The media conglomerates are not obsolete. They own distribution to movies and music. Artists are the fodder for their sh_t pipe.
Try getting your favorite non-label artist onto the airwaves or into Walmart sometime.
This is why they got the fcc to kill internet radio. If they don't kill it outright, it's okay. They'll raise the barrier to entry so they can control that too.
The Bush administration for, among other things, sodomizing the division that is used to exist between the Executive branch and the Attorneys General. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234873&cid=191 46051 No consequences on this one.
American history is full of corporate shenanigans that ended with no penalties. Why does it suck now?
There are a bunch of false assumptions with this review, not to mention Intel _must_ have put in quite a PR effort to get this story published.
1. The family "just using it." I think there are enough admins here who understand that the OLPC will probably be delivered pre-configured.
2. So, wireless, much less a steady _Internet connection_ is widely available in developing nations?
The OLPC is getting destroyed quite publicly and there's nothing OLPC can do about it. They've been out-financed.
Today's lesson: Selling to governments without 10's of millions of dollars for bribes of all kinds (including campaign donations)doesn't happen. This is a text book case of what happens to anything innovative (read: new vendors) in government.
I thought there would be OSS litigation of strategic importance. (unlike the RIAA, but similar in evil quotient) That's a fools game. Your action outline is exactly how Microsoft will proceed.
Just like lindows, pay maybe 10-20 million to some people who won't say no because they and their kids won't ever have to work again while Microsoft make 100's of millions maintaining the status quo and keeps OSS away from the family jewels.
But they can't lie about something that is easily and accurately measured such as sales figures.
Yes, they most certainly can. Marketing can call "Sales" whatever they want. Much like politics, some vague approximation of the truth legitimizes their behavior, but no one goes to jail for their crazy claims.
Accounting, OTOH, will report sales in a GAAP way, but that way is very non-specific and intentionally allows any company some secrecy balanced with accountability and transparency. The GAAP rules allow for some sales reporting complexity to manipulate tax liabilities so units sold never correlates easily with revenue on a quarterly basis.
I could go on, but it seems to me you have no experience in this area.
Therefore, Microsoft has an incentive to tell the truth about things like revenue, which would affect its stock price. If it knowingly lied, people would go to jail.
You must be new here.
The "truth" you speak of is a Accounting/Finance obligation, NOT Marketing. So, marketing can, and does frequently abuse the facts.
I'm not sure why it is you trust them, their security and interoperability proclamations have been complex lies for years. Their Vista proclamations are more of the same. At best they can be called misleading half-truths. Hopefully, the spirit of intentionally misleading consumers hasn't reached the Accounting/Finance department.
Why the media takes Microsoft's word as reliable in any way shape or form?
Maybe it is just a matter of there appears to be little market for _actual_ news as opposed to what is fed to the media from corporate/government sources.
I'd like to hear some opinions because I don't want to be that cynical.
Is it that the laws are different there? Or maybe NY is the only one that gets decent press?
Lack of service or double-evil financing practices can be assumed with most big businesses. Dell isn't even the tip of an iceberg, it's an ice cube from the tip of an iceberg.
I'd really like to hear some opinions as to why other states aren't doing the same.
I would suggest running debian. It's far more reliable than ubuntu. Not as buzzy, but delivers the goods with much higher quality and attention to detail.
1. There will be reliable market research on Linux desktop penetration. This means the start of a new startup/IPO bubble that will do much more harm than good.
2. The most important aspects of Free software that actually drive innovation will be abandoned for hybrids like Ubuntu. These hybrids will not support the Free software components. Look at Redhat for an example of how this works. They've got sort-of-free software and lots and more and more proprietary software that goes on top of their sort-of-free software. Please don't diverge from this point and start talking about their contributions and PR stance regarding Free software.
3. Free is not a business model. Mark is sinking a fortune into Ubuntu at this point and will expect to make a return on his investment at some point. After that, the Ubuntu honeymoon is over.
The summary is pitiful. This is not a good/bad question.
Yes, Dell will have to make a huge infrastructure investment just to sell Ubuntu-equipped equipment. Someone PHB with authority at Dell will have to force the various departments to get this stuff done. Typical to a large company, it will probably be done poorly because change is rarely welcomed. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a linux-equipped Dell will probably be more expensive than windows.
There are two much bigger questions: 1. How will Dell structure Ubuntu sales? PHB's will, at some point, review Ubuntu sales and decide if it generates enough ROI to continue. How that ROI will be defined will heavily influence whether or not they stick with it. This is where politics meets the accounting department and decides the fate of this effort before a single unit is sold.
2. How will Microsoft respond? I'm thinking this is really more of a stick to beat Microsoft with more than anything else.
I don't really want Dell selling Ubuntu-equipped PC's. It will be bad for distro diversity.
I was lucky enough 25 years ago to go to an optometrist who specialized in learning therapy and explained reading to me this way. His program definitely made a massive improvement in my ability to learn and was primarily responsible for me (eventually) going to college.
This is really old news in the neglected educational development communities. No surprise though given the broad and deep benign neglect for public education.
That said, I have the feeling that these things won't sell well at all.
Bingo.
What makes this work this time is Mr. Shuttleworth has deep pockets and is the business-end of a buggy Linux distro. Both are requirements with money being the key factor in getting a meeting at Dell in the first place. Other long-time distro maintainers would never get the consideration that Shuttleworth gets. That's true for most people and businesses though...
Fast-forward 12 months at Dell and this is what you will find: You can get Ubuntu, but it won't be a clear choice on the consumer side. If we are really lucky, it will be a not-obvious URL on the business side. Cost-wise it will cost much more than a Windows machine. The economics of Dell's business pretty much mandates that.
Fast-forward 24 months and Linux sales will be good for institutional sales, but consumers and small businesses will be practically zero. But Dell needs alternatives.
Finally, what concerns me most is we're now getting into a speeds-and-feeds business mentality where there will be good market research quantifying Linux-based OS penetration. This will simultaneously thin the distro herd, and give Microsoft's investors the information to force Microsoft to halt the spread of Linux-based OS distros that threaten their monopoly.
The less investors know about Linux the better. The more and varied distros that are out there without PHB's being able to quantify the better for all of us.
If Verizon tries to sue Level3 it will be presented with code which does what is described in some of their patents and is dated at least several years prior to that.
I wish Verizon would sue Level3, but they won't. They'll sue every ISP/VOIP provider that doesn't pay the Verizon Patent Tax. That costs them a couple of lawyers salaries for a huge return.
Of course there's a way around it! It's software after all.
I worked in a company that did software in the banking/finance world and the lawyer literally spent all her time working with engineering to figure ways around patents or otherwise write code that stuck to as many standards as legally possible.
Apparently this presented great complexity from a coding perspective.
Flamebait like this the logical outcome of an ownership society. The media conglomerates own their media to do with what they want.
As much as I personally disagree with it, I certainly would not want to see it end if it were my property on the table. I'd employ every trick they have to modify consumer behavior such that it seems perfectly logical to check with the media conglomerate who owns the media each and every time before I consume it.
And then I'd maintain my dominance in entertainment distribution and lock out competitors by implementing trusted platform computing in any media capable device thereby taxing device manufacturers and making consumers pay me more than once. That way all media flows through my entertainment conglomerate. And that's okay because I own it.
You would want the same for yourself if it was your content wouldn't you?
You should examine the history of the Catholic Church sometime. They had lots of interesting ways to raise money that equated their holiness with the amount of money donated.
The kid was under a whole lot of pressure and when given the opportunity to let a little steam off, "disturbed" his teacher. It's one of the big downsides to students who do well. They get extra attention and some external expectations that can get a little burdensome if the parents aren't paying attention. If the kid writes well, then it just makes matters worse.
It's wrong to accuse the school system and law enforcement in this case. Anyone that does that is in denial about the usual benign neglect that nearly all students receive. Right now everyone is very aware of the systematic neglect that we all perpetuate. In a few months it will go back to normal.
Slashdot Mirror
The media conglomerates are not obsolete. They own distribution to movies and music. Artists are the fodder for their sh_t pipe.
Try getting your favorite non-label artist onto the airwaves or into Walmart sometime.
This is why they got the fcc to kill internet radio. If they don't kill it outright, it's okay. They'll raise the barrier to entry so they can control that too.
Yes. that's part of being in the club. Recent high-profile club members that will get off include:
4 7237
1 46051 No consequences on this one.
The major government IT vendors: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/19/23
Jack Abramhoff and his pals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff. A tiny number of people were perp-walked.
The Bush administration for, among other things, sodomizing the division that is used to exist between the Executive branch and the Attorneys General. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234873&cid=19
American history is full of corporate shenanigans that ended with no penalties. Why does it suck now?
There are a bunch of false assumptions with this review, not to mention Intel _must_ have put in quite a PR effort to get this story published.
1. The family "just using it."
I think there are enough admins here who understand that the OLPC will probably be delivered pre-configured.
2. So, wireless, much less a steady _Internet connection_ is widely available in developing nations?
The OLPC is getting destroyed quite publicly and there's nothing OLPC can do about it. They've been out-financed.
Today's lesson: Selling to governments without 10's of millions of dollars for bribes of all kinds (including campaign donations)doesn't happen. This is a text book case of what happens to anything innovative (read: new vendors) in government.
When _most_ users can distinguish between the box under their desk and an operating system.
This is not Linux's problem. Linux is a good tool whose value is not slavishly following Redmond's design decisions.
It's value is it offers something(s) that can not be had on Windows, and maybe even a Mac.
I thought there would be OSS litigation of strategic importance. (unlike the RIAA, but similar in evil quotient) That's a fools game. Your action outline is exactly how Microsoft will proceed.
Just like lindows, pay maybe 10-20 million to some people who won't say no because they and their kids won't ever have to work again while Microsoft make 100's of millions maintaining the status quo and keeps OSS away from the family jewels.
Kudos to you sir.
But they can't lie about something that is easily and accurately measured such as sales figures.
Yes, they most certainly can. Marketing can call "Sales" whatever they want. Much like politics, some vague approximation of the truth legitimizes their behavior, but no one goes to jail for their crazy claims.
Accounting, OTOH, will report sales in a GAAP way, but that way is very non-specific and intentionally allows any company some secrecy balanced with accountability and transparency. The GAAP rules allow for some sales reporting complexity to manipulate tax liabilities so units sold never correlates easily with revenue on a quarterly basis.
I could go on, but it seems to me you have no experience in this area.
You must be new here.
Providing greater upload speed runs counter to absolutely everything the telcos, and media conglomerates want in their new media delivery system.
Democratizing information and technology broadly works against both commercial and political interests. That's why uplink speed is BAD.
Therefore, Microsoft has an incentive to tell the truth about things like revenue, which would affect its stock price. If it knowingly lied, people would go to jail.
You must be new here.
The "truth" you speak of is a Accounting/Finance obligation, NOT Marketing. So, marketing can, and does frequently abuse the facts.
I'm not sure why it is you trust them, their security and interoperability proclamations have been complex lies for years. Their Vista proclamations are more of the same. At best they can be called misleading half-truths. Hopefully, the spirit of intentionally misleading consumers hasn't reached the Accounting/Finance department.
Why the media takes Microsoft's word as reliable in any way shape or form?
Maybe it is just a matter of there appears to be little market for _actual_ news as opposed to what is fed to the media from corporate/government sources.
I'd like to hear some opinions because I don't want to be that cynical.
As has been mentioned before on /. Microsoft will require signed drivers on their 64 bit OS
i t/kmsigning.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/64b
Implications of this are:
1. Chilling effect to new devices.
2. Sets the stage for tighter DRM handcuffs.
From Microsoft's perspective these aren't bad things as they directly benefit Microsoft shareholders though, so I guess it's a wash.
Is it that the laws are different there? Or maybe NY is the only one that gets decent press?
Lack of service or double-evil financing practices can be assumed with most big businesses. Dell isn't even the tip of an iceberg, it's an ice cube from the tip of an iceberg.
I'd really like to hear some opinions as to why other states aren't doing the same.
I would suggest running debian. It's far more reliable than ubuntu. Not as buzzy, but delivers the goods with much higher quality and attention to detail.
l er/
I like the NetInst CD. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/debian-instal
Easy:
1. There will be reliable market research on Linux desktop penetration. This means the start of a new startup/IPO bubble that will do much more harm than good.
2. The most important aspects of Free software that actually drive innovation will be abandoned for hybrids like Ubuntu. These hybrids will not support the Free software components. Look at Redhat for an example of how this works. They've got sort-of-free software and lots and more and more proprietary software that goes on top of their sort-of-free software. Please don't diverge from this point and start talking about their contributions and PR stance regarding Free software.
3. Free is not a business model. Mark is sinking a fortune into Ubuntu at this point and will expect to make a return on his investment at some point. After that, the Ubuntu honeymoon is over.
The summary is pitiful. This is not a good/bad question.
Yes, Dell will have to make a huge infrastructure investment just to sell Ubuntu-equipped equipment. Someone PHB with authority at Dell will have to force the various departments to get this stuff done. Typical to a large company, it will probably be done poorly because change is rarely welcomed. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a linux-equipped Dell will probably be more expensive than windows.
There are two much bigger questions:
1. How will Dell structure Ubuntu sales? PHB's will, at some point, review Ubuntu sales and decide if it generates enough ROI to continue. How that ROI will be defined will heavily influence whether or not they stick with it. This is where politics meets the accounting department and decides the fate of this effort before a single unit is sold.
2. How will Microsoft respond? I'm thinking this is really more of a stick to beat Microsoft with more than anything else.
I don't really want Dell selling Ubuntu-equipped PC's. It will be bad for distro diversity.
I was lucky enough 25 years ago to go to an optometrist who specialized in learning therapy and explained reading to me this way. His program definitely made a massive improvement in my ability to learn and was primarily responsible for me (eventually) going to college.
This is really old news in the neglected educational development communities. No surprise though given the broad and deep benign neglect for public education.
That said, I have the feeling that these things won't sell well at all.
Bingo.
What makes this work this time is Mr. Shuttleworth has deep pockets and is the business-end of a buggy Linux distro. Both are requirements with money being the key factor in getting a meeting at Dell in the first place. Other long-time distro maintainers would never get the consideration that Shuttleworth gets. That's true for most people and businesses though...
Fast-forward 12 months at Dell and this is what you will find:
You can get Ubuntu, but it won't be a clear choice on the consumer side. If we are really lucky, it will be a not-obvious URL on the business side. Cost-wise it will cost much more than a Windows machine. The economics of Dell's business pretty much mandates that.
Fast-forward 24 months and Linux sales will be good for institutional sales, but consumers and small businesses will be practically zero. But Dell needs alternatives.
Finally, what concerns me most is we're now getting into a speeds-and-feeds business mentality where there will be good market research quantifying Linux-based OS penetration. This will simultaneously thin the distro herd, and give Microsoft's investors the information to force Microsoft to halt the spread of Linux-based OS distros that threaten their monopoly.
The less investors know about Linux the better. The more and varied distros that are out there without PHB's being able to quantify the better for all of us.
If Verizon tries to sue Level3 it will be presented with code which does what is described in some of their patents and is dated at least several years prior to that.
I wish Verizon would sue Level3, but they won't. They'll sue every ISP/VOIP provider that doesn't pay the Verizon Patent Tax. That costs them a couple of lawyers salaries for a huge return.
Of course there's a way around it! It's software after all.
s .html
e rvice.html
I worked in a company that did software in the banking/finance world and the lawyer literally spent all her time working with engineering to figure ways around patents or otherwise write code that stuck to as many standards as legally possible.
Apparently this presented great complexity from a coding perspective.
Two informative links for those that want a bit of substantive background on the topic.
http://ipurbia.com/2007/03/verizon-patent-analysi
http://herot.typepad.com/cherot/2007/04/verizon_s
That this kind of litigation has to happen at all is another indicator of how bad the business climate is in the U.S.
Flamebait like this the logical outcome of an ownership society. The media conglomerates own their media to do with what they want.
As much as I personally disagree with it, I certainly would not want to see it end if it were my property on the table. I'd employ every trick they have to modify consumer behavior such that it seems perfectly logical to check with the media conglomerate who owns the media each and every time before I consume it.
And then I'd maintain my dominance in entertainment distribution and lock out competitors by implementing trusted platform computing in any media capable device thereby taxing device manufacturers and making consumers pay me more than once. That way all media flows through my entertainment conglomerate. And that's okay because I own it.
You would want the same for yourself if it was your content wouldn't you?
You should examine the history of the Catholic Church sometime. They had lots of interesting ways to raise money that equated their holiness with the amount of money donated.
Here Here!
If the webby's gave out an award for the company/individual that destroyed profits, lowered wages in Silicon Valley and increased competition.
It just doesn't work like that.
Last time I checked, profits, not moral behavior was rewarded by share holders and pat-each-other-on-the-back webby awards.
As long as Meg delivers the profits, there are no problems.
If you feel strongly the other way, then maybe it's time for you to participate in our government and change that?
The most insightful thing I've read in a long time.
The kid was under a whole lot of pressure and when given the opportunity to let a little steam off, "disturbed" his teacher. It's one of the big downsides to students who do well. They get extra attention and some external expectations that can get a little burdensome if the parents aren't paying attention. If the kid writes well, then it just makes matters worse.
It's wrong to accuse the school system and law enforcement in this case. Anyone that does that is in denial about the usual benign neglect that nearly all students receive. Right now everyone is very aware of the systematic neglect that we all perpetuate. In a few months it will go back to normal.