"These companies put out trial applications or full versions of older releases to encourage upggrading, it's not the same thing."
No. I am talking about *new* versions of software; not trial versions, nor am I talking about older versions (like Borland).
A few years ago, you could have downloaded a trial version of any Macromedia product and you could have unlocked the full version by following the instructions on the following readme file. The crack required was trivial, it was illegal to make, and the resulting software was a fully functional completely unrestricted copy of the latest that Macromedia had to offer.
"Besides, shouldn't it be up to the copyright owner to decide how their work is best promoted, not this self-appointed community of thieves,"
At the time, the Macromedia CEO wasn't criticizing the crack of his line of products -- he was boasting about it. Today, Macromedia has made its software much more difficult to crack. And please don't misunderstand me, I am not condoning nor am I rationalizing the act of cracking. In fact, in this case I suggest that we do the opposite. Dan Jackson should be stopped, he shouldn't be praised. The Microsoft ebook format is taking our rights of "FAIR USE" away and coincidently this same product has also been dying a slow natural death. So my assumption is -- that by opening up the format illegally, we are breathing life into the product, we're letting Microsoft gain market share, we're turning Microsoft into a victim, and we're giving Microsoft the future legal means to lock us back into its proprietary chains.
Unless I can be proven otherwise, I will assume that those technological resources will only end up going to the rich and powerful of those remote villages. I was raised in a poor remote area of Europe and I have traveled extensively throughout poor areas of developing countries and typically -- this is what I've witnessed.
If, like me, you don't have a cell phone, payphones are a good thing.
Modernize. Get a cell phone. Even if you hardly use it, cell phone service in the UK is much cheaper and much more reliable than in the US and last I checked cell phones in the UK are much more reliable than those damn BT broken down pay phones.
Companies have been known to release cracks of their own products to foster widespread adoption. The CEO of Macromedia almost admitted doing as much in an interview.
Somehow, I doubt that Microsoft would have done such a thing, but you've got to admit, it's a sound business strategy. It gives a company all the benefits of having an open format, without making the commitment of an open format.
"Normally I agree with Bruce, but not this time. You are suggesting that someone not related with the development of this application come up with their own documentation and choke the revenue stream of the company that does develop and give away the software. The whole mechanism of making a viable opensource business revolves around making money off the support of said package. "
As consumers, it isn't our responsibility and it isn't possible for us to make sure the businesses we consume from are "viable".
As users of open source software, it isn't our responsibility and it isn't possible for us to make sure that an opensource business remains "viable".
On the other hand, it may be possible to keep an opensource project viable indefinitly by taking over its support function ourselves. You can chose to make the business "viable". That is your right. I will chose to make the *project* "viable". That is my right.
I would state that more assertively. It's exactly what should be done, and the folks operating the alternate support site should be the ones to get the $50.
An alternate support site should be created and then the users should write their own documentation. Even with proprietary software, the users themselves are usually the ones who provide some of the most crucial and some of the most straightforward documentation.
If a user doesn't feel like donating his documentation solely to the benefit of the company -- he should still have the option of donating his work to anyone he wants to.
Don't think that would fly in the US... here, speeding tickets are giving to individuals, not phones. The prosecuting attorney could prove my phone went 100mph, but not me. Maybe I lent it to someone else?
This hasn't stopped american cities from using cameras for issuing red-light traffic violations. In San Francisco, it has been proven that those cameras have a 30% failure rate. When they first got started, a city technician would discard half of the pictures because they were bad, but now because of city budget cuts they stopped discarding those bad pictures, and they started issuing tickets regardless of doubt.
Now, I understand we can all take a day off from work and protest those traffic violations, but the judges we have down here are not the most rational/principled human beings in the world and I would love to hear you give that excuse "May be someone else was driving?" to one of our judges.
In any case, in theory there is no limit to the number of traffic violations that could be issued if everything was automated and unfortunatly there is a limit to the number of sick-days you can take off from work to protest those tickets.
How fortutious for Bush that 9/11 happened when it did. I have always that it strange that Clinton could protect our shores with the CIA/FBI while Bush blames them.
Give me a break. I don't like Bush, but Clinton was just lucky this didn't happen under his watch. The security of this country doesn't change overnight simply because a new administration takes over. The screeners didn't change and they certainly didn't care about the new administration. Plus, the hijackers probably didn't care either since most of them were probably already in the US under the Clinton administration.
The only thing, that might have changed, is that the Bin Laden family could have been forbidden to fly out of the United States. That would have been nice. Under Bush and because of Bush, the Bin Laden plane was the only plane allowed to fly out of the United States when every other plane was grounded. Personally, I don't care if the Bin Laden family was innocent, I would still have liked to see them squirm a little bit under our intense scrutiny.
This article is a cheap shot against Microsoft. The same thing could be said of any other profitable company.The people who create a product don't see eye to eye with the people who try to extract as much money as possible from that same product. This is Universal a truth.
The real enemy of Microsoft is the Status Quo. It's that old version of excel spreadsheet that a secretary is using as a database, it's that scrap of paper that the IT director is using to keep track of his passwords, and it's that old Linux box humming along under the desk. The Status Quo is the enemy of Microsoft. It's the enemy of Linux. And it's the enemy of every god damn company out there.
If Linux keeps on focusing on the Status Quo as its main competitor and if Microsoft keeps on focusing on Linux as its main competitor -- Linux will always win.
We discovered fire thousands of years ago; but last summer's rampaging wild fires are testament to how much we don't have that under our control.
That's because many environmentalists chose to have the forrest burn "naturally". With a little bit of preventative maintenance, those wild fires could have been prevented.
http://pushback.com/ http://greenspirit.com/
The minimum wage laws may "oppress" teenagers who could use some pocket money,
Since when did you start quoting yourself to make a point? "oppress" -- please spare me your sarcasm. Oppression is not the right word. Oppression implies intent. The side-effect of the minimum wage is anything but intentional. Oppression implies that the group in question is put down. Low wage non-workers may stagnate as a result of the minimum wage, but they are not explicitly put down and they certainly have no idea that the minimum wage could be one of the cause for their misfortunes.
There are plenty of people out there who can't read, write, count, follow procedures, or get along with people. Many of those people can't get jobs. Period. Because of the minimum wage.
"pocket money"? Fuck the money! Working is about self-respect. Working is about growth. Working is about earning your keep. The human mind wasn't designed to stagnate. The human body wasn't designed simply to consume. We have to be working and producing for the very reason that we were made to produce and survive. For some, working at a very low wage may be the only opportunity for growth and it could be the only chance they have.
For me, I was given that chance when I came to the United States I managed to finish three years of University but in France, my home country -- the cost of hiring/firing someone is so prohibitive -- few companies would hire college graduates, let alone college dropouts.
For example, Microsoft provides tools for migrating Visual Basic applications to.NET making the transition cost a lot less than if you actually had to "rewrite everything from scratch."
The migration tool you speak of is just a "search and replace" script. It leaves the most difficult part of the migration to the programmer and unfortunately -- most VB programmers I know are incapable of doing the rest of the migration correctly. Most traditional VB programmers are not able to make the conceptual leap to VB.NET. This last observation is not an isolated opinion.
Even William Vaughn, an authority on the subject, agrees with that observation. In his book, ADO.NET and ADO, page 402, he wrote: "Unfortunately, as I see it, more than a few BASIC and Visual Basic developers really expect continued support for...a forgiving language and an IDE that supports default properties, unstructured code, automatic instantiation, morphing datatypes, wizards, designers, drag-and-drop binding,...more importantly...[an] 'edit and continue' development [environment], which permitted developers to change their code after a breakpoint and cointinue...this was a radical departure from other development language interfaces...Microsoft expectes'professional' Visual Basic developers (whoever they are) to whole heartly embrace Microsofts' new languages...Some of these developers will be skilled enough and motivated enough to adapt to a new language...some will have the formal training that permits them to easily step from language-to-language--many(I would venture the majority) do not....Microsoft continues to complicate the situation by insisting that VB.NET is really just another version of Visual Basic 6 and that ADO.NET is just another version of COM-based ADO. They clearly aren't the same--not even close."
"Geekery got him in the game. Business sense got him the rest of the way. "
Geekery may have gotten him into the game, but his father got him the rest of the way.
At the time, Bill's dad was already a top-notch lawyer in New York. Without his dad, at his age, he would have been screwed just like most of us have been screwed at his age.
No, I am not bitter. And yes, I am assuming that most of us, at his age, have been screwed businesswise.
The real test will be over the next 5 or 10 years when the total cost of your solution becomes apparent. What happens when somebody comes out with something better and PHP becomes a "legacy" system?
Proprietary languages have a much better chance of becoming "legacy" systems that noone will support. For instance, Microsoft has already said they will stop supporting its pre-DotNET technology and they will force their customers to upgrade and rewrite everything from scratch.
Defense against what? People or animals? It seems to me that Americans are unique in thinking that a gun is a reasonable defense to be used against PEOPLE.
Defense against people. Defense against getting raped/robbed/killed. Those things happen. Some people are a little bit paranoid perhaps, but some are not.
I've never heard anyone mention a gun as a defense against criminals.
That's not surprising. Your canadian neighbor doesn't have a gun. Your canadian police only wants guns for its own protection. And your Canadian news outlet only tells you about guns that have killed people. Unfortunatly, guns that have successfully been used for defense without having been fired don't get recorded and guns that have successfully been used for defense without having killed someone don't even make it to the news.
A gun at home should be locked up, the ammo locked seperately. If you can get your gun out fast enough for defense then it isn't stored safely.
Why do you say that? Are you saying that all crimes happen at home? And are you including homes who don't have kids within their walls?
A libertarian like Nader would have given Enron just a slap on the wrist for lying and let them go about their business. Damn, I wish he and Celia Ward had won in 2000.
I think he meant to say "A liberal like Nader..." and since Nader seems to want a strong benevolent paternal government, I can only assume that the anonymous poster was making an attempt at sarcasm.
AFAIAC, science is still the most altruistic of professions, not to mention one of the most self-sacrificing.
Being a research Professor has its advantages and prestige is definitly one of those. If you really want to go the altruistic way, do like the Chinese (from the olden days) and publish your work anonymously.
Would you be willing to publish your work anonymously?
Here is what Patrick Moore, the original founder of Greenpeace, has to say about cutting down trees.
I believe that trees are the answer to a lot of questions
about our future. These include: How can we advance to a more sustainable
economy based on renewable fuels and materials? How can we improve
literacy and sanitation in developing countries while reversing deforestation
and protecting wildlife at the same time? How can we pull carbon out
of the atmosphere and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emissions,
carbon dioxide in particular? How can we increase the amount of land
that will support a greater diversity of species? How can we help prevent soil erosion and provide clean air and water? How can we make
this world more beautiful and green? The answer is, by growing more
trees and then using more wood, both as a substitute for non-renewable
fossil fuels and materials such as steel, concrete and plastic, and
as paper products for printing, packaging and sanitation.
[...] http://www.greenspirit.com/trees_answer/
This should be hammered into every person - there is no such thing as "boilerplate" in a contract.
Yes, there is. In real estate, a boiler plate contract is when you go to your local printer and have him print a copy of your contract with the header "STANDARD CONTRACT" on top.
Ideally, you should have two different copies of your "STANDARD CONTRACT" -- one for when you're buying real estate and one for when you're selling real estate. And of course, you should always impose your own copy of your contract on your adversary.
Also, you might want to go to http://www.resellerratings.com/ and complain about the reseller there. I think it should also have been the responsibility of the reseller to inform you that it came with a crippled hard drive without a CD.
I mean, I can't see Microsoft selling Windows for anything anywhere near $20.
A supplier will sell you a cheap OEM Microsoft OS if you can prove to them you just bought a new hard drive or a new CPU. I think you have to supply them with an invoice or something, but usually I order my OS from the same supplier I get my hard drive from and that does the trick.
$14 - Windows XP Pro
$14 - Windows XP Home
$68 - Windows XP Academic
$12 - Windows 2000 Pro OS
$6 - Operating Systems
$107 - Windows 2000 Pro Upgrade
$36 - Windows Millennium
$18 - Windows 98
$19 - Windows 95
$33 - Windows 2000 Server
$31 - Server Upgrade
$29 - NT Server
$24 - NT 4.0
$14 - Linux
$77 - OS 2
$17 - Kit
$12 - Service
$6 -...All in Category
Document your case and request a "charge-back" from your credit card. Your bank will automatically hold the amount in dispute and they will send you a form for you to fill out. If I remember correctly, they have an option that says "Not shipped what was promised", or something like that. Of course, this doesn't guarantee your bank will eventually rule in your favor, but it's worth a shot anyway.
Banks have tremendous power over retailers. In one case, I know someone who got a pro-rated refund initiated 2 years after the fact (the retailer had actually gone bankrupt and it couldn't fullfill the remaining part of its service agreement).
"Running an app under Wine is pretty much the same as running it on Windows integration-wise, the only difference really being themeing (or lack of it). "
Mike, are you in propaganda-mode? or honest-trying-to-be-helpful-mode? Honestly, since when did Wine get this good?
Slashdot Mirror
No. I am talking about *new* versions of software; not trial versions, nor am I talking about older versions (like Borland). A few years ago, you could have downloaded a trial version of any Macromedia product and you could have unlocked the full version by following the instructions on the following readme file. The crack required was trivial, it was illegal to make, and the resulting software was a fully functional completely unrestricted copy of the latest that Macromedia had to offer.
"Besides, shouldn't it be up to the copyright owner to decide how their work is best promoted, not this self-appointed community of thieves,"
At the time, the Macromedia CEO wasn't criticizing the crack of his line of products -- he was boasting about it. Today, Macromedia has made its software much more difficult to crack. And please don't misunderstand me, I am not condoning nor am I rationalizing the act of cracking. In fact, in this case I suggest that we do the opposite. Dan Jackson should be stopped, he shouldn't be praised. The Microsoft ebook format is taking our rights of "FAIR USE" away and coincidently this same product has also been dying a slow natural death. So my assumption is -- that by opening up the format illegally, we are breathing life into the product, we're letting Microsoft gain market share, we're turning Microsoft into a victim, and we're giving Microsoft the future legal means to lock us back into its proprietary chains.
Unless I can be proven otherwise, I will assume that those technological resources will only end up going to the rich and powerful of those remote villages. I was raised in a poor remote area of Europe and I have traveled extensively throughout poor areas of developing countries and typically -- this is what I've witnessed.
Modernize. Get a cell phone. Even if you hardly use it, cell phone service in the UK is much cheaper and much more reliable than in the US and last I checked cell phones in the UK are much more reliable than those damn BT broken down pay phones.
Somehow, I doubt that Microsoft would have done such a thing, but you've got to admit, it's a sound business strategy. It gives a company all the benefits of having an open format, without making the commitment of an open format.
As consumers, it isn't our responsibility and it isn't possible for us to make sure the businesses we consume from are "viable". As users of open source software, it isn't our responsibility and it isn't possible for us to make sure that an opensource business remains "viable".
On the other hand, it may be possible to keep an opensource project viable indefinitly by taking over its support function ourselves. You can chose to make the business "viable". That is your right. I will chose to make the *project* "viable". That is my right.
An alternate support site should be created and then the users should write their own documentation. Even with proprietary software, the users themselves are usually the ones who provide some of the most crucial and some of the most straightforward documentation.
If a user doesn't feel like donating his documentation solely to the benefit of the company -- he should still have the option of donating his work to anyone he wants to.
What would happen if someone brought one from India to the US and then sold it back to India? Would that person get arrested?
This hasn't stopped american cities from using cameras for issuing red-light traffic violations. In San Francisco, it has been proven that those cameras have a 30% failure rate. When they first got started, a city technician would discard half of the pictures because they were bad, but now because of city budget cuts they stopped discarding those bad pictures, and they started issuing tickets regardless of doubt.
Now, I understand we can all take a day off from work and protest those traffic violations, but the judges we have down here are not the most rational/principled human beings in the world and I would love to hear you give that excuse "May be someone else was driving?" to one of our judges.
In any case, in theory there is no limit to the number of traffic violations that could be issued if everything was automated and unfortunatly there is a limit to the number of sick-days you can take off from work to protest those tickets.
Give me a break. I don't like Bush, but Clinton was just lucky this didn't happen under his watch. The security of this country doesn't change overnight simply because a new administration takes over. The screeners didn't change and they certainly didn't care about the new administration. Plus, the hijackers probably didn't care either since most of them were probably already in the US under the Clinton administration.
The only thing, that might have changed, is that the Bin Laden family could have been forbidden to fly out of the United States. That would have been nice. Under Bush and because of Bush, the Bin Laden plane was the only plane allowed to fly out of the United States when every other plane was grounded. Personally, I don't care if the Bin Laden family was innocent, I would still have liked to see them squirm a little bit under our intense scrutiny.
The real enemy of Microsoft is the Status Quo. It's that old version of excel spreadsheet that a secretary is using as a database, it's that scrap of paper that the IT director is using to keep track of his passwords, and it's that old Linux box humming along under the desk. The Status Quo is the enemy of Microsoft. It's the enemy of Linux. And it's the enemy of every god damn company out there.
If Linux keeps on focusing on the Status Quo as its main competitor and if Microsoft keeps on focusing on Linux as its main competitor -- Linux will always win.
That's because many environmentalists chose to have the forrest burn "naturally". With a little bit of preventative maintenance, those wild fires could have been prevented.
http://pushback.com/
http://greenspirit.com/
Since when did you start quoting yourself to make a point? "oppress" -- please spare me your sarcasm. Oppression is not the right word. Oppression implies intent. The side-effect of the minimum wage is anything but intentional. Oppression implies that the group in question is put down. Low wage non-workers may stagnate as a result of the minimum wage, but they are not explicitly put down and they certainly have no idea that the minimum wage could be one of the cause for their misfortunes.
There are plenty of people out there who can't read, write, count, follow procedures, or get along with people. Many of those people can't get jobs. Period. Because of the minimum wage.
"pocket money"? Fuck the money! Working is about self-respect. Working is about growth. Working is about earning your keep. The human mind wasn't designed to stagnate. The human body wasn't designed simply to consume. We have to be working and producing for the very reason that we were made to produce and survive. For some, working at a very low wage may be the only opportunity for growth and it could be the only chance they have.
For me, I was given that chance when I came to the United States I managed to finish three years of University but in France, my home country -- the cost of hiring/firing someone is so prohibitive -- few companies would hire college graduates, let alone college dropouts.
The migration tool you speak of is just a "search and replace" script. It leaves the most difficult part of the migration to the programmer and unfortunately -- most VB programmers I know are incapable of doing the rest of the migration correctly. Most traditional VB programmers are not able to make the conceptual leap to VB.NET. This last observation is not an isolated opinion.
Even William Vaughn, an authority on the subject, agrees with that observation. In his book, ADO.NET and ADO, page 402, he wrote: "Unfortunately, as I see it, more than a few BASIC and Visual Basic developers really expect continued support for...a forgiving language and an IDE that supports default properties, unstructured code, automatic instantiation, morphing datatypes, wizards, designers, drag-and-drop binding,...more importantly...[an] 'edit and continue' development [environment], which permitted developers to change their code after a breakpoint and cointinue...this was a radical departure from other development language interfaces...Microsoft expectes'professional' Visual Basic developers (whoever they are) to whole heartly embrace Microsofts' new languages...Some of these developers will be skilled enough and motivated enough to adapt to a new language...some will have the formal training that permits them to easily step from language-to-language--many(I would venture the majority) do not....Microsoft continues to complicate the situation by insisting that VB.NET is really just another version of Visual Basic 6 and that ADO.NET is just another version of COM-based ADO. They clearly aren't the same--not even close."
Geekery may have gotten him into the game, but his father got him the rest of the way. At the time, Bill's dad was already a top-notch lawyer in New York. Without his dad, at his age, he would have been screwed just like most of us have been screwed at his age.
No, I am not bitter. And yes, I am assuming that most of us, at his age, have been screwed businesswise.
Proprietary languages have a much better chance of becoming "legacy" systems that noone will support. For instance, Microsoft has already said they will stop supporting its pre-DotNET technology and they will force their customers to upgrade and rewrite everything from scratch.
Defense against people. Defense against getting raped/robbed/killed. Those things happen. Some people are a little bit paranoid perhaps, but some are not.
I've never heard anyone mention a gun as a defense against criminals.
That's not surprising. Your canadian neighbor doesn't have a gun. Your canadian police only wants guns for its own protection. And your Canadian news outlet only tells you about guns that have killed people. Unfortunatly, guns that have successfully been used for defense without having been fired don't get recorded and guns that have successfully been used for defense without having killed someone don't even make it to the news.
A gun at home should be locked up, the ammo locked seperately. If you can get your gun out fast enough for defense then it isn't stored safely.
Why do you say that? Are you saying that all crimes happen at home? And are you including homes who don't have kids within their walls?
I think he meant to say "A liberal like Nader..." and since Nader seems to want a strong benevolent paternal government, I can only assume that the anonymous poster was making an attempt at sarcasm.
The primary use of guns is defense. The secondary use of guns is to kill and to fantasize about killing.
Being a research Professor has its advantages and prestige is definitly one of those. If you really want to go the altruistic way, do like the Chinese (from the olden days) and publish your work anonymously.
Would you be willing to publish your work anonymously?
I believe that trees are the answer to a lot of questions about our future. These include: How can we advance to a more sustainable economy based on renewable fuels and materials? How can we improve literacy and sanitation in developing countries while reversing deforestation and protecting wildlife at the same time? How can we pull carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emissions, carbon dioxide in particular? How can we increase the amount of land that will support a greater diversity of species? How can we help prevent soil erosion and provide clean air and water? How can we make this world more beautiful and green? The answer is, by growing more trees and then using more wood, both as a substitute for non-renewable fossil fuels and materials such as steel, concrete and plastic, and as paper products for printing, packaging and sanitation.
[...]
http://www.greenspirit.com/trees_answer/
Yes, there is. In real estate, a boiler plate contract is when you go to your local printer and have him print a copy of your contract with the header "STANDARD CONTRACT" on top.
Ideally, you should have two different copies of your "STANDARD CONTRACT" -- one for when you're buying real estate and one for when you're selling real estate. And of course, you should always impose your own copy of your contract on your adversary.
Also, you might want to go to http://www.resellerratings.com/ and complain about the reseller there. I think it should also have been the responsibility of the reseller to inform you that it came with a crippled hard drive without a CD.
A supplier will sell you a cheap OEM Microsoft OS if you can prove to them you just bought a new hard drive or a new CPU. I think you have to supply them with an invoice or something, but usually I order my OS from the same supplier I get my hard drive from and that does the trick.
Got to http://www.pricewatch.com/ and click on Software on the upper right menu.
$14 - Windows XP Pro ...All in Category
$14 - Windows XP Home
$68 - Windows XP Academic
$12 - Windows 2000 Pro OS
$6 - Operating Systems
$107 - Windows 2000 Pro Upgrade
$36 - Windows Millennium
$18 - Windows 98
$19 - Windows 95
$33 - Windows 2000 Server
$31 - Server Upgrade
$29 - NT Server
$24 - NT 4.0
$14 - Linux
$77 - OS 2
$17 - Kit
$12 - Service
$6 -
Banks have tremendous power over retailers. In one case, I know someone who got a pro-rated refund initiated 2 years after the fact (the retailer had actually gone bankrupt and it couldn't fullfill the remaining part of its service agreement).
Mike, are you in propaganda-mode? or honest-trying-to-be-helpful-mode? Honestly, since when did Wine get this good?