Aargh. I wish. The moment I can run Ubuntu on a mobile phone and still make GSM (regular phone) calls on it is when I will buy a new device. For now I have a cell phone for GSM and a laptop for everything else.
No, no--totally right! I had a friend send me a Facebook request and I swear we would have never actually hung out if I actually used Facebook.
I sent him an email explaining my concerns about using Facebook and we actually ended up going out for a beer. It was great and I really enjoy facetime with someone as opposed to having a mechanistic, tit-for-tat, "I can friend you if you can get me a job" type relationship.
The SEC filings in the original post are from 2004. Not the most current evidence damning MS. And since I am all in favor or said damning, here is a quick tutorial on how to search SEC filings using the EDGAR database.
In the "company name" field, type Microsoft. Only two choices there, since it is a pretty unique name. We are going to look at the entity known as "MICROSOFT CORP."
Here is where a lot of people get messed up. You have to look for a form called the "10-K" by entering "10-K" into the "Filing type" text field. That is where all the dirt is, any good corporate researcher will tell you.
From there you have to click on the link in the "Document" column that corresponds with "10-K." After that you just choose the most recent 10-K (annual report), and there should be lots of juicy evidence against the company, written by its very own lawyers.
For example, I just did a simple text search (long document) for the term "open source."
I love doing this: From the MS Annual Report under "ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS", "To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline."
Heheh. The 10-K form from the SEC is very interesting, so many juicy tidbits. Often times this is the only thing you need to hang a company--they practically hand you the rope!
Here is a fun one for all my standards wonks, "Without interoperability among all manner of computing platforms, the integration of any client's internal systems, applications and processes remains a monumental and expensive task."
This kind of stuff would be totally fine with me, except for the fact that Comcast and AT&T are the only companies I can get broadband Internet access from.
Does anyone know of a way to find an ISP that respects users' rights? It seems that in many places you have the choice of AT&T or no Internet.
Whoever the tech folks who work for Obama understand the need for having a FOSS option. Change.gov is licensed under creative commons, so somebody got the memo that user freedom, the web as a commons and all that is a good thing. The Silverlight thing is probably being viewed by the Obama team as "just another option," but they have made a good faith effort to cater to the (for lack of a better catchall term) FOSS community--at least better than any previous USA presidential administration.
Getting too pedantic about what is and isn't journalism leads the discussion away from focusing on the great tools that are being developed to help the average citizen understand the powers that be (government, corporations, etc..).
The Sunlight Foundation has funded a lot of really great web tools, widgets and applets that show how congress works, track money donated to candidates, expose corporate corruption, and many other areas of coverage that the film noir investigative journalist types might still consider their turf.
Anyone can do good journalism, anyone can do bad journalism. I think talking about who is helping to expose and disseminate new information that is in the public interest (news) is more important that talking about the news industry as such.
I was going to respond to this post by saying something like, "Researchers Discover Social Networks Link Plumbers" but the rest of Slashdot has done such a great job of tearing it to shreds by pointing out all of the other things terrorists can use to do their evil deeds that I no longer need to respond to TFA. Thanks:)
Hi. I am the Internet. I am a communications medium. People use me to communicate with one another on an unprecedented scale.
I am a "read/write" medium. That means that a lot of the times people can add-on to the creations of others. Sometimes they can even completely erase the communications of others. This is OK, and is not war, but just another form of communication. Granted, I appreciate it when everyone "plays fair," and there are many people (like Slashdot moderators, wink, wink) that help keep things fair for everyone.
I take offense when people refer to communication as war. There are many people who work for many militaries who use me to communicate (sometimes they are pretty angry). That is OK with me, as long as they play fair. This is not war, but communication.
Some might even think about it as a kind of grassroots diplomacy. Wouldn't it be great if more people could talk with those who their government tells them are the "enemy?" More communication usually tends to alleviate misunderstanding, which can lead to resolution or conflict (aka peace).
Please stop referring to what I do as war, I find it inaccurate and distasteful.
This is a good example of an itch that needs to be scratched (for a fee). If people are trying to get into Open Source to save money, and all they are lacking is support, crunch some numbers about how much typical businesses would save by eliminating the cost of their proprietary software. Charge that much for support and if you can stay in business:profit.
It isn't conceptually difficult, it is just a matter of getting the right numbers to work out for your consultancy. If there was a one stop shop that was easy and could save a business money, many would make the switch.
This could also be a sign that they are going out of business, which wouldn't be unheard of in today's economic climate. I recently saw a promotion for a magazine that offered a free subscription for life if you made a one hundred dollar donation. The magazine went out of business the next month. Clever way to pay the last months rent on the office space.
Nose picking will cease to be a source of ridicule in a completely transparent society. Someone mocks you for nosepicking, you get footage of him cheating on his wife.
People will become totally disinterested in folly such as nospicking with the proliferation of better and more entertaining footage.
I am so surprised no one sees the immense benefit that NCSoft could gain from Open Sourcing this program! There are plenty of business models for Open Source software!
Solution for protecting children who are using a computer: Don't worry about it. They are sitting at a screen, safe in your home. Whatever they see online won't kill them. It is a safer place to explore how bizarre than if they were cruising around town drunk with friends, or other typical stupid kid behavior.
Solution for protecting children from being in child porn: The same as keeping them safe in general, don't talk to strangers etc.. Once again, I think molesters, rapists etc are more likely to be people that the child knows, unfortunately. There are many statistics to back this.
They won't meet them online, so if you are going to shelter the kid, at least let them use the Internet.
No convenient place to insert this comment in this thread, but TFA made me realize there really needs to be a group to organize a platform where people can do an investigative journalism style analysis of a program's source code. The analysis would center, not around functionality, per-se, but around how much the program respects user freedoms, such as privacy and what have you.
It might be easier for less technical people to get involved--they don't need to write code, just figure out if the program is doing something naughty.
I see this as the needed antidote for the common suggestion that people "just look at the code" if they have a suspicion about a program. I don't think many people actually look, and if they do, are the findings being posted?
I worry about your call for "riots in the streets". The presumption is that the riots in the streets are what will cause the type of large scale change that our country needs. While thinking about riots in the street may be cathartic, they don't always cause the change you imagine that you want.
Too often it is average people who suffer property loss, fear, uncertainty and the feeling that their freedom is slipping away.
The people with money and power use riots in the streets as an excuse to increase militaristic actions against average people, and it can cause negative feedback loop from there.
Positive suggestion: Do something on a small scale that can directly help people in your immediate geographic area. You might want to go back to your church, being angry at people for feeling good makes you look pretty grumpy. Don't get angry at the people who are trying to do good for "not doing enough". More people doing good, not the same people doing more good. Good just needs to scale better is all.
Slashdot Mirror
Aargh. I wish. The moment I can run Ubuntu on a mobile phone and still make GSM (regular phone) calls on it is when I will buy a new device. For now I have a cell phone for GSM and a laptop for everything else.
No, no--totally right! I had a friend send me a Facebook request and I swear we would have never actually hung out if I actually used Facebook.
I sent him an email explaining my concerns about using Facebook and we actually ended up going out for a beer. It was great and I really enjoy facetime with someone as opposed to having a mechanistic, tit-for-tat, "I can friend you if you can get me a job" type relationship.
If you are paranoid, don't opt-in and switch to one of the unsupported phones.
The SEC filings in the original post are from 2004. Not the most current evidence damning MS. And since I am all in favor or said damning, here is a quick tutorial on how to search SEC filings using the EDGAR database.
In the "company name" field, type Microsoft. Only two choices there, since it is a pretty unique name. We are going to look at the entity known as "MICROSOFT CORP."
Here is where a lot of people get messed up. You have to look for a form called the "10-K" by entering "10-K" into the "Filing type" text field. That is where all the dirt is, any good corporate researcher will tell you.
From there you have to click on the link in the "Document" column that corresponds with "10-K." After that you just choose the most recent 10-K (annual report), and there should be lots of juicy evidence against the company, written by its very own lawyers.
For example, I just did a simple text search (long document) for the term "open source."
I love doing this: From the MS Annual Report under "ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS", "To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline."
Mmmmm, original reporting...
Oi, the fake bacon kicks ass. The fake liver can't hold a candle to it, I don't care how many fiber tubes it contains.
Heheh. The 10-K form from the SEC is very interesting, so many juicy tidbits. Often times this is the only thing you need to hang a company--they practically hand you the rope!
The IBM Annual report shows some very interesting things.
Here is a fun one for all my standards wonks, "Without interoperability among all manner of computing platforms, the integration of any client's internal systems, applications and processes remains a monumental and expensive task."
This kind of stuff would be totally fine with me, except for the fact that Comcast and AT&T are the only companies I can get broadband Internet access from.
Does anyone know of a way to find an ISP that respects users' rights? It seems that in many places you have the choice of AT&T or no Internet.
Whoever the tech folks who work for Obama understand the need for having a FOSS option. Change.gov is licensed under creative commons, so somebody got the memo that user freedom, the web as a commons and all that is a good thing. The Silverlight thing is probably being viewed by the Obama team as "just another option," but they have made a good faith effort to cater to the (for lack of a better catchall term) FOSS community--at least better than any previous USA presidential administration.
Getting too pedantic about what is and isn't journalism leads the discussion away from focusing on the great tools that are being developed to help the average citizen understand the powers that be (government, corporations, etc..).
The Sunlight Foundation has funded a lot of really great web tools, widgets and applets that show how congress works, track money donated to candidates, expose corporate corruption, and many other areas of coverage that the film noir investigative journalist types might still consider their turf.
Anyone can do good journalism, anyone can do bad journalism. I think talking about who is helping to expose and disseminate new information that is in the public interest (news) is more important that talking about the news industry as such.
I was going to respond to this post by saying something like, "Researchers Discover Social Networks Link Plumbers" but the rest of Slashdot has done such a great job of tearing it to shreds by pointing out all of the other things terrorists can use to do their evil deeds that I no longer need to respond to TFA. Thanks :)
Hi. I am the Internet. I am a communications medium. People use me to communicate with one another on an unprecedented scale.
I am a "read/write" medium. That means that a lot of the times people can add-on to the creations of others. Sometimes they can even completely erase the communications of others. This is OK, and is not war, but just another form of communication. Granted, I appreciate it when everyone "plays fair," and there are many people (like Slashdot moderators, wink, wink) that help keep things fair for everyone.
I take offense when people refer to communication as war. There are many people who work for many militaries who use me to communicate (sometimes they are pretty angry). That is OK with me, as long as they play fair. This is not war, but communication.
Some might even think about it as a kind of grassroots diplomacy. Wouldn't it be great if more people could talk with those who their government tells them are the "enemy?" More communication usually tends to alleviate misunderstanding, which can lead to resolution or conflict (aka peace).
Please stop referring to what I do as war, I find it inaccurate and distasteful.
This is a good example of an itch that needs to be scratched (for a fee). If people are trying to get into Open Source to save money, and all they are lacking is support, crunch some numbers about how much typical businesses would save by eliminating the cost of their proprietary software. Charge that much for support and if you can stay in business:profit.
It isn't conceptually difficult, it is just a matter of getting the right numbers to work out for your consultancy. If there was a one stop shop that was easy and could save a business money, many would make the switch.
Here is a link:
That video no longer shows up on YouTube. What gives?
This could also be a sign that they are going out of business, which wouldn't be unheard of in today's economic climate. I recently saw a promotion for a magazine that offered a free subscription for life if you made a one hundred dollar donation. The magazine went out of business the next month. Clever way to pay the last months rent on the office space.
Nose picking will cease to be a source of ridicule in a completely transparent society. Someone mocks you for nosepicking, you get footage of him cheating on his wife.
People will become totally disinterested in folly such as nospicking with the proliferation of better and more entertaining footage.
I am so surprised no one sees the immense benefit that NCSoft could gain from Open Sourcing this program! There are plenty of business models for Open Source software!
...! Uh, wait... Twitte-no. Shit.
Look at
You can share spreadsheets
Not sure about Writer documents, though.
Solution for protecting children who are using a computer: Don't worry about it. They are sitting at a screen, safe in your home. Whatever they see online won't kill them. It is a safer place to explore how bizarre than if they were cruising around town drunk with friends, or other typical stupid kid behavior.
Solution for protecting children from being in child porn: The same as keeping them safe in general, don't talk to strangers etc.. Once again, I think molesters, rapists etc are more likely to be people that the child knows, unfortunately. There are many statistics to back this.
They won't meet them online, so if you are going to shelter the kid, at least let them use the Internet.
www.SourceCodeWatch.com/org
No convenient place to insert this comment in this thread, but TFA made me realize there really needs to be a group to organize a platform where people can do an investigative journalism style analysis of a program's source code. The analysis would center, not around functionality, per-se, but around how much the program respects user freedoms, such as privacy and what have you.
It might be easier for less technical people to get involved--they don't need to write code, just figure out if the program is doing something naughty.
I see this as the needed antidote for the common suggestion that people "just look at the code" if they have a suspicion about a program. I don't think many people actually look, and if they do, are the findings being posted?
Seriously, just what we need. One more field that gives you cancer.
I worry about your call for "riots in the streets". The presumption is that the riots in the streets are what will cause the type of large scale change that our country needs. While thinking about riots in the street may be cathartic, they don't always cause the change you imagine that you want.
Too often it is average people who suffer property loss, fear, uncertainty and the feeling that their freedom is slipping away.
The people with money and power use riots in the streets as an excuse to increase militaristic actions against average people, and it can cause negative feedback loop from there.
Positive suggestion: Do something on a small scale that can directly help people in your immediate geographic area. You might want to go back to your church, being angry at people for feeling good makes you look pretty grumpy. Don't get angry at the people who are trying to do good for "not doing enough". More people doing good, not the same people doing more good. Good just needs to scale better is all.
Interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way. My perception is indeed colored by the previous discussion.