When I moved out to the suburbs I was still using a StarTac; it had been working fine until I moved to an area where the signal was too weak. Then I switched to a V70; remember that little "rotate to open" thing? It had an awful UI, but it did have a great radio and performed better than the StarTac.
I finally came to the conclusion that it was either give up on cell phones or change providers. So I did; switched to Verizon and got another Motorola phone - which I still carry. The V710 is another Motorola phone with an awful UI; even worse than the V70. And Verizon crippled it in various devious ways to insure that you couldn't do anything without paying them for it. But I get 5 bars of signal everywhere now - at least in this area, Verizon's coverage is far superior.
If PacBell Mobile / SBC Mobile / Cingular / AT&T Wireless (this year's name) would spend some money and build a few more towers in populated areas like this one I'd switch back. Especially if I could have a usable phone instead of this balky lump.
I used to have the trendy phone of the day and Cingular (now AT&T) service. The phone was OK, but I couldn't use it at home; no signal in my San Jose suburb location. No signal at the office either. There was a stretch of two or three blocks along the way between home and work where there was enough signal to make or receive a call; just about useless.
The cell phone salesmen at the local mall couldn't get a signal, either. "Could you demonstrate that phone?" "Nope".
To be fair, there were lots of locations in the San Jose area where there was plenty of signal. It was just the places where I lived, worked, and shopped that were in dead zones.
So I changed to Verizon. Got a Motorola V710; it was the only thing they had at the time that supported Bluetooth. Yeah, right. Dislike the phone, dislike the provider - but they do have good signal strength everywhere I go.
Anyway, no matter how much the IPhone may walk on water - it's still on the Cingular (AT&T) network, and they've still got dead zones everyplace that I'm likely to be. So I won't buy one; it looks very attractive and undoubtedly is leaps and bounds more friendly than this Motorola piece. But they hooked up with a (in this area, anyway) substandard provider so it's useless to me.
IPhone will almost certainly be used in business and supported by IT. Someone in the corporate offices will buy the trendy device and want to use it at work. IT won't be able to say no - they'll just end up figuring some way to make it work with their systems.
Remember back when Blackberry was new? How did those get into your company? Yup, the IPhone will follow that well-traveled path.
They're using piracy as cover for breaking net neutrality. If that doesn't work well enough, expect them to start with a "save the children" campaign.
Once they've got the internet nicely partitioned, then we'll find out what it's going to cost providers / customers to avoid having their site on the pirate / child porn list.
There might even be optional services to buy; $5 per month to use BitTorrent, $3 per month to use Google, etc.
One thing I'm sure of - the reason for their "filtering" move is profit, nothing more or less. It'll be followed by blocking / impairing access to sites / netblocks that host "pirate" material. Then we'll find out who will be paying and how much. In the final act, AT&T determines that Google and other popular sites have links to pirate content so they'll go on the blocked / impaired list.
By the time that people notice what's happening it'll be too late. Welcome to our brave new world where men in black suits visit with an offer "it'd be a shame if something happened to that nice web site of yours".
The tricky part of the plan is almost done. If they get a pass from the government on filtering - it's a sure bet that they'll be bending the filtering to serve their bottom line best.
There's so much wrong with the current crop of cell phones that it shouldn't be hard for any manufacturer to make significant improvements - without infringing on anyone's patents.
Look at the biggest seller of recent history - the Motorola Razr. Great job of miniaturization and clean physical design. But the software - what a joke. The menu structure is user hostile and many of the "features" are less than usable.
Here's an example: the phone can be operated by voice command - push a button, speak the command and the phone does it. Sounds good, but the implementation is spotty at best. So you have a phone where you can say "camera" and have it launch the camera software - but there's no voice command to take a picture or to exit the camera software. Who thought that was a good idea?
If you work your way through the menus to actually take a picture, you'll find that the picture quality is - let's be generous and call it "awful". Almost usable in direct sunlight; don't even bother indoors. Megapixels don't matter when the lens is no good.
Anyway, Motorola has been implementing their menu driven cell phones in the same half baked way for many, many years. People keep complaining, but what really matters to Motorola is that they keep buying the phones. Good enough rules the day...
Will the IPhone shake things up and inspire the other manufacturers to new levels of quality? One can only hope.
Maybe I'm a little cynical, but it seems that when corporate reorganizations end up with one specific product split out from the rest, it means that product is about played out and the new structure will make it much easier to kill that product off. Much tidier, too - Sims, Inc. goes out of business and there's no problems with laid off workers, etc. to deal with.
EA has had enough "employee problems" over the years so it's entirely possible that they could see this as their golden opportunity to trim the payroll with almost no downside.
My bet: EA Sims will be history in less than a year. Product being produced today will be in the discount software bin in 3 months...
While there are carefully crafted laws that offer "safe harbor" protection to ISPs, that protection requires that the ISP exert no editorial control over the content. If they have editorial control, they are expected to use that control and can be found liable for failing to do so.
What AT&T plans to do moves them squarely onto the bullseye. Of course, some money will change hands and the Justice Department may choose not to prosecute - and there will be new laws slipped in as ammendments to "pony and puppy" bills to make this legal retroactively.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out who's behind this latest outrage; too bad that they'll escape from it with little more than a black eye.
Here's how it's likely to play out: AT&T starts "filtering" traffic based on content - that's exerting editorial control and their safe harbor is lost. The media companies will sit by quietly, but some other copyright holder with big plans will see the opening and hit them with the mother of all lawsuits. AT&T has deep pockets; they're an attractive target. Stepping out into the line of fire probably isn't the best idea that's ever come out of their headquarters.
Too bad (for AT&T) that the current megacorp friendly administration won't be around to protect them...
It doesn't seem to be a problem for people to jump up and say "copyright infringement isn't theft!" but nobody seems to have pointed out that Digital Rights Management isn't encryption. Encryption is just one of the tools that can be used by rights holders (or their proxies) to manage / control the distribution of their data.
A file with DRM might not be encrypted; it might have a watermark or other internal identification. It might be stored in an unusual format that can only be read on certain devices or with specific software.
In fact, anything that alters the way you can use, copy, or distribute a file according to the wishes of the copyright holder (or his proxy), is Digital Rights Management.
So the $1.39 files you download from ITunes don't have encryption on them. That's nice, but they do have internal identification embedded in them, and they are stored in an unusual format that can't be read by most devices. Any claim that these files are DRM free is demonstrably false.
The claim that you can move the files around your various devices without restriction is true - as long as those devices speak the M4A format they can play the file. But let's put this in perspective: when ITunes first launched, you could authorize 5 computers to play their DRM protected files. Then Apple unilaterally changed this to only 3 authorized computers. Now, they'll let you play their files on an unlimited number of computers - but only YOUR computers, and only if you pay them 40 cents per file.
The only real benefit here is Apple's: more money per file, and less support problems coming from people with multiple computer failures that could no longer access their paid-for content. Us consumers aren't likely to have 3 or 5 computers / players anyway, so increasing that number doesn't benefit the consumer much. Are the files better sounding in their new higher bitrate? Maybe; there is a difference, but it's subtle and not always easy to hear. What IS easy to hear is the difference between an ITunes purchased music file and the same music ripped from a CD. The difference in sound quality is obvious - the ITunes files are inferior.
The original article reads just like a Microsoft public relations release. So who are these people, anyway? A few minutes spent with Google reveals that BMC is a pretty large software company - with multiple facilities. Geez, their Houston offices cover 1.5 million square feet.
So what possible interest could this large multi-national software company have in GPL software? "Boo hoo, we can't steal code from the internet."
Their assertion that the GPL is unfavorable to developers is questionable at best. Unfair to their developers because they have to write the code instead of stealing it? Or is it unfair to other developers because - I don't know, some other reason that you have to drink the MS kool aid to understand.
Really, now - a company that makes monitoring and management software for several Windows versions - and Linux - issues a release in which they speak of "developers!" and spread FUD about the GPL. Coincidence?
If you were some sort of bottom-feeding scum with a big list of email addresses that you'd scraped from web pages - and looking to sell your list (profitable, and not risky) then you'd appreciate the difference between the price you'd get for raw addresses, or verified addresses.
Rather than launch a spam campaign and deal with the associated risks, why not just bounce your list off of a few high-traffic web sites to see if it's a valid login there? It's scriptable, doesn't cost anything - and the resulting list is much more valuable. If you're really lucky, the sites will offer other personal data as a "clue" to the forgotten password and you can plump up the list and make it even more valuable.
This is why Slashdot should care - if a login fails, no website should offer anything more than the fact that the login failed. No "bad password" or "invalid user id" - and definitely no "wrong password, click here and we'll ask you a personal question". Nothing more than "login failed".
I'm coming to this discussion a little late - but I actually live in an "automated house" so I can offer some useful tips.
The biggest problem you'll have is getting adequate wiring to all the places that it needs to go to. Your LAN isn't the big issue; wireless works well. But what about an alarm system? You'll want two-pair to every door and window for an alarm; one pair is good enough but there's always one doggoned bad wire somewhere - the second pair is your safety net. What about audio / video? Built-in speakers or wall outlets for speakers? Where should they be located now, and after you rearrange the furniture a couple of times?
The suggestion to install conduits between the rooms and a central location is a good one - but keep in mind that having an outlet in a room doesn't necessarily mean that the outlet is where its needed. Unless you're got built-in furniture that defines where things will be located, choosing wire termination locations is your biggest problem. Attics and crawl spaces work even better - that way you can run a wire down a stud cavity and have it end up in just the right place - even years later.
And always remember that all power cables and outlets stay at least one foot away from any other wiring.
Think long and hard about what you want to accomplish, where the major pieces will be located, where outlets would be handy under all different room configurations. Then put in twice as many wires as you think you'll need and you'll be pretty close to right. Need a coax for video? Run two. Need speaker cable? Run two. This way you aren't stopped by bad wires, and when you get that dual-tuner Tivo or a 5.1 stereo system the wires you need are already there.
It's been a while since I've written to Diane. Last time was on the eve of voting on yet another RIAA-friendly piece of legislation. One of her staff members sent me back a nice form letter reply that basically said that she was going to do the right thing - and support the legislation. Nice to know that not only does she not read her email, she doesn't pay any attention to it either.
I suspect they'll pay a bit more attention to the email I sent this time. Very carefully worded, but many sharp edges.
Pass the word to everyone you know: Diane Feinstein is bought and paid for by the RIAA.
The summary says that Vista has "taken care" of buffer overflow problems. I'd like to submit that one of the key features of XP SP2 was that they'd gone over the code completely and eliminated all unchecked buffers - which (according to MS) eliminated buffer overflow problems.
Microsoft is their own worst enemy; they make wild claims about the functionality of their latest version but that functionality never meets their or their customers expectations. Then some exploit points out that they were being economical with the truth. Much like a recently patched (again) exploit that affected 98, NT, 2000, XP and Vista. Seems somewhat odd that an operating system that has been completely rewritten at great expense and effort should be affected by the SAME bug that has been in their products for years.
I mean, how can a company whose email clients automatically launch attachments say that they take security seriously? Let's not get started on the brain-dead file association open / execution misfeatures in every version up to and including Vista. Here's an interesting exercise to see how bad things can get: rename a safe executable to a filename with a WAV extension. Now double-click it; the executable runs. Combine that with browsers and email clients that automatically play WAV files and you've got a very exploitable platform.
What continues to amaze me is that the file type security is applied based on the file extension - but when you execute a file, the system looks at the file header to determine how to open / execute it. This bit of design stupidity has been the cause of millions of systems being exploited. Just a simple check to see if the file header matches the selected file type would go a long way - but no, this is too difficult. Here, have a UAC nuisance instead...
The court's decision is pretty narrowly defined - if the server is owned by someone else, then uploading music to it is considered distributing.
So if you upload it to your own server this decision wouldn't necessarily apply. This brings up some interesting ideas; suppose a server farm was operated as a co-op where all the users own shares of the server farm. Now, if they upload music to this server farm are they distributing it to someone else?
How about if someone you don't know downloads a copy of a song from your server while you're not watching - is this distribution?
The record companies are setting legal precedents right and left these days - but I wonder if they realize what kind of corner they're painting themselves into. The basic idea of the copyright owner being the one who decides who gets copies of his work for a limited time is sound. I don't think even a hardened pirate can honestly argue against this. But this simple idea has been blown up and perverted far beyond what it was intended to be by greedy businessmen. The push-back from the general public is getting stronger by the day and it's just a matter of time before these companies find themselves holding the short end of the stick.
Want to hasten that day? Inform others of what's going on, and defund the crooks by refusing to purchase their products. Take the money out and they'll fold up very quickly.
As the current equivalents of buggy whip and button hook manufacturers, media companies that deliver their product as a physical artifact are dying. They won't go quickly or easily, and they'll fight in every way they can to hold on to their past glories.
But the world turns and the new replaces the old. Such is how it always has been and always will be; try to feel just a little sorry (if you can) for those who become irrelevant in tomorrow's world. One day, it'll be your own chosen career or industry that slips below the horizon.
Even the (rightfully) hated RIAA and MPAA are simply trying every angle they can in hopes of propping up their dying organizations for a little longer. The damage they do as they thrash around in their death throes will take years to clean up - but they will die, and the mess will be cleaned up.
Against this background, why be surprised that some newspapers think that Google should pay them for the privelege of indexing their web pages? If they could make that pig fly, they could compensate for the loss in subscription revenues for - maybe another year or so. Google chooses not to pay, and chooses rightly. These companies are doomed and there's nothing for Google or anyone else to gain by delaying their demise.
Let me see if I can summarize:
1: Start with starch
2: Put it in a car
3: (waving of hands)
4: Profit!
Next: Electricity from seawater, loosely based on biochemistry of electric eels.
Good idea - ask Alton why you'd want to cook meat at higher temperatures than found in the home kitchen. The holy grail of steaks: nicely browned and grill marked on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside - can only be found through the application of very high temperatures.
Many steak house kitchens use a cooking device called a "salamander" to cook steaks. It's essentially two of these infrared elements; one above, one below and just enough room to slide the steak inbetween. Those reach temperatures of 1500 degrees or more - and the people who eat the steaks rave about how well they're cooked.
Being a proper sort of geek, I converted my new grill from propane to natural gas before lighting it the first time. A quick change of inlet hose and a little numbered drill action on the orifices and I never have to worry about running out of propane. While I was at it, I uprated the main burners just a touch so that I can get it up to some even higher temperatures for cooking meats.
Cooking at these higher temperatures isn't like cooking on charcoal or a regular propane grill. Things cook faster and flare-ups don't happen; drips vaporize (poof) and only provide added flavor.
If I feel like I'm missing the good old campfire flavor, I can throw some wood chips in the smoker box. Hickory is nice, sometimes cherry is better. I think I've got a bag of mesquite chips around here somewhere...
For those who wonder why anyone wouldn't use charcoal - turn knob, push button - 15 minutes later the temperature is passing 700 and it's time to toss the meat on. Yum yum - and after cooking, turn the main burners all the way up, close the lid, and check back in 30 minutes. All the mess is now ash; brush it away and it's clean again.
Why not broil in the oven? Not the same thing at all! Your household cooking appliances are designed so the average knuckle-dragger won't burn the house down. Those gray steaks that only have a thin pink stripe in the middle are a poor shadow of what a well grilled steak is like. And by having the cooking fire outdoors, the house stays cooler in the summer.
Gas grills are a very good thing when well designed and well handled - capable of better and more dependable results than a charcoal fired grill. Does that ceramic infrared burner add anything to the equation? I'm not convinced; it's more of a spec sheet checkoff for the marketing department.
Just got a new grill a couple of weeks ago and it came with an "infrared burner" in it. There's nothing that says that a geek can't enjoy a nice grilled T-bone from time to time is there? Can't have pizza every night, you know.
OK, so this fancy burner looks different but doesn't seem to make a significant difference in performance. YMMV and all that, but I wouldn't pay extra for one of these. It's basically a ceramic grid that the gas blows through, so it's more fragile than the typical rolled steel or cast iron burner - probably cheaper to manufacture, too.
Actually, it's about as close to a non-significant change in gas grill technology as you can get. Who greenlighted this story?
The current administration has taken our country a long ways down the road to fascism. This spells disaster for our country; the right candidate is the one that'll jerk us back from this precipice and put us back on the road to being the United States of America.
Before someone quibbles, let's define what a fascist government does: it cedes various government powers to a select group of corporations. That's the real definition and I don't think anyone can deny that this has been going on for several years.
The reason that fascism is almost universally considered evil is simple: Governments serve the needs of their citizens, corporations operate to make a profit. Those two goals are often mutually exclusive and when corporate government sets in it's like living in a bad job that you can't quit. Research Italy under Mussolini for a richly detailed description of what living in a fascist society is like.
It's going to take at least one person with integrity and honor (and brass balls) to get this country to make a quick turn back towards democracy. I can only hope that such a person would be willing to take on one of the hardest tasks a man could face.
It's almost certainly not going to be someone coming from one of the regular political parties. The parties have a vested interest in keeping things the same; all that under the table money is hard to walk away from. They wouldn't consider offering a candidate for public office who wasn't going to play the same old game, they haven't and they won't.
And don't look to the corporate world for good leadership. Consider one of the most successful companies: Microsoft. Consider what they offer, how much they charge for it, and how they've interacted with competitors and regulatory agencies in their continual quest for more, more, more money. Ballmer (or Gates) for president? Whose interest do you really think they'd represent?
The next few years are going to be very, very tricky. They're monitoring your phone and internet, cameras watch you as you move around and it's all to keep you safe. Sure it is; they're also building many large "holding facilities". It's a small step to where they monitor your communications and activities to keep the government safe - those who represent some kind of risk to the continued power of the government get whisked away to a waiting "holding facility". With these "useful" tools in place, how long will it be before they're used against the people? What would Bill Gates do with these tools? Right.
Wake up, folks - the 2008 elections are coming and every one of us should become very familiar with the candidates and vote appropriately. It's too dangerous to stay home and let someone else choose...
After years of watching SCO flounder in their lawsuit in IBM - why would Microsoft try the same tactics? It didn't work before, it won't work now. There may be a temporary FUD benefit, but in the long run it'll just send Microsoft down the path to irrelevancy.
Today's statement blew their credibility totally - out of 235 patents, 11% are supposedly owned by Microsoft. But they don't know which ones and it'd be too difficult to find out.
So if they don't know which patents might be infringed upon - and find it too difficult to research it - then where did that attack against Linux come from? Pure fantasy, of course. It's probably actionable fantasy, too - all the elements of libel are present in Microsoft's "Linux infringes on Microsoft patents". Say - that might be interesting; to defend against a libel charge they'd have to prove that their statement was true. That'd keep their legal staff busy for a few months or years - and give everyone else a target to aim at.
We can only hope that most media outlets make note of the conflicting statements and complete lack of any reason for their claim that Linux infringes Microsoft patents. Microsoft has NO SUCH EVIDENCE of infringement - and has made a public statement that it's too difficult / not worth their time to try to find any such evidence.
CardSpace turned up on my XP box unbidden; came along with the "critical updates". There doesn't seem to be any way to uninstall it, either.
Just more of the anti-consumer practices we know and hate from our favorite monopolist. I especially like the way their updates change my default browser to IE even though the system was configured to use Firefox as the default.
Whoever it was that said CardSpace was optional - ask them how to remove it. I'd like to exercise that option...
Since this website was hosting JS code that was intended to be executed on users machines - with no notification that this code would be run or what it did - then this starts to look a little different, don't you think?
And for a user to take action to prevent unwanted programs from being executed on his machine; nothing wrong with that, is there?
I don't think any website that expects me to download and run code from their website has anything to complain about if I choose not to run their code.
Slashdot Mirror
Go get 'em girl...
I finally came to the conclusion that it was either give up on cell phones or change providers. So I did; switched to Verizon and got another Motorola phone - which I still carry. The V710 is another Motorola phone with an awful UI; even worse than the V70. And Verizon crippled it in various devious ways to insure that you couldn't do anything without paying them for it. But I get 5 bars of signal everywhere now - at least in this area, Verizon's coverage is far superior.
If PacBell Mobile / SBC Mobile / Cingular / AT&T Wireless (this year's name) would spend some money and build a few more towers in populated areas like this one I'd switch back. Especially if I could have a usable phone instead of this balky lump.
The cell phone salesmen at the local mall couldn't get a signal, either. "Could you demonstrate that phone?" "Nope".
To be fair, there were lots of locations in the San Jose area where there was plenty of signal. It was just the places where I lived, worked, and shopped that were in dead zones.
So I changed to Verizon. Got a Motorola V710; it was the only thing they had at the time that supported Bluetooth. Yeah, right. Dislike the phone, dislike the provider - but they do have good signal strength everywhere I go.
Anyway, no matter how much the IPhone may walk on water - it's still on the Cingular (AT&T) network, and they've still got dead zones everyplace that I'm likely to be. So I won't buy one; it looks very attractive and undoubtedly is leaps and bounds more friendly than this Motorola piece. But they hooked up with a (in this area, anyway) substandard provider so it's useless to me.
Remember back when Blackberry was new? How did those get into your company? Yup, the IPhone will follow that well-traveled path.
Once they've got the internet nicely partitioned, then we'll find out what it's going to cost providers / customers to avoid having their site on the pirate / child porn list.
There might even be optional services to buy; $5 per month to use BitTorrent, $3 per month to use Google, etc.
One thing I'm sure of - the reason for their "filtering" move is profit, nothing more or less. It'll be followed by blocking / impairing access to sites / netblocks that host "pirate" material. Then we'll find out who will be paying and how much. In the final act, AT&T determines that Google and other popular sites have links to pirate content so they'll go on the blocked / impaired list.
By the time that people notice what's happening it'll be too late. Welcome to our brave new world where men in black suits visit with an offer "it'd be a shame if something happened to that nice web site of yours".
The tricky part of the plan is almost done. If they get a pass from the government on filtering - it's a sure bet that they'll be bending the filtering to serve their bottom line best.
Look at the biggest seller of recent history - the Motorola Razr. Great job of miniaturization and clean physical design. But the software - what a joke. The menu structure is user hostile and many of the "features" are less than usable.
Here's an example: the phone can be operated by voice command - push a button, speak the command and the phone does it. Sounds good, but the implementation is spotty at best. So you have a phone where you can say "camera" and have it launch the camera software - but there's no voice command to take a picture or to exit the camera software. Who thought that was a good idea?
If you work your way through the menus to actually take a picture, you'll find that the picture quality is - let's be generous and call it "awful". Almost usable in direct sunlight; don't even bother indoors. Megapixels don't matter when the lens is no good.
Anyway, Motorola has been implementing their menu driven cell phones in the same half baked way for many, many years. People keep complaining, but what really matters to Motorola is that they keep buying the phones. Good enough rules the day...
Will the IPhone shake things up and inspire the other manufacturers to new levels of quality? One can only hope.
EA has had enough "employee problems" over the years so it's entirely possible that they could see this as their golden opportunity to trim the payroll with almost no downside.
My bet: EA Sims will be history in less than a year. Product being produced today will be in the discount software bin in 3 months...
What AT&T plans to do moves them squarely onto the bullseye. Of course, some money will change hands and the Justice Department may choose not to prosecute - and there will be new laws slipped in as ammendments to "pony and puppy" bills to make this legal retroactively.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out who's behind this latest outrage; too bad that they'll escape from it with little more than a black eye.
Here's how it's likely to play out: AT&T starts "filtering" traffic based on content - that's exerting editorial control and their safe harbor is lost. The media companies will sit by quietly, but some other copyright holder with big plans will see the opening and hit them with the mother of all lawsuits. AT&T has deep pockets; they're an attractive target. Stepping out into the line of fire probably isn't the best idea that's ever come out of their headquarters.
Too bad (for AT&T) that the current megacorp friendly administration won't be around to protect them...
A file with DRM might not be encrypted; it might have a watermark or other internal identification. It might be stored in an unusual format that can only be read on certain devices or with specific software.
In fact, anything that alters the way you can use, copy, or distribute a file according to the wishes of the copyright holder (or his proxy), is Digital Rights Management.
So the $1.39 files you download from ITunes don't have encryption on them. That's nice, but they do have internal identification embedded in them, and they are stored in an unusual format that can't be read by most devices. Any claim that these files are DRM free is demonstrably false.
The claim that you can move the files around your various devices without restriction is true - as long as those devices speak the M4A format they can play the file. But let's put this in perspective: when ITunes first launched, you could authorize 5 computers to play their DRM protected files. Then Apple unilaterally changed this to only 3 authorized computers. Now, they'll let you play their files on an unlimited number of computers - but only YOUR computers, and only if you pay them 40 cents per file.
The only real benefit here is Apple's: more money per file, and less support problems coming from people with multiple computer failures that could no longer access their paid-for content. Us consumers aren't likely to have 3 or 5 computers / players anyway, so increasing that number doesn't benefit the consumer much. Are the files better sounding in their new higher bitrate? Maybe; there is a difference, but it's subtle and not always easy to hear. What IS easy to hear is the difference between an ITunes purchased music file and the same music ripped from a CD. The difference in sound quality is obvious - the ITunes files are inferior.
So what possible interest could this large multi-national software company have in GPL software? "Boo hoo, we can't steal code from the internet."
Their assertion that the GPL is unfavorable to developers is questionable at best. Unfair to their developers because they have to write the code instead of stealing it? Or is it unfair to other developers because - I don't know, some other reason that you have to drink the MS kool aid to understand.
Really, now - a company that makes monitoring and management software for several Windows versions - and Linux - issues a release in which they speak of "developers!" and spread FUD about the GPL. Coincidence?
Rather than launch a spam campaign and deal with the associated risks, why not just bounce your list off of a few high-traffic web sites to see if it's a valid login there? It's scriptable, doesn't cost anything - and the resulting list is much more valuable. If you're really lucky, the sites will offer other personal data as a "clue" to the forgotten password and you can plump up the list and make it even more valuable.
This is why Slashdot should care - if a login fails, no website should offer anything more than the fact that the login failed. No "bad password" or "invalid user id" - and definitely no "wrong password, click here and we'll ask you a personal question". Nothing more than "login failed".
I think that "fascist" is the word you're looking for...
The biggest problem you'll have is getting adequate wiring to all the places that it needs to go to. Your LAN isn't the big issue; wireless works well. But what about an alarm system? You'll want two-pair to every door and window for an alarm; one pair is good enough but there's always one doggoned bad wire somewhere - the second pair is your safety net. What about audio / video? Built-in speakers or wall outlets for speakers? Where should they be located now, and after you rearrange the furniture a couple of times?
The suggestion to install conduits between the rooms and a central location is a good one - but keep in mind that having an outlet in a room doesn't necessarily mean that the outlet is where its needed. Unless you're got built-in furniture that defines where things will be located, choosing wire termination locations is your biggest problem. Attics and crawl spaces work even better - that way you can run a wire down a stud cavity and have it end up in just the right place - even years later.
And always remember that all power cables and outlets stay at least one foot away from any other wiring.
Think long and hard about what you want to accomplish, where the major pieces will be located, where outlets would be handy under all different room configurations. Then put in twice as many wires as you think you'll need and you'll be pretty close to right. Need a coax for video? Run two. Need speaker cable? Run two. This way you aren't stopped by bad wires, and when you get that dual-tuner Tivo or a 5.1 stereo system the wires you need are already there.
I suspect they'll pay a bit more attention to the email I sent this time. Very carefully worded, but many sharp edges.
Pass the word to everyone you know: Diane Feinstein is bought and paid for by the RIAA.
Microsoft is their own worst enemy; they make wild claims about the functionality of their latest version but that functionality never meets their or their customers expectations. Then some exploit points out that they were being economical with the truth. Much like a recently patched (again) exploit that affected 98, NT, 2000, XP and Vista. Seems somewhat odd that an operating system that has been completely rewritten at great expense and effort should be affected by the SAME bug that has been in their products for years.
I mean, how can a company whose email clients automatically launch attachments say that they take security seriously? Let's not get started on the brain-dead file association open / execution misfeatures in every version up to and including Vista. Here's an interesting exercise to see how bad things can get: rename a safe executable to a filename with a WAV extension. Now double-click it; the executable runs. Combine that with browsers and email clients that automatically play WAV files and you've got a very exploitable platform.
What continues to amaze me is that the file type security is applied based on the file extension - but when you execute a file, the system looks at the file header to determine how to open / execute it. This bit of design stupidity has been the cause of millions of systems being exploited. Just a simple check to see if the file header matches the selected file type would go a long way - but no, this is too difficult. Here, have a UAC nuisance instead...
Maybe it's just me, but that article had too many Frammis rods and Johnson bars in it. It looked like someone was making the story up as they wrote...
So if you upload it to your own server this decision wouldn't necessarily apply. This brings up some interesting ideas; suppose a server farm was operated as a co-op where all the users own shares of the server farm. Now, if they upload music to this server farm are they distributing it to someone else?
How about if someone you don't know downloads a copy of a song from your server while you're not watching - is this distribution?
The record companies are setting legal precedents right and left these days - but I wonder if they realize what kind of corner they're painting themselves into. The basic idea of the copyright owner being the one who decides who gets copies of his work for a limited time is sound. I don't think even a hardened pirate can honestly argue against this. But this simple idea has been blown up and perverted far beyond what it was intended to be by greedy businessmen. The push-back from the general public is getting stronger by the day and it's just a matter of time before these companies find themselves holding the short end of the stick.
Want to hasten that day? Inform others of what's going on, and defund the crooks by refusing to purchase their products. Take the money out and they'll fold up very quickly.
But the world turns and the new replaces the old. Such is how it always has been and always will be; try to feel just a little sorry (if you can) for those who become irrelevant in tomorrow's world. One day, it'll be your own chosen career or industry that slips below the horizon.
Even the (rightfully) hated RIAA and MPAA are simply trying every angle they can in hopes of propping up their dying organizations for a little longer. The damage they do as they thrash around in their death throes will take years to clean up - but they will die, and the mess will be cleaned up.
Against this background, why be surprised that some newspapers think that Google should pay them for the privelege of indexing their web pages? If they could make that pig fly, they could compensate for the loss in subscription revenues for - maybe another year or so. Google chooses not to pay, and chooses rightly. These companies are doomed and there's nothing for Google or anyone else to gain by delaying their demise.
Let me see if I can summarize: 1: Start with starch 2: Put it in a car 3: (waving of hands) 4: Profit! Next: Electricity from seawater, loosely based on biochemistry of electric eels.
Many steak house kitchens use a cooking device called a "salamander" to cook steaks. It's essentially two of these infrared elements; one above, one below and just enough room to slide the steak inbetween. Those reach temperatures of 1500 degrees or more - and the people who eat the steaks rave about how well they're cooked.
Being a proper sort of geek, I converted my new grill from propane to natural gas before lighting it the first time. A quick change of inlet hose and a little numbered drill action on the orifices and I never have to worry about running out of propane. While I was at it, I uprated the main burners just a touch so that I can get it up to some even higher temperatures for cooking meats.
Cooking at these higher temperatures isn't like cooking on charcoal or a regular propane grill. Things cook faster and flare-ups don't happen; drips vaporize (poof) and only provide added flavor.
If I feel like I'm missing the good old campfire flavor, I can throw some wood chips in the smoker box. Hickory is nice, sometimes cherry is better. I think I've got a bag of mesquite chips around here somewhere...
For those who wonder why anyone wouldn't use charcoal - turn knob, push button - 15 minutes later the temperature is passing 700 and it's time to toss the meat on. Yum yum - and after cooking, turn the main burners all the way up, close the lid, and check back in 30 minutes. All the mess is now ash; brush it away and it's clean again.
Why not broil in the oven? Not the same thing at all! Your household cooking appliances are designed so the average knuckle-dragger won't burn the house down. Those gray steaks that only have a thin pink stripe in the middle are a poor shadow of what a well grilled steak is like. And by having the cooking fire outdoors, the house stays cooler in the summer.
Gas grills are a very good thing when well designed and well handled - capable of better and more dependable results than a charcoal fired grill. Does that ceramic infrared burner add anything to the equation? I'm not convinced; it's more of a spec sheet checkoff for the marketing department.
OK, so this fancy burner looks different but doesn't seem to make a significant difference in performance. YMMV and all that, but I wouldn't pay extra for one of these. It's basically a ceramic grid that the gas blows through, so it's more fragile than the typical rolled steel or cast iron burner - probably cheaper to manufacture, too.
Actually, it's about as close to a non-significant change in gas grill technology as you can get. Who greenlighted this story?
Before someone quibbles, let's define what a fascist government does: it cedes various government powers to a select group of corporations. That's the real definition and I don't think anyone can deny that this has been going on for several years.
The reason that fascism is almost universally considered evil is simple: Governments serve the needs of their citizens, corporations operate to make a profit. Those two goals are often mutually exclusive and when corporate government sets in it's like living in a bad job that you can't quit. Research Italy under Mussolini for a richly detailed description of what living in a fascist society is like.
It's going to take at least one person with integrity and honor (and brass balls) to get this country to make a quick turn back towards democracy. I can only hope that such a person would be willing to take on one of the hardest tasks a man could face.
It's almost certainly not going to be someone coming from one of the regular political parties. The parties have a vested interest in keeping things the same; all that under the table money is hard to walk away from. They wouldn't consider offering a candidate for public office who wasn't going to play the same old game, they haven't and they won't.
And don't look to the corporate world for good leadership. Consider one of the most successful companies: Microsoft. Consider what they offer, how much they charge for it, and how they've interacted with competitors and regulatory agencies in their continual quest for more, more, more money. Ballmer (or Gates) for president? Whose interest do you really think they'd represent?
The next few years are going to be very, very tricky. They're monitoring your phone and internet, cameras watch you as you move around and it's all to keep you safe. Sure it is; they're also building many large "holding facilities". It's a small step to where they monitor your communications and activities to keep the government safe - those who represent some kind of risk to the continued power of the government get whisked away to a waiting "holding facility". With these "useful" tools in place, how long will it be before they're used against the people? What would Bill Gates do with these tools? Right.
Wake up, folks - the 2008 elections are coming and every one of us should become very familiar with the candidates and vote appropriately. It's too dangerous to stay home and let someone else choose...
Today's statement blew their credibility totally - out of 235 patents, 11% are supposedly owned by Microsoft. But they don't know which ones and it'd be too difficult to find out.
So if they don't know which patents might be infringed upon - and find it too difficult to research it - then where did that attack against Linux come from? Pure fantasy, of course. It's probably actionable fantasy, too - all the elements of libel are present in Microsoft's "Linux infringes on Microsoft patents". Say - that might be interesting; to defend against a libel charge they'd have to prove that their statement was true. That'd keep their legal staff busy for a few months or years - and give everyone else a target to aim at.
We can only hope that most media outlets make note of the conflicting statements and complete lack of any reason for their claim that Linux infringes Microsoft patents. Microsoft has NO SUCH EVIDENCE of infringement - and has made a public statement that it's too difficult / not worth their time to try to find any such evidence.
Just more of the anti-consumer practices we know and hate from our favorite monopolist. I especially like the way their updates change my default browser to IE even though the system was configured to use Firefox as the default.
Whoever it was that said CardSpace was optional - ask them how to remove it. I'd like to exercise that option...
And for a user to take action to prevent unwanted programs from being executed on his machine; nothing wrong with that, is there?
I don't think any website that expects me to download and run code from their website has anything to complain about if I choose not to run their code.