Jesus H. Christ. What kind of person would mark me troll and be allowed to KEEP me as Troll?
Damn it, NOTHING IN THAT POST WAS FALSE, INTENTIONALLY FALSE, OR LIBELOUS!
My laptop is a Gateway P-6301. It was SOLD with only 1 GB RAM, bought by me at Best Buy, late Dec 2007. I bought the upgrade RAM at CompUSA in Jan/Feb 2008. I downloaded demos OF and later paid for licenses TO of Punch! ViaCAD and IMSI TurboCAD. I installed VirtualBox on the machine because it was pointless to install Win4Lin, and because the damned machine came with Vista.
I NEVER TO THIS DAY let that vista touch the Internet natively and not via VirtualBox. THE ONLY TIME I surf using windows is at work, between tasks. But when on lunch, i break out my laptop so people near and around can see Linux (Mandriva) and KDE4.1 in play.
Now, you troll-marker out there, you are the kind of person who makes it fortunate that duelling is illegal in the US. (This is NOT an invite, nor a threat, but laws keep in check those of us who'd blow a gasket at being marked as troll by YOU because YOU cannot handle the truth, and seem incapable of allowing that someone's word is actually true and unassailable.)
If troll-markers were required to monkey-click tick boxes indicating they searched for and read their targ... vict... subject's related posts, you would have found out that in no fewer than 3 or 4 times i talked about my laptop, it's make and model, what i do with it, and more. (Doesn't/. have a powerful search engine? Why are "troll" marks allowed to post without forcing the mod to jump hoops first? Posting or sharing a story is more difficult than condemning someone to troll status...)
It is NOTHING SHORT OF PATHETIC, though, that Slashdot hasn't fully tapped the power of limiting the power of troll-markers.
Anybody out there care to weight in and show the troll-marker s/he cannot get away with this?
Just a little bit more....
I also want to reiterate that Slashdot is partly at fault for allowing this kind of behavior on the part of troll-markers to occur because instead of using a histogram of scoring/grouping of users' comments, it only shows the latest/last. If things were displayed as historical, then readers could personally assess, visually, whether or not a post is being victimized or assailed by grousers who have no other way of nailing people like me. But, then, such grousers/troll-markers are allowed to get away with hit-and-run/broadside down-scoring, possibly just to piss off people like me who 99.999999999% of the time stay well within the law, but who will at least verbally retaliate --because going further than that is too damn risky...
So, once again, Slashdot admins, Slashdot code could do us all a favor by making troll-markers a thing of the past, or by exposing these hit-n-run moderators. Anyone who marks someone a troll should be flagged as foe, automatically and irrevocably. Anyone who is a habitual foe could or should find their account suspended, or publicly down-rated, and every time they become a foe, every one of their targets should be spiral-graphed so people can know to rescue victims (after all, we humans like to say we are mostly good, kind, benevolent... sure, sure we are...). Usually, though, collectively,/. regulars can automatically by memory ignore or punish anyone who regularly hollers or horns along on a daily, nauseating pattern, but at the same time, with impunity, troll-markers can comfortably slam targets and never be found out or forced into a "cooling-off" period.
Finally...
One day, i dare assert, some geek here will lose his/her cool, sleuth out their victim, and then hunt him/her down and make headlines. I hope that, should that day come,/. will take its share of the blame (rather than letting persist the "let them eat cake" status quo) and indicate it willfully chose not to implement histograms and cooling-off periods. Marking someone a troll should blatantly require the marker to JUSTIFY it
If Win 7 is any indication, win better NOT need more than 1GB. When SMART companies realize that Linux is running in under 1 GB with pretty decent response, and that Vista w/o any SP1 runs "so-so" to "ok" in VirtualBox, in a 2GB max system, then they should begin the next round of PUMMELING the hell out of ms.
For example, my laptop:
Gateway P-6301, 17-inch lappy with TWO HDD slots. 2GB RAM max, with 256 MB going to graphics
Mandriva Linux 2008.0, with use of under 300 MB... because VBox i assigned 1.5 GB so win can have 128 MB video RAM Vista runs so-so to ok, and i run AutoCAD 2008 (rarely, but it behaves well), Punch! ViaCAD (mostly), and other graphics intensive CAD software. I NEVER yet touched the Internet with vista, virtualized or natively!
Now,
Same laptop/same hardware
Mandriva 2009.0, with numerous updates. Same virtual disk of VBox/Vista Some kinks to work out, but overall, vista is still as fast as on Mdv 2008.
What will become of things as more sites along with facebook, such as Multiply, myspace, and all the others become "incentivized" to sidle along with Google. If Google IS in bed with Uncle Same, umm, Uncle Sam, we can all forget about any further tenuous assertions of "privacy".
But, see, back then ms didn't have to compete so much with Linux/Open Source. Back then, to them, Linux was a JOKE and Open Source was trashware.
Now, with the economy in a shambles, with what, only some 10% of the recently surveyed 1,000 companies having switched/upgraded to Vista, and with vista costing more than the hardware, and with many netbooks coming out with all number and manner of lightweight Linux distros, the writing was on the wall for ms.
Win 7 is a turnequit, to stem the hemhorraging of blood from being pummeled and bludgeoned in the press. Linux is the bullet or shrapnel that -- in combination with the economy -- is wounding ms badly. Their own arrogance was what got them stepped into the line of fire, like troops being led by hubris rather than field intelligence, straight into the "gunfire and artillery that our best intelligence said was not supposed to be a threat our superior forces..."
Just the other day i (like many i am sure) posited that the ONLY thing ms can do at this point is to offer free upgrades. However, anyone remember back in the early 90's, when you had to give MS your SSN to get money back for a rebate? They supposedly wanted to prevent fraud. I was royally PISSED that they could be allowed to demand AND GET legal backing (or no apparent government/legal authority backlash/smackdown). Imagine hundreds of thousands of SSNs ms must still have, not to mention the access to SSNs they get when doing HR and other consultancy work.
Anyway, with Compiz FusionPlasma turning heads every time a Linux-running laptop is fired up, and people likely being royally incensed that vista home basic TODAY IN ONE to TWO GIGS OF GRAPHICS RAM and 2 GB of SYSTEM RAM cannot even to a *fraction* of what Compiz and Beryl did in 2007 and even improved to current distros can do in under 256 MEGAbytes of... well, again the writing was on the wall for ms. It was nothing short of pure, fucking outrageousness and coy-ass-reach-around job on unsuspecting or disbelieving consumers (but not PROsumers) to get mislabled, or intentionally vista-ready labels on even machines not ratable for "vista ready"...
Well, i'll step down from my soap box... I've got to go into a public place and fire up KDE 4.1 on Mandriva 2009.0 Free (with updates, but STILL haven't received my PowerPack DVD I ordered WEEKS ago...) so people can oooh and ahhh over witnessing the POWER of Open Source and Linux...
"Then I realized that there's no way Mr. Aiken is serious about these threats. He's posturing in an attempt to force Amazon to rethink the text-to-speech in light of their audio book business. This becomes especially clear based on the response from an Amazon spokesperson:
An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won't confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider."
What I think is that the author's guild heads are trying to do is extort or "read fear" into Amazon's head to convince Amazon to voluntarily offer up royalties or licensing rights, all to set a precedent so that others following Amazon's footsteps will fall into the "precedence" trap in court or pre-court negotiations.
Amazon, DO NOT FALL INTO THAT TRAP! If you do, then once you volunteer, you'll just be squeezed dry since YOU will have volunteered to preemptively settle things. They'll construe (MISconstrue, rather) your initiation as "admission" of being in the wrong, trying to ameliorate matters....
Let them ache. Writers who want to remain in the Guild can, and those who are smart will make sure they rights and by-laws they sign on to don't coerce them to join in solidarity against something that restricts their flexibility...
If they can claim some $10B in "research" (time, labor, materials, marketing, awards, scholarships, grants...) they can deprive "the man" of money "he didn't earn", as if ms HAS earned all the gains it got...
"U.S. Patent No. 7,479,950 covers a technology that lets users place objects on a surface and have them associated with data or media stored on the computer's hard drive. A user could place a set of car keys on the surface and the computer could bring up that person's schedule or list of favorite TV shows airing that night."
This is just nothing less than unctuous BULLSHIT. How is this different from wi-fi and other tags on inventory equipment (think: Walmart, Borders, and convenience stores moving, tracking, and shipping products...) moving from shelf or bin or aisle and other places. Surely, as the techs scan or wand or key in the wi-fi tag, appropriate menus appear. That they aren't in a HOME shouldn't be a distinction.
Lame-ass awarding of a so-called invention. It should be revoked. There should be a mandatory revocation, with penalties by the day...
the parent up from the mere: "(Score:2, Insightful)".
The parent successfully upends the gp's analogies, and without being demeaning or degrading. Why the hell is mR.bRiGhTsId3's comment kept lower-scored than the comment it honestly, gently, genuinely upends, and even provides a solution to the false analogy? What is WITH this site?
Yet, again this underscores that the slashdot moderation system is not just broken, it's not got code in it to FORCE moderators to JUSTIFY and PROMOTE scoring rather than allow trite or ignorant scoring to defeat well-meaning, but better comments to be kept lower.
Now, can we FINALLY get (at reduced labor costs) an Open Source version of SmartSuite? If you DO NOT agree, I will campaign the hell out of EVERY Indian i can get eartime from and show them SmartSuite and let them know a lot of IBM know-how is heading their way. Japan, YEARS ago, got to have SmartSuite as "Super Office", and they (and other countries) got to have the Lotus Approach database as a fucking stand-alone product. But, all these years, i've been grousing, crying, bellyaching, kvetching, moaning and more, hoping.
But, you know, if Indian programmers are willing to come to the US and live 5 to a room, set up a start-up for USD $11,000 a year annual income, in a 2-room apartment, and forgo bonuses, right here in the US, then surely this could be a great cultural (shocking one, albeit) to 'merkuns willing to give India whirl. Hell, it might help broaden the view of the world even MORE than ever. And, when these people return to the USA, maybe they can help moderate and bring better control to this country so that never again do we remain blind, myopic, stupid, and the world's number one target. But, for now, the current administration will have to try to resolve those problems. In the meantime, I'd love to see SmartSuite alone or with combination of OpenOffice.org gain traction in Linuxland, and see SmartSuite head (back) to the Mac platform, too. Apple, are you listening? This could be a chance opportunity here.
I hope Open Source and Linux, and Sun and Apple can bring ms to its crouching duck-walk position as much as many others would like to see. But, MANY open source developers are simply going to have to come up with more polished user interfaces. App installation is STILL going to have to:
-- become as simple as click on the.tar, no yum/apt-get/ whatever -- be as smart as installing with a click (after permissions have been determined valid and authorized) -- and the installer will ALSO have to be smart enough to know how to just search for the Internet-available-but-signed-trusted choices of file are
I have on occasion probably used yum and apt-get and to a greater extent rpm and tar files. It SHOULD be easier. I am sure it IS easy. But, for me, it does not always work. If I have a need to get Rhyme working, and not all the deps are there, it's a show-stopper to face "repository not found", "dependencies (collide/incompatible...)"
But, that's just me and i have to sort these things out so i have less to complain about. BUT...
"Open sourcing Windows wouldn't be a simple thing -- it took Sun years to comb through Solaris to start open sourcing it. If I recall correctly, Sun announced the initiative about a year before any code was released as open, and then other bits have been coming in dribs and drabs since. Windows would probably take even longer -- so, going from closed to open would take a couple of years and cost the company momentum even if they chose to do it.
There's also the legal bits. It would probably take Microsoft a very long time to review the code and ensure that it can be open sourced. I also suspect the company would be hesitant to show its code to the world in its present state -- no doubt, it'd take a while to go through the code just to scrub the comments. There's also the matter of third-party code that would need to be rewritten or relicensed to open source it. It's much easier to start a project using an open source license than it is to go from proprietary to open source."
Well, now, if Enterprise returns, they'll have to revise that history to:
"There once was an intelligence report indicating a Xindi-dispatched Klingon imitation popped up in a convenience mart. He probably had reviewed archive footage of old-fashioned advertisements with what they called a "jingle": "Oh thank Heaven for 7-Eleven", and thought he could find a Xindi contact there... But, he found Daniels working the purchasing counter."
That does not mean they will fill the reqs. These could be aged openings, and they could be there to give false indicators of growth or expected growth for a presumed 2-year position life expectancy.
Even more, they could silently have in effect a hiring freeze. So, recruiting agencies will *see* postings of openings, and some will scrounge around and competing really hard for those spots for their recruits/temps or consultants, but not get much food out of it.
Further, many of those positions could be advertised as one thing, but become something else as needs change. It's happened to me, where i interviewed (as a temp, over a 5-6 year period) for a position, but because of things in my resume i either became a non-fit (too much experience in some areas), and other times my resume forwarded by an agency didn't convey the whole picture, so my in-person handed resume cinched the opportunity. So, I learned to *always* bring in my own copies the agencies didn't edit. On top of that, I gave a long (5-6 pages) and a chopped-up (bulleted, 1-2 pages) resume. Sometimes that helped because the had... "options": speed read, and dig deeper.
It's going to be ROUGH as hell for all those people competing (qualified and hopeful, but unqualified) for positions which are (being) published but effectively frozen.
If the EU and others chafe over the "buy American" clauses, the Obama administration will have few choices: give in, in the respect for globalism over protectionism, or shift that stimulus money from tech and goods to direct labor costs of people eligible FOR and having the right TO work available only to citizens or those visitors with the appropriate visas and proof of experience.
Well, I can see a proactive enemy doing several things:
-- jamming (or attempting jamming) of the snakes
-- using canisters to launch fake (or real) snakes toward the wounded so that conscious wounded will be terrified as hell and may resort to shooting at the expensive devices and venemous or scary real ones
-- launching fraggers into the field to make pointless the use of snakes.
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus H. Christ. What kind of person would mark me troll and be allowed to KEEP me as Troll?
Damn it, NOTHING IN THAT POST WAS FALSE, INTENTIONALLY FALSE, OR LIBELOUS!
My laptop is a Gateway P-6301. It was SOLD with only 1 GB RAM, bought by me at Best Buy, late Dec 2007. I bought the upgrade RAM at CompUSA in Jan/Feb 2008. I downloaded demos OF and later paid for licenses TO of Punch! ViaCAD and IMSI TurboCAD. I installed VirtualBox on the machine because it was pointless to install Win4Lin, and because the damned machine came with Vista.
I NEVER TO THIS DAY let that vista touch the Internet natively and not via VirtualBox. THE ONLY TIME I surf using windows is at work, between tasks. But when on lunch, i break out my laptop so people near and around can see Linux (Mandriva) and KDE4.1 in play.
Now, you troll-marker out there, you are the kind of person who makes it fortunate that duelling is illegal in the US. (This is NOT an invite, nor a threat, but laws keep in check those of us who'd blow a gasket at being marked as troll by YOU because YOU cannot handle the truth, and seem incapable of allowing that someone's word is actually true and unassailable.)
If troll-markers were required to monkey-click tick boxes indicating they searched for and read their targ... vict... subject's related posts, you would have found out that in no fewer than 3 or 4 times i talked about my laptop, it's make and model, what i do with it, and more. (Doesn't /. have a powerful search engine? Why are "troll" marks allowed to post without forcing the mod to jump hoops first? Posting or sharing a story is more difficult than condemning someone to troll status...)
It is NOTHING SHORT OF PATHETIC, though, that Slashdot hasn't fully tapped the power of limiting the power of troll-markers.
Anybody out there care to weight in and show the troll-marker s/he cannot get away with this?
Just a little bit more....
I also want to reiterate that Slashdot is partly at fault for allowing this kind of behavior on the part of troll-markers to occur because instead of using a histogram of scoring/grouping of users' comments, it only shows the latest/last. If things were displayed as historical, then readers could personally assess, visually, whether or not a post is being victimized or assailed by grousers who have no other way of nailing people like me. But, then, such grousers/troll-markers are allowed to get away with hit-and-run/broadside down-scoring, possibly just to piss off people like me who 99.999999999% of the time stay well within the law, but who will at least verbally retaliate --because going further than that is too damn risky...
So, once again, Slashdot admins, Slashdot code could do us all a favor by making troll-markers a thing of the past, or by exposing these hit-n-run moderators. Anyone who marks someone a troll should be flagged as foe, automatically and irrevocably. Anyone who is a habitual foe could or should find their account suspended, or publicly down-rated, and every time they become a foe, every one of their targets should be spiral-graphed so people can know to rescue victims (after all, we humans like to say we are mostly good, kind, benevolent... sure, sure we are...). Usually, though, collectively, /. regulars can automatically by memory ignore or punish anyone who regularly hollers or horns along on a daily, nauseating pattern, but at the same time, with impunity, troll-markers can comfortably slam targets and never be found out or forced into a "cooling-off" period.
Finally...
One day, i dare assert, some geek here will lose his/her cool, sleuth out their victim, and then hunt him/her down and make headlines. I hope that, should that day come, /. will take its share of the blame (rather than letting persist the "let them eat cake" status quo) and indicate it willfully chose not to implement histograms and cooling-off periods. Marking someone a troll should blatantly require the marker to JUSTIFY it
will be on the lookout for new shocking disc-recoveries?
If Win 7 is any indication, win better NOT need more than 1GB. When SMART companies realize that Linux is running in under 1 GB with pretty decent response, and that Vista w/o any SP1 runs "so-so" to "ok" in VirtualBox, in a 2GB max system, then they should begin the next round of PUMMELING the hell out of ms.
For example, my laptop:
Gateway P-6301, 17-inch lappy with TWO HDD slots.
2GB RAM max, with 256 MB going to graphics
Mandriva Linux 2008.0, with use of under 300 MB... because
VBox i assigned 1.5 GB so win can have 128 MB video RAM
Vista runs so-so to ok, and i run AutoCAD 2008 (rarely, but it behaves well), Punch! ViaCAD (mostly), and other graphics intensive CAD software. I NEVER yet touched the Internet with vista, virtualized or natively!
Now,
Same laptop/same hardware
Mandriva 2009.0, with numerous updates.
Same virtual disk of VBox/Vista
Some kinks to work out, but overall, vista is still as fast as on Mdv 2008.
Why should windows require 8 GB, or even 4 GB?
What will become of things as more sites along with facebook, such as Multiply, myspace, and all the others become "incentivized" to sidle along with Google. If Google IS in bed with Uncle Same, umm, Uncle Sam, we can all forget about any further tenuous assertions of "privacy".
I vote "Fidelity" or "Fidelix" (Raulix doesn't sound quite right....) ... in honor of the Regime outlasting multiple US administrations...
But, see, back then ms didn't have to compete so much with Linux/Open Source. Back then, to them, Linux was a JOKE and Open Source was trashware.
Now, with the economy in a shambles, with what, only some 10% of the recently surveyed 1,000 companies having switched/upgraded to Vista, and with vista costing more than the hardware, and with many netbooks coming out with all number and manner of lightweight Linux distros, the writing was on the wall for ms.
Win 7 is a turnequit, to stem the hemhorraging of blood from being pummeled and bludgeoned in the press. Linux is the bullet or shrapnel that -- in combination with the economy -- is wounding ms badly. Their own arrogance was what got them stepped into the line of fire, like troops being led by hubris rather than field intelligence, straight into the "gunfire and artillery that our best intelligence said was not supposed to be a threat our superior forces..."
Just the other day i (like many i am sure) posited that the ONLY thing ms can do at this point is to offer free upgrades. However, anyone remember back in the early 90's, when you had to give MS your SSN to get money back for a rebate? They supposedly wanted to prevent fraud. I was royally PISSED that they could be allowed to demand AND GET legal backing (or no apparent government/legal authority backlash/smackdown). Imagine hundreds of thousands of SSNs ms must still have, not to mention the access to SSNs they get when doing HR and other consultancy work.
Anyway, with Compiz FusionPlasma turning heads every time a Linux-running laptop is fired up, and people likely being royally incensed that vista home basic TODAY IN ONE to TWO GIGS OF GRAPHICS RAM and 2 GB of SYSTEM RAM cannot even to a *fraction* of what Compiz and Beryl did in 2007 and even improved to current distros can do in under 256 MEGAbytes of... well, again the writing was on the wall for ms. It was nothing short of pure, fucking outrageousness and coy-ass-reach-around job on unsuspecting or disbelieving consumers (but not PROsumers) to get mislabled, or intentionally vista-ready labels on even machines not ratable for "vista ready"...
Well, i'll step down from my soap box... I've got to go into a public place and fire up KDE 4.1 on Mandriva 2009.0 Free (with updates, but STILL haven't received my PowerPack DVD I ordered WEEKS ago...) so people can oooh and ahhh over witnessing the POWER of Open Source and Linux...
"Then I realized that there's no way Mr. Aiken is serious about these threats. He's posturing in an attempt to force Amazon to rethink the text-to-speech in light of their audio book business. This becomes especially clear based on the response from an Amazon spokesperson:
An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won't confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider."
What I think is that the author's guild heads are trying to do is extort or "read fear" into Amazon's head to convince Amazon to voluntarily offer up royalties or licensing rights, all to set a precedent so that others following Amazon's footsteps will fall into the "precedence" trap in court or pre-court negotiations.
Amazon, DO NOT FALL INTO THAT TRAP! If you do, then once you volunteer, you'll just be squeezed dry since YOU will have volunteered to preemptively settle things. They'll construe (MISconstrue, rather) your initiation as "admission" of being in the wrong, trying to ameliorate matters....
Let them ache. Writers who want to remain in the Guild can, and those who are smart will make sure they rights and by-laws they sign on to don't coerce them to join in solidarity against something that restricts their flexibility...
And then the AG should shut up.
But, when the Kindle-5 becomes more emotive, then, like M-5, it could reply:
"This... unit... must die" (cue Trek music: Dee-dew doo-doo-doo!)
Kirk: An..d.. what... is.. Murder...?
M-5: Murder-is-contrary-to-the-laws-of-God-and-man.
Kirk: What... is the punishment... for Murder?
M-5: This... unit... must... die (dee-dew doo-doo-dooo!)
California Music Channel....
Bring back in their former gory, or glory, Weird Al Yancovic and Elvis Costello... and some Blancmange...
Go back full circle... Then, Thrillingly, they can sing Everyday they Write the Book, while Living on the Ceiling, hehehhe
If they can claim some $10B in "research" (time, labor, materials, marketing, awards, scholarships, grants...) they can deprive "the man" of money "he didn't earn", as if ms HAS earned all the gains it got...
Ballmer CHAIRS the Board and he might CHAIR the BORED if he hasn't got their unprovided attention...
"U.S. Patent No. 7,479,950 covers a technology that lets users place objects on a surface and have them associated with data or media stored on the computer's hard drive. A user could place a set of car keys on the surface and the computer could bring up that person's schedule or list of favorite TV shows airing that night."
This is just nothing less than unctuous BULLSHIT. How is this different from wi-fi and other tags on inventory equipment (think: Walmart, Borders, and convenience stores moving, tracking, and shipping products...) moving from shelf or bin or aisle and other places. Surely, as the techs scan or wand or key in the wi-fi tag, appropriate menus appear. That they aren't in a HOME shouldn't be a distinction.
Lame-ass awarding of a so-called invention. It should be revoked. There should be a mandatory revocation, with penalties by the day ...
A win-win. I say, WHEN WHEN? Hehehe...
And if the kids learn not to to prattle, addle, they can write masterfully, and engage in learning, and kerning battle...
the Jury... I didn't commit (THAT) crime... And, to demonstrate my innocence, please allow me to call on a HIGHER power..... Please, don't be shock...
OHHHHHMMMM... OHHHHMMM..... Ger-ghe.. Qua-jeh.... hamni-ram-ooo-doool... OHHHHMMMM.. OOOOHHHHMMMM...
But, that is the sledgehammer-to-the-mosquito solution, hehehe. But, then again, if it werks....
the parent up from the mere: "(Score:2, Insightful)".
The parent successfully upends the gp's analogies, and without being demeaning or degrading. Why the hell is mR.bRiGhTsId3's comment kept lower-scored than the comment it honestly, gently, genuinely upends, and even provides a solution to the false analogy? What is WITH this site?
Yet, again this underscores that the slashdot moderation system is not just broken, it's not got code in it to FORCE moderators to JUSTIFY and PROMOTE scoring rather than allow trite or ignorant scoring to defeat well-meaning, but better comments to be kept lower.
Sigh....
Apple, T is for TAX, CINNAMY, TOASTY APPLE TAX, you NEED a good 'puter THAT'S A FACT, staarrrt it out WITH APPLE MACS.. Appoo Macks.....
Bowel Movement, IBM....
Now, can we FINALLY get (at reduced labor costs) an Open Source version of SmartSuite? If you DO NOT agree, I will campaign the hell out of EVERY Indian i can get eartime from and show them SmartSuite and let them know a lot of IBM know-how is heading their way. Japan, YEARS ago, got to have SmartSuite as "Super Office", and they (and other countries) got to have the Lotus Approach database as a fucking stand-alone product. But, all these years, i've been grousing, crying, bellyaching, kvetching, moaning and more, hoping.
But, you know, if Indian programmers are willing to come to the US and live 5 to a room, set up a start-up for USD $11,000 a year annual income, in a 2-room apartment, and forgo bonuses, right here in the US, then surely this could be a great cultural (shocking one, albeit) to 'merkuns willing to give India whirl. Hell, it might help broaden the view of the world even MORE than ever. And, when these people return to the USA, maybe they can help moderate and bring better control to this country so that never again do we remain blind, myopic, stupid, and the world's number one target. But, for now, the current administration will have to try to resolve those problems. In the meantime, I'd love to see SmartSuite alone or with combination of OpenOffice.org gain traction in Linuxland, and see SmartSuite head (back) to the Mac platform, too. Apple, are you listening? This could be a chance opportunity here.
I hope Open Source and Linux, and Sun and Apple can bring ms to its crouching duck-walk position as much as many others would like to see. But, MANY open source developers are simply going to have to come up with more polished user interfaces. App installation is STILL going to have to:
-- become as simple as click on the .tar, no yum /apt-get/ whatever
-- be as smart as installing with a click (after permissions have been determined valid and authorized)
-- and the installer will ALSO have to be smart enough to know how to just search for the Internet-available-but-signed-trusted choices of file are
I have on occasion probably used yum and apt-get and to a greater extent rpm and tar files. It SHOULD be easier. I am sure it IS easy. But, for me, it does not always work. If I have a need to get Rhyme working, and not all the deps are there, it's a show-stopper to face "repository not found", "dependencies (collide/incompatible...)"
But, that's just me and i have to sort these things out so i have less to complain about. BUT...
Joe Brockmeier has, :
http://ostatic.com/blog/open-source-windows-dont-count-on-it
"Open sourcing Windows wouldn't be a simple thing -- it took Sun years to comb through Solaris to start open sourcing it. If I recall correctly, Sun announced the initiative about a year before any code was released as open, and then other bits have been coming in dribs and drabs since. Windows would probably take even longer -- so, going from closed to open would take a couple of years and cost the company momentum even if they chose to do it.
There's also the legal bits. It would probably take Microsoft a very long time to review the code and ensure that it can be open sourced. I also suspect the company would be hesitant to show its code to the world in its present state -- no doubt, it'd take a while to go through the code just to scrub the comments. There's also the matter of third-party code that would need to be rewritten or relicensed to open source it. It's much easier to start a project using an open source license than it is to go from proprietary to open source."
"Why do aliens always pop up in corn fields?"
Well, now, if Enterprise returns, they'll have to revise that history to:
"There once was an intelligence report indicating a Xindi-dispatched Klingon imitation popped up in a convenience mart. He probably had reviewed archive footage of old-fashioned advertisements with what they called a "jingle": "Oh thank Heaven for 7-Eleven", and thought he could find a Xindi contact there... But, he found Daniels working the purchasing counter."
(Damn, overworked)
"Kam'cha chime CHEK!"
(If he were a TRUE Klingon, he could reply with, "You swear WELL in Klingon, human clerk...")
That does not mean they will fill the reqs. These could be aged openings, and they could be there to give false indicators of growth or expected growth for a presumed 2-year position life expectancy.
Even more, they could silently have in effect a hiring freeze. So, recruiting agencies will *see* postings of openings, and some will scrounge around and competing really hard for those spots for their recruits/temps or consultants, but not get much food out of it.
Further, many of those positions could be advertised as one thing, but become something else as needs change. It's happened to me, where i interviewed (as a temp, over a 5-6 year period) for a position, but because of things in my resume i either became a non-fit (too much experience in some areas), and other times my resume forwarded by an agency didn't convey the whole picture, so my in-person handed resume cinched the opportunity. So, I learned to *always* bring in my own copies the agencies didn't edit. On top of that, I gave a long (5-6 pages) and a chopped-up (bulleted, 1-2 pages) resume. Sometimes that helped because the had... "options": speed read, and dig deeper.
It's going to be ROUGH as hell for all those people competing (qualified and hopeful, but unqualified) for positions which are (being) published but effectively frozen.
If the EU and others chafe over the "buy American" clauses, the Obama administration will have few choices: give in, in the respect for globalism over protectionism, or shift that stimulus money from tech and goods to direct labor costs of people eligible FOR and having the right TO work available only to citizens or those visitors with the appropriate visas and proof of experience.
Well, I can see a proactive enemy doing several things:
-- jamming (or attempting jamming) of the snakes
-- using canisters to launch fake (or real) snakes toward the wounded so that conscious wounded will be terrified as hell and may resort to shooting at the expensive devices and venemous or scary real ones
-- launching fraggers into the field to make pointless the use of snakes.
gone amok... or, umm, gone awry...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iPHLGwIeNTSqX5OhfAz5P60q01gAD963LLQO0
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1723015/banned_asian_commercial/
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?&next_url=/watch%3Fv%3DFQZJZRhm_3k
https://www.mywii.com.au/VideoDetail.aspx?id=1296
It would have been funnier if it had been a guy instead (or in stead, hehehe).
(Begin (or, resume) the slashdotting...)