I loaded Linux on a Windows 3.1 machine for my kids to get mail (had a domain name) so they could all have their own mail accounts and login; didn't want the arguments from a 16 year old girl and 12 year old boy fighting over a common email account. The 16 year old liked Pine for email, she would rather exit X to read email under Pine, before she learned about xterm.
It is a fact that Microsoft has hoodwinked and swindled their way to the top. Ask about GO, STAC, DR-DOS, forged video evidence at the anti-trust trial, rigged bencharks, blatant lies and FUD, any period of their history, including that the very MS-BASIC that Bill Gates so infamously complained about being stolen when he himself had stolen the computer time to develop it, and you will find blatant decption and skulduggery.
Then the other side of it, what has Microsoft actually done that is new? You sure won't find much. They are excellent at doing a shoddy job of copying others.
Consider a serial killer, say that guy in Canada who murdered several dozen prostitutes. Would you suggest that some other prostitute should take a chance on that guy?
I doubt it. So why should anyone believe a thing Microsoft says, or have any expectations for future decency in any of their current activities?
Reputations take time to build. Microsoft has shot their own reputation so many times that it will take a wholesale change of corporate leadership to change their reputation, and years and years of reinforcing that new sense of ethics. In the meantime, they continue to reinforce their current reputation. Apologists like yourself do them no good.
As the corporations corral little bits and pieces of things they consider important, the rest of the world moves on. Look at Disney, hanging on to that stupid little mouse. Look at SCO, hanging on to ancient old code as if it were their precioussssss.
Sure there's immediate pain and loss when things are imprisoned. But what happends when wild horses are imprisoned? They lose their freshness. Put flowers in a vase? They wither and need replacement.
Let Disney have their mouse. Popular culture has deserted it. Let Disney waste their resources becoming more and more irrelevant to popular culture. Disney made the choice to hang on to the mouse and let go of Pixar, and it is Disney who will rot from staleness and lack of exercise, not Pixar.
Pay cash. It's beer (well, it's Bud..) it's cheap. Budweiser ain't gonna tailor their next commercial just for you even if you do charge it and they track that.
FYI, I spent 4 years in the US Navy. How about you?
As for attacks by foreign powers, can you specify which ones? Is Castro bothering me? Is there some reason I don't know that Cuba has to be quarantined but not China?
How about Iran, whose current govt only came to power because they finally got fed up with the govt which had been foisted on them by the US?
How about the many central American countries who had govts controlled by US banana companies and backed up by US Marines?
I dare say 90% of the foreign relation problems the US govt has are the direct result of something the US govt has done, allegedly on my behalf.
I am sick and tired of people in power, non-elected people, doing things on my behalf, and when the inevitable backlash comes, they start new nasty programs on my behalf.
Problem is, everyone has a different idea of what "best interests" means. Joe McCarthy certainly had the best interests of the US in mind. So did communists. They just had different best interests.
J Edgar Hoover had the US best interest in mind when he framed Martin Luther King, Jr with forged audio tapes of bogus conversations.
McCarthur had the US best interests in mind when he tried to start WW III with Red China.
The generals who had plans in the early 60s to fake terrorist attacks in the US and blame it on Castro had the US best interests in mind.
Oliver North had the US best interests in mind.
Poindextor and TIA had the US best interests in mind.
I myself don't particularly appreciate other people having my best interests in mind. They don't know my best interests and they don't care.
And that includes you. To all you and your ilk who have my best interests in mind, I say FUCK YOU, I can decide my own best interests.
Like the other poster says, the same tires on other SUVs were ok, and Explorers with other tires were ok... and their internal memos show they knew of the problem and tried to cover it up. Ditto for the engine compartment electronics overheating and causing fires: some bean counter actually wrote a memo saying it was cheaper to get sued a few times than to spend $4 per vehicle to fix the design. And again ditto for the side saddle fuel tanks; more internal memos showing a cover up.
What frustrates me so much is that it really is in their best interest to cover up, since if they disclose the flaw by redsigning it, they get sued anyway. The legal system makes no allowance for honest mistakes. That's what I propose, to provide indemnity if mistakes are admitted publicly and immediately, and throw the book at them for covering up problems.
The author avoids thinking about the case, and instead treats the outcome as a black box whose final outcome is too mysterious to even think about. This is not your standard contract dispute, this is SCO getting desperate. The proof of that comes in their laughable attempts to show any proof of stolen code, their continually varying claims, line counts going from millions to dozens, switching from contract to copyright claims, contradictions from one press release to the next, lying to the judge, idiotic remarks about the GPL being unconstitutional and a danger to national security... no one who has a valid claim wanders over such a large map without ever getting to the point. SCO's behaviour is more like a drunken walk or Brownian motion. They have no goal except to keep walking.
Perhaps there is some doubt as to how much of the copyright Novell and SCO actually own, perhaps some of the finer points are in doubt too, but there are far too many clear cut lies from SCO, and that AT&T statement from 1985 really cuts the ground from underneath them.
Once you get that in perspective, the reason to not offer indemnification makes a lot more sense.
Corporations should be required to disclose all problems with their products and infrastructure as soon as they know about them, and given immunity for doing so. Failure to disclose problems immediately would drop the immunity. I am all for suing the pants off the bastards when they hide defects and cover up and it is only found out after deaths and accidents. Remember Ford Explorers and Bridgestone tires? Remember Ford overheating electronics causing fires in the engine compartment? Remember GM side saddle fuel tanks? etc etc. I have no problem with companies making mistakes, but they better disclose them as soon as they find out, not try to cover up.
Apple has to make money on them, or why sell them? Apple has to make money on something, either iPods or iTunes or Macs, and it can't be for the Macs, since iTunes runs under Windows too. I can't see how it does Apple any good to lose money so HP can make money. They can't have that huge a margin.
The argument against the Hubble maintenance mission is that it would not have the ISS as a safe house if the shuttle makes it to orbit but is not safe to come back down in. Therefore any mission to other than the ISS requires making up the repair kit that the safety board recommended.
Well hogwash! The safety board didn't say build the repair kit only if you go elsewhere, they said build it period. It would still be a good thing to have, even if the crew can hideout in the space station. Second, if no shuttle goes to Hubble, they have to build a special remote operated tug to match orbits with Hubble to bring it down under control, rather than let it wobble around and possible land big chunks on people. But a repair mission could install a much simpler de-orbit rocket as part of its mission, and I bet the costs would be a lot less, compared to designing a one shot remote operated booster.
I have been to small claims court three times, one went to the judge and I won 100%, the other two settled for the full amount, including court costs. I had a solid case and told the judge exactly what happened; my opponent lied her ass off so bad the judge even gave her a startled look, forged evidence, the whole nine yards of fraud and deception. In one of the settled cases, it would have been the same, I had several different stories from the other party and clear violation of state law (deposit on a rental). In the third case, the guy was just plain lazy and thought he could outwait me, and crumbled 100% on the court date.
You are saying that anything which makes economic sense fits the model?
Not just ordinary robbery... Enron fits the model... bribery... kidnaping for ransom... if Bush had said we are going to war to get the oil, that would fit the model...
There is no point to all this. What the hell does fitting some model have to do with anything useful? You may as well argue how many angels fit on the head of a pin, it has no use to anybody.
How exactly will this happen? Will this require every computer with a net connection to allow certain outside agents to read their every file? What business would allow this? They might be willing to allow their executables to be scanned, but not their data. Credit cards, subscription lists, the privacy implications are horrendous and would never pass muster. And anyone who thinks it is impossible to hide executables among the data obviously is a bureaucrat, and a dumb one at that.
As for hardware manufacturers, they don't produce a lot of hardware drivers right now.
You'll have to get a bit more realistic and detailed than that to get a passing grade.
Seems to me that every anti-spam scheme suffers from one basic problem, that spammers increasingly rely on hijacked broadband computers to spew their bile. The "legitimate" spammers, those who actually use their own computers and net connection, will have to pay, those who use hijacked computers won't, and ordinary people who have no idea their computer has been hijacked, and have no idea how to prevent it, will be the real victims.
Sure it's fun to think of all those lusers finally getting a clue in the form of a big fat bill, and all those mad as hell lusers beating on Microsoft for shoddy software, but be realistic, this is a roadblock, and none of these schemes will come to pass as long as hijacked computers get the bill.
How in the dickens can you outlaw free source software? Don't just say they'll pass a law. It hasn't stopped music redistribution, which is widely perceived by lawmakers as having no redeeming value. Post some realistic scenario where they can effectively stop free source software. Include the effects on IBM, Apple, and foreign countries.
Go on. Betcha can't even come close. And remember, details and realism each count for 50% of your grade.
Just as script kiddies have no innate intelligence and have no clue how all those scripts work, this writer has learned from some rule book somewhere that clauses in a sentence are the preferred way to spiff up boring writing. Rather than try to understand why, he has applied this rule indiscriminately and come up with nonsense.
It has been ages since I worried about this stuff (6th grade, I think). I think these are called subordinate clauses, and are supposed to clarify the rest of the sentence. Thus if he had said "Jobs, who made his money interviewing famous people, routinely declines interviews requests" or "Jobs, who is worth $1.7 billion, said he cannot afford to finance movies himself" -- either one would have been legitimate.
Now I hope I've cleared up SOMETHING, for Ifni's sake!
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Only one of those can be top priority. Microsoft priority is making money fast. Linux priority is scratching itches.
Microsoft second priority is form, to have the appearance of function. Linux priority is nothing but function.
Hitler fought Stalin. Nothing new under the sun.
Probably older than you want now :-) this was ten years ago ...
I loaded Linux on a Windows 3.1 machine for my kids to get mail (had a domain name) so they could all have their own mail accounts and login; didn't want the arguments from a 16 year old girl and 12 year old boy fighting over a common email account. The 16 year old liked Pine for email, she would rather exit X to read email under Pine, before she learned about xterm.
It says 80 watts. You think that might mean something?
It is a fact that Microsoft has hoodwinked and swindled their way to the top. Ask about GO, STAC, DR-DOS, forged video evidence at the anti-trust trial, rigged bencharks, blatant lies and FUD, any period of their history, including that the very MS-BASIC that Bill Gates so infamously complained about being stolen when he himself had stolen the computer time to develop it, and you will find blatant decption and skulduggery.
Then the other side of it, what has Microsoft actually done that is new? You sure won't find much. They are excellent at doing a shoddy job of copying others.
Consider a serial killer, say that guy in Canada who murdered several dozen prostitutes. Would you suggest that some other prostitute should take a chance on that guy?
I doubt it. So why should anyone believe a thing Microsoft says, or have any expectations for future decency in any of their current activities?
Reputations take time to build. Microsoft has shot their own reputation so many times that it will take a wholesale change of corporate leadership to change their reputation, and years and years of reinforcing that new sense of ethics. In the meantime, they continue to reinforce their current reputation. Apologists like yourself do them no good.
It's not that hard
Then what's the point? Especially when married?
As the corporations corral little bits and pieces of things they consider important, the rest of the world moves on. Look at Disney, hanging on to that stupid little mouse. Look at SCO, hanging on to ancient old code as if it were their precioussssss.
Sure there's immediate pain and loss when things are imprisoned. But what happends when wild horses are imprisoned? They lose their freshness. Put flowers in a vase? They wither and need replacement.
Let Disney have their mouse. Popular culture has deserted it. Let Disney waste their resources becoming more and more irrelevant to popular culture. Disney made the choice to hang on to the mouse and let go of Pixar, and it is Disney who will rot from staleness and lack of exercise, not Pixar.
Pay cash. It's beer (well, it's Bud ..) it's cheap. Budweiser ain't gonna tailor their next commercial just for you even if you do charge it and they track that.
ZIPPY the PINHEAD
FYI, I spent 4 years in the US Navy. How about you?
As for attacks by foreign powers, can you specify which ones? Is Castro bothering me? Is there some reason I don't know that Cuba has to be quarantined but not China?
How about Iran, whose current govt only came to power because they finally got fed up with the govt which had been foisted on them by the US?
How about the many central American countries who had govts controlled by US banana companies and backed up by US Marines?
I dare say 90% of the foreign relation problems the US govt has are the direct result of something the US govt has done, allegedly on my behalf.
I am sick and tired of people in power, non-elected people, doing things on my behalf, and when the inevitable backlash comes, they start new nasty programs on my behalf.
Problem is, everyone has a different idea of what "best interests" means. Joe McCarthy certainly had the best interests of the US in mind. So did communists. They just had different best interests.
J Edgar Hoover had the US best interest in mind when he framed Martin Luther King, Jr with forged audio tapes of bogus conversations.
McCarthur had the US best interests in mind when he tried to start WW III with Red China.
The generals who had plans in the early 60s to fake terrorist attacks in the US and blame it on Castro had the US best interests in mind.
Oliver North had the US best interests in mind.
Poindextor and TIA had the US best interests in mind.
I myself don't particularly appreciate other people having my best interests in mind. They don't know my best interests and they don't care.
And that includes you. To all you and your ilk who have my best interests in mind, I say FUCK YOU, I can decide my own best interests.
Not only would reading groklaw help, so would reading reports in general.
And reading my actual posting name would help too.
Like the other poster says, the same tires on other SUVs were ok, and Explorers with other tires were ok ... and their internal memos show they knew of the problem and tried to cover it up. Ditto for the engine compartment electronics overheating and causing fires: some bean counter actually wrote a memo saying it was cheaper to get sued a few times than to spend $4 per vehicle to fix the design. And again ditto for the side saddle fuel tanks; more internal memos showing a cover up.
What frustrates me so much is that it really is in their best interest to cover up, since if they disclose the flaw by redsigning it, they get sued anyway. The legal system makes no allowance for honest mistakes. That's what I propose, to provide indemnity if mistakes are admitted publicly and immediately, and throw the book at them for covering up problems.
The author avoids thinking about the case, and instead treats the outcome as a black box whose final outcome is too mysterious to even think about. This is not your standard contract dispute, this is SCO getting desperate. The proof of that comes in their laughable attempts to show any proof of stolen code, their continually varying claims, line counts going from millions to dozens, switching from contract to copyright claims, contradictions from one press release to the next, lying to the judge, idiotic remarks about the GPL being unconstitutional and a danger to national security ... no one who has a valid claim wanders over such a large map without ever getting to the point. SCO's behaviour is more like a drunken walk or Brownian motion. They have no goal except to keep walking.
Perhaps there is some doubt as to how much of the copyright Novell and SCO actually own, perhaps some of the finer points are in doubt too, but there are far too many clear cut lies from SCO, and that AT&T statement from 1985 really cuts the ground from underneath them.
Once you get that in perspective, the reason to not offer indemnification makes a lot more sense.
Corporations should be required to disclose all problems with their products and infrastructure as soon as they know about them, and given immunity for doing so. Failure to disclose problems immediately would drop the immunity. I am all for suing the pants off the bastards when they hide defects and cover up and it is only found out after deaths and accidents. Remember Ford Explorers and Bridgestone tires? Remember Ford overheating electronics causing fires in the engine compartment? Remember GM side saddle fuel tanks? etc etc. I have no problem with companies making mistakes, but they better disclose them as soon as they find out, not try to cover up.
Apple has to make money on them, or why sell them? Apple has to make money on something, either iPods or iTunes or Macs, and it can't be for the Macs, since iTunes runs under Windows too. I can't see how it does Apple any good to lose money so HP can make money. They can't have that huge a margin.
The argument against the Hubble maintenance mission is that it would not have the ISS as a safe house if the shuttle makes it to orbit but is not safe to come back down in. Therefore any mission to other than the ISS requires making up the repair kit that the safety board recommended.
Well hogwash! The safety board didn't say build the repair kit only if you go elsewhere, they said build it period. It would still be a good thing to have, even if the crew can hideout in the space station. Second, if no shuttle goes to Hubble, they have to build a special remote operated tug to match orbits with Hubble to bring it down under control, rather than let it wobble around and possible land big chunks on people. But a repair mission could install a much simpler de-orbit rocket as part of its mission, and I bet the costs would be a lot less, compared to designing a one shot remote operated booster.
I have been to small claims court three times, one went to the judge and I won 100%, the other two settled for the full amount, including court costs. I had a solid case and told the judge exactly what happened; my opponent lied her ass off so bad the judge even gave her a startled look, forged evidence, the whole nine yards of fraud and deception. In one of the settled cases, it would have been the same, I had several different stories from the other party and clear violation of state law (deposit on a rental). In the third case, the guy was just plain lazy and thought he could outwait me, and crumbled 100% on the court date.
You are saying that anything which makes economic sense fits the model?
... Enron fits the model ... bribery ... kidnaping for ransom ... if Bush had said we are going to war to get the oil, that would fit the model ...
Not just ordinary robbery
There is no point to all this. What the hell does fitting some model have to do with anything useful? You may as well argue how many angels fit on the head of a pin, it has no use to anybody.
It sets it back to 4.3. That's hardly 10 years.
Your mother told you a million times not to exagerate.
Any computer that is connected can be analyzed
How exactly will this happen? Will this require every computer with a net connection to allow certain outside agents to read their every file? What business would allow this? They might be willing to allow their executables to be scanned, but not their data. Credit cards, subscription lists, the privacy implications are horrendous and would never pass muster. And anyone who thinks it is impossible to hide executables among the data obviously is a bureaucrat, and a dumb one at that.
As for hardware manufacturers, they don't produce a lot of hardware drivers right now.
You'll have to get a bit more realistic and detailed than that to get a passing grade.
Seems to me that every anti-spam scheme suffers from one basic problem, that spammers increasingly rely on hijacked broadband computers to spew their bile. The "legitimate" spammers, those who actually use their own computers and net connection, will have to pay, those who use hijacked computers won't, and ordinary people who have no idea their computer has been hijacked, and have no idea how to prevent it, will be the real victims.
Sure it's fun to think of all those lusers finally getting a clue in the form of a big fat bill, and all those mad as hell lusers beating on Microsoft for shoddy software, but be realistic, this is a roadblock, and none of these schemes will come to pass as long as hijacked computers get the bill.
How in the dickens can you outlaw free source software? Don't just say they'll pass a law. It hasn't stopped music redistribution, which is widely perceived by lawmakers as having no redeeming value. Post some realistic scenario where they can effectively stop free source software. Include the effects on IBM, Apple, and foreign countries.
Go on. Betcha can't even come close. And remember, details and realism each count for 50% of your grade.
Just as script kiddies have no innate intelligence and have no clue how all those scripts work, this writer has learned from some rule book somewhere that clauses in a sentence are the preferred way to spiff up boring writing. Rather than try to understand why, he has applied this rule indiscriminately and come up with nonsense.
It has been ages since I worried about this stuff (6th grade, I think). I think these are called subordinate clauses, and are supposed to clarify the rest of the sentence. Thus if he had said "Jobs, who made his money interviewing famous people, routinely declines interviews requests" or "Jobs, who is worth $1.7 billion, said he cannot afford to finance movies himself" -- either one would have been legitimate.
Now I hope I've cleared up SOMETHING, for Ifni's sake!