I was about half-way through designing it when I got sick of being asked "why does the guy have a gun?"
What, you don't carry a gun into your real datacenter? Every self-respecting system administrator should! It's what you threaten the server with when it starts to act funny. Trust me, the server will start working correctly immediately when under that kind of threat! And if it doesn't, then you have the right tool to put it out of its misery.
You should use the right tool for the job, I always say...
It used to be that you could keep a company going simply by consistenly producing good products for a good price and a reasonable profit. As long as the products and the price both remained good, people would buy the products and the profits would keep coming in. Obviously the products would have to be refined over time as the needs of the customer base changed, but this fundamental approach is sound.
For some reason, that's not good enough for Wall Street anymore. And so, the notion that companies must grow and expand to be "successful" has been pounded into everyone's head until nobody bothers to question it anymore. And the end result is idiotic articles like this one.
Apple produces a good product for a good price and a reasonable profit. They have been doing this for the last 25 years, ever since their inception. They have stumbled from time to time, yes, but they have survived all this time because when they were in trouble they dropped back to this simple, but time-tested, approach.
Despite this, there have been constant predictions of Apple's demise. After all, how could a company be "successful" if it didn't continuously expand, right?
One needn't expand in order to succeed. One need only provide something that others need or want at a price they can afford and at a price that brings in enough profit to get the job done. Hewlett-Packard appeared to have understood this, back when Bill Hewlett and David Packard were running things. Apple appears to understand this now, under the tutelage of Steve Jobs.
The "expand or die" mantra comes as a result of most stocks today being valued based on how much their share price will rise in the future, because for some reason paying dividends (which any steady-state business would do if it were sane, and which I believe most companies used to do) has become passe. That's not good for the company (and thus its employees and customers) in the long run because expansion is unsustainable and almost always leads to a loss of focus.
The article's about the Office 2007 user interface. The parent is about the Office 2007 user interface. Short of talking about the linked articles themselves, that's about as on-topic as it can get.
Those moderators who moderate replies down simply because they disagree with the reply (or think it's stupid or something) are doing everyone in the community a huge disservice. That's true even if the reply in question is demonstrably incorrect. Why, you ask? Simple: it's far more educational for someone's misconception to be visible to others so that the misconception can be corrected via another reply. If the misconception is invisible due to being moderated down then few will see it and thus few will correct it. And thus few will learn anything.
Similarly, if someone is merely voicing an on-topic opinion, as the parent is, then moderating it down simply because you disagree with it is a disservice because the exchange of opinions is one of the primary ways people learn, and by moderating a reply down that way you interfere with that exchange by making the opinion itself less visible. And again, few will learn anything.
To the moderator who modded the parent offtopic: do us a favor and stick with the moderating rules. Your "creativity" here isn't appreciated.
Doing the responsible thing, like informing the vendor, is absolutely thankless and likely to result in nothing but problems. Be smart, don't be a hero. Don't try to improve the security of others.
Exactly.
Open source software is an entirely different thing, though, and vulnerabilities in that should be reported to the author immediately, preferably with a patch.
If enough people contribute security fixes to open source while not contributing anything at all (including information) to proprietary vendors, in the end open source software will be by far the most secure and reliable software available, and that'll make it much more appealing to anyone who cares about their data.
In short, we win, they lose, and they'll get exactly what they deserve as a result of them shooting the messenger too many times. They'll be fully exposed to the black hats without getting any help from the white hats.
Nobody to speak of except big multinational corporations want draconian copyright legislation, and yet said copyright legislation is exactly what the EU is passing.
What more proof do you need that the EU is bought and paid for just like the US? Individual freedom and self-determination don't matter any more in the face of corporate profits there any more than in the US (which is to say, not at all).
And with Russia and China both either already totalitarian or damned close to it, there is hardly any place in the world where individual freedom is cherished.
Soon, there won't be any place left on the globe where individuals are free. So enjoy what freedom you have. At this rate, you won't have it for long.
As much as I hate to say it, monopolies arent illegal. monopolistic practices are. The government has no right and would set a far worse precedent enforing licensing by a court determined cost. That would be the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen.
As opposed to what, letting the monopoly (Verizon, in this case) shut down what little competition it has via patents? That's the very essence of "monopolistic practices". So enforcing licensing by a court order is exactly what is needed here, if the patent is deemed valid.
A patent most fundamentally grants you the right to determine the fate usage and licensing of your patent. You have every right to refuse to license it to people whether or not you plan on doing any with it.
A patent exists to "promote the progress of the sciences and the useful arts". Patents are published precisely because they're intended to be used by others in order to advance the state of the art. Refusal to license a patent for a reasonable amount (enough to cover the development of the patent plus a bit of interest) shouldn't even be an option. That it is makes a mockery of the entire Constitutional reason patents exist at all.
As much as I hate to say it, monopolies arent illegal. monopolistic practices are. The government has no right and would set a far worse precedent enforing licensing by a court determined cost. That would be the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen.
As opposed to what, letting the monopoly (Verizon, in this case) shut down what little competition it has via patents? That's the very essence of "monopolistic practices". So enforcing licensing by a court order is exactly what is needed here, if the patent is deemed valid.
A patent most fundamentally grants you the right to determine the fate usage and licensing of your patent. You have every right to refuse to license it to people whether or not you plan on doing any with it.
A patent exists to "promote the progress of the sciences and the useful arts". Patents are published precisely because they're intended to be used by others in order to advance the state of the art. Refusal to license a patent for a reasonable amount (enough to cover the development of the patent plus a bit of interest) shouldn't even be an option. That it is makes a mockery of the entire Constitutional reason patents exist at all.
For the purpose of top and other job monitoring tools we can replace a process's "NICE" score with a "VIOLENCE" score -- an aggregate of their armor, accuracy, rampage tendencies and current ammo supply. We can rename the renice utility to medicate. The important thing about medication is that it eventually wears off, unless you specify the -l (lobotomize) option, which turns the process into a harmless drooling vegetable. Its companion utilities are aim and armor, which tune a job's accuracy and armor class, respectively.
Of course, with such a scheduler, something like the
Doom system administration tool
(perhaps more like Quake where you can aim vertically as well as horizontally) will become the preferred method of managing the processes on a system.
For one thing, the processes will obviously shoot back, as the process manager itself (which you see as yourself when running it) is a running process, and thus subject to being fired upon by the other processes.
Secondly, a headshot obviously gets you a "lobotomize" effect. This could pose a problem if one of the other processes hits you with a headshot...
Finally, the application of a medpack to an injured process invokes the "medicate" action.
There are a few possible problems with this, of course:
When you have two or more system administrators, all running the process manager, the system itself becomes a warzone with innocent processes being killed by the dozen as the administrators go on rampages in their attempts to kill each other for supreme control of the system.
Certain weapons, such as the BFG, are powerful enough to take out all but the most heavily armored processes, and since some of them are area effect weapons, a lot of innocent processes will bite the dust as a result of their usage.
Lightly-armored processes will need additional protection in the form of fast reflexes to avoid being hit.
Eventually the administrators will begin using aimbots and the like. One can see where the resulting arms race will go. Obviously the aimbots will have to run on a different system since otherwise they'll be potential targets.
"Spawn camping" takes on a whole new meaning. Newly created processes become very vulnerable compared with running under earlier versions of Linux. Normal users will have an increasingly difficult time starting tasks like OpenOffice and will start to migrate back to Windows or other OSes with clearly inferior schedulers.
Due to all of the above, the system will eventually become unusable by anyone but the system administrators. The sysadmins will, of course, say that this is how it should be.
In short, Linux will quickly become the must-have operating system for gamers, but at the expense of the general purpose desktop.
Essentially this will come down to a management problem. At some point, people will avoid IT as a career altogether. And when that happens, demand will go up for people, more money will be offered, and people will hold their noses and come back.
Er, no. Not anymore. Today, if the demand for people goes up, corporations will strongarm politicians into allowing more H1Bs for jobs that absolutely, positively have to remain in the States, and will ship the jobs in question that don't off to a slave labor economy like China.
So once IT crashes, it'll remain that way for good, at least until wages in the U.S. (and thus the standard of living) are low enough to be competitive against a slave labor economy. In other words, it'll be a very, very long time.
In the late 1990s perks for IT were tremendous -- stock options, lots of vacation, huge bonuses. Now IT is treated like 3rd world labour...its a necessary evil for most businesses, they hold their nose and pay for it.
None of that is relevant anymore. Offshoring and the supreme amount of control corporations wield over the U.S. government (and others, for that matter) will guarantee that anything as essential to business as IT is today will remain cheap no matter what, even if it requires lighting a fire under the INS to approve more H1Bs and the like.
The rebirth of serfdom is right around the corner.
The real fight is exposing and getting the general population to recognize that due the nature of software it is simply not patentable and any organization supporting software patents are commiting fraud against others.
But the elected officials don't listen to the general population, only to those who give them a big wad of cash or who put them up on TV. Haven't you guys figured that out by now?
The desires of the general population don't mean shit when the big corporations want something else, because any politician who goes up against big corporations will suddenly find himself losing the next election. The corporate-owned mass media will see to that.
The only way the patent situation is going to change is if big corporations suddenly find it to their advantage to have it changed. That's not the situation we face today, as the Verizon versus Vonage case so clearly illustrates.
Since acting as its members' copyright-enforcement organization is virtually the entire function of the RIAA such a decision would utterly sink it.
Leaving exactly the decision-makers who chose to proceed with these tactics, along with the hirelings who implemented their policy when they should have known it was wrong, looking for work.
Which means they'd likely do what most corporations in such positions do: dissolve and form up as a different corporation, which would then sign the same contracts the RIAA currently has with its members, and then continue with business as usual.
In other words: same players, same game, different name.
The only way to really kill the RIAA is to break through its corporate veil and nail its members.
Just read the article and try to forget what the/. editors have posted as the description. That usually works for me.
Er, what?
This is Slashdot! You can't just go off and RTFA and then comment intelligently!
I'd find it in the Slashdot Rules of Posting to quote it but that would mean that I'd have to do the equivalent of RTFA, which is strictly not allowed by the Slashdot Rules of Posting...
That process hit a snag when Intel said in March it had accidentally deleted many of those records, including e-mail written by its Chairman Craig Barrett and CEO Paul Ottelini.
Yeah, sure. Email sent by the corporate executives accidentally deleted?
People get their asses fired and sued for much less than that.
The people responsible for the email of the executives don't do anything of the sort unless they're explicitly told to.
So I think it's about as likely that the email messages in question got "accidentally" deleted as it is that the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was "accidentally" bombed.
He seems to be asserting (and other scholars, such as C.S. Lewis [to whom Khomar referred], have asserted) that there must be a higher purpose to the suffering in the world. Khomar alluded to a possibility that pain may be here to teach us.
Of course, since the knowledge in question can simply be downloaded into our brains or placed there to begin with (take your pick), this argument is nonsense. In short, the suffering is unnecessary to achieve the goal, and if it is, it's only because this omnipotent + omniscient being wants it to be necessary.
If this God wants us to know something, then we will know it, and if it wants us to not suffer to achieve that knowledge, then we won't. The suffering is completely independent of the knowledge. That's what omnipotence + omniscience implies. For an omnipotent + omniscient being, there is no such thing as cause and effect, no such thing as constraints, no such thing as a necessarily indirect way of achieving a goal. Whatever such a being wants, it gets directly and automatically.
If such a being doesn't want us to suffer, then we won't. That we do means that it must want us to (or that it's clinically insane, or that it simply doesn't care). The definitions of the words involved leave no other alternatives on the table.
The point the parent was so logically trying to make is that we cannot possibly know the purpose of omnipotent, omniscient God. Until you can see the "big picture", how can you possibly judge a creature that is infinitely greater than yourself.
It's not necessary to know the "purpose" of said God. Nor is it necessary to see any "big picture". The definitions of the words involved do not leave enough ambiguity to counter my argument.
I don't seem to be making making my point very well here, do I?
Let me go through this step by step. One point I should make before I do: the "universe" I refer to in the below includes everything: the currently visible universe, the afterlife, everything.
An omniscient being knows all. That means that an omniscient being always knows exactly what will happen as a result of any action it takes. Do you disagree with this? I hope not, because that's pretty much the definition of "omniscient".
An omnipotent being is capable of doing basically anything, especially when it comes to setting up the rules of a universe. In short, the omnipotent being can define the rules of the universe arbitrarily. Do you disagree with this? I hope not, because that's basically the definition of "omnipotent".
The above two when combined together and when applied to the creation of a universe mean that the universe the being winds up with is exactly what the being intends it to be, no more and no less. If this is not so then one of the above two attributes must not apply to the being in question, because this follows directly from the two definitions involved.
Pain and suffering exist in the universe. Do you disagree with this? If so, check yourself into the local insane asylum, because it means that you're not willing to acknowledge even your own pain and suffering, much less that of others.
The above two, combined, mean that pain and suffering exist in this universe because the omnipotent, omniscient being wants it to exist. That means that the being in question wants the living beings in this universe to go through the pain and suffering that the universe forces them to endure.
By the very definitions of the words "love" and "caring", no sentient being would intentionally allow someone/something it loved and cared about to needlessly suffer. Hence, if said sentient being had it within its power to prevent someone/something it cared about from needlessly suffering, it would do so. Do you disagree with this?
From the previous points, an omnipotent and omniscient being defines what is needless. Therefore, from the point of view of an omnipotent and omniscient being, all suffering is needless suffering, because the being in question can simply redefine the universe to remove the need for suffering. Do you disagree with this? If so, then you must disagree with one or both of the first two assertions.
Therefore, if an omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe, the only way it can also love and care about us in the way we normally mean when we say "love" and "care" is for it to be clinically insane, like the person who beats his spouse while simultaneously claiming to love his spouse.
Therefore, a belief system which asserts that a sane omniscient, omnipotent being which "loves" us happened to also create the very circumstances in which we are forced to endure pain and suffering is an internally contradictory belief system.
Now, which of the above points do you disagree with? The logic itself gives you no place to go. The definitions involved give you no place to go. The only way out of the above for someone who actually has the belief system in question is for them to redefine one or more of the terms involved, which is not allowed. If you want to redefine a term, choose a different word instead.
It's not my fault some people have chosen to hold to an internally contra
to even presume you have the barest idea of what such a creature would do and why, and whether that means it "cares" about its creation or you or not is totally irrational.
I disagree. It's completely rational. The argument I put forth has no flaws in it, no logical way out. The conclusions I draw are the direct result of the definitions of the terms being used. I don't make the claim that an omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe we live in. Others do. I'm simply showing the logical consequences of that claim.
You're therefore limited to either claiming that said creator cannot be logically analyzed (irrelevant: I'm analyzing the belief system itself, and the analysis of the creator in that belief system is only in the context of the combination of that belief system and the observable world, and only to the extent necessary to show the belief system for what it is) or that the meanings of "love" and "caring" here are somehow different than what we use for normal conversation. If you (the proverbial "you", not you personally) choose the latter, then the claims you might make about the intentions of said creator also suddenly have a very different, and likely more sinister, meaning (because the only way to change those definitions so that they are consistent with the rest of the belief system is to change them to match the kind of "love" and "caring" a wife beater has towards his wife).
Can people still choose to believe that way? Sure. Nothing stops them from believing in a logical contradiction. But it is a logical contradiction, and that's ultimately my point.
You are trying to dictate a utopia/paradise as being the only situation where the monotheist God would be plausible, and in doing so have ignored pretty much the entirety of monotheist theology concerning purpose. There are far more convincing arguments on the atheist side. This one - the question of why the human universe isn't perfect - will be dismissed by the monotheists via the concept that it is not meant to be. An everlasting afterlife provides overwhelming justice for the issues that trouble you so much.
Dictate? No. If you choose to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient creator, you must accept the logical consequences of that choice, namely that the universe and everything in it is by definition exactly the way that said creator wishes it to be. You're simply ignoring the argument I'm putting forth.
There is no reason for an afterlife. There is no reason living beings must die. That, too, was an option to said creator. The afterlife is simply an attempt by theologians to add justice to the equation after the fact because they cannot in any other way resolve the contradiction between the injustice, pain, and suffering they see in the world every day and their belief that the creator they believe in actually "loves" the living beings in the world.
No, sorry, that doesn't fly, either. An eternal afterlife of bliss, even if it exists, does not negate the fact that pain and suffering in the real world is unnecessary in the face of an omnipotent, omniscient creator, and that if said creator exists, then that creator explicitly chose to create the world as a place where misery is both possible and necessary for survival. Worst of all, there's no physical evidence of this afterlife, so there's no way to know that it exists. The pain and suffering, on the other hand, are readily observable and easily verifiable. Only an idiot would claim that it doesn't exist or doesn't matter.
So: you can choose to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient creator that "loves" its living creations. But if so, you choose to believe in a logical contradiction, in the same way you would if you chose to believe a wife-beater when he says he loves his wife -- the amount of responsibility for suffering is the same in both cases.
All you know is what "feels bad" to you; and you are not perfect, so you don't really know what IS bad, just what seems bad to you.
What "feels bad" to me is sufficient, because said omnipotent, omniscient being could have arranged the universe such that neither I, nor anyone else, would feel such things. And would have, if said omnipotent being cared about those of us who have felt that way (which is almost all of us, in the end, since almost all of us have experienced pain and suffering where we know we did nothing to deserve it).
The point isn't whether or not some objective definition of evil happens in the world. All that matters is that creatures in the world experience pain and suffering for no other reason but that the universe is set up in such a way as to not only make it possible, but to also make it necessary for the survival of other creatures in the world. And the only logical conclusion to draw from that is that if the universe was created by an omnipotent and omniscient being, then said being doesn't give a damn about the living creatures within it. Because if that being did, then those creatures wouldn't experience the pain and suffering that they do experience. By definition.
Hell, the fact that it's possible to experience pain and suffering is sufficient support of my argument. To an omnipotent, omniscient being, all options in the creation of the universe are independent of each other, so said being could just as easily have chosen to create a universe in which living beings didn't experience pain and suffering without having an effect on anything else.
If something exists in the world, by definition it means that said omnipotent, omniscient being explicitly wants it to exist, assuming said being exists. Let me put it another way: if an omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe, that being is solely responsible for the pain and suffering in it, because that being had the option of creating the universe such that pain and suffering were simply not possible and explicitly decided against that option.
To claim that such a being wants its living creations to experience pain and suffering (and wants some of them to experience it continuously for their entire lives) while simultaneously claiming that said being "loves" its living creations is exactly the same as claiming that you "love" your spouse while at the same time beating said spouse to a pulp. They are logical contradictions, and no sane person would make such a claim.
Anyone who believes in Intelligent Design has never considered the prostate, let alone actually had prostate trouble. Even a human engineer wouldn't design a component like that. They want me to believe omnipotent, omniscient being did that?
An omnipotent, omniscient being always gets what it wants, by definition.
All that pain and suffering in the world? All the bad things that simply happen on their own without human intervention? If an omnipotent, omniscient being exists, those things are there intentionally.
The bottom line is that if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient creator, then you believe in an evil, sadistic being, by definition, and one need only look at the world to see it. No being that cared about what it creates would intentionally set up the universe such that pain and suffering were possible, much less undeserved pain and suffering, and certainly not one in which pain and suffering were necessary for survival (i.e., hunters and prey).
And no, "free will" doesn't help you here, because the universe constrains your free will, sometimes to the point where all your available choices are bad. No being that truly cared about you would set up the universe to make that possible unless said being had no other choice (so much for omnipotence).
Call this a troll if you will, but before you do, work through the logic. You'll find that an omnipotent (can do absolutely anything), omniscient (knows everything) being that cares about its creation and allows undeserved suffering in the world is a logical contradiction.
The idea that a well-funded adversary can bankrupt their opponent for daring to oppose them while the case never even makes it to trial is the worst part of the American system of justice.
It's not a "justice system", it's a "legal system". That should make it clear who the system really serves.
2) Every professional by virtue of being a human being will make honest mistakes. Punishing single mistakes by completely destroying that professional's ability to practice will lead to a shortage of people willing to enter that field as well as a shortage of people willing to take the difficult cases in that field. (I can tell you I would never have entered Emergency Medicine where I cannot choose who I will and won't see had this been the case.)
Then use a "three strikes" law. If it's good enough for punishing criminals, it's good enough for punishing lawyers.
3) If you are defending your own ability to practice (and perhaps your children's livelihood) you are going to go to extremes in order to protect it. If I was under this kind of pressure the amount of defensive medicine I (and every other physician) practice would go through the roof meaning increased costs, unnecessary tests, unnecessary antibiotics, etc. I suspect the same would be the case for lawyers if you pressed them to that extreme.
Except we're talking about the specific act of initiating a frivolous lawsuit. If the cost of initiating lawsuits goes up as a result of the lawyer being forced to be extremely careful, then good! It'll mean that the lawsuits that do get initiated will have much more solid footing. Just like they should.
Frivolous litigation helps nobody but the lawyers. It must stop. As it is, it's a huge drain on the economy. That money can be better spent on things that really improve people's lot in life. Like research and development.
Unfortunately, without additional limitations, it probably would just lead to rich corporations filing even more patents, each with one narrow claim. But the Patent Office might go for it, since it would multiply the fees paid by these corporations by a factor of 10 or more.
That's exactly what would happen. And that still wouldn't improve the current situation, either, because the burden of proof in a patent infringement suit would still remain with the defense. The root of the problem is that the courts think the USPTO is properly screening patent applications when it's really just a patent rubber-stamping machine.
And that's why invalidating the patent isn't enough.
The only way to fix the system is to let anyone patent everything and have the system collapse in on itself. A decade of courts being clogged in patent-litigation carnage ought to let a more reasonable standard emerge.
<sarcasm>
Yeah, because this approach has worked so very well in other legal venues, like liability.
</sarcasm>
A law changing the patentability rules needn't necessarily apply retroactively to existing patents. It's far better to let current patents fall by the wayside over time via patent litigation and expiration while applying a much tougher standard to new patents than it would be to continue the existing system.
Experience has shown that the backlog of the legal system does little to discourage litigation. Worse, the increased demand for patent litigation will make said litigation more expensive, particularly for the defendants, which ultimately drains money from more productive pursuits (like, say, research).
Your approach would kill what little real innovation is left in the U.S. far before the system collapsed in on itself.
That seems plenty sufficient a penalty. If there is undisclosed prior art, you lose the patent. Thus if a company wants a strong patent, the burden is on it to write the patent narrowly (to minimize the possible of conflicting claims from prior art) and do a thorough search for prior art. This would reverse the current situation, where companies try to write the *broadest* patent that they can get accepted and the patent office is responsible for showing prior art limiting the claims.
In short, you think that the way things are right now should be sufficient penalty (hint: if prior art is found and accepted by either the patent office or the courts, the patent is invalidated). Sorry, but reality has already proven you wrong on that.
The problem right now is that even with a weak patent, a company can strongarm others into paying up because the costs of defending a patent infringement suit are high and the probability of doing so successfully is low, thanks to the idiotic assumption of the courts that a patent is automatically valid if approved by the USPTO. In other words, the courts assume that the USPTO is actually doing its job, when the fact of that matter is that it's not.
So the consequences of undisclosed prior art need to be much more severe.
In my opinion, a finding of prior art against a patent should not only invalidate that patent, but should prevent all those who were involved in filing the patent from filing further patents for a relatively long period of time (say, 5 years), just like the grandparent suggests.
Without such strong disincentives, the free-for-all that we've been seeing will continue unabated.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah, I'd be worried about a guy that hangs a carpenter on his wall, too!
What, you don't carry a gun into your real datacenter? Every self-respecting system administrator should! It's what you threaten the server with when it starts to act funny. Trust me, the server will start working correctly immediately when under that kind of threat! And if it doesn't, then you have the right tool to put it out of its misery.
You should use the right tool for the job, I always say...
It used to be that you could keep a company going simply by consistenly producing good products for a good price and a reasonable profit. As long as the products and the price both remained good, people would buy the products and the profits would keep coming in. Obviously the products would have to be refined over time as the needs of the customer base changed, but this fundamental approach is sound.
For some reason, that's not good enough for Wall Street anymore. And so, the notion that companies must grow and expand to be "successful" has been pounded into everyone's head until nobody bothers to question it anymore. And the end result is idiotic articles like this one.
Apple produces a good product for a good price and a reasonable profit. They have been doing this for the last 25 years, ever since their inception. They have stumbled from time to time, yes, but they have survived all this time because when they were in trouble they dropped back to this simple, but time-tested, approach.
Despite this, there have been constant predictions of Apple's demise. After all, how could a company be "successful" if it didn't continuously expand, right?
One needn't expand in order to succeed. One need only provide something that others need or want at a price they can afford and at a price that brings in enough profit to get the job done. Hewlett-Packard appeared to have understood this, back when Bill Hewlett and David Packard were running things. Apple appears to understand this now, under the tutelage of Steve Jobs.
The "expand or die" mantra comes as a result of most stocks today being valued based on how much their share price will rise in the future, because for some reason paying dividends (which any steady-state business would do if it were sane, and which I believe most companies used to do) has become passe. That's not good for the company (and thus its employees and customers) in the long run because expansion is unsustainable and almost always leads to a loss of focus.
What moron modded the parent offtopic?
The article's about the Office 2007 user interface. The parent is about the Office 2007 user interface. Short of talking about the linked articles themselves, that's about as on-topic as it can get.
Those moderators who moderate replies down simply because they disagree with the reply (or think it's stupid or something) are doing everyone in the community a huge disservice. That's true even if the reply in question is demonstrably incorrect. Why, you ask? Simple: it's far more educational for someone's misconception to be visible to others so that the misconception can be corrected via another reply. If the misconception is invisible due to being moderated down then few will see it and thus few will correct it. And thus few will learn anything.
Similarly, if someone is merely voicing an on-topic opinion, as the parent is, then moderating it down simply because you disagree with it is a disservice because the exchange of opinions is one of the primary ways people learn, and by moderating a reply down that way you interfere with that exchange by making the opinion itself less visible. And again, few will learn anything.
To the moderator who modded the parent offtopic: do us a favor and stick with the moderating rules. Your "creativity" here isn't appreciated.
Exactly.
Open source software is an entirely different thing, though, and vulnerabilities in that should be reported to the author immediately, preferably with a patch.
If enough people contribute security fixes to open source while not contributing anything at all (including information) to proprietary vendors, in the end open source software will be by far the most secure and reliable software available, and that'll make it much more appealing to anyone who cares about their data.
In short, we win, they lose, and they'll get exactly what they deserve as a result of them shooting the messenger too many times. They'll be fully exposed to the black hats without getting any help from the white hats.
And I say it can't happen soon enough.
Nobody to speak of except big multinational corporations want draconian copyright legislation, and yet said copyright legislation is exactly what the EU is passing.
What more proof do you need that the EU is bought and paid for just like the US? Individual freedom and self-determination don't matter any more in the face of corporate profits there any more than in the US (which is to say, not at all).
And with Russia and China both either already totalitarian or damned close to it, there is hardly any place in the world where individual freedom is cherished.
Soon, there won't be any place left on the globe where individuals are free. So enjoy what freedom you have. At this rate, you won't have it for long.
I suck. The parent should read thusly:
As opposed to what, letting the monopoly (Verizon, in this case) shut down what little competition it has via patents? That's the very essence of "monopolistic practices". So enforcing licensing by a court order is exactly what is needed here, if the patent is deemed valid.
A patent exists to "promote the progress of the sciences and the useful arts". Patents are published precisely because they're intended to be used by others in order to advance the state of the art. Refusal to license a patent for a reasonable amount (enough to cover the development of the patent plus a bit of interest) shouldn't even be an option. That it is makes a mockery of the entire Constitutional reason patents exist at all.
As opposed to what, letting the monopoly (Verizon, in this case) shut down what little competition it has via patents? That's the very essence of "monopolistic practices". So enforcing licensing by a court order is exactly what is needed here, if the patent is deemed valid.
A patent most fundamentally grants you the right to determine the fate usage and licensing of your patent. You have every right to refuse to license it to people whether or not you plan on doing any with it.
A patent exists to "promote the progress of the sciences and the useful arts". Patents are published precisely because they're intended to be used by others in order to advance the state of the art. Refusal to license a patent for a reasonable amount (enough to cover the development of the patent plus a bit of interest) shouldn't even be an option. That it is makes a mockery of the entire Constitutional reason patents exist at all.
Of course, with such a scheduler, something like the Doom system administration tool (perhaps more like Quake where you can aim vertically as well as horizontally) will become the preferred method of managing the processes on a system.
For one thing, the processes will obviously shoot back, as the process manager itself (which you see as yourself when running it) is a running process, and thus subject to being fired upon by the other processes.
Secondly, a headshot obviously gets you a "lobotomize" effect. This could pose a problem if one of the other processes hits you with a headshot...
Finally, the application of a medpack to an injured process invokes the "medicate" action.
There are a few possible problems with this, of course:
In short, Linux will quickly become the must-have operating system for gamers, but at the expense of the general purpose desktop.
Er, no. Not anymore. Today, if the demand for people goes up, corporations will strongarm politicians into allowing more H1Bs for jobs that absolutely, positively have to remain in the States, and will ship the jobs in question that don't off to a slave labor economy like China.
So once IT crashes, it'll remain that way for good, at least until wages in the U.S. (and thus the standard of living) are low enough to be competitive against a slave labor economy. In other words, it'll be a very, very long time.
None of that is relevant anymore. Offshoring and the supreme amount of control corporations wield over the U.S. government (and others, for that matter) will guarantee that anything as essential to business as IT is today will remain cheap no matter what, even if it requires lighting a fire under the INS to approve more H1Bs and the like.
The rebirth of serfdom is right around the corner.
But the elected officials don't listen to the general population, only to those who give them a big wad of cash or who put them up on TV. Haven't you guys figured that out by now?
The desires of the general population don't mean shit when the big corporations want something else, because any politician who goes up against big corporations will suddenly find himself losing the next election. The corporate-owned mass media will see to that.
The only way the patent situation is going to change is if big corporations suddenly find it to their advantage to have it changed. That's not the situation we face today, as the Verizon versus Vonage case so clearly illustrates.
Which means they'd likely do what most corporations in such positions do: dissolve and form up as a different corporation, which would then sign the same contracts the RIAA currently has with its members, and then continue with business as usual.
In other words: same players, same game, different name.
The only way to really kill the RIAA is to break through its corporate veil and nail its members.
Er, what?
This is Slashdot! You can't just go off and RTFA and then comment intelligently!
I'd find it in the Slashdot Rules of Posting to quote it but that would mean that I'd have to do the equivalent of RTFA, which is strictly not allowed by the Slashdot Rules of Posting...
FTFA:
Yeah, sure. Email sent by the corporate executives accidentally deleted?
People get their asses fired and sued for much less than that.
The people responsible for the email of the executives don't do anything of the sort unless they're explicitly told to.
So I think it's about as likely that the email messages in question got "accidentally" deleted as it is that the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was "accidentally" bombed.
Of course, since the knowledge in question can simply be downloaded into our brains or placed there to begin with (take your pick), this argument is nonsense. In short, the suffering is unnecessary to achieve the goal, and if it is, it's only because this omnipotent + omniscient being wants it to be necessary.
If this God wants us to know something, then we will know it, and if it wants us to not suffer to achieve that knowledge, then we won't. The suffering is completely independent of the knowledge. That's what omnipotence + omniscience implies. For an omnipotent + omniscient being, there is no such thing as cause and effect, no such thing as constraints, no such thing as a necessarily indirect way of achieving a goal. Whatever such a being wants, it gets directly and automatically.
If such a being doesn't want us to suffer, then we won't. That we do means that it must want us to (or that it's clinically insane, or that it simply doesn't care). The definitions of the words involved leave no other alternatives on the table.
It's not necessary to know the "purpose" of said God. Nor is it necessary to see any "big picture". The definitions of the words involved do not leave enough ambiguity to counter my argument.
I don't seem to be making making my point very well here, do I?
Let me go through this step by step. One point I should make before I do: the "universe" I refer to in the below includes everything: the currently visible universe, the afterlife, everything.
Now, which of the above points do you disagree with? The logic itself gives you no place to go. The definitions involved give you no place to go. The only way out of the above for someone who actually has the belief system in question is for them to redefine one or more of the terms involved, which is not allowed. If you want to redefine a term, choose a different word instead.
It's not my fault some people have chosen to hold to an internally contra
I disagree. It's completely rational. The argument I put forth has no flaws in it, no logical way out. The conclusions I draw are the direct result of the definitions of the terms being used. I don't make the claim that an omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe we live in. Others do. I'm simply showing the logical consequences of that claim.
You're therefore limited to either claiming that said creator cannot be logically analyzed (irrelevant: I'm analyzing the belief system itself, and the analysis of the creator in that belief system is only in the context of the combination of that belief system and the observable world, and only to the extent necessary to show the belief system for what it is) or that the meanings of "love" and "caring" here are somehow different than what we use for normal conversation. If you (the proverbial "you", not you personally) choose the latter, then the claims you might make about the intentions of said creator also suddenly have a very different, and likely more sinister, meaning (because the only way to change those definitions so that they are consistent with the rest of the belief system is to change them to match the kind of "love" and "caring" a wife beater has towards his wife).
Can people still choose to believe that way? Sure. Nothing stops them from believing in a logical contradiction. But it is a logical contradiction, and that's ultimately my point.
Dictate? No. If you choose to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient creator, you must accept the logical consequences of that choice, namely that the universe and everything in it is by definition exactly the way that said creator wishes it to be. You're simply ignoring the argument I'm putting forth.
There is no reason for an afterlife. There is no reason living beings must die. That, too, was an option to said creator. The afterlife is simply an attempt by theologians to add justice to the equation after the fact because they cannot in any other way resolve the contradiction between the injustice, pain, and suffering they see in the world every day and their belief that the creator they believe in actually "loves" the living beings in the world.
No, sorry, that doesn't fly, either. An eternal afterlife of bliss, even if it exists, does not negate the fact that pain and suffering in the real world is unnecessary in the face of an omnipotent, omniscient creator, and that if said creator exists, then that creator explicitly chose to create the world as a place where misery is both possible and necessary for survival. Worst of all, there's no physical evidence of this afterlife, so there's no way to know that it exists. The pain and suffering, on the other hand, are readily observable and easily verifiable. Only an idiot would claim that it doesn't exist or doesn't matter.
So: you can choose to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient creator that "loves" its living creations. But if so, you choose to believe in a logical contradiction, in the same way you would if you chose to believe a wife-beater when he says he loves his wife -- the amount of responsibility for suffering is the same in both cases.
What "feels bad" to me is sufficient, because said omnipotent, omniscient being could have arranged the universe such that neither I, nor anyone else, would feel such things. And would have, if said omnipotent being cared about those of us who have felt that way (which is almost all of us, in the end, since almost all of us have experienced pain and suffering where we know we did nothing to deserve it).
The point isn't whether or not some objective definition of evil happens in the world. All that matters is that creatures in the world experience pain and suffering for no other reason but that the universe is set up in such a way as to not only make it possible, but to also make it necessary for the survival of other creatures in the world. And the only logical conclusion to draw from that is that if the universe was created by an omnipotent and omniscient being, then said being doesn't give a damn about the living creatures within it. Because if that being did, then those creatures wouldn't experience the pain and suffering that they do experience. By definition.
Hell, the fact that it's possible to experience pain and suffering is sufficient support of my argument. To an omnipotent, omniscient being, all options in the creation of the universe are independent of each other, so said being could just as easily have chosen to create a universe in which living beings didn't experience pain and suffering without having an effect on anything else.
If something exists in the world, by definition it means that said omnipotent, omniscient being explicitly wants it to exist, assuming said being exists. Let me put it another way: if an omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe, that being is solely responsible for the pain and suffering in it, because that being had the option of creating the universe such that pain and suffering were simply not possible and explicitly decided against that option.
To claim that such a being wants its living creations to experience pain and suffering (and wants some of them to experience it continuously for their entire lives) while simultaneously claiming that said being "loves" its living creations is exactly the same as claiming that you "love" your spouse while at the same time beating said spouse to a pulp. They are logical contradictions, and no sane person would make such a claim.
An omnipotent, omniscient being always gets what it wants, by definition.
All that pain and suffering in the world? All the bad things that simply happen on their own without human intervention? If an omnipotent, omniscient being exists, those things are there intentionally.
The bottom line is that if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient creator, then you believe in an evil, sadistic being, by definition, and one need only look at the world to see it. No being that cared about what it creates would intentionally set up the universe such that pain and suffering were possible, much less undeserved pain and suffering, and certainly not one in which pain and suffering were necessary for survival (i.e., hunters and prey).
And no, "free will" doesn't help you here, because the universe constrains your free will, sometimes to the point where all your available choices are bad. No being that truly cared about you would set up the universe to make that possible unless said being had no other choice (so much for omnipotence).
Call this a troll if you will, but before you do, work through the logic. You'll find that an omnipotent (can do absolutely anything), omniscient (knows everything) being that cares about its creation and allows undeserved suffering in the world is a logical contradiction.
It's not a "justice system", it's a "legal system". That should make it clear who the system really serves.
Then use a "three strikes" law. If it's good enough for punishing criminals, it's good enough for punishing lawyers.
Except we're talking about the specific act of initiating a frivolous lawsuit. If the cost of initiating lawsuits goes up as a result of the lawyer being forced to be extremely careful, then good! It'll mean that the lawsuits that do get initiated will have much more solid footing. Just like they should.
Frivolous litigation helps nobody but the lawyers. It must stop. As it is, it's a huge drain on the economy. That money can be better spent on things that really improve people's lot in life. Like research and development.
That's exactly what would happen. And that still wouldn't improve the current situation, either, because the burden of proof in a patent infringement suit would still remain with the defense. The root of the problem is that the courts think the USPTO is properly screening patent applications when it's really just a patent rubber-stamping machine.
And that's why invalidating the patent isn't enough.
<sarcasm> Yeah, because this approach has worked so very well in other legal venues, like liability. </sarcasm>
A law changing the patentability rules needn't necessarily apply retroactively to existing patents. It's far better to let current patents fall by the wayside over time via patent litigation and expiration while applying a much tougher standard to new patents than it would be to continue the existing system.
Experience has shown that the backlog of the legal system does little to discourage litigation. Worse, the increased demand for patent litigation will make said litigation more expensive, particularly for the defendants, which ultimately drains money from more productive pursuits (like, say, research).
Your approach would kill what little real innovation is left in the U.S. far before the system collapsed in on itself.
In short, you think that the way things are right now should be sufficient penalty (hint: if prior art is found and accepted by either the patent office or the courts, the patent is invalidated). Sorry, but reality has already proven you wrong on that.
The problem right now is that even with a weak patent, a company can strongarm others into paying up because the costs of defending a patent infringement suit are high and the probability of doing so successfully is low, thanks to the idiotic assumption of the courts that a patent is automatically valid if approved by the USPTO. In other words, the courts assume that the USPTO is actually doing its job, when the fact of that matter is that it's not.
So the consequences of undisclosed prior art need to be much more severe.
In my opinion, a finding of prior art against a patent should not only invalidate that patent, but should prevent all those who were involved in filing the patent from filing further patents for a relatively long period of time (say, 5 years), just like the grandparent suggests.
Without such strong disincentives, the free-for-all that we've been seeing will continue unabated.