Life in the Crash lane Surely make you lose your mind Life in the crash lane, everything all the time Life in the crash lane, uh huh Blowin' and burnin', blinded by thirst They didn't see the stop sign, took a turn for the worse
Windows 95 was a house of cards that wasted thousands of hours of millions of people who lost their work and had to have their computers "repaired" on an ongoing basis. Not fond memories, I tell you.
I switched to Linux in 97, and although there were many other issues, once you got it running, it stayed that way.
Yahoo by making itself technologically dependent on Microsoft for 10 years has given up on search. This effectively puts Yahoo out of business. It's a golden parachute for Yahoo's executives but jeopardizes any chances that Yahoo will ever be able to play in the search business again.
As for Microsoft, it allows microsoft to gain instantly a few percentage points in web search, which should allow them to extract higher ad fees.
Microsoft is patient and they hope that they are buying 10 years with which to figure out how to bring down Google. They have enough money, but when it comes to the web, I think Microsoft is largely irrelevant.
If it wasn't for their desktop monopoly, nobody would even care about anything LIVE. They shove that stuff down users throat every time a user tries to download messenger, which they are only interested in because of the network effects that allowed Messenger to become relevant in the first place. I remember when no one even knew what messenger was and people hated it initially, but it kept popping up after every single XP install and telling people that they needed an account and enough people fell for this crap.
Only another Google-like startup could outgoogle google, but it certainly won't be Microsoft or Microsoft and Yahoo's dead skeleton.
The article's main hypothesis is that piracy negates the price differential between Linux and Windows.
Specifically, one of the hypothesis towards the end of the article is that Microsoft unofficially acquiesced to piracy and maybe even encouraged it. Well, I thought I would point to Bill Gate's own words in the matter. In an article that I originally read on Cnet magazine, but that has since been commented and reprinted everywhere, he actually stated that piracy helps Microsoft by making the OS pervasive and that they were not worried about the Chinese pirating Windows, because if they are going to pirate "something", Microsoft and him would prefer that it be Windows.
"Then a comment made by Microsoft Founder, Chairman, and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates in 1998 and reprinted widely and often in the official media became a lightning rod for criticism of the software giant. Fortune magazine reported that, in a presentation to business students at an American university, Gates said rampant software piracy might turn out to be a positive thing for Microsoft.
"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software," Gates reportedly said. "Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Kopete should have decent support for it once KDE 4.0 is officially released. These things take time. I actually appreciate the fact that Google is funding some of this work through SOC scholarships, rather than creating a brand new client.
In other words, they are working to integrate their work into existing projects, rather than create a close-source monolithic client for linux.
This idiot has copied and pasted the same bullshit all over the internet. In fact, I would argue that his supposed problems where posted on ubuntuforums to give credence to his FUD. Had he really had those problems and been genuinely interested in fixing them, he could have easily done so.
A smart society will place limits on what any corporate entity can do. The accumulation of wealth for wealth's sake without clear benefits to society as a whole is not something that most societies should reward.
Corrupt corporations corrupt everything they touch and the bigger they are, the more pervasive their effects on society is. To a certain extent, this anything-goes bullshit that one often hears in Slashdot is a clear example of the real pernicious effect that massive corporations are having on our collective culture.
Isn't this the same company that had dead people lobby Congress to avoid being broken-up during the anti-trust years?
This is the tip of the iceberg as it is rare, Halloween Documents not withstanding, to know the real extent of Microsoft's ongoing disinformation campaign.
Were public opinion to turn around and evaluate many of the existing technologies on their own merits, without being told by the media that they are too dumb to use something like Suse 10.2, Mandriva or Ubuntu, it would hit Microsoft very hard, provided, of course, that there was an OEM there with enough balls to offer preloaded computers with another OS.
So Microsoft fights and will fight to the death for mind-share. This is the single most important thing that drives Microsoft. Once computers,operating systems and office suites are demystified, a process which could be greatly helped by open standards such as ODF,and people are no longer afraid to lose their valuable data in a transition to a different product, Microsoft either innovates in real valuable and tangible terms or begins to have to tap its reserves, which huge as they are, would "only" carry them for another fifteen years at their current size.
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 1
Well, the riots did not occur during the years that the socialist government was in power in France and attributing causality to a single party or factor would be terribly reductionist and useless. You are right to point out that the cultural, but most importantly, economic divide between France's immigrant population, most of whom are French citizens, and the rest of their fellow countrymen is a primary reason for the riots.
Let people live in miserable conditions long enough, light-up a match and watch what happens. In case, you try to pin this down exclusively on the so-called socialist governments that were in power in France at the time, you would be wise to remember the Miami riots of the 1980s or the LA riots. Rioting is the end-result of a much more complex chain of events.
As to your other points, I would much rather live in a society where you cannot be discarded like a used-tissue for no reason, even if it means carrying slightly higher unemployment numbers. But, you would be wise to know that the way that unemployment data is collected in the US and Europe is vastly different. In the US, once you have been in the unemployment rolls for a while and received whatever your state thinks you are entitled to in the form of unemployment benefits, you are then dropped from the official count and told to get on with it.
Spain and Sweden's unemployment are at very healthy levels overall, yet you don't see the kinds of extreme poverty that you witness in cities like New Orleans or Liberty City, Florida.
One last point: I am not sure how old are you, but I hope you never get any form of serious or chronicle disease because the way that the US health care system currently works, you stand to lose everything: your job, your house, and possibly, your health. I have seen it happen and it's very sad.
Here in Europe that would not ever happen. Most European countries have a very healthy (pun intended) health system with coverage for all.
When people have no real arguments left, a sound position to defend or the academic credentials to weigh in on an issue, they do what you are doing: ad hominem attacks.
I guess anything that Joel Bleifuss writes is disqualified because you do not like where he publishes. Great argument.
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 1
LImbaugh, capable of doing research and writing and academically sound book?
Don't make me laugh.
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 1
Attack the man's arguments and his evidence, not the man himself. Oh no, he is a socialist. Oh, lord, let's run away screaming.
Has it struck you that "Socialists" have governed in France, Spain, Germany or Sweeden for long chunks of time, up to 12 or 16 years in some cases with no-ill effects? I don't think the word "Socialist" means what you think it means.
If it weren't for the accrued history of hate-every-one-on-the-left typical of Cold-war America, you would see that Socialists have run fiscally responsible agendas with an emphasis on access to education and health by all. What a terrible thing.
After living for over 15 years in the US, and now one year in France and 5 in Spain, nowhere have I seen the kind of bureaucratic waste and bullshit that I saw in the US health system, which is beholden to the reign of insurance companies and which, on average, is much more expensive and provides lower quality of care than what I have received in the above-mentioned countries.
So, yeah, socialism is a horrible thing, because that's what they told us in school. Look up the definitions of social-democracy and look up the fact that most democracies in Europe and most left-leaning parties diassociated themselves of any connections with the Soviet Union, real or perceived, somewhere between 1930s and early 1950s. Read Willy Brandt's famous words on social democracy to see what those words mean and what has been practiced in continental Europe for a good fifty years.
Idiocy seems to be rewarded in Slashdot as you seem to have been favorably moderated. Just do a google search and you will find plenty of linux-based POS solutions.
Try Novell's POS as we have deployed that for a very large business in Spain.
Financial software is very much country specific. Here there are a couple of very compelling open source solutions, and some proprietary ones.
Anyway, I'll quit wasting my time with what is obviously a troll post in intent, nature, and tone.
If Microsoft had wanted a robust open format, it would have involved itself in the OpenDocument standard committees that it was initially a part of. Instead, it withdrew and went its marry way to develop its proprietary file format and is only trying to find a way to sneak it into open source products after the fact.
Why? Because it has seen too many customers sending Microsoft off to a high bridge where it may jump afer said customers got sick of people playing fast and loose with something as important as their data.
This guy spent a night in jail in an attempt by the government to put fear in him and vicarously in us. It's all about intimidation.
Mr. Howards has guts and may be able to win the day. But what if he had gotten shot to prevent the alleged "assault"? What price must a citizen be willing to pay in a democracy to not have to fear retribution from the government for exercizing his legal right to free speech?
When the vice-president of the most powerful nation in the world has no qualms about having someone thrown in jail, somebody whose only crime was addressing him a public place, I would say that this is very telling about the type of country that they are trying to create through intimidation and fear. And I would further say that for the most part they have been extremely successful. Anyone who doesn't agree with the administration's policies is unamerican or worse.
This propaganda has been socialized through the right-wing media to the point where most people are afraid to speak their minds. I see this every day in academia of all places. Intimidation is ongoing in subtle and not subtle ways.
To all the free speech advocates who cannot believe how this could happen in England and who are so self-assured about free speech in the US, a guy named Steve Howards got thrown in jail accused of assaulting the vice-president for saying the following to him:
I know it's probably too much to ask of you, but read the fine article. He is asking for redistribution rights, not for the firmware to be opensource. In other words, he wants Intel to retain its copyright on the firmware, but wants to be able to distribute freely that firmware to users of open source operating system.
Thus, your argument about how difficult it is to program firmwares or why they shouldn't be opened because they would allow hackers to play with the transmission frequencies is dead on arrival because you are arguing a STRAWMAN!
This still happens on Windows XP and Windows 2003. I could have mentioned that but didn't. The kernel from 2000, XP and 2003 is the same kernel with very small adjustments here and there.
2003 has more sensible defaults such as fewer system services being turned on by default, but it isn't any sort of panacea compared to w2k when it comes to stability. I wish I could say otherwise. I don't enjoy dealing with problems.
And hell, looking at your posting history it is clear that you are a Microsoft apologist, whether by monetary compensation or conviction is hard to say.
Just yesterday I had Win2k look up completely because a badly-coded, but very widespread application in Spain (Infolex) decided to look up. There was no way to kill the task or bring the machine into some form of responsive state.
The fact that an application is able to do this shows how far behind Microsoft still is when it comes to stability. So to those of you who everytime that a Microsoft story comes up, post how great it is and how you haven't had a crash in years, I say, either stop spreading false information or start living in the real world.
Btw: Microsoft's own crash statistics as gathered from logs sent to them show that PCs crashing and crashing consitently remains part of the Windows experience. I wish I could find the article where a high-ranking Windows executive said the same to news.news.com.
Please go tell how safe it is to the thousands of people affected by the Chernobyl accident. Up to 40% of Europe's land mass and population were affected by the radioactive cloud produced by that disaster and much of this land is still contaminated with high levels of cancer among children, land that you can't grow shit on, and animals that you cannot sell and need to be quarantined.
El Pais is Spain's most prominent newspaper, the equivalent of the Nytimes or the Washingtonpost. Check this out
Since when is Google afraid to step on anyone's toes?
I mean, you compete head-to-head with Microsoft.
A google-supported desktop Linux distribution would literally change the world for the better and would provide an incredibly captive market. Who wouldn't want to use google tools when you give them an incredible platform for free?
So, please rethink your strategy. You should also evaluate a KDE-based distribution such as OpenSuse as it is my professional opinion that it is the best desktop in existence currently and what all fifty employees use at my non-profit.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 95 reminds me of an old Eagles song:
Life in the Crash lane
Surely make you lose your mind
Life in the crash lane, everything all the time
Life in the crash lane, uh huh
Blowin' and burnin', blinded by thirst
They didn't see the stop sign,
took a turn for the worse
Windows 95 was a house of cards that wasted thousands of hours of millions of people who lost their work and had to have their computers "repaired" on an ongoing basis. Not fond memories, I tell you.
I switched to Linux in 97, and although there were many other issues, once you got it running, it stayed that way.
Yahoo by making itself technologically dependent on Microsoft for 10 years has given up on search. This effectively puts Yahoo out of business. It's a golden parachute for Yahoo's executives but jeopardizes any chances that Yahoo will ever be able to play in the search business again.
As for Microsoft, it allows microsoft to gain instantly a few percentage points in web search, which should allow them to extract higher ad fees.
Microsoft is patient and they hope that they are buying 10 years with which to figure out how to bring down Google. They have enough money, but when it comes to the web, I think Microsoft is largely irrelevant.
If it wasn't for their desktop monopoly, nobody would even care about anything LIVE. They shove that stuff down users throat every time a user tries to download messenger, which they are only interested in because of the network effects that allowed Messenger to become relevant in the first place. I remember when no one even knew what messenger was and people hated it initially, but it kept popping up after every single XP install and telling people that they needed an account and enough people fell for this crap.
Only another Google-like startup could outgoogle google, but it certainly won't be Microsoft or Microsoft and Yahoo's dead skeleton.
The article's main hypothesis is that piracy negates the price differential between Linux and Windows.
/ microsoft.china.idg/
c hive/2007/07/23/100134488/index.htmd ustry_sectors/technology/article2098235.eceo ft-software-piracy-in.html
Specifically, one of the hypothesis towards the end of the article is that Microsoft unofficially acquiesced to piracy and maybe even encouraged it. Well, I thought I would point to Bill Gate's own words in the matter. In an article that I originally read on Cnet magazine, but that has since been commented and reprinted everywhere, he actually stated that piracy helps Microsoft by making the OS pervasive and that they were not worried about the Chinese pirating Windows, because if they are going to pirate "something", Microsoft and him would prefer that it be Windows.
"Then a comment made by Microsoft Founder, Chairman, and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates in 1998 and reprinted widely and often in the official media became a lightning rod for criticism of the software giant. Fortune magazine reported that, in a presentation to business students at an American university, Gates said rampant software piracy might turn out to be a positive thing for Microsoft.
"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software," Gates reportedly said. "Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Source: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/02/23
And here's a more recent and yet more poignant articles and quotes from Bill Gates as it specifically mentions Linux.
Sources: http://www.digitaltippingpoint.com/?q=node/103
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_ar
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/in
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/07/we-love-micros
I think the article would benefit tremendously from including the information above as it strengthens the author's main thesis a great deal.
Kopete should have decent support for it once KDE 4.0 is officially released. These things take time. I actually appreciate the fact that Google is funding some of this work through SOC scholarships, rather than creating a brand new client.
In other words, they are working to integrate their work into existing projects, rather than create a close-source monolithic client for linux.
Google interops with Gizmoproject.com for chat and will have voice real soon.
Try gizmoproject from gizmoproject.com
This idiot has copied and pasted the same bullshit all over the internet. In fact, I would argue that his supposed problems where posted on ubuntuforums to give credence to his FUD. Had he really had those problems and been genuinely interested in fixing them, he could have easily done so.
No, Microsoft expects to win over enough of the so-called "experts" so that these experts then do their bidding with mom and pop shops.
A smart society will place limits on what any corporate entity can do. The accumulation of wealth for wealth's sake without clear benefits to society as a whole is not something that most societies should reward.
Corrupt corporations corrupt everything they touch and the bigger they are, the more pervasive their effects on society is. To a certain extent, this anything-goes bullshit that one often hears in Slashdot is a clear example of the real pernicious effect that massive corporations are having on our collective culture.
Isn't this the same company that had dead people lobby Congress to avoid being broken-up during the anti-trust years?
This is the tip of the iceberg as it is rare, Halloween Documents not withstanding, to know the real extent of Microsoft's ongoing disinformation campaign.
Were public opinion to turn around and evaluate many of the existing technologies on their own merits, without being told by the media that they are too dumb to use something like Suse 10.2, Mandriva or Ubuntu, it would hit Microsoft very hard, provided, of course, that there was an OEM there with enough balls to offer preloaded computers with another OS.
So Microsoft fights and will fight to the death for mind-share. This is the single most important thing that drives Microsoft. Once computers,operating systems and office suites are demystified, a process which could be greatly helped by open standards such as ODF,and people are no longer afraid to lose their valuable data in a transition to a different product, Microsoft either innovates in real valuable and tangible terms or begins to have to tap its reserves, which huge as they are, would "only" carry them for another fifteen years at their current size.
Well, the riots did not occur during the years that the socialist government was in power in France and attributing causality to a single party or factor would be terribly reductionist and useless. You are right to point out that the cultural, but most importantly, economic divide between France's immigrant population, most of whom are French citizens, and the rest of their fellow countrymen is a primary reason for the riots.
Let people live in miserable conditions long enough, light-up a match and watch what happens. In case, you try to pin this down exclusively on the so-called socialist governments that were in power in France at the time, you would be wise to remember the Miami riots of the 1980s or the LA riots. Rioting is the end-result of a much more complex chain of events.
As to your other points, I would much rather live in a society where you cannot be discarded like a used-tissue for no reason, even if it means carrying slightly higher unemployment numbers. But, you would be wise to know that the way that unemployment data is collected in the US and Europe is vastly different. In the US, once you have been in the unemployment rolls for a while and received whatever your state thinks you are entitled to in the form of unemployment benefits, you are then dropped from the official count and told to get on with it.
Spain and Sweden's unemployment are at very healthy levels overall, yet you don't see the kinds of extreme poverty that you witness in cities like New Orleans or Liberty City, Florida.
One last point: I am not sure how old are you, but I hope you never get any form of serious or chronicle disease because the way that the US health care system currently works, you stand to lose everything: your job, your house, and possibly, your health. I have seen it happen and it's very sad.
Here in Europe that would not ever happen. Most European countries have a very healthy (pun intended) health system with coverage for all.
When people have no real arguments left, a sound position to defend or the academic credentials to weigh in on an issue, they do what you are doing: ad hominem attacks.
I guess anything that Joel Bleifuss writes is disqualified because you do not like where he publishes. Great argument.
LImbaugh, capable of doing research and writing and academically sound book?
Don't make me laugh.
Attack the man's arguments and his evidence, not the man himself. Oh no, he is a socialist. Oh, lord, let's run away screaming.
Has it struck you that "Socialists" have governed in France, Spain, Germany or Sweeden for long chunks of time, up to 12 or 16 years in some cases with no-ill effects? I don't think the word "Socialist" means what you think it means.
If it weren't for the accrued history of hate-every-one-on-the-left typical of Cold-war America, you would see that Socialists have run fiscally responsible agendas with an emphasis on access to education and health by all. What a terrible thing.
After living for over 15 years in the US, and now one year in France and 5 in Spain, nowhere have I seen the kind of bureaucratic waste and bullshit that I saw in the US health system, which is beholden to the reign of insurance companies and which, on average, is much more expensive and provides lower quality of care than what I have received in the above-mentioned countries.
So, yeah, socialism is a horrible thing, because that's what they told us in school. Look up the definitions of social-democracy and look up the fact that most democracies in Europe and most left-leaning parties diassociated themselves of any connections with the Soviet Union, real or perceived, somewhere between 1930s and early 1950s. Read Willy Brandt's famous words on social democracy to see what those words mean and what has been practiced in continental Europe for a good fifty years.
Idiocy seems to be rewarded in Slashdot as you seem to have been favorably moderated. Just do a google search and you will find plenty of linux-based POS solutions.
Try Novell's POS as we have deployed that for a very large business in Spain.
Financial software is very much country specific. Here there are a couple of very compelling open source solutions, and some proprietary ones.
Anyway, I'll quit wasting my time with what is obviously a troll post in intent, nature, and tone.
If Microsoft had wanted a robust open format, it would have involved itself in the OpenDocument standard committees that it was initially a part of. Instead, it withdrew and went its marry way to develop its proprietary file format and is only trying to find a way to sneak it into open source products after the fact.
Why? Because it has seen too many customers sending Microsoft off to a high bridge where it may jump afer said customers got sick of people playing fast and loose with something as important as their data.
This guy spent a night in jail in an attempt by the government to put fear in him and vicarously in us. It's all about intimidation.
Mr. Howards has guts and may be able to win the day. But what if he had gotten shot to prevent the alleged "assault"? What price must a citizen be willing to pay in a democracy to not have to fear retribution from the government for exercizing his legal right to free speech?
When the vice-president of the most powerful nation in the world has no qualms about having someone thrown in jail, somebody whose only crime was addressing him a public place, I would say that this is very telling about the type of country that they are trying to create through intimidation and fear. And I would further say that for the most part they have been extremely successful. Anyone who doesn't agree with the administration's policies is unamerican or worse.
This propaganda has been socialized through the right-wing media to the point where most people are afraid to speak their minds. I see this every day in academia of all places. Intimidation is ongoing in subtle and not subtle ways.
To all the free speech advocates who cannot believe how this could happen in England and who are so self-assured about free speech in the US, a guy named Steve Howards got thrown in jail accused of assaulting the vice-president for saying the following to him:
Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.
http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc100406
If you think this sucks, do something about it here at home and support Steve Howard's lawsuit in support of his right to free speech.
I know it's probably too much to ask of you, but read the fine article. He is asking for redistribution rights, not for the firmware to be opensource. In other words, he wants Intel to retain its copyright on the firmware, but wants to be able to distribute freely that firmware to users of open source operating system.
Thus, your argument about how difficult it is to program firmwares or why they shouldn't be opened because they would allow hackers to play with the transmission frequencies is dead on arrival because you are arguing a STRAWMAN!
This still happens on Windows XP and Windows 2003. I could have mentioned that but didn't. The kernel from 2000, XP and 2003 is the same kernel with very small adjustments here and there.
2003 has more sensible defaults such as fewer system services being turned on by default, but it isn't any sort of panacea compared to w2k when it comes to stability. I wish I could say otherwise. I don't enjoy dealing with problems.
And hell, looking at your posting history it is clear that you are a Microsoft apologist, whether by monetary compensation or conviction is hard to say.
Just yesterday I had Win2k look up completely because a badly-coded, but very widespread application in Spain (Infolex) decided to look up. There was no way to kill the task or bring the machine into some form of responsive state.
The fact that an application is able to do this shows how far behind Microsoft still is when it comes to stability. So to those of you who everytime that a Microsoft story comes up, post how great it is and how you haven't had a crash in years, I say, either stop spreading false information or start living in the real world.
Btw: Microsoft's own crash statistics as gathered from logs sent to them show that PCs crashing and crashing consitently remains part of the Windows experience. I wish I could find the article where a high-ranking Windows executive said the same to news.news.com.
Later.
Why didn't you report this obviously illegal behavior to the Dept. of Labor? They would have protected your employment and pursued the employer.
Please go tell how safe it is to the thousands of people affected by the Chernobyl accident. Up to 40% of Europe's land mass and population were affected by the radioactive cloud produced by that disaster and much of this land is still contaminated with high levels of cancer among children, land that you can't grow shit on, and animals that you cannot sell and need to be quarantined.
El Pais is Spain's most prominent newspaper, the equivalent of the Nytimes or the Washingtonpost. Check this out
:
Nice way to perpertuate a myth.
Egroupware and Kolab are full featured and extremely mature, run on open standards and do not force you to change clients in order to collaborate.
But, keep repeating the same nonsense on the hope that it sticks.
Since when is Google afraid to step on anyone's toes?
I mean, you compete head-to-head with Microsoft.
A google-supported desktop Linux distribution would literally change the world for the better and would provide an incredibly captive market. Who wouldn't want to use google tools when you give them an incredible platform for free?
So, please rethink your strategy. You should also evaluate a KDE-based distribution such as OpenSuse as it is my professional opinion that it is the best desktop in existence currently and what all fifty employees use at my non-profit.