Doesn't matter that the technology is proven, clean, and a damn sight better than...
So was DDT. And asbestos. And a whole lot of other "safe, proven, clean" products and technologies that at some time had quite a few people's panties ina bunch.
To me that only states one thing. Basic and fundamental services, like power, water and communications, should be a state-offered service instead of a private-offered service. When the privatization of those services enters in effect, the quality and level of service stops being the number one mission objective to be replaced by the all mighty profit. That means that, as we are all seeing in the Us, the consumer always gets the shaft.
Yes, the online journalist has a lesser academic background than the person who compiled the study. Nonetheless, the academic background is irrelevant when talking about the veracity of given statements. A statement is true or false independent of who makes it. The truth value of a statement doesn't change if the same statement is given by a Harvard PhD, a Bachelor's degree or a street sweeper. The messenger doesn't influence the truthfullness of a message. It's valid or not and the person who states it (i.e., it's academic background, life, experiences, whatever) doesn't have any impact whatsoever in it.
What you are claiming is that the authority of a figure influences your apreension of a subject. You opt to blindly believe anyone who is an authority figure without taking a moment apply some critical reasoning to the message itself. If two messengers contradict each other, you prefer to believe the biggest authority figure instead of analyzing the facts. That is very silly and I hope you know it.
Yo are wrong. In that scenario the rainforest's demise wouldn't be caused by Biofuel. It would be caused by the way certain people decide to produce biofuel. Right now the rainforest is being devastated to get more grassland to raise cattle and to plant corn. Does that mean that cattle and corn are causing the rainforest's demise?
Aargh! Where do people get the idea that any alternative to petroleum will help reduce global warming?
Any process that generates energy by burning a hydrocarbon procudes CO2. That most certainly includes biofuels.
I see you are missing a very important piece of information, which is misleading your entire judgement. I'll explain.
Petroleum is a fossil fuel (and coal, for that matter). When fossil fuels are uses the carbon which was stored and trapped beneath the soil is again being released into the atmosphere. So in the end when someone uses fossil fuels that person is adding more carbon to the atmosphere and in effect contributing to global warming.
That isn't the case when using biofuels. They are produced by storing carbon already available from the atmosphere. So instead of releasing more carbon into the air we are recycling the carbon already present. When using biofuels no one is introducing more carbon into the atmosphere. The carbon produced by using biofuels is in fact reclycled from the carbon which is already present. In the end there is no CO2 production in the sense that the overall quantity of carbon present in the atmosphere stays exactly the same.
So in the end burning biofuels doesn't contribute to global warming. It doesn't have any effect watsoever. The carbon being release to the atmosphere was extracted from the atmosphere in the first place. Moreover, producing biofuel can also help reduce the carbon levels presented in the air because not every quantity of carbon which is extracted from the atmosphere is again released into it.
And have you noticed that since 3.3 there was 3.4 and now there is 3.5? Why is this distribution the only one having stability problems with KDE so that it can only ship with a version which is almost 2 years old?
KDE 3.3 may be stable but so is 3.4. There is absolutely no need to ship with such a backward version.
For god's sake, KDE 3.3.2 was released in December 8, 2004. Since then KDE 3.4 and now 3.5 has been released. Why are they still keeping up with that ancient version of KDE? Are they trying to steal the market share of Mandrake 9.2 ?
Seriously. Keep up with the times.
This may be becoming a bubble-bursting fest but where the first test server ran is completely irrelevant. If you wish to comment on Jabber's original test server and where it ran then you may post as you wish. On the other hand, if you wish to keep posting on topic, which is the protocol itself, then it if obvious that platforms are irrelevant to protocols. Therefore, claiming that protocol X is bound to platform Y is silly, to say the least.
Forgive me to burst your bubble but Jabber isn't an application. Jabber is a collection of open communication protocols. Being a set of protocols, it is obvious that it isn't bound to any particular OS.
You are wrong and your observation doesn't make sense. I'll explain you why.
In general Microsoft's APIs and protocols may be horrible to work with (MFC, since it's inception, has been hated and frowned upon) and those which Microsoft wants to keep out of the hands of competitors may be even more unworkable and obscure. Yet, that doesn't make the European Comission less right or fair.
If your company is in the business of supplying a product which serves as a basis to a whole lot of products, then it is your company's obligation to supply the necessary information to develop their products. That isn't simply a curiosity or merely a nice thing to have. It is fundamental for the understanding of the underlying platform and therefore developing products for it. So, having that in mind, why do you believe that the prettyness or uglyness of those protocols should justify their lack of exposure?
Moreover, Microsoft is the biggest software maker in the world. The company exist for decades and they employ a lot of very smart and very competent people. Why are there people claiming that, besides all that experience and all that expertise, the people at Microsoft never understood the need to document the interfaces? Moreover why are they defending that after the European Comission's ruling they still couldn't understand what was asked? Do they really believe that those experts, which possess all that experience are, after all, stupid, dumb and very nieve? Do they really believe that those who earn their living developing software don't understand the need to make available documentation explaining the inner workings of any system and how a interface should be handled?
So NVidia and ATi are crap at providing Linux drivers. But is there any video card which is really supported under linux (open source drivers provided by the manufacturer) that is any good and economically viable? It can even be an equivalent to a NVidia mx400. Is there anything like that in the market?
People who love offline messages should really move to Jabber. If they do so and adopt a client like Psi, they can send offline IRC/MSN-like messages and even ICQ-like messages.
Really. Everyone who never tried Jabber+Psi doesn't know what they are missing and trust me, they are missing a lot.
Everyone can do that if they choose to go with Jabber and adopt the right IM client.
The first client that comes to mind is Psi, which has a great support for OpenPGP encryption. The jabber standards require SSL/TSL encryption to start a XML stream and the client itself is capable of encrypting your messages without a problem. So, as it is easy to see, there is absolutely no need for a new protocol. I guess the only barrier here is the phobia of open-ness, which makes all those companies cringe at open standards and protocols.
I use Jabber exclusively, almost all my friends use it (to talk with the ones that don't, some Jabber servers offers transport services) and my ISP is even kind enough to offer it's own jabber servers with transport services to MSN, AIM and IRC.
I really believe that Jabber is the best thing that happened to the IM world ever. It's only a shame that inertia alone keeps people holding on to services like AIM, MSN or even ICQ. I mean, the protocol is extremelly well thought out and the developing community is vibrant and coming up with excellent ideas like jingle, which offers voice chat.
So why doesn't Microsoft (and other companies too) follow the example given by google and instead of rolling their own protocols (MSN keeps on altering them God knows why) contribute to the jabber standards?
Depends on how enforcable the EULA is, since the EULA explicitly disallows this.
It doesn't matter if the EULA is enforceable or not. Personal contracts do not and can not overstep the legislation. So if the law says that the people do not need the copyright owner's permission to use his work, then they may use copyrighted works without the copyright owner's authorization. They may make you agree on EULAs or even sign written contracts but if what the contract states is against the law, that contract isn't legally binding.
As far as I know, the citizens of certain european countries still have their fair share of rights. One of them is usage of copyrighted works without the copyright holder's authorization, as long as it is for personal use. So that means that at least in some european countries it is very possible and very legal to use a copy of XP without having to pay for a copy.
Oddly enough, in portuguese "levanta" is a form of the verb "levantar", which loosely translates to english as "to raise" or "to keep up". Odd coincidence, isn't it?
Internal affairs? International trade is not an internal affair, by definition. When you're violating the copyright of citizens from other countries, it has moved out from being "purely internal" to "international".
The way a country is run by it's government is a purelly internal affair. If a foreign country tries to directly influence and manipulate the way a government is running his country then obviously that is meddling with the internal affairs of a country.
Although we live in a increasingly globalized world, each nation still is independent and sovereign, you know?
I would also recommend Psi as the client. Besides all those goodies you mentioned (cross-platform, easy to support, free and open source, open standards) there is the big advantage of Psi being, along google talk, pioneering the jingle protocol.
For those who don't know, jingle is an extention to the XMPP protocol which delivers voice chat, which is nice.
By "calling in a truce", what Microsoft is claiming is that they can not contain the influx of quality F/OSS projects which is now starting to surface. To make things worse, those projects are starting to take a big chunk of the market share. They know that F/OSS has arrived and it will not leave. They know that it is quite plausible that a F/OSS application becomes a killer app. So now they have two choices: keep marginalizing the free software movement and drive away their participants or make sure that it is possible that those applications are constantly ported to MS's platform.
So that is what MS is trying to accomplish. They know that the fight against the free software is lost and now, instead of trying to kill it, they are diverting at least part of their energies trying to preserve their stronghold on the market. They know that a platform is only as good as the applications which it can run and if MS's platform doesn't run the next killer app, what is it good for anyway?
There are many people who can quickly switch personalities to a work mode, many of the most intelligent are also the most eccentric as well. Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.
Yet, the damaging information about those people, information that they personally posted, is out there for anyone to access. This time the bosses happen to access them but what about the prospective clients and business partners? Independently of that person's competence and professional attitude, what damage can a public profile like that bring to a company?
As I see it this has a lot in common with politics. What does it matter if a political candidate smoked pot or even if he's into S&M? Isn't his competence the only thing that matters? Yet, when the public learns about those details the would-be politician is automatically done for, even if the voters or political opponents do as bad or even worse than him. It's all about public image and if someone is involved in socially questionable things and if that information passes to that person's professional environment and life, then obviously it will have an impact.
Oh and let's not forget that the person in question bragged about doing drugs, which not only is considered ilegal in a lot of countries but it can also, at least to some extent, be a liability.
Are China and the US becoming more and more like eachother nowadays? It's like this country is moving to a pseudo-communist form of government:(
There's a little missconception on your comment. Communism is a political ideology which basis itself on economic and social issues, much like capitalism. When we talk about government organization and structure, communist countries have generally opted for the totalitarian and authoritarian forms of government. According to the more recent news, what the US is turning into is a fascist state, where extreme nationalism, militarism and corporatism is prevalent in the ruling party and secret police organizations are used to closely monitor the population to catch "enemies of the state".
That's why there are similarities between the communist countries. Totalitarian and authoritarian communist states share a lot of common ground with fascist states and their form of government is pretty much a carbon copy of each other.
Slashdot Mirror
So was DDT. And asbestos. And a whole lot of other "safe, proven, clean" products and technologies that at some time had quite a few people's panties ina bunch.
To me that only states one thing. Basic and fundamental services, like power, water and communications, should be a state-offered service instead of a private-offered service. When the privatization of those services enters in effect, the quality and level of service stops being the number one mission objective to be replaced by the all mighty profit. That means that, as we are all seeing in the Us, the consumer always gets the shaft.
You are making a very stupid mistake here.
Yes, the online journalist has a lesser academic background than the person who compiled the study. Nonetheless, the academic background is irrelevant when talking about the veracity of given statements. A statement is true or false independent of who makes it. The truth value of a statement doesn't change if the same statement is given by a Harvard PhD, a Bachelor's degree or a street sweeper. The messenger doesn't influence the truthfullness of a message. It's valid or not and the person who states it (i.e., it's academic background, life, experiences, whatever) doesn't have any impact whatsoever in it.
What you are claiming is that the authority of a figure influences your apreension of a subject. You opt to blindly believe anyone who is an authority figure without taking a moment apply some critical reasoning to the message itself. If two messengers contradict each other, you prefer to believe the biggest authority figure instead of analyzing the facts. That is very silly and I hope you know it.
Yo are wrong. In that scenario the rainforest's demise wouldn't be caused by Biofuel. It would be caused by the way certain people decide to produce biofuel. Right now the rainforest is being devastated to get more grassland to raise cattle and to plant corn. Does that mean that cattle and corn are causing the rainforest's demise?
I see you are missing a very important piece of information, which is misleading your entire judgement. I'll explain.
Petroleum is a fossil fuel (and coal, for that matter). When fossil fuels are uses the carbon which was stored and trapped beneath the soil is again being released into the atmosphere. So in the end when someone uses fossil fuels that person is adding more carbon to the atmosphere and in effect contributing to global warming.
That isn't the case when using biofuels. They are produced by storing carbon already available from the atmosphere. So instead of releasing more carbon into the air we are recycling the carbon already present. When using biofuels no one is introducing more carbon into the atmosphere. The carbon produced by using biofuels is in fact reclycled from the carbon which is already present. In the end there is no CO2 production in the sense that the overall quantity of carbon present in the atmosphere stays exactly the same.
So in the end burning biofuels doesn't contribute to global warming. It doesn't have any effect watsoever. The carbon being release to the atmosphere was extracted from the atmosphere in the first place. Moreover, producing biofuel can also help reduce the carbon levels presented in the air because not every quantity of carbon which is extracted from the atmosphere is again released into it.
And have you noticed that since 3.3 there was 3.4 and now there is 3.5? Why is this distribution the only one having stability problems with KDE so that it can only ship with a version which is almost 2 years old? KDE 3.3 may be stable but so is 3.4. There is absolutely no need to ship with such a backward version.
For god's sake, KDE 3.3.2 was released in December 8, 2004. Since then KDE 3.4 and now 3.5 has been released. Why are they still keeping up with that ancient version of KDE? Are they trying to steal the market share of Mandrake 9.2 ? Seriously. Keep up with the times.
This may be becoming a bubble-bursting fest but where the first test server ran is completely irrelevant. If you wish to comment on Jabber's original test server and where it ran then you may post as you wish. On the other hand, if you wish to keep posting on topic, which is the protocol itself, then it if obvious that platforms are irrelevant to protocols. Therefore, claiming that protocol X is bound to platform Y is silly, to say the least.
Forgive me to burst your bubble but Jabber isn't an application. Jabber is a collection of open communication protocols. Being a set of protocols, it is obvious that it isn't bound to any particular OS.
You are wrong and your observation doesn't make sense. I'll explain you why.
In general Microsoft's APIs and protocols may be horrible to work with (MFC, since it's inception, has been hated and frowned upon) and those which Microsoft wants to keep out of the hands of competitors may be even more unworkable and obscure. Yet, that doesn't make the European Comission less right or fair.
If your company is in the business of supplying a product which serves as a basis to a whole lot of products, then it is your company's obligation to supply the necessary information to develop their products. That isn't simply a curiosity or merely a nice thing to have. It is fundamental for the understanding of the underlying platform and therefore developing products for it. So, having that in mind, why do you believe that the prettyness or uglyness of those protocols should justify their lack of exposure?
Moreover, Microsoft is the biggest software maker in the world. The company exist for decades and they employ a lot of very smart and very competent people. Why are there people claiming that, besides all that experience and all that expertise, the people at Microsoft never understood the need to document the interfaces? Moreover why are they defending that after the European Comission's ruling they still couldn't understand what was asked? Do they really believe that those experts, which possess all that experience are, after all, stupid, dumb and very nieve? Do they really believe that those who earn their living developing software don't understand the need to make available documentation explaining the inner workings of any system and how a interface should be handled?
So NVidia and ATi are crap at providing Linux drivers. But is there any video card which is really supported under linux (open source drivers provided by the manufacturer) that is any good and economically viable? It can even be an equivalent to a NVidia mx400. Is there anything like that in the market?
People who love offline messages should really move to Jabber. If they do so and adopt a client like Psi, they can send offline IRC/MSN-like messages and even ICQ-like messages.
Really. Everyone who never tried Jabber+Psi doesn't know what they are missing and trust me, they are missing a lot.
In what way do you believe this threatens google talk, which is nothing more than Jabber with Jingle support?
Everyone can do that if they choose to go with Jabber and adopt the right IM client.
The first client that comes to mind is Psi, which has a great support for OpenPGP encryption. The jabber standards require SSL/TSL encryption to start a XML stream and the client itself is capable of encrypting your messages without a problem. So, as it is easy to see, there is absolutely no need for a new protocol. I guess the only barrier here is the phobia of open-ness, which makes all those companies cringe at open standards and protocols.
I use Jabber exclusively, almost all my friends use it (to talk with the ones that don't, some Jabber servers offers transport services) and my ISP is even kind enough to offer it's own jabber servers with transport services to MSN, AIM and IRC.
I really believe that Jabber is the best thing that happened to the IM world ever. It's only a shame that inertia alone keeps people holding on to services like AIM, MSN or even ICQ. I mean, the protocol is extremelly well thought out and the developing community is vibrant and coming up with excellent ideas like jingle, which offers voice chat.
So why doesn't Microsoft (and other companies too) follow the example given by google and instead of rolling their own protocols (MSN keeps on altering them God knows why) contribute to the jabber standards?
It doesn't matter if the EULA is enforceable or not. Personal contracts do not and can not overstep the legislation. So if the law says that the people do not need the copyright owner's permission to use his work, then they may use copyrighted works without the copyright owner's authorization. They may make you agree on EULAs or even sign written contracts but if what the contract states is against the law, that contract isn't legally binding.
As far as I know, the citizens of certain european countries still have their fair share of rights. One of them is usage of copyrighted works without the copyright holder's authorization, as long as it is for personal use. So that means that at least in some european countries it is very possible and very legal to use a copy of XP without having to pay for a copy.
Oddly enough, in portuguese "levanta" is a form of the verb "levantar", which loosely translates to english as "to raise" or "to keep up". Odd coincidence, isn't it?
The way a country is run by it's government is a purelly internal affair. If a foreign country tries to directly influence and manipulate the way a government is running his country then obviously that is meddling with the internal affairs of a country.
Although we live in a increasingly globalized world, each nation still is independent and sovereign, you know?
And how exactly are you going to use that in a business environment where the users are MBAs lesser business types?
"You need IM? Oh sir just open a command line and..." *plonk* fired.
I would also recommend Psi as the client. Besides all those goodies you mentioned (cross-platform, easy to support, free and open source, open standards) there is the big advantage of Psi being, along google talk, pioneering the jingle protocol.
For those who don't know, jingle is an extention to the XMPP protocol which delivers voice chat, which is nice.
Don't you mean "downloaded it" ?
Exactly.
By "calling in a truce", what Microsoft is claiming is that they can not contain the influx of quality F/OSS projects which is now starting to surface. To make things worse, those projects are starting to take a big chunk of the market share. They know that F/OSS has arrived and it will not leave. They know that it is quite plausible that a F/OSS application becomes a killer app. So now they have two choices: keep marginalizing the free software movement and drive away their participants or make sure that it is possible that those applications are constantly ported to MS's platform.
So that is what MS is trying to accomplish. They know that the fight against the free software is lost and now, instead of trying to kill it, they are diverting at least part of their energies trying to preserve their stronghold on the market. They know that a platform is only as good as the applications which it can run and if MS's platform doesn't run the next killer app, what is it good for anyway?
Yet, the damaging information about those people, information that they personally posted, is out there for anyone to access. This time the bosses happen to access them but what about the prospective clients and business partners? Independently of that person's competence and professional attitude, what damage can a public profile like that bring to a company?
As I see it this has a lot in common with politics. What does it matter if a political candidate smoked pot or even if he's into S&M? Isn't his competence the only thing that matters? Yet, when the public learns about those details the would-be politician is automatically done for, even if the voters or political opponents do as bad or even worse than him. It's all about public image and if someone is involved in socially questionable things and if that information passes to that person's professional environment and life, then obviously it will have an impact.
Oh and let's not forget that the person in question bragged about doing drugs, which not only is considered ilegal in a lot of countries but it can also, at least to some extent, be a liability.
There's a little missconception on your comment. Communism is a political ideology which basis itself on economic and social issues, much like capitalism. When we talk about government organization and structure, communist countries have generally opted for the totalitarian and authoritarian forms of government. According to the more recent news, what the US is turning into is a fascist state, where extreme nationalism, militarism and corporatism is prevalent in the ruling party and secret police organizations are used to closely monitor the population to catch "enemies of the state".
That's why there are similarities between the communist countries. Totalitarian and authoritarian communist states share a lot of common ground with fascist states and their form of government is pretty much a carbon copy of each other.