Junk email is *mostly* free. That is, you usually don't have to pay someone real money to send 1 email vs. 100,000 emails. So let's make spamming be a theft of services offense at the very minimum, but preferably a felony (grand-theft-bandwidth?). Since it is an international problem, get countries to sign treaties allowing the extradition of potential offenders (with the appropriate documentation, of course). Then have the CIA set up a third world country to handle the court system and prisons for this type of offense prosecution and incarceration, with humanitarian aid from the US and other countries to fund the infrastructure. I think that most spammers would be hestitant to spam if it meant 8 to 20 years of hard labor in a Turkish prison.
Claims by some Linux publishers that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows seem totally oversold.
Duh! But by the same token:
Claims by some Microsoft Publishers (is there more than one?) that anybody can easily upgrade from one Microsoft product to another seem totally oversold.
From the article, he used a system with known problems (Sony is a bitch to work with for Linux distros), and not exactly the distros that I would choose, and didn't use any of the helper apps (like easy_ubuntu, etc.), and that he was using moderately complex spreadsheets (which most people don't use), I'd say his assessment was, well frankly, his assessment.
The thing that really bothers me about people's claims is that they are quite likely personal experiences which at face value are pretty much worth the paper they are written on. Why is it that you never see someone write an article that is a compilation of diverse, informative, non-biased experiences? My guess is that they aren't interested in any truth but their own. I will admit that I'm guilty of that myself, but I'd certainly be willing to give objectivity a shot.
Hey, anybody out there willing to pay me to be objective?
If the CSS were bloated enough, then maybe it would slow down loading, which would slow down reading, which would make it harder to slashdot a linked website.
Really though, I agree that it would be nice to be able to select one of several styles. No one design works for all people. Why not give the choice of several varied (but all very good) styles that would all be properly Slashdot branded, but which work well for varied audiences, screen sizes, etc.?
The Microsoft of Linux would take a perfectly good product and make it fat, ugly, bug and virus ridden, and cost a lot. I think that would be a tragedy to screw up Linux so much.
Now if you are talking about Microsoft's marketing only, then that is a different story. I think that is Microsoft's big forte. Bill and Steve could sell two milking machines to a farmer with one cow and take the cow as a down payment. But, then they'd deliver the machines years late, which would just be two fat, ugly milk maids from Poland with big strong hands. It would get the job done, but you'd never want to actually use them.
The Blockbuster nearest us will take back your on-line rentals in-store, giving you about a two-day faster turnaround. I return one yesterday to the store and they already sent out another from my queue. I could not have returned a Netflix DVD and received the return credit until Wednesday. I find that another benefit that I have not seen here yet.
In most cases, piracy generates no money. It doesn't get money to the owners and the pirates may have money to spend on other things, but most pirates are giving away their booty for free.
The logic used by our government is pre-kindergarten at best. I suggest we vote out every single incumbent in the next election. Show them we don't want their crap anymore. Then those that don't fall in line for the next election, vote them out. It may take a few elections, and it may cause a few problems here and there, but at least it won't be the train wreck we're going to see in the not too distant future if we don't change things.
All Micro$oft would have to charge to have made more money on their SSL products is $.01 each. So what if they made more. The true value of one Apache server is more than all the Micro$soft servers put together.
I always said that XP stood for "eXterminate Piracy". They came out with ME as a stopgap version that was so crappy that anyone running it would want to upgrade to XP. Then with their stronger, single-machine-per-key authentication it would help them to fight piracy. The whole idea behind ME -> XP was to stop the piracy they were seeing with 98 and 95.
What the fuck man. The guy is into the music and dancing and you shatter his eardrums with a whistle? Loosen up! Damn, smoke a joint before the concert or have a beer or two and you won't care, I promise.
If I hadn't move my head out of the way a couple of times, I would have had a blooding nose from the a**hole flinging his arms around. It was not just that he was into the music and dancing. It was totally excessive. He also blocked my view of the stage, and his wiggling butt was about all I could see. Lighten up????!!!!??? I paid good money for the tickets and I was getting a BAD experience. Then when I asked nicely if he was going to stand up the whole concert and he is rude back to me, I was TOTALLY justified. Those I was with agreed with me and several people around me thanked me.
I went to the concert to enjoy the concert. I don't drink or smoke (anything), so maybe I'm not your idea of the concert goer, but right now, I can honestly say, "I don't care."
Really, what concert is worth $250?!?!?!?! Especially with all the crap you have to put up with to go to it - parking, crowds, rude people. The last concert I went to made me realize how much I hate a concert. The guy next to me (and sort of in line with my view of the stage) was standing up dancing around with his butt in my face and flinging his arms in the air almost hitting me a couple of times. I asked him if he was going to stand up the whole concert. He turned to me and said, "Probably!" Well, I have a whistle that is about 135dB (with my fingers in my mouth, not an actual "device") At the end of the next two songs (with gayguy still dancing around) when everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs, I whistled the very loudest I could. They guy then got up and moved, and I stopped whistling. the rest of the concert was much better. Still, having to resort to that made me regret going to concerts.
Okay, I use linux. Never boot my desktop to Windoze and only occasionally boot my laptop to Windoze (very rare, and usually only for a specific reason, then I go back to the one-true OS). So am I just using the wrong OS? Will their offerings lock me out because I won't have their "can't-skip-the-commercials" player? I would guess that it will be Windows ONLY, because Disney does everything they offer that way (f******, G******, s***** M********!!!!), so Mac, *nix, and *BSD would all be screwed.
MS Linux Lab: You want to do flurblizing? We have found that you can't do flurblizing very well with Linux. We do have this sweet little OS called Vista that might do what you want, though....
Outlook also has a little notification box that comes up in the lower right whenever a new e-mail comes in. We call it the toast. I'm very disciplined about ignoring that unless I see that it's a high-priority topic.
Okay, I don't use Outlook (hate it), but, if he ignores it unless it's high priority, then there must be a way to flag something as high priority, and if it is flagged high prioirity, then shouldn't you be able to filter the "toast" so that you only see high priority "toast"? Either he's not very bright, lying, or his product needs and update, right?
Would you prefer them to just repackage stuff and stick a Sun label on it and kill off their R&D? Would you want to work for a company that did only that? Would you have any respect for a company that only did that?
In other words, would you like to work for a company like Microsoft?
Oops, I forgot about Microsoft's best and most successful R&D project - Clippy!
MS Windows doesn't have X already built in, so the functionality using the lowest common denominator was chosen. I am not making a case for the decision, just explaining the reality. I think you are preaching to the choir when I read what you are saying, but there are plenty of others with different opinions. I have said for years that X should have been the standard that MS used for their windowing, but MS didn't own X, so they settled for creating their own, much-less-useable windowing environment (that at least they owned and could control). Let's all give MS a round of applause for such forward thinking ideals!!! *dead silence*
A friend of mine went for a job interview at MS in the '87. One of the people that interviewed him said "We can even do multi-tasking!" and showed him that he had two computers on his desk so that he could run two programs at once. They don't innovate, they redefine.:)
Maybe we should also include all those salaries of all the developers into the cost of making pizza as well, because those developers did all that work by eating pizza. That would make pizza cost about $500 per large pizza. There are not many many thousands of OSS developers that do it full-time, paid-to-do-so-by-their-employer.
The freedom to do what you want with your labor and your mind is included in that freedom, and that is why I am against intellectual property rights in every way.
The reason we have IP laws to begin with is that the companies that used to consider their employees valuable, and tried to keep them as employees, stopped caring for them. Instead they valued the product that came from the employees more than the employees. When the employee left, they had to stop the employee from taking the idea from them and using it as competition. That is where the notion that the ideas we come up with in the employ of another belong to the one who paid us. Heaven forbid they compensate the employee for the great work they did! Just keep them from taking the idea to someone else, or from using it on their own.
IP rights should be totally reworked, but that's not going to happen until it's easy to hit the devil in the head with a snowball. Corporations have more control over our lives than we do, because they pay the politicians to work for them. Campaign reform would be the first step, but politicians aren't going to vote for something that would take money away from them. Unfortunately the first 10 dominoes are glued in place with super glue.
...we'll ship more innovative technology into the marketplace than during our entire 10-year history...
All they'd need is a single innovative item to make that come true, not only for MSN, but for all of Microsoft, for it's complete history. Microsoft Innovation is an oxymoron.
My alltime most hated line is: It's the people's right to know.
Reporters (in general, there are of course exceptions) are just glory mongers, waiting to pounce on a story that will make headlines and give them glory and prestige. They no more care about the public than terrorists. I can't tell you how many times I see a news story where the address and name of a person are given where that information should be kept private (for safety of the person if nothing else). Most of them hide the identity of their source, not because of what might happen to the person, but so that no one else can get the story. We all know how many times a source has be a figment of the reporter's imagination. Why? Because they can't make the story without making up the source.
Show me a good reporter, and I'll show you a dead one.
That doesn't mean that everything they do is detrimental to public interest, but their motive is usually just for their own aggrandizement.
One thing I have said for years is that software development would have progressed several years worth faster had it not been for all the developers trying to work around the problems caused by simply bad software from Microsoft. Case in point: 640K. I don't think I have to say more than this to make my point.
I personally feel that Bill Gates cannot atone for his bad acts until he has not only given away all his money, but also Balmer's and most of the others who made huge fortunes by murdering other businesses with their illegal business practices. If you murder a person, you go to jail. If your business murder's another business, it's called competition. What about all the people from the dead business that were displaced in the business world because Microsoft illegally did business? People have argued that there are more people who have made money from Microsoft than those who lost. I guess that thinking helps support the idea that Hitler was a great man because he helped bring the world out of the Great Depression - "some lost their lives, but look what it did for our economy!" Go, Adolf!
Slashdot Mirror
Junk email is *mostly* free. That is, you usually don't have to pay someone real money to send 1 email vs. 100,000 emails. So let's make spamming be a theft of services offense at the very minimum, but preferably a felony (grand-theft-bandwidth?). Since it is an international problem, get countries to sign treaties allowing the extradition of potential offenders (with the appropriate documentation, of course). Then have the CIA set up a third world country to handle the court system and prisons for this type of offense prosecution and incarceration, with humanitarian aid from the US and other countries to fund the infrastructure. I think that most spammers would be hestitant to spam if it meant 8 to 20 years of hard labor in a Turkish prison.
Duh! But by the same token:
Claims by some Microsoft Publishers (is there more than one?) that anybody can easily upgrade from one Microsoft product to another seem totally oversold.From the article, he used a system with known problems (Sony is a bitch to work with for Linux distros), and not exactly the distros that I would choose, and didn't use any of the helper apps (like easy_ubuntu, etc.), and that he was using moderately complex spreadsheets (which most people don't use), I'd say his assessment was, well frankly, his assessment.
The thing that really bothers me about people's claims is that they are quite likely personal experiences which at face value are pretty much worth the paper they are written on. Why is it that you never see someone write an article that is a compilation of diverse, informative, non-biased experiences? My guess is that they aren't interested in any truth but their own. I will admit that I'm guilty of that myself, but I'd certainly be willing to give objectivity a shot.
Hey, anybody out there willing to pay me to be objective?
Really though, I agree that it would be nice to be able to select one of several styles. No one design works for all people. Why not give the choice of several varied (but all very good) styles that would all be properly Slashdot branded, but which work well for varied audiences, screen sizes, etc.?
Now if you are talking about Microsoft's marketing only, then that is a different story. I think that is Microsoft's big forte. Bill and Steve could sell two milking machines to a farmer with one cow and take the cow as a down payment. But, then they'd deliver the machines years late, which would just be two fat, ugly milk maids from Poland with big strong hands. It would get the job done, but you'd never want to actually use them.
--
Don't hate me just because I'm right.
The US gov't does a lot of stupid things like that. The worst example is that we STILL subsidize tobacco growers!!!
The Blockbuster nearest us will take back your on-line rentals in-store, giving you about a two-day faster turnaround. I return one yesterday to the store and they already sent out another from my queue. I could not have returned a Netflix DVD and received the return credit until Wednesday. I find that another benefit that I have not seen here yet.
The logic used by our government is pre-kindergarten at best. I suggest we vote out every single incumbent in the next election. Show them we don't want their crap anymore. Then those that don't fall in line for the next election, vote them out. It may take a few elections, and it may cause a few problems here and there, but at least it won't be the train wreck we're going to see in the not too distant future if we don't change things.
All Micro$oft would have to charge to have made more money on their SSL products is $.01 each. So what if they made more. The true value of one Apache server is more than all the Micro$soft servers put together.
I always said that XP stood for "eXterminate Piracy". They came out with ME as a stopgap version that was so crappy that anyone running it would want to upgrade to XP. Then with their stronger, single-machine-per-key authentication it would help them to fight piracy. The whole idea behind ME -> XP was to stop the piracy they were seeing with 98 and 95.
If I hadn't move my head out of the way a couple of times, I would have had a blooding nose from the a**hole flinging his arms around. It was not just that he was into the music and dancing. It was totally excessive. He also blocked my view of the stage, and his wiggling butt was about all I could see. Lighten up????!!!!??? I paid good money for the tickets and I was getting a BAD experience. Then when I asked nicely if he was going to stand up the whole concert and he is rude back to me, I was TOTALLY justified. Those I was with agreed with me and several people around me thanked me.
I went to the concert to enjoy the concert. I don't drink or smoke (anything), so maybe I'm not your idea of the concert goer, but right now, I can honestly say, "I don't care."
Really, what concert is worth $250?!?!?!?! Especially with all the crap you have to put up with to go to it - parking, crowds, rude people. The last concert I went to made me realize how much I hate a concert. The guy next to me (and sort of in line with my view of the stage) was standing up dancing around with his butt in my face and flinging his arms in the air almost hitting me a couple of times. I asked him if he was going to stand up the whole concert. He turned to me and said, "Probably!" Well, I have a whistle that is about 135dB (with my fingers in my mouth, not an actual "device") At the end of the next two songs (with gayguy still dancing around) when everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs, I whistled the very loudest I could. They guy then got up and moved, and I stopped whistling. the rest of the concert was much better. Still, having to resort to that made me regret going to concerts.
Okay, I use linux. Never boot my desktop to Windoze and only occasionally boot my laptop to Windoze (very rare, and usually only for a specific reason, then I go back to the one-true OS). So am I just using the wrong OS? Will their offerings lock me out because I won't have their "can't-skip-the-commercials" player? I would guess that it will be Windows ONLY, because Disney does everything they offer that way (f******, G******, s***** M********!!!!), so Mac, *nix, and *BSD would all be screwed.
And my love of Microsoft is just below shoving a red hot poker 20 inches up my ass (BTW, that is something that I don't like).
MS Linux Lab: You want to do flurblizing? We have found that you can't do flurblizing very well with Linux. We do have this sweet little OS called Vista that might do what you want, though....
Okay, I don't use Outlook (hate it), but, if he ignores it unless it's high priority, then there must be a way to flag something as high priority, and if it is flagged high prioirity, then shouldn't you be able to filter the "toast" so that you only see high priority "toast"? Either he's not very bright, lying, or his product needs and update, right?
In other words, would you like to work for a company like Microsoft?
Oops, I forgot about Microsoft's best and most successful R&D project - Clippy!
MS Windows doesn't have X already built in, so the functionality using the lowest common denominator was chosen. I am not making a case for the decision, just explaining the reality. I think you are preaching to the choir when I read what you are saying, but there are plenty of others with different opinions. I have said for years that X should have been the standard that MS used for their windowing, but MS didn't own X, so they settled for creating their own, much-less-useable windowing environment (that at least they owned and could control). Let's all give MS a round of applause for such forward thinking ideals!!! *dead silence*
A friend of mine went for a job interview at MS in the '87. One of the people that interviewed him said "We can even do multi-tasking!" and showed him that he had two computers on his desk so that he could run two programs at once. They don't innovate, they redefine. :)
Maybe we should also include all those salaries of all the developers into the cost of making pizza as well, because those developers did all that work by eating pizza. That would make pizza cost about $500 per large pizza. There are not many many thousands of OSS developers that do it full-time, paid-to-do-so-by-their-employer.
The reason we have IP laws to begin with is that the companies that used to consider their employees valuable, and tried to keep them as employees, stopped caring for them. Instead they valued the product that came from the employees more than the employees. When the employee left, they had to stop the employee from taking the idea from them and using it as competition. That is where the notion that the ideas we come up with in the employ of another belong to the one who paid us. Heaven forbid they compensate the employee for the great work they did! Just keep them from taking the idea to someone else, or from using it on their own.
IP rights should be totally reworked, but that's not going to happen until it's easy to hit the devil in the head with a snowball. Corporations have more control over our lives than we do, because they pay the politicians to work for them. Campaign reform would be the first step, but politicians aren't going to vote for something that would take money away from them. Unfortunately the first 10 dominoes are glued in place with super glue.
All they'd need is a single innovative item to make that come true, not only for MSN, but for all of Microsoft, for it's complete history. Microsoft Innovation is an oxymoron.
Why does it have to look like XP or Vista?
Reporters (in general, there are of course exceptions) are just glory mongers, waiting to pounce on a story that will make headlines and give them glory and prestige. They no more care about the public than terrorists. I can't tell you how many times I see a news story where the address and name of a person are given where that information should be kept private (for safety of the person if nothing else). Most of them hide the identity of their source, not because of what might happen to the person, but so that no one else can get the story. We all know how many times a source has be a figment of the reporter's imagination. Why? Because they can't make the story without making up the source.
Show me a good reporter, and I'll show you a dead one.
That doesn't mean that everything they do is detrimental to public interest, but their motive is usually just for their own aggrandizement.
Here's hoping this gets moderated to funny or at least informative.
I personally feel that Bill Gates cannot atone for his bad acts until he has not only given away all his money, but also Balmer's and most of the others who made huge fortunes by murdering other businesses with their illegal business practices. If you murder a person, you go to jail. If your business murder's another business, it's called competition. What about all the people from the dead business that were displaced in the business world because Microsoft illegally did business? People have argued that there are more people who have made money from Microsoft than those who lost. I guess that thinking helps support the idea that Hitler was a great man because he helped bring the world out of the Great Depression - "some lost their lives, but look what it did for our economy!" Go, Adolf!