"There's nothing wrong with standing on a street corner with a megaphone saying that my ex-employer laid me off and I think they suck for doing so.."
Yes, but it WOULD be wrong if you stood out front and said that they were homophobes, or discriminated against women, and it WAS NOT TRUE. Just like it would be illegal for your employer to post on the front of their web site that you were fired for peddling kiddie porn via corporate servers, and were really just laid off because the company was running out of money.
The street works both ways. Neither of theirs are cases in which someone was out there spreading the truth in a journalistic intent, these cases are merely sophomoric harassment, and garner no protection under our laws.
Exactly what I was thinking. Apple is no longer concerned with any sort of long-term, intelligent strategy because they simply cannot keep up with the X86 world. For them it makes more sense to focus on selling overpriced hardware in burts based on marketing hype, brand loyalty, and the fact that a LOT of people absolutely hate using Windows, but cannot manage to get by with Linux/BSD on their primary desktops.
The only reason I own an Apple is because I need a laptop that just simply works with almost no hassle when away from home; my TiBook running OS X is a dream compared to dealing with strange Linux/Windows issues when I am at a friend's house, game store, library, etc.. This is in part due to the fact that there isn't much OS X software to begin with, and 99% of the GNU stuff I can get for it is utterly unneeded (At least by me.) on a simple desktop, so I wonder how much that will have changed in another year when 10.2 is out, Aqua performance is better, and there is actually some software for the damned thing. What I am pointing out here is that Apple fills a niche market, and would much rather just keep going and let people fall into that niche and then hang around if they feel like it, than to try and suck in every potential customer on earth and hold them forever like the Wintel world wants to.
To all the people griping along the lines of "It is so horrible for us to do this when we don't do the same to China/India/Russia..."
If you really want to see the government do the right thing, call or write the politicians who did THIS, as well as their buddies, and commend them. Let them realize that the American people will support them when they do the right thing against smaller countries, and maybe they will start showing the courage to try pulling the stops against other nations guilty of human rights violations, which piss us off but do not hurt us economically. If all the politicians ever hear from people is "This sucks, these guys only do this to satisfy company X.," they sure as hell won't be willing to do something nasty just to protect the rights of some shmucks that they never deal with anyway.
"It seems to me it would make it more appealing to.coms to use the free software but..."
You forget how many big hardware/software companies were FUNDING the dotcoms. Microsoft, Netscape/AOL, Sun, Novell, Oracle, and plenty of other companies with reason to push commercial software were giving the dotcoms quite a lot of their startup capital, much of the capital often came on the agreement to use/promote/develop a capital provider's product(s). Using Free/Open-Source software was seen as ingrateful by much of the industry, and for many of the dotcoms software costs were just a tiny part of their overall insane operating costs.
Spymac original video/images
on
Apple PDA?
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· Score: 4, Informative
and have them all on a network share ahead of time... hell, build CDs with the cracked executables in place of the originals and just install with those...
Being a young sysadmin with a bunch of young sysadmin friends, I can honestly tell you that this sort of thing happens pretty often, some crotchety old bugger getting pissed off when he realizes that someone half his age is making nearly as much money as he is.
Your best bet at this point is probably to quit and go find a job elsewhere that pays more, which will likely send your stupid coworkers into whole new levels of pissed off. Good luck.
"so basically all the old farts : what does that tell us ?"
1- Only old farts have the money for the lawyers and lobbyists (And even they play benefits to pay for this sort of thing.). Lawyers and lobbyists don't work cheap, especially when going up against the RIAA.
2- Old farts get shafted more by the record companies. When older artists want to go in a different musical direction, record companies often refuse to release the tracks because they don't sound like previous hits.
My sentiments exactly. One thing to remember though, is that Prince is a VERY popular live act and his concerts almost always sell out, so when Prince plays a show it is usually not announced more than seven days in advance to deter scalpers, and in large cities concerts are often only announced day of show.
That said, I have already written to Prince asking why he is not on the bill, for those of you who want to remind him, email utellus@npgonlineltd.com, Prince himself reads many of the emails that go to that address.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein seems pretty badass, and the Linux executables were available within a few days of the game release.
Tribes 2 for Linux would be great if all the people playing the Windows version weren't watching their game crash all the time. Nothing like watching someone crash while running the flag.
"But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know."
Bullshit. Microsoft Office is a hideous, convoluted, unintuitive mess. I grew up on WordPerfect, Lotus, Wordstar, AmiPro/Wordpro, and a host of other GOOD productivity software. It never crashed, I never had any problems with "Microsoft Installer" files becoming corrupted and forcing regular reinstalls, etc.. I have and always will be better off working with good software (Lately StarOffice and Appleworks.) and avoiding Microsoft Office like the plague it is. Microsoft Office only got where it is because Microsoft got the US Government hooked on it, and from there it spread to government contractors and finance companies throughout the business world, and by strongarming OEMs into including it with their systems.
Eventually the world will wake up and realize that MS Office is CRAP, and that people really only use it because Microsoft wants you to!
"...but soon their Manassas, VA facilities will belong to Micron..."
I have quite a few friends who work there, and the japanese never really seemed all that great at managing Americans in a factory environment. Hopefully Micron can do better...
I am an excellent student, and did very well in math classes until middle school. You see, I have this strange problem with math; I can process mathematics just fine, but I am almost entirely unable to recall from memory almost any mathematical theory beyond simple logic or multiplication. Put a decent text or a good set of notes from such a text in front of me, and I can plow through math with no trouble. Take it away, and I am unable to even handle that pythagorean theorem stuff.
This, of course, led to terrible grades and multiple math class failures in high school; due to the fact that no matter how much I tried or studied the shit just would NOT stay in my fucking head. Know how I finally got through? I convinced my mom to buy me a TI-85 calculator that I plugged all of my math notes into every day, and used it during ever single test I took. If my teachers had been pompous pricks like you, I would have been simply branded a cheater and never finished high school.
Teachers like you prove the old adage "Those who can do, those who can't, teach." If inflexible morons like you were allowed to exist in the business world, programmers would suffer having to work without reference, sysadmins without man pages, et al.
I only hope that as mankind progresses, we can isolate the gene that produces personalities like yours, and destroy it- and people like you- utterly.
I might if I could get it from a reputable vendor. My big problem is that laptops are not cheap, and with Intel strongarming the industry to stick with their low-power chips, it seems that many of the OEMs selling Crusoe machines are the ones with nothing to lose.
Of course, if Micros~t released a Crusoe-based web pad I would buy one, and spend the next couple weeks beating my head against the wall to get it running *NIX...
DVD manufacturers don't give a shit what you want. They don't have to. They can phase this into being en masse, and eventually you won't have a choice.
Hell, in the long run you will end up buying one anyone. So will 99% of the/.'ers out there, who still maintain a Windows boot partition to run Diablo II for Windows. Linux geeks love to scream and bitch about stuff like this, and demand boycotts, and the/. editors still constantly post about how great the "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" movies are, usually within hours of complaining about the horrible actions of the movie companies against "freedom."
Geeks have no conviction. In the long run/. readers are a bunch of lazy, overweight dorks happy to just sit inside enjoying their high-paying computer jobs, and go home at night to engrosse themselves in pop culture.
Salon should look into selling/licensing their code to other content providers. Bandwidth is not getting any cheaper, and a cash strapped web company would probably love a chance to buy Salon's code as opposed to spending the money to do this themselves. I know that it is not Salon's MO, but they need money, and so does just about everybody else on the web.
Hacking a computer is nice and no big deal, because they are cheap (Compared to cars.) and unnecessary for things like getting to work, the grocery store, etc. If I screw up my computer, no big deal, it can wait to be fixed. If I screw up my car, my life is thrown into a screwy loop. If my computer is stolen I go drop $1500 on a new one and wait for the insurance company to reimburse me, if my car is stolen I cannot go anywhere until the insurance company reimburses the creditor of the car and I can buy a new one.
Cars are not meant to be toys anymore. If you really insist on playing with your car, buy an old mustang that you don't need to worry about.
The last time I checked, New Zealand had a federal government, to which they pay taxes. Believe it or not, the United States is not the only nation on Earth with a federal government, nor is it the only one where it makes more sense to get yearly tax breaks on least equipment rather than tax breaks every couple of years for new equipment that may need to be replaced yearly.
The new Super Cub.
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Wnat to know why this is a big deal? Because if it is a small, fast, cheap vehicle, it could be the next Honda Super Cub is a small, cheap scooter that has long been a popular mode of transportation in Europe and third world nations, where the people have little money for vehicles and fuel, or storage space. Honda has been selling the Super Cub for decades, and Super Cub sales worldwide have been a huge staple of Honda's income for a long time. The Super Cub was also an excellent advertising tool, as it made the association of cheap and reliable with Honda for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide.
If "it" can handle travel on a crappy dirt road, and sells cheap, this thing has the potential to be huge in areas with electricity. It could make a company, and in the long-run, be a pretty big deal.
Of course, I personally think that Kamen works for Microsoft and is going to show off the new....
Given the replaceable nature of the machines involved, they are probably all leased to provide WETA the most advantageous position possible from a federal tax break standpoint, after which they are probably returned to the owner who sells them to companies in developing nations at discounted prices.
Re:Not willing to go to jail to prove a point?
on
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
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· Score: 2
Your own post pointed out how wrong you are.
"It is copyright infringement to distribute..."
It is NOT, however, illegal to recieve.
Slashdot Mirror
"There's nothing wrong with standing on a street corner with a megaphone saying that my ex-employer laid me off and I think they suck for doing so.."
Yes, but it WOULD be wrong if you stood out front and said that they were homophobes, or discriminated against women, and it WAS NOT TRUE. Just like it would be illegal for your employer to post on the front of their web site that you were fired for peddling kiddie porn via corporate servers, and were really just laid off because the company was running out of money.
The street works both ways. Neither of theirs are cases in which someone was out there spreading the truth in a journalistic intent, these cases are merely sophomoric harassment, and garner no protection under our laws.
Exactly what I was thinking. Apple is no longer concerned with any sort of long-term, intelligent strategy because they simply cannot keep up with the X86 world. For them it makes more sense to focus on selling overpriced hardware in burts based on marketing hype, brand loyalty, and the fact that a LOT of people absolutely hate using Windows, but cannot manage to get by with Linux/BSD on their primary desktops.
The only reason I own an Apple is because I need a laptop that just simply works with almost no hassle when away from home; my TiBook running OS X is a dream compared to dealing with strange Linux/Windows issues when I am at a friend's house, game store, library, etc.. This is in part due to the fact that there isn't much OS X software to begin with, and 99% of the GNU stuff I can get for it is utterly unneeded (At least by me.) on a simple desktop, so I wonder how much that will have changed in another year when 10.2 is out, Aqua performance is better, and there is actually some software for the damned thing. What I am pointing out here is that Apple fills a niche market, and would much rather just keep going and let people fall into that niche and then hang around if they feel like it, than to try and suck in every potential customer on earth and hold them forever like the Wintel world wants to.
To all the people griping along the lines of "It is so horrible for us to do this when we don't do the same to China/India/Russia..."
If you really want to see the government do the right thing, call or write the politicians who did THIS, as well as their buddies, and commend them. Let them realize that the American people will support them when they do the right thing against smaller countries, and maybe they will start showing the courage to try pulling the stops against other nations guilty of human rights violations, which piss us off but do not hurt us economically. If all the politicians ever hear from people is "This sucks, these guys only do this to satisfy company X.," they sure as hell won't be willing to do something nasty just to protect the rights of some shmucks that they never deal with anyway.
"It seems to me it would make it more appealing to .coms to use the free software but..."
You forget how many big hardware/software companies were FUNDING the dotcoms. Microsoft, Netscape/AOL, Sun, Novell, Oracle, and plenty of other companies with reason to push commercial software were giving the dotcoms quite a lot of their startup capital, much of the capital often came on the agreement to use/promote/develop a capital provider's product(s). Using Free/Open-Source software was seen as ingrateful by much of the industry, and for many of the dotcoms software costs were just a tiny part of their overall insane operating costs.
http://www.spymac.com/iwalk/.
Username: iwalk5198, Password: Xv74mS2
and have them all on a network share ahead of time... hell, build CDs with the cracked executables in place of the originals and just install with those...
Being a young sysadmin with a bunch of young sysadmin friends, I can honestly tell you that this sort of thing happens pretty often, some crotchety old bugger getting pissed off when he realizes that someone half his age is making nearly as much money as he is.
Your best bet at this point is probably to quit and go find a job elsewhere that pays more, which will likely send your stupid coworkers into whole new levels of pissed off. Good luck.
"Does Unix really need Office at this point?"
Isn't that why we have StarOffice?
"When will this stop?"
When all you cheap bastards start buying CDs and going to the movies, instead of "sharing" ripped versions with each other 24/7.
Would you mind passing along his email address? I want in...
"so basically all the old farts : what does that tell us ?"
1- Only old farts have the money for the lawyers and lobbyists (And even they play benefits to pay for this sort of thing.). Lawyers and lobbyists don't work cheap, especially when going up against the RIAA.
2- Old farts get shafted more by the record companies. When older artists want to go in a different musical direction, record companies often refuse to release the tracks because they don't sound like previous hits.
My sentiments exactly. One thing to remember though, is that Prince is a VERY popular live act and his concerts almost always sell out, so when Prince plays a show it is usually not announced more than seven days in advance to deter scalpers, and in large cities concerts are often only announced day of show.
That said, I have already written to Prince asking why he is not on the bill, for those of you who want to remind him, email utellus@npgonlineltd.com, Prince himself reads many of the emails that go to that address.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein seems pretty badass, and the Linux executables were available within a few days of the game release.
Tribes 2 for Linux would be great if all the people playing the Windows version weren't watching their game crash all the time. Nothing like watching someone crash while running the flag.
If this means that they will start restricting my incoming traffic like AT&T does to many of their customers, I am going to be PISSED.
"But if you need to produce a document, spreadsheet or presentation, you're still likely to be able to do it faster and better by sticking with the Microsoft devil you know."
Bullshit. Microsoft Office is a hideous, convoluted, unintuitive mess. I grew up on WordPerfect, Lotus, Wordstar, AmiPro/Wordpro, and a host of other GOOD productivity software. It never crashed, I never had any problems with "Microsoft Installer" files becoming corrupted and forcing regular reinstalls, etc.. I have and always will be better off working with good software (Lately StarOffice and Appleworks.) and avoiding Microsoft Office like the plague it is. Microsoft Office only got where it is because Microsoft got the US Government hooked on it, and from there it spread to government contractors and finance companies throughout the business world, and by strongarming OEMs into including it with their systems.
Eventually the world will wake up and realize that MS Office is CRAP, and that people really only use it because Microsoft wants you to!
"...but soon their Manassas, VA facilities will belong to Micron..."
I have quite a few friends who work there, and the japanese never really seemed all that great at managing Americans in a factory environment. Hopefully Micron can do better...
I am an excellent student, and did very well in math classes until middle school. You see, I have this strange problem with math; I can process mathematics just fine, but I am almost entirely unable to recall from memory almost any mathematical theory beyond simple logic or multiplication. Put a decent text or a good set of notes from such a text in front of me, and I can plow through math with no trouble. Take it away, and I am unable to even handle that pythagorean theorem stuff.
This, of course, led to terrible grades and multiple math class failures in high school; due to the fact that no matter how much I tried or studied the shit just would NOT stay in my fucking head. Know how I finally got through? I convinced my mom to buy me a TI-85 calculator that I plugged all of my math notes into every day, and used it during ever single test I took. If my teachers had been pompous pricks like you, I would have been simply branded a cheater and never finished high school.
Teachers like you prove the old adage "Those who can do, those who can't, teach." If inflexible morons like you were allowed to exist in the business world, programmers would suffer having to work without reference, sysadmins without man pages, et al.
I only hope that as mankind progresses, we can isolate the gene that produces personalities like yours, and destroy it- and people like you- utterly.
I might if I could get it from a reputable vendor. My big problem is that laptops are not cheap, and with Intel strongarming the industry to stick with their low-power chips, it seems that many of the OEMs selling Crusoe machines are the ones with nothing to lose.
Of course, if Micros~t released a Crusoe-based web pad I would buy one, and spend the next couple weeks beating my head against the wall to get it running *NIX...
DVD manufacturers don't give a shit what you want. They don't have to. They can phase this into being en masse, and eventually you won't have a choice.
/.'ers out there, who still maintain a Windows boot partition to run Diablo II for Windows. Linux geeks love to scream and bitch about stuff like this, and demand boycotts, and the /. editors still constantly post about how great the "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" movies are, usually within hours of complaining about the horrible actions of the movie companies against "freedom."
/. readers are a bunch of lazy, overweight dorks happy to just sit inside enjoying their high-paying computer jobs, and go home at night to engrosse themselves in pop culture.
Hell, in the long run you will end up buying one anyone. So will 99% of the
Geeks have no conviction. In the long run
Salon should look into selling/licensing their code to other content providers. Bandwidth is not getting any cheaper, and a cash strapped web company would probably love a chance to buy Salon's code as opposed to spending the money to do this themselves. I know that it is not Salon's MO, but they need money, and so does just about everybody else on the web.
Hacking a computer is nice and no big deal, because they are cheap (Compared to cars.) and unnecessary for things like getting to work, the grocery store, etc. If I screw up my computer, no big deal, it can wait to be fixed. If I screw up my car, my life is thrown into a screwy loop. If my computer is stolen I go drop $1500 on a new one and wait for the insurance company to reimburse me, if my car is stolen I cannot go anywhere until the insurance company reimburses the creditor of the car and I can buy a new one.
Cars are not meant to be toys anymore. If you really insist on playing with your car, buy an old mustang that you don't need to worry about.
The last time I checked, New Zealand had a federal government, to which they pay taxes. Believe it or not, the United States is not the only nation on Earth with a federal government, nor is it the only one where it makes more sense to get yearly tax breaks on least equipment rather than tax breaks every couple of years for new equipment that may need to be replaced yearly.
Wnat to know why this is a big deal? Because if it is a small, fast, cheap vehicle, it could be the next Honda Super Cub is a small, cheap scooter that has long been a popular mode of transportation in Europe and third world nations, where the people have little money for vehicles and fuel, or storage space. Honda has been selling the Super Cub for decades, and Super Cub sales worldwide have been a huge staple of Honda's income for a long time. The Super Cub was also an excellent advertising tool, as it made the association of cheap and reliable with Honda for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide.
....
If "it" can handle travel on a crappy dirt road, and sells cheap, this thing has the potential to be huge in areas with electricity. It could make a company, and in the long-run, be a pretty big deal.
Of course, I personally think that Kamen works for Microsoft and is going to show off the new
Given the replaceable nature of the machines involved, they are probably all leased to provide WETA the most advantageous position possible from a federal tax break standpoint, after which they are probably returned to the owner who sells them to companies in developing nations at discounted prices.
Your own post pointed out how wrong you are.
"It is copyright infringement to distribute..."
It is NOT, however, illegal to recieve.