Exactly, but that's not what the fundies are saying. They're complaining that other groups are being acknowledged, and in doing so that they're being diminished in some absurd fashion.
You're absolutely right. The only way to reason with these people is to completely wipe them off the face of the planet. We have the nuclear option, what the hell are we waiting for???
Others who were aligned with the last president do feel that they are having beliefs forced on them.
Yes, they're bitching that by including other religious and non-religious folks in the conversation for once that we're not being inclusive because we're not paying them exclusive attention. They want us to be inclusive as long as we only include them.
Agreed. It's 2009. The last time I remember getting a BSOD was on NT4.0. An electrician had shorted out a power line with a network cable and it fried the machine. These stability jokes really only attest to the author's cluelessness.
Exactly! Even to this day, many sites require IE. If you want to use all those sites, you are forced to use IE. Because of Microsoft's illegal actions.
Oh? Please do tell how MS is responsible for someone else coding their site to only work with IE.
I don't give a damn if you find Opera "compelling" or not.
Well, you should. It's 100% relevant to the conversation. If I don't like Opera, THAT is my reason for not using it, not because IE came with my OS. IE came with my OS and I choose to use neither it nor Opera. Opera started this by wanting to enable "competition". Well, you can only have competition if your product is up to the task of competing, which it isn't. That's their fault, not MS'.
And when you start comparing it to Firefox, when we are talking about IE here, it becomes clear that you are more concerned about throwing out red herrings than anything else.
Not at all, choice is absolutely relevent to the conversation. If you're not concerned with the real reasons people aren't choosing alternate browsers, everything else is just whining. And, we've always been talking about Opera. RTFA.
The fact is that Microsoft broke the law by undermining competition.
The law was broken when written.
It's that simple. In markets with actual competition, such as mobiles and devices, Opera is the dominant browser.
Your argument is illogical. Let's break the market down. For the sake of simplicity, let's say there's two types of mobile phones: those that run Windows Mobile and those that don't. Those that don't run WM don't get IE, therefore it can't be the dominant browser under any circumstance.
Those that run WM come with IE, but people have other browser choices. If Opera is the dominant browser on that platform, then people have made their choice and Opera's argument doesn't apply. I have a feeling that if IE were available on other platforms, it would either be the dominant or at least a close second. I know I would prefer it if my iPhone came with IE, but Apple doesn't allow other browsers....unlike the WM phones. The only circumstance your argument holds water is WM phones and only if IE is the dominant browser, but since your argument is it's the dominant browser, you're a bit leaky.
The user shouldn't have to be concerned about the browser. However, that shouldn't make it difficult for someone else to choose a different browser.
If they're not concerned with their browser, why would they choose a different browser? And, if you don't want to make it more difficult on then, why are you forcing them to make a choice on something they're not concerned with, nor very likely understand? Your argument makes no sense at all. Beyond that, it's not difficult: go download whatever browser you want. BTW, you'll need a browser to do that. It's a good thing the maker of the OS provided you with one otherwise you couldn't get a different one.:)
Today, it is difficult. By your own admission, many sites still require IE.
So, the sum of your argument is that because web developers choose to code to a particular browser that it's MS fault? Also, I didn't say they REQUIRED IE, I said that FF didn't work with them. There's a huge difference between the two. Those sites might render and work perfectly in other browsers, such as Opera. The fault, then, lies with the FF team, not MS and not with the owner of the website. But, I only have two browsers installed, so I can't comment on those.
Hopefully not. I hope the EU learned from their mistakes on that one.
I would have to say they have not since they're planning on doing it again.
XP N sales represent 0.005 percent (1/20,000th of one percent) of overall XP sales in Europe
.005 is statistically close enough to be classified as "none". How many millions of dollars did those 1,787 copies cost the EU? It's easily argued that the EU did more harm to its constituency than MS did.
That's an analogy to the manner in which they're forced to use IE. Still confused?
Even more so. Since IE is free, I didn't pay for it. Even if it takes up a couple of hundred megs of disk space, that's a trivial amount seeing as I can't easily buy a disk that's less than 300G anymore so it's not the same as a car taking up space in my driveway...maybe I'd give you a roller skate, but only a single one...and, it's buried in the dirt in that potted plant over there. As for others causing damage and me being responsible, how does that work? Can you point to a single case in which someone utilized an unutilized IE on someone else's machine and that second person had to provide restitution to some third party? Can you explain how that would work legally?
BTW, if someone steals my car and does damage with it, I'm not responsible. Know how I know? Happened to my stepfather a few years back. Someone stole his car, and during the high speed chase slowed down, jumped out and allowed the car to continue down a busy street where it pretty much managed to hit or swipe every parked car for three blocks. So, you'll have to come up with an analogy that closely mirrors reality in order for it to work.
You're advocating lowering consumption by making it harder to pay..
And, you're advocating increasing unnecessary consumption just to garner more profits. Given the choice, I generally err on the side of benefiting the actual living, breathing members of our society rather than the pieces of paper that define legal entities. Will the lower costs translate into lower prices for the consumer? Historically, lower costs do not result in lower prices, just higher bonuses for the senior managers. We already have methods in place to pay that don't require physical money. Hell, I typically keep a $20 bill in my wallet and replenish it monthly or so since I have very little need to spend actual cash.
Don't worry about it too much. The morons who equate Obama with Hitler are a very small and ignorant minority that we've flushed out of power. They're generally the same people who supported vehemently our previous President's predilection for removing rights from our citizens, and are clueless that the US does not exist in a vacuum on this planet. We're going to be rebuilding our education infrastructure so we will hopefully no longer produce these types of embarrassments.
So it's OK for Microsoft to illegally force themselves on people, but it is not OK for someone to protest? Opera never made any demands to be forced on anyone. Opera simply wants actual competition.
How is anyone forced to use IE, then? Since I can install any browser I want on my copy of Windows, I'm certainly not forced to use IE (excepting the times when FF doesn't work properly with a website), I can use my browser of choice. Just because it's installed in the OS doesn't mean I have to use it. If Opera wants actual competition: a) advertise their product and b) make it compelling enough for people to switch. I look at Opera every few years, and to this day have found not a single reason to switch (from Firefox).
Now, here comes the argument that goes something along the lines of "new users don't know about alternative browsers, and by getting IE with their OS, they're "forced" into using it through ignorance". To that argument I call "bullshit". If the user is really that concerned about their browser choice, they'll find out about others and use them. If they're not, why make it more difficult on them? Let's face it, if they're on the Internet and haven't heard of Firefox within the first 15 minutes of getting online, they're probably not skilled enough to make that choice the first time they boot their OS anyway.
This is going to be just like the version of Windows Microsoft was forced to sell that didn't include Media Player...no one bought it.
Are you kidding? I've never been happier to be wrong, how would I let it slip!?:) And, like our new President, I believe in the power of technology and use it to help me remember.:)
It's so funny when Americans bring up NAFTA as the end of our civilization. It's funny because if you talk to Canadians or Mexicans, they believe the US got the better end of that stick. Perhaps the rhetoric Rush, Fox, and the rest of the Ministry of Truth feeds you everyday doesn't actually jibe with reality?
Absolutely, but it takes people who know what they're doing. Anyone who tells you Exchange is anything more than "install and forget", regardless of implementation size, is either lying to you or completely clueless.
True, but the native RFB protocol does not include either like ICA does. And, I've encountered many a company that didn't force their X through SSH, let alone using compression, so not "everyone" is using it.
Which suggests that perhaps it needs more study instead of being dismissed out of hand as the concept of a couple of wackos lead unthinkingly by Al Gore.
While they're claiming the apps will actually run on the iPhone, they run on a back end server and are displayed on the phone. If you're familiar with Unix, think X server, but with security and compression.
But what remains is a more fleshed out interpretation of the constitution. After this case, these actions are explicitly unconstitutional.
Which makes me wonder if perhaps there's not a subtle flaw in the system? Under the current system, Congress creates and ratifies bills and then the President gives his approval and signs them into laws. In cases such as the PATRIOT Act with significant non-Constitutional provisions, it can take years before the law is tried in court, during which time hundreds, thousands or millions of people could be affected negatively by a law that's later struck down.
The simple solution, IMO, is to have a bill make a quick side trip to the SCOTUS before going on to the President. Glaringly unconstitutional items could be stripped out well in advance of them causing any problems. It means all three branches have a say in the creation of the laws, as opposed to two doing so and the third being left to clean up the mess.
if you're a CS major you should already have played around in some turing complete programming language
How 'bout: Someone from a lower-income area who never had access to their own computer, or went to a public school that didn't have a computer lab (they do still exist, I'm told)? Someone from another, possibly third-world, country who never had access to running water let alone something to program? Or, someone who intelligently starts college with no pre-conceived notions of their major and takes a variety of courses to get an idea of what they might like to do? Are you suggesting that only those "elite" who had access to computers in their younger years should be allowed to take CS later on?
As others have mentioned, when I was in college for CS, I thought CS was something else. The focus was on programming, rather than system design and administration which is what I wanted to do. The initial programming course was in Scheme which, despite having had experience with BASIC since I was 9, Pascal, Assembler and even a bit of FORTRAN at that point I still didn't get. Starting with such an obscure and wacky language doesn't exclude people who don't have the "temperament" or ability to stick it out, it forces out people who don't have the temperament or ability to learn Scheme.
Lower cost does not necessarily equate to greater value. In fact, it's been my experience that the two are generally mutually exclusive.
Note (I have to say this since this is Slashdot where if you say one thing it means you vehemently believe the opposite of that thing to be true): just because I don't equate lower cost with greater value does not mean I equate HIGHER costs with it, either. It IS possible to believe that lower cost equals cheap while higher costs do not denote higher value.
These children that you speak of aren't some imaginary thing you can airly dismiss.
As a parent, I disagree. What's in the best interest of my daughter is growing up in a society that is free from the type of madness and baseless hysteria that forms the remainder of your post.
They are the hopes and dreams of the parents who raised them, the future of our society, innocent and worthy of our very best efforts to protect them.
Absolutely, and that includes remaining a society and not a festering mob. It includes not throwing out civil liberties and due process of law just to punish people we don't like. I don't like presidents that spy on Americans, and feel that it's in my best interest that Bush be brought to trial, but I don't see any slavering "conservative" mobs backing me up. It's much more likely that she'll live in a police state than she'll be molested by a stranger.
Honestly, I'd have to question the humanity of someone who is NOT outraged by any crime against a child
Who isn't outraged by this crime? But, that doesn't mean I can't be outraged if the perp's civil rights were violated, especially in this case. There are other shades than just black and white. How often have we read stories of people who went through "the system" for child porn that they could provide reasonable explanations for being there, such as malware? The law's priority IS to ensure the innocent aren't harmed...even if they've been falsely accused of having child porn.
That being said, pedophilia is a mental disorder that needs to be treated, not punished. I question the humanity of any person that can't see that some things can't just be wished, or locked, away and forgotten about.
and least we can understand now that, that, given the active choice to let child molestors walk, that, all this other so-called liberal talk about children is a lie.
Actually, it's the conservative churchies who are more likely to scream "think about the children" than the liberals. Despite what the Ministry of Truth (Fox News) tells you, "liberal" is not a dirty word. Liberals gave women and blacks equal rights. Liberals ensure that you, as a citizen, get a fair day in court. If, however, you're stinking rich, the 'pubs will be happy to bail you out...even if you ARE a child molester as lot of them have been found to be of late.
They aren't interested in trying to save anyone, not the working man or the children. They are a cancer who deliberately brings countries down and ruins cultures in order to secure power for themselves.
I thought you were talking about liberals here? This description matches the actions of the "conservative" party over the last decade and a half.
You just wait until Obama pardons Mumia
Having grown up in Philadelphia and having a fair number of relatives who serve on the Philadelphia police force, and the police forces of neighboring areas of New Jersey...well, I'm not going to defend Mumia...but I can tell you first hand that brutal racism is rampant in the people who are sworn to serve and protect in that area. My own family members and their friends on the force are sufficient proof to me. I know we like to live in a fantasyland where that's not true, but until you see it firsthand, you have no idea what you're talking about. But, given your other statements, that's not a hard argument to make.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly, but that's not what the fundies are saying. They're complaining that other groups are being acknowledged, and in doing so that they're being diminished in some absurd fashion.
You're absolutely right. The only way to reason with these people is to completely wipe them off the face of the planet. We have the nuclear option, what the hell are we waiting for???
Others who were aligned with the last president do feel that they are having beliefs forced on them.
Yes, they're bitching that by including other religious and non-religious folks in the conversation for once that we're not being inclusive because we're not paying them exclusive attention. They want us to be inclusive as long as we only include them.
Almost every BSOD I've ever heard of was a driver issue. But, try convincing an anti-Windows zealot of that. :)
Agreed. It's 2009. The last time I remember getting a BSOD was on NT4.0. An electrician had shorted out a power line with a network cable and it fried the machine. These stability jokes really only attest to the author's cluelessness.
Exactly! Even to this day, many sites require IE. If you want to use all those sites, you are forced to use IE. Because of Microsoft's illegal actions.
:)
Oh? Please do tell how MS is responsible for someone else coding their site to only work with IE.
I don't give a damn if you find Opera "compelling" or not.
Well, you should. It's 100% relevant to the conversation. If I don't like Opera, THAT is my reason for not using it, not because IE came with my OS. IE came with my OS and I choose to use neither it nor Opera. Opera started this by wanting to enable "competition". Well, you can only have competition if your product is up to the task of competing, which it isn't. That's their fault, not MS'.
And when you start comparing it to Firefox, when we are talking about IE here, it becomes clear that you are more concerned about throwing out red herrings than anything else.
Not at all, choice is absolutely relevent to the conversation. If you're not concerned with the real reasons people aren't choosing alternate browsers, everything else is just whining. And, we've always been talking about Opera. RTFA.
The fact is that Microsoft broke the law by undermining competition.
The law was broken when written.
It's that simple. In markets with actual competition, such as mobiles and devices, Opera is the dominant browser.
Your argument is illogical. Let's break the market down. For the sake of simplicity, let's say there's two types of mobile phones: those that run Windows Mobile and those that don't. Those that don't run WM don't get IE, therefore it can't be the dominant browser under any circumstance. Those that run WM come with IE, but people have other browser choices. If Opera is the dominant browser on that platform, then people have made their choice and Opera's argument doesn't apply. I have a feeling that if IE were available on other platforms, it would either be the dominant or at least a close second. I know I would prefer it if my iPhone came with IE, but Apple doesn't allow other browsers....unlike the WM phones. The only circumstance your argument holds water is WM phones and only if IE is the dominant browser, but since your argument is it's the dominant browser, you're a bit leaky.
The user shouldn't have to be concerned about the browser. However, that shouldn't make it difficult for someone else to choose a different browser.
If they're not concerned with their browser, why would they choose a different browser? And, if you don't want to make it more difficult on then, why are you forcing them to make a choice on something they're not concerned with, nor very likely understand? Your argument makes no sense at all. Beyond that, it's not difficult: go download whatever browser you want. BTW, you'll need a browser to do that. It's a good thing the maker of the OS provided you with one otherwise you couldn't get a different one.
Today, it is difficult. By your own admission, many sites still require IE.
So, the sum of your argument is that because web developers choose to code to a particular browser that it's MS fault? Also, I didn't say they REQUIRED IE, I said that FF didn't work with them. There's a huge difference between the two. Those sites might render and work perfectly in other browsers, such as Opera. The fault, then, lies with the FF team, not MS and not with the owner of the website. But, I only have two browsers installed, so I can't comment on those.
Hopefully not. I hope the EU learned from their mistakes on that one.
I would have to say they have not since they're planning on doing it again.
XP N sales represent 0.005 percent (1/20,000th of one percent) of overall XP sales in Europe
.005 is statistically close enough to be classified as "none". How many millions of dollars did those 1,787 copies cost the EU? It's easily argued that the EU did more harm to its constituency than MS did.
That's an analogy to the manner in which they're forced to use IE. Still confused?
Even more so. Since IE is free, I didn't pay for it. Even if it takes up a couple of hundred megs of disk space, that's a trivial amount seeing as I can't easily buy a disk that's less than 300G anymore so it's not the same as a car taking up space in my driveway...maybe I'd give you a roller skate, but only a single one...and, it's buried in the dirt in that potted plant over there. As for others causing damage and me being responsible, how does that work? Can you point to a single case in which someone utilized an unutilized IE on someone else's machine and that second person had to provide restitution to some third party? Can you explain how that would work legally?
BTW, if someone steals my car and does damage with it, I'm not responsible. Know how I know? Happened to my stepfather a few years back. Someone stole his car, and during the high speed chase slowed down, jumped out and allowed the car to continue down a busy street where it pretty much managed to hit or swipe every parked car for three blocks. So, you'll have to come up with an analogy that closely mirrors reality in order for it to work.
You're advocating lowering consumption by making it harder to pay..
And, you're advocating increasing unnecessary consumption just to garner more profits. Given the choice, I generally err on the side of benefiting the actual living, breathing members of our society rather than the pieces of paper that define legal entities. Will the lower costs translate into lower prices for the consumer? Historically, lower costs do not result in lower prices, just higher bonuses for the senior managers. We already have methods in place to pay that don't require physical money. Hell, I typically keep a $20 bill in my wallet and replenish it monthly or so since I have very little need to spend actual cash.
Don't worry about it too much. The morons who equate Obama with Hitler are a very small and ignorant minority that we've flushed out of power. They're generally the same people who supported vehemently our previous President's predilection for removing rights from our citizens, and are clueless that the US does not exist in a vacuum on this planet. We're going to be rebuilding our education infrastructure so we will hopefully no longer produce these types of embarrassments.
So it's OK for Microsoft to illegally force themselves on people, but it is not OK for someone to protest? Opera never made any demands to be forced on anyone. Opera simply wants actual competition.
How is anyone forced to use IE, then? Since I can install any browser I want on my copy of Windows, I'm certainly not forced to use IE (excepting the times when FF doesn't work properly with a website), I can use my browser of choice. Just because it's installed in the OS doesn't mean I have to use it. If Opera wants actual competition: a) advertise their product and b) make it compelling enough for people to switch. I look at Opera every few years, and to this day have found not a single reason to switch (from Firefox).
Now, here comes the argument that goes something along the lines of "new users don't know about alternative browsers, and by getting IE with their OS, they're "forced" into using it through ignorance". To that argument I call "bullshit". If the user is really that concerned about their browser choice, they'll find out about others and use them. If they're not, why make it more difficult on them? Let's face it, if they're on the Internet and haven't heard of Firefox within the first 15 minutes of getting online, they're probably not skilled enough to make that choice the first time they boot their OS anyway.
This is going to be just like the version of Windows Microsoft was forced to sell that didn't include Media Player...no one bought it.
Are you kidding? I've never been happier to be wrong, how would I let it slip!? :) And, like our new President, I believe in the power of technology and use it to help me remember. :)
Off topic, but I can't reply to the original post....I gladly owe you breakfast!
It's so funny when Americans bring up NAFTA as the end of our civilization. It's funny because if you talk to Canadians or Mexicans, they believe the US got the better end of that stick. Perhaps the rhetoric Rush, Fox, and the rest of the Ministry of Truth feeds you everyday doesn't actually jibe with reality?
Can we make them wear stars and round them up into camps, too? :)
Absolutely, but it takes people who know what they're doing. Anyone who tells you Exchange is anything more than "install and forget", regardless of implementation size, is either lying to you or completely clueless.
Man am I glad I switched to Geico!
True, but the native RFB protocol does not include either like ICA does. And, I've encountered many a company that didn't force their X through SSH, let alone using compression, so not "everyone" is using it.
Which suggests that perhaps it needs more study instead of being dismissed out of hand as the concept of a couple of wackos lead unthinkingly by Al Gore.
While they're claiming the apps will actually run on the iPhone, they run on a back end server and are displayed on the phone. If you're familiar with Unix, think X server, but with security and compression.
But what remains is a more fleshed out interpretation of the constitution. After this case, these actions are explicitly unconstitutional.
Which makes me wonder if perhaps there's not a subtle flaw in the system? Under the current system, Congress creates and ratifies bills and then the President gives his approval and signs them into laws. In cases such as the PATRIOT Act with significant non-Constitutional provisions, it can take years before the law is tried in court, during which time hundreds, thousands or millions of people could be affected negatively by a law that's later struck down.
The simple solution, IMO, is to have a bill make a quick side trip to the SCOTUS before going on to the President. Glaringly unconstitutional items could be stripped out well in advance of them causing any problems. It means all three branches have a say in the creation of the laws, as opposed to two doing so and the third being left to clean up the mess.
if you're a CS major you should already have played around in some turing complete programming language
How 'bout: Someone from a lower-income area who never had access to their own computer, or went to a public school that didn't have a computer lab (they do still exist, I'm told)? Someone from another, possibly third-world, country who never had access to running water let alone something to program? Or, someone who intelligently starts college with no pre-conceived notions of their major and takes a variety of courses to get an idea of what they might like to do? Are you suggesting that only those "elite" who had access to computers in their younger years should be allowed to take CS later on?
As others have mentioned, when I was in college for CS, I thought CS was something else. The focus was on programming, rather than system design and administration which is what I wanted to do. The initial programming course was in Scheme which, despite having had experience with BASIC since I was 9, Pascal, Assembler and even a bit of FORTRAN at that point I still didn't get. Starting with such an obscure and wacky language doesn't exclude people who don't have the "temperament" or ability to stick it out, it forces out people who don't have the temperament or ability to learn Scheme.
Lower cost does not necessarily equate to greater value. In fact, it's been my experience that the two are generally mutually exclusive.
Note (I have to say this since this is Slashdot where if you say one thing it means you vehemently believe the opposite of that thing to be true): just because I don't equate lower cost with greater value does not mean I equate HIGHER costs with it, either. It IS possible to believe that lower cost equals cheap while higher costs do not denote higher value.
These children that you speak of aren't some imaginary thing you can airly dismiss.
As a parent, I disagree. What's in the best interest of my daughter is growing up in a society that is free from the type of madness and baseless hysteria that forms the remainder of your post.
They are the hopes and dreams of the parents who raised them, the future of our society, innocent and worthy of our very best efforts to protect them.
Absolutely, and that includes remaining a society and not a festering mob. It includes not throwing out civil liberties and due process of law just to punish people we don't like. I don't like presidents that spy on Americans, and feel that it's in my best interest that Bush be brought to trial, but I don't see any slavering "conservative" mobs backing me up. It's much more likely that she'll live in a police state than she'll be molested by a stranger.
Honestly, I'd have to question the humanity of someone who is NOT outraged by any crime against a child
Who isn't outraged by this crime? But, that doesn't mean I can't be outraged if the perp's civil rights were violated, especially in this case. There are other shades than just black and white. How often have we read stories of people who went through "the system" for child porn that they could provide reasonable explanations for being there, such as malware? The law's priority IS to ensure the innocent aren't harmed...even if they've been falsely accused of having child porn.
That being said, pedophilia is a mental disorder that needs to be treated, not punished. I question the humanity of any person that can't see that some things can't just be wished, or locked, away and forgotten about.
and least we can understand now that, that, given the active choice to let child molestors walk, that, all this other so-called liberal talk about children is a lie.
Actually, it's the conservative churchies who are more likely to scream "think about the children" than the liberals. Despite what the Ministry of Truth (Fox News) tells you, "liberal" is not a dirty word. Liberals gave women and blacks equal rights. Liberals ensure that you, as a citizen, get a fair day in court. If, however, you're stinking rich, the 'pubs will be happy to bail you out...even if you ARE a child molester as lot of them have been found to be of late.
They aren't interested in trying to save anyone, not the working man or the children. They are a cancer who deliberately brings countries down and ruins cultures in order to secure power for themselves.
I thought you were talking about liberals here? This description matches the actions of the "conservative" party over the last decade and a half.
You just wait until Obama pardons Mumia
Having grown up in Philadelphia and having a fair number of relatives who serve on the Philadelphia police force, and the police forces of neighboring areas of New Jersey...well, I'm not going to defend Mumia...but I can tell you first hand that brutal racism is rampant in the people who are sworn to serve and protect in that area. My own family members and their friends on the force are sufficient proof to me. I know we like to live in a fantasyland where that's not true, but until you see it firsthand, you have no idea what you're talking about. But, given your other statements, that's not a hard argument to make.
Silly you, trying to refute propaganda with facts. If that worked, there wouldn't be any Republicans left anywhere. :)