"the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes."
He's wrong about the basics, of course - primate hierarchical social structure arises from basic primate (indeed mammalian) nature - in other words, the fear of death - combined with the relatively high (among animals) developed level of neurophysiology.
The primary characteristic of all living things (at least those with sufficient nervous systems and neurophysiology as to be aware of it) is the fear of death. That fear governs virtually every action of higher animals - especially primates.
Social behavior is almost entirely organized around avoiding being killed by other members of the social group and to a lesser degree organization of other survival behavior. This behavior takes the basic two forms of all animal behavior: fight or flight, aggression or submission.
All any morality does is attempt to set up a framework under which conditions and actions are specified to govern aggression and submission.
And there is no such thing as "morality" per se - except in the pure abstract conceptual sense. There is merely a SET of "moral philosophies" which differ (frequently radically) from culture to culture.
Read Georges Bataille for more insight on the nature of taboo and transgression.
The basic idea that morality results from primate nature is of course true.
Here's an equal truth: the earth revolves around the sun.
Now what do you do about it? Pat yourself on the back for being a "moral creature"?
That's all this stuff is intended to do - justify somebody's notions of morality to their benefit.
Meanwhile, the monkey shit keeps flying - all justified by the monkey's "moral code".
"Autocracies and constitutional monarchies can sometimes provide these freedoms better than democracies (e.g. Wiemar Germany, the French Revolution, the current Iraqi "democracy")."
Did you really want to include the "current Iraqi 'democracy'" in that list?
The problem with your thesis that "Simple, deliberate changes could begin to heal the rifts" is that NOBODY is making them. Without at the very least an immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and the firing of every neocon at the State Department, the Defense Department, the intelligence community, and then a radical retrenchment of the financial interests of most members of the US Congress, it simply isn't going to happen.
And none of the things I listed are going to happen, either. An impeachment trial of Bush would take six to 12 months to go to completion - and then they'd have to start on Cheney. The reverse would be the same. By that time, we're into the election season. Worse, by that time, Bush and Cheney can rev up the heat on Iran and start a war - unless Congress explicitly prevented them - which Congress has ALREADY REFUSED TO DO.
Not to mention that all Israel has to do to derail all of this is get permission from Bush to attack Iran itself. Israel would take a few missile hits and have to fight Hizballah again - so what? None of that threatens Israel's existence. Meanwhile, the US is dragged into the war with Iran and accomplishes Israel's aim of bombing Iran into the Stone Age - with all the comcomitant results I've listed elsewhere.
Meanwhile, none of that would have any impact on the continued efforts of the neocons inside and outside government, financed by Israeli backers, to continue to destabilize the world for their own ideology and war profiteering.
Face it - the system is too far screwed up. The wrong people have too much influence - and the rest of the country either doesn't understand HOW badly things are screwed up, or has too much self-interest in the current system to change it.
You want to tell everybody working for defense contractors that America's military budget is too big and we're starting too many wars?
Good luck with that.
Their jobs come first.
And if they don't, you can be damn sure their Congressman's campaign contributions come first. You want to start changing things? Ban ALL campaign contributions. Finance campaigns equally out of a fund.
How many years have people been trying to get THAT little bit done?
Our problems do not "stem from our current neo-conservative, ultra-nationalist world view" - that worldview is merely the current expression and logical outcome of the systemic problems inherent in the very notion of the state and in human nature.
And the historical consequences of that are known and inevitable.
Many of these people don't make their money selling "products". Many of these people already have plenty of money, and while they will always want more, they want POWER more than they want money.
Besides, when you have power, it is both true that you can always get money - and what's money when you already have what you really want?
THAT is why the rich are never concerned about "economy collapse" - first because there never is such a thing: there is always a way to make money regardless of the general economic conditions of everyone else - and if you engineered the collapse, you will know how to make that money.
And in the end, there is still the question of whether humans will cut their own throats rather than give up the ability to screw other humans. And I'd say that question is answered in the affirmative daily everywhere.
FEAR makes humans do really stupid things. And that fear frequently translates into greed and power lust. The rest follows.
It's a "small-scale conspiracy". A small number (relative to the population of this country or even the people in government) are actually influencing this country far more than they should.
It's like AIPAC and their support for Israel and war in Iraq and Iran. A small number of rich Jews in this country are pushing a policy which is rejected by probably 87% of the Jews living here, based on the polls. There's been a considerable discussion of this over at Talking Points Memo and articles elsewhere.
Another example is the neocons. A REALLY TINY handful of people in the US government and thinktanks outside it basically did a coup d'tat in this country. They were able to direct the course of this country for the last six years with virtually no opposition or analysis by the mainstream media and no control by Congress.
And after six years of utter disaster for this country on all fronts - military, economic, geopolitical, and even natural disasters - they are STILL IN CHARGE. While a few of them are facing problems in court and in Congressional investigations, they are still in office in the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the intelligence community - and they are still planning in detail another war which will certainly be FAR more of a disaster than the Iraq war.
Is that a "conspiracy?" Depends on your definition.
REAL "conspiracies" don't work like in the movies or fiction. They work in full view of everyone and rely on lack of comprehension and inertia and collusion in self-interest to enable their success.
"I, a concerned citizen of this country, was left feeling unsatisfied and betrayed by the very government I am forced to pay to support."
Welcome to - the nature of the state. You have just learned what every OTHER citizen of every OTHER country in the entire history of the world has learned at some point.
"I'm growing tired of hearing about how the democratic process will repair these evils. How? When?"
Never. No democracy ever has and no democracy ever will. Because democracies that reach this point are no longer democracies - if they ever were.
When you reach this point, revolution or destruction by outside attack are the only solutions left.
It's a tossup which one - or both - will occur to the US and when, but it is inevitable.
And you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until the war on Iran starts, and car bombs start going off all over the place here as the US economy sinks into the sunset due to quadruple oil prices and the Chinese dumping the US dollar. The Constitution is history. Fergeddaboutit.
The only thing you need to understand is: the people really running this country WANT THIS TO HAPPEN. To paraphrase the "feel good" movement, everything that happens happens for a reason - and it serves them (not us.)
But if you're smart enough (which I apparently am not), you can make it serve you, too...
Uhm, what part of the following don't you understand?
Agent: We're the FBI, turn over the documents or we'll get a warrant, trash your offices, and disrupt your business for the next six months looking for them. And then maybe charge you with "obstruction" and "interfering with a Federal officer."
And refer whatever we find to the IRS as well.
Yeah, your average corporate wageslave or corporate idiot manager is going to refuse...
At least some librarians have been known to do so when asked for library patron records. But they don't work for the phone company or a bank - where obedience is Job One.
You see "Smokin' Aces"? Remember the sceen where Ray Liotta is asked by his partner about whether there'll be a problem at the hotel getting access? He says something to the effect, you show them the badge, they bend over.
That's how it works. These companies are regulated and controlled by the US government - they do what the government says (unless it means revealing their own management graft or corruption or monopoly acts, of course.)
Be hard for Iran to have a nuclear war on Israel with no nuclear weapons or even a program for same.
Check back in ten or twenty years, because if Iran starts now it will take them that long to get a weapon AND a delivery system. (Then of course they have to figure out how to deal with Israel's nuclear cruise missiles from submarines - the second strike capability. Then of course they have to figure out how to deal with the US nuclear capability.)
Amazing how many guys carry one or used to. I went into the San Francisco Federal Building a couple weeks ago, and had to hand over my P-38 to be held while I was in the building since they detected it in my wallet! One of the security people was commenting how he used to carry one for years - except he had to put it somewhere other than his keychain since it kept digging into him. I carry mine in my coin purse.
Like I tell the Feds (when I go into the building with my briefcase which has a knife and fork in it which have to be surrendered - but they never ask for the spoon!), "You never know when you might run into food."
You can buy 'em in Army surplus stores for 50 cents to a dollar.
Re:But where was the bottleneck?
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I think the point was that if you use a single cable for both Firewire and eSATA, Firewire tops out at 800Mbps, whereas eSATA goes as high as 3Gbps. On a single drive, which is limited by its hardware and bus speed, it doesn't matter which one you use. When you have multiple drives on the channel, the channel capacity becomes the limiting factor, and eSATA simply scales higher than Firewire.
This is why there is more effort being put into manufacturing larger and fancier eSATA enclosures than there is in Firewire enclosures. You see ten- and 12-bay eSATA enclosures, not so many Firewire (and USB) which tend to be two and four-bay enclosures.
I wasn't making the distinction between drug use and drug production, nor which drug. I think most of the US public views Colombia as "the drug capital of the world". Perhaps that's incorrect, but the point was to make a joke at Microsoft's expense about how the free supplying of Windows on prepurchased PCs is the same tactic as a drug dealer offering a free first hit of an addictive drug (which cocaine isn't even technically addictive in the clinical sense.). No offense meant to any Colombian NOT in the drug trade.
Re:Multiple SATA Drives on a Single SATA Connector
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Backplanes in the classic sense tended to be for rackmount stuff. This is about external enclosures that aren't rack mounted. Although I see from a quick Google that the term is now being applied to SATA external enclosures as well.
But some manufacturers just refer to port multiplication without using the term backplane. I suppose there is a technical point which distinguishes port multiplication from backplanes. Presumably backplanes provide more capabilities than just port fan-in. I'm not that deep into the hardware to know.
Re:Multiple SATA Drives on a Single SATA Connector
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· Score: 1
A quick Google shows no such thing as a Firewire to USB adapter. Apparently this isn't feasible according to an article I saw via the Google. The only such adapter I saw via a Google is some thing designed to convert digital video signals from Firewire to USB.
I don't think there's any easy way to get large numbers of IDE drives in an external enclosure except of course for single or dual drives in USB enclosures. First, IDE is intended for internal use, much like SATA - except SATA being a serial protocol, you can find a way to extend that. IDE is parallel, which doesn't go very far. You can find PC towers with ten bays like this one . Then all you need is some mounting kits if your drives are 3.5" to fit them into the 5.25" bays.
Your other issue with trying to use an external enclosure for IDE drives is how to control them - you'd need ten USB connectors at least, or some way to fan the ports in like eSATA can. I don't think there are very many enclosures set up for IDE like that - most are for eSATA.
Like this Microsoft guy who's touting his "OS Vulnerability Scorecard" now...
He lasted about five minutes before everybody called him on it, even when he tried to derail the obvious criticism by ADMITTING he was a Microsoft employee.
He's "Yet Another Microsoft LIAR" (YAML).
Doesn't matter, though. They have, what, about 71,553 more working for Bill, last count I Googled.
Not to mention the unpaid shills here at/. and elsewhere, which probably number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
I was told once by a journalist that John Kennedy was known for making up facts in his speeches. He'd rell off some stats he pulled out of his ass if pressed.
In other words, like almost every politician, he was a professional liar.
That he got shot by a bunch of liars who then proceeded to lie about who shot him is, I think, called "irony." (Or maybe "leadony.")
"I am a Linux Zealot. But I also use Vista and have a Zune. Am I sort of some kind of schitzo?"
No, you're a Microsoft shill POSING as a Linux zealot.
Jesus, wonder when these guys are going to get a clue and DROP THAT STUPID LINE ABOUT LIKING LINUX! It's a dead giveaway that you're a Microsoft shill!
I mean, really! It's like Secret Service guys showing up at hacker conferences in suits with dark glasses and earpieces in their ears.
REAL Linux users heavily criticize their (and competing) distros AND Microsoft. Windows shills don't. REAL Linux users don't spend time SAYING they like Linux, they DEMONSTRATE that they USE Linux. It's that simple.
It's simply a dead giveaway that you're a shill to start babbling how much you like Linux before defending Microsoft or bashing Linux. I mean, can't you guys get a different script from the Microsoft PR department?
Excellent points which also refute the notion that Linux is the only place where things change so rapidly that developers can't keep up.
Back in the day (early '80's), I used to look at Microsoft language offerings like their early COBOL compiler. I used to think that Gates would lie awake nights listing all the things in the COBOL standard that WOULDN'T be supported - and anything left was what the compiler turned out to be. Compared to products like Ryan-Mcfarland and others, the Microsoft language products were ALWAYS more limited in capability.
It makes sense that they run with "Bright Ideas" if you think of Microsoft as a MARKETING company rather than a TECHNOLOGY company. They don't care if the "Bright Ideas" are either feasible or useful as long as they can be MARKETED. A half-baked technology can be sold to naive buyers like CEOs and CIOs (let alone consumers) as easily as a fully developed technology and more easily than a fully thought through technology can be sold to technology people.
"and consumers are learning to eat more healthily."
That I'm not so sure of - yet anyway. If it does happen, it will probably only be because people get tired of paying seven bucks for a Big Mac when they can get an Arby's roast beef sandwich for the same price (i.e., buy a REAL Mac). Or better yet, get a Caesar salad for nothing (Linux) and start losing weight.
Old news. How many times did they rename and rebrand their object broker technology - about five times, maybe?
Microsoft is run by marketing idiots - other than the one greedy bastard at the top. It's that simple.
Sure, you can find a bunch of (supposedly) "smart" programmers somewhere in the bowels of the organization. Somebody has to write the code - no matter how crappy, unreliable, and insecure the whole thing ends up being, most of the individual parts are probably more or less well-written as proprietary code goes.
But they're really irrelevant to what Microsoft IS. Microsoft is a marketing company run by an asshole.
Nothing matters to Bill Gates and the rest of Microsoft management except how to sell LIES.
Actually I just read an article where Ballmer says that SHAREPOINT is actually the killer app that they intend to use to retain control over their customers.
It's apparently considered to be more important than Vista at Microsoft. Apparently Microsoft intends to end-run the problem of open document formats by locking their customers into their content MANAGEMENT software. So it doesn't matter if the document format is open if you can't GET AT those documents without going through a Bill Gateskeeper (sorry, couldn't resist).
A reprise of the Word and Excel tactics - but on another level of technology.
Slashdot Mirror
"the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes."
He's wrong about the basics, of course - primate hierarchical social structure arises from basic primate (indeed mammalian) nature - in other words, the fear of death - combined with the relatively high (among animals) developed level of neurophysiology.
The primary characteristic of all living things (at least those with sufficient nervous systems and neurophysiology as to be aware of it) is the fear of death. That fear governs virtually every action of higher animals - especially primates.
Social behavior is almost entirely organized around avoiding being killed by other members of the social group and to a lesser degree organization of other survival behavior. This behavior takes the basic two forms of all animal behavior: fight or flight, aggression or submission.
All any morality does is attempt to set up a framework under which conditions and actions are specified to govern aggression and submission.
And there is no such thing as "morality" per se - except in the pure abstract conceptual sense. There is merely a SET of "moral philosophies" which differ (frequently radically) from culture to culture.
Read Georges Bataille for more insight on the nature of taboo and transgression.
The basic idea that morality results from primate nature is of course true.
Here's an equal truth: the earth revolves around the sun.
Now what do you do about it? Pat yourself on the back for being a "moral creature"?
That's all this stuff is intended to do - justify somebody's notions of morality to their benefit.
Meanwhile, the monkey shit keeps flying - all justified by the monkey's "moral code".
"Autocracies and constitutional monarchies can sometimes provide these freedoms better than democracies (e.g. Wiemar Germany, the French Revolution, the current Iraqi "democracy")."
Did you really want to include the "current Iraqi 'democracy'" in that list?
The problem with your thesis that "Simple, deliberate changes could begin to heal the rifts" is that NOBODY is making them. Without at the very least an immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and the firing of every neocon at the State Department, the Defense Department, the intelligence community, and then a radical retrenchment of the financial interests of most members of the US Congress, it simply isn't going to happen.
And none of the things I listed are going to happen, either. An impeachment trial of Bush would take six to 12 months to go to completion - and then they'd have to start on Cheney. The reverse would be the same. By that time, we're into the election season. Worse, by that time, Bush and Cheney can rev up the heat on Iran and start a war - unless Congress explicitly prevented them - which Congress has ALREADY REFUSED TO DO.
Not to mention that all Israel has to do to derail all of this is get permission from Bush to attack Iran itself. Israel would take a few missile hits and have to fight Hizballah again - so what? None of that threatens Israel's existence. Meanwhile, the US is dragged into the war with Iran and accomplishes Israel's aim of bombing Iran into the Stone Age - with all the comcomitant results I've listed elsewhere.
Meanwhile, none of that would have any impact on the continued efforts of the neocons inside and outside government, financed by Israeli backers, to continue to destabilize the world for their own ideology and war profiteering.
Face it - the system is too far screwed up. The wrong people have too much influence - and the rest of the country either doesn't understand HOW badly things are screwed up, or has too much self-interest in the current system to change it.
You want to tell everybody working for defense contractors that America's military budget is too big and we're starting too many wars?
Good luck with that.
Their jobs come first.
And if they don't, you can be damn sure their Congressman's campaign contributions come first. You want to start changing things? Ban ALL campaign contributions. Finance campaigns equally out of a fund.
How many years have people been trying to get THAT little bit done?
Our problems do not "stem from our current neo-conservative, ultra-nationalist world view" - that worldview is merely the current expression and logical outcome of the systemic problems inherent in the very notion of the state and in human nature.
And the historical consequences of that are known and inevitable.
Many of these people don't make their money selling "products". Many of these people already have plenty of money, and while they will always want more, they want POWER more than they want money.
Besides, when you have power, it is both true that you can always get money - and what's money when you already have what you really want?
THAT is why the rich are never concerned about "economy collapse" - first because there never is such a thing: there is always a way to make money regardless of the general economic conditions of everyone else - and if you engineered the collapse, you will know how to make that money.
And in the end, there is still the question of whether humans will cut their own throats rather than give up the ability to screw other humans. And I'd say that question is answered in the affirmative daily everywhere.
FEAR makes humans do really stupid things. And that fear frequently translates into greed and power lust. The rest follows.
"democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Exactly my point.
What hasn't been tried (except in small-scale or tribal conditions in the past) is NO government.
Actually, as a Transhumanist I have now accepted that NO social form of organization can work with humans, due to human nature - not EVEN anarchism.
It's not a "large-scale conspiracy".
It's a "small-scale conspiracy". A small number (relative to the population of this country or even the people in government) are actually influencing this country far more than they should.
It's like AIPAC and their support for Israel and war in Iraq and Iran. A small number of rich Jews in this country are pushing a policy which is rejected by probably 87% of the Jews living here, based on the polls. There's been a considerable discussion of this over at Talking Points Memo and articles elsewhere.
Another example is the neocons. A REALLY TINY handful of people in the US government and thinktanks outside it basically did a coup d'tat in this country. They were able to direct the course of this country for the last six years with virtually no opposition or analysis by the mainstream media and no control by Congress.
And after six years of utter disaster for this country on all fronts - military, economic, geopolitical, and even natural disasters - they are STILL IN CHARGE. While a few of them are facing problems in court and in Congressional investigations, they are still in office in the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the intelligence community - and they are still planning in detail another war which will certainly be FAR more of a disaster than the Iraq war.
Is that a "conspiracy?" Depends on your definition.
REAL "conspiracies" don't work like in the movies or fiction. They work in full view of everyone and rely on lack of comprehension and inertia and collusion in self-interest to enable their success.
Short answer to your last question: No.
"I, a concerned citizen of this country, was left feeling unsatisfied and betrayed by the very government I am forced to pay to support."
Welcome to - the nature of the state. You have just learned what every OTHER citizen of every OTHER country in the entire history of the world has learned at some point.
"I'm growing tired of hearing about how the democratic process will repair these evils. How? When?"
Never. No democracy ever has and no democracy ever will. Because democracies that reach this point are no longer democracies - if they ever were.
When you reach this point, revolution or destruction by outside attack are the only solutions left.
It's a tossup which one - or both - will occur to the US and when, but it is inevitable.
And you haven't seen anything yet. Wait until the war on Iran starts, and car bombs start going off all over the place here as the US economy sinks into the sunset due to quadruple oil prices and the Chinese dumping the US dollar. The Constitution is history. Fergeddaboutit.
The only thing you need to understand is: the people really running this country WANT THIS TO HAPPEN. To paraphrase the "feel good" movement, everything that happens happens for a reason - and it serves them (not us.)
But if you're smart enough (which I apparently am not), you can make it serve you, too...
Uhm, what part of the following don't you understand?
Agent: We're the FBI, turn over the documents or we'll get a warrant, trash your offices, and disrupt your business for the next six months looking for them. And then maybe charge you with "obstruction" and "interfering with a Federal officer."
And refer whatever we find to the IRS as well.
Yeah, your average corporate wageslave or corporate idiot manager is going to refuse...
At least some librarians have been known to do so when asked for library patron records. But they don't work for the phone company or a bank - where obedience is Job One.
You see "Smokin' Aces"? Remember the sceen where Ray Liotta is asked by his partner about whether there'll be a problem at the hotel getting access? He says something to the effect, you show them the badge, they bend over.
That's how it works. These companies are regulated and controlled by the US government - they do what the government says (unless it means revealing their own management graft or corruption or monopoly acts, of course.)
Be hard for Iran to have a nuclear war on Israel with no nuclear weapons or even a program for same.
Check back in ten or twenty years, because if Iran starts now it will take them that long to get a weapon AND a delivery system. (Then of course they have to figure out how to deal with Israel's nuclear cruise missiles from submarines - the second strike capability. Then of course they have to figure out how to deal with the US nuclear capability.)
to have "weapons of mass destruction."
Air strikes will be launched on 24 hours notice from the President.
When asked about the US-India nuclear cooperation deal, the President said, "What deal? We don't cooperate with terrorists!"
Meanwhile, oil shares rose on the news of imminent war with India.
Amazing how many guys carry one or used to. I went into the San Francisco Federal Building a couple weeks ago, and had to hand over my P-38 to be held while I was in the building since they detected it in my wallet! One of the security people was commenting how he used to carry one for years - except he had to put it somewhere other than his keychain since it kept digging into him. I carry mine in my coin purse.
Like I tell the Feds (when I go into the building with my briefcase which has a knife and fork in it which have to be surrendered - but they never ask for the spoon!), "You never know when you might run into food."
You can buy 'em in Army surplus stores for 50 cents to a dollar.
I think the point was that if you use a single cable for both Firewire and eSATA, Firewire tops out at 800Mbps, whereas eSATA goes as high as 3Gbps. On a single drive, which is limited by its hardware and bus speed, it doesn't matter which one you use. When you have multiple drives on the channel, the channel capacity becomes the limiting factor, and eSATA simply scales higher than Firewire.
This is why there is more effort being put into manufacturing larger and fancier eSATA enclosures than there is in Firewire enclosures. You see ten- and 12-bay eSATA enclosures, not so many Firewire (and USB) which tend to be two and four-bay enclosures.
I wasn't making the distinction between drug use and drug production, nor which drug. I think most of the US public views Colombia as "the drug capital of the world". Perhaps that's incorrect, but the point was to make a joke at Microsoft's expense about how the free supplying of Windows on prepurchased PCs is the same tactic as a drug dealer offering a free first hit of an addictive drug (which cocaine isn't even technically addictive in the clinical sense.). No offense meant to any Colombian NOT in the drug trade.
Backplanes in the classic sense tended to be for rackmount stuff. This is about external enclosures that aren't rack mounted. Although I see from a quick Google that the term is now being applied to SATA external enclosures as well.
But some manufacturers just refer to port multiplication without using the term backplane. I suppose there is a technical point which distinguishes port multiplication from backplanes. Presumably backplanes provide more capabilities than just port fan-in. I'm not that deep into the hardware to know.
A quick Google shows no such thing as a Firewire to USB adapter. Apparently this isn't feasible according to an article I saw via the Google. The only such adapter I saw via a Google is some thing designed to convert digital video signals from Firewire to USB.
I don't think there's any easy way to get large numbers of IDE drives in an external enclosure except of course for single or dual drives in USB enclosures. First, IDE is intended for internal use, much like SATA - except SATA being a serial protocol, you can find a way to extend that. IDE is parallel, which doesn't go very far. You can find PC towers with ten bays like this one . Then all you need is some mounting kits if your drives are 3.5" to fit them into the 5.25" bays.
Your other issue with trying to use an external enclosure for IDE drives is how to control them - you'd need ten USB connectors at least, or some way to fan the ports in like eSATA can. I don't think there are very many enclosures set up for IDE like that - most are for eSATA.
You CAN get stuff like Firewire to IDE enclosures like this one. That might do for your needs. Or this USB for IDE four-bay enclosure.
But most of the big enclosures I see via Google are for eSATA. eSATA is designed for this - IDE never was.
His time would be better spent whacking his dick with a hammer...
Like this Microsoft guy who's touting his "OS Vulnerability Scorecard" now...
He lasted about five minutes before everybody called him on it, even when he tried to derail the obvious criticism by ADMITTING he was a Microsoft employee.
He's "Yet Another Microsoft LIAR" (YAML).
Doesn't matter, though. They have, what, about 71,553 more working for Bill, last count I Googled.
Not to mention the unpaid shills here at
I was told once by a journalist that John Kennedy was known for making up facts in his speeches. He'd rell off some stats he pulled out of his ass if pressed.
In other words, like almost every politician, he was a professional liar.
That he got shot by a bunch of liars who then proceeded to lie about who shot him is, I think, called "irony." (Or maybe "leadony.")
"I am a Linux Zealot. But I also use Vista and have a Zune. Am I sort of some kind of schitzo?"
No, you're a Microsoft shill POSING as a Linux zealot.
Jesus, wonder when these guys are going to get a clue and DROP THAT STUPID LINE ABOUT LIKING LINUX! It's a dead giveaway that you're a Microsoft shill!
I mean, really! It's like Secret Service guys showing up at hacker conferences in suits with dark glasses and earpieces in their ears.
REAL Linux users heavily criticize their (and competing) distros AND Microsoft. Windows shills don't. REAL Linux users don't spend time SAYING they like Linux, they DEMONSTRATE that they USE Linux. It's that simple.
It's simply a dead giveaway that you're a shill to start babbling how much you like Linux before defending Microsoft or bashing Linux. I mean, can't you guys get a different script from the Microsoft PR department?
Excellent points which also refute the notion that Linux is the only place where things change so rapidly that developers can't keep up.
Back in the day (early '80's), I used to look at Microsoft language offerings like their early COBOL compiler. I used to think that Gates would lie awake nights listing all the things in the COBOL standard that WOULDN'T be supported - and anything left was what the compiler turned out to be. Compared to products like Ryan-Mcfarland and others, the Microsoft language products were ALWAYS more limited in capability.
It makes sense that they run with "Bright Ideas" if you think of Microsoft as a MARKETING company rather than a TECHNOLOGY company. They don't care if the "Bright Ideas" are either feasible or useful as long as they can be MARKETED. A half-baked technology can be sold to naive buyers like CEOs and CIOs (let alone consumers) as easily as a fully developed technology and more easily than a fully thought through technology can be sold to technology people.
"Microsoft are the McDonalds of software"
I LIKE that one!
"and consumers are learning to eat more healthily."
That I'm not so sure of - yet anyway. If it does happen, it will probably only be because people get tired of paying seven bucks for a Big Mac when they can get an Arby's roast beef sandwich for the same price (i.e., buy a REAL Mac). Or better yet, get a Caesar salad for nothing (Linux) and start losing weight.
Old news. How many times did they rename and rebrand their object broker technology - about five times, maybe?
Microsoft is run by marketing idiots - other than the one greedy bastard at the top. It's that simple.
Sure, you can find a bunch of (supposedly) "smart" programmers somewhere in the bowels of the organization. Somebody has to write the code - no matter how crappy, unreliable, and insecure the whole thing ends up being, most of the individual parts are probably more or less well-written as proprietary code goes.
But they're really irrelevant to what Microsoft IS. Microsoft is a marketing company run by an asshole.
Nothing matters to Bill Gates and the rest of Microsoft management except how to sell LIES.
'Nuff said.
"It's been 'build one that's good enough and market it as being better'."
In other words, as I've been saying, Microsoft does not sell software - they sell LIES.
Absolutely correct.
Actually I just read an article where Ballmer says that SHAREPOINT is actually the killer app that they intend to use to retain control over their customers.
It's apparently considered to be more important than Vista at Microsoft. Apparently Microsoft intends to end-run the problem of open document formats by locking their customers into their content MANAGEMENT software. So it doesn't matter if the document format is open if you can't GET AT those documents without going through a Bill Gateskeeper (sorry, couldn't resist).
A reprise of the Word and Excel tactics - but on another level of technology.
Hmmm...
Colombia...
World's drug capital - and world's Microsoft software adoption capital.
Hmmm...
Reminds me of the recent line:
A computer without a Microsoft OS is like a dog without bricks tied to its head.