After canceling my whining liberal newspaper earlier this summer, they are now tossing a free advertising section on my lawn, essentially all the paper ads and classifieds w/o the news and editorials. Now, every week, I have to walk over, pick up this unsolicited garbage tossed from a drive by delivery person and heave it into the trash. Some of the neighbors are just tossing them back onto the street.
the kind of programmers that are likely to contribute to OSS projects are probably those that CAN'T find a job
OTOH - they might be the kind of programmers that are SO GOOD that they can no only hold down a job, but contribute to public / community projects that they're interested in in their spare time. That is, an employer specifies what your going to work on, but they may have other personal interest persuits, as a self educational hobby and don't mind sharing it.
Jeez, there's a LOT of ppl with time and talent on their hands who do community volunteer work at Hospitals, Churches, schools, scouts, election commitees, etc. - I would be leery of anyone who does absolutely nothing w/o getting paid for it. Employers used to expect some kind of participation in Lion's clubs etc just to help promote a friendly, responsible image, instead of looking like greedy bastards.
Msft muscled in on the original IBM PC and has hung on as the default shipped OS ever since. At least Steve has enough sense to see that nobody is going to displace Msft on the Intel and certainly isn't foolish enough to try. Could Apple afford to %25 piracy rate? Could they withstand all the just plain bad PC hardware out there making their software look bad without a thoroughly locked in consumer base? Sure, the design for the Mercedes or BMW would be affordable if they'd let bottom rate third world el-cheapo auto plants like Yugo or whatever make them, but then it just wouldn't be the same high level of quality and dependability that their customers have come to expect.
Something like has happened before, just on a much smaller market/scale: Radio Scanners, at the behest of the Cell Phone Industry in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 were required to NOT BE ABLE TO SCAN the 800Mhz analog cell phone band. Previously, under 1930's communication laws, someone with a radio could listen to anything, altho it was illegal to use or act on such information. Anyway, here we are, cell band scanners are outlawed and only outlaws own cell enabled scanners. Again, scanner enthusiasts are a very small crowd - forcing such draconian measures on the PC market may be much more difficult.
don't get too cheap on the Intel HW, I mean quality hardware - no software runs well when the tin memory contacts get flaky or the fans seize up after a week. Use a percentage of sw saving for quality stuff and rest is punching buttons with minimal finger pointing at the resident screwdriver jocky & board swapper.The last production box we got even for Msft 2K server was just a 1.1Ghz P3 w/ PC133 ram, and 2 40Gb SCSI disks (low voltage differential, new one on me). Giving untrusted hw a weeks thrashing under simulated production conditions builds confidence immensely and avoids em-bareass-ment.
The problem with 'fair use' is simply that the 'honor system' of 'no I won't give away copies to friends, promise' just flat out doesn't work, at least not for a good third of consumers. Anyone who says otherwise is just practicing political postering. For example, say a grocery store operated on some communal good-will principle, where you go in and pick up what you want and leave the money at the counter as you go out with no checking of items at all. That store would lose money and go broke in a weeks for all the people who would fail to pay for the goods they take. Those who weep and wail about loss of 'fair use' are paying the price of those who hand out copies willy-nilly. The true 'fair use' advocates should go beat up on the real pirates, if they can find them. Putting copy protection on products is identical to putting anti-theft tags on pocketable good, with mirrors and cameras and pickups by the door to stop shoplifters. It's not the producers or authorities who are slowly eroding your precious freedoms, it's the petty digital criminals, period.
Go ahead, mod it troll. In this crowd it is, but it's quite true and you know it, that's why you're going to lose fair use.
If the license agreement was to be taken seriously, he either had to go to the trouble of trying to ship the book back or he had to become an Omnicare customer somehow.
I'd just trash it and forget it. It's illegal to send unsolicited items and then try to collect for it - just because they slap a boilerplate on something that arrives unsolicited in your mail you can still just treat it like any bulk business mail, crapcan it. All they are claiming ownership rights to is the contents. If you want to get in a moral quandrary over it, or become play the OmniCare game that's fine too.
Simply making it mandatory for govt agencies to use OSS IS anti-choice, but a highly visible and political one destined to make headline news and bring on the wrath of the Ayndroids, as compared to all the subtle subterfuge and skulldugery, tie-ins and bundling that goes into maintaining and extending a PC platform monopoly (You can use any software you want, as long as it's Msft).
Re:Yes, but why does Microsoft need a stand...
on
Linuxworld Fun
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· Score: 1
So they can drool over possible food sources directly - "Hmmmm, slurp, which one to buy, which to buy today, Hmmmm, Yuummmmm, tender, young software companies, Hmmmmmm".
Scene's we'd love to see
on
Gone Fission
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· Score: 0, Troll
You know, I'd just *love* to see a bunch of modern day enviro-weenies during the days when the dinosaurs were going extinct - can you imagine the uproar that would ensue? Bake sales to 'save the dino's', bumper stickers, a great outpouring of compassion toward the terrible lizzards, vast weeping and wailing over the destruction wrought against nature by humans, legislation by the ton passed to restrict human activities, all over a perfectly natural and freely occurring change in climate, living conditions, evolution, etc. Why people get so upset and start beating their chest and automatically assume some mantle of cosmic guilt for being alive over every little pertubation in the global ecosystem (species come and go, some thrive, others die out, but somehow, life goes on) is just an amazing phenomena to watch. Freud would have a field day - not with kudzu or worms - but with the way your average enviro-conscious-sensitive-guilty-american can so easily have their chains yanked by the news media.
"Your Passport is protected by powerful online security and a strict privacy policy."
That reminds me of a BOFH test:
9. The security and integrity of your email is protected by:
a. Your password
b. Company Policy
c. PGP Encryption
d. Microsoft's pursuit of excellence. Waaaaaa ha ha ha!
e. Two pints for the System Administrator every Friday night
[ note: I'd rather have option 'c. Federal Law', since encrytion actually does something, whereas laws don't, but the above is original form ]
Anyone interesting in getting into model airplanes, esp. the new 'parkflyer' electrics (if you can't stand glow fuel, caster oil 'slimers') should read up at RC Groups - you can get a pretty good flight at the local soccer field with nice, quiet parkflyer electrics. I've just finished something called a Wing-E and it's a ball to fly in my nearby school yard, get's at least 10 minutes of aerobatic fun off one battery charge.
Microsoft may make things easier to use, but harder to understand. With all of the hand holding, wizards, and simply doing things for you, the end user is becoming less and less knowledgable about computers.
This is an age old tactic, going way back. Find a wealthy, powerful being and become their servant. Do more and more for them. Take over more of their functions, make life easy for them, make life so easy they don't have to lift a finger. After a while the formerly powerful being is impotent, completely dependant on you, and you have become the powerful entity. Numerous Bible stories go like this.
Re:How to get girls to put their head on your arm!
on
The Bulova Accutron
·
· Score: 1
I wore my Dad's accutron throughout junior high school.
This is actually 'off topic' but anyway - thru jr HS I had this pretty cool timex with a second hand that jumped from second to second, i.e., the second hand would be pointing steadily at 12, then a second later suddenly jump to one second past 12, etc etc. You could stop the watch by pulling the stem out, set the time, then push it in to start it again. Eventually I found out it could be accurately synchronized to the school time bells to the second, which turned out to be loads of fun, like saying "the bells going to ring" right when the bell starts ringing. What really freaked out the teachers was leaping out of the desk and running towards the door, crossing the threshhold just as the bell to change classes started ringing;))
Gawd, wish I had a top floor room with an 802.11b antenna on the balcony facing defcon central - think of the honeypots you could setup to trap these guys, esp during the wardriving contest. A little weak encryption for cover, lots of pseudo-confidential bait, watch the fun.
If you stare at the Canadian Flag long enough, until you get background/foreground reversal, you can see two guys butting foreheads and arguing. Lets see an AI do that.
Slashdot Mirror
everytime he called in sick, he knew it was a lie.
No Joke - you can't even buy a decent house in Si Valley for that little anymore.
After canceling my whining liberal newspaper earlier this summer, they are now tossing a free advertising section on my lawn, essentially all the paper ads and classifieds w/o the news and editorials. Now, every week, I have to walk over, pick up this unsolicited garbage tossed from a drive by delivery person and heave it into the trash. Some of the neighbors are just tossing them back onto the street.
Looks like Ford is getting into the act.
the kind of programmers that are likely to contribute to OSS projects are probably those that CAN'T find a job
OTOH - they might be the kind of programmers that are SO GOOD that they can no only hold down a job, but contribute to public / community projects that they're interested in in their spare time. That is, an employer specifies what your going to work on, but they may have other personal interest persuits, as a self educational hobby and don't mind sharing it.
Jeez, there's a LOT of ppl with time and talent on their hands who do community volunteer work at Hospitals, Churches, schools, scouts, election commitees, etc. - I would be leery of anyone who does absolutely nothing w/o getting paid for it. Employers used to expect some kind of participation in Lion's clubs etc just to help promote a friendly, responsible image, instead of looking like greedy bastards.
Msft muscled in on the original IBM PC and has hung on as the default shipped OS ever since. At least Steve has enough sense to see that nobody is going to displace Msft on the Intel and certainly isn't foolish enough to try. Could Apple afford to %25 piracy rate? Could they withstand all the just plain bad PC hardware out there making their software look bad without a thoroughly locked in consumer base? Sure, the design for the Mercedes or BMW would be affordable if they'd let bottom rate third world el-cheapo auto plants like Yugo or whatever make them, but then it just wouldn't be the same high level of quality and dependability that their customers have come to expect.
All you would get is some useless blather about the wonderful power of free markets, capitalism, deregulation and caveat emptor.
Sounds like what Clinton would ask a female co-worker to do
Something like has happened before, just on a much smaller market/scale: Radio Scanners, at the behest of the Cell Phone Industry in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 were required to NOT BE ABLE TO SCAN the 800Mhz analog cell phone band. Previously, under 1930's communication laws, someone with a radio could listen to anything, altho it was illegal to use or act on such information. Anyway, here we are, cell band scanners are outlawed and only outlaws own cell enabled scanners. Again, scanner enthusiasts are a very small crowd - forcing such draconian measures on the PC market may be much more difficult.
don't get too cheap on the Intel HW, I mean quality hardware - no software runs well when the tin memory contacts get flaky or the fans seize up after a week. Use a percentage of sw saving for quality stuff and rest is punching buttons with minimal finger pointing at the resident screwdriver jocky & board swapper.The last production box we got even for Msft 2K server was just a 1.1Ghz P3 w/ PC133 ram, and 2 40Gb SCSI disks (low voltage differential, new one on me). Giving untrusted hw a weeks thrashing under simulated production conditions builds confidence immensely and avoids em-bareass-ment.
The problem with 'fair use' is simply that the 'honor system' of 'no I won't give away copies to friends, promise' just flat out doesn't work, at least not for a good third of consumers. Anyone who says otherwise is just practicing political postering. For example, say a grocery store operated on some communal good-will principle, where you go in and pick up what you want and leave the money at the counter as you go out with no checking of items at all. That store would lose money and go broke in a weeks for all the people who would fail to pay for the goods they take. Those who weep and wail about loss of 'fair use' are paying the price of those who hand out copies willy-nilly. The true 'fair use' advocates should go beat up on the real pirates, if they can find them. Putting copy protection on products is identical to putting anti-theft tags on pocketable good, with mirrors and cameras and pickups by the door to stop shoplifters. It's not the producers or authorities who are slowly eroding your precious freedoms, it's the petty digital criminals, period.
Go ahead, mod it troll. In this crowd it is, but it's quite true and you know it, that's why you're going to lose fair use.
If the license agreement was to be taken seriously, he either had to go to the trouble of trying to ship the book back or he had to become an Omnicare customer somehow.
I'd just trash it and forget it. It's illegal to send unsolicited items and then try to collect for it - just because they slap a boilerplate on something that arrives unsolicited in your mail you can still just treat it like any bulk business mail, crapcan it. All they are claiming ownership rights to is the contents. If you want to get in a moral quandrary over it, or become play the OmniCare game that's fine too.
Simply making it mandatory for govt agencies to use OSS IS anti-choice, but a highly visible and political one destined to make headline news and bring on the wrath of the Ayndroids, as compared to all the subtle subterfuge and skulldugery, tie-ins and bundling that goes into maintaining and extending a PC platform monopoly (You can use any software you want, as long as it's Msft).
So they can drool over possible food sources directly - "Hmmmm, slurp, which one to buy, which to buy today, Hmmmm, Yuummmmm, tender, young software companies, Hmmmmmm".
You know, I'd just *love* to see a bunch of modern day enviro-weenies during the days when the dinosaurs were going extinct - can you imagine the uproar that would ensue? Bake sales to 'save the dino's', bumper stickers, a great outpouring of compassion toward the terrible lizzards, vast weeping and wailing over the destruction wrought against nature by humans, legislation by the ton passed to restrict human activities, all over a perfectly natural and freely occurring change in climate, living conditions, evolution, etc. Why people get so upset and start beating their chest and automatically assume some mantle of cosmic guilt for being alive over every little pertubation in the global ecosystem (species come and go, some thrive, others die out, but somehow, life goes on) is just an amazing phenomena to watch. Freud would have a field day - not with kudzu or worms - but with the way your average enviro-conscious-sensitive-guilty-american can so easily have their chains yanked by the news media.
"A billion here, a billion there - pretty soon it adds up to real money" - one site attributes that to Everett Dirksen
"Your Passport is protected by powerful online security and a strict privacy policy."
That reminds me of a BOFH test:
9. The security and integrity of your email is protected by:
a. Your password
b. Company Policy
c. PGP Encryption
d. Microsoft's pursuit of excellence. Waaaaaa ha ha ha!
e. Two pints for the System Administrator every Friday night
[ note: I'd rather have option 'c. Federal Law', since encrytion actually does something, whereas laws don't, but the above is original form ]
there is an IR or some other sort of sensor and transmitter on it so you can dogfight.
Interesting -- has to be better than the cut-the-paper-streamer-with-your-prop type dogfights -- the props are so slow even tissue paper jams them up.
Charles Lindburg pilot figureen?
Anyone interesting in getting into model airplanes, esp. the new 'parkflyer' electrics (if you can't stand glow fuel, caster oil 'slimers') should read up at RC Groups - you can get a pretty good flight at the local soccer field with nice, quiet parkflyer electrics. I've just finished something called a Wing-E and it's a ball to fly in my nearby school yard, get's at least 10 minutes of aerobatic fun off one battery charge.
Guess they'll be installing some of these then.
Microsoft may make things easier to use, but harder to understand. With all of the hand holding, wizards, and simply doing things for you, the end user is becoming less and less knowledgable about computers.
This is an age old tactic, going way back. Find a wealthy, powerful being and become their servant. Do more and more for them. Take over more of their functions, make life easy for them, make life so easy they don't have to lift a finger. After a while the formerly powerful being is impotent, completely dependant on you, and you have become the powerful entity. Numerous Bible stories go like this.
I wore my Dad's accutron throughout junior high school.
;))
This is actually 'off topic' but anyway - thru jr HS I had this pretty cool timex with a second hand that jumped from second to second, i.e., the second hand would be pointing steadily at 12, then a second later suddenly jump to one second past 12, etc etc. You could stop the watch by pulling the stem out, set the time, then push it in to start it again. Eventually I found out it could be accurately synchronized to the school time bells to the second, which turned out to be loads of fun, like saying "the bells going to ring" right when the bell starts ringing. What really freaked out the teachers was leaping out of the desk and running towards the door, crossing the threshhold just as the bell to change classes started ringing
Gawd, wish I had a top floor room with an 802.11b antenna on the balcony facing defcon central - think of the honeypots you could setup to trap these guys, esp during the wardriving contest. A little weak encryption for cover, lots of pseudo-confidential bait, watch the fun.
Not if the weddings involve shooting firearms into the air they are flying over at the time, no.
But if an armed terrorist assult involves layer cake covered munitions and exploding champaigne bottles, that's perfectly ok, huh?
If you stare at the Canadian Flag long enough, until you get background/foreground reversal, you can see two guys butting foreheads and arguing. Lets see an AI do that.