Microsoft is a software company. They live on people buying Windows (and the other MS software). Okay, there are bugs in Windows. So what? Software will always have bugs and security holes. That doesn't mean software companies should provide free upgrades for people who won't upgrade their ancient OS.
As just a guess, Linux on the desktop hasn't been mature long enough to give desktop machines a chance to be ancient. The 1.0 release of KDE was only in 12 July 1998, so having a KDE desktop from 1998 would take some serious effort. The free upgrades have a lot to do with quicker upgrading, but the lack of machines to upgrade also has an effect.
Only in the Windows world (it seems) do you get a significant number of people who stubornly refuse to give up their applications and OS from 1995.
Several of schools in my local district still have Mac Classics lying around (though most have been replaced). They can't really browse the WWW, no new software is written for them, the most complex piece of software on them is a primitive word processor, and I have 1.5 thousand times the hard drive space that they do on my tiny laptop computer. That said, 16 years after their release they're relatively easy to use and they just keep on working... and working... and working...
If you use the same (or similar) username across multiple sites
I suppose I might have a problem with someone doing that. Though my usual user name (pingveno) is a word in an actual language (Esperanto), I'm pretty much the only person on the web that uses it. Quick, you have five minutes to find out my real name and where I live.
At a certain point, I just gave up trying to hide who I am. I just try not to say or post anything too stupid.
The contest is based on political interference. The people you're attacking (environmentalist hippies) misuse/misinterpret scientific findings to fit to their vision of the world. The people they're aiming at attack well establish science by cutting funding, exploiting government, "refuting" science (often using ad hominem attacks), manipulating the general public's understanding of the subject, etc. That's interfering.
While I was doing some volunteer work with Free Geek, a computer reuse and recycling group in Portland, Oregon, everyone want to do just that to the hard drives in donated computers. They had this huge sledgehammer... fun times.
I'm not a treehugger, but I would definitely not take a job that requires me to drive 70+ miles a day. 45 minutes flying... well, you get the picture. I would certainly consider family time, but the large environmental impact of commuting by plane should not be ignored.
I think that the broadband companies are going to charge for the uses that need insane amounts of bandwidth. Think about how much bandwidth would be used if 30% of a cable ISP's customers are streaming video at 600 Mb/s for 10 hours a week. The ISP would need to spend a lot of money to build up their infrastructure so this 30% of customers can watch Lord of the Rings. The 70% of their customers that don't suck bandwidth get screwed over by the higher costs resulting from the infrastructure upgrades. The cable companies get a double whammy because customers would get drawn away for their TV services as well. Don't worry about Wikipedia or Google search, they won't be affected. Only the principal of net neutrality will.
You underestimate the importance of both wires and PC's.
To expand on a previous poster's point, the PC provides an excellent platform for numerous uses, many of which share the same basic set of requirements.
input, either textual or spacial. Textual would be a keyboard, spacial would be a mouse.
detailed display of information: Whether by CRT's, LCD's, OLED's, or some sort of 3D display in the future, most computer applications require the use of some way to both visually interact with the user and allow for manipulation of graphics.
Physical output: Most physical output is in printers, but PC's can handle other forms of physical output, like controlling a machine to etch an image into a piece of wood.
As for wireless networking, I don't see wired networking disappearing any time soon. Some uses that require less bandwidth, such as a laptop computer (I'm typing on one right now) can be replaced. However, Ethernet has significant advantages over wireless. As I understand it, a large room full of gamers absolutely requires Ethernet because WiFi has limitations on how many users can be connected to a wireless system (become of limitations on spectrums). Servers rooms and Internet backbones are also areas where Ethernet won't be replaced. When speed is the top priority, Ethernet wins any day. IEEE has recently announced that it is working on 802.11n, a form of wireless networking with a theoretical limit of 540 megabits per second. Okay, sounds pretty good, 540000000 bits per second. Meanwhile, Ethernet already has 10 gigabits per second - that's 10000000000 bit per second - with a work on a standard for 100 gigabits per second - that's 100000000000 bits per second. Wireless simply doesn't work in many situations.
Heck, Slashdot censors. Otherwise, every article here might be M$ bashing or Linux raves.
That's not censorship, that's picking topics that are relevant and interesting. If they posted only articles that are Microsoft bashing or Linux raves, the editors would be missing much more interesting stories. There's a big difference between selecting and censoring.
Search companies have to second guess the Chinese government. Though there's no list of banned keywords, there have been instances where Chinese police burst into the office of a search company, grabbed the CEO (or other executive, I forget) and "questioned" him. So, yes, the companies do the censoring. But the censoring is because of a fear of the Chinese government. Directly or indirectly, the Chinese government is responsible/irresponsible.
What constitutes "permission" to access unpassworded network services? Do you need written permission? If so I guess everyone who accesses public web servers is guilty of cracking them since they didn't get written permission from the server owners.
If the owner of the web server posts material an a web site that is intended for public viewing, they are giving implicit permission. It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to figure out when that's the case. Is accessing Wikipedia cracking? No, the owners of Wikipedia have implicitly granted you permission to access the material.
Lets say you connect to a web server - how are you to know if that's a public web site or a private company's intranet site that they didn't bother to password protect?
If you're looking at a web site and there is material that looks like it's coming from an intranet server, you're probably looking at a web site that some idiot didn't password protect. Take the hint, click the back button, and don't bother remembering what was there. There's no implicit permission, and it was obviously none of your business anyway. Law or not, that's both common sense and respectful of other people's privacy.
A beta version or beta release usually represents the first version of a computer program that implements all required features although additional features may be added. It is likely to be unstable but useful for internal demonstrations and previews to select customers, but not yet ready for release.
The PC Magazine people seem to have been very quick in fixing that. As of right now, "Serf" is no longer present in the PC Magazine article. That makes them more credible; the editors and writers read the material enough that they caught the typo very, very quickly.
Additional warmth itself won't do much harm. It's the effects. For an example, start with a map of the world. Stockholm is on the same latitude as Greenland. It should be frozen solid. The only thing that keeps Stockholm just cold, not glacial, is the Gulf Stream (or, rather, the North Atlantic Drift). It brings nice, warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Europe. That means that Britian and the Scandinavian countries are quite a few degrees warmer. There are signs that, because of global warming, the Gulf Stream is slowing. A lot. That means less warmth coming from the Gulf of Mexico. Longer growing seasons? Wheat doesn't grow on glaciers.
The first thing I thought about when I saw the article was the problem with data formats such as Oracle's database. After reading the amendment, I noticed the rules apply only to formats for encoding and transfer. That would presumably not include backend files. Though I still think the bill is overly broad, it looks like the person who wrote it wasn't a complete idiot.
They are not removing their Linux hosting. Go to godaddy.com, Hosting & Servers, Virtual Dedicated Servers. All of the preconfigured plans use Red Hat Fedora Core 2. The "Hosting Plans" section of their web site allows the user a choice between Fedora and Windows. This move to Windows is in just in a certain part of their system. Removing support for Linux web servers would be suicide. Microsoft's web serving numbers aren't going anywhere from this decision.
Note that Portland is known as the microbrewery capital of the world.
It has more breweries per capita than any other city in the world. There are quite a few places where you can go in, grab a meal, and take a look at the tanks of beer being brewed. I'm not of drinking age yet, but I'll be trying some of those craft brews when I am...
Are these particular closings of government information (which could include such things as personal records) related to an essential liberty? How many of these laws are for privacy, how many are for protection of essential infrastructure, etc.? Numbers can be twisted around to mean a lot of different things; only an in-depth look can really tell you.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is a software company. They live on people buying Windows (and the other MS software). Okay, there are bugs in Windows. So what? Software will always have bugs and security holes. That doesn't mean software companies should provide free upgrades for people who won't upgrade their ancient OS.
As just a guess, Linux on the desktop hasn't been mature long enough to give desktop machines a chance to be ancient. The 1.0 release of KDE was only in 12 July 1998, so having a KDE desktop from 1998 would take some serious effort. The free upgrades have a lot to do with quicker upgrading, but the lack of machines to upgrade also has an effect.
Only in the Windows world (it seems) do you get a significant number of people who stubornly refuse to give up their applications and OS from 1995.
Several of schools in my local district still have Mac Classics lying around (though most have been replaced). They can't really browse the WWW, no new software is written for them, the most complex piece of software on them is a primitive word processor, and I have 1.5 thousand times the hard drive space that they do on my tiny laptop computer. That said, 16 years after their release they're relatively easy to use and they just keep on working... and working... and working...
But you forgot the Blue Screen of Death...
If you use the same (or similar) username across multiple sites
I suppose I might have a problem with someone doing that. Though my usual user name (pingveno) is a word in an actual language (Esperanto), I'm pretty much the only person on the web that uses it. Quick, you have five minutes to find out my real name and where I live.
At a certain point, I just gave up trying to hide who I am. I just try not to say or post anything too stupid.
The contest is based on political interference. The people you're attacking (environmentalist hippies) misuse/misinterpret scientific findings to fit to their vision of the world. The people they're aiming at attack well establish science by cutting funding, exploiting government, "refuting" science (often using ad hominem attacks), manipulating the general public's understanding of the subject, etc. That's interfering.
While I was doing some volunteer work with Free Geek, a computer reuse and recycling group in Portland, Oregon, everyone want to do just that to the hard drives in donated computers. They had this huge sledgehammer... fun times.
we would also spend a month each summer on vacation as a family
As a piece of embroidery on the wall of a teacher's home said:
There are three reasons for being a teacher
June
July
August
I'm not a treehugger, but I would definitely not take a job that requires me to drive 70+ miles a day. 45 minutes flying... well, you get the picture. I would certainly consider family time, but the large environmental impact of commuting by plane should not be ignored.
600 kilobytes. I hate it when I'm trying to make a point, then make a stupid typo. :(
B-E-T-A
He doesn't
I think that the broadband companies are going to charge for the uses that need insane amounts of bandwidth. Think about how much bandwidth would be used if 30% of a cable ISP's customers are streaming video at 600 Mb/s for 10 hours a week. The ISP would need to spend a lot of money to build up their infrastructure so this 30% of customers can watch Lord of the Rings. The 70% of their customers that don't suck bandwidth get screwed over by the higher costs resulting from the infrastructure upgrades. The cable companies get a double whammy because customers would get drawn away for their TV services as well. Don't worry about Wikipedia or Google search, they won't be affected. Only the principal of net neutrality will.
You underestimate the importance of both wires and PC's.
To expand on a previous poster's point, the PC provides an excellent platform for numerous uses, many of which share the same basic set of requirements.
As for wireless networking, I don't see wired networking disappearing any time soon. Some uses that require less bandwidth, such as a laptop computer (I'm typing on one right now) can be replaced. However, Ethernet has significant advantages over wireless. As I understand it, a large room full of gamers absolutely requires Ethernet because WiFi has limitations on how many users can be connected to a wireless system (become of limitations on spectrums). Servers rooms and Internet backbones are also areas where Ethernet won't be replaced. When speed is the top priority, Ethernet wins any day. IEEE has recently announced that it is working on 802.11n, a form of wireless networking with a theoretical limit of 540 megabits per second. Okay, sounds pretty good, 540000000 bits per second. Meanwhile, Ethernet already has 10 gigabits per second - that's 10000000000 bit per second - with a work on a standard for 100 gigabits per second - that's 100000000000 bits per second. Wireless simply doesn't work in many situations.
Heck, Slashdot censors. Otherwise, every article here might be M$ bashing or Linux raves.
That's not censorship, that's picking topics that are relevant and interesting. If they posted only articles that are Microsoft bashing or Linux raves, the editors would be missing much more interesting stories. There's a big difference between selecting and censoring.
Search companies have to second guess the Chinese government. Though there's no list of banned keywords, there have been instances where Chinese police burst into the office of a search company, grabbed the CEO (or other executive, I forget) and "questioned" him. So, yes, the companies do the censoring. But the censoring is because of a fear of the Chinese government. Directly or indirectly, the Chinese government is responsible/irresponsible.
What constitutes "permission" to access unpassworded network services? Do you need written permission? If so I guess everyone who accesses public web servers is guilty of cracking them since they didn't get written permission from the server owners.
If the owner of the web server posts material an a web site that is intended for public viewing, they are giving implicit permission. It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to figure out when that's the case. Is accessing Wikipedia cracking? No, the owners of Wikipedia have implicitly granted you permission to access the material.
Lets say you connect to a web server - how are you to know if that's a public web site or a private company's intranet site that they didn't bother to password protect?
If you're looking at a web site and there is material that looks like it's coming from an intranet server, you're probably looking at a web site that some idiot didn't password protect. Take the hint, click the back button, and don't bother remembering what was there. There's no implicit permission, and it was obviously none of your business anyway. Law or not, that's both common sense and respectful of other people's privacy.
Wikipedia:
The PC Magazine people seem to have been very quick in fixing that. As of right now, "Serf" is no longer present in the PC Magazine article. That makes them more credible; the editors and writers read the material enough that they caught the typo very, very quickly.
Additional warmth itself won't do much harm. It's the effects. For an example, start with a map of the world. Stockholm is on the same latitude as Greenland. It should be frozen solid. The only thing that keeps Stockholm just cold, not glacial, is the Gulf Stream (or, rather, the North Atlantic Drift). It brings nice, warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Europe. That means that Britian and the Scandinavian countries are quite a few degrees warmer. There are signs that, because of global warming, the Gulf Stream is slowing. A lot. That means less warmth coming from the Gulf of Mexico. Longer growing seasons? Wheat doesn't grow on glaciers.
not all experts believe in global warming either.
Two words: Michael Behe
(do a web search)
The first thing I thought about when I saw the article was the problem with data formats such as Oracle's database. After reading the amendment, I noticed the rules apply only to formats for encoding and transfer. That would presumably not include backend files. Though I still think the bill is overly broad, it looks like the person who wrote it wasn't a complete idiot.
They are not removing their Linux hosting. Go to godaddy.com, Hosting & Servers, Virtual Dedicated Servers. All of the preconfigured plans use Red Hat Fedora Core 2. The "Hosting Plans" section of their web site allows the user a choice between Fedora and Windows. This move to Windows is in just in a certain part of their system. Removing support for Linux web servers would be suicide. Microsoft's web serving numbers aren't going anywhere from this decision.
Note that Portland is known as the microbrewery capital of the world. It has more breweries per capita than any other city in the world. There are quite a few places where you can go in, grab a meal, and take a look at the tanks of beer being brewed. I'm not of drinking age yet, but I'll be trying some of those craft brews when I am...
Are these particular closings of government information (which could include such things as personal records) related to an essential liberty? How many of these laws are for privacy, how many are for protection of essential infrastructure, etc.? Numbers can be twisted around to mean a lot of different things; only an in-depth look can really tell you.