There are variants of boycotts. I wonder if you mean the temporary kind as in "if you repent, we'll come back".
I'm pretty sure there's a swath of disaffected users who won't come back. We just have to solve some short term problems. I've seen a lot of discussion about Vendor LockIn. The MBA types writing case studies of Apple would call that "adding value through unity". I can't help thinking of Animal Farm.
When I start my Linux Adventure, I'll keep track of the hours spent. I feel my situation is textbook: I'm clever, but no expert.
I have had yahoo mail for about 3 years. I average about 1 junk mail a week in my inbox, and I delete my junk mail box once a week. Fine by me for a free mail system.
It's not stellar - their ads are far too aggressive. But one's email grows into an identity, and I have no serious excuse to change. I only change providers of services when serious problems arise. I used to use AOL until 4 years ago - various forces led me to quit. The recent Search Catastrophe cinched the derision.
As for other services, Yahoo Maps had enough problems to force me to take it off my personal links page. I use Yahoo Advanced Search for no logical reason whatsoever.
I feel that various threads here are scrambling some of the issues.
"Old Line" news had a fundamental fixed cost problem to overcome. "The cost of the building plus salaries plus publish equipment plus secondary costs" had to be dealt with before the first month's paper sales were completed.
Rent is a seller's market. "Awww. You couldn't pay your rent. I guess I have to evict you." (With varying grace periods.) Cash flow in is also the Seller's market. 80% of people's integrity is shot when their actions SERIOUSLY threaten their living situation. Employers complain back about lazy employees, and there's a whole world in between. Survival is a zero effort fixed cost, requiring effort to generate the money to stay ahead. Ask an expert on entropy where that leads.
If someone is a professional news reporter, if abusive financiers threaten that reporter's income, of course said reporter will eventually knuckle under. You can only resign in disgust so many times until the mortgage is due. Now we get to blogs, because these start out as 1-person operations *subsidized by an unrelated primary job*. This both enables freedom of reportage, but it also means the blogger will run out of resources and cannot produce the quantities of reportage that a pro news outfit can.
The *good* news is that *webspace* is a *buyer's market*. Anyone can start off with a free web space, and should they be so lucky as to need server capacity to survive a SlashDotting,... they can cheaply upgrade to some scary capacity. But the blogger's fundamental costs of living have to be dealt with.
I essentially challenge anyone in the world to finance a blogger they believe in. (Can't afford it? Get a consortium or such going.) The fundamental point is that zero censorship can be tolerated. This means putting up with a "yellow blog" with an overemphasis on emotion. (In case you forgot, all papers have these: they are called editorial pages. The bloggers may simply forget to remove them to the editorial page.)
Then it's a matter of viewers. Left to themselves, it's a bit of a challenge to attract viewers. But should a group with money settle on a blogger they believe in, then a 1 year campaign can make them famous.
So at worst it's an unknown little blog in the middle of nowhere. But it's there should *you* decide it's interesting.
C64 - Too hard C128 - Learned simple BASIC Mac 512 - Look, it's a mouse! Mac Plus - plugged into a 220 volt socket and died. Mac Classic II - Screen caught fire Pentium I 133 with Win98 Gift in Summer 1999 "Shawn Fanning!" Two old Thinkpads - "LapTops are Fragile" Win2000 600Mhz fading workhorse. Random Laptop with a bad OS 1.7 Ghz Win2000 "XP SP2? Eew." 2.4 Ghz XP SP2 OEM "Vista will never get here" Win2000 machine comped from work.
Coming Soon: XP on Kentsfield "Let's wait for BlackComb" My First Linux "Please, make it easy on the poor Newbikin"
I caught Commodore on an interesting age curve. It makes me feel like my childhood was exctly the childhood of PC's. A C64 was too hard for me as a 10 year old. Extensive begging landed me the C128 at 13, which I never regretted. I never owned an Amiga, but today I run Tracker tunes at work on DeliPlayer.
Isn't this the entire point of the Mac image? "Pay a little more, the quality is supposed to be higher"? Third Parties (All the ones who are probably furious at MS for ditching them?) cost far less than iPods for certain space ranges. For comparable space the Nano is overpriced.
Apple is currently doing well as the company that seriously "embraced & extended" a xNIX kernel with a unified front end, and unified marketing. Linux needs some unity to begin to be a serious force. There's an article that MS did well with "multiple product editions to meet different needs". I'd like to see a cohesive suite of perhaps 5 Linux versions marketed as a unit by companies with the money muscle to survive a bruise or two. (Sun?)
I am inching my way toward my first Linux system, for which I completely credit SlashDot. I don't have too many fancy peripherals, so I stand a good chance.
I prefer to say the shows aired on TV may have value for entertainment. Most of us object to the presentation style, which wastes 22 minutes with ads, plus locks you into a certain time slot. NBC has gone a long way into the modern age by posting their shows online where they can be retrieved any time. (I am about to watch last Monday's 'Heroes"... then catch *Tomorrow's*, thus enjoying two episodes back to back. Whereupon, I will 'forget' it for a while, and let the 'gauge build back up'.)
The ad ratio is smaller too - I think it was down to 30 seconds per segment, plus I can *scroll past irritating portions of the show* - so I am down to about 35 minutes for what was previously an hour show.
So... Run the simulation? Do they ever want to find the answer, or are they deciding "our shuttle is only good for 4 more years, so all we have to do is take a 3 day holiday every year"?
Plus, I agree with the general sentiment (tied in with the Indian space thread) - they wrote pretty clever software that deals with ROCKET SCIENCE... and a date flip can't be adjusted with a patch. That's definitely a surprise.
Isn't knowledge usually text with the occasional graphics, and advertising media the resource hog?
What about a "content usage" scale where a user gets credits/ratings for disabling pushy ads, thus lowering bandwidth usage. Then we might have an option for $5 per month broadband speeds. The concept is like the low mileage insurance discount.
Except when I specifically download music files, my computing style evolved to be low tech because when my Satellite went out I was stuck on dialup.
I got into the habit of running without installed AV for years because they misbehaved against my odd Satellite ISP I used to use. I tried to be sensible with Zone Alarm (you need that outbound notice!), and external virus scans.
Something did wander onto my system a couple of weeks ago. It's showing up as something that redirects IE searches (it survived upgrading to IE7!), but it lets FireFox searches through. (I joke that I could use the nudge.) Also, a few websites load oddly.
MS pushed so hard to "get it out the door" that Vista is going to be their usual SandPaperWare. While a few experts have some of the beta copies, watch for the flood of info to roll in about February 15. I'm designing a Screener/DarkBox setup, and I think I'm going to be settling on Linux as a screener, with the XP DarkBox only online long enough to grab the live content it needs.
Vista architecture is going cause a general programmer scramble. I'm preparing a dual system to let that situation have a couple of years to resolve itself.
I consider this a very important Ask the 'Dot question. If we peruse the usual gamut of feedback, we jump all over the industrial examples of Vendor LockIn and the evils of closed source. I presume his boss likes Open Source because of all the types of benefits mentioned elsewhere when the topic comes up.
The very real problem is exactly the one being investigated here. "How do I pay This Month's Mortgage long enough for the nebulous benefits of Open Source to appear?" I don't have a surefire answer either.
I will be continuing to watch trends in this category for the next few years. I think it's a cousin problem to the one affecting the music industry. "I am a small band - how do I sell my CD's as a loss leader to gain customers, etc."
My first wild guess for you would be: "Why is it such a small market? Is there a brilliant way to do a medium grade modification to use your code for another class of customers?"
When we copy stuff, we instinctively refuse to value our own time because it tends to be minimal. But if you have a government publication that's supposed to be available on demand (with large leeway for production times), orchestrating 1400 copies of the 500 page report... begins to siphon up resources.
Let's say this tiny little govt dept. gets set up in a small building with a 5 person operation. At a certain number of copies, it will be full time work for that team, plus the cost of the building being rented. Those costs need to be divided back into the unit price of the Righteous Taxpayer's copy of the report. Even being stingy with salaries, that's $100,000 per year in salaries. The building would be lucky to be $2500 per month, or $30,000 per year.
These are the mistakes Web 1.0 made. It's not Pa's Basement anymore. It's not just a visit to Kinko's.
Suppose we break this into two types of difficulty. They had to do all the initial research in 1968 to develop the programs that govern a trip to the moon. Once you go that program set down, wouldn't it be the same general program with updated variables?
I agree a thoroughly competent team would be needed to update it. But if you had a basic template for the subroutines, isn't it down to specific equations for that launch?
Let me review timelines... Star Trek DS9 started in the Mid 1990's, long before this current mess.
So now the Iraqis (Bajorans) hate the occupiers who want material resource supplies (Cardiassians) and are fighting a resistance movement with everything they have. The intensely religious backdrop of DS9 matches perfectly with the intense religous backdrop of Iraq. So in 2009, when W. is repudiated, America ceases involvement, we'll start to see all these human interest stories about the rebuilding of Iraq after the occupation. Oops. Are we on the wrong side of the stereotypical plot?
I work with cost estimates daily, and I am the "detail guy" to make sure "both labor and materials" are covered in cost estimates. I haven't seen the detailed breakdown, but let's suppose "you the taxpayer" paid the labor charge for the X guys working on this thing.
Then when you want a copy, they Print On Demand your copy, which is essentially a Materials charge. Just because you are paying two SETS of dollars doesn't mean you're getting double charged.
Slashdot has linked to its fair share of stories in which two manuscript pages of text are spread over seven flash-ad filled pages. The Ad time on TV is about lost time through viewing ads; the lost time on ad-jammed news pages is equally lost waiting for page loads (I used to have a low end Satellite, and it took thirty ( ! ) seconds... and when it rained I WAS back to dialup. )
We all laughed because "those 300 baud modems back in the day could only handle small text files" - and now we spend our time looking for "information"... which is small text files (and MAYBE a picture.)
I distrust a thundering price tag like that. We did it... with "1968" technology... and let's stop for a moment to think of what that means. One of you history experts, do the conversion of $ per kilobyte, etc.
Hardware. Trade a deal of Labor for Steel/Construction. $75 million in leftover cost. Hardware. Check.
Software: Can a "40 year old" nagivation program be all that hard? Set a three year worldwide Net programming project, coordinate it with $5 million. Okay. Software. Check.
$19 Million, Misc Costs. (You choose. Lease knowhow from NASA?).
"Of course, because I don't get to see what's classified, I can't know this for sure." In fact, Govt Glacial Speeds notwithstanding, you can see what has just come off classified that shouldn't have been there. Combining several threads, Power over people's lives is sexy, and that's what DRM is really about. It's FUN to take away people's rights in the name of "protection".
Elsewhere, "if you don't like the restrictions, don't purchase". And I don't. I don't have an iPod, because like Animal Farm, "Four Words Bad, Four Letters Good" isn't my motto. Except for research, I only buy third party players and generally don't bother with synchronization software. "If it can't figure out for itself what's on there, I won't use it". I promote eMusic, and even further, Bands who *really* understand the 21st century distribution model. (A few Lossless Leader free songs, and UPSELL the premium package or the concert.) On the very few mainstream bands I simply must have, I drill the price down as far as possible.
Financial Press tries its best to be neutral during Christmas season. "Don't Wreck Someone's Holiday Sales!". By May, we'll be seeing the new evals of First Quarter Sales of Zune, and if the deadlines don't slide, Vista. I'm "saving" a small fund to buy extra newspapers. It should be hysterically funny reportage.
You got it, Anonymous Coward (distant cousin of Noel Coward)
This is a (only slightly?) high tech variant of "Dare". Y'all recall that lovely game everyone played at 13, designed to goad people past the limits of propriety. The flaw of Dare, as here, is "Rah Rah, let it all out,... except when it really counts".
This is why I call the bluff of most of these proposals - because I don't see anything truly dangerous on the *founder's* site. Unless he's playing it savvy, why should anyone else risk worse?
Right on. Posters above are falling (deliberately, for effect?) into the trap that "historical trends must continue inexorably". However, in the modern age, national moods are cyclical.
I refuse to be pushed into the artificial paranoia the W. Administration is promoting, but overall I also am more cautious with my privacy. This parallels a slow growth in my understanding of computers in general, and some specific incidents recently, such as AOL's search fiasco.
I do not have a MySpace page. I do not have many photos floating around the net. As other expert SlashDot types have remarked, no one can shield themselves forever from a sustained digging attack. But that takes work, and I am not a famous enough figure to bother with.
W's actions make our decision to impeach Nixon laughable, an event from another age. Anything can be foisted upon the US public for about 6 years, and then after the novelty wears off, the dissenters who were there all along begin to be listened to. Get your 1940's golden age SF now, because we will never be that innocently naive again to write any more. No flying cars, no transporter beams, no hyperdrive, and we're 25-100 years out *minimum* from building the barest beginnings of Moon & Mars bases.
BioChips are the type of thing the government might angle for, but I think we're near the end of this sweep of YRO crushing, so we're also 25 years out before the pendulum swings twice to make that a threat. It's much easier to track cell phones ("think of the children!"), and everyone except me carries one. A "chip" is not necesary.
Some kind of bad interpretation of this whole deal, coupled with MS's usual tricks will be the worst risk of all. Can they successfully confuse a judge?
Slashdot Mirror
There are variants of boycotts. I wonder if you mean the temporary kind as in "if you repent, we'll come back".
I'm pretty sure there's a swath of disaffected users who won't come back. We just have to solve some short term problems. I've seen a lot of discussion about Vendor LockIn. The MBA types writing case studies of Apple would call that "adding value through unity". I can't help thinking of Animal Farm.
When I start my Linux Adventure, I'll keep track of the hours spent. I feel my situation is textbook: I'm clever, but no expert.
Wouldn't that mean Revolution instead? Or maybe L. L. Bean has a discount on boots?
Okay, time to burn a karma point on a must-post joke parent poster set up perfectly.
..."
"... freenixes
This instantly led me to: "Phroenix"
I have had yahoo mail for about 3 years. I average about 1 junk mail a week in my inbox, and I delete my junk mail box once a week. Fine by me for a free mail system.
It's not stellar - their ads are far too aggressive. But one's email grows into an identity, and I have no serious excuse to change. I only change providers of services when serious problems arise. I used to use AOL until 4 years ago - various forces led me to quit. The recent Search Catastrophe cinched the derision.
As for other services, Yahoo Maps had enough problems to force me to take it off my personal links page. I use Yahoo Advanced Search for no logical reason whatsoever.
I'm not so impressed by that site.
After 25ish pictures, it decided I'm 30-something (easy enough), then erroneously guessed I'm a woman. "The brain has no more thoughts about you."
I feel that various threads here are scrambling some of the issues.
... they can cheaply upgrade to some scary capacity. But the blogger's fundamental costs of living have to be dealt with.
"Old Line" news had a fundamental fixed cost problem to overcome. "The cost of the building plus salaries plus publish equipment plus secondary costs" had to be dealt with before the first month's paper sales were completed.
Rent is a seller's market. "Awww. You couldn't pay your rent. I guess I have to evict you." (With varying grace periods.) Cash flow in is also the Seller's market. 80% of people's integrity is shot when their actions SERIOUSLY threaten their living situation. Employers complain back about lazy employees, and there's a whole world in between. Survival is a zero effort fixed cost, requiring effort to generate the money to stay ahead. Ask an expert on entropy where that leads.
If someone is a professional news reporter, if abusive financiers threaten that reporter's income, of course said reporter will eventually knuckle under. You can only resign in disgust so many times until the mortgage is due. Now we get to blogs, because these start out as 1-person operations *subsidized by an unrelated primary job*. This both enables freedom of reportage, but it also means the blogger will run out of resources and cannot produce the quantities of reportage that a pro news outfit can.
The *good* news is that *webspace* is a *buyer's market*. Anyone can start off with a free web space, and should they be so lucky as to need server capacity to survive a SlashDotting,
I essentially challenge anyone in the world to finance a blogger they believe in. (Can't afford it? Get a consortium or such going.) The fundamental point is that zero censorship can be tolerated. This means putting up with a "yellow blog" with an overemphasis on emotion. (In case you forgot, all papers have these: they are called editorial pages. The bloggers may simply forget to remove them to the editorial page.)
Then it's a matter of viewers. Left to themselves, it's a bit of a challenge to attract viewers. But should a group with money settle on a blogger they believe in, then a 1 year campaign can make them famous.
So at worst it's an unknown little blog in the middle of nowhere. But it's there should *you* decide it's interesting.
C64 - Too hard
C128 - Learned simple BASIC
Mac 512 - Look, it's a mouse!
Mac Plus - plugged into a 220 volt socket and died.
Mac Classic II - Screen caught fire
Pentium I 133 with Win98 Gift in Summer 1999 "Shawn Fanning!"
Two old Thinkpads - "LapTops are Fragile"
Win2000 600Mhz fading workhorse.
Random Laptop with a bad OS
1.7 Ghz Win2000 "XP SP2? Eew."
2.4 Ghz XP SP2 OEM "Vista will never get here"
Win2000 machine comped from work.
Coming Soon:
XP on Kentsfield "Let's wait for BlackComb"
My First Linux "Please, make it easy on the poor Newbikin"
I caught Commodore on an interesting age curve. It makes me feel like my childhood was exctly the childhood of PC's. A C64 was too hard for me as a 10 year old. Extensive begging landed me the C128 at 13, which I never regretted. I never owned an Amiga, but today I run Tracker tunes at work on DeliPlayer.
Poke 532581,0 : Poke 53280,0 : New
Ready.
Isn't this the entire point of the Mac image? "Pay a little more, the quality is supposed to be higher"? Third Parties (All the ones who are probably furious at MS for ditching them?) cost far less than iPods for certain space ranges. For comparable space the Nano is overpriced.
Apple is currently doing well as the company that seriously "embraced & extended" a xNIX kernel with a unified front end, and unified marketing. Linux needs some unity to begin to be a serious force. There's an article that MS did well with "multiple product editions to meet different needs". I'd like to see a cohesive suite of perhaps 5 Linux versions marketed as a unit by companies with the money muscle to survive a bruise or two. (Sun?)
I am inching my way toward my first Linux system, for which I completely credit SlashDot. I don't have too many fancy peripherals, so I stand a good chance.
I prefer to say the shows aired on TV may have value for entertainment. Most of us object to the presentation style, which wastes 22 minutes with ads, plus locks you into a certain time slot. NBC has gone a long way into the modern age by posting their shows online where they can be retrieved any time. (I am about to watch last Monday's 'Heroes" ... then catch *Tomorrow's*, thus enjoying two episodes back to back. Whereupon, I will 'forget' it for a while, and let the 'gauge build back up'.)
The ad ratio is smaller too - I think it was down to 30 seconds per segment, plus I can *scroll past irritating portions of the show* - so I am down to about 35 minutes for what was previously an hour show.
So ... Run the simulation? Do they ever want to find the answer, or are they deciding "our shuttle is only good for 4 more years, so all we have to do is take a 3 day holiday every year"?
... and a date flip can't be adjusted with a patch. That's definitely a surprise.
Plus, I agree with the general sentiment (tied in with the Indian space thread) - they wrote pretty clever software that deals with ROCKET SCIENCE
Isn't knowledge usually text with the occasional graphics, and advertising media the resource hog?
What about a "content usage" scale where a user gets credits/ratings for disabling pushy ads, thus lowering bandwidth usage. Then we might have an option for $5 per month broadband speeds. The concept is like the low mileage insurance discount.
Except when I specifically download music files, my computing style evolved to be low tech because when my Satellite went out I was stuck on dialup.
I got into the habit of running without installed AV for years because they misbehaved against my odd Satellite ISP I used to use. I tried to be sensible with Zone Alarm (you need that outbound notice!), and external virus scans.
Something did wander onto my system a couple of weeks ago. It's showing up as something that redirects IE searches (it survived upgrading to IE7!), but it lets FireFox searches through. (I joke that I could use the nudge.) Also, a few websites load oddly.
MS pushed so hard to "get it out the door" that Vista is going to be their usual SandPaperWare. While a few experts have some of the beta copies, watch for the flood of info to roll in about February 15. I'm designing a Screener/DarkBox setup, and I think I'm going to be settling on Linux as a screener, with the XP DarkBox only online long enough to grab the live content it needs.
Vista architecture is going cause a general programmer scramble. I'm preparing a dual system to let that situation have a couple of years to resolve itself.
I consider this a very important Ask the 'Dot question. If we peruse the usual gamut of feedback, we jump all over the industrial examples of Vendor LockIn and the evils of closed source. I presume his boss likes Open Source because of all the types of benefits mentioned elsewhere when the topic comes up.
The very real problem is exactly the one being investigated here. "How do I pay This Month's Mortgage long enough for the nebulous benefits of Open Source to appear?" I don't have a surefire answer either.
I will be continuing to watch trends in this category for the next few years. I think it's a cousin problem to the one affecting the music industry. "I am a small band - how do I sell my CD's as a loss leader to gain customers, etc."
My first wild guess for you would be: "Why is it such a small market? Is there a brilliant way to do a medium grade modification to use your code for another class of customers?"
Gotta Love the magic of Value Billing.
... begins to siphon up resources.
When we copy stuff, we instinctively refuse to value our own time because it tends to be minimal. But if you have a government publication that's supposed to be available on demand (with large leeway for production times), orchestrating 1400 copies of the 500 page report
Let's say this tiny little govt dept. gets set up in a small building with a 5 person operation. At a certain number of copies, it will be full time work for that team, plus the cost of the building being rented. Those costs need to be divided back into the unit price of the Righteous Taxpayer's copy of the report. Even being stingy with salaries, that's $100,000 per year in salaries. The building would be lucky to be $2500 per month, or $30,000 per year.
These are the mistakes Web 1.0 made. It's not Pa's Basement anymore. It's not just a visit to Kinko's.
Suppose we break this into two types of difficulty. They had to do all the initial research in 1968 to develop the programs that govern a trip to the moon. Once you go that program set down, wouldn't it be the same general program with updated variables?
I agree a thoroughly competent team would be needed to update it. But if you had a basic template for the subroutines, isn't it down to specific equations for that launch?
Let me review timelines... Star Trek DS9 started in the Mid 1990's, long before this current mess.
So now the Iraqis (Bajorans) hate the occupiers who want material resource supplies (Cardiassians) and are fighting a resistance movement with everything they have. The intensely religious backdrop of DS9 matches perfectly with the intense religous backdrop of Iraq. So in 2009, when W. is repudiated, America ceases involvement, we'll start to see all these human interest stories about the rebuilding of Iraq after the occupation. Oops. Are we on the wrong side of the stereotypical plot?
Anyone else think that show deserves a new look?
"We're sorry, but those lovely GUI's that Apple popularized have been shut down. Everyone turn to their C: prompt now."
I work with cost estimates daily, and I am the "detail guy" to make sure "both labor and materials" are covered in cost estimates. I haven't seen the detailed breakdown, but let's suppose "you the taxpayer" paid the labor charge for the X guys working on this thing.
Then when you want a copy, they Print On Demand your copy, which is essentially a Materials charge. Just because you are paying two SETS of dollars doesn't mean you're getting double charged.
Slashdot has linked to its fair share of stories in which two manuscript pages of text are spread over seven flash-ad filled pages. The Ad time on TV is about lost time through viewing ads; the lost time on ad-jammed news pages is equally lost waiting for page loads (I used to have a low end Satellite, and it took thirty ( ! ) seconds... and when it rained I WAS back to dialup. )
... which is small text files (and MAYBE a picture.)
We all laughed because "those 300 baud modems back in the day could only handle small text files" - and now we spend our time looking for "information"
I distrust a thundering price tag like that. We did it ... with "1968" technology ... and let's stop for a moment to think of what that means. One of you history experts, do the conversion of $ per kilobyte, etc.
Hardware. Trade a deal of Labor for Steel/Construction. $75 million in leftover cost. Hardware. Check.
Software: Can a "40 year old" nagivation program be all that hard? Set a three year worldwide Net programming project, coordinate it with $5 million. Okay. Software. Check.
$19 Million, Misc Costs. (You choose. Lease knowhow from NASA?).
$1 Million Food & Perishables.
Total Cost: $100 Million.
Typical Cost OverRuns: 900 Million.
So where's the other 134 Billion going?
"Of course, because I don't get to see what's classified, I can't know this for sure."
In fact, Govt Glacial Speeds notwithstanding, you can see what has just come off classified that shouldn't have been there. Combining several threads, Power over people's lives is sexy, and that's what DRM is really about. It's FUN to take away people's rights in the name of "protection".
Elsewhere, "if you don't like the restrictions, don't purchase". And I don't. I don't have an iPod, because like Animal Farm, "Four Words Bad, Four Letters Good" isn't my motto. Except for research, I only buy third party players and generally don't bother with synchronization software. "If it can't figure out for itself what's on there, I won't use it". I promote eMusic, and even further, Bands who *really* understand the 21st century distribution model. (A few Lossless Leader free songs, and UPSELL the premium package or the concert.) On the very few mainstream bands I simply must have, I drill the price down as far as possible.
Financial Press tries its best to be neutral during Christmas season. "Don't Wreck Someone's Holiday Sales!". By May, we'll be seeing the new evals of First Quarter Sales of Zune, and if the deadlines don't slide, Vista. I'm "saving" a small fund to buy extra newspapers. It should be hysterically funny reportage.
You got it, Anonymous Coward (distant cousin of Noel Coward)
... except when it really counts".
This is a (only slightly?) high tech variant of "Dare". Y'all recall that lovely game everyone played at 13, designed to goad people past the limits of propriety. The flaw of Dare, as here, is "Rah Rah, let it all out,
This is why I call the bluff of most of these proposals - because I don't see anything truly dangerous on the *founder's* site. Unless he's playing it savvy, why should anyone else risk worse?
Right on. Posters above are falling (deliberately, for effect?) into the trap that "historical trends must continue inexorably". However, in the modern age, national moods are cyclical.
I refuse to be pushed into the artificial paranoia the W. Administration is promoting, but overall I also am more cautious with my privacy. This parallels a slow growth in my understanding of computers in general, and some specific incidents recently, such as AOL's search fiasco.
I do not have a MySpace page. I do not have many photos floating around the net. As other expert SlashDot types have remarked, no one can shield themselves forever from a sustained digging attack. But that takes work, and I am not a famous enough figure to bother with.
W's actions make our decision to impeach Nixon laughable, an event from another age. Anything can be foisted upon the US public for about 6 years, and then after the novelty wears off, the dissenters who were there all along begin to be listened to. Get your 1940's golden age SF now, because we will never be that innocently naive again to write any more. No flying cars, no transporter beams, no hyperdrive, and we're 25-100 years out *minimum* from building the barest beginnings of Moon & Mars bases.
BioChips are the type of thing the government might angle for, but I think we're near the end of this sweep of YRO crushing, so we're also 25 years out before the pendulum swings twice to make that a threat. It's much easier to track cell phones ("think of the children!"), and everyone except me carries one. A "chip" is not necesary.
Sorry, Bruce.
This sounds like a fitting Meta-Result.
Some kind of bad interpretation of this whole deal, coupled with MS's usual tricks will be the worst risk of all. Can they successfully confuse a judge?