This whole issue just p's me off. Namibia is just next door to my country, and M$ has tried this one on us too! (And got away with it). The problem, as I see it, is that embedding M$ software reliance is a double edged sword: firstly, (as a Linux & OS related solutions vendor) we have to use thier crappy software, and secondly, we have to pay in U$. For us in Southern Africa, that amounts to a fortune, as our exchange rates have been hammered in the past few years by greedy US bankers. The effect of M$ "donating$" their products to the South African government, though, has been that just as South Africa was ready to ditch them in favour of a Linux desktop, they pulled the government back from the brink and re-established themselves as the primary desktop vendor to the SA government. This has the knockon effect that everyone else follows suite: you cant submit a tender document in StarOffice format, no no, use must use a Word Document (emulators, blast em to hell, mission etc.) By M$ making strategic "donations" with strings attached, they wrap up the market tightly. Give it to schools? Why don't you give the little schoolchildren heroin instead? It's gonna work out cheaper for them in the end.
This, to all intents and purposes, looks like a scaled up version of my hamster's exercise wheel for people. Does this mean that we'll be able to get people as pets, shove them in one of these contraptions and then get our kicks as the person runs around responding to arbitrary stimuli.
Would be much more fun than my hamster
Re:Is this the suit/geek showdown?
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
Duh! Did I not just state that I could see it for what it's worth. I fully expect them to take an interest in what's happening here. I just kinda wish they wouldn't!
Is this the suit/geek showdown?
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
Are we going to start to see lawsuits coming down on us because "if anybody needs a lesson in the way the real world works, it's the geeks."
Do they really think that we can't see how the crappy old world works? I thought the whole raison d'etre for geekdom was a retirement from the real world - I certainly have no desire to get sucked into the suits world!
I don't think that the question of actually reintroducing the critter back into the wild has come up yet - which might raise a whole new set of issues. But I am all for reviving it to study the beast, and attempting to understand its place in the greater scheme of things. This may entail reintroducing it into the wild - but really, that is where it belongs.
I also suspect that the wilds of Tasmania are not so different nowadays to what they were 200 years ago, and there is clearly a biological niche for the critter. It's just empty.
Clearly I'm not suggesting say, letting it run riot through the streets of Hobart, or Sydney.
And if it had any sense, it certainly would stay well clear of Noo Yok!
b***ards is a polite way of removing unfreindly terms in a public forum. In this particular case, I removed the "arse", so I got one spare. Here, you can have it.
I disagree with the commentators above about the morality of reviving extinct species. Especially recently extinct species. Fact is, the biodiversity of our planet is been killed off at a breakneck speed, and it is creating all sorts of other environmental problems.
For example, Tasmania (and the rest of Australia) has a real problem with rabbits. These were an introduced species which have run riot mainly because thier traditional predators don't exist in Australia. So would not reviving an Antipodean predator be a tentative solution to this problem?
It's all to easy to say, well, we shot 'em out back in 1880 cus they was killing our sheep, but fact is, the thylacine is a native to the ecosystem there and clearly has a definite place within the ecology. Just because we're largely ignorant of what is is (mainly because we never bothered to find out!) doesn't mean that the position doesn't exist.
We're all to quick to impose our view of the world and the functioning of its environment onto our long-suffering planet, but we clearly don't have any idea what we are doing and we are definitely going to suffer adverse effects.
Greater biodiversity adds to the quality of our lives, not detracts from it. And it's our fault that species like the Tasmanian wolf were eradicated - don't you think we should at least make an effort to restore it if we can?
Firstly, in terms of an amendment to the Data Protection Act, the companies gathering info about you have to disclose it to you.
Armed with that, perhaps the responsibility of letting the coporate b***ards know that we are on to them and will not stand for thier dirty tricks lies with the more technologically enabled, before this ever gets down to consumer level (where things will never change).
IMHO, you shouldn't have to use wierd and wonderful configurations just to buy cat food. They should leave you alone.
I definitely am waiting for the Victoria's Secret versions of these things. Imagine the possibilities..... the imagination runs riot. A sniffer?
On the flip side, maybe by overanalysis, you could find out things that you really just didn't wanna know!
Middlemen and the basis of economic reality
on
The Virtual Tip Jar
·
· Score: 1
I think that ever since the basis of trade moved away from direct barter, there has been a middleman interjecting into the transaction. Historically, you look at the merchant (read middleman) class as those who supply goods and services, streamlining the channels of supply from supplier to customer.
With the record industry, there are two problems that circumvent this theoretical model:
1. The product has the ability to vocalise thier grievances
2. The customer, nowadays, doesn't necessarily have to pay for the goods that they use.
The model has broken down. In order for the customer to understand that the only way that he/she may continue to enjoy the product offerings of the (artist/service/product) in question is to voluntarily, out of the goodness of their own hearts, pay people for what they produce.
This must set the recording industry on edge, as they have made gods out of their icons (to suit thier own nefarious purposes) for 100 years.
Are we to constantly swallow this? I don't think so. I honestly believe, simply because I espouse a vaguely libertarian philosophy, that it is my right to hear what I choose, and pay for it if it is valuable to me.
Maybe, the record industry has to climb off its high horse, recognise that both the artists and its customers don't need them anymore, and perhaps get a life.
I kinda feel two ways about this
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
As a party interested in the recent plight of the oily penguins in South Africa, I was a little put out at the evidently selfish I'm-ok-Jack, I-got-mine scribblings of some/.'ers on the matter. But when I actually looked into the posts, and monitored the results of the money that was actually sent to the institution by people to assist with the tradgedy, I kinda thought, you know, there are people here who have some grip on reality, not everyone is a total geek wrapped up in all things online to the exclusion of everything else. I think that while the author is highlighting some aspects of the current culture, he is taking a somewhat iconoclastic view. It makes a story, but it don't make the truth.
I think in many cases, there are geeks out there, intelligent people who are concerned about thier environment, who have the resources to amend things that appear to be wrong and that are willing to join communities that fulfil all the political agendas too. I think, Mr Katz, that you are wrong about people.
Unless you are some sort of sad screwball loser who can't go out into the sunshine and only interact with machines, it is natural for you to participate in meatspace in a meaningful way too. And not necessarily badly, or half-heartedly either.
Perhaps it is merely because the tech community is young, involved in activities other than social engineering and able to express themselves in a free manner outside of other institutions.
Oh- and by the by - (flamethrower on) where exactly do you get off by assuming that so called "foreigners" are unable to express themselves as clearly as you do? You seem unable to recall that there is a huge (much bigger than than the population of the US) English-speaking, educated community in the rest of the world. Please keep your Nazi xenophobia to yourself. You exhibit the typical arrogance of an ignorant Yank who has never been further than your city limits, and you assume that everyone out there is not like you! How wrong you are! I might mention, to start, England, Canada, Australia, other Commonwealth countries etc.
do you really think that the so-called "android" is the stuff of nightmares? If we could supplement human capabilities with internal as opposed to external machines (we already supplement human capabilities with external tools and machines) would this not be just giving people a set of on-board tools with which to operate? The possibilities are endless with this sort of tech. Think self diagnosis and healing: we could have an end to disease. Think information : We could even have an end to school. I don't think that we're anywhere near understanding how the mind works, so there is little chance of a machine replacing it. But there would be some pretty cool supplements to the human condition if we had an onboard IT environment to monitor and assist us. Not only that, by simply regulating the environment in which these applications will run, we will be able to steer the course of these developments to avoid the really scary stuff. There's nothing really scary about your desktop environment - Nanotech will reduce the need for us to be at work, which can only be a good thing.
Slashdot Mirror
This whole issue just p's me off. Namibia is just next door to my country, and M$ has tried this one on us too! (And got away with it). The problem, as I see it, is that embedding M$ software reliance is a double edged sword: firstly, (as a Linux & OS related solutions vendor) we have to use thier crappy software, and secondly, we have to pay in U$. For us in Southern Africa, that amounts to a fortune, as our exchange rates have been hammered in the past few years by greedy US bankers. The effect of M$ "donating$" their products to the South African government, though, has been that just as South Africa was ready to ditch them in favour of a Linux desktop, they pulled the government back from the brink and re-established themselves as the primary desktop vendor to the SA government. This has the knockon effect that everyone else follows suite: you cant submit a tender document in StarOffice format, no no, use must use a Word Document (emulators, blast em to hell, mission etc.) By M$ making strategic "donations" with strings attached, they wrap up the market tightly. Give it to schools? Why don't you give the little schoolchildren heroin instead? It's gonna work out cheaper for them in the end.
This, to all intents and purposes, looks like a scaled up version of my hamster's exercise wheel for people. Does this mean that we'll be able to get people as pets, shove them in one of these contraptions and then get our kicks as the person runs around responding to arbitrary stimuli.
Would be much more fun than my hamster
Duh! Did I not just state that I could see it for what it's worth. I fully expect them to take an interest in what's happening here. I just kinda wish they wouldn't!
Are we going to start to see lawsuits coming down on us because "if anybody needs a lesson in the way the real world works, it's the geeks."
Do they really think that we can't see how the crappy old world works? I thought the whole raison d'etre for geekdom was a retirement from the real world - I certainly have no desire to get sucked into the suits world!
I don't think that the question of actually reintroducing the critter back into the wild has come up yet - which might raise a whole new set of issues. But I am all for reviving it to study the beast, and attempting to understand its place in the greater scheme of things. This may entail reintroducing it into the wild - but really, that is where it belongs.
I also suspect that the wilds of Tasmania are not so different nowadays to what they were 200 years ago, and there is clearly a biological niche for the critter. It's just empty.
Clearly I'm not suggesting say, letting it run riot through the streets of Hobart, or Sydney.
And if it had any sense, it certainly would stay well clear of Noo Yok!
b***ards is a polite way of removing unfreindly terms in a public forum. In this particular case, I removed the "arse", so I got one spare. Here, you can have it.
I disagree with the commentators above about the morality of reviving extinct species. Especially recently extinct species. Fact is, the biodiversity of our planet is been killed off at a breakneck speed, and it is creating all sorts of other environmental problems.
For example, Tasmania (and the rest of Australia) has a real problem with rabbits. These were an introduced species which have run riot mainly because thier traditional predators don't exist in Australia. So would not reviving an Antipodean predator be a tentative solution to this problem?
It's all to easy to say, well, we shot 'em out back in 1880 cus they was killing our sheep, but fact is, the thylacine is a native to the ecosystem there and clearly has a definite place within the ecology. Just because we're largely ignorant of what is is (mainly because we never bothered to find out!) doesn't mean that the position doesn't exist.
We're all to quick to impose our view of the world and the functioning of its environment onto our long-suffering planet, but we clearly don't have any idea what we are doing and we are definitely going to suffer adverse effects.
Greater biodiversity adds to the quality of our lives, not detracts from it. And it's our fault that species like the Tasmanian wolf were eradicated - don't you think we should at least make an effort to restore it if we can?
Firstly, in terms of an amendment to the Data Protection Act, the companies gathering info about you have to disclose it to you.
Armed with that, perhaps the responsibility of letting the coporate b***ards know that we are on to them and will not stand for thier dirty tricks lies with the more technologically enabled, before this ever gets down to consumer level (where things will never change).
IMHO, you shouldn't have to use wierd and wonderful configurations just to buy cat food. They should leave you alone.
I definitely am waiting for the Victoria's Secret versions of these things. Imagine the possibilities..... the imagination runs riot. A sniffer?
On the flip side, maybe by overanalysis, you could find out things that you really just didn't wanna know!
I think that ever since the basis of trade moved away from direct barter, there has been a middleman interjecting into the transaction. Historically, you look at the merchant (read middleman) class as those who supply goods and services, streamlining the channels of supply from supplier to customer.
With the record industry, there are two problems that circumvent this theoretical model:
1. The product has the ability to vocalise thier grievances
2. The customer, nowadays, doesn't necessarily have to pay for the goods that they use.
The model has broken down. In order for the customer to understand that the only way that he/she may continue to enjoy the product offerings of the (artist/service/product) in question is to voluntarily, out of the goodness of their own hearts, pay people for what they produce.
This must set the recording industry on edge, as they have made gods out of their icons (to suit thier own nefarious purposes) for 100 years.
Are we to constantly swallow this? I don't think so. I honestly believe, simply because I espouse a vaguely libertarian philosophy, that it is my right to hear what I choose, and pay for it if it is valuable to me.
Maybe, the record industry has to climb off its high horse, recognise that both the artists and its customers don't need them anymore, and perhaps get a life.
As a party interested in the recent plight of the oily penguins in South Africa, I was a little put out at the evidently selfish I'm-ok-Jack, I-got-mine scribblings of some /.'ers on the matter. But when I actually looked into the posts, and monitored the results of the money that was actually sent to the institution by people to assist with the tradgedy, I kinda thought, you know, there are people here who have some grip on reality, not everyone is a total geek wrapped up in all things online to the exclusion of everything else. I think that while the author is highlighting some aspects of the current culture, he is taking a somewhat iconoclastic view. It makes a story, but it don't make the truth.
I think in many cases, there are geeks out there, intelligent people who are concerned about thier environment, who have the resources to amend things that appear to be wrong and that are willing to join communities that fulfil all the political agendas too. I think, Mr Katz, that you are wrong about people.
Unless you are some sort of sad screwball loser who can't go out into the sunshine and only interact with machines, it is natural for you to participate in meatspace in a meaningful way too. And not necessarily badly, or half-heartedly either.
Perhaps it is merely because the tech community is young, involved in activities other than social engineering and able to express themselves in a free manner outside of other institutions.
Oh- and by the by - (flamethrower on) where exactly do you get off by assuming that so called "foreigners" are unable to express themselves as clearly as you do? You seem unable to recall that there is a huge (much bigger than than the population of the US) English-speaking, educated community in the rest of the world. Please keep your Nazi xenophobia to yourself. You exhibit the typical arrogance of an ignorant Yank who has never been further than your city limits, and you assume that everyone out there is not like you! How wrong you are!
I might mention, to start, England, Canada, Australia, other Commonwealth countries etc.
Please spare us your phobias!
do you really think that the so-called "android" is the stuff of nightmares? If we could supplement human capabilities with internal as opposed to external machines (we already supplement human capabilities with external tools and machines) would this not be just giving people a set of on-board tools with which to operate? The possibilities are endless with this sort of tech. Think self diagnosis and healing: we could have an end to disease. Think information : We could even have an end to school. I don't think that we're anywhere near understanding how the mind works, so there is little chance of a machine replacing it. But there would be some pretty cool supplements to the human condition if we had an onboard IT environment to monitor and assist us. Not only that, by simply regulating the environment in which these applications will run, we will be able to steer the course of these developments to avoid the really scary stuff. There's nothing really scary about your desktop environment - Nanotech will reduce the need for us to be at work, which can only be a good thing.