Indeed, the real question here should be whether they have the choice to work at this factory. If they have no choice then yes it's slavery and yes it's awful.
If they have the choice then it's still pretty damn awful but they clearly feel it's better than the alternative- perhaps starving to death for example.
Also, how much is 41 cents an hour in Chinese terms? If they're based in rural China where poverty is common then this could be a pretty high rate so it may be a job that they feel is worth doing for a year or so to make what is relatively decent money for the area they live in with the aim of moving somewhere better. 41 cents sounds shocking to us in the West, but I recall Nike's old India shoe factories paying only around 3 cents a day a decade or so back for 18hr days but that that was still enough to keep their family alive on, so it's all relative.
I'm not going to defend the conditions certainly, but I think it's worth realising that this may at least be a choice they've made and a way out of the position they're in. It's not pleasant but it could be a whole lot better than the alternatives for them.
Because the media hosted elsewhere may be illegal in your country, but not illegal elsewhere.
As such, there is a valid reason not to host it yourself (because you have to adhere to local laws) but a valid reason to link to a host where it is legal (because you belive local laws are unacceptable, or because you're catering to a global audience).
Furthermore, making it illegal to link to illegal content puts a massive burden on sites that allow users to post links as it means they are suddently responsible for illegal content on their site, something which is very costly to manage take down notices for and which could hence kill startups.
Google for example links to some illegal content, but it has the man power to process take downs, other sites will likely not.
I think the reason I and others who have responded are puzzled in that case is because there's still nothing specifically American about those values even in concept.
My point was more whether those values really are American values when Americans voted in say, Bush for a second time after he proved the first time he was dead against those values? Surely if the majority of the country don't actually support those values they can't really be classed as American values unless Americans are willing to show they want them, which, to be fair, with voting Obama in they possibly have now done.
Microsoft hardware- XBox's, Zune's, even peripherals and presumably soon showing off things like Microsoft Touch and so on are presumably as much their planned sales products alongside the software itself.
I'd imagine they'll show off things like their Home server and Media centre systems and that sort of thing that doesn't seem to have become overly prevalent in the mainstream stores.
I don't think Microsoft do care about leaked releases of Windows 7 beta.
The reason they stopped official downloads is probably more to do with the fact they'll run an offer at release for beta users to get cheaper final releases or limit information gathering to official beta key owners systems only to better keep the info they get to a managable amount.
Pirated copies are no problem in these cases - no one in their right mind would run an unpatchable beta copy of Windows indefinitely so no eventual sales are necessarily lost but limiting the supply of official keys is still important for the types of reasons listed above of course.
No offence but I think you have a rose tinted view of what American values are. America despite preaching personal liberty on the world stage has for decades protected big corporates over the little guy.
No, what we have here are Swedish guys defending Swedish values. The fact this isn't happening in America and the case was already effectively judged by the recording industry there is testament to the fact that these are not American values.
If anything, more countries should be straining to adhere to these Swedish values.
New software is always required, it doesn't matter if every software package in the world today was put on one big site for free download, companies would still need plugins for existing software or entirely new custom solutions.
And yes, I am a software developer, we could release all our code into the wild tommorrow and I'd still have a job because the company still needs ever more additional features and changes.
Copyright is unimportant to software developers other than those whose business is built around taking advantage of copyright in the first place. This is why the big music companies are also now largely irrelevant and unneeded and why they're fighting for ever more draconian copyright laws and copyright protection, because their business is built around it. Sucks to be them, but protecting such business models hinders the world as a whole far more than it helps.
Same reason you'd buy any company, they have assets that are worth something even if the company is failing.
Square could buy Eidos, drop all the staff and use the Tomb Raider IP in their own series to boost profits for example.
Companies don't buy over companies to carry them on as is, they buy them to take out the good stuff and throw away the bad. The good stuff may be a bunch of great developers with abysmal management for example or it may just be the IP the companies own- again, in Eidos' case, Tomb Raider.
Not really, the US already had ASAT capabilities as pointed out, so for them to test a year later being anything to do with the Chinese makes no sense, they could have done it a day later had they really wanted to make a point, as could the Russians.
Still I'm not sure what your point is as your theory is still totally irrelevant and non-sensical as pointed out by the rest of my post.
I had a gander at the article you mentioned and it seems to fall into the same trap I suggested you did- the $21billion figure is mere speculation and does not match up with the real facts and figures.
Furthermore, there is an obscure focus on Japan, which whilst previously was an important market for gaming systems, is now in a clear last place as it has gone from largest, to smallest market in terms of money spent on gaming. As such the entire premise that failing in Japan is a bad thing overall is a dated and now incorrect view. This is demonstrated by his insistence that success in Japan is important in terms of success in the world wide market, because the XBox 360 is indeed failing in Japan and has been since release and is yet still has an 8 million unit and still growing lead on the PS3 coupled with over double the amount of software titles still being sold per console. This is clear evidence that Japan simply doesn't matter in terms of global success anymore, because despite the PS3 coming out much better in Japan than the 360, it's come out far worse worldwide than the 360 in terms of both hardware and software sales. He is suggesting that the 360 has an issue attracting developers because it hasn't succeeded in Japan and yet gone are the days where console developers like Sega, Nintendo are the main game developers and are based in Japan, nowadays most game development occurs in the US and Europe, the two markets the 360 is extremely strong in- in fact, in the US the Wii shares only around a 4million unit lead on the 360 so if his suggestion that the region with the most game developers and the region where the console is most successful are linked to best overall success then the 360 is extremely well positioned. Perhaps more importantly again it's worth pointing out the figures don't stack up with the commentary in the article you post- the 360 has many more overall titles, many more AAA titles and many more sales than both the Wii and PS3.
His comments do not match up with the actual facts and figures and his conclusion is based on the now false premise that Japan even matters for overall success.
You now also seem to suggest the RROD problem has cost up to $5bn also, this simply makes no sense, and can't be true based on the fact Microsoft only wrote off around $1bn for the issue. It cannot have cost them more than that else the FTC would've been down on them like a ton of bricks for seriously misleading investors. It's not possible to simply move an extra $4bn to pay to fix a problem like that without someone noticing.
Regardless, the fact you provide a link for $21bn then go on to claim $30bn suggests you have some bias or vested interest in outright twisting the figures. It's hard to think you have anything other than an anti-Microsoft agenda when you do that. Slipping an extra $9bn on the figure you produce from an article that is fundamentally flawed in multiple ways is rather an obscure move. But more importantly, quotes from you like this simply don't even make sense:
"I guess the hope is they'll make the money back on games, but they'd have to move billions of titles to make up for the $30 billion or so they've dumped into the gaming business."
Doesn't make sense why? Well you suggest they need to move billions of titles to make up for $30bn of money spent, simple math tells us that at $60 a title they'd at most have to shift around 1 billion titles, but realistically much less. So if Microsoft was only selling retail titles at $10 a piece whilst making no money of netflix, existing TV/movie downloads, game expansion DLC, themes, arcade titles, community titles, XBox live subscriptions, hardware and other peripherals then you'd be right, but lets face it, it's sheer lunacy to believe that they only sell games for $10 and make no money elsewhere. So even in your over the top worst case scenario Microsoft have to be doing better than you predict or your comments simply don't even make sense.
As the majority of the rest of your post is based on false premis
"You make a valid point on the years, but it's accuracy depends on if the Russian satellite was actually bricked and non-maneuverable. It might have been capable of slowing maneuvering into another satellite's orbit (and we now will never know)..."
And you don't think that the countless tracking stations including both those affiliated to governments and those independent of governments worldwide with a vested interest in detecting this sort of thing might have noticed and said something about that?
Only on Slashdot could something so paranoid, full of speculation and even illogical when you take the facts into account get modded insightful, not once, but twice.
I'm not even sure what's so difficult to believe about two satellites colliding when there's so many up there. Even two relatively highly maneuverable manned planes collided in the UK a day or two ago, so it doesn't seem that difficult to think that two much less maneuverable, one of which no longer even active and working, unmanned objects might be able to collide.
Putin has spent the last few years selling himself in martial arts videos, showing off his ability to shoot tigers, flexing his muscles whilst fishing and many other such show off type things. Don't you think he'd jump at the chance to say "Hey, by the way, Russia just show down a satellite too?". Even if they realised they screwed up by somehow hitting a commercial satellite too don't you think the commercial satellite owners would say something? don't you think the US, China and millions of other people capable of tracking such events would scream at the chance to say "Russia just flung something into space and taken out a civilian satellite"?
I don't even see what's so coincidental about the timing, what's so special that now, over 2 years after China did it would be a good time for Russia to have a pop at it again too? Is there something special about around 2 years and 3 weeks later that allows it to be defined as coincidental?
But there's a bigger problem with your theory, ASAT technology isn't even new, the Russians built ASAT kit back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, the US has had F15 launchable ASAT missiles since at least the 80s, possibly the 70s. In fact, looking at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#USSR.2FRussia) it states Russia has pulled off 23 test launches and has had an operaitonal ASAT system since 1973.
If anyone's going to show off ASAT capability next it'll be somewhere like Iran or India most likely. I like people who think outside the box and come up with new ideas but come on if we're going to have conspiracy theories and mod them insightful let's at least have them consist of some degree of plausibility and at least make some sense please?
"I don't know one person who misses ME and regretted moving to XP. XP was gold compared to ME"
Yeah, but not compared to 2000. XP had some horrible bugs at release up until SP1/SP2 such as refusing to delete some files/folders for absolutely no reason even if you reboot for example. It simply wasn't as stable and the teletubbies default scheme and background were enough to make anyone vomit.
I think XP has been around so long people have forgotten how bad and how much it really was slated at startup. Comparing ME to XP is a bit of a con when most people stuck with 2000 and ignored ME altogether, comparing 2000 to XP at release is far better as they were more equivalent- ME was built for the people who felt 98 was better for gaming and refused to use 2000. Personally I switched to 2000 at release and found it possibly the most stable Windows OS I've used at point of release. It was snappy, stable, had some important architecture changes and so on.
XP was just Windows 2000 with additional bloat and bugs for the most part at release.
Nope, I couldn't see that they should change at all.
Millions of kids read their kids bed time stories, many elderly people like to have stories read to them, why should a machine doing it suddenly require a whole new licensing regime? Or if this is already illegal then there's already something severely messed up with the laws surrounding written works.
They should be happy, it means blind people can also now buy books and get some use out of them.
Your post seems to be just pulling data out of thin air and pushing it as fact. Could you link your sources? I'm unable to find anything close to the figure you give. In fact, Forbes states Microsoft's Xbox, MSN, Wireless and Small Business sections combined only lost $7billion up until around 2007 (http://www.forbes.com/2005/09/12/microsoft-management-software_cz_vm_0913microsoft.html). Up until 2005 the XBox division had lost only $4billion, we'll chuck in an extra billion for good measure for the 2005 - 2006 year and another billion and a half on top as an overestimate for the RROD problem, but at $6.5billion we're still only just around a quarter of your lower bound estimate and not even a quarter of your upper bound, so where are you getting those such seemingly wildly inflated figures???
Of course, you might say that well those figures are only to 2005 and you only gave an extra billion for 2006 (when the XBox 360 R&D was all done, dusted and paid for so probably not even close to that high in reality), so you're wondering why I haven't included anything for post 2006? Well, thats because they've been turning a profit since then.
But then onto the next part, the suggestion that Microsoft is still losing money on consoles, again this is outright false and hasn't been true since about Q3 2006- probably no coincidence it coincides with roughly the time the division started turning a profit too.
Regarding the suggestion that Microsoft is possibly a bigger loser than the PS3, I'm trying to figure out how you can calculate that one. The Xbox 360 is making a bigger profit per console than the PS3, it's around 8 million ahead in sales, it's widening the sales gap and it's shifting around twice as many games per console as the PS3 and the 360 is making more in online services and content. I don't see then how the PS3 has any chance of coming out better.
Whilst as you speculate the PS3 might in theory do longer long term, what are the chances- which console is likely to do best, the one only a few people have, that remains more expensive of the extremely cheap one with the larger library of games? The PS2 fell into the latter category last generation and blitzed the others in sales, so if history is anything to go by it'll be the 360 (or the Wii) this time round. By all other metrics be it hardware cost/sales, game cost/sales coupled with money earned from online services there is absolutely no way the PS3 will be able to come close to the 360's final profits unless the PS3 can be sold at a profit at the same price as the 360, suddenly make up 8 million in sales despite the 360 still shifting more.
Comparing to the likes of the iPhone and the Wii is rather ignorant of the long term goal here. Microsoft wanted to break into the home entertainment area because it believes having a box under the TV is important because that box will be called upon to play games, movies and offer countless other entertainment services within a few years. It wants it's box to do that task just as it's OS is usually sat on people's desktop PCs. Microsoft has been phenomenally successful in ousting Sony's dominance here and entering that market. Nintendo aren't fussed about an all round entertainment system else the Wii would play DVDs, and be able to provide high def. content. Microsoft's goals are bigger long term than just having a gaming system as Nintendo has done and although Nintendo outflanked Microsoft and Sony in terms of the success of their gaming system Nintendo needs to be careful it isn't a one-trick pony and that it can carry on next year. Nintendo has shown a lack of will to go after those wanting high end entertainment- we're talking Gears of War, high definition movies and that sort of thing but both Microsoft and Sony have shown they're interested in Nintendo's market share- Lips, Scene It, Singstar and that sort of thing.
Microsoft is really well positioned, they're where they need to be to achieve their longer term aim but most be cautious not to get complacent like Sony did this time
Because it'd still have an identical or near identical memory footprint when compiled such that examination of the binary would be enough to prove it.
Source doesn't have to be open to prove it's using someone elses code.
I disagree then that this is even a factor in arguing for OSS, let alone the whole point of the argument. The argument for OSS is that it's more secure and more extensible and customisable.
Yes, unfortunately though at many places, they're not.
I think the real question is, why the fuck is this even possible? There shouldn't be a single piece of networking hardware available today that's vulnerable to this by default, it's not as if the problem hasn't been known about since about as long as the relevant networking hardware has been around.
An anonymous reader writes:
"When is an Intel PC not an Intel PC? When it moves applications such as word processing on to a piece of paper because it can get longer battery life. And according to a story at EE Times, this hybrid Intel-Paper approach is being taken by PC makers as prominent as Dell. The problem for Intel: Why would you switch out of 'all-day' mode and use the Intel processor? The problem for paper: lacking support from Microsoft for Windows; the applications it runs for the PC have to do so under pen or pencil."
As I said in another post elsewhere it's irrelevant anyway. If we didn't have Darwinism we'd get creationists calling it something like "Creation Theory" to give it an air of undeserved authenticity.
They'll always find something to twist to suit their goals.
It's bollocks because if it wasn't an "ism" Creationists would still find something official sounding.
Looking at Scientology, it's a play on Science and the various "ology" fields out there- phsycology, sociology etc. when the reality is it has nothing to do with either. Should we all stop calling Science Science because it's giving Scientology an air of being an authentic set of ideas?
These movements play on this for a reason and a sudden change of wording isn't going to vanish their ability to come up with official sounding names for the bullshit they peddle.
Also, I believe that the reason texts say things such as "they believe in Darwin's theory" is because there is no absolute proof for it and it is just that, a theory. It's a theory with enough evidence to be worth believing in however as opposed to creationism which still yields zero evidence and that's the difference here.
The author misses the point, it's stupid to run from things like Creationism by changing names and attitudes of scientists, what needs to change is the attitudes and understanding of the general public so they can understand what the difference is between believing a scientific theory and believing a story from the best-selling fiction books of all time (Bible, Koran).
From what I understand, the use of the word "believe" in terms of a theory is actually correct, and to remove it and state a theory as fact would actually be cheating real science, if we could trust it with 100% certainty rather than say 99.999999999999999% certainty then it'd surely be classed as fact not a theory no?
I'm pretty sure none of those could be classed as having a monopoly except perhaps bind/sendmail but that's pretty debateable.
Taking Apache for example, could it bundle PHP with it to make everyone start using PHP and kill off ASP.NET and/or IIS to dominate the web application server market? Absolutely not.
Majority marketshare and monopoly status are two different things. This is why the Microsoft vs. America and the current Microsoft vs. Europe cases take so long, because it's not as simple as saying "Hey look, they have 80% of the market, monopoly!!". You have to be able to demonstrate their position is strong enough to enforce changes in different markets. This was fairly easy when IE killed off Netscape.
What Firefox could do if it became a monopoly would be to push specific application plugins, like say, pushing Flash for video over say Quicktime or real player by bundling only the Flash plugin and hence killing off Quicktime (Although I can't help but think that'd be a good thing;)). This is of course inconceivable right now, because of their plugin system and the fact people would just use IE or whatever instead if they needed to view Quicktime stuff but if Firefox was in a monopoly position then it's an example of what it could do.
"Nevertheless, if lay people (or, no offense, students) were all that good at networking or computers, they'd probably never have produced the problem to begin with."
I've seen IT professionals do exactly the same thing many a time. I don't think students are particularly special here, anyone who has never encountered the problem before is prone to it I'd say but most people in IT encounter it eventually one way or another!
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Indeed, the real question here should be whether they have the choice to work at this factory. If they have no choice then yes it's slavery and yes it's awful.
If they have the choice then it's still pretty damn awful but they clearly feel it's better than the alternative- perhaps starving to death for example.
Also, how much is 41 cents an hour in Chinese terms? If they're based in rural China where poverty is common then this could be a pretty high rate so it may be a job that they feel is worth doing for a year or so to make what is relatively decent money for the area they live in with the aim of moving somewhere better. 41 cents sounds shocking to us in the West, but I recall Nike's old India shoe factories paying only around 3 cents a day a decade or so back for 18hr days but that that was still enough to keep their family alive on, so it's all relative.
I'm not going to defend the conditions certainly, but I think it's worth realising that this may at least be a choice they've made and a way out of the position they're in. It's not pleasant but it could be a whole lot better than the alternatives for them.
Because the media hosted elsewhere may be illegal in your country, but not illegal elsewhere.
As such, there is a valid reason not to host it yourself (because you have to adhere to local laws) but a valid reason to link to a host where it is legal (because you belive local laws are unacceptable, or because you're catering to a global audience).
Furthermore, making it illegal to link to illegal content puts a massive burden on sites that allow users to post links as it means they are suddently responsible for illegal content on their site, something which is very costly to manage take down notices for and which could hence kill startups.
Google for example links to some illegal content, but it has the man power to process take downs, other sites will likely not.
I think the reason I and others who have responded are puzzled in that case is because there's still nothing specifically American about those values even in concept.
My point was more whether those values really are American values when Americans voted in say, Bush for a second time after he proved the first time he was dead against those values? Surely if the majority of the country don't actually support those values they can't really be classed as American values unless Americans are willing to show they want them, which, to be fair, with voting Obama in they possibly have now done.
Microsoft hardware- XBox's, Zune's, even peripherals and presumably soon showing off things like Microsoft Touch and so on are presumably as much their planned sales products alongside the software itself.
I'd imagine they'll show off things like their Home server and Media centre systems and that sort of thing that doesn't seem to have become overly prevalent in the mainstream stores.
I don't think Microsoft do care about leaked releases of Windows 7 beta.
The reason they stopped official downloads is probably more to do with the fact they'll run an offer at release for beta users to get cheaper final releases or limit information gathering to official beta key owners systems only to better keep the info they get to a managable amount.
Pirated copies are no problem in these cases - no one in their right mind would run an unpatchable beta copy of Windows indefinitely so no eventual sales are necessarily lost but limiting the supply of official keys is still important for the types of reasons listed above of course.
No offence but I think you have a rose tinted view of what American values are. America despite preaching personal liberty on the world stage has for decades protected big corporates over the little guy.
No, what we have here are Swedish guys defending Swedish values. The fact this isn't happening in America and the case was already effectively judged by the recording industry there is testament to the fact that these are not American values.
If anything, more countries should be straining to adhere to these Swedish values.
No you don't, you just think you do.
New software is always required, it doesn't matter if every software package in the world today was put on one big site for free download, companies would still need plugins for existing software or entirely new custom solutions.
And yes, I am a software developer, we could release all our code into the wild tommorrow and I'd still have a job because the company still needs ever more additional features and changes.
Copyright is unimportant to software developers other than those whose business is built around taking advantage of copyright in the first place. This is why the big music companies are also now largely irrelevant and unneeded and why they're fighting for ever more draconian copyright laws and copyright protection, because their business is built around it. Sucks to be them, but protecting such business models hinders the world as a whole far more than it helps.
Same reason you'd buy any company, they have assets that are worth something even if the company is failing.
Square could buy Eidos, drop all the staff and use the Tomb Raider IP in their own series to boost profits for example.
Companies don't buy over companies to carry them on as is, they buy them to take out the good stuff and throw away the bad. The good stuff may be a bunch of great developers with abysmal management for example or it may just be the IP the companies own- again, in Eidos' case, Tomb Raider.
Not really, the US already had ASAT capabilities as pointed out, so for them to test a year later being anything to do with the Chinese makes no sense, they could have done it a day later had they really wanted to make a point, as could the Russians.
Still I'm not sure what your point is as your theory is still totally irrelevant and non-sensical as pointed out by the rest of my post.
I had a gander at the article you mentioned and it seems to fall into the same trap I suggested you did- the $21billion figure is mere speculation and does not match up with the real facts and figures.
Furthermore, there is an obscure focus on Japan, which whilst previously was an important market for gaming systems, is now in a clear last place as it has gone from largest, to smallest market in terms of money spent on gaming. As such the entire premise that failing in Japan is a bad thing overall is a dated and now incorrect view. This is demonstrated by his insistence that success in Japan is important in terms of success in the world wide market, because the XBox 360 is indeed failing in Japan and has been since release and is yet still has an 8 million unit and still growing lead on the PS3 coupled with over double the amount of software titles still being sold per console. This is clear evidence that Japan simply doesn't matter in terms of global success anymore, because despite the PS3 coming out much better in Japan than the 360, it's come out far worse worldwide than the 360 in terms of both hardware and software sales. He is suggesting that the 360 has an issue attracting developers because it hasn't succeeded in Japan and yet gone are the days where console developers like Sega, Nintendo are the main game developers and are based in Japan, nowadays most game development occurs in the US and Europe, the two markets the 360 is extremely strong in- in fact, in the US the Wii shares only around a 4million unit lead on the 360 so if his suggestion that the region with the most game developers and the region where the console is most successful are linked to best overall success then the 360 is extremely well positioned. Perhaps more importantly again it's worth pointing out the figures don't stack up with the commentary in the article you post- the 360 has many more overall titles, many more AAA titles and many more sales than both the Wii and PS3.
His comments do not match up with the actual facts and figures and his conclusion is based on the now false premise that Japan even matters for overall success.
You now also seem to suggest the RROD problem has cost up to $5bn also, this simply makes no sense, and can't be true based on the fact Microsoft only wrote off around $1bn for the issue. It cannot have cost them more than that else the FTC would've been down on them like a ton of bricks for seriously misleading investors. It's not possible to simply move an extra $4bn to pay to fix a problem like that without someone noticing.
Regardless, the fact you provide a link for $21bn then go on to claim $30bn suggests you have some bias or vested interest in outright twisting the figures. It's hard to think you have anything other than an anti-Microsoft agenda when you do that. Slipping an extra $9bn on the figure you produce from an article that is fundamentally flawed in multiple ways is rather an obscure move. But more importantly, quotes from you like this simply don't even make sense:
"I guess the hope is they'll make the money back on games, but they'd have to move billions of titles to make up for the $30 billion or so they've dumped into the gaming business."
Doesn't make sense why? Well you suggest they need to move billions of titles to make up for $30bn of money spent, simple math tells us that at $60 a title they'd at most have to shift around 1 billion titles, but realistically much less. So if Microsoft was only selling retail titles at $10 a piece whilst making no money of netflix, existing TV/movie downloads, game expansion DLC, themes, arcade titles, community titles, XBox live subscriptions, hardware and other peripherals then you'd be right, but lets face it, it's sheer lunacy to believe that they only sell games for $10 and make no money elsewhere. So even in your over the top worst case scenario Microsoft have to be doing better than you predict or your comments simply don't even make sense.
As the majority of the rest of your post is based on false premis
"You make a valid point on the years, but it's accuracy depends on if the Russian satellite was actually bricked and non-maneuverable. It might have been capable of slowing maneuvering into another satellite's orbit (and we now will never know)..."
And you don't think that the countless tracking stations including both those affiliated to governments and those independent of governments worldwide with a vested interest in detecting this sort of thing might have noticed and said something about that?
Only on Slashdot could something so paranoid, full of speculation and even illogical when you take the facts into account get modded insightful, not once, but twice.
I'm not even sure what's so difficult to believe about two satellites colliding when there's so many up there. Even two relatively highly maneuverable manned planes collided in the UK a day or two ago, so it doesn't seem that difficult to think that two much less maneuverable, one of which no longer even active and working, unmanned objects might be able to collide.
Putin has spent the last few years selling himself in martial arts videos, showing off his ability to shoot tigers, flexing his muscles whilst fishing and many other such show off type things. Don't you think he'd jump at the chance to say "Hey, by the way, Russia just show down a satellite too?". Even if they realised they screwed up by somehow hitting a commercial satellite too don't you think the commercial satellite owners would say something? don't you think the US, China and millions of other people capable of tracking such events would scream at the chance to say "Russia just flung something into space and taken out a civilian satellite"?
I don't even see what's so coincidental about the timing, what's so special that now, over 2 years after China did it would be a good time for Russia to have a pop at it again too? Is there something special about around 2 years and 3 weeks later that allows it to be defined as coincidental?
But there's a bigger problem with your theory, ASAT technology isn't even new, the Russians built ASAT kit back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, the US has had F15 launchable ASAT missiles since at least the 80s, possibly the 70s. In fact, looking at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#USSR.2FRussia) it states Russia has pulled off 23 test launches and has had an operaitonal ASAT system since 1973.
If anyone's going to show off ASAT capability next it'll be somewhere like Iran or India most likely. I like people who think outside the box and come up with new ideas but come on if we're going to have conspiracy theories and mod them insightful let's at least have them consist of some degree of plausibility and at least make some sense please?
"I don't know one person who misses ME and regretted moving to XP. XP was gold compared to ME"
Yeah, but not compared to 2000. XP had some horrible bugs at release up until SP1/SP2 such as refusing to delete some files/folders for absolutely no reason even if you reboot for example. It simply wasn't as stable and the teletubbies default scheme and background were enough to make anyone vomit.
I think XP has been around so long people have forgotten how bad and how much it really was slated at startup. Comparing ME to XP is a bit of a con when most people stuck with 2000 and ignored ME altogether, comparing 2000 to XP at release is far better as they were more equivalent- ME was built for the people who felt 98 was better for gaming and refused to use 2000. Personally I switched to 2000 at release and found it possibly the most stable Windows OS I've used at point of release. It was snappy, stable, had some important architecture changes and so on.
XP was just Windows 2000 with additional bloat and bugs for the most part at release.
Nope, I couldn't see that they should change at all.
Millions of kids read their kids bed time stories, many elderly people like to have stories read to them, why should a machine doing it suddenly require a whole new licensing regime? Or if this is already illegal then there's already something severely messed up with the laws surrounding written works.
They should be happy, it means blind people can also now buy books and get some use out of them.
Your post seems to be just pulling data out of thin air and pushing it as fact. Could you link your sources? I'm unable to find anything close to the figure you give. In fact, Forbes states Microsoft's Xbox, MSN, Wireless and Small Business sections combined only lost $7billion up until around 2007 (http://www.forbes.com/2005/09/12/microsoft-management-software_cz_vm_0913microsoft.html). Up until 2005 the XBox division had lost only $4billion, we'll chuck in an extra billion for good measure for the 2005 - 2006 year and another billion and a half on top as an overestimate for the RROD problem, but at $6.5billion we're still only just around a quarter of your lower bound estimate and not even a quarter of your upper bound, so where are you getting those such seemingly wildly inflated figures???
Of course, you might say that well those figures are only to 2005 and you only gave an extra billion for 2006 (when the XBox 360 R&D was all done, dusted and paid for so probably not even close to that high in reality), so you're wondering why I haven't included anything for post 2006? Well, thats because they've been turning a profit since then.
But then onto the next part, the suggestion that Microsoft is still losing money on consoles, again this is outright false and hasn't been true since about Q3 2006- probably no coincidence it coincides with roughly the time the division started turning a profit too.
Regarding the suggestion that Microsoft is possibly a bigger loser than the PS3, I'm trying to figure out how you can calculate that one. The Xbox 360 is making a bigger profit per console than the PS3, it's around 8 million ahead in sales, it's widening the sales gap and it's shifting around twice as many games per console as the PS3 and the 360 is making more in online services and content. I don't see then how the PS3 has any chance of coming out better.
Whilst as you speculate the PS3 might in theory do longer long term, what are the chances- which console is likely to do best, the one only a few people have, that remains more expensive of the extremely cheap one with the larger library of games? The PS2 fell into the latter category last generation and blitzed the others in sales, so if history is anything to go by it'll be the 360 (or the Wii) this time round. By all other metrics be it hardware cost/sales, game cost/sales coupled with money earned from online services there is absolutely no way the PS3 will be able to come close to the 360's final profits unless the PS3 can be sold at a profit at the same price as the 360, suddenly make up 8 million in sales despite the 360 still shifting more.
Comparing to the likes of the iPhone and the Wii is rather ignorant of the long term goal here. Microsoft wanted to break into the home entertainment area because it believes having a box under the TV is important because that box will be called upon to play games, movies and offer countless other entertainment services within a few years. It wants it's box to do that task just as it's OS is usually sat on people's desktop PCs. Microsoft has been phenomenally successful in ousting Sony's dominance here and entering that market. Nintendo aren't fussed about an all round entertainment system else the Wii would play DVDs, and be able to provide high def. content. Microsoft's goals are bigger long term than just having a gaming system as Nintendo has done and although Nintendo outflanked Microsoft and Sony in terms of the success of their gaming system Nintendo needs to be careful it isn't a one-trick pony and that it can carry on next year. Nintendo has shown a lack of will to go after those wanting high end entertainment- we're talking Gears of War, high definition movies and that sort of thing but both Microsoft and Sony have shown they're interested in Nintendo's market share- Lips, Scene It, Singstar and that sort of thing.
Microsoft is really well positioned, they're where they need to be to achieve their longer term aim but most be cautious not to get complacent like Sony did this time
Because it'd still have an identical or near identical memory footprint when compiled such that examination of the binary would be enough to prove it.
Source doesn't have to be open to prove it's using someone elses code.
I disagree then that this is even a factor in arguing for OSS, let alone the whole point of the argument. The argument for OSS is that it's more secure and more extensible and customisable.
Yes, unfortunately though at many places, they're not.
I think the real question is, why the fuck is this even possible? There shouldn't be a single piece of networking hardware available today that's vulnerable to this by default, it's not as if the problem hasn't been known about since about as long as the relevant networking hardware has been around.
Apple products overview
=======================
Pros:
- It looks cool
- It sounds cool
- It probably smells cool
- It probably even tastes cool
Cons:
- It's expensive
- It lacks features initially
Any rumour about an Apple product where the details of the rumour fall outside this list is false.
An anonymous reader writes:
"When is an Intel PC not an Intel PC? When it moves applications such as word processing on to a piece of paper because it can get longer battery life. And according to a story at EE Times, this hybrid Intel-Paper approach is being taken by PC makers as prominent as Dell. The problem for Intel: Why would you switch out of 'all-day' mode and use the Intel processor? The problem for paper: lacking support from Microsoft for Windows; the applications it runs for the PC have to do so under pen or pencil."
Someone fix the collider, it's taken out the space time continuum with it.
As I said in another post elsewhere it's irrelevant anyway. If we didn't have Darwinism we'd get creationists calling it something like "Creation Theory" to give it an air of undeserved authenticity.
They'll always find something to twist to suit their goals.
It's bollocks because if it wasn't an "ism" Creationists would still find something official sounding.
Looking at Scientology, it's a play on Science and the various "ology" fields out there- phsycology, sociology etc. when the reality is it has nothing to do with either. Should we all stop calling Science Science because it's giving Scientology an air of being an authentic set of ideas?
These movements play on this for a reason and a sudden change of wording isn't going to vanish their ability to come up with official sounding names for the bullshit they peddle.
Also, I believe that the reason texts say things such as "they believe in Darwin's theory" is because there is no absolute proof for it and it is just that, a theory. It's a theory with enough evidence to be worth believing in however as opposed to creationism which still yields zero evidence and that's the difference here.
The author misses the point, it's stupid to run from things like Creationism by changing names and attitudes of scientists, what needs to change is the attitudes and understanding of the general public so they can understand what the difference is between believing a scientific theory and believing a story from the best-selling fiction books of all time (Bible, Koran).
From what I understand, the use of the word "believe" in terms of a theory is actually correct, and to remove it and state a theory as fact would actually be cheating real science, if we could trust it with 100% certainty rather than say 99.999999999999999% certainty then it'd surely be classed as fact not a theory no?
I'm pretty sure none of those could be classed as having a monopoly except perhaps bind/sendmail but that's pretty debateable.
Taking Apache for example, could it bundle PHP with it to make everyone start using PHP and kill off ASP.NET and/or IIS to dominate the web application server market? Absolutely not.
Majority marketshare and monopoly status are two different things. This is why the Microsoft vs. America and the current Microsoft vs. Europe cases take so long, because it's not as simple as saying "Hey look, they have 80% of the market, monopoly!!". You have to be able to demonstrate their position is strong enough to enforce changes in different markets. This was fairly easy when IE killed off Netscape.
What Firefox could do if it became a monopoly would be to push specific application plugins, like say, pushing Flash for video over say Quicktime or real player by bundling only the Flash plugin and hence killing off Quicktime (Although I can't help but think that'd be a good thing ;)). This is of course inconceivable right now, because of their plugin system and the fact people would just use IE or whatever instead if they needed to view Quicktime stuff but if Firefox was in a monopoly position then it's an example of what it could do.
"Nevertheless, if lay people (or, no offense, students) were all that good at networking or computers, they'd probably never have produced the problem to begin with."
I've seen IT professionals do exactly the same thing many a time. I don't think students are particularly special here, anyone who has never encountered the problem before is prone to it I'd say but most people in IT encounter it eventually one way or another!
So now Apple fans know what us Windows users have to suffer with Apple update and the Bonjour DNS service!
Sucks doesn't it :p ?