So, wait because Microsoft waits five years in order to stop supporting it versus Apple's two years you're going to use Windows? Okay, it's your perogative, but you might want to consider that the $129 is for a new OS (such as Win2k - WinXP) including lots of new features and isn't an upgrade. Apple should extend it's support further back, I agree, but the $129 isn't a service pack, it contains a lot more changes than SP2 did. I'm amazed at how many smart people don't understand Apple's choice of version numbering.
I cannot think of one instance of someone using a Mac on a day-to-day basis....
Well, maybe the print shop and marketing department guys you mentioned in the sentence before this one.
What could possibly be the benefit of OS X as a desktop computer?
Well, just by looking at my dock, it can do email, IM, Office, HTML, PDF, it can use RDC to run Windows programs from a server, it can browse the Internet, it can be used to build Quicktime VR, it can host websites, it can be used to make documents, newspapers, magazines. It can be used to code Java, Flash, etc.
I think the question is what makes you think a Mac wouldn't make a good computer?
I know everyone hates a grammar/spelling Nazi, but for once can't just one of you goons buy a dictionary at the dollar store? Or maybe you could even try this?
It's drawback
Innovate
Imitate
Imitating
People
Sense
And by the way the ellipsis (... ) indicates a pause or more typically an intentional ommission. Were you going for some kind of Shakespearian drama here?
You can count on other nations (China, anyone?) not making this particular blunder.
Dear Mr. Xiang,
I am writing to you to introduce you to an exiting opportunity. The US you see would like to invest large assets into your economy and we would like to source several prominent members of the business establishment, including Mr. Bernie Ebbers, Mr. Kenneth Lay, Ms. Martha Stewart, Ms. Carly Fiorina and several others in order to guide your country's economy into the kind of economic powerhouse the US currently enjoys. As an additional bonus, we would like to act Mr. John Dvorak an exciting and influential commentator whose amazing ability to divine the future surpasses the Great Kreskin.
Lastly, we would like to send to you all our phone sanitizers in this one time opportunity.
Thank you for your time.
It is possible to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, I agree.
However as I think has been pointed out numerously above, it is currently impossible to build a DRM-scheme that doesn't create these kinds of situations. I would conisder it hypocritical for a writer to cheer on DRM schemes who then circumvents it when it suits him. If DRM is so great, then deal with it when it fails.
Not only does DRM get in the way of paying customers, like our blogger, but it also is easily defeated by free and easy-to-use tools.
Okay, now breathe and think: what proportion of Al Qaeda/various Islamic extremists are there in proportion to the civilian population of a city like Fallujah?
Killing civilians is wrong and moreso dangerous because now you have just created more terrorists from the survivors--if your family is dead, it doesn't matter if it came from a car bomb or a missile, you're still going to be pissed and looking for vengence.
We need to be better than these fuckers, we need to find the ones responsible and kill them without killing everyone else around them. No negotiation, but specific targeted elimination. Carpet bombing no, a sniper's shot definitely.
Well, with that kind of legal gambit I'm sure your legal career will be a great one.
The court ruled that Microsoft's monopoly was on the dominant platform and thus affected the entire market, the judge was correct in this position. You would be correct in stating that Apple could be considered a monopolist in the PPC arena, if that wasn't also controlled by Sun, etc. who also help define the PPC market. Furthemore, Microsoft's problem was not becoming a monopoly, but using illegal manuevers to attain that position which violates the Sherman act.
To use your earlier metaphor: two men kill another man, one does it accidentally in a fight, the other waits for several weeks before gunning his victim down and then hiding the evidence. The first man will be tried, but ultimately released under self-defense. The second man will be tried and executed for first degree murder. So, under your logic presumption, the second man shouldn't be convicted because the first man wasn't, even though the court sees the situation as being entirely different, even if the end result was the same. The problem is intention and Microsoft has intentionally seized control of the market while using bad-faith tactics. That is what they were convicted of and that's why they have settled in so many instances. They are guilty and have been allowed to buy their way out of it.
Furthermore, if it had gone to a jury trial Microsoft may have been split up into disparate divisions and everyone was afraid of that, the DOJ ultimately was convinced, wrongly in my opinion, that the split would hurt the computer industry.
The problem isn't that Microsoft is a monopoly, but that it attained that success using illegal means. Microsoft was convicted of violating the Sherman Act, which defines how a company may and may not attain a monopoly and furthermore how a company can use it's position to influence the market to its favor.
A monopoly is not a bad thing, but it is when it unduly affects the surrounding market negatively by stiffling competition. A Dictionary.com reference of the word monopoly does not describe the myriad of legal details that is contained within the Sherman Act.
You're right there is no Academie Francaise for English and every movement to create a unified set of rules has resulted in the kind of strangness that made too and to for example. We do have a kind of authority in the Oxford English Dictionary, but that only works for spelling and usages. However, there are generally accepted rules such as the difference between your and you're.
I expect English to continue to evolve as it has for the nearly two thousand years--ever read Old English texts? Yikes!--but in the meantime, I would like things that I read to be understandable, to be spelled correctly, and to have some semblance of logical thought.
So, if a comma is misplaced, a question mark forgotten, I'm willing to ignore it, but the kind of willful disregard for even the pretense of grammar from some of the posters in Slashdot--and in the hacker community--is annoying as all-hell.
Huh? You're telling me to expect that high school graduates don't have to know how to spell or understand the basic grammar of the English language? How is that racist? Oh, wait you're saying that non-whites (I'm guessing) don't have to learn proper English grammar because they have poor schools. Nope, its the other way around, poor schools should be fixed so kids do know proper English so they can communicate effectively and excel in their lives and not be held to some lower standard. We should up the standards for all our kids, poor and rich alike.
It is all about snobbery. People who think they are better than other people SUCK! I agree, snobbery is bad, but so is refusing to learn. A few Parisians will snear at your accent and mistakes, but lots of them will help you, just like the Italians. However, I don't think many of the Italians, patient as they are, would enjoy speaking with an American, who after years of living in Italy, couldn't speak well-enough to order a pizza. Thus, a kid, even in a poor school, should be expected to learn English in spite of being in a poor school.
I know it's not fair that some Yale-educated wanker gets everything so easily and some kid from Harlem, or some kid who crossed the border when he was five, has to struggle to learn English. But, them's the breaks, that's the thing in life. You struggle to attain success and you refuse to take the lower-standard.
But, that's the whole point of grammar and punctuation, to make things more understandable. Granted we could all write wtht vwls or we could ignore punctuation all together, but why don't we just use the rules that work.
Think of it this way, what's the difference between hey, help your uncle Jack off a horse and hey, help your uncle jack off a horse.
There's a big difference in meaning from just a simple capitalization error, and you'll find dozens of example where poor punctuation, grammar, spelling entirely changes the meaning of a sentance. Granted I can parse through mistakes, but why should I have to? In other words, if your writing is not important enough for you to take the time to make everything correct, why should I bother reading it?
Tell that to a T. Rex.
It will take a while, and Microsoft can reverse this trend, but their corporate culture seems opposed to real underlying change and has put far too much faith in Longhorn.
Whoa, slow down there. There are lots of ways to move data without using proprietary formats that everyone already uses: HTML, PDF, TXT, JPEG. These are all industry-standard and not Esperanto. I would argue that Microsoft is French and the others are English, while French was the lingua franca it has fallen away to English because of the pure ubiquity of our language over one that is controlled by a single Academe'.
A lot of people seem to think that people buy into the iPod because of marketing. But I thnk that's secondary, and the real success of the iPod lies in amazing word of mouth...
I think there's a very nice push-pull with the marketing, good reviews and word-of-mouth. People buy an iPod because of marketing, but then tell all their friends, who then buy their own. The marketing does matter, but the iPod, unlike many other brands, manages to back that up with a great product that also has a large word-of-mouth pressure. Rio has managed to make interesting players, but none that has the shear critical mass of marketing, positive reviews and word-of-mouth; this is just the hat-trick of selling a product.
[i]And I mean for everybody, rich and poor, all ethnic groups, both genders, and all sexual preferences. When everybody has a fair shot at going to war, the chances of anybody going to war will drop dramatically.[/i]
That's not necessarily true, for if a culture is represented by a 'warrior-class' or 'warrior-ethic' than it is more likely to go to war. The problem has never been the general population, but rather the old men (we call them politicians) who seek the glory of battle even as they will not be engaged in it. They either wish they were in battle and so use general-ship to live vicariously, or they remember the glory and so seek it again for the youngest citizens. War will stop when presidents are sent to the field.
Gitmo and Abu Ghraib aren't that bad, fine, then sign your ass up and take a trip down there, you and Rumsfeld can enjoy the fine food, the wonderful scenery, and the hazing.
And don't let me hear you bitch about your civil rights.
It's got nothing to do with Bush. He wouldn't even get to use it. Bloody hell, talk about scaremongering.
Nice that you pointed that particular detail out, but the bill could easily be altered in committee to allow this particular president to use it and furthermore, the 22nd Ammendment, is a nice limit of power.
Furthermore, I'm not sure about the 'countervailing constitutional power to forestall any executive overreaching' with the House and Senate, Executive Branch, and the courts packed with conservatives. We need some brakes on this train, even if it 'impos[es]...further disability to retain tested and trusted leadership.
It's got nothing to do with Bush. He wouldn't even get to use it. Bloody hell, talk about scaremongering.
Nice that you pointed that particular detail out, but the bill could easily be altered in committee to allow this particular president to use it and furthermore, the 22nd Ammendment, is a nice limit of power.
The problem which all you armchair libertarians don't seem to comprehend is that terrorists don't play by the rules
No, they don't those bastards, and furthermore, not only do they intend till kill people, but they hope to destablize the target societies, this includes the elimation of the people's rights.
At heart, PATRIOT is about removing these walls and allowing law-enforcement greater access to information
Then pray-tell, what information is garned from library books? The CIA and FBI knowing that I read Finnegan's Wake last year doesn't keep terrorists at bay, furthemore, the CIA and FBI's inability to communicate about a few Arabs getting flight lessons in Florida wasn't just because of the emplaced wall between the two, that information didn't even move through the FBI. PATRIOT hasn't been used to prosecute terrorists, in fact only one has been prosecuted up and until this point and he was caught and interogated before PATRIOT was put in place.
The GP was a exercise in tin-foil conspiracy, but you're just as bad because of your willingness to give up your inalienable (look it up) rights in exchange for the promise of a little safety that isn't even given by the PATRIOT act.
Bush got 51% of the vote because people are cattle.
I don't think that a person publically acknowledging their political viewpoints and donating to casues they support should be considered a bad thing. As long as it does not reflect overtly in their professional conduct, I don't see why any person should not speak their mind and contribute in the appropriate venues.
O'Dell, when asked, could have easily said he supported Bush and would vote for him in the election, but he didn't he said he was "committed to deliver" votes. O'Dell, and any one in a similar situation where impartiality is necessary, should be careful to separate their personal views from their duty. Think if O'Dell was a judge in a trial and stated on record that he was committed to deliver a guilty verdict. This would be a serious example of impropriety, and while the situation is somewhat different, O'Dell as the president of a company that makes a system to count votes could retain a dangerous influence.
I'd rather people, especially powerful people, wear their opinion of their lapel rather than keep a political knife behind their backs
I agree, but to further your idea, I wish people would uphold their duty and fulfill their contracts rather than ascribe to some political affiliation. O'Dell used a poor choice of words at best, and I don't think he should be defended.
Uh, no you don't have a right to talk on the phone, just as I don't have the right to natter endlessly in your ear the whole trip. Jesus people, you can be disconnected from the world for a few hours, it won't kill you.
If SETI doesn't get ownership of the sky, neither do you, they must be weighed equally.
Hitler was not a Socialist, his party while being the National Socialist party was actually a facsist corportist bunch. Your definition of socialism is flawed.
Slashdot Mirror
So, wait because Microsoft waits five years in order to stop supporting it versus Apple's two years you're going to use Windows? Okay, it's your perogative, but you might want to consider that the $129 is for a new OS (such as Win2k - WinXP) including lots of new features and isn't an upgrade. Apple should extend it's support further back, I agree, but the $129 isn't a service pack, it contains a lot more changes than SP2 did. I'm amazed at how many smart people don't understand Apple's choice of version numbering.
I cannot think of one instance of someone using a Mac on a day-to-day basis....
Well, maybe the print shop and marketing department guys you mentioned in the sentence before this one.
What could possibly be the benefit of OS X as a desktop computer?
Well, just by looking at my dock, it can do email, IM, Office, HTML, PDF, it can use RDC to run Windows programs from a server, it can browse the Internet, it can be used to build Quicktime VR, it can host websites, it can be used to make documents, newspapers, magazines. It can be used to code Java, Flash, etc.
I think the question is what makes you think a Mac wouldn't make a good computer?
It's drawback ... ) indicates a pause or more typically an intentional ommission.
Innovate
Imitate
Imitating
People
Sense
And by the way the ellipsis (
Were you going for some kind of Shakespearian drama here?
Dear Mr. Xiang,
I am writing to you to introduce you to an exiting opportunity. The US you see would like to invest large assets into your economy and we would like to source several prominent members of the business establishment, including Mr. Bernie Ebbers, Mr. Kenneth Lay, Ms. Martha Stewart, Ms. Carly Fiorina and several others in order to guide your country's economy into the kind of economic powerhouse the US currently enjoys.
As an additional bonus, we would like to act Mr. John Dvorak an exciting and influential commentator whose amazing ability to divine the future surpasses the Great Kreskin.
Lastly, we would like to send to you all our phone sanitizers in this one time opportunity.
Thank you for your time.
Check that, I couldn't do that to the Chinese.
However as I think has been pointed out numerously above, it is currently impossible to build a DRM-scheme that doesn't create these kinds of situations. I would conisder it hypocritical for a writer to cheer on DRM schemes who then circumvents it when it suits him. If DRM is so great, then deal with it when it fails.
Not only does DRM get in the way of paying customers, like our blogger, but it also is easily defeated by free and easy-to-use tools.
So, what exactly is the advantage of DRM?
Killing civilians is wrong and moreso dangerous because now you have just created more terrorists from the survivors--if your family is dead, it doesn't matter if it came from a car bomb or a missile, you're still going to be pissed and looking for vengence.
We need to be better than these fuckers, we need to find the ones responsible and kill them without killing everyone else around them. No negotiation, but specific targeted elimination. Carpet bombing no, a sniper's shot definitely.
The court ruled that Microsoft's monopoly was on the dominant platform and thus affected the entire market, the judge was correct in this position. You would be correct in stating that Apple could be considered a monopolist in the PPC arena, if that wasn't also controlled by Sun, etc. who also help define the PPC market. Furthemore, Microsoft's problem was not becoming a monopoly, but using illegal manuevers to attain that position which violates the Sherman act.
To use your earlier metaphor: two men kill another man, one does it accidentally in a fight, the other waits for several weeks before gunning his victim down and then hiding the evidence. The first man will be tried, but ultimately released under self-defense. The second man will be tried and executed for first degree murder. So, under your logic presumption, the second man shouldn't be convicted because the first man wasn't, even though the court sees the situation as being entirely different, even if the end result was the same. The problem is intention and Microsoft has intentionally seized control of the market while using bad-faith tactics. That is what they were convicted of and that's why they have settled in so many instances. They are guilty and have been allowed to buy their way out of it.
Furthermore, if it had gone to a jury trial Microsoft may have been split up into disparate divisions and everyone was afraid of that, the DOJ ultimately was convinced, wrongly in my opinion, that the split would hurt the computer industry.
A monopoly is not a bad thing, but it is when it unduly affects the surrounding market negatively by stiffling competition. A Dictionary.com reference of the word monopoly does not describe the myriad of legal details that is contained within the Sherman Act.
I expect English to continue to evolve as it has for the nearly two thousand years--ever read Old English texts? Yikes!--but in the meantime, I would like things that I read to be understandable, to be spelled correctly, and to have some semblance of logical thought.
So, if a comma is misplaced, a question mark forgotten, I'm willing to ignore it, but the kind of willful disregard for even the pretense of grammar from some of the posters in Slashdot--and in the hacker community--is annoying as all-hell.
Huh? You're telling me to expect that high school graduates don't have to know how to spell or understand the basic grammar of the English language? How is that racist? Oh, wait you're saying that non-whites (I'm guessing) don't have to learn proper English grammar because they have poor schools. Nope, its the other way around, poor schools should be fixed so kids do know proper English so they can communicate effectively and excel in their lives and not be held to some lower standard. We should up the standards for all our kids, poor and rich alike.
It is all about snobbery. People who think they are better than other people SUCK! I agree, snobbery is bad, but so is refusing to learn. A few Parisians will snear at your accent and mistakes, but lots of them will help you, just like the Italians. However, I don't think many of the Italians, patient as they are, would enjoy speaking with an American, who after years of living in Italy, couldn't speak well-enough to order a pizza. Thus, a kid, even in a poor school, should be expected to learn English in spite of being in a poor school.
I know it's not fair that some Yale-educated wanker gets everything so easily and some kid from Harlem, or some kid who crossed the border when he was five, has to struggle to learn English. But, them's the breaks, that's the thing in life. You struggle to attain success and you refuse to take the lower-standard.
Think of it this way, what's the difference between hey, help your uncle Jack off a horse and hey, help your uncle jack off a horse.
There's a big difference in meaning from just a simple capitalization error, and you'll find dozens of example where poor punctuation, grammar, spelling entirely changes the meaning of a sentance.
Granted I can parse through mistakes, but why should I have to? In other words, if your writing is not important enough for you to take the time to make everything correct, why should I bother reading it?
Tell that to a T. Rex.
It will take a while, and Microsoft can reverse this trend, but their corporate culture seems opposed to real underlying change and has put far too much faith in Longhorn.
The thing's been getting great reviews...It's not the ideal phone, or the ideal PDA, but it's a very good combo device. And therein lies the problem.
Whoa, slow down there. There are lots of ways to move data without using proprietary formats that everyone already uses: HTML, PDF, TXT, JPEG. These are all industry-standard and not Esperanto. I would argue that Microsoft is French and the others are English, while French was the lingua franca it has fallen away to English because of the pure ubiquity of our language over one that is controlled by a single Academe'.
I think there's a very nice push-pull with the marketing, good reviews and word-of-mouth. People buy an iPod because of marketing, but then tell all their friends, who then buy their own. The marketing does matter, but the iPod, unlike many other brands, manages to back that up with a great product that also has a large word-of-mouth pressure.
Rio has managed to make interesting players, but none that has the shear critical mass of marketing, positive reviews and word-of-mouth; this is just the hat-trick of selling a product.
That's not necessarily true, for if a culture is represented by a 'warrior-class' or 'warrior-ethic' than it is more likely to go to war. The problem has never been the general population, but rather the old men (we call them politicians) who seek the glory of battle even as they will not be engaged in it. They either wish they were in battle and so use general-ship to live vicariously, or they remember the glory and so seek it again for the youngest citizens. War will stop when presidents are sent to the field.
Am I the only one who finds that fact slightly disturbing?
And don't let me hear you bitch about your civil rights.
Nice that you pointed that particular detail out, but the bill could easily be altered in committee to allow this particular president to use it and furthermore, the 22nd Ammendment, is a nice limit of power.
Furthermore, I'm not sure about the 'countervailing constitutional power to forestall any executive overreaching' with the House and Senate, Executive Branch, and the courts packed with conservatives. We need some brakes on this train, even if it 'impos[es]...further disability to retain tested and trusted leadership.
It's got nothing to do with Bush. He wouldn't even get to use it. Bloody hell, talk about scaremongering. Nice that you pointed that particular detail out, but the bill could easily be altered in committee to allow this particular president to use it and furthermore, the 22nd Ammendment, is a nice limit of power.
No, they don't those bastards, and furthermore, not only do they intend till kill people, but they hope to destablize the target societies, this includes the elimation of the people's rights.
At heart, PATRIOT is about removing these walls and allowing law-enforcement greater access to information
Then pray-tell, what information is garned from library books? The CIA and FBI knowing that I read Finnegan's Wake last year doesn't keep terrorists at bay, furthemore, the CIA and FBI's inability to communicate about a few Arabs getting flight lessons in Florida wasn't just because of the emplaced wall between the two, that information didn't even move through the FBI. PATRIOT hasn't been used to prosecute terrorists, in fact only one has been prosecuted up and until this point and he was caught and interogated before PATRIOT was put in place.
The GP was a exercise in tin-foil conspiracy, but you're just as bad because of your willingness to give up your inalienable (look it up) rights in exchange for the promise of a little safety that isn't even given by the PATRIOT act.
Bush got 51% of the vote because people are cattle.
You're a glass half-empty kind of guy, aren't you?
O'Dell, when asked, could have easily said he supported Bush and would vote for him in the election, but he didn't he said he was "committed to deliver" votes. O'Dell, and any one in a similar situation where impartiality is necessary, should be careful to separate their personal views from their duty. Think if O'Dell was a judge in a trial and stated on record that he was committed to deliver a guilty verdict. This would be a serious example of impropriety, and while the situation is somewhat different, O'Dell as the president of a company that makes a system to count votes could retain a dangerous influence.
I'd rather people, especially powerful people, wear their opinion of their lapel rather than keep a political knife behind their backs
I agree, but to further your idea, I wish people would uphold their duty and fulfill their contracts rather than ascribe to some political affiliation. O'Dell used a poor choice of words at best, and I don't think he should be defended.
If SETI doesn't get ownership of the sky, neither do you, they must be weighed equally.
Hitler was not a Socialist, his party while being the National Socialist party was actually a facsist corportist bunch. Your definition of socialism is flawed.