Re:+5: Anti-Bush Tirade
on
In the Year 2020
·
· Score: 5, Informative
>one big spender with another
Under Clinton the budget was balanced and the deficit was gone. This "spendocrats" myth is just that. Historically, Democratic Presidents have been much more fiscally responsible.
Re:Internal conflict is what I worry about...
on
In the Year 2020
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
>But I do wish we could all just turn down the volume a bit a try to proceed a bit more mindfully and rationally.
You also asked, "What the hell is happening to us?"
Remaining silent is the problem and you are advocating it or promoting it. There is no opposing party in the US, so when the fictional reasons for war came out, there were very few dissenting voices. People like you like that. Everyone was "nice" to Bush. Respect the office and all of that. Look at the fruits of that approach.
On top of it, the corporate media leans so far to the right (dont believe me? watch some foreign media) and is almost an apparatus of the government that any healthy discourse is killed because it never begins.
Toss in the refusal of the religious nuts and conservative wackos to bend a little for compromise (culture warrriors never compromise) and here we are, nicely divided and with a war going on. A war which makes absolutely no sense. But everyone was... nice.
A few points where I find Gates being highly disingenious, if not using blatant rhetorical tricks to manipulate the not-too-bright and highly-agreeable interviewer:
1. Medical records. There's an obvious difference between DRM for copyrights and for confidentiality. Mixing them up for a "greater good argument" is very misleading.
2. Bringing up incentive. I dont believe this was originally part of his "new communist" slander. He just went off on econ 101 theories to cover his ass.
3. China. Please Gates, you should try to hide your ignorance about economic and cultural systems and traditions instead of using them as a strawman.
The larger issue will always be software patents, a broken patent system, DRM which limits legal owners (why cant i copy this DVD?), and a congress extending copyright until forever because of bribes. Ignoring these issues and turning them into a Soviets vs US 80's argument is pathetic. Gates may be wealthy, but his understanding of the things he complains about are very, very poor.
If he wants to speak about culture and digital rights he's really going to give a better arguments then just "COMMUNISTS!!!!" Or "NO INCENTIVE!!!" Or "WE'RE REALLY ON YOUR SIDE!!!" Especially when he's the world's richest and most powerful monopolist and we all know monopolies not only kill competition but kill incentive because very few companies want to fight that 800lbs gorilla. A gorilla with "you shall not sell my competitors products or put them in your base install." Gates as protector of capitalism and free markets is laughable at best.
I'd say the longest way is from 2% to 10% or 15%. At that point its not "weird software I never heard of" if 1 in 10 people are using it. Right now its still "well, my brother in law recommened it and I installed it, but havent used it much" stage in general, but it is doing a great job of infiltrating MS/IE only shops. The university I work for has it on all their lab computers in the CS departments, I see the laziest professors use it or even recommend it, etc. This was certainly not the case last semester.
Like the old saying goes - your first million dollars is always the hardest.
Roght now things are looking up for a healthy IT market. The Mac Mini is predicted to bring a lot of windows users over to the mac side, people understand the concept that the browser is not the "internet" and you can run other browsers, etc.
Dont get me wrong, the MS monopoly is still incredibly strong, but if they lose enough marketshare then it will be a win for standards and competitors will have a better chance of delivering better and more innovative software. It will also get people thinking that they dont have to use office or outlook and just like IE there are alternatives. Viva competition.
>We need to be going after the spamvertisers, not the spammers.
Exactly. It blows my mind that very few people want to ask who the men behind the curtain are. Spammers are just nerds for hire. Its the marketers, businesses, and investors who must be targeted also. The same is true with spyware. Follow the money, people.
Re:add BitTorrent to http protocol
on
Today in P2P
·
· Score: 1
> As I visit yet another site to find it slashdotted
Right now, Slashdot and the people who submit articles can just add.nyud.net:8090 to the URL and make use of the free distributed Coral Cache. This whole thing is paid for by the NSF, so you Americans might as well use your tax dollars.
I'd rather see people using that now, or mirrordot, than holding my breath for an http change that may never come or will require some third party software no one will use like the peercasting client.
in videogame form, which is slightly ironic. Its one of the best games I've played (although a tad difficult) on the PC and easily the best looking game I've played.
The game is over a year old, so new video cards can easily handle it 1600x800.
The game has a decent story and lots of Tron nostalgia. To me, the sequel will have to compare to the game more than the first movie.
Hey, that's me. I maintain the list and ran the new MS spyware tool. It told me my own hosts file was spyware because it had "0.0.0.0 some.server.at.yahoo.kr" in there. Oh, the irony.
Download the app, it has a scanning feature that runs all the time. But please, continue with more FUD.
I hope this is free for everyone and comes with windows as too many friends and family who dont listen to my advice need this kind of app. Not to mention it would cut down on support related costs for many organizations.
It does need improvement. First off it gives a big warning if you have VNC installed, warning you VNC might have been installed by someone else. Well, that sure isn't spyware, that's security. If your hosts file has many entries (regardless of content) it will warn you and recommend to remove it. My hosts file is full of loopbacks from ad servers, which ironically keep spyware away. It also gives a low rating for emule because it assumes you have a spyridden version of edonkey installed.
>How do you think they got wealthy? Buy being nice and promoting everyone else's product or sharing.
The problem is, once they get wealthy they cannot be allowed to abuse the system to maintain that wealth, through, say litigation, bought-for laws, illegal predatory practices they only get a slap on the wrist for, etc which all put up barriers to entry and stop competition and create market stagnation.
It was a more open market that let them get wealthy, but they fail or dont care to realize that restrictive IP laws, pork, corporate welfare, protectionist laws, easy to abuse patents, etc are purely self-serving and break a healthy market. To you and me that means consolidation, less choice, inflation, debt, unemployment, shoddy products, lack of innovation, inability to break into business, and all sorts of other nasties.
No where do I advocate "being nice" in that post as you suggest. The point is monopolies held up by corruption or even monopolies in general are bad for the overall economy. Not to mention many of these companies are run by people who believe they are entitled to always make a profit, regardless of market change and will make this so by abusing our buyable politicians.
He comes off as out of touch as anyone who reads say the opinion section of the Wall street journal.
I find this rhetoric to be common amongst the wealthy business class and conservatives in general. Such as: Commies! X makes America great! Sure there will always be a debate on Y, but lets not jump to conclusions! etc
Look at his claims:
1. The current IP system is what makes America great. Yes, that's what he's saying.
2. The current IP system doesn't need reform, except perhaps making better patent systems. Note Microsoft has been dealing with Eolas and others regarding patents so Bill is only seeing the light only when it serves his company.
3. He calls those who call for IP reform "new communists." That's just an insult and trivializes the real concerns many have with using the law (think DMCA and others) to maintain monopoly status and crack down on how one can use one's machine and software.
He spoke like a perfect monopolist. He knows IP laws help him and help maintain the status quo, thus creating a nice and healthy (for him) barrier to entry. He only diverged from the party-line when it came to patents and it should be obvious why.
Of course, he may be right about patent reform, but its soley in his interest and in the interest in his monopoly, comrade.
I will give MS credit, they are the perfect monopolists. Perfect. No wonder he uses such outdated and misused terms like "communism." MS has shown that ruthlessness pays off and Bill might be seeing himself as Ayn Rand, say versus Karl Marx, when he's just an old fashioned monopolist. Monopolies are of course, a symptom of a market failure or corruption. This is called irony.
>Using one comment against him his just propoganda.
This is not one comment. This is him openly claiming:
1. The current IP system is what makes America great. Yes, that's what he's saying.
2. The current IP system doesn't need reform, except perhaps making better patent systems. Note Microsoft has been dealing with Eolas and others regarding patents so Bill is only seeing the light only when it serves his company.
3. He calls those who call for IP reform "new communists." That's just an insult and trivializes the real concerns many have with using the law (think DMCA and others) to maintain monopoly status and crack down on how one can use one's machine and software.
He spoke like a perfect monopolist. He knows IP laws help him and help maintain the status quo, thus creating a nice and healthy (for him) barrier to entry. He only diverged from the party-line when it came to patents and it should be obvious why.
Of course, he may be right about patent reform, but its soley in his interest and in the interest in his monopoly, comrade.
I will give MS credit, they are the perfect monopolists. Perfect. No wonder he uses such outdated and misused terms like "communism." MS has shown that ruthlessness pays off and Bill might be seeing himself as Ayn Rand, say versus Karl Marx, when he's just an old fashioned monopolist. Monopolies are of course, a symptom of a market failure or corruption. This is called irony.
I find this rhetoric to be common amongst the wealthy business class and conservatives in general. Such as: Commies! X makes America great! Sure there will always be a debate on Y, but lets not jump to conclusions! etc
No. Something that is unintentional is never as "bad" as something that is intentional. If google can't handle the modern web, then a competitor should take its place. Expecting publishers to bow down to google's limitations is ridiculous.
> Or, thinksecret can do what real journalists do and refuse to reveal their source
Christ man, you're talking about a computer rumor site relaying information from people with NDAs. This isn't exactly Valerie Plame. If a "journalist" gets involved in a lawsuit regarding sources, the question becomes one of ethics based on the public trust/greater good not some absolute, "I wont tell you who murdered that couple because I'm a journalist!!!" If you can't see the difference betweeen Watergate and Think Secret its time to step away from the computer for a long, long time.
Like the grandparent posted lawsuits like these are started to help the discovery process to find those who did break the NDAs. The manufactured outrage of "Big company goes after little guy" is paper thin and on par with the false outrage of the RIAA actually suing people for giving away their songs.
I'd much rather see a system which goes after unethical people because the alternative is to go after the technology itself. What I dont need is bittorrent made illegal or having special licenses to run a web server because a few rotten apples are ruining it for everyone else.
Not to mention Think Secret is a commercial site (it serves at least three ads on its pages) and its business model is to coax people to break NDAs and post them on the web soley for profit, not for greater good or whistleblowing, but for money and ego inflation. Not exactly Woodward and Berstein here.
This is news for nerds, not newsforge. Or its supposed to be.
Just about every geeky site has reported on Eisner's death, yet nothing on slashdot's front page today or yesterday. Speaks volumes of the editors really, and not in a good way.
palmone is doing this. I'm on my new 650 treo right now, and soon they will be releasing a camera free version for the very reason you mentioned, not to mention for courthouses. as far as I'm concerned the 650 is the killer gizmo of 2005. getting rid of my sidekick felt good. real good.
Tell me about it. I know wired is supposed to be "everyman's tech magazine", but tossing in a few descriptive acronyms wouldnt hurt. Not to mention they dont even mention emule/edonkey when they list common P2P apps. IRC is barely mentioned. Newsgroups are ignored. These three outlets outpace kazaa and the bizzare mentioning of morpheus easily. Christ, is Limewire still being used?
Wired is getting really dumbed down of late. At least they explained what a telesync is and did pretty well about compression, although not mentioning any codecs by name. Even the average joe P2P has to know what divx or xvid means, because without him actually downloading the codecs all he's gonna get is audio.
What's the motivation? Is is just self-importance?
Reading this article kinda made me feel sick, as if all these people were so addicted to all these horrible hollywood releases (Hellboy?!) and RIAA crap, they were compelled to share it like tape traders of old.
Seems like a huge waste of time and talent to bust your butt and possibly face jail time for the new Good Charlotte or Linkin Park.
I'm hoping the scene does this "because its there and it can be done" for this 99% or so terrible content. But the piece on the people making a "Netflicks content" server implies otherwise.
>But that's a decision for him to make, and restricting the sale of M games helps.
No. Its either he is making the decision OR the store is making the decision. It is not beyond the power of parents to see what their children are playing in case they bought something behind dad's back and if they did, then that's a social problem that that family has to address.
Controlling sales is the latter, observing the raing/testing is the former. You can't have both and yours is pretty poor argument for retail controls and legislation to make such things mandatory.
> but usually there is some decent end you achieve
Decent end? In GTA? Or a host of other games? Especially those war games that are so popular. Killing nobody conscripts is suddenly okay but a pretty president from a wealthy and powerful family is hands off? Lets not get too "patriotic" here, comrade.
Its a game, get over it.
To me, this was a height of free expression and if Joe and Jane Sixpack don't like it, they can somehow force themselves not to buy it.
What? The loud mouth pro-linux kiddies whose windows expereince is limited to videogames have no idea whats going on in the enterprise? On top of their FUD they knock down informative windows posts in defense of their pet OS? Say it aint so!
sigh, if there is a reason why "slashdot is losing its readership" (is it?) its because of evangelical mods and bullshit anti-MS posts.
If they want Open Source news they can visit NewsForge and stop whining about windows and other commercial apps.
Slashdot Mirror
>one big spender with another
Under Clinton the budget was balanced and the deficit was gone. This "spendocrats" myth is just that. Historically, Democratic Presidents have been much more fiscally responsible.
>But I do wish we could all just turn down the volume a bit a try to proceed a bit more mindfully and rationally.
You also asked, "What the hell is happening to us?"
Remaining silent is the problem and you are advocating it or promoting it. There is no opposing party in the US, so when the fictional reasons for war came out, there were very few dissenting voices. People like you like that. Everyone was "nice" to Bush. Respect the office and all of that. Look at the fruits of that approach.
On top of it, the corporate media leans so far to the right (dont believe me? watch some foreign media) and is almost an apparatus of the government that any healthy discourse is killed because it never begins.
Toss in the refusal of the religious nuts and conservative wackos to bend a little for compromise (culture warrriors never compromise) and here we are, nicely divided and with a war going on. A war which makes absolutely no sense. But everyone was... nice.
A few points where I find Gates being highly disingenious, if not using blatant rhetorical tricks to manipulate the not-too-bright and highly-agreeable interviewer:
1. Medical records. There's an obvious difference between DRM for copyrights and for confidentiality. Mixing them up for a "greater good argument" is very misleading.
2. Bringing up incentive. I dont believe this was originally part of his "new communist" slander. He just went off on econ 101 theories to cover his ass.
3. China. Please Gates, you should try to hide your ignorance about economic and cultural systems and traditions instead of using them as a strawman.
The larger issue will always be software patents, a broken patent system, DRM which limits legal owners (why cant i copy this DVD?), and a congress extending copyright until forever because of bribes. Ignoring these issues and turning them into a Soviets vs US 80's argument is pathetic. Gates may be wealthy, but his understanding of the things he complains about are very, very poor.
If he wants to speak about culture and digital rights he's really going to give a better arguments then just "COMMUNISTS!!!!" Or "NO INCENTIVE!!!" Or "WE'RE REALLY ON YOUR SIDE!!!" Especially when he's the world's richest and most powerful monopolist and we all know monopolies not only kill competition but kill incentive because very few companies want to fight that 800lbs gorilla. A gorilla with "you shall not sell my competitors products or put them in your base install." Gates as protector of capitalism and free markets is laughable at best.
> in which the Graphical environment/window server is never even loaded
Change your default shell to cmd.exe
>It's a long way from 2% market share to 98%.
I'd say the longest way is from 2% to 10% or 15%. At that point its not "weird software I never heard of" if 1 in 10 people are using it. Right now its still "well, my brother in law recommened it and I installed it, but havent used it much" stage in general, but it is doing a great job of infiltrating MS/IE only shops. The university I work for has it on all their lab computers in the CS departments, I see the laziest professors use it or even recommend it, etc. This was certainly not the case last semester.
Like the old saying goes - your first million dollars is always the hardest.
Roght now things are looking up for a healthy IT market. The Mac Mini is predicted to bring a lot of windows users over to the mac side, people understand the concept that the browser is not the "internet" and you can run other browsers, etc.
Dont get me wrong, the MS monopoly is still incredibly strong, but if they lose enough marketshare then it will be a win for standards and competitors will have a better chance of delivering better and more innovative software. It will also get people thinking that they dont have to use office or outlook and just like IE there are alternatives. Viva competition.
>We need to be going after the spamvertisers, not the spammers.
Exactly. It blows my mind that very few people want to ask who the men behind the curtain are. Spammers are just nerds for hire. Its the marketers, businesses, and investors who must be targeted also. The same is true with spyware. Follow the money, people.
> As I visit yet another site to find it slashdotted
.nyud.net:8090 to the URL and make use of the free distributed Coral Cache. This whole thing is paid for by the NSF, so you Americans might as well use your tax dollars.
Right now, Slashdot and the people who submit articles can just add
I'd rather see people using that now, or mirrordot, than holding my breath for an http change that may never come or will require some third party software no one will use like the peercasting client.
in videogame form, which is slightly ironic. Its one of the best games I've played (although a tad difficult) on the PC and easily the best looking game I've played.
The game is over a year old, so new video cards can easily handle it 1600x800.
The game has a decent story and lots of Tron nostalgia. To me, the sequel will have to compare to the game more than the first movie.
For more details on the keynote, although they are hastily written.
coral cache here
>every moron in the U.S.
Most of the one's I've found are either Japanese or in the Netherlands. Some links here.
> Mike's Ad Blocking Host File
Hey, that's me. I maintain the list and ran the new MS spyware tool. It told me my own hosts file was spyware because it had "0.0.0.0 some.server.at.yahoo.kr" in there. Oh, the irony.
> which cleans up attacks AFTER they happen.
Download the app, it has a scanning feature that runs all the time. But please, continue with more FUD.
I hope this is free for everyone and comes with windows as too many friends and family who dont listen to my advice need this kind of app. Not to mention it would cut down on support related costs for many organizations.
It does need improvement. First off it gives a big warning if you have VNC installed, warning you VNC might have been installed by someone else. Well, that sure isn't spyware, that's security. If your hosts file has many entries (regardless of content) it will warn you and recommend to remove it. My hosts file is full of loopbacks from ad servers, which ironically keep spyware away. It also gives a low rating for emule because it assumes you have a spyridden version of edonkey installed.
Way, way too over-reaching.
>How do you think they got wealthy? Buy being nice and promoting everyone else's product or sharing.
The problem is, once they get wealthy they cannot be allowed to abuse the system to maintain that wealth, through, say litigation, bought-for laws, illegal predatory practices they only get a slap on the wrist for, etc which all put up barriers to entry and stop competition and create market stagnation.
It was a more open market that let them get wealthy, but they fail or dont care to realize that restrictive IP laws, pork, corporate welfare, protectionist laws, easy to abuse patents, etc are purely self-serving and break a healthy market. To you and me that means consolidation, less choice, inflation, debt, unemployment, shoddy products, lack of innovation, inability to break into business, and all sorts of other nasties.
No where do I advocate "being nice" in that post as you suggest. The point is monopolies held up by corruption or even monopolies in general are bad for the overall economy. Not to mention many of these companies are run by people who believe they are entitled to always make a profit, regardless of market change and will make this so by abusing our buyable politicians.
He comes off as out of touch as anyone who reads say the opinion section of the Wall street journal.
I find this rhetoric to be common amongst the wealthy business class and conservatives in general. Such as: Commies! X makes America great! Sure there will always be a debate on Y, but lets not jump to conclusions! etc
Look at his claims:
1. The current IP system is what makes America great. Yes, that's what he's saying.
2. The current IP system doesn't need reform, except perhaps making better patent systems. Note Microsoft has been dealing with Eolas and others regarding patents so Bill is only seeing the light only when it serves his company.
3. He calls those who call for IP reform "new communists." That's just an insult and trivializes the real concerns many have with using the law (think DMCA and others) to maintain monopoly status and crack down on how one can use one's machine and software.
He spoke like a perfect monopolist. He knows IP laws help him and help maintain the status quo, thus creating a nice and healthy (for him) barrier to entry. He only diverged from the party-line when it came to patents and it should be obvious why.
Of course, he may be right about patent reform, but its soley in his interest and in the interest in his monopoly, comrade.
I will give MS credit, they are the perfect monopolists. Perfect. No wonder he uses such outdated and misused terms like "communism." MS has shown that ruthlessness pays off and Bill might be seeing himself as Ayn Rand, say versus Karl Marx, when he's just an old fashioned monopolist. Monopolies are of course, a symptom of a market failure or corruption. This is called irony.
>Using one comment against him his just propoganda.
This is not one comment. This is him openly claiming:
1. The current IP system is what makes America great. Yes, that's what he's saying.
2. The current IP system doesn't need reform, except perhaps making better patent systems. Note Microsoft has been dealing with Eolas and others regarding patents so Bill is only seeing the light only when it serves his company.
3. He calls those who call for IP reform "new communists." That's just an insult and trivializes the real concerns many have with using the law (think DMCA and others) to maintain monopoly status and crack down on how one can use one's machine and software.
He spoke like a perfect monopolist. He knows IP laws help him and help maintain the status quo, thus creating a nice and healthy (for him) barrier to entry. He only diverged from the party-line when it came to patents and it should be obvious why.
Of course, he may be right about patent reform, but its soley in his interest and in the interest in his monopoly, comrade.
I will give MS credit, they are the perfect monopolists. Perfect. No wonder he uses such outdated and misused terms like "communism." MS has shown that ruthlessness pays off and Bill might be seeing himself as Ayn Rand, say versus Karl Marx, when he's just an old fashioned monopolist. Monopolies are of course, a symptom of a market failure or corruption. This is called irony.
I find this rhetoric to be common amongst the wealthy business class and conservatives in general. Such as: Commies! X makes America great! Sure there will always be a debate on Y, but lets not jump to conclusions! etc
>It's as bad as intentional google spamming
No. Something that is unintentional is never as "bad" as something that is intentional. If google can't handle the modern web, then a competitor should take its place. Expecting publishers to bow down to google's limitations is ridiculous.
> Or, thinksecret can do what real journalists do and refuse to reveal their source
Christ man, you're talking about a computer rumor site relaying information from people with NDAs. This isn't exactly Valerie Plame. If a "journalist" gets involved in a lawsuit regarding sources, the question becomes one of ethics based on the public trust/greater good not some absolute, "I wont tell you who murdered that couple because I'm a journalist!!!" If you can't see the difference betweeen Watergate and Think Secret its time to step away from the computer for a long, long time.
Like the grandparent posted lawsuits like these are started to help the discovery process to find those who did break the NDAs. The manufactured outrage of "Big company goes after little guy" is paper thin and on par with the false outrage of the RIAA actually suing people for giving away their songs.
I'd much rather see a system which goes after unethical people because the alternative is to go after the technology itself. What I dont need is bittorrent made illegal or having special licenses to run a web server because a few rotten apples are ruining it for everyone else.
Not to mention Think Secret is a commercial site (it serves at least three ads on its pages) and its business model is to coax people to break NDAs and post them on the web soley for profit, not for greater good or whistleblowing, but for money and ego inflation. Not exactly Woodward and Berstein here.
This is news for nerds, not newsforge. Or its supposed to be.
Just about every geeky site has reported on Eisner's death, yet nothing on slashdot's front page today or yesterday. Speaks volumes of the editors really, and not in a good way.
palmone is doing this. I'm on my new 650 treo right now, and soon they will be releasing a camera free version for the very reason you mentioned, not to mention for courthouses. as far as I'm concerned the 650 is the killer gizmo of 2005. getting rid of my sidekick felt good. real good.
How dare you question some ranting post full of speculation and zero facts from a site called everybodyiscrazy.com?
Madman!
Tell me about it. I know wired is supposed to be "everyman's tech magazine", but tossing in a few descriptive acronyms wouldnt hurt. Not to mention they dont even mention emule/edonkey when they list common P2P apps. IRC is barely mentioned. Newsgroups are ignored. These three outlets outpace kazaa and the bizzare mentioning of morpheus easily. Christ, is Limewire still being used?
Wired is getting really dumbed down of late. At least they explained what a telesync is and did pretty well about compression, although not mentioning any codecs by name. Even the average joe P2P has to know what divx or xvid means, because without him actually downloading the codecs all he's gonna get is audio.
What's the motivation? Is is just self-importance?
Reading this article kinda made me feel sick, as if all these people were so addicted to all these horrible hollywood releases (Hellboy?!) and RIAA crap, they were compelled to share it like tape traders of old.
Seems like a huge waste of time and talent to bust your butt and possibly face jail time for the new Good Charlotte or Linkin Park.
I'm hoping the scene does this "because its there and it can be done" for this 99% or so terrible content. But the piece on the people making a "Netflicks content" server implies otherwise.
>But that's a decision for him to make, and restricting the sale of M games helps.
No. Its either he is making the decision OR the store is making the decision. It is not beyond the power of parents to see what their children are playing in case they bought something behind dad's back and if they did, then that's a social problem that that family has to address.
Controlling sales is the latter, observing the raing/testing is the former. You can't have both and yours is pretty poor argument for retail controls and legislation to make such things mandatory.
> but usually there is some decent end you achieve
Decent end? In GTA? Or a host of other games? Especially those war games that are so popular. Killing nobody conscripts is suddenly okay but a pretty president from a wealthy and powerful family is hands off? Lets not get too "patriotic" here, comrade.
Its a game, get over it.
To me, this was a height of free expression and if Joe and Jane Sixpack don't like it, they can somehow force themselves not to buy it.
What? The loud mouth pro-linux kiddies whose windows expereince is limited to videogames have no idea whats going on in the enterprise? On top of their FUD they knock down informative windows posts in defense of their pet OS? Say it aint so!
sigh, if there is a reason why "slashdot is losing its readership" (is it?) its because of evangelical mods and bullshit anti-MS posts.
If they want Open Source news they can visit NewsForge and stop whining about windows and other commercial apps.