No government employee should be identifiable as such - too easy to assassinate. All government business should be done in total secrecy and no one in the world should know who is running any government action at any given time.
"Again the PROCESS of reading an access database file is patented."
Can you point me to that specific patent? I find it hard to believe that even under the current stupid patent system, that one cannot even reverse engineer a way to READ a file format (without actually implementing the format to be used by the external software which is a different matter). I don't think even the DMCA can prohibit that - although some corps have tried. If that were true, there would be no interoperability with Samba or anything else.
You may be correct that I am not adequately experienced with manga that is not imported into the US. If so, if I am ever exposed to such, I will reconsider my views.
And I don't say that manga doesn't have good stuff. I HAVE seen some pretty good manga artwork - certainly as good as the usual fare in US superhero comics. I just haven't seen anything that is superior to the best of US artwork. I don't say it doesn't exist, I just haven't seen it or been referred to any of it.
If there's a Web site somewhere that has examples of what you consider to be top-notch manga art, drop me a link and I'll check it out.
Nor have I read entire series (although I did mention Lone Wolf and Cub, a moderately long-running series). No doubt the character development is much better in those.
And you are correct that character development in US superhero comics tends to be a long drawn-out affair with occasional rifts. It usually depends on a particular writer being given control for a long enough time to take his concept of the character somewhere.
That is one problem that you indicate manga does not have - frequent changes of writer and artist in US comics. This is a true problem that has pissed me off many times. I'll start reading a terrific story line with great artwork - and in a few issues, they switch artists and the artwork is crap. This sometimes distracts from the story arc so much that I have to stop reading.
Marvel had a terrific politically radical story line running in their Doom 2099 series in the '90's (the lead character was the villain Doctor Doom, one of the few villains to have his own series - several times in Marvel history - because he is so well liked), but they pulled the plug too soon - changing both artists and the editor.
Just recently they had an interesting story line going for another villain (Thanos), when the writer decided to up and leave due to "creative differences". The new writer so far has not done too badly - but it's a short run series, so it's hard to tell.
Whether the companies I named sell hardware is irrelevant. They also sell operating systems to run that hardware. And they all sell UNIX - which is the only reason they're not pushing Linux harder - they don't want to cut off their own proprietary UNIX variants (which are doomed anyway by Linux). So their competition is very relevant. Besides, it doesn't matter WHY they're pushing Linux - to Microsoft, it's still competition.
As for the Constitution, not quite correct. The US Postal Service is nominally a private corporation, but in fact relies on the existence of Federal law prohibiting anyone else from carrying first class mail. This makes it a state-sponsored monopoly and thus a true monopoly.
Patent encumbrances are a bad thing, correct. And I did mention that in my previous post as being a more monopolistic behavior.
However, there is nothing stopping someone from designing a completely and totally reverse-engineered Access database, regardless of MS patents. The data format does not have to be identical - merely the functionality (and even the "look-and-feel" since THOSE lawsuits were dealt with years ago). The only critical requirement is that there be an migration tool to allow extracting Access data to the new database (and there should be the same report generation and migration ease. Would be nice if it could interoperate with the rest of Office as Access does - this is doable but not critical as very few places do that kind of linking.) The fact that no one has done this yet does not mean it cannot be done. Offered cheaply enough to small business, Access could not compete.
Microsoft is partially a temporary "natural" monopoly (I put "natural" in quotes because they aren't there due to owning all of a natural resource, nor because they have the only source of certain skills) and partially a "quasi-monopoly" because of their restrictive contacts. They are still not a true monopoly.
You are quite correct, however, that every day they remain is one more day the computer industry does not progress. All we have to look forward to from them - despite billions of dollars that could be used to push computer science forward - is the belated discovery that file systems are inadequate for finding things, and the ability to write stuff on the backs of turned-around windows. This will be the net effect of Longhorn. Whoop-de-doo. I find it hard to comprehend why Windows boosters in the media think this will "raise the bar for operating systems" - especially when Linux developers have been working on the same thing for the last couple years as well.
If I had $50 billion, I'd have HAL 9000 running my company by Tuesday.
Suggesting that US comics are inferior to manga because they concentrate on the superhero genre is merely elitism. The issue is character development, plots and artwork.
I've yet to see a manga with artwork superior to the best of the US artists. That's a given.
As for character development, while many of the characters in superhero comics are one-dimensional, many of them have now been around for over forty years. That gives them a LOT of history to have to deal with - more so than any other fictional characters. And even many villains in US comics (from the Joker to Dr. Doom to Thanos) have undergone numerous character developments and reorientations. They have to, or they get played out. Suggesting that the characters in a one-shot or two-shot manga can compare to the history of Wolverine, for instance, is a joke. The only character I can think of in manga that might be equivalent is Lone Wolf and Cub.
As for plot, this is related to the character development. As the characters in US comics have evolved, many of the plot lines have emerged from their past histories and natures. These have been quite complicated at times (Wolverine is a good example here, too). How many manga have plot lines emerging from characters that existed in the 1970's? 1960's? Even 1940's, if you want to count Captain America (admittedly not the best choice since Cap is a bit more one-dimensional than some others)?
While manga DO explore many more issues and also more explicit issues than US comics do, this is mostly due to the US cultural limitations and legal issues surrounding the depiction of sex and violence (the egregious "Comics Code"). It's not an issue with the artists and writers themselves, some of whom have done private material much closer to manga than the superhero genre allows.
Some author once wrote about attending a meeting of high-level businessmen. He asked them if they believed that businessmen on their level conspired together. "Sure", they said. He then asked them if those above their level - politicians in Washington, for instance - conspired together. They said no. They didn't dare believe they could be conspired against because it would threaten their worldview.
It's merely another expression of the fear of death.
My question about obviousness was mostly rhetorical. I know humans can't deal with reality. Their entire history proves it. It's even been suggested that religious belief is hardwired into the brain, probably because primates with the imagination to view their own death couldn't survive without it. I don't necessarily go that far, but I wouldn't have any problem with the notion if it were to be proven.
The problem with that analogy is that the Linux developers are not the competition. Sun, HP, and IBM are the competitors. And IBM is far bigger than Microsoft. So you can hardly claim Linux is not a competition for Microsoft. Microsoft certainly views it as a competitor. Your argument is mere semantics.
As for small business, while they cannot afford retraining costs, that is true in either case. They are also small enough to actually be able to convert everyone at once. And plenty of small businesses have. So the issue is not whether it is possible, but how many small businesses are willing to try. And if Dell, HP and IBM provide the support, and Linux develops sufficient niche software over time, it can still happen.
All of that is irrelevant to the point, however. The bottom line is that Microsoft has no state support for, regulatory or other legal basis for its "monopoly". Therefore it is not a true monopoly. Any monopoly must be a coercive monopoly, unless it is a "natural" monopoly. And natural monopolies don't last because they breed competitors with other technologies or resources. Which is exactly the situation Microsoft faces with Linux. Microsoft has a TEMPORARY natural monopoly position because of the factors you cite and others. It is highly unlikely to last.
I'm assuming they didn't actually do what was said - they probably did what you suggest and discovered it wouldn't work. The extrapolation was that the 5,000 machines couldn't connect if they were updated.
?Do you think that there should be publicly broadcast pornography? Or publicly broadcast videos showing how to make bombs? "
YES, MORON!
What part of FREE SPEECH don't you comprehend?
And don't quote me some Supreme Court crap about "unprotected speech". That was bullshit when they said it and it's bullshit now.
And there is NO SUCH THING as "decency". That is just a cover word for "I don't like your opinion so I'm going to coerce you into not saying it."
You want "indecency"? How about lying about WMDs in Iraq so you can get thousands of people killed so your cronies can make money? How about ALLOWING (and perhaps even planning) an attack in New York that killed three thousand people so you can justify your "pre-emptive" aggression against other countries for your oil buddies? How about making fun of someone you had put to death in an execution?
No, you got a problem with Bill Clinton getting a blowjob, but wholesale death and destruction is no problem.
I did eight years in Federal prison for trying to stand up to the oppressors.
Now I'm waiting for the technology to do it right.
And yes, this IS Nazi Germany. Only the helmets have changed.
Oh, wait... Seen a US helmet lately?
The amusing and instructive part is how much the Israelis - the ones constantly hawking the Holocaust - are the behind this crap. The Zionists learned from the Nazis big time. Oh, wait, there were Zionists BEFORE Hitler. Never mind.
It's the morons who not only don't have the nerve to stand up to the oppressors but who actually support the oppressors who are truly disgusting.
"Last time i looked there was still a 1st amendment."
Unfortunately, not for long.
When the Federal Elections Commission can ask the Justice Deparment for permission to set aside the Constitution (of course, on Presidential order), how long will it take for the 1st Amendment to get trashed?
After Bush gets his Second Korean War going and the North detonates a nuke on US soil (or, alternative scenario, some Mossad-sponsored "Al Qaeda" types, supplied with all the dirty-bomb material they need from the stuff removed from Iraq in the last couple months by the US, touch one off), Bush will have no trouble suspending the elections until the "emergency" is over - which will be when the "War on Terror" is over - which they've already said is never.
Seven Naval carrier groups heading for the Taiwan Straits (just south of Korea) as we speak, and a flight of stealth bombers in South Korea - both allegedly for "training exercises" and Bush wants to suspend the elections.
What does it take to be obvious these days? Howard Stern?
I didn't say manga was categorically inferior to US comics.
What I said was that the best of Marvel is better than the best of manga. I've seen quite a bit of different manga. Yes, most of it has been in comics shops. If I don't see it there, where am I supposed to have seen it? Here in San Francisco, we have a large Japanese population and a large Japanese bookstore which carries manga. I have YET to see anything which matches Jim Steranko or Chris Claremont or several other top US artists.
As far as the rest of the US comics industry, while there have been many interesting comics in terms of plot or subject matter, most of them have had lousy artwork. Only Image and Dark Horse have made a moderately successful stab at matching Marvel and DC.
The fact of the matter is that only the top companies in the US comics industry pay enough to attract the top artists. Everybody else is starving or doing black and white because the companies they work for can't even afford color.
Ghost In The Shell was quite good as far as plot, but the artwork was terrible compared to the best of the US artists.
I reiterate: show me the manga that matches in artwork, color, plot AND character development the best work of US comics.
The best comics from Marvel (and occasionally DC) have always rivaled manga for plot and intensity and usually far better artwork as well.
Manga is seriously deficient in artwork. Most of them use the Japanese style of drawing bodies, which is considered simply bizarre in the West. That most of them are black and white does not help. I've read "Ghost in the Shell" and while it was better, it could not hope to compete with Jim Steranko, or many other US artists.
As for comics being "one-shots", most of the story arcs go on for months at a time, and many have been singularly important for the history of the characters. Show me a manga where the equivalent of the X-men "Dark Phoenix" saga is matched.
Apparently this is referring to retail barcodes. Barcodes are used in many other applications and there are many different kinds of barcodes.
It is likely the library industry will continue using Codabar which has a limited number of characters.
I'm working on implementing barcodes for City College of San Francisco, the primary impetus for that coming from the college library. So CCSF students will have a Codabar bar code.
Corporate users have lock-in because they don't want to re-train. But today the costs of NOT retraining are getting bigger. The retraining cost was always exaggerated anyway. Some corporations (at least smaller ones) are reconsidering. Dell and HP (and of course IBM) can accelerate that process by providing Linux at low-cost in new machines with more support.
I'm not saying it WILL happen anytime soon. But if it DOES, MS's quasi-monopoly is in trouble.
That was my main point. MS is a quasi-monopoly because it doesn't have adequate coercive power - all it has is dominant market share. Which is not a guarantee of the future. Which is why Bill Gates makes sure MS keeps developing new versions of Windows with even more proprietary lock-in technologies. It's all he can do to protect his turf. That and spread FUD about Linux like he's doing in Asia right now.
"joe user does not give a shit about design. joe users cares 1. that it 's easy to use 2. if his apps will work"
Both are true on Linux as well as Windows.
"Some people like to have as little crap installed on the system as possible, and would like to just have one unified API"
Oh, and this guy would "joe user", right? Right.
"Does it display my apps? Does it look nice?"
Let's go back to my first point. Yes, Linux does this better than Windows - certainly on the appearance front (unless you count all the pointless nonfunctional eye candy in XP - moving menus, I mean really...)
Windows is SUCH a bad OS that it can't even run NATIVE applications properly! It can't even run IE properly!
So much so that an EMULATION (yes, I know, WINE stands for "Wine is not an emulator - I'm just using the word as a simplification) runs software better!
Well, I agree with you that vendor lockin is the primary means of control of the market. But you can only have vendor lockin if all vendors agree to do that.
Once some major vendors break that agreement, as Dell and HP seem to be flirting with, your quasi-monopoly is in jeopardy.
Also, the big problem with any monopoly which relies on agreements between commercial entities (such as OPEC) is that there is massive temptation to achieve even more monopoly profit by breaking the agreement and seizing market share at the expense of the monopoly partners by undercutting the price.
Dell in particular - with razor-thin margins - is in a position to be tempted to do this by cutting out the Windows middleman and selling lower-cost Linux to its customers. While this is not a strategy now that will gain it any major economic advantage, once Linux becomes more well known to potential customers (corporations who want to save the MS fees or even home customers at some point), Dell will be very tempted to break that vendor lockin.
Other factors, as you mention, are involved, of course - replacements for proprietary protocols, as you point out, for example.
So Microsoft is still just a "quasi-monopoly" as it has no legal force to apply to its competitors - unless of course it goes the patent route - as it may well do. Doing that would push it more to being a true monopoly.
When I say "force", I mean the act of taking something that someone else would prevent you from taking if they were aware of it. This is force - or more precisely coercion. If you want to distinguish "force" as being direct application of force to someone's person to take something, fine. It's a braindead distinction in this context.
Of course, we could refer to Dean Martin in the move "Bandolero":
His bank robbers enter a bank where a customer is complaining about his bank loan coming due. The bank clerk says nobody forced the customer to take out a loan. So the customer turns to Martin and says, "Force? Me with a wife and kids and two hens looking for a rooster, and all this fool can say is force?" Whereupon Dino pulls out a gun, shoves it at the teller and says, "Never mind the hard stuff, we'll just take the paper." Then he turns to the customer and says, "This is force, mister."
Theft is force. Any seizure of property that is not yours is theft, force, whatever you want to call it. "Intellectual property" is not property - it is an oxymoron. And only morons believe in it.
Slashdot Mirror
You missed a few.
No government employee should be identifiable as such - too easy to assassinate. All government business should be done in total secrecy and no one in the world should know who is running any government action at any given time.
Wait for it...
Here it comes...
Oh, wait...
By God, I think he's got it!
/. nerd-boys have no clue?
Who said
(Me, I think.)
"Again the PROCESS of reading an access database file is patented."
Can you point me to that specific patent? I find it hard to believe that even under the current stupid patent system, that one cannot even reverse engineer a way to READ a file format (without actually implementing the format to be used by the external software which is a different matter). I don't think even the DMCA can prohibit that - although some corps have tried. If that were true, there would be no interoperability with Samba or anything else.
Of course you would be "aghast".
That's why you don't stand up to oppressors.
No nuts.
You may be correct that I am not adequately experienced with manga that is not imported into the US. If so, if I am ever exposed to such, I will reconsider my views.
And I don't say that manga doesn't have good stuff. I HAVE seen some pretty good manga artwork - certainly as good as the usual fare in US superhero comics. I just haven't seen anything that is superior to the best of US artwork. I don't say it doesn't exist, I just haven't seen it or been referred to any of it.
If there's a Web site somewhere that has examples of what you consider to be top-notch manga art, drop me a link and I'll check it out.
Nor have I read entire series (although I did mention Lone Wolf and Cub, a moderately long-running series). No doubt the character development is much better in those.
And you are correct that character development in US superhero comics tends to be a long drawn-out affair with occasional rifts. It usually depends on a particular writer being given control for a long enough time to take his concept of the character somewhere.
That is one problem that you indicate manga does not have - frequent changes of writer and artist in US comics. This is a true problem that has pissed me off many times. I'll start reading a terrific story line with great artwork - and in a few issues, they switch artists and the artwork is crap. This sometimes distracts from the story arc so much that I have to stop reading.
Marvel had a terrific politically radical story line running in their Doom 2099 series in the '90's (the lead character was the villain Doctor Doom, one of the few villains to have his own series - several times in Marvel history - because he is so well liked), but they pulled the plug too soon - changing both artists and the editor.
Just recently they had an interesting story line going for another villain (Thanos), when the writer decided to up and leave due to "creative differences". The new writer so far has not done too badly - but it's a short run series, so it's hard to tell.
Whether the companies I named sell hardware is irrelevant. They also sell operating systems to run that hardware. And they all sell UNIX - which is the only reason they're not pushing Linux harder - they don't want to cut off their own proprietary UNIX variants (which are doomed anyway by Linux). So their competition is very relevant. Besides, it doesn't matter WHY they're pushing Linux - to Microsoft, it's still competition.
As for the Constitution, not quite correct. The US Postal Service is nominally a private corporation, but in fact relies on the existence of Federal law prohibiting anyone else from carrying first class mail. This makes it a state-sponsored monopoly and thus a true monopoly.
Patent encumbrances are a bad thing, correct. And I did mention that in my previous post as being a more monopolistic behavior.
However, there is nothing stopping someone from designing a completely and totally reverse-engineered Access database, regardless of MS patents. The data format does not have to be identical - merely the functionality (and even the "look-and-feel" since THOSE lawsuits were dealt with years ago). The only critical requirement is that there be an migration tool to allow extracting Access data to the new database (and there should be the same report generation and migration ease. Would be nice if it could interoperate with the rest of Office as Access does - this is doable but not critical as very few places do that kind of linking.) The fact that no one has done this yet does not mean it cannot be done. Offered cheaply enough to small business, Access could not compete.
Microsoft is partially a temporary "natural" monopoly (I put "natural" in quotes because they aren't there due to owning all of a natural resource, nor because they have the only source of certain skills) and partially a "quasi-monopoly" because of their restrictive contacts. They are still not a true monopoly.
You are quite correct, however, that every day they remain is one more day the computer industry does not progress. All we have to look forward to from them - despite billions of dollars that could be used to push computer science forward - is the belated discovery that file systems are inadequate for finding things, and the ability to write stuff on the backs of turned-around windows. This will be the net effect of Longhorn. Whoop-de-doo. I find it hard to comprehend why Windows boosters in the media think this will "raise the bar for operating systems" - especially when Linux developers have been working on the same thing for the last couple years as well.
If I had $50 billion, I'd have HAL 9000 running my company by Tuesday.
Suggesting that US comics are inferior to manga because they concentrate on the superhero genre is merely elitism. The issue is character development, plots and artwork.
I've yet to see a manga with artwork superior to the best of the US artists. That's a given.
As for character development, while many of the characters in superhero comics are one-dimensional, many of them have now been around for over forty years. That gives them a LOT of history to have to deal with - more so than any other fictional characters. And even many villains in US comics (from the Joker to Dr. Doom to Thanos) have undergone numerous character developments and reorientations. They have to, or they get played out. Suggesting that the characters in a one-shot or two-shot manga can compare to the history of Wolverine, for instance, is a joke. The only character I can think of in manga that might be equivalent is Lone Wolf and Cub.
As for plot, this is related to the character development. As the characters in US comics have evolved, many of the plot lines have emerged from their past histories and natures. These have been quite complicated at times (Wolverine is a good example here, too). How many manga have plot lines emerging from characters that existed in the 1970's? 1960's? Even 1940's, if you want to count Captain America (admittedly not the best choice since Cap is a bit more one-dimensional than some others)?
While manga DO explore many more issues and also more explicit issues than US comics do, this is mostly due to the US cultural limitations and legal issues surrounding the depiction of sex and violence (the egregious "Comics Code"). It's not an issue with the artists and writers themselves, some of whom have done private material much closer to manga than the superhero genre allows.
Good points.
Some author once wrote about attending a meeting of high-level businessmen. He asked them if they believed that businessmen on their level conspired together. "Sure", they said. He then asked them if those above their level - politicians in Washington, for instance - conspired together. They said no. They didn't dare believe they could be conspired against because it would threaten their worldview.
It's merely another expression of the fear of death.
My question about obviousness was mostly rhetorical. I know humans can't deal with reality. Their entire history proves it. It's even been suggested that religious belief is hardwired into the brain, probably because primates with the imagination to view their own death couldn't survive without it. I don't necessarily go that far, but I wouldn't have any problem with the notion if it were to be proven.
The problem with that analogy is that the Linux developers are not the competition. Sun, HP, and IBM are the competitors. And IBM is far bigger than Microsoft. So you can hardly claim Linux is not a competition for Microsoft. Microsoft certainly views it as a competitor. Your argument is mere semantics.
As for small business, while they cannot afford retraining costs, that is true in either case. They are also small enough to actually be able to convert everyone at once. And plenty of small businesses have. So the issue is not whether it is possible, but how many small businesses are willing to try. And if Dell, HP and IBM provide the support, and Linux develops sufficient niche software over time, it can still happen.
All of that is irrelevant to the point, however. The bottom line is that Microsoft has no state support for, regulatory or other legal basis for its "monopoly". Therefore it is not a true monopoly. Any monopoly must be a coercive monopoly, unless it is a "natural" monopoly. And natural monopolies don't last because they breed competitors with other technologies or resources. Which is exactly the situation Microsoft faces with Linux. Microsoft has a TEMPORARY natural monopoly position because of the factors you cite and others. It is highly unlikely to last.
I'm assuming they didn't actually do what was said - they probably did what you suggest and discovered it wouldn't work. The extrapolation was that the 5,000 machines couldn't connect if they were updated.
?Do you think that there should be publicly broadcast pornography? Or publicly broadcast videos showing how to make bombs? "
YES, MORON!
What part of FREE SPEECH don't you comprehend?
And don't quote me some Supreme Court crap about "unprotected speech". That was bullshit when they said it and it's bullshit now.
And there is NO SUCH THING as "decency". That is just a cover word for "I don't like your opinion so I'm going to coerce you into not saying it."
You want "indecency"? How about lying about WMDs in Iraq so you can get thousands of people killed so your cronies can make money? How about ALLOWING (and perhaps even planning) an attack in New York that killed three thousand people so you can justify your "pre-emptive" aggression against other countries for your oil buddies? How about making fun of someone you had put to death in an execution?
No, you got a problem with Bill Clinton getting a blowjob, but wholesale death and destruction is no problem.
Go suck Ashcroft's dick, clown.
Really?
/., apparently.
I did eight years in Federal prison for trying to stand up to the oppressors.
Now I'm waiting for the technology to do it right.
And yes, this IS Nazi Germany. Only the helmets have changed.
Oh, wait... Seen a US helmet lately?
The amusing and instructive part is how much the Israelis - the ones constantly hawking the Holocaust - are the behind this crap. The Zionists learned from the Nazis big time. Oh, wait, there were Zionists BEFORE Hitler. Never mind.
It's the morons who not only don't have the nerve to stand up to the oppressors but who actually support the oppressors who are truly disgusting.
Many of them post on
suggests SP2 will be a support nightmare.
One company tested the beta and 5,000 remote machines couldn't connect to their home office any more. The CIO said, "It will break the company".
"Last time i looked there was still a 1st amendment."
Unfortunately, not for long.
When the Federal Elections Commission can ask the Justice Deparment for permission to set aside the Constitution (of course, on Presidential order), how long will it take for the 1st Amendment to get trashed?
After Bush gets his Second Korean War going and the North detonates a nuke on US soil (or, alternative scenario, some Mossad-sponsored "Al Qaeda" types, supplied with all the dirty-bomb material they need from the stuff removed from Iraq in the last couple months by the US, touch one off), Bush will have no trouble suspending the elections until the "emergency" is over - which will be when the "War on Terror" is over - which they've already said is never.
Seven Naval carrier groups heading for the Taiwan Straits (just south of Korea) as we speak, and a flight of stealth bombers in South Korea - both allegedly for "training exercises" and Bush wants to suspend the elections.
What does it take to be obvious these days? Howard Stern?
I didn't say manga was categorically inferior to US comics.
What I said was that the best of Marvel is better than the best of manga. I've seen quite a bit of different manga. Yes, most of it has been in comics shops. If I don't see it there, where am I supposed to have seen it? Here in San Francisco, we have a large Japanese population and a large Japanese bookstore which carries manga. I have YET to see anything which matches Jim Steranko or Chris Claremont or several other top US artists.
As far as the rest of the US comics industry, while there have been many interesting comics in terms of plot or subject matter, most of them have had lousy artwork. Only Image and Dark Horse have made a moderately successful stab at matching Marvel and DC.
The fact of the matter is that only the top companies in the US comics industry pay enough to attract the top artists. Everybody else is starving or doing black and white because the companies they work for can't even afford color.
Ghost In The Shell was quite good as far as plot, but the artwork was terrible compared to the best of the US artists.
I reiterate: show me the manga that matches in artwork, color, plot AND character development the best work of US comics.
The best comics from Marvel (and occasionally DC) have always rivaled manga for plot and intensity and usually far better artwork as well.
Manga is seriously deficient in artwork. Most of them use the Japanese style of drawing bodies, which is considered simply bizarre in the West. That most of them are black and white does not help. I've read "Ghost in the Shell" and while it was better, it could not hope to compete with Jim Steranko, or many other US artists.
As for comics being "one-shots", most of the story arcs go on for months at a time, and many have been singularly important for the history of the characters. Show me a manga where the equivalent of the X-men "Dark Phoenix" saga is matched.
Apparently this is referring to retail barcodes. Barcodes are used in many other applications and there are many different kinds of barcodes.
It is likely the library industry will continue using Codabar which has a limited number of characters.
I'm working on implementing barcodes for City College of San Francisco, the primary impetus for that coming from the college library. So CCSF students will have a Codabar bar code.
The end-user will buy whatever he's sold.
Corporate users have lock-in because they don't want to re-train. But today the costs of NOT retraining are getting bigger. The retraining cost was always exaggerated anyway. Some corporations (at least smaller ones) are reconsidering. Dell and HP (and of course IBM) can accelerate that process by providing Linux at low-cost in new machines with more support.
I'm not saying it WILL happen anytime soon. But if it DOES, MS's quasi-monopoly is in trouble.
That was my main point. MS is a quasi-monopoly because it doesn't have adequate coercive power - all it has is dominant market share. Which is not a guarantee of the future. Which is why Bill Gates makes sure MS keeps developing new versions of Windows with even more proprietary lock-in technologies. It's all he can do to protect his turf. That and spread FUD about Linux like he's doing in Asia right now.
"joe user does not give a shit about design.
joe users cares 1. that it 's easy to use 2. if his apps will work"
Both are true on Linux as well as Windows.
"Some people like to have as little crap installed on the system as possible, and would like to just have one unified API"
Oh, and this guy would "joe user", right? Right.
"Does it display my apps?
Does it look nice?"
Let's go back to my first point. Yes, Linux does this better than Windows - certainly on the appearance front (unless you count all the pointless nonfunctional eye candy in XP - moving menus, I mean really...)
That's an excellent point.
Windows is SUCH a bad OS that it can't even run NATIVE applications properly! It can't even run IE properly!
So much so that an EMULATION (yes, I know, WINE stands for "Wine is not an emulator - I'm just using the word as a simplification) runs software better!
It doesn't get more ridiculous than this.
Gates is not merely wrong, he KNOWS he's wrong. He's just LYING. It's that simple.
He's like Bush and Cheney - "I keep saying there was a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda - because there was a connection."
It's pure self-serving lies. Nothing here to analyze.
Well, I agree with you that vendor lockin is the primary means of control of the market. But you can only have vendor lockin if all vendors agree to do that.
Once some major vendors break that agreement, as Dell and HP seem to be flirting with, your quasi-monopoly is in jeopardy.
Also, the big problem with any monopoly which relies on agreements between commercial entities (such as OPEC) is that there is massive temptation to achieve even more monopoly profit by breaking the agreement and seizing market share at the expense of the monopoly partners by undercutting the price.
Dell in particular - with razor-thin margins - is in a position to be tempted to do this by cutting out the Windows middleman and selling lower-cost Linux to its customers. While this is not a strategy now that will gain it any major economic advantage, once Linux becomes more well known to potential customers (corporations who want to save the MS fees or even home customers at some point), Dell will be very tempted to break that vendor lockin.
Other factors, as you mention, are involved, of course - replacements for proprietary protocols, as you point out, for example.
So Microsoft is still just a "quasi-monopoly" as it has no legal force to apply to its competitors - unless of course it goes the patent route - as it may well do. Doing that would push it more to being a true monopoly.
Why would that surprise me? Kerry's a politician. You think just because I don't like Bush, I'm a Democrat.
ENNNNNNNNGGGG! Wrong answer. You want to try for "double jeopardy" where the scores can really add up?
OTOH, Bush has much greater ties to Lay. The dollar amounts contributed to the Republicans far exceeded those contributed to the Democrats.
Hey, fuckwad!
As for "kid", I'm 55.
As for hiding, my address is 440 Eddy Street, Apt. 424, San Francisco, CA.
I did eight years in the Federal pen for armed bank robbery, including four at Leavenworth Penitentiary, the last two of those in The Hole.
Come on down.
Bring your buddies. You'll need them.
Kid.
You really are a moron, aren't you?
When I say "force", I mean the act of taking something that someone else would prevent you from taking if they were aware of it. This is force - or more precisely coercion. If you want to distinguish "force" as being direct application of force to someone's person to take something, fine. It's a braindead distinction in this context.
Of course, we could refer to Dean Martin in the move "Bandolero":
His bank robbers enter a bank where a customer is complaining about his bank loan coming due. The bank clerk says nobody forced the customer to take out a loan. So the customer turns to Martin and says, "Force? Me with a wife and kids and two hens looking for a rooster, and all this fool can say is force?" Whereupon Dino pulls out a gun, shoves it at the teller and says, "Never mind the hard stuff, we'll just take the paper." Then he turns to the customer and says, "This is force, mister."
Theft is force. Any seizure of property that is not yours is theft, force, whatever you want to call it. "Intellectual property" is not property - it is an oxymoron. And only morons believe in it.