I'm not able to comment on most of these, but your first assertion, that "The IBM PC would never have taken off, except in industry, if the Apple II hadn't introduced home computing."
In 1980, IBM hadn't even considered the home market. They were a Business Machines company, and they were afraid of Apple and others like Kaypro creating and then running away with the office PC market. They needed to get a machine out in a big hurry, so they put together a special down in Boca Raton, who threw together a bunch of commodity non-IBM parts, and (now this the important part) non-exclusively licensed an OS from a company that knew a thing or two about small computers.
So while the Apple II's success may have spurred IBM into creating a PC, it was in the office, not the home, that IBM wanted to reply.
If the refrigerator is working, and the TV is working, and the Internet is not, it's time to pull out those Simpsons DVDs, crack open a Duff or two, and get to drinkin'!
Re:The case for a link with Microsoft
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Occam's Razor is a risky instrument when litigation is involved. I'm sure Bill Gates goes to sleep every night praying SCO will win. But if Microsoft is directly underwriting this case, it is engaging in the sort of monopolistic behavior that causes Congress to fly back to Washington to pass a law against it specifically.
I think that if Microsoft made an actual monetary investment in SCO, it is of the speculative sort. If I, as a company with fifty billion dollars in cash reserves, can spend less than a thousandth of those reserves and not only destroy my most dangerous competitor, but come away owning a sizable chunk of the company that just destroyed that competitor, why the hell not?
As intriguing as your theory is, you're going to have to rework it without item three:
3. (Most damning) SCO's denial that MS helped them in any way
Sometimes a denial is just a denial. I mean, if I deny that I've been banging your mother all these years, I just might mean that I haven't.
Furthermore: This will teach them that plagiarism is wrong.
A supremely excellent perspective. It made my mother hopping mad that in high school I routinely broke into friends' cars (to leave notes on their dashboard or cut off their headlights or steal my Kate Bush tapess back). Until, of course, she locked herself out of her own car. My friends never did mind---they thought it was a cool trick.
I believe you are relying on an oversimplified interpretation of "loser pays". Most European court systems use loser-pays, but what the loser pays is not the winner's total bill, but an amount dependent on the damages, the percentage of liability on the defendant's side, a "reasonable" hourly fee. Things like that. So SCO, Exxon, whoever, can't just say, "You're suing us for the $100 refund we should have given you but didn't? Fine. Our lawyers have already run up a $50,000 bill for writing this letter. Would you like us to write you another one?"
Of course, lawyers can argue ad nauseum as to what a constitutes a reasonable fee---or a reasonable anything, for that matter.
Overlawyered has a good section on loser-pays. Lots of good links at the above. Read about offer-for-settlement; it's an interesting variant.
Pay phones still exist. And you aren't asked to produce an ID to buy a "real" cellphone, either. If I'm a drug dealer or terrorist, I have no problem at all with spending a $120 in cash every other month to buy a barebones cell phone and prepay a plan---and I'll buy a new phone every week during the month or two before a big "event." The fact I can do it for $40 every other month now makes little difference to my trade.
SCO's lawyers get a twenty percent payoff if SCO wins or IBM settles. If SCO is bought out while the lawsuit is pending, the lawyers get twenty percent of that, too. source.
Nice to see that the lawyers themselves understand this suit is nothing more than a way to harass a large company into paying off.
It's professional market speculators buying the stock. Look: If you play the smart odds over a large enough sample pool, you win. It doesn't matter if nine of every ten bets (did I say bets? I ment investments) fail if the remaining one pays off better than ten to one.
The trick, of course, is knowing the difference between a smart bet and a big one. This is why day traders go broke: to them, it's no longer investing, it's gambling.
I don't think we'll necessarily see "weapons" as a category filtered out at libraries---not with the current administration. After all, guns don't kill people, naked boobies do.
If it weren't for the LDP, I never would have got that first machine running Slackware (kernel version 1.0.8) back in nineteen ninety mumble, on my Big Bad 486/50 with its Big Bad 20MB and Big Bad 1.08GB hard drive.
Now I'm proud to run a machine that's over twice as fast, with three times the memory! And I still use Matt Walsh's writings to get by. Three Cheers and a virtual beer!
As soon as cars are obsolete, radio will be obsolete. I still listen to the news, weather, and traffic reports, right? I still like listening to something while my eyes are occupied.
My brother has an MP3 player in his car, and can use one disk per week without repeating a single track. So for road trips, yah---screw it. But a ball game on a summer night, a college football game, NPR's Morning Edition, I gotta have radio.
How much fake information do you think Microsoft might generate in order to send competitors' developers (including OSS developers) on wild goose chases?
It's been only recently (last 10 years or so) that all ink manufacturers put a little seal at the end of the tube, so you *can't* blow through it.
It that seal were airtight, the pen wouldn't work. If you look close you'll see that the little seal is a fibrous material that lets air pass through. It's harder to blow-pressurize, but you can still do it. I survived an English exam like that in high school. The little tuft won't let the ink paste through, so your pen won't "bomb" on you.
BTW the Pilot EasyTouch I'm writing this with (blue, medium point) has no such seal. Just as well because the blobs of ink tend to come from the front of this pen rather than the back.
This 38 year old information probably hasn't been sitting in the Director's outbox just waiting for somebody to ask about it. This sort of archival information takes time and money to research. IOW it's our money being spent, whether this goes to court or not. Again, this is money that could be used for space exploration instead of helping some entertainment company boost their ratings. I'm not in the least surprised that a cash-strapped (e.g. not directly involved in the War on Terror) government agency said "Yeah, yeah. We'll put it on the list," and never called back.
It's also possible that NASA concluded their "investigation" was such utter bullshit that the whole file consists of a crayon-written letter from a yokel, and a memo saying "don't waste any time on this crap. We have a space race to win!" and that was the end of it.
So SciFi makes an FIA request; NASA says "that's all there is," mostly because aside from this file that's all there fucking is; then SciFi sues, desperate not to scuttle a project they've already invested $n in, thereby wasting more time and money, but it's all okay because it's not their money, it's ours, and it's not being used on space exploration.
How do you go about sinking something into the ground, that gets up to 500+ degrees C, without melting the permafrost? The Alaska pipeline has chilled pylons on it because the part above ground might get as warm as 75 degrees, thereby warming the part below ground enough to melt the permafrost.
I'll have to ask my uncle. He helped Bechtel build an oil refinery in northern Alberta...
Slashdot Mirror
In 1980, IBM hadn't even considered the home market. They were a Business Machines company, and they were afraid of Apple and others like Kaypro creating and then running away with the office PC market. They needed to get a machine out in a big hurry, so they put together a special down in Boca Raton, who threw together a bunch of commodity non-IBM parts, and (now this the important part) non-exclusively licensed an OS from a company that knew a thing or two about small computers.
So while the Apple II's success may have spurred IBM into creating a PC, it was in the office, not the home, that IBM wanted to reply.
If the refrigerator is working, and the TV is working, and the Internet is not, it's time to pull out those Simpsons DVDs, crack open a Duff or two, and get to drinkin'!
Occam's Razor is a risky instrument when litigation is involved. I'm sure Bill Gates goes to sleep every night praying SCO will win. But if Microsoft is directly underwriting this case, it is engaging in the sort of monopolistic behavior that causes Congress to fly back to Washington to pass a law against it specifically.
I think that if Microsoft made an actual monetary investment in SCO, it is of the speculative sort. If I, as a company with fifty billion dollars in cash reserves, can spend less than a thousandth of those reserves and not only destroy my most dangerous competitor, but come away owning a sizable chunk of the company that just destroyed that competitor, why the hell not?
As intriguing as your theory is, you're going to have to rework it without item three:
Sometimes a denial is just a denial. I mean, if I deny that I've been banging your mother all these years, I just might mean that I haven't.A supremely excellent perspective. It made my mother hopping mad that in high school I routinely broke into friends' cars (to leave notes on their dashboard or cut off their headlights or steal my Kate Bush tapess back). Until, of course, she locked herself out of her own car. My friends never did mind---they thought it was a cool trick.
Screw that. We want hoverbikes!
I've been trying for long, long time not to admit that.
Of course, lawyers can argue ad nauseum as to what a constitutes a reasonable fee---or a reasonable anything, for that matter.
Overlawyered has a good section on loser-pays. Lots of good links at the above. Read about offer-for-settlement; it's an interesting variant.
Pay phones still exist. And you aren't asked to produce an ID to buy a "real" cellphone, either. If I'm a drug dealer or terrorist, I have no problem at all with spending a $120 in cash every other month to buy a barebones cell phone and prepay a plan---and I'll buy a new phone every week during the month or two before a big "event." The fact I can do it for $40 every other month now makes little difference to my trade.
Nice to see that the lawyers themselves understand this suit is nothing more than a way to harass a large company into paying off.
The trick, of course, is knowing the difference between a smart bet and a big one. This is why day traders go broke: to them, it's no longer investing, it's gambling.
...and still count to ten on your fingers.
It's a phod of whales, yhou clhod!
You mean to tell me a glacier that has been receding since the end of the last Ice Age is still receding? Oh, dear.
I don't think we'll necessarily see "weapons" as a category filtered out at libraries---not with the current administration. After all, guns don't kill people, naked boobies do.
C'mon! If they're violating your copyright online, they're in violation of the DMCA you can get their NSP to shut them down. Damn, that would be fun!
Now I'm proud to run a machine that's over twice as fast, with three times the memory! And I still use Matt Walsh's writings to get by. Three Cheers and a virtual beer!
Now I have to change my .sig again.
My brother has an MP3 player in his car, and can use one disk per week without repeating a single track. So for road trips, yah---screw it. But a ball game on a summer night, a college football game, NPR's Morning Edition, I gotta have radio.
How much fake information do you think Microsoft might generate in order to send competitors' developers (including OSS developers) on wild goose chases?
It that seal were airtight, the pen wouldn't work. If you look close you'll see that the little seal is a fibrous material that lets air pass through. It's harder to blow-pressurize, but you can still do it. I survived an English exam like that in high school. The little tuft won't let the ink paste through, so your pen won't "bomb" on you.
BTW the Pilot EasyTouch I'm writing this with (blue, medium point) has no such seal. Just as well because the blobs of ink tend to come from the front of this pen rather than the back.
So for the next couple of weeks, a new Slashdot sig.
It's also possible that NASA concluded their "investigation" was such utter bullshit that the whole file consists of a crayon-written letter from a yokel, and a memo saying "don't waste any time on this crap. We have a space race to win!" and that was the end of it.
So SciFi makes an FIA request; NASA says "that's all there is," mostly because aside from this file that's all there fucking is; then SciFi sues, desperate not to scuttle a project they've already invested $n in, thereby wasting more time and money, but it's all okay because it's not their money, it's ours, and it's not being used on space exploration.
Did you get that from Repo Man ?
I'll have to ask my uncle. He helped Bechtel build an oil refinery in northern Alberta...
Finally an on-topic reason to say "In Soviet Russia..."