And here all this time I thought I was paying for what I receive by sending Dish Network $121 (I get pretty much every non-ppv American oriented channel they offer) each month for my subscription.
Personally, I view commercials as conveniently spaced 30 second pee and "grab some food" breaks. I'll start intently watching the commercials when Jamie Kellner starts paying my aforementioned Dish Network bill.
Although I gotta admit, I do like the Mountain Dew commercial where the dude has the fight with the long horn sheep...
I used to build machines for other people (family members, etc.) Now I just tell them all to buy a Dell because the hassle on me to maintain them is WAAAAAY less.
Preach it, friend!
For the last near 20 years I often built systems for friends, family, or businesses who wanted to save money. But these days I can't build them cheaper than Walmart sells them. The only time I build a system now for anyone other than myself is if all they want is some old wreck good enough to get on the internet and I already have the parts laying around.
To the guy who started this discussion: You start out by comparing a pre-built P4 system to a scratch-built Athlon system. You also need to be looking at Duron/Celeron pre-builts. I bet there is only a handfull of people in your company, if ANY, who need the power of a P4 or a top of the line Athlon. A Celeron or Duron would them just fine, and you're not going to build something from scratch with either of those that is cheaper than what Dell or Walmart can sell them to you for.
Re:Titanium is also very flexible.
on
The Sexiest Metal
·
· Score: 2
Of course Apple used titanium because it was sexy. I've never seen Apple push their products any other way in the last 10 - 15 years. They show the fancy shapes, they show the neat transparent colors, and they push their machines because they are "different".
Instead of showing me how its "sexy" and "different", their advertising should show me how its "better than a PC" and I might go buy one.
Now, back on topic...
I have a couple of pairs of eyeglasses with titanium frames. Most expensive frames I've ever bought. And the best damned frames I've ever bought. I'll never again buy frames made of anything else. They don't crack and turn funny colors like plastic frames, and they don't corode and turn my skin green like traditional nickel-based frames. And combined with nice modern polycarb lenses I bet they don't weigh a tenth of what traditional frames with glass lenses weigh.
I've got to throw in a "yeah, what he said!" here.
Maybe I'm too old to understand (I'm 40, which probably makes me older than 95% of/. readers), but I consider/. to be a news site. I come here for IT/geek news. Normally my attitude is if its important in the world of computing, it will be on/..
Of all the sites I consider "news" sites, I noticed that/. was the only one who wasted space with April Fools stories. Maybe/. just couldn't find any real stories today. But at the same time c|net, who/. seems to sometimes take great pains to point out its better than, managed to find a whole list of stories for today.
One was funny. Two was okay. Three was excessive. Ten was totally friggin stupid and a waste of time, and makes me want to re-evaluate my opinion of/. as THE geek news site.
And all of them were so lame and obvious that anyone who thought they were real stories should be forced to turn in their geek club decoder rings and go away.
A number of people, me being one of them, had "issues" with previous versions of PGPdisk running on Windows XP. In my case, it just plain wouldn't work. PGP 7.11 took care of that.
I am a heavy user of PGPdisk, having probably 15 - 20 gig of data stored both on disk and CD. Until GNUpgp gets PGPdisk compatibility, it simply is not an option for me.
There was also the "PGP hosed my TCP/IP stack" problem that a number of people experienced prior to 7.0something.
While this product is probably useful to the geek Linux lover who also needs to use Office, I fail to see how this is going to make corporate users switch over to Linux. I also fail to see how this is reducing the need for Microsoft software.
Yeah, sure, you're getting rid of the Windows license...a savings of $50 or so in the OEM world. But you're still giving money to Uncle Bill for Office itself...and even in an OEM atmosphere I bet Office is a damned sight more than $50.
Making cute nick-nacks that will run Microsoft's office suite on another OS doesn't reduce Microsoft's grip on the desktop what so ever. Only a native office suite that is not purchased from Microsoft will make that difference on Microsoft's bottom line.
While my age probably is higher than the average/. reader, my feelings on this topic have absolutely nothing to do with my "spirit being broken". Rather, they have to do with being old enough to understand that it is the employer, not me, who owns the computer system, owns the hardware in my office, and pays for the bandwidth that I have access to. That gives them the right to decide how that hardware and bandwidth is used. He who has the gold makes the rules, and its their gold. If you don't like your employer's rules, you have a simple option...find another employer.
The fact that the majority of viruses attacks Microsoft systems and Microsoft email software is irrelevant. The fact that companies could avoid that if they used Macs or Linux is equally irrelevant for this topic.
Tell ya what...since you obviously see no problems with using other people's stuff any old way you'd like...I want to use your car Friday evening. I promise to only put a few thousand miles on it. I'm sure you won't mind...
What we need are more people in the world who don't have knee-jerk reactions that start with "we need some laws...". While you're sick of companies that keep what is going in to the dustbin, I am sick of people telling others what to do with product that THEY don't own and didn't create.
If you write some code and want to give it away, please do. If you write some code, sell a package, decide you don't want to screw with it any more and then give it away, that's great of you too.
At the same time, if I write code and make some neato package, you are perfectly welcome to politely suggest how I distribute it. But in the end, its the owner's choice, not yours, and if you don't like it, tough shit.
I wish NAI would release the code under [insert free (speach and beer) license of choice here] so that development can continue. I wish PZ hadn't sold it to them in the first place, but as I state above, his code - his choice. But the first legislative attempt to FORCE them to release the code will plant me firmly on the side of NAI.
And that's my opinion for any other piece of orphanware, abandonware, garbageware, nolongerwantedware etc etc. I too wish that companies would find it in the goodness of their hearts to release code they are no longer going to support or use. But its THEIR code, and NO ONE should have the right to FORCE them to do ANYTHING with it.
The thing that depresses me the most these days when I read/. and postings on/. is how quick people here are to totally ignore the licenses and rights of others, but are equally quick to pounce on anyone who violates the GPL. And that just makes the fight for Free Software that much harder. Its getting to the point where everyone assumes we're just a bunch of loud mouthed hypocrits.
Several studies were done by various organizations in the late 80s and early 90s (and its your job to look them up for specific examples) to determine if electric cars were really "green" if you took the emissions from the production of electricy to recharge them in to account.
The results...even when energy production for recharging is taken in to account, electric cars were found to be MASSIVELY less of an impact on the environment than their internal combustion brothers.
In the early 80's I bought an HP-11c calculator when I first started college. Since then it has seen almost daily use, and in fact lays on the monitor shelf of the computer I am typing this message from so that it is handy.
Its still using the same set of non-rechargeable batteries that it came out of the box with. I keep figuring "these are gonna die any day now", but they keep chugging along...
What happened when Timothy McVey filled a truck full of commonly available fertilizer, kerosene, mixed well, and lit the fuse?
Damned near anything can be turned in to a weapon, and most household products, when mixed the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) way can level a large office building. Are we going to ban everything that can cause harm when used in the wrong way? Name me a product that CAN'T be used to cause harm.
So no, I don't think your fear is reasonable. If it were, we'd all stay locked in our homes, never venturing out, and the Attorney General of the United States would make damned near everything illegal just out of paranoia. Wait a minute...that's already happening...
I guess since nothing "real" happened in the computer world today, the Powers That Be at Slashdot had to dig up this story again, and take one more attempt to turn it in to a rallying point for Slashdotters to "stick it to The Man!"
The little bastard admitted to defacing websites, which is a crime. Throw his worthless ass in jail. If he were sending out spam, you'd be demanding he be castrated. If he had done something for Microsoft, you'd be demanding his head on a silver platter. But instead you want us to all ignore the fact he committed crimes and admitted to doing so, and instead concentrate on the fact that his own website was brought in to the picture. Maybe you can get John Paul II to make him a friggin Saint while you're at it.
I'm further disappointed to see that the little prick's website is gone...I was hoping to help increase his hits (not to mention his bandwidth bill).
This is not a First Amendmant issue. To raise this case to that level diminishes the importance of the cases that really ARE First Amendmant issues.
In this twit's case I don't want to raisethefist.com, I want to raisethefinger.com!
If this is going to be a product developed by an existing company, the first questions I'd ask when selecting a language are these:
Do we already have programmers on staff? If so, what languages do they already know and are proficient at? If not, am I picking a language that is so obscure there are only 7 people on the planet I can hire?
I've just finished reading Ms. Andersson's account, and most of the comments currently posted here at the time I write this.
I don't know Ms. Andersson, nor have I had any connection with her company, so I can't say whether her account is correct or not.
I have noticed a lot of negative statements about her, though, in these comments. And I find it interesting that the vast majority making those negative comments have chosen to be wimps hiding behind the name "Anonymous Coward" (a very appropriate name).
Even if Ms. Andersson is wrong, at least she has guts enough to put her name on her comments.
If all this little prick was doing was advocating the overthrow of the government and providing recipes for bombs, believe it or not I'd be right there arguing with him for the right to free speech. I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to my death blah blah blah blah.
But no, this guy was actively trashing web sites, admits to doing so, and then whines that he won't go to jail for what he did, but for his opinions.
No, he'll go to jail because he's just another whiny-assed fucking criminal who got caught, and is trying to hide behind other issues that have nothing to do with his crime.
My opinion is his homepage should now be at lockthecelldoorandthrowawaythekey.com...its like 'ol Beretta said, "if ya can't do the time, don't do the crime".
Wow. It would make a great deal of sense for AOL/Time-Warner to acquire an operating system for leverage against Microsoft - same reason they bought Netscape.
Yeah, and look what AOL did with Netscape. Too little, too late. To paraphrase a Robin Williams line, if its being done right anywhere in the online world, its NOT being done by AOL. Any Linux supporter with even a tenth of a brain does not see this article as good news.
Before you figure out how to sell your public on open software, you need to figure out for yourself if this is even going to be a part of your job.
You state you are running for a council member position. Any "council" has more than one member. Will you be the council member in charge of IT? Do others on council know anything about software? Does your city council even involve itself in decisions about specific software? Are you sure your city doesn't have an IT manager that takes care of that sort of thing?
And even if it is part of your job, I hate to burst your bubble but other people here are right...John Q. Citizen doesn't give a rat's ass what software you use, especially in our post-Sept 11th world. He doesn't care if Microsoft is a monopoly. He doesn't give a damn about closed file formats. All he cares about are his taxes don't go up, he has electricity, water, and other utilities coming to his house, and criminals aren't breaking in to his house.
This isn't meant as a troll, I'm seriously asking this and hoping someone will reply.
I live in the US. The BSA shows up at my door. Why do I have to let them in said door? Why can't I just tell them to piss up a rope? I was under the impression that in the US the only people you have to let inside are police officers with a proper warrent. And if the BullShitters of America show up with cops with a warrent, why can't I just say "cops enter, BSA go screw yourselves?"
Well...of course! What do you expect from a group of people where a vocal subset of the group openly supports violating other licenses and calling it "fair use" and "free speech", but when you violate THEIR license they want your head on a platter.
It still isn't news worthy of an outcry. MSN, whether you like it or not, is yet another company exercising control over a computer system THEY own. How they've done it up until now is totally irrelevant. The fact that they are owned by Microsoft also does not make it news, nor make it worthy of an outcry.
If you are an MSN customer and you don't like this, you have two options, 1) move to another ISP, or 2) start your own damned ISP (and then we'll see how you feel about others telling you how to run equipment you own).
I get a kick out of how quickly most of the group here will pounce on a company that violates the GPL, but at the same time the majority of the group here has no problem with violating other licenses themselves such as passing around code that is not supposed to be redistributed, or passing around CDs and calling it "fair use".
And doing so only gives companies like Microsoft more ammo to use against the open source community.
I get a kick out of how quickly most of the group here will pounce on a company that violates the GPL, but at the same time the majority of the group here has no problem with violating other licenses themselves such as passing around code that is not supposed to be redistributed, or passing around CDs and calling it "fair use".
And doing so only gives companies like Microsoft more ammo to use against the open source community.
You are correct in your assumption. Most contracts were updated to include database rights shortly after this became an issue. This ruling will only have major impact on articles written in the 80's.
Of course, and as usual, you can't tell that from the way the opening paragraph is written on slashdot, which makes it sound like civilization is doomed and information database services everywhere will be brought to their knees because they can't archive an article that was written last week...
Slashdot Mirror
And here all this time I thought I was paying for what I receive by sending Dish Network $121 (I get pretty much every non-ppv American oriented channel they offer) each month for my subscription.
Personally, I view commercials as conveniently spaced 30 second pee and "grab some food" breaks. I'll start intently watching the commercials when Jamie Kellner starts paying my aforementioned Dish Network bill.
Although I gotta admit, I do like the Mountain Dew commercial where the dude has the fight with the long horn sheep...
I used to build machines for other people (family members, etc.) Now I just tell them all to buy a Dell because the hassle on me to maintain them is WAAAAAY less.
Preach it, friend!
For the last near 20 years I often built systems for friends, family, or businesses who wanted to save money. But these days I can't build them cheaper than Walmart sells them. The only time I build a system now for anyone other than myself is if all they want is some old wreck good enough to get on the internet and I already have the parts laying around.
To the guy who started this discussion: You start out by comparing a pre-built P4 system to a scratch-built Athlon system. You also need to be looking at Duron/Celeron pre-builts. I bet there is only a handfull of people in your company, if ANY, who need the power of a P4 or a top of the line Athlon. A Celeron or Duron would them just fine, and you're not going to build something from scratch with either of those that is cheaper than what Dell or Walmart can sell them to you for.
Of course Apple used titanium because it was sexy. I've never seen Apple push their products any other way in the last 10 - 15 years. They show the fancy shapes, they show the neat transparent colors, and they push their machines because they are "different".
Instead of showing me how its "sexy" and "different", their advertising should show me how its "better than a PC" and I might go buy one.
Now, back on topic...
I have a couple of pairs of eyeglasses with titanium frames. Most expensive frames I've ever bought. And the best damned frames I've ever bought. I'll never again buy frames made of anything else. They don't crack and turn funny colors like plastic frames, and they don't corode and turn my skin green like traditional nickel-based frames. And combined with nice modern polycarb lenses I bet they don't weigh a tenth of what traditional frames with glass lenses weigh.
I've got to throw in a "yeah, what he said!" here.
/. readers), but I consider /. to be a news site. I come here for IT/geek news. Normally my attitude is if its important in the world of computing, it will be on /..
/. was the only one who wasted space with April Fools stories. Maybe /. just couldn't find any real stories today. But at the same time c|net, who /. seems to sometimes take great pains to point out its better than, managed to find a whole list of stories for today.
/. as THE geek news site.
Maybe I'm too old to understand (I'm 40, which probably makes me older than 95% of
Of all the sites I consider "news" sites, I noticed that
One was funny. Two was okay. Three was excessive. Ten was totally friggin stupid and a waste of time, and makes me want to re-evaluate my opinion of
And all of them were so lame and obvious that anyone who thought they were real stories should be forced to turn in their geek club decoder rings and go away.
A number of people, me being one of them, had "issues" with previous versions of PGPdisk running on Windows XP. In my case, it just plain wouldn't work. PGP 7.11 took care of that.
I am a heavy user of PGPdisk, having probably 15 - 20 gig of data stored both on disk and CD. Until GNUpgp gets PGPdisk compatibility, it simply is not an option for me.
There was also the "PGP hosed my TCP/IP stack" problem that a number of people experienced prior to 7.0something.
While this product is probably useful to the geek Linux lover who also needs to use Office, I fail to see how this is going to make corporate users switch over to Linux. I also fail to see how this is reducing the need for Microsoft software.
Yeah, sure, you're getting rid of the Windows license...a savings of $50 or so in the OEM world. But you're still giving money to Uncle Bill for Office itself...and even in an OEM atmosphere I bet Office is a damned sight more than $50.
Making cute nick-nacks that will run Microsoft's office suite on another OS doesn't reduce Microsoft's grip on the desktop what so ever. Only a native office suite that is not purchased from Microsoft will make that difference on Microsoft's bottom line.
While my age probably is higher than the average /. reader, my feelings on this topic have absolutely nothing to do with my "spirit being broken". Rather, they have to do with being old enough to understand that it is the employer, not me, who owns the computer system, owns the hardware in my office, and pays for the bandwidth that I have access to. That gives them the right to decide how that hardware and bandwidth is used. He who has the gold makes the rules, and its their gold. If you don't like your employer's rules, you have a simple option...find another employer.
The fact that the majority of viruses attacks Microsoft systems and Microsoft email software is irrelevant. The fact that companies could avoid that if they used Macs or Linux is equally irrelevant for this topic.
Tell ya what...since you obviously see no problems with using other people's stuff any old way you'd like...I want to use your car Friday evening. I promise to only put a few thousand miles on it. I'm sure you won't mind...
What we need are more people in the world who don't have knee-jerk reactions that start with "we need some laws...". While you're sick of companies that keep what is going in to the dustbin, I am sick of people telling others what to do with product that THEY don't own and didn't create.
/. and postings on /. is how quick people here are to totally ignore the licenses and rights of others, but are equally quick to pounce on anyone who violates the GPL. And that just makes the fight for Free Software that much harder. Its getting to the point where everyone assumes we're just a bunch of loud mouthed hypocrits.
If you write some code and want to give it away, please do. If you write some code, sell a package, decide you don't want to screw with it any more and then give it away, that's great of you too.
At the same time, if I write code and make some neato package, you are perfectly welcome to politely suggest how I distribute it. But in the end, its the owner's choice, not yours, and if you don't like it, tough shit.
I wish NAI would release the code under [insert free (speach and beer) license of choice here] so that development can continue. I wish PZ hadn't sold it to them in the first place, but as I state above, his code - his choice. But the first legislative attempt to FORCE them to release the code will plant me firmly on the side of NAI.
And that's my opinion for any other piece of orphanware, abandonware, garbageware, nolongerwantedware etc etc. I too wish that companies would find it in the goodness of their hearts to release code they are no longer going to support or use. But its THEIR code, and NO ONE should have the right to FORCE them to do ANYTHING with it.
The thing that depresses me the most these days when I read
Several studies were done by various organizations in the late 80s and early 90s (and its your job to look them up for specific examples) to determine if electric cars were really "green" if you took the emissions from the production of electricy to recharge them in to account.
The results...even when energy production for recharging is taken in to account, electric cars were found to be MASSIVELY less of an impact on the environment than their internal combustion brothers.
Funny you should mention calculator batteries.
In the early 80's I bought an HP-11c calculator when I first started college. Since then it has seen almost daily use, and in fact lays on the monitor shelf of the computer I am typing this message from so that it is handy.
Its still using the same set of non-rechargeable batteries that it came out of the box with. I keep figuring "these are gonna die any day now", but they keep chugging along...
What happened when Timothy McVey filled a truck full of commonly available fertilizer, kerosene, mixed well, and lit the fuse?
Damned near anything can be turned in to a weapon, and most household products, when mixed the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) way can level a large office building. Are we going to ban everything that can cause harm when used in the wrong way? Name me a product that CAN'T be used to cause harm.
So no, I don't think your fear is reasonable. If it were, we'd all stay locked in our homes, never venturing out, and the Attorney General of the United States would make damned near everything illegal just out of paranoia. Wait a minute...that's already happening...
That's a beautiful case!
But since its cube shaped, I expect Apple to sue him any minute for copying their look and feel...
Damn...this week I have no mod points to give out!!
Somebody(s) needs to mod your message all the way up to the top.
I guess since nothing "real" happened in the computer world today, the Powers That Be at Slashdot had to dig up this story again, and take one more attempt to turn it in to a rallying point for Slashdotters to "stick it to The Man!"
The little bastard admitted to defacing websites, which is a crime. Throw his worthless ass in jail. If he were sending out spam, you'd be demanding he be castrated. If he had done something for Microsoft, you'd be demanding his head on a silver platter. But instead you want us to all ignore the fact he committed crimes and admitted to doing so, and instead concentrate on the fact that his own website was brought in to the picture. Maybe you can get John Paul II to make him a friggin Saint while you're at it.
I'm further disappointed to see that the little prick's website is gone...I was hoping to help increase his hits (not to mention his bandwidth bill).
This is not a First Amendmant issue. To raise this case to that level diminishes the importance of the cases that really ARE First Amendmant issues.
In this twit's case I don't want to raisethefist.com, I want to raisethefinger.com!
You're going about this the wrong way.
If this is going to be a product developed by an existing company, the first questions I'd ask when selecting a language are these:
Do we already have programmers on staff? If so, what languages do they already know and are proficient at? If not, am I picking a language that is so obscure there are only 7 people on the planet I can hire?
I've just finished reading Ms. Andersson's account, and most of the comments currently posted here at the time I write this.
I don't know Ms. Andersson, nor have I had any connection with her company, so I can't say whether her account is correct or not.
I have noticed a lot of negative statements about her, though, in these comments. And I find it interesting that the vast majority making those negative comments have chosen to be wimps hiding behind the name "Anonymous Coward" (a very appropriate name).
Even if Ms. Andersson is wrong, at least she has guts enough to put her name on her comments.
If all this little prick was doing was advocating the overthrow of the government and providing recipes for bombs, believe it or not I'd be right there arguing with him for the right to free speech. I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to my death blah blah blah blah.
But no, this guy was actively trashing web sites, admits to doing so, and then whines that he won't go to jail for what he did, but for his opinions.
No, he'll go to jail because he's just another whiny-assed fucking criminal who got caught, and is trying to hide behind other issues that have nothing to do with his crime.
My opinion is his homepage should now be at lockthecelldoorandthrowawaythekey.com...its like 'ol Beretta said, "if ya can't do the time, don't do the crime".
Wow. It would make a great deal of sense for AOL/Time-Warner to acquire an operating system for leverage against Microsoft - same reason they bought Netscape.
Yeah, and look what AOL did with Netscape. Too little, too late. To paraphrase a Robin Williams line, if its being done right anywhere in the online world, its NOT being done by AOL. Any Linux supporter with even a tenth of a brain does not see this article as good news.
Before you figure out how to sell your public on open software, you need to figure out for yourself if this is even going to be a part of your job.
You state you are running for a council member position. Any "council" has more than one member. Will you be the council member in charge of IT? Do others on council know anything about software? Does your city council even involve itself in decisions about specific software? Are you sure your city doesn't have an IT manager that takes care of that sort of thing?
And even if it is part of your job, I hate to burst your bubble but other people here are right...John Q. Citizen doesn't give a rat's ass what software you use, especially in our post-Sept 11th world. He doesn't care if Microsoft is a monopoly. He doesn't give a damn about closed file formats. All he cares about are his taxes don't go up, he has electricity, water, and other utilities coming to his house, and criminals aren't breaking in to his house.
This isn't meant as a troll, I'm seriously asking this and hoping someone will reply.
I live in the US. The BSA shows up at my door. Why do I have to let them in said door? Why can't I just tell them to piss up a rope? I was under the impression that in the US the only people you have to let inside are police officers with a proper warrent. And if the BullShitters of America show up with cops with a warrent, why can't I just say "cops enter, BSA go screw yourselves?"
Well...of course! What do you expect from a group of people where a vocal subset of the group openly supports violating other licenses and calling it "fair use" and "free speech", but when you violate THEIR license they want your head on a platter.
It still isn't news worthy of an outcry. MSN, whether you like it or not, is yet another company exercising control over a computer system THEY own. How they've done it up until now is totally irrelevant. The fact that they are owned by Microsoft also does not make it news, nor make it worthy of an outcry.
If you are an MSN customer and you don't like this, you have two options, 1) move to another ISP, or 2) start your own damned ISP (and then we'll see how you feel about others telling you how to run equipment you own).
Preach it, brother.
I get a kick out of how quickly most of the group here will pounce on a company that violates the GPL, but at the same time the majority of the group here has no problem with violating other licenses themselves such as passing around code that is not supposed to be redistributed, or passing around CDs and calling it "fair use".
And doing so only gives companies like Microsoft more ammo to use against the open source community.
Preach it, brother.
I get a kick out of how quickly most of the group here will pounce on a company that violates the GPL, but at the same time the majority of the group here has no problem with violating other licenses themselves such as passing around code that is not supposed to be redistributed, or passing around CDs and calling it "fair use".
And doing so only gives companies like Microsoft more ammo to use against the open source community.
You are correct in your assumption. Most contracts were updated to include database rights shortly after this became an issue. This ruling will only have major impact on articles written in the 80's.
Of course, and as usual, you can't tell that from the way the opening paragraph is written on slashdot, which makes it sound like civilization is doomed and information database services everywhere will be brought to their knees because they can't archive an article that was written last week...