Patent Everything NOW, so that in a couple of decades it will ALL BE FREE. I just wish all this crap had gone down during the Reagan administration -- then we'd be reaping the rewards today.
If prior art can be patented today, it can be patented again tomorrow. All they have to do is call it something else. Bogus and trivial patents breed more of the same by making patent searches more difficult and requiring more work at the patent office. Software patents, which are essentially algorithms and business methods should never have been patentable in the first place.
Besides, MS has little to no history of suing for patent infringement.
Sure, why sue when you can simply treaten? It's amazing how many M$ appologists have filled this thread with that line of bullshit. Microsoft has many patents and uses them to stop people from working with their crap. This excellent post lists a few. I'll add NTFS to that list. M$ will not allow a free writer to be made and it uses patents to keep that from happening.
Some of these patents will have to be fought. Sometimes, such as this silly NET case, they claim to own common and well applied ideas that would cripple everyone if they get their way. I can imagine someone telling the XFree86 crowd that they can't distribute anymore because Xforwarding infringes on the new M$ patent. Most of the patents, thankfully, only prevent people from working with inferior M$ file formats. Sigh, what was the point of NET again, "everything is connected"?
M$NBC got it all wrong because that's the way Media Player worked, remember this and other stories about Media Player making lists of all the stuff you play? M$ never said they were tracking anyone nor did they ever own up to it, did they?
How does Kerberos prevent local hardware or software tampering with a terminal? It is an authentication method for talking to servers. If your local terminal is compromised, all bets are off.
Off is the word. If the terminal is comprimised, the server would not talk and you would not be able to login, much less browse on over for some one click shopping at Amazon.
I think ALL cable systems should be REQUIRED to have a local access channel. It could be a source of revenue for the cable stations, you actually have to buy air time.
You are rocketing back to the past.
Why not just require cable companies to supply symetric internet access and static IPs? They could make money selling internet access that way and anyone could provide any content they felt like, you know like the peer network the internet was supposed to be! They use public land for their silly cables, they have an obligation, no?
Oh wait, that futre was killed by greedy shit heads. Dreams never die. Those that stand in the way tend to be trampled.
The article makes me laugh: Richard Smith, a Massachusetts-based Internet security consultant, said the software in question is typically used by jealous husbands or wives to spy on their spouses -- or by employers who want to snoop on their workers.... "With the amount of information he gathered from so many different people, there could have been a lot of things he could have done," Smith said. "I'm surprised this kind of thing hasn't been done more often."
Gee, Dick, that would be because the early adoptors of computer technology, such as MIT had a clue. Oh, you and the University thought you could just buy some stuff from M$ and be done with the work?
Now, my old friend, the Waffle Iron, needs some help understanding part of MIT's system. Someone who tried to mod a public terminal for their own use is likely to be bit by this dog. Hardware capture by additional device is another issue, but I'll bet the MIT folks thought of that too. In any case, someone with enough brains to do all that would have enough brains to avoid stupid stuff like that. There's always someone better and they will get you.
The article points out that the major reason the bells (er, bell; hasn't SBC bought all the others yet?) don't want to do this is because they are required to lease out the lines to competitors.
The article I read said no such thing. It said that the Bells were being less than honest about their reasons and pointed out significant promisses that had not been kept to get the regulatory environment that favors them today. Now, having not kept their promisses, they ask for more favors citing a few things they wish to change as reasons for their stuborness. Wake up, will you.
Why did this thread instantly jump to the conclusion it was over this infomercial issue?... his closure falls right in line with the direction the company has been heading in.
Well, such abuse of the user base might, just might, have created some bad publicity. Think about it some.
This incident has convinced me that all computers, even embeded ones, should run free software and be programable by their users. It was spam because it was recorded without your knowledge and without your consent. It used your resources to do it and it's only a line of code or two from forcing you to watch things in order to see the things you are interested in. That kind of thing does not happen in the free software world because the owner has the power to keep it from happening.
One thing is for sure, I'm not going to buy a Tivo or equivalent. I can program my VCR, but I don't because I generally don't watch TV. Tivo had some appeal as beining easier, by orders of magnitude, to use than the VCR. It's just not worth it knowing that it's programers have abused the users this way. All of the appologists, such as yourself, have convinced me that the Tivo people will act worse in the future.
It's planned obsolescence. Metal parts might rust but plastic parts will degrade. They make them out of cheap shit that gets UV damaged and light volitile evaporation embrittled in five years or so. Ever seen an older plastic car? Kick it and see how bouncy the pannels are, if there are any pannels left. Oh yeah, just try to buy that custom injection molded plastic part after five years of so. Ha!
I've got a 30 year old VW van in my garage. It had been trashed up north and had extensive rusting. No problem, because where the rust was not the material was sound. I replaced the front axle and riveted in a bunch of sheet metal painted it up a little and it's as good looking as it ever was. In fact, I like the patches. Try doing that with a plastic car. Can you even paint over that surface? Doubt it.
Tell me about a car with a composite monocoque frame at half the cost of my steel vehicle and I might listen your speel on plastic pannels.
You compare: ipfw -> ipchains -> iptables with the M$ upgrade train's effect on normal computer users? Give me a break. How can you compare free software that still works and has improved to non-free crap? The changes to M$ Word, etc, added no real features and wrecked the users old work, which cost more than the outrageous price of the software itself. The free programs you mention all still work and might even be used on the same box at the same time. Oh yeah, durring the same time period all the major editors remained the same. I've got a 1986 Emacs manual that does a reasonable job of describing the current editor's behavior. Had this reporter learned Emacs instead of Word, he would not be forced to learn anything new today. I don't know iptables either, but I would not consider learning it a waste of time.
If we are talking about mainframe frontends, they are even MORE insane. Most programers (while not the best UI designers) have made it much easier than using a VT100 term emu. for using the mainframe.
Wake up stupid! This guy has been using computers for 22 years to get his job done. He misses the mainframe. It's not that he hates learning, it's that he hates relearning 5 freaking times for programs that do less for him. You also say:
What computer program do any of you use that you had to be trained to use? Microsoft Office? Umm, *most* people have no use for any of the apps other than Word.... I was able to sufficiently use Access and Excel in 30 mins or less.
Get a clue dork, Word does not do what he needs and he has NO use for a freaking database or spreadsheet. He's a reporter! All he needs is a spell checker and a tool that will get his text off to his editors for review and his typesetter for publication. The other shit is in his way. He does not need auto correction, drawing tools or the rest of it. You have helped make things SO BAD that he wishes he had his VT100 back.
I can't even imagine how hoplessly screwed up his work place is to have replaced the very simple tools he needs five times in the last 22 years. Oh no, actually I can. He mentioned enough stuff for me to conclude that he's working in an M$ shop. He complains of machines that take a long time to boot up. That's a sure sign of an M$ shop as real OS don't need to be turned off. I'll bet four of those last five changes happened in the last seven years. It's the intentional waste of the upgrade train and it's costs have outstripped the cost of mainframes many times over by now.
You conclude with:
Stop the whining and learn to use the god damn things...
Ha! Someone is going to show this guy a real operating system one day and you will be fired.
.in which the current dumb-user-centric model has ascended to the point that it begins to conquer volition and personal descision making. The computer tells you what ingrediants to pick in the kitchen, it worrys about how many guests you have, and then tells you a recipie apropos to them... perhaps, soon enough, an earpiece will tell you what to say to them...
This level of automation is only apropriate to the mentally handicapped or infirm!
Or the married. My wife does all that already. Contrary advice would last about 30 seconds.
If a generic local DJ can be replaced with such a simple tool then we are not loosing much. If the most brain-dead table look-up can pass the Turing test then perhaps local DJs need to do their homework, learn more about their community and really have somthing to offer. Try this:
If your mother's home cooking can be replaced with such a simple stuff then we are not losing much. If the most brain-dead table fare can pass the nutrition test then perhaps your mother need to do her homework, learn more about her community and really have somthing to offer.
Rather than describe this as wiz-bang tech, I'd describe it as poor cooking by local moms. Don't get me wrong, I do want good local cooking. I do not want junk generic food spewed by a "local mom" (read moved in from out of state last week).
Oh dear, I'm afraid it's frozen fish sticks for you in the Clear Channel Commune. They passed the nutition test and it's so much cheaper to raise children that way.
How long untill we're not ALLOWED to turn off our TVs?
Have you ever seen the no remote controle icon on your DVD? It comes up when you try to press the menu button to get away from the FBI warning and studio adverts. It's not nearly effective, howerver, as having a wife. Just try to tell her you don't want a TV on all day!
How long before our TVs watch what WE'RE doing so advertisers can see what effect they're having?
The TV does not need to know. Your Tivo or cable box knows what you watch and your credit card knows what you buy. Put the two togeter. The next generation of digital TVs will complete the loop for all TVs.
How long before Max is invading MY TV screen?
As others have pointed out, you won't get anything as fun as Max.
Things have gotten worse as the number of corporate owners has dwindled. They don't tell on each other as much when there are fewer of them. The New York Times used to have people everywhere and though their North East US centric views would color things, the fact that something happened would emerge. Today, their pages are filled with AP crap, which looks nothing like reality and is written by people who go nowhere. The Wall Street Journal still puts people out into the world and gives them reasonable freedom to write. Time ruined CNN with sentimental nonsense. What's worse, however, is the lack of independent news services with the resources to put people where things are hapening. It's up to you and me to tell what's going on now.
When a reader says that Office and Windoze prop M$ up, you say:
I adore how cute it is when some FUD is propagated on Slashdot, and soon you can hear it being repeated verbatim as stone-cold facts time after time by Slashbots.
and then go on to chatter about keyboards and Visual studio. Can you reasonably compare the proffit bassed on M$'s O$ to keyboard sales? The price of VB may pain individuals who cling to M$, but that individual pain does not collectivly match the vast revenues had when big dumb corporations stick Office on every one of their 7,000 peons desks. No, it's true that M$ is using it's O$ monopoly rent to get into other areas.
The fact is that there is nothing new here but failure. M$ gets into each new market the same way, by dumping . The used IBM to make an O$ monopoly then dumped Windoze 3.1 to establish a desktop hegemity. They then used anti-competitive agreements with vendors to keep other O$ out and dumped their office to make familiarity. To this day M$ dumps their software on schools, then turns around and screws them in quater million dollar BSA raids. Their reduction of prices of their vastly inferior "server" software is par for the course but it will not be enough this time.
People are realizing that free makes economic sense. They are starting to see that free software is better software and always will be. Better software does make for a lower total cost of ownership as it eliminates the intentional waste propriatory software vendors are famous for. More importantly, it does what YOU want it to do rather than what some marketdroid thinks it should do and it does it according to best practices. Slammer, Code Red, Nmedia, SirCam, I love you, Klez, la te da te da, the list goes on and on because the closed source, rape the user method does not work for anyone but the vendor.
Asked if TIA would actually spot terroists Barlow says:
If you have the Total Information Awareness project working, it might be relatively easy to find everyone who had bought more than a ton of fertilizer and 500 gallons of diesel in the last year, which would be a great way of spotting potential Tim McVeighs -- but it would also spot half the farmers and ranchers in America. But having spotted them, it couldn't toss them out until it'd exposed them to the next layer of search..... which includes what I consider to be cultural crimes, like say marijuana smoking.
And there, in a nutshell, you have failure to predict and prevent. Who said Tim McVeigh smoked dope? Each "layer" of search is based on someone's idea of what a terroist is, not what one actually will be. What you end up with is a shit list, which may or may not contain a suspect. Before the event you don't know what to look for. Before September 11th, the purchase of a dozen box cutters had no predictive value.
God, things are screwed up. I'm reading Mother Jones and it makes sense while traditional media is clueless or conspiratory.
Would you be one of those folks who describe free software as "communism"? That's rich. To compare free software (people who want to share their software with you so that you can modify it to suit your needs and share in turn) with the Communist Party of the USSR (people who enforced non freedom of speech by jail and death) is silly at best. I get tired of such stupid comparisons. Get it straight: sharing information is not unAmerican, it violates no one's rights and it helps everyone but those who would perpetually sell you the equivalent that does not work as well.
This is not about the users and they don't owe you anything. You don't have to use free software, you don't have to use freeBSD and the authors have no power over you at all. The code lives on, despite the folly of those who wrote it. Take it for what it's worth, contribute if you will.
I think that AOL, MSN and every other ISP would have a lot higher churn if it was easy to get stuff forwarded.
I will happily forward to you all of my AOL mail and my wife's hotmail. I have given up on them both, what you will get is spam spam spam and more spam.
You have your cofee and I have mine. It's food and all the rules were made to be broken. With an extra ingredient you can turn the rule on its head and come out with something great.
Percolation, before paper filters and what not, was for the lazy. You sat the thing on the stove and forgot about it. So what do you do? You work with it. Try a little Cafe Du Monde (CDM) percolated till you can stand a spoon up in it. Ah, chickory what great stuff you are. Add a little sugar and cream and you have something that is different from your usual cup but finishes a meal wonderfully. The same can be made by drip and other means but it's not the same.
CDM is a treat I don't make often because I'm too lazy to clean up. I usually have some fesh ground coffee made with a press, not boiled, just like you say. There are far fewer parts to clean but it requires different coffee to come out right.
I'm sure you will agree that most "flavoings" in the beans and the proposed junk to block your bitter taste are abominations.
Slashdot Mirror
If prior art can be patented today, it can be patented again tomorrow. All they have to do is call it something else. Bogus and trivial patents breed more of the same by making patent searches more difficult and requiring more work at the patent office. Software patents, which are essentially algorithms and business methods should never have been patentable in the first place.
Sure, why sue when you can simply treaten? It's amazing how many M$ appologists have filled this thread with that line of bullshit. Microsoft has many patents and uses them to stop people from working with their crap. This excellent post lists a few. I'll add NTFS to that list. M$ will not allow a free writer to be made and it uses patents to keep that from happening.
Some of these patents will have to be fought. Sometimes, such as this silly NET case, they claim to own common and well applied ideas that would cripple everyone if they get their way. I can imagine someone telling the XFree86 crowd that they can't distribute anymore because Xforwarding infringes on the new M$ patent. Most of the patents, thankfully, only prevent people from working with inferior M$ file formats. Sigh, what was the point of NET again, "everything is connected"?
M$NBC got it all wrong because that's the way Media Player worked, remember this and other stories about Media Player making lists of all the stuff you play? M$ never said they were tracking anyone nor did they ever own up to it, did they?
Not if your encoding program respected the number. YOu know it's illegal to have an unlicensed MP3 encoder don't you?
For the rest of us, this could be a RIAA stamp of approval, unless the RIAA wants to make the ID non unique.
Off is the word. If the terminal is comprimised, the server would not talk and you would not be able to login, much less browse on over for some one click shopping at Amazon.
You are rocketing back to the past.
Why not just require cable companies to supply symetric internet access and static IPs? They could make money selling internet access that way and anyone could provide any content they felt like, you know like the peer network the internet was supposed to be! They use public land for their silly cables, they have an obligation, no?
Oh wait, that futre was killed by greedy shit heads. Dreams never die. Those that stand in the way tend to be trampled.
Golly gee, I'm on TV! Not. Thanks Cox.
Richard Smith, a Massachusetts-based Internet security consultant, said the software in question is typically used by jealous husbands or wives to spy on their spouses -- or by employers who want to snoop on their workers.
Gee, Dick, that would be because the early adoptors of computer technology, such as MIT had a clue. Oh, you and the University thought you could just buy some stuff from M$ and be done with the work?
Now, my old friend, the Waffle Iron, needs some help understanding part of MIT's system. Someone who tried to mod a public terminal for their own use is likely to be bit by this dog. Hardware capture by additional device is another issue, but I'll bet the MIT folks thought of that too. In any case, someone with enough brains to do all that would have enough brains to avoid stupid stuff like that. There's always someone better and they will get you.
The article I read said no such thing. It said that the Bells were being less than honest about their reasons and pointed out significant promisses that had not been kept to get the regulatory environment that favors them today. Now, having not kept their promisses, they ask for more favors citing a few things they wish to change as reasons for their stuborness. Wake up, will you.
Well, such abuse of the user base might, just might, have created some bad publicity. Think about it some.
One thing is for sure, I'm not going to buy a Tivo or equivalent. I can program my VCR, but I don't because I generally don't watch TV. Tivo had some appeal as beining easier, by orders of magnitude, to use than the VCR. It's just not worth it knowing that it's programers have abused the users this way. All of the appologists, such as yourself, have convinced me that the Tivo people will act worse in the future.
I've got a 30 year old VW van in my garage. It had been trashed up north and had extensive rusting. No problem, because where the rust was not the material was sound. I replaced the front axle and riveted in a bunch of sheet metal painted it up a little and it's as good looking as it ever was. In fact, I like the patches. Try doing that with a plastic car. Can you even paint over that surface? Doubt it.
Tell me about a car with a composite monocoque frame at half the cost of my steel vehicle and I might listen your speel on plastic pannels.
You compare: ipfw -> ipchains -> iptables with the M$ upgrade train's effect on normal computer users? Give me a break. How can you compare free software that still works and has improved to non-free crap? The changes to M$ Word, etc, added no real features and wrecked the users old work, which cost more than the outrageous price of the software itself. The free programs you mention all still work and might even be used on the same box at the same time. Oh yeah, durring the same time period all the major editors remained the same. I've got a 1986 Emacs manual that does a reasonable job of describing the current editor's behavior. Had this reporter learned Emacs instead of Word, he would not be forced to learn anything new today. I don't know iptables either, but I would not consider learning it a waste of time.
If we are talking about mainframe frontends, they are even MORE insane. Most programers (while not the best UI designers) have made it much easier than using a VT100 term emu. for using the mainframe.
Wake up stupid! This guy has been using computers for 22 years to get his job done. He misses the mainframe. It's not that he hates learning, it's that he hates relearning 5 freaking times for programs that do less for him. You also say:
What computer program do any of you use that you had to be trained to use? Microsoft Office? Umm, *most* people have no use for any of the apps other than Word. ... I was able to sufficiently use Access and Excel in 30 mins or less.
Get a clue dork, Word does not do what he needs and he has NO use for a freaking database or spreadsheet. He's a reporter! All he needs is a spell checker and a tool that will get his text off to his editors for review and his typesetter for publication. The other shit is in his way. He does not need auto correction, drawing tools or the rest of it. You have helped make things SO BAD that he wishes he had his VT100 back.
I can't even imagine how hoplessly screwed up his work place is to have replaced the very simple tools he needs five times in the last 22 years. Oh no, actually I can. He mentioned enough stuff for me to conclude that he's working in an M$ shop. He complains of machines that take a long time to boot up. That's a sure sign of an M$ shop as real OS don't need to be turned off. I'll bet four of those last five changes happened in the last seven years. It's the intentional waste of the upgrade train and it's costs have outstripped the cost of mainframes many times over by now.
You conclude with:
Stop the whining and learn to use the god damn things...
Ha! Someone is going to show this guy a real operating system one day and you will be fired.
This level of automation is only apropriate to the mentally handicapped or infirm!
Or the married. My wife does all that already. Contrary advice would last about 30 seconds.
Try this:
If your mother's home cooking can be replaced with such a simple stuff then we are not losing much. If the most brain-dead table fare can pass the nutrition test then perhaps your mother need to do her homework, learn more about her community and really have somthing to offer.
Rather than describe this as wiz-bang tech, I'd describe it as poor cooking by local moms. Don't get me wrong, I do want good local cooking. I do not want junk generic food spewed by a "local mom" (read moved in from out of state last week).
Oh dear, I'm afraid it's frozen fish sticks for you in the Clear Channel Commune. They passed the nutition test and it's so much cheaper to raise children that way.
Have you ever seen the no remote controle icon on your DVD? It comes up when you try to press the menu button to get away from the FBI warning and studio adverts. It's not nearly effective, howerver, as having a wife. Just try to tell her you don't want a TV on all day!
How long before our TVs watch what WE'RE doing so advertisers can see what effect they're having?
The TV does not need to know. Your Tivo or cable box knows what you watch and your credit card knows what you buy. Put the two togeter. The next generation of digital TVs will complete the loop for all TVs.
How long before Max is invading MY TV screen?
As others have pointed out, you won't get anything as fun as Max.
Things have gotten worse as the number of corporate owners has dwindled. They don't tell on each other as much when there are fewer of them. The New York Times used to have people everywhere and though their North East US centric views would color things, the fact that something happened would emerge. Today, their pages are filled with AP crap, which looks nothing like reality and is written by people who go nowhere. The Wall Street Journal still puts people out into the world and gives them reasonable freedom to write. Time ruined CNN with sentimental nonsense. What's worse, however, is the lack of independent news services with the resources to put people where things are hapening. It's up to you and me to tell what's going on now.
I adore how cute it is when some FUD is propagated on Slashdot, and soon you can hear it being repeated verbatim as stone-cold facts time after time by Slashbots.
and then go on to chatter about keyboards and Visual studio. Can you reasonably compare the proffit bassed on M$'s O$ to keyboard sales? The price of VB may pain individuals who cling to M$, but that individual pain does not collectivly match the vast revenues had when big dumb corporations stick Office on every one of their 7,000 peons desks. No, it's true that M$ is using it's O$ monopoly rent to get into other areas.
The fact is that there is nothing new here but failure. M$ gets into each new market the same way, by dumping . The used IBM to make an O$ monopoly then dumped Windoze 3.1 to establish a desktop hegemity. They then used anti-competitive agreements with vendors to keep other O$ out and dumped their office to make familiarity. To this day M$ dumps their software on schools, then turns around and screws them in quater million dollar BSA raids. Their reduction of prices of their vastly inferior "server" software is par for the course but it will not be enough this time.
People are realizing that free makes economic sense. They are starting to see that free software is better software and always will be. Better software does make for a lower total cost of ownership as it eliminates the intentional waste propriatory software vendors are famous for. More importantly, it does what YOU want it to do rather than what some marketdroid thinks it should do and it does it according to best practices. Slammer, Code Red, Nmedia, SirCam, I love you, Klez, la te da te da, the list goes on and on because the closed source, rape the user method does not work for anyone but the vendor.
If you have the Total Information Awareness project working, it might be relatively easy to find everyone who had bought more than a ton of fertilizer and 500 gallons of diesel in the last year, which would be a great way of spotting potential Tim McVeighs -- but it would also spot half the farmers and ranchers in America. But having spotted them, it couldn't toss them out until it'd exposed them to the next layer of search. .... which includes what I consider to be cultural crimes, like say marijuana smoking.
And there, in a nutshell, you have failure to predict and prevent. Who said Tim McVeigh smoked dope? Each "layer" of search is based on someone's idea of what a terroist is, not what one actually will be. What you end up with is a shit list, which may or may not contain a suspect. Before the event you don't know what to look for. Before September 11th, the purchase of a dozen box cutters had no predictive value.
God, things are screwed up. I'm reading Mother Jones and it makes sense while traditional media is clueless or conspiratory.
Messing with military radar by mimicking the signal has led to serious user harm. Use with caution.
Oh wait, that troll was the point of your post.
Please don't mod yourself up. I'd like to see something useful and learn a little more about freeBSD.
This is not about the users and they don't owe you anything. You don't have to use free software, you don't have to use freeBSD and the authors have no power over you at all. The code lives on, despite the folly of those who wrote it. Take it for what it's worth, contribute if you will.
I will happily forward to you all of my AOL mail and my wife's hotmail. I have given up on them both, what you will get is spam spam spam and more spam.
You have your cofee and I have mine. It's food and all the rules were made to be broken. With an extra ingredient you can turn the rule on its head and come out with something great.
Percolation, before paper filters and what not, was for the lazy. You sat the thing on the stove and forgot about it. So what do you do? You work with it. Try a little Cafe Du Monde (CDM) percolated till you can stand a spoon up in it. Ah, chickory what great stuff you are. Add a little sugar and cream and you have something that is different from your usual cup but finishes a meal wonderfully. The same can be made by drip and other means but it's not the same.
CDM is a treat I don't make often because I'm too lazy to clean up. I usually have some fesh ground coffee made with a press, not boiled, just like you say. There are far fewer parts to clean but it requires different coffee to come out right.
I'm sure you will agree that most "flavoings" in the beans and the proposed junk to block your bitter taste are abominations.
Someone else is working on the next additive that convinces you shit smells like a rose and McDonald's hamburgers are better than dog food.