My current boss asked me what I thought of asking all employees to work 10-11 hour days until the company is profitable
It's a horrible idea, and I know what I'm talking about, I've got the professional background.
Long work hours are way overrated, especially for activities requiring thinking, problem solving and/or creativity. Chances are very good that it will lead to no improvement at all, since those additional hours are spent creating more problems and bugs that need more additional hours to solve.
Time does not feed linearily into productivity. If you force people to work long hours, you will find them creating more breaks. You can't stop them doing that, because they don't even notice themselves. But they will start to go for coffee, WC or smokes more often, or simply space out right at their desk. And in the end, you aren't after longer hours just because, you are after higher productivity. Improving processes (yes, I know I start to sound like a consultant, but that part is true), reducing waste time (like most meetings), raising employee motivation and other things like that are much more likely to increase productivity than longer hours are.
Then maybe it's not a very reasonable definition of "reasonable".
Or maybe you need to realize the entire world does not revolve around you and your budget. Industry standards regularily discard mom&pop in favour of, well, standardization.
I can only repeat: "reasonable" does not mean dirt cheap, and doesn't have to be, and there is no corporatism or redefinition of language involved.
"reasonable" in this context does not mean "so cheap every mom&pop can afford it". In this context, "reasonable" means you can't charge 52 gazillion trillion just to be sure you technically have an offer available for everyone, while in reality you want only your friends, whom you've given different terms, to really have it.
No, it isn't. The ICC is based on international law, was founded by the international community based on internationally accepted rules and principles. It has a clear (and fairly short) list of crimes it is responsible for. It has the required international(!) authority to prosecute those crimes, and its purpose is precisely to prosecute those criminals who have the power to make their crimes legally not crimes by changing the laws. If you object to the ICC, you should also logically oppose the Nuremburg trials, because most of the things the Nazis did was explicitly legal in the Third Reich. And no, that's not a Godwin argument, because the idea of the ICC goes back directly towards that, and the US prosecutor in Nuremberg was one of the most vocal proponents of the ICC.
It's also the reason that the "Invade the Hague" act was necessary.
Nonsense, that was necessary because the US did and does actively commit war-crimes in the countries it invades, and its leadership was afraid they might have to actually take responsibility for their actions one day. You know, a different kind of responsibility than stepping down with a nice comfy pension.
The stupid ad hominem attacks by the anonymous submitter aside, Peter Bright isn't really that far off the mark. He is quite correct in the claims he makes, which essentially boild down to two points: One, H.264 is an open standard, where "open" needs to be read in the context of standards, and none of the other are (though they are "open" in other senses of the word). And two, the move is more about having a free-as-in-beer standard than a free-as-in-speech one.
I don't really think that Google is the least bit worried about a few million bucks, so I am doubtful of his 2nd argument as far as it regards Chrome. But there are a couple good points in his first argument, especially when it comes to the question of control.
We could simply talk China and Japan into stop sending you toys. Since you've long since outsourced most of your own industrial capacities, the curtain would fall very quickly.
But be that as it may, if Twitter is a US company, based in the US, it is subject to US law. The EU can butt out.
You can start spewing lines like that when the US starts butting out about EU companies or persons, based in the EU, subject to EU law, in the same way. As it stands, the US doesn't give a flying fuck about jurisdiction when it comes to enforcing their laws. Piss off someone with enough lobbyists in Washington, and you will be sued in a US court even if you've never been to the US in your life. It doesn't matter to the US if someone committed a crime somewhere else (where it may not be a crime), they will prosecute.
Successful reproduction does not end at the insemination stage. While we still have a long way to go to understand the whole process, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the father is as important as the mother to a developing child, although in a different way.
In the US the age of consent in MOST states is either 16 or 17.
Which has no bearing whatsoever on this at all, because we are discussion a proposal of a european law. At least look up the appropriate definitions for Europe.
But, even so, the details of the definition of child porn do not matter to the issue at hand. Getting mired in that won't help the case. I totally agree that the examples you mention are insane. But this is not a winning argument if your goal is to prevent the installation of a government censorship infrastructure that would put the Great Firewall of China to shame. Getting your enemy tied up in the details is one very successful strategy of pushing stuff through.
First, aren't these people right in distrusting commercial US-developed software? It's not exactly as if backdoors, or US secret services influencing commercial entities, or the combination of both were an unfathomable, never-seen-before idea. On the contrary, if I were leader of a country even just friendly with someone who once knew someone who is related to someone who is currently on the US shitlist, I'd consider that a healthy dose of caution.
Two, isn't that what the concepts behind Internet technology were designed to do? Provide everyone with the same protocols, so they can have their own implementation of them? As long as my mail server is speaking SMTP, I can write it myself.
Perhaps illegal, but if you look at countries where enforcement is either not a priority or is only done when requested by the politically powerful, including by foreign governments that the local government is or wants to be on good terms with, the numbers change.
Names and numbers, please.
We've been having this exchange for a year now. Nobody on the pro-blocking side has been able to point out one single case of a site hosted somewhere where a simple request to the hosting company did not result in its takedown.
For a good starting point go back to the mid-1990s and count the number of countries that either had no laws outlawing child porn or no or minimal enforcement despite ample evidence it was happening.
Why don't you just post the numbers, instead of creating the impression in readers that there is a significant problem? Enlighten us, which countries did consider child porn to be alright in 1991?
Not everyone agrees what "underage"
Nor does it matter in this context. When politicians talk about "child porn" they never talk about 16 year old first-time-in-love teenagers exchanging nude pictures of themselves, even though that is legally child porn in some crazy countries. They always talk about very young kids, in the words of our prior minister for families, etc. - "sometimes even babies". If "underage" cuts the line at 21, 18, 16 or 14 doesn't matter if the pictures generally created are of 6, 4 or 2 year olds.
Not every person agrees what "porn" is.
Again true, but immaterial to the discussion at hand. The precise definition of the subject to be censored is inconsequential when the discussion is not what exactly should be censored, but whether or not to have censorship at all.
If you start to discussion the details of the deal, you've already halfway agreed. And I'm not doing that. I don't care about your precise definition of "porn", or of "child", because I don't want a censorship infrastructure and that's my point.
don't you see the risk of a gray zone in countries where the vast majority of people worships (and see as role models) prophets which had sex with individuals below ten years of age?
Pornography of any kind is illegal in all muslim countries and China. Child pornography is illegal everywhere else. There is absolutely no gray zone here at all.
Do you think that a "you can bang 'em, but no pictures allowed" attitude will effectively protect children?
Strawman. This discussion is about child porn, not about child abuse. We are talking about laws regulating mandatory Internet censorship infrastructures. In this context, pictures are what the matter is (allegedly) all about, so removing pictures from the argument removes the argument. Before you take that as supporting child abuse: No, it isn't, but I'm not discussing torture, war, hunger or any other real-but-unrelated issue.
let's keep an eye on traditional cultural acceptance of pedophilia, shan't we?
No, we shall not. Different discussion we can have at a different time.
Would you mind taking a break on your political agenda and clearly state your position regarding religious figures who weren't so clear cut on "kids out of the bedroom" behavior?
I don't give a flying fuck if your justification is religious, genetical, psychological or having seen it on a fortune cookie. I am pointing out a simple, provable fact: That we are being lied to. That some people with an interest are abusing children as a political argument to push through a law that will not save a single child from harm.
The simple fact that child abuse survivor organisations are up in arms against this law should be a clear indication that it doesn't do what it claims to do.
I would just say it's the eternal right-against-wrong battle.
There is no such thing. Everyone claiming there is always considers himself on the right side. Funny that.
Possibly. Then there is the analogy of watching a woman getting raped... I'm not the local police, but I'm going to step in. Doesn't that apply to larger situations as well?
In most countries you are actually required to step in by law. And hey, look, we do have international law that handles things like these. It usually requires something called a "vote" in an organisation called the "UN". I hear it even has its offices somewhere in the US...
If they would really want him for questioning only, flying a couple suits to his current UK address for tea would have yielded them any answers they are looking for long ago.
They certainly want more than questioning. That more may be nothing more than an egomanical "we set the rules here" pissing contest. But it isn't just about the questioning. You don't issue an Interpol arrest order to question someone.
You'd think sending a few suits to his current address in the UK and asking to speak with him there over tea would be a lot simpler, faster and more reliable. Provided questions is what they really want.
Gitmo is a facility of the U.S. Navy; I doubt he'd be held there as he's wanted by the Department of Justice, not the Pentagon.
Afghanistan is not exactly a navy operation, landlocked as it is. They still put a lot of people from that theatre into Gitmo. So it doesn't really seem to matter all that much.
Allow us to be a little bit sceptical about the whole "justice" thing in the US after Gitmo.
As long as Gitmo hasn't been closed down and every single one of its prisoners either released or put on an actual trial, nobody in the US has any authority on "justice" whatsoever.
The copyright industry is already on the record as saying (quote from memory) "child porn is great. It is something politicians understand, and we can use to make them implement the infrastructure we require. Then once it is in place, we can ask for it to be expanded using the usual channels and arguments, and add our own lists to it."
Which is why lots of people are fighting this one very hard, because on day one child porn will be blocked, but before the sun sets on that day, other interested parties will have sent in their requests, and before you know it, the big firewall of China has a western competitor.
Have you ever had the feeling that AI is getting to be just a little too commonplace?"
Uh, no?
Finding the solution to stuff that requires no creativity, lateral thinking, ethical judgement or other human qualities is what computers are freaking for. It frees our minds to tackle the tasks that computers suck at. Have we taken a time machine back to the 60s and are now all afraid that computers will replace us all?
permanently removing internet based child sexual abuse content at source, although this also runs into problems when the servers are based outside of your jurisdiction."
No, it doesn't. This is the argument the proponents of filters are putting forward all the time. They've smartened up since we sunk their ship last, and are now claiming their goal is to "only block where we can not delete".
Well, that would be nowhere because for a year now we've been asking them the same question, and they still haven't provided an answer: "Where in the world would that be?" It turns out that child pornography is illegal in every country on earth that has any Internet infrastructure worth mentioning. An especially naive and dumb politician here in Germany threw out a few country names when the debate started, and was quickly proven wrong in addition to receiving angry comments from those countries ambassadors. Then she tried a stupid trick, claiming that in some countries (again, names were named) there was no law against child pornography. She was technically correct - the muslim countries she had mentioned consider all pornography to illegal, punishable by death, so there is no specific law mentioning children.
This whole campaign has been lies and bullshit on the side of the proponents from the start. I have yet to hear one argument from their side that is not a lie. However, they aren't dumb. They know how to play the public. They tested the waters and found them hotter than they had anticipated. But their current campaign is lot more "reasonable". In a debate, they stand a great chance of being able to convince Joe Public that they have a moderate POV that takes all eventualities into account and only wants to reserve the most drastic measure for the exceptional cases, but those freedom hippies they are the extremists and refuse to consider the possibility of evil, evil people abusing children by the thousands.
So, remember, even the "block what we can not delete" is not a balanced position, it is a strawman. The only reason that the police here in Germany does not currently contact providers outside of Germany with a simple notice "hey, you are hosting child pornography, did you know that?" - which according to tests done by an NGO last year leads to a 95% takedown rate within a week, and a 100% takedown rate within a month - is that they are not allowed to do so. Not allowed by whom? Take a guess. Yes, that is right, the same people that need their "inability" to act so they can push for "block where we can not delete".
They are lying bastards, and children are the least thing they worry about.
So, whenever I download a few songs or movies, I'll simply put aside their regular price, in case the issue ever comes up. Then I'll point to this precedent and offer the collection as settlement.
MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.
The problem with the dinosaur metaphor is and always has been, that we are lacking a meteor.
I'd rather link it to a beached whale - it is certainly dead, but it will take a while to die, and while it does it is dangerous to come near it.
And don't forget that a juggernaut like this doesn't just go away. There will be the stench of rotting whale meat for a long time. When they finally go belly-up, there will be some assets that they can sell off, like the licenses to windows, office, etc.
Welcome to the wonderful world of microsoft. Most of us have been there 20 years ago - and left long since. You see, what their normal modus operandi is is using you as a paying beta tester. Other companies pay their beta testers, ms gets theirs to pay them. I doubt they have ever in their entire company history released a single actually finished product to the market.
this stops to a greater extent when we die, however forgoing being destroyed in a fission or fusion reaction the atoms that consist of "you" will continue for a long time,
You have a strange conception of what "you" is. The atoms in my body certainly are not "me". In fact, they get regularily exchanged. The "me" I experience is not in the matter. It's not in anything spiritual, either, I don't believe in that nonsense. "Me" is a process of experience, and thus a structure. You can take any single atom out of my body and my "me" would not even feel the difference.
And I don't see why you make a difference between chemical and nuclear reactions. There's no reason for that.
Upon death, what stops existing is not any particular physical process. What stops is the continuous self-experience of the structure. In geek terms: The program has exited, it doesn't care if the hardware continues to exist or not. Usually, the program stops running when the hardware is damaged. But the program is not identical to the hardware just because they are linked.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is one of the reasons so many current games suck badly and are full of bugs.
My current boss asked me what I thought of asking all employees to work 10-11 hour days until the company is profitable
It's a horrible idea, and I know what I'm talking about, I've got the professional background.
Long work hours are way overrated, especially for activities requiring thinking, problem solving and/or creativity. Chances are very good that it will lead to no improvement at all, since those additional hours are spent creating more problems and bugs that need more additional hours to solve.
Time does not feed linearily into productivity. If you force people to work long hours, you will find them creating more breaks. You can't stop them doing that, because they don't even notice themselves. But they will start to go for coffee, WC or smokes more often, or simply space out right at their desk. And in the end, you aren't after longer hours just because, you are after higher productivity. Improving processes (yes, I know I start to sound like a consultant, but that part is true), reducing waste time (like most meetings), raising employee motivation and other things like that are much more likely to increase productivity than longer hours are.
Then maybe it's not a very reasonable definition of "reasonable".
Or maybe you need to realize the entire world does not revolve around you and your budget. Industry standards regularily discard mom&pop in favour of, well, standardization.
I can only repeat: "reasonable" does not mean dirt cheap, and doesn't have to be, and there is no corporatism or redefinition of language involved.
"reasonable" in this context does not mean "so cheap every mom&pop can afford it". In this context, "reasonable" means you can't charge 52 gazillion trillion just to be sure you technically have an offer available for everyone, while in reality you want only your friends, whom you've given different terms, to really have it.
Funny, isn't that also how the ICC operates?
No, it isn't. The ICC is based on international law, was founded by the international community based on internationally accepted rules and principles. It has a clear (and fairly short) list of crimes it is responsible for. It has the required international(!) authority to prosecute those crimes, and its purpose is precisely to prosecute those criminals who have the power to make their crimes legally not crimes by changing the laws. If you object to the ICC, you should also logically oppose the Nuremburg trials, because most of the things the Nazis did was explicitly legal in the Third Reich. And no, that's not a Godwin argument, because the idea of the ICC goes back directly towards that, and the US prosecutor in Nuremberg was one of the most vocal proponents of the ICC.
It's also the reason that the "Invade the Hague" act was necessary.
Nonsense, that was necessary because the US did and does actively commit war-crimes in the countries it invades, and its leadership was afraid they might have to actually take responsibility for their actions one day. You know, a different kind of responsibility than stepping down with a nice comfy pension.
The stupid ad hominem attacks by the anonymous submitter aside, Peter Bright isn't really that far off the mark. He is quite correct in the claims he makes, which essentially boild down to two points: One, H.264 is an open standard, where "open" needs to be read in the context of standards, and none of the other are (though they are "open" in other senses of the word). And two, the move is more about having a free-as-in-beer standard than a free-as-in-speech one.
I don't really think that Google is the least bit worried about a few million bucks, so I am doubtful of his 2nd argument as far as it regards Chrome. But there are a couple good points in his first argument, especially when it comes to the question of control.
We could simply talk China and Japan into stop sending you toys. Since you've long since outsourced most of your own industrial capacities, the curtain would fall very quickly.
But be that as it may, if Twitter is a US company, based in the US, it is subject to US law. The EU can butt out.
You can start spewing lines like that when the US starts butting out about EU companies or persons, based in the EU, subject to EU law, in the same way. As it stands, the US doesn't give a flying fuck about jurisdiction when it comes to enforcing their laws. Piss off someone with enough lobbyists in Washington, and you will be sued in a US court even if you've never been to the US in your life. It doesn't matter to the US if someone committed a crime somewhere else (where it may not be a crime), they will prosecute.
So shut up when it's quid pro quo.
Successful reproduction does not end at the insemination stage. While we still have a long way to go to understand the whole process, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the father is as important as the mother to a developing child, although in a different way.
In the US the age of consent in MOST states is either 16 or 17.
Which has no bearing whatsoever on this at all, because we are discussion a proposal of a european law. At least look up the appropriate definitions for Europe.
But, even so, the details of the definition of child porn do not matter to the issue at hand. Getting mired in that won't help the case. I totally agree that the examples you mention are insane. But this is not a winning argument if your goal is to prevent the installation of a government censorship infrastructure that would put the Great Firewall of China to shame. Getting your enemy tied up in the details is one very successful strategy of pushing stuff through.
525 (in total) of 800,000 (per year). Introduced in 1996, that's 14 years, so 37.5 per year (on average) out of 800,000 per year. That is a fantastic
0.0047 % success rate
Absolutely something we all desperately need to know about.
First, aren't these people right in distrusting commercial US-developed software? It's not exactly as if backdoors, or US secret services influencing commercial entities, or the combination of both were an unfathomable, never-seen-before idea. On the contrary, if I were leader of a country even just friendly with someone who once knew someone who is related to someone who is currently on the US shitlist, I'd consider that a healthy dose of caution.
Two, isn't that what the concepts behind Internet technology were designed to do? Provide everyone with the same protocols, so they can have their own implementation of them? As long as my mail server is speaking SMTP, I can write it myself.
Perhaps illegal, but if you look at countries where enforcement is either not a priority or is only done when requested by the politically powerful, including by foreign governments that the local government is or wants to be on good terms with, the numbers change.
Names and numbers, please.
We've been having this exchange for a year now. Nobody on the pro-blocking side has been able to point out one single case of a site hosted somewhere where a simple request to the hosting company did not result in its takedown.
For a good starting point go back to the mid-1990s and count the number of countries that either had no laws outlawing child porn or no or minimal enforcement despite ample evidence it was happening.
Why don't you just post the numbers, instead of creating the impression in readers that there is a significant problem? Enlighten us, which countries did consider child porn to be alright in 1991?
Not everyone agrees what "underage"
Nor does it matter in this context. When politicians talk about "child porn" they never talk about 16 year old first-time-in-love teenagers exchanging nude pictures of themselves, even though that is legally child porn in some crazy countries. They always talk about very young kids, in the words of our prior minister for families, etc. - "sometimes even babies". If "underage" cuts the line at 21, 18, 16 or 14 doesn't matter if the pictures generally created are of 6, 4 or 2 year olds.
Not every person agrees what "porn" is.
Again true, but immaterial to the discussion at hand. The precise definition of the subject to be censored is inconsequential when the discussion is not what exactly should be censored, but whether or not to have censorship at all.
If you start to discussion the details of the deal, you've already halfway agreed. And I'm not doing that. I don't care about your precise definition of "porn", or of "child", because I don't want a censorship infrastructure and that's my point.
don't you see the risk of a gray zone in countries where the vast majority of people worships (and see as role models) prophets which had sex with individuals below ten years of age?
Pornography of any kind is illegal in all muslim countries and China. Child pornography is illegal everywhere else. There is absolutely no gray zone here at all.
Do you think that a "you can bang 'em, but no pictures allowed" attitude will effectively protect children?
Strawman. This discussion is about child porn, not about child abuse. We are talking about laws regulating mandatory Internet censorship infrastructures. In this context, pictures are what the matter is (allegedly) all about, so removing pictures from the argument removes the argument. Before you take that as supporting child abuse: No, it isn't, but I'm not discussing torture, war, hunger or any other real-but-unrelated issue.
let's keep an eye on traditional cultural acceptance of pedophilia, shan't we?
No, we shall not. Different discussion we can have at a different time.
Would you mind taking a break on your political agenda and clearly state your position regarding religious figures who weren't so clear cut on "kids out of the bedroom" behavior?
I don't give a flying fuck if your justification is religious, genetical, psychological or having seen it on a fortune cookie. I am pointing out a simple, provable fact: That we are being lied to. That some people with an interest are abusing children as a political argument to push through a law that will not save a single child from harm.
The simple fact that child abuse survivor organisations are up in arms against this law should be a clear indication that it doesn't do what it claims to do.
I would just say it's the eternal right-against-wrong battle.
There is no such thing. Everyone claiming there is always considers himself on the right side. Funny that.
Possibly. Then there is the analogy of watching a woman getting raped... I'm not the local police, but I'm going to step in. Doesn't that apply to larger situations as well?
In most countries you are actually required to step in by law. And hey, look, we do have international law that handles things like these. It usually requires something called a "vote" in an organisation called the "UN". I hear it even has its offices somewhere in the US...
If they would really want him for questioning only, flying a couple suits to his current UK address for tea would have yielded them any answers they are looking for long ago.
They certainly want more than questioning. That more may be nothing more than an egomanical "we set the rules here" pissing contest. But it isn't just about the questioning. You don't issue an Interpol arrest order to question someone.
He is merely wanted here for questioning,
You'd think sending a few suits to his current address in the UK and asking to speak with him there over tea would be a lot simpler, faster and more reliable. Provided questions is what they really want.
Gitmo is a facility of the U.S. Navy; I doubt he'd be held there as he's wanted by the Department of Justice, not the Pentagon.
Afghanistan is not exactly a navy operation, landlocked as it is. They still put a lot of people from that theatre into Gitmo. So it doesn't really seem to matter all that much.
Allow us to be a little bit sceptical about the whole "justice" thing in the US after Gitmo.
As long as Gitmo hasn't been closed down and every single one of its prisoners either released or put on an actual trial, nobody in the US has any authority on "justice" whatsoever.
Uh that would be last year.
The copyright industry is already on the record as saying (quote from memory) "child porn is great. It is something politicians understand, and we can use to make them implement the infrastructure we require. Then once it is in place, we can ask for it to be expanded using the usual channels and arguments, and add our own lists to it."
Which is why lots of people are fighting this one very hard, because on day one child porn will be blocked, but before the sun sets on that day, other interested parties will have sent in their requests, and before you know it, the big firewall of China has a western competitor.
Have you ever had the feeling that AI is getting to be just a little too commonplace?"
Uh, no?
Finding the solution to stuff that requires no creativity, lateral thinking, ethical judgement or other human qualities is what computers are freaking for. It frees our minds to tackle the tasks that computers suck at. Have we taken a time machine back to the 60s and are now all afraid that computers will replace us all?
permanently removing internet based child sexual abuse content at source, although this also runs into problems when the servers are based outside of your jurisdiction."
No, it doesn't. This is the argument the proponents of filters are putting forward all the time. They've smartened up since we sunk their ship last, and are now claiming their goal is to "only block where we can not delete".
Well, that would be nowhere because for a year now we've been asking them the same question, and they still haven't provided an answer: "Where in the world would that be?" It turns out that child pornography is illegal in every country on earth that has any Internet infrastructure worth mentioning. An especially naive and dumb politician here in Germany threw out a few country names when the debate started, and was quickly proven wrong in addition to receiving angry comments from those countries ambassadors. Then she tried a stupid trick, claiming that in some countries (again, names were named) there was no law against child pornography. She was technically correct - the muslim countries she had mentioned consider all pornography to illegal, punishable by death, so there is no specific law mentioning children.
This whole campaign has been lies and bullshit on the side of the proponents from the start. I have yet to hear one argument from their side that is not a lie. However, they aren't dumb. They know how to play the public. They tested the waters and found them hotter than they had anticipated. But their current campaign is lot more "reasonable". In a debate, they stand a great chance of being able to convince Joe Public that they have a moderate POV that takes all eventualities into account and only wants to reserve the most drastic measure for the exceptional cases, but those freedom hippies they are the extremists and refuse to consider the possibility of evil, evil people abusing children by the thousands.
So, remember, even the "block what we can not delete" is not a balanced position, it is a strawman. The only reason that the police here in Germany does not currently contact providers outside of Germany with a simple notice "hey, you are hosting child pornography, did you know that?" - which according to tests done by an NGO last year leads to a 95% takedown rate within a week, and a 100% takedown rate within a month - is that they are not allowed to do so. Not allowed by whom? Take a guess. Yes, that is right, the same people that need their "inability" to act so they can push for "block where we can not delete".
They are lying bastards, and children are the least thing they worry about.
Now that's cool.
So, whenever I download a few songs or movies, I'll simply put aside their regular price, in case the issue ever comes up. Then I'll point to this precedent and offer the collection as settlement.
MS is a dead company, but like the proverbial dinosaur the neural impulses havn't travelled all the way from the tail to the brain yet - MS, being the dinosaur that it is, doesn't yet realise its day is over.
The problem with the dinosaur metaphor is and always has been, that we are lacking a meteor.
I'd rather link it to a beached whale - it is certainly dead, but it will take a while to die, and while it does it is dangerous to come near it.
And don't forget that a juggernaut like this doesn't just go away. There will be the stench of rotting whale meat for a long time. When they finally go belly-up, there will be some assets that they can sell off, like the licenses to windows, office, etc.
Welcome to the wonderful world of microsoft. Most of us have been there 20 years ago - and left long since. You see, what their normal modus operandi is is using you as a paying beta tester. Other companies pay their beta testers, ms gets theirs to pay them. I doubt they have ever in their entire company history released a single actually finished product to the market.
this stops to a greater extent when we die, however forgoing being destroyed in a fission or fusion reaction the atoms that consist of "you" will continue for a long time,
You have a strange conception of what "you" is. The atoms in my body certainly are not "me". In fact, they get regularily exchanged. The "me" I experience is not in the matter. It's not in anything spiritual, either, I don't believe in that nonsense. "Me" is a process of experience, and thus a structure. You can take any single atom out of my body and my "me" would not even feel the difference.
And I don't see why you make a difference between chemical and nuclear reactions. There's no reason for that.
Upon death, what stops existing is not any particular physical process. What stops is the continuous self-experience of the structure. In geek terms: The program has exited, it doesn't care if the hardware continues to exist or not. Usually, the program stops running when the hardware is damaged. But the program is not identical to the hardware just because they are linked.