All you Mac devotees seem to have forgotten something - Uncle Billy owns 5% of Apple. Steve "can't market my way out of a wet paper sack" Jobs made a pact with the devil a few years ago and it wasn't without strings attached. Specifically, IE-only on the Mac and Apple doesn't compete with M$ in the x86 market, among others. It wouldn't matter if the Borg of Redmond didn't own part of Apple. To kill Apple, all M$ has to do is stop developing Office for the Apple platform, a move they're sure to make if Apple so much as spits in the direction of the WinDoze monopoly.
Like it or lump it, that's how it is. I am no friend of M$. I would consider buying a Mac if I didn't have to pay double for a platform that nobody's developing for.
Not necessarily. IMHO, many of the Linux distros (Red Splat, SuSE, Mandrake) are in a race to the bottom where the first to become M$ Window$ wins. All of 'em have these fancy installation and maintenance tools (YaST, etc) that turn your shiny new Linux box into a bloated, resource-hogging convoluted mess. Edit your/etc/rc.conf? Nope, gotta change that in/etc/YaST/foo/bar/cluster/fsck and/YaST/foo/goo/cluster/. Oh yeah, don't forget to run/etc/SuSEConfig when you're done.
As for me, it's bye-bye Linux, hello OpenBSD!
Mild/. anti-Linux comment? mod = -1, karma = NULL;
It's only going to get worse. This is only the tip of the iceberg - for hardcore techies, not the Web script kiddies.
Hell, the code is gonna bang itself in five years or so. Companies will import from India or China at minimum wage the very few still-needed programmers.
What do you expect? They're a government monopoly. Name for me one government monopoly that doesn't offer crappy and expensive service while hemmorhaging money, UK or elsewhere.
I fully understand that companies need to advertise to promote their products. I have no problem with seeing banner ads for ThinkGeek.com on/., for example. In fact, I'll click on the ad to help out CmdrTaco and the guys from time to time. When my meager college student budget allows it, I'll even order something. Under normal circumstances, I can click past or tune out or fast forward or whatever. Most importantly, no record is kept and no dossier is formed on me.
Not true with DCLK. "Advertising" such as what DoubleClick is doing/has done is an entirely different matter. Not only did DoubleClick seek to track individual Web users' surfing habits, they sought to match it to their offline identity and sell that information to the highest bidder. Imagine if, thanks to DCLK, your life insurance company finds out you've been visiting www.jrcigars.com and then, mysteriously, your rates go up. Yet this is EXACTLY what they were trying to do.
As for this being a "temporary" move, DoubleClick isn't coming back. Their exiting the ad-tracking business is like Ford exiting the car business. Online advertising is dead and has been for quite some time, make no mistake about it. I, for one, am happy to see them go.
good things can come out of inferior motives. The Chinese, in an effort to avoid that evil Western propaganda, have chosen not to wed itself to that bloated monstrosity that is M$ Window$.
Only the mentally ill (Read: M$ sales rep) could come say that 'doze is cheaper than Linux! Each of these major security breaches over the past few years has cost companies worldwide serious coin. The ILOVEYOU worm, for one example, did billions in damage worldwide.
On another point, let us not forget that their own network got hacked and the source code to their prized OS was compromised. If M$ themselves can't secure their network (and they HVE access to the source), what chance does some junior-college educated former longshoreman MCSE have?
-- Our private medical information being entered into databases and sold to marketing companies.
-- Our credit records, containing all sorts of personal and private data, being sold to marketing companies and being used to barrage us with all manner of advertisements for crap we don't need or want.
-- The Brits have accepted their every movement being monitored by closed-circuit telescreens, er, cameras, in the name of "crime prevention."
-- A de facto National ID number (the Social Insecurity number).
-- DoubleClick teaming up with Polk to personally identify and track web usage of individuals.
-- The Clipper chip. Key escrow. Carnivore. Nuff said.
What's to stop us from accepting a microship implant? "Oh, you don't want this? What are you a terrorist? A pedophile? A criminal?" is the most common refrain. Or, "If you're an honest guy, you've got nothing to worry about." And you know what? It works every time, it'll work this time too. Face it, folks, it's coming and we've done it to ourselves. We have finally gotten the government we deserve.
Oh well, call me a cynic, but I'm only surprised that it has taken this long.
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OS X will never be available on the x86 platform.
All you Mac devotees seem to have forgotten something - Uncle Billy owns 5% of Apple. Steve "can't market my way out of a wet paper sack" Jobs made a pact with the devil a few years ago and it wasn't without strings attached. Specifically, IE-only on the Mac and Apple doesn't compete with M$ in the x86 market, among others. It wouldn't matter if the Borg of Redmond didn't own part of Apple. To kill Apple, all M$ has to do is stop developing Office for the Apple platform, a move they're sure to make if Apple so much as spits in the direction of the WinDoze monopoly.
Like it or lump it, that's how it is. I am no friend of M$. I would consider buying a Mac if I didn't have to pay double for a platform that nobody's developing for.
Uhh . . . at the risk of dignifying this with an answer . . . how do you figure?
Not necessarily. IMHO, many of the Linux distros (Red Splat, SuSE, Mandrake) are in a race to the bottom where the first to become M$ Window$ wins. All of 'em have these fancy installation and maintenance tools (YaST, etc) that turn your shiny new Linux box into a bloated, resource-hogging convoluted mess. Edit your /etc/rc.conf? Nope, gotta change that in /etc/YaST/foo/bar/cluster/fsck and /YaST/foo/goo/cluster/. Oh yeah, don't forget to run /etc/SuSEConfig when you're done.
/. anti-Linux comment? mod = -1, karma = NULL;
As for me, it's bye-bye Linux, hello OpenBSD!
Mild
Uhhh, yeah . . . it's called PayPal.
Taco, post your PayPal information and I'm sure we'll contribute.
It's only going to get worse. This is only the tip of the iceberg - for hardcore techies, not the Web script kiddies.
Hell, the code is gonna bang itself in five years or so. Companies will import from India or China at minimum wage the very few still-needed programmers.
IT is no longer a viable career field.
What do you expect? They're a government monopoly. Name for me one government monopoly that doesn't offer crappy and expensive service while hemmorhaging money, UK or elsewhere.
I fully understand that companies need to advertise to promote their products. I have no problem with seeing banner ads for ThinkGeek.com on /., for example. In fact, I'll click on the ad to help out CmdrTaco and the guys from time to time. When my meager college student budget allows it, I'll even order something. Under normal circumstances, I can click past or tune out or fast forward or whatever. Most importantly, no record is kept and no dossier is formed on me.
Not true with DCLK. "Advertising" such as what DoubleClick is doing/has done is an entirely different matter. Not only did DoubleClick seek to track individual Web users' surfing habits, they sought to match it to their offline identity and sell that information to the highest bidder. Imagine if, thanks to DCLK, your life insurance company finds out you've been visiting www.jrcigars.com and then, mysteriously, your rates go up. Yet this is EXACTLY what they were trying to do.
As for this being a "temporary" move, DoubleClick isn't coming back. Their exiting the ad-tracking business is like Ford exiting the car business. Online advertising is dead and has been for quite some time, make no mistake about it. I, for one, am happy to see them go.
good things can come out of inferior motives. The Chinese, in an effort to avoid that evil Western propaganda, have chosen not to wed itself to that bloated monstrosity that is M$ Window$.
Only the mentally ill (Read: M$ sales rep) could come say that 'doze is cheaper than Linux! Each of these major security breaches over the past few years has cost companies worldwide serious coin. The ILOVEYOU worm, for one example, did billions in damage worldwide.
On another point, let us not forget that their own network got hacked and the source code to their prized OS was compromised. If M$ themselves can't secure their network (and they HVE access to the source), what chance does some junior-college educated former longshoreman MCSE have?
What you're referring to is RCW 19.190, the Washington antispam law. Also, an "interactive computer service provider" can get $1,000 per spam.
Let's see here, we've already accepted:
-- Our private medical information being entered into databases and sold to marketing companies.
-- Our credit records, containing all sorts of personal and private data, being sold to marketing companies and being used to barrage us with all manner of advertisements for crap we don't need or want.
-- The Brits have accepted their every movement being monitored by closed-circuit telescreens, er, cameras, in the name of "crime prevention."
-- A de facto National ID number (the Social Insecurity number).
-- DoubleClick teaming up with Polk to personally identify and track web usage of individuals.
-- The Clipper chip. Key escrow. Carnivore. Nuff said.
What's to stop us from accepting a microship implant? "Oh, you don't want this? What are you a terrorist? A pedophile? A criminal?" is the most common refrain. Or, "If you're an honest guy, you've got nothing to worry about." And you know what? It works every time, it'll work this time too. Face it, folks, it's coming and we've done it to ourselves. We have finally gotten the government we deserve.
Oh well, call me a cynic, but I'm only surprised that it has taken this long.