The purpose of the limited liability corporation, by the way, is to protect the owners -- that is, the shareholders...
Shareholders are not owners. The owner of a company is the party which governs its actions. The accouting scandals of the 90's demonstrated to everyone that a stockholder is a blind, silent partner at best and just another person for the company to screw at worst.
Distorions deliberately introduced into the economy in order to further one set of interests at the expense of another are the antithesis of a free market.
agreed.
But this can only be done by government.
Ultimately, yes, but this is why the lobbying industry exists.
As far as people like Ken Lay, he deliberately defrauded his shareholders; it's an instance of an employee stealing from his company, and ought to be punished as theft. There's no meaningful economic principles at work here, though.
Except that Ken Lay will not experience anywhere near the penalty I would incur if I stole a pair of sunglasses from Wal-Mart.
Obfuscate their identity? What exactly are you referring to?
The purpose of a corporation is to protect the owners from responsibility for the behavior of the company. This is why Donald Trump can declare bankruptcy without having his posessions confiscated (as would occur if I were to seek the same legal protection).
Except that the invisible hand is a myth. It is the very intentional market manipulation and domination that has occurred in American business from the days of Rockefeller to those of Ken Lay. The only thing that makes the hand invisible is the ability of corporations to obfuscate their own identity.
Because Spain, Portugal, France, Itally, Greece, Croatia are really chilly.
Uh, yeah. They are. Madrid is predicted to climb into the 90s for 2 days out of the next 10, and that will be under 40% humidity. That's balmy compared to the American south, where you get 2 solid months of >90 degrees with 90% humidity. A heat wave for us is when the bermuda high pressure system sets in and we go all summer long never falling below 85 degrees at night.
I can't think of a single other instance in U.S. history where a conglomeration of companies have had the power to stall technological advancement and changing economic structures, but this is precisely what they have done.
This really isn't that unprecedented. There was a big effort by the riverboat lobby to stop the development of railroads back in the 1800s.
What could they possibly hope to attain by astroturfing? I mean, the case is unwinnable, they have no industry esteem left. The only thing they could try to do is take attention off of...
This is the most important post in the thread. Mods, make sure it stays at 5.
They key word here is consideration. I can't contractually obligate you do do something, no matter what is signed, unless I've given you something for that obligation. A signing bonus or other lump sum is acceptable consideration for a contract. Making the obligation a "condition of employment" is generally not. There must be quid pro quo for the contract to be legal.
The problem with the "Windows just works" argument is that... well - it doesn't.
Windows historically crashed if you look at it wrong, and while this has been mitigated in 2000/XP, Windows still becomes unstable under certain situations. Installing a Sony USB camera driver, for example, destroyed device manager on my XP machine.
If we applied the same standard of acceptance to Windows as we seem to hold for Linux, we might ask the following: If a product made by the world's most popular purveyor of electronic devices can not only fail to work, but disable critical elements of a Windows system, is Windows ready for the desktop?
It was possible, back when I worked on such things in the mid 90's, to install an AMD 486 DX2/66 into its processor socket 90 degrees offset. I know this because I did it one time. All the magic blue smoke came out of the motherboard, there was much laughter, etc.
The boss, being something of a skinflint, insisted that I test all the components with another motherboard - in particular the processor, which had been heated furiously during the event. I was incredulous, but he was the boss, so I installed the chip in another board (correctly this time), and fired it up to see if it would work. The bios POST screen had something rather interesting to say about the processor:
AMD 486 DX/4 100
Oops. I thought I'd screwed up the motherboard jumpers. There was no mistake, however. Despite whatever clock speed and doubling I configured the motherboard, the chip continued to inist that it had been bitten by a radioactive spider and turned into a super chip. WTF?
I ran diagnostic utlities, and the chip was not only working flawlessly, it was actually running at 100 mhz. I couldn't believe it.
The skinflint never let me or any of the rest of us who worked for him live it down. This event served only to catastrophically reinforce his pack rat urges. We had giant piles of bad modems, hard drives, etc., because he was convinced that the next turd-encrusted pile of garbage would contain a modem overclocked to 200Mbps due to some random circumstance such as had occurred with the super-chip.
Tired of wondering what my man chowder tastes like and if I did taste it, would anyone think differently of me?
Well, you're well on your way to becoming an internet meme - the legendary Naval jizz guzzler. The real question is, will you think differently of yourself?
My point was not that the firewall is turned on by default. My point was that it turns itself back on without your knowledge or consent. From TFA:
"Windows Firewall also has a tendency to turn itself on after system updates, system restores, or in conjunction with the Windows Security Center (which we'll address in a future installment)."
See what a little reading comprehension does for you?
Nothing personal, but it reflects really badly on this site if people can't participate in an objective discussion.
Why is it more secure? Open Source means better peer review.
That is only half the reason. Microsoft in particular places features above all other concerns, and this results in a marked difference in the way security is dealt with in its software as compared not only to free alternatives, but to other commercial vendors as well.
It isn't just a matter of how well and how quickly you catch the bugs. Security is something you can address by design.
You can't praise yourself until you have truly been subject to the same level of attack and focus as windows.
Apache running on Linux has been the world's most popular web server for quite a while now. You can't pass off Micrsoft's miserable security track record as a matter of popularity. Sendmail, OpenSSL, and many other free software tools have also received a whithering attack based on their popularity, and have either risen to the challenge or been surpassed by more robust solutions.
I love having a simple, unified interface shared by almost all the programs I use.
DOA. You're kidding, right?
I like having simple configuration dialogs for almost all my programs which let me easily change program settings, instead of messing around with obsure configuration files.
Uh, do you know about regedit?
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense, not things like "grep", "GIMP", "X".
You mean such as the Word procedure known as "digging to China" -
Format | Style | Modify | Format | Numbering | Customize
to change your outline numbering format?
Linux computers may come with more pre-installed software on a CD, but if I have the money, I can get a Windows computer set up the same way.
If I have the money, I can buy a Cray.
Also, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to secure a Linux system properly, so I don't know whether my system would be any safer anyway.
Your statement suggests that you know how to secure a Windows system properly. If this is the case, I know of a couple of million Korgo victims who would be very interested in speaking with you.
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Join in by adding a word to this sentence:
Teh
brilliantly put.
Question: Will you (do cool science X)?
Bush: I already did.
Kerry: I will look for other countries to do it.
If I attacked one of the delegates and beat the living shit out of a NYPD cop, I would expect authorities to start asking questions about me, too.
That the Amish have a nice computer and office accessory factory in Ohio. Have you looked for their catalog online?
The purpose of the limited liability corporation, by the way, is to protect the owners -- that is, the shareholders...
Shareholders are not owners. The owner of a company is the party which governs its actions. The accouting scandals of the 90's demonstrated to everyone that a stockholder is a blind, silent partner at best and just another person for the company to screw at worst.
Distorions deliberately introduced into the economy in order to further one set of interests at the expense of another are the antithesis of a free market.
agreed.
But this can only be done by government.
Ultimately, yes, but this is why the lobbying industry exists.
As far as people like Ken Lay, he deliberately defrauded his shareholders; it's an instance of an employee stealing from his company, and ought to be punished as theft. There's no meaningful economic principles at work here, though.
Except that Ken Lay will not experience anywhere near the penalty I would incur if I stole a pair of sunglasses from Wal-Mart.
Obfuscate their identity? What exactly are you referring to?
The purpose of a corporation is to protect the owners from responsibility for the behavior of the company. This is why Donald Trump can declare bankruptcy without having his posessions confiscated (as would occur if I were to seek the same legal protection).
Except that the invisible hand is a myth. It is the very intentional market manipulation and domination that has occurred in American business from the days of Rockefeller to those of Ken Lay. The only thing that makes the hand invisible is the ability of corporations to obfuscate their own identity.
Oh my, a 'new economy' based on 'unconscious cooperation'. My, that sounds like Capitalism.
Not at all. Capitalism (as opposed to a free market economy) is based on conscious domination by the invisible hand.
Because Spain, Portugal, France, Itally, Greece, Croatia are really chilly.
Uh, yeah. They are. Madrid is predicted to climb into the 90s for 2 days out of the next 10, and that will be under 40% humidity. That's balmy compared to the American south, where you get 2 solid months of >90 degrees with 90% humidity. A heat wave for us is when the bermuda high pressure system sets in and we go all summer long never falling below 85 degrees at night.
I can't think of a single other instance in U.S. history where a conglomeration of companies have had the power to stall technological advancement and changing economic structures, but this is precisely what they have done.
This really isn't that unprecedented. There was a big effort by the riverboat lobby to stop the development of railroads back in the 1800s.
What could they possibly hope to attain by astroturfing? I mean, the case is unwinnable, they have no industry esteem left. The only thing they could try to do is take attention off of...
Ooo - You're good.
This is the most important post in the thread. Mods, make sure it stays at 5
Clarification - the grandparent is the most important post in the thread. Not the parent.
This is the most important post in the thread. Mods, make sure it stays at 5.
They key word here is consideration. I can't contractually obligate you do do something, no matter what is signed, unless I've given you something for that obligation. A signing bonus or other lump sum is acceptable consideration for a contract. Making the obligation a "condition of employment" is generally not. There must be quid pro quo for the contract to be legal.
The problem with the "Windows just works" argument is that... well - it doesn't.
Windows historically crashed if you look at it wrong, and while this has been mitigated in 2000/XP, Windows still becomes unstable under certain situations. Installing a Sony USB camera driver, for example, destroyed device manager on my XP machine.
If we applied the same standard of acceptance to Windows as we seem to hold for Linux, we might ask the following: If a product made by the world's most popular purveyor of electronic devices can not only fail to work, but disable critical elements of a Windows system, is Windows ready for the desktop?
Speak up. I can't hear TFA.
The boss, being something of a skinflint, insisted that I test all the components with another motherboard - in particular the processor, which had been heated furiously during the event. I was incredulous, but he was the boss, so I installed the chip in another board (correctly this time), and fired it up to see if it would work. The bios POST screen had something rather interesting to say about the processor: Oops. I thought I'd screwed up the motherboard jumpers. There was no mistake, however. Despite whatever clock speed and doubling I configured the motherboard, the chip continued to inist that it had been bitten by a radioactive spider and turned into a super chip. WTF?
I ran diagnostic utlities, and the chip was not only working flawlessly, it was actually running at 100 mhz. I couldn't believe it.
The skinflint never let me or any of the rest of us who worked for him live it down. This event served only to catastrophically reinforce his pack rat urges. We had giant piles of bad modems, hard drives, etc., because he was convinced that the next turd-encrusted pile of garbage would contain a modem overclocked to 200Mbps due to some random circumstance such as had occurred with the super-chip.
Page 25 of this pdf has a sample of this scam from when it was sent via snail-mail in 1994.
Yeah, I have to agree.
Tired of wondering what my man chowder tastes like and if I did taste it, would anyone think differently of me?
Well, you're well on your way to becoming an internet meme - the legendary Naval jizz guzzler. The real question is, will you think differently of yourself?
See what a little reading comprehension does for you?
Nothing personal, but it reflects really badly on this site if people can't participate in an objective discussion.
I agree wholeheartedly.
it's really not that big a deal to turn off the firewall yourself
The TFA seems to suggest that certain events seem to turn the firewall back on seemingly at random.
A firewall that turns itself on without asking me and being forced to install patches prior to shutting down my computer. Smells like Microsoft to me.
Why is it more secure? Open Source means better peer review.
That is only half the reason. Microsoft in particular places features above all other concerns, and this results in a marked difference in the way security is dealt with in its software as compared not only to free alternatives, but to other commercial vendors as well.
It isn't just a matter of how well and how quickly you catch the bugs. Security is something you can address by design.
You can't praise yourself until you have truly been subject to the same level of attack and focus as windows.
Apache running on Linux has been the world's most popular web server for quite a while now. You can't pass off Micrsoft's miserable security track record as a matter of popularity. Sendmail, OpenSSL, and many other free software tools have also received a whithering attack based on their popularity, and have either risen to the challenge or been surpassed by more robust solutions.
Where is this "M" that tells you how to recover from a problem such as this?
DOA. You're kidding, right?
I like having simple configuration dialogs for almost all my programs which let me easily change program settings, instead of messing around with obsure configuration files.
Uh, do you know about regedit?
I like having my programs and commands have names that actually make sense, not things like "grep", "GIMP", "X".
You mean such as the Word procedure known as "digging to China" - to change your outline numbering format?
Linux computers may come with more pre-installed software on a CD, but if I have the money, I can get a Windows computer set up the same way.
If I have the money, I can buy a Cray.
Also, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to secure a Linux system properly, so I don't know whether my system would be any safer anyway.
Your statement suggests that you know how to secure a Windows system properly. If this is the case, I know of a couple of million Korgo victims who would be very interested in speaking with you.