The American rights demonization of Islam is ridiculus, but simply producing diametrically opposite propaganda is not any better.
The last time I suggested white Western civilisation might be less than perfect I got modded to hell
Ah yes, but this time you are attacking Christianity so you are right in line with the Slashdot groupthink.
the Kingdom of Granada in Spain
Following an imperialist invasion to found it - not any different from the European empires.
Islam has become increasingly a religion of the poor and ill educated. (I know this is a simplification, but it is a useful simplification.) We are now seeing the effects of creating a society of poor and ill-educated people with ready access to cheap weapons.
So how come these effects are most strongest in places like oil rich Saudi Arabia, rather than very poor countries like Bangaldesh?
There are also plenty of historical precedents for intolerant and repressive Islamic societies - they are not just a modern reaction to some injustice. Consider what happened to Christian communities in the Middle East with the rise of Islam, for example.
There was a recent problem with a linux kernel update in Dapper (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS). That was fairly minor as it simply meant the update did not happen until they fixed it.
However it does suggest that the Ubuntu system could be better as well, despite the fact that after the update you mention they said it would never happen again.
That said, Ubuntu does get good support and quick responses - I use Ubuntu for the same reasons you do.
They mean the business is innovative, not the product. This could mean an unusual business model, first to open source, first to market, first to commercialise, etc.
This is linked to why politicians do silly things like pass software patent laws. They understand this type of innovation and want to encourage, they do not understand the invention of new technologies and assume it is solely a side effect of this.
Ideally we would call one thing invention. I have not got a single word description of the other, which is essentially new or clever business practices or models.
I am not sure that a ruling against software patents would be all that bad for MS.
OK, they would lose a chance of damage open source and tax small companies in the industry.
Against that patents are not much use against major competitors who are likely to find something to counter-sue over - and in the long run the industry, like semi-conductors, is likely to end up with all the major players cross-licensing to each other. Patents also leave them exposed to claims themselves.
The only clear winners from software patents are patent trolls - and, for all their faults, MS is better than that.
In Britain talking to analysts is usually considered part of the investor relations process, and misleading analysts will get you in trouble.
Is there any special regulation of these conference calls in the US? I could find nothing on the subject. Are they any different from analysts' conference calls that British companies hold after announcing results? I had a quick look on the SEC website but did not find anything.
I have always took the view that I could rely on what was said in both presentations and conference calls as being true - or, at least, that anyone lying in them would be taking a risk. Of course it could always be spun, and it is important to separate fact from opinion.
In this case, Ballmer has not actually (at least according to anything the article has quoted) said that they are going to sue other Linux vendors - he has implied it and everything he said can be claimed either to be a statement of opinion, or to mean something else. I would guess it is all FUD.
In the case of Startupping, the wiki has been written byy someone who does not know what a business plan is - it gives a list of potential revenue streams as business plans. I assume he has written stuff that he knows FA about, in the hope that someone competent will come along and write some sense.
The rest of the wiki is equally useless.
The forums are not exactly active.
The blog aggregators might be useful.
The Startupping blog itself consists of the one article linked to. That post itself has nothing earthshaking. Old advice like "do something you love", "hire good people", "stick to core competencies" and "don't be afraid to take risks".
1) Electricity consumption 2) Power cuts (unless you have a UPS and software for a clean shutdown installed, what happens if there is a power cut while you are away?). 3) Power fluctuations (my power supply blew dramatically after one a few months ago) and lightning. 4) Heat (in a hot climate)
I can tell you how it will end. Tony will dismiss everyone's objections to it and inform us why he is right and everyone else is wrong. The same answer as all the petitions I have signed on the system. The Tories will be voted in at the next election and quickly abandon everyone one of Labour's wacky schemes and come up with a load of their own for us to moan about.
Which is one reason why changing the government at each election is a good idea. Each undoes what the other did, starting with the loopiest and most unpopular. The other reason for constant change is that the longer people are in power the more arrogant or corrupt they become.
Of course switching to reverse what the last lot did worked even better when
there was a real difference in the beliefs of the different parties.
Is tech support in the US any better? Are US call centres all full of technically competent people who
One of the reasons that HSBC gave for off-shoring from the UK to India was to get better staff as well as cheaper. If you look at the quality of the people they employ in the sub-continent it appears to be true.
I would say what I think about standards of English in the US versus India, but the last time I did so the comment got modded -1 flamebait by the Americans - after first having been modded +5 insightful by the rest of the world (I can guess who modded up and down by that fact that the modding up happened while most Americans were still asleep, and the moddding down when they woke up).
Because my 72 year old mother can, and does, install programs herself in Windows.
Much like my slightly older father does is Linux?
I doubt he knows what a deb or rpm is. He opens synaptic, searches for what he needs and installs. All in fewer clicks than doing the same on Windows would require. There is also no need for him to try to judge whether its a safe download or malware.
End users do not need to understand thinks like differences in the file tree. There are GUIs that do everything for them. Yes, there is software that is not in the repositories, but very little of this is likely to be of interest to end users.
RTFA. It says: However, in this paper, we do not show a
breakdown of drives per manufacturer, model, or vintage
due to the proprietary nature of these data.
It is clearly not proprietary to the drive manufacturers, because it came from Google's study. This means they regard it as proprietary to themselves.
How do you know that their competitors have done equally good studies? Given the large population (100,000) and the fact that people are surprised even by some of the published conclusions, it is very likely that there are things in there that their competitors do not know.
But we're not going to tell you which brand fails at a higher rate than normal because we don't need a lawsuit that would cost us a lot of money but in the end would only confirm what the people who need to know these things already know.
Unless they have signed some sort of NDA, agreeing not to release test results, what exactly can they be sued for? Unless you can either find evidence that buyers of hard drives sign NDAs, or specify some other grounds on which they could be sued, this sounds plain wrong to me.
The HURD did come out earlier than the Linux kernel.. years earlier in fact
It depends what you mean by out. I do not think that most people would take "out" to mean "development started", but "development (of first version) done"
I am thinking about situations where someone is trying out Linux. They are likely to try the default first, if it makes a bad impression, they might not do any further.
Of course, as you say, it is not difficult to find a KDE distro - however I an not convinced that Linux advocates are very good at pointing people to the best distro for them (IMHO, Gnome for naive users, KDE for people who are really comfortable with Windows, XFCE for older PCs, IceWM for really old PCs - I may have left out a few good options).
The two American nations listed are already bugaboos in the US culture wars. Won't this just be used to convince consumers in the US not to adopt Linux? "See, it's really just a plot by those big scary Reds..."
Yes, it could be spun that way. However, if it is, it could easily backfire on them.
Any "linux is commie" propaganda could not be isolated to the US. The message will be international and will be interpreted differently in other countries. This will range from "the Americans don't like it so it must be good" to the most anti-American places to "obviously they are scared of it getting us out from under their control" to "ha, ha, the Americans are paranoid enough to think a piece of software is a communist plot". Hopefully, even the last will lead some people to try Linux simply because it sounds that much more important if a fuss is made about it.
So the disadvantage of using low voltage DC is that the morons are more likely to be able to steal it, thus slowing down the removal of their genes from the population?
Windows look and feel is not very configurable, true, but:
1) Gnome makes it more difficult to edit the start menu or run apps as another user (I am not sure if this is configurable in Windows, but it is easy to do if you have enabled it).
2) Hardware and other control centre stuff.
3) All the stuff the Gnome can do that Windows cannot, which they never discover because its either too deeply buried in the GUI, or not in the default GUI at all (I remember installing gTeawkUI for exaclty this reason, when I last used Gnome).
Incidentally I like Gnome and it is very elegant, but every time I have tried it, I have ended up going back to KDE because something did not work right for me.
Unfortunately, the same politicians who can see the financial sense of the a single lump investment can't see the financial benefit to making it easier for people to start small businesses
They probably can see it. The problem is that it does not look as good. The big investments get the media interested, and therefore help win votes.
This is a global problem. Plenty of politicians will talk about then importance of small businesses (it is undeniable), but dangle a high profile investment in front of them, and they will do anything.
At least the US and Europe are better than some Asian countries which formalise tax breaks for big, especially foreign investment - "invest more than x and get tax breaks, small businesses can forget it".
The problem is that they are Windows power users. How are they supposed to know they should try KDE? They are not familiar with the idea of choosing from multiple desktop environments. They are not likely to realise that they can click on a menu in the login manager and choose KDE.
So the result is likely to be that they will use the default, and assume that Gnome is "Linux".
The term "power user" implies a certain level of familiarity, but little actual knowledge - a lot of rote learning ("click here to do this"), perhaps the ability to use VBA, and that is about it.
Slashdot Mirror
The American rights demonization of Islam is ridiculus, but simply producing diametrically opposite propaganda is not any better.
Ah yes, but this time you are attacking Christianity so you are right in line with the Slashdot groupthink.
Following an imperialist invasion to found it - not any different from the European empires.
So how come these effects are most strongest in places like oil rich Saudi Arabia, rather than very poor countries like Bangaldesh?
There are also plenty of historical precedents for intolerant and repressive Islamic societies - they are not just a modern reaction to some injustice. Consider what happened to Christian communities in the Middle East with the rise of Islam, for example.
There was a recent problem with a linux kernel update in Dapper (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS). That was fairly minor as it simply meant the update did not happen until they fixed it.
However it does suggest that the Ubuntu system could be better as well, despite the fact that after the update you mention they said it would never happen again.
That said, Ubuntu does get good support and quick responses - I use Ubuntu for the same reasons you do.
They mean the business is innovative, not the product. This could mean an unusual business model, first to open source, first to market, first to commercialise, etc.
This is linked to why politicians do silly things like pass software patent laws. They understand this type of innovation and want to encourage, they do not understand the invention of new technologies and assume it is solely a side effect of this.
Ideally we would call one thing invention. I have not got a single word description of the other, which is essentially new or clever business practices or models.
More accurate version
Judge: Why did you make a car for yourself that is an exact copy of a Ferrari?
Me: Because Ferraris are too expensive for me.
Judge: ?
I am not sure that a ruling against software patents would be all that bad for MS.
OK, they would lose a chance of damage open source and tax small companies in the industry.
Against that patents are not much use against major competitors who are likely to find something to counter-sue over - and in the long run the industry, like semi-conductors, is likely to end up with all the major players cross-licensing to each other. Patents also leave them exposed to claims themselves.
The only clear winners from software patents are patent trolls - and, for all their faults, MS is better than that.
Not necessarily. Mozambique is a member of the Commonwealth. It had no historical ties with Britain.
In Britain talking to analysts is usually considered part of the investor relations process, and misleading analysts will get you in trouble.
Is there any special regulation of these conference calls in the US? I could find nothing on the subject. Are they any different from analysts' conference calls that British companies hold after announcing results? I had a quick look on the SEC website but did not find anything.
I have always took the view that I could rely on what was said in both presentations and conference calls as being true - or, at least, that anyone lying in them would be taking a risk. Of course it could always be spun, and it is important to separate fact from opinion.
In this case, Ballmer has not actually (at least according to anything the article has quoted) said that they are going to sue other Linux vendors - he has implied it and everything he said can be claimed either to be a statement of opinion, or to mean something else. I would guess it is all FUD.
Unless you think the MS DRM they are going to implement on their website is evil.
Easy, Saudi Arabia. That way there will be nothing anyone could find obscene on sites with other TLDs at all.
In the case of Startupping, the wiki has been written byy someone who does not know what a business plan is - it gives a list of potential revenue streams as business plans. I assume he has written stuff that he knows FA about, in the hope that someone competent will come along and write some sense.
The rest of the wiki is equally useless.
The forums are not exactly active.
The blog aggregators might be useful.
The Startupping blog itself consists of the one article linked to. That post itself has nothing earthshaking. Old advice like "do something you love", "hire good people", "stick to core competencies" and "don't be afraid to take risks".
Why exactly would anyone want to visit this site?
There are some good reasons to shut down:
1) Electricity consumption
2) Power cuts (unless you have a UPS and software for a clean shutdown installed, what happens if there is a power cut while you are away?).
3) Power fluctuations (my power supply blew dramatically after one a few months ago) and lightning.
4) Heat (in a hot climate)
Which is one reason why changing the government at each election is a good idea. Each undoes what the other did, starting with the loopiest and most unpopular. The other reason for constant change is that the longer people are in power the more arrogant or corrupt they become.
Of course switching to reverse what the last lot did worked even better when there was a real difference in the beliefs of the different parties.
One of the reasons that HSBC gave for off-shoring from the UK to India was to get better staff as well as cheaper. If you look at the quality of the people they employ in the sub-continent it appears to be true.
Funny how American seem to whine about foreign accents in call centres more than the British - even though lots of British companies off-shore. Perhaps it for the same reason that the Americans cannot even make a film without re-writing history to make the heros all American.
I would say what I think about standards of English in the US versus India, but the last time I did so the comment got modded -1 flamebait by the Americans - after first having been modded +5 insightful by the rest of the world (I can guess who modded up and down by that fact that the modding up happened while most Americans were still asleep, and the moddding down when they woke up).
Much like my slightly older father does is Linux?
I doubt he knows what a deb or rpm is. He opens synaptic, searches for what he needs and installs. All in fewer clicks than doing the same on Windows would require. There is also no need for him to try to judge whether its a safe download or malware.
End users do not need to understand thinks like differences in the file tree. There are GUIs that do everything for them. Yes, there is software that is not in the repositories, but very little of this is likely to be of interest to end users.
According to the page you linked to:
It is clearly not proprietary to the drive manufacturers, because it came from Google's study. This means they regard it as proprietary to themselves.
How do you know that their competitors have done equally good studies? Given the large population (100,000) and the fact that people are surprised even by some of the published conclusions, it is very likely that there are things in there that their competitors do not know.
But we're not going to tell you which brand fails at a higher rate than normal because we don't need a lawsuit that would cost us a lot of money but in the end would only confirm what the people who need to know these things already know.
Unless they have signed some sort of NDA, agreeing not to release test results, what exactly can they be sued for? Unless you can either find evidence that buyers of hard drives sign NDAs, or specify some other grounds on which they could be sued, this sounds plain wrong to me.
It depends what you mean by out. I do not think that most people would take "out" to mean "development started", but "development (of first version) done"
Hurd is still not out:
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html#status
Another translation: Our competitors buy millions of dollars worth of drives as well. We are not going to help them avoid the duff ones.
I am thinking about situations where someone is trying out Linux. They are likely to try the default first, if it makes a bad impression, they might not do any further.
Of course, as you say, it is not difficult to find a KDE distro - however I an not convinced that Linux advocates are very good at pointing people to the best distro for them (IMHO, Gnome for naive users, KDE for people who are really comfortable with Windows, XFCE for older PCs, IceWM for really old PCs - I may have left out a few good options).
Yes, it could be spun that way. However, if it is, it could easily backfire on them.
Any "linux is commie" propaganda could not be isolated to the US. The message will be international and will be interpreted differently in other countries. This will range from "the Americans don't like it so it must be good" to the most anti-American places to "obviously they are scared of it getting us out from under their control" to "ha, ha, the Americans are paranoid enough to think a piece of software is a communist plot". Hopefully, even the last will lead some people to try Linux simply because it sounds that much more important if a fuss is made about it.
So the disadvantage of using low voltage DC is that the morons are more likely to be able to steal it, thus slowing down the removal of their genes from the population?
Windows look and feel is not very configurable, true, but:
1) Gnome makes it more difficult to edit the start menu or run apps as another user (I am not sure if this is configurable in Windows, but it is easy to do if you have enabled it).
2) Hardware and other control centre stuff.
3) All the stuff the Gnome can do that Windows cannot, which they never discover because its either too deeply buried in the GUI, or not in the default GUI at all (I remember installing gTeawkUI for exaclty this reason, when I last used Gnome).
Incidentally I like Gnome and it is very elegant, but every time I have tried it, I have ended up going back to KDE because something did not work right for me.
They probably can see it. The problem is that it does not look as good. The big investments get the media interested, and therefore help win votes.
This is a global problem. Plenty of politicians will talk about then importance of small businesses (it is undeniable), but dangle a high profile investment in front of them, and they will do anything.
At least the US and Europe are better than some Asian countries which formalise tax breaks for big, especially foreign investment - "invest more than x and get tax breaks, small businesses can forget it".
So the result is likely to be that they will use the default, and assume that Gnome is "Linux".
The term "power user" implies a certain level of familiarity, but little actual knowledge - a lot of rote learning ("click here to do this"), perhaps the ability to use VBA, and that is about it.