Yeah, you did come off sounding like a fanboy. Good thing you started how you did, or I would have totally written you off as one, too!:P
Still, your business analysis comes off pretty well, and I'd be hard pressed to fight it. The Novell deal works into this somewhere, though, and that's missing. I'd suspect that Microsoft has been planning this embrace move for a while, and I think that the partnership with Novell, and the feelers out to other Linux orgs played no small part in this strategy. I'd say, realizing that the future lay more towards service than development, Microsoft is playing to ensure it has a finger in everyone's pie to make up for the loss in sales revenues. For Windows and other products to survive as well as Microsoft wants them to, the costs will have to come down, and Microsoft will do that, to keep their flagships afloat.
By the way, don't knock the.NET stuff. It's genuinely useful, and believe it or not, makes for better cross-platform compatibility than the current regime. So long as the Mono project keeps pace with Microsoft.NET this will remain the case, too.
I'll take the 4 CDs thank you very much. Especially since I have someone to download and burn them for me since I haven't the bandwidth to do so myself.
If any distro fails "to include proprietary media formats" it would be Ubuntu. Out of the box, I've yet to encounter a single edition of Ubuntu that would play mp3 files (or for that matter, any MPEG related format). And I doubt that the problem stops there.
Of course, as a programmer with limited internet access (mostly through public terminals) I avoid Ubuntu for another reason: A distro without dev packages on the disc is a distro not worth my time.
Ah, the good old "if there are no laws, there can be no criminals" argument. Somehow I just don't see that catching on...
By the way, if you're going to claim "that viewing child porn encourages child molestation is weak at best" it wouldn't hurt to cite some good, critically reviewed sources that back the claim up. It won't stop the knee-jerkers, but it will at least give the mildly skeptical and those on the fence something to think about.
It's quite ingenious, isn't it? More security-conscious pirates won't dare download cracked versions of Vista, because of the malware risk. Seems like a very good, very bright move on Microsoft's part.
I agree that it'll be easy to catch. But even if it isn't, I'm sure someone will likely break into the company (physically or electronically) and walk out with a copy. Then it'll be blocked.
Sure it won't be integrated like Outlook is in office, but that lovely combo of Thunderbird and Calendar will fill most of the same roles that Outlook does. E-mail, calendar, notes (hopefully), etc.
Does Google even need to spend half of what MS is planning for innovation? Given 20% time that Google employees get and the product results from that, I'll bet that Microsoft needs to spend all that extra cash to stay where they are in comparison, let alone try to catch up.
A lot of software engineering textbooks these days have a bit in them about team dynamics and psychology, including how personalities can affect development in positive and negative ways. Taking a personality test can be useful for the company in figuring out who would work best together, allowing them to arrange teams that don't just have the needed knowledge and skills, but who also work well together. Doesn't the idea of having co-workers you can get along with sound great?
I'd advise take the test. Even if you don't get the job, you still get to know more about yourself.
Didn't Google Labs used to have a phone-in search project some years ago that didn't go anywhere? I'm pretty sure that they did, and looking at the date of filing for the patent, it's likely that's how it came about.
I wouldn't keep my hopes up for Google Voice Search any time soon based on that.
There's enough information in print and in electrons that backs up what WP has to say about Savonarola. And personally, I saw the direction Stallman's been going in the past while quite some time before this, and the parallels between the two men are astounding.
Personally, I'd say you have some bigotry or zealotry about you, either religious (are you a Dominican Catholic?) or philosophically, that prevents you from rationally dealing with this subject. Fnord.
Sure, some of the GPL3 changes are for the better, but as a content creator and owner, I still feel that the good of it is outweighed by the bad. Your trollish behaviour easily belies your strong bias, so I don't expect you to take any of this too well, but perhaps you should calm down, and re-read it all? Perhaps go to the library and look up Savonarola in an old-fashioned encyclopaedia just to ensure that yes, this is very much the same scenario?
All I can see is that this might decrease the profit margins of spammers somewhat. Perhaps not even enough to be notable for them. In fact, with the e-mails being certified as well, there's actually an incentive for spammers to pay, because that "certificiation" will make the sheep think that they've just recieved something good and legit rather than some crappy spam mail.
Unless Goodmail is privately held by people or organizations not looking to profit, it shouldn't be too hard for the spam cartel to buy up a stake and subvert it for their own purposes.
Again, there's always switching back to BBSes on the POTS. Modems are cheap and amazingly still plentiful, and I'm sure that anyone can at least acquire the parts needed to make one if they can't actually assemble it themselves. That 0.1% doesn't have to be left in the cold.
Put it in barcode form too, or better yet, in an RFID tag embedded under the skin. That'll make processing by the police... err, Ministry of Love, easier.;D
I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure that the reason people want anonymity on the internet is because they don't have it elsewhere. Don't you ever crave something that you don't have?
Not that I think that is going to happen. Why? Well our glorious defenders of freedom the chinese. The article suggests that this TPM chips is Bill Gates way of getting the chinese to pay for MS software. Lets hope the chinese are smarter and that the TPM chip is the way to get Chinese even more serious about creating an independent IT system. I rather trust the chinese goverment, who has no control over me a dutch citizen, then our own bought and sold goverments.
Are you shitting me? I'm pretty sure that the PRC would just love to get their hands on these chips so as to further control and curtail the average citizen's use of the internet. As would any totalitarian nation.
I don't understand why there's no choice to having the chip or not, and not just because older computers don't have it. I'm sure there's enough CE and EE people out there who can design and build their own motherboards, without the TC chip, and maybe even sell or give away to others. And if these people are blocked from the internet, what's stopping everyone from going back to the BBS style of things? Phone calls aren't so expensive anymore (not even long distance) so accessing a BBS, or networking BBS' anywhere shouldn't be too bad.
Unfortunately, as I stated earlier, to ignore him may be to simply put our heads in the sand. If we're lucky, this "game law" he claims he's been comissioned to create will be his downfall into absolute crackpottery, but what if it turns out that he hasn't just been pulling this story out of his ass? What then?
We may know better than to pay him any heed, but those miserable, stupid peons who make up most of the world's population are another story. And that's why he's a danger.
Could we please just put that asshole Thompson out of our collective misery already? We don't need to kill him, just stick him on a deserted island for the rest of his life.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, you did come off sounding like a fanboy. Good thing you started how you did, or I would have totally written you off as one, too! :P
.NET stuff. It's genuinely useful, and believe it or not, makes for better cross-platform compatibility than the current regime. So long as the Mono project keeps pace with Microsoft.NET this will remain the case, too.
Still, your business analysis comes off pretty well, and I'd be hard pressed to fight it. The Novell deal works into this somewhere, though, and that's missing. I'd suspect that Microsoft has been planning this embrace move for a while, and I think that the partnership with Novell, and the feelers out to other Linux orgs played no small part in this strategy. I'd say, realizing that the future lay more towards service than development, Microsoft is playing to ensure it has a finger in everyone's pie to make up for the loss in sales revenues. For Windows and other products to survive as well as Microsoft wants them to, the costs will have to come down, and Microsoft will do that, to keep their flagships afloat.
By the way, don't knock the
Yeah, this patent smells of prior art and overbroadness -- just another troll. Of course, IANAPL, but this just has bullshit written all over it.
I'll take the 4 CDs thank you very much. Especially since I have someone to download and burn them for me since I haven't the bandwidth to do so myself.
If any distro fails "to include proprietary media formats" it would be Ubuntu. Out of the box, I've yet to encounter a single edition of Ubuntu that would play mp3 files (or for that matter, any MPEG related format). And I doubt that the problem stops there.
Of course, as a programmer with limited internet access (mostly through public terminals) I avoid Ubuntu for another reason: A distro without dev packages on the disc is a distro not worth my time.
Killer bee's torso is cut off.
Killer bee dies.
Ah, the good old "if there are no laws, there can be no criminals" argument. Somehow I just don't see that catching on...
By the way, if you're going to claim "that viewing child porn encourages child molestation is weak at best" it wouldn't hurt to cite some good, critically reviewed sources that back the claim up. It won't stop the knee-jerkers, but it will at least give the mildly skeptical and those on the fence something to think about.
It's quite ingenious, isn't it? More security-conscious pirates won't dare download cracked versions of Vista, because of the malware risk. Seems like a very good, very bright move on Microsoft's part.
I agree that it'll be easy to catch. But even if it isn't, I'm sure someone will likely break into the company (physically or electronically) and walk out with a copy. Then it'll be blocked.
Sure it won't be integrated like Outlook is in office, but that lovely combo of Thunderbird and Calendar will fill most of the same roles that Outlook does. E-mail, calendar, notes (hopefully), etc.
Does Google even need to spend half of what MS is planning for innovation? Given 20% time that Google employees get and the product results from that, I'll bet that Microsoft needs to spend all that extra cash to stay where they are in comparison, let alone try to catch up.
A lot of software engineering textbooks these days have a bit in them about team dynamics and psychology, including how personalities can affect development in positive and negative ways. Taking a personality test can be useful for the company in figuring out who would work best together, allowing them to arrange teams that don't just have the needed knowledge and skills, but who also work well together. Doesn't the idea of having co-workers you can get along with sound great?
I'd advise take the test. Even if you don't get the job, you still get to know more about yourself.
Didn't Google Labs used to have a phone-in search project some years ago that didn't go anywhere? I'm pretty sure that they did, and looking at the date of filing for the patent, it's likely that's how it came about.
I wouldn't keep my hopes up for Google Voice Search any time soon based on that.
There's enough information in print and in electrons that backs up what WP has to say about Savonarola. And personally, I saw the direction Stallman's been going in the past while quite some time before this, and the parallels between the two men are astounding.
Personally, I'd say you have some bigotry or zealotry about you, either religious (are you a Dominican Catholic?) or philosophically, that prevents you from rationally dealing with this subject. Fnord.
Sure, some of the GPL3 changes are for the better, but as a content creator and owner, I still feel that the good of it is outweighed by the bad. Your trollish behaviour easily belies your strong bias, so I don't expect you to take any of this too well, but perhaps you should calm down, and re-read it all? Perhaps go to the library and look up Savonarola in an old-fashioned encyclopaedia just to ensure that yes, this is very much the same scenario?
Well, it is off-topic, but it's also so very, very true.
*wipes tear from eye* Another year without the Cup...
All I can see is that this might decrease the profit margins of spammers somewhat. Perhaps not even enough to be notable for them. In fact, with the e-mails being certified as well, there's actually an incentive for spammers to pay, because that "certificiation" will make the sheep think that they've just recieved something good and legit rather than some crappy spam mail.
Unless Goodmail is privately held by people or organizations not looking to profit, it shouldn't be too hard for the spam cartel to buy up a stake and subvert it for their own purposes.
The Visual Basic.NET compiler (vbc.exe) also rides along for free as part of the framework runtime.
For those who care.
Again, there's always switching back to BBSes on the POTS. Modems are cheap and amazingly still plentiful, and I'm sure that anyone can at least acquire the parts needed to make one if they can't actually assemble it themselves. That 0.1% doesn't have to be left in the cold.
Put it in barcode form too, or better yet, in an RFID tag embedded under the skin. That'll make processing by the police... err, Ministry of Love, easier. ;D
I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure that the reason people want anonymity on the internet is because they don't have it elsewhere. Don't you ever crave something that you don't have?
Are you shitting me? I'm pretty sure that the PRC would just love to get their hands on these chips so as to further control and curtail the average citizen's use of the internet. As would any totalitarian nation.
I don't understand why there's no choice to having the chip or not, and not just because older computers don't have it. I'm sure there's enough CE and EE people out there who can design and build their own motherboards, without the TC chip, and maybe even sell or give away to others. And if these people are blocked from the internet, what's stopping everyone from going back to the BBS style of things? Phone calls aren't so expensive anymore (not even long distance) so accessing a BBS, or networking BBS' anywhere shouldn't be too bad.
That cured guy was none other than C. Montgomery Burns. Just for the next time you post that quote...
Unfortunately, as I stated earlier, to ignore him may be to simply put our heads in the sand. If we're lucky, this "game law" he claims he's been comissioned to create will be his downfall into absolute crackpottery, but what if it turns out that he hasn't just been pulling this story out of his ass? What then?
We may know better than to pay him any heed, but those miserable, stupid peons who make up most of the world's population are another story. And that's why he's a danger.
Could we please just put that asshole Thompson out of our collective misery already? We don't need to kill him, just stick him on a deserted island for the rest of his life.