"Microsoft has attributed the rise in earnings to increased server sales (where *nix-based systems are supposed to be doing well) and more XBox units being sold. For a company that most Slashdotters would say is on the decline, Microsoft sure has weird financial results!"
Yeah - and Linux will do $35 billion over the next few years.
That's $35 billion Microsoft will NOT get...
The predictions stand that Linux will first take out proprietary UNIX systems on the server side, then roll back Microsoft on the server side, then take the desktop.
Have a nice day, moron.
Is that all you got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
ElBaradei is supported by the UN and virtually every nation in the world except the US.
A recent article said that even the US's closest allies - Australia and Britain - BOTH refused to support the US attempt to get rid of him.
The reason the US doesn't like him is because he refuses to fudge evidence that Iran has nuclear weapons and he has pointed out that Israel needs to be inspected for its nuclear arsenal.
Bush is presently flying US military aircraft into Iranian airspace to probe their radar systems, inserting the M.E.K. terrorist group - that's right, we're using a group listed as TERRORISTS - into Iranian territory from both Iraq and Pakistan as well as sending Special Forces into Iran to search for Iranian nuclear facilities. All this is preparatory to an Israel-sponsored attack on Iran which will widen the Middle East war dramatically and result in thousands more US troops dying and scores or hundreds of thousands more civilians dying.
Fortunately, this may not occur - because before the US gets involved in Iran, the Iraqis are likely to send the US fleeing from Iraq with its tail between its legs. That disastrous defeat will either sour the US public on any further military adventurism - or so mess up the military it will be another two years before they can try it again...
Nobody said we shouldn't do what is necessary to be efficient and correct in our current technological capabilities.
That said, remember Malthus - he was wrong, and people who predict catastrophe in 100 years are going to be wrong, too. Remember Paul Erhlich? He predicted most of the world would be starving NOW if we didn't immediately kill off three or four billion people to reduce the Earth's population to five hundred million tops. That was literally crank literature - but he spent more time on the late Johnny Carson's talk show than Tiny Tim did...
I get criticized for predicting things will be solved - why is it nobody gets criticized for predicting chaos that never seems to happen?
I'll tell you why - because people want to believe chaos will happen first because it makes things interesting, and second because then they can proclaim that if we all do things "their way", we can avoid the catastrophe - and incidentally put them in charge.
The same people who criticize extending technological progress on a linear or exponential scale gleefully accept putting problems on the same scale without any regard for the effects of economics or technology.
I got my copy of Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 98 from an MSDN developer who pays for ten seats for every MS OS there is. He gave me one of his seats, since he's a solo developer.
So now if I register these OS's, what does Microsoft do about that? Technically, they're already registered and any of up to ten different people could be using them.
I got my Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 from the MSDNAA program, so they're in the clear. Even if I stop being a student, according to their FAQ, I still license that software.
that Bill Gates complaints about OSS people being "communists" may have been related to IBM's sale of the PC Division to Lenovo as an end-run around Microsoft to penetrate the Chinese PC market - which is obviously potentially far larger than the US market.
Not to mention that the Chinese are likely to be running Linux rather than Windows...
And we all know how Gates has the ear of the Bush Administration...
"Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity."
Let's see if Gates can - as the "richest man in the world" - who only donated $3 million for tsunami relief - match Sandra Bullock - who is far from the richest woman in the world - who donated one million dollars on her own. Anyone for "The Net" - a movie about an egregious computer billionaire who ended up in handcuffs at the end of the movie?
Let's see, the Gates Foundation has maybe TWENTY BILLION in the bank - which they are using to buy stock in places like Cox Communications - so that means Gates' $750 million is less than one-twentieth - 5% - of the value of the Foundation... Anybody want to bet the Foundation's untaxable income this year exceeds 5%?
Meanwhile, Gates - and Microsoft - gets a PR tick the same day it's reported they are dropping their appeal of the EU requirement that they strip their media player out of Windows because of monopoly status...
Wrong. A free market would not allow monopolies because there would be no such thing as corporations - which are creatures created by the state.
You can't blame Microsoft for the idiots who buy their crap - who are mostly morons working for corporations. You can blame Microsoft for making crap and using people's idiocy as a marketing tool.
As for monopoly "meaning" excessive profits, you need to look at the definition of monopolies in economic texts, not the dictionary. The point of all economic activity is to achieve monopoly profit. As it stands, it's not possible to do it except for a short period of time because those profits attract competition. The only way to prevent competition is by legal coercion - or in the case of Microsoft, coercive contracts. However, coercive contracts again depend on idiots not taking action which is in their long-term best interests.
You don't have to make the same product as Microsoft to compete - Linux has proven that. And that's standard economics as well. A different product that does the same job - or a completely different job that obviates the first one - can also compete. This is another reason why monopolies can't exist without coercion.
In any event, it's all irrelevant. Nanotechnology will obviate the entire human economic structure in the next 50-100 years - not to mention humans themselves - so the issues will be moot.
You missed my point. I was NOT agreeing with the poster I responded to - I was pointing out that what he viewed as bad was actually good. Either that or he was being sarcastic himself...
In other words, if I believe that Iraq was behind 9/11 and has WMDs, I'm responsible if I go there and murder Iraqi civilians for what turns out to be no reason?
I'll buy that...
In other words, allowing oneself to be brainwashed into believing bullshit and killing people while under this influence (such as the Inquisition, and, well, most of the history of the Christian Church) is justification for being punished.
Actually, I don't believe in "punishment". If some brainwashed asshole gets in my face, he's going to die. Period. I don't care if he's under the influence of alcohol, pot, DMT, Twinkies - or the Koran - or the Bible - or the Torah - or the Constitution of the United States.
Any monkey boy who has a problem with that can "bring it on".
This legal approach has been done in any number of jurisdictions, and it usually works. The amount of porn available in ANY community is sufficiently large to ensure that ANY porn store is "within community standards".
I like the part about upholding morality is not even an interest of the state. Actually, the state is very interested in upholding "morality" since "morality" is nothing more than a set of (irrational) rules enforced by guilt - and the state loves guilt as a controlling mechanism for the population. They like it almost as much as religion does.
Somebody send a few million copies to George W. Bush at www.whitehouse.gov...or has that URL been changed to www.brownhouse.gov...?
Somebody comes into your little town, kills the only decent auto mechanic and takes over the business, charging insane prices for utterly incompetent work.
Everybody else in town becomes a "home auto mechanic" to cope. A couple gas station owners start charging to fix cars.
This is a "benefit" of monopoly?
Well, yeah, the fact of the matter is that a monopoly can't exist without government coercion. Because a monopoly by definition means excessive profits, which causes competitors (including producers of other products which compete in function with the monopolized product) to enter the market in search of the same monopoly profit.
So in that sense, MS is an asset to the world - but ONLY if it eventually gets knocked off and replaced by something better.
Saying that we need to keep it around for this "benefit" is basically saying we need murderers and rapists around to keep us "alert".
The case can be made but it doesn't sound so good phrased like that, does it?
is the one I think it is (and it may not be), the FBI has good reason to hide its records of that death.
The inmate was beaten to death by two guards. The BOP refused access to the site by the Oklahoma City coroner who got a court order and went in anyway. Using blood detection instruments that illuminate blood stains, the word was the "cell lit up like a Christmas tree." The FBI was called in, then proceeded to cover up the case by removing the bloodstained prison clothes and throwing them in the trunk of an agent's car, who proceeded to drive around with them for a month until he had to complain to his supervisor that the clothes were "stinking up his car". The DOJ called the Oklahoma state Attorney General and threatened to cut off law enforcement funding unless the case was dropped. The family pursued the case which eventually wound up on federal court. There, the judge decided that despite the FACTS that the BOP lied about the circumstances and the FBI mis-handled the evidence, the inmate "committed suicide".
Yeah, right...US "justice" prevails...
This is not the first time the FBI has covered up instances of BOP abuse of prisoners as a favor to a fellow federal law enforcement agency. There as a prison riot in a midwest Penitentiary in October 1995 which entailed numerous instances of brutalization of inmates by corrections officers. The FBI came in and seized vidotapes of the incidents which had been made by the officers (the BOP mandates videotaping incidents so they can be used to defend officers when accused of brutality). When the FBI "crime lab" got through with those tapes, the quality was sufficiently bad they could not be used as evidence in the inmates' federal complaint against the officers. The inmates' legal team recommended settling. The officers walked.
Anything who thinks the FBI operates like Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (if you're old enough to remember that show) or Scully and Mulder (for you younger nerds) hasn't got a clue.
It doesn't completely matter whether the software is developed in-house or customized commercial software - what matters is does the software do the job, can be it be further modified without excessive expense as the business changes, can it be cost-justified against business revenue or savings resulting from its implementation - and a dozen other standard IT 101 lessons that most managers don't seem to have learned in college...
This guy is a self-promoter whose method is very common: claim that any one solution is totally wrong and the opposite solution rigidly applied is the only possible way to solve the given problem.
In other words, he takes his cue from George Bush...
Right now at City College in San Francisco, we run a standard university admin package which is a pain in the butt. On the credit side, almost no customization (other than that allowed by the package's internals) has been done. On the non-credit side, a fair amount of customization has been done. The man who did most of that customization is looking to retire and when he does, support for those customizations will go out the window. Without those customizations, however, the package would not be nearly as useful to the non-credit division.
OTOH, the library uses an ILS (Integrated Library System) package which is out of date, and has signed a contract with another ILS provider to implement a new one. Part of the contract is that ILS provider must provide integrated access to the college admin system (for example, use the patron ID to verify that the patron is a registered student). This has been tried before in other areas without success. Most companies don't like to have to go into their "standard" package and modify it to allow integration with someone else's package because it reduces their profit on the sale to do customization. So the salesman sells the package by promising integration in the contract, then the company backs out or waters the integration requirement down in order to save their profit on the sale.
In this respect, OSS is much better since the money you end up spending for customization - and you WILL spend that money one way or the other - takes less bite out of your budget than it would if you had to pay for the software first. Better to get the source code and pay some consultant (and in OSS especially, this "consultant" may well be the original developer) to modify it than either develop the entire thing in house or pay a third party consultant for modifications on TOP of the cost of commercial software.
Somehow, management doesn't seem to grasp the simple dollars and cents logic of this.
Basically the Magistrate denied certain aspects of SCO's requests and granted the rest mostly in order to forestall SCO's being able to further claim (baselessly so far) that they need more information to find infringing code and thus further delay the case.
IIRC the Judge actually said that in the order.
Also Groklaw reminds us that this Judge is not the trial judge and therefore can not hand SCO any sort of "win".
The Salt Lake City article is mostly hype. I wouldn't be surprised to find the author works for SCO...or his wife does...
Slashdot Mirror
"Microsoft has attributed the rise in earnings to increased server sales (where *nix-based systems are supposed to be doing well) and more XBox units being sold. For a company that most Slashdotters would say is on the decline, Microsoft sure has weird financial results!"
Yeah - and Linux will do $35 billion over the next few years.
That's $35 billion Microsoft will NOT get...
The predictions stand that Linux will first take out proprietary UNIX systems on the server side, then roll back Microsoft on the server side, then take the desktop.
Have a nice day, moron.
Is that all you got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
Reality check.
ElBaradei is supported by the UN and virtually every nation in the world except the US.
A recent article said that even the US's closest allies - Australia and Britain - BOTH refused to support the US attempt to get rid of him.
The reason the US doesn't like him is because he refuses to fudge evidence that Iran has nuclear weapons and he has pointed out that Israel needs to be inspected for its nuclear arsenal.
Bush is presently flying US military aircraft into Iranian airspace to probe their radar systems, inserting the M.E.K. terrorist group - that's right, we're using a group listed as TERRORISTS - into Iranian territory from both Iraq and Pakistan as well as sending Special Forces into Iran to search for Iranian nuclear facilities. All this is preparatory to an Israel-sponsored attack on Iran which will widen the Middle East war dramatically and result in thousands more US troops dying and scores or hundreds of thousands more civilians dying.
Fortunately, this may not occur - because before the US gets involved in Iran, the Iraqis are likely to send the US fleeing from Iraq with its tail between its legs. That disastrous defeat will either sour the US public on any further military adventurism - or so mess up the military it will be another two years before they can try it again...
Nobody said we shouldn't do what is necessary to be efficient and correct in our current technological capabilities.
That said, remember Malthus - he was wrong, and people who predict catastrophe in 100 years are going to be wrong, too. Remember Paul Erhlich? He predicted most of the world would be starving NOW if we didn't immediately kill off three or four billion people to reduce the Earth's population to five hundred million tops. That was literally crank literature - but he spent more time on the late Johnny Carson's talk show than Tiny Tim did...
I get criticized for predicting things will be solved - why is it nobody gets criticized for predicting chaos that never seems to happen?
I'll tell you why - because people want to believe chaos will happen first because it makes things interesting, and second because then they can proclaim that if we all do things "their way", we can avoid the catastrophe - and incidentally put them in charge.
The same people who criticize extending technological progress on a linear or exponential scale gleefully accept putting problems on the same scale without any regard for the effects of economics or technology.
Bullshit.
You ignorant fool, you totally missed my point.
Typical
"concerns kept growing at the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)"
are that Bush still wants to get rid of ElBaradei in order to pull off another pile of bullshit about Iran's "WMDs".
Fortunately the rest of the world - including the "Bush poodle" Blair - aren't going along with it.
The same assumption that we'll all be standing around in our undies one hundred years from now.
Get with the program. None of this is going to be relevant a hundred years from now.
Nanotech will obviate any of this being significant, probably well within fifty years.
Let's call the whole thing off...
I got my copy of Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 98 from an MSDN developer who pays for ten seats for every MS OS there is. He gave me one of his seats, since he's a solo developer.
So now if I register these OS's, what does Microsoft do about that? Technically, they're already registered and any of up to ten different people could be using them.
I got my Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 from the MSDNAA program, so they're in the clear. Even if I stop being a student, according to their FAQ, I still license that software.
If the administrator on his box doesn't let him install software, he probably doesn't want him watching videos on company time, either.
that Bill Gates complaints about OSS people being "communists" may have been related to IBM's sale of the PC Division to Lenovo as an end-run around Microsoft to penetrate the Chinese PC market - which is obviously potentially far larger than the US market.
Not to mention that the Chinese are likely to be running Linux rather than Windows...
And we all know how Gates has the ear of the Bush Administration...
Business as usual in the US of A...
If you can't compete, bring in the cops...
"Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity."
Let's see if Gates can - as the "richest man in the world" - who only donated $3 million for tsunami relief - match Sandra Bullock - who is far from the richest woman in the world - who donated one million dollars on her own. Anyone for "The Net" - a movie about an egregious computer billionaire who ended up in handcuffs at the end of the movie?
Let's see, the Gates Foundation has maybe TWENTY BILLION in the bank - which they are using to buy stock in places like Cox Communications - so that means Gates' $750 million is less than one-twentieth - 5% - of the value of the Foundation... Anybody want to bet the Foundation's untaxable income this year exceeds 5%?
Meanwhile, Gates - and Microsoft - gets a PR tick the same day it's reported they are dropping their appeal of the EU requirement that they strip their media player out of Windows because of monopoly status...
Get a grip.
If you ARE a monkey, you're the cause of the jungle's problems...
To solve the jungle's problems, stop being a monkey.
"which, between them, could raise sea level more than 10 metres over the space of a few centuries"
Within fifty (max one hundred) years, nanotech will render all of this irrelevant.
If you're not a monkey, you don't care if the jungle has problems...
Wrong. A free market would not allow monopolies because there would be no such thing as corporations - which are creatures created by the state.
You can't blame Microsoft for the idiots who buy their crap - who are mostly morons working for corporations. You can blame Microsoft for making crap and using people's idiocy as a marketing tool.
As for monopoly "meaning" excessive profits, you need to look at the definition of monopolies in economic texts, not the dictionary. The point of all economic activity is to achieve monopoly profit. As it stands, it's not possible to do it except for a short period of time because those profits attract competition. The only way to prevent competition is by legal coercion - or in the case of Microsoft, coercive contracts. However, coercive contracts again depend on idiots not taking action which is in their long-term best interests.
You don't have to make the same product as Microsoft to compete - Linux has proven that. And that's standard economics as well. A different product that does the same job - or a completely different job that obviates the first one - can also compete. This is another reason why monopolies can't exist without coercion.
In any event, it's all irrelevant. Nanotechnology will obviate the entire human economic structure in the next 50-100 years - not to mention humans themselves - so the issues will be moot.
You missed my point. I was NOT agreeing with the poster I responded to - I was pointing out that what he viewed as bad was actually good. Either that or he was being sarcastic himself...
"Tech boy genius neighbor: OMFG what did you do!?"
Wrong.
Tech boy genius neighbor: Ah hah! Now I get to charge him more for his cluelessness! Now I can afford to buy that hot new gamer's case!
God (Torvalds) bless spyware!
In other words, if I believe that Iraq was behind 9/11 and has WMDs, I'm responsible if I go there and murder Iraqi civilians for what turns out to be no reason?
I'll buy that...
In other words, allowing oneself to be brainwashed into believing bullshit and killing people while under this influence (such as the Inquisition, and, well, most of the history of the Christian Church) is justification for being punished.
Actually, I don't believe in "punishment". If some brainwashed asshole gets in my face, he's going to die. Period. I don't care if he's under the influence of alcohol, pot, DMT, Twinkies - or the Koran - or the Bible - or the Torah - or the Constitution of the United States.
Any monkey boy who has a problem with that can "bring it on".
This legal approach has been done in any number of jurisdictions, and it usually works. The amount of porn available in ANY community is sufficiently large to ensure that ANY porn store is "within community standards".
(Well, maybe the Amish would be an exception...)
"To say that the government have absolutely no place in legislating morality is no different than saying Anarchy is a great and wonderful thing."
Heh, heh, I got the joke! Nicely put!
You're right! All legislation is morality based!
That's why this is a great decision! Nice to see you understand it!
Now, if people could only understand the irony of a "judge" making this statement...! (Hint: A judge says, "I find you guilty" - not "you are guilty")
I like the part about upholding morality is not even an interest of the state. Actually, the state is very interested in upholding "morality" since "morality" is nothing more than a set of (irrational) rules enforced by guilt - and the state loves guilt as a controlling mechanism for the population. They like it almost as much as religion does.
Somebody send a few million copies to George W. Bush at www.whitehouse.gov...or has that URL been changed to www.brownhouse.gov...?
The New York Times has been attacking the Internet - including charges of fostering pornography and child molestation - for the last ten years.
All bullshit. Big politically controlled media scared of being replaced by true democracy in information.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Somebody comes into your little town, kills the only decent auto mechanic and takes over the business, charging insane prices for utterly incompetent work.
Everybody else in town becomes a "home auto mechanic" to cope. A couple gas station owners start charging to fix cars.
This is a "benefit" of monopoly?
Well, yeah, the fact of the matter is that a monopoly can't exist without government coercion. Because a monopoly by definition means excessive profits, which causes competitors (including producers of other products which compete in function with the monopolized product) to enter the market in search of the same monopoly profit.
So in that sense, MS is an asset to the world - but ONLY if it eventually gets knocked off and replaced by something better.
Saying that we need to keep it around for this "benefit" is basically saying we need murderers and rapists around to keep us "alert".
The case can be made but it doesn't sound so good phrased like that, does it?
is the one I think it is (and it may not be), the FBI has good reason to hide its records of that death.
The inmate was beaten to death by two guards. The BOP refused access to the site by the Oklahoma City coroner who got a court order and went in anyway. Using blood detection instruments that illuminate blood stains, the word was the "cell lit up like a Christmas tree." The FBI was called in, then proceeded to cover up the case by removing the bloodstained prison clothes and throwing them in the trunk of an agent's car, who proceeded to drive around with them for a month until he had to complain to his supervisor that the clothes were "stinking up his car". The DOJ called the Oklahoma state Attorney General and threatened to cut off law enforcement funding unless the case was dropped. The family pursued the case which eventually wound up on federal court. There, the judge decided that despite the FACTS that the BOP lied about the circumstances and the FBI mis-handled the evidence, the inmate "committed suicide".
Yeah, right...US "justice" prevails...
This is not the first time the FBI has covered up instances of BOP abuse of prisoners as a favor to a fellow federal law enforcement agency. There as a prison riot in a midwest Penitentiary in October 1995 which entailed numerous instances of brutalization of inmates by corrections officers. The FBI came in and seized vidotapes of the incidents which had been made by the officers (the BOP mandates videotaping incidents so they can be used to defend officers when accused of brutality). When the FBI "crime lab" got through with those tapes, the quality was sufficiently bad they could not be used as evidence in the inmates' federal complaint against the officers. The inmates' legal team recommended settling. The officers walked.
Anything who thinks the FBI operates like Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (if you're old enough to remember that show) or Scully and Mulder (for you younger nerds) hasn't got a clue.
It's the management that is the problem.
It doesn't completely matter whether the software is developed in-house or customized commercial software - what matters is does the software do the job, can be it be further modified without excessive expense as the business changes, can it be cost-justified against business revenue or savings resulting from its implementation - and a dozen other standard IT 101 lessons that most managers don't seem to have learned in college...
This guy is a self-promoter whose method is very common: claim that any one solution is totally wrong and the opposite solution rigidly applied is the only possible way to solve the given problem.
In other words, he takes his cue from George Bush...
Right now at City College in San Francisco, we run a standard university admin package which is a pain in the butt. On the credit side, almost no customization (other than that allowed by the package's internals) has been done. On the non-credit side, a fair amount of customization has been done. The man who did most of that customization is looking to retire and when he does, support for those customizations will go out the window. Without those customizations, however, the package would not be nearly as useful to the non-credit division.
OTOH, the library uses an ILS (Integrated Library System) package which is out of date, and has signed a contract with another ILS provider to implement a new one. Part of the contract is that ILS provider must provide integrated access to the college admin system (for example, use the patron ID to verify that the patron is a registered student). This has been tried before in other areas without success. Most companies don't like to have to go into their "standard" package and modify it to allow integration with someone else's package because it reduces their profit on the sale to do customization. So the salesman sells the package by promising integration in the contract, then the company backs out or waters the integration requirement down in order to save their profit on the sale.
In this respect, OSS is much better since the money you end up spending for customization - and you WILL spend that money one way or the other - takes less bite out of your budget than it would if you had to pay for the software first. Better to get the source code and pay some consultant (and in OSS especially, this "consultant" may well be the original developer) to modify it than either develop the entire thing in house or pay a third party consultant for modifications on TOP of the cost of commercial software.
Somehow, management doesn't seem to grasp the simple dollars and cents logic of this.
Big surprise.
Basically the Magistrate denied certain aspects of SCO's requests and granted the rest mostly in order to forestall SCO's being able to further claim (baselessly so far) that they need more information to find infringing code and thus further delay the case.
IIRC the Judge actually said that in the order.
Also Groklaw reminds us that this Judge is not the trial judge and therefore can not hand SCO any sort of "win".
The Salt Lake City article is mostly hype. I wouldn't be surprised to find the author works for SCO...or his wife does...