It was a good run. Seriously-- once MS decides to push you out of the market, you're as good as dead.
Example 1: WinCE vs. PalmOS
Example 2: Xbox 360 vs. Playstation 3
Example 3: Internet Explorer vs. Netscape
Example 4: Doubledisk/doublespace vs. Stacker
Example 5: Windows vs. OS/2
etc. etc. etc. Sometimes, it takes a while-- like how they're still struggling to make MSN relevant-- but, in the end, they always get what they want. They simply have too much money-- and, therefore, too much clout-- not to.
I'm not saying I agree with this. Quite the opposite, in fact. However, VMware is doomed. (Film at eleven.) You read it here first. Call me a pessimist, but I've seen the writing on the wall. I should have seen it coming when Microsoft released Virtual PC as freeware.
You can't really "ensure" ANYTHING in life. But you can make it much harder to get away with bullying. I remember that in school, bullying was virtually ignored by the school authorities; they pretty much turned a blind eye to the whole thing, both on-campus and off. If that changed, so would bullying.
Freedom of speech exists so that the powerless are allowed to criticise the powerful without fear of retribution, not so that the powerful are allowed to torment the powerless without fear of retribution.
It's a fascinating story, and even names one person at Microsoft.(Emphasis mine)
You can name someone within a company as the perpetrator of a crime all you want-- we all know from experience that when someone does something as part of a corporation, it's virtually guaranteed that they will never face personal legal consequences for it. (And, similarly, no matter how bad a company is, there is no "corporate death penalty".)
Corporations have evolved into legal entities in which people can do illegal things. And get away with them.
What is it about university IT departments that attracts such incompetent people?
In addition to the fact (as mentioned by other posters) that the pay is shite, there is the fact that University IT departments absolutely will not hire anyone without a degree. Since they're in the degree "business", they seem to expect their systems admins to have advanced CS degrees.
They would rather hire someone with a 15-year-old MS in CS than someone who's a good admin.
This question is like asking "If multinational corporations were scrupulously ethical and fairly competitive, would you support them?" or "If communism was implemented according to Marx's ideals, would you support it?".
Quite simply, such a system of "ethical DRM" would NEVER exist for longer than a few years at best-- and then they'd try to put the djinni back in the bottle.
DRM is about control. It is part of human nature that those driving efforts towards controlling that which is presently uncontrolled (e.g.: "piracy") want more and more control as time goes on-- not less and less, nor even a static amount. Over time, any reasonable system of DRM-- one which supports fair use and doesn't assume that consumers are all evil thieves-- would mutate into the typical corporate nightmare that we think of DRM as. If not something worse.
"Google lost the right to use the "Don't be evil" motto when they teamed up with the Communist rulers of China to censor search results for Chinese subjects."
It's 2006; the era of McCarthyism is dead. Is there really a reason why people still use the word "Communist" as a sort of bogeyman? China's leaders aren't evil because they're communists (and, by the way, they aren't); they're evil because they're evil.
...it hasn't any right at all to be anything but a Boolean, at least at first. DHS has a right to check for the answer to the question 'Is this person a terror suspect?', and perhaps 'Is this person a known friend or confidant of a terror suspect?'. ONLY if the answer to one of those questions is 'yes' have the underpaid security monkeys at the airport got any right whatsoever to see any information on people. All too often, the quest for 'security' is just another grab for power and intimidation.
AMD thinks the core race is just a repeat of the megahertz race that took place a few years ago. Instead, AMD is counting on Accelerated Processing Units, chips that mix and match general-purpose CPU cores with dedicated application processors for graphics and other tasks.
So Intel is betting on more and more cores, and AMD is betting on more and more integrated units. Wait... why not, y'know, BOTH? A 16-core CPU with an integrated high-end GPU sounds sweet.
Actually, as of the time I made my comment, nobody had bothered to point out that "sex offender" doesn't mean "child rapist". People just seemed to operate on the assumption that "sex offender" automatically means "child rapist", just like how people often assume that "anarchist" means "bomb-throwing terrorist" or "American" means "fat, lazy, religious Republican".
Words can be very dangerous when they are misused in this way.
As a reminder, there are plenty of jurisdictions in which urinating in a back alley when no public toilet is available constitutes a "sex offense", and sufficies to have one placed on "sex offender" lists.
Furthermore, making out in a car in a quasi-public place can likewise be considered a "sex offense", if I'm not mistaken, though in practice, the cops tend to crack down only on gay couples doing this. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Even if a God willing to commit acts of mass murder (even genocide) against his own, supposedly beloved creations actually existed, he would not be worth worshipping. The things God allegedly did, just vis-a-vis mass human extinction alone (i.e.: 'The Flood'), makes God a worse dictator than any human tyrant ever to live.
The 'Old Testament' makes it abundantly clear that YHVH is not a nice guy. At all. Hell, even I'm nicer than YHVH; I've never even killed a single person, much less nearly wiped out the human race in a fit of pique.
"With the growing number of low-level flaws, one has to wonder if Apple's 'more secure' argument still stands."
No, no, one doesn't.
Number of Windows machines I've had to painstakingly remove highly virulent spyware/adware from: Dozens.
Number of Mac OS X machines I've had to painstakingly remove highly virulent spyware/adware from: ZERO.
This is far more than just anecdotal evidence; this is how things go in the real world. In the real world, 50+% of Windows machines are badly infected by spyware, and 0% of Mac OS X machines.
ZERO.
By far the most prevalent security and stability breaches "in the wild" are not rootkits or remote exploits... they're spyware and viruses, both of which are virtually exclusively Windows issues. You can claim that this is mostly or wholly due to the overwhelming dominance of Windows over all other operating systems (in terms of "market share"), but the fact remains.
Until I start getting calls from blue-haired grandmas to hand-pick bits of Hotbar and Bonzibuddy and porno pop-up daemons out of their Macs, I won't buy the "Macs aren't any more secure than Windows" FUD. And neither should you!
"Conservative" has become a "dirty word" among intelligent people all across America because in America, "conservative" usually means "gay-bashing religious zealot".
Hey, we live in a country where the majority doesn't even believe in one's right to MARRY the person of one's choice... why on earth should we expect the (wholly reasonable, of course) freedom to run an operating system of our choice?
Any American who isn't straight, and doesn't run Windows, is a deviant unamerican commie terrorist-sympathizer. Right? I mean, right???? Somebody back me up here.;)
Microsoft built the ASP.NET platform; it isn't a surprise that Expression Web Designer was designed to support that platform.
This is about more than just supporting the ASP.NET platform; it's about supporting exclusively that platform. A more appropriate verb would be "pimping".
Aside from sites where adults recruit children to rape them or kill them (anything ending in ".mil" qualifies as the latter), I can't think of a site that could be "dangerous" to children.
I WISH the Internet as it exists now existed when I was a child. I could have prevented a lot of suffering for myself, in multiple ways. For one thing, I could have Googled the various slang terms people used to tease me for not knowing, thus sparing me the indignation of being pointed and laughed at for being too much of a nerd to know all the various sexual terms.
I'm so, so, so fucking sick of this "treat anyone under 18 like they're a fucking moron" thing that most "adults" have going on. (Full disclosure: I'm 27.)
It all boils down to the "ZOMG PEDOPHILES ON TEH INTARWEBS!" argument, which of course is a variant of the old "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!11oneoneone" chestnut. You know what? When I was 12 (or 13, or 14, or 15, or 16...), I wanted to get laid more than anything. People seem to forget that kids want (and have a right to) sexual pleasure too. And I say that as someone who doesn't even date 18-year-olds, much less 15-year-olds. Jesus Christ, people, stop being so ridiculous about sex. It's Just Another Bodily Function(TM).
Slashdot Mirror
Correct. And, knowing MS's pervasive influence, they'll just move to WMA, and call it a Good Thing(TM).
ORLY? Where? A link would be helpful. If they've actually made such a positive statement, I'd love to see WHERE.
It was a good run. Seriously-- once MS decides to push you out of the market, you're as good as dead.
Example 1: WinCE vs. PalmOS
Example 2: Xbox 360 vs. Playstation 3
Example 3: Internet Explorer vs. Netscape
Example 4: Doubledisk/doublespace vs. Stacker
Example 5: Windows vs. OS/2
etc. etc. etc. Sometimes, it takes a while-- like how they're still struggling to make MSN relevant-- but, in the end, they always get what they want. They simply have too much money-- and, therefore, too much clout-- not to.
I'm not saying I agree with this. Quite the opposite, in fact. However, VMware is doomed. (Film at eleven.) You read it here first. Call me a pessimist, but I've seen the writing on the wall. I should have seen it coming when Microsoft released Virtual PC as freeware.
You can't really "ensure" ANYTHING in life. But you can make it much harder to get away with bullying. I remember that in school, bullying was virtually ignored by the school authorities; they pretty much turned a blind eye to the whole thing, both on-campus and off. If that changed, so would bullying.
Freedom of speech exists so that the powerless are allowed to criticise the powerful without fear of retribution, not so that the powerful are allowed to torment the powerless without fear of retribution.
You can name someone within a company as the perpetrator of a crime all you want-- we all know from experience that when someone does something as part of a corporation, it's virtually guaranteed that they will never face personal legal consequences for it. (And, similarly, no matter how bad a company is, there is no "corporate death penalty".)
Corporations have evolved into legal entities in which people can do illegal things. And get away with them.
In addition to the fact (as mentioned by other posters) that the pay is shite, there is the fact that University IT departments absolutely will not hire anyone without a degree. Since they're in the degree "business", they seem to expect their systems admins to have advanced CS degrees.
They would rather hire someone with a 15-year-old MS in CS than someone who's a good admin.
This question is like asking "If multinational corporations were scrupulously ethical and fairly competitive, would you support them?" or "If communism was implemented according to Marx's ideals, would you support it?".
Quite simply, such a system of "ethical DRM" would NEVER exist for longer than a few years at best-- and then they'd try to put the djinni back in the bottle.
DRM is about control. It is part of human nature that those driving efforts towards controlling that which is presently uncontrolled (e.g.: "piracy") want more and more control as time goes on-- not less and less, nor even a static amount. Over time, any reasonable system of DRM-- one which supports fair use and doesn't assume that consumers are all evil thieves-- would mutate into the typical corporate nightmare that we think of DRM as. If not something worse.
It's 2006; the era of McCarthyism is dead. Is there really a reason why people still use the word "Communist" as a sort of bogeyman? China's leaders aren't evil because they're communists (and, by the way, they aren't); they're evil because they're evil.
...it hasn't any right at all to be anything but a Boolean, at least at first. DHS has a right to check for the answer to the question 'Is this person a terror suspect?', and perhaps 'Is this person a known friend or confidant of a terror suspect?'. ONLY if the answer to one of those questions is 'yes' have the underpaid security monkeys at the airport got any right whatsoever to see any information on people. All too often, the quest for 'security' is just another grab for power and intimidation.
So Intel is betting on more and more cores, and AMD is betting on more and more integrated units. Wait... why not, y'know, BOTH? A 16-core CPU with an integrated high-end GPU sounds sweet.
Actually, as of the time I made my comment, nobody had bothered to point out that "sex offender" doesn't mean "child rapist". People just seemed to operate on the assumption that "sex offender" automatically means "child rapist", just like how people often assume that "anarchist" means "bomb-throwing terrorist" or "American" means "fat, lazy, religious Republican".
Words can be very dangerous when they are misused in this way.
As a reminder, there are plenty of jurisdictions in which urinating in a back alley when no public toilet is available constitutes a "sex offense", and sufficies to have one placed on "sex offender" lists.
Furthermore, making out in a car in a quasi-public place can likewise be considered a "sex offense", if I'm not mistaken, though in practice, the cops tend to crack down only on gay couples doing this. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Sex offenders just ain't what they used to be.
Even if a God willing to commit acts of mass murder (even genocide) against his own, supposedly beloved creations actually existed, he would not be worth worshipping. The things God allegedly did, just vis-a-vis mass human extinction alone (i.e.: 'The Flood'), makes God a worse dictator than any human tyrant ever to live.
The 'Old Testament' makes it abundantly clear that YHVH is not a nice guy. At all. Hell, even I'm nicer than YHVH; I've never even killed a single person, much less nearly wiped out the human race in a fit of pique.
No, no, one doesn't.
Number of Windows machines I've had to painstakingly remove highly virulent spyware/adware from: Dozens.
Number of Mac OS X machines I've had to painstakingly remove highly virulent spyware/adware from: ZERO.
This is far more than just anecdotal evidence; this is how things go in the real world. In the real world, 50+% of Windows machines are badly infected by spyware, and 0% of Mac OS X machines.
ZERO.
By far the most prevalent security and stability breaches "in the wild" are not rootkits or remote exploits... they're spyware and viruses, both of which are virtually exclusively Windows issues. You can claim that this is mostly or wholly due to the overwhelming dominance of Windows over all other operating systems (in terms of "market share"), but the fact remains.
Until I start getting calls from blue-haired grandmas to hand-pick bits of Hotbar and Bonzibuddy and porno pop-up daemons out of their Macs, I won't buy the "Macs aren't any more secure than Windows" FUD. And neither should you!
WHY would Acer want to sell Linux?
Geeks don't buy Acer computers, and non-geeks don't want Linux! It would be a wasted effort, and piss off Microsoft to boot.
Bach warez!
Why do you assume that Slashdot is pro-open-source? I've seen a LOT of pro-Microsoft toadies on this site.
Where's the (-1, Corporate Whore) mod option when you need it?
"Conservative" has become a "dirty word" among intelligent people all across America because in America, "conservative" usually means "gay-bashing religious zealot".
Hey, we live in a country where the majority doesn't even believe in one's right to MARRY the person of one's choice... why on earth should we expect the (wholly reasonable, of course) freedom to run an operating system of our choice?
;)
Any American who isn't straight, and doesn't run Windows, is a deviant unamerican commie terrorist-sympathizer. Right? I mean, right???? Somebody back me up here.
This is about more than just supporting the ASP.NET platform; it's about supporting exclusively that platform. A more appropriate verb would be "pimping".
Oh, PLEASE.
Aside from sites where adults recruit children to rape them or kill them (anything ending in ".mil" qualifies as the latter), I can't think of a site that could be "dangerous" to children.
I WISH the Internet as it exists now existed when I was a child. I could have prevented a lot of suffering for myself, in multiple ways. For one thing, I could have Googled the various slang terms people used to tease me for not knowing, thus sparing me the indignation of being pointed and laughed at for being too much of a nerd to know all the various sexual terms.
I'm so, so, so fucking sick of this "treat anyone under 18 like they're a fucking moron" thing that most "adults" have going on. (Full disclosure: I'm 27.)
It all boils down to the "ZOMG PEDOPHILES ON TEH INTARWEBS!" argument, which of course is a variant of the old "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!11oneoneone" chestnut. You know what? When I was 12 (or 13, or 14, or 15, or 16...), I wanted to get laid more than anything. People seem to forget that kids want (and have a right to) sexual pleasure too. And I say that as someone who doesn't even date 18-year-olds, much less 15-year-olds. Jesus Christ, people, stop being so ridiculous about sex. It's Just Another Bodily Function(TM).
I hope they're prepared for a legal onslaught from Apple.
Nurse! o/~