Don't get so upset, one of my favourite sports is troll huntin', and the greed of corporations and B$ marketing techniques means there will be a never ending supply of them. Don't forget don't attack the troll, attack the paid for corporate message (which as it turns out does more damage to the troll, corporations wont pay marketing failures).
Now the tool I would like to see, is the creation of a popular distribution that is specifically for your hardware. A website that access your pc hardware specs and fine tunes a distribution specifically for your machine, pay some money, and they send you cd/dvd that will set up an optimum Linux install, no muss, no fuss.
Quite a bit of work in that considering all the variations of hardware around, a never ending exercise but one which would also produce some interesting data about the various hardware combinations, what hardware has survived over time and of course what hardware is missing proper Linux support;).
I see you miss the whole western ideal of individualism, of the rights of the individual and in turn the collective rights of all individuals over the rights of the state, especially when the rights of the state are really only the rights of a minority of greed obsessed, power mad, psychopathic individuals hiding behind a nationalistic image of a state.
The rights of an individual and in turn the collective rights of all individuals can be shared across all humanity. Nationalism has been and always will be seen as destructive. It is nothing but self serving camouflage for the failings of a society which the power 'elite'(those crazy, fucked up, psychopaths) hide behind to gain and maintain control over the ignorant masses. That is the real threat and power of the Internet, turning the ignorant masses into the informed masses and the power elite into convicts.
Not that democracies are always working to the benefit of individuals. In fact at the moment, there is a clear cut example of the abuse of the collective rights of individuals by the current US administration working in conjunction with major corporations and mass media, all based upon typical nationalistic lies. So no society is immune from the threat imposed by autocratic sociopaths, screaming nationalistic propaganda whilst they line their own pockets with the profits and blood of their fellow country men. A free and open internet is the best way by which to put those lies to a final well deserved end and put some of the worst criminal behind bars.
All, no thanks to those money grubbing slimy executives hiding behind their corporate façades, like the googlites, the microsofties and the yahoos et al corporate profits over the future of humanity.
I believe you missed the real issue of licence that M$ was trying to foist on schools. It was attempting to make M$ licence compulsory for all students regardless of what computers they were using. Say for example schools decided to use the OLPC computer as it fulfils all the necessary requirements for schools, a low cost durable computer with all the required free software needed and specifically targeted at student education.
So while lazy, cheap teachers get the free windows and M$ office at home they are making everybody else pay for all the student licences even when the student's computers aren't and likely wont be using any M$ software. So it is a straight up lie and to be honest your lie is just that as well. The truth is M$ is not a viable option for school use, where you would have to be paying a licence fee for each and every student for the 12 years that are at school amounting to thousands of dollars added to the cost of public schooling, M$ exploiting children yet again.
As for keyboarding, I used a computer everyday at work no touch typing, basically because I had to shift the keyboard around my work, no set location, no touch typing. So you see everybody on the planet employed as secretaries, computer coders and data input operators. Silly me and I though the OLPC XO laptop was already being used with Linux to effectively teach children in schools and that was the real reason behind the new M$=B$ licensing scheme.
The Nintendo console is different. It is a console that was carefully targeted at the family market, only had the hardware required to achieve that role and combined an effective viral marketing strategy to achieve sales. So M$ was clumsy and stupid basically reflected Ballmer's true lack business abilities and failed, all they really have done is damage their own PC Games business and of course Sony's high end game console (Sony had a chance at a work around but greed and stupidity ended that).
So where would M$ be now if the had invested those xbox losses in windows games instead, games consoles taking games from the windows os really do provide an opportunity for alternate operating systems.
That makes absolutely no sense at all. For by far the majority of people there is no separation between the computer and the operating system. They use what ever operating system the hardware comes with. So for them the operating system is not free, they paid for it with the hardware.
For M$ of course, they spent a considerable amount of time disparaging and attacking the OLPC project and went out of their way to try to destroy it.
If they now want to contribute to it, they should do so openly and honestly for the benefit of the OLPC project and not some pathetic, greed based divisive attack ie. greater profits for them at the expense of the children the OLPC project is trying to help.
They are behaving a disgustingly as they always do, greedy little children, playing with complete disregard to the harm they cause, for once, just once, M$ should work to improve the technological opportunities for disadvantaged people and work to bridge the digital divide.
Ahh, but was it patented, you do know that google supports patent first, just because it was your idea or you invented it, as far as google is concerned, that gives you no right to it, in the great patent gold rush, the first to the patent office doors with their weasel patent lawyers wins. Lie, cheat and steal, it's all just normal modern corporate practice.
The idea is to get as many consoles out there as possible in order for other people to sell games for which M$ charge a licence fee. Loading up the consoles with a profit margin just reduces sales, so yes they are sold at cost or at a loss, in order to promote sales of the units.
The only slippery point of the claimed profit margin is whether it is just for that quarters operating costs or does it include all the prior losses ie. it looks good for fluffing up the share price but does it really reflect reality of the earlier billion dollar loses. Your are never in profit until you have accounted for all the losses.
Non-editable PDFs since when. Are you really saying you can not reproduce an identical edited PDF, and this on a tech forum, seriously. The only copies of the law that should be un-editable are those housed with in the government and of legal government record. To claim distributed PDFs as some sort of secure method of distributing of laws is just so laughable, it is impossible to believe you are serious.
No, it is for all the other government documents. Documents sent out for tender, documents relating to all government communications over the long term, documents produced by various consultants and sent into government. All those documents that go between government departments that are or will be at some time in the future, a matter of public record and accessible.
Not to mention when it comes to producing those documents the government should also be actively seeking the lowest cost, fit for purpose solutions.
Think of the relationships from home web server to home web server, that might help. What ever the finder and linker is becomes arbitrary, as your web identity/presence would be housed on your own appliance. So maintaining facebook or myspace or what ever will be seen as being a pretty lame, corporate puppet and marketing victim, compared to creating your own independent, personally controlled digital existence.
It is all content, the method of creating and sharing content is the only difference. The other big thing, is whether they are your relationships, or just targeted invasive corporate marketing vectors. There is now way, that the old, corporate controlled and manipulated so called "social networks" aren't going to be seen as third world in comparison.
5. Posted an anti blind obedience to authority comment on Slashdot and got tracked back by your IP via the warrant less wire tapping 'un-laws'.
Those numbers just about make sense that way. It's all that mixing and sharing ideas with foreigners. It's all those free thinking intellectuals, they can never be trusted to properly and dutifully fear and obey.
More importantly, M$ investors viewpoint, throwing away $240 million on some whacked business strategy. M$ investors have just one question to ask, how much will that $240 million make this financial year, will it generate any revenue at all or it is some ego driven, game playing stunt with other peoples money.
Ballmer's, "we sold at a loss yesterday, were selling at a loss today, we will continue to sell at a loss in the future, because we are rich and can afford to do so", is starting to were pretty thin.
The only successful strategy that M$ investors should accept from Ballmer is the creation or in reality the resurrection of MSN's own social networking site.
What is it with tech magazines "Especially when $750 million was the going figure for the longest time. In terms of Google's cash flow, a company accountant could trip coming out of the bathroom and drop that much cash." is this journalist on drugs, what ever happened to accountability, or acting responsibly, or even at least making an appearance of management skill and expertise. Shit no wonder the dotbomb period earlier this century and all the resultant SEC prosecutions. Generally you really only see investing like this when there are ulterior motives and management is using less than honest methods to bleed the share holders by buying craptastic companies at grossly inflated prices, either that or just sheer stupidity and desperation.
Why Wisconsin. Sandisk is a californian company is there any reason in the suit why it is filed in Wisconsin. Is there something different in Wisconsin courts, some bias that favours them or some legal requirement.
It simply adds a layer of purposeful confusion when European companies trade with US companies. So at a base level no royalties are paid when trading in the Europe, but when trading in the US a micro royalty might have to be paid. In M$ accepting that rate in the EU it makes it very difficult for then to charge a higher rate in the US.
The really significant part of the story, is that in order for a tech journalist to remain publicly relevant, they have to at least appear to know, understand and 'like' Linux.
Consider the enormous change that has been achieved in terms of acceptability and mind share. Linux is now recognized as being the future universal operating system, to not recognize and acknowledge that, leaves a tech journalist marginalized and redundant in the tech communities public eye.
So regardless of whether or not he is sincere, he is at least accepting and acknowledging the truth of Linux as THE operating system of the twenty first century;).
Why not PDF, one word, interactivity. Any document standard has to reflect the most common uses, a document, a spreadsheet and a data base. For a government in it's interactions with business and the public means that data is not only going out but it is coming in. So the only thing left for a document standard is vector based drawings.
PDF as a government document standard would be, quite simply put, mind bogglingly stupid and completely pointless.
There is nothing 'morally' wrong with sharing ideas, in fact there is everything 'morally' wrong with attempting to block the sharing of ideas regardless of the media used. Censorship enables the worst abusers of humanity to hide, to stay out of the public light, to avoid prosecution and to continue their evil immoral practices.
Infringing copyright does not deny anybody anything, all it does is break the artificial government enforced monopoly. You don't want people to use your ideas, then to be blunt, keep them to your self, we wont mind, honest;).
The big problem is it would have no affect on outside interference. Higher data density results in ever greater data loses due to, lighting, welders, electric motors and power transmission lines. Not to forget the age of the copper network, it's altered molecular structure as well as the affects of weather due to leaky pipes. So solve one problem only to run face first into all the others.
To completely refurbish the copper network in order to make the idea workable you might as well spend that money more effectively on a new FTTH network.
The most obvious thing you pay property taxes for, is the legalized and recognized proof that you in fact own your property, next up of course is access to your property is via public roads, then you have rubbish removal and of course all the administrative and accountability effort behind that. Add of course the cost of managing a democracy, the election stuff, offices, administration. Yeah I know, you only want the benefit of other peoples taxes but not the cost.
Then of course you, I believe you were not born as an adult and as a child made use of many government supplied services for which you didn't pay and are of course now paying for them.
Here is an interesting thought for you, do you believe that the various law enforcement agencies peruse the forums and subject the postings to psychological profiling for possible criminal investigation. At a guess you post would reflect that you don't always 'er' pay your fair share of taxes, exactly when was the last time you were audited;).
So one crazy shoe bomber and a few hundred million shoes latter, how many exploding shoes have they found. So why aren't they strip searching everybody, if it is real, think of bombs in bras and cavity insertions, or at an absolute minimum completely dismantling every electronic component that goes onto a plane, every camera, phone, laptop, pda and media player. Better yet if you can afford to fly you can afford to buy all new stuff at your destination, great for corporate profits and besides, what is wrong with flying naked if you have nothing to hide, hmm.
Nice BS political troll combining the little shoe explosion (which most probably had no room for a foot) with that much larger plane explosion.
So FWit friends of Fred selling fear in 08, so 'SUP', hmm, fear - obey - corporate profits (try changing the letters it is far more truthful). If you are going to do political trolls on/. at least put some geek/nerd word craft into it;).
The real difference between Myspace and facebook. Myspace is already owned by a large mass media company, absolutely no space for a buy in by either google or M$ and of course facebook is basically up for sale to the highest bidder.
The problem with both of these sites in terms of future value, they are simply just a small microcosm of the overall world wide web, doomed to a limited existence. Cheap web serving appliances and IPv6 will be the death of both myspace and facebook.
M$ making the typical Ballmer blunder by buying into a section of the web at inflated prices as it's demise is on the horizon, well, at least to those who have at least some understanding of the changing nature of the internet, as hardware reduces in price, software becomes free and broadband bandwidth grows.
For either google or M$ to buy into facebook is an addmission of their own incompetence in managing their web portals and being unable to create their own desirable virtual community or in the case of both of those companies, to so mismanage their existing virtual communities, that they to lose to relative new comers.
You only buy competitors when you can't compete. As for web advertising dominance, expect a come from behind, old world mass media, fracturing of that business space. They have a depth of expertise, as well as extensive libraries of content. Admittedly slow to the party, which sees them currently behind, but they will leverage their existing media distribution systems to push out and marginalize what is basically just a 'search engine'(google) and an 'OS/office suite'(M$).
Did no one pay attention to how Newscorp sutlely promoted myspace by inserting references to it in their news papers, television shows, cable network and movies (the most interesting targeted ones were references to myspace in Sunday paper cartoons). As well as of course the expected advertising as news articles.
I see it more like a courier. You call a courier, put you package in the van and away it goes travelling down a Comcast owned toll way. Along they way a bunch of Comcast hijackers jump out from behind a bush, pull the van over, grab your package and throw it into a ditch. The van driver informs you your package has been dumped, doesn't tell you exactly why, and you have to call another courier a hope this time the package makes it.
By the way, you get charged each and every time the courier drives on the Comcast toll way, even when the additional traffic is as a result of their, fraudulent actions. The actions are fraudulent because, it is costing you in additional computer time, in additional energy usage, in your lost time and of course additional traffic charges (all traffic counts especially when unlimited, ain't really unlimited).
A lesson for you about the rich and greedy, you don't get that way by giving away your money. Expect them to pay as little as possible, expect them in fact to lie, cheat and steal or when it comes right down to it kill, to make as much money as possible.
So as far as the MPAA were concerned, here was a weasel who had a falling out over an advertising based upon piracy scheme, and was seeking to profit via another method. They paid him as little as possible and because they were aware of the criminal implications of the weasels actions, they wanted no future associations with him, a one shot deal for as much as they could get.
So the evidence is tainted and worthless and the weasel should be prosecuted for gaining illegal access to a network, and if they have a copy of the code for the torrent back end they have committed a copyright infringement.
Consider this, should a warrant be issued for search and seizure, and that search or seizure fails to lead to a prosecution, by logical definition would not that warrant be 'unreasonable' and the oath or affirmation used to obtain the warrant be defamation and bearing false witness.
The real reason for oversight is to place limits upon individuals who get carried away with the power given them and when that power is abused that a warrant be issued for their arrest and prosecution. By avoiding oversight they are simply establishing a system where they are above the law and no longer accountable for their actions, which often have political motivations.
I would think in terms of a constitution, secret warrants would be specifically mentioned in order to be allowed, as the logical basis for a warrant is that it is shown and and acknowledged by all affected parties.
Slashdot Mirror
Now the tool I would like to see, is the creation of a popular distribution that is specifically for your hardware. A website that access your pc hardware specs and fine tunes a distribution specifically for your machine, pay some money, and they send you cd/dvd that will set up an optimum Linux install, no muss, no fuss.
Quite a bit of work in that considering all the variations of hardware around, a never ending exercise but one which would also produce some interesting data about the various hardware combinations, what hardware has survived over time and of course what hardware is missing proper Linux support ;).
The rights of an individual and in turn the collective rights of all individuals can be shared across all humanity. Nationalism has been and always will be seen as destructive. It is nothing but self serving camouflage for the failings of a society which the power 'elite'(those crazy, fucked up, psychopaths) hide behind to gain and maintain control over the ignorant masses. That is the real threat and power of the Internet, turning the ignorant masses into the informed masses and the power elite into convicts.
Not that democracies are always working to the benefit of individuals. In fact at the moment, there is a clear cut example of the abuse of the collective rights of individuals by the current US administration working in conjunction with major corporations and mass media, all based upon typical nationalistic lies. So no society is immune from the threat imposed by autocratic sociopaths, screaming nationalistic propaganda whilst they line their own pockets with the profits and blood of their fellow country men. A free and open internet is the best way by which to put those lies to a final well deserved end and put some of the worst criminal behind bars.
All, no thanks to those money grubbing slimy executives hiding behind their corporate façades, like the googlites, the microsofties and the yahoos et al corporate profits over the future of humanity.
Of course you can create PDF documents with OpenOffice.org and you can read PDFs with a whole range of software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software, so really, what is you point ;).
So while lazy, cheap teachers get the free windows and M$ office at home they are making everybody else pay for all the student licences even when the student's computers aren't and likely wont be using any M$ software. So it is a straight up lie and to be honest your lie is just that as well. The truth is M$ is not a viable option for school use, where you would have to be paying a licence fee for each and every student for the 12 years that are at school amounting to thousands of dollars added to the cost of public schooling, M$ exploiting children yet again.
As for keyboarding, I used a computer everyday at work no touch typing, basically because I had to shift the keyboard around my work, no set location, no touch typing. So you see everybody on the planet employed as secretaries, computer coders and data input operators. Silly me and I though the OLPC XO laptop was already being used with Linux to effectively teach children in schools and that was the real reason behind the new M$=B$ licensing scheme.
So where would M$ be now if the had invested those xbox losses in windows games instead, games consoles taking games from the windows os really do provide an opportunity for alternate operating systems.
For M$ of course, they spent a considerable amount of time disparaging and attacking the OLPC project and went out of their way to try to destroy it.
If they now want to contribute to it, they should do so openly and honestly for the benefit of the OLPC project and not some pathetic, greed based divisive attack ie. greater profits for them at the expense of the children the OLPC project is trying to help.
They are behaving a disgustingly as they always do, greedy little children, playing with complete disregard to the harm they cause, for once, just once, M$ should work to improve the technological opportunities for disadvantaged people and work to bridge the digital divide.
Ahh, but was it patented, you do know that google supports patent first, just because it was your idea or you invented it, as far as google is concerned, that gives you no right to it, in the great patent gold rush, the first to the patent office doors with their weasel patent lawyers wins. Lie, cheat and steal, it's all just normal modern corporate practice.
The only slippery point of the claimed profit margin is whether it is just for that quarters operating costs or does it include all the prior losses ie. it looks good for fluffing up the share price but does it really reflect reality of the earlier billion dollar loses. Your are never in profit until you have accounted for all the losses.
No, it is for all the other government documents. Documents sent out for tender, documents relating to all government communications over the long term, documents produced by various consultants and sent into government. All those documents that go between government departments that are or will be at some time in the future, a matter of public record and accessible.
Not to mention when it comes to producing those documents the government should also be actively seeking the lowest cost, fit for purpose solutions.
It is all content, the method of creating and sharing content is the only difference. The other big thing, is whether they are your relationships, or just targeted invasive corporate marketing vectors. There is now way, that the old, corporate controlled and manipulated so called "social networks" aren't going to be seen as third world in comparison.
So who bloody protects the innocent from the cop. If they person who upholds the law fails to be judged by the law, the you have no justice.
5. Posted an anti blind obedience to authority comment on Slashdot and got tracked back by your IP via the warrant less wire tapping 'un-laws'.
Those numbers just about make sense that way. It's all that mixing and sharing ideas with foreigners. It's all those free thinking intellectuals, they can never be trusted to properly and dutifully fear and obey.
Ballmer's, "we sold at a loss yesterday, were selling at a loss today, we will continue to sell at a loss in the future, because we are rich and can afford to do so", is starting to were pretty thin.
The only successful strategy that M$ investors should accept from Ballmer is the creation or in reality the resurrection of MSN's own social networking site.
What is it with tech magazines "Especially when $750 million was the going figure for the longest time. In terms of Google's cash flow, a company accountant could trip coming out of the bathroom and drop that much cash." is this journalist on drugs, what ever happened to accountability, or acting responsibly, or even at least making an appearance of management skill and expertise. Shit no wonder the dotbomb period earlier this century and all the resultant SEC prosecutions. Generally you really only see investing like this when there are ulterior motives and management is using less than honest methods to bleed the share holders by buying craptastic companies at grossly inflated prices, either that or just sheer stupidity and desperation.
Why Wisconsin. Sandisk is a californian company is there any reason in the suit why it is filed in Wisconsin. Is there something different in Wisconsin courts, some bias that favours them or some legal requirement.
It simply adds a layer of purposeful confusion when European companies trade with US companies. So at a base level no royalties are paid when trading in the Europe, but when trading in the US a micro royalty might have to be paid. In M$ accepting that rate in the EU it makes it very difficult for then to charge a higher rate in the US.
Consider the enormous change that has been achieved in terms of acceptability and mind share. Linux is now recognized as being the future universal operating system, to not recognize and acknowledge that, leaves a tech journalist marginalized and redundant in the tech communities public eye.
So regardless of whether or not he is sincere, he is at least accepting and acknowledging the truth of Linux as THE operating system of the twenty first century ;).
PDF as a government document standard would be, quite simply put, mind bogglingly stupid and completely pointless.
Infringing copyright does not deny anybody anything, all it does is break the artificial government enforced monopoly. You don't want people to use your ideas, then to be blunt, keep them to your self, we wont mind, honest ;).
To completely refurbish the copper network in order to make the idea workable you might as well spend that money more effectively on a new FTTH network.
Then of course you, I believe you were not born as an adult and as a child made use of many government supplied services for which you didn't pay and are of course now paying for them.
Here is an interesting thought for you, do you believe that the various law enforcement agencies peruse the forums and subject the postings to psychological profiling for possible criminal investigation. At a guess you post would reflect that you don't always 'er' pay your fair share of taxes, exactly when was the last time you were audited ;).
Nice BS political troll combining the little shoe explosion (which most probably had no room for a foot) with that much larger plane explosion.
So FWit friends of Fred selling fear in 08, so 'SUP', hmm, fear - obey - corporate profits (try changing the letters it is far more truthful). If you are going to do political trolls on /. at least put some geek/nerd word craft into it ;).
The problem with both of these sites in terms of future value, they are simply just a small microcosm of the overall world wide web, doomed to a limited existence. Cheap web serving appliances and IPv6 will be the death of both myspace and facebook.
M$ making the typical Ballmer blunder by buying into a section of the web at inflated prices as it's demise is on the horizon, well, at least to those who have at least some understanding of the changing nature of the internet, as hardware reduces in price, software becomes free and broadband bandwidth grows.
For either google or M$ to buy into facebook is an addmission of their own incompetence in managing their web portals and being unable to create their own desirable virtual community or in the case of both of those companies, to so mismanage their existing virtual communities, that they to lose to relative new comers.
You only buy competitors when you can't compete. As for web advertising dominance, expect a come from behind, old world mass media, fracturing of that business space. They have a depth of expertise, as well as extensive libraries of content. Admittedly slow to the party, which sees them currently behind, but they will leverage their existing media distribution systems to push out and marginalize what is basically just a 'search engine'(google) and an 'OS/office suite'(M$).
Did no one pay attention to how Newscorp sutlely promoted myspace by inserting references to it in their news papers, television shows, cable network and movies (the most interesting targeted ones were references to myspace in Sunday paper cartoons). As well as of course the expected advertising as news articles.
By the way, you get charged each and every time the courier drives on the Comcast toll way, even when the additional traffic is as a result of their, fraudulent actions. The actions are fraudulent because, it is costing you in additional computer time, in additional energy usage, in your lost time and of course additional traffic charges (all traffic counts especially when unlimited, ain't really unlimited).
So as far as the MPAA were concerned, here was a weasel who had a falling out over an advertising based upon piracy scheme, and was seeking to profit via another method. They paid him as little as possible and because they were aware of the criminal implications of the weasels actions, they wanted no future associations with him, a one shot deal for as much as they could get.
So the evidence is tainted and worthless and the weasel should be prosecuted for gaining illegal access to a network, and if they have a copy of the code for the torrent back end they have committed a copyright infringement.
The real reason for oversight is to place limits upon individuals who get carried away with the power given them and when that power is abused that a warrant be issued for their arrest and prosecution. By avoiding oversight they are simply establishing a system where they are above the law and no longer accountable for their actions, which often have political motivations.
I would think in terms of a constitution, secret warrants would be specifically mentioned in order to be allowed, as the logical basis for a warrant is that it is shown and and acknowledged by all affected parties.