I'm not a Mac fan by any stretch, but the G5 has very little visible wiring from the pictures I've seen and has probably the best looking internals of any system I've ever seen. Although, it isn't exactly a mod. =)
The tax part of that argument isn't entirely accurate. A lot of people actually buy SUVs due to the tax breaks that are afforded them when used for business.
There are certainly two sides to this story. Obviously, morons driving cars are a danger to everybody and to a greater extent to motorcyclist, and the reverse holds true. In my experience, a higher proportion of motorcyclist drive like morons. The majority of the time I see motorcyclists on the road they are swerving in and out of traffic at 30+ mph over the speed limit, or the one that bugs me the most driving in between vehicles on the lines on the highway at those speeds.
Granted, that doesn't mean that motorcycles are inherently bad, but unfortunately, a large portion of the people driving them that I have encountered drive like jackasses.
Do you happen to have some links on the "crappy" AWD on VWs and Audis? I'm considering cars under both brands for my next car and would be interested to read up on it.
I guess they are doing better than their big brother. The Altima's are pretty bad on leg room. I'm 6'2" and everyone I have sat in has been uncomfortable in that area, but then everybody has their own definition of what is comfortable obviously.
I don't imagine most people buying a car are planning on keeping the car for 10+ years. It's a reasonable consideration for people who do plan on keeping a car that long, but I feel pretty confident that is a very small segment of the car buying population.
Just to add to this. Every credit report I've ran across that I remember was based on data from Equifax. That's in MS and TN. So it may indeed have something to do with regions.
Well, clearly what they were found guilty of is covered under the first section of the Sherman act regarding anti competitive trade agreements.
The creation or attempt to create a monopoly is covered under the second section which could arguably be applied to MS Office. Based strictly on the definition of a monopoly, Office does not qualify because it does not have exclusive control of the market (there are afterall alternatives that people do use). The legal definition may be a little more loose in interpretation.
Regardless, the act of MS offering a feature in Office that requires MS Server 2003 really doesn't fall under either category. It isn't restricting the use of an alternative (the first section), and it would be a stretch to say this is going to push Office to monopoly status if it isn't there already. MS Server is obviously no where near a monopoly in the server market, so that's not really an issue.
IANAL, so take that interpretation of the Sherman Act with a grain of salt. I don't claim to have read the entire document, but I believe the first 2 sections contain the primary things that are at issue. Anyway, I welcome someone with a fuller knowledge of the legal aspects of this to correct me.
In this case, they aren't leveraging in the same manner as in the antitrust rulings. The antitrust ruling says they can't do something like withhold the right to distribute Windows with an OEM manufacturer's computers if that OEM also offers an alternative OS on their systems.
Releasing software that has a feature that depends on their server software isn't really the same thing. This is leverage of course, but it is legal leverage.
It SHOULD be bullshit, and I would imagine if Apple Computers had actually gone to court over the issue they would have won. The problem is they settled and made an agreement to stay out of the music marketplace. I don't have any idea what the specifics of that agreement were, but it was apparently fairly broad.
From the article: "The Beatles sued and won another lawsuit when Apple shipped computers that allowed music to be played through attachable speakers."
If attaching speakers to a computer thereby enabling music to be played breeched the agreement with Apple Corps, then ANYTHING they touch involving music must be within the scope of the agreement.
Unless there is someway to have that agreement rendered void, it appears Apple will be paying big bucks if they continue to release music products under the Apple name. Confusion or lack there of doesn't even play into it.
Yeah, this report is pretty useless given the way they presented the data. I would have prefered to see just one statistic. % of <insert OS> servers compromised. That would give a more equal picture of what's going on here.
Regardless, much like all the anti Windows reports that don't necessarily take into account the sheer number of Windows desktop systems, reports like this can cast a bad light on Linux and should be taken as a call for more security education within the community.
Yeah, this report is pretty useless given the way they presented the data. I would have prefered to see just one statistic. % of servers compromised. That would give a more equal picture of what's going on here.
Regardless, much like all the anti Windows reports that don't necessarily take into account the sheer number of Windows desktop systems, reports like this can cast a bad light on Linux and should be taken as a call for more security education within the community.
The target audience is web developers in this case, not Windows or Linux users. If the only thing keeping a web developer from switching to Linux is a web development package comprable to Dreamweaver, then any such package is indeed competing with Dreamweaver.
"I'm not sure about that--how many people actually know anything about Windows?"
Most people at least have SEEN Windows. That's more than you can say about most people and any other PC based OS. Toss in the fact that if they work in an office, they probably either use some custom designed application running over a dumb terminal or Windows. That breeds familiarity, and that's what people are comfortable buying.
"Nothing stopped the OEM's from offering BeOS as an unsupported option"
Offering something as an "unsupported option" doesn't mean you aren't going to have support costs associated with it. I worked at an ISP for a few years, and we had people calling in for help with their printers. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that your ISP isn't there to support your printer, but people still called. Even if you provide no assistance at all, you are still going to have costs associated with answering the phone and listening to the user before telling them you can't support that.
"The decision as to the value of the product is also based on the comparisons of similar products."
There was nothing stopping consumers from doing this. There are other CD outlets and record labels other than those listed in this lawsuit. There are also used CD outlets, and CD clubs that offer other ways of comparing prices.
"made them purchase the product on a strictly emotional level by actively denying them the necessary information to make a logical decision"
People weren't MADE to do anything. Yes, they made their purchases based on emotional choices, and they still do. The consumers that actually use logic to make decisions when purchasing CDs have options if they are denied the information they need to make said choice, don't make the purchase. If they made the purchase after that, they decided that the CD was worth it to them on some other basis. Regardless, they still chose to buy the CD.
It absolutely should be the consumers job to figure out what information they require for making a purchase and to choose not to make a purchase if they do not have that information. Part of business is setting a price that is going to produce the most profit for your company. Consumers should and do control that price by their purchases. If record companies set the price of their CDs at $1000, they will quickly find their profits plummetting. It's in their best interest to find that magical price that will maximize their profits.
The only time courts should step into a price fixing case is when it is something that people NEED. If your city had multiple water providers (very rare, but this isn't about monopolies), and they got together to jack up the prices, then I would agree with the legal system stepping in because water is a necessity. And then only because every water provider was involved, thereby leaving no alternative and no choice.
This is just another case of consumers not taking responsibilities for their choices. People choose to eat McD's hamburgers and get fat, let's sue McD's. People choose to smoke cigarettes with big fat warning labels on them and get cancer, let's sue the tobacco companies. They bought the CD, they made the choice, they could have said no. Suck it up and take responsibility for the decision.
The cost of CD production really doesn't matter here. Ideally, the price of a CD would be closely tied to the cost of production, but again, we are talking about people who chose to purchase the CD. This means that to them it held a value of at least the asking price, or alternatively, they are too stupid to NOT pay more than what they value the CD at. I'm giving consumers the benefit of the doubt in that they are intelligent enough to decide what the CD is worth to them. They express this through their purchases. So the cd costs $1 to make or $2 or $5, it really isn't relevant to the value they place on the CD.
"Ripped off" is relative. I'd consider paying $1 for a Britney Spears CD a rip off, but there are a fair number of consumers who happily shell out their $18 for her CDs.
"Did anyone sign up for that? And actually get any money?"
I'd hope not. This isn't a matter of something you NEED being forced upon you at inflated prices. Consumers chose to go out and spend x amount of money on the cd. I don't really care if the record companies got together and decided to sell it for $1 million per a cd. If you don't like the price, you don't have to fucking buy it. I hardly think consumers deserve to be reimbursed b/c they CHOSE to spend that money on the cd. They obviously valued the cd at whatever price it was being offered at, or they wouldn't have bought it.
I'm so fucking tired of people winning court cases over shit like this.
"Get caught stealing 1/2 billion dollars, and no one went to jail?"
STEALING? I must have missed the guy wielding a gun at Tower Records forcing me to buy that cd. I think your notion of stealing is highly skewed at best.
Did you white list the mailing list you are on or classify messages from the list as valid email? I'm not an expert on Bayesian filtering, but I would think that mailing list email might not be the best training set for filters as it tends to exhibit some of the characteristics of spam. I would imagine classifying this sort of email as valid might tend to skew the filtering to "misclassify" more mail as being valid. If you haven't already, I'd try setting up a white list for that email and see if that improves the performance.
I unfortunately haven't had a chance to use it, as the last time I tried it out the IMAP support was kind of sketchy. I'll be trying this new release the next time I have time to sit down with it.
I completely agree with you regarding the prices in general. I don't think $1 for a song is a good price. I don't value music that much. But then I am pretty contented listening to the radio most of the time, so I don't really feel the need to own and control precisely what I listen to. CD prices dropping and music being available in a mix and match format certainly makes the industry offerings as a whole more appealing to me, but I still don't feel inclined to run out and start spending my money on any of it.
At least it appears the industry is heading in the right direction with this. There's a long way to go, but it's definitely an improvement.
You can hate the argument all you want, it certainly doesn't hurt the validity of it. While you may be blessed to just love everything that every artist you listen to puts out, and hate everything that artists that "suck" put out. I think the general population tends to like some songs by artists and dislike others. This is the strength of being able to download one song at a time. This is the primary strength of iTunes and its competitors.
If you happen to like an entire album by an artist, then the prices dropping to $13/cd makes them very competitive with online offerings. But the problem of not being able to pick and choose songs is still there for cds.
Child porn is very much an issue of freedom of speech or probably more accurately freedom of expression. In this case, US lawmakers have deeemed it illegal. If lawmakers deemed taking pictures of horses illegal or writing books about fishing illegal, does that mean the right to do so is not a matter of free expression? Regardless of what laws are created to restrict it, if it is a means of expression it is a matter of freedom of expression. Whether said freedoms should be restricted or banned is up to society, but the issue still falls under the freedom of expression discussion.
It's also worth noting that while it is a crime in the US, the internet is an international medium where different cultures meet, and therefore a mix of cultural standards may clash. What is illegal in the US may be readily accepted in another country.
How many messages have you trained Thunderbird with? And have you noticed any improvement as more messages have been marked as junk mail or "good" mail?
I wouldn't expect Thunderbird's filtering performance to be very good right out of the box, but the performance I should improve greatly as a the number of messages classified increases.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL, I love the toaster mod on that page.
I'm not a Mac fan by any stretch, but the G5 has very little visible wiring from the pictures I've seen and has probably the best looking internals of any system I've ever seen. Although, it isn't exactly a mod. =)
The tax part of that argument isn't entirely accurate. A lot of people actually buy SUVs due to the tax breaks that are afforded them when used for business.
There are certainly two sides to this story. Obviously, morons driving cars are a danger to everybody and to a greater extent to motorcyclist, and the reverse holds true. In my experience, a higher proportion of motorcyclist drive like morons. The majority of the time I see motorcyclists on the road they are swerving in and out of traffic at 30+ mph over the speed limit, or the one that bugs me the most driving in between vehicles on the lines on the highway at those speeds.
Granted, that doesn't mean that motorcycles are inherently bad, but unfortunately, a large portion of the people driving them that I have encountered drive like jackasses.
Isn't that illegal everywhere?
Do you happen to have some links on the "crappy" AWD on VWs and Audis? I'm considering cars under both brands for my next car and would be interested to read up on it.
I guess they are doing better than their big brother. The Altima's are pretty bad on leg room. I'm 6'2" and everyone I have sat in has been uncomfortable in that area, but then everybody has their own definition of what is comfortable obviously.
I don't imagine most people buying a car are planning on keeping the car for 10+ years. It's a reasonable consideration for people who do plan on keeping a car that long, but I feel pretty confident that is a very small segment of the car buying population.
Just to add to this. Every credit report I've ran across that I remember was based on data from Equifax. That's in MS and TN. So it may indeed have something to do with regions.
Well, clearly what they were found guilty of is covered under the first section of the Sherman act regarding anti competitive trade agreements.
The creation or attempt to create a monopoly is covered under the second section which could arguably be applied to MS Office. Based strictly on the definition of a monopoly, Office does not qualify because it does not have exclusive control of the market (there are afterall alternatives that people do use). The legal definition may be a little more loose in interpretation.
Regardless, the act of MS offering a feature in Office that requires MS Server 2003 really doesn't fall under either category. It isn't restricting the use of an alternative (the first section), and it would be a stretch to say this is going to push Office to monopoly status if it isn't there already. MS Server is obviously no where near a monopoly in the server market, so that's not really an issue.
IANAL, so take that interpretation of the Sherman Act with a grain of salt. I don't claim to have read the entire document, but I believe the first 2 sections contain the primary things that are at issue. Anyway, I welcome someone with a fuller knowledge of the legal aspects of this to correct me.
In this case, they aren't leveraging in the same manner as in the antitrust rulings. The antitrust ruling says they can't do something like withhold the right to distribute Windows with an OEM manufacturer's computers if that OEM also offers an alternative OS on their systems.
Releasing software that has a feature that depends on their server software isn't really the same thing. This is leverage of course, but it is legal leverage.
It SHOULD be bullshit, and I would imagine if Apple Computers had actually gone to court over the issue they would have won. The problem is they settled and made an agreement to stay out of the music marketplace. I don't have any idea what the specifics of that agreement were, but it was apparently fairly broad.
From the article: "The Beatles sued and won another lawsuit when Apple shipped computers that allowed music to be played through attachable speakers."
If attaching speakers to a computer thereby enabling music to be played breeched the agreement with Apple Corps, then ANYTHING they touch involving music must be within the scope of the agreement.
Unless there is someway to have that agreement rendered void, it appears Apple will be paying big bucks if they continue to release music products under the Apple name. Confusion or lack there of doesn't even play into it.
Let's try this again without the < > omission.
Yeah, this report is pretty useless given the way they presented the data. I would have prefered to see just one statistic. % of <insert OS> servers compromised. That would give a more equal picture of what's going on here.
Regardless, much like all the anti Windows reports that don't necessarily take into account the sheer number of Windows desktop systems, reports like this can cast a bad light on Linux and should be taken as a call for more security education within the community.
Yeah, this report is pretty useless given the way they presented the data. I would have prefered to see just one statistic. % of servers compromised. That would give a more equal picture of what's going on here.
Regardless, much like all the anti Windows reports that don't necessarily take into account the sheer number of Windows desktop systems, reports like this can cast a bad light on Linux and should be taken as a call for more security education within the community.
The target audience is web developers in this case, not Windows or Linux users. If the only thing keeping a web developer from switching to Linux is a web development package comprable to Dreamweaver, then any such package is indeed competing with Dreamweaver.
"I'm not sure about that--how many people actually know anything about Windows?" Most people at least have SEEN Windows. That's more than you can say about most people and any other PC based OS. Toss in the fact that if they work in an office, they probably either use some custom designed application running over a dumb terminal or Windows. That breeds familiarity, and that's what people are comfortable buying.
"Nothing stopped the OEM's from offering BeOS as an unsupported option"
Offering something as an "unsupported option" doesn't mean you aren't going to have support costs associated with it. I worked at an ISP for a few years, and we had people calling in for help with their printers. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that your ISP isn't there to support your printer, but people still called. Even if you provide no assistance at all, you are still going to have costs associated with answering the phone and listening to the user before telling them you can't support that.
"The decision as to the value of the product is also based on the comparisons of similar products."
There was nothing stopping consumers from doing this. There are other CD outlets and record labels other than those listed in this lawsuit. There are also used CD outlets, and CD clubs that offer other ways of comparing prices.
"made them purchase the product on a strictly emotional level by actively denying them the necessary information to make a logical decision"
People weren't MADE to do anything. Yes, they made their purchases based on emotional choices, and they still do. The consumers that actually use logic to make decisions when purchasing CDs have options if they are denied the information they need to make said choice, don't make the purchase. If they made the purchase after that, they decided that the CD was worth it to them on some other basis. Regardless, they still chose to buy the CD.
It absolutely should be the consumers job to figure out what information they require for making a purchase and to choose not to make a purchase if they do not have that information. Part of business is setting a price that is going to produce the most profit for your company. Consumers should and do control that price by their purchases. If record companies set the price of their CDs at $1000, they will quickly find their profits plummetting. It's in their best interest to find that magical price that will maximize their profits.
The only time courts should step into a price fixing case is when it is something that people NEED. If your city had multiple water providers (very rare, but this isn't about monopolies), and they got together to jack up the prices, then I would agree with the legal system stepping in because water is a necessity. And then only because every water provider was involved, thereby leaving no alternative and no choice.
This is just another case of consumers not taking responsibilities for their choices. People choose to eat McD's hamburgers and get fat, let's sue McD's. People choose to smoke cigarettes with big fat warning labels on them and get cancer, let's sue the tobacco companies. They bought the CD, they made the choice, they could have said no. Suck it up and take responsibility for the decision.
Ad hominems aside.
The cost of CD production really doesn't matter here. Ideally, the price of a CD would be closely tied to the cost of production, but again, we are talking about people who chose to purchase the CD. This means that to them it held a value of at least the asking price, or alternatively, they are too stupid to NOT pay more than what they value the CD at. I'm giving consumers the benefit of the doubt in that they are intelligent enough to decide what the CD is worth to them. They express this through their purchases. So the cd costs $1 to make or $2 or $5, it really isn't relevant to the value they place on the CD.
"Ripped off" is relative. I'd consider paying $1 for a Britney Spears CD a rip off, but there are a fair number of consumers who happily shell out their $18 for her CDs.
"Did anyone sign up for that? And actually get any money?"
I'd hope not. This isn't a matter of something you NEED being forced upon you at inflated prices. Consumers chose to go out and spend x amount of money on the cd. I don't really care if the record companies got together and decided to sell it for $1 million per a cd. If you don't like the price, you don't have to fucking buy it. I hardly think consumers deserve to be reimbursed b/c they CHOSE to spend that money on the cd. They obviously valued the cd at whatever price it was being offered at, or they wouldn't have bought it.
I'm so fucking tired of people winning court cases over shit like this.
"Get caught stealing 1/2 billion dollars, and no one went to jail?"
STEALING? I must have missed the guy wielding a gun at Tower Records forcing me to buy that cd. I think your notion of stealing is highly skewed at best.
Did you white list the mailing list you are on or classify messages from the list as valid email? I'm not an expert on Bayesian filtering, but I would think that mailing list email might not be the best training set for filters as it tends to exhibit some of the characteristics of spam. I would imagine classifying this sort of email as valid might tend to skew the filtering to "misclassify" more mail as being valid. If you haven't already, I'd try setting up a white list for that email and see if that improves the performance.
I unfortunately haven't had a chance to use it, as the last time I tried it out the IMAP support was kind of sketchy. I'll be trying this new release the next time I have time to sit down with it.
I completely agree with you regarding the prices in general. I don't think $1 for a song is a good price. I don't value music that much. But then I am pretty contented listening to the radio most of the time, so I don't really feel the need to own and control precisely what I listen to. CD prices dropping and music being available in a mix and match format certainly makes the industry offerings as a whole more appealing to me, but I still don't feel inclined to run out and start spending my money on any of it.
At least it appears the industry is heading in the right direction with this. There's a long way to go, but it's definitely an improvement.
You can hate the argument all you want, it certainly doesn't hurt the validity of it. While you may be blessed to just love everything that every artist you listen to puts out, and hate everything that artists that "suck" put out. I think the general population tends to like some songs by artists and dislike others. This is the strength of being able to download one song at a time. This is the primary strength of iTunes and its competitors.
If you happen to like an entire album by an artist, then the prices dropping to $13/cd makes them very competitive with online offerings. But the problem of not being able to pick and choose songs is still there for cds.
Child porn is very much an issue of freedom of speech or probably more accurately freedom of expression. In this case, US lawmakers have deeemed it illegal. If lawmakers deemed taking pictures of horses illegal or writing books about fishing illegal, does that mean the right to do so is not a matter of free expression? Regardless of what laws are created to restrict it, if it is a means of expression it is a matter of freedom of expression. Whether said freedoms should be restricted or banned is up to society, but the issue still falls under the freedom of expression discussion.
It's also worth noting that while it is a crime in the US, the internet is an international medium where different cultures meet, and therefore a mix of cultural standards may clash. What is illegal in the US may be readily accepted in another country.
How many messages have you trained Thunderbird with? And have you noticed any improvement as more messages have been marked as junk mail or "good" mail?
I wouldn't expect Thunderbird's filtering performance to be very good right out of the box, but the performance I should improve greatly as a the number of messages classified increases.