Sorry.. the "Star Wars" program died when the Soviet Union did. It was ostensibly meant to counter their massive ICBM threat. What is was really meant to do was (kind of a re-vamp of the 70s moon program) to force them to spend billions of rubles on developing their own counterpart (or a way to defeat it). They started this, and then finally, at long last, fell bankrupt under their own stagnation.
It was the best non-deployed weapons program ever conceived.
This sounded like the same sort of crap Microsoft was spouting regarding Open Source and it's "viral licensing" a couple of years ago. If "Software Assurance" ain't viral licensing, I don't know what is.
I love the out-of-context "quotes" from Bruce Perens. Say, Love, the reason the code "didn't belong in Linux" is because the particular platform for which it was written was never used by more than ten people, and even they aren't using it anymore.
I gave up after page 1. I wanted to keep my burrito down.
Didn't Alfred Nobel invent the "weapon to end all wars"? That weapon was called "dynamite". It can be used for everything from blowing holes in enemy fortifications to blowing dead tree stumps out of the ground in your back-40.
But real estate prices near Edwards AFB in Kern County, CA, maintained their value. Residents who bought their homes ten years ago at $50,000.00 can now sell them for %52,000.00. Local real estate agents were actively advertising in the area for business.
Said Ernesto Sanchez (through his interpreter), "It won't affect my quality of life.. I plan on staying right here. Besides, trailers in the next nearest town have risen to $75,000.00, placing them still outside my range."
Another resident, Stf.Sgt. Fred Pierce, said, "Well, it doesn't affect me because I live on base. I'm also about to be transferred to a classified conflict zone in the Middle East."
We do. The victorious party needs to request them in their version of the judgement which is submitted to the Judge.
How it works is each party will submit a draft judgment document in their favor to the Judge prior to release of ruling. The Judge will consider each draft and, if necessary, make changes. The prevailing judgement document then becomes the ruling after the Judge signs it. The document typically will include costs associated with bringing or defending the action (depending on which party prevailed).
However, in order to get to that point (final ruling), each party must have sufficient funds to pay the attorneys doing the research, creating the various pleadings and motions, and appearing in court to actually argue the case. There are also court fees associated with filing each particular document which concerns the case.
This costs money up front. If a party can no longer pay these costs, then either a settlement, release, or default judgment occurs (depending on which side drops, and the circumstances under which that party dropped).
If the case reaches final judgement, then the prevailing party is very often entitled to recoup these costs (sometimes in total, sometimes in part - this can often drag a case out for months with the parties haggling over what are justifiable fees).
In bankruptcy proceedings, the attorneys for the debtors must actually have a mini-trial to justify their fees to the overseeing court... those pleadings are sometimes hilarious as attorneys are sometimes force to justify their fees down to the nickel...
They were successful through a stroke of luck (well, two actually). First, IBM gave them the contract to supply the OS for their little project called the "PC" (with an expected product lifespan of a few thousand models) and second, Bill Gates duped Tim Paterson into selling him QDOS for nothing (had Paterson known it was going to be integrated into IBM's product he would have undoubtedly asked for an ongoing piece of the action).
The third stroke of luck, which had nothing to do with Microsoft, was that IBM opened up the specs for the PC which allowed multiple vendors to create competing products to enhance the capabilities of the system. This high availability of off-the-shelf items at the competetive prices required led many to choose the PC platform over the Mac platform which was more expensive to upgrade.
Once the market share of the PC grew, Microsoft went along for the ride. No one gave a rats ass about DOS, other than it was the OS which came with the computer.
We could go into the "theft" of the windows idea from Apple, but that would take pages.
Basically, Microsoft got a monopoly by forces outside its control. That's really fine and dandy; good for them. What's a big problem though is how that monopoly was MAINTAINED.
THAT is a big issue, and an ongoing one at that.
Microsoft is the chicken which grew up first and started kicking all the other eggs out of the nest.
Actually, the DOJ "won" the *initial* case. Then Microsoft appealed (would have appealed regardless, except in the extremely-unlikely event of a total vindication). During the appeal process the administration changed and the DOJ backed down.
However, prior to administration change, the DOJ was winding down on stamina. Remember, this had gone on for some 5 years. Once the Feds dropped off, so did the individual states (regardless of political affiliations).
"It's a shame though. BeOS was a pretty nice OS, even if it was unsuitable for the modern world -- a modern OS needs a real concept of security."
You say this while defending Microsoft?
Have you lost your fucking mind?
Have you actually ever really used a computer, or are you just hijacking your buddy's web browser which just happened to be pointed at Slashdot?
Oh, and to answer your other question: 90% of the folks buying PCs at some SuperStore want to use the OS that everyone else uses. Everyone else uses that same OS because everyone else could ONLY buy that OS on a new computer for years and years.
Ergo, Microsoft had a monopoly and used illegal practices to maintain said monopoly.
The average home computer user was immersed in Microsoft, was ignorant of the alternatives, and was too ignorant of technology to even begin to understand HOW to go about investigating an alternative. Microsoft enforced this ignorance.
Microsoft also made it economically difficult for developers to develop for other platforms (both by having the most ubiquitous desktop platform and by manipulating the license of its Developer Kit). Therefore, you see a plethora of applications developed exclusively for the Microsoft platform. Is it because the developers love it, or because it makes them a buck?
In short, you talk good game, but you really don't know shit. You'll notice I haven't opened the topic of Open Source (yet).
Actually what this is, is an admission by Be that they'd rather save something to pay off the investors and/or creditors rather than be economically litigated into the ground by Microsoft.
Remember folks, Microsoft's war chest is so great that it actually economically litigated the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE into the ground, forcing the Feds and multiple individual States to "settle" for a bag of peanut shells and a waggling finger.
If you can keep a court case going by filing motion after motion, continuance after continuance, and then appeal after appeal, eventually the other party will run out of money or lose interest and go away.
Basically, during a conference call between Be's lawyers and Microsoft's lawyers, the group representing Microsoft told the group representing Be that they were prepared to spend at least 2x the remaining assets of Be to "defend themselves" and wouldn't it be in the best interests of Be to obtain *something* to return to the poor shareholders rather than see it all turn to dust with nothing in return.
You run out of money, you run out of lawyers... that's a simple and sad fact.
I've been party to such conference calls (on both sides). It's a dirty, pathetic business.
Well.. I once wrote a billing system for an law firm back in 1991 that was entirely written in WordPerfect macros (prior to their being swallowed by Corel). That was the cap on the productivity suite I created (again, using WP Macros) which autoformatted all legal pleadings, letters, etc. which allowed them to save thousands of dollars per quarter on pre-printed forms and papers.
damn.. looks like the fucktards set up a throttle.
Too bad; I've got a nice, powerful, high-bandwidth server sitting around forgotten in a back corner of a co-lo facility doing nothing but serving a long-defunct website and listening for my SSH requests....
"To say that his claims are lies is to say that he did not genuinely believe in the reliability of his sources. You can't even prove that he didn't have good reason to believe them."
Two words:
1. Uranium 2. Niger
The President himself presented this "proof" to the UN days before Powell's speech. Since that was a known lie (even the CIA tried to get him to drop that blurb from the speech, citing lack of credibility), what's to say that most or all of the "evidence" being offered was known to be of dubious quality?
How deep would you like to dig this hole? I've got a plenty big shovel for you, m'friend.
" The Bush Administration did not claim that it had "incontrovertable proof" of the weapon's existance. I'd ask you to produce a quote to support that statement, but I know that you can't."
You ask, and I provide. Here is Colin Powell's speech to the UN, the same where he showed some grainy images of a jet, a few satellite images, and other out-of-context tidbits of information.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm
I'll point out just one of the quotes from the above speech, should you be too busy to read it:
"Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction, to keep them from being found by inspectors. While we were here in this Council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.
Most of the launchers and warheads had been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection."
I haven't seen anything about these weapons since we 0wn3d Baghdad; not even on (presumably your favorite news station) Fox. In fact, all I heard was the Administration try to downplay the failure by saying they were really talking about the "program to produce WMD". That wasn't what Powell brought to the UN...
Now, you can claim all you want about "good faith". But my empirical evidence trumps your theoretical evidence every day, all day.
Nice try. However, your quote actually further proves my point. While the rest of the world, via the UN, was requesting we wait until the renewed inspections were finished, Bush went ahead with his war plans. Hans Blix publically stated that he hadn't found anything, but was sure that with a little more time he and his team could prove one way or another the actual status of the Iraqi WMD program.
So they got a few more weeks which allowed the Administration to further justify the run-up to a pre-determined outcome.
The invasion was not launched because of the "threat of rebuilding". It was launched because the Administration maintained it had incontrovertable proof of the existence of these weapons, and knew where they were.
So here we are, some months later, with full access to the entire country, and no weapons are found. We found some dated papers, a couple of trailers of dubious purpose, and some rusty bits of a long-buried centrifuge.
That does not equal absolute existence. That tells me that the Administration acted in bad faith, lying both to the American public and to the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry.. the "Star Wars" program died when the Soviet Union did. It was ostensibly meant to counter their massive ICBM threat. What is was really meant to do was (kind of a re-vamp of the 70s moon program) to force them to spend billions of rubles on developing their own counterpart (or a way to defeat it). They started this, and then finally, at long last, fell bankrupt under their own stagnation.
It was the best non-deployed weapons program ever conceived.
And it should stay that way.
This sounded like the same sort of crap Microsoft was spouting regarding Open Source and it's "viral licensing" a couple of years ago. If "Software Assurance" ain't viral licensing, I don't know what is.
I love the out-of-context "quotes" from Bruce Perens. Say, Love, the reason the code "didn't belong in Linux" is because the particular platform for which it was written was never used by more than ten people, and even they aren't using it anymore.
I gave up after page 1. I wanted to keep my burrito down.
I could do that, but that would pollute the case prior to judicial ruling.
Please just buy a license to protect your ability to further discuss Dr. Nobel. and his "weapon to end all war".
All mention of diatomaceous earth and nitroglycerine compounds are clearly a derivative work of my post and are therefore subject to my license.
Hey.. you ripped that idea from my post in the previous story, thereby violating my IP. You owe me $699. This offer is good until October 13, 2003.
Oh man.. so she has Scientology to blame for her hair?
I'd sue!
(and I liked Gretta when she was on CNN.. too bad she sold her soul to Beelzebub O'Reilly).
I love the blurb at the end listing Everest as one of the supposed volcanoes Xenu used to turn the thetans into nuke-dust.
Last I checked, Everest was not volcanic nor ever was.
However, simple facts like that shouldn't bother a Scientolojerk - after all, it's all an implant, right?
Damn me and my fat-finger ways. Good thing I don't write contracts.
oh yeah, I think the English Longbow also bore that moniker ("the weapon to end all wars").
I can't wait until the Centaurians show up in orbit to drop Mass Drivers on the planet...
Heh.. yeah, really.
Didn't Alfred Nobel invent the "weapon to end all wars"? That weapon was called "dynamite". It can be used for everything from blowing holes in enemy fortifications to blowing dead tree stumps out of the ground in your back-40.
But real estate prices near Edwards AFB in Kern County, CA, maintained their value. Residents who bought their homes ten years ago at $50,000.00 can now sell them for %52,000.00. Local real estate agents were actively advertising in the area for business.
Said Ernesto Sanchez (through his interpreter), "It won't affect my quality of life.. I plan on staying right here. Besides, trailers in the next nearest town have risen to $75,000.00, placing them still outside my range."
Another resident, Stf.Sgt. Fred Pierce, said, "Well, it doesn't affect me because I live on base. I'm also about to be transferred to a classified conflict zone in the Middle East."
Local herpetiles were unavailable for comment.
We do. The victorious party needs to request them in their version of the judgement which is submitted to the Judge.
How it works is each party will submit a draft judgment document in their favor to the Judge prior to release of ruling. The Judge will consider each draft and, if necessary, make changes. The prevailing judgement document then becomes the ruling after the Judge signs it. The document typically will include costs associated with bringing or defending the action (depending on which party prevailed).
However, in order to get to that point (final ruling), each party must have sufficient funds to pay the attorneys doing the research, creating the various pleadings and motions, and appearing in court to actually argue the case. There are also court fees associated with filing each particular document which concerns the case.
This costs money up front. If a party can no longer pay these costs, then either a settlement, release, or default judgment occurs (depending on which side drops, and the circumstances under which that party dropped).
If the case reaches final judgement, then the prevailing party is very often entitled to recoup these costs (sometimes in total, sometimes in part - this can often drag a case out for months with the parties haggling over what are justifiable fees).
In bankruptcy proceedings, the attorneys for the debtors must actually have a mini-trial to justify their fees to the overseeing court... those pleadings are sometimes hilarious as attorneys are sometimes force to justify their fees down to the nickel...
They were successful through a stroke of luck (well, two actually). First, IBM gave them the contract to supply the OS for their little project called the "PC" (with an expected product lifespan of a few thousand models) and second, Bill Gates duped Tim Paterson into selling him QDOS for nothing (had Paterson known it was going to be integrated into IBM's product he would have undoubtedly asked for an ongoing piece of the action).
The third stroke of luck, which had nothing to do with Microsoft, was that IBM opened up the specs for the PC which allowed multiple vendors to create competing products to enhance the capabilities of the system. This high availability of off-the-shelf items at the competetive prices required led many to choose the PC platform over the Mac platform which was more expensive to upgrade.
Once the market share of the PC grew, Microsoft went along for the ride. No one gave a rats ass about DOS, other than it was the OS which came with the computer.
We could go into the "theft" of the windows idea from Apple, but that would take pages.
Basically, Microsoft got a monopoly by forces outside its control. That's really fine and dandy; good for them. What's a big problem though is how that monopoly was MAINTAINED.
THAT is a big issue, and an ongoing one at that.
Microsoft is the chicken which grew up first and started kicking all the other eggs out of the nest.
Actually, the DOJ "won" the *initial* case. Then Microsoft appealed (would have appealed regardless, except in the extremely-unlikely event of a total vindication). During the appeal process the administration changed and the DOJ backed down.
However, prior to administration change, the DOJ was winding down on stamina. Remember, this had gone on for some 5 years. Once the Feds dropped off, so did the individual states (regardless of political affiliations).
"It's a shame though. BeOS was a pretty nice OS, even if it was unsuitable for the modern world -- a modern OS needs a real concept of security."
You say this while defending Microsoft?
Have you lost your fucking mind?
Have you actually ever really used a computer, or are you just hijacking your buddy's web browser which just happened to be pointed at Slashdot?
Oh, and to answer your other question: 90% of the folks buying PCs at some SuperStore want to use the OS that everyone else uses. Everyone else uses that same OS because everyone else could ONLY buy that OS on a new computer for years and years.
Ergo, Microsoft had a monopoly and used illegal practices to maintain said monopoly.
The average home computer user was immersed in Microsoft, was ignorant of the alternatives, and was too ignorant of technology to even begin to understand HOW to go about investigating an alternative. Microsoft enforced this ignorance.
Microsoft also made it economically difficult for developers to develop for other platforms (both by having the most ubiquitous desktop platform and by manipulating the license of its Developer Kit). Therefore, you see a plethora of applications developed exclusively for the Microsoft platform. Is it because the developers love it, or because it makes them a buck?
In short, you talk good game, but you really don't know shit. You'll notice I haven't opened the topic of Open Source (yet).
Actually what this is, is an admission by Be that they'd rather save something to pay off the investors and/or creditors rather than be economically litigated into the ground by Microsoft.
Remember folks, Microsoft's war chest is so great that it actually economically litigated the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE into the ground, forcing the Feds and multiple individual States to "settle" for a bag of peanut shells and a waggling finger.
If you can keep a court case going by filing motion after motion, continuance after continuance, and then appeal after appeal, eventually the other party will run out of money or lose interest and go away.
Basically, during a conference call between Be's lawyers and Microsoft's lawyers, the group representing Microsoft told the group representing Be that they were prepared to spend at least 2x the remaining assets of Be to "defend themselves" and wouldn't it be in the best interests of Be to obtain *something* to return to the poor shareholders rather than see it all turn to dust with nothing in return.
You run out of money, you run out of lawyers... that's a simple and sad fact.
I've been party to such conference calls (on both sides). It's a dirty, pathetic business.
Or SCOacholy:
"My name is Darlmandius, Clown of Clowns!
Look upon my lawsuits, Oh Linux, and despair!"
ok ok.. I'll shut up now.
(but I do remember being snuck into that Atari game room as a kid and spending a few glorious hours...)
Well.. I once wrote a billing system for an law firm back in 1991 that was entirely written in WordPerfect macros (prior to their being swallowed by Corel). That was the cap on the productivity suite I created (again, using WP Macros) which autoformatted all legal pleadings, letters, etc. which allowed them to save thousands of dollars per quarter on pre-printed forms and papers.
That was an interesting project...
damn.. looks like the fucktards set up a throttle.
Too bad; I've got a nice, powerful, high-bandwidth server sitting around forgotten in a back corner of a co-lo facility doing nothing but serving a long-defunct website and listening for my SSH requests....
But it sure as hell puts a large taint on the rest of it...
"To say that his claims are lies is to say that he did not genuinely believe in the reliability of his sources. You can't even prove that he didn't have good reason to believe them."
Two words:
1. Uranium
2. Niger
The President himself presented this "proof" to the UN days before Powell's speech. Since that was a known lie (even the CIA tried to get him to drop that blurb from the speech, citing lack of credibility), what's to say that most or all of the "evidence" being offered was known to be of dubious quality?
How deep would you like to dig this hole? I've got a plenty big shovel for you, m'friend.
" The Bush Administration did not claim that it had "incontrovertable proof" of the weapon's existance. I'd ask you to produce a quote to support that statement, but I know that you can't."
m
You ask, and I provide. Here is Colin Powell's speech to the UN, the same where he showed some grainy images of a jet, a few satellite images, and other out-of-context tidbits of information.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.ht
I'll point out just one of the quotes from the above speech, should you be too busy to read it:
"Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction, to keep them from being found by inspectors. While we were here in this Council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.
Most of the launchers and warheads had been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection."
I haven't seen anything about these weapons since we 0wn3d Baghdad; not even on (presumably your favorite news station) Fox. In fact, all I heard was the Administration try to downplay the failure by saying they were really talking about the "program to produce WMD". That wasn't what Powell brought to the UN...
Now, you can claim all you want about "good faith". But my empirical evidence trumps your theoretical evidence every day, all day.
And the typical Republican name-calling ensues.
How fitting.
Nice try. However, your quote actually further proves my point. While the rest of the world, via the UN, was requesting we wait until the renewed inspections were finished, Bush went ahead with his war plans. Hans Blix publically stated that he hadn't found anything, but was sure that with a little more time he and his team could prove one way or another the actual status of the Iraqi WMD program.
So they got a few more weeks which allowed the Administration to further justify the run-up to a pre-determined outcome.
The invasion was not launched because of the "threat of rebuilding". It was launched because the Administration maintained it had incontrovertable proof of the existence of these weapons, and knew where they were.
So here we are, some months later, with full access to the entire country, and no weapons are found. We found some dated papers, a couple of trailers of dubious purpose, and some rusty bits of a long-buried centrifuge.
That does not equal absolute existence. That tells me that the Administration acted in bad faith, lying both to the American public and to the world.
Do you comprehend THAT?
I think that explains the Platypus...
Rene' Descartes walked into a bar. The bartender shouted to him, "Hey Rene'! How about a drink!"
Descartes replied, "I think not.."
Then he disappeared.