European Commission regulators in Brussels chose Mr. Barrett from among Microsoft's own nominees
His testimony leads to threats of fines by the EU....
prompting Microsoft to attack Mr. Barrett's competence and to accuse him of colluding with its rivals
The EU publishes the previously secret terms of Mr. Barrett's mandate, arguing he is required to seek input from Microsoft rivals.
Not that I'd expect Microsoft to know about the secret terms, but the fact that their lawyers can do a u-turn on their own fucking nominee like that and retain credibility is incredible. I'm more inclined to trust an ex-hacker who says things like this:
"Although experts [in the U.K. courts] are usually employed on one side of a particular case, we are not 'on their side' once we are in court," he wrote. "We are there to see that justice is served."
To end, here is a list of companies who agree with Barrett about Microsoft's documentation:
Oracle
IBM (this dumbass news site thinks they're still International Business Machines)
Sun
Novell>
Even if they can undermine belief in his competence, they can hardly do the same for companies like those.
It's just a shame that all that this will lead to are chump-change fines that probably won't even equal the money made by all the lawyers - the real winners. I'll go as far as to say that the EU would have spent its money better on OpenOffice development.
I can imagine it must be pretty annoying to be a deaf gamer, to have to scour reviews inferring the information to tell if you will be able to play the game or not. It would be very nice if there was a decent standard set of information, like a grid or something, that they put on all games. There could be a database of it online too.
Deaf gamers could find games with the 'deaf-friendly' check box - games that don't rely completely on sound, meaning they have visual indicators for events, and new missions or whatever flash up as text too.
Blind friendly? There wouldn't be enough games to justify keeping this data.
Mobility impaired.... complicated, because of the variety in this area of disablification. On further thought, again probably not worth having a box for this.
But the concept can be extended - violence, gore, sex, criminal acts, scary, murder simulator etc. There is something similar in use, but it's a useless piece of crap, to be perfectly honest. Phrases like "Contains scenes of moderate violence" are too full of superfluous prose. It needs to be a big blue grid with obvious ticks or color-coded symbols, and unfortunately this is not for the visually impaired, but for intention-impaired parents.
It's just another thing being worked on. It's not a case of being out of touch, as clearly there are several tools, mostly aimed at the visually impaired, which is what they really mean by disabled.
Even Slackware gives the option to install a speakup kernel.
KDE has text-to-speech, though only the frontend in earlier versions.
KDE also enables you to resize the screen easily, helping those with less severe vision problems.
Nothing in FOSS can be taken and presented as An Official Display of How Good It Is And Always Shall Be. Most things are work in progress.
If there's a lack of communication, it's the fault of the disabled community. Or are FOSS developers to spend their time researching potential user groups' needs instead of coding? I imagine that disabled rights groups have already provided the necessary information, and are just waiting for the tools to appear, because from what little I've seen, they're very good at doing their part. If they haven't done that yet, tough luck. Unless they want some sighted programmer to just guess?
Another thing I didn't like about this article was its use of the phrase "disabled people". It's about THE BLIND, so just say THE BLIND. Deaf people don't have any fixable problems with computers unless some idiot decides to make their program depend on sound feedback. There's little we can do to enable a dumb person to use VOIP, short of recognising their speech and converting it to text. Reduced mobility users need to complain to their hardware vendors if there are no Linux drivers for their single-handed keyboards or whatever they may need. They are working on blind access. Work is slow because FOSS runs on itch scratching. People make software that they want. Companies work on software that they use.
I really want blind users to be able to have their needs catered for. I don't want them to need to send letters saying things like "Do you know that choosing Linux means excluding blind users?". But as in everything else, steps are being made. Unfortunately, it's quite a long journey:
he has not found "a distribution that boots" and detects "Italian speech synthesizers, or Braille terminals with the brltty driver."
What this is, is a testament to the sheer size of the problem. There has to be some serious money behind this for it to be this advanced. I saw a mention of several billion in the article.
It sometimes makes me angry that such a clearly insecure system is being abused to take money from honest people. But everyone I know is totally aware of the risks, I've given them all 'the talk' about Linux, and they choose the blue pill every single time. Desensitisation is a strange thing.
You'd think that they'd at least call them "customers" in a situation like this.
*sigh* As a customer, it's getting hard to find people to do business with these days. I still don't envy the lot of "consumers" though. But then again, if your self-worth is low enough that you're willing to be called a "consumer" by your "vendor", you're asking for trouble.
Out of honest curiosity, is that how perl is? I'm a fledgling programmer myself, using PHP. There's a lot of talk about it being insecure, and not being a True Programming Nerd, I have no real idea why.
This itself raises the issue that if a language is too easy to write securely by default, people starting out in it won't learn to think about security when they code, which is a short term vs long term thing. The phrase "too secure" does sound a little moronic though...
For the record, my code is incredibly paranoid. I'm probably not very representative though, being a much-less-new security conscious Linux user.
First of all, let me say: THANK YOU for restoring my faith in humanity. Check the mini flamewar I've had with the thread starter for a classic example of a discussion going nowhere fast.
I think it's safe to say the UN are going to be biased in this matter. One possibility is that their enthusiasm comes from the amount of goodwill potential this project offers. They can make themselves look very relevant and useful by getting themselves into a headline along with a name like "$100 laptop".
However, I am more prepared to trust a comparatively impartial group such as the UN or MIT, than a publically traded company such as Microsoft or Intel - the two most vocal critics of the project in my opinion. And just as the UN is ignorant of technology, Bill Gates can hardly be considered an expert on the wants and needs of the poor.
In any case, the real issue is the educational value of the thing, and my point of view on this is quite simple: the $100 laptop is better than nothing, which is what a lot of people are proposing here.
My criticism of the dissenting view isn't what you think it is. In my opinion, Slashdot doesn't have 'dissent' as such. It collectively picks a side and moderation forces people to run with it. Most of the time I just roll with this. It's just that something about this subject makes me get all angry and before I know it I'm reaching for CAPS LOCK.
You're a real piece of work, you know that? I've said twice now that it's not a world-saver, just a step, and still you won't step away from the strawman. My mention of Linux was unrelated to this, and indeed the OS wouldn't have come into it but that you called it a dumbed down computer.
And when will you stop referring to the target market as "there"? STOP IGNORING WHAT I'M SAYING. The developing world is diverse, and most of the countries interested in this laptop are not starvation-filled, AIDS ridden hellholes. Most are in Latin America, for one thing. They are going to people who AREN'T STARVING TO DEATH.
As I've already said in another reply to someone similar to you: I too say that this is not about Bill Gates. Thing is, dickhead, it's not about "what REALLY needs to happen to solve the problems of the poor and 3rd world countries the world over" either. It's about an educational laptop for kids in developing countries. You got a better way to teach kids about computers than to give them one? I'm all ears, unlike you, who've repeatedly ignored every one of my points. Can you not see the irony in this phrase: And i won't read anything you have to say because your as closed minded as they come.
The question isn't "Do you trust the UN?". It's "What's the best way to get I.T. to kids in developing countries?".
But let's play along and assume the UN are a load of bungling idiots though...
Well then I guess we're lucky this isn't a UN aid program, but a non-profit venture run by an independent organization. Does the amount of UN backing it gets undermine its credibility as a project? Not according to the governments of Brazil, Egypt, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Tunisia, Argentina and Venezuela. I don't know about most of those, but there's no way Chavez would touch a US-based charity product unless it seemed clean. But Chavez is a nutter, so let's skip him. Lula: there's a guy I trust when it comes to this kind of pro-puppy social niceness.
You bigoted sack of shit (yeah, more swearing, deal with it). You really do think that 'developing countries' invariably means starvation and no democracy? Typical Slashdotter. How can you even think you can talk about "these people" like that? The rest of the world is more diverse than you think.
And anyway, internet only flourished in our countries once there was a large enough base of computer owners. It is possible for a computer to be useful without the internet. And these computers won't be going into any black market because they're so low tech, and going straight to the bottom of the social strata in most cases. The black market has no interest in a children's computer being handed out for free by the government. The only people to sell these to are the ones getting them for free (discounting your batshit insane idea that Linux-using American kids alone will fuel a worldwide black market).
And who exactly are the "we" you seem to be exalting? You think America or the developed world are regarded as "teachers"? Europe is seen as a good area to migrate to by many, but as the recent cartoon protests have shown, nobody's lining up for assimilation.
for gods sake don't just give them something like this and expect it to solve the problems that go much deeper then you care to think of.
I explicitly stated that contrary to what you bigoted Slashdotters are repeating to yourselves, this isn't a magic solution. Your shitty strawman argument won't work on me. Why don't you read an objective article on this thing and tell me if you see anything about it saving the world?. Are you talking about this quote? "Every single problem you can think of, poverty, peace, the environment, is solved with education or including education." At no point does Negroponte claim that his laptop solves every single problem. He is just implying that it can have a wide-reaching effect. If you take this to mean that he thinks it will solve every problem, you are assuming that every aspect of education revolves around computers.
I don't trust Gates because he's in it for money. He has competing products to sell. His worldview revolves around his dream of hardware being free and the OS being what people pay for. This laptop is a huge threat to the credibility of this. The UN does this stuff because it's part of their purpose, whereas Bill Gates wouldn't give nearly as much if it weren't also an effective tax dodge, and besides that, being rich and providing funds doesn't mean he knows a thing about practicalities. I'll trust the judgement of the UN and the several governments waiting to buy millions of these laptops before the judgement of Bill Gates and you, thank you very much.
Dumbed down? These machines are a work of networking genius. And they run fucking Linux, which frees them up completely.
Anything you've seen calling this an attempt to "solve the problem of 3rd world technology and computing" was market speak. This is no different to anything else - a step forward.
Infrastructure? These laptops are infrastructure. And I can't think of anything more "from the ground up" than KIDS.
Wireless broadband infrastructure? And what do you propose they connect to this wireless broadband? Sounds like your fantasy world is a step ahead of the rest of us.
I'm sick to death of smug Slashdotters pissing on this project as if they know better than MIT and the UN.
Some people are just crazy. Journalists call these people 'sources'. So, what do you think of this new email thi...
If you spend all your time on email, you're not listening and reading. If you spend all your time playing tag with your buddies, you're not listening and reading! If you spend all your time fixing your car, you're not listening and reading!! HAS THE WORLD GONE CRAZY? NOBODY IS LISTENING AND READING ANY MORE? Have you seen TV viewing figures lately? NOBODY is listening and reading!!
But surely you ca...
I tell ya! You gotta listen and read! You know, I didn't even take notes in college. That's how important listening and reading is. If you're spending all your time taking notes, you're not listening and reading! I didn't risk my neck in the Australian-American War for you kiddies to spend all your time taking notes!
People on Slashdot always seem to add one or two tricks in their List of Bad Things done by Microsoft. It's an obvious Illuminati test of my cognitive abilities, so here goes:
Bill Gates didn't invent phishing (this is actually debatable, but no original research is allowed here on Slashdot).
That's enough cutting insight.
I have family with Windows computers which barely boot, run at a snail's pace, pop up ads at regular intervals, have ad-icons regenerating themselves on the desktop, and are probably reporting all sorts of useful information back to the darker corners of the internet. They know all this, and they continue to use the internet daily, because they are locked in. Their small, insignificant, family-based, lo-tech businesses depend on email and buying shit off eBay and more stuff than I care to remember.
For some reason I am the appointed IT consultant, despite my ignorance in Windows maintenance. Despite their problems, I've been called in, and helped them upgrade their connections, fix their connections, plug their shit in, you name it.
But I'm in England, so Your Mileage Might Vary In Your Inefficient American Cars.
I must say, this is incredibly rude of you. If you'd taken half a second to check the very last comment before yours, you'd have seen that the discussion is now over. That means we have to stop posting now. You don't disobey a guy with a UID that low. Not if you enjoy the use of your kneecaps, if you know what I mean.
Slashdot Mirror
- Oracle
- IBM (this dumbass news site thinks they're still International Business Machines)
- Sun
- Novell>
Even if they can undermine belief in his competence, they can hardly do the same for companies like those.It's just a shame that all that this will lead to are chump-change fines that probably won't even equal the money made by all the lawyers - the real winners. I'll go as far as to say that the EU would have spent its money better on OpenOffice development.
Deaf gamers could find games with the 'deaf-friendly' check box - games that don't rely completely on sound, meaning they have visual indicators for events, and new missions or whatever flash up as text too.
Blind friendly? There wouldn't be enough games to justify keeping this data.
Mobility impaired.... complicated, because of the variety in this area of disablification. On further thought, again probably not worth having a box for this.
But the concept can be extended - violence, gore, sex, criminal acts, scary, murder simulator etc. There is something similar in use, but it's a useless piece of crap, to be perfectly honest. Phrases like "Contains scenes of moderate violence" are too full of superfluous prose. It needs to be a big blue grid with obvious ticks or color-coded symbols, and unfortunately this is not for the visually impaired, but for intention-impaired parents.
ROMEO TANGO FOXTROT ALPHA
- Even Slackware gives the option to install a speakup kernel.
- KDE has text-to-speech, though only the frontend in earlier versions.
- KDE also enables you to resize the screen easily, helping those with less severe vision problems.
- Check this out
Nothing in FOSS can be taken and presented as An Official Display of How Good It Is And Always Shall Be. Most things are work in progress.If there's a lack of communication, it's the fault of the disabled community. Or are FOSS developers to spend their time researching potential user groups' needs instead of coding? I imagine that disabled rights groups have already provided the necessary information, and are just waiting for the tools to appear, because from what little I've seen, they're very good at doing their part. If they haven't done that yet, tough luck. Unless they want some sighted programmer to just guess?
Another thing I didn't like about this article was its use of the phrase "disabled people". It's about THE BLIND, so just say THE BLIND. Deaf people don't have any fixable problems with computers unless some idiot decides to make their program depend on sound feedback. There's little we can do to enable a dumb person to use VOIP, short of recognising their speech and converting it to text. Reduced mobility users need to complain to their hardware vendors if there are no Linux drivers for their single-handed keyboards or whatever they may need. They are working on blind access. Work is slow because FOSS runs on itch scratching. People make software that they want. Companies work on software that they use.
I really want blind users to be able to have their needs catered for. I don't want them to need to send letters saying things like "Do you know that choosing Linux means excluding blind users?". But as in everything else, steps are being made. Unfortunately, it's quite a long journey:
It sometimes makes me angry that such a clearly insecure system is being abused to take money from honest people. But everyone I know is totally aware of the risks, I've given them all 'the talk' about Linux, and they choose the blue pill every single time. Desensitisation is a strange thing.
Sounds like someone is confusing Windows' file sharing system with a security breach... oh wait...
*sigh* As a customer, it's getting hard to find people to do business with these days. I still don't envy the lot of "consumers" though. But then again, if your self-worth is low enough that you're willing to be called a "consumer" by your "vendor", you're asking for trouble.
Now you see how stupid you are for coding while angry? You forgot to put anything in your function! That's what I call a messy habit!
There, fixed that typo for you.
This itself raises the issue that if a language is too easy to write securely by default, people starting out in it won't learn to think about security when they code, which is a short term vs long term thing. The phrase "too secure" does sound a little moronic though...
For the record, my code is incredibly paranoid. I'm probably not very representative though, being a much-less-new security conscious Linux user.
If Python developers had { and } keys they'd be using PHP!
Not once the moderators are finished with him.
Iam Slasdot edditer Rob Malda, and this is the longast day of my life! BEEP BEEP BEEP VEEEP.
I've just tested it on my local copy of my site, in php, and it seems to work similarly to 'exit'.
I think it's safe to say the UN are going to be biased in this matter. One possibility is that their enthusiasm comes from the amount of goodwill potential this project offers. They can make themselves look very relevant and useful by getting themselves into a headline along with a name like "$100 laptop".
However, I am more prepared to trust a comparatively impartial group such as the UN or MIT, than a publically traded company such as Microsoft or Intel - the two most vocal critics of the project in my opinion. And just as the UN is ignorant of technology, Bill Gates can hardly be considered an expert on the wants and needs of the poor.
In any case, the real issue is the educational value of the thing, and my point of view on this is quite simple: the $100 laptop is better than nothing, which is what a lot of people are proposing here.
My criticism of the dissenting view isn't what you think it is. In my opinion, Slashdot doesn't have 'dissent' as such. It collectively picks a side and moderation forces people to run with it. Most of the time I just roll with this. It's just that something about this subject makes me get all angry and before I know it I'm reaching for CAPS LOCK.
And when will you stop referring to the target market as "there"? STOP IGNORING WHAT I'M SAYING. The developing world is diverse, and most of the countries interested in this laptop are not starvation-filled, AIDS ridden hellholes. Most are in Latin America, for one thing. They are going to people who AREN'T STARVING TO DEATH.
As I've already said in another reply to someone similar to you: I too say that this is not about Bill Gates. Thing is, dickhead, it's not about "what REALLY needs to happen to solve the problems of the poor and 3rd world countries the world over" either. It's about an educational laptop for kids in developing countries. You got a better way to teach kids about computers than to give them one? I'm all ears, unlike you, who've repeatedly ignored every one of my points. Can you not see the irony in this phrase: And i won't read anything you have to say because your as closed minded as they come.
But let's play along and assume the UN are a load of bungling idiots though...
Well then I guess we're lucky this isn't a UN aid program, but a non-profit venture run by an independent organization. Does the amount of UN backing it gets undermine its credibility as a project? Not according to the governments of Brazil, Egypt, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Tunisia, Argentina and Venezuela. I don't know about most of those, but there's no way Chavez would touch a US-based charity product unless it seemed clean. But Chavez is a nutter, so let's skip him. Lula: there's a guy I trust when it comes to this kind of pro-puppy social niceness.
And anyway, internet only flourished in our countries once there was a large enough base of computer owners. It is possible for a computer to be useful without the internet. And these computers won't be going into any black market because they're so low tech, and going straight to the bottom of the social strata in most cases. The black market has no interest in a children's computer being handed out for free by the government. The only people to sell these to are the ones getting them for free (discounting your batshit insane idea that Linux-using American kids alone will fuel a worldwide black market).
And who exactly are the "we" you seem to be exalting? You think America or the developed world are regarded as "teachers"? Europe is seen as a good area to migrate to by many, but as the recent cartoon protests have shown, nobody's lining up for assimilation.
I explicitly stated that contrary to what you bigoted Slashdotters are repeating to yourselves, this isn't a magic solution. Your shitty strawman argument won't work on me. Why don't you read an objective article on this thing and tell me if you see anything about it saving the world?. Are you talking about this quote? "Every single problem you can think of, poverty, peace, the environment, is solved with education or including education." At no point does Negroponte claim that his laptop solves every single problem. He is just implying that it can have a wide-reaching effect. If you take this to mean that he thinks it will solve every problem, you are assuming that every aspect of education revolves around computers.I don't trust Gates because he's in it for money. He has competing products to sell. His worldview revolves around his dream of hardware being free and the OS being what people pay for. This laptop is a huge threat to the credibility of this. The UN does this stuff because it's part of their purpose, whereas Bill Gates wouldn't give nearly as much if it weren't also an effective tax dodge, and besides that, being rich and providing funds doesn't mean he knows a thing about practicalities. I'll trust the judgement of the UN and the several governments waiting to buy millions of these laptops before the judgement of Bill Gates and you, thank you very much.
Anything you've seen calling this an attempt to "solve the problem of 3rd world technology and computing" was market speak. This is no different to anything else - a step forward.
Infrastructure? These laptops are infrastructure. And I can't think of anything more "from the ground up" than KIDS.
Wireless broadband infrastructure? And what do you propose they connect to this wireless broadband? Sounds like your fantasy world is a step ahead of the rest of us.
I'm sick to death of smug Slashdotters pissing on this project as if they know better than MIT and the UN.
Something like this?
So, what do you think of this new email thi... But surely you ca...
- Bill Gates didn't invent phishing (this is actually debatable, but no original research is allowed here on Slashdot).
- That's enough cutting insight.
I have family with Windows computers which barely boot, run at a snail's pace, pop up ads at regular intervals, have ad-icons regenerating themselves on the desktop, and are probably reporting all sorts of useful information back to the darker corners of the internet. They know all this, and they continue to use the internet daily, because they are locked in. Their small, insignificant, family-based, lo-tech businesses depend on email and buying shit off eBay and more stuff than I care to remember.For some reason I am the appointed IT consultant, despite my ignorance in Windows maintenance. Despite their problems, I've been called in, and helped them upgrade their connections, fix their connections, plug their shit in, you name it.
But I'm in England, so Your Mileage Might Vary In Your Inefficient American Cars.
I must say, this is incredibly rude of you. If you'd taken half a second to check the very last comment before yours, you'd have seen that the discussion is now over. That means we have to stop posting now. You don't disobey a guy with a UID that low. Not if you enjoy the use of your kneecaps, if you know what I mean.