This garbage mindset where we try to turn good business practice into a call for machiavellian maneuvering is absurd. Unfortunately, the poor logical education that we get in the US has our president seeing WMD where there are none, and is lowering our defenses against the political wolves who continually run US businesses down.
I'm mostly a product of that education, and I'd say that education, or lack thereof, is not the current president's problem. His problem lies in the fact that he's blinded by his beliefs (not necessarily or solely religious, although that is quite evident as well). Self-delusion has nothing to do with education. Even brilliant minds can be self-deluded (although I'm definitely not making that case in relation to the president! )
"True innovation would render all of this legal schmegal bullshit a total waste of time."
I would almost agree with you on this point.
But let's say there is a better product available and an computer manufacturer wants to include it as a pre installed option.
Well, there was at least one better system. The one that prompted MS to release the Cairo specs something like 4 years before its intended release (OS/2 for those that don't remember or even know). The Cairo specs are still not realized, and now Longhorn is the new "Cairo", and MS's current OS still only has a fraction of the built-in capabilities of OS/2 in 92/93. (Hey, playing a C&C game with full sound on an OS/2 system was pretty darn cool as you could dynamically switch between window and full screen, and read your email while you were waiting for things to build:).
Of course, then there was the other system, Apple, which is much better constructed, but for some mysterious reason, for a while there, there was no ability for an Apple system to support MS Office files, which seemed to be popping up from everywhere. (Actually, this last issue made OS/2 a non-viable OS for general office use as well - Office 97 finally broke OS/2's capability to run Office products in a VM by asking for an address at the 2GB range, OS/2's Windows engine was limited to 512MB)
...but I stand in complete awe of their ability to succeed, regardless of the circumstances. Despite doing many things "wrong" according to/. users, Microsoft has in fact played their cards right in a lot of ways....
Hmm, Capone, by your reasoning, played his "cards" right in a lot of ways despite doing many things "wrong"... blah blah blah....
Seriously, knee-capping your competitors via tying products together, first via exclusivity contracts with PC makers that stood way too long, then by using the momentum gathered from those exclusivity contracts to undermine your competitors by creating "bad" access API's which you ignored so your aps performed "better", and then finally tying orthogonal applications to squeeze out your competitors in those areas.... Not to mention the outright stolen IP they used in several cases (well documented, but left my links at home...)
Are you beginning to see why MS has prospered by doing wrong yet? And that the only thing that they've succeeded at outside those initial exclusivity contracts, which were legal at the time as they were NOT a monopoly, has been definably illegal although not prosecuted beyond wrist slapping for fear of opening the door to competitors outside the US? However, the recent emergence of Linux as an alternative desktop system is most likely the greatest threat MS has ever faced, and my opinion is that it will lead to their downfall from their current monopoly status, probably sooner than later. I don't think they're going to get Longhorn out the door in time.
This would only be true if MS weren't a de facto monopoly. By your reasoning, AT&T would still be charging you $3/min to call outside your 5 mile zone, Standard Oil would be your only oil company, provided there would be a true road system, because the railroads might still be your only transportation....
I would rather that MS unbundle, rather than have more crap bundled. Let's see, WMP already is the source of several major security holes, why would I want to bundle more potential security holes by default?
Seriously, less is more, sometimes. Besides, I use other products to play/view/edit my multimedia files, thank you.
Some games I think a dual monitor setup would be awesome. Think any RTS game where the play field is shrunk because of the "instrumentation" or the like, with dual monitors, a lot of this could go to the second monitor. I think it'd be even cooler if you could decide what components went over to the second screen, and only keep those items most important to you on the play field screen. Or, have both the current and a completely non-instrumented view in the second.
I don't think that just spanning the entire screen shot across 2 monitors would be helpful in any way though. Even with LCDs, the break caused by the frames would be somewhat irritating, to me at least. Then again, even the mesh lines on Trinitron monitors are annoying to me, so I may be just a bit more sensitive to those types of things.
As for dual monitors in general, initially I thought why have duals? Just get one bigger better monitor. Now having worked with duals for about 2 years, I love this setup, and would rather have 2 slightly less capable monitors instead of one slightly bigger monitor. Being able to see a full web page and do something else in another screen related to it is way more helpful than switching between two window frames. There are many other instances where dual monitors are useful as well, and I even span both sometimes, although the application I use when doing that is amenable to doing that (eclipse).
CO2 is only one polluting by-product, and not nearly the most important one. Try all the other sulfur-based oxides and nitrous compounds, along with the various hydro-carbon compounds a normal car exhausts. Without those, our air will be much cleaner, even if the amount of CO2 remains constant.
I played this for a while... BORING. Seriously, the game all about wasting your RT while waiting for stuff to populate. There was no true "quest" (false advertising, anyone?) as all quests were about sit here, kill kill kill, finally collect piece, go there (usually a 20+ min trip) kill kill kill kill, finally see a piece pop and have someone come in and steal the kill, bitch moan and complain, kill kill kill.... kill kill kill yeah - finally got piece #2 of 4 after 6 days....
You get the picture. Very little real gameplay, and I love those folks who say the class balance is a joke. It is, but not for the reasons they think. (rather than post an extremely long explanation, I'd rather let this assertion stand, with the single exception of stating that a high level wizard should be able to flat out kill just about any single opponent immediately, and have a chance to with the rest. Of course, getting away might be a problem when you can do no more magic....;)
ethics and religion are not one and the same, fortunately. Currently, people who shouldn't have babies still have them: think immature teen-agers that don't understand what happened, rapists and their victims, female crack addicts, etc.
From an ethics standpoint, none of these should have children (teen-agers described above didn't want or even know about children, aren't able to take care of them even if they do have them, rapists certainly don't deserve children, female crack addicts are certainly not providing a good environment for the baby to be...)
Due to religion, however, people think babies are a divine gift, or something for <insert religious diety here> to be the sole decider of, and therefore there are few, if any, laws regulating this.
I know this isn't exactly a popular topic...but at some risk, I post this anyways. I'm surely not advocating anything here, for those that like to read too much in between the lines. Merely stating some facts and observances.
AMD comes out with a nice 64 bit CPU, Intel takes their highest end 32bit CPU, repackages it for a desktop, at twice the price, and barely competes.
AMD's 64 bit solution looks to beat the pants off of Itanium... Intel's statement that they're working on an x86 64 bit CPU says everything we need to know.
Sun partners with AMD - smartest move they could have made, especially if they jointly develop the next generation of AMD CPUs. Can we say massively SMP processing added to a fast core?
it's only a matter of time before someone does clone a human. There's nothing mysterious or exceptionally difficult about it as compared to cloning sheep, cows, horses, etc.
The ethical questions are something else entirely, due to the fact that at this time, there's no way to relibaly bring forth healthy clones (most have some sort of genetic defect).
There's also a general misconception that a clone will be just like the clonee. Something that's extremely unlikely, just look at identical twins.
No, I don't. And Comcast does worry about apparently compromised computers, as I got a notice the one time I mistakenly hooked up an NT server directly to the network to download AV software updates... whoops. Took them about all of 2 hours to notify me, as apparently I got infected within seconds....
I hope Comcast cleans it up as well. I'm sick of lamo crap like the Lion King et al that's come out lately. Bring back more of the classic animation and true storylines with multiple layers of interest, less flat celine dion tripe driven directionless storylines! (Shrek and Monsters Inc, for example, had multiple layers of complexity and were excellent.)
As for hiding age-innappropriate stuff, that was years ago, and only a select few knew about it until the advent of DVDs and perfect still frames. I'm sure after the embarrassment, Disney now painstackingly goes through the final cut frame by frame (or I would, if I were them).
They're going to have to enable multi-cast on the majority of systems before that can happen. Turns out MS's TCPIP stack doesn't handle multi-casting very well... surprise surprise... and, best of all, MS doesn't believe it needs to be fixed, just like "640K should be enough for anyone" - from the ever visionary Bill Gates himself.
If you're getting spammed, it's your own fault. I've had 4 email addresses in use at comcast for over 3 years now (well, attbi.com first) and I only get about 1 true spam message a month on all 4 accounts.
...thats upto 25% of that persons monthly salary!!!
And still you complain they sell it for cheap???
Yes. It's not a percentage issue, but a total cost issue.
If the costs were the same, 1 of 2 things would happen: either labor costs would go up, or there would be fewer workers available, as there would be fewer "trained" workers out there. Either one would be better for the world economy than the discounted system currently in place which promotes an unfair playing field and effectively torpedoes those who do not get the "discount".
Management's means for proving they add value 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time they're held by actual worker types, they're short, and things get accomplished.
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Well, there was at least one better system. The one that prompted MS to release the Cairo specs something like 4 years before its intended release (OS/2 for those that don't remember or even know). The Cairo specs are still not realized, and now Longhorn is the new "Cairo", and MS's current OS still only has a fraction of the built-in capabilities of OS/2 in 92/93. (Hey, playing a C&C game with full sound on an OS/2 system was pretty darn cool as you could dynamically switch between window and full screen, and read your email while you were waiting for things to build:).
Of course, then there was the other system, Apple, which is much better constructed, but for some mysterious reason, for a while there, there was no ability for an Apple system to support MS Office files, which seemed to be popping up from everywhere. (Actually, this last issue made OS/2 a non-viable OS for general office use as well - Office 97 finally broke OS/2's capability to run Office products in a VM by asking for an address at the 2GB range, OS/2's Windows engine was limited to 512MB)
Hmm, Capone, by your reasoning, played his "cards" right in a lot of ways despite doing many things "wrong"... blah blah blah....
Seriously, knee-capping your competitors via tying products together, first via exclusivity contracts with PC makers that stood way too long, then by using the momentum gathered from those exclusivity contracts to undermine your competitors by creating "bad" access API's which you ignored so your aps performed "better", and then finally tying orthogonal applications to squeeze out your competitors in those areas.... Not to mention the outright stolen IP they used in several cases (well documented, but left my links at home...)Are you beginning to see why MS has prospered by doing wrong yet? And that the only thing that they've succeeded at outside those initial exclusivity contracts, which were legal at the time as they were NOT a monopoly, has been definably illegal although not prosecuted beyond wrist slapping for fear of opening the door to competitors outside the US? However, the recent emergence of Linux as an alternative desktop system is most likely the greatest threat MS has ever faced, and my opinion is that it will lead to their downfall from their current monopoly status, probably sooner than later. I don't think they're going to get Longhorn out the door in time.
This would only be true if MS weren't a de facto monopoly. By your reasoning, AT&T would still be charging you $3/min to call outside your 5 mile zone, Standard Oil would be your only oil company, provided there would be a true road system, because the railroads might still be your only transportation....
I would rather that MS unbundle, rather than have more crap bundled. Let's see, WMP already is the source of several major security holes, why would I want to bundle more potential security holes by default?
Seriously, less is more, sometimes. Besides, I use other products to play/view/edit my multimedia files, thank you.Some games I think a dual monitor setup would be awesome. Think any RTS game where the play field is shrunk because of the "instrumentation" or the like, with dual monitors, a lot of this could go to the second monitor. I think it'd be even cooler if you could decide what components went over to the second screen, and only keep those items most important to you on the play field screen. Or, have both the current and a completely non-instrumented view in the second.
I don't think that just spanning the entire screen shot across 2 monitors would be helpful in any way though. Even with LCDs, the break caused by the frames would be somewhat irritating, to me at least. Then again, even the mesh lines on Trinitron monitors are annoying to me, so I may be just a bit more sensitive to those types of things.
As for dual monitors in general, initially I thought why have duals? Just get one bigger better monitor. Now having worked with duals for about 2 years, I love this setup, and would rather have 2 slightly less capable monitors instead of one slightly bigger monitor. Being able to see a full web page and do something else in another screen related to it is way more helpful than switching between two window frames. There are many other instances where dual monitors are useful as well, and I even span both sometimes, although the application I use when doing that is amenable to doing that (eclipse).
CO2 is only one polluting by-product, and not nearly the most important one. Try all the other sulfur-based oxides and nitrous compounds, along with the various hydro-carbon compounds a normal car exhausts. Without those, our air will be much cleaner, even if the amount of CO2 remains constant.
like most myths, turns out to be mythical.
I played this for a while... BORING. Seriously, the game all about wasting your RT while waiting for stuff to populate. There was no true "quest" (false advertising, anyone?) as all quests were about sit here, kill kill kill, finally collect piece, go there (usually a 20+ min trip) kill kill kill kill, finally see a piece pop and have someone come in and steal the kill, bitch moan and complain, kill kill kill.... kill kill kill yeah - finally got piece #2 of 4 after 6 days....
You get the picture. Very little real gameplay, and I love those folks who say the class balance is a joke. It is, but not for the reasons they think. (rather than post an extremely long explanation, I'd rather let this assertion stand, with the single exception of stating that a high level wizard should be able to flat out kill just about any single opponent immediately, and have a chance to with the rest. Of course, getting away might be a problem when you can do no more magic....;)
Now we'll have all sorts of new viruses and worms....
ethics and religion are not one and the same, fortunately. Currently, people who shouldn't have babies still have them: think immature teen-agers that don't understand what happened, rapists and their victims, female crack addicts, etc.
From an ethics standpoint, none of these should have children (teen-agers described above didn't want or even know about children, aren't able to take care of them even if they do have them, rapists certainly don't deserve children, female crack addicts are certainly not providing a good environment for the baby to be...)
Due to religion, however, people think babies are a divine gift, or something for <insert religious diety here> to be the sole decider of, and therefore there are few, if any, laws regulating this.
I know this isn't exactly a popular topic...but at some risk, I post this anyways. I'm surely not advocating anything here, for those that like to read too much in between the lines. Merely stating some facts and observances.AMD comes out with a nice 64 bit CPU, Intel takes their highest end 32bit CPU, repackages it for a desktop, at twice the price, and barely competes.
AMD's 64 bit solution looks to beat the pants off of Itanium... Intel's statement that they're working on an x86 64 bit CPU says everything we need to know.
Sun partners with AMD - smartest move they could have made, especially if they jointly develop the next generation of AMD CPUs. Can we say massively SMP processing added to a fast core?
noone@nowhere.com :D
it's only a matter of time before someone does clone a human. There's nothing mysterious or exceptionally difficult about it as compared to cloning sheep, cows, horses, etc.
The ethical questions are something else entirely, due to the fact that at this time, there's no way to relibaly bring forth healthy clones (most have some sort of genetic defect).
There's also a general misconception that a clone will be just like the clonee. Something that's extremely unlikely, just look at identical twins.
They monitor every field widget, but forget to monitor the monitoring servers? That's bright...dark...err...
Linux isn't hard.
No, I don't. And Comcast does worry about apparently compromised computers, as I got a notice the one time I mistakenly hooked up an NT server directly to the network to download AV software updates... whoops. Took them about all of 2 hours to notify me, as apparently I got infected within seconds....
But, "Windows" is the proper form of "windows" when starting a sentence....
I hope Comcast cleans it up as well. I'm sick of lamo crap like the Lion King et al that's come out lately. Bring back more of the classic animation and true storylines with multiple layers of interest, less flat celine dion tripe driven directionless storylines! (Shrek and Monsters Inc, for example, had multiple layers of complexity and were excellent.)
As for hiding age-innappropriate stuff, that was years ago, and only a select few knew about it until the advent of DVDs and perfect still frames. I'm sure after the embarrassment, Disney now painstackingly goes through the final cut frame by frame (or I would, if I were them).
They're going to have to enable multi-cast on the majority of systems before that can happen. Turns out MS's TCPIP stack doesn't handle multi-casting very well... surprise surprise... and, best of all, MS doesn't believe it needs to be fixed, just like "640K should be enough for anyone" - from the ever visionary Bill Gates himself.
If you're getting spammed, it's your own fault. I've had 4 email addresses in use at comcast for over 3 years now (well, attbi.com first) and I only get about 1 true spam message a month on all 4 accounts.
are alterable. Film? Easy to manipulate, not as easy as digitable, but easy enough, esp if you convert to/from digital. Who would know?
Yes. It's not a percentage issue, but a total cost issue.
If the costs were the same, 1 of 2 things would happen: either labor costs would go up, or there would be fewer workers available, as there would be fewer "trained" workers out there. Either one would be better for the world economy than the discounted system currently in place which promotes an unfair playing field and effectively torpedoes those who do not get the "discount".
Management's means for proving they add value 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time they're held by actual worker types, they're short, and things get accomplished.