"Reform copyrights! No closed source software should be allowed to be copyrighted. Copyrights are supposed to get people to publish their works . . . "/i>
Closed source software is published all the time. The binaries are published. The copyright that applies to that copy of Windows you are using is on the binary images and not the source code. I just love it when/. runs stories on copyright and patents. All the geeks simply can't help from rushing to be the first one to show how utterly ignorant they are of the issues.
Oh, and just on the "conspiracy theorist" theme, the main article I linked to was by Mary Enig, who is a renowned researcher in the field, and if I recall correctly a Nobel laureate.
She campaigned against Trans-fats for many years and was ridiculed by the establishment in just the way you are doing now. Time has shown that she was right, and the industry, who for years held the position that trans-fats were not harmful, has only recently been forced to remove them from the food chain.
The problem is, the solution they have come up with is worse than the original problem.
However, I understand if you want to remain in your comfortably ignorant position. It is much easier to just accept what you are told and consider it to be "Gods will" when you contract some incurable condition. It sure is a lot harder to avoid consuming this crap than it is just to accept eating it, I know that for a fact.
It most certainly is. When in doubt you should always follow the money.
As for the third, you are right, I am not an industrial chemist. However, I'm not sure a wikipedia article is entirely credible either. As for scientific consensus, the same was said for many years in the tobacco wars. We all now know that the big money was lying through their collective teeth the entire time. I'm confident that due course we will all discover that things are no different here.
http://www.drz.org/asp/nl/NL_Hydrogenated_Oils_10. 10.05.htm "Crisco made their first shortening through hydrogenation in 1911 ( What Not to Eat, Ron Lagerquist and Tom McGregor ). In the 1930s scientists at Dupont used the hydrogenation process to create margarine . Since then these hydrogenated products have infiltrated a large portion of our food. According to Tim O'Shea, DC "... genetically modified hydrogenated soybean oil (is) now present in over 60 percent of food items on the shelves of American supermarkets." ( Dr. Tim O'Shea )
Hydrogenation of oils is achieved by bubbling hydrogen through the oil in the presence of a metal catalyst, such as nickel, platinum, aluminum, at 248 to 410 degrees Fahrenheit ( Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus ). Remnants of these metals stay in the finished product and are consumed. This can lead to an increased load of heavy metals in the body .
All of the natural enzymes in the oil are destroyed, making for an almost unlimited shelf life . Eating hydrogenated oils is very similar to eating plastic. In addition, the high temperature and hydrogenation mutates the molecules' configuration and it thus becomes a trans (formed)-fatty acid. "A very slight change -- the rotation of the molecule around a double bond -- twists a fatty acid from its natural cis-configuration into an unnatural trans-configuration, creating a trans-fatty acid." (Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus) This changes the fatty acids properties and the way they affect our bodies. The body does not recognize that these molecules are mutated and uses them as if they were normal essential fatty acids.
However, the trans-fatty acid cannot perform the function of the essential fatty acid. This causes a short circuit in the electrical flow that controls the heartbeat, nerve functions, cell division and mental balance. They create free radicals that are linked to cancer and they increase the blood cholesterol levels . Because of this, and the metal ( nickel, aluminum) remnants, hydrogenated oils are a major contributor to cancer, heart disease, immune system dysfunction, osteoporosis, depression, chronic fatigue, Alzheimers, and neurological diseases . It has been estimated that over 200 million have died prematurely because of the trans-fatty acids in oils ( What Not to Eat, Ron Lagerquist and Tom McGregor) .
Some examples of where you find hydrogenated oils are baked products (breads, cakes, muffins, etc.), salad dressings, soups, potato chips, mayonnaise, cheese spreads, peanut butter, cake and biscuit mixes. Raisins are sometimes coated with it. You will find them in most processed foods.
Herbert Dutton, one of the oldest oil chemists in North America said: "If the hydrogenation process were discovered today, it probably could not be adopted by the oil industry." ( Fat that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Eramus) It is clear that we should avoid hydrogenated oil whenever possible.
Develop a strategy of shopping and cooking that is not based on processed foods. Read labels on all products before you buy (bring your magnifying glass to the grocery if you need to). Be sure to check your bread labels, or bake your own. Use less carbohydrates and use more vegetables and protein in your diet. When cooking or baking with fats and oils use only butter and cold pressed extra virgin olive oil . It is also recommended not to cook with oils at high temperature. The best choice for frying is butter as it contains little essential fatty acids that would be transformed by the heat of frying.
"This article explains that India is actually having a huge problem with heart disease"
Yes, I'm aware of that, but I've also seen studies that put that down to the, as you correctly point out, wealthier Indians using more expensive western oils on the basis that they are supposedly healthier.
"A study of more than one million males in India demonstrated that people in northern India consume more than seventeen times more animal fat than people in southern India. The incidence of CVD in northern India, however, is seven times lower than people in southern India. People in southern India consume much more vegetable oil than in the north."
Malhotra, SL., "Epidemiology of ischaemic heart disease in India with special reference to causation." Br Heart J, 1967; 29(6): 895-905.
Here is an excerpt, the site has full references for all the assertions made;
"Evolution of the unhealthy American
What's decreased?
* Animal fat consumption has dropped over 21% since 1910. [1]
* Whole milk consumption has decreased 50%. [15]
* The consumption of butter has decreased from 18 pounds per year to 4 pounds. [1]
What's increased?
* Over the past 80 years, cholesterol consumption has increased a mere 1%. [1]
* Vegetable oil consumption, including hydrogenated oils, has increased 437%. [15]
* Sugar consumption went from 5 pounds per year in 1900 to 163 pounds per year today. [16]
If animal fats (saturated fats) are so dangerous, and vegetable oils (polyunsaturated fat) are
so healthy, why are we so unhealthy as a nation? The scientific data of the past and present
does not support the assertion that saturated fats cause heart disease. As a matter of fact,
more than 20 studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten any
more saturated fat than other people, and the degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated
to diet. [17] Saturated fats have been nourishing societies around the world for thousands of years."
There is a lot more evidence out there if you care to look. Such as a few years back when cattle farmers tried to use the saturated fats from coconut oil to fatten up their livestock for the Japanese market, only to find that their cattle LOST weight. They eventually solved the "problem" by feedign their cattle soy oil, which is allegedly less fattening.
Feel free to believe whatever you like, I really don't care. When Monsanto tells you that their patented seed stock is better than natural seeds I'm sure they only have your best interests at heart.
If you look at the history of canola oil, it was originally grown as "rapeseed" and first used extensively as a lubricant for machinery during WW2 due to the difficulties in obtaining fossil based oils from the middle east. It was inedible. The problem was that after the war, when the west went back to using fossil oils for lubrication there were many new farms producing rapeseed with no market to sell to. A solution was needed and needed fast. That solution was to modify rapeseed oil to make it "edible". And by edible I mean "won't make you sick and kill you within a short enough period for rapeseed oil to be identified as the culprit". The first "edible" rapeseed was "developed" in the 50's, and rebranded as Canola in the 70's for obvious reasons. It is a vastly inferior product with serious health ramifications that has been foisted on the public to further the commercial interests of corporate food production interests.
"Vegetable oil" is a synonym for "heavily processed, hydrogenated oil which will kill you but makes good financial sense to the corporatised US food production industry"
It is poisonous bloody stuff. If you want to know why America (in particular) and western nations (in general) are all suffering out of control obesity and diabetes epidemics you need to look no further than the replacement of natural oils (peanut, coconut and butter), with so-called "healthy" polyunsaturates. Countries like India uses huge amounts of butter (ghee) and coconut oil and you don't see them with rampaging blood sugar levels, heart disease and all of the other side effects of eating crap like "Crisco" and margarines.
Ask yourself why these types of oils never spoil? If you leave margarine out of the refridgerator for a week, does it go off? Why? It doesn't go off because it is not bio-degradeable. If it is not biodegradable, then how is your body meant to metabolise it? Of course it can't, so what it does is "put it aside" and get on with the job of digesting everything else. After sufficient time of course your body will have put enough fat aside that you become fat. Fat builds up around the pancreas and voila, you've got diabetes.
So why do we eat this crap? Because US food interests want you to. The problem for US business interests is that most natural oils such as peanut, olive and coconut/palm oil are not produced in the US. The US does produce gobs of corn and soy however, not to mention that canola rubbish. The problem is that these crops do not produce much edible oil naturally, it has to be processed out of them. Another problem is that the resulting oils are quite unstable, meaning they react to oxygen (oxidize) quickly and spoil. This is a problem for the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries however, who really like long shelf lives and cheap storage (non-refrigerated). So what the industry does is to hydrogenate their oils, which means superheating the oil and passing it through hydrogen to fuse hydrogen molecules to the receptors that would normally fuse with the oxygen. This makes for an oil that is extremely stable but an unfortunate side effect is that it also becomes virtually undigestable. Sure you can eat it and you won't turn blue and die in a week, but then the same can be said for smoking too. Remember how corporate interests insisted that smoking couldn't hurt you until only a few years ago? Well the edible oil industry is no better than those criminals. They too use bogus science and massive amounts of money to produce a steady stream of lies and bullshit regarding the health benefits of eating processed vegetable oils. This began during the thirties and over time it has worked so well that the US is now the most overweight and unhealthy nation on earth, with other western nations scrambling to follow suit.
Now they want to stick that crap in chocolate. It's getting to the point that you wont be able to buy anything that isn't filled with this rubbish.
"I think that in the Linux world, mergers are a good thing and need to be made across the entire Linux community. Imagine if the Gnome and KDE camps could work together."
That's all well and good, unless of course the "merger" involves one player essentially subsuming the other.
I like Gnome. I can't stand KDE. If Gnome and KDE were to merge, only to become basically the new version of KDE, then I would be royally pissed off. I'm sure there are plenty of KDE fans who would be just as pissed if KDE became more like Gnome.
Sorry, but you clearly have no clue as to what the free/open software world is all about. If you don't like choice, then there is a corporation based in Redmond that has just the operating system for you.
"I mean trying to stop people DESCRIBING an event... dear god who the F*ck do they think they are? "
Actually, this sort of battle has already been fought in Australia (it didn't make it to the courtroom though).
I refer to "NRL versus Radio 2UE" from about 2003 (I think). The scenario goes like this;
1) 2UE has long held the radio broadcast rights for National Rugby League (NRL) games and has a highly successful commentary team that achieves competition crushing ratings throughout game days, ie not just during the game itself. We are talking high ratings 12PM through 6PM Saturdays AND Sunday, throughout the season.
2) Come Season 2003, 2UE loses the broadcast rights. The "Continuous Call Team" then proceeds to "continue calling" (har har har) games from within their own studio by viewing Foxtels live TV coverage via satellite. Ratings continue to dominate, while the newly installed rights-holder (2GB) embarassingly languish in the basement.
3) NRL cries foul and demands that 2UE discontinue their "unauthorised descriptions" of NRL games.
4) 2UE initially flips the NRL the bird, but eventually relents because they know they stand a snowballs chance in hell of regaining the official broadcast rights were they to continue with that stance. It is unclear why they thought they would ever need the official rights in light of their "unofficial" ratings success.
It would have been interesting to see which side would have prevailed had it reached the courts.
So, how has it all panned out in 2007? Well, 2UE suffered through a change of owner, which apparently caused some serious discontent amongst the on-air staff. Meanwhile, 2GB management were unimpressed by the performance of their own on-air people so they began a large scale head-hunting effort which culminated in the entire "Continuous Call Team" moving across to 2GB, along with some other high profile non-league related personalities (ie "The Parrot") as well.
More to the point, if I see an update come through on Ubuntu that is for "gnome-desktop-calendar" then I can be pretty sure that even if it is borked, it won't bork my entire system, and even if it does, I will know where to look in order to fix it.
On the flip side, if I apply W2K_SP2.exe to my server and something breaks I have a much more difficult time identifying the problem and often the best short term course of action is to roll back the entire service pack.
Microsoft have built a business around ever increasing revenues coming from the the only 2 products that they have that make any significant money for them, those being Windows and Office.
They have come to realise that this unchecked growth cannot continue ad infinitum. Not on that, but both those products are now under very serious threat from more nimble competitors and a market that is becoming increasingly hostile towards them.
Because of that, they are desperate to find alternate revenue streams to replace their existing ones. The way that Microsoft does business means that the only way they can make a profit is through having a monopoly product. They have spent the last 30 years destroying any competitor that even raises its head. They have been doing business that way for sow long now that that is the only way they know how to operate. The problem is that in existing markets you can't just insert yourself as the defacto monopoly because there are others already there who hold more market territory than you and you can't leverage your existing monopoly power outside of the desktop application market. Hence they try to beat Sony at console games, Nokia at cell phones Google at web search and apple at mp3 players, and all of these endeavors will end or have already ended with spectacular failures.
Microsoft, simply put, are unable to compete.
What they really want is to break into just one emerging market where they can hold their customers to ransom and last mile delivery is their current choice of target. They will fail at that too of course, they just don't realise it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Mono is a .NET port? Fascinating. Steve Ballmer must have been feeling uncharacteristically generous on that day.
"Reform copyrights! No closed source software should be allowed to be copyrighted. Copyrights are supposed to get people to publish their works . . . "/i>
/. runs stories on copyright and patents. All the geeks simply can't help from rushing to be the first one to show how utterly ignorant they are of the issues.
Closed source software is published all the time. The binaries are published. The copyright that applies to that copy of Windows you are using is on the binary images and not the source code. I just love it when
Spoken like a true teenage dingbat who thinks the PS/3/Wii/XBox360 (pick your fanboi allegience) is the pinnacle of the worlds computing achievements.
Congratulations on being an ignorant toolbox.
It is a common trolling tactic used on /.
You must be new here etc etc
And yes, I do realise you were making a joke.
If you want that then take a look at Win9x and its non-premeptive scheduling. Ever wonder how a misbehaving app can completely lock a system?
Cool,
First they offer us the Blackberry without the network, now they offer us the network without the Blackberry. What next? No network and no Blackberry?
Hey, I've already got that upgrade!
Oh, and just on the "conspiracy theorist" theme, the main article I linked to was by Mary Enig, who is a renowned researcher in the field, and if I recall correctly a Nobel laureate.
. html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_G._Enig
She campaigned against Trans-fats for many years and was ridiculed by the establishment in just the way you are doing now. Time has shown that she was right, and the industry, who for years held the position that trans-fats were not harmful, has only recently been forced to remove them from the food chain.
The problem is, the solution they have come up with is worse than the original problem.
http://www.stop-trans-fat.com/interesterified-fat
However, I understand if you want to remain in your comfortably ignorant position. It is much easier to just accept what you are told and consider it to be "Gods will" when you contract some incurable condition. It sure is a lot harder to avoid consuming this crap than it is just to accept eating it, I know that for a fact.
Ah yes, all of 15 minutes of research there, well done.
You can rest easy now I'm sure.
"The first statement is blatantly incorrect,"
. 10.05.htm
So you say, but you offer no contrary evidence.
"the second is not relevant,"
It most certainly is. When in doubt you should always follow the money.
As for the third, you are right, I am not an industrial chemist. However, I'm not sure a wikipedia article is entirely credible either. As for scientific consensus, the same was said for many years in the tobacco wars. We all now know that the big money was lying through their collective teeth the entire time. I'm confident that due course we will all discover that things are no different here.
http://www.drz.org/asp/nl/NL_Hydrogenated_Oils_10
"Crisco made their first shortening through hydrogenation in 1911 ( What Not to Eat, Ron Lagerquist and Tom McGregor ). In the 1930s scientists at Dupont used the hydrogenation process to create margarine . Since then these hydrogenated products have infiltrated a large portion of our food. According to Tim O'Shea, DC "... genetically modified hydrogenated soybean oil (is) now present in over 60 percent of food items on the shelves of American supermarkets." ( Dr. Tim O'Shea )
Hydrogenation of oils is achieved by bubbling hydrogen through the oil in the presence of a metal catalyst, such as nickel, platinum, aluminum, at 248 to 410 degrees Fahrenheit ( Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus ). Remnants of these metals stay in the finished product and are consumed. This can lead to an increased load of heavy metals in the body .
All of the natural enzymes in the oil are destroyed, making for an almost unlimited shelf life . Eating hydrogenated oils is very similar to eating plastic. In addition, the high temperature and hydrogenation mutates the molecules' configuration and it thus becomes a trans (formed)-fatty acid. "A very slight change -- the rotation of the molecule around a double bond -- twists a fatty acid from its natural cis-configuration into an unnatural trans-configuration, creating a trans-fatty acid." (Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Erasmus) This changes the fatty acids properties and the way they affect our bodies. The body does not recognize that these molecules are mutated and uses them as if they were normal essential fatty acids.
However, the trans-fatty acid cannot perform the function of the essential fatty acid. This causes a short circuit in the electrical flow that controls the heartbeat, nerve functions, cell division and mental balance. They create free radicals that are linked to cancer and they increase the blood cholesterol levels . Because of this, and the metal ( nickel, aluminum) remnants, hydrogenated oils are a major contributor to cancer, heart disease, immune system dysfunction, osteoporosis, depression, chronic fatigue, Alzheimers, and neurological diseases . It has been estimated that over 200 million have died prematurely because of the trans-fatty acids in oils ( What Not to Eat, Ron Lagerquist and Tom McGregor) .
Some examples of where you find hydrogenated oils are baked products (breads, cakes, muffins, etc.), salad dressings, soups, potato chips, mayonnaise, cheese spreads, peanut butter, cake and biscuit mixes. Raisins are sometimes coated with it. You will find them in most processed foods.
Herbert Dutton, one of the oldest oil chemists in North America said: "If the hydrogenation process were discovered today, it probably could not be adopted by the oil industry." ( Fat that Heal, Fats that Kill, Udo Eramus) It is clear that we should avoid hydrogenated oil whenever possible.
Develop a strategy of shopping and cooking that is not based on processed foods. Read labels on all products before you buy (bring your magnifying glass to the grocery if you need to). Be sure to check your bread labels, or bake your own. Use less carbohydrates and use more vegetables and protein in your diet. When cooking or baking with fats and oils use only butter and cold pressed extra virgin olive oil . It is also recommended not to cook with oils at high temperature. The best choice for frying is butter as it contains little essential fatty acids that would be transformed by the heat of frying.
"This article explains that India is actually having a huge problem with heart disease"
p othesis.htm
Yes, I'm aware of that, but I've also seen studies that put that down to the, as you correctly point out, wealthier Indians using more expensive western oils on the basis that they are supposedly healthier.
"A study of more than one million males in India demonstrated that people in northern India consume more than seventeen times more animal fat than people in southern India. The incidence of CVD in northern India, however, is seven times lower than people in southern India. People in southern India consume much more vegetable oil than in the north."
Malhotra, SL., "Epidemiology of ischaemic heart disease in India with special reference to causation." Br Heart J, 1967; 29(6): 895-905.
This article is quite good too;
http://www.bullz-eye.com/furci/2006/fats_lipid_hy
Here is an excerpt, the site has full references for all the assertions made;
"Evolution of the unhealthy American
What's decreased?
* Animal fat consumption has dropped over 21% since 1910. [1]
* Whole milk consumption has decreased 50%. [15]
* The consumption of butter has decreased from 18 pounds per year to 4 pounds. [1]
What's increased?
* Over the past 80 years, cholesterol consumption has increased a mere 1%. [1]
* Vegetable oil consumption, including hydrogenated oils, has increased 437%. [15]
* Sugar consumption went from 5 pounds per year in 1900 to 163 pounds per year today. [16]
If animal fats (saturated fats) are so dangerous, and vegetable oils (polyunsaturated fat) are
so healthy, why are we so unhealthy as a nation? The scientific data of the past and present
does not support the assertion that saturated fats cause heart disease. As a matter of fact,
more than 20 studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten any
more saturated fat than other people, and the degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated
to diet. [17] Saturated fats have been nourishing societies around the world for thousands of years."
There is a lot more evidence out there if you care to look. Such as a few years back when cattle farmers tried to use the saturated fats from coconut oil to fatten up their livestock for the Japanese market, only to find that their cattle LOST weight. They eventually solved the "problem" by feedign their cattle soy oil, which is allegedly less fattening.
Feel free to believe whatever you like, I really don't care. When Monsanto tells you that their patented seed stock is better than natural seeds I'm sure they only have your best interests at heart.
Re: Canola oil
If you look at the history of canola oil, it was originally grown as "rapeseed" and first used extensively as a lubricant for machinery during WW2 due to the difficulties in obtaining fossil based oils from the middle east. It was inedible. The problem was that after the war, when the west went back to using fossil oils for lubrication there were many new farms producing rapeseed with no market to sell to. A solution was needed and needed fast. That solution was to modify rapeseed oil to make it "edible". And by edible I mean "won't make you sick and kill you within a short enough period for rapeseed oil to be identified as the culprit". The first "edible" rapeseed was "developed" in the 50's, and rebranded as Canola in the 70's for obvious reasons. It is a vastly inferior product with serious health ramifications that has been foisted on the public to further the commercial interests of corporate food production interests.
You should avoid it at all costs.
"Vegetable oil" is a synonym for "heavily processed, hydrogenated oil which will kill you but makes good financial sense to the corporatised US food production industry"
t ml
3 471-trans-fat-interesterified-fat-cvd
e goil.htmle ption.htmld rogenatedoil.htm
It is poisonous bloody stuff. If you want to know why America (in particular) and western nations (in general) are all suffering out of control obesity and diabetes epidemics you need to look no further than the replacement of natural oils (peanut, coconut and butter), with so-called "healthy" polyunsaturates. Countries like India uses huge amounts of butter (ghee) and coconut oil and you don't see them with rampaging blood sugar levels, heart disease and all of the other side effects of eating crap like "Crisco" and margarines.
Ask yourself why these types of oils never spoil? If you leave margarine out of the refridgerator for a week, does it go off? Why? It doesn't go off because it is not bio-degradeable. If it is not biodegradable, then how is your body meant to metabolise it? Of course it can't, so what it does is "put it aside" and get on with the job of digesting everything else. After sufficient time of course your body will have put enough fat aside that you become fat. Fat builds up around the pancreas and voila, you've got diabetes.
So why do we eat this crap? Because US food interests want you to. The problem for US business interests is that most natural oils such as peanut, olive and coconut/palm oil are not produced in the US. The US does produce gobs of corn and soy however, not to mention that canola rubbish. The problem is that these crops do not produce much edible oil naturally, it has to be processed out of them. Another problem is that the resulting oils are quite unstable, meaning they react to oxygen (oxidize) quickly and spoil. This is a problem for the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries however, who really like long shelf lives and cheap storage (non-refrigerated). So what the industry does is to hydrogenate their oils, which means superheating the oil and passing it through hydrogen to fuse hydrogen molecules to the receptors that would normally fuse with the oxygen. This makes for an oil that is extremely stable but an unfortunate side effect is that it also becomes virtually undigestable. Sure you can eat it and you won't turn blue and die in a week, but then the same can be said for smoking too. Remember how corporate interests insisted that smoking couldn't hurt you until only a few years ago? Well the edible oil industry is no better than those criminals. They too use bogus science and massive amounts of money to produce a steady stream of lies and bullshit regarding the health benefits of eating processed vegetable oils. This began during the thirties and over time it has worked so well that the US is now the most overweight and unhealthy nation on earth, with other western nations scrambling to follow suit.
Now they want to stick that crap in chocolate. It's getting to the point that you wont be able to buy anything that isn't filled with this rubbish.
Essential reading:
The Oiling of America
http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/oiling.h
Other good sites;
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=7
http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays5-1/v
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/DiabetesDec
http://www.jctonic.com/include/healingcrisis/12Hy
Have you moderated on slashdot lately?
"I think that in the Linux world, mergers are a good thing and need to be made across the entire Linux community. Imagine if the Gnome and KDE camps could work together."
That's all well and good, unless of course the "merger" involves one player essentially subsuming the other.
I like Gnome. I can't stand KDE. If Gnome and KDE were to merge, only to become basically the new version of KDE, then I would be royally pissed off. I'm sure there are plenty of KDE fans who would be just as pissed if KDE became more like Gnome.
Sorry, but you clearly have no clue as to what the free/open software world is all about. If you don't like choice, then there is a corporation based in Redmond that has just the operating system for you.
"And I don't see the point of running a x86 emulator on a phone."
:-)
Because we are geeks, and we can, that's why.
Yes? And? I'm stll waiting for the second word I was promised . . .
"What does Java has to offer that some standard C emulator doesn't?"
Can you compile C apps to run on your phone? I know I can't.
"I mean trying to stop people DESCRIBING an event... dear god who the F*ck do they think they are? "
Actually, this sort of battle has already been fought in Australia (it didn't make it to the courtroom though).
I refer to "NRL versus Radio 2UE" from about 2003 (I think). The scenario goes like this;
1) 2UE has long held the radio broadcast rights for National Rugby League (NRL) games and has a highly successful commentary team that achieves competition crushing ratings throughout game days, ie not just during the game itself. We are talking high ratings 12PM through 6PM Saturdays AND Sunday, throughout the season.
2) Come Season 2003, 2UE loses the broadcast rights. The "Continuous Call Team" then proceeds to "continue calling" (har har har) games from within their own studio by viewing Foxtels live TV coverage via satellite. Ratings continue to dominate, while the newly installed rights-holder (2GB) embarassingly languish in the basement.
3) NRL cries foul and demands that 2UE discontinue their "unauthorised descriptions" of NRL games.
4) 2UE initially flips the NRL the bird, but eventually relents because they know they stand a snowballs chance in hell of regaining the official broadcast rights were they to continue with that stance. It is unclear why they thought they would ever need the official rights in light of their "unofficial" ratings success.
It would have been interesting to see which side would have prevailed had it reached the courts.
So, how has it all panned out in 2007? Well, 2UE suffered through a change of owner, which apparently caused some serious discontent amongst the on-air staff. Meanwhile, 2GB management were unimpressed by the performance of their own on-air people so they began a large scale head-hunting effort which culminated in the entire "Continuous Call Team" moving across to 2GB, along with some other high profile non-league related personalities (ie "The Parrot") as well.
"Try actually reading the website "
I did, it crashed my browser.
More to the point, if I see an update come through on Ubuntu that is for "gnome-desktop-calendar" then I can be pretty sure that even if it is borked, it won't bork my entire system, and even if it does, I will know where to look in order to fix it.
On the flip side, if I apply W2K_SP2.exe to my server and something breaks I have a much more difficult time identifying the problem and often the best short term course of action is to roll back the entire service pack.
Microsoft have built a business around ever increasing revenues coming from the the only 2 products that they have that make any significant money for them, those being Windows and Office.
They have come to realise that this unchecked growth cannot continue ad infinitum. Not on that, but both those products are now under very serious threat from more nimble competitors and a market that is becoming increasingly hostile towards them.
Because of that, they are desperate to find alternate revenue streams to replace their existing ones. The way that Microsoft does business means that the only way they can make a profit is through having a monopoly product. They have spent the last 30 years destroying any competitor that even raises its head. They have been doing business that way for sow long now that that is the only way they know how to operate. The problem is that in existing markets you can't just insert yourself as the defacto monopoly because there are others already there who hold more market territory than you and you can't leverage your existing monopoly power outside of the desktop application market. Hence they try to beat Sony at console games, Nokia at cell phones Google at web search and apple at mp3 players, and all of these endeavors will end or have already ended with spectacular failures.
Microsoft, simply put, are unable to compete.
What they really want is to break into just one emerging market where they can hold their customers to ransom and last mile delivery is their current choice of target. They will fail at that too of course, they just don't realise it yet.
That might alleviate the forecast bandwidth shortage that is due to occur when TV over the internet is rolled out in force!
You clearly have no idea as to the motivations driving Microsoft these days.
Yes you can, as long as you post AC