She may have followed "the letter of the law" but that is always the prerogative of judges. They have the power to either hand out justice or, as is the case here, allow unrepentant serial offender go virtually unpunished and unhindered.
Can the fucking American establishment possibly get any more arrogant!!??
The decision eliminates the establishment of a technical committee to assess Microsoft's compliance with the agreement. In its place, a corporate compliance committee -- consisting of Microsoft board members -- will make sure Microsoft lives up to the deal, the judge said.
If this charade of "law-enforcement in the USA" wasn't so ridiculous it'd actually be funny.
Right. Latin America truly rocks. Great people, great sights, good food, inexpensive. And it's reasonably safe if you don't do anything stupid. Not to mention the fact that you just need to know Spanish to get around most of it.
Just in case Spanish is only spoken on the Iberian peninsula, brushing up one's Latin might prove useful.
The little fly in the ointment is that Taiwan still officially considers them to be the Republic of China, i.e. the "rightful heirs" to the whole of China (and even neighbors like Tibet!), despite losing the civil war to Mao's communists. Therefore any country that recognizes ROC/Taiwan will by default support the claim that the Mainland China (aka People's Republic of China; PRC) has been illegally controlled by the Chinese Communist Party since 1949. ROC/Taiwan even represented whole China in the UN into the seventies until PRC ended their self-imposed isolationism and started throwing their weight around.
The island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa) was the place where the Nationalist army retreated in 1949 (initially protected by a US navy blockade) and after decades of occasionally ruthless party/military dictatorship, democracy only started to blossom there in the nineties.
However the main point is that Taiwan as an independent entity has never declared their national independence and these days the communist leadership of the awakening giant is threatening the island with war (ultra-patriotism is potent propaganda material for rulers everywhere) if they even dream aloud of declaring independence now.
I personally support democracies over one party/military dictatorships any day, but in this case the people of Taiwan really can't afford to whine about their lack of international recognition since they haven't even declared independence for the island.
The author here essentially argues that he thinks the world is now ripe to settle on such a standard. And he is full of glee that its his company winning - after having successfully sabotaged every attempt to agree on a worldwide common standard.
I didn't bother wasting my time reading his latest rants but perhaps a quick look into his other recent agendas give my respected Slashdot peers some perspective on Mr Steven Den Beste's philosophy on IT industry in general and business ethics in particular.
Someone mod up the parent. While the hyperlink is mangled, the hand-typed URL indeed works with RealPlayer and displays a modest but watchable 34Kbps stream.
(pnm://rm.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/cta/progs/02/c li ck_online/03oct.rm)
The Linus-at-home interview starts 5 minutes into the program (and ends at around 18 mins) but even before that there's a cute BBC-style preview of Linux.
Shame on the person who modded the parent as flamebait.
While it starts with the common misperception that the BBC is "an official government mouthpiece (that is) state-run organization and controlled by the British government", the concerns about the organization's objectivity are totally reasonable. Open discussion about issues such as the objectivity of media is of crucial importance to all modern democratic societies.
All organizations that consist of humans are subject to bias issues and in BBC's case Britain's historical and continuing cultural and economic links (or occasionally antipathies against old adversaries) will inevitably affect BBC's reporting from time to time. Yet they provide far more factual and unbiased coverage of world events than the American news networks which inevitably tend to oversimplify the news to their average American audience which lacks both the background knowledge and the attention span, not to mention plain interest, to get to the bottom of things.
BBC is a great english-language news resource once you learn to keep your bias-filtering glasses on. The best news organizations, i.e. those based in countries that have no major/recent colonialist past or any existing "special relationship" to the USA or other major powers, are found in continental Europe, but their english-language coverage tends to concentrate domestic rather than international news.
FWIW, part of the anglophone news scene's problem might also lie in the "information inbreeding" that stems from monolingualism. European journalists, OTOH, are likely to speak besides english also other foreign languages and that is often reflected in the different perspective and approach esp. what comes to difficult political issues in world politics.
There just might be a reason why Apple has it much easier in the "easy-to-use kernel configuration system" department...
All things considered, even the current Linux method works amazingly well. Not everything gets included in the official kernel releases, for various reasons, but users (incl. distro builders) are free (as in speech&beer) to add any features they feel will add value to their case.
Sometimes it's in the best long-term interests not include the first available stab at a new feature.
Personally, I have no reason not to trust Linus & Co's judgement in these matters.
Or was your rant targeted more at the object model and UI issues instead of the ability to configure kernels?
So what's the situation with Trident and their video drivers for Linux?
A quick Google search came up with complaints that they aren't providing the Xfree86 developers specs of their hardware and apparently number of their common chipsets remain unaccelerated under Linux. Since Trident has pretty much fallen off radar however I don't know if that is still true. Graphics chips being their bread and butter, and common in cheap generic hardware, I'm not sure I'd raise them on an open source pedestal for providing drivers for some of their sound chips only.
They are parading the banners of some of the largest PC OEMs on their website, a number of which (try to) appear friendly towards the Linux community, so it'd be truly positive if their upcoming commodity chips would be properly supported by open source drivers. Closed binary drivers may be fine for a while, until the company cuts the oxygen supply.
On the dark shadowy corner we have Micro$oft, the eternal holders of the DirectX belt, who would much rather not see a flood of $300 PCs coming out with complete and perfect driver support under Linux...
I'd kind of be up for a new video card and the specs per price ratio of these new Tridents seem okay to me, but I'm hoping to give my cash to really nice guys who really support my favourite platform.
One thing that I've found a little surprising has been the rise of MicrosoftNBC as the #1 preferred news source by Slashdot.
Not only are the M$NBC articles usually rehashed versions of news already scooped elsewhere, but pointing out Slashdot editors' strange fascination with promoting M$NBC tends to result in downmodding.
I'm not suggesting any comprehensive conspiracy, but considering Microsoft's favoured modes of covert action (they turned astro-turfing into an art form), I'd be surprised if we didn't have microserfs here trying to create divisions.
If the colour LCD screens are now good enough to handle "movies", these PDAs would make a handy portable TV receiver too. That would also open up a whole new market segment for these currently "geeky" gadgets: the consumers.
PDA-with-TV&Tivo-in-your-pocket?
What pieces are still missing until that can happen?
To me, it's incredible that no hardware vendor such as IBM or HP is offering StarOffice or OpenOffice preinstalled on personal computers. I see no reason for them to not install it.
That might have something to do with the fact that Sun Microsystems is a competitor to other hardware OEMs, especially the major PC makers who tend to be in the workstation and server markets.
Actually, the lads marching out dressed up as flightless birds weren't Transmetites - they were just the staff from next door company leaving for lunch. Now what was that other company called again... hmm, oh yes, Transvesta!
Scandinavia has a long and proud history of "fair use" broadcasting where the authors do get paid royalties, besides benefitting from the obvious free publicity, and the story-telling programs are particularly popular among the pre-schoolers who wouldn't be buying books quite yet anyway. Perhaps that was the fly in the magic ointment; no potential sales in that market segment within the current financial year?
As an author who also "initially" used to hide her gender in order to attract young boys, her behaviour has struck me as somewhat peculiar, if not outright petty. She might be a literary genius (not that I'd have read anything by her) but does she deserve my sympathy for getting one-upped by chinese pirates? I don't think so.
If you should pick one body part to concentrate on in order to maximize return on investment, what do you think that organ would be?
They'll be selling "designer private parts" not just for John Bobbitt but every Tom, Harry, and of course, Dick.
Just a word of prophetic warning: do not even consider having your spanking-new organically grown appendage attached in a cheap clinic in any area like California which tends to affected by rolling blackouts, not unless you don't mind joining the Eunuch Geek Movement anyway.
Having studied only British English at school and preferring BBC (who use predominantly something resembling "Queen's English", apart from foreign guests and of course Vicky Parker) as my anglophone source of news instead of the US-centric American networks I find it a bit difficult to follow some of the lyrics in "cartoon-American".
I couldn't find the lyrics for this EFF-Disney extragavanza anywhere but with the EFF being involved I must be missing something. Could some kind soul either point me to the right direction or alternatively post the lyrics e.g. here on Slashdot (potential karma goldmine awaits...)?
Re:What do Teale data center personnel say?
on
California Hax0red
·
· Score: 1
Usually, if the news article does not mention the type of systems to get cracked it is quite likely they were running MS software.
When the data systems failed catastrophically upon the '98 opening of the Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong, the local aviation authorities refused to tell - due to contractual issues - what software had failed and how. News footage did show BSOD'ed terminal screens so that raised suspicions and a friend of mine who worked for the Airport Authority as an admin later privately confessed they were using Windows NT at the data center.
Microsoft seems to have a standard gag order clause in their software contracts. If anything goes (and it will go) wrong, you, the customer, are denied not only the right to sue MS but you aren't even allowed to mention thy Redmondian lord's name.
And given the romance and adventure of exploring uncharted worlds, it is not surprising that so many citizens and grade school children have also become excited about this mission to new frontiers.
To me this quote represents some of the best ideals of the so-called western civilization. There's a deep-rooted sense of purpose in pushing the barriers of scientific knowledge and understanding. Despite the fact that military is also interested in any advances stemming from such exploration the ultimate aim is to have this knowledge advance the whole of humanity.
So how does terrorism - as demonstrated by the relatively recent islamic jihad against the western world - fit into this picture? Well, for a long time while "The Old World" was suffering under the Dark Ages (imposed by religion, the Church) the islamic empire had a thriving scientific culture. That fine and rather benevolent islamic culture was eventually suffocated by increasing religious dogmatism so it is highly ironic that those same forces are now attempting to destroy the West where the evolution of the State and Religion followed the opposite route.
I don't think I'm much off the mark by saying that the driving force, or motive, behind the actions of the "ultra-islamic" terrorists is simple envy and the desire to pull the West down to the same level of stagnation and religious revival that they themselves are under. If the western governments, and especially the US, decrease their scientific commitments in favour of military spending the religious terrorists have gained a victory of sorts.
PS. Would it not be ironic if scientific missions such as this one to study the Kuiper Belt would help us (the humanity) to better understand dangerous asteroids and help us learn how to repel them. Suppose just one, say 10 miles across, was on a collision course with Earth and was calculated to strike the Middle East in the 2030's. Would the Mid-East populations still support the destruction of the West? Of course, if the object was calculated to hit North America or even Europe there would probably be much rejoicing in God punishing the infidels...
Slashdot Mirror
Relax and enjoy the show, we're all doomed to become blind anyway
So what do you think about her now?
She may have followed "the letter of the law" but that is always the prerogative of judges. They have the power to either hand out justice or, as is the case here, allow unrepentant serial offender go virtually unpunished and unhindered.
Can the fucking American establishment possibly get any more arrogant!!??
... until their next extension, of course.
The decision eliminates the establishment of a technical committee to assess Microsoft's compliance with the agreement. In its place, a corporate compliance committee -- consisting of Microsoft board members -- will make sure Microsoft lives up to the deal, the judge said.
If this charade of "law-enforcement in the USA" wasn't so ridiculous it'd actually be funny.
The little fly in the ointment is that Taiwan still officially considers them to be the Republic of China, i.e. the "rightful heirs" to the whole of China (and even neighbors like Tibet!), despite losing the civil war to Mao's communists. Therefore any country that recognizes ROC/Taiwan will by default support the claim that the Mainland China (aka People's Republic of China; PRC) has been illegally controlled by the Chinese Communist Party since 1949. ROC/Taiwan even represented whole China in the UN into the seventies until PRC ended their self-imposed isolationism and started throwing their weight around.
The island of Taiwan (formerly known as Formosa) was the place where the Nationalist army retreated in 1949 (initially protected by a US navy blockade) and after decades of occasionally ruthless party/military dictatorship, democracy only started to blossom there in the nineties.
However the main point is that Taiwan as an independent entity has never declared their national independence and these days the communist leadership of the awakening giant is threatening the island with war (ultra-patriotism is potent propaganda material for rulers everywhere) if they even dream aloud of declaring independence now.
I personally support democracies over one party/military dictatorships any day, but in this case the people of Taiwan really can't afford to whine about their lack of international recognition since they haven't even declared independence for the island.
Steven Den Beste has been on a some weird acid crusade at least since mid-nineties, when he started a tireless Microsoft-adulation campaign in OS/2 newsgroups.
I didn't bother wasting my time reading his latest rants but perhaps a quick look into his other recent agendas give my respected Slashdot peers some perspective on Mr Steven Den Beste's philosophy on IT industry in general and business ethics in particular.
Someone mod up the parent. While the hyperlink is mangled, the hand-typed URL indeed works with RealPlayer and displays a modest but watchable 34Kbps stream.
c li ck_online/03oct.rm)
(pnm://rm.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/cta/progs/02/
The Linus-at-home interview starts 5 minutes into the program (and ends at around 18 mins) but even before that there's a cute BBC-style preview of Linux.
Shame on the person who modded the parent as flamebait.
While it starts with the common misperception that the BBC is "an official government mouthpiece (that is) state-run organization and controlled by the British government", the concerns about the organization's objectivity are totally reasonable. Open discussion about issues such as the objectivity of media is of crucial importance to all modern democratic societies.
All organizations that consist of humans are subject to bias issues and in BBC's case Britain's historical and continuing cultural and economic links (or occasionally antipathies against old adversaries) will inevitably affect BBC's reporting from time to time. Yet they provide far more factual and unbiased coverage of world events than the American news networks which inevitably tend to oversimplify the news to their average American audience which lacks both the background knowledge and the attention span, not to mention plain interest, to get to the bottom of things.
BBC is a great english-language news resource once you learn to keep your bias-filtering glasses on. The best news organizations, i.e. those based in countries that have no major/recent colonialist past or any existing "special relationship" to the USA or other major powers, are found in continental Europe, but their english-language coverage tends to concentrate domestic rather than international news.
FWIW, part of the anglophone news scene's problem might also lie in the "information inbreeding" that stems from monolingualism. European journalists, OTOH, are likely to speak besides english also other foreign languages and that is often reflected in the different perspective and approach esp. what comes to difficult political issues in world politics.
You didn't only get laid off, you're off and with time to get laid.
You never know what you can contract that way...
There just might be a reason why Apple has it much easier in the "easy-to-use kernel configuration system" department...
All things considered, even the current Linux method works amazingly well. Not everything gets included in the official kernel releases, for various reasons, but users (incl. distro builders) are free (as in speech&beer) to add any features they feel will add value to their case.
Sometimes it's in the best long-term interests not include the first available stab at a new feature.
Personally, I have no reason not to trust Linus & Co's judgement in these matters.
Or was your rant targeted more at the object model and UI issues instead of the ability to configure kernels?
So what's the situation with Trident and their video drivers for Linux?
A quick Google search came up with complaints that they aren't providing the Xfree86 developers specs of their hardware and apparently number of their common chipsets remain unaccelerated under Linux. Since Trident has pretty much fallen off radar however I don't know if that is still true. Graphics chips being their bread and butter, and common in cheap generic hardware, I'm not sure I'd raise them on an open source pedestal for providing drivers for some of their sound chips only.
They are parading the banners of some of the largest PC OEMs on their website, a number of which (try to) appear friendly towards the Linux community, so it'd be truly positive if their upcoming commodity chips would be properly supported by open source drivers. Closed binary drivers may be fine for a while, until the company cuts the oxygen supply.
On the dark shadowy corner we have Micro$oft, the eternal holders of the DirectX belt, who would much rather not see a flood of $300 PCs coming out with complete and perfect driver support under Linux...
I'd kind of be up for a new video card and the specs per price ratio of these new Tridents seem okay to me, but I'm hoping to give my cash to really nice guys who really support my favourite platform.
i dum ed vs. i DuM HeR
Until someone proves otherwise, Debian's (female gender) title is wittier since it can incorporate "dep" backwards too. Witness "i dum(ped) ed".
Try fitting "rpm" into ReHMuDi...
Btw, who was ed?
One thing that I've found a little surprising has been the rise of MicrosoftNBC as the #1 preferred news source by Slashdot.
Not only are the M$NBC articles usually rehashed versions of news already scooped elsewhere, but pointing out Slashdot editors' strange fascination with promoting M$NBC tends to result in downmodding.
I'm not suggesting any comprehensive conspiracy, but considering Microsoft's favoured modes of covert action (they turned astro-turfing into an art form), I'd be surprised if we didn't have microserfs here trying to create divisions.
If the colour LCD screens are now good enough to handle "movies", these PDAs would make a handy portable TV receiver too. That would also open up a whole new market segment for these currently "geeky" gadgets: the consumers.
PDA-with-TV&Tivo-in-your-pocket?
What pieces are still missing until that can happen?
To me, it's incredible that no hardware vendor such as IBM or HP is offering StarOffice or OpenOffice preinstalled on personal computers. I see no reason for them to not install it.
That might have something to do with the fact that Sun Microsystems is a competitor to other hardware OEMs, especially the major PC makers who tend to be in the workstation and server markets.
Actually, the lads marching out dressed up as flightless birds weren't Transmetites - they were just the staff from next door company leaving for lunch. Now what was that other company called again... hmm, oh yes, Transvesta!
There's also something else that will get Ms Rowling fuming.
Scandinavia has a long and proud history of "fair use" broadcasting where the authors do get paid royalties, besides benefitting from the obvious free publicity, and the story-telling programs are particularly popular among the pre-schoolers who wouldn't be buying books quite yet anyway. Perhaps that was the fly in the magic ointment; no potential sales in that market segment within the current financial year?
As an author who also "initially" used to hide her gender in order to attract young boys, her behaviour has struck me as somewhat peculiar, if not outright petty. She might be a literary genius (not that I'd have read anything by her) but does she deserve my sympathy for getting one-upped by chinese pirates? I don't think so.
If you should pick one body part to concentrate on in order to maximize return on investment, what do you think that organ would be?
They'll be selling "designer private parts" not just for John Bobbitt but every Tom, Harry, and of course, Dick.
Just a word of prophetic warning: do not even consider having your spanking-new organically grown appendage attached in a cheap clinic in any area like California which tends to affected by rolling blackouts, not unless you don't mind joining the Eunuch Geek Movement anyway.
Having studied only British English at school and preferring BBC (who use predominantly something resembling "Queen's English", apart from foreign guests and of course Vicky Parker) as my anglophone source of news instead of the US-centric American networks I find it a bit difficult to follow some of the lyrics in "cartoon-American".
I couldn't find the lyrics for this EFF-Disney extragavanza anywhere but with the EFF being involved I must be missing something. Could some kind soul either point me to the right direction or alternatively post the lyrics e.g. here on Slashdot (potential karma goldmine awaits...)?
Usually, if the news article does not mention the type of systems to get cracked it is quite likely they were running MS software.
When the data systems failed catastrophically upon the '98 opening of the Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong, the local aviation authorities refused to tell - due to contractual issues - what software had failed and how. News footage did show BSOD'ed terminal screens so that raised suspicions and a friend of mine who worked for the Airport Authority as an admin later privately confessed they were using Windows NT at the data center.
Microsoft seems to have a standard gag order clause in their software contracts. If anything goes (and it will go) wrong, you, the customer, are denied not only the right to sue MS but you aren't even allowed to mention thy Redmondian lord's name.
I believe this when I see an editorial link to Micro$oft-NBC - the choice of Slashdot news sites...
To me this quote represents some of the best ideals of the so-called western civilization. There's a deep-rooted sense of purpose in pushing the barriers of scientific knowledge and understanding. Despite the fact that military is also interested in any advances stemming from such exploration the ultimate aim is to have this knowledge advance the whole of humanity.
So how does terrorism - as demonstrated by the relatively recent islamic jihad against the western world - fit into this picture? Well, for a long time while "The Old World" was suffering under the Dark Ages (imposed by religion, the Church) the islamic empire had a thriving scientific culture. That fine and rather benevolent islamic culture was eventually suffocated by increasing religious dogmatism so it is highly ironic that those same forces are now attempting to destroy the West where the evolution of the State and Religion followed the opposite route.
I don't think I'm much off the mark by saying that the driving force, or motive, behind the actions of the "ultra-islamic" terrorists is simple envy and the desire to pull the West down to the same level of stagnation and religious revival that they themselves are under. If the western governments, and especially the US, decrease their scientific commitments in favour of military spending the religious terrorists have gained a victory of sorts.
PS. Would it not be ironic if scientific missions such as this one to study the Kuiper Belt would help us (the humanity) to better understand dangerous asteroids and help us learn how to repel them. Suppose just one, say 10 miles across, was on a collision course with Earth and was calculated to strike the Middle East in the 2030's. Would the Mid-East populations still support the destruction of the West? Of course, if the object was calculated to hit North America or even Europe there would probably be much rejoicing in God punishing the infidels...
Customers tend to turn to Red Hat because they know the Linux kernel (and its immediate surroundings) inside out.
I'm not convinced they have that same advantage wrt the Solaris kernel. Getting to know anything/anyone intimately is usually a long process.
I'm rather skinny...
Isn't that self-explanatory?
I know, it's mad...