Although we don't have enough data to come to any conclusions, a reasonable first assumption about the nature of ET civilizations that are no longer restricted to their own planet is possible. We can use human experience as a starting point.
They have somehow managed to not destroy themselves with nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Supposing that their civilization was similar to ours in terms of conflict and competition, the assumption is that means of dealing with conflict are in place. This is good news for us if they are more advanced than we are.
They are much older, racially speaking, than us (unless there is a breakthrough in energy right around the corner for us) and so probably have a bureaucracy from hell, making ours look like kids playing office.
So if they did decide to wipe us out or make us a dependent colony, then most likely the Emperor's order would be lost for a thousand years in the filing system!
Since, according to our current understanding, the Universe is between 10 and 15 billion years old, it also follows that the radius of the Universe (assuming it's spherical or circular) is between 10 and 15 billion light years. While some ET civilizations may no longer be detectable by us because of the change in transmissions, others will still be detectable. Why? Because they are far enough away that their transmissions have not yet reached us.
Remember those transmissions occurred in the past. They take years (or even millions of years) to reach us. Looking at the stars is looking into a time machine. We are not seeing the stars as they are now, but as they were in the past.
O'Reilly's "Essential System Administration" should be mandatory reading for all new sys admins.
"Oracle XXX: The Complete Reference" from Osborne is excellent for both sys admins and DBA's maintaining Oracle platforms.
"Open Computing: Best UNIX Tips Ever", also from Osborne, is good for sys admins too.
"Portable Shell Programming" by Bruce Blinn is pretty much a must have for anyonw who writes shell scripts.
Of course if you connect to and access a network that displays banners saying it's a private network then you were breaking the law after being warned. That's not really entrapment as far as I understand it. For example, if an access banner says something like:
WARNING: Use of the network is restricted to users authorized by XXXX only. User activity is monitored and recorded by system personnel. Anyone using the network expressly consents to such monitoring and recording. BE ADVISED: If possible criminal activity is detected, system records, along with certain personal information, may be provided to law enforcement officials.
Nobody enticed you to do anything. In fact, they did just the opposite and told you not to do it, and you did it anyway.
Up until recently I would have agreed with you. In the past months, say 10 to 12, I have noticed a steady increase in articles and opinions that don't extoll the wonder of MS. Generally I found 2 to 3 articles, and Dvorak's column, that deal with Linux, Mac, UNIX, etc. per issue.
I think PC Mag is trying to revamp a bit and follow the trend. Given that 95% of the consumer market uses Windows they're doing pretty good to have as much non Windows content as they have. They even review open source stuff these days, MySQL was included in their Database review a few months ago, for example.
Although I work in the Enterprise environment I still like to keep up with the PC/Consumer industry and PC Mag is one of the decent sources for that.
Hopefully Microsoft will once again change their.doc format, as they did from Word 95 to 97. Last time people were upset. This time, with a higher level of awareness of Microsoft's unsavory tactics and the high cost of MS Office, we will see an actual shift from MS Office to OpenOffice and StarOffice. Microsoft might actually do something good for the industry in its attempt to perpetuate its monopoly.
I wonder if the industry remembers the betamax vs. VHS saga. Betamax was a superior format for recording and playing video tapes for the consumer market. However, beta video players did not allow you to record. VHS did. Consumers purchased VHS in droves, making it the default format for consumer video tape. Betamax is completely unknown now and if you're under age 25 it's likely you never even heard of it. Consumers don't intend to pirate anything. They, by and large, are not recording music or movies for redistribution, but rather to play on their MP3 player, or on their VCR or DVD player. They paid for the original, or they recorded it from HBO (perfectly legal as long as you don't redistribute). With new DRM technologies it is likely you will be unable to use new electronic equipment to do any of that. Is the consumer going to go for it? I hope not
Find a pair of wire cutters. Find the ethernet cable connecting you to the network. Place the wire cutters approximately in the middle of the cable and squeeze the handles firmly until the cable is cut. There. Now you're safe.
But by pirating what you are really doing is keeping software costs high, and possibly limiting competition.
I agree with this statement, in the sectors of the software industry where there is still competitition. Where there is competition the margins are low and the prices reflect the reality of the cost of producing the product plus marketing, distribution and profit. However, where there is no competition, like the consumer desktop market, the prices are so out of line with reality that they actually cause the piracy.
Violating intellectual property laws is wrong, no matter whether pirating copyrighted material or pretending that you wrote code that is really under GPL. But, MS is obviously making a huge margin off of it's consumer software based on their budget surplus (they have over $30 billion in the bank). If you stop to think about it, the average consumer here in the US doesn't really have the money to meet these prices, let alone Malaysia. If MS were to lower their software prices, their actual sales would likely go up and their instances of piracy down.
\\Uriel said: "Another of my favorite MS FUD is that the taxes for software are a good thing for the economy,"
Microsoft must not study basic economics. Taxes are, by their very nature, regressive. They are not good for the economy because that is money that you and I (and our companies) cannot spend. Instead the government has it and uses it for non-productive things, like hiring people to make sure we pay our taxes.
If you have read the translations of the Peruvian legislation and the correspondence involved, the real issue is not that Microsoft won't be able to compete for government contracts in Peru. The way the bill is worded, all competetitors for government business will have to provide source code and allow the source code to be modified. This is the sticking point for Microsoft. The legislation is actually pretty fair, anyone can compete for government business, just show us the whole package you are selling us.
Imagine if a car dealer refused to show you anything but the outside of the car and the driver's seat. And you were forbidden to open the hood and look at the engine unless you took to the car to a licensed mechanic.
Microsoft claims that the cost of installing and maintaining open source is higher than the cost of installing and maintaining their products. In the MS scenario this means that the low/free purchase price is an illusion.
Of course, this is totally contradictory to the reports from many large and small companies who have implemented new systems based around open source in the past 3 years or so and can show that their TCO is lower than their comparable proprietary systems. Or even the fact that most commercial UNIX systems require about 1/4th the admin time of Microsoft systems.
2. File formats:
MS cannot change file formats with impunity without breaking compatibility with previous versions of Office. If they do make a change, they must allow users to save in the older file format... problem solved.
Remember when Office 97 came out and the file format changed between Word 95 and 97, but the extension was the same? Microsoft caught a huge amount of negative publicity and had a very slow adoption rate because of it. This comment is right on target. Of course, knowing Microsoft, they may not have learned from the past, so.....
Actually, in 1997 I bought an IBM Aptiva that was pre-loaded with Win95 and Lotus. Lotus was slow, didn't display MS Office documents correctly, and a general pain in the butt. I got it off the machine and installed Office 95. I'm not a MS fan, but I do have to interoperate with everyone else in the business world. Everyone I do business with either uses MS Office or can produce MS Office documents (Sun folks, for example, who often use StarOffice).
Open/StarOffice seems to be on the right track. My first looks at the product show that it displays and edits MS Office documents just about as well as MS Office, and it's native format looks quite good. I work for an computer services company and we have had serious discussions about replacing our Office 2000 installs with OpenOffice rather than paying for Office XP. This is the first time there has been serious competition to MS Office in about 6 years.
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Although we don't have enough data to come to any conclusions, a reasonable first assumption about the nature of ET civilizations that are no longer restricted to their own planet is possible. We can use human experience as a starting point.
They have somehow managed to not destroy themselves with nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Supposing that their civilization was similar to ours in terms of conflict and competition, the assumption is that means of dealing with conflict are in place. This is good news for us if they are more advanced than we are.
They are much older, racially speaking, than us (unless there is a breakthrough in energy right around the corner for us) and so probably have a bureaucracy from hell, making ours look like kids playing office.
So if they did decide to wipe us out or make us a dependent colony, then most likely the Emperor's order would be lost for a thousand years in the filing system!
Remember those transmissions occurred in the past. They take years (or even millions of years) to reach us. Looking at the stars is looking into a time machine. We are not seeing the stars as they are now, but as they were in the past.
You forgot Stranger in a Strange Land!
O'Reilly's "Essential System Administration" should be mandatory reading for all new sys admins. "Oracle XXX: The Complete Reference" from Osborne is excellent for both sys admins and DBA's maintaining Oracle platforms. "Open Computing: Best UNIX Tips Ever", also from Osborne, is good for sys admins too. "Portable Shell Programming" by Bruce Blinn is pretty much a must have for anyonw who writes shell scripts.
WARNING: Use of the network is restricted to users authorized by XXXX only. User activity is monitored and recorded by system personnel. Anyone using the network expressly consents to such monitoring and recording. BE ADVISED: If possible criminal activity is detected, system records, along with certain personal information, may be provided to law enforcement officials.
Nobody enticed you to do anything. In fact, they did just the opposite and told you not to do it, and you did it anyway.
Up until recently I would have agreed with you. In the past months, say 10 to 12, I have noticed a steady increase in articles and opinions that don't extoll the wonder of MS. Generally I found 2 to 3 articles, and Dvorak's column, that deal with Linux, Mac, UNIX, etc. per issue.
I think PC Mag is trying to revamp a bit and follow the trend. Given that 95% of the consumer market uses Windows they're doing pretty good to have as much non Windows content as they have. They even review open source stuff these days, MySQL was included in their Database review a few months ago, for example.
Although I work in the Enterprise environment I still like to keep up with the PC/Consumer industry and PC Mag is one of the decent sources for that.
Sorry, missed your reply the other day.
Hopefully Microsoft will once again change their .doc format, as they did from Word 95 to 97. Last time people were upset. This time, with a higher level of awareness of Microsoft's unsavory tactics and the high cost of MS Office, we will see an actual shift from MS Office to OpenOffice and StarOffice. Microsoft might actually do something good for the industry in its attempt to perpetuate its monopoly.
I wonder if the industry remembers the betamax vs. VHS saga. Betamax was a superior format for recording and playing video tapes for the consumer market. However, beta video players did not allow you to record. VHS did. Consumers purchased VHS in droves, making it the default format for consumer video tape. Betamax is completely unknown now and if you're under age 25 it's likely you never even heard of it. Consumers don't intend to pirate anything. They, by and large, are not recording music or movies for redistribution, but rather to play on their MP3 player, or on their VCR or DVD player. They paid for the original, or they recorded it from HBO (perfectly legal as long as you don't redistribute). With new DRM technologies it is likely you will be unable to use new electronic equipment to do any of that. Is the consumer going to go for it? I hope not
A really effective firewall:
Find a pair of wire cutters. Find the ethernet cable connecting you to the network. Place the wire cutters approximately in the middle of the cable and squeeze the handles firmly until the cable is cut. There. Now you're safe.
But by pirating what you are really doing is keeping software costs high, and possibly limiting competition.
I agree with this statement, in the sectors of the software industry where there is still competitition. Where there is competition the margins are low and the prices reflect the reality of the cost of producing the product plus marketing, distribution and profit. However, where there is no competition, like the consumer desktop market, the prices are so out of line with reality that they actually cause the piracy.
Violating intellectual property laws is wrong, no matter whether pirating copyrighted material or pretending that you wrote code that is really under GPL. But, MS is obviously making a huge margin off of it's consumer software based on their budget surplus (they have over $30 billion in the bank). If you stop to think about it, the average consumer here in the US doesn't really have the money to meet these prices, let alone Malaysia. If MS were to lower their software prices, their actual sales would likely go up and their instances of piracy down.
\\Uriel said: "Another of my favorite MS FUD is that the taxes for software are a good thing for the economy,"
Microsoft must not study basic economics. Taxes are, by their very nature, regressive. They are not good for the economy because that is money that you and I (and our companies) cannot spend. Instead the government has it and uses it for non-productive things, like hiring people to make sure we pay our taxes.
Imagine if a car dealer refused to show you anything but the outside of the car and the driver's seat. And you were forbidden to open the hood and look at the engine unless you took to the car to a licensed mechanic.
Microsoft claims that the cost of installing and maintaining open source is higher than the cost of installing and maintaining their products. In the MS scenario this means that the low/free purchase price is an illusion.
Of course, this is totally contradictory to the reports from many large and small companies who have implemented new systems based around open source in the past 3 years or so and can show that their TCO is lower than their comparable proprietary systems. Or even the fact that most commercial UNIX systems require about 1/4th the admin time of Microsoft systems.
2. File formats: MS cannot change file formats with impunity without breaking compatibility with previous versions of Office. If they do make a change, they must allow users to save in the older file format ... problem solved.
Remember when Office 97 came out and the file format changed between Word 95 and 97, but the extension was the same? Microsoft caught a huge amount of negative publicity and had a very slow adoption rate because of it. This comment is right on target. Of course, knowing Microsoft, they may not have learned from the past, so .....
Actually, in 1997 I bought an IBM Aptiva that was pre-loaded with Win95 and Lotus. Lotus was slow, didn't display MS Office documents correctly, and a general pain in the butt. I got it off the machine and installed Office 95. I'm not a MS fan, but I do have to interoperate with everyone else in the business world. Everyone I do business with either uses MS Office or can produce MS Office documents (Sun folks, for example, who often use StarOffice).
Open/StarOffice seems to be on the right track. My first looks at the product show that it displays and edits MS Office documents just about as well as MS Office, and it's native format looks quite good. I work for an computer services company and we have had serious discussions about replacing our Office 2000 installs with OpenOffice rather than paying for Office XP. This is the first time there has been serious competition to MS Office in about 6 years.