Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Intuit, Telemetry, Meetup
I'd prefer an apology from the IRS. Rico writes "Intuit have spoken out about the CD-protection methods of their TurboTax software. According to them, the protection is harmless to computers and does not erase data. Despite the huge negative customer feedback, Intuit are still profiting from the product."
Train the dog, then never call the command. Mitch Wagner writes "Barry Shein, subject of this week's /. interview, proposes in "ISP Head Floats Plan To Legalize Spam" that spam is impossible to block, and so instead should be legitimized and regulated, with a central, not-for-profit company charged with collecting fees from spammers and distributing those fees to ISPs that receive the spam. Of course, there have been many other plans for charging spammers to send spam, but those plans mostly have the fees going to the ISP that sends the e-mail, or to the user that receives the mail, rather than the ISP that receives it and has to deliver it to the end-users. I'm the author of the piece I link to in this article."
Make big money as an open source telemetrist! For anyone who missed it in the Science section, there's a great followup to the Linux-based home-brewed weather balloon we recently featured: the OpenTRAC project is looking for help in building an APRS-like protocol. If that's gibberish to you, check out their introduction to the protocol to get an idea of how it's useful. Future experimenters will thank you.
One good deed escapes punishment. Psyiode writes with a link to this story at the Houston Chronicle which begins "Jurors needed only about 15 minutes to acquit a Houston man who was accused of hacking into the Harris County district clerk's wireless computer system in March. One juror, Helen Smith, 62, said she and the other jurors found that Stefan Puffer indeed hacked into the system but they did not believe he caused any damage as the government had alleged."
Puffer was arrested last summer for demonstrating that the county court's wireless LAN wasn't secure, and telling them about it.
Do we need manned spaceflight? Professor_Quail writes "The BBC has a story on NASA's plans for a successor to the Space Shuttle. From the article: Nasa has revealed its first set of mission criteria for the Orbital Space Plane (OSP) - the series of space vehicle expected to replace the space shuttle from 2012. The new spacecraft's primary function will be to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and serve as a lifeboat if the station has to be evacuated."
Or do you have other plans? Finally, rufo writes "For those of you brave enough to weather the elements and meet your fellow geek, don't forget that the Slashdot Meetup is this Thursday at 7PM your local time zone. I've been to a couple and there's some rather interesting characters that show up, and the conversations are quite engaging. Highly recommended if you have nothing better to do on a Thursday evening." Hmmm, must check to see if there's one around Knoxville ...
I have no idea how these people think spammers would volunteer to be regulated and pay more. Even given the prescribed system the current bulk mailing methods will still work and still be cheaper.
I seriously doubt most of these guys care at all about regulations or laws given the lame illegel or immoral crap I see flooding my inbox.
This idea to let ISPs charge for spam is preposterous. Shein is just looking to make money out of our discomfort. He argues that charging is a better solution because you can't stop spam - but if you can find a spammer to charge him then you can just as easily find him to stop him and make him pay a fine.
Red alert everybody, if he gets enough industry support behind this idea and throws enough money at Washington, we'll *never* see an end to the spam.
Even with ISP charging, spam will always be cheaper than traditional mail and most other forms of advertising, and if legalized in this way I strongly suspect that we'll see the quantity of spam increase rather than the opposite.
In Canada MYOB software was sold to Intuit. .... well buying different software. This helpful advice came strait from a support call.
They now no longer support any payroll tax table updates and a bunch of other things that basically make the software useless. However, even with these horrendous omissions, they are as of today, still selling the software at full retail in stores across the country.
Lucky customers purchasing this software and want full functionality now have the option of
This is FRUAD and these clowns should be charged criminally. I will never by an Intuit product for as long as I live.
I have used TurboTax for the web two years in a row now. The first year I got a refund, and the bill was deducted from the refund. This year I had to pay and I was able to tell the program on which date the IRS should deduct money from my account. It also remembered where I live, and the various carryover events from last year (like capital losses). Overall, I thought it was a good experience and would recomend it over their normal product or Taxcut. Also, since it is web-based it I did my Taxes on a Linux box.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
While I understand that selecting a successor to the Space Shuttle is an important task, there is a much more important issue at hand: where will NASA get its next generation of visionary rocket scientists, to take us to Mars and beyond?
Many current NASA astronauts, scientists, and technicians first became interested in space exploration as a result of the "Space Race" in the 60s, and, later, grew and maintained their interest thoughout their adolescence by participating in the hobby of model rocketry.
After the space race ended, model rocketry started to decline, but the emergence of high power rocketry in the 80s and 90s revitalized the hobby, and brought back many "Born Again Rocketeers", or BARs, into the hobby; these are people who flew model rockets as kids, and rediscovered the hobby later in life. Many of these BARs are now introducing the hobby to a new generation, and passing on their inspiration.
Now, in the middle of a resurgence of interest, the hobby is in danger of being killed by overzealous overregulation. Due to a combination of misclassification of the most common hobby rocket propellant (Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant) as an explosive (instead of a flammable solid) by ATF, and background checks being mandated by the Homeland Security Act for any employees of companies that ship explosives, shippers like UPS have decided to stop carrying "explosives" altogether, meaning that rocket motors are now virtually impossible to ship, even by UPS ground.
Bottom line, this, and other similar regulations, are leading to the demise of rocketry as a safe, educational hobby. The next generation of rocket scientists will simply not exist.
However, there is hope. Efforts are underway to push a bill through Congress to explicitly exempt the materials used in the hobby of rocketry, when they are used for rocketry (i.e.: non-weapon) uses.
What is needed is a groundswell of support from concerned citizens, supporting this effort. There are complete details on this effort at http://www.space-rockets.com/congress.html, along with a number of talking points you may wish to incorporate into faxed letters to your Senators.
The bill hasn't been introduced yet, but should be this week some time. If you decide to join in, and send a letter, please wait until the notice is posted on http://www.space-rockets.com/congress.html before doing so. That way, the messages will have the most effect (and your senator may have some idea what you're talking about, as there will be a bill on the subject up for debate...).
If you want to help keep the dream alive, I encourage you to read the background info at that site, and join in this worthy effort.
Thanks,
- Rick "Rocket Geek" Dickinson
It is not a question of *how* people use the software it is a question of how Intuit deceived their customers by covertly installing Macrovision C-Dilla.
"In all the test systems they set up, they didn't find any appreciable deterioration in performance for any of the computer systems they tested," Allanson said.
Excuse me? I'll make the determination of what 'appreciable deterioration' *is* on *my* PCs.
One thing that Intuit is learning the hard way is not to listen to so-called 'experts' like Allanson's think tank. It is what your customers think and believe that is important. I used to use Quicken (for the last 6 years) and TurboTax (for the last three tax seasons). After several recent annoyances with Quicken and TurboTax's covert use of the Macrovision C-Dilla (Safecast) license manager was more than enough to push me toward using Microsoft's Money software and to use Klipenger's TaxCut software.
Piss your customers off and you'll be looking for new markets no matter *how* incorrect the consumers perceptions of the product's deficiencies are.
Some years ago, at 1 AM on a weeknight, on a back-country road on the south side of Austin, I saw the most incredible traffic jam I've ever seen.
I live in Dallas. I've driven in Los Angeles. I've seen some traffic jams.
What made this incredible is that it was also the politest traffic jam I've ever seen. Everyone was having a good time, no one was arguing, no horns were honking.
That road ran by Bergstrom Air Force Base, by the ramp. The Shuttle transporter 747, with a Shuttle on its back, was sitting on the ramp overnight. Everyone in that traffic jam wanted to see the Shuttle.
I wish I'd taken some pictures of the crowd, to give to the people who MISTAKENLY believe that "nobody is interested in space." There sure were a lot of "nobody" out on that road at 1 AM that night.
NASA should get on with X-39. Forget about the X-38 designs -- it was put on the chopping block for too long and now newer technology could be used. If more funding for X-38 had succeeded, then it should all be transferred to the newest program for X-39.
I suggest you read Slashdot
"We did it that way because we don't want to eat up disk space, and we wanted to make it easier if people had to restore from a backup.
Just how do you manage to restore data that never gets backed up?
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
If you want to be brutally practical, the ultimate reason for space exploration is simple: survival of the human species.
Species are able to survive disasters that strike their ecological niches by the simple expedient of being elsewhere. When a flood wipes out all of the creatures living in one particular meadow, the creatures in the next meadow over carry on as though nothing had happened.
Given the fact that, on a sufficiently long time scale, the odds of a worldwide ecological disaster (such as a "planet killer" asteroid, or a nuclear war) eventually approach certainty, it's absolutely imperative for the survival of "earthlings" that we start working towards a goal of spreading out, and taking steps to move beyond this one rock.
Disasters do happen, however infrequently. As every good sysadmin knows, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
Let's plan for the big one, and set up a RAIL (Redundant Array of Independent Lifeforms).
to track zero problem," he said. "We did it that way because we don't want to eat up disk space, and we wanted to make it easier if people had to restore from a backup."
Good grief! Intuit must think that users out there are total morons if they expect them to believe that load of malarky. And since when have these bloatware companies been interested in saving a few megabytes, much less kilobytes of disk space?
All I know is, my CPA never touches my boot sector. I have fixed his computers a few times, though. And he doesn't get me audited and stuck owing the IRS tens of thousands of dollars later on the way TurboTax has done to some of my friends.
Intuit was a great company a few years back. I was proud to partner with them om some things. But everything they've done lately has been pathetic.
We are not going back to the "original plan." A hell of a lot was learned from the Shuttle fleet. One of the most important payoffs from flying the Shuttle was the experience gained in reprocessing reusable vehicles. This information will be integrated into OSP and all other future reusable spaceflight vehicles.
OSP would suffer from many of the Shuttles' problems if we had built it in 1975 and stacked it on top of Saturn Vs. We'd now instead be discussing when we were going to replace the expensive and risky OSP.
By the way, in case anyone is confused, OSP was planned before we lost Columbia. People have been discussing this for the past year, and the proposal went to Congress in the Fall.
I'm completely fed up with IT weenies on Slashdot pontificating on how the space program should be run. Most don't know shit about space exploration beyond what they've read on Slashdot, CNN, and in Discover. Not only do they not understand how to evaluate courses for the future, they don't actually understand what the planning failures were in the past!!!!
All the uninformed bull on Slashdot is really starting to drive me crazy.
Why haven't ISP's started limiting the amount and speed with which you can send email. Most people send to maybe a dozen others at once tops. Why don't they set a 100 (25?) address limit per hour or something. One mail would go full speed, 50 would go at half speed, etc...(and flag users/sysop if it goes over! This would help reduce virus attacks!) Comercial sites like Slashdot, could get a business account with higher limits and certian responsibility expected!
Simply slowing down the system would stop most spammers. You can only send 2400 emails in a day from a user account. To send millons would take days--costing them money! Also, ISP's should limit incomming traffic in a similar fashion. Again, watch headers and if too many come at once, drop 'um!
I can't see any legitimate use for normal users to have that kind of power. Legitimate users of newsgroups, non-profits, commercial sites could get a special flag from the ISP to allow full-speed access.
They key is for them to DO SOMETHING! They don't have to broadcast everyting, just start slipping in the filters a little at a time.
Tomorrow's rocket scientists will likely come in large part from India, Pakistan, and China, countries looking to build the bigger better missile. Those countries are going to give incentive for engineers to go into rocketry programs, because that is a priority of theirs, and they will fund it accordingly.
When it comes to Rocketry, Military need is going to produce more rocket scientists than will sheer enthusiasm, and to that end, shed no tears, the US military will always want that shinier rocket that can turn corners and stop on a dime.
Your average kid may not grow up playing with model rockets, because he can't get his hands on the materiel, but I'm sure he'll take the tuition break and a career in rocketry if it's offered him.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Correct enough for a Slashdot editor, anyway...
I for one am glad to see that this man wasn't punished. He saw a vulnerability checked it out, and alerted the people(I hope I have that right). If anything the man should be thanked. What if someone malicious had come along. If they had things could have been bad. Because of this vulnerability with Wireless networks, I choose to keep my home network hardwired. Now I just wish that guy with the laptop outside my house would realize I don't have a wireless network and go away.
FOML: Rise to Power
Ignoring the fact that other people probably do use the full boot sector area of their disks, there's an obvious reason why Intuit shouldn't do it: standards. Standards have defined the boot sector not as a DRM tool, but as the first place on the disk that gets executed at boot time. It's a critical piece of every (AFAIK) operating system's core design, and needs to be very reliable, because it's hard to fix if you can't load your operating system, and even harder without rescue media handy.
This is the same as all of the CD-ROM copy-protection schemes out there that write special "bad" sectors or mess with the table-of-contents in a non-standard way. Plenty of people have CD drives that are unable to use those forms of copy-protection, and some of the manufacturers end up patching the game to remove it. Anyone who wants to actually copy the game, of course, can easily download a utility to get around the problem. It only hurts unknowing consumers.
Microsoft frequently plays the "embrace and extend" game and has been called to task for it. So should Intuit, Sony, and everyone else who tries to violate a standard instead of playing by the rules.
--Elentar
Footnote: Consider that a laissez-faire economy results in prices that rise to what the market will bear. If, then, a piece of software is regularly pirated, copied, or used once and returned, doesn't that indicate that the price is too high, according to the market? Corporations should listen to the message consumers are sending and reduce the cost of their software, not impede upon the rights of consumers to use their own possessions.
The wheel it turns, around and around, with an ancient rumbling sound.
In reading that NASA is going to spend 10 years and billions of dollars to build a new space shuttle that does even less than the current space shuttle I'm left shaking my head. Is this all NASA can manage, spending more and more money to do less and less. I appreciate the new mini space shuttle may be cheaper, simpler and safer than the space shuttle but it also can't carry any cargo and all it will do is ferry people to and from the ISS which is already recognized as a dead end a giant waste of money in space.
NASA may as well pack it in if this space plane and the ISS is their vision of manned space flight for the next decade. They talk about the ISS as crucial to the trip to Mars but I just don't see it.
If NASA wants to do something to stay relevent they need to pour their resources into:
- Cheap heavy lift launchers to get big cargos in to low earth orbit
- Innovative interplanetary propulsion like the ion drive starting initial tests
- Innovative means to protect againt radiation on interplanetary space flight, cowering in low earth orbit in the ISS wont help.
- Serious closed biosystem research. The ISS is a joke because it requires constant resupply of water and food.
- Continued discovery of the resources available on Mars and figure out smart ways for colonists to tap them when they get there.
If we want to get to Mars stop planning for a round trip. Round trips make the mission MUCH harder and make it in to the same dead end that was Apollo. We need to start designing one way missions that send people to Mars as colonists and not visitors. There would be no shortage of volunteers for a one way trip as long as they have a fair shot at long term survival. If I were a little younger I would be at the head of the line. Throughout history there have always been exceptional individuals that want to explore new frontiers. At this point, short of exploring the oceans, there simply aren't any frontiers left here to explore. Spinning around in low earth orbit sure isn't a new frontier any more. Create a new frontier to explore on Mars and will capture the imagination of the world again and NASA you really, desperately need that if you dont want to wither away as poinless bureaucracy.
Its an absurd waste to have to try to get a ship to Mars that has to get back to earth. The round trip scenario has led to the massive NASA fixation on long duration zero gravity research which is about all the ISS is good for.
A far more rational apporach is a fast one way trip for colonists with periodic cargo flights before and after they arrive to insure the colonists have the resources and equipment to create permenent habitats, raise food, find water and survive.
We should be doing research on how people cope with 6-9 months in zero G en route to indefinite periods at the %38 Martian gravity. Going from zero G to %38 is a lot less of a problem than spending years in zero G on a round trip and ending up back in Earth's gravity.
Please NASA, start designing fast propulsion, biospheres and Mars colonization missions. Please stop reinventing the space shuttle and wasting money on dead ends that are relatively easy for you to do but pointless. Please do things that are hard but worth it.
@de_machina
Subtitute "illegal drugs" for spam, and we just may be able to solve both problems.
I hate to break it to you, but I don't work for NASA and I certainly don't work on the Shuttle Program. I am a physicist, and have a damned good working knowledge of the space program.
You don't get the purpose of the Orbital Space Plane, do you? They're selling it as a way to transport people to and from the Station. But, it's clearly intended to do much more. They're intending to stack it on much larger rockets, so that we can push out to the Earth-Moon L1 point, perform large telescope construction, do manned asteroid exploration, etc. It's an element of a broader plan to push the envelope of joint human-robotic exploration outwards.
All of this was described in detail in NASA Exploration Team (NExT) comments last year. It also fits in nicely with broader NASA plans which have been around for decades.
We all understand that spaceflight costs far too much right now. We also have to remain always vigilant that those who wish to use spacecraft development and operations as a jobs program don't succeed. But, after twenty years with the Shuttle there has been significant movement over the last couple of years toward trying to get the hell out of Low-Earth orbit and doing it in a sustainable manner.
Horse feathers! This is what we call "spin control." The point is that a key is placed in the "boot track." Yes, a Windows OS PC has nothing there, but some alternate boot loaders do. The key is a unique identifier that Intuit associates with your registration data ON THEIR SERVERS. From then on, they can ask their installed software to provide this key on demand when you visit their web sites, partner web sites with whom they may share the data, and any future Intuit software can examine this key. It's a token they can associate with any future data.
Moreover, the purpose is ye olde Digital Restrictions Management. I'm not a software thief. I resent being presumed to be one. Yes, I bought and installed this crippleware, but I won't next year. No matter how much they change. They violated my trust. They don't get it back automatically because some PR flak said nice things. Yes, Intuit, that's right. I've spent several hundred dollars on your software over the years (every version of Quicken from 5 through 2000 where I stopped for lack of Linux support) and every version of TurboTax for roughly the same length of time. Not one dollar more. Ever. Period.
I'm not saying they are using this key, or sharing this key for nefarious purposes, but fer gudness sake! Get bent, Intuit! I can't install TurboTax on another one of my PC's, even if I deinstall it first from the first PC (well, it'll install but I can't file or print!).
(BTW, I think in my spare time I might write a little utility, you'll have to go down to DOS mode to use it, but the BIOS disk calls could be used to copy cyl 0 to a file and then to write that file to cyl 0 of another hard drive. Oh, wait! There's the DMCA. I could go to jail for presuming that software I bought and put on hardware I own was mine to use. Foolish me!)
This pattern of contempt for customers shouldn't be ignored just because a company backpedals a little bit. We lose choice when we do not make a choice. Intuit would have to come out and say "We were wrong. We will never use any such technology ever again." before I would even THINK about giving them another dime. Nope. I've never used a personal finance or tac package from a company other than Intuit before. But never again. TaxCut 2003, here I come. Gnucash, here I come. I'm done with Intuit. And I hope you are too.