You're absolutely right but neglect the important point, it hasn't been a a necessary desktop tactic for Microsoft for a very long time. Since the OS/2 days?
Still is, depending on your definition. If by 'good' you mean stable and solid as basalt and the almost certain development target of most proprietary business software, the core Intel manufactured MB is still the way to go for me. It's all we spec at work. On the other hand, I'm picking up a 939 & 3500+ 64 for my gaming rig next Tuesday.
"Shock and amazement - employees talk to each other!"
And the public using this service cares that it's internally easier for MS to take the 'lazy route'? Makes for a great branding position: "We might not do it best, but we expend less effort!" I'll take a dozen!
The answer is right in front you. Do you remember all the search engines popular prior to Google's launch? Yahoo, Excite, Altavista etc? Why do think that, without any external advertising, publicly visible product ties, cross promotion or 'flash-enabling' Google has become so successful the term is becoming synonymous for 'Internet search'? Because of 'we higher intelligence' geeks? Please, drop the notion 'users' aren't smart enough to desire or recognise an unbiased search result. Google is dominant because it's easily recognizable unbiased information, exactly what people using a search engine want.
That statement is a perfect example of "not getting it". When I use a search engine, I'm not searching for "branding", I'm searching for the best information. Microsoft returns "branding", rendering Newsbot another potentialy useful service crippled by buzzwording marketing drones.
"Anyway, it's their party and they'll invite who they want to. You don't have to go there if you don't like those terms."
Will Microsoft make it clear on the front page the search will be the equivalent of an Amway party?
" Comparing tape-to-tape copying with CD-ripping/P2P is apples/oranges."
Same old song and dance (Aerosmith TM)...
Comparing cassette copying with reel-to-reels is apples/oranges.
Comparing radio with live performance is apples/oranges.
Comparing DAT copies with cassette copying is apples/oranges.
Comparing CD burning with cassette copying is apples/oranges.
These arguments have been used since the days printed sheet music was common at home, all were 'the death of music'. The only thing new is the near-complete technological idiocy of most lawyer/politicians who see the P2p argument as more credible.
"..somebody to invest in studio time, radio distribution, etc.
What's often forgotten is the artists already pay for this in the form of 'advances' from the record companies against future earnings. Record companies lose if future earnings don't materialize, but that's a risk management issue undertaken by banks, relatives and bookies every day and I see no reason for federal legislation to support RIAA member's poor performance in this respect.
"How many innovative, vs "let's copy the functionality of product X" OSs programs are out there?"
That's not what you hear in this forum when the discussion turns to desktops, then OSS has too many which are too different. What software does Emacs copy? VIM, Apache, PHP, Webmin, etc, etc? I think you mistake the popularity of packages such as Gnome and KDE, which try to win Windows converts, for a general trend.
Any other industry that inefficient and incompetent would be long gone. Only through the force of legislation far reaching enough to threaten the free movement of information for all, coupled with insane and rampant celebrity worship and dishonest politicians, can this most disposable of all industries get away with this kind of crap.
Isn't part of compliancy with a legal decision "good will", the implicit assumption the guilty will do the best to comply with the penalty phase? Personally, I think the RIAA's actions are excellent, they display the same contempt for the courts of law as for consumers. Maybe this will be enough to make some of the human turnips warming judge's benches sit up and notice.
Re:Why IT is annoying
on
Are You Annoying?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
A little story. I called IT when my desktop slowed to a crawl one afternoon. Turns out corporate head office was pushing out patches and anti-virus DATs 'after hours' at 5 eastern time, apparently unaware the west coast is in a different time zone. We didn't know that at the time, so IT logged in remotely via VNC and proceeded to download and run Ad-aware. Now, our company disables access to regedit in the default profile. Ad-aware sees that as a potential hijack and clears the registry entry. I'm on the phone with this guy, watching him blast out the permission restrictions his department have enforced, and he won't let me cut in to warn him. You want batshit? I'll see you and raise 'Windows qualified' support people who know less than home users. Irony is, he was the good support guy, not the one who rebooted live servers without warning, installed unauthorized software or loosened permissions on machines outside his department, causing us to scramble fixing the damage. I also support clueless users, and for my money clueless IT people are orders of magnitude more infuriating and dangerous.
"Once that was over, the national speed limit was only a technicality since there are no national traffic police: local cops enforced the "unofficial" local speed limit.
Not quite correct, states were indeed free to raise their speed limits, but at the cost of forfeiting federal road funds. The federal gov 'reversed blackmailed' the states, "do as we want or don't get the money".
This kind of legislation is horrifying. Jackasses like Hatch are basically selling RIAA an exclusive, protected license to make money by drastically curtailing the freedom to move information (but not, apparently, the freedom to move money into his pocket.) The brazen attitude is what really sends chills down my spine, bought Senators aren't even making an effort at an appearance of balance, he's advocating for the rubber stamping of legislation written by special interest corporations making huge segments of the general population criminals. There's a special place in hell for his kind and I wish him god's speed in his journey.
Fair enough, however it ignores the consequences of efficiencies brought modern technology. In your 'old' example, police forces didn't share that log, almost invariably a piece of paper in a file cabinet. Purchases were cash, police could take your picture but sharing it meant a fax (still recent tech in historical terms) or developing a copy from a negative and mailing it. In practical terms it was impossible for the government to assemble a comprehensive picture of a person's life and movements because it relied on manual labour. It was only done in special cases to specific individuals considered exceptional dangers, such as Mafia dons, Hollywood celebrities and Martin Luther King.
With the advent of technology and electronic purchases what was once the dream of the KGB becomes more a matter of funding than impossibility, and the qualitative repercussions of such a huge quantative advance in efficiencies will be unpredicatable and potentially catastrophic. The differences between Eniac and an Opteron can also be described as not much more than a difference in efficiencies and I can guarantee those early scientists would never have predicted the qualitative changes their research wrought on the world, communicating on electronic forums as a trivial example. Given the abysmal record of heads of governments in managing power, a record the American founders knew well and struggled to create a resistant system, it's only hubris (any country's hubris) that insists of tyranny 'it can't happen here'.
Jumpin jesus, is it so hard to see the difference between 'in public', meaning in full view of equal citizens, and 'government monitoring', using public spaces to track, monitor and database the movements of 'free' citizens? People who claim it takes goverment monitoring in private homes before rights are being quashed scare the hell out of me and, from this foreign perspective, define everything that was once considered anti-American. Things have surely changed.
That's a great point because these discussions will often become mired in a false dichotomy of 'Rebs' vs. 'Dems' and draw away from the reality that both have chipped away at the intent and vision of your country's founders. Clinton's Adminstration arguably did as much damage to liberties as Bush's, only their 'terror' was the drug trade. Pointing out how long some of these measures have been in place is a constant reminder.
As did medieval Europe, the Romans and 'insert your favourite 20th Century genocidal regime here'. Your definition is broad to the point of being meaningless in the context of a discussion about rights and freedoms.
" Good point -- and I would bet that sharing a cassette, in their eyes, is just as illegal as putting an MP3 online...
Of course they do, it's the same old dog and pony show this nauseating industry has put on the road for generations. They claimed the death of the industry from cassette as adamantly as they do now from mp3. It's a horrid weakness of the democratic process, the industry doesn't need to be right, decades of influence peddling and lobbying will overcome any lack of solid fact. Memories are short.
In my hard core road days I would never have spent that much on a stem, but don't discount the subtlies of small parts. Of all those I tried, only one saddle (Squadra) and one seatpost (American Classic) let me set up the critical pedal-saddle-bar relationship in a way that kept me and Mr. Johnson pain free hour after hour. If a serious rider told me a carbon fiber stem reduces high frequency bar vibrations and keeps their hands from falling asleep on 200 mile rides, I would be inclined to take them at their word.
"As far as the article - the THD levels (3% to 30%) aren't unusual for 60's era equipment."
The MacIntosh MC240 2x 40 watt amp, sitting on the floor right in front of me, has printed on the back a harmonic distrotion specification of less than 0.5% full power from 20 Hz to 20 KHz, and an intermod distortion spec of 0.5% to twice rated power on peaks. Best I can find it was manufactured in the late fifties or very early sixties. The DIY Mullard 3-3 single-ended amp I'm listening to as I type, an early fifties circuit never mass produced, bench tested on an Audio Precision at under ~.7% across the band to it's full rated power. Dynaco, Fisher, Sansui, all manufactured tube equipment through the sixties and seventies with comparable specs.
Slashdot Mirror
Or Mainland China for another. How about the Pacific Rim nations?
The American Founding Fathers?
How can users be liable to triple damages? My understanding is users are not liable at all for use of an infringing product, the developers are.
. Strawman argument or anti-Linux user bigotry? Not a reflection of reality, piecework moderation to the contrary.
You're absolutely right but neglect the important point, it hasn't been a a necessary desktop tactic for Microsoft for a very long time. Since the OS/2 days?
Still is, depending on your definition. If by 'good' you mean stable and solid as basalt and the almost certain development target of most proprietary business software, the core Intel manufactured MB is still the way to go for me. It's all we spec at work. On the other hand, I'm picking up a 939 & 3500+ 64 for my gaming rig next Tuesday.
And the public using this service cares that it's internally easier for MS to take the 'lazy route'? Makes for a great branding position: "We might not do it best, but we expend less effort!" I'll take a dozen!
The answer is right in front you. Do you remember all the search engines popular prior to Google's launch? Yahoo, Excite, Altavista etc? Why do think that, without any external advertising, publicly visible product ties, cross promotion or 'flash-enabling' Google has become so successful the term is becoming synonymous for 'Internet search'? Because of 'we higher intelligence' geeks? Please, drop the notion 'users' aren't smart enough to desire or recognise an unbiased search result. Google is dominant because it's easily recognizable unbiased information, exactly what people using a search engine want.
"Anyway, it's their party and they'll invite who they want to. You don't have to go there if you don't like those terms."
Will Microsoft make it clear on the front page the search will be the equivalent of an Amway party?
Same old song and dance (Aerosmith TM)...
Comparing cassette copying with reel-to-reels is apples/oranges.
Comparing radio with live performance is apples/oranges.
Comparing DAT copies with cassette copying is apples/oranges.
Comparing CD burning with cassette copying is apples/oranges.
These arguments have been used since the days printed sheet music was common at home, all were 'the death of music'. The only thing new is the near-complete technological idiocy of most lawyer/politicians who see the P2p argument as more credible.
What's often forgotten is the artists already pay for this in the form of 'advances' from the record companies against future earnings. Record companies lose if future earnings don't materialize, but that's a risk management issue undertaken by banks, relatives and bookies every day and I see no reason for federal legislation to support RIAA member's poor performance in this respect.
That's not what you hear in this forum when the discussion turns to desktops, then OSS has too many which are too different. What software does Emacs copy? VIM, Apache, PHP, Webmin, etc, etc? I think you mistake the popularity of packages such as Gnome and KDE, which try to win Windows converts, for a general trend.
Any other industry that inefficient and incompetent would be long gone. Only through the force of legislation far reaching enough to threaten the free movement of information for all, coupled with insane and rampant celebrity worship and dishonest politicians, can this most disposable of all industries get away with this kind of crap.
Isn't part of compliancy with a legal decision "good will", the implicit assumption the guilty will do the best to comply with the penalty phase? Personally, I think the RIAA's actions are excellent, they display the same contempt for the courts of law as for consumers. Maybe this will be enough to make some of the human turnips warming judge's benches sit up and notice.
A little story. I called IT when my desktop slowed to a crawl one afternoon. Turns out corporate head office was pushing out patches and anti-virus DATs 'after hours' at 5 eastern time, apparently unaware the west coast is in a different time zone. We didn't know that at the time, so IT logged in remotely via VNC and proceeded to download and run Ad-aware. Now, our company disables access to regedit in the default profile. Ad-aware sees that as a potential hijack and clears the registry entry. I'm on the phone with this guy, watching him blast out the permission restrictions his department have enforced, and he won't let me cut in to warn him. You want batshit? I'll see you and raise 'Windows qualified' support people who know less than home users. Irony is, he was the good support guy, not the one who rebooted live servers without warning, installed unauthorized software or loosened permissions on machines outside his department, causing us to scramble fixing the damage. I also support clueless users, and for my money clueless IT people are orders of magnitude more infuriating and dangerous.
Not quite correct, states were indeed free to raise their speed limits, but at the cost of forfeiting federal road funds. The federal gov 'reversed blackmailed' the states, "do as we want or don't get the money".
This kind of legislation is horrifying. Jackasses like Hatch are basically selling RIAA an exclusive, protected license to make money by drastically curtailing the freedom to move information (but not, apparently, the freedom to move money into his pocket.) The brazen attitude is what really sends chills down my spine, bought Senators aren't even making an effort at an appearance of balance, he's advocating for the rubber stamping of legislation written by special interest corporations making huge segments of the general population criminals. There's a special place in hell for his kind and I wish him god's speed in his journey.
With the advent of technology and electronic purchases what was once the dream of the KGB becomes more a matter of funding than impossibility, and the qualitative repercussions of such a huge quantative advance in efficiencies will be unpredicatable and potentially catastrophic. The differences between Eniac and an Opteron can also be described as not much more than a difference in efficiencies and I can guarantee those early scientists would never have predicted the qualitative changes their research wrought on the world, communicating on electronic forums as a trivial example. Given the abysmal record of heads of governments in managing power, a record the American founders knew well and struggled to create a resistant system, it's only hubris (any country's hubris) that insists of tyranny 'it can't happen here'.
Jumpin jesus, is it so hard to see the difference between 'in public', meaning in full view of equal citizens, and 'government monitoring', using public spaces to track, monitor and database the movements of 'free' citizens? People who claim it takes goverment monitoring in private homes before rights are being quashed scare the hell out of me and, from this foreign perspective, define everything that was once considered anti-American. Things have surely changed.
Uh, what part of the difference between observation by 'the government' and 'the public' has you confused? Learn some history.
That's a great point because these discussions will often become mired in a false dichotomy of 'Rebs' vs. 'Dems' and draw away from the reality that both have chipped away at the intent and vision of your country's founders. Clinton's Adminstration arguably did as much damage to liberties as Bush's, only their 'terror' was the drug trade. Pointing out how long some of these measures have been in place is a constant reminder.
As did medieval Europe, the Romans and 'insert your favourite 20th Century genocidal regime here'. Your definition is broad to the point of being meaningless in the context of a discussion about rights and freedoms.
Of course they do, it's the same old dog and pony show this nauseating industry has put on the road for generations. They claimed the death of the industry from cassette as adamantly as they do now from mp3. It's a horrid weakness of the democratic process, the industry doesn't need to be right, decades of influence peddling and lobbying will overcome any lack of solid fact. Memories are short.
In my hard core road days I would never have spent that much on a stem, but don't discount the subtlies of small parts. Of all those I tried, only one saddle (Squadra) and one seatpost (American Classic) let me set up the critical pedal-saddle-bar relationship in a way that kept me and Mr. Johnson pain free hour after hour. If a serious rider told me a carbon fiber stem reduces high frequency bar vibrations and keeps their hands from falling asleep on 200 mile rides, I would be inclined to take them at their word.
The MacIntosh MC240 2x 40 watt amp, sitting on the floor right in front of me, has printed on the back a harmonic distrotion specification of less than 0.5% full power from 20 Hz to 20 KHz, and an intermod distortion spec of 0.5% to twice rated power on peaks. Best I can find it was manufactured in the late fifties or very early sixties. The DIY Mullard 3-3 single-ended amp I'm listening to as I type, an early fifties circuit never mass produced, bench tested on an Audio Precision at under ~.7% across the band to it's full rated power. Dynaco, Fisher, Sansui, all manufactured tube equipment through the sixties and seventies with comparable specs.