Their whole attitude is fucked. You're a customer; a firm that wants you to give them your money accomodates you. Our government is acting like Microsoft is doing it some sort of favour by selling to it -- one that could easily and whimsically be withdrawn. Hence the pathetic attempts at appeasing the company that should be bleeding itself to appease them.
That they are apparently terrified of the possibility that Microsoft will stop selling to them further demonstrates their lack of savvy: in swearing not to even try other solutions, they're locking themselves even more into more dependence on Microsoft. They're renewing, in other words, the situation that has them worried.
In terms of price, it is true that the Department is probably getting a not-entirely-atrocious price from Microsoft in exchange for absolute adherence -- but if they bothered to act like consumers they might remember how low Microsoft will put its prices when challenged, and realize that the smarter move is to at least threaten them with OSS.
But smart moves aren't, apparently, part of our government's repertoire.
One school I worked at in NSW had a network of Windows 98 boxes drowning in malware, to the extent that they were almost totally unusable -- it took literally five minutes after logging in before any program could be launched; crashes were hideously regular; Internet Explorer had shady toolbars, popups in Google and refused to open a link in a new window. Disturbed that students actually had to try and work on these computers, I told the network administrator that he should install some antispyware software and Mozilla Firefox.
As if the sorry state of the network wasn't disgusting enough, the administrator replied that he'd received a Department of Education directive which said he couldn't install any programs for which there was a Microsoft equivalent. That meant no Firefox.
So, in my experience, the impression that the article gives of our school system not forcing Microsoft to actually compete for its business is pretty much spot-on.
Could we learn from your reasoning ability, which apparently constitutes making bold, generalized, unsupported assertions and then referring (in lieu of evidence for them) to how well they were received elsewhere?
Fabulous! Typing that URL is a superb introduction to Slashdot's essentially redundant nature. Soon you'll be posting stories that rephrase actual news sites, enjoying CmdrTaco repost them, reaffirming the evils of draconian copyright law in any mildly appropriate article and reusing the Soviet Russia meme. It all starts with the slash, followed by a slash, followed by yet another slash.
No, this is just a trick to get you to come out. The next story is about donkeys getting elected to the EU parliament and electricuting themselves with flagpoles.
PopularInternet website "Slashdot" has ceased and desisted its run of distressingly unfunny April Fool's news entries. Trolls everywhere have reported repeated bouts of jealousy at the power of CmdrTaco to shit all over Slashdot - a capacity whose unhindered, total form had eluded them.
If you truly did intend to use "posting" as a noun, as is sometimes done in a newsgroup context, you have my most profoundly felt, sincerest apologies. But, sadly, my concern that your pursuit of syllabic padding overshadows your command of language structure remains valid.
(oh look, I used a verb as verb)
Yes, indeed. Did you mean to say that you used a noun as a verb? Clearly words are a struggle for you. Perhaps you should lie down and rest your weary mind.
It has ammused me that people find the desire to further discuss after I have refused an action, it is not as though they can convince me to change my mind.
I will pretend that you wrote something along the lines of
"It has amused me that people - "
Ugh! - your sentence is so fundamentally overwritten that no cursory cure will suffice. I suggest more radical treatment - a complete rewrite:
"It's amused me that people continue to boss me around, like my mummy did, but I showed her!!!!!!! OMG LOL OMG!!!!!"
Well, I don't think we need to enquire any more deeply into your thoughts in that area.
The only meaning you had was to call me a rotten sod for not posting where I first read something and doesn't really confront me at all.
Silly boy! You didn't catch any of my meaning, then, did you? My original point was that you were stupid for wasting time replying (a charge of which I confess my own guilt) when you had been vocally disinclined to waste time earlier. I frankly don't give a fuck about whatever you were talking about originally, nor whether or not you had references to support it.
Knowing now that your perceptions are so faulty, it is not at all surprising that the comments you built out of them feel like were manufactured in Yugoslavia!
Charming. One thing I find with your post is that it fails to distinguish between the verb "posting" and the noun "post". If you were to refer to my "posting", then you'd have to read through my post history and identified a pattern that would allow you to characterize my behaviour - yet as you have only commented on one of my posts I can presume that you have not. It seems that in your pursuit for extra syllables with which to pad your sentences, you failed to distinguish between the meanings of those two little words. That's called a "boo-boo".
I might also note that you have divided my one long sentence, whose unwieldily prolonged structure reflects the projected mental processes of repeated and awkward bafflement upon repeatedly encountering your stupidity, in two. I can only assume that you have difficulty with my polysemous writing style - my conveyance of meaning additionally through form went entirely unnoticed by you.
So lemme get this straight, you imbecile. You had the time and inclination to
* carry on a completely inane conversation, * compare your situation to that of a societies encouraging independence in their weak and * ultimately have produced more bullshit than you had originally
but not to use Google for a moment to provide a link.
Please stop spreading misinformation. HD-DVDs won't play on "the current installed base of DVD players." HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs are read with lasers at 405 nm; DVDs use lasers at 650 nm. Nevertheless both HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives can be made fully backwards compatible with DVDs.
Yes. Essentially, Blu-ray is better, HD-DVD is cheaper. From Wikipedia:
"One single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold about 25GB or almost two hours of HDTV audio and video, and the dual-layer disc can hold approximately 50GB."
"HD-DVD has a capacity of 15 GB (for dual-sided HD-DVD, maximum capacity would be 30 GB)... The cover layer is, as in the case of the DVD, 0.6 mm thick (unlike the Blu-ray Disc at 0.1 mm). The numerical aperture of the optical pick-up head is accordingly the same as that of DVD player (0.65 mm). These factors mean that HD-DVD media is less expensive to manufacture than Blu-ray, not requiring the re-tooling of disc production lines (as is needed for Blu-ray discs)."
because now Microsoft has been stung by the U.S.'s absurd patent law themselves, thanks to Eolas. As Microsoft apparently realize that THEY, being a hugely profitable company and having software products spread across several markets, are the biggest target for rubbish software patents, it's in their clear interests to help fix the system. What we can't trust is that they have influence over government. They won't always be doing the right thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Their whole attitude is fucked. You're a customer; a firm that wants you to give them your money accomodates you. Our government is acting like Microsoft is doing it some sort of favour by selling to it -- one that could easily and whimsically be withdrawn. Hence the pathetic attempts at appeasing the company that should be bleeding itself to appease them.
That they are apparently terrified of the possibility that Microsoft will stop selling to them further demonstrates their lack of savvy: in swearing not to even try other solutions, they're locking themselves even more into more dependence on Microsoft. They're renewing, in other words, the situation that has them worried.
In terms of price, it is true that the Department is probably getting a not-entirely-atrocious price from Microsoft in exchange for absolute adherence -- but if they bothered to act like consumers they might remember how low Microsoft will put its prices when challenged, and realize that the smarter move is to at least threaten them with OSS.
But smart moves aren't, apparently, part of our government's repertoire.
One school I worked at in NSW had a network of Windows 98 boxes drowning in malware, to the extent that they were almost totally unusable -- it took literally five minutes after logging in before any program could be launched; crashes were hideously regular; Internet Explorer had shady toolbars, popups in Google and refused to open a link in a new window. Disturbed that students actually had to try and work on these computers, I told the network administrator that he should install some antispyware software and Mozilla Firefox.
As if the sorry state of the network wasn't disgusting enough, the administrator replied that he'd received a Department of Education directive which said he couldn't install any programs for which there was a Microsoft equivalent. That meant no Firefox.
So, in my experience, the impression that the article gives of our school system not forcing Microsoft to actually compete for its business is pretty much spot-on.
Ewww, my grandparent's my parent!
Could we learn from your reasoning ability, which apparently constitutes making bold, generalized, unsupported assertions and then referring (in lieu of evidence for them) to how well they were received elsewhere?
Whoops, fed a troll.
Windows doesn't support my G5 and it doesn't run any of my BeOS apps. I guess it's not a real OS. :(
http: slash slash slash dot dot dot
Fabulous! Typing that URL is a superb introduction to Slashdot's essentially redundant nature. Soon you'll be posting stories that rephrase actual news sites, enjoying CmdrTaco repost them, reaffirming the evils of draconian copyright law in any mildly appropriate article and reusing the Soviet Russia meme. It all starts with the slash, followed by a slash, followed by yet another slash.
electricuting
Sorry, I had to misspell that word to get into the CmdrTaco persona.
No, this is just a trick to get you to come out. The next story is about donkeys getting elected to the EU parliament and electricuting themselves with flagpoles.
Stay hidden.
Popular Internet website "Slashdot" has ceased and desisted its run of distressingly unfunny April Fool's news entries. Trolls everywhere have reported repeated bouts of jealousy at the power of CmdrTaco to shit all over Slashdot - a capacity whose unhindered, total form had eluded them.
You're getting 2GB. And Google have added a raft of new features.
...
I like this:
Gmail turns 1 today. And we've always loved a good joke. We know we won't reach infinity, but check out what we will do
Ah, Google, that endearingly rascally but ultimately inoffensive jokester!
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `)'
:( Can anyone help me here, I really need pr0nage on my PSP!!!!!!!1!!!
And thanks for pointing out that it was obvious, Captain Obvious.
If you truly did intend to use "posting" as a noun, as is sometimes done in a newsgroup context, you have my most profoundly felt, sincerest apologies. But, sadly, my concern that your pursuit of syllabic padding overshadows your command of language structure remains valid.
(oh look, I used a verb as verb)
Yes, indeed. Did you mean to say that you used a noun as a verb? Clearly words are a struggle for you. Perhaps you should lie down and rest your weary mind.
It has ammused me that people find the desire to further discuss after I have refused an action, it is not as though they can convince me to change my mind.
I will pretend that you wrote something along the lines of
"It has amused me that people - "
Ugh! - your sentence is so fundamentally overwritten that no cursory cure will suffice. I suggest more radical treatment - a complete rewrite:
"It's amused me that people continue to boss me around, like my mummy did, but I showed her!!!!!!! OMG LOL OMG!!!!!"
Well, I don't think we need to enquire any more deeply into your thoughts in that area.
The only meaning you had was to call me a rotten sod for not posting where I first read something and doesn't really confront me at all.
Silly boy! You didn't catch any of my meaning, then, did you? My original point was that you were stupid for wasting time replying (a charge of which I confess my own guilt) when you had been vocally disinclined to waste time earlier. I frankly don't give a fuck about whatever you were talking about originally, nor whether or not you had references to support it.
Knowing now that your perceptions are so faulty, it is not at all surprising that the comments you built out of them feel like were manufactured in Yugoslavia!
Charming. One thing I find with your post is that it fails to distinguish between the verb "posting" and the noun "post". If you were to refer to my "posting", then you'd have to read through my post history and identified a pattern that would allow you to characterize my behaviour - yet as you have only commented on one of my posts I can presume that you have not. It seems that in your pursuit for extra syllables with which to pad your sentences, you failed to distinguish between the meanings of those two little words. That's called a "boo-boo".
I might also note that you have divided my one long sentence, whose unwieldily prolonged structure reflects the projected mental processes of repeated and awkward bafflement upon repeatedly encountering your stupidity, in two. I can only assume that you have difficulty with my polysemous writing style - my conveyance of meaning additionally through form went entirely unnoticed by you.
So lemme get this straight, you imbecile. You had the time and inclination to
* carry on a completely inane conversation,
* compare your situation to that of a societies encouraging independence in their weak and
* ultimately have produced more bullshit than you had originally
but not to use Google for a moment to provide a link.
If this were a dupe, it would be the most fantabulous dupe ever - it links to the original Slashdot story!
Please stop spreading misinformation. HD-DVDs won't play on "the current installed base of DVD players." HD-DVDs and Blu-ray Discs are read with lasers at 405 nm; DVDs use lasers at 650 nm. Nevertheless both HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives can be made fully backwards compatible with DVDs.
Yes. Essentially, Blu-ray is better, HD-DVD is cheaper. From Wikipedia:
"One single-layer Blu-ray Disc can hold about 25GB or almost two hours of HDTV audio and video, and the dual-layer disc can hold approximately 50GB."
"HD-DVD has a capacity of 15 GB (for dual-sided HD-DVD, maximum capacity would be 30 GB)... The cover layer is, as in the case of the DVD, 0.6 mm thick (unlike the Blu-ray Disc at 0.1 mm). The numerical aperture of the optical pick-up head is accordingly the same as that of DVD player (0.65 mm). These factors mean that HD-DVD media is less expensive to manufacture than Blu-ray, not requiring the re-tooling of disc production lines (as is needed for Blu-ray discs)."
Playstation is the exception that proves the BetaMax, ATRAC, soon UMD, soon Blu-Ray... rule.
How about the CD, which Sony co-developed with Philips? I hear they're relatively popular.
because now Microsoft has been stung by the U.S.'s absurd patent law themselves, thanks to Eolas. As Microsoft apparently realize that THEY, being a hugely profitable company and having software products spread across several markets, are the biggest target for rubbish software patents, it's in their clear interests to help fix the system. What we can't trust is that they have influence over government. They won't always be doing the right thing.
see The View of Garry Kasparov Everything you've been told is a lie
I was going to, but then I realized you must be lying as well.
the Administration thinks that keeping her out of the marketplace is the best thing they can do for data privacy. Or maybe this is a dream.
(Concerning the uniqueness of having a little "i")
The one he invented doesn't count.
Whatever it is, it's profound.