I'm not a big Microsoft basher despite being a Linux user, but --
Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they aren't a monopoly. They still are around 90% of the OS market.
You need Office? OpenOffice is available and quite good.
Yes, but you still have to deal with people who use Microsoft Office -- and they're more than 90% of the market.
IIS? Apache. IE? Firefox.
Yeah, Apache wins. Firefox? That's fine, but again, because of Microsoft's presence, there are sites that require IE.
Zune? iPod.
The Zune came out after the iPod was already a success, and Microsoft couldn't leverage their weight to squash the iPod.
Microsoft has a very large market share because they are arguably good at what they do.
They have a very large market share because of business practices that got them convicted as a monopoly. They didn't get their market share in a clean way.
It's not Microsoft that limits what we do, it's the choice of all of the companies to build the software that doesn't work on anything else which then leaves us with no choice.
I agree with this. Unfortunately, there's not enough of a non-MS market to convince companies to port, and we're stuck because there won't be a market until companies port...
This isn't like your cable company where you don't have a choice.
In a way, it is. Find a way for a non-techie to get a PC that doesn't come with Windows. This eliminates using websites because a lot of non-tech people won't know about sites that sell OS-less PCs (does Dell? I don't think they do), leaving you only with stores. Find a store that sells non-Windows PCs. Go ahead -- I'll wait. I don't know how common Apple stores are, but there's certainly not one near me.
Microsoft is becoming less and less of a monopoly as time passes
I agree with this, too. And their attitude since the Vista era is part of it. Which is why -- hey, let them charge extra for an XP downgrade and foist their shitty OS on people. If one out of a thousand users switch to Linux...
I really don't mean to be a troll with this. But I wanted to read RoF in order to see what kind of short stories were being published, and so I subscribed for a year.
Most of the story content during the year I subscribed came across as snooty/snobby artsy fartsy junk fantasy. At least as far as I can recall. I have like, zero standards when it comes to reading science fiction/fantasy so long as I can pronounce the character names without needing a guide, and this stuff turned me off. Seriously, I went through a phase where fantasy stories were like crack, and these guys couldn't publish one story in a year that made me feel like the subscription was worth it.
Maybe some of their problem comes from the fact a bunch of people didn't like the content? Content is everywhere. If you want someone to pay for content, it has to be more entertaining or valuable than they can get for free. I can get snooty art fantasy all I want at deviantart for free.
I prefer just to set a password for root -- that's all you have to do in order to have the normal root user that you can su to. Atomic Penguin suggested it upthread.
I prefer that, because then root has a separate password from any user...
"The Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), also called Human herpesvirus 4 (HHV-4), is a virus of the herpes family (which includes Herpes simplex virus), and is one of the most common viruses in humans."
The herpes family of viruses is certainly one of the most "successful." It's everywhere.
Yeah, but: How many guns does the government lose each year? It's ridiculously high, too. You might think they'd keep an eye on their guns, but: It was a government employee who lost a laptop with thousands of social security numbers on it.
Thus, you'd have to eliminate guns from the government (including police) as well.
The best way to eliminate violent crime has nothing to do with banning anything. It has to do with fixing the actual root causes, and I'm not even sure we can do that.
I'd rather the life of the criminal be potentially dangerous when said criminal may or may not come across an armed victim, than to disarm everyone.
I think the argument is that he started out great, but because there were no term limits, became corrupt when he lost sight of why he was there in the first place.
Personally, I don't know enough to say, but I'm with the OP on the idea of term limits -- seriously, the guy is 84. He would be 90 at the end of this term if he survived. Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond -- heck, even Ted Kennedy. There's no reason the Senate should be a lifetime appointment. McCain is going to run again in 2010 for his Senate seat*.
Stevens is a prime example of why: The man didn't know shit about computers and was decrying the fact an internet sent on Friday just reached him. He was too old to be making laws -- not just about tech, either. I don't think we should require the Senate to all be experts on all matters, but a passing familiarity with what they're doing should be a must.
* If you're going to campaign for anything other than re-election, you should be forced to resign from any current national office, at least in my opinion. McCain shouldn't have been collecting a paycheck for being a Senator, neither should Kerry, or Dole, or Obama even, or any of the Senate/House goobs that ran for the nominations and lost. But that's another thread...
In bankruptcy, even the easier (chapter 7?), you still have to pay your mortgage to live in your house. At least, before the bill OP talks about. I know this because my parents went through a bankruptcy a few months before the bill became law; they still pay their mortgage.
Also, you don't start out with a "clean" slate. Bankruptcy tanks your credit rating, which tanks your ability to get credit for a long, long time.
I'm not arguing for or against easy bankruptcy, just pointing out some facts.
And as much as phone companies annoy me, at least they're up-front with passing on the taxes; every phone bill I receive has the taxes set aside from the rest of the bill, probably because they got sick of people wondering why their phone service cost more than advertised.
I own nothing by Apple, but I kind of disagree with you here.
Nobody can say they bought an iPhone, at this point, and didn't know what they were signing up for. Apple's attitude is well known, and only an idiot I wouldn't feel sorry for will have gone into an agreement with them without being aware of what kind of company Apple is. Clearly, people like Apple despite their flaws (just like people like Google despite theirs, and Linux, and Microsoft -- all are flawed but Jesus they have annoying fanboys). Apple fans just don't care about the same stuff you do.
I use Linux almost exclusively on my home PC, but none of my friends do; they want to play games or don't want to learn to use a new OS or whatever. It's not that they've drank the MS kool-aid. They just don't have the same outlook as I do.
That said, I don't like the idea of a device that I've paid for talking to a third party and deciding which programs (that I've paid for) to run. So I guess I won't be getting an iPhone (not like it was ever in consideration in the first place).
1. Nobody was arguing for rape, murder, or theft in this thread. But keep building those strawmen, I'm sure they'll keep the birds away.
2. You are not the final arbiter of what is and is not constitutional. I don't recall, however, the portion of the constitution that says anything about keeping kids from seeing pornography on the internet, so I'm not sure how the law falls under the very purpose of the constitution.
The purpose of the constitution is to lay out our federal government's most basic rules and set up. There's nothing, NOTHING, in it about protecting children. (Of course, you probably think there's a constitutional right to vote...)
Slashdot Mirror
I dug out my old login for this one.
Rob, thanks, for everything. Your site has become a major part of my regular websurfing, and helps some long work days go by faster!
Thank you!
I'm not a big Microsoft basher despite being a Linux user, but --
Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they aren't a monopoly. They still are around 90% of the OS market.
You need Office? OpenOffice is available and quite good.
Yes, but you still have to deal with people who use Microsoft Office -- and they're more than 90% of the market.
IIS? Apache. IE? Firefox.
Yeah, Apache wins. Firefox? That's fine, but again, because of Microsoft's presence, there are sites that require IE.
Zune? iPod.
The Zune came out after the iPod was already a success, and Microsoft couldn't leverage their weight to squash the iPod.
Microsoft has a very large market share because they are arguably good at what they do.
They have a very large market share because of business practices that got them convicted as a monopoly. They didn't get their market share in a clean way.
It's not Microsoft that limits what we do, it's the choice of all of the companies to build the software that doesn't work on anything else which then leaves us with no choice.
I agree with this. Unfortunately, there's not enough of a non-MS market to convince companies to port, and we're stuck because there won't be a market until companies port...
This isn't like your cable company where you don't have a choice.
In a way, it is. Find a way for a non-techie to get a PC that doesn't come with Windows. This eliminates using websites because a lot of non-tech people won't know about sites that sell OS-less PCs (does Dell? I don't think they do), leaving you only with stores. Find a store that sells non-Windows PCs. Go ahead -- I'll wait. I don't know how common Apple stores are, but there's certainly not one near me.
Microsoft is becoming less and less of a monopoly as time passes
I agree with this, too. And their attitude since the Vista era is part of it. Which is why -- hey, let them charge extra for an XP downgrade and foist their shitty OS on people. If one out of a thousand users switch to Linux...
Uh, the point of a netbook is pretty much to read e-mail and surf the web. Which is something Linux does quite well.
I really don't mean to be a troll with this. But I wanted to read RoF in order to see what kind of short stories were being published, and so I subscribed for a year.
Most of the story content during the year I subscribed came across as snooty/snobby artsy fartsy junk fantasy. At least as far as I can recall. I have like, zero standards when it comes to reading science fiction/fantasy so long as I can pronounce the character names without needing a guide, and this stuff turned me off. Seriously, I went through a phase where fantasy stories were like crack, and these guys couldn't publish one story in a year that made me feel like the subscription was worth it.
Maybe some of their problem comes from the fact a bunch of people didn't like the content? Content is everywhere. If you want someone to pay for content, it has to be more entertaining or valuable than they can get for free. I can get snooty art fantasy all I want at deviantart for free.
People who don't like Bush -- ESPECIALLY people who don't like Bush -- should want all record of him preserved.
I prefer just to set a password for root -- that's all you have to do in order to have the normal root user that you can su to. Atomic Penguin suggested it upthread.
I prefer that, because then root has a separate password from any user...
Whodathunkit?
No one capable of subtraction? ;)
Over a hundred is a "small number"?
That and region lock-out aside, I'm not sure how the AC's post about the Virtual Console applies to putting free games *on a PC*...
The point is that most modern screens use no less power if they're displaying a lot of black vs a lot of white, as Blackle claims.
Yes, it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein-Barr
"The Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), also called Human herpesvirus 4 (HHV-4), is a virus of the herpes family (which includes Herpes simplex virus), and is one of the most common viruses in humans."
The herpes family of viruses is certainly one of the most "successful." It's everywhere.
Yeah, but: How many guns does the government lose each year? It's ridiculously high, too. You might think they'd keep an eye on their guns, but: It was a government employee who lost a laptop with thousands of social security numbers on it.
Thus, you'd have to eliminate guns from the government (including police) as well.
The best way to eliminate violent crime has nothing to do with banning anything. It has to do with fixing the actual root causes, and I'm not even sure we can do that.
I'd rather the life of the criminal be potentially dangerous when said criminal may or may not come across an armed victim, than to disarm everyone.
Censorship does not have a party affiliation.
I'd extend this: Censorship doesn't have a party affiliation, but both major parties are affiliated with it.
I think the argument is that he started out great, but because there were no term limits, became corrupt when he lost sight of why he was there in the first place.
Personally, I don't know enough to say, but I'm with the OP on the idea of term limits -- seriously, the guy is 84. He would be 90 at the end of this term if he survived. Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond -- heck, even Ted Kennedy. There's no reason the Senate should be a lifetime appointment. McCain is going to run again in 2010 for his Senate seat*.
Stevens is a prime example of why: The man didn't know shit about computers and was decrying the fact an internet sent on Friday just reached him. He was too old to be making laws -- not just about tech, either. I don't think we should require the Senate to all be experts on all matters, but a passing familiarity with what they're doing should be a must.
* If you're going to campaign for anything other than re-election, you should be forced to resign from any current national office, at least in my opinion. McCain shouldn't have been collecting a paycheck for being a Senator, neither should Kerry, or Dole, or Obama even, or any of the Senate/House goobs that ran for the nominations and lost. But that's another thread...
Yes, but those credit offers aren't the "good" kind of credit.
Credit cards aren't the same as getting a mortgage or other type of loan. They're the Windows ME of credit.
In bankruptcy, even the easier (chapter 7?), you still have to pay your mortgage to live in your house. At least, before the bill OP talks about. I know this because my parents went through a bankruptcy a few months before the bill became law; they still pay their mortgage.
Also, you don't start out with a "clean" slate. Bankruptcy tanks your credit rating, which tanks your ability to get credit for a long, long time.
I'm not arguing for or against easy bankruptcy, just pointing out some facts.
Probably the first time Pelosi and Reid have been called "Bushtards."
You were very close, actually -- disbarred is the term. I think, IANAL and all.
Yep.
And as much as phone companies annoy me, at least they're up-front with passing on the taxes; every phone bill I receive has the taxes set aside from the rest of the bill, probably because they got sick of people wondering why their phone service cost more than advertised.
It is completely different than pirating a game: It's two pictures from a movie.
It's the equivalent of having a picture of Rydia and Cecil on your website, not pirating the entirety of FF4.
I own nothing by Apple, but I kind of disagree with you here.
Nobody can say they bought an iPhone, at this point, and didn't know what they were signing up for. Apple's attitude is well known, and only an idiot I wouldn't feel sorry for will have gone into an agreement with them without being aware of what kind of company Apple is. Clearly, people like Apple despite their flaws (just like people like Google despite theirs, and Linux, and Microsoft -- all are flawed but Jesus they have annoying fanboys). Apple fans just don't care about the same stuff you do.
I use Linux almost exclusively on my home PC, but none of my friends do; they want to play games or don't want to learn to use a new OS or whatever. It's not that they've drank the MS kool-aid. They just don't have the same outlook as I do.
That said, I don't like the idea of a device that I've paid for talking to a third party and deciding which programs (that I've paid for) to run. So I guess I won't be getting an iPhone (not like it was ever in consideration in the first place).
Excuse me for being a rude American, but*:
There are no apostrophes in plural words, timmarh'y.
*Nyah nyah, you started it.
I'd say $550 difference per song is "foiled." Yeah, $200 is still outrageous. But it's less than a third of what they wanted.
Wait, you mean my boycott of blank CD-RWs is stupid?
Damn it, here I am backing up all my media to floppies for nothing...
1. Nobody was arguing for rape, murder, or theft in this thread. But keep building those strawmen, I'm sure they'll keep the birds away.
2. You are not the final arbiter of what is and is not constitutional. I don't recall, however, the portion of the constitution that says anything about keeping kids from seeing pornography on the internet, so I'm not sure how the law falls under the very purpose of the constitution.
The purpose of the constitution is to lay out our federal government's most basic rules and set up. There's nothing, NOTHING, in it about protecting children. (Of course, you probably think there's a constitutional right to vote...)
Dent had lost his mind by that point. He wasn't Harvey Dent the "White Knight" and DA anymore.
He was Two Face the villain.
My biggest gripe is: He was Two Face for a total of five minutes at the end of the movie, and then he's gone. WTF?