Short of sending a guy over with a club to keep me away, they will never be able to deny me access to my computer or the data on it. Vista still supports FAT32 and NTFS, you can still get data off drives.
Ahh, but does that include the keys for the DRM'd media files you bought? And what about if you use the default filesystem (like most people) and encrypted your data? Isn't that a built in feature of Vista? So sure maybe you can if you take precautions and avoid certain types of data and features, but that does not mean the average person can.
That's like saying this murderer the police have refused to arrest never poisoned a person to death before. MS inserted code into Windows to intentionally break competitor's products and was found guilty. They performed classic bundling and tying that others have been seriously punished for and were found guilty and then sentenced to o nothing, not even stop committing the crime. They have proven their lobbying dollars make them above the law.
If they deactivate, they're probably overstepping some hitherto invisible line.
One more illegal act makes no difference. If anything, a congress lead by Democrats, who MS has not been bribing, err campaigning for, as heavily might cause the laws to be enforced... unless a bunch of new contributions appear.
Just wait until some gov't agency's or some Federal judge's copies of Windows get deactivated. I think that using extortionate tactics like this will get MS into some deep legal shite.
This is no worse than things they've been convicted of in the past. The law does not apply to the rich, or at least not nearly as much. That's all there is to it.
The law differentiates between general public viewing and private 'electronic mail' to minors.
Yeah, but if you're going to be running Windows in a VM, why run it as the host OS as well? You might as well run it on Linux or OS X and then you have the application sets of both OS's. I use OS X as my base OS on my laptop and run Windows and Linux in VMs on top of that. This provides me the capability to use a wider set of applications and features. I sometimes even run OpenBSD in my VM to test a simulation of one of the servers I work on. Having a more secure host OS also reduces the chances I'll be compromised by some random worm that does not have a user interaction component. A subset of games even work natively in OS X for those network games you mention. Finally, since OS X has the best migration path to new machines pulling all my files, programs, certs, settings, and VMs onto a newer machine is a painless one step process via the firewire cable. It easily saves me several days of time whenever I move to a newer laptop.
The law differentiates between general public viewing and private 'electronic mail' to minors.
No it doesn't. You might want it to, but it does not. You see, phone calls are a private, electronic message sent to a minor. So are telegraph messages. The law does not make illegal telegraph messages or phone messages or IMs or "private messages" it makes illegal e-mail messages. The law is stupid. There is already a law banning soliciting a minor and adding another to add extra punishment if it is by e-mail is absurd. As if they were hurting minors more if they use e-mail than if they use regular mail or do it in person. Now this judge is taking this stupid law and trying to apply it in other cases because she believes the lawmakers should have made it include them as well. That is not justice or "rule by law." That is one person taking it upon themselves to twist the law to make it apply when they want to. The law is wrong. The judge's interpretation is wrong. If this were an analogous situation about pretty much anything but child abuse or terrorism this would be decried loudly. It undermines our justice system and weakens our democracy to allow this crap to happen.
No matter what a judge does, she is forced to apply an interpretation of the law.
There is a difference between interpreting the intent of what is written and trying to strain the words to mean something they clearly do not in common language. If a jury ruled they though e-mail was a term that included IMs in that jurisdiction, that is one thing, but for a judge to make such a ruling is something else entirely.
Laws cannot be perfectly specific.
No, which is why laws should cover principals, not specific situations. A law banning soliciting a child over IM is a very idiotic law. That is the fault of the lawmakers. The judge, however, should make ruling that reflect the stupidity of the law, not try to interpret them as though they were anything but idiotic.
Hell, for all that says, laws are arbitrarily forcing beliefs on you just as much as that judge was.
You're failing to understand the concept of "rule by law." The idea is the people decide upon laws, in this case through their elected representatives. Then, that law applies equally to everyone and is enforced as written. When the legislature writes a law that says soliciting a child over IM is punishable by 2 years in jail, and any person that does that is convicted, we have rule by law.
When a judge decides in one particular the legislature really meant the law banning such an act over e-mail to include IM, or telephone calls, or mental telepathy, then you have laws being enforced not as they are written but as one person wants them to have been written and has been able to twist them to try to apply. That is no longer rule of law, but rule by one arbitrary person. Even if I agree with the motives, the action is still wrong and undermines the justice system.
The problem with this is that tech changes waaaay too quickly to try and be specific in every law.
I see very little need for tech specific laws. The laws are supposed to be arbitrating conflicting rights. In principal, adding technology to the equation does little or nothing.
I mean, you're the same guy who, in 5 years will be saying, "Hey the law only covers IM, Email, Blog posts and VOIP...It doesn't say anything about holo-chat rooms!"
We already have a law that says it's illegal to solicit a minor for sexual acts. Why do we need one to add another penalty if it is done on e-mail, IM phone, messages on rocks, or mental telepathy?
Forcing the law down to a super nit-picky technical medium is ripe for setting up a huge number of bad precidents.
Agreed, which is why laws should be about actions, not the means by which those actions are completed. I victim is just as dead whether they're killed with a rock, a firearm, or a disintegrator ray. That is why the law should ban murder not killings with rocks or firearms or disintegrator rays.
...or you're going to basically force legislators to make these colossal generalizations, to cover every possible case. And you really don't want a case with this much 1st amendment baggage and a legitimate "Think of the children" complaint to go to the current supreme court, do you?
Yes I do. If it is is unethical to knowingly solicit a minor, then it is unethical to do so via any medium and there is no reason for mediums to be specified in law. The only reason these unnecessary laws are passed is to garner votes from morons. "Look how tough governor Smith is on cyber-criminals. Now they are convicted of two crimes for each act and serve twice the sentence instead of one." It is idiotic and needs to stop.
Sony IS profiting off you as a consumer by you buying their machine. This comes in the way of you buying the games, accessories, movies, etc... as previously stated.
This is false. They potentially benefit from people who buy their machines but there is nothing inherent in buying a PS3 that forces me to buy games, accessories, etc. They benefit from my buying these add ons. In losing money selling me a console they are counting on me buying those other products, which is why this is akin to marketing. They spent money for potential benefits, not necessarily real benefits.
Another thing you are buying with a PS3 (or any other console for that matter) is DRM. You're buying vendor lock-in.
So if I go buy a PS3 and disassemble it for the laser and other components I've bought DRM and vendor lock in? Nope. Again, these are potential benefits to Sony, not ones inherent in the purchase.
But isn't that why we have judges and jury. So they can make the proper distinctions within the spirit of the law?
No we have judges to interpret what the law says, not to infer the intent of the lawmakers with regard to things they did not include. This is no different in principal to a lawmaker interpreting a homicide statute to convict someone of slaughtering cows. I mean cows are people too, right? Sure they are, the same way an instant message or phone call or paper letter is an e-mail message.
As for juries, that is a different case. They are there to interpret the common meaning of laws and decide if they apply or should be nullified. If a jury had ruled on this case, that the common interpretation of "e-mail" in that jurisdiction included instant messaging, I'd accept it, but be very suspicious about their impartiality. This was not a jury though, it was a judge basically making up laws on the spot. That is wrong, no matter how good his intentions might be.
Anyhow, if you check answers.com, the 4th defintion of mail is: "Mail or messages sent electronically; e-mail."
I'm not willing to accept that as the authoritative definition. By that definition, telephone calls would be considered e-mail. Heck telegraphs would be considered e-mail. I don't buy it.
The judge probably did the right thing. The man was still attempting to socillicit from an underage girl over the internet, who cares excatly which communications protocol was used?
I do. If you take the time to look up the millions of obscure laws written half in Latin, the least you should be able to expect is that the law be enforced as written. This guy was already guilty of violating a different law and their was no reason why another "on the internet" law should have been applied.
The difference is between living in a state where people are ruled by laws and living in one where people arbitrarily enforce their beliefs upon you. Just because you agree with the beliefs in this case does not make it any less wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right, and that is exactly what is being done here.
Re:Intranet vs. internet
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In an intranet, you do what works best for your intranet. But most people who discuss web authoring on Slashdot assume, before it is stated otherwise, that a public-facing web site is under discussion.
I think "customer" pretty much implies "public-facing," don't you? In any case this is not part of an intranet, although the access is limited to partners and those willing to pony up the $40K for our cheapest system. Not that any of that matters as we were discussing limiting oneself to the XHTML that is also HTML4, versus using the fuller capabilities of XHTML where they are called for. My original comment was "it depends upon the application" and I then was asked to explain what application might need those features.
Re:Sounds logical, but isn't
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Can you give an example?
Not a specific one due to some NDA restrictions, but basically if you apply scope to the CSS, you need to use a hack or ignore either IE or everything else.
It depends on your toolset. I'm in a similar situation, and switching between HTML and XHTML is a couple of lines of code. They are both just very similar output formats, after all.
The problem is contextual information. Say I have some text plus formatting that applies in one context but not another. In XHTML that is fine for any cross product of contexts. For the subset of XHTML that is HTML that means stripping things off and processing different bits before the encoding.
I'm not following you. Like I said, XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 are functionally identical
No, HTML provides a subset of XHTML. Picture a matrix of about three sets of branding CSS crossed with six sets of user contexts crossed with eight types of products all resulting in potentially different user visible markup. With XHTML it is just a matter of setting the scope for elements and then applying CSS. All the info is there and you can pull it back out. Also, consider processing the same data to make printed books of the same material, PDFs, and a command line informational system. All this is a lot easier if you can import and export without any data being lost. HTML just doesn't cut it there.
Sorry about the vagueness of all this but my company is a little hush hush as a matter of policy and I'd rather not come close to having an issue of this thing. I hope this helped explain the type of limitations that make XHTML not limited to HTML a better choice for this application, especially given the fact that IE is mostly a non-issue as it is not used by any of our customers regularly.
Re:Sounds logical, but isn't
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You are wrong. There are a few different factors at play here:
I'm aware of all the factors you site, but I don't think I've ever gotten such code to work in IE and validate. There was always some weird hack with the scoping or something, which may simply be the validator not agreeing with all the specs, but I'm not really expert enough to judge.
In addition, you shouldn't really focus on the XHTML bit. There are very few people who actually need XHTML, and despite the buzz, it has nothing to do with standards compliance or CSS. XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 are functionally identical in these respects.
Of course not. I can render every character of text as an image or some such nonsense. You never need to use XHTML, it is just much, much, much more convenient if you're taking well formatted XML in and outputting to multiple variants of multiple output formats, like I am. Converting to XHTML and applying CSS is easy and allows the data to be "round tripped" if necessary. Limiting my data to HTML 4 means a lot more complex juggling and the final result has to have information stripped out of it, making it a dead-end in my production system. When I wrote it, I just followed the specs and every browser I tried (sans IE) handled it just the same. Since I don't need to cater to IE users, I'm sure not going to double my work to do so. If MS can't get with the program they can rot (or just get a bunch of poorly formatted and improperly formatted markup).
Re:Sounds logical, but isn't
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You can write perfectly compliant code which will display correctly in IE6 (a non-compliant browser).
I don't think this is true. You can come very close with IE6 and IE7, but I don't think it is technically possible to write a completely compliant page that works in both and uses proper CSS and XHTML. I could be wrong.
The way to do it is to use only those subsets of CSS and XHTML which are correctly interpreted by IE6. IE6 is compliant in many things. This may seem limiting but it's a million times better than attempting "browser-sniffing."
As I said before, for some applications it is better to use noncompliant code. This is because often the IE supported subset of CSS and XHTML (which is a joke) is insufficient for a given task. Worse yet, IE7 seems to have introduced some new incompatibilities with XHTML in particular, so that XHTML which is not coincidentally also HTML4, no longer gracefully degrades as it did in IE6. So far my project has more or less ignored IE7 (since IE is almost unheard of among our customers), but I expect I will eventually have to work around IE7 as well as IE6 and that might mean moving to browser detection, even for the fairly simple uses I have now. For now though, I see no reason to deprive customers of the advantages of proper CSS and XHTML because a few throwbacks might have problems, so IE users can just suffer with lousy formatting and less ease of use.
Re:Well this sounds promising...
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I though, and correct me if I am wrong, that conditional HTML statements were the best way to go. Nowadays, why would someone want a book that is going to lead you to write non-compliant code.
It depends upon what your application for the code is. As for why anyone would write non-compliant code, that's easy... most users will be using a non-complaint browser (some version of IE).
I understand what they're doing and it is a reasonable business model. The point I was making, however, is that selling a loss leader is not the same as buying stock, but rather is more like paying for advertising because all you're buying is the potential of customers, not a real asset.
Really. Well, here's my original point, which you as usual managed to "miss" completely...
Great, I can copy and paste my original reply and save all sorts of time, since (as usual) you failed to address any of the points I brought up in it:
This is a strawman argument. No one else said it did not cost money to roll out 25,000 desktops in an enterprise. The discussion is should it cost as much as they claim to roll out 1500 desktops as workstations in public libraries. The consulting firm that they parted ways with called their costs "ridiculous" and they have a lot better idea of what the project entailed than anyone here.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
Who's talking about Microsoft? We're talking about the incompetent shmoes in charge of this project who decided to stop working with two different Linux deployment consulting firms and "do it themselves" with current staff who had no experience and questionable purchases.
Okay I followed each and every one of those links. Most did nothing at all to back up your assertion. Of the few that did, one was modded as "funny" and one was modded to 0. I hope you had fun making all those links, but they don't support your opinions as far as I can tell.
Now, let me save you some keyboard lubricant. Go back to my original post, and then read it very carefully. Understand what I said in that post.
Yeah, maybe you need to take some English classes again, because I read your post. You made numerous assertions about the opinions of people here, and no, I don't see how you can claim most of those links support it. Address them specifically if you have a real point.
That is one way of looking at it, but in my mind a customer is someone who I'm profiting from, not who is profiting from me. I don't consider charging someone less than I paid for something to make them a customer (lot's or room for disagreement here). When they buy games which provide me a profit, they are a customer, but that is only one possibility when they buy the console. Maybe they're just going to pull the blu-ray drive out and put it in something else.
Well, true, until you realize that the "something" that is stock, is itself just the potential of it having future value -- just like the $306 loss "investment".
Stock is not just the potential of something it is part ownership of a company. While a corporation may be a nebulous thing they do have real assets and cash and debts. So buying stock is a lot like buying gold or some other commodity. The value may go up or down or neither, but it is something purchased. This is how it is different from spending money on marketing, which is designed to persuade, but which does not actually buy anything other than potential.
You made an unsupported assertion about what you claim people think. That is an argument.
After 30 minutes my predictions are correct.
Really? Not according to the posts I read in this discussion.
For both my points, take the time to go through the comments posted so far.
I did thanks, I just don't see how they support your assertions.
Now did you have a specific point about what I posted or are you just looking for a scrape?
Here's my point, you're making baseless assertions about "what people think" and are ponderously close to being a troll. You throw around random large numbers and apparently did not bother to read the article being discussed. Just because you say, 'Slashdotters all think this" does not make it so and does not mean there is anything valuable at all in what you've posted. How about instead of generalized jabs at your opinion of the consensus here you try addressing specific posts from someone or *gasp* the article itself.
Think of it like this: if I spend $1000 on stock, I didn't "lose" $1000 - I invested it, with the hopes of getting more than $1000 back at some point in the future, but my returns are not guaranteed, just as Sony's returns are not.
You're more or less right, but there is a difference. If you invest in stock you get something, stock. You made a purchase that may or may not increase in value. When Sony loses money selling consoles they don't have anything. They have arguable increased their potential of selling games and movies. Thus, it is more like paying for advertising than it is investing in stock. This doesn't mean that the return is less likely, only that what they have purchased is more ephemeral. It also means their expenditure may be more exploitable by individuals who happen to want just that hardware, but who don't want any games or movies.
Claiming that it's the fault of incompetent staff isn't really an excuse. In every deployment I've seen, the staff has known nothing about the product when the deployment starts.
What!?! You've never hired people familiar with the platform you're deploying to deploy it? You just hire random minimum wage people or what?
What you rely on is good whitepapers and documentation provided by the company on how they expect a rollout to occur.
They parted ways with two consulting firms that were both experienced at deploying this and instead paid no one for documentation and support and instead tried to create it themselves. That is incompetence at the management level if nothing else.
This could be a case of them encountering more obstacles than they assumed initially, and/or having no good reliable source for help to solve them quickly.
...Because they decided to stop paying both the experienced planners and the support company.
I realize this is/. and everybody here thinks they are smarter than everybody else in the world, but the real world doesn't work like that.
In the real world if you make idiotic design decisions, your budget balloons to levels described by the company that helped you plan the deployment as "ridiculous," and you decide to scrap the whole thing at the cost of a million bucks then yeah maybe you're incompetent and should have retained at least one of the professional companies instead of trying to do it yourself. There are plenty of from-scratch deployments in numerous countries, that cost half what these people wasted.
The problem of course is that around here it's commonly understood that because I installed Fedora on the two Celeron boxen in my room and didn't spend a dime, that deploying 25,000 desktops across an enterprise should be no more complicated or expensive.
This is a strawman argument. No one else said it did not cost money to roll out 25,000 desktops in an enterprise. The discussion is should it cost as much as they claim to roll out 1500 desktops as workstations in public libraries. The consulting firm that they parted ways with called their costs "ridiculous" and they have a lot better idea of what the project entailed than anyone here.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
Who's talking about Microsoft? We're talking about the incompetent shmoes in charge of this project who decided to stop working with two different Linux deployment consulting firms and "do it themselves" with current staff who had no experience and questionable purchases.
Monopolies do not exist in free markets - fundamental economics.
Umm, where did you go to school? In a free market there is a tendency towards more and more monopolies until the market is no longer free. that is why almost every capitalist country regulates their capitalism by restricting the actions of cartels and monopolies.
Indeed, MS may have market share, but in order to have a monopoly, it has to prevent others from entering the market.
In order to wield sufficient influence in the market to bypass normal market forces, they only need the vast majority of the market, not all of it. This allows them to introduce artificial barriers to entry in that market to maintain the monopoly by making the best interests of the people be to buy the monopolized product even if it is "better" only because they control the market.
It doesn't, there are alternatives available. I can run many Windows apps without even having windows.
And you've just provided a demonstration that shows you don't know the market were talking about. Microsoft sells a desktop OS, which is one component of a computer system. Their purchasers are computer vendors and large companies/organizations. The people who buy boxed copies of Windows are so small a portion of their sales as to be insignificant. The proof of whether or not they are a monopoly is not whether you can run Windows programs, but can a major PC vendor buy a differnt OS to pre-install and survive in the market.
MS has the market share they have because of their investment in products and advertising.
It doesn't matter how they have a monopoly, only if they have that influence on the market. They do, as all the courts to look at the issue and every respectable economist has ruled.
Product manufacturers can install other OS's and sell them based on their desired profit model.
Really, who sells computers in volume with anything else?
Some do, Apple has OSX, a number have *nix offerings.
Apple maintains a complete separate vertical chain of supply and makes their own OS, which they don't sell to others. They are not in the OS market, but the PC market. No one else is in the desktop OS market (sells them). In fact, Apple making their own and not selling it is a classic warning sign of a monopolized market.
Others tried and failed in the market place- CPM, BEOS, NEXT.
Yes other companies tried to compete with MS and they all went out of business. They didn't take a small chunk and survive they actually died. They did this despite having (in most experts opinions) created a superior alternative. BeOS, for example, died because MS pressured computer vendors to cancel all pre-install deals under threat of price discrimination.
Someone could be developing the next OS now as we speak.
But they won't. What capitalist acting in their own best interests would fund such an uphill and uncertain battle when for less they could get greater return by competing fairly in a non-monopolized market? To enter the desktop OS market you need to simultaneously enter the hardware, services, and applications markets as well, trebling your risk for no added return. Even if you have significantly innovative products, superior to Windows you're still not likely to win, as their lock-ins will prevent you from gaining critical mass.
Capitalism relies on people acting out of greed and self interest. Monopolies make greedy, self-interested people go elsewhere where they get more return for less risk.
Sorry, but MS is a monopoly. It is about as clear cut as an economist could hope for as an example. Worse yet, they are an abusive monopoly. They used their monopoly in one market to monopolize secondary markets and gain unfair advantages in still other markets. If you're in denial about that, you're living in a fantasy world
Slashdot Mirror
Short of sending a guy over with a club to keep me away, they will never be able to deny me access to my computer or the data on it. Vista still supports FAT32 and NTFS, you can still get data off drives.
Ahh, but does that include the keys for the DRM'd media files you bought? And what about if you use the default filesystem (like most people) and encrypted your data? Isn't that a built in feature of Vista? So sure maybe you can if you take precautions and avoid certain types of data and features, but that does not mean the average person can.
MS has never tried something like *this* before.
That's like saying this murderer the police have refused to arrest never poisoned a person to death before. MS inserted code into Windows to intentionally break competitor's products and was found guilty. They performed classic bundling and tying that others have been seriously punished for and were found guilty and then sentenced to o nothing, not even stop committing the crime. They have proven their lobbying dollars make them above the law.
If they deactivate, they're probably overstepping some hitherto invisible line.
One more illegal act makes no difference. If anything, a congress lead by Democrats, who MS has not been bribing, err campaigning for, as heavily might cause the laws to be enforced... unless a bunch of new contributions appear.
Just wait until some gov't agency's or some Federal judge's copies of Windows get deactivated. I think that using extortionate tactics like this will get MS into some deep legal shite.
This is no worse than things they've been convicted of in the past. The law does not apply to the rich, or at least not nearly as much. That's all there is to it.
The law differentiates between general public viewing and private 'electronic mail' to minors.
Yeah, but if you're going to be running Windows in a VM, why run it as the host OS as well? You might as well run it on Linux or OS X and then you have the application sets of both OS's. I use OS X as my base OS on my laptop and run Windows and Linux in VMs on top of that. This provides me the capability to use a wider set of applications and features. I sometimes even run OpenBSD in my VM to test a simulation of one of the servers I work on. Having a more secure host OS also reduces the chances I'll be compromised by some random worm that does not have a user interaction component. A subset of games even work natively in OS X for those network games you mention. Finally, since OS X has the best migration path to new machines pulling all my files, programs, certs, settings, and VMs onto a newer machine is a painless one step process via the firewire cable. It easily saves me several days of time whenever I move to a newer laptop.
The law differentiates between general public viewing and private 'electronic mail' to minors.
No it doesn't. You might want it to, but it does not. You see, phone calls are a private, electronic message sent to a minor. So are telegraph messages. The law does not make illegal telegraph messages or phone messages or IMs or "private messages" it makes illegal e-mail messages. The law is stupid. There is already a law banning soliciting a minor and adding another to add extra punishment if it is by e-mail is absurd. As if they were hurting minors more if they use e-mail than if they use regular mail or do it in person. Now this judge is taking this stupid law and trying to apply it in other cases because she believes the lawmakers should have made it include them as well. That is not justice or "rule by law." That is one person taking it upon themselves to twist the law to make it apply when they want to. The law is wrong. The judge's interpretation is wrong. If this were an analogous situation about pretty much anything but child abuse or terrorism this would be decried loudly. It undermines our justice system and weakens our democracy to allow this crap to happen.
No matter what a judge does, she is forced to apply an interpretation of the law.
There is a difference between interpreting the intent of what is written and trying to strain the words to mean something they clearly do not in common language. If a jury ruled they though e-mail was a term that included IMs in that jurisdiction, that is one thing, but for a judge to make such a ruling is something else entirely.
Laws cannot be perfectly specific.
No, which is why laws should cover principals, not specific situations. A law banning soliciting a child over IM is a very idiotic law. That is the fault of the lawmakers. The judge, however, should make ruling that reflect the stupidity of the law, not try to interpret them as though they were anything but idiotic.
Hell, for all that says, laws are arbitrarily forcing beliefs on you just as much as that judge was.
You're failing to understand the concept of "rule by law." The idea is the people decide upon laws, in this case through their elected representatives. Then, that law applies equally to everyone and is enforced as written. When the legislature writes a law that says soliciting a child over IM is punishable by 2 years in jail, and any person that does that is convicted, we have rule by law.
When a judge decides in one particular the legislature really meant the law banning such an act over e-mail to include IM, or telephone calls, or mental telepathy, then you have laws being enforced not as they are written but as one person wants them to have been written and has been able to twist them to try to apply. That is no longer rule of law, but rule by one arbitrary person. Even if I agree with the motives, the action is still wrong and undermines the justice system.
The problem with this is that tech changes waaaay too quickly to try and be specific in every law.
I see very little need for tech specific laws. The laws are supposed to be arbitrating conflicting rights. In principal, adding technology to the equation does little or nothing.
I mean, you're the same guy who, in 5 years will be saying, "Hey the law only covers IM, Email, Blog posts and VOIP...It doesn't say anything about holo-chat rooms!"
We already have a law that says it's illegal to solicit a minor for sexual acts. Why do we need one to add another penalty if it is done on e-mail, IM phone, messages on rocks, or mental telepathy?
Forcing the law down to a super nit-picky technical medium is ripe for setting up a huge number of bad precidents.
Agreed, which is why laws should be about actions, not the means by which those actions are completed. I victim is just as dead whether they're killed with a rock, a firearm, or a disintegrator ray. That is why the law should ban murder not killings with rocks or firearms or disintegrator rays.
Yes I do. If it is is unethical to knowingly solicit a minor, then it is unethical to do so via any medium and there is no reason for mediums to be specified in law. The only reason these unnecessary laws are passed is to garner votes from morons. "Look how tough governor Smith is on cyber-criminals. Now they are convicted of two crimes for each act and serve twice the sentence instead of one." It is idiotic and needs to stop.
Sony IS profiting off you as a consumer by you buying their machine. This comes in the way of you buying the games, accessories, movies, etc... as previously stated.
This is false. They potentially benefit from people who buy their machines but there is nothing inherent in buying a PS3 that forces me to buy games, accessories, etc. They benefit from my buying these add ons. In losing money selling me a console they are counting on me buying those other products, which is why this is akin to marketing. They spent money for potential benefits, not necessarily real benefits.
Another thing you are buying with a PS3 (or any other console for that matter) is DRM. You're buying vendor lock-in.
So if I go buy a PS3 and disassemble it for the laser and other components I've bought DRM and vendor lock in? Nope. Again, these are potential benefits to Sony, not ones inherent in the purchase.
But isn't that why we have judges and jury. So they can make the proper distinctions within the spirit of the law?
No we have judges to interpret what the law says, not to infer the intent of the lawmakers with regard to things they did not include. This is no different in principal to a lawmaker interpreting a homicide statute to convict someone of slaughtering cows. I mean cows are people too, right? Sure they are, the same way an instant message or phone call or paper letter is an e-mail message.
As for juries, that is a different case. They are there to interpret the common meaning of laws and decide if they apply or should be nullified. If a jury had ruled on this case, that the common interpretation of "e-mail" in that jurisdiction included instant messaging, I'd accept it, but be very suspicious about their impartiality. This was not a jury though, it was a judge basically making up laws on the spot. That is wrong, no matter how good his intentions might be.
Anyhow, if you check answers.com, the 4th defintion of mail is: "Mail or messages sent electronically; e-mail."
I'm not willing to accept that as the authoritative definition. By that definition, telephone calls would be considered e-mail. Heck telegraphs would be considered e-mail. I don't buy it.
The judge probably did the right thing. The man was still attempting to socillicit from an underage girl over the internet, who cares excatly which communications protocol was used?
I do. If you take the time to look up the millions of obscure laws written half in Latin, the least you should be able to expect is that the law be enforced as written. This guy was already guilty of violating a different law and their was no reason why another "on the internet" law should have been applied.
The difference is between living in a state where people are ruled by laws and living in one where people arbitrarily enforce their beliefs upon you. Just because you agree with the beliefs in this case does not make it any less wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right, and that is exactly what is being done here.
In an intranet, you do what works best for your intranet. But most people who discuss web authoring on Slashdot assume, before it is stated otherwise, that a public-facing web site is under discussion.
I think "customer" pretty much implies "public-facing," don't you? In any case this is not part of an intranet, although the access is limited to partners and those willing to pony up the $40K for our cheapest system. Not that any of that matters as we were discussing limiting oneself to the XHTML that is also HTML4, versus using the fuller capabilities of XHTML where they are called for. My original comment was "it depends upon the application" and I then was asked to explain what application might need those features.
Can you give an example?
Not a specific one due to some NDA restrictions, but basically if you apply scope to the CSS, you need to use a hack or ignore either IE or everything else.
It depends on your toolset. I'm in a similar situation, and switching between HTML and XHTML is a couple of lines of code. They are both just very similar output formats, after all.
The problem is contextual information. Say I have some text plus formatting that applies in one context but not another. In XHTML that is fine for any cross product of contexts. For the subset of XHTML that is HTML that means stripping things off and processing different bits before the encoding.
I'm not following you. Like I said, XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 are functionally identical
No, HTML provides a subset of XHTML. Picture a matrix of about three sets of branding CSS crossed with six sets of user contexts crossed with eight types of products all resulting in potentially different user visible markup. With XHTML it is just a matter of setting the scope for elements and then applying CSS. All the info is there and you can pull it back out. Also, consider processing the same data to make printed books of the same material, PDFs, and a command line informational system. All this is a lot easier if you can import and export without any data being lost. HTML just doesn't cut it there.
Sorry about the vagueness of all this but my company is a little hush hush as a matter of policy and I'd rather not come close to having an issue of this thing. I hope this helped explain the type of limitations that make XHTML not limited to HTML a better choice for this application, especially given the fact that IE is mostly a non-issue as it is not used by any of our customers regularly.
You are wrong. There are a few different factors at play here:
I'm aware of all the factors you site, but I don't think I've ever gotten such code to work in IE and validate. There was always some weird hack with the scoping or something, which may simply be the validator not agreeing with all the specs, but I'm not really expert enough to judge.
In addition, you shouldn't really focus on the XHTML bit. There are very few people who actually need XHTML, and despite the buzz, it has nothing to do with standards compliance or CSS. XHTML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 are functionally identical in these respects.
Of course not. I can render every character of text as an image or some such nonsense. You never need to use XHTML, it is just much, much, much more convenient if you're taking well formatted XML in and outputting to multiple variants of multiple output formats, like I am. Converting to XHTML and applying CSS is easy and allows the data to be "round tripped" if necessary. Limiting my data to HTML 4 means a lot more complex juggling and the final result has to have information stripped out of it, making it a dead-end in my production system. When I wrote it, I just followed the specs and every browser I tried (sans IE) handled it just the same. Since I don't need to cater to IE users, I'm sure not going to double my work to do so. If MS can't get with the program they can rot (or just get a bunch of poorly formatted and improperly formatted markup).
You can write perfectly compliant code which will display correctly in IE6 (a non-compliant browser).
I don't think this is true. You can come very close with IE6 and IE7, but I don't think it is technically possible to write a completely compliant page that works in both and uses proper CSS and XHTML. I could be wrong.
The way to do it is to use only those subsets of CSS and XHTML which are correctly interpreted by IE6. IE6 is compliant in many things. This may seem limiting but it's a million times better than attempting "browser-sniffing."
As I said before, for some applications it is better to use noncompliant code. This is because often the IE supported subset of CSS and XHTML (which is a joke) is insufficient for a given task. Worse yet, IE7 seems to have introduced some new incompatibilities with XHTML in particular, so that XHTML which is not coincidentally also HTML4, no longer gracefully degrades as it did in IE6. So far my project has more or less ignored IE7 (since IE is almost unheard of among our customers), but I expect I will eventually have to work around IE7 as well as IE6 and that might mean moving to browser detection, even for the fairly simple uses I have now. For now though, I see no reason to deprive customers of the advantages of proper CSS and XHTML because a few throwbacks might have problems, so IE users can just suffer with lousy formatting and less ease of use.
I though, and correct me if I am wrong, that conditional HTML statements were the best way to go. Nowadays, why would someone want a book that is going to lead you to write non-compliant code.
It depends upon what your application for the code is. As for why anyone would write non-compliant code, that's easy... most users will be using a non-complaint browser (some version of IE).
Just look at the whole razor argument.
I understand what they're doing and it is a reasonable business model. The point I was making, however, is that selling a loss leader is not the same as buying stock, but rather is more like paying for advertising because all you're buying is the potential of customers, not a real asset.
Really. Well, here's my original point, which you as usual managed to "miss" completely...
Great, I can copy and paste my original reply and save all sorts of time, since (as usual) you failed to address any of the points I brought up in it:
This is a strawman argument. No one else said it did not cost money to roll out 25,000 desktops in an enterprise. The discussion is should it cost as much as they claim to roll out 1500 desktops as workstations in public libraries. The consulting firm that they parted ways with called their costs "ridiculous" and they have a lot better idea of what the project entailed than anyone here.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
Who's talking about Microsoft? We're talking about the incompetent shmoes in charge of this project who decided to stop working with two different Linux deployment consulting firms and "do it themselves" with current staff who had no experience and questionable purchases.
I'll bet I can script this.
Okay I followed each and every one of those links. Most did nothing at all to back up your assertion. Of the few that did, one was modded as "funny" and one was modded to 0. I hope you had fun making all those links, but they don't support your opinions as far as I can tell.
Now, let me save you some keyboard lubricant. Go back to my original post, and then read it very carefully. Understand what I said in that post.
Yeah, maybe you need to take some English classes again, because I read your post. You made numerous assertions about the opinions of people here, and no, I don't see how you can claim most of those links support it. Address them specifically if you have a real point.
Sony bought a customer.
That is one way of looking at it, but in my mind a customer is someone who I'm profiting from, not who is profiting from me. I don't consider charging someone less than I paid for something to make them a customer (lot's or room for disagreement here). When they buy games which provide me a profit, they are a customer, but that is only one possibility when they buy the console. Maybe they're just going to pull the blu-ray drive out and put it in something else.
Well, true, until you realize that the "something" that is stock, is itself just the potential of it having future value -- just like the $306 loss "investment".
Stock is not just the potential of something it is part ownership of a company. While a corporation may be a nebulous thing they do have real assets and cash and debts. So buying stock is a lot like buying gold or some other commodity. The value may go up or down or neither, but it is something purchased. This is how it is different from spending money on marketing, which is designed to persuade, but which does not actually buy anything other than potential.
I'm not making an "argument" here...
You made an unsupported assertion about what you claim people think. That is an argument.
After 30 minutes my predictions are correct.
Really? Not according to the posts I read in this discussion.
For both my points, take the time to go through the comments posted so far.
I did thanks, I just don't see how they support your assertions.
Now did you have a specific point about what I posted or are you just looking for a scrape?
Here's my point, you're making baseless assertions about "what people think" and are ponderously close to being a troll. You throw around random large numbers and apparently did not bother to read the article being discussed. Just because you say, 'Slashdotters all think this" does not make it so and does not mean there is anything valuable at all in what you've posted. How about instead of generalized jabs at your opinion of the consensus here you try addressing specific posts from someone or *gasp* the article itself.
Think of it like this: if I spend $1000 on stock, I didn't "lose" $1000 - I invested it, with the hopes of getting more than $1000 back at some point in the future, but my returns are not guaranteed, just as Sony's returns are not.
You're more or less right, but there is a difference. If you invest in stock you get something, stock. You made a purchase that may or may not increase in value. When Sony loses money selling consoles they don't have anything. They have arguable increased their potential of selling games and movies. Thus, it is more like paying for advertising than it is investing in stock. This doesn't mean that the return is less likely, only that what they have purchased is more ephemeral. It also means their expenditure may be more exploitable by individuals who happen to want just that hardware, but who don't want any games or movies.
Claiming that it's the fault of incompetent staff isn't really an excuse. In every deployment I've seen, the staff has known nothing about the product when the deployment starts.
What!?! You've never hired people familiar with the platform you're deploying to deploy it? You just hire random minimum wage people or what?
What you rely on is good whitepapers and documentation provided by the company on how they expect a rollout to occur.
They parted ways with two consulting firms that were both experienced at deploying this and instead paid no one for documentation and support and instead tried to create it themselves. That is incompetence at the management level if nothing else.
This could be a case of them encountering more obstacles than they assumed initially, and/or having no good reliable source for help to solve them quickly.
...Because they decided to stop paying both the experienced planners and the support company.
I realize this is /. and everybody here thinks they are smarter than everybody else in the world, but the real world doesn't work like that.
In the real world if you make idiotic design decisions, your budget balloons to levels described by the company that helped you plan the deployment as "ridiculous," and you decide to scrap the whole thing at the cost of a million bucks then yeah maybe you're incompetent and should have retained at least one of the professional companies instead of trying to do it yourself. There are plenty of from-scratch deployments in numerous countries, that cost half what these people wasted.
The problem of course is that around here it's commonly understood that because I installed Fedora on the two Celeron boxen in my room and didn't spend a dime, that deploying 25,000 desktops across an enterprise should be no more complicated or expensive.
This is a strawman argument. No one else said it did not cost money to roll out 25,000 desktops in an enterprise. The discussion is should it cost as much as they claim to roll out 1500 desktops as workstations in public libraries. The consulting firm that they parted ways with called their costs "ridiculous" and they have a lot better idea of what the project entailed than anyone here.
And looking at the general direction the comments on this story are going I'd say we have a winner. Another great day for Slashdot ad impressions and another "look at what teh evil Micro$haft did" data point to use in the next flamewar.
Who's talking about Microsoft? We're talking about the incompetent shmoes in charge of this project who decided to stop working with two different Linux deployment consulting firms and "do it themselves" with current staff who had no experience and questionable purchases.
Monopolies do not exist in free markets - fundamental economics.
Umm, where did you go to school? In a free market there is a tendency towards more and more monopolies until the market is no longer free. that is why almost every capitalist country regulates their capitalism by restricting the actions of cartels and monopolies.
Indeed, MS may have market share, but in order to have a monopoly, it has to prevent others from entering the market.
In order to wield sufficient influence in the market to bypass normal market forces, they only need the vast majority of the market, not all of it. This allows them to introduce artificial barriers to entry in that market to maintain the monopoly by making the best interests of the people be to buy the monopolized product even if it is "better" only because they control the market.
It doesn't, there are alternatives available. I can run many Windows apps without even having windows.
And you've just provided a demonstration that shows you don't know the market were talking about. Microsoft sells a desktop OS, which is one component of a computer system. Their purchasers are computer vendors and large companies/organizations. The people who buy boxed copies of Windows are so small a portion of their sales as to be insignificant. The proof of whether or not they are a monopoly is not whether you can run Windows programs, but can a major PC vendor buy a differnt OS to pre-install and survive in the market.
MS has the market share they have because of their investment in products and advertising.
It doesn't matter how they have a monopoly, only if they have that influence on the market. They do, as all the courts to look at the issue and every respectable economist has ruled.
Product manufacturers can install other OS's and sell them based on their desired profit model.
Really, who sells computers in volume with anything else?
Some do, Apple has OSX, a number have *nix offerings.
Apple maintains a complete separate vertical chain of supply and makes their own OS, which they don't sell to others. They are not in the OS market, but the PC market. No one else is in the desktop OS market (sells them). In fact, Apple making their own and not selling it is a classic warning sign of a monopolized market.
Others tried and failed in the market place- CPM, BEOS, NEXT.
Yes other companies tried to compete with MS and they all went out of business. They didn't take a small chunk and survive they actually died. They did this despite having (in most experts opinions) created a superior alternative. BeOS, for example, died because MS pressured computer vendors to cancel all pre-install deals under threat of price discrimination.
Someone could be developing the next OS now as we speak.
But they won't. What capitalist acting in their own best interests would fund such an uphill and uncertain battle when for less they could get greater return by competing fairly in a non-monopolized market? To enter the desktop OS market you need to simultaneously enter the hardware, services, and applications markets as well, trebling your risk for no added return. Even if you have significantly innovative products, superior to Windows you're still not likely to win, as their lock-ins will prevent you from gaining critical mass.
Capitalism relies on people acting out of greed and self interest. Monopolies make greedy, self-interested people go elsewhere where they get more return for less risk.
Sorry, but MS is a monopoly. It is about as clear cut as an economist could hope for as an example. Worse yet, they are an abusive monopoly. They used their monopoly in one market to monopolize secondary markets and gain unfair advantages in still other markets. If you're in denial about that, you're living in a fantasy world