...they couldn't think of anything better to do with their money than give it to SCO?
Did you miss the part where they said it was an investment? That means they expect to get more back than what they put in. They didn't drop $50 mil on SCO just to spend on legal expenses. There's nothing irresponsible about investing money in a company that you think will be able to give you good returns.
This may be a victory for the anti-spammers, but at what cost (to use a cliche)? Why does the spam problem require government intervention? Almost every problem that has come up in recent history, particularly technical challenges, have been or can be solved with technical solutions or non-government practical solutions (like standards, etc). Natural language processing is getting better and better, and there are already spam-filtering solutions out there that do a pretty decent job. I use procmail, and I hardly ever lose a real email to the spam folder while only about 5% of the spam I get ever reaches my inbox, and that's only because I don't know how to write a regular expression to match "P'E.N^l'.S"E',N'.L,A-'.R%G`M~'E.N.,T" (I suppose I could try to use something like tr to get rid of non alpha-numerics, but...). There are much better systems out there than procmail.
This is definitely not a win for the first amendment or civil liberties. This is definitely not a win that is going to help keep the internet a free place.
I propose that there is a better way to direct all this vehement, foaming-at-the-mouth anger for spammers. Instead of trying to de-legalize spam, why couldn't ISP's each keep a do-not-spam list? If end users could authorize their ISP's to catch spam at the water's edge, so to speak, wouldn't that be a better solution for people who are so concerned with spam and still keep our freedoms intact?
here here! Right on! Why not encourage MS to do what they're good at, to both their benefit and ours? This is exactly where capitalism should step in and fix this mess.
so get the binary packages of all the ports. If done correctly, all dependencies will be handled, and if something needs to be downloaded, it will (although in that case I think it compiles the source).
Also, regardless of whether you want to compile source or not, ports (particularly gentoo's emerge) is just as automated as apt-get. If you don't want to compile, then that's your argument against emerge and ports, not the lack of automation.
The Computer Science department at tamu has what I think is a really neat way to track IT requests. Requests go into sorted queues, and as the tasks are worked on, the status in the queues is updated and emails help track changes.
Maybe you ought to RTFA again. It appears that you missed this line: "Maintenance, training and support are far more expensive with open source than proprietary software." This statement, incidentally, is a flat out lie, and is NOT backed by any reputable studies. I, offhand, question their motives for printing this.
What article are you reading? Something from The Sun? Here it is, in its entirety: ----- (Washington, D.C.)The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today criticized Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn for his stated intention to move all state and local government computers to open-source operating systems. The "Freeware Initiative" will require that all IT expenditures in 2004 and 2005 be made on an open-source/Linux format. Proprietary vendors will be effectively barred from competing for state contracts, limiting competition and raising costs.
"Governor Mitt Romney must put a stop to this boondoggle," CAGW President Tom Schatz said. "People mistakenly refer to Linux as 'free' software because it can be freely altered and distributed. Yet while the software itself is free, the cost to maintain and upgrade it can become very expensive. Like all procurement decisions, the best policy on the use of software is to place all products on equal footing. It is critical that taxpayers receive the best quality programs at the least cost."
"It is ironic that Massachusetts, as the only state remaining in the lawsuit accusing Microsoft of antitrust violations, is creating its own state-imposed monopoly on software. Under the state's proposed "Freeware Initiative," there would be no exceptions to the rule permitting only open source/Linux software. The old Soviet Union could not have done this any better," Schatz added.
While the initial open source software may be "free," most studies conclude that acquisition costs represent only 5 to 10 percent of total cost of ownership. Maintenance, training and support are far more expensive with open source than proprietary software.
"Massachusetts is proving itself the most technologically inept state in the nation. In addition to attempting to impose a socialistic procurement system, the state's record keeping on the Microsoft lawsuit was so abysmal that the judge in that case substantially reduced the proposed reimbursement of the state's cost," Schatz concluded. "It's time for Governor Romney to bring Massachusetts into the twenty-first century by dropping the lawsuit and opening up the procurement process. The state's taxpayers deserve nothing less."
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
-------
The sentence you quoted does not appear in the press release. That's what this thread is about; the recent press release. If you don't believe me, try Ctl-F in your browser.
The other link provided was not an article, but a set of emails (afaik), and are not the topic of discussion.
I think there's a big difference there. Mandating Open Source software or standards would not be explicitly excluding any competitors. It would only be excluding the closed-source philosophy, which, especially in the context of public affairs, is certainly a worthy cause.
Try this: Mandating only proprietary software wouldn't excluding competitors; it would only be excluding the open-sourced philosophy, which, especially in the context of public affairs, is certainly a worth cause --- by buying the government would be providing economic stimulus _and_ and jobs, etc, etc.
Being a taxpayer, I don't want my taxes being used to make some person or company richer without seeing any public benefits myself. That is what using proprietary software does. On the other hand, if a government funds or contracts Open Source development and procureme
I know this is lame, but....lesson learned. _Always_ click "preview" first.
Anyway, here's how it should have read:
First of all, maybe you need to RTFA yourself, or else improve your reading comprehension skills. Nowhere does the FA say that "Open-source software = good, admirable."
Speaking of reading skills... quoting myself: Here's the sum-up of the press release...
If you still want to bicker about the "open-source = good, admirable", then you have two problems. (A) you are convinced that CCAGW is anti open-source, which they aren't (B) You are using a red herring to get out of a losing argument
And they call Linux a monopoly in the same sentence that you quoted.
First of all, maybe you need to RTFA yourself, or else improve your reading comprehension skills. Nowhere does the FA say that "Open-source software = good, admirable."
Speaking of reading skills...
quoting myself: Here's the sum-up of the press release...And they call Linux a monopoly in the same sentence that you quoted.
You are simply incorrect.
Nice try. Troll somewhere else.
I would like to point out that the only time the word "monopoly" appears in the press release was in the following sentence:
It is ironic that Massachusetts, as the only state remaining in the lawsuit accusing Microsoft of antitrust violations, is creating its own state-imposed monopoly on software.
For the others of you who did not RTFA, I would also like to point out that the CCAGW was not criticizing the value of using open-source open-source itself, but rather the decision to exclude all other competitors in the bidding process. If they were excluding all competitors to the benefit of a for-profit corporation (Microsoft would be a good example), the criticism would be the same, and the process would be unethical at best, illegal at worst. Why is it suddenly alright to do the same thing with open-source vendors and projects?
Here's the sum-up of the press release for those of you who still refuse to RTFA: Open-source software = good, admirable state mandated zero-competition = bad, socialist
I don't like spam, but I like even less the idea that the government can tell someone who they can and can't send email to.
People (this could be ISPs _or_ end users) who don't like spam should come up with better filters (or just use the ones out there) or put up with it or a combination of the two (my chosen alternative to an inbox full of nothing). I would much rather use a filter and put up with a minimum amount of spam in my email (5 seconds to delete an entire day's worth of spam) than have the government tell me that I can't send mail to someone unless they asked for it.
Why don't Corporations just go back to good ol' quality products for a fair price to make money? That used to be a reliable way to do it after all. Sanely priced CDs with mp3s and oggs and mpeg videos included, along with interessting booklets should do magic to a declining market. But I guess they just want to sell crap for to much money and will use law enforcement to emphasis that and in the end really piss their customers of.
Right on, man. The cd itself doesn't cost a dime to these labels, and I would be willing to pay $5 or so for a decent album, especially if it included all those things you mentioned.
I have another theory too: part of the problem is crappy music written by wannabe artists that make their money through non-musical attention getting, like brittney dressing like a whore and kissing madonna like a lesbian. If there was quality music being sold, it would sell (and it does), but not for $15 a pop, especially when you can listen to the radio for free. Not to mention that if the music you like is in a movie, you can get the DVD for $15 and get the music + movie + lots of extra stuff like interviews with the actors, etc, etc, etc.
They need to start paying attention to quality musicians --- not just the 20-year-olds with big tits willing to act like whores --- and selling their music for less than $10 for 15 or more songs.
You miss the point. Despite being a part of the Executive Branch, the FCC is essentially serving a legislative function (deciding what the media companies may or may not do, rather than simply enforcing laws passed by Congress).
No, they serve a regulatory function, which is well within the powers of the executive branch given by the constitution and by prior legislation. Regulatory is different than legislative.
First of all, a general comment. Your accusations are completely unsubstantiated either by common knowledge or by facts or evidence.
That's right. I generally happens every 10 years (in Texas at least).
It's mandated by the Texas constitution that the state legislature redistrict at least once every ten years. By tradition, it's always been on the decade, so the last time would have been 2000.
The last time it happened, the situation had to be settled by a district court judge. That was in 2001.
Well, technically it started in 2000, but since the legislature couldn't agree to a district map, a 3-judge panel redrew the districts themselves. The argument is then that the constitutional requirement for the legislature to draw the district map has not yet been met for this decade.
Now the Texas Republicans want to redistrict again. They didn't like the last result
It's totally intellectually dishonest for a liberal/Democrat like yourself (I presume) to argue this, especially if you are one to argue (I also presume) that Bush didn't win the popular vote in 2000 and therefore shouldn't be president. Republicans hold ALL statewide offices in Texas, and 56% of all votes in state legislator elections went to republicans (I *think*...the number is right, but I may be applying it to the wrong event(s)). Is it unreasonable to then argue that given the above information and the fact that democrats hold a majority of U.S. representative positions from Texas that the district map might not be a fair one? I happen to live in a very gerrymandered district north of Dallas. I am in the same district with people from Witchita Falls instead of people from my own county. There are plenty more districts like this, which suggests to me that the district map could use some work.
so they're changing parliamentary rules in order to get their plan shoved through.
Actually, they are only breaking tradition, not rules.
This is all at the behest of the Bush Whitehouse.
It's much more likely to be at the behest of Tom DeLay than Bush, but I wouldn't really believe that the state legislators would go after this if they didn't think it was best. There's no benefit to them to simply do the bidding of a national elected leader.
It is not normal to redistrict every 2 years.
Correct, it is not. If the legislature had passed a district map in 2000 like they were supposed to, this wouldn't be a happening now. Furthermore, the Texas constitution only requires that the legislature redistrict every 10 years. It does not prohibit it from redistricting more often than that.
This is what you do when you want to guarantee getting elected, because you've fscked the economy up so much that you can't get enough of the popular vote to carry you into office.
This is the beginning of an irrational diatribe, but I'll do my best to respond. First of all, I'm not sure who you're talking about that wants to get a guarantee of being elected. If you're talking about Bush, you need to see my comments in a previous post about Politics 101. This redistricting has nothing to do with the electoral college. It doesn't affect it in any way. If you're talking about state legislators, it is also irrelevant. They aren't redistricting their own districts. They are redistricting the districts for representatives from Texas to the U.S. House of Representatives. The elections for the US representatives from Texas are the only elections that could possibly be affected by this. As far as they're concerned, see what I wrote above about Republicans dominating all positions in Texas and the Democrats still having a majority of US representatives, somehow.
It's a bit like getting your brother to block minorities from voting in the state that he's running.
What minorities were blocked from voting? If anyone was disenfranchised, it was the overseas military vote.
Bush's cronies in Texas are already trying to redistrict the state to increase republican state representatives. In the process, republican electoral votes for the President in national elections.
You need to brush up on political science 101. Electoral votes are not determined by the representatives elected to congress. The only relationship between the elected representatives to the U.S. Congress and the presidential electoral college is that the total number of representatives = the total number of electoral votes. Texas is an all-or-nothing state. If a presidential candidate wins the popular vote in Texas, he gets all 32 (33 now?) electoral votes, regardless of which party has more representatives. It is true that elected official s are often also the electoral representatives, but that's neither here nor there.
So even if the popular vote favors a democratic candidate, the republican candidate has a better chance of winning. Considering Texas is one of the largest states in terms of electoral votes that's not just disgusting. That's scary.
See above comments. WHO is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives doesn't really affect who gets what electoral votes. The electoral votes are decided (by tradition, incidentally) by the popular vote alone. Don't be scared, be involved. Also, as a side note: Texas is one of the largest (if not the largest) in all terms.:-)
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I realize that its popular to pick on the Republicans at the moment
Says who?
but this sort of redisticting happens every few years (I forget how many at the moment, and am to lazy to look it up for a/. post)
10 years, on the decade.
Which ever set of aristocrats are in power at the time use this redistricting to help themselves (gee, suprise). This is a normal function of our federal govenment.
Political science 101. It is a normal function of your state government. The U.S. Government has no say in districting.
Is it right, and/or benificial to us pesants? Probaly not, but please don't pretend its new, or one sided. Move along nothing to see here...
This is the wrong attitude. If people would pay attention to what their state legislators are up to, they could hold them accountable if what they see isn't satisfactory.
interesting point
on
Back To SCO
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
interesting point you bring up....
instead of a simple line by line comparison, if they were really interested in seeing if any source was copied at all, maybe they should compare how many groups of 4 or more lines are the same? You're naturally going to have a lot of this:
int i; int j; ... ...
but what about this taken all together as a single unit of comparison:
int i; int j; int (*f)(int arg1, char *arg2, void **data); long long x = (v != NULL)?qd:tt;
The probability of finding common lines simply because the nature of the two code sets would decreate dramatically the more lines are grouped together. I would love to do a comparison of my own, but alas. SCO isn't interested in being forthcoming, only in market manipulation.
SCO's strategy here isn't even to reconcile whatever wrongs they claim have been committed against them. Everything they're doing is simply an exit strategy. They recognized that they are history, so they're going out with a bang and getting as much [money] as they can before it the CFO signs the chapter 11 paperwork.
Re:"Keeping the computer on"
on
MRAM in 2004?
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· Score: 1
"How many people keep their computer on 24 hours a day simply because they can't stand to sit around for four or five minutes waiting for it to boot up?"
Actually, I keep mine on 24 hours a day to see how much uptime I can accumulate. I had my windows box up for over 30 days before the last power outage in my area. Power outages are actually the limiting factor in my uptimes, especially for my OpenBSD boxen. Even better than simply storing data permanently would be if MRAM also stored reserve energy to keep basic system services up while the power's out. I'd be measuring uptime in months and days instead of days and hours.
when are they finally understand that the RIAA is their own worst enemy, not the P2P networks, not to mention that there's no possible way to really control P2P, not to mention that people are responsible for their own actions. If you get child porn from kazaa or whatever, it's your bad, not the author of kazaa.
I never thought the purpose of linux was to bring the masses away from using windows on the desktop. Linux was never intended to be a desktop for the masses like windows was. The strengths of linux lie in being UNIX-like and open source, meaning that ultimate tweakage as well as learning are possible.
Why, then, is it so important to standardize a GUI? To accommodate the stupid (e.g., not familiar with UNIX) end-users? Why not just make a high-quality and user-intuitive GUI that stupid end-users can use rather than create a standard that panders to them? I think Gnome and KDE as well as several others are prime candidates --- they need a little work, but they're already there. There's no need for a standard.
Not mine, I've had XP for about 5 months and have had the screen black out on my laptop a few times (about 5-7) and reboot after a few "ctrl-alt-delete"s. NO BSOD, just dead. A co-worker has had a few similar issues on his desktop. Further, if XP WAS that stable, why wouldn't MS look to use it as a server? Sounds to me like a good opportunity to combine their commercial and personal lines.
Actually, "just dead" is the same thing as BSOD, just less scary. That was intentional. Just FYI.
Also, they are looking to use XP as a server. What do you think Windows Server.NET is? Combining the commercial and personal lines is precisely what Windows XP is all about. The differences between the Home and Pro editions are all but trivial.
I can attest to this; I was a MS developer in the windows division for a while. I had to do stress testing all the time, and I found it quite common for XP to go days at a time during the stress tests, which I thought was pretty impressive. These tests make the system unusable, as it would with any system, but it didn't crash until it just couldn't allocate one more drop of memory or the disk controller just gave up or what have you.
Also, while looking over bugs in the database they keep, there were vastly more bugs filed as a result of a poorly behaving 3rd party application than because of the windows code itself. Also, most of these didn't cause crashes. XP does a pretty nice job of handling application crashes gracefully. All of this is from inside professional experience.
My personal expericence (e.g., outside the MS environment) has been than XP is as stable as any other machine I've got at home (Gentoo Linux, OpenBSD). In 2 years time, I've only seen 1 blue screen of death, and I've been using many different computers using with XP on them and I've installed in many times over that two years.
MS does do a good job of testing their windows code (can't speak for office --- those nerds need to learn a thing or two about threads and finally put clippy out of his pathetic misery). They test their code far more thoroughly than ANYONE who does open source including Red Hat, IBM and others.
Of course, all of this is not to be a MS zealot because that's not what I am. I'm much more of an OpenBSD guy. It is, however, to make this discussion a little more fair by sharing my inside experience and knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
...they couldn't think of anything better to do with their money than give it to SCO?
Did you miss the part where they said it was an investment? That means they expect to get more back than what they put in. They didn't drop $50 mil on SCO just to spend on legal expenses. There's nothing irresponsible about investing money in a company that you think will be able to give you good returns.
This may be a victory for the anti-spammers, but at what cost (to use a cliche)? Why does the spam problem require government intervention? Almost every problem that has come up in recent history, particularly technical challenges, have been or can be solved with technical solutions or non-government practical solutions (like standards, etc). Natural language processing is getting better and better, and there are already spam-filtering solutions out there that do a pretty decent job. I use procmail, and I hardly ever lose a real email to the spam folder while only about 5% of the spam I get ever reaches my inbox, and that's only because I don't know how to write a regular expression to match "P'E.N^l'.S"E',N'.L,A-'.R%G`M~'E.N.,T" (I suppose I could try to use something like tr to get rid of non alpha-numerics, but...). There are much better systems out there than procmail.
This is definitely not a win for the first amendment or civil liberties. This is definitely not a win that is going to help keep the internet a free place.
I propose that there is a better way to direct all this vehement, foaming-at-the-mouth anger for spammers. Instead of trying to de-legalize spam, why couldn't ISP's each keep a do-not-spam list? If end users could authorize their ISP's to catch spam at the water's edge, so to speak, wouldn't that be a better solution for people who are so concerned with spam and still keep our freedoms intact?
here here! Right on! Why not encourage MS to do what they're good at, to both their benefit and ours? This is exactly where capitalism should step in and fix this mess.
so get the binary packages of all the ports. If done correctly, all dependencies will be handled, and if something needs to be downloaded, it will (although in that case I think it compiles the source).
Also, regardless of whether you want to compile source or not, ports (particularly gentoo's emerge) is just as automated as apt-get. If you don't want to compile, then that's your argument against emerge and ports, not the lack of automation.
Well said, friend. I was going to post something like this, but you stole my thunder. Now I only need to post to compliment you.
The Computer Science department at tamu has what I think is a really neat way to track IT requests. Requests go into sorted queues, and as the tasks are worked on, the status in the queues is updated and emails help track changes.
csg.cs.tamu.edu
Maybe you ought to RTFA again. It appears that you missed this line: "Maintenance, training and support are far more expensive with open source than proprietary software." This statement, incidentally, is a flat out lie, and is NOT backed by any reputable studies. I, offhand, question their motives for printing this.
What article are you reading? Something from The Sun? Here it is, in its entirety:
-----
(Washington, D.C.)The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today criticized Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn for his stated intention to move all state and local government computers to open-source operating systems. The "Freeware Initiative" will require that all IT expenditures in 2004 and 2005 be made on an open-source/Linux format. Proprietary vendors will be effectively barred from competing for state contracts, limiting competition and raising costs.
"Governor Mitt Romney must put a stop to this boondoggle," CAGW President Tom Schatz said. "People mistakenly refer to Linux as 'free' software because it can be freely altered and distributed. Yet while the software itself is free, the cost to maintain and upgrade it can become very expensive. Like all procurement decisions, the best policy on the use of software is to place all products on equal footing. It is critical that taxpayers receive the best quality programs at the least cost."
"It is ironic that Massachusetts, as the only state remaining in the lawsuit accusing Microsoft of antitrust violations, is creating its own state-imposed monopoly on software. Under the state's proposed "Freeware Initiative," there would be no exceptions to the rule permitting only open source/Linux software. The old Soviet Union could not have done this any better," Schatz added.
While the initial open source software may be "free," most studies conclude that acquisition costs represent only 5 to 10 percent of total cost of ownership. Maintenance, training and support are far more expensive with open source than proprietary software.
"Massachusetts is proving itself the most technologically inept state in the nation. In addition to attempting to impose a socialistic procurement system, the state's record keeping on the Microsoft lawsuit was so abysmal that the judge in that case substantially reduced the proposed reimbursement of the state's cost," Schatz concluded. "It's time for Governor Romney to bring Massachusetts into the twenty-first century by dropping the lawsuit and opening up the procurement process. The state's taxpayers deserve nothing less."
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
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The sentence you quoted does not appear in the press release. That's what this thread is about; the recent press release. If you don't believe me, try Ctl-F in your browser.
The other link provided was not an article, but a set of emails (afaik), and are not the topic of discussion.
I think there's a big difference there. Mandating Open Source software or standards would not be explicitly excluding any competitors. It would only be excluding the closed-source philosophy, which, especially in the context of public affairs, is certainly a worthy cause.
Try this: Mandating only proprietary software wouldn't excluding competitors; it would only be excluding the open-sourced philosophy, which, especially in the context of public affairs, is certainly a worth cause --- by buying the government would be providing economic stimulus _and_ and jobs, etc, etc.
Being a taxpayer, I don't want my taxes being used to make some person or company richer without seeing any public benefits myself. That is what using proprietary software does. On the other hand, if a government funds or contracts Open Source development and procureme
I know this is lame, but....lesson learned. _Always_ click "preview" first.
Anyway, here's how it should have read:
First of all, maybe you need to RTFA yourself, or else improve your reading comprehension skills. Nowhere does the FA say that "Open-source software = good, admirable."
Speaking of reading skills... quoting myself:
Here's the sum-up of the press release...
If you still want to bicker about the "open-source = good, admirable", then you have two problems. (A) you are convinced that CCAGW is anti open-source, which they aren't
(B) You are using a red herring to get out of a losing argument
And they call Linux a monopoly in the same sentence that you quoted.
You are simply incorrect.
Nice try. Troll somewhere else.
First of all, maybe you need to RTFA yourself, or else improve your reading comprehension skills. Nowhere does the FA say that "Open-source software = good, admirable." Speaking of reading skills... quoting myself: Here's the sum-up of the press release... And they call Linux a monopoly in the same sentence that you quoted. You are simply incorrect. Nice try. Troll somewhere else.
"Linux is a monopoly"
Thanks CCAGW, I needed a good laugh.
It's clear that you didn't RTFA.
I would like to point out that the only time the word "monopoly" appears in the press release was in the following sentence:
It is ironic that Massachusetts, as the only state remaining in the lawsuit accusing Microsoft of antitrust violations, is creating its own state-imposed monopoly on software.
For the others of you who did not RTFA, I would also like to point out that the CCAGW was not criticizing the value of using open-source open-source itself, but rather the decision to exclude all other competitors in the bidding process. If they were excluding all competitors to the benefit of a for-profit corporation (Microsoft would be a good example), the criticism would be the same, and the process would be unethical at best, illegal at worst. Why is it suddenly alright to do the same thing with open-source vendors and projects?
Here's the sum-up of the press release for those of you who still refuse to RTFA:
Open-source software = good, admirable
state mandated zero-competition = bad, socialist
How is this trolling?
I don't like spam, but I like even less the idea that the government can tell someone who they can and can't send email to.
People (this could be ISPs _or_ end users) who don't like spam should come up with better filters (or just use the ones out there) or put up with it or a combination of the two (my chosen alternative to an inbox full of nothing). I would much rather use a filter and put up with a minimum amount of spam in my email (5 seconds to delete an entire day's worth of spam) than have the government tell me that I can't send mail to someone unless they asked for it.
Why don't Corporations just go back to good ol' quality products for a fair price to make money? That used to be a reliable way to do it after all.
Sanely priced CDs with mp3s and oggs and mpeg videos included, along with interessting booklets should do magic to a declining market. But I guess they just want to sell crap for to much money and will use law enforcement to emphasis that and in the end really piss their customers of.
Right on, man. The cd itself doesn't cost a dime to these labels, and I would be willing to pay $5 or so for a decent album, especially if it included all those things you mentioned.
I have another theory too: part of the problem is crappy music written by wannabe artists that make their money through non-musical attention getting, like brittney dressing like a whore and kissing madonna like a lesbian. If there was quality music being sold, it would sell (and it does), but not for $15 a pop, especially when you can listen to the radio for free. Not to mention that if the music you like is in a movie, you can get the DVD for $15 and get the music + movie + lots of extra stuff like interviews with the actors, etc, etc, etc.
They need to start paying attention to quality musicians --- not just the 20-year-olds with big tits willing to act like whores --- and selling their music for less than $10 for 15 or more songs.
W has got to be the worst president in the history of our nation. I'm not kidding.
You must not know much about other presidents in the history of the US.
Also, you must not really understand much of what Bush has actually done since he was elected.
You miss the point. Despite being a part of the Executive Branch, the FCC is essentially serving a legislative function (deciding what the media companies may or may not do, rather than simply enforcing laws passed by Congress). No, they serve a regulatory function, which is well within the powers of the executive branch given by the constitution and by prior legislation. Regulatory is different than legislative.
First of all, a general comment. Your accusations are completely unsubstantiated either by common knowledge or by facts or evidence.
That's right. I generally happens every 10 years (in Texas at least).
It's mandated by the Texas constitution that the state legislature redistrict at least once every ten years. By tradition, it's always been on the decade, so the last time would have been 2000.
The last time it happened, the situation had to be settled by a district court judge. That was in 2001.
Well, technically it started in 2000, but since the legislature couldn't agree to a district map, a 3-judge panel redrew the districts themselves. The argument is then that the constitutional requirement for the legislature to draw the district map has not yet been met for this decade.
Now the Texas Republicans want to redistrict again. They didn't like the last result
It's totally intellectually dishonest for a liberal/Democrat like yourself (I presume) to argue this, especially if you are one to argue (I also presume) that Bush didn't win the popular vote in 2000 and therefore shouldn't be president. Republicans hold ALL statewide offices in Texas, and 56% of all votes in state legislator elections went to republicans (I *think*...the number is right, but I may be applying it to the wrong event(s)). Is it unreasonable to then argue that given the above information and the fact that democrats hold a majority of U.S. representative positions from Texas that the district map might not be a fair one? I happen to live in a very gerrymandered district north of Dallas. I am in the same district with people from Witchita Falls instead of people from my own county. There are plenty more districts like this, which suggests to me that the district map could use some work.
so they're changing parliamentary rules in order to get their plan shoved through.
Actually, they are only breaking tradition, not rules.
This is all at the behest of the Bush Whitehouse.
It's much more likely to be at the behest of Tom DeLay than Bush, but I wouldn't really believe that the state legislators would go after this if they didn't think it was best. There's no benefit to them to simply do the bidding of a national elected leader.
It is not normal to redistrict every 2 years.
Correct, it is not. If the legislature had passed a district map in 2000 like they were supposed to, this wouldn't be a happening now. Furthermore, the Texas constitution only requires that the legislature redistrict every 10 years. It does not prohibit it from redistricting more often than that.
This is what you do when you want to guarantee getting elected, because you've fscked the economy up so much that you can't get enough of the popular vote to carry you into office.
This is the beginning of an irrational diatribe, but I'll do my best to respond. First of all, I'm not sure who you're talking about that wants to get a guarantee of being elected. If you're talking about Bush, you need to see my comments in a previous post about Politics 101. This redistricting has nothing to do with the electoral college. It doesn't affect it in any way. If you're talking about state legislators, it is also irrelevant. They aren't redistricting their own districts. They are redistricting the districts for representatives from Texas to the U.S. House of Representatives. The elections for the US representatives from Texas are the only elections that could possibly be affected by this. As far as they're concerned, see what I wrote above about Republicans dominating all positions in Texas and the Democrats still having a majority of US representatives, somehow.
It's a bit like getting your brother to block minorities from voting in the state that he's running.
What minorities were blocked from voting? If anyone was disenfranchised, it was the overseas military vote.
Bush's cronies in Texas are already trying to redistrict the state to increase republican state representatives. In the process, republican electoral votes for the President in national elections.
:-)
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You need to brush up on political science 101. Electoral votes are not determined by the representatives elected to congress. The only relationship between the elected representatives to the U.S. Congress and the presidential electoral college is that the total number of representatives = the total number of electoral votes. Texas is an all-or-nothing state. If a presidential candidate wins the popular vote in Texas, he gets all 32 (33 now?) electoral votes, regardless of which party has more representatives. It is true that elected official s are often also the electoral representatives, but that's neither here nor there.
So even if the popular vote favors a democratic candidate, the republican candidate has a better chance of winning. Considering Texas is one of the largest states in terms of electoral votes that's not just disgusting. That's scary.
See above comments. WHO is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives doesn't really affect who gets what electoral votes. The electoral votes are decided (by tradition, incidentally) by the popular vote alone. Don't be scared, be involved. Also, as a side note: Texas is one of the largest (if not the largest) in all terms.
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I realize that its popular to pick on the Republicans at the moment
Says who?
but this sort of redisticting happens every few years (I forget how many at the moment, and am to lazy to look it up for a
10 years, on the decade.
Which ever set of aristocrats are in power at the time use this redistricting to help themselves (gee, suprise). This is a normal function of our federal govenment.
Political science 101. It is a normal function of your state government. The U.S. Government has no say in districting.
Is it right, and/or benificial to us pesants? Probaly not, but please don't pretend its new, or one sided.
Move along nothing to see here...
This is the wrong attitude. If people would pay attention to what their state legislators are up to, they could hold them accountable if what they see isn't satisfactory.
what??
but what about this taken all together as a single unit of comparison:
The probability of finding common lines simply because the nature of the two code sets would decreate dramatically the more lines are grouped together. I would love to do a comparison of my own, but alas. SCO isn't interested in being forthcoming, only in market manipulation. SCO's strategy here isn't even to reconcile whatever wrongs they claim have been committed against them. Everything they're doing is simply an exit strategy. They recognized that they are history, so they're going out with a bang and getting as much [money] as they can before it the CFO signs the chapter 11 paperwork.
"How many people keep their computer on 24 hours a day simply because they can't stand to sit around for four or five minutes waiting for it to boot up?"
Actually, I keep mine on 24 hours a day to see how much uptime I can accumulate. I had my windows box up for over 30 days before the last power outage in my area. Power outages are actually the limiting factor in my uptimes, especially for my OpenBSD boxen. Even better than simply storing data permanently would be if MRAM also stored reserve energy to keep basic system services up while the power's out. I'd be measuring uptime in months and days instead of days and hours.
when are they finally understand that the RIAA is their own worst enemy, not the P2P networks, not to mention that there's no possible way to really control P2P, not to mention that people are responsible for their own actions. If you get child porn from kazaa or whatever, it's your bad, not the author of kazaa.
I never thought the purpose of linux was to bring the masses away from using windows on the desktop. Linux was never intended to be a desktop for the masses like windows was. The strengths of linux lie in being UNIX-like and open source, meaning that ultimate tweakage as well as learning are possible.
Why, then, is it so important to standardize a GUI? To accommodate the stupid (e.g., not familiar with UNIX) end-users? Why not just make a high-quality and user-intuitive GUI that stupid end-users can use rather than create a standard that panders to them? I think Gnome and KDE as well as several others are prime candidates --- they need a little work, but they're already there. There's no need for a standard.
Not mine, I've had XP for about 5 months and have had the screen black out on my laptop a few times (about 5-7) and reboot after a few "ctrl-alt-delete"s. NO BSOD, just dead. A co-worker has had a few similar issues on his desktop. Further, if XP WAS that stable, why wouldn't MS look to use it as a server? Sounds to me like a good opportunity to combine their commercial and personal lines. Actually, "just dead" is the same thing as BSOD, just less scary. That was intentional. Just FYI. Also, they are looking to use XP as a server. What do you think Windows Server.NET is? Combining the commercial and personal lines is precisely what Windows XP is all about. The differences between the Home and Pro editions are all but trivial.
I'll sick my cat on them....
I can attest to this; I was a MS developer in the windows division for a while. I had to do stress testing all the time, and I found it quite common for XP to go days at a time during the stress tests, which I thought was pretty impressive. These tests make the system unusable, as it would with any system, but it didn't crash until it just couldn't allocate one more drop of memory or the disk controller just gave up or what have you.
Also, while looking over bugs in the database they keep, there were vastly more bugs filed as a result of a poorly behaving 3rd party application than because of the windows code itself. Also, most of these didn't cause crashes. XP does a pretty nice job of handling application crashes gracefully. All of this is from inside professional experience.
My personal expericence (e.g., outside the MS environment) has been than XP is as stable as any other machine I've got at home (Gentoo Linux, OpenBSD). In 2 years time, I've only seen 1 blue screen of death, and I've been using many different computers using with XP on them and I've installed in many times over that two years.
MS does do a good job of testing their windows code (can't speak for office --- those nerds need to learn a thing or two about threads and finally put clippy out of his pathetic misery). They test their code far more thoroughly than ANYONE who does open source including Red Hat, IBM and others.
Of course, all of this is not to be a MS zealot because that's not what I am. I'm much more of an OpenBSD guy. It is, however, to make this discussion a little more fair by sharing my inside experience and knowledge.