They are going in the right direction--abandoning the hamstring of backwards compatibility--but who has any faith in Microsoft's ability to execute? Um... I think the main point of the article is that they're not abandoning backwards compatibility. By saying that they're focused on compatibility, they're also debunking the whole "running programs in a VM for compatibility" rumor. Not that a VM for compatibility isn't a bad idea, but Microsoft is showing that they're willing to sacrifice simplifying the operating system in order to ensure native compatibility.
I've occasionally been accused of having an evil mind, but I'm sure that professionals given weeks or months can come up with better kneecapping plans than the above amateur hipshots. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
Office 2007 is version 12. If the article is correct (they said Office 14), that's two releases away! Actually, it is the next release. Microsoft skips the number 13 in their versions.
Honestly though I have heard great things about the upgrade from many users. Also Engadget was running a story and most of the people that commented had good things to say.
And I am not one of them. I attempted to install SP1 from the installer and it corrupted some of my system files (aspi.sys to be exact). I was able to use system restore to roll it back, but it looks like I'm not upgrading until I have a lot of free time to spare working with it. Too bad, I was looking forward to the faster file copy speeds.
While proposed jokingly before, why not use something like PDF or flash for a fully graphical web? While it would make writing crawlers and accessibility harder, I think that is something that could be worked on, by providing an open standard for the files that can be parsed easier than html.
How about OpenDocument?
It's an ISO standard, uses XML so it's easily parseable, has more features than HTML, and is supported by most of the office suites (There's always the Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office). An interesting side effect would be that people could create entire websites with just a word processor. (Yes, I know most word processors can create HTML too, but have you even seen the code they create? It's a total mess.)
Personally I'm of the mind that iTunes tracks have always been DRM free though, since you are allowed to burn them to CD. If you just want to use the iPod alone, there's no need. This in built burn to cd option hasn't been the case for other DRM schemes that I know of.
It's still DRM. Apple still encrypts your songs with a secret key and only allows them to be decrypted by iTunes and your iPod after checking that you can play it. It still blocks you from playing it on more than a few computers and prevents it from being converted into other formats. Being able to burn to a CD doesn't make it non-DRM.
Now that I've made that point, most music stores that use WMA DRM also allow you to burn it to a CD. Just being able to play a legally purchased song on your computer or Sansa would be a foolish model, so Walmart and other songs that you purchase from let you burn it to a CD a certain number of times. You're probably getting it confused with subscription DRM which only lets you play it on your computer or WMA player for a limited time.
Maybe to encourage network encryption so that they don't have to store and provide access to people's surfing habits for the government.
But seriously, why would they be in league with Hollywood on this issue? It's a lot of trouble for them to correctly implement this technology (but then again, who says they have to correctly implement it?), with little gain for them. Sure, the bandwidth costs them in infrastructure, but now they won't have an excuse for blocking BitTorrent and P2P. Your suggestion about them trying to break small ISPs is plausible, but would they go through all the trouble and headache just to pressure small ISPs when they've already got a lot of the US's userbase?
Even still, when I google my name (first & last in quotes) I still get three results.
That's funny, when I search for "Sacred Byte", I get twelve responses, and four of them are in another language. Is your gaming clan from Korea, Japan, or Russia?
Will the GNOME Foundation's indifferent response to Richard Stallman's appeal drive him to throw his weight behind KDE?
With Linus preferring KDE, could Stallman's support put more weight behind KDE? I'm rather surprised that the GNOME Foundation's decision. They could at least have kept their mouths shut instead of praising OOXML, which severely damages their credibility in the GNU world.
You can't see it with Slashdot's HTML rendering, but whoever typed that reply for Comcast is back in the days of the typewriter. He or she used two spaces after every period. That made sense when all type was monospaced.
Or maybe they used vi. It required a sentence to be separated with two spaces in order for it to detect them.
But you've got admit, it's pretty cool how they address you by name throughout this carefully composed, personal email response made Just For You. And here's the code that'll help you make your own personal email response Just For You.
$pathetic_letter =~ s/Dumb Customer/Mark/;
If the author doesn't attach any license and it's "just" some code from a forum posting I don't see a problem with it. I have several times posted code samples in forums to help people, I would not mind that they where used in someones commercial program, if I minded I would have attached some for of license. If its posted on a forum to help somebody, the poster must know that it will be used.
But even still, unless you have explicitly disclaimed the code, it's technically under copyright. Although it doesn't sound like you're about to sue someone over it, you can still change your mind and sue them if you think you can get some money from them.
I see code on forums without a license or notice putting the code in public domain all the time. I usually rewrite the code from scratch just to be safe. For all you who post code on the Internet, please don't assume that everyone can use your code. You probably wouldn't want to sue them, but they don't know that. I would recommend putting an explicit notice that you're releasing the code in public domain or that the code is released under a permissive license like BSD, MIT, or ISC license (unless you really want the code to be open source only).
For the author of the article, I would recommend notifying the company of the problem and let them decide what to do. The company at least deserves to know about the potential problem so they aren't surprised later on. The problem is small, and it can be cleared up pretty quickly, but ignoring it won't make it go away forever.
My question is, how do they know which traffic is illegal. I download my Linux distro's via BitTorrent.
Simple, use "fingerprints" of copyrighted content. Sure, it won't get everything, but it'll catch the majority of illegal file sharers. It's what Google is doing for YouTube, and it seems to work pretty well. They'll have to have some kind of appeal system in case a user gets flagged incorrectly, but I think it'll be pretty effective. If you knew your Internet would be cut off if you downloaded(FTP, Bittorrent, Kazaa, etc...) illegal content, would you take the chance? It wouldn't fly in the US, but if it gets rid of DRM, I might support it.
These searches are especially important in cases where the suspects are aware that their internet traffic and phone calls may be monitored and choose to store sensitive information directly on their hard drives without emailing it.
That's the real point of the story, not that Skype is unbreakable. Exactly. It's just an excuse to be able to install Trojans on others computers.
But if terrorists are smart enough to use encrypted Skype instead of a normal phone, wouldn't they also be smart enough to encrypt any sensitive information with Truecrypt?
I suspect the real reason is that with the ability to scan terrorist's computers they could also use the law to scan other people's computers too.
How many laws that were supposed to be used to protect the country have been used to investigate copyright laws or "suspicious people". I fully support gathering information from terrorists, but it is far too easy for the government to use them to enforce trivial or unconstitutional laws.
Do they have some mechanism for surviving the intial format or is this a complete hoax? Even assuming the drive is installed in a Windows computer, isn't the first step always to format the drive? I've added lots of drives to Windows machines and it never occurred to me to try to access them without formatting them. Do these come preformatted?
These are preformatted portable hard drives, like the kind you use for backing up your computer. The dangerous part is that the trojan is set to autorun, which can infect your computer by just hooking up the drive. You don't need to click on anything.
You must have missed it. Google Docs supports ODF for documents and spreadsheets, but not presentations (only.ppt for now). In fact, they've supported it for a while (I exported a document to ODF back in May).
It's called wear levelling, and it's pretty common on flash drives. It tries to spread out writes so the memory degrades slowly as a whole. Most flash devices implement it in hardware, so it's transparent to the software. It can be performed with software, but this is pretty uncommon.
To be fair, that's probably the fault of the OEM you bought from loading tons of crap and free offers on top of the system. A clean install of Vista Ultimate on an Aspire 5100 (1GB RAM) works just fine for me performance wise and I like it.
I don't know how many brand new computers I've had to remove loads of junk from. The free offers, trial security suites, and "free" games that only work for an hour all slow down your computer and eat up your disk space. Some of them make it hard to uninstall, or have convenient "bugs" which prevent uninstallation or only remove part of the program.
If I get a new computer, the first thing I'll do is reformat and reinstall from scratch. Besides removing all the "preinstalled offers", it'll give me a chance to give part of the disk to Kubuntu. Or I'll get a Mac and install an OEM copy of Vista and Kubuntu.
Slashdot Mirror
In Soviet Delaware, subway cars sink YOU!
And I am not one of them. I attempted to install SP1 from the installer and it corrupted some of my system files (aspi.sys to be exact). I was able to use system restore to roll it back, but it looks like I'm not upgrading until I have a lot of free time to spare working with it. Too bad, I was looking forward to the faster file copy speeds.
FutureDomainHow about OpenDocument?
It's an ISO standard, uses XML so it's easily parseable, has more features than HTML, and is supported by most of the office suites (There's always the Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office). An interesting side effect would be that people could create entire websites with just a word processor. (Yes, I know most word processors can create HTML too, but have you even seen the code they create? It's a total mess.)
~~FutureDomain~~
They might try to sell them to McDonalds for their happy meals.
Sorry W3C, but if I don't include it in my webpage, IE goes into the dreaded quirks mode!
*forwards article to Microsoft*
You must be new here.
Slashdot effect
It's still DRM. Apple still encrypts your songs with a secret key and only allows them to be decrypted by iTunes and your iPod after checking that you can play it. It still blocks you from playing it on more than a few computers and prevents it from being converted into other formats. Being able to burn to a CD doesn't make it non-DRM.
Now that I've made that point, most music stores that use WMA DRM also allow you to burn it to a CD. Just being able to play a legally purchased song on your computer or Sansa would be a foolish model, so Walmart and other songs that you purchase from let you burn it to a CD a certain number of times. You're probably getting it confused with subscription DRM which only lets you play it on your computer or WMA player for a limited time.
~~FutureDomain~~
Maybe to encourage network encryption so that they don't have to store and provide access to people's surfing habits for the government.
But seriously, why would they be in league with Hollywood on this issue? It's a lot of trouble for them to correctly implement this technology (but then again, who says they have to correctly implement it?), with little gain for them. Sure, the bandwidth costs them in infrastructure, but now they won't have an excuse for blocking BitTorrent and P2P. Your suggestion about them trying to break small ISPs is plausible, but would they go through all the trouble and headache just to pressure small ISPs when they've already got a lot of the US's userbase?
That's funny, when I search for "Sacred Byte", I get twelve responses, and four of them are in another language. Is your gaming clan from Korea, Japan, or Russia?
Gates: What the hell is going on? It's freezing in here!
With Linus preferring KDE, could Stallman's support put more weight behind KDE? I'm rather surprised that the GNOME Foundation's decision. They could at least have kept their mouths shut instead of praising OOXML, which severely damages their credibility in the GNU world.
I don't think so.
Windows + Uneducated computer users - Security software = Multiple viruses, spyware, bots, and maybe a rootkit or two.
In this context of AT&T, it might be better to refer to them as "Cingular".
Or maybe they used vi. It required a sentence to be separated with two spaces in order for it to detect them.
~~FutureDomain~~But even still, unless you have explicitly disclaimed the code, it's technically under copyright. Although it doesn't sound like you're about to sue someone over it, you can still change your mind and sue them if you think you can get some money from them.
I see code on forums without a license or notice putting the code in public domain all the time. I usually rewrite the code from scratch just to be safe. For all you who post code on the Internet, please don't assume that everyone can use your code. You probably wouldn't want to sue them, but they don't know that. I would recommend putting an explicit notice that you're releasing the code in public domain or that the code is released under a permissive license like BSD, MIT, or ISC license (unless you really want the code to be open source only).
For the author of the article, I would recommend notifying the company of the problem and let them decide what to do. The company at least deserves to know about the potential problem so they aren't surprised later on. The problem is small, and it can be cleared up pretty quickly, but ignoring it won't make it go away forever.
~~FutureDomain~~Simple, use "fingerprints" of copyrighted content. Sure, it won't get everything, but it'll catch the majority of illegal file sharers. It's what Google is doing for YouTube, and it seems to work pretty well. They'll have to have some kind of appeal system in case a user gets flagged incorrectly, but I think it'll be pretty effective. If you knew your Internet would be cut off if you downloaded(FTP, Bittorrent, Kazaa, etc...) illegal content, would you take the chance? It wouldn't fly in the US, but if it gets rid of DRM, I might support it.
~~FutureDomain~~But if terrorists are smart enough to use encrypted Skype instead of a normal phone, wouldn't they also be smart enough to encrypt any sensitive information with Truecrypt?
~~FutureDomain~~I suspect the real reason is that with the ability to scan terrorist's computers they could also use the law to scan other people's computers too.
How many laws that were supposed to be used to protect the country have been used to investigate copyright laws or "suspicious people". I fully support gathering information from terrorists, but it is far too easy for the government to use them to enforce trivial or unconstitutional laws.
These are preformatted portable hard drives, like the kind you use for backing up your computer. The dangerous part is that the trojan is set to autorun, which can infect your computer by just hooking up the drive. You don't need to click on anything.
~~FutureDomain~~You must have missed it. Google Docs supports ODF for documents and spreadsheets, but not presentations (only .ppt for now). In fact, they've supported it for a while (I exported a document to ODF back in May).
It's called wear levelling, and it's pretty common on flash drives. It tries to spread out writes so the memory degrades slowly as a whole. Most flash devices implement it in hardware, so it's transparent to the software. It can be performed with software, but this is pretty uncommon.
I don't know how many brand new computers I've had to remove loads of junk from. The free offers, trial security suites, and "free" games that only work for an hour all slow down your computer and eat up your disk space. Some of them make it hard to uninstall, or have convenient "bugs" which prevent uninstallation or only remove part of the program.
If I get a new computer, the first thing I'll do is reformat and reinstall from scratch. Besides removing all the "preinstalled offers", it'll give me a chance to give part of the disk to Kubuntu. Or I'll get a Mac and install an OEM copy of Vista and Kubuntu.