So now we've identified the target as the corporate buyers - how do we tell them this is a bad thing? Moving to a new OS requires extensive training (especially for all-MS shops who have "standardized" on MS Office, Outlook, Exchange, NT, ASP, etc...) -- most pointy-haired types don't go for that very well.
I agree that large corporate customers are the ones who are most likely to be able to influence Microsoft issue. Of course for them to get involved it's going to have to cost them money. The yahoo article states:
Microsoft plans to deliver WPA in all 32-bit versions of Whistler except those sold to volume-licensing customers and the so-called "Royalty OEM initial install images" provided to PC makers, said sources close to the company. Microsoft is expected to add similar anti-piracy technology to Office 10 and Visual Studio.Net, sources said. (Emphasis added)
That pretty much takes the large corporate customers out of the picture. Management doesn't want to look like they are pro software piracy. Intelectual property issues are very touchy subjects with large companies in my recent experience. Not much of the management of these large corporations are going to want to pressure Microsoft over this when Micorsoft seems to be willing to exempt them from the problem. It will still effect their home PCs, but they probably just call up dell when they want a new PC anyway, and the cost of buying the OS upgrade wouldn't phase them much anyway.
They're probably frustrated that they never seem to have the latest and greatest OS as it is now. They would likely think that an OS subscription which keeps them up to date it a good thing.
Most of the people who have the influence to pressure Microsoft make enough money that the $100 for the Microsoft OS upgrades just doesn't bother them that much. Using M$ software is familliar to them, and it's worth the $ not to spend their time learning anything else, and for the most part the software does a good job of doing what they need it to do.
There are other people who will drop M$ because they don't like their business practices or don't want to pay the $. Most of those people are going to go to Linux no matter what M$ does, so what do they have to lose.
I guess I remember the winmodem differently than you remember it. I remember almost every modem manufacturer making one. I remember them going into most mass produced PCs that were being built. I remember that Linux advocates hated them, with good reason. But, I don't remember this "immediately failed" part. Actually, I still see them on the shelves, and you have to pay a premium if you want a hardware PCI modem.
I'm sure that someone can find a way around breaking the copy protection, but their method of disabling the protection will be illegal in the US. Once again the DCMA will make criminals of those who are trying to exercise "fair use" of copyrighted materials.
This is what happens when the US Congress lets Hollywood write Copyright Laws instead of balancing the rights of copyright holders with those using the materials.
. . . there is in some foreign country an auction site that sells cocaine, heroin, LSD and other such stuff to U.S. citizens with guaranteed anonymous delivery? How many milliseconds will this be online before the U.S. government tries to stop this?
The US has a lot of ways they can pressure the country in which that site is hosted. They can use economic sanctions, and apply a large amount of political and economic pressure on that country to cause that site to be removed.
France can use these methods to try and influence the US to pass laws to stop US companies from providing the information to people in France.
And if the government of that country refuses to take actions, how long will it be there before the CIA replaces it with a more U.S. friendly government?
If it was really that simple, do you think Osama Bin Laden would still be in Afganistan? I don't think the CIA has the kind of power they once may have wielded.
A better example that drugs might be online gambling. It's illegal in the US, but so far the US has been pretty ineffective in preventing their citizens from gambling online.
From the article you don't know if the teacher was reprimanded. You also don't know if the teacher stood up for the student or not. All you know from the article is that someone who answered the teacher's phone said this whole thin was silly. It seems like the teacher made a mistake by making a sarcastic comment, and the student made a mistake by taking it as a challenge.
It sounds thke the schools administrators blew this thing out of porportion. The 5 days suspension seems a bit harsh, but it does seem like the student had been in trouble in the past for doing things on school computers he wasn't supposed to be doing.
I think the student should be punished, in a limited manner. People are held accountable all the time for doing things that are wrong even though someone else said it was ok. It's better he learns this lesson now when all he gets is a suspension. Hopefully, the suspension will be the end of it and this won't hurt his chances of getting a good education at that school.
The student getting hauled into the police station seems to definately have been overkill. The school and police should do a better job or researching the problem before making such accusations. It seems obvious that no crimes were committed. At least the charges were dropped.
I'd be willing to bet the teacher will get reprimanded as well. If nothing else, bringing this much negative attention to himself and the school can't be good for his career. It really seems like the school administration did everyone a disservice by overreacting and not handling this in a professional manner. The teacher made a stupid, sarcastic remark, and a student's life gets turned upside down, and the teacher's career goes in the toilet. Bad news all around.
The problem with this argument is that it's unlikely that many major corporations will be deploying Linux on the desktop any time soon. Windows may be becomming a larger portion of the costs of a PC, but it's still a tiny portion of the cost of having an employee do a job. The cost of Windows, or even MS Office is still pretty small if it's easier for their employees to use, and saves them some time.
There are some cases where the users are more Unix literate, and the tools those users need are available on Linux. In those cases switching to Linux may be a good move. However, in most cases, Windows, even with it's many flaws, is still a better choice for the average business user. Windows is the industry standard, and bucking that standard will cost a company a lot of unproductive hours over compatability issues, as well as in training. This is still one of Linux's main barriers to entry in the desktop OS market.
Gore was at least willing to take a full manual recount of all of FL and accept the results as found, but Bush declined.
Gore's so called offer of a compromise was nothing of the sort. At the time Gore offered this 'compromise' I'm pretty sure the time for candidates to request recounts had passed. Even if it had not passed Gore and Buse couldn't force the counties to perfom a recount. The election boards in those counties make that decision. This was nothing but a political ploy on Gore's part which he had no authority to offer. Why didn't he just offer to let Bush be president of Canada if he would concede.
That's strange. I run Windows NT and Office on my computer here at work, and I seldom even reboot or shut my computer off more than once every couple of months.
One of the more recent times I rebooted was because Samba hicupped on our Solaris server.
I can remember a time several years ago, where I couldn't get much done for a week. It was because our Sparc server kept crashing. After repeated occurences of this we eventually had to replace the administrator, and that server later became very stable.
This doesn't mean that Solaris itself is less stable than NT. When both are properly managed I have little doubt that Solaris is the more robust of the two. However, if you're reloading Office and Windows every couple of months, something is definately wrong. It may be that the hardware you are using has really bad drivers. It may be that your users keep loading software that overwrites system dlls with ones that don't work (Windows 2000 and WinME are much better at preventing this).
I don't know if Linux would break that cycle, but we certainly need something.
If you currently need to reload your systems every couple of months, I doubt switching to Linux and sending everyone to 5 days of training will solve the problem. If the problem is that untrained/unskilled people are screwing up the systems, if may help because you have much more control over what the users can do, but I'm not sure overall productivity will increase.
The government used to spend an obscene amount of money funding software development to get software that suits their needs, in some cases they still do. They've moved away from this to buying off the shelf software because it's proven to be cheaper for them in the end.
Lets see how much they're paying. $129,000/800 = $161.25. A company's largest expense is the salaries they pay their employees. Virginia beach has 6000+ software licenses for MS software. Training their people to use free software just isn't cost effective. Even if you have to pay a few people full time to manage and audit software licenses, it's still a lower TCO. If you've got as many users as they do they should be buying a site license from MS and paying the maintenence. For the software that everyone has on their PC, Windows and Office for example, they pay a set fee per person, and those never ending upgrades are included in the maintence.
But when it's all said and done, you're not paying through the nose for updated MS products as often as they deem fit to bump a version number.
Free software also gets updated, in most cases even more often than MS upgrades theirs. Those revisions need to be tested in the user's environment. Some consistency between the software on different user's PCs has to be maintained for compatability reasons, and the simple fact that you can't afford to train your support team to know the quirks of every version of every software package that one of their users wants to run.
How can Microsoft keep track of the licenses. Not everyone registers their software. If microsoft forced everyone to register their software in order to get some kind of code to enable the software you'd have consumer activists up in arms. As for tying a license to a MAC address, it doesn't work well when those computers aren't on a network.
It's been about 5 years since I had to deal with keeping track of licenses for a large organization, but in my experience Microsoft was pretty reasonable to deal with. Since they actually told Virginia Beach to prove they owned what the have, I expect they got a pretty believable tip from a disgruntled civil servant (or former civil servant).
This will hurt them because it will drive artists away from their members. Only a few artists make any real money from royalties-- most of their income comes from ticketing.
I've heard this statement many times, but I'm curious if anyone knows how much of the cost of a CD goes to the artists?
I'm guessing that your $16 CD probably costs the record store around $8. The distributer probably paid $4. A couple dolars goes to costs of manufacturing, packaging, paying the accountants and lawyers. Of the remainig $2 myabe half goes to the producers and the record companies who fronted the money to produce and advertise the album. That leaves about a buck for the actual artists. Maybe less if someone else wrote the song, and they have to pay them royalties as well.
If I'm close to the mark, I would guess that better known artists would make a higher percentage of that last $2, while little known names would make less. That would only make sense. There's less risk with better known names, and the volume would make the pruduction and advertising costs less per album.
Anyone know if I'm close?
Does it really surprise you that there are lazy people who call themselves musicians? I've met lazy people who make claims to all kinds of professions. There are people who work hard at music. Maybe there work isn't physically strenuous as digging a ditch, but it still can be hard work.
So your friend's a bum. Make some new friends. Lumping all the hard working musicians in with him is doing them a disservice.
At this point, does this make sense? Since the HP P4 systems will be in the store, non-CTO of course, by December 2, all those technophiles would be able to get their computers well before the CTO system hits their door.
From Best Buy's point of view it makes lots of sense. They do whatever they can to keep from having to give back your money.
The customer comes back with their recalled computer. They're pissed off, and really just want their money back so they can drive down the road to Circuit City and buy one there. They end up in line for 15 - 30 minutes at the customer service desk to finally get to talk to some 17 year old kid who's been told to get you to come back and pick up a replacement for your computer on or after Dec 2nd, or they can send a "custom built" on just like it to your home for no additional charge. At this poit you can spend another 15 - 30 minutes trying to get a refund, then go to Circuit City and spend another frustrating hour or so getting a new computer there, or you can just take the custom built computer choice, and hope it works so you won't have to deal with these people again. I be a lot of people go for the custom built choice.
There's not supposed to be *any* margin of error in the actual vote.
Nice concept, but not very realistic. Unfortunately, people make mistakes. Some people will fail to follow directions, others will mistakenly punch the wrong hole or fill in the wrong circle. That's just the error in the voting process. There's also the errors in counting the votes. The manual recounts in Florida did show that even if a hole is properly punched, the chad can hang on and end up blocking the hole again. This happened in very few cases, and there's a reasonable chance that the recount ended up less accurate than the original count. Many of the elections workers are older retired people. There eyesight may not be that good, eyestrain has to play a considerable factor after hours of looking at little chads to see if not all the corners are really connected. When you start counting dimples, the margin of error goes up even higher.
Regardless of who wins in the end, one of the first acts should be to pass legislation for a new, modern vote system verifyable by some kind of encryption key to preserve anonymity.
You have to remember that there's a large percentage of the voting public who is not that comfortable with technology. If you think the "digital divide" is a big thing in the media now, think about the Rev. Jesse Jackson protesting that America's less fortunate are being disinfranchised. The other problem is that a lot of the people working at the polling places are often older, retired people. Many of them aren't going to like the change themselves, and they aren't that likely to help reduce the fears of the voters.
The vote could be ammended anonymously online via SSL or in a private booth at the local courthouse.
As someone else mentioned, you can't let people change their vote after the fact. There's also the problem of people forgetting their private key. There will also be the problem of who keeps the list of the public keys, and the chances for fraud through their use still exists.
No, a ballot that said "I prefer Browne to Nader to Gore to Bush" would be setting priorities (plural). A ballot that says "I prefer Gore to everyone else" sets a priority (singular), and millions of voters regularly set that priority in a way that makes it an inaccurate statement, a "lie".
The ballot I read didn't say vote for the person/persons you prefer. It said vote for not more than one. People can vote for whoever they want to, for whatever reason they choose without it being a "lie". If they follow the instructions and only vote for one, they even have a really good chance of their vote getting counted.
Our systems isn't perfect, however I'm not sure a more complicated system wouldn't just confuse and piss off more voters. We already have an appalingly low voter turnout. If people are convinced that an "Instant runoff voting" system gives them a better chance to make a difference, it might actually cause more people to vote. However, I thinks it's more likely that those that are apathetic about voting now aren't going to be convinced, and a more confusing method will disallusion more people.
2) If campaign money is speech (Buckley vs Valejo!) then my voice is being drowned out by the roar of corporate cash. Let's investigate public financing so that we know in advance who has bought the candidates - us!
I think there's some serious free speech issues with telling people or corporations they can't spend their money supporting a candidate. I do think large contributions should be disclosed to the public.
3) Just exactly why isn't voting day a national holiday?!?
I think there's some well founded concern that if people had the day off they would go out of town on vacation or just go party instead of voting. It doesn't make much difference to me, but I go to the polls at 7:00 am, and have never spent more than a couple minutes in line.
Since I'm from the US, I hate to be the one to remind people of this, but THE INTERNET IS NOT LIMITED TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! I'm sure there are a considerabe number of very skilled crackers from other countries that would love to screw with a US election. I don't think that the fact that it's a felony in the US would do much to disuade them either. One good DDOS attack alone could lead to some serious anarchy.
You'd also never get using the internet into law. Of those people who aren't online, a large percentage of them are minorities or elderly. There's no way a Constitutional Amendment can pass when the combined lobying power of the AARP, AFL-CIO, and NAACP is against it. You can provide other ways for those who aren't online, but if is considerably easier for one class of people to vote, it's inequitable.
I also question why you think a computer will make it easier for those who are easily confused by the current methods to vote correctly. I can understand that you might want to be able to review how you voted before you commit those choices, but that's been done mechanically for years. I remember using a voting machine 13 years ago that let you flip little levers to cast your votes. It would only let you pick one candidate for a specific office. You could even change your mind up until the point where you pulled the lever. The machine would then punch the card when you pulled the lever.
I understand that there are mechanical problems with these machines, but I suspect that they could be worked out. You can even track errors in holes not getting punched by having the machine punch a hole signifying that no candidates were chosen. The reason I would stick with physical ballots is that people don't trust computers. The average person still seem to think that computers have minds of their own, and will occasionaly do things they weren't programmed to do. Even if those physical ballots are counted by computer, people will demand for them to exist. In order to detect fraud you need to have a recording of how each person voted, and physical ballots seem like a better solution than data on a hard drive to me. Neither method is impervious to problems, but I think there are a lot of people who will distrust a purely computerized ballot.
If sounds like a good idea in principle, but I'm skeptical that it would work well in practice. I expect the process of trying to get a patent renewed would make a lot of Lawyers rich, and screw the small time inventor who can't afford to keep paying lawyers while their money is tied up in getting their product out.
I strongly believe that patents are still a good thing, but that the laws need to change to be relevant to modern times. Maybe a patent should last for 3 to 5 years - certainly enough time to get a competitive advantage. Also, if a patent holder does not use the patent constructively within one year (or show that the patent is part of an ongoing development within that year) then the holder must be forced to license the patent to one or more other parties, at a reasonable price.
For many truly unique ideas, 3 to 5 years just isn't enough to implement the idea and see a reasonable return on the investment. Some things are invented before the infrastructure is there for them to become viable products. The invention of the television is a good example. The man who invented TV never did make any noticable amount of money off of it, because his patent expired before it became a real product.
Drug research is another example of an area where 3 to 5 years just isn't enough. The drug has to be developed and tested internally. It then needs to go through clinical trials and FDA approval. This process can often take longer than 3 to 5 years.
How about all these new storage technologies we hear about from time to time. There's always some new non-volatile digital storage medium that I'm hearing about, and it always seems like someone is saying that it's about 5 years from becomming a product, and that's often after years have gone into the development.
There's been some good arguments that software is different, and that a software patent would only need to last for a few years. I'm sure that there are many cases where that are true, but for ideas that are implemented in software, that are truely ahead of their time, is a few years really enough to bring them to market?
There's another issue with software patents that I never see addressed on Slashdot. What about VHDL code. The VHDL describes how the hardware will work, but is it really just software? We make products where I work that you can change the VHDL, recompile it, load it into the FPGA over the PCI bus, and significantly change the function of that PCI card. How is that different than recompiling a software program? The layout of the PCI card, and the parts used aren't that unique. But the operations the VHDL performs are unique. The problem is that the product is for a imature market. The company I work for will likely break even on it within 3 years of the invention, it doesn't make much sense to invest millions of dolars over three years to develop a product and bring it to market just to break even.
Who wants to invest in developing new products, when there's more money to be made by stealing three year old designs that are just becomming profitable. Whoever has the cheapest production and marketing costs wins. That doesn't sound like a good environment for technological innovation.
Many people on Slashdot seem to want to beleive that all it takes for innovation is the sharing of ideas. The problem is that the economic aspects of creating products that people can use just can't be ignored, and saying that everything can be brought to market in 3 to 5 years isn't close to being realistic.
The point has been made on salon (a self admittedly un-republican 'zine) numerous times that Bush's entire campaign has been a bunch of well crafted soundbites that are strung together in a semi-random fashion to answer pretty much any question.
He very rarely answers the question even indirectly, often resorting to wonderful statements like "I have said what I believe in, and if that is what you are asking, then that is what I believe." OR something equally self-referential.
He sure seemed to answer these questions for the most part. If you don't like what he has to say, feel free to attack him on the issues. Accusing him of not answering the questions is just a bunch of FUD.
There's more information to be found on a computer disk than what you can get by dumping the contents. If he erased a file, there are methods of recovering the information even if it's been overwritten. I don't know that there was enough evidence that the warrant should have been issued, but once it's been issued you can't blame the FBI for doing a good investigation. The problem is that it's difficult to get a Judge that knows enough about computers to determine if the warrant should be issued.
Slashdot Mirror
So now we've identified the target as the corporate buyers - how do we tell them this is a bad thing? Moving to a new OS requires extensive training (especially for all-MS shops who have "standardized" on MS Office, Outlook, Exchange, NT, ASP, etc...) -- most pointy-haired types don't go for that very well.
.Net, sources said. (Emphasis added)
I agree that large corporate customers are the ones who are most likely to be able to influence Microsoft issue. Of course for them to get involved it's going to have to cost them money. The yahoo article states:
Microsoft plans to deliver WPA in all 32-bit versions of Whistler except those sold to volume-licensing customers and the so-called "Royalty OEM initial install images" provided to PC makers, said sources close to the company. Microsoft is expected to add similar anti-piracy technology to Office 10 and Visual Studio
That pretty much takes the large corporate customers out of the picture. Management doesn't want to look like they are pro software piracy. Intelectual property issues are very touchy subjects with large companies in my recent experience. Not much of the management of these large corporations are going to want to pressure Microsoft over this when Micorsoft seems to be willing to exempt them from the problem. It will still effect their home PCs, but they probably just call up dell when they want a new PC anyway, and the cost of buying the OS upgrade wouldn't phase them much anyway.
They're probably frustrated that they never seem to have the latest and greatest OS as it is now. They would likely think that an OS subscription which keeps them up to date it a good thing.
Most of the people who have the influence to pressure Microsoft make enough money that the $100 for the Microsoft OS upgrades just doesn't bother them that much. Using M$ software is familliar to them, and it's worth the $ not to spend their time learning anything else, and for the most part the software does a good job of doing what they need it to do.
There are other people who will drop M$ because they don't like their business practices or don't want to pay the $. Most of those people are going to go to Linux no matter what M$ does, so what do they have to lose.
I guess I remember the winmodem differently than you remember it. I remember almost every modem manufacturer making one. I remember them going into most mass produced PCs that were being built. I remember that Linux advocates hated them, with good reason. But, I don't remember this "immediately failed" part. Actually, I still see them on the shelves, and you have to pay a premium if you want a hardware PCI modem.
I'm sure that someone can find a way around breaking the copy protection, but their method of disabling the protection will be illegal in the US. Once again the DCMA will make criminals of those who are trying to exercise "fair use" of copyrighted materials.
This is what happens when the US Congress lets Hollywood write Copyright Laws instead of balancing the rights of copyright holders with those using the materials.
. . . there is in some foreign country an auction site that sells cocaine, heroin, LSD and other such stuff to U.S. citizens with guaranteed anonymous delivery? How many milliseconds will this be online before the U.S. government tries to stop this?
The US has a lot of ways they can pressure the country in which that site is hosted. They can use economic sanctions, and apply a large amount of political and economic pressure on that country to cause that site to be removed.
France can use these methods to try and influence the US to pass laws to stop US companies from providing the information to people in France.
And if the government of that country refuses to take actions, how long will it be there before the CIA replaces it with a more U.S. friendly government?
If it was really that simple, do you think Osama Bin Laden would still be in Afganistan? I don't think the CIA has the kind of power they once may have wielded.
A better example that drugs might be online gambling. It's illegal in the US, but so far the US has been pretty ineffective in preventing their citizens from gambling online.
From the article you don't know if the teacher was reprimanded. You also don't know if the teacher stood up for the student or not. All you know from the article is that someone who answered the teacher's phone said this whole thin was silly. It seems like the teacher made a mistake by making a sarcastic comment, and the student made a mistake by taking it as a challenge. It sounds thke the schools administrators blew this thing out of porportion. The 5 days suspension seems a bit harsh, but it does seem like the student had been in trouble in the past for doing things on school computers he wasn't supposed to be doing. I think the student should be punished, in a limited manner. People are held accountable all the time for doing things that are wrong even though someone else said it was ok. It's better he learns this lesson now when all he gets is a suspension. Hopefully, the suspension will be the end of it and this won't hurt his chances of getting a good education at that school. The student getting hauled into the police station seems to definately have been overkill. The school and police should do a better job or researching the problem before making such accusations. It seems obvious that no crimes were committed. At least the charges were dropped. I'd be willing to bet the teacher will get reprimanded as well. If nothing else, bringing this much negative attention to himself and the school can't be good for his career. It really seems like the school administration did everyone a disservice by overreacting and not handling this in a professional manner. The teacher made a stupid, sarcastic remark, and a student's life gets turned upside down, and the teacher's career goes in the toilet. Bad news all around.
The problem with this argument is that it's unlikely that many major corporations will be deploying Linux on the desktop any time soon. Windows may be becomming a larger portion of the costs of a PC, but it's still a tiny portion of the cost of having an employee do a job. The cost of Windows, or even MS Office is still pretty small if it's easier for their employees to use, and saves them some time.
There are some cases where the users are more Unix literate, and the tools those users need are available on Linux. In those cases switching to Linux may be a good move. However, in most cases, Windows, even with it's many flaws, is still a better choice for the average business user. Windows is the industry standard, and bucking that standard will cost a company a lot of unproductive hours over compatability issues, as well as in training. This is still one of Linux's main barriers to entry in the desktop OS market.
Gore was at least willing to take a full manual recount of all of FL and accept the results as found, but Bush declined.
Gore's so called offer of a compromise was nothing of the sort. At the time Gore offered this 'compromise' I'm pretty sure the time for candidates to request recounts had passed. Even if it had not passed Gore and Buse couldn't force the counties to perfom a recount. The election boards in those counties make that decision. This was nothing but a political ploy on Gore's part which he had no authority to offer. Why didn't he just offer to let Bush be president of Canada if he would concede.
That's strange. I run Windows NT and Office on my computer here at work, and I seldom even reboot or shut my computer off more than once every couple of months.
One of the more recent times I rebooted was because Samba hicupped on our Solaris server.
I can remember a time several years ago, where I couldn't get much done for a week. It was because our Sparc server kept crashing. After repeated occurences of this we eventually had to replace the administrator, and that server later became very stable.
This doesn't mean that Solaris itself is less stable than NT. When both are properly managed I have little doubt that Solaris is the more robust of the two. However, if you're reloading Office and Windows every couple of months, something is definately wrong. It may be that the hardware you are using has really bad drivers. It may be that your users keep loading software that overwrites system dlls with ones that don't work (Windows 2000 and WinME are much better at preventing this).
I don't know if Linux would break that cycle, but we certainly need something.
If you currently need to reload your systems every couple of months, I doubt switching to Linux and sending everyone to 5 days of training will solve the problem. If the problem is that untrained/unskilled people are screwing up the systems, if may help because you have much more control over what the users can do, but I'm not sure overall productivity will increase.
I was talking about the United States government in the above post.
The government used to spend an obscene amount of money funding software development to get software that suits their needs, in some cases they still do. They've moved away from this to buying off the shelf software because it's proven to be cheaper for them in the end.
Lets see how much they're paying. $129,000/800 = $161.25. A company's largest expense is the salaries they pay their employees. Virginia beach has 6000+ software licenses for MS software. Training their people to use free software just isn't cost effective. Even if you have to pay a few people full time to manage and audit software licenses, it's still a lower TCO. If you've got as many users as they do they should be buying a site license from MS and paying the maintenence. For the software that everyone has on their PC, Windows and Office for example, they pay a set fee per person, and those never ending upgrades are included in the maintence.
But when it's all said and done, you're not paying through the nose for updated MS products as often as they deem fit to bump a version number.
Free software also gets updated, in most cases even more often than MS upgrades theirs. Those revisions need to be tested in the user's environment. Some consistency between the software on different user's PCs has to be maintained for compatability reasons, and the simple fact that you can't afford to train your support team to know the quirks of every version of every software package that one of their users wants to run.
How can Microsoft keep track of the licenses. Not everyone registers their software. If microsoft forced everyone to register their software in order to get some kind of code to enable the software you'd have consumer activists up in arms. As for tying a license to a MAC address, it doesn't work well when those computers aren't on a network.
It's been about 5 years since I had to deal with keeping track of licenses for a large organization, but in my experience Microsoft was pretty reasonable to deal with. Since they actually told Virginia Beach to prove they owned what the have, I expect they got a pretty believable tip from a disgruntled civil servant (or former civil servant).
This will hurt them because it will drive artists away from their members. Only a few artists make any real money from royalties-- most of their income comes from ticketing.
I've heard this statement many times, but I'm curious if anyone knows how much of the cost of a CD goes to the artists?
I'm guessing that your $16 CD probably costs the record store around $8. The distributer probably paid $4. A couple dolars goes to costs of manufacturing, packaging, paying the accountants and lawyers. Of the remainig $2 myabe half goes to the producers and the record companies who fronted the money to produce and advertise the album. That leaves about a buck for the actual artists. Maybe less if someone else wrote the song, and they have to pay them royalties as well.
If I'm close to the mark, I would guess that better known artists would make a higher percentage of that last $2, while little known names would make less. That would only make sense. There's less risk with better known names, and the volume would make the pruduction and advertising costs less per album.
Anyone know if I'm close?
Does it really surprise you that there are lazy people who call themselves musicians? I've met lazy people who make claims to all kinds of professions. There are people who work hard at music. Maybe there work isn't physically strenuous as digging a ditch, but it still can be hard work.
So your friend's a bum. Make some new friends. Lumping all the hard working musicians in with him is doing them a disservice.
At this point, does this make sense? Since the HP P4 systems will be in the store, non-CTO of course, by December 2, all those technophiles would be able to get their computers well before the CTO system hits their door.
From Best Buy's point of view it makes lots of sense. They do whatever they can to keep from having to give back your money.
The customer comes back with their recalled computer. They're pissed off, and really just want their money back so they can drive down the road to Circuit City and buy one there. They end up in line for 15 - 30 minutes at the customer service desk to finally get to talk to some 17 year old kid who's been told to get you to come back and pick up a replacement for your computer on or after Dec 2nd, or they can send a "custom built" on just like it to your home for no additional charge. At this poit you can spend another 15 - 30 minutes trying to get a refund, then go to Circuit City and spend another frustrating hour or so getting a new computer there, or you can just take the custom built computer choice, and hope it works so you won't have to deal with these people again. I be a lot of people go for the custom built choice.
There's not supposed to be *any* margin of error in the actual vote.
Nice concept, but not very realistic. Unfortunately, people make mistakes. Some people will fail to follow directions, others will mistakenly punch the wrong hole or fill in the wrong circle. That's just the error in the voting process. There's also the errors in counting the votes. The manual recounts in Florida did show that even if a hole is properly punched, the chad can hang on and end up blocking the hole again. This happened in very few cases, and there's a reasonable chance that the recount ended up less accurate than the original count. Many of the elections workers are older retired people. There eyesight may not be that good, eyestrain has to play a considerable factor after hours of looking at little chads to see if not all the corners are really connected. When you start counting dimples, the margin of error goes up even higher.
Regardless of who wins in the end, one of the first acts should be to pass legislation for a new, modern vote system verifyable by some kind of encryption key to preserve anonymity.
You have to remember that there's a large percentage of the voting public who is not that comfortable with technology. If you think the "digital divide" is a big thing in the media now, think about the Rev. Jesse Jackson protesting that America's less fortunate are being disinfranchised. The other problem is that a lot of the people working at the polling places are often older, retired people. Many of them aren't going to like the change themselves, and they aren't that likely to help reduce the fears of the voters.
The vote could be ammended anonymously online via SSL or in a private booth at the local courthouse.
As someone else mentioned, you can't let people change their vote after the fact. There's also the problem of people forgetting their private key. There will also be the problem of who keeps the list of the public keys, and the chances for fraud through their use still exists.
No, a ballot that said "I prefer Browne to Nader to Gore to Bush" would be setting priorities (plural). A ballot that says "I prefer Gore to everyone else" sets a priority (singular), and millions of voters regularly set that priority in a way that makes it an inaccurate statement, a "lie".
The ballot I read didn't say vote for the person/persons you prefer. It said vote for not more than one. People can vote for whoever they want to, for whatever reason they choose without it being a "lie". If they follow the instructions and only vote for one, they even have a really good chance of their vote getting counted.
Our systems isn't perfect, however I'm not sure a more complicated system wouldn't just confuse and piss off more voters. We already have an appalingly low voter turnout. If people are convinced that an "Instant runoff voting" system gives them a better chance to make a difference, it might actually cause more people to vote. However, I thinks it's more likely that those that are apathetic about voting now aren't going to be convinced, and a more confusing method will disallusion more people.
2) If campaign money is speech (Buckley vs Valejo!) then my voice is being drowned out by the roar of corporate cash. Let's investigate public financing so that we know in advance who has bought the candidates - us!
I think there's some serious free speech issues with telling people or corporations they can't spend their money supporting a candidate. I do think large contributions should be disclosed to the public.
3) Just exactly why isn't voting day a national holiday?!?
I think there's some well founded concern that if people had the day off they would go out of town on vacation or just go party instead of voting. It doesn't make much difference to me, but I go to the polls at 7:00 am, and have never spent more than a couple minutes in line.
The internet is a horrible way to vote.
Since I'm from the US, I hate to be the one to remind people of this, but THE INTERNET IS NOT LIMITED TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! I'm sure there are a considerabe number of very skilled crackers from other countries that would love to screw with a US election. I don't think that the fact that it's a felony in the US would do much to disuade them either. One good DDOS attack alone could lead to some serious anarchy.
You'd also never get using the internet into law. Of those people who aren't online, a large percentage of them are minorities or elderly. There's no way a Constitutional Amendment can pass when the combined lobying power of the AARP, AFL-CIO, and NAACP is against it. You can provide other ways for those who aren't online, but if is considerably easier for one class of people to vote, it's inequitable.
I also question why you think a computer will make it easier for those who are easily confused by the current methods to vote correctly. I can understand that you might want to be able to review how you voted before you commit those choices, but that's been done mechanically for years. I remember using a voting machine 13 years ago that let you flip little levers to cast your votes. It would only let you pick one candidate for a specific office. You could even change your mind up until the point where you pulled the lever. The machine would then punch the card when you pulled the lever.
I understand that there are mechanical problems with these machines, but I suspect that they could be worked out. You can even track errors in holes not getting punched by having the machine punch a hole signifying that no candidates were chosen. The reason I would stick with physical ballots is that people don't trust computers. The average person still seem to think that computers have minds of their own, and will occasionaly do things they weren't programmed to do. Even if those physical ballots are counted by computer, people will demand for them to exist. In order to detect fraud you need to have a recording of how each person voted, and physical ballots seem like a better solution than data on a hard drive to me. Neither method is impervious to problems, but I think there are a lot of people who will distrust a purely computerized ballot.
If sounds like a good idea in principle, but I'm skeptical that it would work well in practice. I expect the process of trying to get a patent renewed would make a lot of Lawyers rich, and screw the small time inventor who can't afford to keep paying lawyers while their money is tied up in getting their product out.
I strongly believe that patents are still a good thing, but that the laws need to change to be relevant to modern times. Maybe a patent should last for 3 to 5 years - certainly enough time to get a competitive advantage. Also, if a patent holder does not use the patent constructively within one year (or show that the patent is part of an ongoing development within that year) then the holder must be forced to license the patent to one or more other parties, at a reasonable price.
For many truly unique ideas, 3 to 5 years just isn't enough to implement the idea and see a reasonable return on the investment. Some things are invented before the infrastructure is there for them to become viable products. The invention of the television is a good example. The man who invented TV never did make any noticable amount of money off of it, because his patent expired before it became a real product.
Drug research is another example of an area where 3 to 5 years just isn't enough. The drug has to be developed and tested internally. It then needs to go through clinical trials and FDA approval. This process can often take longer than 3 to 5 years.
How about all these new storage technologies we hear about from time to time. There's always some new non-volatile digital storage medium that I'm hearing about, and it always seems like someone is saying that it's about 5 years from becomming a product, and that's often after years have gone into the development.
There's been some good arguments that software is different, and that a software patent would only need to last for a few years. I'm sure that there are many cases where that are true, but for ideas that are implemented in software, that are truely ahead of their time, is a few years really enough to bring them to market?
There's another issue with software patents that I never see addressed on Slashdot. What about VHDL code. The VHDL describes how the hardware will work, but is it really just software? We make products where I work that you can change the VHDL, recompile it, load it into the FPGA over the PCI bus, and significantly change the function of that PCI card. How is that different than recompiling a software program? The layout of the PCI card, and the parts used aren't that unique. But the operations the VHDL performs are unique. The problem is that the product is for a imature market. The company I work for will likely break even on it within 3 years of the invention, it doesn't make much sense to invest millions of dolars over three years to develop a product and bring it to market just to break even.
Who wants to invest in developing new products, when there's more money to be made by stealing three year old designs that are just becomming profitable. Whoever has the cheapest production and marketing costs wins. That doesn't sound like a good environment for technological innovation.
Many people on Slashdot seem to want to beleive that all it takes for innovation is the sharing of ideas. The problem is that the economic aspects of creating products that people can use just can't be ignored, and saying that everything can be brought to market in 3 to 5 years isn't close to being realistic.
The point has been made on salon (a self admittedly un-republican 'zine) numerous times that Bush's entire campaign has been a bunch of well crafted soundbites that are strung together in a semi-random fashion to answer pretty much any question.
He very rarely answers the question even indirectly, often resorting to wonderful statements like "I have said what I believe in, and if that is what you are asking, then that is what I believe." OR something equally self-referential.
He sure seemed to answer these questions for the most part. If you don't like what he has to say, feel free to attack him on the issues. Accusing him of not answering the questions is just a bunch of FUD.
There's more information to be found on a computer disk than what you can get by dumping the contents. If he erased a file, there are methods of recovering the information even if it's been overwritten. I don't know that there was enough evidence that the warrant should have been issued, but once it's been issued you can't blame the FBI for doing a good investigation. The problem is that it's difficult to get a Judge that knows enough about computers to determine if the warrant should be issued.
It's not a loan, you don't have to return it. If you don't like the rules they want you to play by, then throw the thing away.
You're a Linux geek. There's still plenty of idiots our there using Linux that would call their tech support over and over.