Once mass adopted, we won't have the satisfaction to know we are running a better OS anymore;-)
We'll all still have that satisfaction unless we switch to a different OS. What we won't have is that deeply satisfying feeling of smugness, of superiority, although that attitude is more common amongst Mac users than the Linux crowd, I'd say.
For someone who uses FF, noscript and occasional peeks at firebug,
Don't forget Privoxy.
But yeah, the only thing I deliberately use Internet Exploiter for is Windowsupdate. Requiring an ActiveX control (ActiveX!) on a financial site is unacceptable, as is forcing visitors to use Explorer. Personally, I have the same setup you do, and the occasional site that requires Explorer doesn't get visited again. I also have several sites that I use for financial purposes, and they all support Firefox. If they didn't, I'd either switch institutions, or not use their site.
One of those is when I've actually got to visit one of my online banking sites, which requires some obscure activex "security" extension to work.
That's insane. I mean, the bank is assuming that their own security is perfect and will never be cracked, which is not realistic. When you get right down to it, you'd think that banks (of all organizations) would require the use of a more secure medium. Nothing would please me more than to navigate to my bank's Web site in Explorer and see a message "We're sorry, but due to ongoing security issues with Microsoft Internet Explorer, this site requires the use of a more capable browser" and see links to Firefox, Opera and others. When I first signed up at my current bank, it was the exact opposite, but fortunately I could just change the browser ID and it worked fine, no ActiveX crap.
Ever compared the amount of waste and fraud in the American system to that of countries like Norway, Germany or Austria? Apples to oranges, only worse. Our "welfare system", if you can call it that, has never been about helping people. The primary purpose of America's system is to keep people addicted to public funds, so they will continue to cast votes for the people who maintain the flow of money. "Great Society" my ass. In any event... the funds for Norway, Germany or Austria's welfare systems still comes from the taxpayers, but I presume it's more efficiently utilized.
That, ultimately, is the problem with large-scale use of public funds in any society that has substantial corruption within both the bureaucratic ranks and among the welfare recipients themselves (and that's not counting the crap that goes on at higher levels.) This applies across the board: education, medical care, everything. All these organizations want more and more money to "serve the public" and when they get it, they squander it. More spending isn't the solution... it'll just get wasted or picked off for private use. Not much different than a typical third-world military regime receiving foreign aid shipments: the people it's intended to help never see much of it because the people in charge of it grab it first. So the countries sending it have to send even more, so that the trickle that gets through will do some good. Meanwhile, the government crooks who are stealing it get richer and consolidate their power. We have a much better system here in the U.S., because we allow private corporations in on the deal too.
The problem is fundamentally cultural, not governmental or financial. Germany can get away with what they are doing because, other than certain specific forms of institutionalized corruption, their bureaucracy is efficient and more to the point, can be trusted. There are no such organizations in the United States that I would trust by default, because by default I don't particularly trust my fellow Americans. Not anymore. The "me me me" generation is running things now, and boy does it show.
Treatment of the poor... well, if you're poor, that means you don't have a lot of money. That's true. And if you want to get rid of your poor, you only have a few choices: forcibly transfer wealth from the non-poor to the poor (i.e. welfare state, and America spends a LOT of taxpayer money on that), kill all the poor or ship them elsewhere... or figure out how to make real jobs for those people producing real goods. That's the trick.
The latter requires investment and forethought. Countries that fail to invest in the future (even to the exclusion of some current needs) often find that they don't have one. A future, that is. If I had to note what I consider the biggest failing of the United States right now, it's that we've lost our vision of the future, forgotten that the status-quo ante cannot be maintained indefinitely without a lot of work, and a lot of smart decisions. The penalty for failing to make those decisions now will be amplified manyfold as time goes on.
The problem with the "forget all those rocket thingies and research and spend the money on social programs" mindset is that it strips a society of the ability to improve. Yes, it is important to take care of your own, but to truly do that you have to look ahead, put money where it's mostly likely to have a good payoff. Scientific research has always had the best payoff, in the long term, and space is a big part of that.
This is a dynamic I really don't think Paramount will get right without a lot of effort.
{sigh} given Paramount's history with the franchise, I really don't think they'll ever get it right.
-------------
McCoy: Mr Spock, you said a while ago that there were always alternatives.
Spock: Did I? I may have been mistaken.
McCoy: Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that.
-------------
Spock: I made an error in my computations.
McCoy: Oh? This could be an historic occasion.
-------------
Kirk: You're suffering from a Vulcan mind-meld, Doctor.
McCoy: That green-blooded son of a bitch! It's his revenge for all those arguments he lost!
-------------
Spock: Your attempt to improve the species through selective breeding.
McCoy: Oh now wait a minute - not our attempt, Mr Spock. A group of ambitious scientists. I'm sure you know the type - devoted to logic, completely unemotional - !
Of course they generally leave with obscene heaps of cash in their bags, and get on somewhere else after a nice vacation, and maybe write a book about it.
Yeah... and then they go on the lecture circuit and make even more heaps of cash, at which point some other sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorporation hires them. Really, it's beyond belief what goes on in those circles.
And with Doohan having passed on, there's already a very essential element missing. You just can't have Spock without Scotty.
I'd say it's more true that you can't have Spock with out McCoy, since it was their ever-present banter (and to a degree, rivalry since Spock's logic and McCoy's emotionalism often came into conflict usually resolved by Kirk) that was so entertaining.
McCoy: "It's a song, you green-blooded Vulcan. You sing it. The words aren't important. What's important is that you have a good time singing it."
Spock: "Oh. I am sorry, Doctor. Were we having a good time?"
McCoy: "Why you green-blooded, pointy-eared...!"
Of course, that still leaves you with the same problem. DeForest Kelly is long gone as well.
I don't think you can "break up" the RIAA... they're just the front organization (industry trade group, or some such) for a cartel (and a largely foreign-owned one at that), and the whole point of a cartel is to avoid attracting antitrust lightning. Even if the RIAA disappeared tomorrow, the price-fixing bastards that run the major studios would still be playing golf.
It's a serious accusation, and people should have some kind of accountability for making false accusations with such flimsy evidence, so that they are compelled to do a better job of it.
My understanding of the DMCA is that there is little accountability for such false accusations, and I see that as one of the big problems. There's no penalty for wrongly jerking someone around unless they choose to come after you in court.
No morals involved...it's simply just more convenient.
Yeah... seriously more convenient. If NBC could come up with a site as simple, clean and functional as... well, as any major Torrent site, they'd have a winner, with a capital "W". I'd cheerfully hand over my credit card number if I could download quality shows with no commercials. That's key: you absolutely will not get a penny out of me if you're going to also subject me to advertising. Either make your product free and advertising supported, or just sell it to me without the ads. I've largely stopped buying DVDs because now they're putting product advertising in them, and you can't skip it (oh sure, you can remaster the thing with DVD Shrink or a similar app, but that's not the point.) Just like cable TV was in the beginning: ad-free, and that was a major marketing point. But they just couldn't resist the lure of those advertising dollars. Blood-sucking leeches, all of them.
In any event, these people seem to think like all the other old-line content producers: keep control over the distribution channels at all costs even if it means throwing away hundreds of millions in revenue. To paraphrase Lewis Black: I'm surprised their stockholders haven't risen as one and slain them.
It was probably like having their teeth pulled with rusty pliers just to agree to put their shows up on iTunes in the first place.
"Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,"
More to the point... what is wrong with bankrupting those companies? That's the purpose of lawsuits... if you're too successful at screwing people over, and you get called on it, you are supposed to have your ass handed to you on a platter. That's why we pay all the good people at the Justice Department. Honestly, I'd have thought they would be all over Verizon and the rest, but apparently Justice and the telcos are two halves of the same problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I already got modded both Flamebait and Troll. I guess we know which OS the mods are running tonight. Humorless twits.
He's 76 years old. Kind of hard to do action scenes, ain't it?
Two words: Stunt Men
Once mass adopted, we won't have the satisfaction to know we are running a better OS anymore ;-)
We'll all still have that satisfaction unless we switch to a different OS. What we won't have is that deeply satisfying feeling of smugness, of superiority, although that attitude is more common amongst Mac users than the Linux crowd, I'd say.
Linux gets Safe Mode!
I guess that's an advance.
I think we should hold a conference for kernel developers the world over to air their concerns about this issue.
We could call it the "International Scheduler Fair".
Of course, there's the companion "pork barrel scheduler" which randomly spawns useless processes in order to take time from those that deserve it.
The main problem is that the Indian technical institutes rarely teach anything besides Microsoft products.
Good.
For someone who uses FF, noscript and occasional peeks at firebug,
Don't forget Privoxy.
But yeah, the only thing I deliberately use Internet Exploiter for is Windowsupdate. Requiring an ActiveX control (ActiveX!) on a financial site is unacceptable, as is forcing visitors to use Explorer. Personally, I have the same setup you do, and the occasional site that requires Explorer doesn't get visited again. I also have several sites that I use for financial purposes, and they all support Firefox. If they didn't, I'd either switch institutions, or not use their site.
One of those is when I've actually got to visit one of my online banking sites, which requires some obscure activex "security" extension to work.
That's insane. I mean, the bank is assuming that their own security is perfect and will never be cracked, which is not realistic. When you get right down to it, you'd think that banks (of all organizations) would require the use of a more secure medium. Nothing would please me more than to navigate to my bank's Web site in Explorer and see a message "We're sorry, but due to ongoing security issues with Microsoft Internet Explorer, this site requires the use of a more capable browser" and see links to Firefox, Opera and others. When I first signed up at my current bank, it was the exact opposite, but fortunately I could just change the browser ID and it worked fine, no ActiveX crap.
Ever compared the amount of waste and fraud in the American system to that of countries like Norway, Germany or Austria? Apples to oranges, only worse. Our "welfare system", if you can call it that, has never been about helping people. The primary purpose of America's system is to keep people addicted to public funds, so they will continue to cast votes for the people who maintain the flow of money. "Great Society" my ass. In any event ... the funds for Norway, Germany or Austria's welfare systems still comes from the taxpayers, but I presume it's more efficiently utilized.
... it'll just get wasted or picked off for private use. Not much different than a typical third-world military regime receiving foreign aid shipments: the people it's intended to help never see much of it because the people in charge of it grab it first. So the countries sending it have to send even more, so that the trickle that gets through will do some good. Meanwhile, the government crooks who are stealing it get richer and consolidate their power. We have a much better system here in the U.S., because we allow private corporations in on the deal too.
That, ultimately, is the problem with large-scale use of public funds in any society that has substantial corruption within both the bureaucratic ranks and among the welfare recipients themselves (and that's not counting the crap that goes on at higher levels.) This applies across the board: education, medical care, everything. All these organizations want more and more money to "serve the public" and when they get it, they squander it. More spending isn't the solution
The problem is fundamentally cultural, not governmental or financial. Germany can get away with what they are doing because, other than certain specific forms of institutionalized corruption, their bureaucracy is efficient and more to the point, can be trusted. There are no such organizations in the United States that I would trust by default, because by default I don't particularly trust my fellow Americans. Not anymore. The "me me me" generation is running things now, and boy does it show.
Treatment of the poor ... well, if you're poor, that means you don't have a lot of money. That's true. And if you want to get rid of your poor, you only have a few choices: forcibly transfer wealth from the non-poor to the poor (i.e. welfare state, and America spends a LOT of taxpayer money on that), kill all the poor or ship them elsewhere ... or figure out how to make real jobs for those people producing real goods. That's the trick.
The latter requires investment and forethought. Countries that fail to invest in the future (even to the exclusion of some current needs) often find that they don't have one. A future, that is. If I had to note what I consider the biggest failing of the United States right now, it's that we've lost our vision of the future, forgotten that the status-quo ante cannot be maintained indefinitely without a lot of work, and a lot of smart decisions. The penalty for failing to make those decisions now will be amplified manyfold as time goes on.
The problem with the "forget all those rocket thingies and research and spend the money on social programs" mindset is that it strips a society of the ability to improve. Yes, it is important to take care of your own, but to truly do that you have to look ahead, put money where it's mostly likely to have a good payoff. Scientific research has always had the best payoff, in the long term, and space is a big part of that.
Yes. I hear that's working well for China, India and the rest of the third world.
...do they have the technology to fake it as well as we did?
... I guess it depends upon what kind of export restrictions are on Photoshop.
I dunno
This is a dynamic I really don't think Paramount will get right without a lot of effort.
{sigh} given Paramount's history with the franchise, I really don't think they'll ever get it right.
-------------
McCoy: Mr Spock, you said a while ago that there were always alternatives.
Spock: Did I? I may have been mistaken.
McCoy: Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that.
-------------
Spock: I made an error in my computations.
McCoy: Oh? This could be an historic occasion.
-------------
Kirk: You're suffering from a Vulcan mind-meld, Doctor.
McCoy: That green-blooded son of a bitch! It's his revenge for all those arguments he lost!
-------------
Spock: Your attempt to improve the species through selective breeding.
McCoy: Oh now wait a minute - not our attempt, Mr Spock. A group of ambitious scientists. I'm sure you know the type - devoted to logic, completely unemotional - !
Of course they generally leave with obscene heaps of cash in their bags, and get on somewhere else after a nice vacation, and maybe write a book about it.
... and then they go on the lecture circuit and make even more heaps of cash, at which point some other sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorporation hires them. Really, it's beyond belief what goes on in those circles.
Yeah
And with Doohan having passed on, there's already a very essential element missing. You just can't have Spock without Scotty.
...!"
I'd say it's more true that you can't have Spock with out McCoy, since it was their ever-present banter (and to a degree, rivalry since Spock's logic and McCoy's emotionalism often came into conflict usually resolved by Kirk) that was so entertaining.
McCoy: "It's a song, you green-blooded Vulcan. You sing it. The words aren't important. What's important is that you have a good time singing it."
Spock: "Oh. I am sorry, Doctor. Were we having a good time?"
McCoy: "Why you green-blooded, pointy-eared
Of course, that still leaves you with the same problem. DeForest Kelly is long gone as well.
An article that is definitely News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.
Cool.
I don't think you can "break up" the RIAA ... they're just the front organization (industry trade group, or some such) for a cartel (and a largely foreign-owned one at that), and the whole point of a cartel is to avoid attracting antitrust lightning. Even if the RIAA disappeared tomorrow, the price-fixing bastards that run the major studios would still be playing golf.
It's a serious accusation, and people should have some kind of accountability for making false accusations with such flimsy evidence, so that they are compelled to do a better job of it.
My understanding of the DMCA is that there is little accountability for such false accusations, and I see that as one of the big problems. There's no penalty for wrongly jerking someone around unless they choose to come after you in court.
I can understand why Scribd took them down, as lawyers don't come cheap.
Yeah. Too bad India isn't outsourcing lawyers.
No morals involved...it's simply just more convenient.
... seriously more convenient. If NBC could come up with a site as simple, clean and functional as ... well, as any major Torrent site, they'd have a winner, with a capital "W". I'd cheerfully hand over my credit card number if I could download quality shows with no commercials. That's key: you absolutely will not get a penny out of me if you're going to also subject me to advertising. Either make your product free and advertising supported, or just sell it to me without the ads. I've largely stopped buying DVDs because now they're putting product advertising in them, and you can't skip it (oh sure, you can remaster the thing with DVD Shrink or a similar app, but that's not the point.) Just like cable TV was in the beginning: ad-free, and that was a major marketing point. But they just couldn't resist the lure of those advertising dollars. Blood-sucking leeches, all of them.
Yeah
In any event, these people seem to think like all the other old-line content producers: keep control over the distribution channels at all costs even if it means throwing away hundreds of millions in revenue. To paraphrase Lewis Black: I'm surprised their stockholders haven't risen as one and slain them.
It was probably like having their teeth pulled with rusty pliers just to agree to put their shows up on iTunes in the first place.
In my country, 20 Mb/s down connections are common, but upload speeds are only 1 Mb/s.
In my country, 1.5 Mb/s down connections are common, but upload speeds are only 30 Kb/s.
"Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,"
... what is wrong with bankrupting those companies? That's the purpose of lawsuits ... if you're too successful at screwing people over, and you get called on it, you are supposed to have your ass handed to you on a platter. That's why we pay all the good people at the Justice Department. Honestly, I'd have thought they would be all over Verizon and the rest, but apparently Justice and the telcos are two halves of the same problem.
More to the point
The payphone will never be obsolete so long as we have Superman.
Until he starts hanging around with Dr. Who.
One wonders how such a long-established blogging company can be so ignorant about the nature of the world wide web.
Perhaps they are in need of some of those Alzheimer's implants referred to in another recent story.
Makes sense to me, so long as I can pay my Internet bill with my illegal downloads.