How about ones that are qualified to properly dispose of nuclear waste. Presumably, leading engineers and scientists. You know, the ones that could potentially design a place to put the waste into.
Tell me where you find a qualified engineer whose opinions won't be colored by decades of work for the nuclear power industry or the military.
In fact, it's far from clear that MS Office is the superior product at all
From the FA:
Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems, agreed that his company's StarOffice and OpenOffice programs are playing catch-up when it comes to features for disabled people. ''We will cheerfully admit that it's not as good as what's there under Windows today," Bray said.
You seem to forget that computer hardware used to sell for only a few hundred dollars, long before Microsoft had any significant presence in the OS industry
These aren't the prices I see in back issues of "Creative Computing." Unless you consider a Sinclair, Vic-20 or an Atari 800 an office machine.
I feel safer already. Bob Terrorist can send coded messages just about any way he wants to get around this (the apocryphal "coded eBay auction" stories, PGP or any number of other encryption standards, smoke signals, fucking microfiche under a stamp
KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. Bob doen't want to be seen carrying a one-time pad, a sack full of cell-phones, or a James Bond gadget.
Where encryption is little used, encryption draws attention.
It's amazing to me that real piracy, where huge profits are made, is ignored while file sharing between friends is hammered
When you define "friends" as "everyone on the Internet" with a P2P client you have moved into distribution big-time. You might want to think about that before going into competition with the real-world pirates who settle territorial disputes with guns.
The government has the resources to pursue both the amateur and the pro: Cybercrime
How about CONSUMERS pay for new TVs or converters themselves? They don't get cable free. They don't get a free CD palyer when cassettes go out of style.
When Los Angeles began the transition from 50 to 60 cycle AC power distribution in the thirties it provided free repair or replacement for every electric clock in the city. There is nothing new about using government subsidies to eaze the migration to a new technology.
It is argued here every day that cities have the right or the obligation to provide "free" municipal WiFI, a middle-class entitlement, if ever there was one.
If we're going to spend billions of tax dollars on televisions, let's spend it subsidizing people to NOT own them?Seriously, we already fucking subsidize breeders and marriage. Now we want to add television watching to that?
Television brings events into focus in a way that anyone can understand. 9/11 gave Bush the moral authority he needed to govern, Katrina took it away.
I don't know why you would pay an actor over a million dollars to act in a movie.
Stars sell tickets. You get one Cary Grant or Sean Connery to a generation. With talent of that caliber on board, your financing and distribution problems are solved.
The person should fit the role
The role is often crafted with a particular actor in mind. Jimmy Cagney in "White Heat," Harrison Ford in "Air Force One."
I imagine a hundred years ago the fact that incandescent bulb gave 2800K to candle's 1200K really hindered its adoption. Because candles were what people came to expect.
The mid 19th Century was home was lit by natural gas (if you could afford it) or by kerosene and other petroleum based lamp oils (dangerous).
Think for a moment how fifty to seventy-five years of experience with gas illumination affects interior design, men and women's fashions, cosmetics, etc.
I mean, just because it's online, it's not something of a 'public library'? How so? Do libraries have to get permission from every single publisher of every single piece of media they release? I think not.
Libraries don't "release" anything. They purchase books for short-term loan to their patrons.
Popular titles can disintegrate in weeks unless custom-bound, but, realistically, most books will never see more than a handful of readers.
I could care less about profits from creative works.
Historically, there are only three ways an artist can survive and remain productive:
1 He is independently wealthy. In the past, a landed aristocrat like Livy or Thomas Jefferson sustained by slave labor.
2 He is subsidized by the state, the church, or a private patron. Not unlike being paid by Sun but working more or less full time on OpenOffice. But patrons can be whimsical and demanding.
3 He sells his work in a protected market. Shakespeare doesn't go to law, he goes to his contacts and business partners in the Court of King James.
The capitalist model lowers the barriers to entry while granting the artist a measure of independence and security. It seems to have worked pretty well.
File sharing takes the power of information out of the hands of large conglomerates and gives it back to the people, where it rightly belongs.
Distribution is not production. You saved $5 on a video rental. But Harry Potter continues to define and shape a younger generation as Star Wars did the last.
First you have to overcome Monsento's patented grain. Good luck there...
When a farmer looks at seed stocks the questions he asks begin with yield, resistance to insects, drought and disease. labor costs, markets and so on. It's a business decision like any other. If Monsanto's proprietary, patented, stock is a consistent money maker you go with it.
we found pamphlets distributed by the government during the 1940's and 1950's. They included a *very detailed* guide to the properties of different sorts of wood -- everything you'd want to know about selecting wood to build with. Another talked about radioactive fallout. I was impressed. Name some recent effort by the US government to provide information to the public on such a detailed level.
It is called the Government Printing Office. The GPO publishes books, magazines. posters and CD-ROMs in hundreds of categories. Titles like "The American Practical Navigator" have been in print for two hundred years. U.S. Government Online Bookstore
Windows: Go to store, purchase box that says "foo" on it Linux: sudo apt-get install foo
,,,and now at last we are getting to the real problem.
If I upgrade Paint Shop Pro, Corel will ship a polished commercial product with a thick printed manual and CD. This I like.
It isn't just games that keeps people on Windows. It is an immense end-user oriented program library developed over twenty-five years that fills every market niche.
More people getting online, more people buying computers, which come with Microsoft on them. More people upgrading from old Windows versions means XP picks up percentages.
Which is another way of saying that people are comfortable where they are. They never migrate in significant numbers to the "alternative OS."
Theres only so much you can push people. Windows XP did not deliver what people thought it would and Vista won't achieve what it set out to do, and updates take too long coming.
How do you explain numbers like these? OS Platform Stats: XP with a 70% share, up 40% from March 2003. Linux and OSX at 3% each, no change.
Do you really think so? I mean, when I bought my first computer 10 years ago, 56k was blazing fast. And wireless was unheard of (at least beyond 5 foot, PDA to PDA transmissions). Now Wireless is much more commonplace, and the bandwidth is rising rapidly. I doubt it'll take 50 years.
One striking image out of New Orleans was that of a man using an ordinary pay phone. Technology rooted in the 1880s, tough and resilient, but also a reminder of the divide between the rich and poor: Cell phones, Wi-Fi enabled laptops, VoIP, software-defined radios... "Freeplay" clockwork radios for emergency use cost $50-150. You need a middle class income or better to afford any of this stuff.
No, the IBM PC did that, because it was an open platform, of which any manufacturer could create compatible clones. DOS was just along for the ride. The PC platform succeeded despite DOS, not because of it.
Let's not rewrite history. The clones flew off the shelves because they could run software written for the IBM PC. MS-DOS software.
That is what was advertised and that is what sold.
Slashdot Mirror
only in your fantasy world would $258,000,000 US be considered chump change.
Tell me where you find a qualified engineer whose opinions won't be colored by decades of work for the nuclear power industry or the military.
From the FA:
Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems, agreed that his company's StarOffice and OpenOffice programs are playing catch-up when it comes to features for disabled people. ''We will cheerfully admit that it's not as good as what's there under Windows today," Bray said.
Senators qustion file-storage shift
I'm sure some other vendor will be only too willing to meet their needs. That's what capitalism is all about, after all
If you can write this line with a straight face, you have a future with Walmart in PR.
These aren't the prices I see in back issues of "Creative Computing." Unless you consider a Sinclair, Vic-20 or an Atari 800 an office machine.
KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. Bob doen't want to be seen carrying a one-time pad, a sack full of cell-phones, or a James Bond gadget.
Where encryption is little used, encryption draws attention.
When you define "friends" as "everyone on the Internet" with a P2P client you have moved into distribution big-time. You might want to think about that before going into competition with the real-world pirates who settle territorial disputes with guns.
The government has the resources to pursue both the amateur and the pro: Cybercrime
Suggested reading: Cybercrime - Homepage.
You don't need to be running FF to know the value of the BBC.
Whwn China joied the WTO, Microsoft was the first foreign corporation invited into the CSIA.
Since when do psychotic fantasies of violence warrant a mod-up to +2, Informative? God help us all if this loon actually shoots someone.
When Los Angeles began the transition from 50 to 60 cycle AC power distribution in the thirties it provided free repair or replacement for every electric clock in the city. There is nothing new about using government subsidies to eaze the migration to a new technology.
It is argued here every day that cities have the right or the obligation to provide "free" municipal WiFI, a middle-class entitlement, if ever there was one.
If we're going to spend billions of tax dollars on televisions, let's spend it subsidizing people to NOT own them?Seriously, we already fucking subsidize breeders and marriage. Now we want to add television watching to that?
Television brings events into focus in a way that anyone can understand. 9/11 gave Bush the moral authority he needed to govern, Katrina took it away.
Stars sell tickets. You get one Cary Grant or Sean Connery to a generation. With talent of that caliber on board, your financing and distribution problems are solved.
The person should fit the role
The role is often crafted with a particular actor in mind. Jimmy Cagney in "White Heat," Harrison Ford in "Air Force One."
The mid 19th Century was home was lit by natural gas (if you could afford it) or by kerosene and other petroleum based lamp oils (dangerous).
Think for a moment how fifty to seventy-five years of experience with gas illumination affects interior design, men and women's fashions, cosmetics, etc.
There were real barriers to change, Competition to Edison's Lamp
How many Windows users have even heard of Ubuntu or post to any online forum?
Libraries don't "release" anything. They purchase books for short-term loan to their patrons.
Popular titles can disintegrate in weeks unless custom-bound, but, realistically, most books will never see more than a handful of readers.
Historically, there are only three ways an artist can survive and remain productive:
1 He is independently wealthy. In the past, a landed aristocrat like Livy or Thomas Jefferson sustained by slave labor.
2 He is subsidized by the state, the church, or a private patron. Not unlike being paid by Sun but working more or less full time on OpenOffice. But patrons can be whimsical and demanding.
3 He sells his work in a protected market. Shakespeare doesn't go to law, he goes to his contacts and business partners in the Court of King James.
The capitalist model lowers the barriers to entry while granting the artist a measure of independence and security. It seems to have worked pretty well.
File sharing takes the power of information out of the hands of large conglomerates and gives it back to the people, where it rightly belongs.
Distribution is not production. You saved $5 on a video rental. But Harry Potter continues to define and shape a younger generation as Star Wars did the last.
When a farmer looks at seed stocks the questions he asks begin with yield, resistance to insects, drought and disease. labor costs, markets and so on. It's a business decision like any other. If Monsanto's proprietary, patented, stock is a consistent money maker you go with it.
A better place to begin might be the Lucas Arts adventures or The Longest Journey.
It is called the Government Printing Office. The GPO publishes books, magazines. posters and CD-ROMs in hundreds of categories. Titles like "The American Practical Navigator" have been in print for two hundred years. U.S. Government Online Bookstore
My niece began with XP at age four. Windows is in her home and in her hand every day. Something she can touch.
Linux: sudo apt-get install foo
If I upgrade Paint Shop Pro, Corel will ship a polished commercial product with a thick printed manual and CD. This I like.
It isn't just games that keeps people on Windows. It is an immense end-user oriented program library developed over twenty-five years that fills every market niche.
Which is another way of saying that people are comfortable where they are. They never migrate in significant numbers to the "alternative OS."
How do you explain numbers like these? OS Platform Stats: XP with a 70% share, up 40% from March 2003. Linux and OSX at 3% each, no change.
One striking image out of New Orleans was that of a man using an ordinary pay phone. Technology rooted in the 1880s, tough and resilient, but also a reminder of the divide between the rich and poor: Cell phones, Wi-Fi enabled laptops, VoIP, software-defined radios... "Freeplay" clockwork radios for emergency use cost $50-150. You need a middle class income or better to afford any of this stuff.
Let's not rewrite history. The clones flew off the shelves because they could run software written for the IBM PC. MS-DOS software.
That is what was advertised and that is what sold.