"Socialist program" does not equal "socialism". I don't know what kind of goverment you have, but I live here in America and our government is pretty far from socialism even though many of our programs are socialist in nature.
"Socialist program" does not always equal "bad". A certain amount of help for the poor can lead to a nicer society for all without sacrificing a core capitalist system.
Using "socialism" almost as a curse word instead of a simple desctiption is one sure way to avoid real discussions about pros and cons. It's almost always an indication the user of such a word has no real desire to understand the subject but rather wants to bully the oppposition into silence.
Sorry, I don't feel like being afraid of your word.
How come you Mac folk (I'm kinda responding to many of the above comments here) are so quick to resort to name calling when someone says they don't like your computer? Is it just possible they have a real reason for not liking it? Maybe, since this is a discussion forum, you should take the time to read and respond to that reason instead of calling them a troll or a bigot for simply expressing it.
I've used my GFs Mac quite a lot and I have a few gripes about it. I've taken the time to listen to Mac folk call my OS the spawn of Satan and took it like a man. Maybe it's time you folk can listen to a few of our observations with the same understanding.
You may be right about the tray, but everywere else it's a godsend. When I need to get something done I usually right-click and I can get it done without resorting to top menus or toolbars. This is _good_ design. Not only do I not need to move my mouse, but I don't have to search through a bunch of irrelevant stuff because the context-menu almost always has what I want.
Let me put it another way: Right clicking is like L2 cache. It usualy has what I want so I don't have to go back to main memory and therefore I save precious clock cycles gettting the data I need. Having one button is like not having L2 cache. You always have to go to main memory to get what you need.
Of course, keyboard shortcuts are like L1, but that's another story....:-)
Responsible investing in companies that improve society, sure... but irrationally throwing away your money?
It seems IBM forsees a future in which software is commoditized. This doesn't bother them because they sell lots and lots of hardware. It seems they believe they will sell even more hardware if people aren't "wasting" their money on software.
See the cycle? If much of the money that previously went to Redmond goes to them instead, do you see how they just might make a buck or two?
Open source changes the notion of who will make money. IBM has made major moves to make sure they will be the bennefactors of this change. They have a much better chance at dramatically increased riches than almost any other "linux vendor" you can name.
But will the same thing happen if you build a "bypass" road? Richmond, Virginia has a nice big highway going through the city and a nice big highway that goes around the city for "through" traffic. Is this bypass highway destined for the same fate?
Plus, the glass recording disks are bad-ass. It's like something from the future made in 1974.
I once took one of those clear spacer disks from a CD spindle and convinced a couple of the people in our office that they were a new type of CD. They thought the clear disk was the coolest thing until they tried to play it. I'd love to give them one of these and see their reaction.
I know Quake has tons of name recognition, but is there really much room for a game that hasn't changed much of anything since its first incarnation 8 years ago?
Baseball, football and basketball haven't changed much in 100 years, but people still enjoy them.
Some of the things that keeps these games exciting are fresh faces, higher levels of athletic skills and new world records. Oh yeah, and the fact that regular folk can play pretty close to the same game with their out-of-shape co-workers.
I like the fresh face of a new FPS, espcially one that makes a real difference visually because of new technology. I like to see new weapons that reaquire new skills. And I like to play against other people on the internet who really end up challenging my skills.
I thought the difference between free and open source software was that with open source you can actually download, view, and/or modify the source code while free software, such as skype or adobe acrobat reader, wouldn't allow such practices.
They're not talking about that kind of "free". However, you make a very good point without realizing it.
People can, and will give out "free" software that isn't "free". Sometimes they'll let you see the source, they'll call it "open source" but it really won't be "open source".
The questions should'nt be about whether "free" (as in speech) software or real "open source" software is better. The real question is about how to make a meaningful distinction to average people between Adobe Reader type software and Firefox type software. They can download both of them and use both of them and the average Joe has no clue about the differences. If both of them say "free" on the web site then the Joe average will assume they're the same type of thing.
Similarly, even Microsoft is sharing source on some amount of software without making it anything remotely close to "free". If they call what they're doing "opening the source" then how is the public to know the difference between that and real "open source" software?
...what sucks even worse is that taking away jobs from the US economy WILL have broader implications as in.. who will buy stuff??
Markets not only rise and fall but move as well. Markets can and will move to places like India and China whose individual populations dwarf ours and whose combined populations make us look like, well Great Britian, the super power of another age.
But GB is not dead. It's not even close to dead. It's not a superpower or a particularly strong world leader, but the people get along very well with a relatively good standard of living.
American IT isn't dead and will not die completely. But we have to be realistic about the world we live in. Many, many people who live outside our boarders are smart. We've already put in the infrastructure to take advantage of that intelligence. No matter how we might want our jobs, we WILL have to compete with other intelligent people who are more than capable of also doing those jobs well.
Look, we're already not the top cell phone market and we're not the top market for many other electronic goods. It only makes sense that other contries will end up consuming more than us if we don't step up to the plate. But it doesn't mean we're going to end up some third world contry ourselves. It just means we have to share.
Yes, they're legit. So is my anti-spam provider. Why I would pay good money to have spam eliminated and then sign up with these guys to get a "free" iPod is beyond me.
Yes, I know the hassle is "worth it" to some. I know others use fake email addresses, etc to get their iPod without the obligations they "agree" to. I find ignoring this kind of thing to be a much simpler solution. If your "friends" don't understand why you're ignoring thier pleas to join, you probably need a better class of friend.
I know this is just a troll, but people need to rethink their notion of the term "best".
In my IT department, we're abandoning the search for systems that are "the best." Now we look for "very high quality" systems instead. It may seem like mincing words to some of you, but it makes a real difference. Territorial bastards will always be teritorial bastards, but it's amazing how much better their decisions are when you say, "is the solution very high quality" instead of "is it the best." They're forced to make an actual evaluation instead of just going with their gut or their pet. They'll still try to spin their favorite solution, but they're at least forced to acknowledge the real strengths of the competition.
The quest could be paid off with a bounty and the bounty could get higher and higher based on the number of complaints against the character in question.
Of course, you could boot the character without the police force, like the article said X-box live does, but I kind of like the idea of the universe taking care of itself. I think troublemakers tend to learn their lesson better if their peers teach it rather than some megacorp.
I've never played MMOGs but I'm a vetran to online FPSs. The voting systems works fairly well on these. If a guy is causing problems, someone will call for a vote, the vote will be tallied and the troublemaker gets the boot.
Based on what I know about MMOG, I'd imagine a citizen police force might work well. Though I'm sure they'd be subject to the same temptations as real-world police, the idea of a bunch of good guys hunting down and exterminating bad guys is pretty appealing. They could get tips from "regular citizens", investigate, then band together and kill the bad guys. As a game scenerio, I imaging being an Everquest "police" would be quite fun and have a certain amount of status.
Of course, maybe such things already exist. If they do, then why aren't they effective? Maybe they just need some tweeking to do a better job.
BTW, if it stands, this is a hit against MS on two major counts: the original ruling required them to open up various information for interoperability purposes, and to produce a version of Windows without Media Player integrated.
I can't help but find part of this a little sad. We've been so completely bullied by MS that we actually believe that the consumer being able to say no to free a "portion of the OS" is a major hit against the software maker.
This is not, in reality, a hit on Microsoft at all. It's just a defensive move on the part of the consumer. It's the difference between us putting on a bullet proof vest or actaully getting a gun and firing back. We have no gun with this ruling.
I understand why we would be happy to put a halt to one or two of the barrage of bullets, but MS is still very much winning. If they can make us jump for joy over such a minor protection then our chances of ever actually getting a level playinf field are slim indeed.
Things are usually done for a reason, but the reason is not always obvious from looking at the outcome. Your answer and the answer of several others was very helpful.
In the same vein, what if they wanted to communicate via a VPN tunnel to a private network?
Unfortuneately, that one is relatively "easy" to deal with... just make strong encryption illegal. In fact, it appears to be illegal already:-(
Ask the guy who invented PGP what the result was. The government did not take it lightly. Even as ever stronger encryption becomes legal, you have to ask yourself this simple question: Is the government only making this legal because the intelligence services have assured lawmakers they can already crack it?
We used to say the same thing about electronic dossiers--that storage was so expensive there was no way to keep all that transactional data forever. Now they can.
So they can store it. Can they find it through all the noise?
If out of every 300 million people there are a couple dozen terrorists, how do you expect to find the terrorists talking about bombs through all the talk about bombs in video games, bombs in the movies, blonde bombshells and new cars that are "the bomb"?
Even if you solve storage and you solve relevance, you still have to solve monitoring every delivery avenue. With the incentive of P2P, video games and new hardware you have several new avenues opening up every day. What if they terrorist wanted to communicate via handwritten text on his new Nintendo DS? Is that monitored?
When communication was just phone and post, spies used flashes of light, pigeons and cleverly placed symbols in public locations. There is always a way to communicate without being spotted. Being able to store all you _can_ find will only help a little bit.
The whole point of the article being discused is that random IP addresses and random university web sites cant really be trusted unless someone verifies them. But we all download Firefox anyway because we believe that it's ok to trust these sites for this purpose.
Now you come along and say "don't trust geocities" but you don't give any more information on why we shouldn't trust them than this Microsoft wonk gives for not trusting a Firefox download.
I think that's pretty funny.
I love it when people tell me who I should and shouldn't put my faith in. Especially when they don't give any better details than "they're untrustworthy". I mean, what if I don't trust the guy telling my who is trustworthy or not?
Why should I listen to the MS guy telling me that Mozilla.org isn't trustworthy? Why should I listen to you telling me not to trust geocities? Should you listen to me telling you not to trust some other guy? You don't even know me, dude, and I have almost as high a user number as you do.
Bottom line: Some geocities sites post unreliable information and some don't. You will not be able to tell which, based on a geocities domain alone. See, some people have the capacity for truth, but don't have the income to justify anything but a free site... Just like Mozilla.org needs to get donations to pay for theirs.
Your point is well taken. It's a pretty good point. However, the same documents you're refering to held blacks to not be human in the same way whites were. They also held women to not have the same rational thought required for voting that men were endowed with.
In other words, just because it's in the law doesn't mean it "right." Also, laws can change their meaning over time so that previous interpretations are abandoned in favor of current understandings.
Nothing changed in the constitution, yet women now have the right to vote. It's universally acknowledged that this is A Good Thing (tm). But the constitution clearly says, and clearly meant at the time of writing, that only men have the right to vote.
Just as we've come around in our view of what "men" should be, so will we acknowledge at some point that "We, the People of the United States..." really already means "We, the Self-aware, Intelligent beings of the United States..." without a single change in the original document. Either that, or we'll suffer the same fate we suffered in the 50s and 60s; we'll have a horribly devided nation were millions of "people" with no rights must decide to capitulate to the ruling power, protest peacefully, or fight for what's due them. All three are possible.
So, if we colonize one or two other planets, that just gives us a few more baskets. What we need are hundreds or thousands of baskets.
Well put. But if a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so must we find some kind of real begining for our extraplanetary colonization efforts.
It will be much easier to convince regular folk to put up the money to colonize the moon or mars, our first step, then to convince them to take the whole journey, site unseen.
I thought a similar thing the first time I saw one of those little laptop lights that plug into the USB port. Now devices that use USB just for power are extremely common and some are quite creative and useful. I love recharging my cell phone with a a USB cable because I dont' need an extra brick(transformer) to get the job done.
In fact, even though power over Ethernet is a great idea, I'll bet it's biggest competitor will continue to be good ol' USB. The only real advantage the Ethernet has is range and until it's commonly built into laptops and desktops It'll continue to be a very niche type of product.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got tickets to the opera that night. Better we should just hash it out now...
TW
"Socialist program" does not equal "socialism". I don't know what kind of goverment you have, but I live here in America and our government is pretty far from socialism even though many of our programs are socialist in nature.
"Socialist program" does not always equal "bad". A certain amount of help for the poor can lead to a nicer society for all without sacrificing a core capitalist system.
Using "socialism" almost as a curse word instead of a simple desctiption is one sure way to avoid real discussions about pros and cons. It's almost always an indication the user of such a word has no real desire to understand the subject but rather wants to bully the oppposition into silence.
Sorry, I don't feel like being afraid of your word.
TW
Notes for MS Bigots:
Ok, I've read enough.
"MS Bigots?" "Mac Trolls?"
How come you Mac folk (I'm kinda responding to many of the above comments here) are so quick to resort to name calling when someone says they don't like your computer? Is it just possible they have a real reason for not liking it? Maybe, since this is a discussion forum, you should take the time to read and respond to that reason instead of calling them a troll or a bigot for simply expressing it.
I've used my GFs Mac quite a lot and I have a few gripes about it. I've taken the time to listen to Mac folk call my OS the spawn of Satan and took it like a man. Maybe it's time you folk can listen to a few of our observations with the same understanding.
TW
This is poor, poor design.
:-)
You may be right about the tray, but everywere else it's a godsend. When I need to get something done I usually right-click and I can get it done without resorting to top menus or toolbars. This is _good_ design. Not only do I not need to move my mouse, but I don't have to search through a bunch of irrelevant stuff because the context-menu almost always has what I want.
Let me put it another way: Right clicking is like L2 cache. It usualy has what I want so I don't have to go back to main memory and therefore I save precious clock cycles gettting the data I need. Having one button is like not having L2 cache. You always have to go to main memory to get what you need.
Of course, keyboard shortcuts are like L1, but that's another story....
TW
Responsible investing in companies that improve society, sure ... but irrationally throwing away your money?
It seems IBM forsees a future in which software is commoditized. This doesn't bother them because they sell lots and lots of hardware. It seems they believe they will sell even more hardware if people aren't "wasting" their money on software.
See the cycle? If much of the money that previously went to Redmond goes to them instead, do you see how they just might make a buck or two?
Open source changes the notion of who will make money. IBM has made major moves to make sure they will be the bennefactors of this change. They have a much better chance at dramatically increased riches than almost any other "linux vendor" you can name.
TW
Saving $20 by spending 20 minutes doing it yourself -- Priceless.
Uh, no, not "priceless". $20. Unless you've got some kind of rare $20 bill that was painted by a famous Italian artist or something.
But will the same thing happen if you build a "bypass" road? Richmond, Virginia has a nice big highway going through the city and a nice big highway that goes around the city for "through" traffic. Is this bypass highway destined for the same fate?
TW
Plus, the glass recording disks are bad-ass. It's like something from the future made in 1974.
I once took one of those clear spacer disks from a CD spindle and convinced a couple of the people in our office that they were a new type of CD. They thought the clear disk was the coolest thing until they tried to play it. I'd love to give them one of these and see their reaction.
TW
I know Quake has tons of name recognition, but is there really much room for a game that hasn't changed much of anything since its first incarnation 8 years ago?
Baseball, football and basketball haven't changed much in 100 years, but people still enjoy them.
Some of the things that keeps these games exciting are fresh faces, higher levels of athletic skills and new world records. Oh yeah, and the fact that regular folk can play pretty close to the same game with their out-of-shape co-workers.
I like the fresh face of a new FPS, espcially one that makes a real difference visually because of new technology. I like to see new weapons that reaquire new skills. And I like to play against other people on the internet who really end up challenging my skills.
I think this game will do just fine.
TW
I thought the difference between free and open source software was that with open source you can actually download, view, and/or modify the source code while free software, such as skype or adobe acrobat reader, wouldn't allow such practices.
They're not talking about that kind of "free". However, you make a very good point without realizing it.
People can, and will give out "free" software that isn't "free". Sometimes they'll let you see the source, they'll call it "open source" but it really won't be "open source".
The questions should'nt be about whether "free" (as in speech) software or real "open source" software is better. The real question is about how to make a meaningful distinction to average people between Adobe Reader type software and Firefox type software. They can download both of them and use both of them and the average Joe has no clue about the differences. If both of them say "free" on the web site then the Joe average will assume they're the same type of thing.
Similarly, even Microsoft is sharing source on some amount of software without making it anything remotely close to "free". If they call what they're doing "opening the source" then how is the public to know the difference between that and real "open source" software?
TW
Score one for old media. Maybe we should keep them around after all.
TW
...what sucks even worse is that taking away jobs from the US economy WILL have broader implications as in.. who will buy stuff??
Markets not only rise and fall but move as well. Markets can and will move to places like India and China whose individual populations dwarf ours and whose combined populations make us look like, well Great Britian, the super power of another age.
But GB is not dead. It's not even close to dead. It's not a superpower or a particularly strong world leader, but the people get along very well with a relatively good standard of living.
American IT isn't dead and will not die completely. But we have to be realistic about the world we live in. Many, many people who live outside our boarders are smart. We've already put in the infrastructure to take advantage of that intelligence. No matter how we might want our jobs, we WILL have to compete with other intelligent people who are more than capable of also doing those jobs well.
Look, we're already not the top cell phone market and we're not the top market for many other electronic goods. It only makes sense that other contries will end up consuming more than us if we don't step up to the plate. But it doesn't mean we're going to end up some third world contry ourselves. It just means we have to share.
TW
Yes, they're legit. So is my anti-spam provider. Why I would pay good money to have spam eliminated and then sign up with these guys to get a "free" iPod is beyond me.
Yes, I know the hassle is "worth it" to some. I know others use fake email addresses, etc to get their iPod without the obligations they "agree" to. I find ignoring this kind of thing to be a much simpler solution. If your "friends" don't understand why you're ignoring thier pleas to join, you probably need a better class of friend.
TW
OS X is already the best OS available anyway.
I know this is just a troll, but people need to rethink their notion of the term "best".
In my IT department, we're abandoning the search for systems that are "the best." Now we look for "very high quality" systems instead. It may seem like mincing words to some of you, but it makes a real difference. Territorial bastards will always be teritorial bastards, but it's amazing how much better their decisions are when you say, "is the solution very high quality" instead of "is it the best." They're forced to make an actual evaluation instead of just going with their gut or their pet. They'll still try to spin their favorite solution, but they're at least forced to acknowledge the real strengths of the competition.
TW
The quest could be paid off with a bounty and the bounty could get higher and higher based on the number of complaints against the character in question.
Of course, you could boot the character without the police force, like the article said X-box live does, but I kind of like the idea of the universe taking care of itself. I think troublemakers tend to learn their lesson better if their peers teach it rather than some megacorp.
TW
I've never played MMOGs but I'm a vetran to online FPSs. The voting systems works fairly well on these. If a guy is causing problems, someone will call for a vote, the vote will be tallied and the troublemaker gets the boot.
Based on what I know about MMOG, I'd imagine a citizen police force might work well. Though I'm sure they'd be subject to the same temptations as real-world police, the idea of a bunch of good guys hunting down and exterminating bad guys is pretty appealing. They could get tips from "regular citizens", investigate, then band together and kill the bad guys. As a game scenerio, I imaging being an Everquest "police" would be quite fun and have a certain amount of status.
Of course, maybe such things already exist. If they do, then why aren't they effective? Maybe they just need some tweeking to do a better job.
TW
BTW, if it stands, this is a hit against MS on two major counts: the original ruling required them to open up various information for interoperability purposes, and to produce a version of Windows without Media Player integrated.
I can't help but find part of this a little sad. We've been so completely bullied by MS that we actually believe that the consumer being able to say no to free a "portion of the OS" is a major hit against the software maker.
This is not, in reality, a hit on Microsoft at all. It's just a defensive move on the part of the consumer. It's the difference between us putting on a bullet proof vest or actaully getting a gun and firing back. We have no gun with this ruling.
I understand why we would be happy to put a halt to one or two of the barrage of bullets, but MS is still very much winning. If they can make us jump for joy over such a minor protection then our chances of ever actually getting a level playinf field are slim indeed.
TW
Thanks much.
Things are usually done for a reason, but the reason is not always obvious from looking at the outcome. Your answer and the answer of several others was very helpful.
TW
Unfortuneately, that one is relatively "easy" to deal with... just make strong encryption illegal. In fact, it appears to be illegal already
Ask the guy who invented PGP what the result was. The government did not take it lightly. Even as ever stronger encryption becomes legal, you have to ask yourself this simple question: Is the government only making this legal because the intelligence services have assured lawmakers they can already crack it?
TW
The imperial system, on the other hand, does have multiple discreet built-in benefits.
Could you name them or provide a link? Imperial measurments apear to me to be designed primarily by people who "didn't know any better."
TW
We used to say the same thing about electronic dossiers--that storage was so expensive there was no way to keep all that transactional data forever. Now they can.
So they can store it. Can they find it through all the noise?
If out of every 300 million people there are a couple dozen terrorists, how do you expect to find the terrorists talking about bombs through all the talk about bombs in video games, bombs in the movies, blonde bombshells and new cars that are "the bomb"?
Even if you solve storage and you solve relevance, you still have to solve monitoring every delivery avenue. With the incentive of P2P, video games and new hardware you have several new avenues opening up every day. What if they terrorist wanted to communicate via handwritten text on his new Nintendo DS? Is that monitored?
When communication was just phone and post, spies used flashes of light, pigeons and cleverly placed symbols in public locations. There is always a way to communicate without being spotted. Being able to store all you _can_ find will only help a little bit.
TW
Shouldn't your post be modded "Funny"?
The whole point of the article being discused is that random IP addresses and random university web sites cant really be trusted unless someone verifies them. But we all download Firefox anyway because we believe that it's ok to trust these sites for this purpose.
Now you come along and say "don't trust geocities" but you don't give any more information on why we shouldn't trust them than this Microsoft wonk gives for not trusting a Firefox download.
I think that's pretty funny.
I love it when people tell me who I should and shouldn't put my faith in. Especially when they don't give any better details than "they're untrustworthy". I mean, what if I don't trust the guy telling my who is trustworthy or not?
Why should I listen to the MS guy telling me that Mozilla.org isn't trustworthy? Why should I listen to you telling me not to trust geocities? Should you listen to me telling you not to trust some other guy? You don't even know me, dude, and I have almost as high a user number as you do.
Bottom line: Some geocities sites post unreliable information and some don't. You will not be able to tell which, based on a geocities domain alone. See, some people have the capacity for truth, but don't have the income to justify anything but a free site... Just like Mozilla.org needs to get donations to pay for theirs.
TW
Your point is well taken. It's a pretty good point. However, the same documents you're refering to held blacks to not be human in the same way whites were. They also held women to not have the same rational thought required for voting that men were endowed with.
In other words, just because it's in the law doesn't mean it "right." Also, laws can change their meaning over time so that previous interpretations are abandoned in favor of current understandings.
Nothing changed in the constitution, yet women now have the right to vote. It's universally acknowledged that this is A Good Thing (tm). But the constitution clearly says, and clearly meant at the time of writing, that only men have the right to vote.
Just as we've come around in our view of what "men" should be, so will we acknowledge at some point that "We, the People of the United States..." really already means "We, the Self-aware, Intelligent beings of the United States..." without a single change in the original document. Either that, or we'll suffer the same fate we suffered in the 50s and 60s; we'll have a horribly devided nation were millions of "people" with no rights must decide to capitulate to the ruling power, protest peacefully, or fight for what's due them. All three are possible.
TW
So, if we colonize one or two other planets, that just gives us a few more baskets. What we need are hundreds or thousands of baskets.
Well put. But if a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so must we find some kind of real begining for our extraplanetary colonization efforts.
It will be much easier to convince regular folk to put up the money to colonize the moon or mars, our first step, then to convince them to take the whole journey, site unseen.
TW
The razor doesn't have networking capabilities!
I thought a similar thing the first time I saw one of those little laptop lights that plug into the USB port. Now devices that use USB just for power are extremely common and some are quite creative and useful. I love recharging my cell phone with a a USB cable because I dont' need an extra brick(transformer) to get the job done.
In fact, even though power over Ethernet is a great idea, I'll bet it's biggest competitor will continue to be good ol' USB. The only real advantage the Ethernet has is range and until it's commonly built into laptops and desktops It'll continue to be a very niche type of product.
TW