Things happen much more quickly nowadays. We won't have hundreds of years of Empire before the barbarians come crashing through the gates. Decades, if we're lucky, and we probably won't be.
Have error messages gone out of style, or are the Explorer devs in denial? If the app is running up against a limit or is running out of memory to complete an operation, it should be reporting so, loudly, and providing the user with options.
More likely there was so much pressure on them to ship something that something had to slip.
Yes, but it is possible to fairly accurately speculate about Microsoft's future wrongdoings. All one need do is determine what will cause the most damage to Microsoft's competition, while simultaneously making it the most money. That's pretty much what Microsoft will do, like clockwork, because that is all that company knows how to do. The fact that so many organizations are continually blindsided by Microsoft just amazes me. It is no less remarkable that so many people actually admire Microsoft, along with its predatory and utterly uncharismatic leaders. You would think, after all these years, that Microsoft's reputation for rabbit-punching would precede it.
Slippery slope? We're way past that point, my friend. The Patriot Act, the RICO Act, and others like it qualify more as a "steep incline facing a bottomless pit."
Back in 1985 or so, I worked for a software house (video games and educational software, as it happened) and due to a number of factors which can be conveniently lumped under "bad management", they had to institute massive layoffs. "Black Monday" we called it. No warning, no hint of anything to come... just "there'll be a meeting at 9:00." As we were heading towards the meeting room, our manager pulled me and another programmer aside and said, "Not you two. See me after the meeting." So we went back to our desks and waited, figuring that we were about to get fired or something. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good. But next thing you know, another one of the guys I'd worked with came back from the meeting. Didn't say a word, just made a motion like he was swinging an axe.
In one swell foop, they killed off at least four fifths of the staff: programming, art and animation support, quality assurance, sales, marketing... all gone. For my part, I was expected to not only continue my current projects, but to also take over the work of half a dozen others. "You have to work 100 hours a week! We have commitments!" I was told. I pointed out that they should have thought of that before they laid off everybody. I lasted another six months... couldn't take the pressure. One week I worked straight through from Monday morning to Friday afternoon (I went home for an occasional shower and came right back) and my supervisor told me that if I got the product into QC by Friday I could take the next Monday off. So I did, and the bastard tried to renege on the deal. I took it off anyway: being fired didn't seem so bad right about then. As it happened, when I showed up for work the following Tuesday all he said was, "How was your day off?"
I did notice, however, that not a single manager was let go, even though we really didn't need them anymore (ha, nobody to manage.) More to the point, those were the very people that ran the company into the ground. Yet it was the rest of us, the folks that actually created and sold the company's products, who paid the price for their incompetence. Typical, I suppose, but it explains why American businesses seem to be so full of fools and nitwits nowadays.
One late night, me and the other programmer who was kept snuck into the CEO's office, just to see what it was like on the other side. It was unbelievable: very well-appointed, shall we say, On top of that, through a door in the back we found a complete private sauna and jacuzzi! Wasn't like it was his company: he was just hired by the parent corporation to run the place. Spent money like water though.
Last I heard, they'd moved to California and were selling Activision game cartridges.
Microsoft betraying user trust on several separate occasions and this behavior is eroding customer confidence in the entire update mechanism.'
I think there are probably a lot of people on Slashdot that got burned early by WindowsUpdate, and never trusted it again. I've been burned a few times, and now I leave automatic updates off unless I have a good reason to leave it on. Nevertheless, I really believe that Microsoft is making a mistaking screwing around with this particular sacred cow, although I'm sure the temptation to abuse it was just irresistible. As Wally from Dilbert put it, "What would be the other reasons for having power?"
Still, if our good friends Joe Average and Joe Sixpack get it into their heads that WindowsUpdate has a significant chance of blowing away their systems, they're going to just turn it off and to Hell with patches and fixes. And you know what? They'd be right to do so. This is a stupid, dangerous game that Microsoft is playing.
Neither true Communism nor true Democracy have ever been tried on any significant scale.
Mainly because neither of them work... simplistic ideas based upon flawed models of human behavior and interaction. The United States (in spite of its current President's claims to the contrary) is not a true democracy. Never has been, nor was it ever intended to be by those that founded it. And anyone who believes that Russia or China have ever been actually Communist is just as misguided as Mr. Bush.
Yes, but on the other hand... that doesn't prove there wasn't one, just that they're trying to get us so sick and tired of hearing about it that we don't care anymore. It used to be they would just repeat a lie over and over and over and over and over until we ultimately believed the lie. It's sort of a mild form of brainwashing, and it worked because back then we really wanted to believe that our government and our representatives truly had our best interests at heart. Well, we're too sophisticated for that now: I mean, between eight years of Clinton and almost as many of George Bush we've collectively reached the conclusion that everything they say is a lie. "No, Mr. President... don't believe you. You had your chance to let us trust you and you blew it."
So, all they can do now is just keep pounding the obvious lies into our heads at every opportunity until we finally say, "Enough! Whatever! I can't stand it any more and I don't CARE if there were weapons of mass destruction or not! Jesus Christ, just SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT ALREADY! AAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!"
I read around and it seems like a lot of people think that this budget for such an expensive extensive project would almost certainly be cut from any other alternative energy sources.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, given that the United States Federal Government's alternative fuel of choice is ethanol from corn. If the development of space-going solar power arrays takes funding from the corn subsidies and the billions of dollars being spent on ethanol production facilities, I'm all for it. This is a lot like the NASA of old... whatever happens we'll still learn a hell of a lot of useful stuff from the effort. And who knows... also like the NASA of old we might actually do it.
Slashdot is populated by people that are so ignorant of war and history sometimes it's pretty tragic, but I guess that's to be expected when you have young people who have not a clue of how the world works because they've lived in a peaceful country all their lives.
It's not so much a matter of a peaceful existence as it is a high standard of living encouraging a complacent view of the world. It's easy to begin to believe that nothing can touch us, nothing can affect us... but every time I go fill up my gas tank I realize just how ignorant that perspective is. The world is a damned unfriendly place: for some reason we seem to have forgotten that. In reality, there are people out to get us. It's not paranoia, it's fact, the way it has always been, and all that is accomplished by "free trade" is aiding and abetting the enemy.
I understand and accept that our corporate leaders have a vested interest in screwing the domestic workforce in their endless, mindless quest to improve their collective bottom lines. That's what happens when you put a group of sociopaths in charge, no surprise there. However, what absolutely astounds me is that the rest of us, the very people that are having our futures stolen, are apparently all for it. What's even more incredible is that they babble on about "free trade" as if they're arguing from some position of moral and intellectual superiority! Well, when the Great Collapse of 2017 occurs, and millions of Americans who used to have cars and homes suddenly find themselves on the street (no flipping burgers at McDonald's... nobody will have money to buy fast food anymore) I wonder what the "free traders" will be saying then? "Nobody could have predicted this disaster, it just happened" or maybe "We had America's best interests at heart." Yeah, right.
The Founders understood what we're talking about: they wanted us to be a free and independent nation. By "independent" they meant free of economic interference from other countries. We're becoming terrifyingly dependent upon China, and it's really hard to consider yourself part of a free nation when you depend upon another country (one of those damned unfriendly outfits I mentioned previously) for basics such as shoes and clothing. We could put a stop to this, of course, by raising tariffs on selected classes of imported goods and doing what we can to encourage the rebuilding of domestic manufacturing.
But we won't. We've been convinced that the new "service economy" (whatever the hell that is supposed to be) will take care of all our needs. Personally, I consider the term equivalent to "third world country" because, in the long run, that's what it means. For right now though, we're still running on inertia and haven't really begun to feel the effects yet. We will, though, and fairly soon.
Anyone operating such a site would be sued out of existence, unless they had phenomenal legal resources at their command. A couple dozen libel suits would take the starch out of any effort... doesn't much matter if there's any merit to them. Frivolous lawsuits still require money for a defense.
Corporations, like governments, are amoral by definition. Opt-in would require business ethic, of which Verizon has repeatedly shown it has little. To be fair, the same applies to AT&T/SBC, Comcast, AOL, and any of the other big boys.
The people who consume the goods and services provided by the likes of Verizon have become less important than the companies willing to pay to mine customer databases. There's a lot of money in that, which means quality-of-service levels (and corresponding expenses) can be reduced while maintaining profitability. If that kind of information-sharing were simply illegal, perhaps our communications providers would have to get back to worrying themselves about what their customers want.
Yes, and in other news cyanide poisoning causes general weakness, confusion, bizarre behavior, coma and death! Acetaminophen poisoning can cause nausea, vomiting, poor appetite and total renal failure!
What you free trade types eternally fail to grasp is that people aren't nice, don't always play by the same rules, and frequently use their economies to damage each other. To me, it seems like you have a rose-colored world view that is simply not borne out by history and current events. Yes, competition is good, it keeps companies on their toes, and certainly excessive protectionism has negative consequences in that regard. No argument from me there. But you have to understand, the converse also has negative effects. That's especially true when dealing with a culture and economy such as China, which doesn't have the slightest conception of Western business ethic, and sees nothing wrong with eliminating the competition by any means whatsoever. Very efficient from their perspective, downright disastrous for us.
I have news for you: raw industrial efficiency is not the only measure of a successful economy. How a nation's economy provides for its people, long term, is an equally important metric. I would say, a far more important one. Throwing away domestic manufacturing in favor of cheap imports from inimical foreign powers is not a good way to serve the needs of your people. In fact, free trade, so far as the United States is concerned, is doing exactly the opposite. We are transferring massive amounts of money to China in exchange for cheap imports, while simultaneously losing the ability to provide for ourselves. What good are these customers of whom you speak, when there are no longer any American producers of those products? Explain to me how this is good, how it grows our economy?
The original poster in this thread was correct: if you have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever you protect your key industries. If you don't, and someone takes them away from you (as is happening with virtually every manufacturing sector in the United States today) you are vulnerable at every level. I'm not saying that means exclude all foreign competition, but it does mean that you make damn sure that foreign competition isn't allowed to operate in a predatory manner. Unfortunately for us, our government and corporate leaders sold us out for a song. Now, I don't know exactly what's going to happen over the next few years, but if what I read about American manufacturing being down to 1950's levels is even close to being true, we are in deep shit.
This is not a joke, this is not some philosophical issue with no real-world effects: when a major economy falls people get hurt. Ours is heading for a fall of Biblical proportions, and it's you Free Traders that will bear a significant responsibility for that event.
There's no way a third party could attempt to compete, since Exchange uses totally proprietary hooks and methods.
I believe MDaemon can serve as an Exchange replacement with their Connector plug-in, although I've not personally used it for that. MDaemon is hardly an open source product (although it is one of the better commercial offerings out there) but it does go to show that Exchange compatibility is not an impossible goal. If that's what you want.
Slashdot Mirror
Things happen much more quickly nowadays. We won't have hundreds of years of Empire before the barbarians come crashing through the gates. Decades, if we're lucky, and we probably won't be.
Have error messages gone out of style, or are the Explorer devs in denial? If the app is running up against a limit or is running out of memory to complete an operation, it should be reporting so, loudly, and providing the user with options.
More likely there was so much pressure on them to ship something that something had to slip.
Yes, but it is possible to fairly accurately speculate about Microsoft's future wrongdoings. All one need do is determine what will cause the most damage to Microsoft's competition, while simultaneously making it the most money. That's pretty much what Microsoft will do, like clockwork, because that is all that company knows how to do. The fact that so many organizations are continually blindsided by Microsoft just amazes me. It is no less remarkable that so many people actually admire Microsoft, along with its predatory and utterly uncharismatic leaders. You would think, after all these years, that Microsoft's reputation for rabbit-punching would precede it.
Some people never learn.
What if the law enforcement agency can't afford it?
They'll just ask for a bigger budget next year.
And I have everything by Garth Brooks, and I don't give a shit about Zeppelin or the Beatles. So we've both got all our bases covered.
You two should get together. You have a lot in common.
And what makes them authorities?
They have more money than we do. That's pretty much about it, I'd say.
Slippery slope? We're way past that point, my friend. The Patriot Act, the RICO Act, and others like it qualify more as a "steep incline facing a bottomless pit."
Back in 1985 or so, I worked for a software house (video games and educational software, as it happened) and due to a number of factors which can be conveniently lumped under "bad management", they had to institute massive layoffs. "Black Monday" we called it. No warning, no hint of anything to come ... just "there'll be a meeting at 9:00." As we were heading towards the meeting room, our manager pulled me and another programmer aside and said, "Not you two. See me after the meeting." So we went back to our desks and waited, figuring that we were about to get fired or something. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good. But next thing you know, another one of the guys I'd worked with came back from the meeting. Didn't say a word, just made a motion like he was swinging an axe.
... all gone. For my part, I was expected to not only continue my current projects, but to also take over the work of half a dozen others. "You have to work 100 hours a week! We have commitments!" I was told. I pointed out that they should have thought of that before they laid off everybody. I lasted another six months ... couldn't take the pressure. One week I worked straight through from Monday morning to Friday afternoon (I went home for an occasional shower and came right back) and my supervisor told me that if I got the product into QC by Friday I could take the next Monday off. So I did, and the bastard tried to renege on the deal. I took it off anyway: being fired didn't seem so bad right about then. As it happened, when I showed up for work the following Tuesday all he said was, "How was your day off?"
In one swell foop, they killed off at least four fifths of the staff: programming, art and animation support, quality assurance, sales, marketing
I did notice, however, that not a single manager was let go, even though we really didn't need them anymore (ha, nobody to manage.) More to the point, those were the very people that ran the company into the ground. Yet it was the rest of us, the folks that actually created and sold the company's products, who paid the price for their incompetence. Typical, I suppose, but it explains why American businesses seem to be so full of fools and nitwits nowadays.
One late night, me and the other programmer who was kept snuck into the CEO's office, just to see what it was like on the other side. It was unbelievable: very well-appointed, shall we say, On top of that, through a door in the back we found a complete private sauna and jacuzzi! Wasn't like it was his company: he was just hired by the parent corporation to run the place. Spent money like water though.
Last I heard, they'd moved to California and were selling Activision game cartridges.
Microsoft betraying user trust on several separate occasions and this behavior is eroding customer confidence in the entire update mechanism.'
I think there are probably a lot of people on Slashdot that got burned early by WindowsUpdate, and never trusted it again. I've been burned a few times, and now I leave automatic updates off unless I have a good reason to leave it on. Nevertheless, I really believe that Microsoft is making a mistaking screwing around with this particular sacred cow, although I'm sure the temptation to abuse it was just irresistible. As Wally from Dilbert put it, "What would be the other reasons for having power?"
Still, if our good friends Joe Average and Joe Sixpack get it into their heads that WindowsUpdate has a significant chance of blowing away their systems, they're going to just turn it off and to Hell with patches and fixes. And you know what? They'd be right to do so. This is a stupid, dangerous game that Microsoft is playing.
Neither true Communism nor true Democracy have ever been tried on any significant scale.
... simplistic ideas based upon flawed models of human behavior and interaction. The United States (in spite of its current President's claims to the contrary) is not a true democracy. Never has been, nor was it ever intended to be by those that founded it. And anyone who believes that Russia or China have ever been actually Communist is just as misguided as Mr. Bush.
Mainly because neither of them work
Democracy is based upon the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based upon the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?
Lazarus Long
Yes, but on the other hand ... that doesn't prove there wasn't one, just that they're trying to get us so sick and tired of hearing about it that we don't care anymore. It used to be they would just repeat a lie over and over and over and over and over until we ultimately believed the lie. It's sort of a mild form of brainwashing, and it worked because back then we really wanted to believe that our government and our representatives truly had our best interests at heart. Well, we're too sophisticated for that now: I mean, between eight years of Clinton and almost as many of George Bush we've collectively reached the conclusion that everything they say is a lie. "No, Mr. President ... don't believe you. You had your chance to let us trust you and you blew it."
So, all they can do now is just keep pounding the obvious lies into our heads at every opportunity until we finally say, "Enough! Whatever! I can't stand it any more and I don't CARE if there were weapons of mass destruction or not! Jesus Christ, just SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT ALREADY! AAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!"
If that's their plan, it seems to be working.
Yes, good point.
Flamebait? How does referencing a science-fiction book earn one a flamebait mod?
I read around and it seems like a lot of people think that this budget for such an expensive extensive project would almost certainly be cut from any other alternative energy sources.
... whatever happens we'll still learn a hell of a lot of useful stuff from the effort. And who knows ... also like the NASA of old we might actually do it.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, given that the United States Federal Government's alternative fuel of choice is ethanol from corn. If the development of space-going solar power arrays takes funding from the corn subsidies and the billions of dollars being spent on ethanol production facilities, I'm all for it. This is a lot like the NASA of old
Have you ever read "The Humanoids" by Jack Williamson? The kind of world it portrays is like the one you describe, only much worse.
Slashdot is populated by people that are so ignorant of war and history sometimes it's pretty tragic, but I guess that's to be expected when you have young people who have not a clue of how the world works because they've lived in a peaceful country all their lives.
... but every time I go fill up my gas tank I realize just how ignorant that perspective is. The world is a damned unfriendly place: for some reason we seem to have forgotten that. In reality, there are people out to get us. It's not paranoia, it's fact, the way it has always been, and all that is accomplished by "free trade" is aiding and abetting the enemy.
... nobody will have money to buy fast food anymore) I wonder what the "free traders" will be saying then? "Nobody could have predicted this disaster, it just happened" or maybe "We had America's best interests at heart." Yeah, right.
It's not so much a matter of a peaceful existence as it is a high standard of living encouraging a complacent view of the world. It's easy to begin to believe that nothing can touch us, nothing can affect us
I understand and accept that our corporate leaders have a vested interest in screwing the domestic workforce in their endless, mindless quest to improve their collective bottom lines. That's what happens when you put a group of sociopaths in charge, no surprise there. However, what absolutely astounds me is that the rest of us, the very people that are having our futures stolen, are apparently all for it. What's even more incredible is that they babble on about "free trade" as if they're arguing from some position of moral and intellectual superiority! Well, when the Great Collapse of 2017 occurs, and millions of Americans who used to have cars and homes suddenly find themselves on the street (no flipping burgers at McDonald's
The Founders understood what we're talking about: they wanted us to be a free and independent nation. By "independent" they meant free of economic interference from other countries. We're becoming terrifyingly dependent upon China, and it's really hard to consider yourself part of a free nation when you depend upon another country (one of those damned unfriendly outfits I mentioned previously) for basics such as shoes and clothing. We could put a stop to this, of course, by raising tariffs on selected classes of imported goods and doing what we can to encourage the rebuilding of domestic manufacturing.
But we won't. We've been convinced that the new "service economy" (whatever the hell that is supposed to be) will take care of all our needs. Personally, I consider the term equivalent to "third world country" because, in the long run, that's what it means. For right now though, we're still running on inertia and haven't really begun to feel the effects yet. We will, though, and fairly soon.
The cracks are already showing.
Anyone operating such a site would be sued out of existence, unless they had phenomenal legal resources at their command. A couple dozen libel suits would take the starch out of any effort ... doesn't much matter if there's any merit to them. Frivolous lawsuits still require money for a defense.
Corporations, like governments, are amoral by definition. Opt-in would require business ethic, of which Verizon has repeatedly shown it has little. To be fair, the same applies to AT&T/SBC, Comcast, AOL, and any of the other big boys.
The people who consume the goods and services provided by the likes of Verizon have become less important than the companies willing to pay to mine customer databases. There's a lot of money in that, which means quality-of-service levels (and corresponding expenses) can be reduced while maintaining profitability. If that kind of information-sharing were simply illegal, perhaps our communications providers would have to get back to worrying themselves about what their customers want.
Yes, and in other news cyanide poisoning causes general weakness, confusion, bizarre behavior, coma and death! Acetaminophen poisoning can cause nausea, vomiting, poor appetite and total renal failure!
Exciting, isn't it? No?
I dunno ... sounds like it would be blast!
What you free trade types eternally fail to grasp is that people aren't nice, don't always play by the same rules, and frequently use their economies to damage each other. To me, it seems like you have a rose-colored world view that is simply not borne out by history and current events. Yes, competition is good, it keeps companies on their toes, and certainly excessive protectionism has negative consequences in that regard. No argument from me there. But you have to understand, the converse also has negative effects. That's especially true when dealing with a culture and economy such as China, which doesn't have the slightest conception of Western business ethic, and sees nothing wrong with eliminating the competition by any means whatsoever. Very efficient from their perspective, downright disastrous for us.
I have news for you: raw industrial efficiency is not the only measure of a successful economy. How a nation's economy provides for its people, long term, is an equally important metric. I would say, a far more important one. Throwing away domestic manufacturing in favor of cheap imports from inimical foreign powers is not a good way to serve the needs of your people. In fact, free trade, so far as the United States is concerned, is doing exactly the opposite. We are transferring massive amounts of money to China in exchange for cheap imports, while simultaneously losing the ability to provide for ourselves. What good are these customers of whom you speak, when there are no longer any American producers of those products? Explain to me how this is good, how it grows our economy?
The original poster in this thread was correct: if you have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever you protect your key industries. If you don't, and someone takes them away from you (as is happening with virtually every manufacturing sector in the United States today) you are vulnerable at every level. I'm not saying that means exclude all foreign competition, but it does mean that you make damn sure that foreign competition isn't allowed to operate in a predatory manner. Unfortunately for us, our government and corporate leaders sold us out for a song. Now, I don't know exactly what's going to happen over the next few years, but if what I read about American manufacturing being down to 1950's levels is even close to being true, we are in deep shit.
This is not a joke, this is not some philosophical issue with no real-world effects: when a major economy falls people get hurt. Ours is heading for a fall of Biblical proportions, and it's you Free Traders that will bear a significant responsibility for that event.
Sure ... because if you can prove you're a crook, odds are you aren't law enforcement.
... but I learned from Tesla that efficiency increases with frequency.
So that just means that if we can make it run on microwaves we'll be in great shape.
There's no way a third party could attempt to compete, since Exchange uses totally proprietary hooks and methods.
I believe MDaemon can serve as an Exchange replacement with their Connector plug-in, although I've not personally used it for that. MDaemon is hardly an open source product (although it is one of the better commercial offerings out there) but it does go to show that Exchange compatibility is not an impossible goal. If that's what you want.