I know this is a bold claim to make, but I have never before seen such twaddle posted on slashdot.
I don't even know where to begin in describing how ludicrous this idea is.
Are you kidding? I jumped two whole steps on my way downstairs this morning and found the cease and desist letter already waiting for me on the doormat!
To Lucas's constant raping of the star wars trilogy. Don't buy any of it. I own the trilogy on DVD. Notice I said trilogy? As far as I'm concerned there are three films. I've watched one of the 'prequels' and bits of the others and they suck so I haven't bought any of them. I haven't bought any of the remastered, re-engineered, added a new sound-effect garbage which passes for George Lucas's output these days. I don't even have any plans to buy the blu-ray versions.
I feel sorry for the Star-Wars collectors who feel the need to buy everything every time it comes out. They just get screwed constantly and while their bleating gets a little louder each time, they still hand over their hard-earned with a smile.
So you think your DNA isn't private? You leave it everywhere you go so it's in the public domain. Is it OK for a company to collect it, store it and profile it for its own purposes?
A lot of comments seem to excuse this as a mistake, as if Google sent out their vehicles, collected the data and simply left most of it to one side because "they didn't know what it was". You don't think they analysed all of this data to death to see what it was, if it was useful to them in any way now or in the future? They kept a huge amount of data in storage for three years even though it was useless to them? I don't believe that for a second.
I have dual 19" monitors but have three desktops setup using Dexpot. One is a finance desktop for excel, banking and other finance apps. Next is a development desktop for IDE, web development and database management. Finally, I have a general desktop for email, web browsing and anything else.
All three desktops use both monitors. It helps to keep common groups of applications in separate workspaces. So, multiple monitors and virtual desktops are not mutually exclusive!
Yes, I've used Dexpot on my office, home and laptop PCs. Home and Office have dual monitors and Dexpot allows me to have multiple, dual-screen desktops with almost no problems at all. I have one application which will put it's progress bars on the current desktop instead of the one the application is on and there are a couple of graphical glitches here and there but on the whole I'd thoroughly recommend it.
Our company designed and developed the products we sell in the 70's and used to fly the "Made in in Britain" flag as a mark of the quality and engineering standards of our product. Competitors opened up selling alternative versions of our products and gradually during the late 90's started to import their goods, first from India and then from China. We were the very last company in our market to switch to importing from China and we hung on until 2005 when we were almost out of business. Now we buy from China.
To give you an idea of the cost difference, our main product when we made it in the UK in 2005 was costing us £1.27 each to make. By that time our competitors were selling imports at £0.90. Their products were all stamped up with the relevant standard compliances but the tests we did showed that they were sub-standard by a long way.
We found the best quality suppliers in China to maintain our quality lead and only a few could cope with the volumes we buy, but we cannot trust them to maintain our standards without our continuous input and testing.
Making products in our own country was ruled out years ago. Manufacturing in any western country is pointless unless you are in a niche, high-margin, low-volume business. The competition will simply put you out of business.
The company I work for buys metal goods from China. Every item is specified to the last detail and it should simply be case of "make me those".
Unfortunately, many Chinese companies have a taste of our money and want more of it, so they will do anything to shave the cost without telling the customer.
The items we buy are safety critical and we have to test the hell out of them because we catch the suppliers time after time using sub-standard steel because they can get it cheaper.
China is probably becoming wealthy faster than any country in the world ever has and many companies and individuals there are a little too greedy for more.
Agreed, check out this (BBC) story about a guy who walked into a shop with a knife and slit his own throat. Crazy people who want to kill themselves do sometimes do it as publicly as possible.
Actually, cases in the past have hinged on whether the buyer knew or believed that an error had been made, in which case the company was under no obligation to honour the deal. I think when Amazon advertised " buy one, get one free" the customer would have no reason to believe this actually meant "buy one get, pay nothing for it and get another free".
The only difference between this case and past ones is that Amazon have actually shipped the orders, previous cases were about whether the seller had to honour their advertised prices when an obvious mistake had been made.
I've got one of the Lenovo laptops with the fingerprint scanner as well. There does seem to be a knack to it, although I can now always log in with the first or second attempt, usually the first. The knack seems to be to be a quite slow and smooth slide across the scanner.
I'm pretty sure Lenovo only put it on their notebooks so that people can gasp at our "secret agent" laptop:)
If the UK is anything to go by, Payroll is the big stumbling block for running a full accounts system on Linux desktops. The government is always tinkering with the employment legislation, introducing new benefits and then removing them two years later. The commercial payroll software suppliers, and I'm thinking particularly of Sage here, have to stay on top of these changes, modify the software as well as the parameters every time there's a budget. They then have to roll out the changes to all customers in time for the new tax year and the updates MUST work.
I just did a quick search on Sage's website and got the message "There were no results returned for your search criteria 'linux'."
The accounting systems barely change at all so that's a much easier proposition. I'm curious now, has anyone in the UK got a payroll solution running on Linux desktops? (I'm talking native apps, ignoring wine for the moment)
Forgive me if I appear to not care about my karma, but it's late an I've had a few drinks, but could someone point out to me why this is important to, well, anyone?
I'm curious, how often do even hard-core PC gamers upgrade their video cards? To me, who only upgrades every 2-3 years, the new cards just become a blur of model numbers and benchmark scores.
I agree, it's easy to be enthusiastic about these applications until you hit the problem of always needing a speedy and reliable internet connection in order to be able to do *anything*. While we have higher speeds and longer up-time than we've ever had, sod's law tells us that the minute you trust a web app for anything important is when your internet connection takes a dive. Of course you could find another local connection but is it worth the risk or the hassle?
I agree, although I also find it difficult to characterise bloggers and online 'fan' page writers as journalists. The logic is sound that someone providing information of public interest should have protection as they are acting in the capacity of a journalist.
Out of curiosity, is a gossip columnist in a newspaper classed as a journalist? If so the argument that online publishers are not must surely be weakened?
Slashdot Mirror
I know this is a bold claim to make, but I have never before seen such twaddle posted on slashdot. I don't even know where to begin in describing how ludicrous this idea is.
Just trying to get the title to make sense made my head hurt!
you leave the TV switched on.
Are you kidding? I jumped two whole steps on my way downstairs this morning and found the cease and desist letter already waiting for me on the doormat!
To Lucas's constant raping of the star wars trilogy. Don't buy any of it. I own the trilogy on DVD. Notice I said trilogy? As far as I'm concerned there are three films. I've watched one of the 'prequels' and bits of the others and they suck so I haven't bought any of them. I haven't bought any of the remastered, re-engineered, added a new sound-effect garbage which passes for George Lucas's output these days. I don't even have any plans to buy the blu-ray versions. I feel sorry for the Star-Wars collectors who feel the need to buy everything every time it comes out. They just get screwed constantly and while their bleating gets a little louder each time, they still hand over their hard-earned with a smile.
So you think your DNA isn't private? You leave it everywhere you go so it's in the public domain. Is it OK for a company to collect it, store it and profile it for its own purposes?
A lot of comments seem to excuse this as a mistake, as if Google sent out their vehicles, collected the data and simply left most of it to one side because "they didn't know what it was". You don't think they analysed all of this data to death to see what it was, if it was useful to them in any way now or in the future? They kept a huge amount of data in storage for three years even though it was useless to them? I don't believe that for a second.
and lets face it, where there's porn, there's no shortage of enthusiasts.
In the UK, we call it netball and it's played by girls. Basketball here is ranked below dominos in popularity.
Yep, I'm going to Slashdot Hell for this. Windows 3.1 as my OS on a 386, Balmer as my boss, and no stock options to compensate...
Could have been worse, you could have said that Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
I have dual 19" monitors but have three desktops setup using Dexpot. One is a finance desktop for excel, banking and other finance apps. Next is a development desktop for IDE, web development and database management. Finally, I have a general desktop for email, web browsing and anything else. All three desktops use both monitors. It helps to keep common groups of applications in separate workspaces. So, multiple monitors and virtual desktops are not mutually exclusive!
Yes, I've used Dexpot on my office, home and laptop PCs. Home and Office have dual monitors and Dexpot allows me to have multiple, dual-screen desktops with almost no problems at all. I have one application which will put it's progress bars on the current desktop instead of the one the application is on and there are a couple of graphical glitches here and there but on the whole I'd thoroughly recommend it.
Our company designed and developed the products we sell in the 70's and used to fly the "Made in in Britain" flag as a mark of the quality and engineering standards of our product. Competitors opened up selling alternative versions of our products and gradually during the late 90's started to import their goods, first from India and then from China. We were the very last company in our market to switch to importing from China and we hung on until 2005 when we were almost out of business. Now we buy from China.
To give you an idea of the cost difference, our main product when we made it in the UK in 2005 was costing us £1.27 each to make. By that time our competitors were selling imports at £0.90. Their products were all stamped up with the relevant standard compliances but the tests we did showed that they were sub-standard by a long way.
We found the best quality suppliers in China to maintain our quality lead and only a few could cope with the volumes we buy, but we cannot trust them to maintain our standards without our continuous input and testing. Making products in our own country was ruled out years ago. Manufacturing in any western country is pointless unless you are in a niche, high-margin, low-volume business. The competition will simply put you out of business.
The company I work for buys metal goods from China. Every item is specified to the last detail and it should simply be case of "make me those". Unfortunately, many Chinese companies have a taste of our money and want more of it, so they will do anything to shave the cost without telling the customer. The items we buy are safety critical and we have to test the hell out of them because we catch the suppliers time after time using sub-standard steel because they can get it cheaper. China is probably becoming wealthy faster than any country in the world ever has and many companies and individuals there are a little too greedy for more.
Agreed, check out this (BBC) story about a guy who walked into a shop with a knife and slit his own throat. Crazy people who want to kill themselves do sometimes do it as publicly as possible.
to see how many suppliers they can drive out of business before they drive themselves out of business.
Actually, cases in the past have hinged on whether the buyer knew or believed that an error had been made, in which case the company was under no obligation to honour the deal. I think when Amazon advertised " buy one, get one free" the customer would have no reason to believe this actually meant "buy one get, pay nothing for it and get another free".
The only difference between this case and past ones is that Amazon have actually shipped the orders, previous cases were about whether the seller had to honour their advertised prices when an obvious mistake had been made.
I've got one of the Lenovo laptops with the fingerprint scanner as well. There does seem to be a knack to it, although I can now always log in with the first or second attempt, usually the first. The knack seems to be to be a quite slow and smooth slide across the scanner. I'm pretty sure Lenovo only put it on their notebooks so that people can gasp at our "secret agent" laptop:)
If the UK is anything to go by, Payroll is the big stumbling block for running a full accounts system on Linux desktops. The government is always tinkering with the employment legislation, introducing new benefits and then removing them two years later. The commercial payroll software suppliers, and I'm thinking particularly of Sage here, have to stay on top of these changes, modify the software as well as the parameters every time there's a budget. They then have to roll out the changes to all customers in time for the new tax year and the updates MUST work. I just did a quick search on Sage's website and got the message "There were no results returned for your search criteria 'linux'." The accounting systems barely change at all so that's a much easier proposition. I'm curious now, has anyone in the UK got a payroll solution running on Linux desktops? (I'm talking native apps, ignoring wine for the moment)
Even if you've been invited into that country and you're going about your peaceful business and breaking no laws in the process?
Everything with them has to be so dark - black holes, dark matter, black saturns........ Lighten up guys!
Forgive me if I appear to not care about my karma, but it's late an I've had a few drinks, but could someone point out to me why this is important to, well, anyone?
I'm curious, how often do even hard-core PC gamers upgrade their video cards? To me, who only upgrades every 2-3 years, the new cards just become a blur of model numbers and benchmark scores.
I agree, it's easy to be enthusiastic about these applications until you hit the problem of always needing a speedy and reliable internet connection in order to be able to do *anything*. While we have higher speeds and longer up-time than we've ever had, sod's law tells us that the minute you trust a web app for anything important is when your internet connection takes a dive. Of course you could find another local connection but is it worth the risk or the hassle?
I agree, although I also find it difficult to characterise bloggers and online 'fan' page writers as journalists. The logic is sound that someone providing information of public interest should have protection as they are acting in the capacity of a journalist. Out of curiosity, is a gossip columnist in a newspaper classed as a journalist? If so the argument that online publishers are not must surely be weakened?