China is smart, that's all. They take what aids them from the globalisation hype, and block anything that would hurt them. They're the only country that had balls enough to tell the WTO in no uncertain terms to fuck off. I'm quite sure these political moves are a major part of their constant two-digit growth rate.
I, for one, care about two things. One is that Firefox gains enough market share that most sites make sure they work on non-IE browsers. And two is the distribution of the visitors of my site, which currently stands at:
Firefox 1148966 41.9 % MS IE 1084645 39.6 % Opera 205058 7.4 % Mozilla 181433 6.6 % Safari 47638 1.7 %
Which shows one thing: My "Spread Firefox" banner is working, at least on the people that play my game.
Microsoft is rich. They could give away everything they make for free for 20-50 years before going bankrupt.
No, they couldn't. MS is based largely on their stock value - their actual physical assets are pocket change compared to that.
It would be headline news if MS quarterly profit would fall. If they started losing money, you'd read it in the mainstream press, front page, above the fold. All that negative press and the past history, plus the fact that they don't really have much to back up the stock means that stock prices would plummet.
Yes, MS could survive for a while on their cash alone. However, once they get to that level, they would have to, because stock holders would be selling like crazy.
They might recover, but it's unlikely that they would, because everyone and their dogs would use the opportunity to look for alternatives. When your company is built on the product of someone who is making headlines as going down the drain, you pretty much have no choice but to investigate alternate options, or your stock holders will hang you for being careless.
No, it shouldn't. School schould prepare a kid for life, which includes a lot of things that are not job-related. We don't teach history, politics and safe bicycle driving because it's a job requirement, you know? Schools are not workforce factories, they're what we came up with when life started to be too complicated to figure it all out on your own.
I'll tell you something about staff training: Back when I was in school, we (the 12th grade class) taught our teacher how to set up the network and essentially use the more advanced aspects of the machine.
Forget staff training. Give the kids the machine and they'll figure things out, and afterwards they will be very happy to explain them to the teacher. It's a form of empowerment.
Over a long time, in an environment with light, development of the eye becomes almost assured.
So much, in fact, that the idea was hit upon several times during evolution - we don't have one type of eyes on this planet, but well over a dozen. That's a crazy designer if you ask me ("now the insects, I think I'll give them completely different eyes, just for fun").
it used to be easy to toss out the trawlers based on their spelling alone.
And it still is. I don't have an account with the First Whatever Bank, so it must be spam. I know that neither paypal or ebay will send me mail asking for my password. I know that my bank doesn't even know my e-mail address.
I wonder if the testing includes monitoring the 'nightmare status' of the pre-schoolers?"
I wonder if the submitter has any clue as to what he's talking about. It's pretty difficult to give toddlers nightmares. They're not easily scared. They do cry over the slightest problem, mostly because crying is the only well-developed form of verbal communication available to them at that age. They are also excellent at forgetting whatever the problem was and getting on with their lifes. Watch a kid hurt itself. Then go away and watch the same kid 10 minutes later.
It'd take a serious event to cause nightmares in those kids, and that machine has neither the looks nor the sheer physical power that would be required.
Humans are driven by various needs (e.g. shelter/sex/food/beer) - what needs do the robots have?
The driving interest in toddlers (and that's what the article is about) certainly isn't sex or beer, and it also isn't shelter or fod - which is still provided by the parents.
The driving interest in very young kids is pure interest. Our brains are just wired that way. Curiosity is a built-in feature.
How long until congress goes the final step and auctions off laws? It's obvious that many of the recent laws are simply bought, even if the politically correct term is "lobbyism". Why not go the whole nine yards? In the long run, it'll be the only way to save the exploding deficit anyways.
Yes, the guy is crazy, and I speak as a security dude (who has also written for securityfocus).
He's right that even the paranoid have enemies. He ignores that many of the paranoid with enemies still get done in, despite all the paranoia.
The most important point, however, is that his approach to secure will do zilch to improve security in general. Microsoft releasing a new patch improves world-wide computer security a thousand times as much as his 50 character password.
Because frankly, I don't care if his machine gets hacked into, and neither does anyone else. But the two or three million hacked windos machines that are part of dozens of zombie networks, now that is a serious problem.
You should really read the press release that is on their main site.
It's so much tongue-in-cheek that it stops just short of saying outright "yes, it's a joke".
Then again, it's very refreshing to see that a corporate PR department can still get away with cheap shots at the CEO. Choice quote: "However, having seen Jon in his red beach attire before, I am not sure if swimming to the USA is scarier than exposing people to this sight."
Precedent doesn't have legally binding character as it does in the UK and (partially) in the US. However, a lot of case law does exist and it is meaningful.
The main difference is that a single decision, or even two, doesn't mean much. But after a while, it becomes more and more unlikely that a court would go a different way. Especially the higher courts, where your appeals would go, have a strong tendency to reinforce their own previous decisions.
Maybe not as a dance floor, but as a regular floor. Imagine the stuff you can do if you can make your floor any colour, any pattern, whenever you feel like it...
Then again, reading's a bitch when the light comes from below. Damn.
DNS isn't a phone book, never was, and never was intended to be one. It's a laziness mechanism. It was made so you don't have to remember four bytes of numbers, but can remember a name instead. Since humans are better at remembering names then numbers, it serves that purpose well.
If you want a phone book, maybe you should propose a suitable RFC? It's not as if the internet standards were not extendable, you know?
I am. The same way that my doctor will not bother to explain the fine details of my medical condition because I wouldn't understand it anyways. The difference is that the 'net has become an open access medium, while do-it-yourself surgery kits are not a big hype.
my telephone directory
Your telephone directory doesn't cover a couple billion numbers world-wide. The DNS does.
It's a question of yet another system that forces humans to bend to the limitations of computers.
Maybe. Then again, as long as you we have keyboards, "www.amazon.co.uk" is simply much more convenient to type than "Take me to the website of the amazon online shop in the United Kingdom".
It shows that the TLD idea wasn't thought through, or was designed to make people register many domains, generating loads of money
No, it shows that the TLD idea is from a time when net users were expected to have minimum tech knowledge. Once AOL entered the picture, the idea became too complicated for the average luser and broke down.
but the ultimate source of their profit has to be their own proprietary code, not the code anyone else can use for free.
Yes, in a way. There are many areas where no improvements were made to BSD code in windos, e.g. the TCP/IP stack.
because the adoption of the code by others leads to better interoperability.
That is a good point. Unfortunately, we are speaking of an entity that found a way to circumvent and exploit even that advantage, through their famous "embrace and extend" strategy (which, btw. is not a secret).
he likelihood is that the makers of the proprietary systems that dominated the market in the early 1990s would have ignored it, and it never would have caught on.
Or Free Software would have had a much earlier breakthrough. It's futile to speculate about pasts that did not happen.
You have a number of good points. I do think the GPL is the better deal but the BSD license certainly has advantages, especially to low-level code.
They must be desperate. They don't use the "everything you write becomes our property" clauses that are so common with similar "look, we let you contribute for free to a product that we sell" systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Company CEO says competitor will die. Film at 11.
Really, it's the job of PR to predict that the competition will go away.
China is smart, that's all. They take what aids them from the globalisation hype, and block anything that would hurt them.
They're the only country that had balls enough to tell the WTO in no uncertain terms to fuck off. I'm quite sure these political moves are a major part of their constant two-digit growth rate.
Big business tycoon announces that competitor will fail. Film at eleven.
...a statistic you haven't faked yourself.
I, for one, care about two things. One is that Firefox gains enough market share that most sites make sure they work on non-IE browsers. And two is the distribution of the visitors of my site, which currently stands at:
Firefox 1148966 41.9 %
MS IE 1084645 39.6 %
Opera 205058 7.4 %
Mozilla 181433 6.6 %
Safari 47638 1.7 %
Which shows one thing: My "Spread Firefox" banner is working, at least on the people that play my game.
Microsoft is rich. They could give away everything they make for free for 20-50 years before going bankrupt.
No, they couldn't. MS is based largely on their stock value - their actual physical assets are pocket change compared to that.
It would be headline news if MS quarterly profit would fall. If they started losing money, you'd read it in the mainstream press, front page, above the fold.
All that negative press and the past history, plus the fact that they don't really have much to back up the stock means that stock prices would plummet.
Yes, MS could survive for a while on their cash alone. However, once they get to that level, they would have to, because stock holders would be selling like crazy.
They might recover, but it's unlikely that they would, because everyone and their dogs would use the opportunity to look for alternatives. When your company is built on the product of someone who is making headlines as going down the drain, you pretty much have no choice but to investigate alternate options, or your stock holders will hang you for being careless.
Shouldn't a school prepare a kid for a job.
No, it shouldn't. School schould prepare a kid for life, which includes a lot of things that are not job-related.
We don't teach history, politics and safe bicycle driving because it's a job requirement, you know? Schools are not workforce factories, they're what we came up with when life started to be too complicated to figure it all out on your own.
I'll tell you something about staff training: Back when I was in school, we (the 12th grade class) taught our teacher how to set up the network and essentially use the more advanced aspects of the machine.
Forget staff training. Give the kids the machine and they'll figure things out, and afterwards they will be very happy to explain them to the teacher. It's a form of empowerment.
Over a long time, in an environment with light, development of the eye becomes almost assured.
So much, in fact, that the idea was hit upon several times during evolution - we don't have one type of eyes on this planet, but well over a dozen. That's a crazy designer if you ask me ("now the insects, I think I'll give them completely different eyes, just for fun").
True. However, over here few ISPs carry the alt.binary.* hierarchy. :(
Bwuahahahahahahahaha!
The creators of DOS and Windos talk about "can't crash"
Oh my.
Pffft.
Stop it, it hurts. All the laughter, oh the pain...
Puh. Now that was a good one.
it used to be easy to toss out the trawlers based on their spelling alone.
And it still is. I don't have an account with the First Whatever Bank, so it must be spam. I know that neither paypal or ebay will send me mail asking for my password. I know that my bank doesn't even know my e-mail address.
What is wrong with you people?
I wonder if the testing includes monitoring the 'nightmare status' of the pre-schoolers?"
I wonder if the submitter has any clue as to what he's talking about.
It's pretty difficult to give toddlers nightmares. They're not easily scared. They do cry over the slightest problem, mostly because crying is the only well-developed form of verbal communication available to them at that age. They are also excellent at forgetting whatever the problem was and getting on with their lifes. Watch a kid hurt itself. Then go away and watch the same kid 10 minutes later.
It'd take a serious event to cause nightmares in those kids, and that machine has neither the looks nor the sheer physical power that would be required.
Humans are driven by various needs (e.g. shelter/sex/food/beer) - what needs do the robots have?
The driving interest in toddlers (and that's what the article is about) certainly isn't sex or beer, and it also isn't shelter or fod - which is still provided by the parents.
The driving interest in very young kids is pure interest. Our brains are just wired that way. Curiosity is a built-in feature.
How long until congress goes the final step and auctions off laws? It's obvious that many of the recent laws are simply bought, even if the politically correct term is "lobbyism". Why not go the whole nine yards? In the long run, it'll be the only way to save the exploding deficit anyways.
Yes, the guy is crazy, and I speak as a security dude (who has also written for securityfocus).
He's right that even the paranoid have enemies. He ignores that many of the paranoid with enemies still get done in, despite all the paranoia.
The most important point, however, is that his approach to secure will do zilch to improve security in general. Microsoft releasing a new patch improves world-wide computer security a thousand times as much as his 50 character password.
Because frankly, I don't care if his machine gets hacked into, and neither does anyone else. But the two or three million hacked windos machines that are part of dozens of zombie networks, now that is a serious problem.
You should really read the press release that is on their main site.
It's so much tongue-in-cheek that it stops just short of saying outright "yes, it's a joke".
Then again, it's very refreshing to see that a corporate PR department can still get away with cheap shots at the CEO. Choice quote: "However, having seen Jon in his red beach attire before, I am not sure if swimming to the USA is scarier than exposing people to this sight."
Parent isn't entirely true.
Precedent doesn't have legally binding character as it does in the UK and (partially) in the US. However, a lot of case law does exist and it is meaningful.
The main difference is that a single decision, or even two, doesn't mean much. But after a while, it becomes more and more unlikely that a court would go a different way. Especially the higher courts, where your appeals would go, have a strong tendency to reinforce their own previous decisions.
IANAL, but my job that requires that I almost am.
I want one!
Maybe not as a dance floor, but as a regular floor. Imagine the stuff you can do if you can make your floor any colour, any pattern, whenever you feel like it...
Then again, reading's a bitch when the light comes from below. Damn.
Xbox 2 will be revealed on live TV on May 12.
Two additional games will be revealed on June, 17. A third is expected before August.
DNS isn't a phone book, never was, and never was intended to be one. It's a laziness mechanism. It was made so you don't have to remember four bytes of numbers, but can remember a name instead. Since humans are better at remembering names then numbers, it serves that purpose well.
If you want a phone book, maybe you should propose a suitable RFC? It's not as if the internet standards were not extendable, you know?
Be an elitist if you like.
I am. The same way that my doctor will not bother to explain the fine details of my medical condition because I wouldn't understand it anyways. The difference is that the 'net has become an open access medium, while do-it-yourself surgery kits are not a big hype.
my telephone directory
Your telephone directory doesn't cover a couple billion numbers world-wide. The DNS does.
It's a question of yet another system that forces humans to bend to the limitations of computers.
Maybe. Then again, as long as you we have keyboards, "www.amazon.co.uk" is simply much more convenient to type than "Take me to the website of the amazon online shop in the United Kingdom".
It shows that the TLD idea wasn't thought through, or was designed to make people register many domains, generating loads of money
No, it shows that the TLD idea is from a time when net users were expected to have minimum tech knowledge. Once AOL entered the picture, the idea became too complicated for the average luser and broke down.
but the ultimate source of their profit has to be their own proprietary code, not the code anyone else can use for free.
Yes, in a way. There are many areas where no improvements were made to BSD code in windos, e.g. the TCP/IP stack.
because the adoption of the code by others leads to better interoperability.
That is a good point. Unfortunately, we are speaking of an entity that found a way to circumvent and exploit even that advantage, through their famous "embrace and extend" strategy (which, btw. is not a secret).
he likelihood is that the makers of the proprietary systems that dominated the market in the early 1990s would have ignored it, and it never would have caught on.
Or Free Software would have had a much earlier breakthrough. It's futile to speculate about pasts that did not happen.
You have a number of good points. I do think the GPL is the better deal but the BSD license certainly has advantages, especially to low-level code.
They must be desperate. They don't use the "everything you write becomes our property" clauses that are so common with similar "look, we let you contribute for free to a product that we sell" systems.
I stand corrected:
BSD code they can profit from for free, GPL code they can not.
Or: One's a gift, the other is a mutual exchange. Hey, who doesn't like gifts?