This isn't mainstream?. Considering they broke this a few hours after it ran on Slashdot I'm not sure what else you expect. A CNN <blink>breaking news</blink> flash?
2) Surround sound being an important part of an office? If your office is a production studio, maybe - but if your office is a studio, chances are you know more about what you need than a bunch of marketing hacks from MS.
Surround sound makes sense to MSFT employees because most of us [including wet behind the ears college hires like me] have their own office. I love being able to listen to my obnoxioushiphopmusic without having to worry about an office mate like I did at internships in the past. However I often find myself wishing for speakers better than the stock, cheap PC speakers than came with my Dell. Surround sound would be way fucking cool.
Of course, this all assumes having your own office. Cubicles or other shared spaces may not be as conducive for surround sound music listening as ones own office but I wouldn't just dismiss it out of hand as you have.
Disclaimer:The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.
Linux is just starting to make inroads in the enterprise and critical application markets, say it became useful in 2001. This is the area that has been dominated by Unix since 1986. So it took us "only" 16 years to duplicate the enterprise functionality of a Unix operating system.
Linux is only about 11 years old but your point is taken. Also you should note that a number of innovations in proprietary Unix especially in the area of memory management end up back in Linux in much shorter than a decade.
Sometimes copying is easier than innovating: but achieving total compatibility -which can not be ignored- is a massive task. Wine has been cloning the Win32 API, and it is one of the most ancient projects from the Linux community: it was there back in 1996, and we have still not managed to clone the entire Win32 API. Yes, copying certain things are easy, but achieving the compatibility is a completely different matter.
Duplicating functionality is not the same thing as creating exact duplicates of API functions. For example, it's one thing to create a standards compliant, fully functional web browser (i.e. Mozilla) and another to try to duplicate Internet Explorer's behavior and APIs feature for feature and bug for bug.
I rather see Microsoft stay on the innovation track, than go into a legal battle against Open Source projects.
I completely agree.
And I do not see anything wrong with having more than one operating system in our day to day environments: it promotes open standards, it promotes well written and well documented reliable solutions, and ultimately, it allows the consumer to choose a solution that is right for him.
Nothing is wrong with multiple OSes and in fact I run Linux and WinXP at home (although I could probably do with an upgrade on the Linux box once I find a free weekend).
There are two main thoughts that run through my mind when I think about competing with Open Source and the IBM model. The first is that, the main problem with competing with Open Source is that it's always faster to copy than to innovate. It may take years, multiple focus groups and millions of dollars to produce feature X or behavior Y in some commercial product but after that it usually takes a fraction of the time for that feature or behavior to be replicated in competing products. This is much compounded by Open Source which is also typically free (as in beer) thus undercutting the original innovators. A good example of this is commercial Unix and Linux.
In such an arena, it seems inevitable that the only way to slow the inexorable march of Open Source is to resort to Intellectual Property. So far no one has done this to any significant degree (the MP3 patents don't count because they are a different issue) although there has at least been discussion amongst Linux kernel hackers about patent liability which will only continue given the proliferation of software patents and the more features that various Open Source projects copy from their proprietary brethren. It is food for thought.
The second thing that comes to mind is that Open Source is shifting the balance of power from software developers to software consultants. For companies like IBM with huge consulting divisions (their Global Services division is at least thrice as large as all of Microsoft) this a great boon which they are willing to sacrifice a lot of software development to gain which explains their intense support of the Linux and Apache projects. To compete with this, I believe large software companies will have to use similar tactics including providing more source code to customers, making more software available free of charge and providing more extensive consulting services. Of course, this would significantly change the landscape of the software industry. Open Source and Linux would indeed have changed the game.
Disclaimer: This post is my opinion and does not reflect the thoughts, strategies, intentions or opinions of my employer.
Until Slashdot started trying to cause a controversy with the C#/University of Waterloo thing I had assumed this widespread practice in the American university system was taken for granted. Academia is all about politics especially when it comes to the curriculum, technical arguments for or against programming languages are just one slice of the cake. If it wasn't about politics we'd all be learning Lisp and Smalltalk in school instead of C++ and Java. OK, we actually did learn Scheme and Smalltalk at GA Tech so maybe that's a bad example.:)
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.
The primary thing that has concerned me the most about most web based worms is the fact that they usually infect systems using exploits that have long since been patched. This is true for both *nix and Windows worms.
Unfortunately given human nature, we can't rely on sys admins and end users to patch their boxen. Almost every mechanism I can think of to automate this process either calls for automatically updating machines (which sucks if a patch breaks an untested scenario and also may need some legal exemptions) or some similar mechanisms to enable computers to help themselves.
The data and charts accumulated by the author are quite impressive especially the chart of music sales from 1991 to 2001. He also correctly points out that the economic slump should be factored in when considering the drop in revenue of music sales as well as their relative high cost.
Where the article begins to fall down is when the author begins to speculate without hard data such as his belief that cell phone usage adversely affects music sales. It completely falls down when he counters the very data with the following quote
Given the slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal customers. Perhaps the real reason for some of the drop in sales was the shutdown of Napster and other crackdowns by the music industry.
So since burning and downloading didn't cause a sizeable dip in sales it must have caused an increase instead? This conclusion is incorrect and quite illogical.
The author also seems to imply that shutting down Napster reduced the degree of copyright infringement but this seems unlikely given the number of P2P services that sprang up in its stead from Kazaa to Audiogalaxy to Gnutella.
BOTTOM LINE: The article correctly points out that the claims of the music industry of the costs of copyright infringement are exaggerated but falls down by claiming that copyright infringement fuels sales without anything more than a gut feeling to back this up.
There's hacking classes in college? Somebody needs to smack the entire H.R. dept. for weeding out a lot of talented folks.
I distinctly remember taking a Linux kernel hacking class when I was in college which amongst other things included hacking Linux on the iPaq. I also seem to remember that one of my group members was in a video game class at the same time which included projects such as hack Quake I.
The Canonical C# for Java Developers Article
on
C# for Java Developers
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Those that survived developed an immunity to AIDS and its variants. If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick
What does one have to do with the other? Besides the fact that there is a quote in the article that states
He also said there is no definitive proof linking specific genes with resistance to AIDS in either chimpanzees or humans,
the only way this has a bearing on human immunity is if the submitter is suggesting that those humans with AIDS immunity are evolved from chimps two million years ago which seems highly unlikely.
My official job title is Editor-in-Chief for OSDN, but I'm more of an in-house editorial consultant than a controlling "boss" editor because we have a great staff that needs little or no direction. Now and then I offer a little advice, but I usually wait until I'm asked instead of forcing my words of wisdom (wisdumb?) into unwilling ears.
well it may be that most of the Slashdot editors (timothy, CmdrTaco, hemos, etc) know how to use their own discretion but it is painfully obvious to anyone who's been a Slashdot reader for any decent amount of time that Michael needs adult supervision. If he isn't bitch slapping comments or posting blatantly wrong information then he's insulting Open Source luminaries like Tim O'reilly and twisting their arguments.
However he has now topped himself by linking to a script kiddie tool to what may be an unpatched bug on a website that gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day. What the fuck? Do you see MSNBC or C|Net linking to r00tkits whenever a Linux vulnerability is released?
Roblimo as Editor-in-Chief, you are responsible for his work and quite frankly he is the worst part of the Slashdot experience (now that I've upped my threshold to 4).
Most crime happens in poor, minority-dominated neighborhoods. It only makes sense to increase the police presence in those areas, through random patrols and targetted surveillance of possible hotspots and hotheads.
The worst part of America winning the Cold War is that whenever insane shit like profiling potential criminals happens we can no longer point to the practice of show me your papers in the Iron Curtain or Soviet states to show why it is against the very principles of democracy the US is based upon. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
I used to live in one of those poor, crime ridden, minority dominated neighborhoods a few years ago and this adverserial us vs. them mentality between the police and members of the community was a major problem which is excarberated by public opinion that encourages treating poor, non-whites as a criminal underclass as default behavior of the police.
Whenever I read stuff like this I am reminded that most Slashdotters are fairly young and have little idea of what has been common practice for decades in the computer industry. Microsoft has had user groups for most of their products for years in fact the there's a link to finding local Microsoft user groups right of the
MSDN front page.
In fact you don't have to take my word for it or that of MSDN, why not just Google for 'Microsoft "user group"' see how many thousand hits come back.
ObLegalDisclaimer: I work for Microsoft but this post represents my opinions and does not necessarily reflect the thoughts, opinions, strategies or plans of my employer
Like many people on here there was a time I grew used to paying $15 - $20 for a CD only to end up listening to only 2 or 3 good songs on the album. In fact, I had mentally begun to consider a CD a good buy if it had 3 good songs and anything above that an excellent buy. This was helped by treating each CD purchase as the equivalent of buying 3 singles from the same artist.
Then came the advent of large scale P2P software based, copyright infringement while I was in college. I began being able to avoid what I used to consider "bad" CD purchases by only obtaining the one good song without having to deal with the dreck on the rest of the album or paying for it.
Now in many cases I would love to pay for the one or two album tracks or single remixes that I like but the music industry has steadfastly refused to provide me a mechanism to do this.
However, there is really nothing technologically preventing record labels from either a.) providing customized CDs for their target audience (in the same vein as the NOW compilation albums) or b.) providing digital music at a fraction of the current price of singles and CDs.
Unfortunately they don't seem remotely interested in satisfying their customers in this demand. Legislating against technology can only last for so long.
Instead of saying that the sun can burn you, he told someone sitting in a dark closet that they are going to get burnt if they stay there. Still maybe not flamebait, but if you are going to type in l33t to look cool, at least read the article.
I read the article and it described a system where if you have a website that serves only static content you can use this snake oil technology to prevent people from defacing your website. Why is the technology snake oil:
Most websites worth anything are dynamic so can't benefit from this system.
One of the primary concerns after a website has been hacked is that the script kiddies got away with valuable information, this technology does not prevent that in the slightest
Two hard drives heads, one OS, one root/administrator account. If your box is r00ted, it doesn't matter how many hard drives or hard drive heads you have you have still been 0wn3d.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft but this post contains my opinions and does not represent some official company statement
In my opinion the best places to find out information about Microsoft technologies and products are
Newsgroups: Most microsoft technologies have a newsgroup in the microsoft.public.* hierarchy that are read not only by Microsoft employees but by dozens of regular developers who just want to help others who are having problems. I personally monitor microsoft.public.xml and microsoft.public.dotnet.xml where I answer a lot of questions and pass many of those I can't answer to the actual devs who work on the applications and APIs in question.
Online Communities: There are a number of strong online communities where Windows developers congregate to share information, tips and tricks. These range from Microsoft sponsored sites like GotDotNet, ASP.NET, and Windows Forms.NET that are run by MSFT employees who participate actively in these communities to independent sites like 4 Guys from Rolla, Code Project, Dev Hood, DevelopMentor and CodeGuru
Microsoft Websites: Few places beat MSDN as a source of information about Microsoft technologies. By the way, if you are into XML check out my Extreme XML column
Mailing Lists: There are number of mailing lists hosted by various parties about Microsoft technologies. The ones I've seen with the most vibrance have been the DevelopMentor mailing lists and the ASP Friends lists
PS: So this post isn't offtopic I'll add something about SSH. OpenSSH in Windows is possible if one installs Cygwin.
I can't believe the number of sites that have fallen for this. The amount of game players that'll see an ad in some corner of a graveyard is rather miniscule compared to the amount of people who'll read about all the hubub on thier favorite geek or regular news site. When Acclaim backs off the idea as they were planning to do all along we'll all know all the initimate gory details of Shadow Man 2 because we've read dozens of articles about their "despicable advertising plan", now who here can say they knew there was a Shadow Man 1? Not me.
But then I reconsidered. First, a little background. C# was, is, and always will be, a Micro$oft invention. Like it did with SMB and OLE, not to mention DirectX and ZIP, M$ will have no reservations about mucking with C# just to break Mono compatibility.
C# is an ECMA standard, like C++ which is an ISO standard unlike Java which is Sun Microsystem's property. Thus Sun has complete control over the future of Java while Microsoft does not have the same for C#. So claiming supporting C# is supporting Microsoft is way off base. Question: Were DirectX, OLE and SMB also international standards or are they technologies wholly owned by M$?
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't mainstream?. Considering they broke this a few hours after it ran on Slashdot I'm not sure what else you expect. A CNN <blink>breaking news</blink> flash?
...available in Mark Pilgrim's blog
... a reference to the awesome Meta Crap article which highlights very clearly the problems with relying on <META> tags for useful information.
2) Surround sound being an important part of an office? If your office is a production studio, maybe - but if your office is a studio, chances are you know more about what you need than a bunch of marketing hacks from MS.
Surround sound makes sense to MSFT employees because most of us [including wet behind the ears college hires like me] have their own office. I love being able to listen to my obnoxious hip hop music without having to worry about an office mate like I did at internships in the past. However I often find myself wishing for speakers better than the stock, cheap PC speakers than came with my Dell. Surround sound would be way fucking cool.
Of course, this all assumes having your own office. Cubicles or other shared spaces may not be as conducive for surround sound music listening as ones own office but I wouldn't just dismiss it out of hand as you have.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.
...REMIX!!!!
Hey miguel,
Linux is just starting to make inroads in the enterprise and critical application markets, say it became useful in 2001. This is the area that has been dominated by Unix since 1986. So it took us "only" 16 years to duplicate the enterprise functionality of a Unix operating system.
Linux is only about 11 years old but your point is taken. Also you should note that a number of innovations in proprietary Unix especially in the area of memory management end up back in Linux in much shorter than a decade.
Sometimes copying is easier than innovating: but achieving total compatibility -which can not be ignored- is a massive task. Wine has been cloning the Win32 API, and it is one of the most ancient projects from the Linux community: it was there back in 1996, and we have still not managed to clone the entire Win32 API. Yes, copying certain things are easy, but achieving the compatibility is a completely different matter.
Duplicating functionality is not the same thing as creating exact duplicates of API functions. For example, it's one thing to create a standards compliant, fully functional web browser (i.e. Mozilla) and another to try to duplicate Internet Explorer's behavior and APIs feature for feature and bug for bug.
I rather see Microsoft stay on the innovation track, than go into a legal battle against Open Source projects.
I completely agree.
And I do not see anything wrong with having more than one operating system in our day to day environments: it promotes open standards, it promotes well written and well documented reliable solutions, and ultimately, it allows the consumer to choose a solution that is right for him.
Nothing is wrong with multiple OSes and in fact I run Linux and WinXP at home (although I could probably do with an upgrade on the Linux box once I find a free weekend).
There are two main thoughts that run through my mind when I think about competing with Open Source and the IBM model. The first is that, the main problem with competing with Open Source is that it's always faster to copy than to innovate. It may take years, multiple focus groups and millions of dollars to produce feature X or behavior Y in some commercial product but after that it usually takes a fraction of the time for that feature or behavior to be replicated in competing products. This is much compounded by Open Source which is also typically free (as in beer) thus undercutting the original innovators. A good example of this is commercial Unix and Linux.
In such an arena, it seems inevitable that the only way to slow the inexorable march of Open Source is to resort to Intellectual Property. So far no one has done this to any significant degree (the MP3 patents don't count because they are a different issue) although there has at least been discussion amongst Linux kernel hackers about patent liability which will only continue given the proliferation of software patents and the more features that various Open Source projects copy from their proprietary brethren. It is food for thought.
The second thing that comes to mind is that Open Source is shifting the balance of power from software developers to software consultants. For companies like IBM with huge consulting divisions (their Global Services division is at least thrice as large as all of Microsoft) this a great boon which they are willing to sacrifice a lot of software development to gain which explains their intense support of the Linux and Apache projects. To compete with this, I believe large software companies will have to use similar tactics including providing more source code to customers, making more software available free of charge and providing more extensive consulting services. Of course, this would significantly change the landscape of the software industry. Open Source and Linux would indeed have changed the game.
Disclaimer: This post is my opinion and does not reflect the thoughts, strategies, intentions or opinions of my employer.
When I went to school we had whole labs of machines donated by Sun and Intel which no one protested about being out of the ordinary. Similarly there is at least one mandatory classes for CS majors which uses Sun Microsystem's proprietary progamming language and many optional classes as well require Java or strongly suggest it.
:)
Until Slashdot started trying to cause a controversy with the C#/University of Waterloo thing I had assumed this widespread practice in the American university system was taken for granted. Academia is all about politics especially when it comes to the curriculum, technical arguments for or against programming languages are just one slice of the cake. If it wasn't about politics we'd all be learning Lisp and Smalltalk in school instead of C++ and Java. OK, we actually did learn Scheme and Smalltalk at GA Tech so maybe that's a bad example.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.
The primary thing that has concerned me the most about most web based worms is the fact that they usually infect systems using exploits that have long since been patched. This is true for both *nix and Windows worms.
Unfortunately given human nature, we can't rely on sys admins and end users to patch their boxen. Almost every mechanism I can think of to automate this process either calls for automatically updating machines (which sucks if a patch breaks an untested scenario and also may need some legal exemptions) or some similar mechanisms to enable computers to help themselves.
Any Slashdotters have any thoughts about this?
Where the article begins to fall down is when the author begins to speculate without hard data such as his belief that cell phone usage adversely affects music sales. It completely falls down when he counters the very data with the following quote So since burning and downloading didn't cause a sizeable dip in sales it must have caused an increase instead? This conclusion is incorrect and quite illogical.
The author also seems to imply that shutting down Napster reduced the degree of copyright infringement but this seems unlikely given the number of P2P services that sprang up in its stead from Kazaa to Audiogalaxy to Gnutella.
BOTTOM LINE: The article correctly points out that the claims of the music industry of the costs of copyright infringement are exaggerated but falls down by claiming that copyright infringement fuels sales without anything more than a gut feeling to back this up.
That article was mostly speculation short on technical details but long on Micro$oft bashing.
Being a geek I got more mileage out of reading the technical details on palladium by a member of the EFF (Seth Schoen) who was at a presentation and TCPA and Palladium: Sony Inside an article on kuro5hin by a former Microserf.
Disclaimer:The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not reflect the opinions, thoughts, strategies or plans of my employer.
There's hacking classes in college? Somebody needs to smack the entire H.R. dept. for weeding out a lot of talented folks.
I distinctly remember taking a Linux kernel hacking class when I was in college which amongst other things included hacking Linux on the iPaq. I also seem to remember that one of my group members was in a video game class at the same time which included projects such as hack Quake I.
Mirrors:
- Mirror 1
- Mirror 2
- Mirror 3
- Mirror 4
- Mirror 5
Translations:Those that survived developed an immunity to AIDS and its variants. If this theory holds true it may explain why some humans who are repeatedly exposed to HIV don't get sick
What does one have to do with the other? Besides the fact that there is a quote in the article that states the only way this has a bearing on human immunity is if the submitter is suggesting that those humans with AIDS immunity are evolved from chimps two million years ago which seems highly unlikely.
However he has now topped himself by linking to a script kiddie tool to what may be an unpatched bug on a website that gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day. What the fuck? Do you see MSNBC or C|Net linking to r00tkits whenever a Linux vulnerability is released?
Roblimo as Editor-in-Chief, you are responsible for his work and quite frankly he is the worst part of the Slashdot experience (now that I've upped my threshold to 4).
Most crime happens in poor, minority-dominated neighborhoods. It only makes sense to increase the police presence in those areas, through random patrols and targetted surveillance of possible hotspots and hotheads.
The worst part of America winning the Cold War is that whenever insane shit like profiling potential criminals happens we can no longer point to the practice of show me your papers in the Iron Curtain or Soviet states to show why it is against the very principles of democracy the US is based upon. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
I used to live in one of those poor, crime ridden, minority dominated neighborhoods a few years ago and this adverserial us vs. them mentality between the police and members of the community was a major problem which is excarberated by public opinion that encourages treating poor, non-whites as a criminal underclass as default behavior of the police.
Whenever I read stuff like this I am reminded that most Slashdotters are fairly young and have little idea of what has been common practice for decades in the computer industry. Microsoft has had user groups for most of their products for years in fact the there's a link to finding local Microsoft user groups right of the MSDN front page.
In fact you don't have to take my word for it or that of MSDN, why not just Google for 'Microsoft "user group"' see how many thousand hits come back.
ObLegalDisclaimer: I work for Microsoft but this post represents my opinions and does not necessarily reflect the thoughts, opinions, strategies or plans of my employer
Like many people on here there was a time I grew used to paying $15 - $20 for a CD only to end up listening to only 2 or 3 good songs on the album. In fact, I had mentally begun to consider a CD a good buy if it had 3 good songs and anything above that an excellent buy. This was helped by treating each CD purchase as the equivalent of buying 3 singles from the same artist.
Then came the advent of large scale P2P software based, copyright infringement while I was in college. I began being able to avoid what I used to consider "bad" CD purchases by only obtaining the one good song without having to deal with the dreck on the rest of the album or paying for it.
Now in many cases I would love to pay for the one or two album tracks or single remixes that I like but the music industry has steadfastly refused to provide me a mechanism to do this. However, there is really nothing technologically preventing record labels from either a.) providing customized CDs for their target audience (in the same vein as the NOW compilation albums) or b.) providing digital music at a fraction of the current price of singles and CDs.
Unfortunately they don't seem remotely interested in satisfying their customers in this demand. Legislating against technology can only last for so long.
I read the article and it described a system where if you have a website that serves only static content you can use this snake oil technology to prevent people from defacing your website. Why is the technology snake oil:
Two hard drives heads, one OS, one root/administrator account. If your box is r00ted, it doesn't matter how many hard drives or hard drive heads you have you have still been 0wn3d.
In my opinion the best places to find out information about Microsoft technologies and products are
PS: So this post isn't offtopic I'll add something about SSH. OpenSSH in Windows is possible if one installs Cygwin.
I can't believe the number of sites that have fallen for this. The amount of game players that'll see an ad in some corner of a graveyard is rather miniscule compared to the amount of people who'll read about all the hubub on thier favorite geek or regular news site. When Acclaim backs off the idea as they were planning to do all along we'll all know all the initimate gory details of Shadow Man 2 because we've read dozens of articles about their "despicable advertising plan", now who here can say they knew there was a Shadow Man 1? Not me.
Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.
But then I reconsidered. First, a little background. C# was, is, and always will be, a Micro$oft invention. Like it did with SMB and OLE, not to mention DirectX and ZIP, M$ will have no reservations about mucking with C# just to break Mono compatibility.
C# is an ECMA standard, like C++ which is an ISO standard unlike Java which is Sun Microsystem's property. Thus Sun has complete control over the future of Java while Microsoft does not have the same for C#. So claiming supporting C# is supporting Microsoft is way off base. Question: Were DirectX, OLE and SMB also international standards or are they technologies wholly owned by M$?
Exactly. Why use a proprietary OS when for more money you can get a proprietary OS on proprietary hardware? :)
<Runs back to the Borg cube/>