If it's true that microsoft has used their "anti-trust" actions to create and enforce "brand loyalty" rather than to stifle competition, then they haven't done anything illegal.
One of the points of antitrust law is to prevent a monopoly with price-fixing power. But what will happen if windows machines are suddenly $1000 more expensive?
Simple: people will start buying more Macs. Because Macs are the closest thing to windows machines out there right now to consumers. They don't care if it's an x86 or not in there, just what applications they can run.
If MS pricefixing causes them to lose sales to a *competitor*, then they are not a monopoly.
Too bad the anti-trust case excluded Macs early on... quite the anti-MS framing job by the judge. Exclude the #1 competitor from the consumer's point of view, and you have a much more monopoly-looking situation.
Then a Mac with 2 G4 chips 512MB RAM 12GB HD and OS X will seem cheap. Good...
What a friggin moron...
Barring consumer revolt, the only direction prices ever take in a monopoly is UP.
Huh? By mentioning a mac, you seem to be admitting that microsoft does have competition, and won't be able to raise prices that high because they'll start losing sales to macs... But then you say they are a monopoly? Which is it? Or are they a monopoly in "x86 Desktop Computers" only and Macs are irrelevant? They also have a monopoly in "Microsoft Operating Systems" by the way.
Let's say microsoft had broken up, and suddenly the next version of windows costs $1000.
Or even to look at both sides of the coin, let's say that microsoft wins the case, and is able to use their "monopoly powers" to "price-fix" windows and the next version is $1000.
Would it affect me immediately? Of course not. I'd just stick with my current version of windows (windows2000) for as long as possible.
But when the time came that I needed a new OS or computer? By that time, linux might be more useful (right now it just doesn't run all the apps I want -- I admire it from a technical standpoint).
I could
1) buy an x86 w/o an OS on it and put either win2k on again or linux or beos or some other alternative os that's currently gaining ground.
or, 2), and this seems to be something that everyone's been ignoring thus far, I could BUY A MAC.
I have no clue why the judge in the microsoft trial dismissed Macs as a viable competitor for windows. There are lots of applications common to both platforms, and big ones. And think of the average consumer, going to buy a computer -- suddenly windows machines are $1000 more than the macs that seem to do the same thing, what are they going to buy? MACS. I'd consider Macintosh to be the #1 competitor to windows in the desktop OS arena (of course the trial narrowly defined it as x86-desktop-oses, again for a reason beyond me, since this isn't realistic from the *consumer*'s point of view).
Whew, got off on a tangent there. The other possibility is that department stores might start selling computers with linux or beos preinstalled, and the normal consumer might buy one of those.
Either way, it shouldn't affect people. They'd just stop buying windows. Microsoft does have competition, breaking them up doesn't magically make competition appear.
Doesn't MS make most of their money through NT licenses anyway? Oh yeah, and Office.
Basically, besides Myst Masterpiece for Mac and Myst3d, they're working on a project codenamed "Mudpie" which will be a massively multiplayer D'ni online roll playing game (aparently using a later version of the Myst3d Engine). And they've also licenced Presto Studios to make Myst III
------------- The following sentence is true.
What this was rendered on (word from Cyan staff)
on
Myst - In Realtime?
·
· Score: 5
A Couple cyan employees posted on a Riven mailing list info on how these shots were rendered:
Bill Slease wrote: "I took the shots of mechanical that you've seen on a PIII 500 with a GeForce card. The other shots were done on similar machines. But my work machine is a PII 450 with a Viper770 and the game looks just as good...and we're not done yet...:) The one marked difference I've seen between the cards is rendering of fog. I like the GeForce's fog better but that doesn't mean the Viper's is bad - just different. And probably imperceptible to someone who isn't living in Selenitic for months at a time on multiple machines.
Note: Direct3D doesn't currently do anti-aliasing so what you're interpreting as anti-aliasing in those images is probably just a result of resizing the images for the web."
Doug McBride wrote: "For the most part, the specs on the computer realMyst was running on when these screenshots were taken are P3 500's, with 32Meg GeForce video cards. About half of us have GeForce cards (D3D), and the rest have Voodoo 2 cards (Glide). Some of our computers have 256 megs of ram, others have 128. Keep in mind that these aren't the minimum hardware requirements to run realMyst. That hasn't been decided on yet. Those specs I mention are our development machines, and we have faster computers to help speed the creation process. We need that much processing horsepower and memory because we all typically keep several programs, such as 3dsMAX and Photoshop, open at the same time as we're running the game.
Again, being a real-time game, these images are rendered "on-the-fly" several times a second in our proprietary Plasma engine (the one Cyan now owns, since we acquired [it from] Headspin), so it's not like these are rendered with some commercially available software, such as Bryce 3D. They were taken by hitting a single keyboard key, and the engine writes the current frame out as a targa image. That's exactly what you are seeing.
Is this the quality you'll experience at home? That depends on your computer. We do have a "mere mortal" testing machine here at the office that is used to show how well the engine runs on a computer more typical of what people have at home. On many of the Ages, we're in the optimizing phase, trying to squeeze as high of a framerate as possible without losing the quality we want.
The exciting thing about these screenshots is that what you see is a screenshot directly from the game. It shows not only what our development team can do, but also what our engine is capable of. I don't care what crazy, unreleased hardware you give any other 3d engine from any genre of computer gaming. I doubt you'll find one that looks as good as those 3d screenshots. Yes, it comes at a hardware price, but it shows what you have to look forward to."
it's when/if the motherboard manufactures get on the ball and start making ATA/100 interfaces.
The Abit KA7-100 KX133 board, interestingly enough an Athlon mobo, comes with ATA-100 built in, and is available right now at GamePC.com among other places: GamePC's mobo page
Why can't you send a signal faster than light that still arrives at its destination after it was sent?
I didn't say that you couldn't. However, if arbitrary FTL signals are possible, then it'd be possible to set up paradoxical situations, according to SR.
So my first question is: What is speed if not distance travelled divided by time elapsed? If the time elapsed is negative, how is the speed "300 times c"?
Simple answer: In relativity, speed is not simply equal to distance traveled divided by time elapsed. The reason is that the distance traveled is dependant on the velocity. When the velocity is the speed of light, the distance to travel to any point is zero. When the velocity is past the speed of light, the distance is negative. When you do out the theoretical equations, you get time to be negative.
it seems strange, but you have to remember that the various weird effects from these phenomena (ie, time dilation) have been well demonstrated. In fact, GPS uses principles of relativity to work right!
I don't have the actual equation on hand though... sorry. Do a search for "relativity" on the web or something. Or find a book about it.
I hear this supposed time travel 'paradox' cited all the time as a reason that FTL travel isn't possible. We can't send information faster than light because then we can 'see' events before an observer only a short distance away, and this is supposed to be a paradox.
What the heck am I missing? Are all these people stupid, or is it me? Why is it a paradox if information gets to someone at a distance before it gets to someone nearby? You're never going to get the information before the event occurs, so there's never any threat of paradox.
Read a book on special relativity. You're misrepresenting the paradox. What you cite, in and of itself, isn't a paradox. But it's also not what's cited to defend against FTL travel.
In special relativity, if you can send a superluminal signal, something like this could happen: Event A sends a signal to you. You send a signal back to event A and it arrives at event A before event A sent its original signal. If your signal can change what event A does, then you're in effect changing the past after you've seen it. This is the paradox of superluminal signaling.
ISP == Internet service provider. Napster does provide an Internet service (Napster Protocol servers and downloadable Napster clients). Who said that an ISP has to be an Internet uplink?
You're playing foolish word games rather than looking at the real issue. I don't know what definition of ISP is relevant legally (IANAL), but I'm pretty sure it goes beyond the three words "internet service provider."
It's not a generic service that is used for anything the customer desires. It is designed explicitly as a music exchange service.
The Napster system can be used to exchange any type of file (latest Linux kernel, latest Mozilla milestone, the MS-Kerberos spec, w4r3z, pr0n, etc.) especially when standard (ftp/http) methods can be easily slashdotted. Just use the Wrapster archiver after zipping the files.
Wrapster sure is a neat-o hack, but you're ignoring what he said. He said "designed explicitly as a music exchange service" and this is WHAT NAPSTER IS DESIGNED EXPLICITLY FOR. The service takes the mp3 format specially, and uses it to create a searchable database of titles/artistes, etc. What wrapster does is fool napster into thinking that the file is an mp3. The fact that this kind of hack is necessary to transfer non-mp3s actually helps out the argument that Napster is specifically designed to transmit mp3s. Sorry.
I hope this theory proves to be right. It should be interesting to see a generation that has been force fed the Big Bang be forced to pass it and swallow something new. ("From the guys who brought you The Big Bang Theory then told you it was wrong, here's the newest in origins...").
Many of us understand that scientists consider it to be a success when they prove themselves wrong, but the public in general may just drop their faith in the men of science and turn to religion.
People turning away from science because they don't understand what it's all about. What a sad idea. There should be more education as to what the *point* of science is, the scientific method, and the fact that science *advances* when it proves itself wrong.
Science is *nothing* like religion and people should stop looking at it like it is. "Faith" in the men of science!? Whaza!?
Ok, I must have misread you. Actually, i think i agree with you. Specifically to these problems (script or macro based email worms), there are three things I see where there should be at least a user confirmation, if not a complete restriction of the script: 1) Attempting to send email (maybe it can write it, but the user has to send it) 2) Attempting to modify the disk 3) Attempting to modify startup programs or other programs' registry settings (already somewhat protected in NT, but not enough)
I was thinking about this, and there's a simple solution that would stop the spread and damage of 99% of these worms: Microsoft should implement three user confirmation checks in all their scripting and macros:
1) "This script is attempting to send mail, would you like to allow it?"
2) "This script is attempting to modify the hard disk, would you like to allow it?"
3) "This script is attempting to modify your startup programs, would you like to allow it?"
Alright, i wrote a small vbs file and emailed it to myself, to see if any of the FUD here is true.
First of all, IT DOES *NOT* EXECUTE AUTOMATICALLY IN THE PREVIEW PANE!!! I don't know what you people are talking about! I have to click on the attachment-button, then click on "Excel.VBS" in the drop-down menu.
It then pops up a dialog that says:
"Open Attachment Warning
Opening: EXCEL.VBS
Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source.
What would you like to do with this file? [ ] Open it [x] Save it to disk
[x] Always ask before opening this type of file"
You have to choose "Open it" then click "OK", then it runs.
That's a pretty stern warning, but people ignore it because it's from someone they know. You would think that people would learn after the melissa worm. Don't run ANY files you recieve in email without confirmation first.
No software should be able to edit a registry file or its equivalent without specific permission from an informed user. Period.
Think of what sense this makes. So, every time a program changes anything on a system, it needs the user's confirmation? Just THINK about this for ten seconds. Think of programs you use on a daily basis. Think of how many things they change on your hard drive. Do you want a prompt for every single one of those!?
Oh, yeah, also: Outlook ALREADY WARNS YOU if you try to open an executable attachment. But the people spreading this virus ignore the warnings and run it anyway. Stupid people are the problem, here.
Even though the Bell experiments prove that the quantum world experiences either nonlocality or nonseparability (most probably the latter, which doesn't allow superluminal signaling), there has been much analysis of the possibility to send signals over entangled particles, and so far there is no way to send any information across them. The best we've been able to do is quantum cryptography, but that requires a second (sub-lumnial) communication channel.
Either way, they said that Terminus uses Newtonian Physics which means none of this is relevent:)
------------- The following sentence is true.
i'm sorry, but you continue to miss the point.
on
Microsoft Loses
·
· Score: 1
you are seriously deluding yourself by thinking that microsoft is responsible for most of the bugs in the computer industry. I really don't think it's possible to get through your thick skull, with you making such wild and unsubstantiable claims. How many patches and bugfixes have there been for unix operating systems in the past? How many times has netscape crashed on you?
Then there's the notion of enforcability. Just *who* decides what bugs should be fined? And should bugs in non-microsoft software be fined too? Oh no wait, that would go against your anything-but-microsoft worldview
also, my original point still stands. You are completely missing the point of the antitrust legislation. It is IRRELEVANT whether microsoft makes good or bad quality software. Making bad software is not illegal. Whether they used anticompetative means to maintain monopoly power is at question here, not the quality of their software! Ironically enough (and you would have known this if you'd READ THE FINDINGS OF FACT), it mentions in the FoF the incredible amounts of money and man power microsoft put into Internet Explorer to try to make it a better quality product than Netscape. THEY DID EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE SUGGESTING THEY DO!!!!
You are also making a logical flaw here, of begging the question. Have you stopped cheating on your wife yet? I have used many of microsoft's latest products -- IE5, win2k, and office2k, and they are very stable, quality pieces of software. In fact, microsoft did just what you were suggesting in creating windows2000 -- spend years and gobs of money and manpower on it to try to create good software. If you respond with the 63,000 bug bs i will lose all respect for you -- ZERO of those 'issues' on file are showstopper bugs, meaning none of them represent crashes, broken functionality, or security holes. Sheesh, now you got me going off topic.
name one software product that has ever been bug free
TeX.
TeX is a quality piece of software, and I commend the efforts of the authors to rid of any bugs they can find. However, its scope is quite small in comparison to the applications of issue here (web browsers, operating systems). If you don't admit that, you're fooling yourself.
in 5 minutes of searching, I was unable to find mention of any TeX-only bugs, but I did find several sites with lists of LaTeX bugs. Perhaps we should start fining the makers of LaTeX, too, because their buggy macros are damaging the computer industry. Oh no wait, the bugs in LaTeX were obviously Microsoft's fault. I forgot.
So only things you agree with qualify as "insight." Uh-huh.
Some of you slashdotters just don't get it. The point of the moderation system is NOT to block out all opinions except the slashdot/linux norm, and it is NOT some sort of "let's see who can get more points" contest. It's to bring posts that contribute well to the discussion, no matter WHAT SIDE THEY'RE ON, to the front. Maybe you missed the fact that several posts that contested what the original post said were ALSO brought to the front? See? All sides are represented! The system works! Sheesh.
Showing raw backstage footage, nervous stars, or other such not-part-of-the-big-show information on camera is something MTV award shows have been doing for a while. Now the bigger ones are starting to catch on to these ideas. Who knows why -- perhaps to appeal to a younger audience? (Robin Williams doing Blame Canada also points to this)
If you don't want to see MS bashing posts, do as other sensible people do here and browse at +1.
unfortunately that wouldn't have helped. You obviously missed the text for this article on the main page: "A copy of MS Windows 2001 beta has been leaked out to the Net. I wonder if it will have fixed any of the 65,000 documented bugs. No one is installing Win2k so I guess the MS marketing machine is trying to get rev 2 out the door... New and Improved! Only 32k bugs! Geesh..."
"the 65,000 documented bugs" "No one is installing Win2k" "New and Improved! Only 32k bugs! Geesh..."
Pretty harsh Win2k bashing, IMHO. By your own argument, the text for the article is off-topic since after the first sentence it only talks about Win2k.
Anyway, whoever wrote that review of Win2k was obviously responding to the FUD on the main page (cited above); that's my point.
Slashdot Mirror
with all your wonderful highlighting you seemed to have missed this phrase:
"finally, microbiologists culture potentially pathogenic organisms all the time without a problem"
-------------
The following sentence is true.
Look down at the bottom of the page:
"ver. 10.2.2000
Trailer A and B updated"
So though it isn't quite a "new" trailer, it is updated.
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The following sentence is true.
If it's true that microsoft has used their "anti-trust" actions to create and enforce "brand loyalty" rather than to stifle competition, then they haven't done anything illegal.
... quite the anti-MS framing job by the judge. Exclude the #1 competitor from the consumer's point of view, and you have a much more monopoly-looking situation.
One of the points of antitrust law is to prevent a monopoly with price-fixing power. But what will happen if windows machines are suddenly $1000 more expensive?
Simple: people will start buying more Macs. Because Macs are the closest thing to windows machines out there right now to consumers. They don't care if it's an x86 or not in there, just what applications they can run.
If MS pricefixing causes them to lose sales to a *competitor*, then they are not a monopoly.
Too bad the anti-trust case excluded Macs early on
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What a friggin moron...
Barring consumer revolt, the only direction prices ever take in a monopoly is UP.
Huh? By mentioning a mac, you seem to be admitting that microsoft does have competition, and won't be able to raise prices that high because they'll start losing sales to macs... But then you say they are a monopoly? Which is it? Or are they a monopoly in "x86 Desktop Computers" only and Macs are irrelevant? They also have a monopoly in "Microsoft Operating Systems" by the way.
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The following sentence is true.
Let's say microsoft had broken up, and suddenly the next version of windows costs $1000.
Or even to look at both sides of the coin, let's say that microsoft wins the case, and is able to use their "monopoly powers" to "price-fix" windows and the next version is $1000.
Would it affect me immediately? Of course not. I'd just stick with my current version of windows (windows2000) for as long as possible.
But when the time came that I needed a new OS or computer? By that time, linux might be more useful (right now it just doesn't run all the apps I want -- I admire it from a technical standpoint).
I could
1) buy an x86 w/o an OS on it and put either win2k on again or linux or beos or some other alternative os that's currently gaining ground.
or, 2), and this seems to be something that everyone's been ignoring thus far, I could BUY A MAC.
I have no clue why the judge in the microsoft trial dismissed Macs as a viable competitor for windows. There are lots of applications common to both platforms, and big ones. And think of the average consumer, going to buy a computer -- suddenly windows machines are $1000 more than the macs that seem to do the same thing, what are they going to buy? MACS. I'd consider Macintosh to be the #1 competitor to windows in the desktop OS arena (of course the trial narrowly defined it as x86-desktop-oses, again for a reason beyond me, since this isn't realistic from the *consumer*'s point of view).
Whew, got off on a tangent there. The other possibility is that department stores might start selling computers with linux or beos preinstalled, and the normal consumer might buy one of those.
Either way, it shouldn't affect people. They'd just stop buying windows. Microsoft does have competition, breaking them up doesn't magically make competition appear.
Doesn't MS make most of their money through NT licenses anyway? Oh yeah, and Office.
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The following sentence is true.
someone didn't read the whole thing, or has no sense of humor. This guy was being facetious people!!!
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The following sentence is true.
See here for info: http://www.cyan.com/info1.html
Basically, besides Myst Masterpiece for Mac and Myst3d, they're working on a project codenamed "Mudpie" which will be a massively multiplayer D'ni online roll playing game (aparently using a later version of the Myst3d Engine). And they've also licenced Presto Studios to make Myst III
-------------
The following sentence is true.
A Couple cyan employees posted on a Riven mailing list info on how these shots were rendered:
:) The one marked difference I've seen between the cards is
Bill Slease wrote:
"I took the shots of mechanical that you've seen on a PIII 500 with a GeForce
card. The other shots were done on similar machines. But my work machine is
a PII 450 with a Viper770 and the game looks just as good...and we're not
done yet...
rendering of fog. I like the GeForce's fog better but that doesn't mean the
Viper's is bad - just different. And probably imperceptible to someone who
isn't living in Selenitic for months at a time on multiple machines.
Note: Direct3D doesn't currently do anti-aliasing so what you're
interpreting as anti-aliasing in those images is probably just a result of
resizing the images for the web."
Doug McBride wrote:
"For the most part, the specs on
the computer realMyst was running on when these screenshots were taken are
P3 500's, with 32Meg GeForce video cards. About half of us have GeForce cards
(D3D), and the rest have Voodoo 2 cards (Glide). Some of our computers have 256
megs of ram, others have 128. Keep in mind that these aren't the minimum hardware
requirements to run realMyst. That hasn't been decided on yet. Those specs I mention
are our development machines, and we have faster computers to help speed the creation
process. We need that much processing horsepower and memory because we
all typically keep several programs, such as 3dsMAX and Photoshop, open at the same
time as we're running the game.
Again, being a real-time game, these images are rendered "on-the-fly" several times
a second in our proprietary Plasma engine (the one Cyan now owns, since we acquired [it from]
Headspin), so it's not like these are rendered with some commercially available software,
such as Bryce 3D. They were taken by hitting a single keyboard key, and the engine
writes the current frame out as a targa image. That's exactly what you are seeing.
Is this the quality you'll experience at home? That depends on your computer. We do
have a "mere mortal" testing machine here at the office that is used to show how well
the engine runs on a computer more typical of what people have at home. On many of
the Ages, we're in the optimizing phase, trying to squeeze as high of a framerate as
possible without losing the quality we want.
The exciting thing about these screenshots is that what you see is a screenshot
directly from the game. It shows not only what our development team can do, but also
what our engine is capable of. I don't care what crazy, unreleased hardware you give any
other 3d engine from any genre of computer gaming. I doubt you'll find one that looks as
good as those 3d screenshots. Yes, it comes at a hardware price, but it shows what
you have to look forward to."
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The following sentence is true.
Good thing terminus isn't an FPS, eh?
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The following sentence is true.
The Abit KA7-100 KX133 board, interestingly enough an Athlon mobo, comes with ATA-100 built in, and is available right now at GamePC.com among other places: GamePC's mobo page
-------------
The following sentence is true.
I didn't say that you couldn't. However, if arbitrary FTL signals are possible, then it'd be possible to set up paradoxical situations, according to SR.
-------------
The following sentence is true.
So my first question is: What is speed if not distance travelled divided by time elapsed? If the time elapsed is negative, how is the speed "300 times c"?
Simple answer: In relativity, speed is not simply equal to distance traveled divided by time elapsed. The reason is that the distance traveled is dependant on the velocity. When the velocity is the speed of light, the distance to travel to any point is zero. When the velocity is past the speed of light, the distance is negative. When you do out the theoretical equations, you get time to be negative.
it seems strange, but you have to remember that the various weird effects from these phenomena (ie, time dilation) have been well demonstrated. In fact, GPS uses principles of relativity to work right!
I don't have the actual equation on hand though... sorry. Do a search for "relativity" on the web or something. Or find a book about it.
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The following sentence is true.
What the heck am I missing? Are all these people stupid, or is it me? Why is it a paradox if information gets to someone at a distance before it gets to someone nearby? You're never going to get the information before the event occurs, so there's never any threat of paradox.
Read a book on special relativity. You're misrepresenting the paradox. What you cite, in and of itself, isn't a paradox. But it's also not what's cited to defend against FTL travel.
In special relativity, if you can send a superluminal signal, something like this could happen: Event A sends a signal to you. You send a signal back to event A and it arrives at event A before event A sent its original signal. If your signal can change what event A does, then you're in effect changing the past after you've seen it. This is the paradox of superluminal signaling.
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The following sentence is true.
ISP == Internet service provider. Napster does provide an Internet service (Napster Protocol servers and downloadable Napster clients). Who said that an ISP has to be an Internet uplink?
You're playing foolish word games rather than looking at the real issue. I don't know what definition of ISP is relevant legally (IANAL), but I'm pretty sure it goes beyond the three words "internet service provider."
It's not a generic service that is used for anything the customer desires. It is designed explicitly as a music exchange service.
The Napster system can be used to exchange any type of file (latest Linux kernel, latest Mozilla milestone, the MS-Kerberos spec, w4r3z, pr0n, etc.) especially when standard (ftp/http) methods can be easily slashdotted. Just use the Wrapster archiver after zipping the files.
Wrapster sure is a neat-o hack, but you're ignoring what he said. He said "designed explicitly as a music exchange service" and this is WHAT NAPSTER IS DESIGNED EXPLICITLY FOR. The service takes the mp3 format specially, and uses it to create a searchable database of titles/artistes, etc. What wrapster does is fool napster into thinking that the file is an mp3. The fact that this kind of hack is necessary to transfer non-mp3s actually helps out the argument that Napster is specifically designed to transmit mp3s. Sorry.
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The following sentence is true.
Many of us understand that scientists consider it to be a success when they prove themselves wrong, but the public in general may just drop their faith in the men of science and turn to religion.
People turning away from science because they don't understand what it's all about. What a sad idea. There should be more education as to what the *point* of science is, the scientific method, and the fact that science *advances* when it proves itself wrong.
Science is *nothing* like religion and people should stop looking at it like it is. "Faith" in the men of science!? Whaza!?
-------------
The following sentence is true.
Ok, I must have misread you.
Actually, i think i agree with you. Specifically to these problems (script or macro based email worms), there are three things I see where there should be at least a user confirmation, if not a complete restriction of the script:
1) Attempting to send email (maybe it can write it, but the user has to send it)
2) Attempting to modify the disk
3) Attempting to modify startup programs or other programs' registry settings (already somewhat protected in NT, but not enough)
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The following sentence is true.
1) "This script is attempting to send mail, would you like to allow it?"
2) "This script is attempting to modify the hard disk, would you like to allow it?"
3) "This script is attempting to modify your startup programs, would you like to allow it?"
Pretty easy, ne? Maybe I should email them :P
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The following sentence is true.
Alright, i wrote a small vbs file and emailed it to myself, to see if any of the FUD here is true.
First of all, IT DOES *NOT* EXECUTE AUTOMATICALLY IN THE PREVIEW PANE!!! I don't know what you people are talking about! I have to click on the attachment-button, then click on "Excel.VBS" in the drop-down menu.
It then pops up a dialog that says:
"Open Attachment Warning
Opening:
EXCEL.VBS
Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source.
What would you like to do with this file?
[ ] Open it
[x] Save it to disk
[x] Always ask before opening this type of file"
You have to choose "Open it" then click "OK", then it runs.
That's a pretty stern warning, but people ignore it because it's from someone they know. You would think that people would learn after the melissa worm. Don't run ANY files you recieve in email without confirmation first.
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The following sentence is true.
Think of what sense this makes. So, every time a program changes anything on a system, it needs the user's confirmation? Just THINK about this for ten seconds. Think of programs you use on a daily basis. Think of how many things they change on your hard drive. Do you want a prompt for every single one of those!?
Oh, yeah, also: Outlook ALREADY WARNS YOU if you try to open an executable attachment. But the people spreading this virus ignore the warnings and run it anyway. Stupid people are the problem, here.
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The following sentence is true.
Even though the Bell experiments prove that the quantum world experiences either nonlocality or nonseparability (most probably the latter, which doesn't allow superluminal signaling), there has been much analysis of the possibility to send signals over entangled particles, and so far there is no way to send any information across them. The best we've been able to do is quantum cryptography, but that requires a second (sub-lumnial) communication channel.
:)
Either way, they said that Terminus uses Newtonian Physics which means none of this is relevent
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Then there's the notion of enforcability. Just *who* decides what bugs should be fined? And should bugs in non-microsoft software be fined too? Oh no wait, that would go against your anything-but-microsoft worldview
also, my original point still stands. You are completely missing the point of the antitrust legislation. It is IRRELEVANT whether microsoft makes good or bad quality software. Making bad software is not illegal. Whether they used anticompetative means to maintain monopoly power is at question here, not the quality of their software! Ironically enough (and you would have known this if you'd READ THE FINDINGS OF FACT), it mentions in the FoF the incredible amounts of money and man power microsoft put into Internet Explorer to try to make it a better quality product than Netscape. THEY DID EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE SUGGESTING THEY DO!!!!
You are also making a logical flaw here, of begging the question. Have you stopped cheating on your wife yet? I have used many of microsoft's latest products -- IE5, win2k, and office2k, and they are very stable, quality pieces of software. In fact, microsoft did just what you were suggesting in creating windows2000 -- spend years and gobs of money and manpower on it to try to create good software. If you respond with the 63,000 bug bs i will lose all respect for you -- ZERO of those 'issues' on file are showstopper bugs, meaning none of them represent crashes, broken functionality, or security holes. Sheesh, now you got me going off topic.
name one software product that has ever been bug free
TeX.
TeX is a quality piece of software, and I commend the efforts of the authors to rid of any bugs they can find. However, its scope is quite small in comparison to the applications of issue here (web browsers, operating systems). If you don't admit that, you're fooling yourself.
in 5 minutes of searching, I was unable to find mention of any TeX-only bugs, but I did find several sites with lists of LaTeX bugs. Perhaps we should start fining the makers of LaTeX, too, because their buggy macros are damaging the computer industry. Oh no wait, the bugs in LaTeX were obviously Microsoft's fault. I forgot.
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Really now, please name one software product EVER that has been bug-free.
Besides the questions of legality and enforcement, it's missing the point. The quality of microsoft software is NOT what's on trial here.
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Some of you slashdotters just don't get it. The point of the moderation system is NOT to block out all opinions except the slashdot/linux norm, and it is NOT some sort of "let's see who can get more points" contest. It's to bring posts that contribute well to the discussion, no matter WHAT SIDE THEY'RE ON, to the front. Maybe you missed the fact that several posts that contested what the original post said were ALSO brought to the front? See? All sides are represented! The system works! Sheesh.
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Showing raw backstage footage, nervous stars, or other such not-part-of-the-big-show information on camera is something MTV award shows have been doing for a while. Now the bigger ones are starting to catch on to these ideas. Who knows why -- perhaps to appeal to a younger audience? (Robin Williams doing Blame Canada also points to this)
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unfortunately that wouldn't have helped. You obviously missed the text for this article on the main page: ... New and Improved! Only 32k bugs! Geesh ..."
"A copy of MS Windows 2001 beta has been leaked out to the Net. I wonder if it will have fixed any of the 65,000 documented bugs. No one is installing Win2k so I guess the MS marketing machine is trying to get rev 2 out the door
"the 65,000 documented bugs" ..."
"No one is installing Win2k"
"New and Improved! Only 32k bugs! Geesh
Pretty harsh Win2k bashing, IMHO. By your own argument, the text for the article is off-topic since after the first sentence it only talks about Win2k.
Anyway, whoever wrote that review of Win2k was obviously responding to the FUD on the main page (cited above); that's my point.
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