Ah, now they're modding me down. Come! Mod me down, fuckers! You know I'm right, just like I was right when I predicted that Dubya would get us into war, and I was right when I predicted that Microsoft would get off with a tiny slap-on-the-wrist. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that within a year or two, this will be "coming home to America"... Mod me down if you can't take a negative prediction, but remember it well... I'm sure it will happen.
(WARNING - WARNING - FEMINIST RANTING FOLLOWS. WARNING - WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)
Mister, you have issues. (Granted, I do too, but hey.) The reason I don't use Windows is because Microsoft is an immoral company. I have a sense of morality left, unlike 99.9% of the people in this field. If that bothers you, tough cookies. I'm not in this field to make myself rich, I'm not in this field to do what everyone else admires, I'm in this field because I love computers. And because I love computers, I don't like it when some big bully of a company comes in and starts dictating (implicitly or otherwise) how the entire computer field will work. (There is a rumor, perhaps unsubstantiated, that Bill Gates was at a conference with other heads of software companies around 25 years ago. Someone remarked about how many wonderful software companies there would be in the future, and Gates made a remark to the tune of "No. There will be ONE software company.". Perhaps this didn't actually happen, but frankly, I wouldn't put it past the man.)
Incidentally, unlike most people in this field, I am a woman, and I am also a feminist. My instinct as a woman is to nurture; my instinct as a feminist is to fight the male-dominated "playground 'king of the hill' social structure" which still dominates so much of America. And since I am a worker in the computer field, (if you utter the phrase "IT Professional", I am going to smack you. Yes, through the monitor.) my instincts find their application in nurturing technology, the development thereof, and the free and unstifled choice of technology users.
Although I have observed (on school playgrounds as a child, for starters) how males enjoy bullying other males (and sometimes even females) and tend to rally around the biggest bully on the playground, I have always held that such behavior is inappropriate, foolish and ultimately destructive at any age. Nevertheless, in my highly opinionated opinion (ha), I feel that this sort of "he has beat up the most other boys, so he's the coolest!" mentality is precisely why so many young male geeks in the computer field rally to the Microsoftian cause. Denied throughout childhood the privilege of being an accepted member of the "Tommy's so cool cuz he beats the crap out of that nerdy kid Ralph" crowd (due to their geekiness), they now cling like magnets to anyone who makes them feel like an accepted member of Big Bully BillG's "winning team." I for one was also picked on for being geeky-- myself and another girl named Shelly were the most tormented kids in the entire school (me for being a nerd, her for being overweight). But instead of reacting by being desperate to get accepted by the "popular kids", and hence growing up to be a good little Gates-worshipping Winvocate like virtually all of my male counterparts, I learned then and there how dangerous and evil groupthink (and the playground social structure paradigm) is. Think of this for a moment: Ever notice how the sports teams that seem to have the most rabid fans foaming at the mouth about how wonderful they are, are also the winningest teams? Also a male phenomenon, also inappropriate at any age. And highly depressing, at that...
In my experience, women are far more sympathetic to the causes of so-called "alternative" OSes (read: Mac OS, Debian, FreeBSD, Red Hat... ANYTHING but Windows is now "alternative". Sick.), because we, by and large, are not impressed by the whole 'UNGA BUNGA, GROB BEAT UP TWENTY OTHA CAVE MANS!! GROB BIG MAN!!!' sort of 'might-makes-right' philosophy which dominates most of the "boyz only gurlz keep out" club atmosphere of the computer field.
(Incidentally, while I'm ranting about the subject, I have also had store clerks assume I know nothing about computers because I happen to be in possession of breasts. I had to not so politely tell them that I've been using computers since before they knew how to speak. You think sexism isn't a factor in our 'enlightened' times? Thin
Re:And I'm sure it will happen in America soon...
on
Police Target Free Email
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Lessee. So far 50% insightful, 50% troll. I'm an insightful troll?
And I'm sure it will happen in America soon...
on
Police Target Free Email
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· Score: 2, Insightful
...and in that context, it will be all about screening for "drug dealers, pedophiles, and anti-war activists with Muslim-sounding last names"...
No, I felt the same way. Frankly, I am amazed that anyone has the chutzpah to do this sort of thing, much less open a public Web site about it. I'm still amazed at the very existence of mplayerhq.hu-- in Hungary as it is. I'm stunned that the **AA fascists haven't sent a few thugs over to Hungary to work "justice", just like they did with Dmitry Sklyarov (spelling?)...
Ah, so what we need is a complex, hard to use interface that makes every computer user require months of training... Great idea, if you're in the computer training field.
Again you put words in my mouth. I don't believe this at all. Read what I say, and don't make ASSumptions. I said that Windows XP's default interface, Luna, looks like it was designed for a preschooler-- and that IS bad. I did not berate it for being "easy" (though I could certainly think of several other interfaces, past and present, which are arguably easier to use-- of course, familiarity breeds 'intuitiveness', and so those who were born and raised in the Windows world would find, say, Mac OS X's interface 'difficult' and 'unintuitive'...). Being 'easy' is good (though it would be nice if you could turn the interface off or turn off the "idiot-proofing" features if you, like me, are not a functional computer illiterate like most people!). Being PATRONIZING is bad, and that is why I continually berate Luna.
Again, you are proving my point, people hate Microsoft becuase they made using computers easier, while still being successful.
You know, you're welcome to believe whatever you want, but I am telling you again that that is not why I hate Microsoft. I have nothing against them making computers easy to use. Get it? How many times am I going to have to say that? If they had fair business practices, didn't patronize their users, and didn't have a mentality of 'we must control every device that is computerized, connected to a computer, or-- hell-- even involves electronics at all'... then, and only then, would I not hate them. I couldn't give half of a rat's ass how good, bad, 'innovative', or whatever their programs are, were, or will be. They could have the best, easiest, most powerful software in the world, or the worst, most difficult, most fragile software imaginable-- I would hate them just the same. The reason that I hate them is a MORAL issue and has NOTHING to do with their software.
No matter how good something is, illegally pushing it on people as the only choice is wrong. Period. If you don't understand that, I suggest you learn something about basic morality.
Most people want to send email, play games and visit websites at home. Great news, Windows does that for you. It might not be the best system out there, but it does the job and it does it well. It's not super expensive and lots of vendors offer software for it.
It's not super-expensive? Office costs $300ish. Windows XP costs $200ish. For the amount of money you'd spend on Office and Windows, you could buy TWO entire computers from the Lindows people. (Not like I like Lindows either, but it was an example.) And that would include the software.
Windows is great for games and Web sites, eh? Look at the flip side, you short-sighted buffoon. Those games and Web sites are usually, or often, (respectively) ONLY RELEASED FOR WINDOWS. Life is great, if you're with the unwashed masses (a.k.a. "the majority"), eh? I for one prefer choice, and I resent the fact that Web sites nowadays are loaded with funky plug-in-dependent embeds and broken HTML that only IE running on Windows will ever render correctly.
As for work, you can thank Lotus for totally screwing up the spreadsheet market when GUI's became popular. And you can thank Wordperfect for screwing up the word processing market. Microsoft had Excel and Word, no one used it, now everyone does. Why? Because they were BETTER PRODUCTS. Wordperfect and Lotus were pushing DOS applications well into the Windows 3.1 market, by the Windows 95 release, they were fading fast. When they finally got a clue, their Windows versions were too little, too late. Lotus and WP had a choice to develop for Windows, they didn't, they lost out.
Is Word really better than WordPerfect? Word is good, but I k
It would appear that you have trouble breaking out of the mold of the "we must upgrade every X months/years" mentality. I have an old 14" monitor. From freaking AT&T (do they even still MAKE monitors? I think not.) I run it at 800x600-- the highest resolution that it can handle without interlacing. And it's Good Enough For Me(TM);)
Ahh, I love how you think you know what drives me. I don't hate Gates/MS for that reason. I hate them because they ruthlessly destroy any and all competition, and push a bloated, security-hole-ridden product on everyone. I also hate them because they make no effort to educate people to be TRULY computer literate. Microsoft wants nothing more than for the current status quo to continue indefinitely-- that is, for people to go to school and learn (by rote) the top 10 most common things they'll need to do in Office, the top 10 most common things they'll need to do in IE, and so on, then claim that they are "computer literate". Is it any wonder that MS keeps its stranglehold on the public admiration when they so love to keep their users in the dark?
MS might be (and they might not be.. remember the Apple II?) the reason why every Tom, Dick and Harry has a computer and an Internet connection (again, remember that MS was late to the game in "discovering" the Internet! Uh, remember Netscape? Before IE came around, it was the big "innovator", before it turned sour...), but they are also the reason why many Web sites nowadays will not render correctly in any browser except Microsoft's, why virtually every game nowadays is coded only for Microsoft's OS, and why Microsoft is rapidly pushing their ever-multiplying tendrils into the mobile phone, handheld PC, embedded OS, and even the bloody video game console markets.
Incidentally, if you doubt my comments about keeping users in the dark, just LOOK at the default (Luna) interface in Windows XP. It looks like it was designed for a preschooler-- right down to the freaking "Little People"-esque icons. Not only does MS want to keep its users dumb, but it's patronizing them. The first thing I had to say upon seeing Luna was "It's 'Fisher Price's 'My First OS''!"...
...this sort of thing (i.e. legal wrangling in place of real "innovation", to borrow Gates's term) is becoming The Way Business Is Done.
I don't like it any more than you do, but let's look at it this way: This sort of thing WILL continue until the public is not only MADE AWARE, but MADE TO CARE about these issues.
Which, of course, is unlikely at best, and impossible at worst.
In my humble opinion and experience, there is only ONE way to motivate the Wrath of the Public nowadays, and that is to convince them that their money is at risk. The public will generally not raise an upcry AT ALL any more (the '60s having brought to a close the era of widespread, effective social upheavals of any sort), but when they do, it inevitably surrounds a "they're trying to take away my money, and I don't want them to" sort of issue.
So, there are only so many ways to deal with the growing problem of corporate litigiousness:
1) Somehow convince the public, in such a way that they could not be swayed again back into the corporate fold by extensive "PR" campaigns like the SoundByte campaign from the RIAA, that this sort of thing threatens their money (highly unlikely, but as I noted it's the only way to mobilize The Masses)
2) Move to another country-- but if it's anywhere even remotely civilized (e.g. Europe, Australia, Japan, etc.), chances are that they are already working on DMCA-like and other pro-corporatocracy laws there... if they've not already passed them!
3) Become a criminal and go burn down corporate infrastructure (and/or murder the "luminaries" of the Corporatocracy world, e.g. Darl McBride, Hilary Rosen, and of course BillG)-- likely ineffective, and even more likely to land you in jail and/or Death Row for the rest of your life (though may I be the first to say that the day Microsoft awakens to find their Redmond campus burned to the ground, I will hold a HUGE party...)
4) Commit suicide in disgust. (A bit extreme, but I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind. We are living in a global plutocracy, and it's frankly very depressing.)
I wish there was a better way, and I'll probably be modded down as a Troll for being so negativistic, but hey-- I'd like to think I'm somewhat insightful. When Dubya was elected, the first two things I said (after "Oh, shit!") were that (1) we would get into a war (or wars), and (2) that the MS v. DOJ matter would end in MS getting let off with a slap on the wrist. Both came true. So maybe my negativistic attitude here is right-on. I really don't see an end in sight to all of this. The only thing that could stop it is for the economy to collapse so much that even Upper Management would be begging for crap jobs like the rest of us... and I really don't see that happening. In ten years, everyone in the US could be reduced to eating rice and drinking tap water, but Bill Gates will still be worth dozens of billions of dollars, and Darl McBride, as likely as not, will be living on a private (and very posh) island somewhere...
One very important point that the Public doesn't realize is that in a recession, or even in a Depression, all that money that people used to have does not "disappear". The total number of dollars floating about in the US is ever-increasing (even as the value of the dollar fluctuates). What happens during recessions and depressions is that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Do you really think that when 99% of the people have fallen on hard economic times, that their money simply disappears into thin air? Nonsense. It means that the other 1% are getting fatter.
Oh yes, and one more thing to bear in mind. Many people's highest ambition in life is to become like these people. Most people entering the "IT" world (that sinister term for the fusion of inferior technology and businesslike ways) dream of being the next Bill Gates. And most people among The Public At Large not only respect corporations and corporate ty
I know it's off-topic, and I really don't like to have to wax RMS, but it's "cracker", not "hacker". "Hacker" isn't a synonym for "computer criminal"...
I know I'll get modded down for this, but I really think that SlashDotters should not be making posts about those evil "hackers"... I am a hacker. I don't break into systems.
You are brilliant. (was Re: Yeah yeah...)
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
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· Score: 1
You are brilliant. I thought I was the only human being on the planet who noticed (much less GAVE A RAT'S PATOOTIE) that PHP was now controlled by a for-profit entity. Email me some time (jb AT twu DOT net) and I'll gladly host your Web site forever. You rule.
Just in case anyone missed this connection: UnitedLinux was founded by four companies, including SCO. Please bear this in mind when making purchasing decisions.
It is. But most people have not heard of it. Red Hat has virtually all of the mindshare in the Linux world (just as Solaris has virtually all of the mindshare in the non-Linux Un*x/Un*xlike world).
Thanks. Glad to see I'm not the only one interpreting things this way.
"Amazingly enough"?
on
Mac OS X Hints
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· Score: 1, Interesting
The story notes that this book is about power tips for Mac OS X, "amazingly enough". As a Mac OS X user, this is upsetting... it seems to me that the poster finds it unusual or ironic that ORA would release a book of "power tips" for OS X?
For one thing, they've released countless books on Windows (and I remember the times when their only books on MS issues were the "(X) Annoyances" series). For another thing, OS X is actually quite a serious system. Have you used it? Try it, it's Neat(TM).
I used to run Debian (yes, Debian) "on the desktop". Now, I run OS X. I am not regretting my move one bit. Mac OS X has a nifty GUI and all the open-source goodness I could need.
That's right... in seven years, there might not be anything other than IE. I remember when Netscape had greater than 50% of the browser "market" (not much of a "market" now that they're all free-as-in-beer...)... now IE has a staggering 95+%. It frightens me sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, now they're modding me down. Come! Mod me down, fuckers! You know I'm right, just like I was right when I predicted that Dubya would get us into war, and I was right when I predicted that Microsoft would get off with a tiny slap-on-the-wrist. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that within a year or two, this will be "coming home to America"... Mod me down if you can't take a negative prediction, but remember it well... I'm sure it will happen.
(WARNING - WARNING - FEMINIST RANTING FOLLOWS. WARNING - WARNING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)
Mister, you have issues. (Granted, I do too, but hey.) The reason I don't use Windows is because Microsoft is an immoral company. I have a sense of morality left, unlike 99.9% of the people in this field. If that bothers you, tough cookies. I'm not in this field to make myself rich, I'm not in this field to do what everyone else admires, I'm in this field because I love computers. And because I love computers, I don't like it when some big bully of a company comes in and starts dictating (implicitly or otherwise) how the entire computer field will work. (There is a rumor, perhaps unsubstantiated, that Bill Gates was at a conference with other heads of software companies around 25 years ago. Someone remarked about how many wonderful software companies there would be in the future, and Gates made a remark to the tune of "No. There will be ONE software company.". Perhaps this didn't actually happen, but frankly, I wouldn't put it past the man.)
Incidentally, unlike most people in this field, I am a woman, and I am also a feminist. My instinct as a woman is to nurture; my instinct as a feminist is to fight the male-dominated "playground 'king of the hill' social structure" which still dominates so much of America. And since I am a worker in the computer field, (if you utter the phrase "IT Professional", I am going to smack you. Yes, through the monitor.) my instincts find their application in nurturing technology, the development thereof, and the free and unstifled choice of technology users.
Although I have observed (on school playgrounds as a child, for starters) how males enjoy bullying other males (and sometimes even females) and tend to rally around the biggest bully on the playground, I have always held that such behavior is inappropriate, foolish and ultimately destructive at any age. Nevertheless, in my highly opinionated opinion (ha), I feel that this sort of "he has beat up the most other boys, so he's the coolest!" mentality is precisely why so many young male geeks in the computer field rally to the Microsoftian cause. Denied throughout childhood the privilege of being an accepted member of the "Tommy's so cool cuz he beats the crap out of that nerdy kid Ralph" crowd (due to their geekiness), they now cling like magnets to anyone who makes them feel like an accepted member of Big Bully BillG's "winning team." I for one was also picked on for being geeky-- myself and another girl named Shelly were the most tormented kids in the entire school (me for being a nerd, her for being overweight). But instead of reacting by being desperate to get accepted by the "popular kids", and hence growing up to be a good little Gates-worshipping Winvocate like virtually all of my male counterparts, I learned then and there how dangerous and evil groupthink (and the playground social structure paradigm) is. Think of this for a moment: Ever notice how the sports teams that seem to have the most rabid fans foaming at the mouth about how wonderful they are, are also the winningest teams? Also a male phenomenon, also inappropriate at any age. And highly depressing, at that...
In my experience, women are far more sympathetic to the causes of so-called "alternative" OSes (read: Mac OS, Debian, FreeBSD, Red Hat... ANYTHING but Windows is now "alternative". Sick.), because we, by and large, are not impressed by the whole 'UNGA BUNGA, GROB BEAT UP TWENTY OTHA CAVE MANS!! GROB BIG MAN!!!' sort of 'might-makes-right' philosophy which dominates most of the "boyz only gurlz keep out" club atmosphere of the computer field.
(Incidentally, while I'm ranting about the subject, I have also had store clerks assume I know nothing about computers because I happen to be in possession of breasts. I had to not so politely tell them that I've been using computers since before they knew how to speak. You think sexism isn't a factor in our 'enlightened' times? Thin
Lessee. So far 50% insightful, 50% troll. I'm an insightful troll?
...and in that context, it will be all about screening for "drug dealers, pedophiles, and anti-war activists with Muslim-sounding last names"...
No, I felt the same way. Frankly, I am amazed that anyone has the chutzpah to do this sort of thing, much less open a public Web site about it. I'm still amazed at the very existence of mplayerhq.hu-- in Hungary as it is. I'm stunned that the **AA fascists haven't sent a few thugs over to Hungary to work "justice", just like they did with Dmitry Sklyarov (spelling?)...
Ah, so what we need is a complex, hard to use interface that makes every computer user require months of training... Great idea, if you're in the computer training field.
Again you put words in my mouth. I don't believe this at all. Read what I say, and don't make ASSumptions. I said that Windows XP's default interface, Luna, looks like it was designed for a preschooler-- and that IS bad. I did not berate it for being "easy" (though I could certainly think of several other interfaces, past and present, which are arguably easier to use-- of course, familiarity breeds 'intuitiveness', and so those who were born and raised in the Windows world would find, say, Mac OS X's interface 'difficult' and 'unintuitive'...). Being 'easy' is good (though it would be nice if you could turn the interface off or turn off the "idiot-proofing" features if you, like me, are not a functional computer illiterate like most people!). Being PATRONIZING is bad, and that is why I continually berate Luna.
Again, you are proving my point, people hate Microsoft becuase they made using computers easier, while still being successful.
You know, you're welcome to believe whatever you want, but I am telling you again that that is not why I hate Microsoft. I have nothing against them making computers easy to use. Get it? How many times am I going to have to say that? If they had fair business practices, didn't patronize their users, and didn't have a mentality of 'we must control every device that is computerized, connected to a computer, or-- hell-- even involves electronics at all'... then, and only then, would I not hate them. I couldn't give half of a rat's ass how good, bad, 'innovative', or whatever their programs are, were, or will be. They could have the best, easiest, most powerful software in the world, or the worst, most difficult, most fragile software imaginable-- I would hate them just the same. The reason that I hate them is a MORAL issue and has NOTHING to do with their software.
No matter how good something is, illegally pushing it on people as the only choice is wrong. Period. If you don't understand that, I suggest you learn something about basic morality.
Most people want to send email, play games and visit websites at home. Great news, Windows does that for you. It might not be the best system out there, but it does the job and it does it well. It's not super expensive and lots of vendors offer software for it.
It's not super-expensive? Office costs $300ish. Windows XP costs $200ish. For the amount of money you'd spend on Office and Windows, you could buy TWO entire computers from the Lindows people. (Not like I like Lindows either, but it was an example.) And that would include the software.
Windows is great for games and Web sites, eh? Look at the flip side, you short-sighted buffoon. Those games and Web sites are usually, or often, (respectively) ONLY RELEASED FOR WINDOWS. Life is great, if you're with the unwashed masses (a.k.a. "the majority"), eh? I for one prefer choice, and I resent the fact that Web sites nowadays are loaded with funky plug-in-dependent embeds and broken HTML that only IE running on Windows will ever render correctly.
As for work, you can thank Lotus for totally screwing up the spreadsheet market when GUI's became popular. And you can thank Wordperfect for screwing up the word processing market. Microsoft had Excel and Word, no one used it, now everyone does. Why? Because they were BETTER PRODUCTS. Wordperfect and Lotus were pushing DOS applications well into the Windows 3.1 market, by the Windows 95 release, they were fading fast. When they finally got a clue, their Windows versions were too little, too late. Lotus and WP had a choice to develop for Windows, they didn't, they lost out.
Is Word really better than WordPerfect? Word is good, but I k
It would appear that you have trouble breaking out of the mold of the "we must upgrade every X months/years" mentality. I have an old 14" monitor. From freaking AT&T (do they even still MAKE monitors? I think not.) I run it at 800x600-- the highest resolution that it can handle without interlacing. And it's Good Enough For Me(TM) ;)
Hey, I for one am amazed this happened at all, for any amount, given the current political climate..
I don't use a "desktop". My idea of a GUI is X + WindowMaker. Not that I like X, but I do prefer X to the idea of running something bloated like that.
Ahh, I love how you think you know what drives me. I don't hate Gates/MS for that reason. I hate them because they ruthlessly destroy any and all competition, and push a bloated, security-hole-ridden product on everyone. I also hate them because they make no effort to educate people to be TRULY computer literate. Microsoft wants nothing more than for the current status quo to continue indefinitely-- that is, for people to go to school and learn (by rote) the top 10 most common things they'll need to do in Office, the top 10 most common things they'll need to do in IE, and so on, then claim that they are "computer literate". Is it any wonder that MS keeps its stranglehold on the public admiration when they so love to keep their users in the dark?
MS might be (and they might not be.. remember the Apple II?) the reason why every Tom, Dick and Harry has a computer and an Internet connection (again, remember that MS was late to the game in "discovering" the Internet! Uh, remember Netscape? Before IE came around, it was the big "innovator", before it turned sour...), but they are also the reason why many Web sites nowadays will not render correctly in any browser except Microsoft's, why virtually every game nowadays is coded only for Microsoft's OS, and why Microsoft is rapidly pushing their ever-multiplying tendrils into the mobile phone, handheld PC, embedded OS, and even the bloody video game console markets.
Incidentally, if you doubt my comments about keeping users in the dark, just LOOK at the default (Luna) interface in Windows XP. It looks like it was designed for a preschooler-- right down to the freaking "Little People"-esque icons. Not only does MS want to keep its users dumb, but it's patronizing them. The first thing I had to say upon seeing Luna was "It's 'Fisher Price's 'My First OS''!"...
I'm a girl. Not all paranoid leftists are male. And just because you can't see my side of things doesn't mean I shouldn't be modded up.
...this sort of thing (i.e. legal wrangling in place of real "innovation", to borrow Gates's term) is becoming The Way Business Is Done.
I don't like it any more than you do, but let's look at it this way: This sort of thing WILL continue until the public is not only MADE AWARE, but MADE TO CARE about these issues.
Which, of course, is unlikely at best, and impossible at worst.
In my humble opinion and experience, there is only ONE way to motivate the Wrath of the Public nowadays, and that is to convince them that their money is at risk. The public will generally not raise an upcry AT ALL any more (the '60s having brought to a close the era of widespread, effective social upheavals of any sort), but when they do, it inevitably surrounds a "they're trying to take away my money, and I don't want them to" sort of issue.
So, there are only so many ways to deal with the growing problem of corporate litigiousness:
1) Somehow convince the public, in such a way that they could not be swayed again back into the corporate fold by extensive "PR" campaigns like the SoundByte campaign from the RIAA, that this sort of thing threatens their money (highly unlikely, but as I noted it's the only way to mobilize The Masses)
2) Move to another country-- but if it's anywhere even remotely civilized (e.g. Europe, Australia, Japan, etc.), chances are that they are already working on DMCA-like and other pro-corporatocracy laws there... if they've not already passed them!
3) Become a criminal and go burn down corporate infrastructure (and/or murder the "luminaries" of the Corporatocracy world, e.g. Darl McBride, Hilary Rosen, and of course BillG)-- likely ineffective, and even more likely to land you in jail and/or Death Row for the rest of your life (though may I be the first to say that the day Microsoft awakens to find their Redmond campus burned to the ground, I will hold a HUGE party...)
4) Commit suicide in disgust. (A bit extreme, but I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind. We are living in a global plutocracy, and it's frankly very depressing.)
I wish there was a better way, and I'll probably be modded down as a Troll for being so negativistic, but hey-- I'd like to think I'm somewhat insightful. When Dubya was elected, the first two things I said (after "Oh, shit!") were that (1) we would get into a war (or wars), and (2) that the MS v. DOJ matter would end in MS getting let off with a slap on the wrist. Both came true. So maybe my negativistic attitude here is right-on. I really don't see an end in sight to all of this. The only thing that could stop it is for the economy to collapse so much that even Upper Management would be begging for crap jobs like the rest of us... and I really don't see that happening. In ten years, everyone in the US could be reduced to eating rice and drinking tap water, but Bill Gates will still be worth dozens of billions of dollars, and Darl McBride, as likely as not, will be living on a private (and very posh) island somewhere...
One very important point that the Public doesn't realize is that in a recession, or even in a Depression, all that money that people used to have does not "disappear". The total number of dollars floating about in the US is ever-increasing (even as the value of the dollar fluctuates). What happens during recessions and depressions is that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Do you really think that when 99% of the people have fallen on hard economic times, that their money simply disappears into thin air? Nonsense. It means that the other 1% are getting fatter.
Oh yes, and one more thing to bear in mind. Many people's highest ambition in life is to become like these people. Most people entering the "IT" world (that sinister term for the fusion of inferior technology and businesslike ways) dream of being the next Bill Gates. And most people among The Public At Large not only respect corporations and corporate ty
I know it's off-topic, and I really don't like to have to wax RMS, but it's "cracker", not "hacker". "Hacker" isn't a synonym for "computer criminal"...
I know I'll get modded down for this, but I really think that SlashDotters should not be making posts about those evil "hackers"... I am a hacker. I don't break into systems.
(/rms)
...Guybrush Threepwood.
You are brilliant. I thought I was the only human being on the planet who noticed (much less GAVE A RAT'S PATOOTIE) that PHP was now controlled by a for-profit entity. Email me some time (jb AT twu DOT net) and I'll gladly host your Web site forever. You rule.
Just in case anyone missed this connection: UnitedLinux was founded by four companies, including SCO. Please bear this in mind when making purchasing decisions.
... ...
From www.unitedlinux.com:
"The four partner companies in UnitedLinux LLC - Conectiva, the SCO Group, SuSE Linux and Turbolinux"...
It is. But most people have not heard of it. Red Hat has virtually all of the mindshare in the Linux world (just as Solaris has virtually all of the mindshare in the non-Linux Un*x/Un*xlike world).
..."but does it run Windows?"
Thanks. Glad to see I'm not the only one interpreting things this way.
The story notes that this book is about power tips for Mac OS X, "amazingly enough". As a Mac OS X user, this is upsetting... it seems to me that the poster finds it unusual or ironic that ORA would release a book of "power tips" for OS X?
For one thing, they've released countless books on Windows (and I remember the times when their only books on MS issues were the "(X) Annoyances" series). For another thing, OS X is actually quite a serious system. Have you used it? Try it, it's Neat(TM).
I used to run Debian (yes, Debian) "on the desktop". Now, I run OS X. I am not regretting my move one bit. Mac OS X has a nifty GUI and all the open-source goodness I could need.
That was a hell of a non-sequitur...
That's right... in seven years, there might not be anything other than IE. I remember when Netscape had greater than 50% of the browser "market" (not much of a "market" now that they're all free-as-in-beer...)... now IE has a staggering 95+%. It frightens me sometimes.
You see my email address. Email me. We'll talk. I'd love to learn about alternatives. But thus far, none have been proposed.
Err... I mean "Microsoft". Just woke up, head groggy. Blluuuuuh.
Microsoft's company partnering with Linus Torvalds's company... hee!