Yeah, it's just a game. but some people take their games very seriously. Imagine next year, just before the Superbowl, one of the teams just plain concedes, and stands around drinking Gatoraid and picking flowers or something. Imagine the uproar! Hey, it's only a game, but it would make every newspaper's headline and there'd probably be death threats on the the team.
I don't take games that seriously. I cheated plenty of times playing Diablo with my friends because hey, I bought the game, I deserve to see every cool thing in it, whether I have the skill or time to play it all the way through. But I realize that some people take their games very seriously so I wouldn't play with someone who cared that I was cheating.
I for one am happy that Senator Schumer is seeking an injunction. When the lawsuit was originally brought up, Microsoft was allowed to ship Windows 98 with Internet Explorer an "integral part" of the OS. Of course, now that Netscape is no longer a threat, they're willing to say that PC manufacturers can now "disable" IE, as CNN reported earlier.
Microsoft is doing it again, but with Messenger, Windows Media Player, Photo printing services, and other technologies in XP. It's important for the government to act before Microsoft subsumes other technologies into Windows in the quest for "innovation". Steve Balmer has said before that anything can be bundled into Windows:
"Is there any limit to what you think you can put into the operating system at all?" [Steve Balmer] was asked.
"If you asked me as a matter of law, no, I don't think so," Ballmer replied after a little hemming and hawing. The only restriction he mentioned was that everything Microsoft integrates into its operating system should make good business sense and not be "frivolous."
And to the troll who suggested that Microsoft should be able to do anything they want: Microsoft has a monopoly. They can, on a whim, force companies to pay them money, even it means laying off employees: like when they tried to raise fees earlier this year but charitably gave a 6-month stay so companies could rebudget. They illegally attacked Java, fragmented it, and now refuse to support in XP. They forced Apple, a third company, to use their web browser or they would kill a completely unrelated product. This is not a company that you want to leave alone because they promise to be good.
It's time the US got as tough on them as they would on anyone who engages on illegal behavior.
Better find another "funny" acronym. Although I never found the Mac OS to be less stable than Windows 9x, Mac OS X is extremely stable. I've got an unsupported 6-year-old Power Mac 7500 with an overclocked PowerLogix G3 processor running Mac OS X, and it's been up for 10 days straight so far. The only times I've had to reboot it in the last month is when I updated the OS.
Recently I compiled/installed MySQL, the newest version of Apache, PHP, and PHP-Nuke, and I'm hosting a PHP-Nuke site off of it. And it's still running without a hitch.
I've run my share of Microsoft programs, and I'd to say that their software has gotten better, but it's still a little flaky. In fact, I used to be able to completely freeze my Mac (requiring a reboot) opening a corrupted Word document. Mac OS X may be the perfect environment for Microsoft because Mac OS X can handle their buggy software.
I can understand students pirating software individually (I did it plenty of times in college), but having someone at the school district do it is stupid. The guy said he was running AppleWorks, but they were having a problem translating Office docs. Well, I've had no problems opening Office documents in AppleWorks using the included DataViz translators. For more complicated work, it may choke, but in my experience, very few people do complicated Office documents -- how many times do you see someone doing a multiple column, multisectional document with embedding tables and whatnot? And I don't see them doing something like this at a school. So I think he must be rationalizing the fact that he didn't know very much about importing/exporting documents in AppleWorks, and that cost the school district $300,000 in fines.
The big problem with this is too often schools "want to use what businesses use", as if the school is nothing but a trade school. Of course this is ridiculous. By the time some first grader gets into the workforce, everyone will be using something wildly different anyway. It's more important for kids to learn how computers work or how to learn about what a computer can do for them, rather than be trained to use a specific application.
It's funny, but generally browsing the responses to this article, you'd come to the conclusion that most people disagree with global warming, therefore, it's not real. Of course, in science we don't vote on the facts. Clearly there is an issue with global warming (every country outside the US is convinced), but large energy companies are against doing anything about it, and generally so is the public.
As long as we have a president cozying up to his buddies in the oil industry, a public that loves to drive their gas-wasting SUVs, and an industry that depends on both to make record profits, you'll always have a group of people that claims that global warming isn't happening.
Science isn't enough to combat this, because the US has been steadily becoming anti-science since probably the 1970s. The US became very concerned about Russia becoming a threat in the 1950s due to Sputnik, so there was an agressive campaign to increase the science-literacy of students in schools. These days, things are much different. Today, we have a number of states that tried (or are trying) to remove biological evolution from public schools and teach myths instead. Every newspaper in the country carries astrological horoscopes to "tell you your future". Some guy has his own cable show where he "talks" to audience members' dead relatives. Is this the society that you think will be convinced they should give up their 8 MPG SUVs to prevent the Earth's climate from changing?
SGI has been hovering around around a dollar since May. They've been steadily eroding since their plan to make money building high-end NT/x86 workstations just isn't working out. I hate to say it, but reality.sgi.com may not be the only server they're turning off.
> "Microsoft is saying 'we made a mistake,'" says
> Chris LeTocq, principal analyst with Guernsey
> Research. "They listened to IT executives."
> Those executives were saying they could not
> afford the new licensing model this year.
Any IT manager out there worth his or her salt should ask Microsoft for an extension, begging and pleading for time. Then immediately put together a task force to reduce their company's dependance on Microsoft's products. Maybe not completely (they do have a monopoly, you know), but be able to put your company in a position where you have a second vendor for any product Microsoft makes. That way you have a second vendor to keep Microsoft honest. That means instigating policies such as "all company documents should be stored in an open format like RTF or even PDF, but not like DOC."
That way, the next time Microsoft floats a trial balloon, your company can have a credible alternative to give Microsoft in response.
Remember, your first responsibility is to honor your fiduciary duty to your company's shareholders, not to Microsoft. A simple concept, but something overlooked in all companies I've worked for.
Clearly Microsoft has been using the press to float trial balloons about controversial policies. Instead of discussing the policy with customers (like a company that doesn't have a monopoly has to), they formulate a Machiavellian policy, float it in the press, and watch the firestorm. If it looks politically manageable, they proceed. If not, they repeal it as a misunderstanding.
Ziff-Davis had a story that described how Microsoft had to back off of SmartTags and their upgrade policy. Remember when Microsoft spammed their users (Infoworld, 1999) to encourage them to write to congress to promote their "freedom to innovate"? On the other hand, they're policy to rent software was a miss in 1997, but they're doing it now with Office XP.
The result is that, these policies get postponed, but Microsoft just keeps trying. Either they're waiting for people not to notice an especially odious policy (or to be too jaded to care), or for their monopoly power to be so entrenched that it doesn't matter anyway.
I'd like to think that this is an example of the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I suspect another expression will sadly become more appropriate; To paraphrase Mel Brooks, "It's good to be a monopoly."
You're right; you could argue that Zeitgeist as used in English just a fifty cent word version of "trend". But I think, we make a distinction between the two in ordinary usage (if one could seriously suggest that anyone uses the word Zeitgeist in ordinary usage).
A "trend" kind of implies a short-lived idea, maybe spanning 1 1/2 years. When we say Zeitgeist, we often mean something overwhelming for an era or age. So while there was a trend in the early 1980s of wearing skinny ties, red silk suspenders represented a zeitgeist. The ties becoming skinny was simply a response to the wide ties of the 1970s. The red silk suspenders were more than that in that they symbolize the "power color" red (implying that "power" was synonymous with "aggressive"), the unnecessary expense of silk, and the overly-dressed look that requires suspenders -- remember the go-go 80s, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", junk bonds, people paying way too much money for works of art, tax cuts for the wealthy, etc? You could summarize it all with red silk suspenders. So while the ties were a trend, the suspenders encompassed something bigger than that.
In a similar vein, I would argue that Eddie Bauer represents a zeitgeist for the 1990s, because the brand epitomizes the store-bought rugged individualism and pseudo-outdoors lifestyle that was popular: "Eddie Bauer" edition SUVs driving to fast food places, people buying overpriced clothes from Orvis that they would never wear to go hiking or anything, etc.
So I guess you could say we use (perhaps misuse) the word Zeitgeist to mean an amalgamation of major trends. It's a fine (and perhaps unnecessary) distinction, but hey, that's what marketing is for.
I don't think it's necessarily German. It just so happens that some languages have a single word that expresses an idea more succinctly than in English.
Notice how we define the word "Zeitgeist" in English as "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." So instead of saying the latter phrase, we can just steal a single word from Germany. If we could define the word "Zeitgeist" as "well, it means the same as 'flgrogbrsa' in English, then we'd have no reason to use the German word. I guess we could go to the trouble of making up our own in English, but people in this country have problems as it is with the words we've got.
There are exceptions, of course, but I think when people borrow German words it's because there's no good English equivalent.
Now, French on the other hand, is a different story. People in the US use French all the time when there are perfectly acceptable English subtitutes: lèse-majesté (detraction from dignity), par excellence (being the best kind), nouveau riche (new rich), etc. So in that case, we have no excuse. And of course, when people in the US say these French words, they pronounce them perfectly, much to the glee of French people everywhere.
> The long and short of it is, if people want to
> spend their money on something that's legal,
> it's none of your business if they do so.
That's the attitude that made this country great! If you can slap a price tag on it, it's moral. If people choose to buy slaves, buy land from the government despite any agreements with the natives, or -- for these days -- buy a congressman or a president or a Furby, it's none of yer business. So get yer do-goodin', high-falutin' attitude back to your fairytale land, and pass me some kleenex!
I personally think it's kind of disgusting that porn is the big business it is. Erotica is one thing -- it should be free and not be censored -- but there's something wrong with our society when you can have MPEGs of "HOT YOUNG BARELY LEGAL TEENS" and "HOT BONDAGE AND RAPE PICS!" considered to be a mainstream business. The porn industry does degrade women, and the hot "barely legal" pics promotes the idea of child porn. So while it's legal in the US, that doesn't make it morally right.
So to the guy who complained that slashdotters were knocking the porn industry: while the US Constitution guarantees porn as free speech, it gives the rest of us the right to label you as a pervert.
I think the big question is not whether.NET can be reverse engineered, but does anyone want it?
I have the feeling that Microsoft developed the idea of.NET to entrench their Windows monopoly, not to add some desperately needed services for customers. Just like integrating IE into Windows 98, this is not something people are asking for, but once it's implemented Microsoft's customers won't consider it something they care to complain about.
I could be wrong, but who's asking for this? What major need is Microsoft expecting to solve with.NET? Microsoft with their monopoly is able to change the rules of successful product development -- instead of developing something that solves people's problems, they spend billions developing things to entrench their monopoly but no one complains about. I remember reading articles before Windows 98 (97 back then) was released where pundits were asking why Microsoft was bothering to integrate IE with Windows. Who wants that? Well, customers may not have been asking for it, but it got Microsoft what they wanted -- the tools to be able to control content on the WWW, and make the Internet their own on-line service.
Well, the analogy is, what if someone found a way to "integrate" IE with Linux's or the Mac OS's UI in the same way? No users are clamoring for this, and something that looks like it's "hurting" Microsoft, would actually benefit them. Realize their real goal is not to get everyone to use Windows; it's to create a "sticky" service generating recurring revenue where the barriers of entry so high that their monopoly is preserved. That can be done with a closed OS or with a closed on-line service.
So the question is, if someone reverse-engineers.NET, are they really solving a problem, or just helping Microsoft entrench their monopoly further?
> the practice of tracking vehicles with GPS is
>still a legal practice
Why wouldn't it still be legal? Tracking a vehicle via GPS is not necessarily a bad thing. I just bought a new car (a Mercedes, in fact) that comes with a function called TeleAid (similar to GM's system, I imagine). The idea is that under certain conditions, the car can contact a Mercedes call center via the built-in cellular phone and forward information about the car -- GPS location, speed, last known heading, VIN, color, etc. These conditions include:
1. Airbag goes off
2. Seat belt retractor does whatever it does
3. Car alarm goes off for at a pre-defined period of time
4. Driver pushes the big, James-Bond-styled SOS button just in front of the mirror
I personally like the idea of my car being smart enough to call for help in the event of an accident. This is actually a useful function, as opposed to all the goofy things that I've seen computer makers trying to integrate into cars: I don't care about having stock quotes sent to my car or having some TTS read my email to me. Mercedes doesn't track the location of my car just for fun -- the cellular charges alone would outweigh the value of the data they collect.
I agree that this is a little different from the rental car case; Mercedes is providing me a benefit for the service, rather than trying to regulate me. But realize there are some legitimate uses for this technology.
Before you jump to conspiracy theories
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 3
I'm sure it's more like these are isolated instances, and may not be tied to some conspiracy. Maybe these are disgruntled workers or plain accidents. The fact that the police have no leads is very suspicious. Maybe blaming eco-terrorists is a way to explain it away; kind of like blaming space ships for "crop circles". So while I wouldn't suggest that the stories are being made up completely, I wouldn't be surprised if there were pressure from the white house or their lobbying interests to blame the incidents on a huge environmental terrorist group, just for the sympathy.
In fact, before I start chasing "eco-terrorists", I'd investigate those incidents at SUV dealerships a bit more. I keep hearing that large, gas-guzzling SUVs are cheap these days: Lincoln is selling their Navigator at 0% financing, and you can buy a Chevy Suburban for $6-8k off. Typically you don't discount a "hot" car, even it it is at the end of a model year. From what I've heard, with gas prices where they are, it costs about $80 to fill up the tank on one of those behemoths. Maybe they're torching their own inventory. I mean, car dealerships are always saying how crazy they are.
For a while I learned how to type using a Dvorak keyboard layout. So what I'd do is use a common phrase for me, but type the letters in the Dvorak sequence on a Qwerty keyboard. Or the reverse. Bingo, a relatively simple passphrase became jibberish.
Unfortunately, it was too hard to switch back and forth between Dvorak and Qwerty, and my regular typing became jibberish as well. So I quit doing that, and went back to the slow ol' Qwerty way.
Saying that Microsoft somehow needs Apple to keep the DoJ off their back is out of date. Clearly, Microsoft is no longer worried about the DoJ: bundling MSN messenger, adding smart tags so they can control content on the web, changing their licensing agreements to force users to upgrade, and bundling VoIP clients into XP. Having Apple around to show they don't have a monopoly isn't enough to stem their recent activity. They probably figure they can entrench their position pretty well until dubya gets replaced in office.
No, I think it's more likely that as long as the Macintosh BU is making Microsoft money but not cannibalizing Windows sales, and Apple keeps "preferring" Internet Explorer, they'll keep writing software for it. But if Apple gets into selling an OS for x86, the gloves will come off.
I can't wait until the other episodes are released on DVD. I'm not a big fan of the first two seasons; too crudely drawn and Bart is a moron with his "don't have a cow" and constantly using "man" as an interjection (particularly in season 1). But starting with season 3, the show was great!
Like most, I've seen many of the episodes many times. Even though Fox shows the Simpsons twice day in Dallas, invariably, the syndicated version cuts about a minute or two off each episode. For example:
* In the episode where the Simpsons move to a neighboring town for Homer's new job, Homer asks his new boss for some sugar for his coffee. His boss shuffles in his pockets and dumps some sugar on the table. This part gets cut: His boss then says, "Want some cream, too" and he puts his hands in his pocket. Homer pauses for a second and say, "Uh... no thanks". I fell out of my chair after that line
* During the episode paying homage to "Pulp Fiction" they always cut Professor Frink's song at the end, particular when he mumbles, "ooh, that monkey is gonna pay".
* In one of the Halloween episodes, when Homer and Bart appear as CG, they always cut the scene where Frink explains the "third dimension".
So is it worth it to buy the DVD collections for those extra 30-60 seconds that they cut during syndication play? Probably not, but it would be great to see the shows intact and without commercial interruption.
What kind of OSX are you running at home? I've been running it on my PowerBook G3 (FireWire), and it's cool. I agree that the lack of DVD movie support is annoying, but other than that, it works great!
Classic Mode slow? Are you kidding? Once it loads up (takes about 1-2 minutes the first time you do it), Classic apps generally run as fast as under native Mac OS 9. In fact, for some apps that aren't optimized (like IE 5.x Preview), the older Classic app is much faster. I consistantly run Classic apps (Netscape, MS Office, Outlook Express, etc.), and the performance is just fine.
Software? There's plenty. First, I haven't seen any Mac OS 9 software that won't run in Classic. But if you're interested in Mac OS X-native software, here's what I'm running:
* Apple Mail/Address Book -- cool mail tool
* OmniWeb -- beautiful web browser
* OmniGraffle -- awesome simple vector graphics program
* Macromedia FreeHand -- awesome complicated graphics program
* Preview and Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 -- pdf readers
* FileMaker Pro 5.5 -- cool database package
* BBEdit -- text editor that doesn't suck
* Plus tons of utilities.
I'm not saying that everything's out there, but considering Mac OS X is less than 3 months old, I'd say the software choices better than what one would expect. If you're really impatient, take a nap until after the Worldwide Developers' Conference next month. After that, they'll be plenty of software to go around.
Let's say I own quite a few CDs that are no longer readable. This is happening quite often for some of the older CDs that I own -- KMFDM's "Naive", The Cult's "Electric", Meat Beat Manifesto's "Armed Audio Warfare", etc. Some songs won't play in a regular CD player and none will rip into MP3s.
There's no way I'm going to buy these CDs again (even if they are still in print) because I already own them. Therefore, I downloaded MP3s of the songs off LimeWire and add them to my iTunes music library. As far as I'm concerned, downloading MP3s of songs I own is the same as inserting the disc and ripping them myself. In fact, converting your CDs into MP3s has a hundred advantages over discs, including being generally immune to the paint-leaking-though-the-plastic syndrome that seems to affect lesser discs.
Now, I'm not going to explain to Roxio the above situation, and I don't want to have the hassle of dealing with some goofy digital signature "feature". I like to listen to music, not fsck around with digital signatures or whatever so that "the artist can be compensated" -- we all know that Roxio means it's the RIAA and the music labels that will be compensated.
I expect that Roxio will add some annoying feature because that's the way they run their business. I've had to buy three copies of Toast ($99 ea): once for Mac OS 8 capability, once for Mac OS 8.5 capability, once for Mac OS 9 capability. Toast had no new features I wanted, but I had to buy to use the software with the new OS. This is crazy because Adaptec (now Roxio) never offer an upgrade price. "Oh, you upgraded your OS? Where's our $100?"
I am now more than happy to use the free Disc Burner software that Apple provides. iTunes is better than the SoundJam/Toast hack, and it's much easier to burn indexed CDs with Disc Burner than Toast anyway.
If nothing else, Apple's free disc burning software will make Roxio think twice about charging for a simple compatibility upgrade. It doesn't matter anyway; they lost me as a customer a long time ago.
> Is implementing the standard always A Good
> Thing?"
One can always find a situation, however esoteric, where doing it the "wrong" way seems advantageous. Just like there's always a situation where ignorance provides some benefit, but that doesn't mean that one should always choose ignorance as a matter of course.
Standards are the same way. The one-in-a-million situation where a nonstandard approach provides an accidental benefit (this case for example) isn't really a good case for *always* implementing a non-standard approach.
Slashdot Mirror
> It's just a game.
Yeah, it's just a game. but some people take their games very seriously. Imagine next year, just before the Superbowl, one of the teams just plain concedes, and stands around drinking Gatoraid and picking flowers or something. Imagine the uproar! Hey, it's only a game, but it would make every newspaper's headline and there'd probably be death threats on the the team.
I don't take games that seriously. I cheated plenty of times playing Diablo with my friends because hey, I bought the game, I deserve to see every cool thing in it, whether I have the skill or time to play it all the way through. But I realize that some people take their games very seriously so I wouldn't play with someone who cared that I was cheating.
And to the troll who suggested that Microsoft should be able to do anything they want: Microsoft has a monopoly. They can, on a whim, force companies to pay them money, even it means laying off employees: like when they tried to raise fees earlier this year but charitably gave a 6-month stay so companies could rebudget. They illegally attacked Java, fragmented it, and now refuse to support in XP. They forced Apple, a third company, to use their web browser or they would kill a completely unrelated product. This is not a company that you want to leave alone because they promise to be good.
It's time the US got as tough on them as they would on anyone who engages on illegal behavior.
Better find another "funny" acronym. Although I never found the Mac OS to be less stable than Windows 9x, Mac OS X is extremely stable. I've got an unsupported 6-year-old Power Mac 7500 with an overclocked PowerLogix G3 processor running Mac OS X, and it's been up for 10 days straight so far. The only times I've had to reboot it in the last month is when I updated the OS.
Recently I compiled/installed MySQL, the newest version of Apache, PHP, and PHP-Nuke, and I'm hosting a PHP-Nuke site off of it. And it's still running without a hitch.
I've run my share of Microsoft programs, and I'd to say that their software has gotten better, but it's still a little flaky. In fact, I used to be able to completely freeze my Mac (requiring a reboot) opening a corrupted Word document. Mac OS X may be the perfect environment for Microsoft because Mac OS X can handle their buggy software.
I can understand students pirating software individually (I did it plenty of times in college), but having someone at the school district do it is stupid. The guy said he was running AppleWorks, but they were having a problem translating Office docs. Well, I've had no problems opening Office documents in AppleWorks using the included DataViz translators. For more complicated work, it may choke, but in my experience, very few people do complicated Office documents -- how many times do you see someone doing a multiple column, multisectional document with embedding tables and whatnot? And I don't see them doing something like this at a school. So I think he must be rationalizing the fact that he didn't know very much about importing/exporting documents in AppleWorks, and that cost the school district $300,000 in fines.
The big problem with this is too often schools "want to use what businesses use", as if the school is nothing but a trade school. Of course this is ridiculous. By the time some first grader gets into the workforce, everyone will be using something wildly different anyway. It's more important for kids to learn how computers work or how to learn about what a computer can do for them, rather than be trained to use a specific application.
It's funny, but generally browsing the responses to this article, you'd come to the conclusion that most people disagree with global warming, therefore, it's not real. Of course, in science we don't vote on the facts. Clearly there is an issue with global warming (every country outside the US is convinced), but large energy companies are against doing anything about it, and generally so is the public.
As long as we have a president cozying up to his buddies in the oil industry, a public that loves to drive their gas-wasting SUVs, and an industry that depends on both to make record profits, you'll always have a group of people that claims that global warming isn't happening.
Science isn't enough to combat this, because the US has been steadily becoming anti-science since probably the 1970s. The US became very concerned about Russia becoming a threat in the 1950s due to Sputnik, so there was an agressive campaign to increase the science-literacy of students in schools. These days, things are much different. Today, we have a number of states that tried (or are trying) to remove biological evolution from public schools and teach myths instead. Every newspaper in the country carries astrological horoscopes to "tell you your future". Some guy has his own cable show where he "talks" to audience members' dead relatives. Is this the society that you think will be convinced they should give up their 8 MPG SUVs to prevent the Earth's climate from changing?
> After losing several hundred dollars I decided to pull the
>plug.
>I did not play enough hands to be sure I didn't have a run
>of bad luck. Maybe if I'd been willing to lose $10k I'd
>have eventually gone positive.
Wow, it sounds like not only did you write a program to simulate video poker playing, but also to simulate a gambling addiction!
SGI has been hovering around around a dollar since May. They've been steadily eroding since their plan to make money building high-end NT/x86 workstations just isn't working out. I hate to say it, but reality.sgi.com may not be the only server they're turning off.
> Microsoft has pushed back the deadlines for
> enrollment to its new licensing program by five
> months
You got an extension this time, but if you're late again, they're going to have to break your legs!
> "Microsoft is saying 'we made a mistake,'" says
> Chris LeTocq, principal analyst with Guernsey
> Research. "They listened to IT executives."
> Those executives were saying they could not
> afford the new licensing model this year.
Any IT manager out there worth his or her salt should ask Microsoft for an extension, begging and pleading for time. Then immediately put together a task force to reduce their company's dependance on Microsoft's products. Maybe not completely (they do have a monopoly, you know), but be able to put your company in a position where you have a second vendor for any product Microsoft makes. That way you have a second vendor to keep Microsoft honest. That means instigating policies such as "all company documents should be stored in an open format like RTF or even PDF, but not like DOC."
That way, the next time Microsoft floats a trial balloon, your company can have a credible alternative to give Microsoft in response.
Remember, your first responsibility is to honor your fiduciary duty to your company's shareholders, not to Microsoft. A simple concept, but something overlooked in all companies I've worked for.
Clearly Microsoft has been using the press to float trial balloons about controversial policies. Instead of discussing the policy with customers (like a company that doesn't have a monopoly has to), they formulate a Machiavellian policy, float it in the press, and watch the firestorm. If it looks politically manageable, they proceed. If not, they repeal it as a misunderstanding.
Ziff-Davis had a story that described how Microsoft had to back off of SmartTags and their upgrade policy. Remember when Microsoft spammed their users (Infoworld, 1999) to encourage them to write to congress to promote their "freedom to innovate"? On the other hand, they're policy to rent software was a miss in 1997, but they're doing it now with Office XP.
The result is that, these policies get postponed, but Microsoft just keeps trying. Either they're waiting for people not to notice an especially odious policy (or to be too jaded to care), or for their monopoly power to be so entrenched that it doesn't matter anyway.
I'd like to think that this is an example of the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I suspect another expression will sadly become more appropriate; To paraphrase Mel Brooks, "It's good to be a monopoly."
You're right; you could argue that Zeitgeist as used in English just a fifty cent word version of "trend". But I think, we make a distinction between the two in ordinary usage (if one could seriously suggest that anyone uses the word Zeitgeist in ordinary usage).
A "trend" kind of implies a short-lived idea, maybe spanning 1 1/2 years. When we say Zeitgeist, we often mean something overwhelming for an era or age. So while there was a trend in the early 1980s of wearing skinny ties, red silk suspenders represented a zeitgeist. The ties becoming skinny was simply a response to the wide ties of the 1970s. The red silk suspenders were more than that in that they symbolize the "power color" red (implying that "power" was synonymous with "aggressive"), the unnecessary expense of silk, and the overly-dressed look that requires suspenders -- remember the go-go 80s, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", junk bonds, people paying way too much money for works of art, tax cuts for the wealthy, etc? You could summarize it all with red silk suspenders. So while the ties were a trend, the suspenders encompassed something bigger than that.
In a similar vein, I would argue that Eddie Bauer represents a zeitgeist for the 1990s, because the brand epitomizes the store-bought rugged individualism and pseudo-outdoors lifestyle that was popular: "Eddie Bauer" edition SUVs driving to fast food places, people buying overpriced clothes from Orvis that they would never wear to go hiking or anything, etc.
So I guess you could say we use (perhaps misuse) the word Zeitgeist to mean an amalgamation of major trends. It's a fine (and perhaps unnecessary) distinction, but hey, that's what marketing is for.
I don't think it's necessarily German. It just so happens that some languages have a single word that expresses an idea more succinctly than in English.
Notice how we define the word "Zeitgeist" in English as "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." So instead of saying the latter phrase, we can just steal a single word from Germany. If we could define the word "Zeitgeist" as "well, it means the same as 'flgrogbrsa' in English, then we'd have no reason to use the German word. I guess we could go to the trouble of making up our own in English, but people in this country have problems as it is with the words we've got.
There are exceptions, of course, but I think when people borrow German words it's because there's no good English equivalent.
Now, French on the other hand, is a different story. People in the US use French all the time when there are perfectly acceptable English subtitutes: lèse-majesté (detraction from dignity), par excellence (being the best kind), nouveau riche (new rich), etc. So in that case, we have no excuse. And of course, when people in the US say these French words, they pronounce them perfectly, much to the glee of French people everywhere.
> The long and short of it is, if people want to
> spend their money on something that's legal,
> it's none of your business if they do so.
That's the attitude that made this country great! If you can slap a price tag on it, it's moral. If people choose to buy slaves, buy land from the government despite any agreements with the natives, or -- for these days -- buy a congressman or a president or a Furby, it's none of yer business. So get yer do-goodin', high-falutin' attitude back to your fairytale land, and pass me some kleenex!
I personally think it's kind of disgusting that porn is the big business it is. Erotica is one thing -- it should be free and not be censored -- but there's something wrong with our society when you can have MPEGs of "HOT YOUNG BARELY LEGAL TEENS" and "HOT BONDAGE AND RAPE PICS!" considered to be a mainstream business. The porn industry does degrade women, and the hot "barely legal" pics promotes the idea of child porn. So while it's legal in the US, that doesn't make it morally right.
So to the guy who complained that slashdotters were knocking the porn industry: while the US Constitution guarantees porn as free speech, it gives the rest of us the right to label you as a pervert.
I think the big question is not whether .NET can be reverse engineered, but does anyone want it?
I have the feeling that Microsoft developed the idea of .NET to entrench their Windows monopoly, not to add some desperately needed services for customers. Just like integrating IE into Windows 98, this is not something people are asking for, but once it's implemented Microsoft's customers won't consider it something they care to complain about.
I could be wrong, but who's asking for this? What major need is Microsoft expecting to solve with .NET? Microsoft with their monopoly is able to change the rules of successful product development -- instead of developing something that solves people's problems, they spend billions developing things to entrench their monopoly but no one complains about. I remember reading articles before Windows 98 (97 back then) was released where pundits were asking why Microsoft was bothering to integrate IE with Windows. Who wants that? Well, customers may not have been asking for it, but it got Microsoft what they wanted -- the tools to be able to control content on the WWW, and make the Internet their own on-line service.
Well, the analogy is, what if someone found a way to "integrate" IE with Linux's or the Mac OS's UI in the same way? No users are clamoring for this, and something that looks like it's "hurting" Microsoft, would actually benefit them. Realize their real goal is not to get everyone to use Windows; it's to create a "sticky" service generating recurring revenue where the barriers of entry so high that their monopoly is preserved. That can be done with a closed OS or with a closed on-line service.
So the question is, if someone reverse-engineers .NET, are they really solving a problem, or just helping Microsoft entrench their monopoly further?
> the practice of tracking vehicles with GPS is
>still a legal practice
Why wouldn't it still be legal? Tracking a vehicle via GPS is not necessarily a bad thing. I just bought a new car (a Mercedes, in fact) that comes with a function called TeleAid (similar to GM's system, I imagine). The idea is that under certain conditions, the car can contact a Mercedes call center via the built-in cellular phone and forward information about the car -- GPS location, speed, last known heading, VIN, color, etc. These conditions include:
1. Airbag goes off
2. Seat belt retractor does whatever it does
3. Car alarm goes off for at a pre-defined period of time
4. Driver pushes the big, James-Bond-styled SOS button just in front of the mirror
I personally like the idea of my car being smart enough to call for help in the event of an accident. This is actually a useful function, as opposed to all the goofy things that I've seen computer makers trying to integrate into cars: I don't care about having stock quotes sent to my car or having some TTS read my email to me. Mercedes doesn't track the location of my car just for fun -- the cellular charges alone would outweigh the value of the data they collect.
I agree that this is a little different from the rental car case; Mercedes is providing me a benefit for the service, rather than trying to regulate me. But realize there are some legitimate uses for this technology.
I'm sure it's more like these are isolated instances, and may not be tied to some conspiracy. Maybe these are disgruntled workers or plain accidents. The fact that the police have no leads is very suspicious. Maybe blaming eco-terrorists is a way to explain it away; kind of like blaming space ships for "crop circles". So while I wouldn't suggest that the stories are being made up completely, I wouldn't be surprised if there were pressure from the white house or their lobbying interests to blame the incidents on a huge environmental terrorist group, just for the sympathy.
In fact, before I start chasing "eco-terrorists", I'd investigate those incidents at SUV dealerships a bit more. I keep hearing that large, gas-guzzling SUVs are cheap these days: Lincoln is selling their Navigator at 0% financing, and you can buy a Chevy Suburban for $6-8k off. Typically you don't discount a "hot" car, even it it is at the end of a model year. From what I've heard, with gas prices where they are, it costs about $80 to fill up the tank on one of those behemoths. Maybe they're torching their own inventory. I mean, car dealerships are always saying how crazy they are.
For a while I learned how to type using a Dvorak keyboard layout. So what I'd do is use a common phrase for me, but type the letters in the Dvorak sequence on a Qwerty keyboard. Or the reverse. Bingo, a relatively simple passphrase became jibberish.
Unfortunately, it was too hard to switch back and forth between Dvorak and Qwerty, and my regular typing became jibberish as well. So I quit doing that, and went back to the slow ol' Qwerty way.
It was a cool system while it lasted.
Saying that Microsoft somehow needs Apple to keep the DoJ off their back is out of date. Clearly, Microsoft is no longer worried about the DoJ: bundling MSN messenger, adding smart tags so they can control content on the web, changing their licensing agreements to force users to upgrade, and bundling VoIP clients into XP. Having Apple around to show they don't have a monopoly isn't enough to stem their recent activity. They probably figure they can entrench their position pretty well until dubya gets replaced in office. No, I think it's more likely that as long as the Macintosh BU is making Microsoft money but not cannibalizing Windows sales, and Apple keeps "preferring" Internet Explorer, they'll keep writing software for it. But if Apple gets into selling an OS for x86, the gloves will come off.
So much for MSNBC being somehow "independent" of Microsoft.
I can't wait until the other episodes are released on DVD. I'm not a big fan of the first two seasons; too crudely drawn and Bart is a moron with his "don't have a cow" and constantly using "man" as an interjection (particularly in season 1). But starting with season 3, the show was great!
Like most, I've seen many of the episodes many times. Even though Fox shows the Simpsons twice day in Dallas, invariably, the syndicated version cuts about a minute or two off each episode. For example:
* In the episode where the Simpsons move to a neighboring town for Homer's new job, Homer asks his new boss for some sugar for his coffee. His boss shuffles in his pockets and dumps some sugar on the table. This part gets cut: His boss then says, "Want some cream, too" and he puts his hands in his pocket. Homer pauses for a second and say, "Uh... no thanks". I fell out of my chair after that line
* During the episode paying homage to "Pulp Fiction" they always cut Professor Frink's song at the end, particular when he mumbles, "ooh, that monkey is gonna pay".
* In one of the Halloween episodes, when Homer and Bart appear as CG, they always cut the scene where Frink explains the "third dimension".
So is it worth it to buy the DVD collections for those extra 30-60 seconds that they cut during syndication play? Probably not, but it would be great to see the shows intact and without commercial interruption.
What kind of OSX are you running at home? I've been running it on my PowerBook G3 (FireWire), and it's cool. I agree that the lack of DVD movie support is annoying, but other than that, it works great!
Classic Mode slow? Are you kidding? Once it loads up (takes about 1-2 minutes the first time you do it), Classic apps generally run as fast as under native Mac OS 9. In fact, for some apps that aren't optimized (like IE 5.x Preview), the older Classic app is much faster. I consistantly run Classic apps (Netscape, MS Office, Outlook Express, etc.), and the performance is just fine.
Software? There's plenty. First, I haven't seen any Mac OS 9 software that won't run in Classic. But if you're interested in Mac OS X-native software, here's what I'm running:
* Apple Mail/Address Book -- cool mail tool
* OmniWeb -- beautiful web browser
* OmniGraffle -- awesome simple vector graphics program
* Macromedia FreeHand -- awesome complicated graphics program
* Preview and Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 -- pdf readers
* FileMaker Pro 5.5 -- cool database package
* BBEdit -- text editor that doesn't suck
* Plus tons of utilities.
I'm not saying that everything's out there, but considering Mac OS X is less than 3 months old, I'd say the software choices better than what one would expect. If you're really impatient, take a nap until after the Worldwide Developers' Conference next month. After that, they'll be plenty of software to go around.
Let's say I own quite a few CDs that are no longer readable. This is happening quite often for some of the older CDs that I own -- KMFDM's "Naive", The Cult's "Electric", Meat Beat Manifesto's "Armed Audio Warfare", etc. Some songs won't play in a regular CD player and none will rip into MP3s.
There's no way I'm going to buy these CDs again (even if they are still in print) because I already own them. Therefore, I downloaded MP3s of the songs off LimeWire and add them to my iTunes music library. As far as I'm concerned, downloading MP3s of songs I own is the same as inserting the disc and ripping them myself. In fact, converting your CDs into MP3s has a hundred advantages over discs, including being generally immune to the paint-leaking-though-the-plastic syndrome that seems to affect lesser discs.
Now, I'm not going to explain to Roxio the above situation, and I don't want to have the hassle of dealing with some goofy digital signature "feature". I like to listen to music, not fsck around with digital signatures or whatever so that "the artist can be compensated" -- we all know that Roxio means it's the RIAA and the music labels that will be compensated.
I expect that Roxio will add some annoying feature because that's the way they run their business. I've had to buy three copies of Toast ($99 ea): once for Mac OS 8 capability, once for Mac OS 8.5 capability, once for Mac OS 9 capability. Toast had no new features I wanted, but I had to buy to use the software with the new OS. This is crazy because Adaptec (now Roxio) never offer an upgrade price. "Oh, you upgraded your OS? Where's our $100?"
I am now more than happy to use the free Disc Burner software that Apple provides. iTunes is better than the SoundJam/Toast hack, and it's much easier to burn indexed CDs with Disc Burner than Toast anyway.
If nothing else, Apple's free disc burning software will make Roxio think twice about charging for a simple compatibility upgrade. It doesn't matter anyway; they lost me as a customer a long time ago.
I'd like to log a complaint about the choice of the article title. I thought it was talking about an R-rated sequel to "The Matrix."
[Note to humor-impaired moderators, this was a joke]
> Is implementing the standard always A Good
> Thing?"
One can always find a situation, however esoteric, where doing it the "wrong" way seems advantageous. Just like there's always a situation where ignorance provides some benefit, but that doesn't mean that one should always choose ignorance as a matter of course.
Standards are the same way. The one-in-a-million situation where a nonstandard approach provides an accidental benefit (this case for example) isn't really a good case for *always* implementing a non-standard approach.
You know what happens to you when you have too much fiber in your diet.