I suspect that laws like this aren't aimed at TV stations, who really have never been able to afford to antagonize or expose politicians too much. I suspect laws like this are aimed at people publishing things on YouTube: viral videos and all that. It may be designed to make people think twice about making fun of their politicians.
Well, one might say that sound bites are not a fair way of characterizing the entire work of a politician. I think they are right: with Stevens and Allen, the rotten attitudes seem to go far deeper.
Laws like this aren't going to be very effective, but these people are running scared.
Name one instance where Microsoft has ever done anything like this.
MS Office formats.
Even if Microsoft didn't have a record of doing this, the point is that (1) we know Microsoft plays very dirty, (2) they now consider FOSS a threat, and (3) they can do this. And they have already tried leveraging their file system format control through other means (FAT patents, etc.).
In fact, you people are usually pitching a fit about how MS is a slave to backward compatibility.
What I described preserves backwards compatibility; it just happens to also make it likely that you'll upgrade soon.
I would guess that 'laughingcoder' is talking about desktop hardware systems for professional CAD engineering in the mid 1980's to late 1990's
Yes, but it's an error in perception. The kind of specialty applications that cost thousands of dollars back then and ran only on specific configurations... still cost thousands of dollars and run only on specific configurations.
Portability also hasn't really improved; instead of half a dozen different versions of UNIX, we now have half a dozen versions of Windows, plus multiple different APIs and GUIs, all from a single company.
Furthermore, several workstation vendors had good workstations available for about the same price as a reasonably equipped PC.
Of course, Microsoft didn't win this market through brilliant strategies: the UNIX vendors were stupid and lost the market.
Needless to say, many users chose to use open source compilers such as 'gcc' instead, along with OSF/Motif.
That is another reason why Windows was a step backwards.
Yes, thereby inducing people to upgrade more systems, meaning more revenue.
Microsoft will have to continue to support at least NTFS XP in Windows Vista.
Come on, you know how this works. Sure, it will continue to read and write old-NTFS. It will also keep bugging you "You have inserted an old NTFS drive; for better performance and security, I strongly recommend upgrading this to new NTFS. [UPGRADE] [UPGRADE and Don't Ask Again] [Don't Upgrade for Now]". Your fixed volumes will be upgraded quiescently unless you use the special enterprise edition of Windows.
But would such a solution have to be written from scratch in order to be compatible with the license of the Windows IFS header files? Has the system library exemption of the GPLv2 been tested in a court of law?
Ext2 ports have been around for both Windows and OS X for years, so it looks like there isn't a legal problem; they are simply not being maintained as well as one would like, and IFS support on Windows itself is kind of iffy. BSD would be even less of a licensing issue.
As a graybeard I remember those horrible days where we got our OS from our hardware vendor, along with the "opportunity" to buy their crappy, proprietary, $10,000/seat applications.
As a graybeard, I can say categorically that you're full of shit.
Microsoft has killed a competitive software market and taken us back to the IBM monopoly days.
I seriously doubt the Chinese are going to $100/person. In fact, most likely, using Linux as a bargaining chip, they probably negotiated that down to a few bucks per copy, at most. And the Chinese user population is much smaller than one billion anyway.
Also, it's wrong to assume that this money is going to make it to the US; it's likely paid to the Chinese subsidiary, and China is going to make sure that that gets spent in China as much as possible.
This pattern of big companies getting chummy with oppressive governments is quite common. In the end, it doesn't matter that much. The fact that the Chinese managed to exert such pressure on Microsoft using Linux is already a win for Linux and a big loss for Microsoft. And in the long run, China will be free from Microsoft as Microsoft itself disappears.
NTFS is not a solution because Microsoft can change it incompatibly at any time; all they have to do is put something in a Vista update that modifies the file system in a backwards-incompatible way. Once they do, Windows becomes unsupported by NTFS-3G. In addition, Microsoft likely has a lot of NTFS-related patents that they can use to shut down any open source implementation whenever they want.
No, the only solution is to create drivers for one of the FOSS file systems. Ext2 and ext3 are the obvious candidates. In fact, an even more obvious candidate would be the BSD file system, except that there seem to be so many incompatible versions of it.
Most of us live our lives in the real world. We don't exist to extract funding from grant-giving bodies.
And the problem with that would be... what? Academics have to do a shitload of work to get very limited research grants, and they use that money to pay for students and education. What the hell is supposed to be wrong with that? Academic employment is paid so poorly and so much work that fewer and fewer people are willing to do it at all.
Now, who do you extract funding from? Gullible teenagers? Desperate housewives? Little old ladies? Or does the industry you work in survive on pork and government handouts? Come on, tell us about your Dilbertesque life!
Microsoft is charging a lot of money for their software; there is absolutely no reason anybody but Microsoft should pay for the bandwidth related to their software updates.
From a practical point of view, no matter how "secure" the protocol may be, if this thing is running on a host as part of a P2P network, it is essentially broadcasting to the world that (1) the host is running Windows, and (2) that it's not up to date with its patches. That's not a smart thing to broadcast.
If you go for post-graduate studies, it's because you've learned far too much about far too little to cope in the world, so you seek funding to stay on campus for a longer period of time. Some people even manage to stay on campus their entire life.
How is that different from becoming a lawyer, a politician, a priest, a race car driver, computer programmer, or a hamburger flipper? Everybody specializes, and everybody has specific sources of funding and income.
Now, why don't you tell us what makes your life and your job more meaningful and important than an academic job?
Anonymous is what happens when you give people the ability to act without reprecussions,
And "reporter" is what happens when you have sunk so low that it doesn't matter anymore what you say as long as it's controversial.
No matter how anonymity may be abused, it's an essential part of a functioning democracy and free society, because if you don't have it, the only people participating in discussions are those with nothing to lose.
You mean because I have a PhD in English I can qualify to work as a postdoc physicist in only 2 years?
No. Ph.D.'s are about how to do research. Many fields share research methodology, some don't. So, if you have an English Ph.D., then a Physics Ph.D. may teach you something, but a French Ph.D. might not be.
I agree that a second Ph.D. is pointless for the reasons you say, however...
So in fact what you really want to do is read for a BA (or BSc) in a new area - just do it at a good university (which unfortunately rules out most).
No, to get started in a new field you want to take MA or MSc courses in a new area; the BA/BSc is supposed to prepare you for graduate study in general. Or just read the books and watch the lectures on-line.
There is only a handful of major mobile phone operators, it's hard to switch, and they have you on long-term contracts anyway.
The solution to this is simple: prohibit long-term contracts, prohibit locked phones, and require all operators to standardize on a single mobile phone system.
Unlike many news media and publications, Wikipedia doesn't try to use the identity and authority of contributors to establish credibility. Who cares if someone is working for the MI5 or CIA or whatever as long as they give accurate information and cite verifiable sources?
That's not "research", that's someone's opinion or personal preference.
a light grey text on a black background actually produces one of the best readable displays for your eyes.
"Light grey on black" may have more contrast than "white on black" on a different monitor. So, saying that "light grey text" is more readable is meaningless.
There is an optimal contrast for the human eye for readability; I suspect it's pretty high. But some people prefer low contrast displays, probably because of some visual processing issues.
As I was saying, you're an idiot if you think that educated people don't know about the waste, pork, and fraud in government. You still have failed to come up with any ideas about solutions. You seem to think that if you produce "convincing evidence" somehow, magically, the problem will go away. The problem isn't "lack of convincing evidence", the problem is finding a better system.
Yes, well, some of us retain our memories of past transgressions, and would like to prevent future ones.
So do we all. But specific transgressions by government don't mean that every and all government is corrupt. Furthermore, each and every one of those transgressions has actually led to changes in government that have made those specific transgressions less likely in the future, so it's not like people aren't trying.
No, sir, I don't whine. I laugh as I watch you sink into the morass so willingly. Apparently you don't like it when the slaves get uppity. [...] Always remember, the safest place to be is in the center of the herd. Of course that's the position you all fight each other for. Everybody knows what happens to stragglers.
"Uppity"? Do you think you're going to change anything with a bunch of flames on Slashdot? Heck, these postings have less impact on government than an investigatory high school newspaper article.
Mooing a lot doesn't take out out of the center of the herd, you know.
Everybody who isn't a complete moron knows that governments do lots of bad things and waste a large fraction of taxpayer money on pork and fraud. The question is: what specific steps have you taken to reduce it? Did you vote? Did you run for office? Did you do an investigative news piece? Come on, tell us, what extraordinary steps have you taken to reduce government corruption and waste?
No, but you apparently are. Obviously, there is a significant level of inefficiency, corruption, and/or fraud in government granting and contracting, even for the biggest projects. But even if, for the sake of argument, 50% of the government contracting that's happening is pork or fraud, the other 50% still need to get done.
So the question is: instead of whining and complaining about it, what concrete, workable suggestions do you have for reducing it?
That whole world is way beyond the reach or influence of the American people.
Seems to me it's quite within the reach and influence of the American people, since the politicians doing it are selected and elected from among the American people. With election participation rates of under 50% and voters making decisions based on issues like terrorism, gun control, gay marriage, and school prayer, I think "the American people" have little justification for complaining that their government isn't the government they want. Heck, people re-elected Bush after he started the Iraq disaster and gave away hundreds of billions to his buddies in industry; how much more of an affirmation do you need that people don't care?
Again, you, too, are mixing up a whole bunch of things.
In fact, most government contracts are subject to public scrutiny, as well as multiple independent controls. Defense and national security are the exception. I don't think that the exception is justified, but given that there are other tinfoil hat wearers out there, it will be hard to change that. that doesn't make the whole system corrupt.
Furthermore, for many government contracts, there is only a couple of companies that they can be awarded to because only those companies have the expertise and size to pull it off. So, it's not surprising that 50 or even 100 year old companies get these contracts. Heck, in Europe, many companies that built stuff for the Nazis later got government contracts from the democratic governments; there simply was no choice.
People like you love to whine a lot and throw out a lot of accusations. In the process, you end up throwing good and bad companies, good and bad politicians all into the same bin. What you're short on is solutions. Have you run for office? Have you attempted to do anything about it other than whine on Slashdot?
I'll tell you this much: I don't know how to improve the system on a grand scale; I just try to fix things when I see something wrong locally. And while this system may suck and it is wasteful, but it sure beats the alternatives we had before or that other nations have had.
Of course, politicians and companies plan for years about government contracts. Of course, they both write the laws and determine the size of the checks. That's how government contracting is supposed to work.
Yes, a lot of that money is wasted. But it's wasted because of incompetence and "not my problem" attitudes, not because these people have some elaborate conspiracy.
These kinds of issues arise whenever more than two people work together on anything. It's the price we pay for living and cooperating. It's the cost of compromise and incomplete information. There is no magic fix for it and we can't throw people in jail for it. All you can do is try to do your part to improve things.
Who do you think the government is supposed to task with doing this kind of work? And who do you think is supposed to make the decisions about how to allocate money and how?
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that laws like this aren't aimed at TV stations, who really have never been able to afford to antagonize or expose politicians too much. I suspect laws like this are aimed at people publishing things on YouTube: viral videos and all that. It may be designed to make people think twice about making fun of their politicians.
This sounds like a YouTube law. These politicians are scared of appearing in public with "macaca" and "tubes":
http://youtube.com/watch?v=r90z0PMnKwI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE
and the remixes...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EtOoQFa5ug8
Well, one might say that sound bites are not a fair way of characterizing the entire work of a politician. I think they are right: with Stevens and Allen, the rotten attitudes seem to go far deeper.
Laws like this aren't going to be very effective, but these people are running scared.
Name one instance where Microsoft has ever done anything like this.
MS Office formats.
Even if Microsoft didn't have a record of doing this, the point is that (1) we know Microsoft plays very dirty, (2) they now consider FOSS a threat, and (3) they can do this. And they have already tried leveraging their file system format control through other means (FAT patents, etc.).
In fact, you people are usually pitching a fit about how MS is a slave to backward compatibility.
What I described preserves backwards compatibility; it just happens to also make it likely that you'll upgrade soon.
I would guess that 'laughingcoder' is talking about desktop hardware systems for professional CAD engineering in the mid 1980's to late 1990's
Yes, but it's an error in perception. The kind of specialty applications that cost thousands of dollars back then and ran only on specific configurations... still cost thousands of dollars and run only on specific configurations.
Portability also hasn't really improved; instead of half a dozen different versions of UNIX, we now have half a dozen versions of Windows, plus multiple different APIs and GUIs, all from a single company.
Furthermore, several workstation vendors had good workstations available for about the same price as a reasonably equipped PC.
Of course, Microsoft didn't win this market through brilliant strategies: the UNIX vendors were stupid and lost the market.
Needless to say, many users chose to use open source compilers such as 'gcc' instead, along with OSF/Motif.
That is another reason why Windows was a step backwards.
And make it incompatible with Windows XP too.
Yes, thereby inducing people to upgrade more systems, meaning more revenue.
Microsoft will have to continue to support at least NTFS XP in Windows Vista.
Come on, you know how this works. Sure, it will continue to read and write old-NTFS. It will also keep bugging you "You have inserted an old NTFS drive; for better performance and security, I strongly recommend upgrading this to new NTFS. [UPGRADE] [UPGRADE and Don't Ask Again] [Don't Upgrade for Now]". Your fixed volumes will be upgraded quiescently unless you use the special enterprise edition of Windows.
But would such a solution have to be written from scratch in order to be compatible with the license of the Windows IFS header files? Has the system library exemption of the GPLv2 been tested in a court of law?
Ext2 ports have been around for both Windows and OS X for years, so it looks like there isn't a legal problem; they are simply not being maintained as well as one would like, and IFS support on Windows itself is kind of iffy. BSD would be even less of a licensing issue.
As a graybeard I remember those horrible days where we got our OS from our hardware vendor, along with the "opportunity" to buy their crappy, proprietary, $10,000/seat applications.
As a graybeard, I can say categorically that you're full of shit.
Microsoft has killed a competitive software market and taken us back to the IBM monopoly days.
I seriously doubt the Chinese are going to $100/person. In fact, most likely, using Linux as a bargaining chip, they probably negotiated that down to a few bucks per copy, at most. And the Chinese user population is much smaller than one billion anyway.
Also, it's wrong to assume that this money is going to make it to the US; it's likely paid to the Chinese subsidiary, and China is going to make sure that that gets spent in China as much as possible.
This pattern of big companies getting chummy with oppressive governments is quite common. In the end, it doesn't matter that much. The fact that the Chinese managed to exert such pressure on Microsoft using Linux is already a win for Linux and a big loss for Microsoft. And in the long run, China will be free from Microsoft as Microsoft itself disappears.
NTFS is not a solution because Microsoft can change it incompatibly at any time; all they have to do is put something in a Vista update that modifies the file system in a backwards-incompatible way. Once they do, Windows becomes unsupported by NTFS-3G. In addition, Microsoft likely has a lot of NTFS-related patents that they can use to shut down any open source implementation whenever they want.
No, the only solution is to create drivers for one of the FOSS file systems. Ext2 and ext3 are the obvious candidates. In fact, an even more obvious candidate would be the BSD file system, except that there seem to be so many incompatible versions of it.
Most of us live our lives in the real world. We don't exist to extract funding from grant-giving bodies.
And the problem with that would be... what? Academics have to do a shitload of work to get very limited research grants, and they use that money to pay for students and education. What the hell is supposed to be wrong with that? Academic employment is paid so poorly and so much work that fewer and fewer people are willing to do it at all.
Now, who do you extract funding from? Gullible teenagers? Desperate housewives? Little old ladies? Or does the industry you work in survive on pork and government handouts? Come on, tell us about your Dilbertesque life!
Microsoft is charging a lot of money for their software; there is absolutely no reason anybody but Microsoft should pay for the bandwidth related to their software updates.
From a practical point of view, no matter how "secure" the protocol may be, if this thing is running on a host as part of a P2P network, it is essentially broadcasting to the world that (1) the host is running Windows, and (2) that it's not up to date with its patches. That's not a smart thing to broadcast.
If you go for post-graduate studies, it's because you've learned far too much about far too little to cope in the world, so you seek funding to stay on campus for a longer period of time. Some people even manage to stay on campus their entire life.
How is that different from becoming a lawyer, a politician, a priest, a race car driver, computer programmer, or a hamburger flipper? Everybody specializes, and everybody has specific sources of funding and income.
Now, why don't you tell us what makes your life and your job more meaningful and important than an academic job?
Anonymous is what happens when you give people the ability to act without reprecussions,
And "reporter" is what happens when you have sunk so low that it doesn't matter anymore what you say as long as it's controversial.
No matter how anonymity may be abused, it's an essential part of a functioning democracy and free society, because if you don't have it, the only people participating in discussions are those with nothing to lose.
You mean because I have a PhD in English I can qualify to work as a postdoc physicist in only 2 years?
No. Ph.D.'s are about how to do research. Many fields share research methodology, some don't. So, if you have an English Ph.D., then a Physics Ph.D. may teach you something, but a French Ph.D. might not be.
I agree that a second Ph.D. is pointless for the reasons you say, however...
So in fact what you really want to do is read for a BA (or BSc) in a new area - just do it at a good university (which unfortunately rules out most).
No, to get started in a new field you want to take MA or MSc courses in a new area; the BA/BSc is supposed to prepare you for graduate study in general. Or just read the books and watch the lectures on-line.
There is only a handful of major mobile phone operators, it's hard to switch, and they have you on long-term contracts anyway.
The solution to this is simple: prohibit long-term contracts, prohibit locked phones, and require all operators to standardize on a single mobile phone system.
Unlike many news media and publications, Wikipedia doesn't try to use the identity and authority of contributors to establish credibility. Who cares if someone is working for the MI5 or CIA or whatever as long as they give accurate information and cite verifiable sources?
Yet another way for Apple to screw their customers on overpriced batteries and service.
From what I remember reading in some research
That's not "research", that's someone's opinion or personal preference.
a light grey text on a black background actually produces one of the best readable displays for your eyes.
"Light grey on black" may have more contrast than "white on black" on a different monitor. So, saying that "light grey text" is more readable is meaningless.
There is an optimal contrast for the human eye for readability; I suspect it's pretty high. But some people prefer low contrast displays, probably because of some visual processing issues.
As I was saying, you're an idiot if you think that educated people don't know about the waste, pork, and fraud in government. You still have failed to come up with any ideas about solutions. You seem to think that if you produce "convincing evidence" somehow, magically, the problem will go away. The problem isn't "lack of convincing evidence", the problem is finding a better system.
Yes, well, some of us retain our memories of past transgressions, and would like to prevent future ones.
So do we all. But specific transgressions by government don't mean that every and all government is corrupt. Furthermore, each and every one of those transgressions has actually led to changes in government that have made those specific transgressions less likely in the future, so it's not like people aren't trying.
No, sir, I don't whine. I laugh as I watch you sink into the morass so willingly. Apparently you don't like it when the slaves get uppity. [...] Always remember, the safest place to be is in the center of the herd. Of course that's the position you all fight each other for. Everybody knows what happens to stragglers.
"Uppity"? Do you think you're going to change anything with a bunch of flames on Slashdot? Heck, these postings have less impact on government than an investigatory high school newspaper article.
Mooing a lot doesn't take out out of the center of the herd, you know.
Everybody who isn't a complete moron knows that governments do lots of bad things and waste a large fraction of taxpayer money on pork and fraud. The question is: what specific steps have you taken to reduce it? Did you vote? Did you run for office? Did you do an investigative news piece? Come on, tell us, what extraordinary steps have you taken to reduce government corruption and waste?
You can't be that naive.
No, but you apparently are. Obviously, there is a significant level of inefficiency, corruption, and/or fraud in government granting and contracting, even for the biggest projects. But even if, for the sake of argument, 50% of the government contracting that's happening is pork or fraud, the other 50% still need to get done.
So the question is: instead of whining and complaining about it, what concrete, workable suggestions do you have for reducing it?
That whole world is way beyond the reach or influence of the American people.
Seems to me it's quite within the reach and influence of the American people, since the politicians doing it are selected and elected from among the American people. With election participation rates of under 50% and voters making decisions based on issues like terrorism, gun control, gay marriage, and school prayer, I think "the American people" have little justification for complaining that their government isn't the government they want. Heck, people re-elected Bush after he started the Iraq disaster and gave away hundreds of billions to his buddies in industry; how much more of an affirmation do you need that people don't care?
Again, you, too, are mixing up a whole bunch of things.
In fact, most government contracts are subject to public scrutiny, as well as multiple independent controls. Defense and national security are the exception. I don't think that the exception is justified, but given that there are other tinfoil hat wearers out there, it will be hard to change that. that doesn't make the whole system corrupt.
Furthermore, for many government contracts, there is only a couple of companies that they can be awarded to because only those companies have the expertise and size to pull it off. So, it's not surprising that 50 or even 100 year old companies get these contracts. Heck, in Europe, many companies that built stuff for the Nazis later got government contracts from the democratic governments; there simply was no choice.
People like you love to whine a lot and throw out a lot of accusations. In the process, you end up throwing good and bad companies, good and bad politicians all into the same bin. What you're short on is solutions. Have you run for office? Have you attempted to do anything about it other than whine on Slashdot?
I'll tell you this much: I don't know how to improve the system on a grand scale; I just try to fix things when I see something wrong locally. And while this system may suck and it is wasteful, but it sure beats the alternatives we had before or that other nations have had.
Of course, politicians and companies plan for years about government contracts. Of course, they both write the laws and determine the size of the checks. That's how government contracting is supposed to work.
Yes, a lot of that money is wasted. But it's wasted because of incompetence and "not my problem" attitudes, not because these people have some elaborate conspiracy.
These kinds of issues arise whenever more than two people work together on anything. It's the price we pay for living and cooperating. It's the cost of compromise and incomplete information. There is no magic fix for it and we can't throw people in jail for it. All you can do is try to do your part to improve things.
Who do you think the government is supposed to task with doing this kind of work? And who do you think is supposed to make the decisions about how to allocate money and how?
The approach is decades old... but no doubt, it's newly patented.