I totally agree. And in some legal circles to this day WP documents are still the gold standard. When I have to work with lawyers, it always ends up with WordPerfect files. Never Office. I just wish I had saved my old install disks from years ago so I could run it in Virtual PC on my Mac.
And what if the zombie computer is running air traffic, or life support monitoring, or some other mission-critical task when the botnet hunter starts tampering with an already compromised system? Will he take responsibility when something lethal happens?
Why would you burn and rip a CD 10 times? Why not just do it once in a lossless format? It would have been more accurate for you to challenge him to save a JPEG at 85% quality, then open the saved copy and save it as a PNG.
Oh, wait... you weren't trying to be helpful or factual. You were just trying to bash iTunes. Sorry. I missed you intention there at first.
You're kidding right? Dell hardware is just complete crap!
Just more anecdotal evidence, but the Dells at my office have a 12% failure rate after two years. The IT guys say that it's not just at our company, and the Dell rep can't get them fixed fast enough because they're failing at other companies at a similar rate. He said the reason Dell hasn't issued a recall is that they don't have the parts to even keep up with the failures peacemeal, let alone if they were to issue a full recall.
You, sir have proven yourself to be an idiotic moron... you're a lying sack of shit... Asshats like yourself who whine like little bitches... that they are cowards and they are traitors. Only fools or sociopaths could possibly support them.. keep your moronic 24 hour propaganda lies to yourself.
I think you have fairly well demonstrated why you are part of the problem, and not part of the solution. People who cannot carry on a rational discussion but insteead degenerate into foul language for no particular reason illustrate a lack of cognitive ability. Posts like yours are the reason that so many people are moving Slashdot off their radar, and the reason we see so few low UIDs anymore. Most of the good people have left because of people like you.
(And before you try to point out that your UID is lower than mine, consider the fact that this isn't my original ID.)
Or could it be that nerds have actually learned to care about politics
But strangely, they haven't learned that there can be a web site for tech stories and a web site for politics? Is there some web browser I'm unaware of which can only surf one site? My point is that Slashdot is trying to be too broad and in doing so is straying from its original purpose. I can understand posting stories that involve both technology and politics, but this one is pure politics, and is clearly intended to create heat, not light.
Stories like this are the reason I check Slashdot less and less each day. Slashdot jumped the shark when it decided to plant all of these political stories in order to generate page views. Fortunately, there are a bunch of new sites starting to fill the void for actual tech news and discussion that Slashdot created.
It's too bad Slashdot doesn't just open up Politicaldot.org and get this junk out of our way. Blocking the Politics category doesn't even always work because the stories are everywhere.
The whole "the customer is always right" BS will get you bankrupt in a hurry.
As the people of Chicago know all too well. The phrase "the customer is always right" was coined by Marshall Field in the 19th century. What did it get him? His company is now a small part of Macy's.
But "Microsoft" is a company, while "Mac" is a computer. If it said "Apple OS X" I could see your analogy, but it doesn't. It's like a great big specification hanging out there.
I've always thought it curious that the operating system is almost always officially refered to as "Mac OS X." As if somewhere down the line it might be bundled with other computers and you'd have "IBM OS X" or something. It could just be branding, but it could be an indication of things to come.
I don't know how Australia's legal system is structured, but in the United States most laws are developed, tailored to, and enforced at the local level. The dropout age can vary from state to state, or even town to town. The United States was founded as a loose confederation. Though many regulations have been federalized in many areas, education remains something very very local.
Immediacy. E-mail happens now. Interoffice paper takes time. And with 3,000 employees scattered across 200 cities around the world sending dozens of messages each day, I imagine e-mail also saves the company a bit in postage.
I think you've totally hit it there, not just with the aim of Google e-mail, but with an entire Google strategy.
Google isn't after the megacorps -- it's after small business. Businesses that are nimble, willing to take chances, and small enough to made quick decisions. Google is never going to convince a huge company to offload its e-mail. But something like this could save thousands of small businesses money, time, and frustration while making their employees more productive.
Now expand mail to the whole range of Google rumors. Remember those Google desktop boxes we keep hearing about? Google is never going to wean the Fortune 500 to unhook from Microsoft's teat. But it can make serious inroads among the other 5,000,000 companies in America that can lay out $400 for a new computer with a trusted brand name that will let them get things done without worrying about viruses, spyware, or the constant upgrade cycle/Microsoft tax. Google, like many other companies would rather have 20% of five million businesses than 20% of the top five hundred businesses.
And since many of these small businesses are run by people who have things like Google Desktop on their home machines, and search the internet with Google already, Google isn't some strange name coming out of left field promising them the moon. They're a known quantity that the head of Joe's Antiques or Mary's Candy Shoppe can look at and say, "Well, it works great at home. I bet it would be good for my business, too!"
Think of all the Google things that don't work well in megacorp environments, but work well for small business:
> Google Desktop - Did the Kelley Girl lose a document? That's OK, Google Desktop will find it. > Google Translate - OK for informal e-mails that small companies use to make a sale, but not robust enough for a real corporate contract > Google Mail - Small companies don't have the time or technical know-how to manage mail servers. > Google Alerts - Small companies can't afford clipping services, but Google can do the work for them. > Google Catalogs - A B2B tool, and a method for keeping an eye on the competition and doing industry research. > Froogle - Big business buys through contracts and channels and purchase orders and waits and waits and waits. Small business hits Froogle and gets it done. > Google Maps - Great for small delivery companies, florists, pizza shops. Useless to megacorps like FedEx and UPS that have their own methods.
And obviously Google is thinking at least some about business, because front and center on their home page is a "Business Solutions" link.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't public companies supposed to archive all their corporate e-mails anyway, under Sarbanes-Oxley?
I don't think all of them. I know the last three companies I've worked for have all had a 30-day e-mail retention policy. No one was allowed to keep any e-mail, personal or business, for more than 30 days. This was a rule enforced at the server level, and after three or four important memos vanish from their mailboxes, employees quickly learned to print out anything they'd need long term.
There has been a 19.4% increase in the mean annual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from 1959 to 2004.
I'm curious about how atmospheric CO2 was measured in 1959. It was well before I was born, so I don't have a firm grasp on how advanced measuring was back then. Was it just as accurate as the data from 2004? Is the 2004 data more accurate because of better instruments? Was the 1959 sample taken from developed nations only? There are still places that we can't get to today to take samples.
The reason I bring this up is because many people don't realize that sampling methods change over time. Look at average city temperatures. Back in the 1950's the official temperature was usually recorded in the concrete heart of a city. Now we take it at an airport or open field. And there's some discussion in the meteorological community about whether that's the best way, either. In Chicago, the "official" location for taking the temperature has changed at least 12 times. And these aren't small changes -- they were miles and miles away. Sometimes closer to Lake Michigan, sometimes father away. Sometimes in the heart of the city, sometimes in a remote corner. All of these factors can skew the figures on a local level, so it makes me wonder about global data, especially global data taken in 1959.
I don't think Australia signed either. They must hate the Earth, too. Things haven't been right down there since they dropped ".oz"
You're right about Kyoto, though. The biggest problem with it is the nations that didn't jump on: China and India. Save the "developing nation" crap. Yes, they're dirt poor. They're also huge polluters because they can't afford proper scrubbing on their stacks. There's also a zillion of them, and CO2 isn't the only way to measure pollution. Think particulate matter. I hear lots of environmentalists saying that 300,000,000 Americans make more pollution than 3,000,000,000 Chinese and Indians. Then how come the skies of our cities aren't choked dark orange in midday like in China? (Yes, I've been there, I know.)
Oh, and for the record: Germany is the only European country actually reducing pollution to meet its Kyoto obligations. CO2 output is up 7% in France, 11% in Italy, and 29% in Spain (numbers from 2003 - the most recent available). They're supposed to reduce their emissions 8% by 2012. Looks like arrogant Europe is going the wrong way and should get its own house in order before jumping ugly with the U.S.
Good thing I've got Excellent karma. I'm going to need it after this one.
I use CE/BCE because that's how I was taught throughout high school and university.
How sad that you went through all those years of school and never had a history lesson. Even sadder that you can't think for yourself and parrot what your teachers told you.
do you still refer to the sky as "the heavens"
Yes. Sometimes. It depends on what I'm writing.
refer to the number 20 as "a score"
No, but if it would bother you, I'd be happy to start.
and your car as an "automobile"
Yes. It's not that uncommon to hear, especially in international circles where "auto" is more universal than the American word "car." Though, I noticed you tried to play fake British by dropping the article before "university." Sorry. I'm not impressed.
Do you use Roman Numerals?
Sometimes at work, yes. It's sometimes required for the job.
AD itself is a relatively new term; people used to refer to "the 2006th year of our lord".
Your teachers must have implanted a unique notion of "new" in your mind, considering I've seen historic churches and cathedrals around the world that use "AD" in their engavings back before the year 1,000. Possibly earlier.
Seriously, grow up and try to live in the real world.
I'll live in the real world. You can live in yours.
Global warming is not as proven a fact as say, evolution.
I don't want to sound like I'm from Kansas or anything, but when did evolution go from theory to fact? When I got out of college (10 years or so ago) "evolution" was always expressed as "the theory or evolution" or "evolutionary theory." Again, I went to college in Pennsylvania and New York, so any neocon flames will be misdirected, but it seems that the root of the problem in these debates is that everyone plays their favorite theory as a fact, and spins everyone else's can be dismissed as a theory.
Sorry, but it's hard to take anything seriously from anyone who uses CE/BCE instead of AD/BC. Regardless of your views on religion, ignoring 2,000 years of history and tradition to fit your own world view is just as bad as the neocons ignoring science. You accuse anti-global warming people of ignoring historical facts, then you ignore history, yourself. Time to take a little bit of your own medicine. Or are you one of those people who make up words like "vlog" and "meme" to make up for a lack of vocabulary and life experience?
Slashdot Mirror
I totally agree. And in some legal circles to this day WP documents are still the gold standard. When I have to work with lawyers, it always ends up with WordPerfect files. Never Office. I just wish I had saved my old install disks from years ago so I could run it in Virtual PC on my Mac.
And what if the zombie computer is running air traffic, or life support monitoring, or some other mission-critical task when the botnet hunter starts tampering with an already compromised system? Will he take responsibility when something lethal happens?
But when the US government does something, almost nobody says a word.
You must be new around here.
Why would you burn and rip a CD 10 times? Why not just do it once in a lossless format?
It would have been more accurate for you to challenge him to save a JPEG at 85% quality, then open the saved copy and save it as a PNG.
Oh, wait... you weren't trying to be helpful or factual. You were just trying to bash iTunes. Sorry. I missed you intention there at first.
You're kidding right? Dell hardware is just complete crap!
Just more anecdotal evidence, but the Dells at my office have a 12% failure rate after two years. The IT guys say that it's not just at our company, and the Dell rep can't get them fixed fast enough because they're failing at other companies at a similar rate. He said the reason Dell hasn't issued a recall is that they don't have the parts to even keep up with the failures peacemeal, let alone if they were to issue a full recall.
If you think your POV is not being seriously considered in THIS environment, perhaps you should reconsider your POV.
In other words, minoriy opinions are not welcome.
Thank you for proving his point.
You, sir have proven yourself to be an idiotic moron... you're a lying sack of shit... Asshats like yourself who whine like little bitches... that they are cowards and they are traitors. Only fools or sociopaths could possibly support them.. keep your moronic 24 hour propaganda lies to yourself.
I think you have fairly well demonstrated why you are part of the problem, and not part of the solution. People who cannot carry on a rational discussion but insteead degenerate into foul language for no particular reason illustrate a lack of cognitive ability. Posts like yours are the reason that so many people are moving Slashdot off their radar, and the reason we see so few low UIDs anymore. Most of the good people have left because of people like you.
(And before you try to point out that your UID is lower than mine, consider the fact that this isn't my original ID.)
Or could it be that nerds have actually learned to care about politics
But strangely, they haven't learned that there can be a web site for tech stories and a web site for politics? Is there some web browser I'm unaware of which can only surf one site? My point is that Slashdot is trying to be too broad and in doing so is straying from its original purpose. I can understand posting stories that involve both technology and politics, but this one is pure politics, and is clearly intended to create heat, not light.
Stories like this are the reason I check Slashdot less and less each day. Slashdot jumped the shark when it decided to plant all of these political stories in order to generate page views. Fortunately, there are a bunch of new sites starting to fill the void for actual tech news and discussion that Slashdot created.
It's too bad Slashdot doesn't just open up Politicaldot.org and get this junk out of our way. Blocking the Politics category doesn't even always work because the stories are everywhere.
Does your machine not support restarting the Finder? I've been able to give my locked up Finder a three-finger salute and select "relaunch."
I don't know a single person who wants to run this OS on thier PC wanting to steal it.
You must not spend much time with BitTorrent.
The whole "the customer is always right" BS will get you bankrupt in a hurry.
As the people of Chicago know all too well. The phrase "the customer is always right" was coined by Marshall Field in the 19th century. What did it get him? His company is now a small part of Macy's.
And I want to plug a lamp into my powerbook
What's stopping you? Go right ahead!
But "Microsoft" is a company, while "Mac" is a computer.
If it said "Apple OS X" I could see your analogy, but it doesn't. It's like a great big specification hanging out there.
I've always thought it curious that the operating system is almost always officially refered to as "Mac OS X." As if somewhere down the line it might be bundled with other computers and you'd have "IBM OS X" or something. It could just be branding, but it could be an indication of things to come.
I don't know how Australia's legal system is structured, but in the United States most laws are developed, tailored to, and enforced at the local level. The dropout age can vary from state to state, or even town to town. The United States was founded as a loose confederation. Though many regulations have been federalized in many areas, education remains something very very local.
I think the idea is to make it harder for dropouts to work so they don't drop out.
Immediacy. E-mail happens now. Interoffice paper takes time.
And with 3,000 employees scattered across 200 cities around the world sending dozens of messages each day, I imagine e-mail also saves the company a bit in postage.
I think you've totally hit it there, not just with the aim of Google e-mail, but with an entire Google strategy.
Google isn't after the megacorps -- it's after small business. Businesses that are nimble, willing to take chances, and small enough to made quick decisions. Google is never going to convince a huge company to offload its e-mail. But something like this could save thousands of small businesses money, time, and frustration while making their employees more productive.
Now expand mail to the whole range of Google rumors. Remember those Google desktop boxes we keep hearing about? Google is never going to wean the Fortune 500 to unhook from Microsoft's teat. But it can make serious inroads among the other 5,000,000 companies in America that can lay out $400 for a new computer with a trusted brand name that will let them get things done without worrying about viruses, spyware, or the constant upgrade cycle/Microsoft tax. Google, like many other companies would rather have 20% of five million businesses than 20% of the top five hundred businesses.
And since many of these small businesses are run by people who have things like Google Desktop on their home machines, and search the internet with Google already, Google isn't some strange name coming out of left field promising them the moon. They're a known quantity that the head of Joe's Antiques or Mary's Candy Shoppe can look at and say, "Well, it works great at home. I bet it would be good for my business, too!"
Think of all the Google things that don't work well in megacorp environments, but work well for small business:
> Google Desktop - Did the Kelley Girl lose a document? That's OK, Google Desktop will find it.
> Google Translate - OK for informal e-mails that small companies use to make a sale, but not robust enough for a real corporate contract
> Google Mail - Small companies don't have the time or technical know-how to manage mail servers.
> Google Alerts - Small companies can't afford clipping services, but Google can do the work for them.
> Google Catalogs - A B2B tool, and a method for keeping an eye on the competition and doing industry research.
> Froogle - Big business buys through contracts and channels and purchase orders and waits and waits and waits. Small business hits Froogle and gets it done.
> Google Maps - Great for small delivery companies, florists, pizza shops. Useless to megacorps like FedEx and UPS that have their own methods.
And obviously Google is thinking at least some about business, because front and center on their home page is a "Business Solutions" link.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't public companies supposed to archive all their corporate e-mails anyway, under Sarbanes-Oxley?
I don't think all of them. I know the last three companies I've worked for have all had a 30-day e-mail retention policy. No one was allowed to keep any e-mail, personal or business, for more than 30 days. This was a rule enforced at the server level, and after three or four important memos vanish from their mailboxes, employees quickly learned to print out anything they'd need long term.
There has been a 19.4% increase in the mean annual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from 1959 to 2004.
I'm curious about how atmospheric CO2 was measured in 1959. It was well before I was born, so I don't have a firm grasp on how advanced measuring was back then. Was it just as accurate as the data from 2004? Is the 2004 data more accurate because of better instruments? Was the 1959 sample taken from developed nations only? There are still places that we can't get to today to take samples.
The reason I bring this up is because many people don't realize that sampling methods change over time. Look at average city temperatures. Back in the 1950's the official temperature was usually recorded in the concrete heart of a city. Now we take it at an airport or open field. And there's some discussion in the meteorological community about whether that's the best way, either. In Chicago, the "official" location for taking the temperature has changed at least 12 times. And these aren't small changes -- they were miles and miles away. Sometimes closer to Lake Michigan, sometimes father away. Sometimes in the heart of the city, sometimes in a remote corner. All of these factors can skew the figures on a local level, so it makes me wonder about global data, especially global data taken in 1959.
I don't think Australia signed either. They must hate the Earth, too. Things haven't been right down there since they dropped ".oz"
You're right about Kyoto, though. The biggest problem with it is the nations that didn't jump on: China and India. Save the "developing nation" crap. Yes, they're dirt poor. They're also huge polluters because they can't afford proper scrubbing on their stacks. There's also a zillion of them, and CO2 isn't the only way to measure pollution. Think particulate matter. I hear lots of environmentalists saying that 300,000,000 Americans make more pollution than 3,000,000,000 Chinese and Indians. Then how come the skies of our cities aren't choked dark orange in midday like in China? (Yes, I've been there, I know.)
Oh, and for the record: Germany is the only European country actually reducing pollution to meet its Kyoto obligations. CO2 output is up 7% in France, 11% in Italy, and 29% in Spain (numbers from 2003 - the most recent available). They're supposed to reduce their emissions 8% by 2012. Looks like arrogant Europe is going the wrong way and should get its own house in order before jumping ugly with the U.S.
Good thing I've got Excellent karma. I'm going to need it after this one.
I use CE/BCE because that's how I was taught throughout high school and university.
How sad that you went through all those years of school and never had a history lesson. Even sadder that you can't think for yourself and parrot what your teachers told you.
do you still refer to the sky as "the heavens"
Yes. Sometimes. It depends on what I'm writing.
refer to the number 20 as "a score"
No, but if it would bother you, I'd be happy to start.
and your car as an "automobile"
Yes. It's not that uncommon to hear, especially in international circles where "auto" is more universal than the American word "car." Though, I noticed you tried to play fake British by dropping the article before "university." Sorry. I'm not impressed.
Do you use Roman Numerals?
Sometimes at work, yes. It's sometimes required for the job.
AD itself is a relatively new term; people used to refer to "the 2006th year of our lord".
Your teachers must have implanted a unique notion of "new" in your mind, considering I've seen historic churches and cathedrals around the world that use "AD" in their engavings back before the year 1,000. Possibly earlier.
Seriously, grow up and try to live in the real world.
I'll live in the real world. You can live in yours.
Global warming is not as proven a fact as say, evolution.
I don't want to sound like I'm from Kansas or anything, but when did evolution go from theory to fact? When I got out of college (10 years or so ago) "evolution" was always expressed as "the theory or evolution" or "evolutionary theory." Again, I went to college in Pennsylvania and New York, so any neocon flames will be misdirected, but it seems that the root of the problem in these debates is that everyone plays their favorite theory as a fact, and spins everyone else's can be dismissed as a theory.
Sorry, but it's hard to take anything seriously from anyone who uses CE/BCE instead of AD/BC. Regardless of your views on religion, ignoring 2,000 years of history and tradition to fit your own world view is just as bad as the neocons ignoring science. You accuse anti-global warming people of ignoring historical facts, then you ignore history, yourself. Time to take a little bit of your own medicine. Or are you one of those people who make up words like "vlog" and "meme" to make up for a lack of vocabulary and life experience?