Since labor laws in this country forbid firing a striking work force, in general, the result was that jobs moved overseas. You had a lot of companies realizing they had to give in to unions or else go under, but at the same time putting plans in effect to ultimately rid themselves of unionized labor.
So basically the law says consolidated business has to deal with the labor that consolidated to even the playing field and prevent abuse of the power of big business. As a result big business obeyed the laws, but did their best to get around them and move their labor to places with governments less interested in the welfare of the people.
This may be a problem that the unions have to deal with (difficult since although they have the voting numbers, big business has the money which is more important in our twisted psuedo-republic). It is not, however, a inherent problem with unions but merely that businesses can move to where there are no unions, and unions have trouble forming in places with corrupt governments that don't mind shooting protesters.
What amazes me is that people in more developed countries who are consumers put up with it. The whole "Made in America" label campaign should have been funded by unions and revamped to show all the horrible things companies are doing overseas and name companies by name. Now it is damn near impossible to find American made goods of many types.
If the CEO ran a company into the ground yet got personally rich, it doesn't mean he's incompetent or unmotivated, it means his motivation was self serving and I would have to say that he was quite competent at screwing his employees while he got rich!
And what about all of the employees of that company? How motivated do you think they were? And since when is it considered competent for a CEO to run a company into the ground? He could have made a lot more money if he had run the company competently instead of going for a short term payoff.
Are you implying that corporate conditions and worker v. executive treatment is any better because the company is not American?
In many instances, yes. Look at some of the corporate behaviors in Europe, or better yet try working there for a while.
You are claiming that we are losing our edge due to deficiencies in our workers abilities and that is simply not the case.
I made no such claim. What I said was that the original poster's claim that Americans were not incompetent or unmotivated was not necessarily true. I know lots of unmotivated American employees. I also know a fair number of incompetent ones. Having taken physics and mathematics courses with a number of architectural, civil, and materials engineers I can tell you that I have less confidence than ever when driving across bridges. If you don't think many Americans are incompetent and unmotivated you are just not paying attention.
People work hard for their money - do don't undermine us American workers like that. Got it?
No.
Some people work hard for their money, some don't. I was describing what I see as a common case among many Americans. Here are some case examples for you. I know a biochemistry researcher working on curing a disease. She works about 4 hours in an average day because she does not have the authority to spend any more money on experiments. Her boss shows up once a week or so. The research will probably never result in anything and she is looking for a new career. She went into the field want to help people and cure diseases, now she realizes that a combination of all the federal funding cuts and the huge amount of bureaucracy basically makes it impossible to make any sort of progress. She is not lazy, just completely disheartened. She does not work hard, nor is she motivated.
I have a friend who works at a major automotive manufacturer. He gets paid 20% less than he should and that money goes to the contract company he works for. That is because it is a policy to never hire any direct employees to avoid union problems. Until recently he worked long hours and developed a software system that would have made him a lot of money had he done it on his own. He can't even get a cost of living raise after several years of employment. He's much less motivated now.
I used to work at a successful software company. We were profitable during the.com crash and beyond. They our investors mandated a management change. With our new CEO and his cronies we went from profitable to unprofitable, even after they laid off a significant number of the engineers. Those engineers worked hard and were dedicated. They were sacked to make room for friends of the new CEO. Needless to say neither they nor the remaining engineers were very motivated for long.
Hard work and dedication can be a very admirable thing. It can also be foolish if all your work is going to enrich the pocketbooks of stuffed shirts who are just there to exploit you. I like my job and work hard at it. I enjoy what I do. I am, however the exception among people I know. How many people do I know with undergraduate or graduate degrees in the sciences with tens of thousands of dollars in loans who make less money than fast-food jockeys? Too damn many. Corporate America treats workers like shit, because jobs are hard to come by, especially here. I don't blame people for not working hard at pointless and thankless tasks, especially when it does not benefit them in any way.
In the movie office space the protagonist tells the consultants that his only motivation for doing work is to not get fired and hassled, which is only enough motivation to make him work just hard enough to not get fired. Welcome to the U.S.A. in a nutshell.
Also, the lack of caring for your employees is universal.
This is not so. It is widespread, especially within global corporations. It is common in many, many places. It is not universal. Take, for example, the traditional family run business. Employees and employers care because it is a family concern. In many smaller businesses the employers actually care about their employees. I work at a very successful start-up company right now. It is obvious that most of the management actually care about the employees and if someone is a poor fit for the company then they sit down with management and decide what should be done to either change their behavior or so that the employee can start looking for work elsewhere. Oh, and we actually profit when the company does well. Profit sharing extends to all regular employees, not just the management.
Personally I think a large part of the cultural problem comes from the bureaucracy that forms when companies grow too large. It makes things impersonal and employees are considered assets rather than people.
There is nothing lacking in the skill, talent and dedication of American employees.
Sure there is. I agree with much of what you have to say, but that is all beside the fact that American workers are unmotivated and incompetent in many cases. The CEO of a company I used to work at had already run three companies into the ground by doing really stupid and greedy things that made him rich but killed the company. The vast majority of workplaces in the U.S. offer no profit sharing or reasonable incentive plan. If you work twice as hard you get paid the same, but are more tired and stressed. American employees lack dedication for a number of really good reasons. They don't benefit when the company does. They may be fired not because they don't work hard but because the company wants to cut corners or outsource. Executives usually have a different health plan and benefits package than the regular employees. Basically, companies don't treat employees very well and don't feel responsible for them in they way many used to. As a result many employees don't care about working hard or well. This is a huge disadvantage compared to some other cultures.
Unless you avoid ever touching a doorknob or hand-rail, I don't see what difference this makes. Common surfaces are everywhere. We all touch them all the time. Sometimes we catch something from a common surface. Adding a palm scanner to the mix doesn't increase the risk of transmission.
???
Adding a single surface every person must touch daily, without gloves does not increase the risk of transmitting an illness? You are making the logical fallacy of relational equivalence. e.g. "I had sex without a condom and I acquired HIV. My friend always uses them and he also acquired HIV. Using condoms does not help stop diseases."
I sort of understand where you are coming from. There are plenty of opportunities for diseases to be transmitted in communal housing. That does not mean adding a new opportunity with even higher risks is not a bad idea.
If you read the links that I provided, you also see that the Apache security adviseries are also more critical than the IIS ones.
If you'd read my post you'd notice I addressed that. All of the apache vulnerabilities discovered are announced and admins can address them. MS generally only announces vulnerabilities when they release the fix for them. Most vendors report their vulnerabilities to MS. Hence, MS almost certainly has a list of vulnerabilities for IIS that are not included in your report, but which the blackhat community has access to. In that manner your comparison is flawed.
IIS 6.0 is NOT designed in an insecure manner, and this has been shown in practice.
Yes it is. It only runs on Windows which is a huge design failure. Windows requires exposed services like RPC to be running in order to function properly. How is this not a design flaw? I dare you to run an IIS server one the internet without a firewall for a year. I double-super-duper dog dare you. The fact that additional software/hardware is required to keep IIS secure means it is fundamentally broken. If you weren't so used to having to take extreme steps to keep it running you'd realize that.
Why don't we get Apple to do a little experiment? Apple can have their iTMS offer every song in either their restrictive DRM encrusted AAC format, or a non-DRM'ed MP3. See what format sells more. That would be the industry "speaking".
Surprisingly, I more or less agree with you. Actually I think congress should demand interoperability by mandating the removal of DRM from and the open publishing of formats for all published works for general consumption. DRM and proprietary formats are fine for use within a company or organization, but if you are selling a product or media to the general public it should be open and unencumbered.
I don't think Apple would have any problem with a law like that. It would level the playing field and be good for everyone. I seriously doubt Apple sells DRM'd music because they prefer it. It is almost certainly the only way they could get the RIAA to buy in to the online store. IMHO they have done a very good job of balancing keeping the corps happy and still not getting in the user's way too much. Unfortunately, the most likely result of this congressional interference is to force Apple to give away their DRM format to everyone else, who will use it to make their devices and apps work with the ITMS. Apple will end up providing free support and development for everyone else on a service they are running at a break even level right now. They will then have to raise the prices of songs in order to maintain breaking even. Windows DRM formats will probably not be opened and a monopoly will be given a competitive advantage over the smaller player. Sad but likely.
Do you honestly believe they would be any more readily available if copyright laws were changed?
Allow me to answer your question with a question. If works are copyrighted and not available to the public at any cost do you believe the copyright laws are working or do you believe they need to be changed? If the former how do you reconcile that with the original intention of copyright laws?
Who is destroying our "artistic heritage"? RIAA certainly isn't. If by destroy you mean "continue to make available for a fee", I think you need to make use of a dictionary.
So you consider all the works that are no longer available but still copyrighted some of which exist in storage somewhere and some of which have been destroyed by time, mold, fires, or intentionally destroyed to make space to not be destroyed? If a work is not available to the public copyright has failed in its purpose. Their are literally hundreds of thousands of recording, movies, books, songs, and other media that are not legally available to the public at any price. For many of them no known copies exist. Heck, I think only half the episodes of "Dr. Who" still exist.
I personally have tried get my hands on several recordings that are owned by various music houses. One very popular record label only offers 4% of it's catalogue for sale. I've also tried to get printings of a large number of books. Sometimes you can get lucky and find them in used book or record shops, but for the most part they are just not available. That means pretty much no one can read, watch, or listen to the vast majority of the copyrighted material for the last 60 years. Some of those works are amazing and would probably be regarded as great artistic works if only anyone could see or hear them.
That is what our corrupted copyright system has done to us. People like you who are completely ignorant about all that has been stolen from our culture by the greed of a few amaze me. Can you really have never tried to find anything but the 20 most popular artists in a genre that is more than a decade old? Or is it just that you think nothing good has been made in the last 60 years?
If the fact that these works are denied to us for the simple of expedient of having less competition with current offerings and because "they might be valuable again" some day and it never hurts to lock it all away does not make you angry, then you probably have no passion for art or literature and will be content with whatever crap you are fed. You make me sick by defending a system that is so unjust and that is so damaging to our culture.
Copyright & Trademark law require the vigorous defence of your property. It's a use it or loose it scenario.
In the U.S. that is only true for trademarks.
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Yes, they are illegal, which is why the poster took pains to say "...unreleased live musical performances..." rather than the better-known term "bootlegs" which is what they really are.
You know most bands used to encourage the recording of their performances for posterity. That includes a large number of the works hosted at EZT. For that matter, some bands still do, just not ones owned by the the big media companies since the copyright on those works is very debatable.
if the artists that performed the live show agree to having thier performance made available in this way.
Ahh, but in the case of most of the artists on the site in question they not only allowed but encouraged recording of their shows. Now, however, the RIAA is threatening an ISP for hosting a web site, that has bittorrent files, that index other computers that are hosting copies of these recordings.
Why are artists granted exclusive rights to make copies of anything they produce? Their is a reason you know, it is spelled out. It is to promote the advancement of useful arts and sciences. Please explain to me how stopping people from trading the unreleased works of dead artists promotes the advancement of useful arts and sciences.
Those that don't choose to allow it, whether you like it or not, have the right to defend thier copyrights.
Oh you mean the unconstitutional laws passed by bribed politicians who were bought by industry executives grant them the right to destroy our artistic heritage. Well why didn't you say so? I don't care what laws they pass. Nothing gives them the right to permanently delete great works of art so that they don't compete with whatever crap the RIAA is selling. What a load of horse shit.
How about... every single MMORPG except World of Warcraft?
If you read my comment it said, "I can't think of anything I want that is not available." Seeing as I am not a gaming fanatic I find myself unwilling to play games that require a monthly fee. It is too expensive for the amount of free time I have and encourages people to play more the get "more value" for their purchase. I use a computer for about 10 hours each day doing useful things (and wasting time on Slashdot). When I play games it is usually a spur of the moment thing or a LAN party. I don't need games that require more of my time than my girlfriend does.
If you are a MMORPG fan or a huge gamer in general Macs are probably not for you right now. If you use your machine for work, misc. tasks, science, arts, and like to play the occasional game you're probably more likely to enjoy using a Mac.
I would not switch from windows to a mac is because of the lack of software. The last time I was at the computer store I walked into the Mac section to look around. Their selection of software was 1/4th that of the PC's, and mostly graphical software.
If most people think like you Windows will dominate forever, even if it sucks. For me, OS X has all the applications I use (including some not available for windows). It is a chicken and egg problem. Developers don't port applications unless their are enough users and users don't switch unless their are applications. Luckily it is a problem that is mostly solved at this point. Macs even play pretty much all of the popular PC games these days. Their are a few stragglers who trapped themselves by basing everything on DirectX and similar technologies and used less portable languages but for the most part I can't think of anything I want that is not available.
What is really amazing for switchers is not the applications though. Most of them are pretty much the same. The difference is how much the underlying OS changes the user experience. I really did not know what I was missing until I got multitasking that actually works and modular system wide services that let me spell check or speak aloud or translate to german any text in any application with three clicks. Standard UI elements that provide user feedback, expose, scriptable everything, UNIX tools and CLI, and some great included applications were icing on the cake.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Have fun with Windows. Personally, I dread using it (I still use it for compatibility testing and when I need some more terminals just to display info). Maybe some day soon the applications you want will migrate.
You want DHS to make sure your google surfing doesn't fill your computer with spam? You're actually more concerned about that than some terrorist blowing up a kindergarten or something? Your priorities are truly fucked.
First, the person you are replying to said the cybersecurity group of the DHS. Second, their is more to this than spam, they are redirecting financial sites, e-mail, etc. Third, are you really afraid terrorists are going to blow up a kindegarten? I mean more people drown in buckets every year than are killed by terrorists. DNS poisoning is a real, ongoing threat. It is probably not a life and death situation (although with VOIP that is not necessarily ruled out) but at least it would be something more useful for them to do.
Note, it does not really matter in any case. From what I have heard the DHS can't even keep worms from compromising their own machines. Three people have resigned from the cybersecurity post each saying the job was impossible given the resources available. They're probably all running unpatched WinXP-SP1 boxes or something equally stupid.
But people who speed die with less frequency than those traveling the limit or under.
I never said that they didn't. I said, "The average person can understand why going too fast might cause them to die." Here's something to think about when ever you hear a statistic or fact based upon statistics. I always wonder, "how did they gather those numbers." I mean how do you find out if people who speed die more or less than people that don't speed? Do you ask a random sampling of people if they speed and then wait to see who dies? Do you follow them around without telling them and see if they really do speed? Do you ask people in serious accidents if they were speeding? It basically gives me zero confidence in the reliability of your factoid.
Tell that to Amsoil and the "never change your oil again" filters
I never said that their was no solution to cars that don't need to refuel or add lubricants. Obviously it is a solvable problem. The point was an average person can understand why, given our current technology, these problems occur.
There is a real problem with how people approach computers.
Why? Are people naturally afraid to learn how to use a computer because they are new an complex? I'd say probably to some degree. But I'd also say it is because a lot of people try to use computers and find them very very hard to do simple tasks with. Their is an old stereotype about how most people can't program their VCRs. It is true in a way. Most people never programmed their VCRs, not because it was too hard but because it was not really really easy and they were not motivated to learn to do it. That did not stop anyone from playing tapes on a VCR. After all, that was easy. You put the tape in and press "Play." Computers on the other hand are not simple to use for simple tasks. Most users would be happy if when they booted up their computer their were four buttons: e-mail, games, web pages, and other. You can't just give someone an incredibly complex, unintuitive, and buggy system and expect them to learn all about it in order to accomplish three or four basic tasks. Arcane labels, poor feedback, dreadful default configurations, basic setting buried in ridiculous places, and many more problems plague new users. Computers are really pretty crappy at doing what the average user wants.
You claim it is user's attitudes towards computers that are the problem. I partially agree. But, the average user's experiences with computers are the most likely cause of a poor attitude and for that I cannot blame them.
Your point is well taken, but your analogy is flawed in a number of ways.
The average person can understand why going too fast might cause them to die, and thus it is something to be avoided. A reasonably intelligent person can understand why (from a technical perspective) all the gas and oil your car will ever need is not included with the vehicle. They can also understand that everything breaks occasionally and when it happens they need to get it fixed.
Now look at computers. You buy a computer and before you even use it you have to download updates or it will be remotely hacked. Why is that (from a technical perspective)? Is it so hard to design a system that has everything except the update feature firewalled initially and that automatically updates during the setup? Not to mention all the exposed services running on a default Windows install. It's stupid to sell systems in that state and customers suffer for it. If not for a certain monopoly they wouldn't stand for it, but they don't even know they have a choice in most cases and in many they don't have a choice.
It's easy to blame the users for being stupid. "my 'gas meter' is on E! What's that mean?" you wrote in your example. How many unidentified icons are in your car, that you actually need to use. Usually 5-10 of them. That is not ideal, but it is manageable. How many thousands of icons and widgets does an average user see trying to run a system to check e-mail and look at web pages?
People know that things break. Cars break down, maybe once a month, maybe once every 5 years, depending on your car and other factors. Computers break (or appear to break to the user) almost every day. Every time a dialogue box appears it means the computer has stopped doing what the user wants and is now asking them to do something to "fix it" so they can go back to completing their task. Not only does it break, but as this article mentions it does so in some very ambiguous ways. A user might see a box with some technical jargon and two buttons, one labeled "OK" and one labeled "Cancel." Given the wording of the warning, it may or may not be obvious to someone fluent in English which box will take a given action, or even what action is being questioned. Is it really so hard to have buttons that actually say something like "don't do it" and "do it, I trust this website." What about warning boxes that appear with a message and just have an "OK" button. How is this useful? The box might read "I'm going to delete all your porn and send an e-mail to Don King that says you're going to kick his ass." and what is the user going to do? There is only one option. Why bother to even pop-up a dialogue box?
Now their is plenty of blame to go around. Many users are stupid or just don't want to learn. Of course most of them only want to accomplish a few specific tasks. The main problem is that computers are not designed for their users and when users hate they way a computer works, they don't really have a choice of going with someone else. If MS did not have their monopoly people would go into the store and pick from one of three or four types of operating systems and based upon how well they liked it would either buy a new version of it at a later date and recommend it to their friends or not. Right now when they buy a car if the controls are too complex and it breaks all the time. They bitch about it and buy a different brand and encourage their friends to do the same. Different types of cars cater to different types of users. If they buy a computer that crashes, gets worms, and is hard to use and they go back to the store they buy another Windows machine because that is their only option. My point is that while users may be dumb and not want to learn, that does not mean using computers does not suck because they are poorly designed and are not improving because of the MS hegemony.
The political repercussions of hitting Microsoft like this are FAR greater than most Europeans on here apparently imagine.
What makes you think European politicians give a damn about what American voters think? Pissing off americans is very popular in Europe right now. Hell brand names that are too "american" have been rotting on the shelves for a year. If we wanted Europe to want to keep the U.S. happy, maybe we shouldn't have called them cowards and rushed into a war nobody wanted for reasons that everyone else told us did not exist.
How about if the situation were reversed. Suppose Airbus was found guilty of industrial espionage against Lockheed. The U.S. courts after convicting them said, ok you have to pay 10 million in restitution and release the specs on the engine you made with the information. Now imagine Airbus said, "well we'll pay the fine, but we're not going to release the specs." What do you think would be fair for the courts to do about that? What if this was the 6th time Airbus was caught and it had also been caught lying to the courts? I think your attitude might be a bit different.
it could lead to a full out economic embargo
I don't think the U.S. is up for that. Frankly we need them a lot more than they need us.
you can't just take what you want when it becomes convienient in the civilized world
What exactly do you think court fines and penalties are? They are taking something from the offender to punish them. Every government does it.
You won't share? When in history has there existed a corporation that has consolidated all markets?
Obviously never on a global scale. On a small scale look to any mining town in the 1800's. On a medium scale there was the Medeci trading empire, the East India company, etc.
So far MS has only been burned over IE and Media Player. Do you think they'll get burned with their Longhorn's Desktop search or the upcoming ad-ware scanner? The answer is we don't know. Monopoly laws are so subjective that MS doesn't know if their actions to provide these tools will result in a $500 million fine 5 years down the line.
I'll give you a hint. Whenever they enter a market and use their existing monopoly to give them an advantage they are breaking the law. Or maybe they should be split in OS and application companies so that they don't have to worry about being so confused.
Capitalism "allows" a monopoly to do what they please with their property. End of story.
Capitalism is a concept. It "allows" nothing and no one has ever been so stupid as to implement a pure capitalism since it is such a basically flawed concept.
Before the anti-trust suit, MS had minimal number of lobbyists in Washington. Apple, Netscape, IBM had a substantial presence. Look what happened.
So you're saying because MS donated more money to the democrats and republicans than anyone else they should be allowed to break the law? Politicians can be bribed, what is your point?
What is your problem?
I work in computers and have to deal with MS's incompetence and illegal behavior. They have held the whole damn industry back for years by buying out innovative companies and letting their technologies rot. They have destroyed open standards, interoperability and the internet has basically made no progress in six years due to their bundling of IE and refusal to support new technologies. As a company they have gutted one of my passions. If not for their illegal behaviors a few executives would be a whole lot poorer and the state of the art would be years ahead of where it is today.
Let's see they make money by overcharging everyone and simultaneously hold back progress, what's not to like?
There may be some reasons to prefer Apache over IIS but security is not one of them. Since 2003, IIS 6.0 has had exactly 3 security adviseries verses Apache's 22 in the same time period:
Ummm. How does the number of security advisories listed have anything to do with how secure a box is?
The most important statistic that can be easily gathered is how often each type of box is compromised. A better statistic yet is how often are systems compromised that are used in a situation similar to what you plan to do with it and configured by someone with a similar amount of expertise. I'm not a security expert, although I work with many of them. My server is running Apache and I can say with some confidence that although it is not hack proof, it is unlikely to be hacked. Could some of my co-workers get in? Almost certainly. But a random worm is unlikely to do so. Anyone in the security field will tell you that running off the shelf systems means you can be hacked if someone is talented and motivated. They will also tell you you are a lot more likely to be hacked if you are running IIS because it is designed in an insecure manner, security fixes take forever, and MS never tells you about the "in the wild" exploits that are being used, but that they have no fix for yet.
the population of Europe that already has tax rates as high as 75% of their income.
FUD. On average Europeans pay less in taxes than U.S. citizens
a good 90% of that comes from Japan which isn't part of the EU
36%, not 90% is held by japan. China and the U.K. each hold about 10%.
people use Windows because it doesn't take a nerd to setup and get it ready to use.
People use windows because it come pre-installed on their computer and they don't even know that anything else exists.
International law is a crock, Microsoft should just give the EU the finger, revoke all licenses currently in EU sponsered countries
U.S. law is a crock. Everyone should give the U.S. the finger and confiscate all property belonging to U.S. companies. I somehow doubt MS is going to walk away from 40% of their revenue and jeopardize the billions of dollars of real and intellectual property they have in Europe. They broke the law. They have no legal right to terminate the contracts they have already signed. I seriously doubt breaking the law a few million more times is going to help them.
They will just critise them for giving in to Microsoft, even though the EU got 80% of what they were asking for.
You really have to have your head on backwards to make a comment like this. If you were convicted of a crime and you agreed with the courts to spend 80% of the jail time they sentenced you to what do you think would happen?
I hope you are being paid to spread FUD like this, otherwise I'm afraid you are a complete idiot.
Thier is one set of rules for everyone. It just says that if you establish a monopoly, you cannot leverage that monopoly to take over more markets. Any company that establishes a monopoly has to abide by these rules. If not, they are punished by the law for the good of everyone, just like every other law.
You seem to be more in favor the the U.S. approach to MS. When convicted of breaking the law, abusing the legal system, lying to the courts, and bribing officials, pay huge sums of money to the political parties and wait. Then after you are convicted your punishment is decided to be nothing. I hear it works for murderers who stole billions of dollars from their victims as well.
If I was an advertiser, I doubt that I'd try that hard to get around it. I'd prefer to advertise to people that actually click on the ads, making me money.
Usually, advertisers just buy ad space. It's the companies selling them space that try to get around pop-up blockers. They get paid by the number of eyeballs they capture and couldn't care less if viewers are pissed off.
Slashdot Mirror
Since labor laws in this country forbid firing a striking work force, in general, the result was that jobs moved overseas. You had a lot of companies realizing they had to give in to unions or else go under, but at the same time putting plans in effect to ultimately rid themselves of unionized labor.
So basically the law says consolidated business has to deal with the labor that consolidated to even the playing field and prevent abuse of the power of big business. As a result big business obeyed the laws, but did their best to get around them and move their labor to places with governments less interested in the welfare of the people.
This may be a problem that the unions have to deal with (difficult since although they have the voting numbers, big business has the money which is more important in our twisted psuedo-republic). It is not, however, a inherent problem with unions but merely that businesses can move to where there are no unions, and unions have trouble forming in places with corrupt governments that don't mind shooting protesters.
What amazes me is that people in more developed countries who are consumers put up with it. The whole "Made in America" label campaign should have been funded by unions and revamped to show all the horrible things companies are doing overseas and name companies by name. Now it is damn near impossible to find American made goods of many types.
If the CEO ran a company into the ground yet got personally rich, it doesn't mean he's incompetent or unmotivated, it means his motivation was self serving and I would have to say that he was quite competent at screwing his employees while he got rich!
And what about all of the employees of that company? How motivated do you think they were? And since when is it considered competent for a CEO to run a company into the ground? He could have made a lot more money if he had run the company competently instead of going for a short term payoff.
Are you implying that corporate conditions and worker v. executive treatment is any better because the company is not American?
In many instances, yes. Look at some of the corporate behaviors in Europe, or better yet try working there for a while.
You are claiming that we are losing our edge due to deficiencies in our workers abilities and that is simply not the case.
I made no such claim. What I said was that the original poster's claim that Americans were not incompetent or unmotivated was not necessarily true. I know lots of unmotivated American employees. I also know a fair number of incompetent ones. Having taken physics and mathematics courses with a number of architectural, civil, and materials engineers I can tell you that I have less confidence than ever when driving across bridges. If you don't think many Americans are incompetent and unmotivated you are just not paying attention.
People work hard for their money - do don't undermine us American workers like that. Got it?
No.
Some people work hard for their money, some don't. I was describing what I see as a common case among many Americans. Here are some case examples for you. I know a biochemistry researcher working on curing a disease. She works about 4 hours in an average day because she does not have the authority to spend any more money on experiments. Her boss shows up once a week or so. The research will probably never result in anything and she is looking for a new career. She went into the field want to help people and cure diseases, now she realizes that a combination of all the federal funding cuts and the huge amount of bureaucracy basically makes it impossible to make any sort of progress. She is not lazy, just completely disheartened. She does not work hard, nor is she motivated.
I have a friend who works at a major automotive manufacturer. He gets paid 20% less than he should and that money goes to the contract company he works for. That is because it is a policy to never hire any direct employees to avoid union problems. Until recently he worked long hours and developed a software system that would have made him a lot of money had he done it on his own. He can't even get a cost of living raise after several years of employment. He's much less motivated now.
I used to work at a successful software company. We were profitable during the .com crash and beyond. They our investors mandated a management change. With our new CEO and his cronies we went from profitable to unprofitable, even after they laid off a significant number of the engineers. Those engineers worked hard and were dedicated. They were sacked to make room for friends of the new CEO. Needless to say neither they nor the remaining engineers were very motivated for long.
Hard work and dedication can be a very admirable thing. It can also be foolish if all your work is going to enrich the pocketbooks of stuffed shirts who are just there to exploit you. I like my job and work hard at it. I enjoy what I do. I am, however the exception among people I know. How many people do I know with undergraduate or graduate degrees in the sciences with tens of thousands of dollars in loans who make less money than fast-food jockeys? Too damn many. Corporate America treats workers like shit, because jobs are hard to come by, especially here. I don't blame people for not working hard at pointless and thankless tasks, especially when it does not benefit them in any way.
In the movie office space the protagonist tells the consultants that his only motivation for doing work is to not get fired and hassled, which is only enough motivation to make him work just hard enough to not get fired. Welcome to the U.S.A. in a nutshell.
Also, the lack of caring for your employees is universal.
This is not so. It is widespread, especially within global corporations. It is common in many, many places. It is not universal. Take, for example, the traditional family run business. Employees and employers care because it is a family concern. In many smaller businesses the employers actually care about their employees. I work at a very successful start-up company right now. It is obvious that most of the management actually care about the employees and if someone is a poor fit for the company then they sit down with management and decide what should be done to either change their behavior or so that the employee can start looking for work elsewhere. Oh, and we actually profit when the company does well. Profit sharing extends to all regular employees, not just the management.
Personally I think a large part of the cultural problem comes from the bureaucracy that forms when companies grow too large. It makes things impersonal and employees are considered assets rather than people.
There is nothing lacking in the skill, talent and dedication of American employees.
Sure there is. I agree with much of what you have to say, but that is all beside the fact that American workers are unmotivated and incompetent in many cases. The CEO of a company I used to work at had already run three companies into the ground by doing really stupid and greedy things that made him rich but killed the company. The vast majority of workplaces in the U.S. offer no profit sharing or reasonable incentive plan. If you work twice as hard you get paid the same, but are more tired and stressed. American employees lack dedication for a number of really good reasons. They don't benefit when the company does. They may be fired not because they don't work hard but because the company wants to cut corners or outsource. Executives usually have a different health plan and benefits package than the regular employees. Basically, companies don't treat employees very well and don't feel responsible for them in they way many used to. As a result many employees don't care about working hard or well. This is a huge disadvantage compared to some other cultures.
Unless you avoid ever touching a doorknob or hand-rail, I don't see what difference this makes. Common surfaces are everywhere. We all touch them all the time. Sometimes we catch something from a common surface. Adding a palm scanner to the mix doesn't increase the risk of transmission.
???
Adding a single surface every person must touch daily, without gloves does not increase the risk of transmitting an illness? You are making the logical fallacy of relational equivalence. e.g. "I had sex without a condom and I acquired HIV. My friend always uses them and he also acquired HIV. Using condoms does not help stop diseases."
I sort of understand where you are coming from. There are plenty of opportunities for diseases to be transmitted in communal housing. That does not mean adding a new opportunity with even higher risks is not a bad idea.
If you read the links that I provided, you also see that the Apache security adviseries are also more critical than the IIS ones.
If you'd read my post you'd notice I addressed that. All of the apache vulnerabilities discovered are announced and admins can address them. MS generally only announces vulnerabilities when they release the fix for them. Most vendors report their vulnerabilities to MS. Hence, MS almost certainly has a list of vulnerabilities for IIS that are not included in your report, but which the blackhat community has access to. In that manner your comparison is flawed.
IIS 6.0 is NOT designed in an insecure manner, and this has been shown in practice.
Yes it is. It only runs on Windows which is a huge design failure. Windows requires exposed services like RPC to be running in order to function properly. How is this not a design flaw? I dare you to run an IIS server one the internet without a firewall for a year. I double-super-duper dog dare you. The fact that additional software/hardware is required to keep IIS secure means it is fundamentally broken. If you weren't so used to having to take extreme steps to keep it running you'd realize that.
Why don't we get Apple to do a little experiment? Apple can have their iTMS offer every song in either their restrictive DRM encrusted AAC format, or a non-DRM'ed MP3. See what format sells more. That would be the industry "speaking".
Surprisingly, I more or less agree with you. Actually I think congress should demand interoperability by mandating the removal of DRM from and the open publishing of formats for all published works for general consumption. DRM and proprietary formats are fine for use within a company or organization, but if you are selling a product or media to the general public it should be open and unencumbered.
I don't think Apple would have any problem with a law like that. It would level the playing field and be good for everyone. I seriously doubt Apple sells DRM'd music because they prefer it. It is almost certainly the only way they could get the RIAA to buy in to the online store. IMHO they have done a very good job of balancing keeping the corps happy and still not getting in the user's way too much. Unfortunately, the most likely result of this congressional interference is to force Apple to give away their DRM format to everyone else, who will use it to make their devices and apps work with the ITMS. Apple will end up providing free support and development for everyone else on a service they are running at a break even level right now. They will then have to raise the prices of songs in order to maintain breaking even. Windows DRM formats will probably not be opened and a monopoly will be given a competitive advantage over the smaller player. Sad but likely.
Do you honestly believe they would be any more readily available if copyright laws were changed?
Allow me to answer your question with a question. If works are copyrighted and not available to the public at any cost do you believe the copyright laws are working or do you believe they need to be changed? If the former how do you reconcile that with the original intention of copyright laws?
Who is destroying our "artistic heritage"? RIAA certainly isn't. If by destroy you mean "continue to make available for a fee", I think you need to make use of a dictionary.
So you consider all the works that are no longer available but still copyrighted some of which exist in storage somewhere and some of which have been destroyed by time, mold, fires, or intentionally destroyed to make space to not be destroyed? If a work is not available to the public copyright has failed in its purpose. Their are literally hundreds of thousands of recording, movies, books, songs, and other media that are not legally available to the public at any price. For many of them no known copies exist. Heck, I think only half the episodes of "Dr. Who" still exist.
I personally have tried get my hands on several recordings that are owned by various music houses. One very popular record label only offers 4% of it's catalogue for sale. I've also tried to get printings of a large number of books. Sometimes you can get lucky and find them in used book or record shops, but for the most part they are just not available. That means pretty much no one can read, watch, or listen to the vast majority of the copyrighted material for the last 60 years. Some of those works are amazing and would probably be regarded as great artistic works if only anyone could see or hear them.
That is what our corrupted copyright system has done to us. People like you who are completely ignorant about all that has been stolen from our culture by the greed of a few amaze me. Can you really have never tried to find anything but the 20 most popular artists in a genre that is more than a decade old? Or is it just that you think nothing good has been made in the last 60 years?
If the fact that these works are denied to us for the simple of expedient of having less competition with current offerings and because "they might be valuable again" some day and it never hurts to lock it all away does not make you angry, then you probably have no passion for art or literature and will be content with whatever crap you are fed. You make me sick by defending a system that is so unjust and that is so damaging to our culture.
Copyright & Trademark law require the vigorous defence of your property. It's a use it or loose it scenario.
In the U.S. that is only true for trademarks.
Yes, they are illegal, which is why the poster took pains to say "...unreleased live musical performances..." rather than the better-known term "bootlegs" which is what they really are.
You know most bands used to encourage the recording of their performances for posterity. That includes a large number of the works hosted at EZT. For that matter, some bands still do, just not ones owned by the the big media companies since the copyright on those works is very debatable.
if the artists that performed the live show agree to having thier performance made available in this way.
Ahh, but in the case of most of the artists on the site in question they not only allowed but encouraged recording of their shows. Now, however, the RIAA is threatening an ISP for hosting a web site, that has bittorrent files, that index other computers that are hosting copies of these recordings.
Why are artists granted exclusive rights to make copies of anything they produce? Their is a reason you know, it is spelled out. It is to promote the advancement of useful arts and sciences. Please explain to me how stopping people from trading the unreleased works of dead artists promotes the advancement of useful arts and sciences.
Those that don't choose to allow it, whether you like it or not, have the right to defend thier copyrights.
Oh you mean the unconstitutional laws passed by bribed politicians who were bought by industry executives grant them the right to destroy our artistic heritage. Well why didn't you say so? I don't care what laws they pass. Nothing gives them the right to permanently delete great works of art so that they don't compete with whatever crap the RIAA is selling. What a load of horse shit.
How about... every single MMORPG except World of Warcraft?
If you read my comment it said, "I can't think of anything I want that is not available." Seeing as I am not a gaming fanatic I find myself unwilling to play games that require a monthly fee. It is too expensive for the amount of free time I have and encourages people to play more the get "more value" for their purchase. I use a computer for about 10 hours each day doing useful things (and wasting time on Slashdot). When I play games it is usually a spur of the moment thing or a LAN party. I don't need games that require more of my time than my girlfriend does.
If you are a MMORPG fan or a huge gamer in general Macs are probably not for you right now. If you use your machine for work, misc. tasks, science, arts, and like to play the occasional game you're probably more likely to enjoy using a Mac.
I would not switch from windows to a mac is because of the lack of software. The last time I was at the computer store I walked into the Mac section to look around. Their selection of software was 1/4th that of the PC's, and mostly graphical software.
If most people think like you Windows will dominate forever, even if it sucks. For me, OS X has all the applications I use (including some not available for windows). It is a chicken and egg problem. Developers don't port applications unless their are enough users and users don't switch unless their are applications. Luckily it is a problem that is mostly solved at this point. Macs even play pretty much all of the popular PC games these days. Their are a few stragglers who trapped themselves by basing everything on DirectX and similar technologies and used less portable languages but for the most part I can't think of anything I want that is not available.
What is really amazing for switchers is not the applications though. Most of them are pretty much the same. The difference is how much the underlying OS changes the user experience. I really did not know what I was missing until I got multitasking that actually works and modular system wide services that let me spell check or speak aloud or translate to german any text in any application with three clicks. Standard UI elements that provide user feedback, expose, scriptable everything, UNIX tools and CLI, and some great included applications were icing on the cake.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Have fun with Windows. Personally, I dread using it (I still use it for compatibility testing and when I need some more terminals just to display info). Maybe some day soon the applications you want will migrate.
You want DHS to make sure your google surfing doesn't fill your computer with spam? You're actually more concerned about that than some terrorist blowing up a kindergarten or something? Your priorities are truly fucked.
First, the person you are replying to said the cybersecurity group of the DHS. Second, their is more to this than spam, they are redirecting financial sites, e-mail, etc. Third, are you really afraid terrorists are going to blow up a kindegarten? I mean more people drown in buckets every year than are killed by terrorists. DNS poisoning is a real, ongoing threat. It is probably not a life and death situation (although with VOIP that is not necessarily ruled out) but at least it would be something more useful for them to do.
Note, it does not really matter in any case. From what I have heard the DHS can't even keep worms from compromising their own machines. Three people have resigned from the cybersecurity post each saying the job was impossible given the resources available. They're probably all running unpatched WinXP-SP1 boxes or something equally stupid.
But people who speed die with less frequency than those traveling the limit or under.
I never said that they didn't. I said, "The average person can understand why going too fast might cause them to die." Here's something to think about when ever you hear a statistic or fact based upon statistics. I always wonder, "how did they gather those numbers." I mean how do you find out if people who speed die more or less than people that don't speed? Do you ask a random sampling of people if they speed and then wait to see who dies? Do you follow them around without telling them and see if they really do speed? Do you ask people in serious accidents if they were speeding? It basically gives me zero confidence in the reliability of your factoid.
Tell that to Amsoil and the "never change your oil again" filters
I never said that their was no solution to cars that don't need to refuel or add lubricants. Obviously it is a solvable problem. The point was an average person can understand why, given our current technology, these problems occur.
There is a real problem with how people approach computers.
Why? Are people naturally afraid to learn how to use a computer because they are new an complex? I'd say probably to some degree. But I'd also say it is because a lot of people try to use computers and find them very very hard to do simple tasks with. Their is an old stereotype about how most people can't program their VCRs. It is true in a way. Most people never programmed their VCRs, not because it was too hard but because it was not really really easy and they were not motivated to learn to do it. That did not stop anyone from playing tapes on a VCR. After all, that was easy. You put the tape in and press "Play." Computers on the other hand are not simple to use for simple tasks. Most users would be happy if when they booted up their computer their were four buttons: e-mail, games, web pages, and other. You can't just give someone an incredibly complex, unintuitive, and buggy system and expect them to learn all about it in order to accomplish three or four basic tasks. Arcane labels, poor feedback, dreadful default configurations, basic setting buried in ridiculous places, and many more problems plague new users. Computers are really pretty crappy at doing what the average user wants.
You claim it is user's attitudes towards computers that are the problem. I partially agree. But, the average user's experiences with computers are the most likely cause of a poor attitude and for that I cannot blame them.
I think his point is that some open source projects would be more widely adopted and supported without the GPL
You mean the way the BSDs are so much more widely adopted than Linux?
Your point is well taken, but your analogy is flawed in a number of ways.
The average person can understand why going too fast might cause them to die, and thus it is something to be avoided. A reasonably intelligent person can understand why (from a technical perspective) all the gas and oil your car will ever need is not included with the vehicle. They can also understand that everything breaks occasionally and when it happens they need to get it fixed.
Now look at computers. You buy a computer and before you even use it you have to download updates or it will be remotely hacked. Why is that (from a technical perspective)? Is it so hard to design a system that has everything except the update feature firewalled initially and that automatically updates during the setup? Not to mention all the exposed services running on a default Windows install. It's stupid to sell systems in that state and customers suffer for it. If not for a certain monopoly they wouldn't stand for it, but they don't even know they have a choice in most cases and in many they don't have a choice.
It's easy to blame the users for being stupid. "my 'gas meter' is on E! What's that mean?" you wrote in your example. How many unidentified icons are in your car, that you actually need to use. Usually 5-10 of them. That is not ideal, but it is manageable. How many thousands of icons and widgets does an average user see trying to run a system to check e-mail and look at web pages?
People know that things break. Cars break down, maybe once a month, maybe once every 5 years, depending on your car and other factors. Computers break (or appear to break to the user) almost every day. Every time a dialogue box appears it means the computer has stopped doing what the user wants and is now asking them to do something to "fix it" so they can go back to completing their task. Not only does it break, but as this article mentions it does so in some very ambiguous ways. A user might see a box with some technical jargon and two buttons, one labeled "OK" and one labeled "Cancel." Given the wording of the warning, it may or may not be obvious to someone fluent in English which box will take a given action, or even what action is being questioned. Is it really so hard to have buttons that actually say something like "don't do it" and "do it, I trust this website." What about warning boxes that appear with a message and just have an "OK" button. How is this useful? The box might read "I'm going to delete all your porn and send an e-mail to Don King that says you're going to kick his ass." and what is the user going to do? There is only one option. Why bother to even pop-up a dialogue box?
Now their is plenty of blame to go around. Many users are stupid or just don't want to learn. Of course most of them only want to accomplish a few specific tasks. The main problem is that computers are not designed for their users and when users hate they way a computer works, they don't really have a choice of going with someone else. If MS did not have their monopoly people would go into the store and pick from one of three or four types of operating systems and based upon how well they liked it would either buy a new version of it at a later date and recommend it to their friends or not. Right now when they buy a car if the controls are too complex and it breaks all the time. They bitch about it and buy a different brand and encourage their friends to do the same. Different types of cars cater to different types of users. If they buy a computer that crashes, gets worms, and is hard to use and they go back to the store they buy another Windows machine because that is their only option. My point is that while users may be dumb and not want to learn, that does not mean using computers does not suck because they are poorly designed and are not improving because of the MS hegemony.
The political repercussions of hitting Microsoft like this are FAR greater than most Europeans on here apparently imagine.
What makes you think European politicians give a damn about what American voters think? Pissing off americans is very popular in Europe right now. Hell brand names that are too "american" have been rotting on the shelves for a year. If we wanted Europe to want to keep the U.S. happy, maybe we shouldn't have called them cowards and rushed into a war nobody wanted for reasons that everyone else told us did not exist.
How about if the situation were reversed. Suppose Airbus was found guilty of industrial espionage against Lockheed. The U.S. courts after convicting them said, ok you have to pay 10 million in restitution and release the specs on the engine you made with the information. Now imagine Airbus said, "well we'll pay the fine, but we're not going to release the specs." What do you think would be fair for the courts to do about that? What if this was the 6th time Airbus was caught and it had also been caught lying to the courts? I think your attitude might be a bit different.
it could lead to a full out economic embargo
I don't think the U.S. is up for that. Frankly we need them a lot more than they need us.
you can't just take what you want when it becomes convienient in the civilized world
What exactly do you think court fines and penalties are? They are taking something from the offender to punish them. Every government does it.
You won't share? When in history has there existed a corporation that has consolidated all markets?
Obviously never on a global scale. On a small scale look to any mining town in the 1800's. On a medium scale there was the Medeci trading empire, the East India company, etc.
So far MS has only been burned over IE and Media Player. Do you think they'll get burned with their Longhorn's Desktop search or the upcoming ad-ware scanner? The answer is we don't know. Monopoly laws are so subjective that MS doesn't know if their actions to provide these tools will result in a $500 million fine 5 years down the line.
I'll give you a hint. Whenever they enter a market and use their existing monopoly to give them an advantage they are breaking the law. Or maybe they should be split in OS and application companies so that they don't have to worry about being so confused.
Capitalism "allows" a monopoly to do what they please with their property. End of story.
Capitalism is a concept. It "allows" nothing and no one has ever been so stupid as to implement a pure capitalism since it is such a basically flawed concept.
Before the anti-trust suit, MS had minimal number of lobbyists in Washington. Apple, Netscape, IBM had a substantial presence. Look what happened.
So you're saying because MS donated more money to the democrats and republicans than anyone else they should be allowed to break the law? Politicians can be bribed, what is your point?
What is your problem?
I work in computers and have to deal with MS's incompetence and illegal behavior. They have held the whole damn industry back for years by buying out innovative companies and letting their technologies rot. They have destroyed open standards, interoperability and the internet has basically made no progress in six years due to their bundling of IE and refusal to support new technologies. As a company they have gutted one of my passions. If not for their illegal behaviors a few executives would be a whole lot poorer and the state of the art would be years ahead of where it is today.
Let's see they make money by overcharging everyone and simultaneously hold back progress, what's not to like?
There may be some reasons to prefer Apache over IIS but security is not one of them. Since 2003, IIS 6.0 has had exactly 3 security adviseries verses Apache's 22 in the same time period:
Ummm. How does the number of security advisories listed have anything to do with how secure a box is?
The most important statistic that can be easily gathered is how often each type of box is compromised. A better statistic yet is how often are systems compromised that are used in a situation similar to what you plan to do with it and configured by someone with a similar amount of expertise. I'm not a security expert, although I work with many of them. My server is running Apache and I can say with some confidence that although it is not hack proof, it is unlikely to be hacked. Could some of my co-workers get in? Almost certainly. But a random worm is unlikely to do so. Anyone in the security field will tell you that running off the shelf systems means you can be hacked if someone is talented and motivated. They will also tell you you are a lot more likely to be hacked if you are running IIS because it is designed in an insecure manner, security fixes take forever, and MS never tells you about the "in the wild" exploits that are being used, but that they have no fix for yet.
the population of Europe that already has tax rates as high as 75% of their income.
FUD. On average Europeans pay less in taxes than U.S. citizens
a good 90% of that comes from Japan which isn't part of the EU
36%, not 90% is held by japan. China and the U.K. each hold about 10%.
people use Windows because it doesn't take a nerd to setup and get it ready to use.
People use windows because it come pre-installed on their computer and they don't even know that anything else exists.
International law is a crock, Microsoft should just give the EU the finger, revoke all licenses currently in EU sponsered countries
U.S. law is a crock. Everyone should give the U.S. the finger and confiscate all property belonging to U.S. companies. I somehow doubt MS is going to walk away from 40% of their revenue and jeopardize the billions of dollars of real and intellectual property they have in Europe. They broke the law. They have no legal right to terminate the contracts they have already signed. I seriously doubt breaking the law a few million more times is going to help them.
They will just critise them for giving in to Microsoft, even though the EU got 80% of what they were asking for.
You really have to have your head on backwards to make a comment like this. If you were convicted of a crime and you agreed with the courts to spend 80% of the jail time they sentenced you to what do you think would happen?
I hope you are being paid to spread FUD like this, otherwise I'm afraid you are a complete idiot.
And you're basing this on what? Intuition?
History.
One set of rules for everyone. Get it?
Thier is one set of rules for everyone. It just says that if you establish a monopoly, you cannot leverage that monopoly to take over more markets. Any company that establishes a monopoly has to abide by these rules. If not, they are punished by the law for the good of everyone, just like every other law.
You seem to be more in favor the the U.S. approach to MS. When convicted of breaking the law, abusing the legal system, lying to the courts, and bribing officials, pay huge sums of money to the political parties and wait. Then after you are convicted your punishment is decided to be nothing. I hear it works for murderers who stole billions of dollars from their victims as well.
If I was an advertiser, I doubt that I'd try that hard to get around it. I'd prefer to advertise to people that actually click on the ads, making me money.
Usually, advertisers just buy ad space. It's the companies selling them space that try to get around pop-up blockers. They get paid by the number of eyeballs they capture and couldn't care less if viewers are pissed off.