But it's certainly possible to approach the range of things that Excel can do (which are substantial, especially when you use ODBC, etc., to patch into huge databases, etc) with a professional set of skills and business sensibilities.
A well-conceived Excel file can carry with it everything you need for a pretty elaborate bunch of data crunching and presentation, and that can hop from machine to machine very easily. Sales people in the field working up quotes, or managers chewing on inventory info before making a buying decision at a meeting - certainly they could just "use" a spreadsheet to do all of that, but having a purpose-specific UI sitting on top of it (without having to drag around other runtimes, etc) can really help when you're dealing with non-power-users.
"Professional level" can also refer to presentation sensibilities. For example, wise use of font families and graphs can make the tool's output more useful in a wider variety of settings. A pro knows how to wrap it all up in a smooth package, even if some of the logic is very simple. But a huge, complex, what-if business plan package friendly to investor-type users... that's a very cool type of app, with Excel running under the hood.
You mean, become a company that does legitimate business, instead of a company that goes out of its way to facilitate copyright violation on a massive scale?
buy some members of congress, get them to pass new laws
Actually, massive copyright violation was already against the law. We have a long standing tradition in the US called, "just because it has become technically easier to do it, doesn't means it's OK to rip off artists"
form an industry organization
Those organizations were around a long time before Napster. Because there were music piracy and "I want to be entertained for free" problems before, too.
sue and make the targets highly visable
Well, that makes sense, since the people that were using Napster to rip off copyrighted material were being highly visible and crowing about how clever they were to find a way to get around paying for their entertainment.
distribute faulty crap to frustrate people
Hmmm. Who would that be frustrating? The only people I can think of would be the people trying to get it without paying for it. Have you seen "faulty" crap coming through iTunes or any of the other well regarded subscription systems? No... it's a lot like complaining to the police that some street corner drug dealer just sold you some faulty heroin.
All this almost makes me want to switch to a Mac, if only they were not so bloody expensive
Huh! I wonder why that would be? Maybe because the x86 architecture is much more open, more widely supported, and MS has such a huge audience that their stuff ends up being a better deal because of scale? I don't spend much on machines, either. But I'm quite happy with XP and Win2K/3 depending on what I'm up to.
Not really, because I'm talking about something that normal people actually do, as opposed to something that only astronauts to. Take 1000 people, and get them from New York to Los Angeles, several times. 500 by plane, and 500 by car. Repeat until you've got enough data to consider it a valid test. The several that would have been killed or injured in the cars will have a different take on "silly facts" than you do, I think.
The first time one of these monsters go down, it will be a tragedy larger than we're willing to admit.
Why? If a 747 goes down with 400 people that's a pretty big tragedy. Never mind though... in between the (very rare) airliner crashes, thousands upon thousands of people die in automobile crashes. Just because those are a continuous roar of "small" tragedies doesn't mean they don't count. So: people moving around the planet take on a certain amount of risk. Flying in a large airliner run by a reputable airline is safer per passenger, per mile, than driving on the ground in most any vehicle. In the meantime, these newer, larger planes use less fuel and can reduce the overall number of aircraft on the move - which reduces airport ground traffic, heavy aircraft wake issues, and so on. Fewer flights = safer travel, and bigger aircraft = fewer flights. The burning of less fuel per passenger is a nice side benefit.
I (and I don't think I'm alone on this) come here for the techie perspective, be it on the front page, or in the bowels of the comments.
What is the "techie perspective?" In my experience, it falls hugely, dramatically, and beyond-reunification-ally into two camps: (1) those techies that run, or understand the running of businesses, and (2) those that don't.
That dichotomy, which of course spins off in all sorts of directions (like, should businesses be allowed to exist at all, and similar pablum), certainly fuels most of the debate on slashdot. Because one's take on the micro- and macro-economics of technology tends to drive your politics, your emotional involvement in all sorts of legal issues, and so on. Essentially, the more hours of the day that you spend getting into the issues of dealing with the financial ramifications of high-tech stuff, the more you ask questions like "who's paying for this?" as you read the news. The more you're focused on the raw technology itself, and keep the underlying economics blissfully at arm's length, the less that stuff matters. Do that often enough, and you begin to resent the people that keep dragging money back into the discussion, as if there really is a Free Lunch.
All that being said, the those two big camps here (and I think one is much, much larger than the other) certainly use the commenting process to demonstrate what they think about these issues. The techie perspective makes itself very clear within a few posts. But when the original articles are themselves dripping with flamebait, too many of the comments (like this one!) end up being about the editors and each other, rather than about the news itself. I know it's a subtle distinction, but I think it does help improve the tone when the editors choose posts with just a little less spin.
As opposed to someone who might...say...disallow people from attending a techincal conference based on their political opinions?
Well, sure. Of course, you're not referring to any recent news events. You might be confusing the circumstances of a different situation, in which the membership of an administration delegation was chosen by... that administration! Based... on politics! And the people that were left out of the administration's group were people that... spent money in groups decrying that administration!
Come on. And I suppose that if Kerry were president and picking some people to send to a conference on reproductive services, he'd be the first one to pick, say, some rabid fundamentalist "life" nuts as part of the representation of his administration? People that spent money loudly proclaiming his evilness before the election? Not hardly.
I don't think that the republicans shaping a conference delegation's membership is very different than, say, the democrats in the senate refusing to allow a simple vote on a judicial appointment. Political position taking and policy positioning (including policies of who gets the perks of some federally-paid-for travel to an event, and who, despite being nominated, does or doesn't get the basic decency of the called-for vote, because of their conservative politics, whatever) isn't peculiar to this administration. You could have said the same thing about the last administration's deliberations about socializing the medical system... not everyone who wanted a seat at that table got one either, because their party didn't win that election. Happily, that mess collapsed under its own weight, though it was vastly more important (a 7th of our economy) than is the issue of who gets the free lunches at an IATC meeting.
Yes, they do. Sometimes it comes to that. And cops are trained expressly on how to do it, when to do it, and how to use the tools for doing it. And of course, they spend their careers generally hoping they won't ever bump into circumstances like that.
people over there didn't like what they were doing
Right. Because what was happening in that town was that they local murderous thugs were slowly being squeezed out of their long term jobs, and losing their funding (from the charming Saddam crew).
Anybody who kills for a living is dead inside
You're confusing being prepared to kill if necessary with taking some delight in doing it, or not caring that you have to. You're so obsessed with this topic that you can't imagine meeting someone who takes this burden on. Mostly, you can't imagine that there really are souless killers out there (not just your rhetorical constructs), and that many of them work for people like Bin Laden or his boys, and have the cash to keep grinding away as if they are eventually going to make the world like their approach. Further, you're going to be uncomfortable with the fact that there are decent people willing to put themselves on the line for a career of shutting those people down, killing them if necessary.
Finally I noticed you had nothing to say about the hundreds of people killed in venegence for your friend
You mean the holdouts that were supporting what was left of Saddam's former military? And the ones that had been sweet-talked into thinking that they were somehow going to keep democracy and liberty at bay by simply terrorizing the people in Fallujah? Into that town moves the Marines, making endless announcements about how to simply vacate the weapons caches, suicide bomb workshops, and armed mosques/schools, and to help flush out the armed gangs without it becoming a big fight. So, a bunch of untrained, brainwashed leftover Baathists and Uday/Qusay Buddies refused to contemplate the fact that they weren't going to re-establish a minority Sunni thug-ocracy, and they paid the price. This has nothing to do with having empathy for Arabs. Empathy for Arabs demands that one actually help them shake off the kinds of punks that were trying to run Fallujah as a Mafia Outpost. Empathy for Arabs demands that we allow people like the population of Iraq to not wake up every day worrying about people like Zarqawi using foreign cash and jihad-muddled young people to kill innocent civilians in the interests of denying democracy. Sometimes you need professional soldiers to counter people like that, and they have to know how to use lethal force. They are not dead inside, they're there to stop people who are.
Huh. That sounds a lot like talking to yourself. Which, of course, you're welcome to do. But when you say it out loud, here (especially in mode) it's not really worth getting all wound up when someone else chimes in.
Perhaps such posts should start with: "This post is only for my own benefit. Please do not respond." That would help cut down on the responses. Not!
Learn to read. He said " I don't want to hear from anyone who uses AOL anyways." See that? "I don't". Not "Who would". "I don't"!!!!
Now, if that little comment of his was merely his opinion of what he thinks about this, and how he'll alter (or not) his actions... why would he throw it out there on slashdot, a place where most every comment is intended to make at least one other point? There's no question that his intention was to be dismissive of AOL users in general, and it was my thought to point out that they represent hundreds of millions of dollars a year in online business. I'm not trying to change his mind, I'm making sure that someone who doesn't know better doesn't form a not-necessarily-valid opinion of the place that AOL users have in the world.
Is MAPS forcing you to use their lists? No. So what's your problem?
Just because I host or maintain e-commerce tools for a merchant doesn't mean they're in the mood to break their e-mail away from some other ISP to which they're somewhat attached, or which they use for mail because that's who provides the pipe into their offices. Of course I'd prefer to host their mail, though spam management has me more and more allergic to that side of the business. Issues like this can kill a man-week of productivity, with no guarantee it won't pop back up the next week.
I don't want to hear from anyone who uses AOL anyways.
Yeah, who wants to do business, say, with tens of millions of people.
I've got e-commerce clients that, unable to communicate gracefully with AOL users, would run into trouble with a third or more of their customers. This is not trivial, it's blacklist BS, and a sign of how that solution to the problem is part of the problem.
when you say that you have the right to sue and press criminal charges on people who copy
No, only those that copy outside of the limits the artist has established. Someone, at some point, has deliberately broken an agreement. If I sell one book to one person, and part of the deal is that he won't re-distribute copies of the book, then the only way that there can be two copies floating around is if the person specifically violated an agreement into which they entered. I can't sue just anybody because I feel like it, and under most circumstances I can't sue some other person to whom the book was given... but I can certainly sue guy who just deliberately copied the material that he agreed he wouldn't copy. What's not clear about that? Are you saying that the principal of the situation is different if he's technically able, instead, to make millions of copies in a minute? How is that any different? It's the same in principle, and even worse in practice. Of course, if I can prove he just did it, and he refuses to stop or make recompense, you're damn right that's when the government gets involved. Just like they get involved in other cases where one person injures another.
Maybe you could send me 100 dollars in the mail with a note attached that says "by opening this you owe me 200
That's a bogus analogy. If you walk up to a store (buy online, whatever) and choose to pay for an envelope that says that, then we're having a different conversation. Of course I can't just compel you to owe me money through an unsolicited unilateral act. But if you ask me for something, and I say, "sure, but here's the thing: if you want it, you have to agree to the following terms..." you've got the choice to agree (and get it), or disagree (and go elsewhere). There are plenty of "elsewheres" these days, for operating systems, reading material, art, music... why complain about the people that would rather be paid for their work when you can go and get some other flavor from people that don't mind giving it away? Or, is there a chance that some of that stuff just isn't as desireable as some of what's produced by professionals that have to be able to earn a living at what they do all day, or they'd never be that good at it?
if they get blasted out all over the world, then even when it is wrong that is tough.
Yeah, it's tough, but it's also the fault of the person who acted to spread it around. We're not talking about leaving something on the bus seat, here. We're talking about people who, for example, are issued a preview DVD because they are a film critic, and they are given it only on the condition that they in no way distribute the content. So, when that person lies while accepting the material, and acts to damage the artist by spreading it out all over the 'net before it's even formally released... that's just "tough?" No, it's demonstrable contract violation, possibly fraud, and certainly a worthy case for a trip to court.
It's sad to see people can't deal with that.
Sad? For whom? It's sad that we're at the point where enough people have decided that they want to be entertained for free, and that the best excuse they can come up with is that the laws that addressed that when we were copying things by hand are just not scalable enough somehow, so, oh well, it must now be ethically just fine to rip someone off. Do you even listen to yourself? If it's wrong for one to defraud an artist into entertaining them for free, how is it OK for 10,000 people to do the same?
I think that comment is a little misleading...How many 15-16yr olds do you know with a policatal opinion like being called schoolboys?
I don't know... I'd say that's a perfectly appropriate label for someone with such a weak philosophy that only through defacing someone else's words or information do they think they're communicating in a useful way. 15-16 year-olds are essentially twits, no matter what their fashionable political orientation. But it's clear that if cracking sites fits comfortably within the political system they do support, we don't really have to worry about hurting their poor, tender little feelings, do we? Boys, pre-pubescents, developmentally stunted... call them what you will, why should anyone care what they like (thus showing them any respect whatsoever) when their purpose, as deliberately shown through their actions, is to make a mockery of respect for anyone else? "Political opinion" indeed. I think "child's tantrum" is more like it, and that's not how you get someone to listen to your nascent ideology. Yup, schoolboys.
Hmm. Personal appearances only? How many stops do you think that might take in a country of a few hundred million people? Obviously that won't work. So, you're going to suggest that the rest of The People will learn what they need to know through press coverage of those live events, right? So, then we're looking at those journalists' impressions and biases being the things that most people are exposed to, not the direct message that each candidate wants to communicate. And what about me? If I want to convey a public message about what I think about a candidate's attitude, policies, etc? Am I limited to shouting on street corners? Election cycles don't last long enough for that to work across an entire country. Better for me to be privately persuasive with enough people to gather up enough money to be heard in a wider communication... say, through an advertisement - in my choice of venues, to the audience I want to reach. It's called free speech.
a mandate for true political power comes from the masses
Well, not really. It comes from the US Constitution, and from the states' constitutions. "The masses" sounds a lot like "the mob." There's a reason our genius founders set us up as a representative republic, and not a straight democracy.
...to use the Google search engine. I mean, sure it's expensive to use MS's engine, but by paying that extra bit to use Google, I get less evil results. And no ads, placed by people that are paying Google, either!
Give me a damn break. It's MS's own freakin' web site, and they can do what they want (assuming this study is even really exposing causation, rather than correlation). No one is paying MS to be neutral in any way, any more than they are paying Google or Yahoo, each of whom tilt results according to all sorts of standards, ideals, and sometimes total capriciousness. Now, lower ranking for sites that can't figure out the difference betwen "its" and "it's" would be worth paying for.
Copyrights are more like a government regulation that controlls how people use information than a free market property right.
Wrong. It's the means by which the person who creates the work controls it. The only time a government entity has to get involved is when someone decides that an artist, for example, should not have control over their own work. If someone wants the public to have unrestricted use of something they've created, all they have to do is say so. They can use frameworks like the Creative Commons, or simply declare a free license. The government has nothing whatsoever to do with making that decision.
try sharing 10000 coppies of office 2000 over the internet and you soon will
Why would I do that? I bought a license for the product because I wanted it, and part of that deal is that I don't spread it around. There's certainly no lack of means by which other people who want the product, the support, etc., to get their hands on it. MS (just like Apple) has thousands of dealers and integrators who have built businesses around delivering that product. Certainly I don't feel restricted, because I already got what I paid for.
First, this starts out with a red herring.
Not at all. The guy I was responding to was complaining that Windows treats "the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat." And of course my point is that we, and the information tools that use do need to start out with some presumed controls over information access, and need to be thinking, even during rhetorical excercises, about who should have control over what information, and by what means.
most creators would be far better off putting the content they create on-line
This is the traditional excuse of the person too cheap to pay for an artist's work. Sure, you're not paying for your entertainment, but it's OK! See, you're helping with the artist's reputation! You're doing them a favor by ignoring their stated expectation that you'll pay for the experience of enjoying the artist's work.
hint for every 1 that makes it big, 10000 get nowhere>
So, tightwad junior high school students that don't feel like working for enough money to pay for their entertainment should be the ones to decide which artist out of 10,000 "makes it?" Or are we talking about what happens when an artist does start to make it (and thus all of the artist's work in creating an audience and market has started to pay off), and then it's OK to rip them off?
I don't care if only one in a million people are "helped" by being to exercize a copyright on their own work. Any of those artists that want to define the way in which their work disseminates should have that decision protected.
Copyrights only help large monopolized interests
You mean, like J.K. Rowling before she was a famous writer? Or someone like my brother that makes a good living writing highly specialized graphics industry software? Simply claiming that copyrights only work for large entities is just a transparent attempt to make people feel better about deliberately screwing over creative people for some "free" entertainment. I'm always astounded by the big group-think falacies that are built up around the central theme of expecting artists to entertain the masses for free.
Last time I checked, you couldn't walk into Best Buy or Frys or Circuit City or CompUSA or........and buy a PC without Windows on it.
So, walk out of Best Buy, walk next door to Wal-Mart, and spend $200 for one with a different O/S. Don't watch the consumer computer market much? Or is it too upsetting to your anti-MS world view that the largest retailer in the world regularly sells inexpensive machines with a Linux distro, right next to inexpensive machines with WinXP, and you're in denial? Market forces, right there to click on.
This basically means they violated certain principles of the free market
Well, it actually means that they worked better than anyone else (in terms of getting market share) within that free market, until the market's conditions were changed through government action to alter the market's tilt towards the company that had been that effective. The principles that were in question there were not those of a free market, but those of Anti-Trust Law, which by no means seeks to ensure a free market - quite the contrary. Anti-trust law actually seeks to create a sort of economic terrarium, where the more sensitive species, like Apple (or Netscape) can survive despite the market. No question that owning the largest share of any market will dull your innovative energies, of course. That's plain, and MS is still playing catch-up from being complacent. Still, I wouldn't say that MS is "stagnate," per se. Their hugeness also means they have a lot more interia, and a lot more time involved in shifting what they do around a much wider hardware landscape. Kind of hard, really, to compare them to Apple in that regard.
The real truth is that you're pretty incoherent, here. Let's see:
It doesn't matter what's Linux's flaws are - they will be remedied by market forces sooner or later.
Great! Glad to know that you understand the power of the market to shape things. Say, um, why wouldn't you think that Windows, which is produced by a completely market-oriented company, would be shaped by the same influences? If people won't buy it, Microsoft will change it. As they have, and continue to do, in response to what people need, have learned to use, and so on. Just like Apple has. They each have a different audience, a different legacy, etc., but the market is exactly what is driving all of this, Linux, Windows - all of them.
Windows is not, becuase it trys to treat information like "intellectual property" and sees the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat and "piracy".
If, by "information" you mean songs that some people want to hear, by artists they say they like (just not well enough to pay them for their work), perhaps. Or movies that you want to see, but just not badly enough to actually pay the price for. But I'm sitting here right now using XP, connected to the internet, freely exchanging this information with you. Now, how is it exactly that Microsoft is restricting me? Of course, we're not freely exchanging this information, because the folks a slashdot have to pay for this conversation.
Speaking of free, please point me to where your personal financial data is, and any and all academic papers you've ever written, and any sensitive information used by the members of your family or any friends that are in business in any way. I'm sure they'll agree with you that information should be free and unrestricted, and will help you serve it all up. Maybe you've got a friend or family member that makes wine, or runs a restaurant, or has spent a lifetime developing a way to do something difficult? I'll help you out with some web hosting where you can put up all of their inside information they use to run their businesses or create their artwork. Hopefully you've got a family member that's almost done with a great novel, biography, or excellent article for an industry journal of some sort (which, of course, they would have written on a Linux machine - goes without saying). Please have them forward a copy of that manuscript so that we can get together and post it online for free, and that way that writer doesn't have to get his or her hands all dirty with making an actual living or anything by getting income from their work. I'm sure they want nothing to do with "market forces," though you're sure those will still have an important role in fixing anything in Linux that needs a little attention.
Actually, this usually has more to do with harvesting things prematurely for long-haul shipment, and then force-ripening (with gas exposure, etc) just prior to sale. The fruit, or vegetable in question doesn't have as long to properly ripen and generate the compounds that we enjoy as the familiar mature tastes.
This is driven mostly by the demand from less well educated (in culinary terms) shoppers wanting to see/feel crisp-looking produce of every variety on the shelf through every season, or with their unwillingness to pay what it costs for the more immediate transportation of those same items if they were left to ripen on the vine/tree, etc. Spend a little more on the same varieties at a higher-end store, and you'll get your flavor back. But you'll also be burning more fuel, because the produce was probably flown to you (unless it's grown locally).
Ah, French liberty. Just as long as you don't mention the N-word! Um, or sell WWII collectibles online. Or try to introduce a new word into the vocabulary. They're still a little funny about a few things.
But the wine... the cheese. The shameless use of butter and salt in the food. sigh.
Sorry, I should have been more plainspoken, even given the pretty obvious context. When I say we "can't have it both ways," I meant that can't have:
1) Successful companies like Google spending a fortune to develop and deliver (free to end users!) fantastic things like their mapping systems, and equally fantastic things like their stock in your portfolio.
As well as:
2) A native dislike of all things "corporate" and the reflexive use of the word "cynical" whenever the words "growth" or "profit" have to appear in a sentence.
That's what I mean. The widespread, seemingly genetic slashdot attitude of contempt for the prosperity of big companies is mutually exclusive with the breathless praise heaped on products and services from those same companies.
Hopefully this is just a temporary abberation
Why? They're allowing third party publishers (of AdSense partner sites) to choose to display if they want a wider variety of ad formats. They're the middle man. No one's arm is being twisted, but advertisers and publishers who are comfortable with the wider range of choices, and who have an audience that will appreciate (or not mind) it, are ahead of the game because of it. Your normal visit to a Google page isn't even being discussed here (though it's not as if you pay for that service, of course).
A growing company and high stock values validate any behavior that gets you there
Careful, your biases are showing. I didn't say that, or even imply it. Read my comment again, and assume that I used the words I used for a reason. My (rhetorical) point was that lots of slashdotters have swooned over Google (and its public stock), and while they don't seem to crow too much about its elevated value, anyone who owns a piece of that company should be pleased by the performance. There's really nowhere in that comment or its meaning to infer some notion that just any behavior attached to a rising stock is somehow just fine. That's a bit of mythology that doesn't hold up very well in the real world of meetings with boards of directors, having the Washington Post business writers talking about you, or having your company's name mentioned in the same breath as a place formerly run by crooks (like Enron). Investors certainly won't invest without some expectation of a return on that investment. But they also don't want to lose their investment entirely (like Enron) because the people in whom they invested are behaving like jackasses.
cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth
Everyone raves about, say, Google Maps. I do too. But is it "cynical" for them to move around enough money to actually pay for all that great stuff? Come on, folks, we can't have it both ways. There's nothing "evil" about growing the company. And all of you Google stock holders had better come clean now if your preference is that the stock stays low!
Slashdot Mirror
But it's certainly possible to approach the range of things that Excel can do (which are substantial, especially when you use ODBC, etc., to patch into huge databases, etc) with a professional set of skills and business sensibilities.
A well-conceived Excel file can carry with it everything you need for a pretty elaborate bunch of data crunching and presentation, and that can hop from machine to machine very easily. Sales people in the field working up quotes, or managers chewing on inventory info before making a buying decision at a meeting - certainly they could just "use" a spreadsheet to do all of that, but having a purpose-specific UI sitting on top of it (without having to drag around other runtimes, etc) can really help when you're dealing with non-power-users.
"Professional level" can also refer to presentation sensibilities. For example, wise use of font families and graphs can make the tool's output more useful in a wider variety of settings. A pro knows how to wrap it all up in a smooth package, even if some of the logic is very simple. But a huge, complex, what-if business plan package friendly to investor-type users... that's a very cool type of app, with Excel running under the hood.
Hey, how's that tinfoil hat holding up?
It will go the way of Napster
You mean, become a company that does legitimate business, instead of a company that goes out of its way to facilitate copyright violation on a massive scale?
buy some members of congress, get them to pass new laws
Actually, massive copyright violation was already against the law. We have a long standing tradition in the US called, "just because it has become technically easier to do it, doesn't means it's OK to rip off artists"
form an industry organization
Those organizations were around a long time before Napster. Because there were music piracy and "I want to be entertained for free" problems before, too.
sue and make the targets highly visable
Well, that makes sense, since the people that were using Napster to rip off copyrighted material were being highly visible and crowing about how clever they were to find a way to get around paying for their entertainment.
distribute faulty crap to frustrate people
Hmmm. Who would that be frustrating? The only people I can think of would be the people trying to get it without paying for it. Have you seen "faulty" crap coming through iTunes or any of the other well regarded subscription systems? No... it's a lot like complaining to the police that some street corner drug dealer just sold you some faulty heroin.
All this almost makes me want to switch to a Mac, if only they were not so bloody expensive
Huh! I wonder why that would be? Maybe because the x86 architecture is much more open, more widely supported, and MS has such a huge audience that their stuff ends up being a better deal because of scale? I don't spend much on machines, either. But I'm quite happy with XP and Win2K/3 depending on what I'm up to.
Not really, because I'm talking about something that normal people actually do, as opposed to something that only astronauts to. Take 1000 people, and get them from New York to Los Angeles, several times. 500 by plane, and 500 by car. Repeat until you've got enough data to consider it a valid test. The several that would have been killed or injured in the cars will have a different take on "silly facts" than you do, I think.
The first time one of these monsters go down, it will be a tragedy larger than we're willing to admit.
Why? If a 747 goes down with 400 people that's a pretty big tragedy. Never mind though... in between the (very rare) airliner crashes, thousands upon thousands of people die in automobile crashes. Just because those are a continuous roar of "small" tragedies doesn't mean they don't count. So: people moving around the planet take on a certain amount of risk. Flying in a large airliner run by a reputable airline is safer per passenger, per mile, than driving on the ground in most any vehicle. In the meantime, these newer, larger planes use less fuel and can reduce the overall number of aircraft on the move - which reduces airport ground traffic, heavy aircraft wake issues, and so on. Fewer flights = safer travel, and bigger aircraft = fewer flights. The burning of less fuel per passenger is a nice side benefit.
I (and I don't think I'm alone on this) come here for the techie perspective, be it on the front page, or in the bowels of the comments.
What is the "techie perspective?" In my experience, it falls hugely, dramatically, and beyond-reunification-ally into two camps: (1) those techies that run, or understand the running of businesses, and (2) those that don't.
That dichotomy, which of course spins off in all sorts of directions (like, should businesses be allowed to exist at all, and similar pablum), certainly fuels most of the debate on slashdot. Because one's take on the micro- and macro-economics of technology tends to drive your politics, your emotional involvement in all sorts of legal issues, and so on. Essentially, the more hours of the day that you spend getting into the issues of dealing with the financial ramifications of high-tech stuff, the more you ask questions like "who's paying for this?" as you read the news. The more you're focused on the raw technology itself, and keep the underlying economics blissfully at arm's length, the less that stuff matters. Do that often enough, and you begin to resent the people that keep dragging money back into the discussion, as if there really is a Free Lunch.
All that being said, the those two big camps here (and I think one is much, much larger than the other) certainly use the commenting process to demonstrate what they think about these issues. The techie perspective makes itself very clear within a few posts. But when the original articles are themselves dripping with flamebait, too many of the comments (like this one!) end up being about the editors and each other, rather than about the news itself. I know it's a subtle distinction, but I think it does help improve the tone when the editors choose posts with just a little less spin.
As opposed to someone who might...say...disallow people from attending a techincal conference based on their political opinions?
Well, sure. Of course, you're not referring to any recent news events. You might be confusing the circumstances of a different situation, in which the membership of an administration delegation was chosen by... that administration! Based... on politics! And the people that were left out of the administration's group were people that... spent money in groups decrying that administration!
Come on. And I suppose that if Kerry were president and picking some people to send to a conference on reproductive services, he'd be the first one to pick, say, some rabid fundamentalist "life" nuts as part of the representation of his administration? People that spent money loudly proclaiming his evilness before the election? Not hardly.
I don't think that the republicans shaping a conference delegation's membership is very different than, say, the democrats in the senate refusing to allow a simple vote on a judicial appointment. Political position taking and policy positioning (including policies of who gets the perks of some federally-paid-for travel to an event, and who, despite being nominated, does or doesn't get the basic decency of the called-for vote, because of their conservative politics, whatever) isn't peculiar to this administration. You could have said the same thing about the last administration's deliberations about socializing the medical system... not everyone who wanted a seat at that table got one either, because their party didn't win that election. Happily, that mess collapsed under its own weight, though it was vastly more important (a 7th of our economy) than is the issue of who gets the free lunches at an IATC meeting.
Police don't get paid to kill
Yes, they do. Sometimes it comes to that. And cops are trained expressly on how to do it, when to do it, and how to use the tools for doing it. And of course, they spend their careers generally hoping they won't ever bump into circumstances like that.
people over there didn't like what they were doing
Right. Because what was happening in that town was that they local murderous thugs were slowly being squeezed out of their long term jobs, and losing their funding (from the charming Saddam crew).
Anybody who kills for a living is dead inside
You're confusing being prepared to kill if necessary with taking some delight in doing it, or not caring that you have to. You're so obsessed with this topic that you can't imagine meeting someone who takes this burden on. Mostly, you can't imagine that there really are souless killers out there (not just your rhetorical constructs), and that many of them work for people like Bin Laden or his boys, and have the cash to keep grinding away as if they are eventually going to make the world like their approach. Further, you're going to be uncomfortable with the fact that there are decent people willing to put themselves on the line for a career of shutting those people down, killing them if necessary.
Finally I noticed you had nothing to say about the hundreds of people killed in venegence for your friend
You mean the holdouts that were supporting what was left of Saddam's former military? And the ones that had been sweet-talked into thinking that they were somehow going to keep democracy and liberty at bay by simply terrorizing the people in Fallujah? Into that town moves the Marines, making endless announcements about how to simply vacate the weapons caches, suicide bomb workshops, and armed mosques/schools, and to help flush out the armed gangs without it becoming a big fight. So, a bunch of untrained, brainwashed leftover Baathists and Uday/Qusay Buddies refused to contemplate the fact that they weren't going to re-establish a minority Sunni thug-ocracy, and they paid the price. This has nothing to do with having empathy for Arabs. Empathy for Arabs demands that one actually help them shake off the kinds of punks that were trying to run Fallujah as a Mafia Outpost. Empathy for Arabs demands that we allow people like the population of Iraq to not wake up every day worrying about people like Zarqawi using foreign cash and jihad-muddled young people to kill innocent civilians in the interests of denying democracy. Sometimes you need professional soldiers to counter people like that, and they have to know how to use lethal force. They are not dead inside, they're there to stop people who are.
Huh. That sounds a lot like talking to yourself. Which, of course, you're welcome to do. But when you say it out loud, here (especially in mode) it's not really worth getting all wound up when someone else chimes in.
Perhaps such posts should start with: "This post is only for my own benefit. Please do not respond." That would help cut down on the responses. Not!
Learn to read. He said " I don't want to hear from anyone who uses AOL anyways." See that? "I don't". Not "Who would". "I don't"!!!!
Now, if that little comment of his was merely his opinion of what he thinks about this, and how he'll alter (or not) his actions... why would he throw it out there on slashdot, a place where most every comment is intended to make at least one other point? There's no question that his intention was to be dismissive of AOL users in general, and it was my thought to point out that they represent hundreds of millions of dollars a year in online business. I'm not trying to change his mind, I'm making sure that someone who doesn't know better doesn't form a not-necessarily-valid opinion of the place that AOL users have in the world.
Is MAPS forcing you to use their lists? No. So what's your problem?
Just because I host or maintain e-commerce tools for a merchant doesn't mean they're in the mood to break their e-mail away from some other ISP to which they're somewhat attached, or which they use for mail because that's who provides the pipe into their offices. Of course I'd prefer to host their mail, though spam management has me more and more allergic to that side of the business. Issues like this can kill a man-week of productivity, with no guarantee it won't pop back up the next week.
I don't want to hear from anyone who uses AOL anyways.
Yeah, who wants to do business, say, with tens of millions of people.
I've got e-commerce clients that, unable to communicate gracefully with AOL users, would run into trouble with a third or more of their customers. This is not trivial, it's blacklist BS, and a sign of how that solution to the problem is part of the problem.
when you say that you have the right to sue and press criminal charges on people who copy
No, only those that copy outside of the limits the artist has established. Someone, at some point, has deliberately broken an agreement. If I sell one book to one person, and part of the deal is that he won't re-distribute copies of the book, then the only way that there can be two copies floating around is if the person specifically violated an agreement into which they entered. I can't sue just anybody because I feel like it, and under most circumstances I can't sue some other person to whom the book was given... but I can certainly sue guy who just deliberately copied the material that he agreed he wouldn't copy. What's not clear about that? Are you saying that the principal of the situation is different if he's technically able, instead, to make millions of copies in a minute? How is that any different? It's the same in principle, and even worse in practice. Of course, if I can prove he just did it, and he refuses to stop or make recompense, you're damn right that's when the government gets involved. Just like they get involved in other cases where one person injures another.
Maybe you could send me 100 dollars in the mail with a note attached that says "by opening this you owe me 200
That's a bogus analogy. If you walk up to a store (buy online, whatever) and choose to pay for an envelope that says that, then we're having a different conversation. Of course I can't just compel you to owe me money through an unsolicited unilateral act. But if you ask me for something, and I say, "sure, but here's the thing: if you want it, you have to agree to the following terms..." you've got the choice to agree (and get it), or disagree (and go elsewhere). There are plenty of "elsewheres" these days, for operating systems, reading material, art, music... why complain about the people that would rather be paid for their work when you can go and get some other flavor from people that don't mind giving it away? Or, is there a chance that some of that stuff just isn't as desireable as some of what's produced by professionals that have to be able to earn a living at what they do all day, or they'd never be that good at it?
if they get blasted out all over the world, then even when it is wrong that is tough.
Yeah, it's tough, but it's also the fault of the person who acted to spread it around. We're not talking about leaving something on the bus seat, here. We're talking about people who, for example, are issued a preview DVD because they are a film critic, and they are given it only on the condition that they in no way distribute the content. So, when that person lies while accepting the material, and acts to damage the artist by spreading it out all over the 'net before it's even formally released... that's just "tough?" No, it's demonstrable contract violation, possibly fraud, and certainly a worthy case for a trip to court.
It's sad to see people can't deal with that.
Sad? For whom? It's sad that we're at the point where enough people have decided that they want to be entertained for free, and that the best excuse they can come up with is that the laws that addressed that when we were copying things by hand are just not scalable enough somehow, so, oh well, it must now be ethically just fine to rip someone off. Do you even listen to yourself? If it's wrong for one to defraud an artist into entertaining them for free, how is it OK for 10,000 people to do the same?
I think that comment is a little misleading...How many 15-16yr olds do you know with a policatal opinion like being called schoolboys?
I don't know... I'd say that's a perfectly appropriate label for someone with such a weak philosophy that only through defacing someone else's words or information do they think they're communicating in a useful way. 15-16 year-olds are essentially twits, no matter what their fashionable political orientation. But it's clear that if cracking sites fits comfortably within the political system they do support, we don't really have to worry about hurting their poor, tender little feelings, do we? Boys, pre-pubescents, developmentally stunted... call them what you will, why should anyone care what they like (thus showing them any respect whatsoever) when their purpose, as deliberately shown through their actions, is to make a mockery of respect for anyone else? "Political opinion" indeed. I think "child's tantrum" is more like it, and that's not how you get someone to listen to your nascent ideology. Yup, schoolboys.
Hmm. Personal appearances only? How many stops do you think that might take in a country of a few hundred million people? Obviously that won't work. So, you're going to suggest that the rest of The People will learn what they need to know through press coverage of those live events, right? So, then we're looking at those journalists' impressions and biases being the things that most people are exposed to, not the direct message that each candidate wants to communicate. And what about me? If I want to convey a public message about what I think about a candidate's attitude, policies, etc? Am I limited to shouting on street corners? Election cycles don't last long enough for that to work across an entire country. Better for me to be privately persuasive with enough people to gather up enough money to be heard in a wider communication... say, through an advertisement - in my choice of venues, to the audience I want to reach. It's called free speech.
a mandate for true political power comes from the masses
Well, not really. It comes from the US Constitution, and from the states' constitutions. "The masses" sounds a lot like "the mob." There's a reason our genius founders set us up as a representative republic, and not a straight democracy.
...to use the Google search engine. I mean, sure it's expensive to use MS's engine, but by paying that extra bit to use Google, I get less evil results. And no ads, placed by people that are paying Google, either!
Give me a damn break. It's MS's own freakin' web site, and they can do what they want (assuming this study is even really exposing causation, rather than correlation). No one is paying MS to be neutral in any way, any more than they are paying Google or Yahoo, each of whom tilt results according to all sorts of standards, ideals, and sometimes total capriciousness. Now, lower ranking for sites that can't figure out the difference betwen "its" and "it's" would be worth paying for.
Copyrights are more like a government regulation that controlls how people use information than a free market property right.
Wrong. It's the means by which the person who creates the work controls it. The only time a government entity has to get involved is when someone decides that an artist, for example, should not have control over their own work. If someone wants the public to have unrestricted use of something they've created, all they have to do is say so. They can use frameworks like the Creative Commons, or simply declare a free license. The government has nothing whatsoever to do with making that decision.
try sharing 10000 coppies of office 2000 over the internet and you soon will
Why would I do that? I bought a license for the product because I wanted it, and part of that deal is that I don't spread it around. There's certainly no lack of means by which other people who want the product, the support, etc., to get their hands on it. MS (just like Apple) has thousands of dealers and integrators who have built businesses around delivering that product. Certainly I don't feel restricted, because I already got what I paid for.
First, this starts out with a red herring.
Not at all. The guy I was responding to was complaining that Windows treats "the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat." And of course my point is that we, and the information tools that use do need to start out with some presumed controls over information access, and need to be thinking, even during rhetorical excercises, about who should have control over what information, and by what means.
most creators would be far better off putting the content they create on-line
This is the traditional excuse of the person too cheap to pay for an artist's work. Sure, you're not paying for your entertainment, but it's OK! See, you're helping with the artist's reputation! You're doing them a favor by ignoring their stated expectation that you'll pay for the experience of enjoying the artist's work.
hint for every 1 that makes it big, 10000 get nowhere>
So, tightwad junior high school students that don't feel like working for enough money to pay for their entertainment should be the ones to decide which artist out of 10,000 "makes it?" Or are we talking about what happens when an artist does start to make it (and thus all of the artist's work in creating an audience and market has started to pay off), and then it's OK to rip them off?
I don't care if only one in a million people are "helped" by being to exercize a copyright on their own work. Any of those artists that want to define the way in which their work disseminates should have that decision protected.
Copyrights only help large monopolized interests
You mean, like J.K. Rowling before she was a famous writer? Or someone like my brother that makes a good living writing highly specialized graphics industry software? Simply claiming that copyrights only work for large entities is just a transparent attempt to make people feel better about deliberately screwing over creative people for some "free" entertainment. I'm always astounded by the big group-think falacies that are built up around the central theme of expecting artists to entertain the masses for free.
Last time I checked, you couldn't walk into Best Buy or Frys or Circuit City or CompUSA or........and buy a PC without Windows on it.
So, walk out of Best Buy, walk next door to Wal-Mart, and spend $200 for one with a different O/S. Don't watch the consumer computer market much? Or is it too upsetting to your anti-MS world view that the largest retailer in the world regularly sells inexpensive machines with a Linux distro, right next to inexpensive machines with WinXP, and you're in denial? Market forces, right there to click on.
This basically means they violated certain principles of the free market
Well, it actually means that they worked better than anyone else (in terms of getting market share) within that free market, until the market's conditions were changed through government action to alter the market's tilt towards the company that had been that effective. The principles that were in question there were not those of a free market, but those of Anti-Trust Law, which by no means seeks to ensure a free market - quite the contrary. Anti-trust law actually seeks to create a sort of economic terrarium, where the more sensitive species, like Apple (or Netscape) can survive despite the market. No question that owning the largest share of any market will dull your innovative energies, of course. That's plain, and MS is still playing catch-up from being complacent. Still, I wouldn't say that MS is "stagnate," per se. Their hugeness also means they have a lot more interia, and a lot more time involved in shifting what they do around a much wider hardware landscape. Kind of hard, really, to compare them to Apple in that regard.
The real truth is that you're pretty incoherent, here. Let's see:
It doesn't matter what's Linux's flaws are - they will be remedied by market forces sooner or later.
Great! Glad to know that you understand the power of the market to shape things. Say, um, why wouldn't you think that Windows, which is produced by a completely market-oriented company, would be shaped by the same influences? If people won't buy it, Microsoft will change it. As they have, and continue to do, in response to what people need, have learned to use, and so on. Just like Apple has. They each have a different audience, a different legacy, etc., but the market is exactly what is driving all of this, Linux, Windows - all of them.
Windows is not, becuase it trys to treat information like "intellectual property" and sees the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat and "piracy".
If, by "information" you mean songs that some people want to hear, by artists they say they like (just not well enough to pay them for their work), perhaps. Or movies that you want to see, but just not badly enough to actually pay the price for. But I'm sitting here right now using XP, connected to the internet, freely exchanging this information with you. Now, how is it exactly that Microsoft is restricting me? Of course, we're not freely exchanging this information, because the folks a slashdot have to pay for this conversation.
Speaking of free, please point me to where your personal financial data is, and any and all academic papers you've ever written, and any sensitive information used by the members of your family or any friends that are in business in any way. I'm sure they'll agree with you that information should be free and unrestricted, and will help you serve it all up. Maybe you've got a friend or family member that makes wine, or runs a restaurant, or has spent a lifetime developing a way to do something difficult? I'll help you out with some web hosting where you can put up all of their inside information they use to run their businesses or create their artwork. Hopefully you've got a family member that's almost done with a great novel, biography, or excellent article for an industry journal of some sort (which, of course, they would have written on a Linux machine - goes without saying). Please have them forward a copy of that manuscript so that we can get together and post it online for free, and that way that writer doesn't have to get his or her hands all dirty with making an actual living or anything by getting income from their work. I'm sure they want nothing to do with "market forces," though you're sure those will still have an important role in fixing anything in Linux that needs a little attention.
Actually, this usually has more to do with harvesting things prematurely for long-haul shipment, and then force-ripening (with gas exposure, etc) just prior to sale. The fruit, or vegetable in question doesn't have as long to properly ripen and generate the compounds that we enjoy as the familiar mature tastes.
This is driven mostly by the demand from less well educated (in culinary terms) shoppers wanting to see/feel crisp-looking produce of every variety on the shelf through every season, or with their unwillingness to pay what it costs for the more immediate transportation of those same items if they were left to ripen on the vine/tree, etc. Spend a little more on the same varieties at a higher-end store, and you'll get your flavor back. But you'll also be burning more fuel, because the produce was probably flown to you (unless it's grown locally).
Ah, French liberty. Just as long as you don't mention the N-word! Um, or sell WWII collectibles online. Or try to introduce a new word into the vocabulary. They're still a little funny about a few things.
But the wine... the cheese. The shameless use of butter and salt in the food. sigh.
So he's involved with outlining a two-part solution... and he's completed one part of it. That's sort of an actual accomplishment, isn't it?
I mean, I'm poised to win the lottery. He's actually doing things.
Sorry, I should have been more plainspoken, even given the pretty obvious context. When I say we "can't have it both ways," I meant that can't have: 1) Successful companies like Google spending a fortune to develop and deliver (free to end users!) fantastic things like their mapping systems, and equally fantastic things like their stock in your portfolio. As well as: 2) A native dislike of all things "corporate" and the reflexive use of the word "cynical" whenever the words "growth" or "profit" have to appear in a sentence.
That's what I mean. The widespread, seemingly genetic slashdot attitude of contempt for the prosperity of big companies is mutually exclusive with the breathless praise heaped on products and services from those same companies.
Hopefully this is just a temporary abberation
Why? They're allowing third party publishers (of AdSense partner sites) to choose to display if they want a wider variety of ad formats. They're the middle man. No one's arm is being twisted, but advertisers and publishers who are comfortable with the wider range of choices, and who have an audience that will appreciate (or not mind) it, are ahead of the game because of it. Your normal visit to a Google page isn't even being discussed here (though it's not as if you pay for that service, of course).
A growing company and high stock values validate any behavior that gets you there
Careful, your biases are showing. I didn't say that, or even imply it. Read my comment again, and assume that I used the words I used for a reason. My (rhetorical) point was that lots of slashdotters have swooned over Google (and its public stock), and while they don't seem to crow too much about its elevated value, anyone who owns a piece of that company should be pleased by the performance. There's really nowhere in that comment or its meaning to infer some notion that just any behavior attached to a rising stock is somehow just fine. That's a bit of mythology that doesn't hold up very well in the real world of meetings with boards of directors, having the Washington Post business writers talking about you, or having your company's name mentioned in the same breath as a place formerly run by crooks (like Enron). Investors certainly won't invest without some expectation of a return on that investment. But they also don't want to lose their investment entirely (like Enron) because the people in whom they invested are behaving like jackasses.
I don't know about you, but I've had the option, so far, of accepting graphical AdSense ads or just sticking with text. It's in your account profile.
cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth
Everyone raves about, say, Google Maps. I do too. But is it "cynical" for them to move around enough money to actually pay for all that great stuff? Come on, folks, we can't have it both ways. There's nothing "evil" about growing the company. And all of you Google stock holders had better come clean now if your preference is that the stock stays low!