Re:I remember when it was the best...
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Altavista Renewed
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Google needs to make money. How do you think they pay for all of their bandwidth?
Why so defensive about Google? Indeed, why are so many on Slashdot so defensive about Google in general? It's a search engine with people looking to make a buck somehow -- It isn't a benevolent charity. I'm not saying it's a BAD thing that they've decided to get some income: I expect them to make money. Let's face it though: Google became prominent basically for doing what Microsoft gets slammed for (at least in the case of IE): They ate costs to get marketshare, and it worked beautifully. The number one reason that most people went to Google in the nascent years was the absolute lack of ads.
Also, Google will never get flashvertisements or anything of that sort. They know one of the main reasons people use their site is the clean interface with no annoying ads. They won't abandon that. They're making a very good profit just the way it is.
And you know this how? I like Google. I use Google exclusively for searching. I've used Google for years. However I don't love Google, and I owe them no loyalty outside of what they earn day to day by having the best search engine.
Re:I remember when it was the best...
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Altavista Renewed
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Altavista became way too bloated and way too commercial, and it will wither and die away within 5 years. Everything it does, google does, but without the sense of bloat or loading 200k webpages full of ads.
3 years ago you would have been saying that X was going to whither away and die because everything it did, AltaVista did better. In case you haven't noticed, Google hit the point where they decided that not losing money would be wise, and they've started to fill up on advertisements. For all we know Google might be 2MB of Flashvertisements in a years time.
Personally I'm willing to use whatever service offers me the best search results. Whether someone develops a new CredibilityRank(TM - Patent Pending) system that eliminates the garbage, or a phonetic search for the chronic misspellings that plague the net, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Re:Altavista the best?
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Altavista Renewed
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· Score: 5, Informative
Then you must be new to the net. AltaVista (then owned by Digital) owned the search rankings for a while, and then Excite came on fairly strong and took the crown (Excite was actually a great site: They had a clean page, great results, and they did cute things like changing the graphics by the time of year, etc). Around that time the.COM bubble started expanding quickly, and both did some incredibly stupid things to try to capitalize on their positions: Becoming variations of Yahoo, or shopping hubs, etc. They squandered the market they exceled in to pursue what the VCs told them would be of value.
Of course around this time Google came on strong. Google's primary selling point, of course, was the cleanliness of the design and lack of advertisements.
Yes, the whole terminology scheme for OLE/COM/MTS/ COM+/ActiveX did get very muddy.
This was largely the result of Microsoft themselves, and a marketing arm that just wasn't sure what to call these things (much like the situation with.net right now). For instance while popular usage is that "ActiveX" are visual embedded controls, Microsoft themselves has used the term as a synonym for COM (indeed the portion of the MSDN that you quoted a couple of replies down exemplifies that: They mention that an "ActiveX" object need only support IUnknown and the registration functions. Of course that doesn't define a visual control as we normal consider them, which is a swath of interfaces that need to be implemented.
I agree in theory with what you're saying, it's just that it does get a little ugly. Microsoft has also used OLE in the 32-bit world again as a synonym for COM.
Read the patent itself. My intepretation of the patent is that he saw OLE in Microsoft Office and, as all predatory patent offenders do, he broadened the scope and then claimed invention (he actually even references OLE in his patent : "Other existing approaches to embedding interactive program objects in documents include the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) facility in Microsoft Windows...At least one shortcoming of these approaches is that neither is capable of allowing a user to access embedded interactive program objects in distributed hypermedia documents over networks." ActiveX, a misnomer for COM, is a growth of OLE. Given that this guy references it in his patent, obviously Microsoft has prior art on that.)
His "invention" appears to be when these plug-ins perform work on another machine and then return the results. i.e. An embedded window in a "hypertext document" that requests information from a networked computer and then displays it. This seems to be the kind of patent that infuriates Slashdot normally, so it's perplexing how anyone would lines up to cheer them on, or to pretend that they're underdogs
Right on the money. It's saddening to think how many people are cheering seeing this article when it really represents all that is evil in software: Ridiculous patents (two-way communications? Give me a friggin' break), predatory enforcement, and a company looking to exist on the coattails of other organizations.
Of course it all sounds absurd to begin with. You cannot specifically exclude a company from licensing your patents (it's one of the fundamentals), and furthermore you have to set a equitable and constant, non-discriminatory licensing fee. Personally I think Microsoft will ground these guys into the ground, and given my feelings on absurd patents that add absolutely nothing to the general pool of knowledge (but merely describe the obvious and then hope for the checks to come rolling in), I'm very happy about that.
Quoteworthy? I suggest letting those who know better make the judge of that. I've been quoted a couple of times as "A.Lizard" myself in the Washington Post on IT-related issues. (check the archives, and you'll have to pay to read the actual articles... I may do that one of these days)
Oooh, gosh, do you know better? I don't know if you have some sort of personal connection with the Register (I take it you do), but your attempts to make this personal is tiring.
With respect to using AP as an example of credibility... you believe without reservation everything the mass media says? If you ever become newsworthy and they get it wrong about you, perhaps you'll know better. Or perhaps you'll believe "it's in print, therefore it must be right".
Again, nice attempt at making it personal. Credible media has rules that they follow before they print tripe. Alternately they'll surround said tripe with disclaimers. The Register, which apparently is your love, reports completely unsubstantiated gossip as news. They go to no lengths to actually verify facts. They don't look for corroboration. This has nothing to do with "believing everything", and again your sad attempts to demean what I'm saying by personal attacks is pathetic, but rather whether what they print has any merit whatsoever. I don't need someone to re-print every piece of shit someone's put on a website.
Alternately, you might try learning how to develop independent credibility of your own. Learning something about anything might help. Perhaps you'll understand credibility should you ever develop any.
You might want to learn how to troll a bit better, because this is just sad. Please resort to AC bashing to other posts as well for your Register friends.
Certainly, it's tabloid journalism. It is also useful tabloid journalism. It's written in a chatty, informal style. Guess what. Bill Gates' speeches are NOT The Sermon on the Mount and press releases by various vendors are taken far too seriously by the computer industry trade press.
I find it fascinating that so many Register fanatics have come out with fists flying in defence of the site.
My point was that The Register is not a credible source for news. Credible sources are sources that you can report upon as a source for your information when relaying information. i.e. "AP reports that Linus Torvalds kicks puppies": You don't have to give details because obviously if AP is reporting it, then they have credible sources and a foundation to make the claim. Here on Slashdot The Register is often used as a source of "news" of that sort, yet in reality most of the time all they've done is quoted some anonymous posting somewhere, or some gossip said by some third person friend of a guy who might know someone involved with the subject of the story. There is no credibility in claiming the Register as a source of a news story. (Just as it was absurd for the Register to quote ESR as a "source" for the latest Microsoft Halloween document).
News at 11: "Some random guy says that you pick your nose and eat it!"
Apart from the news thing, maybe the Register is a fantastic site. Maybe they have awesome tutorials on how to secure Linux. Maybe they've invented a perpetual motion machine. Regardless, though, they are not a quoteworthy "news" site.
I have no idea whether you're referring to the supposed customer relations email, or the Microsoft Halloween memo. In the former it was an anonymous posting on a message board: There is no veracity to it, and while mainstream media might perhaps report on it, they'd extensively disclaim that it's of no authenticity. In the case of the Microsoft thing: Even if it _IS_ completely real, and I was at the conference myself, I'd STILL laugh about their SOURCE being ESR (a raging anti-Microsoftite), who himself got it in some undescribed way. It's like information 5 steps removed, and it's usually the nature of gossip and other BS.
They definitely have an editorial slant, but that is not the same thing. In fact, it is the opposite, because by making the comparison with the Enquirer you are suggesting that they will publish anything as long as it is flashy
Many of the Register's stories tend to derive from anonymous, shadowy types, or "a guy who got it from some other guy who got it from some other guy". On this story we see them referencing "facts" that they derive from an Eric S. Raymond posting about a Microsoft document that he covertly received from some session that he didn't attend. This is par for the course for the type of Register articles that get posted here on Slashdot (I don't read it regularly, so it tends to be that I only see those "Some guy overhead a guy on the train saying that he heard that Bill Gates likes to kick puppies").
Firstly, The Register is the National Enquirer of the net. Take it with a huge grain of salt.
Secondly, even if this letter were authentic, it could very well be the result of a disgruntled employee who had a really bad day and just didn't give a shit anymore. Unless someone can show me widespread responses along the same line, or a mandate that this is the official response, I'll take this as no more than one guy. While the truth is that they are actively pursuing copy protection, which is their right, I find the overly hostile and confrontational content of the letter incredibly dubious.
We either have to stop fishing or start whaling because otherwise other fish will become extinct.
Yes because nature is incapable of balancing itself. Clearly there have been humans with whaling fleets since the beginning of time to keep the whale population in check.
Rotting in warehouses??? WTF? The buying programs have been cut to the bone, we don't have a single system that isn't unavailable for extended periods of time because we don't have enough of them!
Yes, rotting in warehouses. We recently had to destroy tens of millions of dollars of munitions because they passed their expiry date and were sitting in a warehouse. The media currently loves printing about how our armed forces have to "beg" for smart bombs during conflicts, but what they're really reporting is that we've moved more to a "on-time delivery" of perishable hardware. It hardly surprizes me that the manufacturers would rather we stockpile warehouses.
Our individual soldiers are NOT paid quite well, and only have fantastic personal equipment because we finally managed to convince the government to buy them new equipment, the same equipment people like you rallied against as being "un-needed" and "arms-industry sales tactics"!
Nice strawman technique there. And you want every troop to have their own personal multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier! You're crazy! As for the troops, a lot in specific areas are. I've seen the pay rates for specific areas, and it seemed pretty good to me, especially when all of the fringe benefits were included in the equation. A non-commissioned office with a family of 5 and a stay-at-home wife might have some difficulty making ends meet, but that's the case throughout society.
That is the stupidest most useless comment ever. Taken to it's non-logical extereme, we might as well not pay ANY ATTENTION what so ever to JUST HOW SMALL we are, PROPORTIONALLY, compared to ANYBODY! Why? Why should we spend 2 times less per person to keep the world free than the Finnish or Belgians!??
I love the proportional comments. Who sets the base rate? Is it a little race to have the highest percentage? Secondly I just checked here to find that we spend 1.3% of our GDP (~$9 billion US), while Belgium spends 1.2% (~$3 Billion US). Looks like you should do a better research job next time.
I would rather we spend billions on special operations teams and intelligence. Those are the areas where we can actually make a difference in the world of today (a world that already has the massive conventional force of the US, who is our friend and ally).
NO IT WASN'T. You're pulling this stuff out of your ASS!!!
The common wisdom before the friendly fire incident was that a smaller Canadian force would be rotated in (smaller because the conflict had died down), however it was politically palitable to just pull them all out after that incident. Obviously I don't know for sure, as you sure as hell don't, what went on in the war rooms, but I would say that it sure seems like it may have given them an "out".
MicroSoft Office came out long after MicroSoft word was absolutely number one in the world. There was no other office suite that would work with MicroSoft Word.
While it seems hard to believe now, the "Office Suite" market was one where there was huge competition, and the merits of individual applications didn't carry it. Instead it was integration between the various components, and use as a whole. While it's hard to recall now, there were entries like MS Office, Lotus SmartSuite, Corel had something, AMISoft had one, among others.
MicroSoft Word itself competed with Word Perfect for a few months back in 1986 before wiping it out everywhere except the legal profession. It did have some advantages from what I heard. This was well before Windows.
While there were versions of Word for DOS, Word broke out with the move to Windows. If you remember, Microsoft came out with Word for Windows and it was criticizes as slow, bloated, etc. Quite a while later (really late to the ball) WordPerfect came out with WordPerfect for Windows. It was horrendous, and redefined the word "bloat". They were too slow, and when they came to the ball they forgot their dancing shoes.
I realize that your posting panders to the "Microsoft bad...everything else good" crowd, however I would like to call you on a few assumptions.
a) What amazing abilities does Microsoft Office derive via these secret covert hooks that the source to the OS will reveal? This is an oft stated claimed, and I'm curious what the thought process is behind it. Will the "MakeOfficeProgramGreat()" API call suddenly make Open Office that much better? Of course this is all moot anyways as open source programs usually don't capitalize on OS specific hooks even where there are advantages.
b) While this might be hard for the kids to believe, Microsoft Office earned the position that it's in right now. I recall when it was an underdog, and then review after review after review found it to be best. While it's far from perfect, in any overall, non-biased comparison it came out on top. It's my personal opinion that Open Office doesn't even remotely compare with Office XP.
c) This same thing can be said about virtually any other MS program. I run Microsoft SQL Server because it's a very powerful, cost effective database system. I use Visual Studio.NET because it's a fantastic development environment that I've never used a rival to.
Agreed, and we are already taking delivery of Cormorant S&R helicopters (though I believe those are intended to replace the Labrador).
I have no doubt that there is a need for a well equipped military (especially if the equipment itself endangers the servicepeople), however it's a classic situation where "how much is enough?" is a completely subjective measure where everyone will fervently and passionately proclaim their point of view. Generals will argue that the military needs to be bigger, faster, larger (if necessary they'll distort perceived enemies. See the cold war and the massive US buildup against a Soviet threat that later was found not to exist). This is similar to how if you put the police in charge of the police budget, every citizen would have their own personally assigned police officer, and all police officers would walk around in giant personal robots.
It should also be noted, that Canada cannot have nuclear reactors. All of their ships are diesels. Good for coastal defense, but not for a extended campaign miles away.
We cannot have nuclear reactors? Huh? Nuclear reactors on weapons of war are, apart from being tremendously dangerous, enormously expensive. Secondly, the vast majority of the US fleet is diesel powered, apart from some aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. For the rest of the world only Russia uses nuclear power outside of submarines, with France giving it a try on one of their micro aircraft carriers. Perhaps you believe that aircraft carriers just go roving around the oceans on their own and aren't basically tethered to the battle fleet that goes with them?
Canada sucks as a military power.
Completely and absolutely true. We're not a military power. We're a country of 30 million with a focus on social programs, in a world that is completely dominated by the machinations that built a massive military complex during the cold war, and now will use every device to maintain it. At the same time the honest truth is that we're perfectly happy being in the United State's shadow, so while France and England and Germany busily produce their next attempt to provide a European equal to US power, we'll happily let our fighters rust into oblivion. Despite 9/11, the world is a vastly safer place with far fewer tyrants and far fewer threats that aircraft carriers and fighter jets can conquer. A terrorist with some biological agents doesn't care if you have a vast army of M1A2s.
Their airforce is also just as crappy as their navy... when conducting joint excercises with the US and British, the canadians are usually given "busy time" excercises.
Sure.... that's why Canadian pilots win virtually every competition they're entered into (like our snipers). Of course we do have a pretty limited air power: Maybe 100 F18s, and that's it as far as front line fighters. Air power is tremendously expensive, and we long realized that the US will outmatch us dramatically regardless (just like it outmatches any other nation. Your British comments are especially telling because, apart from Tony Blair's US pandering, Britain most certainly is not a supreme power alongside the US. Indeed, all of Europe together is but a token gesture compared to the US arsenal).
With all due respect, and I'm a Canadian and I have served in our nation's armed forces, I think this is past tense. The logic of keeping piles of generals handy to suddenly recruit and train a whack of soldiers is kind of broken, given the nature of modern conflicts.
Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.
The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry- An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses, ready for multi-billion dollar upgrades 5 years down the road. Military equipment comes at a cost to social programs, healthcare, etc, or alternately higher taxes. Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.
While we hear constant cries about the "dangerous new world", the reality is that the classic militarism of yesteryear is a bygone thing: The US has nominated itself, and achieved by default, global policeman. Though this role is costly to her, it was a self-pursued role, and comes with a healthy bonus of being able to promote and pursue her own self-interests. Of course, simpleton morons like Pat Buchanan would try to cast such a role not as a self-serving role, but as a role which we should all send a cheque in the mail.
I *wish* we could actually help out some of the places that really need help right now. But we can't even keep a thousand guys in Afghanistan for a year, let alone buy those guys some appropriate camouflage fatigues in a timely fashion. And don't get me started on the Sea King or its replacements....
I think the camouflage issue was more of a political red herring: There isn't an armed forces on the planet, except perhaps the US, that has camo for every possible battlefield situation. The Afghan conflict came up just as a prior batch was destroyed and the new batch was on order. It happens. Personally I think, given the nature of the military, that some of the elite teams showed true military gumption and they quite literally made their own, creating some of the best camo possible. The Sea King is indeed an unfortunate reality, but again compared with the acquisition of a fleet of modern subs, missile frigates, and cormorant helicopters, it's amazing how much attention the Sea King garners. Again, take a close look at the $ vested interests who are looking at lining up at the trough.
We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US', just as the military of every other NATO countries does. I'm perfectly fine with that. We went into Afghanistan with troops that were perfect for the non-conventional modern warfare (i.e. snipers), did a great job, and got out after the situation had pretty much settled. Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire: Given that the conflict was pretty much resolved, such a needless loss couldn't be repeated.
And probably about 70% of Slashdot's population. Not sure if you noticed, but there is a very high percentage of Canadians who visit Slashdot. I suspect it's due to that national program to integrate high speed into our igloo clusters.
While it's fun to joke about Canada, it should be noted that when it's actually needed (i.e. not against a bunch of two bit little shithole nations, or just to continue to push a military-export policy) Canada quickly becomes a military powerhouse.
"The Canadian Navy began the Second World War with half a dozen vessels and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian Soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the War with the World's 3rd largest Navy and the fourth largest Air Force. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had in previous times.......In film, Hollywood abandoned the notion of a separate Canadian identity"
Re:From now on, we'll all travel in TUBES!
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Pipeline Mass Transit?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I think this will never see the light of day in the US.
I doubt it'll see the light of day anywhere for quite a few years. The massive, extraordinary effort to make a pressureless vacuum in a tube long enough that trains are going 300kmh just boggles the mind: We can barely dig a little tunnel under the English Channel, and we're seriously proposing vacuum tubes? We have enough trouble making little spheres as vacuum tube, much less some sort of system that's supposed to let people in and out, etc. Maintaining a vacuum at sealevel would be a massive energy sucker.
BTW: Some other people mentioned a prior New York system of pneumatic trains that used suction, basically, to pull the train forward. This was immediately pooh poohed (hehe...just had to use that phrase) by some saying it's so much different. Of course the advantage of a vacuum is that there is no wind resistance: The exact feat can be accomplished by accelerating the air in the tunnel to the same speed as the train (of course it'd be a circular system, so there wouldn't be the energy requirements of a standard wind tunnel where stationary air is pulled in and then forced out against more stationary air). Impossible? Certainly not any more impossible than magically making a multi hundred KM vacuum tube. It'd be a lot safer too.
Slashdot Mirror
Google needs to make money. How do you think they pay for all of their bandwidth?
Why so defensive about Google? Indeed, why are so many on Slashdot so defensive about Google in general? It's a search engine with people looking to make a buck somehow -- It isn't a benevolent charity. I'm not saying it's a BAD thing that they've decided to get some income: I expect them to make money. Let's face it though: Google became prominent basically for doing what Microsoft gets slammed for (at least in the case of IE): They ate costs to get marketshare, and it worked beautifully. The number one reason that most people went to Google in the nascent years was the absolute lack of ads.
Also, Google will never get flashvertisements or anything of that sort. They know one of the main reasons people use their site is the clean interface with no annoying ads. They won't abandon that. They're making a very good profit just the way it is.
And you know this how? I like Google. I use Google exclusively for searching. I've used Google for years. However I don't love Google, and I owe them no loyalty outside of what they earn day to day by having the best search engine.
Altavista became way too bloated and way too commercial, and it will wither and die away within 5 years. Everything it does, google does, but without the sense of bloat or loading 200k webpages full of ads.
3 years ago you would have been saying that X was going to whither away and die because everything it did, AltaVista did better. In case you haven't noticed, Google hit the point where they decided that not losing money would be wise, and they've started to fill up on advertisements. For all we know Google might be 2MB of Flashvertisements in a years time.
Personally I'm willing to use whatever service offers me the best search results. Whether someone develops a new CredibilityRank(TM - Patent Pending) system that eliminates the garbage, or a phonetic search for the chronic misspellings that plague the net, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Then you must be new to the net. AltaVista (then owned by Digital) owned the search rankings for a while, and then Excite came on fairly strong and took the crown (Excite was actually a great site: They had a clean page, great results, and they did cute things like changing the graphics by the time of year, etc). Around that time the .COM bubble started expanding quickly, and both did some incredibly stupid things to try to capitalize on their positions: Becoming variations of Yahoo, or shopping hubs, etc. They squandered the market they exceled in to pursue what the VCs told them would be of value.
Of course around this time Google came on strong. Google's primary selling point, of course, was the cleanliness of the design and lack of advertisements.
Sorry for the confusion. I had rebuked myself about 14 hours before your post.
Yes, the whole terminology scheme for OLE/COM/MTS/ COM+/ActiveX did get very muddy.
.net right now). For instance while popular usage is that "ActiveX" are visual embedded controls, Microsoft themselves has used the term as a synonym for COM (indeed the portion of the MSDN that you quoted a couple of replies down exemplifies that: They mention that an "ActiveX" object need only support IUnknown and the registration functions. Of course that doesn't define a visual control as we normal consider them, which is a swath of interfaces that need to be implemented.
This was largely the result of Microsoft themselves, and a marketing arm that just wasn't sure what to call these things (much like the situation with
I agree in theory with what you're saying, it's just that it does get a little ugly. Microsoft has also used OLE in the 32-bit world again as a synonym for COM.
Whoops I was thinking in terms of industry consortiums, who virtually all conform to RAND conditions. Many apologies.
Read the patent itself. My intepretation of the patent is that he saw OLE in Microsoft Office and, as all predatory patent offenders do, he broadened the scope and then claimed invention (he actually even references OLE in his patent : "Other existing approaches to embedding interactive program objects in documents include the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) facility in Microsoft Windows...At least one shortcoming of these approaches is that neither is capable of allowing a user to access embedded interactive program objects in distributed hypermedia documents over networks." ActiveX, a misnomer for COM, is a growth of OLE. Given that this guy references it in his patent, obviously Microsoft has prior art on that.)
His "invention" appears to be when these plug-ins perform work on another machine and then return the results. i.e. An embedded window in a "hypertext document" that requests information from a networked computer and then displays it. This seems to be the kind of patent that infuriates Slashdot normally, so it's perplexing how anyone would lines up to cheer them on, or to pretend that they're underdogs
The patent in question can be found here.
Right on the money. It's saddening to think how many people are cheering seeing this article when it really represents all that is evil in software: Ridiculous patents (two-way communications? Give me a friggin' break), predatory enforcement, and a company looking to exist on the coattails of other organizations.
Of course it all sounds absurd to begin with. You cannot specifically exclude a company from licensing your patents (it's one of the fundamentals), and furthermore you have to set a equitable and constant, non-discriminatory licensing fee. Personally I think Microsoft will ground these guys into the ground, and given my feelings on absurd patents that add absolutely nothing to the general pool of knowledge (but merely describe the obvious and then hope for the checks to come rolling in), I'm very happy about that.
Quoteworthy? I suggest letting those who know better make the judge of that. I've been quoted a couple of times as "A.Lizard" myself in the Washington Post on IT-related issues. (check the archives, and you'll have to pay to read the actual articles... I may do that one of these days)
Oooh, gosh, do you know better? I don't know if you have some sort of personal connection with the Register (I take it you do), but your attempts to make this personal is tiring.
With respect to using AP as an example of credibility... you believe without reservation everything the mass media says? If you ever become newsworthy and they get it wrong about you, perhaps you'll know better. Or perhaps you'll believe "it's in print, therefore it must be right".
Again, nice attempt at making it personal. Credible media has rules that they follow before they print tripe. Alternately they'll surround said tripe with disclaimers. The Register, which apparently is your love, reports completely unsubstantiated gossip as news. They go to no lengths to actually verify facts. They don't look for corroboration. This has nothing to do with "believing everything", and again your sad attempts to demean what I'm saying by personal attacks is pathetic, but rather whether what they print has any merit whatsoever. I don't need someone to re-print every piece of shit someone's put on a website.
Alternately, you might try learning how to develop independent credibility of your own. Learning something about anything might help. Perhaps you'll understand credibility should you ever develop any.
You might want to learn how to troll a bit better, because this is just sad. Please resort to AC bashing to other posts as well for your Register friends.
Certainly, it's tabloid journalism. It is also useful tabloid journalism. It's written in a chatty, informal style. Guess what. Bill Gates' speeches are NOT The Sermon on the Mount and press releases by various vendors are taken far too seriously by the computer industry trade press.
I find it fascinating that so many Register fanatics have come out with fists flying in defence of the site.
My point was that The Register is not a credible source for news . Credible sources are sources that you can report upon as a source for your information when relaying information. i.e. "AP reports that Linus Torvalds kicks puppies": You don't have to give details because obviously if AP is reporting it, then they have credible sources and a foundation to make the claim. Here on Slashdot The Register is often used as a source of "news" of that sort, yet in reality most of the time all they've done is quoted some anonymous posting somewhere, or some gossip said by some third person friend of a guy who might know someone involved with the subject of the story. There is no credibility in claiming the Register as a source of a news story. (Just as it was absurd for the Register to quote ESR as a "source" for the latest Microsoft Halloween document).
News at 11: "Some random guy says that you pick your nose and eat it!"
Apart from the news thing, maybe the Register is a fantastic site. Maybe they have awesome tutorials on how to secure Linux. Maybe they've invented a perpetual motion machine. Regardless, though, they are not a quoteworthy "news" site.
I have no idea whether you're referring to the supposed customer relations email, or the Microsoft Halloween memo. In the former it was an anonymous posting on a message board: There is no veracity to it, and while mainstream media might perhaps report on it, they'd extensively disclaim that it's of no authenticity. In the case of the Microsoft thing: Even if it _IS_ completely real, and I was at the conference myself, I'd STILL laugh about their SOURCE being ESR (a raging anti-Microsoftite), who himself got it in some undescribed way. It's like information 5 steps removed, and it's usually the nature of gossip and other BS.
From a completely different company altogether! Sorry, but two responses in an industry hardly makes for a trend.
They definitely have an editorial slant, but that is not the same thing. In fact, it is the opposite, because by making the comparison with the Enquirer you are suggesting that they will publish anything as long as it is flashy
Many of the Register's stories tend to derive from anonymous, shadowy types, or "a guy who got it from some other guy who got it from some other guy". On this story we see them referencing "facts" that they derive from an Eric S. Raymond posting about a Microsoft document that he covertly received from some session that he didn't attend. This is par for the course for the type of Register articles that get posted here on Slashdot (I don't read it regularly, so it tends to be that I only see those "Some guy overhead a guy on the train saying that he heard that Bill Gates likes to kick puppies").
Firstly, The Register is the National Enquirer of the net. Take it with a huge grain of salt.
Secondly, even if this letter were authentic, it could very well be the result of a disgruntled employee who had a really bad day and just didn't give a shit anymore. Unless someone can show me widespread responses along the same line, or a mandate that this is the official response, I'll take this as no more than one guy. While the truth is that they are actively pursuing copy protection, which is their right, I find the overly hostile and confrontational content of the letter incredibly dubious.
We either have to stop fishing or start whaling because otherwise other fish will become extinct.
Yes because nature is incapable of balancing itself. Clearly there have been humans with whaling fleets since the beginning of time to keep the whale population in check.
Rotting in warehouses??? WTF? The buying programs have been cut to the bone, we don't have a single system that isn't unavailable for extended periods of time because we don't have enough of them!
Yes, rotting in warehouses. We recently had to destroy tens of millions of dollars of munitions because they passed their expiry date and were sitting in a warehouse. The media currently loves printing about how our armed forces have to "beg" for smart bombs during conflicts, but what they're really reporting is that we've moved more to a "on-time delivery" of perishable hardware. It hardly surprizes me that the manufacturers would rather we stockpile warehouses.
Our individual soldiers are NOT paid quite well, and only have fantastic personal equipment because we finally managed to convince the government to buy them new equipment, the same equipment people like you rallied against as being "un-needed" and "arms-industry sales tactics"!
Nice strawman technique there. And you want every troop to have their own personal multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier! You're crazy! As for the troops, a lot in specific areas are. I've seen the pay rates for specific areas, and it seemed pretty good to me, especially when all of the fringe benefits were included in the equation. A non-commissioned office with a family of 5 and a stay-at-home wife might have some difficulty making ends meet, but that's the case throughout society.
That is the stupidest most useless comment ever. Taken to it's non-logical extereme, we might as well not pay ANY ATTENTION what so ever to JUST HOW SMALL we are, PROPORTIONALLY, compared to ANYBODY! Why? Why should we spend 2 times less per person to keep the world free than the Finnish or Belgians!??
I love the proportional comments. Who sets the base rate? Is it a little race to have the highest percentage? Secondly I just checked here to find that we spend 1.3% of our GDP (~$9 billion US), while Belgium spends 1.2% (~$3 Billion US). Looks like you should do a better research job next time.
I would rather we spend billions on special operations teams and intelligence. Those are the areas where we can actually make a difference in the world of today (a world that already has the massive conventional force of the US, who is our friend and ally).
NO IT WASN'T. You're pulling this stuff out of your ASS!!!
The common wisdom before the friendly fire incident was that a smaller Canadian force would be rotated in (smaller because the conflict had died down), however it was politically palitable to just pull them all out after that incident. Obviously I don't know for sure, as you sure as hell don't, what went on in the war rooms, but I would say that it sure seems like it may have given them an "out".
MicroSoft Office came out long after MicroSoft word was absolutely number one in the world. There was no other office suite that would work with MicroSoft Word.
While it seems hard to believe now, the "Office Suite" market was one where there was huge competition, and the merits of individual applications didn't carry it. Instead it was integration between the various components, and use as a whole. While it's hard to recall now, there were entries like MS Office, Lotus SmartSuite, Corel had something, AMISoft had one, among others.
MicroSoft Word itself competed with Word Perfect for a few months back in 1986 before wiping it out everywhere except the legal profession. It did have some advantages from what I heard. This was well before Windows.
While there were versions of Word for DOS, Word broke out with the move to Windows. If you remember, Microsoft came out with Word for Windows and it was criticizes as slow, bloated, etc. Quite a while later (really late to the ball) WordPerfect came out with WordPerfect for Windows. It was horrendous, and redefined the word "bloat". They were too slow, and when they came to the ball they forgot their dancing shoes.
I realize that your posting panders to the "Microsoft bad...everything else good" crowd, however I would like to call you on a few assumptions.
a) What amazing abilities does Microsoft Office derive via these secret covert hooks that the source to the OS will reveal? This is an oft stated claimed, and I'm curious what the thought process is behind it. Will the "MakeOfficeProgramGreat()" API call suddenly make Open Office that much better? Of course this is all moot anyways as open source programs usually don't capitalize on OS specific hooks even where there are advantages.
b) While this might be hard for the kids to believe, Microsoft Office earned the position that it's in right now. I recall when it was an underdog, and then review after review after review found it to be best. While it's far from perfect, in any overall, non-biased comparison it came out on top. It's my personal opinion that Open Office doesn't even remotely compare with Office XP.
c) This same thing can be said about virtually any other MS program. I run Microsoft SQL Server because it's a very powerful, cost effective database system. I use Visual Studio.NET because it's a fantastic development environment that I've never used a rival to.
Agreed, and we are already taking delivery of Cormorant S&R helicopters (though I believe those are intended to replace the Labrador).
I have no doubt that there is a need for a well equipped military (especially if the equipment itself endangers the servicepeople), however it's a classic situation where "how much is enough?" is a completely subjective measure where everyone will fervently and passionately proclaim their point of view. Generals will argue that the military needs to be bigger, faster, larger (if necessary they'll distort perceived enemies. See the cold war and the massive US buildup against a Soviet threat that later was found not to exist). This is similar to how if you put the police in charge of the police budget, every citizen would have their own personally assigned police officer, and all police officers would walk around in giant personal robots.
It should also be noted, that Canada cannot have nuclear reactors. All of their ships are diesels. Good for coastal defense, but not for a extended campaign miles away.
We cannot have nuclear reactors? Huh? Nuclear reactors on weapons of war are, apart from being tremendously dangerous, enormously expensive. Secondly, the vast majority of the US fleet is diesel powered, apart from some aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. For the rest of the world only Russia uses nuclear power outside of submarines, with France giving it a try on one of their micro aircraft carriers. Perhaps you believe that aircraft carriers just go roving around the oceans on their own and aren't basically tethered to the battle fleet that goes with them?
Canada sucks as a military power.
Completely and absolutely true. We're not a military power. We're a country of 30 million with a focus on social programs, in a world that is completely dominated by the machinations that built a massive military complex during the cold war, and now will use every device to maintain it. At the same time the honest truth is that we're perfectly happy being in the United State's shadow, so while France and England and Germany busily produce their next attempt to provide a European equal to US power, we'll happily let our fighters rust into oblivion. Despite 9/11, the world is a vastly safer place with far fewer tyrants and far fewer threats that aircraft carriers and fighter jets can conquer. A terrorist with some biological agents doesn't care if you have a vast army of M1A2s.
Their airforce is also just as crappy as their navy... when conducting joint excercises with the US and British, the canadians are usually given "busy time" excercises.
Sure.... that's why Canadian pilots win virtually every competition they're entered into (like our snipers). Of course we do have a pretty limited air power: Maybe 100 F18s, and that's it as far as front line fighters. Air power is tremendously expensive, and we long realized that the US will outmatch us dramatically regardless (just like it outmatches any other nation. Your British comments are especially telling because, apart from Tony Blair's US pandering, Britain most certainly is not a supreme power alongside the US. Indeed, all of Europe together is but a token gesture compared to the US arsenal).
With all due respect, and I'm a Canadian and I have served in our nation's armed forces, I think this is past tense. The logic of keeping piles of generals handy to suddenly recruit and train a whack of soldiers is kind of broken, given the nature of modern conflicts.
Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.
The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry- An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses, ready for multi-billion dollar upgrades 5 years down the road. Military equipment comes at a cost to social programs, healthcare, etc, or alternately higher taxes. Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.
While we hear constant cries about the "dangerous new world", the reality is that the classic militarism of yesteryear is a bygone thing: The US has nominated itself, and achieved by default, global policeman. Though this role is costly to her, it was a self-pursued role, and comes with a healthy bonus of being able to promote and pursue her own self-interests. Of course, simpleton morons like Pat Buchanan would try to cast such a role not as a self-serving role, but as a role which we should all send a cheque in the mail.
I *wish* we could actually help out some of the places that really need help right now. But we can't even keep a thousand guys in Afghanistan for a year, let alone buy those guys some appropriate camouflage fatigues in a timely fashion. And don't get me started on the Sea King or its replacements....
I think the camouflage issue was more of a political red herring: There isn't an armed forces on the planet, except perhaps the US, that has camo for every possible battlefield situation. The Afghan conflict came up just as a prior batch was destroyed and the new batch was on order. It happens. Personally I think, given the nature of the military, that some of the elite teams showed true military gumption and they quite literally made their own, creating some of the best camo possible. The Sea King is indeed an unfortunate reality, but again compared with the acquisition of a fleet of modern subs, missile frigates, and cormorant helicopters, it's amazing how much attention the Sea King garners. Again, take a close look at the $ vested interests who are looking at lining up at the trough.
We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US', just as the military of every other NATO countries does. I'm perfectly fine with that. We went into Afghanistan with troops that were perfect for the non-conventional modern warfare (i.e. snipers), did a great job, and got out after the situation had pretty much settled. Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire: Given that the conflict was pretty much resolved, such a needless loss couldn't be repeated.
And probably about 70% of Slashdot's population. Not sure if you noticed, but there is a very high percentage of Canadians who visit Slashdot. I suspect it's due to that national program to integrate high speed into our igloo clusters.
While it's fun to joke about Canada, it should be noted that when it's actually needed (i.e. not against a bunch of two bit little shithole nations, or just to continue to push a military-export policy) Canada quickly becomes a military powerhouse.
"The Canadian Navy began the Second World War with half a dozen vessels and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian Soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the War with the World's 3rd largest Navy and the fourth largest Air Force. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had in previous times.......In film, Hollywood abandoned the notion of a separate Canadian identity"
I think this will never see the light of day in the US.
I doubt it'll see the light of day anywhere for quite a few years. The massive, extraordinary effort to make a pressureless vacuum in a tube long enough that trains are going 300kmh just boggles the mind: We can barely dig a little tunnel under the English Channel, and we're seriously proposing vacuum tubes? We have enough trouble making little spheres as vacuum tube, much less some sort of system that's supposed to let people in and out, etc. Maintaining a vacuum at sealevel would be a massive energy sucker.
BTW: Some other people mentioned a prior New York system of pneumatic trains that used suction, basically, to pull the train forward. This was immediately pooh poohed (hehe...just had to use that phrase) by some saying it's so much different. Of course the advantage of a vacuum is that there is no wind resistance: The exact feat can be accomplished by accelerating the air in the tunnel to the same speed as the train (of course it'd be a circular system, so there wouldn't be the energy requirements of a standard wind tunnel where stationary air is pulled in and then forced out against more stationary air). Impossible? Certainly not any more impossible than magically making a multi hundred KM vacuum tube. It'd be a lot safer too.