On the other hand, your travel to & from the office becomes a tax deduction, along with many other legitimate business expenses that a "mere" employee incurs but can't use to reduce income taxes.
On the other hand, a dead battery ain't going to produce any more juice even if George Bush and Alan Greenspan personally praise it on the floor during a joint session of congress.
"...I'd rather see a slightly stronger government that imposes some regulation and control over corporations..."
What you wind up with here is a very strong centralized government, and a few megacorps who are strong enough to survive the onslaught of red-tape with their bottom line intact. In other words, facism, the very thing that most leftwing advocates purport to be opposed to! Their own actions bring it about.
Only in a libertarian-inclined society will the small business minnows maintain enough numbers to take down an occasional corporate whale. If you don't believe me, ask any small business owner. People wonder why Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Microsoft are taking over the country... they're the only ones with enough lawyers to beat back the regulators!
From the article: "...the (Hawaii Dept of Education) is unlikely to convert to open-source machines itself, because the schools get big discounts on service for proprietary software. Although the open-source programs are free, technical support is not," (Rodney Moriyama, assistant superintendent of the DOE's Office of Information Technology Services), pointed out, "so the DOE would have to pay if there were problems with the software. There's actually no incentive for us to do it," he said.
Wouldn't work here -- the trial lawyers have a very powerful lobbyng arm, and that fact is, firms and individuals who lose frivilous lawsuits are generally golddiggers without much cash of their own. Trial lawyers here aren't stupid - they know that if our laws were like Canadas, their net pay would be much, much lower.
Trying to change this situation is like trying to push rope: we can huff and puff, but nothing of any import will happen.
My kid turned an old Amiga 2000 into a firecracker. He was screwing around with the 68030 card, and left a piece of (hair? wire? dustbunny?) in the socket instead of checking to make sure it was clean before powering up. Snap_Crackle_Pop ensued. High Intensity, Short Duration ozone generation, too.
Huh? You made this comment in a thread about HP reselling Apple tech. The same HP that just announced a new Linux laptop. The same HP that... oh, nevermind. This is the same HP that won't let me refill my ink cartridges with cheap non-HP kits. To hell with the great neo-MS Shaitan!
How can anyone claim Microsoft is a monopoly that unfairly prices its products?
Hear, hear! I dispise McMicrosoft as much as a good Slashdot Trooper ought to, but how the heck can someone claim that Microsoft has "predatory pricing" when they're up against free software? I'm just a wannabe geek, but thanks to wisdom passed on by the good full-time geeks hereabouts, I'm using Firefox (free), OpenOffice (free), and wetting my toes in Linux (free) -- and what I've learned thus far is that Microsoft could *give* their products away, and I still wouldn't go back to using their crappola. Even for free, what they have isn't worth it! Predatory pricing, my patootie, this is some lawyers' get rich quick scheme, that's all...
You have a meeting at 14:00 on Thursday to discuss purchasing a house from a 19 year old virgin Viagra sales rep you met at a mortgage expo last week at the university.
The peecee game market is a tiny and shrinking market. The vast,vast majority of the gaming consumer market doesn't give a damn about anything released for the peecee outside of The Sims and EQ.
Where do you get your information? The only market study I've found on this topic indicates that, as of Nov 2003, console games had 65% marketshare vs 35% for peecee -- but that hardly constitutes what you deem "a tiny and shrinking market" -- especially in a multi-billion dollar industry.
Rest assured, they are _not_ doing it for the warm fuzzy feeling you get by doing something nice. OSS and GNU/Linux are part of their business strategy. They are in it for the money.
Hey, put yourself in the shoes of a low-level manager at IBM:
New PHB: (pokes head into mid-level boss' office) Psst! Hey Boss! Gotta minute?
Old PHB: Yeah, what is it?
New PHB: Uh, you know how other companies have problems with employees surfing Fark.com, porn, eBay, et al? Well, I've discovered that our employees are goofing off by... (looks left, looks right, whispers)... developing that free Linux operating system during work hours, when they don't think I'm looking!
Old PHB: Hmmm... well, if we discipline them, we'll have a morale problem... if we fire them, they'll take our secrets to the competitors... tell you what, why don't you look into this Linux thing, see if we can make some money with it.
Maybe because radio emissions aren't necessarily a result of communication? Lots of machinery generates RF, that's why the FCC has to approve electronic stuff in the USA before it's released.
Great - so our historic first contact with an alien civilization might just happen because we notice that their garbage compactor is a bit noisy.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought "Now that's interesting! What's next? KMart Amigas? WalMart PackardBells?" I want a ColecoVision wristwatch!
On the other hand, your travel to & from the office becomes a tax deduction, along with many other legitimate business expenses that a "mere" employee incurs but can't use to reduce income taxes.
You don't visit eBay very often, do you?
Network television announces a new television series: PirateEye for the Copying Guy
Aha! Now I understand why Packard-Bell went broke! They priced-gouged themselves into ruin...
What you wind up with here is a very strong centralized government, and a few megacorps who are strong enough to survive the onslaught of red-tape with their bottom line intact. In other words, facism, the very thing that most leftwing advocates purport to be opposed to! Their own actions bring it about.
Only in a libertarian-inclined society will the small business minnows maintain enough numbers to take down an occasional corporate whale. If you don't believe me, ask any small business owner. People wonder why Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Microsoft are taking over the country... they're the only ones with enough lawyers to beat back the regulators!
You should be flogged with a 4 Ghz, carbon-fiber, stealth-capable buggy whip for this bit of verbosity!
... they won't REALLY have hit the big time with Firefox until they get sued by SCO!
Apparently, he doesn't realize that other branches of the state gov't feel differently, and are putting out bids to convert from Windows to Linux
As opposed to some people to have to jump out of airplanes without parachutes, just to feel dead?
Wouldn't work here -- the trial lawyers have a very powerful lobbyng arm, and that fact is, firms and individuals who lose frivilous lawsuits are generally golddiggers without much cash of their own. Trial lawyers here aren't stupid - they know that if our laws were like Canadas, their net pay would be much, much lower.
Trying to change this situation is like trying to push rope: we can huff and puff, but nothing of any import will happen.
My kid turned an old Amiga 2000 into a firecracker. He was screwing around with the 68030 card, and left a piece of (hair? wire? dustbunny?) in the socket instead of checking to make sure it was clean before powering up. Snap_Crackle_Pop ensued. High Intensity, Short Duration ozone generation, too.
Huh? You made this comment in a thread about HP reselling Apple tech. The same HP that just announced a new Linux laptop. The same HP that... oh, nevermind. This is the same HP that won't let me refill my ink cartridges with cheap non-HP kits. To hell with the great neo-MS Shaitan!
Hear, hear! I dispise McMicrosoft as much as a good Slashdot Trooper ought to, but how the heck can someone claim that Microsoft has "predatory pricing" when they're up against free software? I'm just a wannabe geek, but thanks to wisdom passed on by the good full-time geeks hereabouts, I'm using Firefox (free), OpenOffice (free), and wetting my toes in Linux (free) -- and what I've learned thus far is that Microsoft could *give* their products away, and I still wouldn't go back to using their crappola. Even for free, what they have isn't worth it! Predatory pricing, my patootie, this is some lawyers' get rich quick scheme, that's all...
You have a meeting at 14:00 on Thursday to discuss purchasing a house from a 19 year old virgin Viagra sales rep you met at a mortgage expo last week at the university.
Why? You can buy a cheap 300 dollar PC right now from Wal-Mart that runs windows straight out of the box.
(Next, I suppose someone will say that they can make a beowulf cluster of hacked 300 dollar windows-running consoles. I don't care! Stop it!)
Where do you get your information? The only market study I've found on this topic indicates that, as of Nov 2003, console games had 65% marketshare vs 35% for peecee -- but that hardly constitutes what you deem "a tiny and shrinking market" -- especially in a multi-billion dollar industry.
Hey, put yourself in the shoes of a low-level manager at IBM:
New PHB: (pokes head into mid-level boss' office) Psst! Hey Boss! Gotta minute?
Old PHB: Yeah, what is it?
New PHB: Uh, you know how other companies have problems with employees surfing Fark.com, porn, eBay, et al? Well, I've discovered that our employees are goofing off by... (looks left, looks right, whispers)... developing that free Linux operating system during work hours, when they don't think I'm looking!
Old PHB: Hmmm... well, if we discipline them, we'll have a morale problem... if we fire them, they'll take our secrets to the competitors... tell you what, why don't you look into this Linux thing, see if we can make some money with it.
Why, that's the biggest crock of bulleeeyarGHHHEEEHHH(gasp)........(thunk!)
Oh come now, don't get Kerried away...
"You've got money!"
Great - so our historic first contact with an alien civilization might just happen because we notice that their garbage compactor is a bit noisy.
After fighting with that Gator nonsense for several years, anything containing the letters GAIM is sure to make me think of the phrase "killer app"