I had a similar directive at a past job. The company president told me to install Windows 3.1 or he would do it. His logic was that the company purchased one copy, and since it was so expensive, we should be able to put it on as many PCs as we wanted. Needless to say, I found another job.
You can't go wrong by doing the right thing. You may suffer in the short term, but in the long term things work out for the better. That's how it worked for me.
BT and GMO is as much about patents as anything else. See the case of Percy Schmeiser. http://www.percyschmeiser.com/crime.htm His field was contaminated by Monsanto genetics. Monsanto sued him and won!
I own a piece of land that has some tillable acres. It had a history of rotated corn and beans sprayed with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. I planted it to pasture. http://mikesmind.com/home/?p=33 What amazed me more than anything is that I couldn't find an earthworm on the tillable portion! The earth was basically dead. It's starting to come back now.
Genetic modifications and the subsequent application of chemicals is poisoning our land.
Re:Does it matter?
on
SCO Vs. Groklaw
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· Score: 2, Interesting
by all accounts PJ is who she claims to be
If you look back at the writing she did when Groklaw started, then compare it to what it is today, I believe it shows the normal progression of someone getting better at what they do. Also, her personality comes through in her writing. A team of lawyers or some ghost writer would have to be pretty darn good to pull this one off. No, my opinion is that PJ is who she says she is. She's the real deal.
My understanding of eBay Express is that it is supposed to feel more like a traditional shopping cart. eBay is trying to reach shoppers outside of the eBay community. In my opinion, the main problem for its adoption is all the shipping charges that add up when you buy from multiple merchants.
It's kind of frightening how people think 1984 was a how-to manual
The frightening thing is that in the book, 1984, so much of the work was paper-based. Granted, they did have the Speakwrite. However, once the corrections were made, the published works were destroyed and republished. How much easier could it be with spiders and bots being able to index all this news. What if the government gained enough control to "hack" a site and electronically re-write the news?
Sadly, if people don't take action, what you say will be true.
Look at the Eighteenth Amendment. It was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment. While this is not an example of corporate legislation, it is an example of how people can rise up and change the law.
Corporations do not have ultimate say in the affairs of the people unless the people give it to them.
I would send it back to the bank and say, "No thanks!" I would demand a traditional credit card and if I couldn't get it, I would go somewhere else. If a person is against this technology, and the potential for abuse, they need to make their opinion known. Vote with your wallet and your actions. Believe me, if there is a customer revolt, these corporations will change direction.
Benchmark studies can have some usefulness in helping you to come up with multiple, viable options. I prefer to pick the "two best" and set up a sandbox in our operating environment to see which alternative works for us. There are so many variables involved that if you can set up a couple pilot projects and compare results, you will be able to determine which alternative is right for your situation. Most companies have a defined system architecture, whether this is intentional or not, that they run their applications under. This alone, will prejudice them toward a few solutions. Changing basic infrastructure takes a certain leap of faith.
Would colonizing space really solve the basic problems that could cause mankind to die out on Earth? The disasters listed above seem to originate with man, and most of these because of man's relentless pursuit for power or profit. If our lives are so fragile now, on the planet we are ideally suited to live on, how much more fragile will the human race be on an inhospitable planet somewhere else in the solar system, not to mention the universe. There is a great gulf to cross through space and it seems that we should solve the root causes of our problems at home before we bring them with us to a more delicate and dangerous place.
I only have the need to create simple PDF newsletters. Since I can't do that in Word, I installed OpenOffice.org at work. Now, I simply open up a Word document in OpenOffice.org and export it to PDF. It works like a charm for my purposes.
I can certainly see why Adobe would be scared of a PDF export funciton in Office. Many, many people would take advantage of it. As it stands now, most office workers do not even know that this capability is available in OpenOffice.org. Also, I suspect that many companies, as it is in my company, does not have OpenOffice.org on their approved software list.
The listed prices range from $149 (student) to $499 (Professional Plus) with no price listed for the required SharePoint Server (volume licensing only). Oh, subtract $170 or so for the upgrade version.
While this may be slightly off-topic, hopefully it is interesting. Someone I know at work was looking to buy a used copy of MS Office. I suggested that he download OpenOffice.org. When I asked him about it a week later, he told me that he had downloaded it and was now using it. OpenOffice.org did everything he needed it to do and he really liked the price tag!
Now I will try to relate this back to the topic at hand. Now that Microsoft is radically changing Office, it is a great time to switch to OpenOffice.org. The interface is close enough to Office, that retraining is minimal. It is questionable how many companies will use the collaboration features. Generally features are used as justification for upgrading but often the additional features are not well-utilized.
Currently the NAIS is voluntary and in the early stages of implementation. Current targets are to make it manditory by 2009. There is no law authorizing the USDA to do this. Their tactic is to get states to enact laws requiring NAIS. It is also being pushed by corporate agricultural giants as a means to assure the general public that the food supply is safe and that if any disease outbreak did happen that the origin could be traced quickly.
That sounds good, but it won't work. Disease problems require a root cause solution, not an "after-the-fact" remedy. The reason that we have disease problems in our animal food supply is modern agriculture methods. The animals we typically eat: cattle, hogs, and chickens, were never meant to be raised in confinement. Animals need to be outdoors, with their natural food supply, and not too concentrated. That is the way for animal health and natural resistance to disease.
NAIS will put a tremendous burden on farmers and ranchers, all for the benefit of big corporations. I farm and I don't want anything to do with it. If the corporate farmers want to use this technology, they are free to do it. As for me, I want to keep my rights to be free to reject it.
Frankly why not just a credit card without an RFID tag?
Good question! I think that a lot of the call for RFID tags is generated by the folks who sell RFID tags. I can see advantages to being able to scan a warehouse to take inventory, or find something, using RFID technology. I don't see any obvious advantages for an individual to have an RFID tag implant. The advantage seems to be for government or industry. RFID implants don't look good for personal liberty.
In my family, we have coined a term - The Wal Mart Effect. This effect happens when companies lower quality to meet the Wal Mart buyer's pricing demands. This results in other stores carrying the lower quality items that Wal Mart does so they too can compete on price.
For example, you want to buy a pair of socks. You happen to like Brand X socks. Since Brand X sells socks at Wal Mart, they have to lower the quality of the product to meet the price point that the buyer demands. These same socks are then sold to Kmart, Target, Sears, etc. In order to get a good pair of socks that last, you have to move up to a brand like Gold Toe that isn't sold at Wal Mart. To get this sock, you now shop at JC Penneys, Dillards, etc. Yes, you gladly pay more, because you want your socks to last more than a few months.
If you want quality, don't buy from Wal Mart. (It wasn't this bad when Sam Walton was in charge.)
I think that the author's comment on ISV's and risk was interesting.
Secondly, the continuous development cycle concerns companies like Adobe and Intuit whose cost could increase with every release and upgrade of Linux. Ubuntu has a six month release cycle and replaces applications and libraries continuously. This scares ISVs.
Somehow, free software keeps up with the development cycle. The real problem for most ISV's is development cost. Each separate platform adds significant cost to development. Open standards, on the other hand, open up development to multiple platforms...
It's not only collaboration, but document management in the corporate environment. There are, increasingly, more requirements for managed document retention and destruction because of requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley. Because Office is so entrenched in the corporate world, most document management solutions are integrated with Office. You just click on a button and the document is declared a corporate document. An indexing window pops up and away you go.
OpenOffice.org will have an uphill battle with this type of requirement, because of market forces. The only thing I see that could break this open is Open Document Format, such as what is happening in Massachusetts.
Yes, Microsoft habitually spins marketing hype, promising much but delivering who knows what? Usually, Microsoft over promises and under delivers. Google, on the other hand, rolls out beta versions of their applications with very little fanfare. With these betas, they see what gets traction, then they work on enhancing the product. Look how far Google Maps has come.
My GOD ! They're giving it away ! How can we control this !
This is funny and not so funny, at the same time. Government establishes laws to protect someone. Here is a case where the entity (Mozilla) they are supposed to protect, does not need their protection! The license terms allow the software to be distributed, as long as the distributor abides by the terms of the license. (IANAL)
It is hard to be a police state when people start choosing freedom!
Slashdot Mirror
I had a similar directive at a past job. The company president told me to install Windows 3.1 or he would do it. His logic was that the company purchased one copy, and since it was so expensive, we should be able to put it on as many PCs as we wanted. Needless to say, I found another job.
You can't go wrong by doing the right thing. You may suffer in the short term, but in the long term things work out for the better. That's how it worked for me.
BT and GMO is as much about patents as anything else. See the case of Percy Schmeiser. http://www.percyschmeiser.com/crime.htm His field was contaminated by Monsanto genetics. Monsanto sued him and won!
I own a piece of land that has some tillable acres. It had a history of rotated corn and beans sprayed with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. I planted it to pasture. http://mikesmind.com/home/?p=33 What amazed me more than anything is that I couldn't find an earthworm on the tillable portion! The earth was basically dead. It's starting to come back now.
Genetic modifications and the subsequent application of chemicals is poisoning our land.
by all accounts PJ is who she claims to be
If you look back at the writing she did when Groklaw started, then compare it to what it is today, I believe it shows the normal progression of someone getting better at what they do. Also, her personality comes through in her writing. A team of lawyers or some ghost writer would have to be pretty darn good to pull this one off. No, my opinion is that PJ is who she says she is. She's the real deal.
Give a hoot, don't pollute!
My understanding of eBay Express is that it is supposed to feel more like a traditional shopping cart. eBay is trying to reach shoppers outside of the eBay community. In my opinion, the main problem for its adoption is all the shipping charges that add up when you buy from multiple merchants.
Actually, they will be easier to forge, with published standards and all...
It's kind of frightening how people think 1984 was a how-to manual
The frightening thing is that in the book, 1984, so much of the work was paper-based. Granted, they did have the Speakwrite. However, once the corrections were made, the published works were destroyed and republished. How much easier could it be with spiders and bots being able to index all this news. What if the government gained enough control to "hack" a site and electronically re-write the news?
Does a man named Winston Smith work there?
Look at the Eighteenth Amendment. It was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment. While this is not an example of corporate legislation, it is an example of how people can rise up and change the law.
Corporations do not have ultimate say in the affairs of the people unless the people give it to them.
I would send it back to the bank and say, "No thanks!" I would demand a traditional credit card and if I couldn't get it, I would go somewhere else. If a person is against this technology, and the potential for abuse, they need to make their opinion known. Vote with your wallet and your actions. Believe me, if there is a customer revolt, these corporations will change direction.
They will need to really push why people need to upgrade
The push is called Windows Genuine Advantage.
Benchmark studies can have some usefulness in helping you to come up with multiple, viable options. I prefer to pick the "two best" and set up a sandbox in our operating environment to see which alternative works for us. There are so many variables involved that if you can set up a couple pilot projects and compare results, you will be able to determine which alternative is right for your situation. Most companies have a defined system architecture, whether this is intentional or not, that they run their applications under. This alone, will prejudice them toward a few solutions. Changing basic infrastructure takes a certain leap of faith.
Would colonizing space really solve the basic problems that could cause mankind to die out on Earth? The disasters listed above seem to originate with man, and most of these because of man's relentless pursuit for power or profit. If our lives are so fragile now, on the planet we are ideally suited to live on, how much more fragile will the human race be on an inhospitable planet somewhere else in the solar system, not to mention the universe. There is a great gulf to cross through space and it seems that we should solve the root causes of our problems at home before we bring them with us to a more delicate and dangerous place.
I can certainly see why Adobe would be scared of a PDF export funciton in Office. Many, many people would take advantage of it. As it stands now, most office workers do not even know that this capability is available in OpenOffice.org. Also, I suspect that many companies, as it is in my company, does not have OpenOffice.org on their approved software list.
Then Cowboy Neal would win!
While this may be slightly off-topic, hopefully it is interesting. Someone I know at work was looking to buy a used copy of MS Office. I suggested that he download OpenOffice.org. When I asked him about it a week later, he told me that he had downloaded it and was now using it. OpenOffice.org did everything he needed it to do and he really liked the price tag!
Now I will try to relate this back to the topic at hand. Now that Microsoft is radically changing Office, it is a great time to switch to OpenOffice.org. The interface is close enough to Office, that retraining is minimal. It is questionable how many companies will use the collaboration features. Generally features are used as justification for upgrading but often the additional features are not well-utilized.
Just meet Scotty at the auxiliary bridge.
That sounds good, but it won't work. Disease problems require a root cause solution, not an "after-the-fact" remedy. The reason that we have disease problems in our animal food supply is modern agriculture methods. The animals we typically eat: cattle, hogs, and chickens, were never meant to be raised in confinement. Animals need to be outdoors, with their natural food supply, and not too concentrated. That is the way for animal health and natural resistance to disease.
NAIS will put a tremendous burden on farmers and ranchers, all for the benefit of big corporations. I farm and I don't want anything to do with it. If the corporate farmers want to use this technology, they are free to do it. As for me, I want to keep my rights to be free to reject it.
Frankly why not just a credit card without an RFID tag?
Good question! I think that a lot of the call for RFID tags is generated by the folks who sell RFID tags. I can see advantages to being able to scan a warehouse to take inventory, or find something, using RFID technology. I don't see any obvious advantages for an individual to have an RFID tag implant. The advantage seems to be for government or industry. RFID implants don't look good for personal liberty.
For example, you want to buy a pair of socks. You happen to like Brand X socks. Since Brand X sells socks at Wal Mart, they have to lower the quality of the product to meet the price point that the buyer demands. These same socks are then sold to Kmart, Target, Sears, etc. In order to get a good pair of socks that last, you have to move up to a brand like Gold Toe that isn't sold at Wal Mart. To get this sock, you now shop at JC Penneys, Dillards, etc. Yes, you gladly pay more, because you want your socks to last more than a few months.
If you want quality, don't buy from Wal Mart. (It wasn't this bad when Sam Walton was in charge.)
Secondly, the continuous development cycle concerns companies like Adobe and Intuit whose cost could increase with every release and upgrade of Linux. Ubuntu has a six month release cycle and replaces applications and libraries continuously. This scares ISVs.
Somehow, free software keeps up with the development cycle. The real problem for most ISV's is development cost. Each separate platform adds significant cost to development. Open standards, on the other hand, open up development to multiple platforms...
OpenOffice.org will have an uphill battle with this type of requirement, because of market forces. The only thing I see that could break this open is Open Document Format, such as what is happening in Massachusetts.
No, they must be off-shoring movie production and special effects.
Yes, Microsoft habitually spins marketing hype, promising much but delivering who knows what? Usually, Microsoft over promises and under delivers. Google, on the other hand, rolls out beta versions of their applications with very little fanfare. With these betas, they see what gets traction, then they work on enhancing the product. Look how far Google Maps has come.
This is funny and not so funny, at the same time. Government establishes laws to protect someone. Here is a case where the entity (Mozilla) they are supposed to protect, does not need their protection! The license terms allow the software to be distributed, as long as the distributor abides by the terms of the license. (IANAL)
It is hard to be a police state when people start choosing freedom!