Here's a copy of an e-mail I wrote in response to the article in Washtech stating the MS position "make us get rid of MSIE and we'll have to stop selling W2000"
============== quote
========== quote from article
In court filings late Friday, the company said the recently released consumer operating system, Windows XP, and the business-oriented Windows 2000 system could not be redesigned to satisfy state demands that they be made available in separate versions, with and without key programs, such as the Internet Explorer Web browser.
==========end quote from article
to Jonathan Krim:
I have been running without Internet Explorer on my PC since a few months after I got Windows 95 using products provided by 98lite.net . What I got out of de-integrating MSIE from my computer is reduced resource utilization and increased stability.
I'm running Windows 98SE now without MSIE. At this point, the first thing I do with a MS operating system is to remove IE as an operating system component. MS originally claimed that 98SE doesn't work without MSIE. 98SE works *better* without MSIE as an OS component. MS lied then. I'm using Opera and Netscape at this point.
The *freeware* product below is one that will eliminate MSIE from W2000. Unfortunately, they don't have a version for XP yet.
Try it on one of your organization's Windows 2000 machines and see for yourself if Microsoft is lying about the impossibility of detaching MSIE from W2000. If their thousands of programmers can't figure out how, perhaps they can license this company's products.
I recommend trying this on a newly installed W2000 OS with no new apps or user data, like any other software running on Windows, there's no guarantee that the next installation of any Windows program whatsoever won't cause the hard drive to melt or the monitor to explode or Satan to appear in person sitting on your desk.;-) The script version is a no-brainer, simply download the file, read the brief instructions, and run as directed.
A.Lizard
p.s. any way to get a copy of this e-mail to the law firm for the State AGs doing the MS antitrust prosecution? The script version of the deinstaller takes about 2 minutes to run and a reboot to bring up the new IE-free OS. The judge might find a demo of IE disappearing from W2000 in an effortless way entertaining. The MS attorneys who are running W2000 will probably request it. a cc of the file. For their personal use.;-)
Looking for the hit-man? IEradicator is the first and only utility to remove all versions of Internet Explorer from all versions of Windows 95/98/ Me/2000 in 8 different languages!. IEradicator uses the built- in Windows setup engine to "rub out da big fella" in less time than it takes to oil your 12-gauge.
------------- end 98lite quote
============= end quote
This version is "free as in beer", a demo for a more sophisticated product. If MS can't figure out how to get rid of MSIE, I'm sure these people could come up with reasonable licensing terms.
Re:The only way to send a message to politicians
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You have to tell them that we will defeat them, and then actually do it.
Hollings isn't up until 2004, though, and I imagine he'll retire then.
Does anyone think this bill can pass and not create a major recesssion? We need to tell the most viable opponents of any incumbents who vote for this bill how this bill screwed the economy and the Net and how it happened and why it must be repealed. I see some wonderful attack ads in the future of anyone stupid enough to vote for this.
Incumbents will automatically be in trouble anyway. We should do what we can to make that trouble far worse.
This bill should be called "The Incumbent-free Congress" act. While Hollings will definitely be of retirement age and will have a nice pension we're paying for waiting for him, there are a lot of first-term Congress who would like to stay in for a while. The consequences of this bill becoming law should nicely derail the chances of anyone stupid enough to vote for it of staying in office.
Basically, Hollings and Hollywood are giving Congress a "poison pill" and hoping they'll swallow it.
This is one of the few pieces of legislation I've ever seen that will even do harm to even its supporters. Unless anyone thinks Hollywood in any form we know it in can now do without computers, implementing their bill will hose their computers as well as our own.
Of course, by the time people start asking Valenti just why every single digital FX project for Hollywood is behind schedule and movies are generally running millions over the usual overbudgeting, he'll have retired, his damage done. However, this may not be an issue, a lot fewer people will be able to afford movies, either at theaters or via cable.
The bottom line is that this bill is a threat to our jobs.
If it passes, this will give more of us, especially those that this bill as law will render unemployable a lot more free time to volunteer to work against the people who vote for it.
One won't change his mind, but it will be noticed. A stack of this kind of e-mail and Hollings will start rethinking his position. BTW, Libertarian Party fits the high-tech agenda as perceived by politicians a bit better.
That was the idea. Note that a number of customer people quit Exxon over that tanker spilling all that oil because they couldn't deal with the rage they were getting from customers over the phone. If Hollings' staffers started quitting, he'd get the message.
At this point, the only hopes S.Carolinans have of changing the mind of their Senator are:
1) A big enough individual contribution accompanied with a polite snailmail saying someting of the order of "if you don't withdraw this bill, your opponent will get one twice this size next election season". Big enough means comparable to everything Hollings got from all media accounts combined. To get that number requires finding someone with the political expertise to find out which law firms contributed on behalf of Disney, AOL, et. al. in order that the voters who checked wouldn't discover where Hollings campaign funds really come from. Note that a person who can do this should not be concerned about what state he lives in, Hollings won't care.
2. Enough e-mails, etc. with the message we are REALLY pissed off over Hollywood's attempts to destroy our digital infrastructure for the sake of the media industry's convenience.
Few slashdotters are in the position of being able to write a check for several hundred thousand dollars. (Note: if any are, remember there are campaign contribution laws that have to be complied with)
However, a large number of "we're really, really pissed off" communications might persuade him to tell his owners, "Sorry, but the voters in my state really think this is a bad idea, so bad that it endangers my chance of re-election. Can't deliver this time, maybe I can sneak something through." While these letters will be counted, not read in any detail, there's a small chance that this could work.
If you get a reply, try posting it on slashdot. Odds are, the reply will have very little relationship to anything you wrote to the point where it'll provide us with something to laugh at.
It is my understanding based on a Politech post by Mike Godwin that Vadasz of Intel actually made a pretty good presentation and that the problem is that "too many of the players and decisionmakers in this area lack the basic technical understanding necessary to make intelligent copyright-policy and
IT-policy decisions"
This ignorance has become dangerous to all of us. Like to back up your system using mass storage with Hollywood-style copy protection built in?
Hollywood has already bought the politicians who are going to decide on this. They don't get it. There's no political profit in getting this.
I've said for some time if the high-tech community from CEOs to end users all decided to pull together on an issue, that we can win regardless of opposition.
Collectively, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Sybase, and Unisys are a probably lot bigger and employ more people than the motion picture industry. I mention these companies because their leaders signed an open letter to MPAA asking that the movie industry start having real discussions with them with respect to a solution everyone can live with.
Jack Valenti figures correctly that he doesn't have to compromise, and by the time Hollywood finds out that their own computers have been compromised by the solution the top corporate suits bought from Congress, he'll be in a very well paid retirement.
Perhaps it's time for high-tech industry to stop kissing their asses and start kicking them and see about enlisting our help in kicking them as well.
If these high-tech companies start buying media time and doing press campaigns about just what the Hollywood solution means (start with pictures of dark factory floors, blue screens on computers, etc.) in conjunction to putting out a call to write letters to Congress to their employees and their developer communities and to communities like this one.
I'd certainly write my own Senators over this issue even if the request was signed by Bill Gates.
I've been telling people to avoid XP and I've been running AMD in my boxes for years and years. However, there are issues where the most die-hard Linux fanatic with any sense will realize that we've got common interests.
If the Senators don't get the point, a number of them are up for re-election this fall. High-tech money and voters can make the difference between who wins and who loses.
We know who our enemies are. We can't do anything permanent on them by ourselves. A high-tech coalition can probably remake Congress in our own image. We don't have to like Microsoft, just be glad they're on our side for a change and be willing to work with them.
There are other major corporations who would be greatly inconvenienced by having MPAA use Congress to tell us what our computers are going to look like and what can and can't be done on the Internet.
It's coalition time. It's single-issue politics time. . . us vs. the laws Hollywood has used Congress to ram down our collective throats. I know that every major corporation I mentioned specifically has people reading slashdot. Carry the word back to your bosses that it's time to see what kind of coalition we can put together.
High tech developers and users plus high-tech corporate money is probably an unstoppable political force. There are few issues that we can all agree on, but on those issues, we need to work together.
Why don't you tell good old Senator Fritz what you think of his sellout to the major multimedia corporate interests at the expense of everybody else.
Being a trained attack dog for Disney and AOL doesn't serve anyone living in your state. It just gets him campaign money.
If you find that it's literally impossible to back up your hard drive or your company's data storage a year from now because he got those "anti-piracy" (note: in Hollings-speak, fair use = piracy) laws passed, do you think Hollings will help you? Maybe he can get a law passed making it illegal for hard drives to fail.
Note: you may safely assume that at least some of the law firm contributions are from organizations on media industry payrolls.
Since I don't live in South Carolina, the only way he's going to pay any attention to what I say as a non-constituent is if I send it via snailmail with a check for over $1,000 enclosed. Since hell will freeze over before I send him money, I didn't see any reason to bother writing him.
Here's a copy of the e-mail I didn't bother sending. Perhaps some of you who live in SC can get some inspiration from it. Note: URL below is
a fair usage quote from Yahoo News:
Senator rips tech fears on piracy curb
Threatens government standards to protect copyrights
By Lisa Smith, Medill News Service
WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- A powerful senator criticized Silicon Valley's high-tech firms Thursday for obstructing efforts to fight movie and music piracy.
If the electronics and content industries can't agree on a solution to digital piracy, the government will step in, promised Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
Hollings told Intel (INTC: news, chart, profile) executive vice president Leslie Vadasz that it was "nonsense" to say that protecting intellectual property rights would damage the high-tech industry, stifle innovation, reduce product usefulness and slow new technology investment, as Vadasz had testified.
Dear Senator Hollings:
The above comment makes you either a liar or a fool.
There was a time I used to admire you. After you decided you now represent AOL/TimeWarner, the MPAA, and Disney instead of the poor suckers who voted for you, I no longer can respect you as a public leader or even a human being.
You're just another political whore. You are a disgrace to the US Senate and a living indictment of American democracy.
Of course, this is not news to any of your staff member who reads this, but if that person had any personal integrity or decency, he or she wouldn't be working for you anyway.
Hopefully, when those companies you attack finish with you, you'll be just someone who's trying to become a lobbyist and finding that nobody in politics can afford to be associated with you, instead of the "powerful senator" you are no longer fit to be.
Don't tell me, use the method I described to dump your comment into your congressidiot's fax machine.
It's time he finds out that Internet users are becoming a "special interest" group and an increasing number of people are going to be looking at a politician's votes on Internet-connected issues first in deciding who to vote for.
However, toward election day, assuming the Internet is your top issue, find out how he voted on other Internet-related legislation before deciding how to vote and telling everyone you know why you should vote against him.
And find out about his opponent, he might be worse.
Remember that the people in government responsible for the creation and funding of Frankenstein's monster, aka ICANN don't know what a DNS or an IETF is. Is there anybody in Congress who does?
I think it's obvious that it's time to reframe the question of ICANN... from:
their proposal to turn ICANN into The Force in the hopes that with enough of our money and total control over the root, that they may find a mission someday
to
how to reduce it to a useful size and believable function as Randy Bush is proposing.
I think it's time to start taking this seriously. Like to see next year's domain referrals go up $5 a year due to charges passed along to us by any registrar who wants to sell domain names people can connect to? Or $10? Or $100?
Or prices cranked up to the point where only major corporations and governments can afford them? The proposal to expand ICANN is an ambitious one. Ambitious translates to "if this goes through, it's going to cost somebody." WE are the somebody who will wind up paying.
My last comment on ICANN started with the phrase "taxation without representation". The proposed new ICANN doesn't have any public input that ICANN would have to pay attention to.
The fact that the post I'm responding to got modded up to +5 instead of -1 shows how the Slashdot moderation system breaks when the focus of a discussion slips outside a pure technical focus and deals to the slightest extent with the social impact of technology. Since that can't be fixed unless slashdot readers as a group put the same kind of effort and time into learning about history, economics, and other things one needs to know to speak intelligently about public policy issues, there isn't much that can be done about it.
Misinformation or even disinformation via mass media is NOT the problem.
While this isn't true with respect to every issue or group, thanks to the Web, we have more access to all sides of every issue than we have ever had before. All we have to do to find out what any group has to say about itself is to go to their website and look. No need to be concerned about media agendas or "editorial judgement".
If you don't like "misinformation" or "disinformation" about a group or country or company, go to their Websites and get their side of it. Many newspapers in foriegn lands have English-language versions. In some cases, this is government-controlled media, in which case you at least know what the government has to say. Other countries have presses with varying degrees of freedom.
Don't whine about misinformation, make or find better information and tell people about it yourself.
If you care to take the time, you can become a better informed citizen than has ever been possible in the history of the world.
The problem isn't the media, it's that most people can't find the time or more often, the interest to find out for themselves what their media is deliberately not telling them.
The US is hardly immune to this, the best 2000 election coverage came from The Guardian in England.
With a bit of digging around, you can find out why the rest of the world believes that the 2000 US Presidential Election was stolen and that the democratic process in the US is a joke. And not 1 American citizen in 10 knows why, most have accepted the mass media version as spin-controlled by both political parties as TRUTH.
While "The Truth" isn't necessarily out there, you can go out and find very large chunks of it by simply knowing what to point and click at.
Here are some of the URLs I use when I want to find things the mass media isn't discussing:
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/index1.html#news1, warning, the page is 250K of text, it'll take a while to load even in lyns for dialup users.
First: Don't bother with e-mail, most staffers consider it "spam".
They usually do read their fax messages.
I sent the following to the fax number of my Congresscritter free of charge, I'd like you to do the same with yours. (look them up on your congresmoron's site at http://www.house.gov.) You can construct a fax number that which will relay your e-mail through the Washington, DC mail > faxgate free of charge by simply substituting your Congressidiot's fax number for the one in the following sample letter. Needless to say, the text of your letter should NOT be identical to mine.
To find your congressperson, go to http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The fax number should be somewhere on the congressperson's site entering your zip code and state will get you.
Note: substitute the 10 digit 1 + area code / phone number of your congressperson WITHOUT dashes or spaces for xxxxxxxxxx below. This is sent as a regular e-mail to the To: address.
To: remote-printer.firstname_last name/US_Congress@xxxxxxxxxx.iddd.tpc.int
Subject: HR1542
Dear [insert name of congressperson here]:
Please vote NO on HR1542. The only purpose it is intended to serve is to put independent DSL providers out of business to increase RBOC profits, and I don't see this as serving *any* legitimate policy purpose. Unlike the phone companies, I think that competition is a good thing. Your constituents need *more* choices in broadband, not fewer.
name
address
city,state,zip
(including your address is important because if they don't know you're a constituent, your fax will be tossed into the garbage)
The words "no taxation without representation" started the American Revolution.
We are the people who are ultimately going to pay for this. Just what is it that ICANN is trying to sell us that is worth paying for? Making you feel secure isn't worth a cent of my money. The whole reason behind the proposal is that that the ccTLDs and other registries can't find a reason to pay what ICANN wants to charge. How much does it really cost to run a root server? How much more than that does ICANN want to charge?
Adding a superbureaucracy to ICANN somehow doesn't seem to add value to the product to me. As an end user and owner of a domain, all I want from whoever is running a root server is reliable enough propagation that if I want to access a domain by e-mail or ftp or via Web, I can with no screwing around. While a true Internet government responsible to the userbase might be an interesting thing, that has nothing to do with the ICANN proposal.
If you don't feel worthy to be part of the governance of the Internet, I agree completely with you. You aren't. Some of the rest of us might be. Go back to your TV set and believe whatever the pundits on CNN tell you.
Nobody has to get shot at by anybody to create alternate root servers that ICANN can't touch, and if ICANN actually gets it together far enough to make this happen, the question isn't whether there will be alternate roots, the question is how many. Do you want to have to select an ISP based on which root is most likely to have in its namespace the people and entities you want to communicate with?
What you have mistaken for a legitimate attempt of the Internet to govern itself is just another political scam to get us to buy services that nobody except a few major corporate and governmental interests who want better tools for intellectual property control and control of Internet content in general want.
The Internet is screwed up enough as it is and it should be obvious to any informed person that the ICANN proposal isn't even in the right general direction to fix what's wrong.
Will this clean up the spam coming out of Asia? Will this make open relay operators fix their servers? The other problems like insufficient bandwidth will be taken care of by the private sector when it becomes profitable to do so.
What do corporations do when governmental powers are made available to them? The DMCA, Cybercrime Treaty complete with secret protocols, and the new WIPO restrictions on use of copyrighted material are good examples. A corporate charter says to do things that are good for the stockholders, not for the public interest.
"Who shall watch the watchdogs?" The ICANN proposal says nobody... perhaps power exercised by backroom deals solely accessible to insiders makes you feel warm and fuzzy. If this is what you want to pay for, write ICANN a check with your money. NOT mine.
You want to make a martyr out of the fuckhead? Let's see... movies made for TV, memorial albums, retrospectives, never mind, I just had dinner. I'll just say that if you want to see the band and him 24/7... hmmm, are you by any chance on the band's payroll?
Much funnier if he pulled something Darwinian in orbit.
A person who thinks his money and publicity hype puts him above listening REAL CAREFULLY to the "how to stay alive in space" lectures and figures that the spacemen around him will keep him safe if he's in REAL trouble because he is famous and thinks he knows something because he watches a lot of sci-fi movies actually isn't somebody we want going into space to further space tourism.
At the current primitive state of space technology, the classic "tourist fuckup due to inattention" means death. In an emergency, our brave, intrepid astronauts will do their best, but will be too busy trying to save their own asses to spare much time for a pop star they detest. (if they don't, they aren't smart enough to have been selected for the station to begin with)
Though if he decides he can safely go for a space walk without a space suit because it would be real kewl and anyone gets video footage, I hope it gets posted on the Web and broadcast. THAT would be real entertainment.
>> Tony Bennet, or just about any of the big name
>> groups are not hurting for cash.
>Guess what. They didn't get there by "selling
>out". They got there by being such big names that
>they could pick and choose between recording
companies
I would guess that most of the artists and bands who got into that position got there after having been burned by their first labels. Note the number of bands that change labels at the very first possible opportunity. Why? Shopping for better deals, obviously.
AFAIK, the Geneva Convention only refers to soldiers in uniform... a signatory that captures anybody else under arms or performing other combatant roles (e.g. spying) can do whatever amuses it with that person.
On a no-name computer, the mom-and-pop reseller generally sells a REAL OS separately. Not a recovery disk, and not a hard drive partition with recovery information.
Of course, we all know why full OS disks don't go on machines with pre-installed Microsoft OSs, but what do you expect when you deal with M$?
White boxes are generally built of standard parts. No proprietary motherboards or other ugly surprises. Much nicer if the vendor is gone and the computer breaks.
Is HP "too big to fail"? Two words. Compaq. Merger.
While a "recovery disk" is no substitute for an OS, it's somewhat better than nothing if the problem calls for no more than reformatting and a reinstall. If you backed your data up, you shortly get back a working computer.
HP deciding that a drive partition is a substitute for a working OS and making customers jump through hoops to buy something that was supposed to come with a computer simply tells us that there's no longer any further reason to buy HP.
I tell my friends to buy "white box", not name brand. I'm now telling them specifically to avoid Hewlett-Packard.
Too bad. I've got a 1987 HP laser printer that puts out print just as clean as it did when it was new. Too bad only the name is left from the company that built it.
Michael Powell should be explaining the logic behind his peculiar statement to a Federal Grand Jury after a proper investigation looking for unusual bank deposits, off-shore bank accounts, unusual property transfers, speakers' fees, and the myriad other ways public officials have been collecting payoffs from parties with financial stakes in government regulatory agencies decisions.
Of course, he may be taking orders from someone who can collect payoffs in the perfectly legal and aboveboard ways we call campaign contributions and soft money.
Any public official who states this decision in the public interest is a liar, fool, or both.
Better hope the IT job market turns around before you graduate from college. However, since judging from your post, you just entered high school, that's probably a safe bet. Of course, there's always the chance that you'll miss the next boom and the job market will look just like this when you show HR people your nice, new CS diploma and they seem really unimpressed.
I'd start putting my resume out immediately. To do otherwise is a bet that everyone involved will do everything right the first time.
If you have bosses stupid enough to bet the company on this, their business and that of the unfortunates who invested, but you have no reason to bet your career with them.
Unless you've got a shitload of cash and the company's got really cool technology, in which case your best move is to wait. . . and buy it at fire sale prices, rebrand the product, and build it right this time.
You're in a good position to learn modern electronics. Most small / worthwhile electronic designs are a microcontroller connected to a handful of glue logic chips, sensors, and maybe an analog chip or two conditioning the sensor outputs. If you can handle assembly language, you're in a *very* good position to deal with, but you *must* learn digital electronics to take advantage of it. While reversing Vcc and GND is easy to do, the result might be smoke coming out of your project or the PC it's connected to. You don't know what Vcc and GND area? That's why you need to learn this.
ECAD is electronic computer aided design. There are low cost packages, some are even freeware. Get a package as soon as you can.
You will get schematics that are automatically legible, plus you will get automatically generated net lists telling you exactly which pins of which chips are supposed to be connected to each other. If you're wiring up a circuit by hand, this is amazingly good information to have, especially if it's accurate.
Here's a freeware package, I think it's good for 16 IC equivalents. Check McCAD . Perfectly adequate for hobbyist or student. Their shrinkwrap unlimited version is thousands of dollars and has more power than you have any idea how to use at this point.
Get a good basic set of hand tools, there are plenty of hobbyist kits.
In addition, include a decent wire-wrap gun if you plan to work in digital. Your technique of choice if you aren't buying a kit with a PCB is going to be wirewrap on perforated boards into which you've plugged lots of 8-64 pin wirewrap sockets into. Get the socket ID labels. These items, except for the (I said decent) wrap gun, you can get at Radio Shack. You might check ebay for a deal on a pro wire-wrap gun.
You need a DMM (Digital mulitmeter), an analog VOM (volt-ohmmmetter, this will generally have a current measurement range large enough to be of us, look for several amps measurement capability, and an oscilloscope, at least 100 MHz, look for a used Tektronix.
Look hard for a decent electronics surplus store in your area, you might get some spectacular deals on test gear and the more expensive tools.
Find out where the electronics "pro shop" in your area is, for the stuff that Radio Shack never did and never will sell. You'll pay a premium, but it beats waiting for shipping if you need it NOW.
The ARRL Handbook from the ARRL ham radio organization is a good starting point, as their other tutorial guides are.
Pretty much proves that anyone really could patent inventions plucked from Britain after and during WW2... just goes to show;)
"So what if I'm a janitor, I really invented the Jet Engine, god damn it"
'So how was your trip to England'
In your case, I'd suggest you invent a method for keeping your shoelaces tied so you won't excite laughter by falling on your face.
You have trouble with the idea that a beautiful woman might be smarter than an Anonymous Coward? I don't. Neither does the EFF. Finding the following at Google took less time than your whine took to type:
Sample quote: "Note: Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil's invention of spread-spectrum has recently been awarded an EFF Pioneer award. (The nomination is here) This 'weblet' is a tribute to this interesting and significant technology and to the people who are using it."
Try embedded - Web-connected appliances, for instance, preferably at a small startup. A startup guarantees you long hours and a variety of different kind of work. Once it's discovered that there are all sorts of advantages to hooking anything and everything to the Web, a lot of work should open up in this area and a mechanical engineer / programmer should do very well.
If you go into this area, pay careful attention to security, perhaps your company can avoid the damage suits that will follow once people discover what fun it is to have their hot tubs and gas ovens hacked into while they are using them.
Perhaps the proper application of biofeedback training can teach people how to suppress the "thermal flash" that the inventor claims is associated with lying.
I've read that the ordinary polygraph can be manipulated via biofeedback training and other methods.
Knowing how to beat these methods could be invaluable to criminals and terrorists, particularly if the output from these tests are used as a substitute for common sense.
Slashdot Mirror
============== quote
========== quote from article
In court filings late Friday, the company said the recently released consumer operating system, Windows XP, and the business-oriented Windows 2000 system could not be redesigned to satisfy state demands that they be made available in separate versions, with and without key programs, such as the Internet Explorer Web browser.
==========end quote from article
to Jonathan Krim:
I have been running without Internet Explorer on my PC since a few months after I got Windows 95 using products provided by 98lite.net . What I got out of de-integrating MSIE from my computer is reduced resource utilization and increased stability.
I'm running Windows 98SE now without MSIE. At this point, the first thing I do with a MS operating system is to remove IE as an operating system component. MS originally claimed that 98SE doesn't work without MSIE. 98SE works *better* without MSIE as an OS component. MS lied then. I'm using Opera and Netscape at this point.
The *freeware* product below is one that will eliminate MSIE from W2000. Unfortunately, they don't have a version for XP yet.
Try it on one of your organization's Windows 2000 machines and see for yourself if Microsoft is lying about the impossibility of detaching MSIE from W2000. If their thousands of programmers can't figure out how, perhaps they can license this company's products.
I recommend trying this on a newly installed W2000 OS with no new apps or user data, like any other software running on Windows, there's no guarantee that the next installation of any Windows program whatsoever won't cause the hard drive to melt or the monitor to explode or Satan to appear in person sitting on your desk. ;-) The script version is a no-brainer, simply download the file, read the brief instructions, and run as directed.
A.Lizard ;-)
p.s. any way to get a copy of this e-mail to the law firm for the State AGs doing the MS antitrust prosecution? The script version of the deinstaller takes about 2 minutes to run and a reboot to bring up the new IE-free OS. The judge might find a demo of IE disappearing from W2000 in an effortless way entertaining. The MS attorneys who are running W2000 will probably request it. a cc of the file. For their personal use.
fair usage quote from 98lite site
http://www.98lite.net/products.html
IEradicator 2001 NEW!!!
Looking for the hit-man? IEradicator is the first and only utility to remove all versions of Internet Explorer from all versions of Windows 95/98/ Me/2000 in 8 different languages!. IEradicator uses the built- in Windows setup engine to "rub out da big fella" in less time than it takes to oil your 12-gauge.
------------- end 98lite quote
============= end quote
This version is "free as in beer", a demo for a more sophisticated product. If MS can't figure out how to get rid of MSIE, I'm sure these people could come up with reasonable licensing terms.
Does anyone think this bill can pass and not create a major recesssion? We need to tell the most viable opponents of any incumbents who vote for this bill how this bill screwed the economy and the Net and how it happened and why it must be repealed. I see some wonderful attack ads in the future of anyone stupid enough to vote for this.
Incumbents will automatically be in trouble anyway. We should do what we can to make that trouble far worse.
This bill should be called "The Incumbent-free Congress" act. While Hollings will definitely be of retirement age and will have a nice pension we're paying for waiting for him, there are a lot of first-term Congress who would like to stay in for a while. The consequences of this bill becoming law should nicely derail the chances of anyone stupid enough to vote for it of staying in office.
Basically, Hollings and Hollywood are giving Congress a "poison pill" and hoping they'll swallow it.
This is one of the few pieces of legislation I've ever seen that will even do harm to even its supporters. Unless anyone thinks Hollywood in any form we know it in can now do without computers, implementing their bill will hose their computers as well as our own.
Of course, by the time people start asking Valenti just why every single digital FX project for Hollywood is behind schedule and movies are generally running millions over the usual overbudgeting, he'll have retired, his damage done. However, this may not be an issue, a lot fewer people will be able to afford movies, either at theaters or via cable.
The bottom line is that this bill is a threat to our jobs.
If it passes, this will give more of us, especially those that this bill as law will render unemployable a lot more free time to volunteer to work against the people who vote for it.
One won't change his mind, but it will be noticed. A stack of this kind of e-mail and Hollings will start rethinking his position. BTW, Libertarian Party fits the high-tech agenda as perceived by politicians a bit better.
At this point, the only hopes S.Carolinans have of changing the mind of their Senator are:
1) A big enough individual contribution accompanied with a polite snailmail saying someting of the order of "if you don't withdraw this bill, your opponent will get one twice this size next election season". Big enough means comparable to everything Hollings got from all media accounts combined. To get that number requires finding someone with the political expertise to find out which law firms contributed on behalf of Disney, AOL, et. al. in order that the voters who checked wouldn't discover where Hollings campaign funds really come from. Note that a person who can do this should not be concerned about what state he lives in, Hollings won't care.
2. Enough e-mails, etc. with the message we are REALLY pissed off over Hollywood's attempts to destroy our digital infrastructure for the sake of the media industry's convenience.
Few slashdotters are in the position of being able to write a check for several hundred thousand dollars. (Note: if any are, remember there are campaign contribution laws that have to be complied with)
However, a large number of "we're really, really pissed off" communications might persuade him to tell his owners, "Sorry, but the voters in my state really think this is a bad idea, so bad that it endangers my chance of re-election. Can't deliver this time, maybe I can sneak something through." While these letters will be counted, not read in any detail, there's a small chance that this could work.
If you get a reply, try posting it on slashdot. Odds are, the reply will have very little relationship to anything you wrote to the point where it'll provide us with something to laugh at.
This ignorance has become dangerous to all of us. Like to back up your system using mass storage with Hollywood-style copy protection built in?
Hollywood has already bought the politicians who are going to decide on this. They don't get it. There's no political profit in getting this.
I've said for some time if the high-tech community from CEOs to end users all decided to pull together on an issue, that we can win regardless of opposition.
Collectively, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Sybase, and Unisys are a probably lot bigger and employ more people than the motion picture industry. I mention these companies because their leaders signed an open letter to MPAA asking that the movie industry start having real discussions with them with respect to a solution everyone can live with.
Jack Valenti figures correctly that he doesn't have to compromise, and by the time Hollywood finds out that their own computers have been compromised by the solution the top corporate suits bought from Congress, he'll be in a very well paid retirement.
Perhaps it's time for high-tech industry to stop kissing their asses and start kicking them and see about enlisting our help in kicking them as well.
If these high-tech companies start buying media time and doing press campaigns about just what the Hollywood solution means (start with pictures of dark factory floors, blue screens on computers, etc.) in conjunction to putting out a call to write letters to Congress to their employees and their developer communities and to communities like this one.
I'd certainly write my own Senators over this issue even if the request was signed by Bill Gates.
I've been telling people to avoid XP and I've been running AMD in my boxes for years and years. However, there are issues where the most die-hard Linux fanatic with any sense will realize that we've got common interests.
If the Senators don't get the point, a number of them are up for re-election this fall. High-tech money and voters can make the difference between who wins and who loses.
We know who our enemies are. We can't do anything permanent on them by ourselves. A high-tech coalition can probably remake Congress in our own image. We don't have to like Microsoft, just be glad they're on our side for a change and be willing to work with them.
There are other major corporations who would be greatly inconvenienced by having MPAA use Congress to tell us what our computers are going to look like and what can and can't be done on the Internet.
It's coalition time. It's single-issue politics time. . . us vs. the laws Hollywood has used Congress to ram down our collective throats. I know that every major corporation I mentioned specifically has people reading slashdot. Carry the word back to your bosses that it's time to see what kind of coalition we can put together.
High tech developers and users plus high-tech corporate money is probably an unstoppable political force. There are few issues that we can all agree on, but on those issues, we need to work together.
Being a trained attack dog for Disney and AOL doesn't serve anyone living in your state. It just gets him campaign money.
If you find that it's literally impossible to back up your hard drive or your company's data storage a year from now because he got those "anti-piracy" (note: in Hollings-speak, fair use = piracy) laws passed, do you think Hollings will help you? Maybe he can get a law passed making it illegal for hard drives to fail.
His public contact page is http://hollings.senate.gov/webform.html.
Be as nasty as you like, there's no possibility of working with him. He has been bought and being an honest politician, will probably stay that way.
From http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?C ID=N00002423&cycle=2002
The top industries supporting Ernest F. Hollings are:
1 Lawyers/Law Firms $1,151,134
2 TV/Movies/Music $260,034
Note: you may safely assume that at least some of the law firm contributions are from organizations on media industry payrolls.
Since I don't live in South Carolina, the only way he's going to pay any attention to what I say as a non-constituent is if I send it via snailmail with a check for over $1,000 enclosed. Since hell will freeze over before I send him money, I didn't see any reason to bother writing him.
Here's a copy of the e-mail I didn't bother sending. Perhaps some of you who live in SC can get some inspiration from it. Note: URL below is
a fair usage quote from Yahoo News:
Dear Senator Hollings:The above comment makes you either a liar or a fool.
There was a time I used to admire you. After you decided you now represent AOL/TimeWarner, the MPAA, and Disney instead of the poor suckers who voted for you, I no longer can respect you as a public leader or even a human being.
You're just another political whore. You are a disgrace to the US Senate and a living indictment of American democracy.
Of course, this is not news to any of your staff member who reads this, but if that person had any personal integrity or decency, he or she wouldn't be working for you anyway.
Hopefully, when those companies you attack finish with you, you'll be just someone who's trying to become a lobbyist and finding that nobody in politics can afford to be associated with you, instead of the "powerful senator" you are no longer fit to be.
A.Lizard
It's time he finds out that Internet users are becoming a "special interest" group and an increasing number of people are going to be looking at a politician's votes on Internet-connected issues first in deciding who to vote for.
However, toward election day, assuming the Internet is your top issue, find out how he voted on other Internet-related legislation before deciding how to vote and telling everyone you know why you should vote against him. And find out about his opponent, he might be worse.
I think it's obvious that it's time to reframe the question of ICANN... from:
their proposal to turn ICANN into The Force in the hopes that with enough of our money and total control over the root, that they may find a mission someday
to
how to reduce it to a useful size and believable function as Randy Bush is proposing.
I think it's time to start taking this seriously. Like to see next year's domain referrals go up $5 a year due to charges passed along to us by any registrar who wants to sell domain names people can connect to? Or $10? Or $100?
Or prices cranked up to the point where only major corporations and governments can afford them? The proposal to expand ICANN is an ambitious one. Ambitious translates to "if this goes through, it's going to cost somebody." WE are the somebody who will wind up paying.
My last comment on ICANN started with the phrase "taxation without representation". The proposed new ICANN doesn't have any public input that ICANN would have to pay attention to.
Misinformation or even disinformation via mass media is NOT the problem.
While this isn't true with respect to every issue or group, thanks to the Web, we have more access to all sides of every issue than we have ever had before. All we have to do to find out what any group has to say about itself is to go to their website and look. No need to be concerned about media agendas or "editorial judgement".
If you don't like "misinformation" or "disinformation" about a group or country or company, go to their Websites and get their side of it. Many newspapers in foriegn lands have English-language versions. In some cases, this is government-controlled media, in which case you at least know what the government has to say. Other countries have presses with varying degrees of freedom.
Don't whine about misinformation, make or find better information and tell people about it yourself.
If you care to take the time, you can become a better informed citizen than has ever been possible in the history of the world.
The problem isn't the media, it's that most people can't find the time or more often, the interest to find out for themselves what their media is deliberately not telling them.
The US is hardly immune to this, the best 2000 election coverage came from The Guardian in England.
With a bit of digging around, you can find out why the rest of the world believes that the 2000 US Presidential Election was stolen and that the democratic process in the US is a joke. And not 1 American citizen in 10 knows why, most have accepted the mass media version as spin-controlled by both political parties as TRUTH.
While "The Truth" isn't necessarily out there, you can go out and find very large chunks of it by simply knowing what to point and click at.
Here are some of the URLs I use when I want to find things the mass media isn't discussing:
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/index1.html#news1, warning, the page is 250K of text, it'll take a while to load even in lyns for dialup users.
I sent the following to the fax number of my Congresscritter free of charge, I'd like you to do the same with yours. (look them up on your congresmoron's site at http://www.house.gov .) You can construct a fax number that which will relay your e-mail through the Washington, DC mail > faxgate free of charge by simply substituting your Congressidiot's fax number for the one in the following sample letter. Needless to say, the text of your letter should NOT be identical to mine.
To find your congressperson, go to http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The fax number should be somewhere on the congressperson's site entering your zip code and state will get you.
Note: substitute the 10 digit 1 + area code / phone number of your congressperson WITHOUT dashes or spaces for xxxxxxxxxx below. This is sent as a regular e-mail to the To: address.
To: remote-printer.firstname_last name/US_Congress@xxxxxxxxxx.iddd.tpc.int
Subject: HR1542
Dear [insert name of congressperson here]:
Please vote NO on HR1542. The only purpose it is intended to serve is to put independent DSL providers out of business to increase RBOC profits, and I don't see this as serving *any* legitimate policy purpose. Unlike the phone companies, I think that competition is a good thing. Your constituents need *more* choices in broadband, not fewer.
name
address
city,state,zip
(including your address is important because if they don't know you're a constituent, your fax will be tossed into the garbage)
We are the people who are ultimately going to pay for this. Just what is it that ICANN is trying to sell us that is worth paying for? Making you feel secure isn't worth a cent of my money. The whole reason behind the proposal is that that the ccTLDs and other registries can't find a reason to pay what ICANN wants to charge. How much does it really cost to run a root server? How much more than that does ICANN want to charge?
Adding a superbureaucracy to ICANN somehow doesn't seem to add value to the product to me. As an end user and owner of a domain, all I want from whoever is running a root server is reliable enough propagation that if I want to access a domain by e-mail or ftp or via Web, I can with no screwing around. While a true Internet government responsible to the userbase might be an interesting thing, that has nothing to do with the ICANN proposal.
If you don't feel worthy to be part of the governance of the Internet, I agree completely with you. You aren't. Some of the rest of us might be. Go back to your TV set and believe whatever the pundits on CNN tell you.
Nobody has to get shot at by anybody to create alternate root servers that ICANN can't touch, and if ICANN actually gets it together far enough to make this happen, the question isn't whether there will be alternate roots, the question is how many. Do you want to have to select an ISP based on which root is most likely to have in its namespace the people and entities you want to communicate with?
What you have mistaken for a legitimate attempt of the Internet to govern itself is just another political scam to get us to buy services that nobody except a few major corporate and governmental interests who want better tools for intellectual property control and control of Internet content in general want.
The Internet is screwed up enough as it is and it should be obvious to any informed person that the ICANN proposal isn't even in the right general direction to fix what's wrong.
Will this clean up the spam coming out of Asia? Will this make open relay operators fix their servers? The other problems like insufficient bandwidth will be taken care of by the private sector when it becomes profitable to do so.
What do corporations do when governmental powers are made available to them? The DMCA, Cybercrime Treaty complete with secret protocols, and the new WIPO restrictions on use of copyrighted material are good examples. A corporate charter says to do things that are good for the stockholders, not for the public interest.
"Who shall watch the watchdogs?" The ICANN proposal says nobody... perhaps power exercised by backroom deals solely accessible to insiders makes you feel warm and fuzzy. If this is what you want to pay for, write ICANN a check with your money. NOT mine.
Much funnier if he pulled something Darwinian in orbit.
At the current primitive state of space technology, the classic "tourist fuckup due to inattention" means death. In an emergency, our brave, intrepid astronauts will do their best, but will be too busy trying to save their own asses to spare much time for a pop star they detest. (if they don't, they aren't smart enough to have been selected for the station to begin with)
Though if he decides he can safely go for a space walk without a space suit because it would be real kewl and anyone gets video footage, I hope it gets posted on the Web and broadcast. THAT would be real entertainment.
>Guess what. They didn't get there by "selling
>out". They got there by being such big names that
>they could pick and choose between recording
companies
I would guess that most of the artists and bands who got into that position got there after having been burned by their first labels. Note the number of bands that change labels at the very first possible opportunity. Why? Shopping for better deals, obviously.
SOURCES, PLEASE. Ever heard of posting URLs to back your claims, especially when they sound like BS?
AFAIK, the Geneva Convention only refers to soldiers in uniform... a signatory that captures anybody else under arms or performing other combatant roles (e.g. spying) can do whatever amuses it with that person.
Of course, we all know why full OS disks don't go on machines with pre-installed Microsoft OSs, but what do you expect when you deal with M$?
White boxes are generally built of standard parts. No proprietary motherboards or other ugly surprises. Much nicer if the vendor is gone and the computer breaks.
Is HP "too big to fail"? Two words. Compaq. Merger.
While a "recovery disk" is no substitute for an OS, it's somewhat better than nothing if the problem calls for no more than reformatting and a reinstall. If you backed your data up, you shortly get back a working computer.
HP deciding that a drive partition is a substitute for a working OS and making customers jump through hoops to buy something that was supposed to come with a computer simply tells us that there's no longer any further reason to buy HP.
I tell my friends to buy "white box", not name brand. I'm now telling them specifically to avoid Hewlett-Packard.
Too bad. I've got a 1987 HP laser printer that puts out print just as clean as it did when it was new. Too bad only the name is left from the company that built it.
Of course, he may be taking orders from someone who can collect payoffs in the perfectly legal and aboveboard ways we call campaign contributions and soft money.
Any public official who states this decision in the public interest is a liar, fool, or both.
Better hope the IT job market turns around before you graduate from college. However, since judging from your post, you just entered high school, that's probably a safe bet. Of course, there's always the chance that you'll miss the next boom and the job market will look just like this when you show HR people your nice, new CS diploma and they seem really unimpressed.
If you have bosses stupid enough to bet the company on this, their business and that of the unfortunates who invested, but you have no reason to bet your career with them.
Unless you've got a shitload of cash and the company's got really cool technology, in which case your best move is to wait. . . and buy it at fire sale prices, rebrand the product, and build it right this time.
ECAD is electronic computer aided design. There are low cost packages, some are even freeware. Get a package as soon as you can.
You will get schematics that are automatically legible, plus you will get automatically generated net lists telling you exactly which pins of which chips are supposed to be connected to each other. If you're wiring up a circuit by hand, this is amazingly good information to have, especially if it's accurate.
Here's a freeware package, I think it's good for 16 IC equivalents. Check McCAD . Perfectly adequate for hobbyist or student. Their shrinkwrap unlimited version is thousands of dollars and has more power than you have any idea how to use at this point.
Get a good basic set of hand tools, there are plenty of hobbyist kits.
In addition, include a decent wire-wrap gun if you plan to work in digital. Your technique of choice if you aren't buying a kit with a PCB is going to be wirewrap on perforated boards into which you've plugged lots of 8-64 pin wirewrap sockets into. Get the socket ID labels. These items, except for the (I said decent) wrap gun, you can get at Radio Shack. You might check ebay for a deal on a pro wire-wrap gun.
You need a DMM (Digital mulitmeter), an analog VOM (volt-ohmmmetter, this will generally have a current measurement range large enough to be of us, look for several amps measurement capability, and an oscilloscope, at least 100 MHz, look for a used Tektronix.
Look hard for a decent electronics surplus store in your area, you might get some spectacular deals on test gear and the more expensive tools.
Find out where the electronics "pro shop" in your area is, for the stuff that Radio Shack never did and never will sell. You'll pay a premium, but it beats waiting for shipping if you need it NOW.
The ARRL Handbook from the ARRL ham radio organization is a good starting point, as their other tutorial guides are.
For where/how to get electronics info that's actually useful, try the electronics section on my site http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/index1.html#electroni cs
You have trouble with the idea that a beautiful woman might be smarter than an Anonymous Coward? I don't. Neither does the EFF. Finding the following at Google took less time than your whine took to type:
http://www.ncafe.com/chris/pat2/
Sample quote: "Note: Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil's invention of spread-spectrum has recently been awarded an EFF Pioneer award. (The nomination is here) This 'weblet' is a tribute to this interesting and significant technology and to the people who are using it."
If you go into this area, pay careful attention to security, perhaps your company can avoid the damage suits that will follow once people discover what fun it is to have their hot tubs and gas ovens hacked into while they are using them.
I've read that the ordinary polygraph can be manipulated via biofeedback training and other methods.
Knowing how to beat these methods could be invaluable to criminals and terrorists, particularly if the output from these tests are used as a substitute for common sense.