Bill O'Reilly... like him because he walks both sides of the fence by making logical decisions... Good show, people should watch it, even if they don't like it. You'll change your opinion of the show after a month or two, I guarantee it.
Watched it for over a year, it's one of the worst shows on news. You must be thinking of a different Bill O'Reilly than the one on Fox News. He shouts down his guests, refuses to let them speak (in particular when they disagree with them), turns off their mics when he disagrees with them, and thinks with one of the most emotionally based irrational minds possible.
Bill O'Reilly is just Wally George without the peanut gallery (which frankly, was the only thing that made Wally George worth watching).
Interesting that it is the conservative talk-hosts who find it necessary (and appropriate, apparently) to cut off those they disagree with-- apparently unable to muster effective counterarguments. Rush on the other hand, doesn't even have enough confidence in his arguments to put himself in a position of having to defend them in the face of a live person-- instead preferring to caricature, misrepresent and take out-of-context sound bytes and video clips and argue against them. It's easy to win arguments when you get to invent your opponent's opinions.
How anyone can see any of these guys as anything but complete buffoons is probably the most serious indictment of our educational system that anyone could possibly make. Too bad such mass buffoonery is going to make all our kids have to cover the multi-trillion dollar debt we're building up at breakneck speed, no doubt either in raised taxes or reduced social programs (probably both).
And yeah, so Saddam Hussein was a real asshole, but a tin dictator that really wasn't worth 100+billion and 1000+ lives (so far) to take out. Now our military is far more stretched thin than ever, and more vulnerable to any real threats-- if an enemy wanted a good time to go after us when they know we're struggling to find the manpower and money to cover the mess we're in, we'd be hard pressed to give them a better opportunity.
After the election, no matter WHO wins, I expect the economy is going to take some serious hits. Right now the conservatives are doing everything they can to keep things propped up so it doesn't make Bush look bad. They've got their gut sucked in so hard they're turning blue, trying to look sexy for that babe, the electorate. After the election though, all hell is liable to break loose. The real hard decisions are ahead-- how to keep the debt from killing the country (hmm... maybe that's been Osama's plan all along) and where to find the manpower to staff the Iraq effort (can you spell D-R-A-F-T?), both which are likely to kick our economy in the privates, and no amount of Viagra is gonna fix it...
Either Bush knew there were no WMDs and he misled us, or he SHOULD have known and is incompetent. But liar or incompetent, we really like him because his heart's in the right place...
I mean, how else are they going to get even a basic OS from "scratch" deliverable in 2006, even without a new GUI and filesystem? The FUDster's were claiming it takes years to write an OS, as an argument that Torvaldis couldn't have done it without "help". In fact, it has taken 10+ years for Linux to get where it is, and still has a ways to go before you're grandma can use it. Stands to reason that an OS deliverable in a couple of years is going to need significant "help"...
A new OS written from scratch needs at least two years of betasites beating on it before it's ready for prime time IMHO...
It's looking here like "open source" is the problem that needs a solution.
But no, "open source" is a potential solution to certain problems.
You don't start with the hammer, and say "ok, what can we do with this thing," best start with the task you want to accomplish, and if it seems to need a "hammer" you get one at that point.
Then again, it's been very clear for a long time that Microsoft has no idea what Open Source is about, so I guess this should be no surprise...
Java is uncool for some of the same reasons that X windows is uncool. Too much time is spent on capabilities that most users don't care about when they could have been spending that time on capabilities users DO care about.
Platform independence is for the most part, a convenience to the creator or marketer of the program, not the user of the program. With relatively few exceptions, users generally only want to run a program on one computer. Even if they have multiple computers, they usually have them configured for different purposes.
I learned something important years ago in the Apple II/Atari/C64/Amiga, etc. days when video games for home computers started to become multi-platform. What I learned was, if you buy games that run ONLY on your particular platform of interest, they'll be more likely to take full advantage of your platforms specialties, which is why I bought the particular platform in the first place. The least-common-denominator phenomena really divided the GREAT games from the mediocre ones. As a user I noted which games were multi-platform and which were single-platform, and it was the single-platform games that made the best use of my hardware. Guess where I spent my money?
Today, despite claims to the contrary, computer language still matters. Not many programs are written all in assembly language anymore, but if I come across one, I'll certainly take notice. Such programs will be blisteringly fast and have a very small footprint. No matter how much CPU power and memory you have, there is always a benefit to making something smaller and faster. And while few programs are in assembly any more, the OPPOSITE extreme is Java and.Net, and as soon as I see a program that seems like it may be interesting but I find out it's written in Java, I now tune it out as a matter of course. Slow, glitchy, incompatible, THAT'S ALL I'VE EVER SEEN in Java. Of course, I don't keep a finely tuned latest-rev-level Java VM on my system which probably would make a difference, but that's not what I want to spend my time doing. Developers who do, immediately make themselves completely out-of-touch with their user's experience and consequently, can't see what the problems are.
All Java developers should have a low-powered PC configured with the oldest and buggiest Java machine they can find, and run all their apps over the net using a 56K modem. Then they may have at least some idea how their app may be running out in the real world...
Guess that means an open-source DVD player is illegal.
Such a ban would be "restraint of trade" in a country who's government isn't just the corporations bitch.
Myth: IT Journalists Never Run Out Of Ideas...
on
IT Myths
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Years ago, Creative Computing magazine published an article entitled "Don't Write That Program If" with a set of either obvious or otherwise lame or irrelevant reasons not to write a computer program (things like, if it already exists, if it's easier to do some other way, etc., I don't remember exactly, they were just too lame). It was clear to me at the time, that they were really reaching for things to fill the few pages that weren't ads.
I responded with an letter to the editor entitled "Don't Write That Article If" which applied similar criteria to magazine articles, all of which applied to the original article (needless to say, the editor didn't print it). About three months later, they went belly-up. A shame, as at one time they were a great magazine.
And, it's certainly true there is a glut of IT mags right now, I get at least 4 and they often have content so similar it looks like the same staff is coming up with all of them. And the number of articles worth reading has been diminishing of late...
IANAL and I haven't tried to plow through the GPL's language, but I thought that the notable penalties involved in violations of (non-GPL) copyright were damage awards connected to lost revenue-- any idea how damages can be assessed in a GPL violation case?
Assuming the GPL does stand up in court, what then is the actual risk involved in violating it?
Unless notable damages can be calculated in a GPL violation, it would seem to me that going after a violator could cost the infringee more than the violator-- you violate the GPL, someone sues, you stop distributing and pay a cheap lawyer to plead guilty. BFD. Looks to me the only risk is that someone may tell you you have to stop...
The theaters need more reasons to get people out of their comfy chair and into the theaters and charge more money doing it. A couple of "showcase" movies that really show off the difference could do it-- some of these multispectral systems can exceed the gamut and dynamic range of film, and really underscore the fact that we've been seeing a narrower range of colors in reproductions for so long that we're used to it.
And of course, the same movies can still be "gamut-reduced" to RGB for DVD releases after the fact, so it may not really be all that expensive a proposition for them, considering many of them are already considering moving to digital projection as it is...
Here's the actual research outfit working on the IRODORI system. It's a complete end-to-end system that includes cameras, front and rear projection systems and LCD displays:
I've seen it-- they're getting quite a bit more of the CIE color space than we're use to with traditional RGB displays, and the results show it if you get to actually see one (I have). The results are truly stunning...
This site conVENiently created just as they're having trouble passing legislation to ban P2P. They never tire of scare tactics, and are still stinging from the leaks at Abu Ghriab. Cockroaches do tend to scurry when you shine the light on them, they'd apparently prefer we all remain in the dark...
It's just like guns and encryption-- if P2P is outlawed, only outlaws will have P2P. (Or EMail for that matter, as it's P2P...)
Site's got some interesting stuff on it though.
Lots of links to conservative blogs... No way the guy's 30, looks more like he's 60. Guess the livestock biz wears you out...
Interesting-- the two PayPal examples cited as "legitimate" contradict each other-- #5 says only login at "https://www.paypal.com" and the #9 says
"visit the details of your payment at" and gives a direct URL. IMHO, you should click on neither link, as it could easily be implemented as:
No, you just have to recognize the proper set of conditions. If an E-mail already contains correct and verifiable information about your account, or if it does not ask for any account information in the first place, it's probably legit. Otherwise, it's probably a fraud. My non-geek wife and I both took the test and scored 10 / 10.
Congratulations. However, by ALLOWING YOUR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION to send you correct and verifiable information over email, and since email is sent unencrypted they have in effect, published your information to the web at large. I would consider this a CONTRIBUTION TO FRAUD, and therefore equivalent to fraud, in my book. If I were to get that kind of information from a bona-fide financial institution I'm associated with, I will immediately contact them and treat it like an actual fraud-- change my account, etc.
This site is bogus because it is giving you a false sense of security...
If that happened, they would lose a significant revenue source.
What revenue source? The MS Windows app market is saturated, they need someplace to go where it's not. Linux is exactly that place, and MS has a significant edge as their Office products are considerably more mature than the OSS equivalents.
MS can't make any more money off the OS-- primarily because even if they gave theirs away for free they'd still be losing market share to Linux-- it's not about cost, it's about quality. On the other hand, MS Office is a solid, well designed suite that is in a good position to out-compete the OSS suite, at least initially, which is all they will need-- to establish a compatibility framework that third parties will want to tie into, and can lock users into MS even on the Linux platform. Linux is a HUGE market opportunity for MS, don't expect them to pass it up...
I mean, come on, Longhorn should be called "Longshot." It's a big red-herring so that when Office for Linux comes out everyone will be surprised and think it a brilliant move, rather than an obvious one.
Longhorn is a huge risk. On the other hand, Office is a sure thing. Microsoft Office is what made MS's fortune, not Windows. Noone bought their PC because it ran Windows, they bought it because they could write letters and create business documents on it. And Office is actually a fairly stable product, unlike Windows. MS would be doing themselves a BIG favor by getting rid of major headaches if they dumped the OS biz and dived in with both feet into the transportable apps biz, and a Windows compatibility layer that runs on Linux that's more compatible than Wine.
Just what do you think.NET is about, if not creating an OS-independent framework with which to provide the apps people actually buy computers for? Noone is upgrading Windows anyway, as the old versions work "good enough" for most people, why waste time developing a new OS product noone wants or needs, and that has to compete with open source?
Bill Gates may be somewhat myopic, but I seriously doubt he's all that myopic...
You'd think moles would have sufficiently penetrated Microsoft by now, if that be their goal. And in a proprietary environment there would be fewer eyes to spot the sabotage...
Motherboards designed for easily replacable bios code could be re-used as single-board controllers or specialized turnkey devices and not become unrecyclable garbage as soon as a new generation of PCs comes along and makes them undesirable underperfomers. Someone could develop BIOS replacements that turn the motherboard into a cheap burglar alarm system or router, for example. You got a CPU, RAM slots and various interfaces that could be put to good use even after their life as PCs are over...
The BIOS is just one area-- a critical feature we should all demend in consumer electronics gadgets (by voting with our dollars) is flashable firmware and documented architectures so OSS alternatives can be utilized to customize the hardwares capabilities. An inadvertent example is the Archos Jukebox MP3 player/recorders. We should see such capabilities in consumer devices as critical features that will allow us to fully utilize the hardware as we desire. Does the iPod provide for OSS firmware? No? Then buy an Archos or equivalent instead. Such a feature should be ADVERTISED as a competitive feature and appear on the spec sheets. The potential advantages are enormous-- what it represents, in effect, is Open Source hardware that can be utilized in ways unforseen to the manufacturers.
Unfortunately, many manufacturers do NOT desire such features, as it tends to counteract planned or even natural obsolescence. However, if we only buy gear that is self-extensible through open source, they can be forced to provide the feature if they are losing out to competitors who aren't afraid to offer it.
Re:Religion IS escapism
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 1
And zero times any value is still zero.
You again make my off topic point in apparently admitting here that spirituality has not conferred any values to you whatsoever, that aren't propped up by the existence of an afterlife.
But WRT more realistic religion in video games, be careful what you wish for...
Re:Religion IS escapism
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 1
The Misanthropic Principle in action:
If it doesn't exist, then the believer and the non-believer net out the same, with cessation of existence.
That's only true for those who have concluded that what they do while they are here can only be meaningless unless it serves to placate God.
If there is no "afterlife", then what you do while you are here is all that has any meaning. To simply say "what do I care, I'll be dead" is completely sociopathic, and it is that characteristic of religion that I primarily object to. The implication is that if it weren't for the rewards or punishments meted out by God, one would have no reason to behave oneself at all and would see no reason not to murder and pillage to one's hearts content.
Such a corrupt attitude towards existance and society is a common legacy of spirituality, and in my opinion is the root of all evils.
Personally, I have no interest in placating a God. If one exists, it must be as bound to external moral principles as we are, or it can only be considered amoral and therefore without any moral authority. While a Supreme Being may be powerful enough to dole out rewards or mete out punishments, Might Makes Right IMHO does not confer the moral authority to forgive nor the morality for us to accept such spiritual welfare.
Yeah, right. That's what they told us a few years ago in order to get all that free bandwidth. We need the subsidy to convert to HDTV so we'll be ahead of evil foreign competition (there's an oxymoron for you: "subsidized capitalism").
Yawn. I predict BILL GATES will become obsolete long before DVDs (Oh, wait, it's already happened)...
Best Buy is getting their just deserts with this type of customer. Best Buy thinks it is OK to treat their customers like crap but it's not OK for customers to do the same to them.
Boo-hoo, poor Best Buy, they're so incompetent at inspiring customer loyalty they no longer even pretend to and instead just outright treat them badly. A sign of severe desperation, and a failing business model.
Bye-bye, Best Buy.
On the other hand, if they treated me like I'm treated when I go to Trader Joe's (the food store), I'd be willing to pay a little more and would shop there first. A few weeks ago, I was in a Trader Joe's, and the checkstand lines started getting a little long. A checker briefly got the manager's attention, and he immediately got on the horn and said "all hands on deck" and EVERY EMPLOYEE IN THE STORE dropped what they were doing and immediately went to the front to either open up another checkstand or to bag for the existing ones in order to deal with the line-- and within about two minutes the problem was solved and they went back to what they were doing. There's an example of a company who believes in creating a positive experience for their customers. I've NEVER seen that kind of thing happen in one of the "mainstream" grocery stores, they usually just have two or three checkstands open (even though they have an array of 15-20 in the store) no matter how big the lines get. Trader Joe's is usually cheaper too, but even if they weren't I'd still be shopping there first and only going to the others if I couldn't get it at Trader Joe's.-- And sure, grocery stores may need better customer relations than Best Buy because they have repeat customers that come back every week when Best Buy probably couldn't expect that level of repeat business no matter what they did due to the nature of their products, but the point remains, you treat your customers like crap, you shouldn't be surprised if they give you the same in return.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, how many widely distributed American animations have you seen since the 1970s that had any of the following components?
- Expletives in the dialog
- Gay or lesbian characters
- Anything about sex, religion or politics
- Graphic violence (w/blood, etc.)
- Had an MPAA rating higher than PG
- Were neither comedies nor musicals
American animations are guaranteed not to offend, targeted for kids. If you have some counterexamples, please tell us.
Bill O'Reilly ... like him because he walks both sides of the fence by making logical decisions ... Good show, people should watch it, even if they don't like it. You'll change your opinion of the show after a month or two, I guarantee it.
Watched it for over a year, it's one of the worst shows on news. You must be thinking of a different Bill O'Reilly than the one on Fox News. He shouts down his guests, refuses to let them speak (in particular when they disagree with them), turns off their mics when he disagrees with them, and thinks with one of the most emotionally based irrational minds possible.
Bill O'Reilly is just Wally George without the peanut gallery (which frankly, was the only thing that made Wally George worth watching).
Interesting that it is the conservative talk-hosts who find it necessary (and appropriate, apparently) to cut off those they disagree with-- apparently unable to muster effective counterarguments. Rush on the other hand, doesn't even have enough confidence in his arguments to put himself in a position of having to defend them in the face of a live person-- instead preferring to caricature, misrepresent and take out-of-context sound bytes and video clips and argue against them. It's easy to win arguments when you get to invent your opponent's opinions.
How anyone can see any of these guys as anything but complete buffoons is probably the most serious indictment of our educational system that anyone could possibly make. Too bad such mass buffoonery is going to make all our kids have to cover the multi-trillion dollar debt we're building up at breakneck speed, no doubt either in raised taxes or reduced social programs (probably both).
And yeah, so Saddam Hussein was a real asshole, but a tin dictator that really wasn't worth 100+billion and 1000+ lives (so far) to take out. Now our military is far more stretched thin than ever, and more vulnerable to any real threats-- if an enemy wanted a good time to go after us when they know we're struggling to find the manpower and money to cover the mess we're in, we'd be hard pressed to give them a better opportunity.
After the election, no matter WHO wins, I expect the economy is going to take some serious hits. Right now the conservatives are doing everything they can to keep things propped up so it doesn't make Bush look bad. They've got their gut sucked in so hard they're turning blue, trying to look sexy for that babe, the electorate. After the election though, all hell is liable to break loose. The real hard decisions are ahead-- how to keep the debt from killing the country (hmm... maybe that's been Osama's plan all along) and where to find the manpower to staff the Iraq effort (can you spell D-R-A-F-T?), both which are likely to kick our economy in the privates, and no amount of Viagra is gonna fix it...
Either Bush knew there were no WMDs and he misled us, or he SHOULD have known and is incompetent. But liar or incompetent, we really like him because his heart's in the right place...
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me (for Australia, that is)...
I mean, how else are they going to get even a basic OS from "scratch" deliverable in 2006, even without a new GUI and filesystem? The FUDster's were claiming it takes years to write an OS, as an argument that Torvaldis couldn't have done it without "help". In fact, it has taken 10+ years for Linux to get where it is, and still has a ways to go before you're grandma can use it. Stands to reason that an OS deliverable in a couple of years is going to need significant "help"...
A new OS written from scratch needs at least two years of betasites beating on it before it's ready for prime time IMHO...
It's looking here like "open source" is the problem that needs a solution.
But no, "open source" is a potential solution to certain problems.
You don't start with the hammer, and say "ok, what can we do with this thing," best start with the task you want to accomplish, and if it seems to need a "hammer" you get one at that point.
Then again, it's been very clear for a long time that Microsoft has no idea what Open Source is about, so I guess this should be no surprise...
Java is uncool for some of the same reasons that X windows is uncool. Too much time is spent on capabilities that most users don't care about when they could have been spending that time on capabilities users DO care about.
Platform independence is for the most part, a convenience to the creator or marketer of the program, not the user of the program. With relatively few exceptions, users generally only want to run a program on one computer. Even if they have multiple computers, they usually have them configured for different purposes.
I learned something important years ago in the Apple II/Atari/C64/Amiga, etc. days when video games for home computers started to become multi-platform. What I learned was, if you buy games that run ONLY on your particular platform of interest, they'll be more likely to take full advantage of your platforms specialties, which is why I bought the particular platform in the first place. The least-common-denominator phenomena really divided the GREAT games from the mediocre ones. As a user I noted which games were multi-platform and which were single-platform, and it was the single-platform games that made the best use of my hardware. Guess where I spent my money?
Today, despite claims to the contrary, computer language still matters. Not many programs are written all in assembly language anymore, but if I come across one, I'll certainly take notice. Such programs will be blisteringly fast and have a very small footprint. No matter how much CPU power and memory you have, there is always a benefit to making something smaller and faster. And while few programs are in assembly any more, the OPPOSITE extreme is Java and .Net, and as soon as I see a program that seems like it may be interesting but I find out it's written in Java, I now tune it out as a matter of course. Slow, glitchy, incompatible, THAT'S ALL I'VE EVER SEEN in Java. Of course, I don't keep a finely tuned latest-rev-level Java VM on my system which probably would make a difference, but that's not what I want to spend my time doing. Developers who do, immediately make themselves completely out-of-touch with their user's experience and consequently, can't see what the problems are.
All Java developers should have a low-powered PC configured with the oldest and buggiest Java machine they can find, and run all their apps over the net using a 56K modem. Then they may have at least some idea how their app may be running out in the real world...
Guess that means an open-source DVD player is illegal.
Such a ban would be "restraint of trade" in a country who's government isn't just the corporations bitch.
Years ago, Creative Computing magazine published an article entitled "Don't Write That Program If" with a set of either obvious or otherwise lame or irrelevant reasons not to write a computer program (things like, if it already exists, if it's easier to do some other way, etc., I don't remember exactly, they were just too lame). It was clear to me at the time, that they were really reaching for things to fill the few pages that weren't ads.
I responded with an letter to the editor entitled "Don't Write That Article If" which applied similar criteria to magazine articles, all of which applied to the original article (needless to say, the editor didn't print it). About three months later, they went belly-up. A shame, as at one time they were a great magazine.
And, it's certainly true there is a glut of IT mags right now, I get at least 4 and they often have content so similar it looks like the same staff is coming up with all of them. And the number of articles worth reading has been diminishing of late...
IANAL and I haven't tried to plow through the GPL's language, but I thought that the notable penalties involved in violations of (non-GPL) copyright were damage awards connected to lost revenue-- any idea how damages can be assessed in a GPL violation case?
Assuming the GPL does stand up in court, what then is the actual risk involved in violating it?
Unless notable damages can be calculated in a GPL violation, it would seem to me that going after a violator could cost the infringee more than the violator-- you violate the GPL, someone sues, you stop distributing and pay a cheap lawyer to plead guilty. BFD. Looks to me the only risk is that someone may tell you you have to stop...
The theaters need more reasons to get people out of their comfy chair and into the theaters and charge more money doing it. A couple of "showcase" movies that really show off the difference could do it-- some of these multispectral systems can exceed the gamut and dynamic range of film, and really underscore the fact that we've been seeing a narrower range of colors in reproductions for so long that we're used to it.
And of course, the same movies can still be "gamut-reduced" to RGB for DVD releases after the fact, so it may not really be all that expensive a proposition for them, considering many of them are already considering moving to digital projection as it is...
Here's the actual research outfit working on the IRODORI system. It's a complete end-to-end system that includes cameras, front and rear projection systems and LCD displays:
Experimental System
I've seen it-- they're getting quite a bit more of the CIE color space than we're use to with traditional RGB displays, and the results show it if you get to actually see one (I have). The results are truly stunning...
This site conVENiently created just as they're having trouble passing legislation to ban P2P. They never tire of scare tactics, and are still stinging from the leaks at Abu Ghriab. Cockroaches do tend to scurry when you shine the light on them, they'd apparently prefer we all remain in the dark...
It's just like guns and encryption-- if P2P is outlawed, only outlaws will have P2P. (Or EMail for that matter, as it's P2P...)
Site's got some interesting stuff on it though. Lots of links to conservative blogs... No way the guy's 30, looks more like he's 60. Guess the livestock biz wears you out...
Interesting-- the two PayPal examples cited as "legitimate" contradict each other-- #5 says only login at "https://www.paypal.com" and the #9 says "visit the details of your payment at" and gives a direct URL. IMHO, you should click on neither link, as it could easily be implemented as:
<a href="http://www.fraudsite.com">
https://www.paypal.com
</a>
No, you just have to recognize the proper set of conditions. If an E-mail already contains correct and verifiable information about your account, or if it does not ask for any account information in the first place, it's probably legit. Otherwise, it's probably a fraud. My non-geek wife and I both took the test and scored 10 / 10.
Congratulations. However, by ALLOWING YOUR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION to send you correct and verifiable information over email, and since email is sent unencrypted they have in effect, published your information to the web at large. I would consider this a CONTRIBUTION TO FRAUD, and therefore equivalent to fraud, in my book. If I were to get that kind of information from a bona-fide financial institution I'm associated with, I will immediately contact them and treat it like an actual fraud-- change my account, etc.
This site is bogus because it is giving you a false sense of security...
If that happened, they would lose a significant revenue source.
What revenue source? The MS Windows app market is saturated, they need someplace to go where it's not. Linux is exactly that place, and MS has a significant edge as their Office products are considerably more mature than the OSS equivalents.
MS can't make any more money off the OS-- primarily because even if they gave theirs away for free they'd still be losing market share to Linux-- it's not about cost, it's about quality. On the other hand, MS Office is a solid, well designed suite that is in a good position to out-compete the OSS suite, at least initially, which is all they will need-- to establish a compatibility framework that third parties will want to tie into, and can lock users into MS even on the Linux platform. Linux is a HUGE market opportunity for MS, don't expect them to pass it up...
I mean, come on, Longhorn should be called "Longshot." It's a big red-herring so that when Office for Linux comes out everyone will be surprised and think it a brilliant move, rather than an obvious one.
Longhorn is a huge risk. On the other hand, Office is a sure thing. Microsoft Office is what made MS's fortune, not Windows. Noone bought their PC because it ran Windows, they bought it because they could write letters and create business documents on it. And Office is actually a fairly stable product, unlike Windows. MS would be doing themselves a BIG favor by getting rid of major headaches if they dumped the OS biz and dived in with both feet into the transportable apps biz, and a Windows compatibility layer that runs on Linux that's more compatible than Wine.
Just what do you think .NET is about, if not creating an OS-independent framework with which to provide the apps people actually buy computers for? Noone is upgrading Windows anyway, as the old versions work "good enough" for most people, why waste time developing a new OS product noone wants or needs, and that has to compete with open source?
Bill Gates may be somewhat myopic, but I seriously doubt he's all that myopic...
You'd think moles would have sufficiently penetrated Microsoft by now, if that be their goal. And in a proprietary environment there would be fewer eyes to spot the sabotage...
Motherboards designed for easily replacable bios code could be re-used as single-board controllers or specialized turnkey devices and not become unrecyclable garbage as soon as a new generation of PCs comes along and makes them undesirable underperfomers. Someone could develop BIOS replacements that turn the motherboard into a cheap burglar alarm system or router, for example. You got a CPU, RAM slots and various interfaces that could be put to good use even after their life as PCs are over...
The BIOS is just one area-- a critical feature we should all demend in consumer electronics gadgets (by voting with our dollars) is flashable firmware and documented architectures so OSS alternatives can be utilized to customize the hardwares capabilities. An inadvertent example is the Archos Jukebox MP3 player/recorders. We should see such capabilities in consumer devices as critical features that will allow us to fully utilize the hardware as we desire. Does the iPod provide for OSS firmware? No? Then buy an Archos or equivalent instead. Such a feature should be ADVERTISED as a competitive feature and appear on the spec sheets. The potential advantages are enormous-- what it represents, in effect, is Open Source hardware that can be utilized in ways unforseen to the manufacturers.
Unfortunately, many manufacturers do NOT desire such features, as it tends to counteract planned or even natural obsolescence. However, if we only buy gear that is self-extensible through open source, they can be forced to provide the feature if they are losing out to competitors who aren't afraid to offer it.
And zero times any value is still zero.
You again make my off topic point in apparently admitting here that spirituality has not conferred any values to you whatsoever, that aren't propped up by the existence of an afterlife.
But WRT more realistic religion in video games, be careful what you wish for...
The Misanthropic Principle in action:
If it doesn't exist, then the believer and the non-believer net out the same, with cessation of existence.
That's only true for those who have concluded that what they do while they are here can only be meaningless unless it serves to placate God.
If there is no "afterlife", then what you do while you are here is all that has any meaning. To simply say "what do I care, I'll be dead" is completely sociopathic, and it is that characteristic of religion that I primarily object to. The implication is that if it weren't for the rewards or punishments meted out by God, one would have no reason to behave oneself at all and would see no reason not to murder and pillage to one's hearts content.
Such a corrupt attitude towards existance and society is a common legacy of spirituality, and in my opinion is the root of all evils.
Personally, I have no interest in placating a God. If one exists, it must be as bound to external moral principles as we are, or it can only be considered amoral and therefore without any moral authority. While a Supreme Being may be powerful enough to dole out rewards or mete out punishments, Might Makes Right IMHO does not confer the moral authority to forgive nor the morality for us to accept such spiritual welfare.
Yeah, right. That's what they told us a few years ago in order to get all that free bandwidth. We need the subsidy to convert to HDTV so we'll be ahead of evil foreign competition (there's an oxymoron for you: "subsidized capitalism").
Yawn. I predict BILL GATES will become obsolete long before DVDs (Oh, wait, it's already happened)...
The difference is, Al Gore showed he has confidence in the arguments, the Unabomber showed he does not.
IE still runs places where Firefox will not, or does so poorly as to be useless (32M W98, for example). Less is more...
Best Buy is getting their just deserts with this type of customer. Best Buy thinks it is OK to treat their customers like crap but it's not OK for customers to do the same to them.
Boo-hoo, poor Best Buy, they're so incompetent at inspiring customer loyalty they no longer even pretend to and instead just outright treat them badly. A sign of severe desperation, and a failing business model.
Bye-bye, Best Buy.
On the other hand, if they treated me like I'm treated when I go to Trader Joe's (the food store), I'd be willing to pay a little more and would shop there first. A few weeks ago, I was in a Trader Joe's, and the checkstand lines started getting a little long. A checker briefly got the manager's attention, and he immediately got on the horn and said "all hands on deck" and EVERY EMPLOYEE IN THE STORE dropped what they were doing and immediately went to the front to either open up another checkstand or to bag for the existing ones in order to deal with the line-- and within about two minutes the problem was solved and they went back to what they were doing. There's an example of a company who believes in creating a positive experience for their customers. I've NEVER seen that kind of thing happen in one of the "mainstream" grocery stores, they usually just have two or three checkstands open (even though they have an array of 15-20 in the store) no matter how big the lines get. Trader Joe's is usually cheaper too, but even if they weren't I'd still be shopping there first and only going to the others if I couldn't get it at Trader Joe's.-- And sure, grocery stores may need better customer relations than Best Buy because they have repeat customers that come back every week when Best Buy probably couldn't expect that level of repeat business no matter what they did due to the nature of their products, but the point remains, you treat your customers like crap, you shouldn't be surprised if they give you the same in return.