Oh wait!! After 32 years of rejection, maybe this will be a GOOD thing? Yeah, alright! I'm going to get lucky.... in 2029.... maybe... fsck! space exploration is SLOWWWW
my horoscope... this could immeasurably ruin my life!! Don't these insensitive rock-et science clods know they could end up making it so I never meet a woman?
I'm continually amazed that MS has such traction that F/OSS has to fight to get anywhere. If MS and Linux were cars (never mind old jokes) people would be buying magazines to compare, taking test drives, and asking their buddies which one to buy... but with an OS, OMG, if you don't use MS, you must be one of those Linux geek nutjobs... and surely FREE software can't be as good as stuff you pay an arm and leg for... righ?
Why do we have to pass laws to compete with MS? That is the real story! I bet its an interesting read too... Shame that weather is the only thing that gets full coverage these days.
I know why they are cancelling funding... NASA doesn't have any bald chicks, so when they saw the movie, they knew that Voyager had to be stopped... Since no one can reach the power switch, we'll just ignore it till it returns and wants to meet the creator.
Same old problem, different questions....
on
Keeping the Lights On
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Disaster recovery, and maintaining operations in the face of reduced knowledge base and personnel are the two sides of the same coin. The military regularly does this (no comment on efficiency here) but business as a whole do not do this./.-ers think in terms of IT, but there are other issues too. Think about customer service departments, billing departments, all facets of a business. Disaster recovery is not a simple or trivial issue.
Data back-ups and documentation are not sufficient. To truly be prepared, a company has to have an agreement with temporary worker agencies to replace certain people, and practice to make sure that the documentation is enough....
In the case of New Orleans, they not only need people, companies there need their buildings and hardware replaced. Other, less demanding situations are losing people because of personal responsibilities to family in the aftermath of the storms. Those people have to be temporarily replaced in some cases.
A truly thorough disaster recovery plan is both large, complex, and on some levels, very scary. It has to cover situations where the entire IT department is in the same bar when a bomb goes off. Who does what then? Do they tell the IT staff not to socialize together?
When the only legal person in your SMB is now missing, who steps in to sign that paperwork?
There are tons of things to think of. The simple things stick out, but true disaster preparedness is a horrific thing to accomplish, and it costs big $$$$$$$$$$$
nano-bio-tech that can alter DNA markers, or leave some sort of trace in your body to make your DNA "fingerprint" be different... and viola, we have almost every really bad scifi movies coming to fruition!
I wouldn't surprise me if they can already tell North Americans by their DNA because years of eating fast food has altered DNA....
FTFA: "The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Cancer Institute."
Of course it is funded by DARPA, the army would love to have medical advancements like that on the battlefield. When a necklace every soldier wears instantly tells the med-tech that the wound the wearer is suffering has punctured a lung or spleen or something like that.
I can also envision this kind of technology being incorporated in care-giving robots for the elderly and infirm. If you have a 'tri-corder' like medical diagnosis kit that can fit on a robot, the robot then would know what to tell the 911 operator when it called, other than "help, they've fallen and can't get up" and that makes this type of nanotech VERY cool. Talk about search and rescue... a robot finds bodies in the rubble, slaps a triage-analysis bandage on their skin and can then tell rescue workers what kind of medical treatments are necessary.... Well, I hope that is what comes of this stuff. That magic little microphone looking thing that Dr McCoy always waved around was damned cool!!
I suppose one of the real drawbacks is that drug screenings for employment might be used to cancel insurance and work contracts etc. based on ineligiblity due to pre-existing conditions and bad things like that. (uhhhh thinking of bad scifi movies now)
in the land of reality tv, why should any F/OSS group be admonished for using the MS media machine to advertise. This was so blatantly sarcastic that I laughed. Offering Yates a link to the KOffice website is hilarious!! I don't think anyone could have called him stupid any more pointedly and not used the word stupid or one of its synonyms.
This kind of media circus brings attention to the KOffice products, and hopefully to other F/OSS offerings. There literally are people that don't know what is available, or that it can / does compete with MS Office. Not just that, there are millions of people who should know, but don't know that Adobe is not the only product that will save/print to a.pdf format. Ignorance is a real enemy of the F/OSS community. More than just/.-ers need to know.
Getting the information out there in the public view is VERY important. Doing it and making people laugh is even better! Well, I think so.
this type of contest will lead to advantageous developments in both solar energy generation and electrical power usage. Both of these can lead to a greener world. Sounds coy, but if everyone was contributing to the power grid instead of only sucking from it, the reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy would decrease. This is better for everyone (I'm NOT anti-nuclear or a global warming nutjob) and the planet as well.
As stupid as it sounds, I think that trying to use cleaner energy will lead us to better use of just about everything. If power were essentially free for all to use, there would be a massive shift of cultural and business boundaries. Anyone can donate farm equipment to poor 3rd world countries, but continuous powering of that equipment is the down side. If you teach them to fish with a huge fishing vessel, you still have to show them how to power it.
I'm not saying that power/energy generation and usage is the crux of the world's problems, but when you look at the list of problems, pick the one that gives you the biggest bang for buck when it is fixed, engergy generation/usage is close or at the top of that list.
So, in respect of the possible outcomes of such racing events, I have high hopes that it will lead the world to better ways of doing things. Hybrid cars are a good start, but the technology is still lagging behind where we really need it to be. Approximately 10-25% of US household budgets will be spent on fuels and energy this winter because of the recent hurricanes, damage, and of course price gouging. If we all had the capability of generating at least some of our own energy, it would be competition to other fuel/energy sources... which hopefully would drop the price as well as reliance on oil companies. This can't be anything other than good.
Perhaps windmills on the roofs are not a safe/good idea, but we need something.
that more people continue to think in old ways. What will replace the current plethora of computing devices in the home is a voice/audio interface, and it won't matter what the device looks like. The wireless phone will become the human interface, and when a display is required, the ubiquitous television will suffice. Keyboards are wireless already, as are mice. When required (which won't be much at all) they will interact with the hidden computer that is part of the entertainment center, using the tv for display, and normally the wireless phone as the interface. If its not as simple as gossiping over the fence, it will never get past the religious OS wars, and on to something really important.
IM-not-so-HO, until we get past fanatacism over small things, we'll never get to the larger more important issues. Computer science is really only beginning... Windows is not the end of development for computers. Think about the voice operated computer systems on Star Trek or any other scifi show. We have a long way to go. The home computer will not be replace by a mobile device... DUH... anyone that needs that little computing power at home is NOT likely to buy a wireless device that complex.... sheeesh, I wish people would remember the human factors... all of them: form factor, human interface, money/cost, usability, coolness, function/usefulness and a few others that marketing guys at Sony know all about.
I wonder what happens if all those Chinese Yahoo users start getting emails from all over the world detailing the things they would like to know about their own government. How much can Yahoo actually filter? If it was as plentiful as spam, surely the message would start getting through. What message? Pick one. I'm sure that international headlines about the Chinese government would be a good start. Chinese ex-pats should be able to tell people. Can't we get spammers to do something good once? The power of millions of sources of sensored material should be a challenge that the Chinese government cannot overcome with today's technology without shutting themselves off from the world again. It seems a simple thing to do, just spam the entire Chinese TLD space with news articles and information that has been previously sensored. After all, information wants to be free.... Well, its a thought.
to borrow the phrase. The Internet has revolutionized how information is shared, viewed, absorbed, distributed, and used.... The *AA, the governments in general, and many other people are not able to see that the world has changed and the old ways of doing things have to change, including the rules. Many campaign laws were enacted to stop particular misconduct by polititions. Obviously, those laws and practices were flawed in the first place, being aimed at stopping only certain practices. The laws should not be enacted to include the Internet... they should be fixed to prevent malicious political behavior in any manner.
There are several ways to do that, none of them are really elegant or pretty. The trouble with making new laws to govern politicians is that the laws are voted on by the very people they are aimed at? How this makes sense is not readily visible. If the Internet really works, the US two party system will become a 4 or 5 party system in the future... somehow, I think that money will always rule politics though. I think that if there was no money to be made, much of the poor behaviors of politicians would go away with them as they went off to make money elsewhere.
Stifling political comment on the Internet is not the way to stop politicians.... take away the money is.
This seems to me to be related, at least in part, to the practice of having governments prop-up certain industries. I personally see no actual good coming from this. As an example, if the government would simply let one of the airlines fold and go under, it would bolster all the others, sooner or later, via increased business.
I think the *AA are asking the government to protect their businesses, and doing so without thorough reasoning. If the *AA members cannot continue to make money with their current business models, and are not changing their business models, then LET THEM FAIL!
Clearly, there are arguments on all sides of this topic, but I do not think that the government/FCC/any-other-bureau should prop them up so they don't fail. If you can't stay in business on your own, using the existing laws if necessary, then you don't need to be in business. There is no need for new laws. Adding DRM to digital recorders is a ploy to take away our rights, bolster the *AA member's businesses, and build a foundation for continued bullying of the justice system to take away even more rights in the future.
that the argument about quality and such of OSS is no longer valid? If MS keeps using F/OSS, doesn't that actually validate the quality and value of F/OSS?
The more F/OSS code that is included in MS products, the more they take on the RedHat business model? Or am I just not seeing things the right way?
But the RIAA is a perfect example of why many people around the globe have the feeling that most of the USA is full of nut-jobs!!
What a load this trivial seeming crap puts on the justice system.... just outlaw the RIAA, revoke their copyrights, returning them to the artists and be done with it. The artists are not profiting from these lawsuits. Turning everyone from 18 to 80 into white collar criminals is so unbalanced as to be laughable.
I hope these women make a dent in the RIAA money stash. I no longer care if the *AA have any valid arguments, their behavior is disgusting, and continues to be.
What a sham! Trying to force a single mom, too ill to work, into debtors prison, or its equivelent? Anything with dignity, legality, and general social validity rarely ever culminates in such outlandish situations... at least not that I can think of.
So how does America (and the world) get the attention of sensible members of the justice system? How does the public reverse this trend? Don't tell me how they were criminal and wrong and deserve to be prosecuted. There is no smoke without fire, and the stories of such ludicrous racketeering behavior is probably just the smoke.. not the fire.
Didn't we all do this in chemistry class? I wonder how the patents are going to work on this? Pushing air and combustable gases into an internal combustion engine is not new? (nitrous oxide?)
From TFA: "He's not the only one trying to save the world, and to make a bundle doing it. Other companies have been working on the same theory of hydrogen generation and they are already suing each other over patent infringements."
Oh, and have you seen the cost of distilled water? Its not much cheaper than gasoline some places.
I sort of doubt the safety and savings claims on this. It certainly won't get much play from petroleum companies. I can just see them actively lining up to help sell you a hybrid vehicle that gets over 100 mpg in the USA.
This, I predict, will be another promise that goes unfulfilled....
Where is the F/OSS spirit? Guess it goes away when there are billions of dollars to be made?
The Roman empire, as others, was built by dominating all possible enemies, or politically playing them off against each other. This works okay for a while, but eventually it always seems to lead to the empire's undoing.
The Roman Catholic church, following the fall of the Roman empire, in turn conquered much of the world by assimilation and adaptation.
Perhaps MS will take this lesson from history one day before it is too late?
This is possibly a most evil move. MS buys into AOL and has control (of some sort) of the browser market (IE, Netscape, Mozilla funding) but even more evil is that MS buys into several other categories:
Digital content distribution (Time-Warner) VoIP (Time-Warner networks) Combined IM markets (AIM/MSN) DRM on all that content
I hope that those anti-trust government types see this as evil the way that I do. I can't remember what cable companies are tied up in this mess, should it happen, but this is a move by MS to take over communications, digital and voice, as well as a large share of content and content distribution. EVIL EVIL EVIL... that's all I can see in it.
I'm betting that the government will not be able to see the all digital, all-IP future that the FCC and others are trying to create being brought to a corporate congolmeration through moves like this one... Science fiction horror stories happening in real life.
The jokes about MSN and AOL securing MS position with worst portal and search abound, but it proves that most computer users don't care or are clueless. That means that if MS manages this, the world of digital content and communications may become a very bad thing... imagine using an MS phone service? or MSN cable? You'll soon be able to get a BSOD on all your entertainment and communication devices!
Its interesting that this might bring light to the EMI and RF radiation that is all around us. The work to filter out that noise and reduce it will go quite a long ways toward making wireless broadband more available, toward making things more capable, quiet, and efficient. This amounts to a step toward making RF polution a problem that needs to be addressed. Sort of like taking lead out of computer parts, but taking unneeded and nasty RF out of the airwaves. That would give more spectrum, and better use of the spectrum that is used. This is good.
Personally, if I have to load MS products to view, read, hear, or use something, then I will never view, read, hear, or use that data... period!
If DVD John can crack it, then it wasn't secure in the first place. In my opinion, DVD-J is making the world more secure by showing people that their encryption sucks. Go John go...
If you donate enough computer cycles, you can use the SETI@home points to buy your way off the Darwin Awards list, like a get out of jail free card... or at least keep your name from being used if you make the runners up list?
I think that some of us are not paying too much attention. All the buzz lately, in technology communications industries, the USPTO, the FCC, and just about anywhere you turn on the Internet, has been about broadband, wired, wireless, mesh, all kinds of broadband... for Google to buy up a small part of the worlds existing as-yet-unused-broadband infrastructure only means that Google wants to still be relevant in 3 years time. I don't think it means anything more than that... it is what every telecomms company should be doing to ensure relevance in the comming All-IP all the time world.
in this case anyway. The telecommunications world is quickly converging on all-IP based networks and services. Switched circuit and non-IP services will become irrelevant shortly. Legislation and taxation will see to this.
Without more spectrum and technology for ubiquitous IP networks, we will be stuck with whatever gets thrown out to the consumer and at whatever cost the big names can squeeze from our wallets.
More is better. More dual and tri-band devices, Wireless VoIP, streaming audio and video, until we have communicator badges and tri-corders everywhere.
is what this is all about. When the excriment hits the oscillating air movement device, companies want someone or some company that they can put their feet to the fire and blame them instead of taking the blame. Look at the recent personal indentification information losses. How many companies simply said "oh, sorry, we fscked up"????
Reliability and performance mean nothing if there is a group of people standing by waiting to rush in and fix company XYZ's problems when they happen, no matter if the problems are because of the software or not.
Reliability and performace translate to 'no liability' and 'we don't perform, you do' in the real world of business. When thousands or millions of dollars, not to mention customer experience, are on the line, company XYZ is the last one to want to take the blame, especially if there is a software maker they can blame on lost data or lost network function.
Linux simply doesn't provide companies with this easy out, and until it does, there won't be large scale adoption of Linux in the business world. As mentioned, because MS is so large, they often don't have to take the heat, so its a lose-lose for businesses.
I work in a field where there is a lot of proprietary software (some of it mine) and that is the case. The ROI (long term) is improved by having your own software teams, and managing the damage on your own, but that is not what businesses want, they just want to be able to throw money at the problem for a guaranteed fix. Its clearly bad business, but is the business model that software houses have been creating for decades.
I don't care how much outsourcing saves, it will never beat having your software knowledgebase in-house and ready to respond, not to mention having your finger on the check of those responsible for the code.
US businesses have pushed their responsibility out to others for so long, they are now addicted.... Changing drugs is as difficult as stopping taking them altogether.
How does this hobble technical innovation? It is a logical extension of CALEA.
I see problems with it, like Skype is not a US company and implementing CALEA functions for monitoring on Skype servers would not be legal in other countries?
I don't think that the government has a clear grip on what the Internet is yet, but by allowing VoIP to replace traditional switched circuit voice networks, they lose monitoring functions for legal wiretap operations. This just gives it back to them, though I'm not sure how they will implement it worldwide, nor do I think it can be done simply within the borders of one country since it is run over the Internet in many cases. Sure, if Comcast offers VoIP, then CALEA would apply, but I see trouble with Skype and Gizmo services.
Also makes me wonder how far the reach of CALEA will go, given the current state of anti-terrorism and related activities.
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Oh wait!! After 32 years of rejection, maybe this will be a GOOD thing? Yeah, alright! I'm going to get lucky .... in 2029.... maybe... fsck! space exploration is SLOWWWW
my horoscope... this could immeasurably ruin my life!! Don't these insensitive rock-et science clods know they could end up making it so I never meet a woman?
I'm continually amazed that MS has such traction that F/OSS has to fight to get anywhere. If MS and Linux were cars (never mind old jokes) people would be buying magazines to compare, taking test drives, and asking their buddies which one to buy... but with an OS, OMG, if you don't use MS, you must be one of those Linux geek nutjobs... and surely FREE software can't be as good as stuff you pay an arm and leg for... righ?
Why do we have to pass laws to compete with MS? That is the real story! I bet its an interesting read too... Shame that weather is the only thing that gets full coverage these days.
I know why they are cancelling funding... NASA doesn't have any bald chicks, so when they saw the movie, they knew that Voyager had to be stopped... Since no one can reach the power switch, we'll just ignore it till it returns and wants to meet the creator.
Disaster recovery, and maintaining operations in the face of reduced knowledge base and personnel are the two sides of the same coin. The military regularly does this (no comment on efficiency here) but business as a whole do not do this. /.-ers think in terms of IT, but there are other issues too. Think about customer service departments, billing departments, all facets of a business. Disaster recovery is not a simple or trivial issue.
Data back-ups and documentation are not sufficient. To truly be prepared, a company has to have an agreement with temporary worker agencies to replace certain people, and practice to make sure that the documentation is enough....
In the case of New Orleans, they not only need people, companies there need their buildings and hardware replaced. Other, less demanding situations are losing people because of personal responsibilities to family in the aftermath of the storms. Those people have to be temporarily replaced in some cases.
A truly thorough disaster recovery plan is both large, complex, and on some levels, very scary. It has to cover situations where the entire IT department is in the same bar when a bomb goes off. Who does what then? Do they tell the IT staff not to socialize together?
When the only legal person in your SMB is now missing, who steps in to sign that paperwork?
There are tons of things to think of. The simple things stick out, but true disaster preparedness is a horrific thing to accomplish, and it costs big $$$$$$$$$$$
Google for information, it is scary....
Two cents used...
nano-bio-tech that can alter DNA markers, or leave some sort of trace in your body to make your DNA "fingerprint" be different... and viola, we have almost every really bad scifi movies coming to fruition!
I wouldn't surprise me if they can already tell North Americans by their DNA because years of eating fast food has altered DNA....
FTFA: "The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Cancer Institute."
Of course it is funded by DARPA, the army would love to have medical advancements like that on the battlefield. When a necklace every soldier wears instantly tells the med-tech that the wound the wearer is suffering has punctured a lung or spleen or something like that.
I can also envision this kind of technology being incorporated in care-giving robots for the elderly and infirm. If you have a 'tri-corder' like medical diagnosis kit that can fit on a robot, the robot then would know what to tell the 911 operator when it called, other than "help, they've fallen and can't get up" and that makes this type of nanotech VERY cool. Talk about search and rescue... a robot finds bodies in the rubble, slaps a triage-analysis bandage on their skin and can then tell rescue workers what kind of medical treatments are necessary.... Well, I hope that is what comes of this stuff. That magic little microphone looking thing that Dr McCoy always waved around was damned cool!!
I suppose one of the real drawbacks is that drug screenings for employment might be used to cancel insurance and work contracts etc. based on ineligiblity due to pre-existing conditions and bad things like that. (uhhhh thinking of bad scifi movies now)
Still, its cool.
in the land of reality tv, why should any F/OSS group be admonished for using the MS media machine to advertise. This was so blatantly sarcastic that I laughed. Offering Yates a link to the KOffice website is hilarious!! I don't think anyone could have called him stupid any more pointedly and not used the word stupid or one of its synonyms.
.pdf format. Ignorance is a real enemy of the F/OSS community. More than just /.-ers need to know.
This kind of media circus brings attention to the KOffice products, and hopefully to other F/OSS offerings. There literally are people that don't know what is available, or that it can / does compete with MS Office. Not just that, there are millions of people who should know, but don't know that Adobe is not the only product that will save/print to a
Getting the information out there in the public view is VERY important. Doing it and making people laugh is even better! Well, I think so.
this type of contest will lead to advantageous developments in both solar energy generation and electrical power usage. Both of these can lead to a greener world. Sounds coy, but if everyone was contributing to the power grid instead of only sucking from it, the reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy would decrease. This is better for everyone (I'm NOT anti-nuclear or a global warming nutjob) and the planet as well.
As stupid as it sounds, I think that trying to use cleaner energy will lead us to better use of just about everything. If power were essentially free for all to use, there would be a massive shift of cultural and business boundaries. Anyone can donate farm equipment to poor 3rd world countries, but continuous powering of that equipment is the down side. If you teach them to fish with a huge fishing vessel, you still have to show them how to power it.
I'm not saying that power/energy generation and usage is the crux of the world's problems, but when you look at the list of problems, pick the one that gives you the biggest bang for buck when it is fixed, engergy generation/usage is close or at the top of that list.
So, in respect of the possible outcomes of such racing events, I have high hopes that it will lead the world to better ways of doing things. Hybrid cars are a good start, but the technology is still lagging behind where we really need it to be. Approximately 10-25% of US household budgets will be spent on fuels and energy this winter because of the recent hurricanes, damage, and of course price gouging. If we all had the capability of generating at least some of our own energy, it would be competition to other fuel/energy sources... which hopefully would drop the price as well as reliance on oil companies. This can't be anything other than good.
Perhaps windmills on the roofs are not a safe/good idea, but we need something.
that more people continue to think in old ways. What will replace the current plethora of computing devices in the home is a voice/audio interface, and it won't matter what the device looks like. The wireless phone will become the human interface, and when a display is required, the ubiquitous television will suffice. Keyboards are wireless already, as are mice. When required (which won't be much at all) they will interact with the hidden computer that is part of the entertainment center, using the tv for display, and normally the wireless phone as the interface. If its not as simple as gossiping over the fence, it will never get past the religious OS wars, and on to something really important.
... anyone that needs that little computing power at home is NOT likely to buy a wireless device that complex.... sheeesh, I wish people would remember the human factors... all of them: form factor, human interface, money/cost, usability, coolness, function/usefulness and a few others that marketing guys at Sony know all about.
IM-not-so-HO, until we get past fanatacism over small things, we'll never get to the larger more important issues. Computer science is really only beginning... Windows is not the end of development for computers. Think about the voice operated computer systems on Star Trek or any other scifi show. We have a long way to go. The home computer will not be replace by a mobile device... DUH
I wonder what happens if all those Chinese Yahoo users start getting emails from all over the world detailing the things they would like to know about their own government. How much can Yahoo actually filter? If it was as plentiful as spam, surely the message would start getting through. What message? Pick one. I'm sure that international headlines about the Chinese government would be a good start. Chinese ex-pats should be able to tell people. Can't we get spammers to do something good once? The power of millions of sources of sensored material should be a challenge that the Chinese government cannot overcome with today's technology without shutting themselves off from the world again. It seems a simple thing to do, just spam the entire Chinese TLD space with news articles and information that has been previously sensored. After all, information wants to be free.... Well, its a thought.
to borrow the phrase. The Internet has revolutionized how information is shared, viewed, absorbed, distributed, and used .... The *AA, the governments in general, and many other people are not able to see that the world has changed and the old ways of doing things have to change, including the rules. Many campaign laws were enacted to stop particular misconduct by polititions. Obviously, those laws and practices were flawed in the first place, being aimed at stopping only certain practices. The laws should not be enacted to include the Internet... they should be fixed to prevent malicious political behavior in any manner.
There are several ways to do that, none of them are really elegant or pretty. The trouble with making new laws to govern politicians is that the laws are voted on by the very people they are aimed at? How this makes sense is not readily visible. If the Internet really works, the US two party system will become a 4 or 5 party system in the future... somehow, I think that money will always rule politics though. I think that if there was no money to be made, much of the poor behaviors of politicians would go away with them as they went off to make money elsewhere.
Stifling political comment on the Internet is not the way to stop politicians.... take away the money is.
This seems to me to be related, at least in part, to the practice of having governments prop-up certain industries. I personally see no actual good coming from this. As an example, if the government would simply let one of the airlines fold and go under, it would bolster all the others, sooner or later, via increased business.
I think the *AA are asking the government to protect their businesses, and doing so without thorough reasoning. If the *AA members cannot continue to make money with their current business models, and are not changing their business models, then LET THEM FAIL!
Clearly, there are arguments on all sides of this topic, but I do not think that the government/FCC/any-other-bureau should prop them up so they don't fail. If you can't stay in business on your own, using the existing laws if necessary, then you don't need to be in business. There is no need for new laws. Adding DRM to digital recorders is a ploy to take away our rights, bolster the *AA member's businesses, and build a foundation for continued bullying of the justice system to take away even more rights in the future.
I say, let them go bankrupt!!
My 2 cents worth
that the argument about quality and such of OSS is no longer valid? If MS keeps using F/OSS, doesn't that actually validate the quality and value of F/OSS?
The more F/OSS code that is included in MS products, the more they take on the RedHat business model? Or am I just not seeing things the right way?
But the RIAA is a perfect example of why many people around the globe have the feeling that most of the USA is full of nut-jobs!!
What a load this trivial seeming crap puts on the justice system.... just outlaw the RIAA, revoke their copyrights, returning them to the artists and be done with it. The artists are not profiting from these lawsuits. Turning everyone from 18 to 80 into white collar criminals is so unbalanced as to be laughable.
I hope these women make a dent in the RIAA money stash. I no longer care if the *AA have any valid arguments, their behavior is disgusting, and continues to be.
What a sham! Trying to force a single mom, too ill to work, into debtors prison, or its equivelent? Anything with dignity, legality, and general social validity rarely ever culminates in such outlandish situations... at least not that I can think of.
So how does America (and the world) get the attention of sensible members of the justice system? How does the public reverse this trend? Don't tell me how they were criminal and wrong and deserve to be prosecuted. There is no smoke without fire, and the stories of such ludicrous racketeering behavior is probably just the smoke.. not the fire.
Its just disgusting...
Didn't we all do this in chemistry class? I wonder how the patents are going to work on this? Pushing air and combustable gases into an internal combustion engine is not new? (nitrous oxide?)
From TFA:
"He's not the only one trying to save the world, and to make a bundle doing it. Other companies have been working on the same theory of hydrogen generation and they are already suing each other over patent infringements."
Oh, and have you seen the cost of distilled water? Its not much cheaper than gasoline some places.
I sort of doubt the safety and savings claims on this. It certainly won't get much play from petroleum companies. I can just see them actively lining up to help sell you a hybrid vehicle that gets over 100 mpg in the USA.
This, I predict, will be another promise that goes unfulfilled....
Where is the F/OSS spirit? Guess it goes away when there are billions of dollars to be made?
The Roman empire, as others, was built by dominating all possible enemies, or politically playing them off against each other. This works okay for a while, but eventually it always seems to lead to the empire's undoing.
The Roman Catholic church, following the fall of the Roman empire, in turn conquered much of the world by assimilation and adaptation.
Perhaps MS will take this lesson from history one day before it is too late?
This is possibly a most evil move. MS buys into AOL and has control (of some sort) of the browser market (IE, Netscape, Mozilla funding) but even more evil is that MS buys into several other categories:
Digital content distribution (Time-Warner)
VoIP (Time-Warner networks)
Combined IM markets (AIM/MSN)
DRM on all that content
I hope that those anti-trust government types see this as evil the way that I do. I can't remember what cable companies are tied up in this mess, should it happen, but this is a move by MS to take over communications, digital and voice, as well as a large share of content and content distribution. EVIL EVIL EVIL... that's all I can see in it.
I'm betting that the government will not be able to see the all digital, all-IP future that the FCC and others are trying to create being brought to a corporate congolmeration through moves like this one... Science fiction horror stories happening in real life.
The jokes about MSN and AOL securing MS position with worst portal and search abound, but it proves that most computer users don't care or are clueless. That means that if MS manages this, the world of digital content and communications may become a very bad thing... imagine using an MS phone service? or MSN cable? You'll soon be able to get a BSOD on all your entertainment and communication devices!
EVIL EVIL EVIL!
Its interesting that this might bring light to the EMI and RF radiation that is all around us. The work to filter out that noise and reduce it will go quite a long ways toward making wireless broadband more available, toward making things more capable, quiet, and efficient. This amounts to a step toward making RF polution a problem that needs to be addressed. Sort of like taking lead out of computer parts, but taking unneeded and nasty RF out of the airwaves. That would give more spectrum, and better use of the spectrum that is used. This is good.
Personally, if I have to load MS products to view, read, hear, or use something, then I will never view, read, hear, or use that data... period!
If DVD John can crack it, then it wasn't secure in the first place. In my opinion, DVD-J is making the world more secure by showing people that their encryption sucks. Go John go...
If you donate enough computer cycles, you can use the SETI@home points to buy your way off the Darwin Awards list, like a get out of jail free card... or at least keep your name from being used if you make the runners up list?
I think that some of us are not paying too much attention. All the buzz lately, in technology communications industries, the USPTO, the FCC, and just about anywhere you turn on the Internet, has been about broadband, wired, wireless, mesh, all kinds of broadband... for Google to buy up a small part of the worlds existing as-yet-unused-broadband infrastructure only means that Google wants to still be relevant in 3 years time. I don't think it means anything more than that... it is what every telecomms company should be doing to ensure relevance in the comming All-IP all the time world.
in this case anyway. The telecommunications world is quickly converging on all-IP based networks and services. Switched circuit and non-IP services will become irrelevant shortly. Legislation and taxation will see to this.
Without more spectrum and technology for ubiquitous IP networks, we will be stuck with whatever gets thrown out to the consumer and at whatever cost the big names can squeeze from our wallets.
More is better. More dual and tri-band devices, Wireless VoIP, streaming audio and video, until we have communicator badges and tri-corders everywhere.
MORE IS BETTER!
is what this is all about. When the excriment hits the oscillating air movement device, companies want someone or some company that they can put their feet to the fire and blame them instead of taking the blame. Look at the recent personal indentification information losses. How many companies simply said "oh, sorry, we fscked up"????
Reliability and performance mean nothing if there is a group of people standing by waiting to rush in and fix company XYZ's problems when they happen, no matter if the problems are because of the software or not.
Reliability and performace translate to 'no liability' and 'we don't perform, you do' in the real world of business. When thousands or millions of dollars, not to mention customer experience, are on the line, company XYZ is the last one to want to take the blame, especially if there is a software maker they can blame on lost data or lost network function.
Linux simply doesn't provide companies with this easy out, and until it does, there won't be large scale adoption of Linux in the business world. As mentioned, because MS is so large, they often don't have to take the heat, so its a lose-lose for businesses.
I work in a field where there is a lot of proprietary software (some of it mine) and that is the case. The ROI (long term) is improved by having your own software teams, and managing the damage on your own, but that is not what businesses want, they just want to be able to throw money at the problem for a guaranteed fix. Its clearly bad business, but is the business model that software houses have been creating for decades.
I don't care how much outsourcing saves, it will never beat having your software knowledgebase in-house and ready to respond, not to mention having your finger on the check of those responsible for the code.
US businesses have pushed their responsibility out to others for so long, they are now addicted.... Changing drugs is as difficult as stopping taking them altogether.
Well, that's my tuppence worth
How does this hobble technical innovation? It is a logical extension of CALEA.
I see problems with it, like Skype is not a US company and implementing CALEA functions for monitoring on Skype servers would not be legal in other countries?
I don't think that the government has a clear grip on what the Internet is yet, but by allowing VoIP to replace traditional switched circuit voice networks, they lose monitoring functions for legal wiretap operations. This just gives it back to them, though I'm not sure how they will implement it worldwide, nor do I think it can be done simply within the borders of one country since it is run over the Internet in many cases. Sure, if Comcast offers VoIP, then CALEA would apply, but I see trouble with Skype and Gizmo services.
Also makes me wonder how far the reach of CALEA will go, given the current state of anti-terrorism and related activities.
I just don't see how this hobbles innovation.