I like how he'll take my money and buy broadband for poor people. I was just thinking the other day about how poor people don't get to see enough pornography.
I'm glad he wants to modernize goverment services to cut costs but people who can't afford internet connections and/or don't want them can go to the library or an internet cafe. Providing internet access isn't the government's job.
I wouldn't expect that at all. If anything, I'd expect more votes bought from last term congress people. They have retirement to think about. No more cushy congress salary, so better get the most out of it while they can. And if they get caught, they were finished anyway.
The problem for those whose livelihoods or businesses depend on copyright isn't what a few Slashdot geeks say and think, but the fact that most cultures believe sharing what one has with others is a positive trait (generosity), while hoarding stuff that isn't actually scarce by nature so one can charge for it is a negative one (greed). This is why every major survey that's been done indicates that the public sees nothing morally wrong whatsoever in sharing files as long as it isn't being done for profit.
You're confused. Greed is a positive trait. It's the trait that makes the world go round. Do you think the people who built your house did it for the joy of giving you a place to live? Or the guys who built your car were thinking "Wow, I sure feel great some guy is going to have transportation!"? No, they did it for the paycheck. Everybody is greedy, and the sooner you realize it's not a bad thing the happier you'll be.
The key here is "company", i.e. commercial piracy, which most Slashdotters agree with the vast majority of non-Slashdotters is wrong, irrespective of what's being pirated.
No, it's not. The Slashdot community is pissed whenever anybody violates the GPL. IIRC, there was (some) outrage when some small distro tried distributing compiled ISOs and linking to the source code instead of providing it from their server. And it doesn't change the fact that individuals violating the GPL *could* be sued if the copyright holder wanted to.
Do you people even try the sfotware you're shitting on? OOo can read and write most Office documents without any problem. From what I've seen, the worst case scenario is there *may* be some formatting issues. I've heard rumors that the paid version of StarOffice is even more compatible than OOo, but I haven't used it myself.
Besides that, telling people "Sorry the formatting is a little off, we just saved $250k by not buying Office" is only going to make your company look good.
Also, your last complaint is irrelevant. If you weren't going to buy Office, you certainly wouldn't buy super expensive accounting software built on top of it. Even if you were that stupid, most employees don't use accounting and inventory management software, so you can save money by only buying Office for the accountants.
I don't think the AC was too far off. At the very least, the/. groupthink is confused.
File sharing violates the license that most music is released under. That license happens to be based on copyright law. But, the prevailing attitude on/. seems to be that it doesn't matter because music is just data, and sharing data is easy/cheap, so file sharing should be okay.
On the other hand, every time a story breaks about some company violating the GPL, the/. crowd throws a hissy fit, even though the same principle still applies.
The **AA's tactics are a bit heavy handed, and their "evidence" gathering is a bit suspect,but they're as in the right as people suing GPL violators.
I'm glad someone's finally doing this. People can't keep using the internet and keep being ignorant of computer/internet technology at the same time. Wise up or GTFO. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
That being said, insecure OS or not, if the user will download and install any random program, they're going to "get hacked" no matter the OS they're running.
You clearly don't deal with many professionals who spend hours a day in Office.
No, I have, which is why I'm so convinced Office is a waste of money for most businesses.
From what I've seen at a variety of employers, any word processor capable of basic text formatting, inserting tables, and creating bulletted/numbered lists would be completely adequate 99.99% of the time.
This is what's wrong with America. Instead of wondering how you can beat the Chinese, you're whining that you should get the job for no other reason than you live in America.
Or do you think lead is safe for children?
Hey, at least outsourcing to China will avoid asbestos, amirite?
Thats exactly it: nobody with power cares for the long term maluses by strongly pushing outsourcing.
Maybe you're not seeing the long term gains of outsourcing.
Maybe you failed to consider all the new factories that the outsourcing companies will have to build to handle the increased load? And what about all the people who will get new, higher paying jobs in those factories? And what about the the standard of living increase those people and their families get because of this? Oh wait, all those people will live in a different country. Racist much?
In that case, maybe you're forgetting the poor people in our country that will be able to afford new computers now? And what about all the money that will be saved by people/companies who buy Dells?
If nothing else, look at it this way: Now that Dell has fewer employees doing manual labor, they'll be able to hire more people to design new, better machines.
Your complaints don't make sense. Nobody uses Microsoft Office with the specific goal of using Office. They word process, or work with spreadsheets, or make a presentation. All of which can be done under Linux.
Same with games. Just because you can't play some specific Windows only game under Linux doesn't make Linux bad. It's like arguing Windows is bad because I can't play a PS3 specific game on it.
Linux isn't Windows. Some of the shit you're used to on Windows isn't going to work under Linux. If you can't deal with that, stop complaining and just use Windows.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I'm against the government spending tax money on anything that isn't absolutely necessary. IMO, the "liberation" of Iraq, social security, and "universal healthcare" all fall into the "not the government's fucking job" category.
Granted, you can look at the national debt and claim they're *not* spending tax money on them, but that's another issue altogether.
I'm confused. They "disabled right click"? In web browsers, or in general? What were they trying to achieve? I've never heard of anyone doing that. The more I think about it, the harder I laugh. That's gotta suck.
I disagree. For the time being, MS has almost nothing to lose from this. Companies and governments are still going to buy Office for Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook. Worst case scenario, they'll have to shell out an extra $50 for a third party ODF import/export plugin. More likely, MS will make their own exporter and include it. Hell, they could sell it as an add-on and make even more money off of Office. Just because Word will have to support ODF doesn't mean it has to be the default format. It only has to be supported well enough that people don't complain about it.
Like any geek, I like the idea of Microsoft being forced into submission, but document format standardization isn't going to be what does it. Maybe when the rest of the office formats are standardized.
You're missing my point. The main issue slowing adoption of Google Apps, OpenOffice, KOffice, Gnumeric, and the others is their poor compatibility with Office as a whole. ODF and OOXML cover word processing document formats. That still leaves spreadsheets, presentations, small databases, and the stuff Outlook does. Most companies buy Office and use that for everything. They're not going to stop using Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook simply because they can open Word documents in other programs.
My point: most companies will continue to use MS Office until there are standardized formats for the rest of the stuff Office does. ODF is an important step, but it's not going to have much impact until the rest of the office suite formats are standardized.
Yeah... But for many people who take work home, "work" could just as well include spreadsheets, presentations, and email. And since they're going to need Office for those anyway, might as well buy Office and use Word also.
As for businesses interacting with governments, a lot of that is already done through PDF. For the times it's not PDF, it's just as likely to be Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations, as it is Word documents.
I'm not saying the change shouldn't be made. I'm just pointing out that the people who think it'll be a big blow to Microsoft are probably wrong.
What do you foresee some of the practical implications being? Companies continue to use Office exclusively, but now their internal documents are saved in ODF?
Standardization is great, but this is such a small step I don't see it having an impact. Nobody is going to use two office suites. Nobody is going to buy Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access separately and then use OpenOffice for word processing. Until there are standardized formats covering the rest of Office's components, any actual change is going to be minimal.
Honestly, most companies will go with Office anyway because there's still Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Most of those are at least as entrenched as Word.
ODF vs OOXML is important in a philosophical kinda way, but I don't expect much practical change.
JavaScript is just plain weak. It should have been replaced with something with something more powerful years ago.
What features of a "real language" does Javascript lack? Can you give an example of something you could write in C/C++/Java/Ruby/Perl/Smalltalk/C#/Lisp/Fortran that couldn't be written in Javascript?
Slashdot Mirror
I like how he'll take my money and buy broadband for poor people. I was just thinking the other day about how poor people don't get to see enough pornography.
I'm glad he wants to modernize goverment services to cut costs but people who can't afford internet connections and/or don't want them can go to the library or an internet cafe. Providing internet access isn't the government's job.
I think that's part of what the OP meant by "If they'd done this from the start". Security that nobody uses or enforces might as well not even exist.
I wouldn't expect that at all. If anything, I'd expect more votes bought from last term congress people. They have retirement to think about. No more cushy congress salary, so better get the most out of it while they can. And if they get caught, they were finished anyway.
What? Some site asked for your email password, and you gave it to them? Shouldn't people reading Slashdot know better than this?
You're confused. Greed is a positive trait. It's the trait that makes the world go round. Do you think the people who built your house did it for the joy of giving you a place to live? Or the guys who built your car were thinking "Wow, I sure feel great some guy is going to have transportation!"? No, they did it for the paycheck. Everybody is greedy, and the sooner you realize it's not a bad thing the happier you'll be.
No, it's not. The Slashdot community is pissed whenever anybody violates the GPL. IIRC, there was (some) outrage when some small distro tried distributing compiled ISOs and linking to the source code instead of providing it from their server. And it doesn't change the fact that individuals violating the GPL *could* be sued if the copyright holder wanted to.
Do you people even try the sfotware you're shitting on? OOo can read and write most Office documents without any problem. From what I've seen, the worst case scenario is there *may* be some formatting issues. I've heard rumors that the paid version of StarOffice is even more compatible than OOo, but I haven't used it myself.
Besides that, telling people "Sorry the formatting is a little off, we just saved $250k by not buying Office" is only going to make your company look good.
Also, your last complaint is irrelevant. If you weren't going to buy Office, you certainly wouldn't buy super expensive accounting software built on top of it. Even if you were that stupid, most employees don't use accounting and inventory management software, so you can save money by only buying Office for the accountants.
I don't think the AC was too far off. At the very least, the /. groupthink is confused.
File sharing violates the license that most music is released under. That license happens to be based on copyright law. But, the prevailing attitude on /. seems to be that it doesn't matter because music is just data, and sharing data is easy/cheap, so file sharing should be okay.
On the other hand, every time a story breaks about some company violating the GPL, the /. crowd throws a hissy fit, even though the same principle still applies.
The **AA's tactics are a bit heavy handed, and their "evidence" gathering is a bit suspect,but they're as in the right as people suing GPL violators.
I'm glad someone's finally doing this. People can't keep using the internet and keep being ignorant of computer/internet technology at the same time. Wise up or GTFO. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
That being said, insecure OS or not, if the user will download and install any random program, they're going to "get hacked" no matter the OS they're running.
No, I have, which is why I'm so convinced Office is a waste of money for most businesses.
From what I've seen at a variety of employers, any word processor capable of basic text formatting, inserting tables, and creating bulletted/numbered lists would be completely adequate 99.99% of the time.
This is what's wrong with America. Instead of wondering how you can beat the Chinese, you're whining that you should get the job for no other reason than you live in America.
Hey, at least outsourcing to China will avoid asbestos, amirite?
Maybe you're not seeing the long term gains of outsourcing.
Maybe you failed to consider all the new factories that the outsourcing companies will have to build to handle the increased load? And what about all the people who will get new, higher paying jobs in those factories? And what about the the standard of living increase those people and their families get because of this? Oh wait, all those people will live in a different country. Racist much?
In that case, maybe you're forgetting the poor people in our country that will be able to afford new computers now? And what about all the money that will be saved by people/companies who buy Dells?
If nothing else, look at it this way: Now that Dell has fewer employees doing manual labor, they'll be able to hire more people to design new, better machines.
Your complaints don't make sense. Nobody uses Microsoft Office with the specific goal of using Office. They word process, or work with spreadsheets, or make a presentation. All of which can be done under Linux.
Same with games. Just because you can't play some specific Windows only game under Linux doesn't make Linux bad. It's like arguing Windows is bad because I can't play a PS3 specific game on it.
Linux isn't Windows. Some of the shit you're used to on Windows isn't going to work under Linux. If you can't deal with that, stop complaining and just use Windows.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I'm against the government spending tax money on anything that isn't absolutely necessary. IMO, the "liberation" of Iraq, social security, and "universal healthcare" all fall into the "not the government's fucking job" category.
Granted, you can look at the national debt and claim they're *not* spending tax money on them, but that's another issue altogether.
IDK, if you want to pretend the government is competent, I'd say tax cuts. Otherwise I'd agree with the guy who said paying down the national debt.
I agree completely about the war in Iraq. Huge mistake.
But spending the money on social security and universal health care instead would be replacing one big mistake with two big mistakes.
Maybe you should transfer. If they hire admins that bad, what does it say about the rest of their staff?
I'm confused. They "disabled right click"? In web browsers, or in general? What were they trying to achieve? I've never heard of anyone doing that. The more I think about it, the harder I laugh. That's gotta suck.
I disagree. For the time being, MS has almost nothing to lose from this. Companies and governments are still going to buy Office for Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook. Worst case scenario, they'll have to shell out an extra $50 for a third party ODF import/export plugin. More likely, MS will make their own exporter and include it. Hell, they could sell it as an add-on and make even more money off of Office. Just because Word will have to support ODF doesn't mean it has to be the default format. It only has to be supported well enough that people don't complain about it.
Like any geek, I like the idea of Microsoft being forced into submission, but document format standardization isn't going to be what does it. Maybe when the rest of the office formats are standardized.
You're missing my point. The main issue slowing adoption of Google Apps, OpenOffice, KOffice, Gnumeric, and the others is their poor compatibility with Office as a whole. ODF and OOXML cover word processing document formats. That still leaves spreadsheets, presentations, small databases, and the stuff Outlook does. Most companies buy Office and use that for everything. They're not going to stop using Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook simply because they can open Word documents in other programs.
My point: most companies will continue to use MS Office until there are standardized formats for the rest of the stuff Office does. ODF is an important step, but it's not going to have much impact until the rest of the office suite formats are standardized.
Yeah... But for many people who take work home, "work" could just as well include spreadsheets, presentations, and email. And since they're going to need Office for those anyway, might as well buy Office and use Word also.
As for businesses interacting with governments, a lot of that is already done through PDF. For the times it's not PDF, it's just as likely to be Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations, as it is Word documents.
I'm not saying the change shouldn't be made. I'm just pointing out that the people who think it'll be a big blow to Microsoft are probably wrong.
Elegant as it may be, that version of quicksort is so slow that (IIRC) even the Haskell documentation suggests against using it in "real" code.
Personally, I think the C++ way is even easier to read, and it has the benefit of being really fast:
sort(xs.begin(), xs.end());
What do you foresee some of the practical implications being? Companies continue to use Office exclusively, but now their internal documents are saved in ODF?
Standardization is great, but this is such a small step I don't see it having an impact. Nobody is going to use two office suites. Nobody is going to buy Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access separately and then use OpenOffice for word processing. Until there are standardized formats covering the rest of Office's components, any actual change is going to be minimal.
Honestly, most companies will go with Office anyway because there's still Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. Most of those are at least as entrenched as Word.
ODF vs OOXML is important in a philosophical kinda way, but I don't expect much practical change.
What makes you think we're made of positive matter?
What features of a "real language" does Javascript lack? Can you give an example of something you could write in C/C++/Java/Ruby/Perl/Smalltalk/C#/Lisp/Fortran that couldn't be written in Javascript?