I have no love for Microsoft, but the whole antitrust suit based around Internet Exploder is and was total BS, plain and simple. The whole central argument against M$ was that Windows came bundled with IE, which automatically tanked competition from Netscape and others -- that's the biggest load of hooey I've ever heard. Let's look at OS's and DE's that come with their own browser, shall we... oh, right, er, all of them.
If someone wanted to go after M$ for antitrust type practices, they should have nailed them when they started strong-arming PC manufacturers back in the day, to the detriment of OS/2, etc. Any lawyer that tried to sue Google for bundling a browser with an OS would also need to sue OSX, every Linux distro, Unix, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm OS, WebOS, and any-other-damned-OS out there.
That being said, I'm speaking rationally, and we all know that rather than rationality, the litigious world runs on cocoa puffs and gummy bears, not rationality.
"The best you can ever hope for with BSD is an incremental return."
Unfortunately though, that incremental return may start to look a lot more attractive when factored against the monumental loss that patent wars with a company like Microsoft may cost you. Even if long term GPL-style licensing has a higher return, you have to survive as a company long enough term for that to apply. If Microsoft sues the bejesus out of anyone using that code, then companies will sacrifice that long term gain for short term stability, aka a BSD-style license.
That being said, I'm not convinced that a BSD-style license would be the answer here anyway, but patent litigation is not cheap, so even if it's a partial deterrent to closed source patents, companies may jump on it.
Now, my question to you licensing gurus: what does this mean for the overall Linux ecosystem? If Microsoft gets this patent enforced, are we looking at an MPEG style situation? Where distros start removing FAT support out of the box? THAT would truly be a disaster, as it's just one more hurdle for the average person to install and use Linux on a regular basis.
To put this in a way that will sound stupendously condescending: you live in a small market, your choices are limited, deal with it. That's one of the choices you make when deciding to live somewhere outside a mainstream market.
Why would an ISP bother setting up infrastructure so "Ma and Pa Kettle" can have broadband? Where's the return on investment? Too often people seem to think they are OWED something, when in fact they aren't.
As an example: my company started as a mac-only software company, it's what we did for the first 10 years we were in existence. Then we introduced a Windows version of our software that sold in tandem with the Mac version, opening up our options for selling software. When Apple switched from OS9 to OSX, we looked at the re-dev costs to move to a completely new software base (classic mode notwithstanding), looked at the fact that our Windows business was now 95% of our sales, and decided to drop our support for the mac platform.
The point? I still get whiny mac folks to this day bitching about us not writing mac software, "forcing" them to use Windows. Do they care that it wouldn't have been at all profitable for us to do so? Do they care that the 5% that were our mac customers weren't enough to sustain that project? No, because they live in the "me, me, me" world of their own private bubbles. They think that we are somehow OBLIGATED to provide them that, and that we are FAILING THEM because we don't.
Bullshit.
No one owes you broadband, and if you choose to live in a market where it's not profitable for an ISP to provide it, then don't whine. At least you have clean air and less traffic, should I bitch about that on my side?
But of course the Guberment is quick to agree with you, that it's somehow a 'right', so the whole thing falls apart in the end, and my tax dollars pay for you to have better competition./rant
Too many people act like my children: just because you are too lazy, unwilling, or incapable of learning or doing something doesn't necessarily mean the task is too hard or complicated. And far to many people get overly religious about their knowledge... just because you are so sure that the way you have always done it, or the "old way" is the "right way" doesn't make it so. Look, one of the most beautiful things about technological achievements is that, when done well, technology becomes something that integrates seamlessly with our lives, not gives us one more thing to fight on a daily basis.
Is learning a good thing? Of course it is, but it doesn't mean that EVERY person who uses a technology needs to know everything about that technology! For all of us that geek out when we see a CLI, and understand the power of it.. there are just as many people who want a computer to work, and then go away - technology that's helpful, but non-intrusive.
And for every geek that gets on his/her high horse about how some random Joe doesn't know what happens below the GUI, I could just as easily throw back in their face that they have no clue about compression ratios in a four-cylinder vs. an 8-cylinder... and a good 90% of them probably couldn't adequately explain what "naturally aspirated" means, or what it's counterpart would be without consulting Wiki-freakin'-pedia.
Everyone is a geek about something, but it doesn't mean that everyone else is being lazy or stupid if they aren't sharing your preferred method of geekdom. Just as the Linux geeks are laughing and shaking their heads in exasperation at the OS X and Windows users, there are just as many football fans who are laughing at THEM for not knowing what a 3 point conversion is!
-olly
Someday I'd like to have a job that allowed me to go to OSS conventions, and work with Linux as my desktop OS at work.
Sadly, I'm stuck going to proprietary-windows-crap conventions and making the world a more evil place... all while using XP.
Woe is me.
-olly
"One of the most often overlooked issues with AJAX is the huge bandwidth that most AJAX implementations consume. Everyone is out rushing to build AJAX apps into even the simplest applications, and the result is slow loading time and greatly increased server loads."
THANK YOU for recognizing this. As someone who couldn't code their way out of a BASIC 101 class, I'm the last to comment on any of the technical aspects of AJAX development. But I do have to wonder why more people who DO code AJAX apps aren't paying attention to the person that really matters in this case: the end user.
Case in point: Yahoo Maps, the old non-AJAXy application, worked great IMHO. It was easy to use, intuitive, and fairly accurate (if I queried Seattle, I didn't end up in Canada at least). All of a sudden, there is the new Yahoo Maps Beta. And I'm sorry, but it sucks in my opinion. Why bother with something like that? Why change something that didn't need it?
AJAX-iness is all well and good, and there are apps that really benefit from it (I love Flickr, for example), but there are situations where it's just an exercise in stupidity to update something in that way.
-olly
There are a few differences between the apps that you mention and IE, but I do see your point of view. However, consider the history of WHY people bitched about the inclusion. The original complaints stemmed not simply from the inclusion of IE, but the fact that removal of IE HOSED Win 95/98 systems. This fact seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of Monopoly trials, but it remains one of the main problems.
Personally I don't care if IE is included... so long as removing it doesn't screw up my system (not that I use Windows very often anyway). An example from the car world would be the HORRIBLE electrical job that VW foisted off in late 90's model Jetta's (among others). The electrical system was so needlessly complex and badly designed that in order to remove a factory stereo and put in an aftermarket one, you had to disable the built in security system as well.
Point is, it's MS's OS, they can do what they want... but from a consumer point of view, don't expect me to pay for it if I don't have control over it.
-olly
At what point does being denied a cure for a disease due to poverty equal being denied the right to life?
Or do we just accept that the rich will live years, maybe decades, longer than the rest of US?
We already accept that fact, at least in the US where we don't have state healthcare. Example, if you are Bill Gates, and you need a liver transplant costing hundreds of thousands of dollars... or you are me. Who is going to live longer? It is already a reality that those with money get better medical treatment... such is what happens when medicine and capitalism collide.
We already do things like this for unborn embryos. No, maybe we don't do it to the extent of gene mapping yet, but primitivly, things like amniocentesis are there to determine sex and illnesses that may come along with a fetus... and sometimes, that info is used for aborting an unwanted fetus. In China, for example, where male children are highly prized and female children lamented, this kind of thing is already happening, if not prevalent yet.
Pretty much all gene mapping would do would refine this. Let's keep in mind however that gene mapping is not the same thing as gene manipulation... choosing to abort is possible, but Gattica like changes are not... at least as of yet.
agreed... the next thing you know were going to find ourselves involved in intergalactic lawsuits that state
"the lawsuit is based upon the stated copyright violation of mars orbital satelites 3,4, and 5. said satelites, whos orbital speed and trajectory are an exact duplicate of several earth-orbital satelites are violating the artistic integrity of said earth satelites. under intergalactic law, no two orbital patterns can be duplicated without the express permission of the originating orbital satelite."
this of course would be followed by several pay-as-you-go networks, where for a small fee each satelite would have the right to use the orbital pattern of previous satelites, assuming that all royalties have been duly paid.
If you wanted to play guitar, but couldn't afford it, steal one.
If you want to learn a computer, but can't afford one, steal one.
Remember kids, since capitalism fucks with you, fuck capitalism.
Art has always been about titilating rich creeps, whether those rich creeps are kings or banking millionares
if art were always about titiliating rich creeps, then pop music would be the penultimate form of art, as it is giving the 'rich creeps' (i.e. 14 year olds who's parents buy them everything) what they want, rather than challenging them to think, as most good art does. if Britney Spears is art, then may ears go deaf.
I almost went into art as a career myself. But, my style does not attract the chicks. It is "geek art" more or less.
as for this idea, it sounds to me like you are the antithesis of what real art is about, doing something for yourself. ask any artist why they did something, and they will tell you that they did if because they enjoy it... or they did it for themselves. saying that you want to do something to 'get chicks' or to make money or something is admitting to the world that you are an entertainer, not an artist. big difference.
it's interesting to me to see that you are talkin' shit and stereotyping at the same time. it is easy to stereotype a country into oblivion... it would be easy for me to say 'the English are arrogant' or 'Norwegians are all alcoholics' or something similarly ignorant. it would also be easy for me to say that the only thing even semi-worthwhile that has come out of finland is Nokia. but i have enough respect for people to not judge them based solely on their national identity
why don't you drop the stereotypes and respect people's individual opinions. look at it this way... just because George W. Bush is a fu#kin' assmonkey doesn't mean I am.
I have to agree that companies need to work on the quality of their call centers. As someone who has worked for a couple of call centers, and observing the people around me, I think that at the moment an automated phone system is more intelligent than some of the people who work at call centers. This is not to say that EVERYONE who works at a call center is a moron, just about 75% of them.
Nerfster, the name of Napster's next incarnation, is a P2P network specializing in the trading of Nerf and Nerf-related materials
On a related note, Nerf has declared that it will be installing chips in its toys that allow only the registered user to use them... all copyright violaters will be assimilated, er, prosecuted.
while i agree that the people who will buy these will be the people that want to play this copyrighted mainstream audio, even the MPAA and RIAA can't be stupid enough to believe that there is an absolutely assured way of copyrighting? as soon as something is copyprotected, it is cracked, no matter what. a perfect example of this in the analog arena is when the recording industry was so worried about how cassettes were going to ruin the industry because everyone could start making illegal copies. so they put that little freakin' hole in them that makes it "impossible" to copy onto tapes you buy. how long was it before people figured out that you could put a piece of tape over that hole and then record just fine? copy protection doesn't work, plain and simple. so as soon as they do start having all of these watermarked dvd's and stuff, we will have software/hardware that can crack it. again, plane and simple.
in response to myself, maybe the MPAA and the RIAA really are that stupid. (by the way, i am the promotional manager for a small college webcast station http://www.plu.edu/k103 and the RIAA has already managed to f#ck us with the whole per song copyright surcharge thing... i just wanted to gripe about that).
BestBuy, HHGregg and the likes will sell these devices hard (mainly because of commissions) and many consumers will get screwed.
this would be the case except for the fact that BestBuy doesn't work on commission. As a former employee, I can honestly say that they work not on commission but on the, 'pay your employees as little as possible' business model.
(note: this is related to Microsofts business model of 'screw your consumer repeatedly for profit')
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I have no love for Microsoft, but the whole antitrust suit based around Internet Exploder is and was total BS, plain and simple. The whole central argument against M$ was that Windows came bundled with IE, which automatically tanked competition from Netscape and others -- that's the biggest load of hooey I've ever heard. Let's look at OS's and DE's that come with their own browser, shall we... oh, right, er, all of them. If someone wanted to go after M$ for antitrust type practices, they should have nailed them when they started strong-arming PC manufacturers back in the day, to the detriment of OS/2, etc. Any lawyer that tried to sue Google for bundling a browser with an OS would also need to sue OSX, every Linux distro, Unix, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm OS, WebOS, and any-other-damned-OS out there. That being said, I'm speaking rationally, and we all know that rather than rationality, the litigious world runs on cocoa puffs and gummy bears, not rationality.
"The best you can ever hope for with BSD is an incremental return." Unfortunately though, that incremental return may start to look a lot more attractive when factored against the monumental loss that patent wars with a company like Microsoft may cost you. Even if long term GPL-style licensing has a higher return, you have to survive as a company long enough term for that to apply. If Microsoft sues the bejesus out of anyone using that code, then companies will sacrifice that long term gain for short term stability, aka a BSD-style license. That being said, I'm not convinced that a BSD-style license would be the answer here anyway, but patent litigation is not cheap, so even if it's a partial deterrent to closed source patents, companies may jump on it. Now, my question to you licensing gurus: what does this mean for the overall Linux ecosystem? If Microsoft gets this patent enforced, are we looking at an MPEG style situation? Where distros start removing FAT support out of the box? THAT would truly be a disaster, as it's just one more hurdle for the average person to install and use Linux on a regular basis.
To put this in a way that will sound stupendously condescending: you live in a small market, your choices are limited, deal with it. That's one of the choices you make when deciding to live somewhere outside a mainstream market. Why would an ISP bother setting up infrastructure so "Ma and Pa Kettle" can have broadband? Where's the return on investment? Too often people seem to think they are OWED something, when in fact they aren't. As an example: my company started as a mac-only software company, it's what we did for the first 10 years we were in existence. Then we introduced a Windows version of our software that sold in tandem with the Mac version, opening up our options for selling software. When Apple switched from OS9 to OSX, we looked at the re-dev costs to move to a completely new software base (classic mode notwithstanding), looked at the fact that our Windows business was now 95% of our sales, and decided to drop our support for the mac platform. The point? I still get whiny mac folks to this day bitching about us not writing mac software, "forcing" them to use Windows. Do they care that it wouldn't have been at all profitable for us to do so? Do they care that the 5% that were our mac customers weren't enough to sustain that project? No, because they live in the "me, me, me" world of their own private bubbles. They think that we are somehow OBLIGATED to provide them that, and that we are FAILING THEM because we don't. Bullshit. No one owes you broadband, and if you choose to live in a market where it's not profitable for an ISP to provide it, then don't whine. At least you have clean air and less traffic, should I bitch about that on my side? But of course the Guberment is quick to agree with you, that it's somehow a 'right', so the whole thing falls apart in the end, and my tax dollars pay for you to have better competition. /rant
You can run XP on 256mb just fine... ...doesn't change the fact that it sucks, but it still runs.
-olly
Someday I'd like to have a job that allowed me to go to OSS conventions, and work with Linux as my desktop OS at work. Sadly, I'm stuck going to proprietary-windows-crap conventions and making the world a more evil place... all while using XP. Woe is me. -olly
"One of the most often overlooked issues with AJAX is the huge bandwidth that most AJAX implementations consume. Everyone is out rushing to build AJAX apps into even the simplest applications, and the result is slow loading time and greatly increased server loads." THANK YOU for recognizing this. As someone who couldn't code their way out of a BASIC 101 class, I'm the last to comment on any of the technical aspects of AJAX development. But I do have to wonder why more people who DO code AJAX apps aren't paying attention to the person that really matters in this case: the end user. Case in point: Yahoo Maps, the old non-AJAXy application, worked great IMHO. It was easy to use, intuitive, and fairly accurate (if I queried Seattle, I didn't end up in Canada at least). All of a sudden, there is the new Yahoo Maps Beta. And I'm sorry, but it sucks in my opinion. Why bother with something like that? Why change something that didn't need it? AJAX-iness is all well and good, and there are apps that really benefit from it (I love Flickr, for example), but there are situations where it's just an exercise in stupidity to update something in that way. -olly
There are a few differences between the apps that you mention and IE, but I do see your point of view. However, consider the history of WHY people bitched about the inclusion. The original complaints stemmed not simply from the inclusion of IE, but the fact that removal of IE HOSED Win 95/98 systems. This fact seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of Monopoly trials, but it remains one of the main problems. Personally I don't care if IE is included... so long as removing it doesn't screw up my system (not that I use Windows very often anyway). An example from the car world would be the HORRIBLE electrical job that VW foisted off in late 90's model Jetta's (among others). The electrical system was so needlessly complex and badly designed that in order to remove a factory stereo and put in an aftermarket one, you had to disable the built in security system as well. Point is, it's MS's OS, they can do what they want... but from a consumer point of view, don't expect me to pay for it if I don't have control over it. -olly
fp
At what point does being denied a cure for a disease due to poverty equal being denied the right to life?
Or do we just accept that the rich will live years, maybe decades, longer than the rest of US?
We already accept that fact, at least in the US where we don't have state healthcare. Example, if you are Bill Gates, and you need a liver transplant costing hundreds of thousands of dollars... or you are me. Who is going to live longer? It is already a reality that those with money get better medical treatment... such is what happens when medicine and capitalism collide.
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
I haven't seen Gattaca in years... you're probably right, sorry 'bout that!
One Word:
EUGENICS
brrrrr... makes me cold just thinking about it.
We already do things like this for unborn embryos. No, maybe we don't do it to the extent of gene mapping yet, but primitivly, things like amniocentesis are there to determine sex and illnesses that may come along with a fetus... and sometimes, that info is used for aborting an unwanted fetus. In China, for example, where male children are highly prized and female children lamented, this kind of thing is already happening, if not prevalent yet.
Pretty much all gene mapping would do would refine this. Let's keep in mind however that gene mapping is not the same thing as gene manipulation... choosing to abort is possible, but Gattica like changes are not... at least as of yet.
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
agreed... the next thing you know were going to find ourselves involved in intergalactic lawsuits that state
"the lawsuit is based upon the stated copyright violation of mars orbital satelites 3,4, and 5. said satelites, whos orbital speed and trajectory are an exact duplicate of several earth-orbital satelites are violating the artistic integrity of said earth satelites. under intergalactic law, no two orbital patterns can be duplicated without the express permission of the originating orbital satelite."
this of course would be followed by several pay-as-you-go networks, where for a small fee each satelite would have the right to use the orbital pattern of previous satelites, assuming that all royalties have been duly paid.
--Stupidity should be as painful as Windows.
If you wanted to play guitar, but couldn't afford it, steal one.
If you want to learn a computer, but can't afford one, steal one.
Remember kids, since capitalism fucks with you, fuck capitalism.
--Stupidity should be as painful as Windows.
Art has always been about titilating rich creeps, whether those rich creeps are kings or banking millionares
if art were always about titiliating rich creeps, then pop music would be the penultimate form of art, as it is giving the 'rich creeps' (i.e. 14 year olds who's parents buy them everything) what they want, rather than challenging them to think, as most good art does. if Britney Spears is art, then may ears go deaf.
I almost went into art as a career myself. But, my style does not attract the chicks. It is "geek art" more or less.
as for this idea, it sounds to me like you are the antithesis of what real art is about, doing something for yourself. ask any artist why they did something, and they will tell you that they did if because they enjoy it... or they did it for themselves. saying that you want to do something to 'get chicks' or to make money or something is admitting to the world that you are an entertainer, not an artist. big difference.
--Stupidity should be as painful as Windows.
I believe the word that we are looking for here is 'Anyways...'
BUT WE DIGRESS...
--Stupidity should be as painful as Windows
Messed up my sig, it should have read
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
not that displacing the word 'Windows' with 'ignorance' is that big of screw up.
it's interesting to me to see that you are talkin' shit and stereotyping at the same time. it is easy to stereotype a country into oblivion... it would be easy for me to say 'the English are arrogant' or 'Norwegians are all alcoholics' or something similarly ignorant. it would also be easy for me to say that the only thing even semi-worthwhile that has come out of finland is Nokia. but i have enough respect for people to not judge them based solely on their national identity
why don't you drop the stereotypes and respect people's individual opinions. look at it this way... just because George W. Bush is a fu#kin' assmonkey doesn't mean I am.
--Stupidity should be as painful as ignorance.
I have to agree that companies need to work on the quality of their call centers. As someone who has worked for a couple of call centers, and observing the people around me, I think that at the moment an automated phone system is more intelligent than some of the people who work at call centers. This is not to say that EVERYONE who works at a call center is a moron, just about 75% of them.
And now I wait for the flames to appear!
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
Nerfster, the name of Napster's next incarnation, is a P2P network specializing in the trading of Nerf and Nerf-related materials
On a related note, Nerf has declared that it will be installing chips in its toys that allow only the registered user to use them... all copyright violaters will be assimilated, er, prosecuted.
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
P2P = Prepare 2 Pay
This is what big business has been dreaming about for ever... an acronym that encompasses thier entire philosophy of consumerism and economics
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows.
Death to fruitflys!
while i agree that the people who will buy these will be the people that want to play this copyrighted mainstream audio, even the MPAA and RIAA can't be stupid enough to believe that there is an absolutely assured way of copyrighting? as soon as something is copyprotected, it is cracked, no matter what. a perfect example of this in the analog arena is when the recording industry was so worried about how cassettes were going to ruin the industry because everyone could start making illegal copies. so they put that little freakin' hole in them that makes it "impossible" to copy onto tapes you buy. how long was it before people figured out that you could put a piece of tape over that hole and then record just fine? copy protection doesn't work, plain and simple. so as soon as they do start having all of these watermarked dvd's and stuff, we will have software/hardware that can crack it. again, plane and simple.
in response to myself, maybe the MPAA and the RIAA really are that stupid. (by the way, i am the promotional manager for a small college webcast station http://www.plu.edu/k103 and the RIAA has already managed to f#ck us with the whole per song copyright surcharge thing... i just wanted to gripe about that).
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows.
"Damn the man, save the Empire!"
BestBuy, HHGregg and the likes will sell these devices hard (mainly because of commissions) and many consumers will get screwed.
this would be the case except for the fact that BestBuy doesn't work on commission. As a former employee, I can honestly say that they work not on commission but on the, 'pay your employees as little as possible' business model.
(note: this is related to Microsofts business model of 'screw your consumer repeatedly for profit')
Stupidity should be as painful as Windows...
Dust Puppy Cometh!
in case you missed the point, the whole we're not productive anymore... thing was a direct quote from Fight Club.
stupidity should be as painful as windows...
"Dare to be stupid!" -Weird Al