Those godless, marauding mancubi will feel no remorse prying your $699 from your cold, dead, chips/pretzel/pizza/popcorn/nacho/cheetos/Neal mix stained hands...
"Neal mix"?
*shudder*
I don't think I what to know what goes into that, but I'm sure a very large blender must be involved.
I agree completely with what you're saying about corporations and too much power / not enough liability.
However, it's not like XM (or Sirius) is providing a public service. Their customers will decide how far they (as a company) can censor the content. If the majority of subscribers joined XM to get away from "terrestrial" radio censorship, then they will leave XM and take their money with them as it appears they're doing. If XM retains enough customers to continue to be profitable, then that's the business decision they made.
On the other hand, if I were a shareholder (NASDAQ - XMSR) I would probably be a bit pissed that this move is driving away a large number of subscriptions and advertisers and would demand (to the best of my ability) that the management remedy this situation or perhaps I'd just cut my losses and leave. The stock value is up from a few days ago but overall is less than its IPO and in a current downward trend.
The point being, censorship occurs everywhere but much of it is done by private businesses who live or die by the choices they make. If the public (i.e. the consumers) accept this censorship then the business continues. If it doesn't then the business fails. Unless there is blatant interference by the government I agree this isn't a free speech issue as much as it is freedom of choice. If you're a subscriber and don't want to allow this type of behavior, cancel your subscription and tell them why you're canceling. If you can't live without XM then they'll be able to censor anything they want without fear that you'll leave.
We can get our music elsewhere. There is still Sirius if you need streaming tunes in the middle of the Adirondacks or the Himalayas. There's still several Internet radio stations (not including the "pirate" ones) that have commercial-free music playing non-stop. These things called CD players and MP3 players still exist and still have the capacity for mobile music, and last but not least - there's still terrestrial radio and even "HD" radio if you want to buy into the hype and need your digital music fix.
Meanwhile you have DRM systems like Steam that make the honest game buyer's experience a misery enough to never want to purchase a game from Valve again.
My understanding is that if you use Google from Firefox (identified by the user-agent string) then Mozilla gets money. Perhaps though it's simply limited to searches done from the Firefox / Google start page or the Google search bar in Firefox. Either way, I believe it's quite easy to generate revenue for Mozilla by using Firefox and searching Google in a variety of ways.
I call bullshit. I left Vonage very recently and to date they had not implemented E911 and did not make any mention of an intention to do so. They also kept increasing my fees and such until I was paying over $35/month for Vonage service -- up $10 from the advertised cost and initial price. They also claim "no contract" but if you don't stick with them at least 12 months, they charge a $40 "disconnect fee" -- bullshit again.
E911 requirements are hard, and telcos get no slack - they either provide the required service accurately, or pay tremendous fines and run the risk of losing the right to offer service in an area.
My post was intended to be humorous and facetious but I think the lameness filter did something to the humor which was completely missed on you. However, I fully understand and agree that E911 is an incredibly important feature/service.
It makes me wonder however if the requirements are so strict as to lose the ability to provide service, how is it that Vonage has gone so long without E911 when most other VOIP carriers provide it. AT&T decided to drop their VOIP offering, but I haven't read the article to find out why exactly. Was it simply because they didn't want to / couldn't support E911 (I don't believe it), or was it because they want people to pay more with the traditional phone and long distance services?
Either way, if Vonage can't manage to produce E911 and the requirements are as you say then how are they still in business?
Either they're having a stroke, or their mouth has been morphed away into a seamless patch of flesh while three men in black suits place a mechanical insect-like tracking device in their stomach.
While I wouldn't buy a desktop from Dell (they're not really upgradeable in the way they're designed internally), I might consider a laptop purchase because frankly you don't upgrade laptops - you just buy a new one.
All I have to do is make sure it doesn't have one of those Sony lithium-ion batteries and Dell might once again get my money.
I imagine that Dell chose Ubuntu for primarily two reasons (whether Canonical approached them or not is unimportant):
Ubuntu is very popular these days and growing rapidly
Canonical is not bogged down in patents and license agreements and can be easily cut loose if it doesn't work out
If you consider that OpenSUSE is still somewhat entangled by Novell's agreement with Microsoft and that RedHat has their own level of corporate encumbrances (not to mention it's fallen out of the spotlight a bit) then Ubuntu was the most (only?) logical choice for Dell -- no strings, corporate backing, very popular, new fancy release with a pretty Vista-like interface (if Desktop effects are on).
If things go south, they can just drop Canonical like a sack of potatoes and move back to selling Vista exclusively -- very little risk involved.
They used to come up with new and innovative ideas such as, the Xerox copier, a graphical user interface using windows, and a host of other innovate technologies.
Now they've reduced themselves to patent trolling in order to pander to marketing scum. Just, wow.
Except that it's quite impractical and unreasonable to expect voters to keep a copy of their voting receipt to do a full paper recount and since the paper rolls in the machine are as sequestered as the electronic count, the software could easily print the correct vote on the voter's receipt and the incorrect vote on the official tape and no one would be the wiser.
Methinks you believe our current system to be 100% tamper-free? Of course it isn't and I doubt it is even 99.999% tamper free (stuffing the ballot?), but it goes without saying that e-voting will be held to higher standards than traditional ballot voting simply because it's new and untrustworthy.
I think with a sufficiently large sample size (say millions of votes) collected over a period of time from small elections that 99.999% accuracy could be proven.
And I agree, the paper consumption is a very weak reason to move to e-voting, but it is still there (if you can eliminate the paper trail altogether).
There's the overlooked aspect of environmental impact. How much new or old growth forest is used in making the millions of miles of paper tape used in voting machines? With e-voting (and no paper trail) you use less paper.
Granted, e-voting with a paper trail is rather a step backwards environmentally because now you're not only using up a lot of paper, but you're using a lot of electricity as well. In general though, electronic machines can be made to run more efficiently as their design improves. Electricity can be generated more cleanly as technology improves. Paper cannot be made with the same amount of reduction in trees as technology improves (though possibly less of the tree is wasted).
I would like to see a completely open e-voting system without a paper trail. To some degree the critics are right that we're acting like a bunch of luddites demanding paper trails. But I think that's more due to our distrust of the vendors and politicians more than it is of the technology itself. Once the technology can be proven to be 99.999% tamper-free, then there will be no need for a paper trail.
Symphony OS is taking a much more radical approach to changing the desktop environment. There are many good ideas with it's Mezzo interface, and some not so good. But it's far and away more "redefining" than Ulteo will ever be.
Aside from that, why does Ulteo think that auto-updates are a good idea? They must have really liked Microsoft's WGA and the forced security updates and such. Mmm mm fun!
Wikipedia has an article on overpopulation that shows the trends are leveling off. An Inconvenient Truth (in the update on the DVD) also talks about how the world's population is expected to level off at about 9.2 billion people in the next 50 years. Overpopulation is mostly a problem in less developed countries but even their birth rates have declined in the past 20 years.
Escape is never the safest path
-- Eddie Vedder (Dissident)
Probes to promising galaxies? How many thousands of years do you think we have at our present rate of growth? I'd be more inclined to think O'Neill colonies rather than terraforming. We need that steady supply of space food sticks first.
I think we'll need a much faster propulsion system as well first. With a propulsion system, you can send the probe out and send radio (or perhaps some not-yet-discovered type of signal) back as it travels away - not thousands of years. Alpha Centauri is only 4 light years away and we haven't explored that at all. All I'm saying is that piling a bunch of people on a space ship with a limited amount of food and no destination might work on Babylon 5, Star Trek, or Battlestar Galactica, but it won't work in real life. These spaceports are entrepreneurial adventures plain and simple -- they're not going to advance the science of space travel if they're not even really traveling into outer space (just low orbit "hops").
Shouldn't we have a plan on where to go though first? I'm all for exploration and finding a way off this planet for the survival of the species, but shouldn't we send probes to promising galaxies and get an idea of what's even close to habitable or terraformable?
What purpose do these spaceports that are being built serve beyond joy rides for the wealthy? Perhaps we'll get some technological advances, but I would guess not because they can't afford to take those kinds of mortal risks on new spacecraft. They'll just keep using proven methods of propulsion and such to get their customers safely up and down. NASA will still be left with the bulk of the research into new propulsion systems and environmental systems.
Also I think it's premature to give up on the Earth altogether. We can control population and even create a negative growth. We can clean up our processes and avoid spewing caustic chemicals into our air and water. We can do a lot of things to reverse the trends of the past and we can do it a lot faster than we can develop space technology to take us somewhere else to destroy that place.
Space travel and exploration has its place, but it's not a very feasible solution for escaping the problems we have here on Earth right now, and as such these spaceports are essentially expensive amusement parks. I'd rather see the money put into cleaning up our manufacturing processes, finding eco-friendly solutions to eco-unfriendly products, and educating the world's population about the problem and how they can help reduce their negative impact.
Until Dell actually releases one of these so-called pre-installed Linux computers, it's all just hot air. Dell (or anyone) can huff and puff and take surveys until they're blue in the face, but that doesn't prove anything. People are getting so excited and worked up about something that doesn't exist and doesn't even have a time line for Christ's sake!
Those of us who are skeptical are waiting to see the proof, just like we were all waiting to see Novell's proof that never came. Posturing means nothing unless it's backed with action - real verifiable action, not more posturing.
That's only true if you look at it from a short-term perspective. Once you've overcome the training hurdle, then you support costs are lower than Microsoft's because your staff is now familiar with the Unix/Linux/POSIX systems and can upgrade and maintain them as efficiently as they could do the same to a Windows system. It's exactly as you said, "[it's less expensive] sticking with what they know". But I have to ask - do you send your people to Microsoft training for new products and systems? If so, you're still spending money on training, but you see it in small chunks instead of one large one (and understandably, that's what a business wants to do, parlay they cost over a long period of time).
If you wanted to move your company away from Microsoft Windows servers and you didn't have a hard-and-fast time line in which to do it, I think you could make a very cost-effective business case for training one or two people in Linux with one or two small servers (I'm talking commodity hardware here for starters) and use the training budget they'd normally have for Windows to go to Linux/Unix training and/or buy books to help them learn the new system. If you think that's too costly or you have a short period of time in which to get up and running with Linux servers, hire a new person who already has the knowledge you're looking for.
I find it hard to make a case for spending more money by staying with Microsoft and it's self-named Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when with just a small amount of effort and no software cost, you can hire or train the first staff who can eventually help train the rest of your staff. Usually people don't want to move because they're comfortable, not because they're in the best position.
In my place of employment we have over 500 developers in multiple locations. Seven years ago Linux existed in our company but was relegated to development lab machines and nothing developed to run in Linux (except Java) could be deployed into a production server. All user desktops were Windows and all production servers were Solaris or Windows (about a 60/40 split). Today our Solaris hardware is being phased out in favor of commodity blade servers running SuSE Linux. Our development sadly is still in Windows (Java again), but that's understandable as the IT department doesn't have enough collective knowledge of desktop Linux to support a much larger user base than the 500 developers mentioned. However, the IT department does have a fair amount of Linux experience and expertise amongst itself, just not enough probably and no corporate approval yet to roll out Linux as a corporate desktop.
My point being, it has been proven time and again that Linux is a viable alternative in the server world and more than that it has no up-front price tag on the OS itself. It's true that you will have to pay for training and support (support is never free), but how is that any different with Windows? You pay Microsoft for support. You pay your technicians to be trained. You pay them salaries or overtime when they have to work through the night when a server crashes unexpectedly. This doesn't change (much) with Linux. People still need to be trained, servers will still fail (usually hardware-related only with Linux in my experience), and you can still pay for corporate support from Novell or RedHat.
Given all that, how is using Microsoft any cheaper than using Linux when the only relevant difference is the cost of the OS itself?
When you say "play the lottery" in this sense, it seems more like "play Russian Roulette" -- the likelihood of winning over multiple games is quite a bit lower that you may have hoped.
Slashdot Mirror
"Neal mix"?
*shudder*
I don't think I what to know what goes into that, but I'm sure a very large blender must be involved.
I agree completely with what you're saying about corporations and too much power / not enough liability.
However, it's not like XM (or Sirius) is providing a public service. Their customers will decide how far they (as a company) can censor the content. If the majority of subscribers joined XM to get away from "terrestrial" radio censorship, then they will leave XM and take their money with them as it appears they're doing. If XM retains enough customers to continue to be profitable, then that's the business decision they made.
On the other hand, if I were a shareholder (NASDAQ - XMSR) I would probably be a bit pissed that this move is driving away a large number of subscriptions and advertisers and would demand (to the best of my ability) that the management remedy this situation or perhaps I'd just cut my losses and leave. The stock value is up from a few days ago but overall is less than its IPO and in a current downward trend.
The point being, censorship occurs everywhere but much of it is done by private businesses who live or die by the choices they make. If the public (i.e. the consumers) accept this censorship then the business continues. If it doesn't then the business fails. Unless there is blatant interference by the government I agree this isn't a free speech issue as much as it is freedom of choice. If you're a subscriber and don't want to allow this type of behavior, cancel your subscription and tell them why you're canceling. If you can't live without XM then they'll be able to censor anything they want without fear that you'll leave.
We can get our music elsewhere. There is still Sirius if you need streaming tunes in the middle of the Adirondacks or the Himalayas. There's still several Internet radio stations (not including the "pirate" ones) that have commercial-free music playing non-stop. These things called CD players and MP3 players still exist and still have the capacity for mobile music, and last but not least - there's still terrestrial radio and even "HD" radio if you want to buy into the hype and need your digital music fix.
Personally, I like re: Your Brains better and the WoW version of Code Monkey as well.
Meanwhile you have DRM systems like Steam that make the honest game buyer's experience a misery enough to never want to purchase a game from Valve again.
Smart move.
My understanding is that if you use Google from Firefox (identified by the user-agent string) then Mozilla gets money. Perhaps though it's simply limited to searches done from the Firefox / Google start page or the Google search bar in Firefox. Either way, I believe it's quite easy to generate revenue for Mozilla by using Firefox and searching Google in a variety of ways.
I call bullshit. I left Vonage very recently and to date they had not implemented E911 and did not make any mention of an intention to do so. They also kept increasing my fees and such until I was paying over $35/month for Vonage service -- up $10 from the advertised cost and initial price. They also claim "no contract" but if you don't stick with them at least 12 months, they charge a $40 "disconnect fee" -- bullshit again.
Don't believe everything you read from Vonage.
My post was intended to be humorous and facetious but I think the lameness filter did something to the humor which was completely missed on you. However, I fully understand and agree that E911 is an incredibly important feature/service.
It makes me wonder however if the requirements are so strict as to lose the ability to provide service, how is it that Vonage has gone so long without E911 when most other VOIP carriers provide it. AT&T decided to drop their VOIP offering, but I haven't read the article to find out why exactly. Was it simply because they didn't want to / couldn't support E911 (I don't believe it), or was it because they want people to pay more with the traditional phone and long distance services?
Either way, if Vonage can't manage to produce E911 and the requirements are as you say then how are they still in business?
You know...things like this happen sometimes
noun verb noun verb verb noun preposition article noun
Mental language processor exception handling 'verb verb'...aborting. See compiler output for details.
How about "Who wants 4 more years of the (what would be 24 year) Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton dynasty?"
While I wouldn't buy a desktop from Dell (they're not really upgradeable in the way they're designed internally), I might consider a laptop purchase because frankly you don't upgrade laptops - you just buy a new one.
All I have to do is make sure it doesn't have one of those Sony lithium-ion batteries and Dell might once again get my money.
I imagine that Dell chose Ubuntu for primarily two reasons (whether Canonical approached them or not is unimportant):
If you consider that OpenSUSE is still somewhat entangled by Novell's agreement with Microsoft and that RedHat has their own level of corporate encumbrances (not to mention it's fallen out of the spotlight a bit) then Ubuntu was the most (only?) logical choice for Dell -- no strings, corporate backing, very popular, new fancy release with a pretty Vista-like interface (if Desktop effects are on).
If things go south, they can just drop Canonical like a sack of potatoes and move back to selling Vista exclusively -- very little risk involved.
They used to come up with new and innovative ideas such as, the Xerox copier, a graphical user interface using windows, and a host of other innovate technologies.
Now they've reduced themselves to patent trolling in order to pander to marketing scum. Just, wow.
That would be very coo. I'm all a flutter for it!
Except that it's quite impractical and unreasonable to expect voters to keep a copy of their voting receipt to do a full paper recount and since the paper rolls in the machine are as sequestered as the electronic count, the software could easily print the correct vote on the voter's receipt and the incorrect vote on the official tape and no one would be the wiser.
Methinks you believe our current system to be 100% tamper-free? Of course it isn't and I doubt it is even 99.999% tamper free (stuffing the ballot?), but it goes without saying that e-voting will be held to higher standards than traditional ballot voting simply because it's new and untrustworthy.
I think with a sufficiently large sample size (say millions of votes) collected over a period of time from small elections that 99.999% accuracy could be proven.
And I agree, the paper consumption is a very weak reason to move to e-voting, but it is still there (if you can eliminate the paper trail altogether).
There's the overlooked aspect of environmental impact. How much new or old growth forest is used in making the millions of miles of paper tape used in voting machines? With e-voting (and no paper trail) you use less paper.
Granted, e-voting with a paper trail is rather a step backwards environmentally because now you're not only using up a lot of paper, but you're using a lot of electricity as well. In general though, electronic machines can be made to run more efficiently as their design improves. Electricity can be generated more cleanly as technology improves. Paper cannot be made with the same amount of reduction in trees as technology improves (though possibly less of the tree is wasted).
I would like to see a completely open e-voting system without a paper trail. To some degree the critics are right that we're acting like a bunch of luddites demanding paper trails. But I think that's more due to our distrust of the vendors and politicians more than it is of the technology itself. Once the technology can be proven to be 99.999% tamper-free, then there will be no need for a paper trail.
Symphony OS is taking a much more radical approach to changing the desktop environment. There are many good ideas with it's Mezzo interface, and some not so good. But it's far and away more "redefining" than Ulteo will ever be.
Aside from that, why does Ulteo think that auto-updates are a good idea? They must have really liked Microsoft's WGA and the forced security updates and such. Mmm mm fun!
It's not as bad as you think.
Wikipedia has an article on overpopulation that shows the trends are leveling off. An Inconvenient Truth (in the update on the DVD) also talks about how the world's population is expected to level off at about 9.2 billion people in the next 50 years. Overpopulation is mostly a problem in less developed countries but even their birth rates have declined in the past 20 years.
-- Eddie Vedder (Dissident)I think we'll need a much faster propulsion system as well first. With a propulsion system, you can send the probe out and send radio (or perhaps some not-yet-discovered type of signal) back as it travels away - not thousands of years. Alpha Centauri is only 4 light years away and we haven't explored that at all. All I'm saying is that piling a bunch of people on a space ship with a limited amount of food and no destination might work on Babylon 5, Star Trek, or Battlestar Galactica, but it won't work in real life. These spaceports are entrepreneurial adventures plain and simple -- they're not going to advance the science of space travel if they're not even really traveling into outer space (just low orbit "hops").
Shouldn't we have a plan on where to go though first? I'm all for exploration and finding a way off this planet for the survival of the species, but shouldn't we send probes to promising galaxies and get an idea of what's even close to habitable or terraformable?
What purpose do these spaceports that are being built serve beyond joy rides for the wealthy? Perhaps we'll get some technological advances, but I would guess not because they can't afford to take those kinds of mortal risks on new spacecraft. They'll just keep using proven methods of propulsion and such to get their customers safely up and down. NASA will still be left with the bulk of the research into new propulsion systems and environmental systems.
Also I think it's premature to give up on the Earth altogether. We can control population and even create a negative growth. We can clean up our processes and avoid spewing caustic chemicals into our air and water. We can do a lot of things to reverse the trends of the past and we can do it a lot faster than we can develop space technology to take us somewhere else to destroy that place.
Space travel and exploration has its place, but it's not a very feasible solution for escaping the problems we have here on Earth right now, and as such these spaceports are essentially expensive amusement parks. I'd rather see the money put into cleaning up our manufacturing processes, finding eco-friendly solutions to eco-unfriendly products, and educating the world's population about the problem and how they can help reduce their negative impact.
Sure it will! Now I've got two reasons to block those ads if I wasn't blocking them before.
Until Dell actually releases one of these so-called pre-installed Linux computers, it's all just hot air. Dell (or anyone) can huff and puff and take surveys until they're blue in the face, but that doesn't prove anything. People are getting so excited and worked up about something that doesn't exist and doesn't even have a time line for Christ's sake!
Those of us who are skeptical are waiting to see the proof, just like we were all waiting to see Novell's proof that never came. Posturing means nothing unless it's backed with action - real verifiable action, not more posturing.
That's only true if you look at it from a short-term perspective. Once you've overcome the training hurdle, then you support costs are lower than Microsoft's because your staff is now familiar with the Unix/Linux/POSIX systems and can upgrade and maintain them as efficiently as they could do the same to a Windows system. It's exactly as you said, "[it's less expensive] sticking with what they know". But I have to ask - do you send your people to Microsoft training for new products and systems? If so, you're still spending money on training, but you see it in small chunks instead of one large one (and understandably, that's what a business wants to do, parlay they cost over a long period of time).
If you wanted to move your company away from Microsoft Windows servers and you didn't have a hard-and-fast time line in which to do it, I think you could make a very cost-effective business case for training one or two people in Linux with one or two small servers (I'm talking commodity hardware here for starters) and use the training budget they'd normally have for Windows to go to Linux/Unix training and/or buy books to help them learn the new system. If you think that's too costly or you have a short period of time in which to get up and running with Linux servers, hire a new person who already has the knowledge you're looking for.
I find it hard to make a case for spending more money by staying with Microsoft and it's self-named Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when with just a small amount of effort and no software cost, you can hire or train the first staff who can eventually help train the rest of your staff. Usually people don't want to move because they're comfortable, not because they're in the best position.
In my place of employment we have over 500 developers in multiple locations. Seven years ago Linux existed in our company but was relegated to development lab machines and nothing developed to run in Linux (except Java) could be deployed into a production server. All user desktops were Windows and all production servers were Solaris or Windows (about a 60/40 split). Today our Solaris hardware is being phased out in favor of commodity blade servers running SuSE Linux. Our development sadly is still in Windows (Java again), but that's understandable as the IT department doesn't have enough collective knowledge of desktop Linux to support a much larger user base than the 500 developers mentioned. However, the IT department does have a fair amount of Linux experience and expertise amongst itself, just not enough probably and no corporate approval yet to roll out Linux as a corporate desktop.
My point being, it has been proven time and again that Linux is a viable alternative in the server world and more than that it has no up-front price tag on the OS itself. It's true that you will have to pay for training and support (support is never free), but how is that any different with Windows? You pay Microsoft for support. You pay your technicians to be trained. You pay them salaries or overtime when they have to work through the night when a server crashes unexpectedly. This doesn't change (much) with Linux. People still need to be trained, servers will still fail (usually hardware-related only with Linux in my experience), and you can still pay for corporate support from Novell or RedHat.
Given all that, how is using Microsoft any cheaper than using Linux when the only relevant difference is the cost of the OS itself?
When you say "play the lottery" in this sense, it seems more like "play Russian Roulette" -- the likelihood of winning over multiple games is quite a bit lower that you may have hoped.
Jesus is fucking metal!