Comment Re:In before the morons (Score 1) 438
Actually, free market economies abhor a monopoly...
Comment In unrelated news... (Score 3, Funny) 366
An unexplained rash of spontaneous cow explosions has resulted in a glut in the Canadian beef market...
Comment Re:Democracy is the problem (Score 1) 709
AMEN!
Comment Re:Not a tax scam (Score 1) 1505
And actually, the evil businesses he is targeting are not cheats. They followed the law to the letter. Blame congress for leaving the loop holes.
It is more fundamental than that. A business must make a profit to survive. Think about plain and simple truth for a moment...
Now think about this:
A business never pays any taxes. It merely collects the taxes levied on it by government by increasing the price of the goods and services it provides or by lowering the wages of its employees.
Comment Re:Exactly -- is the software the means, or the en (Score 1) 370
A sucky one though. I doubt many programmers on this board want to be in a position that the work they produce for a company is essentially worthless and the way to move up is through the tech support department. I also doubt customers would benefit either since giving away the software and charging for support creates an incentive to make shoddy software that requires a lot of hand-holding.
That might hold true until your competitor realises what you are doing and makes a better offer to the customer.
As a business customer I want Free as in Freedom software (to avoid vendor lock-in) that is easy to use (to lower total-cost-of-ownership) and comes with "enterprise" level support (for the edge cases I create that eventually break things in some way).
As a vendor I want software that is cheap to build and maintain over the long run, and I want to build brand loyalty (even in a fiercely competitive market) by delivering a great product, and I don't want to have to maintain a huge support staff that eats into the profits I make by selling support contracts. Enterprise customers will pay for support simply because it eliminates some risk, even if they never actually have to pick up the phone and use it.
Comment Re:Biggest disappointment thusfar (Score 5, Insightful) 788
Obama took out of his Presidential campaign to vote in favor of spying on innocent Americans.
What did you expect?
Comment Re:Change we can believe in. (Score 1) 785
Comment There is a solution... (Score 3, Informative) 237
Submission + - MIT hacks XKCD talk with AACS key
Hanji writes: During a talk by popular webcomic author XKCD author Randall Munroe, MIT hackers
dropped hundreds
of labelled playpen balls onto the audience from hatches in the
ceiling. The labels bore XKCD's logo as well as the recently
discovered 16-byte AACS processing key.
Students Embarrass eBay With Firefox Add-On 269
An anonymous reader sends along a posting from the Grooveking blog on a group of Stanford students who got together to help promote Firefox and ended up releasing a long overdue eBay Toolbar for Firefox before Mozilla and eBay could release their jointly developed extension in Europe. Mozilla's COO said the preemptive release of the eBay Toolbar had ruffled some feathers among European eBay execs. "Besides basic search features, it removes external ads on the site and allows users to see thumbnail pictures on ALL search items, even those sellers didn't pay for. An eBay toolbar has been long overdue... eBay can't be too enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees. But eBay users get a really good deal."
Submission + - New Fair Use Bill introduced today to change DMCA
An anonymous reader writes: WashingtonPost.com notes that Reps Boucher(D-Va) and Dolittle(R-Calif) today introduced the FAIR USE Act that updates the DMCA to "make it easier for digital media consumers to use the content they buy." Boucher's statement on the bill says "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use..." Backing the bill is the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, the American Library Association and others.
Submission + - MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain
nadamsieee writes: "Eliot Van Buskirk has an interesting piece over at Wired about the fall-out from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win.""
Vista Worse For User Efficiency Than XP 546
erikvlie writes "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarized the most important findings."
EU Wants German Telekom Fiber Open to All 100
High Fibre writes "The European Commission has informed Germany that a new law protecting Deutsche Telekom's fiber optic network is illegal. Deutsche Telekom is in the process of rolling out a new fiber network that will serve the 50 largest German cities by the end of 2007 and convinced the German parliament to pass a law that would keep the competition from being able to lease its lines. The EC says that's a no-go: 'The EC believes that the German law would make it more difficult for competitors to enter the German market. More importantly, it runs contrary to an EC-endorsed recommendation that Deutsche Telekom be forced to open up its network — including the new fiber deployment — to competitors.'"
Submission + - How to Keep America Competitive
pkbarbiedoll writes: In a Washington Times column from this weekend, Bill Gates writes,
Interesting read, but this argument is not new and is based on a distortion of truth. If US companies simply offered fair pay, good benefits, and a general sense of job security to US citizens there would be no reason to insource labor from other countries. Mr. Gates implies that US workers are not willing to work IT anymore. He fails to mention why. Most college students do not wish to throw away 4 years of their lives (and thousands of dollars) on a career in an industry rife with outsourcing. Mr. Gates acknowledges that most US companies are not interested in offering competitive wages, so the only solution in his eyes is to import coders willing to work for a lot less (or, outsource). This has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with creating downward pressure on IT costs.
This issue has reached a crisis point. Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees. The United States provides 65,000 temporary H-1B visas each year to make up this shortfall — not nearly enough to fill open technical positions. Permanent residency regulations compound this problem. Temporary employees wait five years or longer for a green card. During that time they can't change jobs, which limits their opportunities to contribute to their employer's success and overall economic growth.
Interesting read, but this argument is not new and is based on a distortion of truth. If US companies simply offered fair pay, good benefits, and a general sense of job security to US citizens there would be no reason to insource labor from other countries. Mr. Gates implies that US workers are not willing to work IT anymore. He fails to mention why. Most college students do not wish to throw away 4 years of their lives (and thousands of dollars) on a career in an industry rife with outsourcing. Mr. Gates acknowledges that most US companies are not interested in offering competitive wages, so the only solution in his eyes is to import coders willing to work for a lot less (or, outsource). This has nothing to do with innovation and everything to do with creating downward pressure on IT costs.
