As a member of the fast food industry, I have brought the issue of your fabulously bloated ass to the attention of the fast food high council. A team of fast food special teams operatives will:
descend on your domocile in the dark of night
slice a pair of 4-inch incisions in your ample love handles
utilize a flexible hose from a supercharged home vacuum system to suck the fat from your ponderous gut.
Let no one say that we of the fast food industry do not take full responsiblity for the creation of the monstrously corpulent among you.
If the same statement was made in a pro-microsoft environment, it would not be a troll.
I agree completely.
You might just as well say the poster is ugly for all the intellectual value "troll" brings to the discussion.
I suppose if I made the "Nice troll" comment in some sort of neutral context, this would be true, however you may have noticed that I made this comment in/. The term "troll" has definite, highly polarized meaning here, and the phrase (both words of it) that I used is thus both positively drenched in intellectual value and ever-so-delicately nuanced with a snide sense of drollery.
So first you state that there may be a lack of agreement about the term "monopoly" and then you go on to choose the definition that supports your position as if the other poster had agreed to it.
So you manufacture a requirement that the other poster must agree with my analysis before I can post it?
Ahhh, no. First I state that there is a legal definition of a "monopoly", as contrasted with a common term that is bandied about with no such clear definition. I then illustrate this with an ingenious "OJ" analogy, which I'm really quite taken with. All to make the point that the original poster is in error in his belief, according to the law as laid down by the district court and upheld on appeal.
"I don't believe M$ is a monopoly" is not the same as "MS is not a monopoly"
Syntactically, sure they're different. If we really want to split hairs, I would say that the second statement has an implied assertion of belief, so that:
"MS is not a monopoly" is semantically equivalent to "(I believe) MS is not a monopoly", which in turn is equivalent to "I don't believe M$ is a monopoly". At this point I'm willing to pick nits in just about anything:).
Granted, I don't know what the poster truly believes or doesn't believe. Of course, you don't know if I truly believe what I'm saying here either... maybe you can tell me.
Well, this is a change in your position.
No. Nice try, though.
If the court is supposed to be wiser than slashdot readers, why would you consider changing your voting preferences?
I have not made the assertion that "the court" is "wiser" than slashdot readers. I noted that the original poster was self-evidently a/. reader. (Yes, yes, I know, very low "intellectual value" on this one, BWTF). No comparison was made between the relative capacities of/. readers as contrasted with, say, appellate judges (perhaps because no comparison really needs to be made).
The astute reader will have noticed that my comment was somewhat, err, "sarcastic". Let me be the first to point out that I do not really consider the judiciary to be a collection of "black-robed slackers". In the future, I shall go to every effort to ascertain that my comments have no humorous component whatsoever, in order to avoid any possible confusion on your part.
It suggests that you (like the original poster and everyone else) are willing to cite the court when it agrees with you but would like to see them replaced if they do not.
One does not "replace" Supreme court justices, and I have made no such suggestion.
If I disagree with the direction of the court, I may choose to vote for a candidate who reflects my own views and who might tend to appoint to vacancies justices who share those views as well. Or maybe I decide to run for President. But whether I agree with the court or not, their judgments are the law of the land.
Answer a yes or no question for me, friend. Is Microsoft a monopoly?
Am I sensing some hostility here?:) It's been a long time (high school) since I read the Constitution, but I'm reasonably sure they don't specifically address Social Security, welfare, or drugs. But you have a very valid point.
A huge percentage of what the federal government does has no justification at all in the Constitution. And it only grows. Lincoln instituted the draft, which, IIRC, was of dubious constitutionality. And with that precedent we still have Selective Service today.
FDR packed the Supreme Court in order to keep it from striking down the various social and economic programs he wanted. This is a fabulously dangerous precedent, IMHO, regardless of whether you agree with his agenda. "Want to change the very fabric of the republic? Just add a few hundred more Supreme Court justices!"
The trust-busting of last century, which the whole MS thing is based on, was a major intrusion by the gov't into private industry.
But in general, I'm glad we have Social Security to help keep the old folks from freezing on the streets, and the draft (since an unwilling army is the best protector of our liberties:), and that when companies get too rapacious there's a mechanism to keep them in check.
Then the statement "I believe that M$ is a monopoly" must also be a troll.
If a comment is a troll, it's negation must also be a troll? I think a troll is pretty much defined by context. The true measure of a troll is how many exasperated, furious, overly-serious responses (like mine) it engenders... (which goes a long way toward explaining why trolls are so much fun).
So if a court in the future reverses some of the findings or if MS ends up with a light punishment you'll be 100% in support since the judges are so much more knowlegeable than a slashdot reader like yourself?
If the court (pretty much have to be the Supremes at this point), decide that MS is not a monopoly, then they're not a monopoly. It's within their authority. I'll accept that the judicial process has run it's course and that we all have to accept the results even though we might not personally agree with them, just the same way everyone from Al Gore on has accepted Dubya as President.
I think we are probably using the term "monopoly" in two senses here; the strictly legalistic sense and a more common sense usage. Let's substitute the name "OJ" for Microsoft and the term "murder" for monopoly. If I say "OJ is guilty of murder", that's false; he was acquitted. Our opinions may differ, but it doesn't change the fact that he's in Miami instead of San Quentin. No matter how much you believe that he's guilty, he's not. So my take on the original post is that when it says "I don't believe M$ is a monopoly", it's actually flying in the face of the facts, and is therefore either a) a troll, or b) egregiously incorrect. MS is clearly, legally, a monopoly. Just ask Netscape's lawyers. Maybe what the poster meant is something like "I think the monopoly finding is unfair/inaccurate/wrong".
Personally, if the monopoly finding is reversed, I'll mutter some bad words about it... and perhaps rethink my voting preferences and campaign contributions, since I would strongly disagree, but I'm not going to insist that they don't know what they're doing or that they don't have the jurisdiction.
Obviously we should fire all those black-robed slackers on the judiciary, since you, a slashdot reader, know so much more about it.
Seriously, the question at this point is not whether they are or they aren't. The question now is what remedies should be applied.
government subsidized one corporation and tariffed, penalized, or regulated its competition (Standard Oil, etc).
This would be the same government that broke the company up? I'm sure there are cases where Standard Oil bribed elected officials to get its' way, particularly after it had already become powerful, but saying that the gov't effectively created their monopoly is just plain wrong.
Look into the definition of a monopoly. A monopoly is not necessarily something granted or sanctioned by the government, although the gov't can grant monopolies when it chooses. I don't think anyone is stating that the gov't has granted Microsoft a monopoly.
That they have been judged a monopoly in the anti-trust trial and the appeals court has let that stand. Microsoft as a monopoly is now pretty much a judicial fact.
The examples you point out are a bit skewed by the fact that MS products are usually distributed through OEM channels and price is usually folded into equipment cost. Irrespective of that, each computer I buy costs about half of what the previous one did.
Consumers buy what the marketing droids tell them to and little else.
Based on your own buying habits? What are the determining factors when you buy something? My guess would be price and quality are key, and that you don't pay much attention to what the marketing droids are telling you. So why is anyone else any different?
At the end of the day, more than 80% of handhelds sold run Palm OS.
Remember when some company called "Netscape" had 80-plus % of the browser market?
If you want your aunt and your grandma and the whole rest of the world to use your software, you write it for Palm OS.
The aunts and grandmas of the world aren't buying PDAs just yet. It's still very much of a tech-elite toy. When PDAs do wind up in the general consumer market, what they buy will be driven primarily by cost, just like every other consumer good. Software quality will make very little difference in that market.
AOL may well be very friendly, as you say, but they had nothing to do with the decision to open source Mozilla. It was a done deal by the time they acquired Netscape.
Just working off memory here, so my dates may be off a bit, but AOL didn't buy Netscape until about 98 or so... long after Netscape decided to license the Navigator codebase as open source, which was 97 or so.
All of Asia is practically floating on pirated music, video, and software. You can buy pretty much any software app ever written for barely above the price of the media.
So does the US impose sanctions on every nation that refuses to dance to the RIAA/MPAA's tune? At what point does this become counter-productive for a country that's also currently trying to keep an anti-terror coalition together?
Not entirely accurate. Interim clearances take a relatively short amount of time (a month or so). Plus, a great deal of defense work is unclassified.
The DoD contractor I work for is actively hiring, and, while we make sure the applicant is a US Citizen in order to eventually get a clearance, we don't require it.
You are a tool of the global conspiracy
Like the so-called "moon landing" (which was actually filmed in an underground film studio off the coast of Switzerland) the WTC buildings never actually existed. They are actually a complex optical illusion engineered by Donald Trump - the original Trump, not the shallow cloned imposter running around Manhatten these days - to mask the entrance to his secret underground laboratory. Tunnels from this lab complex extend throughout the tri-state area, and escapees from the Donald's experimental psych wards are unceremoniously hustled off to the state hospital at Matawan.
For me to reveal any more, you'll need one of these.
Like other posters, I come from the dot-com debacle. Been thru 3 companies, all of which bombed, largely due to executive headupassis.
So I left the Valley and now I'm a defense contractor in the southeast. Nice job. Doesn't pay as well, but I don't have continual nightmares about overdue projects and the sort of chronic stress that's imposed from all sides in the entrepreneurial environment.
The article makes way too much of this sort of hostility between the two camps. I haven't seen any of that. What I have seen is a good amount of respect for the technology skills that I am bringing to the table, all of which were picked up in the commercial world.
Even though we deal with legacy system integrations issues, it's not a technology backwater here... they avoid Fortran here... they like Java here... just like everyone else. And HLA is basically CORBA as designed by Duke Nukem... lots of cool weapons to fire.
There isn't any of this vengeful kick-them-when-they're-down attitude that the article portrays. Perhaps this is because there isn't a whole lot of substance to this article, so the author felt obliged to manufacture some.
I also think the perception of defense contracters as technology underacheivers is unfounded. We seem to have the same percentage of motivated, smart people here that we did in the dot-com arena.
We also have the same number of doltish poltroons, of course. The non-performers here, though, are here more for the security and laid-back pace. They aren't the collection of half-skilled flakes, con-artists, and hangers-on, all pulled by the lure of easy money, that dot-coms usually accumulate to ride on the coattails of the star developers.
And it is very strange working on a project that has a delivery date 5 years out. In the commercial world, this thing would be on a (highly unrealistic) 6 month track, and would probably end in a complete cluster-fuck because we'd be throwing shit out there before we even understand the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
- descend on your domocile in the dark of night
- slice a pair of 4-inch incisions in your ample love handles
- utilize a flexible hose from a supercharged home vacuum system to suck the fat from your ponderous gut.
Let no one say that we of the fast food industry do not take full responsiblity for the creation of the monstrously corpulent among you.Say "au revior" to your avoirdupois!
I agree completely.
You might just as well say the poster is ugly for all the intellectual value "troll" brings to the discussion.
I suppose if I made the "Nice troll" comment in some sort of neutral context, this would be true, however you may have noticed that I made this comment in /. The term "troll" has definite, highly polarized meaning here, and the phrase (both words of it) that I used is thus both positively drenched in intellectual value and ever-so-delicately nuanced with a snide sense of drollery.
So first you state that there may be a lack of agreement about the term "monopoly" and then you go on to choose the definition that supports your position as if the other poster had agreed to it.
So you manufacture a requirement that the other poster must agree with my analysis before I can post it?
Ahhh, no. First I state that there is a legal definition of a "monopoly", as contrasted with a common term that is bandied about with no such clear definition. I then illustrate this with an ingenious "OJ" analogy, which I'm really quite taken with. All to make the point that the original poster is in error in his belief, according to the law as laid down by the district court and upheld on appeal.
"I don't believe M$ is a monopoly" is not the same as "MS is not a monopoly"
Syntactically, sure they're different. If we really want to split hairs, I would say that the second statement has an implied assertion of belief, so that:
"MS is not a monopoly" is semantically equivalent to "(I believe) MS is not a monopoly", which in turn is equivalent to "I don't believe M$ is a monopoly". At this point I'm willing to pick nits in just about anything :).
Granted, I don't know what the poster truly believes or doesn't believe. Of course, you don't know if I truly believe what I'm saying here either ... maybe you can tell me.
Well, this is a change in your position.
No. Nice try, though.
If the court is supposed to be wiser than slashdot readers, why would you consider changing your voting preferences?
I have not made the assertion that "the court" is "wiser" than slashdot readers. I noted that the original poster was self-evidently a /. reader. (Yes, yes, I know, very low "intellectual value" on this one, BWTF). No comparison was made between the relative capacities of /. readers as contrasted with, say, appellate judges (perhaps because no comparison really needs to be made).
The astute reader will have noticed that my comment was somewhat, err, "sarcastic". Let me be the first to point out that I do not really consider the judiciary to be a collection of "black-robed slackers". In the future, I shall go to every effort to ascertain that my comments have no humorous component whatsoever, in order to avoid any possible confusion on your part.
It suggests that you (like the original poster and everyone else) are willing to cite the court when it agrees with you but would like to see them replaced if they do not.
One does not "replace" Supreme court justices, and I have made no such suggestion.
If I disagree with the direction of the court, I may choose to vote for a candidate who reflects my own views and who might tend to appoint to vacancies justices who share those views as well. Or maybe I decide to run for President. But whether I agree with the court or not, their judgments are the law of the land.
Answer a yes or no question for me, friend. Is Microsoft a monopoly?
Regards,
A huge percentage of what the federal government does has no justification at all in the Constitution. And it only grows. Lincoln instituted the draft, which, IIRC, was of dubious constitutionality. And with that precedent we still have Selective Service today.
FDR packed the Supreme Court in order to keep it from striking down the various social and economic programs he wanted. This is a fabulously dangerous precedent, IMHO, regardless of whether you agree with his agenda. "Want to change the very fabric of the republic? Just add a few hundred more Supreme Court justices!"
The trust-busting of last century, which the whole MS thing is based on, was a major intrusion by the gov't into private industry.
But in general, I'm glad we have Social Security to help keep the old folks from freezing on the streets, and the draft (since an unwilling army is the best protector of our liberties :), and that when companies get too rapacious there's a mechanism to keep them in check.
If a comment is a troll, it's negation must also be a troll? I think a troll is pretty much defined by context. The true measure of a troll is how many exasperated, furious, overly-serious responses (like mine) it engenders ... (which goes a long way toward explaining why trolls are so much fun).
So if a court in the future reverses some of the findings or if MS ends up with a light punishment you'll be 100% in support since the judges are so much more knowlegeable than a slashdot reader like yourself?
If the court (pretty much have to be the Supremes at this point), decide that MS is not a monopoly, then they're not a monopoly. It's within their authority. I'll accept that the judicial process has run it's course and that we all have to accept the results even though we might not personally agree with them, just the same way everyone from Al Gore on has accepted Dubya as President.
I think we are probably using the term "monopoly" in two senses here; the strictly legalistic sense and a more common sense usage. Let's substitute the name "OJ" for Microsoft and the term "murder" for monopoly. If I say "OJ is guilty of murder", that's false; he was acquitted. Our opinions may differ, but it doesn't change the fact that he's in Miami instead of San Quentin. No matter how much you believe that he's guilty, he's not. So my take on the original post is that when it says "I don't believe M$ is a monopoly", it's actually flying in the face of the facts, and is therefore either a) a troll, or b) egregiously incorrect. MS is clearly, legally, a monopoly. Just ask Netscape's lawyers. Maybe what the poster meant is something like "I think the monopoly finding is unfair/inaccurate/wrong".
Personally, if the monopoly finding is reversed, I'll mutter some bad words about it ... and perhaps rethink my voting preferences and campaign contributions, since I would strongly disagree, but I'm not going to insist that they don't know what they're doing or that they don't have the jurisdiction.
Obviously we should fire all those black-robed slackers on the judiciary, since you, a slashdot reader, know so much more about it.
Seriously, the question at this point is not whether they are or they aren't. The question now is what remedies should be applied.
government subsidized one corporation and tariffed, penalized, or regulated its competition (Standard Oil, etc).
This would be the same government that broke the company up? I'm sure there are cases where Standard Oil bribed elected officials to get its' way, particularly after it had already become powerful, but saying that the gov't effectively created their monopoly is just plain wrong.
That they have been judged a monopoly in the anti-trust trial and the appeals court has let that stand. Microsoft as a monopoly is now pretty much a judicial fact.
People actually pay money for that stuff? Ewwww.
The examples you point out are a bit skewed by the fact that MS products are usually distributed through OEM channels and price is usually folded into equipment cost. Irrespective of that, each computer I buy costs about half of what the previous one did.
Consumers buy what the marketing droids tell them to and little else.
Based on your own buying habits? What are the determining factors when you buy something? My guess would be price and quality are key, and that you don't pay much attention to what the marketing droids are telling you. So why is anyone else any different?
Remember when some company called "Netscape" had 80-plus % of the browser market?
If you want your aunt and your grandma and the whole rest of the world to use your software, you write it for Palm OS.
The aunts and grandmas of the world aren't buying PDAs just yet. It's still very much of a tech-elite toy. When PDAs do wind up in the general consumer market, what they buy will be driven primarily by cost, just like every other consumer good. Software quality will make very little difference in that market.
Well, when I go to the store for "Kleenex" and "Ketchup", I come home with the generic store brand stuff.
"Palm" is a good name, but I can see where it could come to refer to any little handheld computing device ...
What's a "swirly"?
Just working off memory here, so my dates may be off a bit, but AOL didn't buy Netscape until about 98 or so ... long after Netscape decided to license the Navigator codebase as open source, which was 97 or so.
So does the US impose sanctions on every nation that refuses to dance to the RIAA/MPAA's tune? At what point does this become counter-productive for a country that's also currently trying to keep an anti-terror coalition together?
The DoD contractor I work for is actively hiring, and, while we make sure the applicant is a US Citizen in order to eventually get a clearance, we don't require it.
For me to reveal any more, you'll need one of these.
So I left the Valley and now I'm a defense contractor in the southeast. Nice job. Doesn't pay as well, but I don't have continual nightmares about overdue projects and the sort of chronic stress that's imposed from all sides in the entrepreneurial environment.
The article makes way too much of this sort of hostility between the two camps. I haven't seen any of that. What I have seen is a good amount of respect for the technology skills that I am bringing to the table, all of which were picked up in the commercial world.
Even though we deal with legacy system integrations issues, it's not a technology backwater here ... they avoid Fortran here ... they like Java here ... just like everyone else. And HLA is basically CORBA as designed by Duke Nukem ... lots of cool weapons to fire.
There isn't any of this vengeful kick-them-when-they're-down attitude that the article portrays. Perhaps this is because there isn't a whole lot of substance to this article, so the author felt obliged to manufacture some.
I also think the perception of defense contracters as technology underacheivers is unfounded. We seem to have the same percentage of motivated, smart people here that we did in the dot-com arena.
We also have the same number of doltish poltroons, of course. The non-performers here, though, are here more for the security and laid-back pace. They aren't the collection of half-skilled flakes, con-artists, and hangers-on, all pulled by the lure of easy money, that dot-coms usually accumulate to ride on the coattails of the star developers.
And it is very strange working on a project that has a delivery date 5 years out. In the commercial world, this thing would be on a (highly unrealistic) 6 month track, and would probably end in a complete cluster-fuck because we'd be throwing shit out there before we even understand the problem.
And as a bonus, I can read /. now ...
They're waiting in line at the security checkpoint.
Do you operate an Exchange server?
If so, have any of your users ever launched a virus by opening an attachment? In my book, that would qualify as a security flaw.