When Bush was running against McCain he ran ads saying that McCain was against breast cancer research and Karl Rove launched a "McCain has an illiegitemate black baby" whispering campaign in the south.
Despite these immoral and sleazy campaign tactics used against him George Bush McCain has backed him 100% on every issue and has never critized Bush.
This tells me that McCain does not have the integrity and honor people say he does. His loyalty is to his party before everything else including his honor.
There is nothing special about McCain he is just another politician willing to compromise all and any of his beliefs in order to get what he wants.
" Have you ever used.net? Have you ever used c#? Have you seen those '3 or 4 new features' and advantages, speed and openness of the standard to name a few?"
Yes Indeed I have. The speed is basically similar to java, the new features have already been implemented by java and the standard only covers the core c# language and does not cover any of windows forms, ado.net, asp.net or anything else. 90% of the.net stack is prorietary and patented. At least with java you can download JVMs from other companies or use open source ones..NET is just another me too product from MS. As always a few years behind the real innovation.
For another example take a look at visual studio. After three years the VS users finally get refactoring, javadoc, and ant (they still don't have hibernate, micro containers, dependency injection and mocking!). It took them all this time just to implement some of the features of eclipse. Meanwhile eclipse will speed along for the next two years while VS.NET 2005 stagnates and falls behind.
Bill Gates has a billion dollar house, a fleet of exotic cars, a private jet or two and all other trappings of a billionaire. He gives a tiny bit of his stock (not actual money) to his wife's foundation who then sells it and gives the money to charity. In a very real sense that money comes from people who bought the stock not bill gates (although bill gave the stock which cost him nothing).
As for Larry I kind of admire him. If I was rich I too would own a jet and a super sailboat but I don't know if I would have the nuts to fly the jet or race the sailboat in massively bad weather like he does.
Walmart and Microsoft are both ample proof that what wins in the marketplace is "good enough and cheaper". Windows was never as good as a Mac, OS/2, Amiga or anything else and yet it gained market dominance because it was cheaper and "good enough".
Linux will dominate for the same reason. MS knows this and that's why they are cutting prices and even giving away their software like IE and SQL server.
What kind of a difference would another 3 billion make to him? Honestly is he going to buy fifty more planes? A thousand feraris? He is not going to retire, he is still going to wake up every day and go to work wearing his jeans and turtleneck.
At some level any more money is not going to make a damn bit of difference except to your children after you die.
"That's right, you heard me. I said, on/., that I think Windows should peacefully and cooperatively coexist wit Linux/OS X/whatever. Proprietary alongside open as well. There is no absolute right here, onlyimprovement."
IF that's what you really want then MS is your enemy. They don't want the same thing that you do. In fact they are spending millions of dollars trying to make sure you don't get what you want. They are bribing politicians to make sure you don't get what you want. They are rigging their products to make sure you don't get what you want. They are hiring astro-turfers and so called journalists to make sure you don't get what you want.
If you really want that then you should spend your time fighting MS not defending them. MS thinks people like you are communists.
"Ever heard of.net? MS technology, but developers love it, even OSS developers, hence Mono and dotGnu. But, then again, MS came up with it so it must be bad. There is no point in arguing this further."
MS didn't come up with it. They just took java and re-implemented it with three or four new features.
More of then then not they are shills. You can always spot a shill because they all speak the same talking points and are usually hyping whatever argument was voiced by a high placed MS executive last week or last month.
"Ooooor OpenOffice could instead add Office 2003 XML output (in a subprogram granted), which was my whole point."
IF they did they would be violating MS intellectual property. Not only could they get sued everybody who used OO could be sued for patent violation by MS. MS has so far refused to grant a blanket patent grant despite being asked to do so.
" There is not much to be gained as far as "open standards" go in moving to OpenDocument. "
There is immense good gained from going to open standards. The state of mass needs perpetual access to data they themselves created.
"Which makes me think that the only reason Slashdot cares so damn much is because of the OSS crusade."
I suppose you can think whatever you want. It seems like facts don't really enter into your thought process.
"I hope you aren't trying to relate doing what almost all MS's competitors were also trying to do with the willful killing of american children and infirm. "
1) Almost all of MS competitors were doing the same thing. That's something shills tell themselves to make themsevles feel better. 2) Osama killed around 3000 people most of whom were adults and healthy and at work. 3) George Bush has so far killed over a 100,000 people a lot of whom were children and infirm and most (if not all) of them were desparately poor compared to your typical american.
4) Although I was not directly comparing the crimes of Bill Gates to crimes of Osama there is a paralell in that both of them give money to the poor in order to advance their causes and to try and get good press amongst their audiance.
You realize of course that constantly calling people who disagree with you zealots (or communists, or cancer, or anti american) does not help you at all. In fact you come off looking much worse then they are.
I think it is you who is the zealot here.
By the way saying "you take things too seriously relax" is no different then "shut up and take it bitch" in this case.
"Basically to me all this whining over openess of the whole thing sounds like just silly zealotry and isn't helpful."
Yes, it's widely understood that people you disagree with are by definition zealots. After all there can be no rational or reasonable reason not to accept your viewpoint, people must be disagreeing with you out of sheer zealotry and blind hatred of you and those things you love.
Your situation points out one thing. What incentive do you have to switch to Linux or other open source operating system? The answer is none. As long as you are able to use open source software in windows you will never switch to linux.
Without a "killer app" that only runs on linux the platform will be slow to gain widespread deployment. Right now asterisk is the only popular open source project that does not run on windows that I can think of and you can bet your ass lots of people are installing linux just to get a cheap PBX system. In fact it's created a thriving cottage industry of consultant, appliance makers, support businesses etc. We need more projects like asterisk.
In your zeal to shill you forgot that this has nothing to with open source but everything to do with open standards. MS could support the OASIS XML format and Mass would have no problems continuing their use of office.
See how simple that is? Just add a "save as" filter and all your problems go away.
"He also hadn't turned Microsoft into a litigation powerhouse until Netscape, Sun et.al decided to cajole the Clinton DOJ to put up that circus witch hunt (not that I am denying the antitrust issue). Take that for what it's worth."
How does that make Gates a moral and kind person? You are saying that MS turned into a litigation powerhouse once the people he raped called the cops. OK I'll buy that. By the same token he stated giving away money once the litigation started.
We seem to be saying the same thing. He is not motivated to give away money by the goodness of his own heart, it was a reaction to being tried in court. If he was a good person he would not have to wait till he was dragged into court right?
Is it really enough to be better then the worst corporation in the world? I hear this all the time, "at least I am not as bad as.....". It's like a murderer saying "well at least I didn't eat them like Jeffrey Dahmer".
Apple has already done this with.MAC. The cool thing is that you don't even need to install an exchange server and you can still share files, calendars and sync with your PDA or Ipod even.
There is no reason why google could not add file and calendar sharing. Their database application will probably do that. Then you can use thunderbird and the moz icalender thingie.
Whatever happened to chandler anyway? I thought that was supposed to be the next big PIM.
Oh and I also hear rumors that Netmanage will open source Ecco after all these years. Ecco Pro was the best PIM ever written by anybody. Too bad Netmange shelved it months after buying it.
I think the i am a dummy switch is great. One time I was upgrading debian using dist upgrade but of course I had to do things my way so typed in a apt-get upgrade on one of the packages I wasn't suppoed to. Apt of course balked and said it wasn't going to upgrade the package unless I typed "I realize this is a bad idea". Yes the whole phrase. So being an idiot I typed the phrase in and proceeded to break my system.
I find linux error messages refreshingly human. Often verbose and clear, in the vein of "I am looking for a file in directory/etc/something/something but I can't find it" rather then the windows "file not found" or worse yet "overflow" error messages.
As for product names if we left it to the "professionals" every product would be named "word" or "windows" or "notepad" or some boring soul-less crap. Worse yet it would be some non sensical word like "vista". Hey guys check out my vista!. Buy hey who am kidding those soul-less professional corporate types have already gotten a copyright on every word in every language anyway if you name your product anything other then "rottenPorkChop" they will sue your ass off.
" What else can we expect from MS, maybe tabs on IE? Oh wait..."
Look at Visual studio. Finally after two years of waiting VS developers get refactoring, a build system, decent version control, and an integrated javadoc like system. Now that they have almost caught up to eclipse they can wait another two years while the rest of the field runs away from them.
Slashdot Mirror
When Bush was running against McCain he ran ads saying that McCain was against breast cancer research and Karl Rove launched a "McCain has an illiegitemate black baby" whispering campaign in the south.
Despite these immoral and sleazy campaign tactics used against him George Bush McCain has backed him 100% on every issue and has never critized Bush.
This tells me that McCain does not have the integrity and honor people say he does. His loyalty is to his party before everything else including his honor.
There is nothing special about McCain he is just another politician willing to compromise all and any of his beliefs in order to get what he wants.
" Have you ever used .net? Have you ever used c#? Have you seen those '3 or 4 new features' and advantages, speed and openness of the standard to name a few?"
.net stack is prorietary and patented. At least with java you can download JVMs from other companies or use open source ones. .NET is just another me too product from MS. As always a few years behind the real innovation.
Yes Indeed I have. The speed is basically similar to java, the new features have already been implemented by java and the standard only covers the core c# language and does not cover any of windows forms, ado.net, asp.net or anything else. 90% of the
For another example take a look at visual studio. After three years the VS users finally get refactoring, javadoc, and ant (they still don't have hibernate, micro containers, dependency injection and mocking!). It took them all this time just to implement some of the features of eclipse. Meanwhile eclipse will speed along for the next two years while VS.NET 2005 stagnates and falls behind.
Bill Gates has a billion dollar house, a fleet of exotic cars, a private jet or two and all other trappings of a billionaire. He gives a tiny bit of his stock (not actual money) to his wife's foundation who then sells it and gives the money to charity. In a very real sense that money comes from people who bought the stock not bill gates (although bill gave the stock which cost him nothing).
As for Larry I kind of admire him. If I was rich I too would own a jet and a super sailboat but I don't know if I would have the nuts to fly the jet or race the sailboat in massively bad weather like he does.
Walmart and Microsoft are both ample proof that what wins in the marketplace is "good enough and cheaper". Windows was never as good as a Mac, OS/2, Amiga or anything else and yet it gained market dominance because it was cheaper and "good enough".
Linux will dominate for the same reason. MS knows this and that's why they are cutting prices and even giving away their software like IE and SQL server.
What kind of a difference would another 3 billion make to him? Honestly is he going to buy fifty more planes? A thousand feraris? He is not going to retire, he is still going to wake up every day and go to work wearing his jeans and turtleneck.
At some level any more money is not going to make a damn bit of difference except to your children after you die.
"That's right, you heard me. I said, on /., that I think Windows should peacefully and cooperatively coexist wit Linux/OS X/whatever. Proprietary alongside open as well. There is no absolute right here, onlyimprovement."
IF that's what you really want then MS is your enemy. They don't want the same thing that you do. In fact they are spending millions of dollars trying to make sure you don't get what you want. They are bribing politicians to make sure you don't get what you want. They are rigging their products to make sure you don't get what you want. They are hiring astro-turfers and so called journalists to make sure you don't get what you want.
If you really want that then you should spend your time fighting MS not defending them. MS thinks people like you are communists.
"Ever heard of .net? MS technology, but developers love it, even OSS developers, hence Mono and dotGnu. But, then again, MS came up with it so it must be bad. There is no point in arguing this further."
MS didn't come up with it. They just took java and re-implemented it with three or four new features.
VB.NET wow now there is a cool product!
More of then then not they are shills. You can always spot a shill because they all speak the same talking points and are usually hyping whatever argument was voiced by a high placed MS executive last week or last month.
"Ooooor OpenOffice could instead add Office 2003 XML output (in a subprogram granted), which was my whole point."
IF they did they would be violating MS intellectual property. Not only could they get sued everybody who used OO could be sued for patent violation by MS. MS has so far refused to grant a blanket patent grant despite being asked to do so.
" There is not much to be gained as far as "open standards" go in moving to OpenDocument. "
There is immense good gained from going to open standards. The state of mass needs perpetual access to data they themselves created.
"Which makes me think that the only reason Slashdot cares so damn much is because of the OSS crusade."
I suppose you can think whatever you want. It seems like facts don't really enter into your thought process.
"I hope you aren't trying to relate doing what almost all MS's competitors were also trying to do with the willful killing of american children and infirm. "
1) Almost all of MS competitors were doing the same thing. That's something shills tell themselves to make themsevles feel better.
2) Osama killed around 3000 people most of whom were adults and healthy and at work.
3) George Bush has so far killed over a 100,000 people a lot of whom were children and infirm and most (if not all) of them were desparately poor compared to your typical american.
4) Although I was not directly comparing the crimes of Bill Gates to crimes of Osama there is a paralell in that both of them give money to the poor in order to advance their causes and to try and get good press amongst their audiance.
You realize of course that constantly calling people who disagree with you zealots (or communists, or cancer, or anti american) does not help you at all. In fact you come off looking much worse then they are.
I think it is you who is the zealot here.
By the way saying "you take things too seriously relax" is no different then "shut up and take it bitch" in this case.
"Basically to me all this whining over openess of the whole thing sounds like just silly zealotry and isn't helpful."
Yes, it's widely understood that people you disagree with are by definition zealots. After all there can be no rational or reasonable reason not to accept your viewpoint, people must be disagreeing with you out of sheer zealotry and blind hatred of you and those things you love.
Your situation points out one thing. What incentive do you have to switch to Linux or other open source operating system? The answer is none. As long as you are able to use open source software in windows you will never switch to linux.
Without a "killer app" that only runs on linux the platform will be slow to gain widespread deployment. Right now asterisk is the only popular open source project that does not run on windows that I can think of and you can bet your ass lots of people are installing linux just to get a cheap PBX system. In fact it's created a thriving cottage industry of consultant, appliance makers, support businesses etc. We need more projects like asterisk.
"This looks like a mindless OSS crusade to me."
In your zeal to shill you forgot that this has nothing to with open source but everything to do with open standards. MS could support the OASIS XML format and Mass would have no problems continuing their use of office.
See how simple that is? Just add a "save as" filter and all your problems go away.
"1) Bland
2) Soulless
3) Lacks Flavor
4) Lacks Style"
Perfect for corporations. Should be a big hit with the pointy hair types. BSD had just crossed over to the dilbert zone.
I think it does to God. I think it also matter how here got his money. Osama gives money to the orphans too you know.
"He also hadn't turned Microsoft into a litigation powerhouse until Netscape, Sun et.al decided to cajole the Clinton DOJ to put up that circus witch hunt (not that I am denying the antitrust issue). Take that for what it's worth."
How does that make Gates a moral and kind person? You are saying that MS turned into a litigation powerhouse once the people he raped called the cops. OK I'll buy that. By the same token he stated giving away money once the litigation started.
We seem to be saying the same thing. He is not motivated to give away money by the goodness of his own heart, it was a reaction to being tried in court. If he was a good person he would not have to wait till he was dragged into court right?
"Because they don't charge $50000 per CPU per year, and thus can afford fewer people working full-time on the code."
Feature for feature oracle costs the same as SQL server. To think that Oracle has more money to throw at a project then MS is laughable.
He also didn't give a penny to anybody until after the anti-trust trial started. Take that for what it's worth.
Personally I think it's his wife who is the generous one, I don't think Bill Gates has the capacity for empathy.
Is it really enough to be better then the worst corporation in the world? I hear this all the time, "at least I am not as bad as .....". It's like a murderer saying "well at least I didn't eat them like Jeffrey Dahmer".
Why doesn't apple put a couple of engineers on the OO team? It must not be very important to them I guess.
Apple has already done this with .MAC. The cool thing is that you don't even need to install an exchange server and you can still share files, calendars and sync with your PDA or Ipod even.
There is no reason why google could not add file and calendar sharing. Their database application will probably do that. Then you can use thunderbird and the moz icalender thingie.
Whatever happened to chandler anyway? I thought that was supposed to be the next big PIM.
Oh and I also hear rumors that Netmanage will open source Ecco after all these years. Ecco Pro was the best PIM ever written by anybody. Too bad Netmange shelved it months after buying it.
I think the i am a dummy switch is great. One time I was upgrading debian using dist upgrade but of course I had to do things my way so typed in a apt-get upgrade on one of the packages I wasn't suppoed to. Apt of course balked and said it wasn't going to upgrade the package unless I typed "I realize this is a bad idea". Yes the whole phrase. So being an idiot I typed the phrase in and proceeded to break my system.
/etc/something/something but I can't find it" rather then the windows "file not found" or worse yet "overflow" error messages.
I find linux error messages refreshingly human. Often verbose and clear, in the vein of "I am looking for a file in directory
As for product names if we left it to the "professionals" every product would be named "word" or "windows" or "notepad" or some boring soul-less crap. Worse yet it would be some non sensical word like "vista". Hey guys check out my vista!. Buy hey who am kidding those soul-less professional corporate types have already gotten a copyright on every word in every language anyway if you name your product anything other then "rottenPorkChop" they will sue your ass off.
Nice to know that after five years or so they are catching up to where oracle and java was. Why does it take them so long anyway?
" What else can we expect from MS, maybe tabs on IE? Oh wait..."
Look at Visual studio. Finally after two years of waiting VS developers get refactoring, a build system, decent version control, and an integrated javadoc like system. Now that they have almost caught up to eclipse they can wait another two years while the rest of the field runs away from them.