While I agree that it's not exactly hard to give away money "by the time you die" (especially considering that he made 50 billion of his current 100 odd billion in the last year), I think it's important to keep track of the *end result*: Faster work towards an AIDS vaccine, more kids who don't get malaria, etc.
That's a heck of a lot of money! I'm willing to overlook a lot for that good of a benefit:-)
I don't think AOL is that bad. They provide more than a $14.95 ISP does. I remember trying to get Windows 3.1 to connect to my ISP a long time ago, and I had to configure this 'trumpet winsock' and it was very confusing.
My mom on the other hand, installed and signed up for an account on AOL and uses it by herself with no help from me or any other techie in our family. I think that's a win.
And plus, I think microsoft does make some nice products. NT does what I need it to for a workstation (I really got tired of futzing with linux after a while, I confess.. "Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing", didn't Linus say that?), Outlook rocks my world, and Excel is pretty nifty in my opinion as well.
I think you're right. There is a difference here. Releasing specs to the open source community in order for them to write clients in order to allow Linux/*nix users to communicate with the AIM community is not the same thing as allowing Microsoft or some other commercial entity to write a client.
AOL did not release specs 'to the open source community'. They released specs. Period. If they didn't want people/companies to use them in a certain way, they should have put an NDA on the site or some such thing, and then they would have true legal recourse against Microsoft, Yahoo, Prodigy, and whoever else writing a competing client used the specs.
And I'm sure that if if a popular unix AIM client came about, and AOL then decided that the market was worthy and ported AIM to unix themselves, they'd have a fit about that competing client using "their" protocol.
> firstly, while the media might portray a model > as being *right*, the simple fact is that guys > actually prefer women with a more rounded > figure and a general feeling of warmth.
I've seen a few descriptions of some posters' ideas of what "more rounded" and "normal" figures are. From conversations of this type I've had in the past, I fear that 'more rounded and normal' means Cindy Crawford as opposed to Kate Moss. Cindy Crawford is extremely well rounded, she has wonderful curves, and just about anyone can admit she's a beautiful woman. But she's hardly 'normal'.
Someone once told me that gabrielle reese was an example of a woman who's more normal than supermodels.. Gabrielle is at least 6 feet tall and has rock-solid muscles, again not what I'd call 'normal'.
In my experience, the 'normal' woman is about 5'3, 150-160 pounds. That's actually not very heavy, believe it or not.
To get back on topic, the whole 'cgi model' thing scares the heck out of me, no matter how good the rendering is on the clothing. It's bad enough to hear about cindy (or how she hates to have pictures taken of her from behind because she thinks her butt's too big), even worse for young girls to feel like they have to compete with a 'woman' whose appearance can improve with a few minutes of photoshop.
I hope I don't have any daughters, or if I do, I somehow am able to raise them so that they are self-confident. Not sure how to do that:-)
If the POP/IMAP/SMTP combo is the solution you decide on, you can use Outlook98 or Outlook2000 in internet mode and maintain some of the features that make groupware useful.
Things like scheduling meetings, looking at other people's free/busy times, IMAP w/shared folders on Cyrus or another IMAP server. Outlook2000's support is better than 98's.
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While I agree that it's not exactly hard to give away money "by the time you die" (especially considering that he made 50 billion of his current 100 odd billion in the last year), I think it's important to keep track of the *end result*: Faster work towards an AIDS vaccine, more kids who don't get malaria, etc.
:-)
That's a heck of a lot of money! I'm willing to overlook a lot for that good of a benefit
I don't think AOL is that bad. They provide more than a $14.95 ISP does. I remember trying to get Windows 3.1 to connect to my ISP a long time ago, and I had to configure this 'trumpet winsock' and it was very confusing.
My mom on the other hand, installed and signed up for an account on AOL and uses it by herself with no help from me or any other techie in our family. I think that's a win.
And plus, I think microsoft does make some nice products. NT does what I need it to for a workstation (I really got tired of futzing with linux after a while, I confess.. "Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing", didn't Linus say that?), Outlook rocks my world, and Excel is pretty nifty in my opinion as well.
I think you're right. There is a difference here. Releasing specs to the open source community in order for them to write clients in order to allow Linux/*nix users to communicate with the AIM community is not the same thing as allowing Microsoft or some other commercial entity to write a client.
AOL did not release specs 'to the open source community'. They released specs. Period. If they didn't want people/companies to use them in a certain way, they should have put an NDA on the site or some such thing, and then they would have true legal recourse against Microsoft, Yahoo, Prodigy, and whoever else writing a competing client used the specs.
And I'm sure that if if a popular unix AIM client came about, and AOL then decided that the market was worthy and ported AIM to unix themselves, they'd have a fit about that competing client using "their" protocol.
> firstly, while the media might portray a model
:-)
> as being *right*, the simple fact is that guys
> actually prefer women with a more rounded
> figure and a general feeling of warmth.
I've seen a few descriptions of some posters' ideas of what "more rounded" and "normal" figures are. From conversations of this type I've had in the past, I fear that 'more rounded and normal' means Cindy Crawford as opposed to Kate Moss. Cindy Crawford is extremely well rounded, she has wonderful curves, and just about anyone can admit she's a beautiful woman. But she's hardly 'normal'.
Someone once told me that gabrielle reese was an example of a woman who's more normal than supermodels.. Gabrielle is at least 6 feet tall and has rock-solid muscles, again not what I'd call 'normal'.
In my experience, the 'normal' woman is about 5'3, 150-160 pounds. That's actually not very heavy, believe it or not.
To get back on topic, the whole 'cgi model' thing scares the heck out of me, no matter how good the rendering is on the clothing. It's bad enough to hear about cindy (or how she hates to have pictures taken of her from behind because she thinks her butt's too big), even worse for young girls to feel like they have to compete with a 'woman' whose appearance can improve with a few minutes of photoshop.
I hope I don't have any daughters, or if I do, I somehow am able to raise them so that they are self-confident. Not sure how to do that
If the POP/IMAP/SMTP combo is the solution you decide on, you can use Outlook98 or Outlook2000 in internet mode and maintain some of the features that make groupware useful.
Things like scheduling meetings, looking at other people's free/busy times, IMAP w/shared folders on Cyrus or another IMAP server. Outlook2000's support is better than 98's.