Bellsouth and Verizon will be filing suit claiming it's unconstitutional restraint of trade. While reminding the Republican lawmakers that Bellsouth's 26 person lobbying firm on K Street funnels millions of dollars to them to stop exactly this kind of unfavorable legislation.
And before you pipe up and say they also give money to Democrats, take a look and their reports. Bellsouth's lobbying is overwhelmingly favorable to Republicans. The best party money can buy.
Cisco and companies that develop for MSFT platforms. What conclusion did you think they were going to reach? Every school that installs F/OSS is lost business for them. It's like expecting the Beef Council to run an Eat Chicken campaign.
Heaven forbid any of these companies would have to take their gravy train product line and port it to another platform. *shudder* That would mean actually working for living! What are you, a Democrat? I bet you don't even have a gardener, do you?
Ha! Turnabout is fair play. MY NAME IS JOHN SMITH AND I WAS REFERRED TO YOU BY A CLOSE FRIEND...FOR YOUR PART WE WOULD PAY YOU 30 BILLION(s) IN RUPEES...
Hehe. Come on, let's get started! How do you say "penis pills" in Hindi?
Do we really need that massive bureaucracy anymore? Look at what Scaled Composites is doing with a fraction of their budget. I think NASA needs to survive in some form, perhaps as more of a specialized contract administrator. Or the FAA for space. Someone needs to coordinate all that junk zooming around in orbit.
I'm just wondering if the only way we're ever going to achieve practical space travel is to put it in the hands of the private side. Not necessarily corporate hands but private industry. It's sort of like if DARPA was still trying to run the internet. It's outgrown their mission. Perhaps space travel has outgrown NASA.
NASA has the same problems any big government agency has. They feel they have a right to exist instead of earning that right. They're top heavy, really top heavy and most times they the problem is dictating the solution. They're also too prone to political pressure because of their need for legislative funding. We could make really safe space widget but the company that makes them now is in Congressman X's district and he's on the apporpriations panel. So they keep using the unsafe widget because of politics.
I'm just not sure the NASA model works anymore. Perhaps it's time to rethink the way we manage the space industry.
Unfortunately, we still have the old Fascists, the democrats who want to tag and follow everyone...
What they may or may not want to do is beside the real point which is the Republicans are the ones actually doing it right now.
The Replublicans are the guilty ones and if you support them, then you are as well.
Considering they would wiretap innocent Americans without a warrant, run secret prisons in soviet bloc countries, rig elections, award no-bid government contracts to their friends, invade Iraq on false pretences and loot the federal budget....how does a CD that phones home compare to that? If you're so far gone that you still support the Republican party, then a CD is not going to change your mind.
The few hundred bucks per machine that they're charging over Windows doesn't come close to paying the bill of the support that the "average" computer users would need if they actually bought these things.
Then charge extra for a Linux service contract then farm it out to a company that knows what it's doing. You could even sell different levels of service, everything up to remote hand-holding. Then you could turn that expense frown upside down.
So if Dell could either A) not provide service or B) charge extra for it...then what's their excuse for not offering it? Interesting question. And once we have the answer to that question made public, then we'll really see the walls come tumblin' down.
But this is only one tier of corruption. We haven't even started on the pressure MSFT puts on software development companies. And I'd bet there was more pressure there than the OEM's. Because an OEM couldn't sell a machine that didn't have popular software titles available.
Then there's pressure on government. MSFT is like a 7 headed dragon. It doesn't ever attack in just one direction.
It might. If he reasonably felt Diebold had committed a felony or that a felony was about to take place, then he could get in just as much trouble for not reporting it.
The L.A. County prosecutor is the one who should be tossed in jail for charging someone trying to stick up for honest elections. What the hell are they thinking? Since when has undermining Democracy become part of his job description?
Otherwise anyone protesting crooked elections will be labeled mentally incompetent and sent to "re-education" camp in GITMO for daring to cross the evil lord Cheney. This is only one small step away.
How long until Google Base is directly competing with eBay? The framework is now in place.
If Google treats sellers well, they'll be jumping ship from eBay in packs. I'm guessing eBay will lighten up on their sellers and the new equilibrium will be sellers using both services.
Competition is a good thing. More outlets for sellers is more business, also a good thing. I'd use Google before Amazon.
If you buy in to the theory that MSFT funded the SCO follies in part because they wanted to slow the adoption of Linux in light of the delay in fielding Vista, then it's only sweet that IBM would be dropping on Redmond in time for MSFT's dirty laundry to get a good airing in court before the big roll out this fall.
The legality of such indexing remains questionable, however this has not deterred copyright enforcement actions.
And why should something silly like "legal" get in the way of a good enforcement action? Hey, if the president can wiretap Americans at will without a warrant, then what's the problem with confiscating a few servers and taking a business offline?
Bunch of left wing, tree hugging whiners if you ask me. Next you'll be spouting some dribble about voting in honest elections and representative government. Give those lefties an inch and they'll run this god-fearing nation right into the ground.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is unhappy with the existing propaganda systems in place and insists that the US must create a 'more effective, 24-hour propaganda machine' or risk losing the battle for the minds of Muslims.
I think it's pretty safe to say we already lost that battle. Here are a few suggestions, which you'll continue to ignore:
Get rid of GITMO and prosecute everyone, including the vice president, for what happened at Abu Ghraib. You claim people hate us for our freedom out of one side of your face and run secret prisons and military tribunals out of the other. Don't say one thing and do another.
Make alternate energy the primary front on the war on terror. Which you should have done the day after 9-11. Let American ingenuity work on that problem and in 10 years we could kiss off foreign oil.
Saudia Arabia is the biggest source of terrorists and terror financing. Stop holding hands with the biggest enemies we have outside the US.
Stop spying on Americans. If al-Qeida is calling someone in the US, why are you pinpointing where the call is coming from and sending some mofo's to pop a cap in their ass? We don't want to monitor terrorists, we don't give a crap about understanding them, just f***ing kill them. Got it? Bang. Dead. That should be simple enough even for Bush to understand.
We can't win this on our own. We need the cooperation of foreign governments and that means not acting like the global dickwad.
Unfortunately, the right wing's stupidity got us into this but it isn't going to get us out.
That's the ultimate end result. Adobe and friends will trumpet that you can install it on as many computers as you wish because only one person can make it work. They started long ago by attacking your right of first sale. If you don't own software, you can't sell it to someone else.
You don't need this to secure documents. There are already nice products like TrueCrypt available that let you encrypt a volume and even create hidden volumes within. If someone steals your PC or laptop, they get nothing but the hardware.
It's not entirely about DRM, though. I'd bet there are still more "features" we haven't been told about. If that system can track who reads a document, it can also be used to figure out who visited a web page or who originated an email. Count on it, that's what this is really about. Taking away the remaining shreds of anonimity that's left on the internet. There will likely be some upside to that. Stolen hardware will be easier to locate, as will trojaned spam bots. You'll be able to access software online with reasonable assurance that no one else can get to your stuff. But, overall, we're all going to get dicked.
And it will keep happening until those companies implement something like this and experience a giant decrease in sales. Like Sony and rootkit follies.
I suppose I'm the only person who thought that said penis-sized color scanner. It was a boggle trying to figure out why that would be the unit of measure and who would calculate the standard.
You could spin that out to suggest there was a replica at some government office, made out of titanium or something, that was the internationally recognized standard. That could help out anyone getting caught with a vibrator in their desk. They could simply explain that was their 1.0 reference standard. Think of it as a ruler.
I bet Bill O'Reilly wishes he would have thought of that now, huh?
We all went about our business knowing the world was going to end some day but not really sure how or when. All the fear, the paranoia about nukes, religous zealots and in the end it was some grad student dicking around making protein sequences online. He designed a super virus, just to see if he could do it, not really intending to actually manufacture it. Then there was a mix up at the lab....
Well, I guess we can declare the war on terrorism over if Homeland Security agents have this much time on their hands.
I voting against every Republican incumbent on the ballot this fall. Maybe the only message we can send is "throw the bums out" but if I have anything to do with it, they'll damn sure get that message.
A federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to release records related to the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic spying program by March 8, or else explain the legal basis under which the records cannot be released.
The Gonzales will just give him the same tripe they've been spouting on TV. Constitution, use of force authorization, blah, blah, blah. The Bush administration isn't going to let some piddly little district court judge push them around. Especially when they've managed to load the Supreme Kangaroo Court with their cronnies.
They'll claim it's necessary for "security" and there will be a 5 to 4 vote overturning the order and they'll go right back to doing whatever the hell they feel like. This will only further demonstrate how little the current administration values the rule of law. And if you haven't figured that out by now, you're never going to. For rest of us it will simply be one more razor slash on the Constitution.
And the open source ERP sytem that's kicking SAP's ass would be what?
Depends on what space you're talking about, but generally if you want to see SAP or Siebel reps grind their teeth start talking expansively about SugarCRM.
I don't know who you are talking to, but I personally never voted for anything to do with Microsoft.
Bravo. I began the transition a little later than you at the end of the Windows 2000 era. I was using the royal "you" in that context, or "ya'll" as we say around here. Knowing there are a great many people like yourself, particularly here at/., who have gleefully and intelligently (IMHO) left MSFT behind long ago. It's very liberating, I encourage more people to try it.
It's difficult to draw a razor sharp line between business and politics in some instances. Particularly when large businesses, like MSFT and the RIAA member companies, spend so much time and money trying to legislate their business interests. What we get is this weird blend of PR spin, politics and business advocacy groups that are, in many cases, taking over our national dialogue. Usually to the detriment of the rest of us.
MSFT was successful at getting the software world at large to buy in to product activation, but I'm not at all certain RIAA is going to be as effective in their efforts. Although they have been quite successufl in equating infringement with stealing, even though they are quite different concepts.
I just love it when CEO's from companies producing large, expensive, proprietary data systems start throwing rocks at OSS because it's immature. When I hear that my internal babelfish translates it like so, "We're getting our ass kicked by some open source product so we have to frame the discussion in a way our customers can justify spending thousands more than is really necesary."
Well, it may be immature but it's not bloated or overly complex. And it doesn't cost a fortune to implement or require expensive hardware or expensive training for how to customize their proprietary business objects or require any of the monstrous administrative overhead systems like Siebel demand.
Maybe you should focus on making your product a value proposition instead of trying to run down open source. If you did more of that then maybe your crapass product wouldn't be getting the snot kicked out of it. Funny how big government and big business start thinking they have a right to exist instead of earning their living like everyone else.
...what MSFT has already done. RIAA is trying to implment the same type system for music that MSFT was able to successfully employ for software. They're angling for product activation. Where you activate your music content before it will play on a device.
Why is that so far fetched? You went along with it for software and they're using the same basic talking points. It'll cut down on piracy and everyone will enjoy lower prices on music. And if you believe that I have a bridge in San Francisco you can buy cheap. MSFT increased their prices in the wake of product activation, so will the music industry.
And while RIAA's running the propaganda campaign in the media they're quietly sinking millions into lobbying efforts to get the few in Congress they don't already own, like Orin Hatch, to go along with what they want.
You put up with it in software, you voted for the people selling you out to corporate lobbyists. I realize this will be an unpopular point, but you get what you tolerate.
When you're learning about how to handle firearms, drive a car, invest in stocks, skydive--pratically anything that involves risk, the you're *always* taught how do those activities safely and in accordance with the law.
Perhaps we should take that money and invest in "re-education" camps instead. Then, when we find someone not operating their vehicle correctly, sharing copyright material on P2P networks or saying bad things about our glorious, lawyer-shooting leaders then we could send them to the camp for a little remedial education. When they demonstrate proper thinking toward copyright issues we could integrate them back into society. With a proper monitoring program, of course.
You're absolutely right, we should use education to keep the populace in line and give thanks to our glorious politikal leaders every day.
These kinds of roadblocks will only frustrate the average consumer more.
Honestly, I don't think the average consumer understands much beyond the power switch. They'll go to Worst Buy or Short-Circuit City and ask if this or that computer plays HD movies. And that may be giving them too much credit. They might ask if it plays "the new type movies" that their friend has. DRM will annoy the sophisticated user, like those of us here, far more than the average user.
How is this any different than MSFT's product activation? There was major pissing and moaning about that but MSFT profits are still up and the average user barely noticed any difference. I noticed a big difference because I switched to Linux and OpenOffice near the end of the Windows 2000 era. So, for me, in an odd way, MSFT product activation greatly improved my PC experience. Hehe.
Every time corporations work together to try and control the user experience, the more they'll open the door for alternatives. More evidence that a rich man will sell you the rope you use to hang him.
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Brilliant!
And before you pipe up and say they also give money to Democrats, take a look and their reports. Bellsouth's lobbying is overwhelmingly favorable to Republicans. The best party money can buy.
Heaven forbid any of these companies would have to take their gravy train product line and port it to another platform. *shudder* That would mean actually working for living! What are you, a Democrat? I bet you don't even have a gardener, do you?
- XP is the most secure os we've ever fielded
- Vista will be the most secure os we've ever fielded
and now
- Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months
Uh-huh. *snicker*
Hehe. Come on, let's get started! How do you say "penis pills" in Hindi?
I'm just wondering if the only way we're ever going to achieve practical space travel is to put it in the hands of the private side. Not necessarily corporate hands but private industry. It's sort of like if DARPA was still trying to run the internet. It's outgrown their mission. Perhaps space travel has outgrown NASA.
NASA has the same problems any big government agency has. They feel they have a right to exist instead of earning that right. They're top heavy, really top heavy and most times they the problem is dictating the solution. They're also too prone to political pressure because of their need for legislative funding. We could make really safe space widget but the company that makes them now is in Congressman X's district and he's on the apporpriations panel. So they keep using the unsafe widget because of politics.
I'm just not sure the NASA model works anymore. Perhaps it's time to rethink the way we manage the space industry.
What they may or may not want to do is beside the real point which is the Republicans are the ones actually doing it right now.
The Replublicans are the guilty ones and if you support them, then you are as well.
Considering they would wiretap innocent Americans without a warrant, run secret prisons in soviet bloc countries, rig elections, award no-bid government contracts to their friends, invade Iraq on false pretences and loot the federal budget....how does a CD that phones home compare to that? If you're so far gone that you still support the Republican party, then a CD is not going to change your mind.
Then charge extra for a Linux service contract then farm it out to a company that knows what it's doing. You could even sell different levels of service, everything up to remote hand-holding. Then you could turn that expense frown upside down.
So if Dell could either A) not provide service or B) charge extra for it...then what's their excuse for not offering it? Interesting question. And once we have the answer to that question made public, then we'll really see the walls come tumblin' down.
But this is only one tier of corruption. We haven't even started on the pressure MSFT puts on software development companies. And I'd bet there was more pressure there than the OEM's. Because an OEM couldn't sell a machine that didn't have popular software titles available.
Then there's pressure on government. MSFT is like a 7 headed dragon. It doesn't ever attack in just one direction.
The L.A. County prosecutor is the one who should be tossed in jail for charging someone trying to stick up for honest elections. What the hell are they thinking? Since when has undermining Democracy become part of his job description?
Otherwise anyone protesting crooked elections will be labeled mentally incompetent and sent to "re-education" camp in GITMO for daring to cross the evil lord Cheney. This is only one small step away.
If Google treats sellers well, they'll be jumping ship from eBay in packs. I'm guessing eBay will lighten up on their sellers and the new equilibrium will be sellers using both services.
Competition is a good thing. More outlets for sellers is more business, also a good thing. I'd use Google before Amazon.
Talk about a turd in the punch bowl. Hehe.
And why should something silly like "legal" get in the way of a good enforcement action? Hey, if the president can wiretap Americans at will without a warrant, then what's the problem with confiscating a few servers and taking a business offline?
Bunch of left wing, tree hugging whiners if you ask me. Next you'll be spouting some dribble about voting in honest elections and representative government. Give those lefties an inch and they'll run this god-fearing nation right into the ground.
With our powers of surprise, fear and...what was that other one?
I think it's pretty safe to say we already lost that battle. Here are a few suggestions, which you'll continue to ignore:
Unfortunately, the right wing's stupidity got us into this but it isn't going to get us out.
You don't need this to secure documents. There are already nice products like TrueCrypt available that let you encrypt a volume and even create hidden volumes within. If someone steals your PC or laptop, they get nothing but the hardware.
It's not entirely about DRM, though. I'd bet there are still more "features" we haven't been told about. If that system can track who reads a document, it can also be used to figure out who visited a web page or who originated an email. Count on it, that's what this is really about. Taking away the remaining shreds of anonimity that's left on the internet. There will likely be some upside to that. Stolen hardware will be easier to locate, as will trojaned spam bots. You'll be able to access software online with reasonable assurance that no one else can get to your stuff. But, overall, we're all going to get dicked.
And it will keep happening until those companies implement something like this and experience a giant decrease in sales. Like Sony and rootkit follies.
I suppose I'm the only person who thought that said penis-sized color scanner. It was a boggle trying to figure out why that would be the unit of measure and who would calculate the standard.
You could spin that out to suggest there was a replica at some government office, made out of titanium or something, that was the internationally recognized standard. That could help out anyone getting caught with a vibrator in their desk. They could simply explain that was their 1.0 reference standard. Think of it as a ruler.
I bet Bill O'Reilly wishes he would have thought of that now, huh?
We all went about our business knowing the world was going to end some day but not really sure how or when. All the fear, the paranoia about nukes, religous zealots and in the end it was some grad student dicking around making protein sequences online. He designed a super virus, just to see if he could do it, not really intending to actually manufacture it. Then there was a mix up at the lab....
I voting against every Republican incumbent on the ballot this fall. Maybe the only message we can send is "throw the bums out" but if I have anything to do with it, they'll damn sure get that message.
The Gonzales will just give him the same tripe they've been spouting on TV. Constitution, use of force authorization, blah, blah, blah. The Bush administration isn't going to let some piddly little district court judge push them around. Especially when they've managed to load the Supreme Kangaroo Court with their cronnies.
They'll claim it's necessary for "security" and there will be a 5 to 4 vote overturning the order and they'll go right back to doing whatever the hell they feel like. This will only further demonstrate how little the current administration values the rule of law. And if you haven't figured that out by now, you're never going to. For rest of us it will simply be one more razor slash on the Constitution.
Depends on what space you're talking about, but generally if you want to see SAP or Siebel reps grind their teeth start talking expansively about SugarCRM.
Bravo. I began the transition a little later than you at the end of the Windows 2000 era. I was using the royal "you" in that context, or "ya'll" as we say around here. Knowing there are a great many people like yourself, particularly here at /., who have gleefully and intelligently (IMHO) left MSFT behind long ago. It's very liberating, I encourage more people to try it.
It's difficult to draw a razor sharp line between business and politics in some instances. Particularly when large businesses, like MSFT and the RIAA member companies, spend so much time and money trying to legislate their business interests. What we get is this weird blend of PR spin, politics and business advocacy groups that are, in many cases, taking over our national dialogue. Usually to the detriment of the rest of us.
MSFT was successful at getting the software world at large to buy in to product activation, but I'm not at all certain RIAA is going to be as effective in their efforts. Although they have been quite successufl in equating infringement with stealing, even though they are quite different concepts.
Well, it may be immature but it's not bloated or overly complex. And it doesn't cost a fortune to implement or require expensive hardware or expensive training for how to customize their proprietary business objects or require any of the monstrous administrative overhead systems like Siebel demand.
Maybe you should focus on making your product a value proposition instead of trying to run down open source. If you did more of that then maybe your crapass product wouldn't be getting the snot kicked out of it. Funny how big government and big business start thinking they have a right to exist instead of earning their living like everyone else.
Why is that so far fetched? You went along with it for software and they're using the same basic talking points. It'll cut down on piracy and everyone will enjoy lower prices on music. And if you believe that I have a bridge in San Francisco you can buy cheap. MSFT increased their prices in the wake of product activation, so will the music industry.
And while RIAA's running the propaganda campaign in the media they're quietly sinking millions into lobbying efforts to get the few in Congress they don't already own, like Orin Hatch, to go along with what they want.
You put up with it in software, you voted for the people selling you out to corporate lobbyists. I realize this will be an unpopular point, but you get what you tolerate.
Perhaps we should take that money and invest in "re-education" camps instead. Then, when we find someone not operating their vehicle correctly, sharing copyright material on P2P networks or saying bad things about our glorious, lawyer-shooting leaders then we could send them to the camp for a little remedial education. When they demonstrate proper thinking toward copyright issues we could integrate them back into society. With a proper monitoring program, of course.
You're absolutely right, we should use education to keep the populace in line and give thanks to our glorious politikal leaders every day.
Honestly, I don't think the average consumer understands much beyond the power switch. They'll go to Worst Buy or Short-Circuit City and ask if this or that computer plays HD movies. And that may be giving them too much credit. They might ask if it plays "the new type movies" that their friend has. DRM will annoy the sophisticated user, like those of us here, far more than the average user.
How is this any different than MSFT's product activation? There was major pissing and moaning about that but MSFT profits are still up and the average user barely noticed any difference. I noticed a big difference because I switched to Linux and OpenOffice near the end of the Windows 2000 era. So, for me, in an odd way, MSFT product activation greatly improved my PC experience. Hehe.
Every time corporations work together to try and control the user experience, the more they'll open the door for alternatives. More evidence that a rich man will sell you the rope you use to hang him.