge, isn't that free?)
Radio stations have convinced folks that music is free? My God, what a revelation! And I suppose all those Blockbuster Music stores, and Media Play, and Tower Records, and all those other music stores don't mind that folks shoplift, either? After all, music is free...the radio said so!
Most people do not mind listning to a few ads on the radio, in fact, many people enjoy advertisements. So with this general mindset that music doens't really cost anything, why would they be expected to pay for it?
Because the music isn't brought to you for free, dammit. Radio stations pay hefty licensing fees to the song artists in order to play the songs. In turn, the station intersperses ads in the music, the sale of which pays for the songs and the radio station staff. By listening, you are voluntarily donating your ears to the listening of commercials in return for hearing music from time to time. You are being paid for your time, the station is being paid for its time, and the song artist is paid for their time. That is what fair is. You, however, advocate something that is totally different, and fundamentally unfair.
Ever since the 8 track tape was invented people have copying music.
Ever since humans have walked the earth they've been murdering and raping one another from time to time. It doesn't make it right.
These people don't get (or care) that it is digital and therefore it is an exact copy, they just by default expect to be allowed to do it.
And ignorance is the primary instigator of this. People who wouldn't even consider shoplifting a CD from a music store have no compunction whatsoever about pirating music online. After all, its so easy, so anonymous...seductive indeed. It's also wrong. Stealing by any other name is just the same.
Look, I despise the RIAA and MPAA to the core of my being. I think they're dinosaurs, breeds that have become extinct but are too stubborn to realize it yet. They are propping up an ancient business model with legalism, which is one of the most reprehensible ways to keep a business going. It totally contravenes the idea of capitalism and a free market, both of which I am a great fan of. But I've had it up to here with all the damned hypocrisy and lying justifications that everyone spouts to "defend" music piracy.
If you wish to steal music, then just steal it and admit that it's stealing. You are enjoying the benefits of someone else's labors (the songwriter, the performer, the recording engineer, the marketing company, and even the guy who sweeps the floor at RIAA headquarters) without paying for it. That is stealing, and it is NOT a gray area.
If I employed you as a programmer, then took the code and refused to pay you, that's stealing. But, hey, that's okay, isn't it? After all, it's just bits and bytes, just ones and zeroes. I haven't depleted the world of anything by taking the code you wrote and using it. I can make an infinite number of copies of the code and I haven't deprived you of any bits or bytes at all, have I? I'm such an innocent soul, all I've done is steal your time and refused to pay you for it. But that's okay, because you're the oppressed little guy, and the record companies are the big, mean, evil guys.
Get off the high horse, people. If you have music you didn't pay for, you stole it. Be grown up enough to admit it and move on, but don't try to weasel through some sanctimonious justification process that makes it seem like you're doing the Right Thing(tm). You're not. If you want to make a statement, just boycott the fucking music and do without.
But it still does not justify the nuke, it just made Americans and Chinese feel better.
Armchair quarterbacking is a nice pasttime, but it has no bearing on reality. The Japanese were not planning on capitulation. Evidence gathered after the surrender indicates that Japan's military generals were advocating mass human wave attacks, on the scale of millions of men, women, and children, to defend against an amphibious invasion of their islands. The slaughter that would've been created during such an attack would've made D-Day look like a picnic, and would have radically dwarfed the casualty figures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Conservative Allied estimates put the body counts in excess of one million over a one month period. It still would've ended with Japan losing, but it would've been much more horrendous without the A-bomb.
No, despite the knee-jerk reaction to condemn the bombing, sensible individuals understand that it actually saved lives, both Japanese and American. In war, people die. It's that simple. The Japanese had to know that when the started the whole thing at Pearl Harbor, and accepted the consequences of their actions. You can choose to fight a war in many ways, but the way that defeats your enemy the quickest is almost always the "cheapest" in terms of human life. "At one point, a memo would've stopped Hitler", said Winston Churchill after the war, and he was absolutely right. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were required to show the Japanese that resistance was futile. After all, conventional bombing had not broken them, nor had a blockade. Only by showing absolutely overwhelming force, and the will to use it, could we force them to accept surrender.
By the way, the parallels with today's Saddam Hussein are almost deja vu-like: Hussein knows that in any conflict with U.S. forces he would lose, but the lack of resolution on the part of the U.N. emboldens him to thumb his nose at the U.N. and the rest of the world. If petty dictators and thugs worldwide knew that such actions would result in swift retribution, history has shown that their tendency towards violence is greatly curbed.
All that said, the atomic bombing of Japan was a horrible event, but I cannot condemn it. If you embrace the danger of stealing honey from a beehive, you also accept the consequences of being stung. Japan wanted the honey, but got stung instead. I feel nothing but sorrow for the Japanese people during that time, but they allowed their leaders to start the war, and are thus involved to the hilt. Responsibility is a tough thing to have to deal with, but it cannot be avoided in the real world.
Bombing of boats? I haven't the foggiest notion what you're referring to.
As for dropping an A-bomb on "millions" of "civilians":
1. The high-water mark for the population of Hiroshima was around 380,000, but that was prior to the war. At the time of the bombing, civilians had been increasingly leaving metropolitan areas, and there were about 255,000 people living in Hiroshima. (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp06.htm) . Your claim of "millions" shows that either you don't know how to count or you're more interested in spouting anti-US propaganda than you are interested in facts. That, however, is no surprise.
2. Classifying the entire city as "civilians" is idiotic. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had significant strategic importance to the Japanese war effort. Both were home to significant concentrations of Japanese ground troops (see previous link to Yale study) and war industry. At a time when almost the entire population of the country was ordered to meet an invading amphibious army with sharpened bamboo poles and swords, the distinction between civilian and military was tenuous at best. Again, you have chosen to interpret this in a fashion that "backs up" your otherwise-unworkable, illogical, unprovable argument.
3. I would point out that the Japanese initiated hostilities against the U.S. at Pearl Harbor with no military provocation by the U.S., but that would likely send you into a catatonic fit of denial.
4. The Japanese were responsible for some of the most reprehensible war crimes to be carried out during all of WWII. Captured U.S. military personnel were beheaded, starved, shot, mutilated, and put into forced labor camps, all in violation of the Geneva Convention treatment of POW's. In contrast, Japanese POW's were treated according to international accords like the Geneva convention. Few were taken prisoner, though, because their government had informed them that we'd treat them as badly as they treated us.
5. During the occupation of China, the Japanese practiced wholesale "ethnic cleansing" of the Chinese. Further, thousands of women were herded into camps and forced to become "comfort women" -- slave prostitutes. To this day, the Japanese government continues to deny any responsibility for these actions, and no formal reparation has ever been made to the survivors.
But hey! Let's not forget, it's the Americans who are the evil bastards in this world, right? We need to stand up against the tyranny of the U.S. of A and respect those who stand for freedom, individuality, and love of liberty...folks like Hitler, Mussolini, Togo, Stalin, Ghaddafi, Hussein, and Mugabe.
Bah, who am I kidding? Liberals like you live in your own little dream world, and no amount of facts and logic will ever drag you away from it.
Better that the whole world be blind than the good be sightless and the evil being sighted, or so I say. If someone is intent on taking me down, I'm going to do my damndest to stop them. Failing that, I'll make damn sure I take them with me.
Then you haven't been looking very hard. Every vulnerability in recent memory has been accompanied by a patch at the time of disclosure, usually because MS had finished the patch before announcing the hole. This is the responsible way to report a vulnerability, as opposed to shouting out that there's a hole, then following with a patch days or weeks later.
Microsoft hasn't always been good about doing this, though, and has sometimes relied upon security via obscurity. But every single mass vulnerability exploited in the past year (especially things like Slammer) has made use of holes that were patched months or even YEARS ago. Pitiful admins are the ones to blame in these instances, not MS.
Okay, we've been trying to get rid of the damned floppy for how long? Five years? And it's still a fundamental requirement for updating most BIOS's?
How long did it take to put the ISA bus to bed after PCI came out? Ten years?
I'd love to see the BIOS go away as much as anyone, but I just don't see this happening in a reasonable amount of time. It's just too firmly entrenched in every PC, add-in card, and software doo-dad to easily do away with. And I don't care how good the "legacy" support is, I'm sure it will not work more frequently than it does work.
Then again, I am a cynic, although you'd never know it.
Please, whether you are religious or not, have some respect for those who are. The poster was not in any way advocating all of NASA just sit down and pray this won't happen again, he was simply espousing grief over this situation. Your callous remark does nothing to help the situation. Can you not have your own belief system (or lack thereof) without throwing it in someone else's face? If you don't want to pray, don't. Let everyone do what they need to do in difficult times like this.
If you wish to compare a top-end G4 to a low-end Celeron, then you're right, but then you're paying an incredible price differential for said Mac.
As for the mobile P4 being slower than a desktop P4, you're quite wrong there. Depending upon the user's power-saving options, the mobile P4 can be just as fast as a desktop unit, albeit at a cost of battery runtime. This is, of course, the object of the debate, but it's unfair to say that the mobile P4 is slower as a blanket statement. It can be, but it doesn't have to be.
Lastly, I'll take issue with your idea of a crippled mobile CPU. It's not crippled, unless you consider the addition of ruthless power saving circuitry "crippling". Again, you don't have to engage these features if you don't want to. You can set yourself up for maximum speed and it will run circles around a G4, at a cost of battery life. While the G4 will last longer, you do not have the option of bumping up your performance in lieu of battery life, so in this instance it is the Mac that is less accomodating.
But there's one thing neither of us has mentioned just yet. Just how fast does a desktop really need to be? If you're just surfing, answering mail, and composing documents or spreadsheets, does it really matter all that much whether you've got a 1GHz G4, a 1.6GHz Celeron, or a 2GHz P4? I'd wager that it makes very little difference overall. Playing games, 3D rendering...that takes horsepower, but who uses a laptop for that? Not many people.
Not a rant or a flame, but I think it's worth noting that the processors Apple uses are significantly slower than the PC processors you're comparing them to. Apple propaganda aside, the most powerful PowerBook Apple makes isn't even close to having the same amount of processing power a top 'o the line Thinkpad has.
This isn't to say the Apples are worthless -- far from it. It's just that they're not for everyone.
You know, we have a name for a piece of code that installs itself without permission, changes settings, takes control of your machine, and fights you when you try to uninstall it. It's called a virus, and last time I checked, distributing such things was illegal and punishable by jail time.
Actually, the students get private grants and such to fund their own experiments, and they pay NASA for payload space/mass. So your precious tax dollars are safe to be spent elsewhere, like for "art" like bisected pigs being suspended in formaldehyde and put on display. But hey, that's "freedom of expression", and this on only scientific research. Mustn't mess with our priorities here.
But on a less obtrusive note, the research data that we could get from this ant experiment is far from valueless. By observing how different species adapts to microgravity environments, we can better determine how human beings might better adapt to weightlessness. We can, and do, learn a lot from studying nature's inventions, and the hope is that we can learn from her and improve ourselves.
Don't forget to thank the Democrats, as they're pushing this like nobody's business. Bush, on the other hand, is more closely aligned with the business-friendly Republican party, and they are against this sort of thing.
An inane response from someone so pea-green with envy and jealously that it leaks out with every word you type. You obviously haven't made much of yourself in your life, and you obviously don't have any cogent thinking or argument skills within that thick skull of yours. Now that you're full of jealously and hate, it's awful convenient for you to blame somebody else because you haven't "made it" yet. After all, why work hard to improve yourself when you can simply claim that you're being held down, denied your "rightful" compensation by someone who's worked harder or smarter than you and is reaping the rewards for their decisions.
Why don't you go out there and do something besides bitch and moan about how much everyone else has? Oh, I forget, that would take discipline, motivation, hard work, and intelligence...and all of these concepts are utterly alien to you.
I tell you what they'd like to see: they'd like to see the CEO make no money at all, have no home, no car, no possessions at all, while all the cubicle inhabitants have million-dollar salaries, stock options, company cars, and mansions.
Of course, there's no way that such a situation would ever work, but since when do class-warfare-loving slashdotters ever really give a damn about reality? Fantasy is so much more...rewarding.
How about this for a comparison: how much is a star athlete worth? If he or she is the one who brings success to the enterprise, be it sports or traditional business, how much is that person worth? It comes down to supply and demand, and if you have a skill that few others have, you can command a very high salary. How many people can juggle the concept of running a multi-billion dollar international corporation? Not that many, which is why those who can are paid such huge sums of money.
Further, since you bring up the concept of pay being tied to contributing to the company, suppose the CEO is instrumental in securing a new account that brings $200 million in revenue. In large corporations the CEO is more of a salesperson than anything else, and their job is to use their persuasion skills, their contacts, and anything else they have to bring new business to the company. This is a vital role, as CEO's are the most visible appendage of a large company. Not to be rude or demeaning in any way, but much more business (and thus, revenue) is generated by a CEO than by the $60K/year coder toiling in the cubicle. TRUE, the CEO would have little to sell without the cubicle worker, but then the cubicle worker would have no job if the CEO wasn't out there winning new business.
You see, dammit, it's a symbiotic relationship. Many here, however, seem to think it's parasitic, with greedy, evil management living off the bones of the poor, righteous, downtrodden workers. Bullshit. Total absolute bullshit. If you think otherwise then why don't you go start your own company and try running it without any management at all. See just how far you get. It won't be very far, I can assure you.
I'll answer your accusation with this comparison: if you follow any professional sporting event like (American) football, basketball, baseball, etc. you'll note that these teams all have a manager. It's this person's responsibility to see the big picture, and to organize the team's strengths against competitor's weaknesses.
A good team manager, coach, or CEO can take a down-and-out group of people and turn them into a world-class team. But give a bad leader good people and he will almost surely fail.
You are right, it DOES take a team effort -- and by God that damned team includes the sonuvabitch who's leading it just as surely as it includes the guy sweeping the floors, carrying the water, and making the winning touchdown! Why must you always assume that the managing person somehow isn't involved, that they're just mooching along on the efforts of others? Do you have any idea what's required to be a good leader, to bust your ass trying to motivate people to bust theirs? It's damn galling to see how little damned respect people here are willing to give those who make sure that the ship stays on the right course. A team cannot lead, it must be led by someone who is willing and able to do it. When a team tries to lead, you end up with management by consensus, which means you almost always end up with the lowest common denominator.
Before you decry how worthless CEO's and management in general is, why don't you just try doing their job for a little while. It's all very easy for you to just sit there and judge, not having walked a mile in anyone else's shoes but your own.
Not at all when you consider that, in the "accelerating" object's inertial reference frame, it's not moving at all, it's the rest of the universe that's whizzing by. Thus, as far as that inertial frame is concerned, it is not gaining mass at all. I won't even begin to get into the time dilation problems, which is a whole 'nother can 'o worms.
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Rarely has someone made my "friend" list so quickly, and by having said so little. Bravo! That's the funniest (and most accurate) thing I've seen yet in this forum.
That's why I added "(list)" in my original post. $199 is what I pay if I order online [microsoft.com] from Microsoft for a full version of Windows XP Home. I'm aware that I can get better deals than that, but even $75 is still $75. There's no way I can legally get it for free, like I can with a Linux or BSD distro. The best price I've found locally is around $100 where I live, btw - importing from the US is about as expensive because of taxes and overseas shipping.
And again you miss the point: "free" is a very relative term. Sure, you can download it for free and install it for free. Just in case you didn't get it the first time, what about support? Sure, you're capable of supporting the box yourself, just as I'm able to run my company's Linux/Apache/Tomcat setup, but what if the company has no Linux talent on staff? Implementation would require the company to add staff, or fire someone and then add staff. This is far from "free" in my book. Do not, as so many OSS advocates do, overlook the costs that happen after the OS is installed.
I think everyone who has ever done a Linux/BSD installation is very aware of that.
Funny, you didn't mention it. In fact, the point of your paragraph implied the exact opposite. Shall I repost it? "For those not running Windows...the usual installation hassles, like drivers for equipment which isn't included on the CD." You made it sound like Windows is the only OS that suffers this "hassle". On the face of it, if both OS's have the same issues (and, by your admission, Windows has better handling of it when it does come up), then why did you hold it out as a reason to avoid Windows? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Here I disagree. I'm in the business long enough to remember when it was impossible to buy a PC from any of the major vendors without paying for a Microsoft operating system license. This is not the case anymore, thanks to the antitrust cases.
I was referring more to your buzzword usage than the actual content of your argument. Call it what it is -- a licensing fee. It's not some evil document requiring you to sign over your soul, so stop making it sound so odious. It colors your argument to the point where you cannot be considered objective.
Sure, no problem with it. Whenever I feel that some commercial software I own has an upgrade that's worth its money, I pay for it. I still can't remember when apt-get has ever asked me to pay for new versions of packages (with useful features), though
I sure can't remember the last time I had to pay for an update to Office 2000, which added security features and a host of other things that were outside the standard "bugfix" category. Same goes for Windows XP. And again, I'll point out that after installation is where the real costs of software come into play. Ever installed an RPM that totally fscked up some other application? Who do you turn to for support? Windows has its share of screwed up installers and patches, but you still need only go to one place to get it fixed, and they'll hang with you until it IS fixed. OSS can do the same, but there's absolutely no obligation on the part of the software supplier to do so, and Murphy's Law pretty much guarantees that the one thing you need from them is the one thing you can't get. Sure, you have the code and can fix it yourself -- if you have the time, skills, and inclination to do so. Most of the rest of the world has a job to do besides patching someone else's code, regardless of how free it is.
That's true. The company I work for can continue to use Windows NT 4.0 for as long as they like. The catch is that Microsoft is retiring the OS, so there will be no updates, no support and no security patches if we choose to go that route. Since we can't take the associated risks, we're practically forced to upgrade to Windows XP.
Risks? What risks? There are thousands of companies across the nation (and millions worldwide) that are run
For those not running Windows, the Word viewer comes "free" with a $199.- (list price) version of Windows
Which, I'll point out, is the highest possible price you could pay. Even a token amount of effort would reveal that you can get WinXP Pro for under $100, and WinXP Home for under $75. Just check Pricewatch. No, these are not educational licenses, they are real licenses.
a good sized chunk of your system disk (not that it really matters much given today's HD prices and capacities)
Good. You got that one right. With 80GB disks being common, who cares if the OS uses 1GB to install. Of course, you can make a WinXP installation fit into something much smaller if you'd like.
and the usual installation hassles, like drivers for equipment which isn't included on the CD etc
You're completely bypassing the fact that you have to do the exact same damned thing with Linux if the drivers aren't on the CD. Further, if the drivers aren't in some handy, pre-compiled form, you've got to compile them, or compile a new kernel with the drivers in them, or a new module. You have to worry about dependency hell, which makes DLL hell look like paradise in comparison. That's a far greater "hassle" for most folks than getting a Windows driver...which, by the way, about 100% of products sold today come with Windows drivers on a CD or floppy. How many come with Linux drivers out of the box? Precious few (although it is growing).
Even if you got Windows "free" with your PC from the manufacturer, you just paid the Microsoft tax up front
First off, the "Microsoft Tax" is propaganda at its worst. You paid a licensing fee for software, the same as if you paid for any other bundled software with any PC, whether it's "free" or not. At the end of the day, OEM's pay roughly $20-$30 per PC for these licenses, which is a damn tiny cost for a modern OS. Sure, you can download RedHat for free...what about support? That costs extra unless you're willing to wade through newsgroups that can be rude, uninformative, and daunting to new users. Then there's the poor documentation that ships with most open source software -- it's either out of date, not yet finished, poorly organized, or not applicable to your situation. Most people, yourself included obviously, grossly underestimate the total cost of a system, support being the thing that most folks leave out. Linux folks think "hey, if I can do it, so can everybody else", forgetting that "the rest of the world" has something better to do with their time than wade through documentation that was written by a programmer, for a programmer. "End users? Who's that?", say most programmers. "They should get a clue and learn Java/C++/Perl/PHP and then they can do this." Yeah...right.
and will continue to pay if you want to keep your system up to date.
Really? I don't know about you, but the entire rest of the world gets Windows Update and Office Update for free. I'm not sure why you're paying for such things, but I would suspect that you're simply making this up to further your argument. Sorry, it doesn't wash. Updates are free.
If you're talking about upgrades, that's different, and upgrades should cost you something if useful features are added. It's up to the user to decide if the new functions warrant additional costs, but MS isn't holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to upgrade. I can run Office 97 for as long as I like, even after offical support of it is dropped, so long as it does what I like. Sure, MS would like you to upgrade, but you don't have to. Millions of Windows 95/Office95 users worldwide haven't upgraded, which is testimony enough.
That's like saying the Grappa I got offered after shelling out $150.- for dinner with a date last Saturday was "free". Sure, I didn't pay for it, but you can't get it without buying dinner first.
Yes, I know there are solutions for reading MS Office documents on Li
That's why there's something called life insurance.
No, that's called managing the estate of a deceased person. Life insurance isn't some Get Rich Quick policy that's designed to keep heirs in money for the rest of their lives. Life insurance is primarily aimed at sudden, unexpected death. Even in that, it won't keep many people going long, even with absurdly huge policies. After taxes, a lot of that goes away. If you have enough life insurance to keep your heirs rolling in dough for the next thirty years, you've got WAY too much insurance.
I'm digressing here a bit, but the point is, life insurance is not a method to keep your family afloat if you have other means to do so. If you have investments and property, they are there for your heirs. It doesn't matter whether it's physical or intellectual property, it's still yours to do with as you will. If it has value, so much the better.
Why does there need to be a "life plus" term at all for those works?
I don't think that there should be. On that we are in agreement.
So do you think a copyright should last 20 years like a patent? And have you expressed these views to your representatives in the legislature (Parliament, Congress, Diet, whatever they call it in your country)?
Yes, on both counts. The extensions granted to Disney by Sonny Bono were absolutely infuriating. They might as well have given a lifetime copyright on that damned mouse, since every time it comes up for expiration, Congress gives them another twenty years or so.
Intellectual property is not property in the real sense...It is simply an imposed rule, not a real thing in itself.
Really? Why? You make a grand sweeping statement and have absolutely nothing to back it up save your opinion. What's your reasoning? Simply because you can't touch it? How purile.
There's such a thing as supply and demand. I'm sure you've heard of it, even the in logical vacuum you seem to operate in. If someone wants something, it now has value. The value is in direct proportion to the want. If I have something that no one else has (like a superlative singing voice), and people want it, the value is tremendous. If many people have that same talent, the value is still there, but diminished. But no matter how many people may or may not have the talent, if nobody wants the products of that talent, it's likely to be worthless. That is how supply and demand works, and it's how the world functions on a daily basis. Thank you for attending Econ 101.
But according to your world-view, anoyone who decides that they want to make money by engaging in any business model, whether it be realistically feasible or not, should be paid.
That's a complete fabrication on your part, because I never said any such thing. In fact, I said just the opposite. Anyone should (and does) have the right to get paid whatever the market will pay for their talents, services, or products. The key item here is whatever the market will pay, just in case you missed it last time. That's how a free market system works. If you produce something that other people value, be it a program, a song, or a piece of dung sculpted into the shape of Don King, if people value it, it has value. If they don't, it doesn't. I simply can't understand why you cannot grasp such a simple concept.
Value is, and always will be, an entirely relative concept. To someone here in America, a diamond may be worth $2,000, but to someone stranded on a deserted island with no food or water, it's completely worthless. Your time, just like a musician's time, is worth whatever the market deems it to be worth at that particular time. Witness the incredible devaluation of I.T. skillsets in the last two years, and you have a concrete example staring you in the face. To claim otherwise would be to declare yourself a blind, deaf, mute idiot.
Why is anyone needed to appoint power? I, and everyone else can use our own judgement... some would say God gave us that.
You're the one making such sweeping proclamations as to the worth of things, not I. I'm simply asking you to explain your views, something you seem to be avoiding. You can use your judgement all you want, so long as you realize that you have absolutely no right to expect anyone else to follow it or pay heed to it without logical reasoning.
One more thing, don't take out your frustration at your inability to have to world think the way you want it to (perish the thought) on me, you uncouth little twerp. That is all.
It has nothing to do with me taking out frustrations on you for not thinking like me. On the contrary, it has everything to do with people (like yourself) who make grand pronouncements like "there's no such thing as IP rights" and then just (figuratively) walk away, as if the statement alone is enough to support your bombastic claim. I'm sorry, but you're either going to have to (a) defend your claim with some logical reasoning, based upon facts and provable statistics or (b) run away and act like you're right simply because you can't imagine anyone else being bold enough as to question you. The fact that the majority of people choose plan B is the source of my frustration, my oh-so-eloquent non-thinker, and you have done precious little other than offer more opinions without facts.
Because the artist, inventor, or whatever has an estate, heirs, a family to support, or an image to maintain, even after death. Take, for example, images of John Wayne, or Martin Luther King. Ad companies have tried to use images of these well known people to boost their products or messages, and the estates of those people have (rightly) objected to their usage in certain situations. I, for one, would not like to see MLK hawking Pepsi, or John Wayne trying to sell me a Ford. It's debasing. Thus, IP rights extend beyond the grave.
For corporations, it's a slightly different but no less relevant matter. It can take quite some time to recoup the costs of R&D, therefore it's silly to tie the length of IP rights to a human lifespan. What if the head researcher made a massive discovery and died the next day? Should all the time and money spent on the research be thrown away because somebody died? Of course not. There needs to be a reasonable length of time you can hold a copyright. That being said, I think the current terms are, indeed, far too long.
It isn't stealing because it's copying not stealing, so there's no tangible or easily precieved loss.
I've heard this argument so many times I'm about ready to throw up.
Get this through your thick, obtuse skull: intangible things can have a tangible value!!!! Intellectual property is just that -- property! Just because nothing physical is involved doesn't mean it's free and clear, where just anyone can do anything they want with it.
Further, you're not paying for the musical notes, or bits and bytes, or any vibrations in the air. You're paying the artist for their time and talent, which has a value. If you've got a talent that can't be matched by anyone else, that talent is worth something. Suppose you were the best programmer there was, and could come up with algorithms better and faster than anyone else. Would it be right for a company to employ you to write code for them, but then have them refuse to pay you for your time and talent? Of course it wouldn't be right, especially if you were expressly contracted to be paid for such work. Song artists expect to be paid for their work, otherwise they wouldn't work. I'm not sure what other careers some of those misfits might get into, but that's immaterial -- people have to work to make money, and they have a right to expect to be paid for their efforts in accordance to what the fair market value is for their skillsets.
That, of course, leads many to think that artists and music executives are vastly overpaid. To that, I say that: who in the hell annointed you with the power to say who is worth what? Nobody annointed you, that's who. It is not your place to decide how much money any person may make, any more than it is up to me to decide that you need to be making minimum wage instead of whatever it is you are making. Collectively, if consumers decide an artist sucks, they sell no albums and thus make no money. While I must admit that some musical tastes defy comprehension, the fact is that even Justin Timberlake has millions of screaming fans buying his execrable music. Who are you to tell them that their tastes are wrong? Nobody, that's who. You are not special.
Information, despite the current trendy tagline, is not free, nor does it want to be free. Information is valued in direct proportion to how unique it is. If you remove the carrot, that being a financial payoff to making a unique creation, from the system, you will destroy the largest motivating factor to innovation and creation. France tried this back in the 1800's. All inventions and creations were made public domain, and it failed miserably. People had no incentive to create! Why should they toil and sweat, the equivalent of modern R&D, when some fool down the street can quickly and easily copy my work with no effort at all? You see this today in how many countries shy away from investment in China due to lax copyright enforcement. People go where money is, and until something better than money comes along, you've no right to condemn them for it.
You can hate the RIAA and MPAA all you want. I hate them, too. But abolition of property rights is ridiculous, and copyrights are inherently linked to property rights. If you'd think a bit more about the implications of the socialist utopia you're proposing, you'd realize that it doesn't work, hasn't worked, and won't work.
Ok. My Mom is the type of person who would never steal anything from anyone. Totally good soul.
Good for her.
But even she sees no problem with getting CDs copied or songs downloaded form the Internet, in fact she gets me to do it all the time.
Well, there goes that "never steal from anyone" thing. Of course, she's co-opted you into doing her stealing for her. Sounds a lot like "contributing to the delinquency of a minor", but then again you probably introduced her to the who MP3-share concept.
Why? Because for decades the radio stations have convinced the general populace that music is free (after all, if you can listen to it wherever you want for no charge, isn't that free?)
Radio stations have convinced folks that music is free? My God, what a revelation! And I suppose all those Blockbuster Music stores, and Media Play, and Tower Records, and all those other music stores don't mind that folks shoplift, either? After all, music is free...the radio said so!
Most people do not mind listning to a few ads on the radio, in fact, many people enjoy advertisements. So with this general mindset that music doens't really cost anything, why would they be expected to pay for it?
Because the music isn't brought to you for free, dammit. Radio stations pay hefty licensing fees to the song artists in order to play the songs. In turn, the station intersperses ads in the music, the sale of which pays for the songs and the radio station staff. By listening, you are voluntarily donating your ears to the listening of commercials in return for hearing music from time to time. You are being paid for your time, the station is being paid for its time, and the song artist is paid for their time. That is what fair is. You, however, advocate something that is totally different, and fundamentally unfair.
Ever since the 8 track tape was invented people have copying music.
Ever since humans have walked the earth they've been murdering and raping one another from time to time. It doesn't make it right.
These people don't get (or care) that it is digital and therefore it is an exact copy, they just by default expect to be allowed to do it.
And ignorance is the primary instigator of this. People who wouldn't even consider shoplifting a CD from a music store have no compunction whatsoever about pirating music online. After all, its so easy, so anonymous...seductive indeed. It's also wrong. Stealing by any other name is just the same.
Look, I despise the RIAA and MPAA to the core of my being. I think they're dinosaurs, breeds that have become extinct but are too stubborn to realize it yet. They are propping up an ancient business model with legalism, which is one of the most reprehensible ways to keep a business going. It totally contravenes the idea of capitalism and a free market, both of which I am a great fan of. But I've had it up to here with all the damned hypocrisy and lying justifications that everyone spouts to "defend" music piracy.
If you wish to steal music, then just steal it and admit that it's stealing. You are enjoying the benefits of someone else's labors (the songwriter, the performer, the recording engineer, the marketing company, and even the guy who sweeps the floor at RIAA headquarters) without paying for it. That is stealing, and it is NOT a gray area.
If I employed you as a programmer, then took the code and refused to pay you, that's stealing. But, hey, that's okay, isn't it? After all, it's just bits and bytes, just ones and zeroes. I haven't depleted the world of anything by taking the code you wrote and using it. I can make an infinite number of copies of the code and I haven't deprived you of any bits or bytes at all, have I? I'm such an innocent soul, all I've done is steal your time and refused to pay you for it. But that's okay, because you're the oppressed little guy, and the record companies are the big, mean, evil guys.
Get off the high horse, people. If you have music you didn't pay for, you stole it. Be grown up enough to admit it and move on, but don't try to weasel through some sanctimonious justification process that makes it seem like you're doing the Right Thing(tm). You're not. If you want to make a statement, just boycott the fucking music and do without.
But it still does not justify the nuke, it just made Americans and Chinese feel better.
Armchair quarterbacking is a nice pasttime, but it has no bearing on reality. The Japanese were not planning on capitulation. Evidence gathered after the surrender indicates that Japan's military generals were advocating mass human wave attacks, on the scale of millions of men, women, and children, to defend against an amphibious invasion of their islands. The slaughter that would've been created during such an attack would've made D-Day look like a picnic, and would have radically dwarfed the casualty figures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Conservative Allied estimates put the body counts in excess of one million over a one month period. It still would've ended with Japan losing, but it would've been much more horrendous without the A-bomb.
No, despite the knee-jerk reaction to condemn the bombing, sensible individuals understand that it actually saved lives, both Japanese and American. In war, people die. It's that simple. The Japanese had to know that when the started the whole thing at Pearl Harbor, and accepted the consequences of their actions. You can choose to fight a war in many ways, but the way that defeats your enemy the quickest is almost always the "cheapest" in terms of human life. "At one point, a memo would've stopped Hitler", said Winston Churchill after the war, and he was absolutely right. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were required to show the Japanese that resistance was futile. After all, conventional bombing had not broken them, nor had a blockade. Only by showing absolutely overwhelming force, and the will to use it, could we force them to accept surrender.
By the way, the parallels with today's Saddam Hussein are almost deja vu-like: Hussein knows that in any conflict with U.S. forces he would lose, but the lack of resolution on the part of the U.N. emboldens him to thumb his nose at the U.N. and the rest of the world. If petty dictators and thugs worldwide knew that such actions would result in swift retribution, history has shown that their tendency towards violence is greatly curbed.
All that said, the atomic bombing of Japan was a horrible event, but I cannot condemn it. If you embrace the danger of stealing honey from a beehive, you also accept the consequences of being stung. Japan wanted the honey, but got stung instead. I feel nothing but sorrow for the Japanese people during that time, but they allowed their leaders to start the war, and are thus involved to the hilt. Responsibility is a tough thing to have to deal with, but it cannot be avoided in the real world.
Bombing of boats? I haven't the foggiest notion what you're referring to.
) . Your claim of "millions" shows that either you don't know how to count or you're more interested in spouting anti-US propaganda than you are interested in facts. That, however, is no surprise.
As for dropping an A-bomb on "millions" of "civilians":
1. The high-water mark for the population of Hiroshima was around 380,000, but that was prior to the war. At the time of the bombing, civilians had been increasingly leaving metropolitan areas, and there were about 255,000 people living in Hiroshima. (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp06.htm
2. Classifying the entire city as "civilians" is idiotic. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had significant strategic importance to the Japanese war effort. Both were home to significant concentrations of Japanese ground troops (see previous link to Yale study) and war industry. At a time when almost the entire population of the country was ordered to meet an invading amphibious army with sharpened bamboo poles and swords, the distinction between civilian and military was tenuous at best. Again, you have chosen to interpret this in a fashion that "backs up" your otherwise-unworkable, illogical, unprovable argument.
3. I would point out that the Japanese initiated hostilities against the U.S. at Pearl Harbor with no military provocation by the U.S., but that would likely send you into a catatonic fit of denial.
4. The Japanese were responsible for some of the most reprehensible war crimes to be carried out during all of WWII. Captured U.S. military personnel were beheaded, starved, shot, mutilated, and put into forced labor camps, all in violation of the Geneva Convention treatment of POW's. In contrast, Japanese POW's were treated according to international accords like the Geneva convention. Few were taken prisoner, though, because their government had informed them that we'd treat them as badly as they treated us.
5. During the occupation of China, the Japanese practiced wholesale "ethnic cleansing" of the Chinese. Further, thousands of women were herded into camps and forced to become "comfort women" -- slave prostitutes. To this day, the Japanese government continues to deny any responsibility for these actions, and no formal reparation has ever been made to the survivors.
But hey! Let's not forget, it's the Americans who are the evil bastards in this world, right? We need to stand up against the tyranny of the U.S. of A and respect those who stand for freedom, individuality, and love of liberty...folks like Hitler, Mussolini, Togo, Stalin, Ghaddafi, Hussein, and Mugabe.
Bah, who am I kidding? Liberals like you live in your own little dream world, and no amount of facts and logic will ever drag you away from it.
Better that the whole world be blind than the good be sightless and the evil being sighted, or so I say. If someone is intent on taking me down, I'm going to do my damndest to stop them. Failing that, I'll make damn sure I take them with me.
According to ISS's writeup on this, between 50% and 75% of all the email on the Internet is run by sendmail. I guess some folks didn't get the memo.
Then you haven't been looking very hard. Every vulnerability in recent memory has been accompanied by a patch at the time of disclosure, usually because MS had finished the patch before announcing the hole. This is the responsible way to report a vulnerability, as opposed to shouting out that there's a hole, then following with a patch days or weeks later.
Microsoft hasn't always been good about doing this, though, and has sometimes relied upon security via obscurity. But every single mass vulnerability exploited in the past year (especially things like Slammer) has made use of holes that were patched months or even YEARS ago. Pitiful admins are the ones to blame in these instances, not MS.
Okay, we've been trying to get rid of the damned floppy for how long? Five years? And it's still a fundamental requirement for updating most BIOS's?
How long did it take to put the ISA bus to bed after PCI came out? Ten years?
I'd love to see the BIOS go away as much as anyone, but I just don't see this happening in a reasonable amount of time. It's just too firmly entrenched in every PC, add-in card, and software doo-dad to easily do away with. And I don't care how good the "legacy" support is, I'm sure it will not work more frequently than it does work.
Then again, I am a cynic, although you'd never know it.
Please, whether you are religious or not, have some respect for those who are. The poster was not in any way advocating all of NASA just sit down and pray this won't happen again, he was simply espousing grief over this situation. Your callous remark does nothing to help the situation. Can you not have your own belief system (or lack thereof) without throwing it in someone else's face? If you don't want to pray, don't. Let everyone do what they need to do in difficult times like this.
If you wish to compare a top-end G4 to a low-end Celeron, then you're right, but then you're paying an incredible price differential for said Mac.
As for the mobile P4 being slower than a desktop P4, you're quite wrong there. Depending upon the user's power-saving options, the mobile P4 can be just as fast as a desktop unit, albeit at a cost of battery runtime. This is, of course, the object of the debate, but it's unfair to say that the mobile P4 is slower as a blanket statement. It can be, but it doesn't have to be.
Lastly, I'll take issue with your idea of a crippled mobile CPU. It's not crippled, unless you consider the addition of ruthless power saving circuitry "crippling". Again, you don't have to engage these features if you don't want to. You can set yourself up for maximum speed and it will run circles around a G4, at a cost of battery life. While the G4 will last longer, you do not have the option of bumping up your performance in lieu of battery life, so in this instance it is the Mac that is less accomodating.
But there's one thing neither of us has mentioned just yet. Just how fast does a desktop really need to be? If you're just surfing, answering mail, and composing documents or spreadsheets, does it really matter all that much whether you've got a 1GHz G4, a 1.6GHz Celeron, or a 2GHz P4? I'd wager that it makes very little difference overall. Playing games, 3D rendering...that takes horsepower, but who uses a laptop for that? Not many people.
Not a rant or a flame, but I think it's worth noting that the processors Apple uses are significantly slower than the PC processors you're comparing them to. Apple propaganda aside, the most powerful PowerBook Apple makes isn't even close to having the same amount of processing power a top 'o the line Thinkpad has.
This isn't to say the Apples are worthless -- far from it. It's just that they're not for everyone.
You know, we have a name for a piece of code that installs itself without permission, changes settings, takes control of your machine, and fights you when you try to uninstall it. It's called a virus, and last time I checked, distributing such things was illegal and punishable by jail time.
Actually, the students get private grants and such to fund their own experiments, and they pay NASA for payload space/mass. So your precious tax dollars are safe to be spent elsewhere, like for "art" like bisected pigs being suspended in formaldehyde and put on display. But hey, that's "freedom of expression", and this on only scientific research. Mustn't mess with our priorities here.
But on a less obtrusive note, the research data that we could get from this ant experiment is far from valueless. By observing how different species adapts to microgravity environments, we can better determine how human beings might better adapt to weightlessness. We can, and do, learn a lot from studying nature's inventions, and the hope is that we can learn from her and improve ourselves.
Don't forget to thank the Democrats, as they're pushing this like nobody's business. Bush, on the other hand, is more closely aligned with the business-friendly Republican party, and they are against this sort of thing.
An inane response from someone so pea-green with envy and jealously that it leaks out with every word you type. You obviously haven't made much of yourself in your life, and you obviously don't have any cogent thinking or argument skills within that thick skull of yours. Now that you're full of jealously and hate, it's awful convenient for you to blame somebody else because you haven't "made it" yet. After all, why work hard to improve yourself when you can simply claim that you're being held down, denied your "rightful" compensation by someone who's worked harder or smarter than you and is reaping the rewards for their decisions.
Why don't you go out there and do something besides bitch and moan about how much everyone else has? Oh, I forget, that would take discipline, motivation, hard work, and intelligence...and all of these concepts are utterly alien to you.
I tell you what they'd like to see: they'd like to see the CEO make no money at all, have no home, no car, no possessions at all, while all the cubicle inhabitants have million-dollar salaries, stock options, company cars, and mansions.
Of course, there's no way that such a situation would ever work, but since when do class-warfare-loving slashdotters ever really give a damn about reality? Fantasy is so much more...rewarding.
How about this for a comparison: how much is a star athlete worth? If he or she is the one who brings success to the enterprise, be it sports or traditional business, how much is that person worth? It comes down to supply and demand, and if you have a skill that few others have, you can command a very high salary. How many people can juggle the concept of running a multi-billion dollar international corporation? Not that many, which is why those who can are paid such huge sums of money.
Further, since you bring up the concept of pay being tied to contributing to the company, suppose the CEO is instrumental in securing a new account that brings $200 million in revenue. In large corporations the CEO is more of a salesperson than anything else, and their job is to use their persuasion skills, their contacts, and anything else they have to bring new business to the company. This is a vital role, as CEO's are the most visible appendage of a large company. Not to be rude or demeaning in any way, but much more business (and thus, revenue) is generated by a CEO than by the $60K/year coder toiling in the cubicle. TRUE, the CEO would have little to sell without the cubicle worker, but then the cubicle worker would have no job if the CEO wasn't out there winning new business.
You see, dammit, it's a symbiotic relationship. Many here, however, seem to think it's parasitic, with greedy, evil management living off the bones of the poor, righteous, downtrodden workers. Bullshit. Total absolute bullshit. If you think otherwise then why don't you go start your own company and try running it without any management at all. See just how far you get. It won't be very far, I can assure you.
I'll answer your accusation with this comparison: if you follow any professional sporting event like (American) football, basketball, baseball, etc. you'll note that these teams all have a manager. It's this person's responsibility to see the big picture, and to organize the team's strengths against competitor's weaknesses.
A good team manager, coach, or CEO can take a down-and-out group of people and turn them into a world-class team. But give a bad leader good people and he will almost surely fail.
You are right, it DOES take a team effort -- and by God that damned team includes the sonuvabitch who's leading it just as surely as it includes the guy sweeping the floors, carrying the water, and making the winning touchdown! Why must you always assume that the managing person somehow isn't involved, that they're just mooching along on the efforts of others? Do you have any idea what's required to be a good leader, to bust your ass trying to motivate people to bust theirs? It's damn galling to see how little damned respect people here are willing to give those who make sure that the ship stays on the right course. A team cannot lead, it must be led by someone who is willing and able to do it. When a team tries to lead, you end up with management by consensus, which means you almost always end up with the lowest common denominator.
Before you decry how worthless CEO's and management in general is, why don't you just try doing their job for a little while. It's all very easy for you to just sit there and judge, not having walked a mile in anyone else's shoes but your own.
Not at all when you consider that, in the "accelerating" object's inertial reference frame, it's not moving at all, it's the rest of the universe that's whizzing by. Thus, as far as that inertial frame is concerned, it is not gaining mass at all. I won't even begin to get into the time dilation problems, which is a whole 'nother can 'o worms.