Here's the thing--broadcasters have been loosening up on censoring continuously for 50 years. Nearly every year has brought out something that couldn't have been shown previously. This chip certainly isn't going to reverse that!
Huh? I don't get it. Windows released a very stable, lightweight, bombproof OS YEARS ago! Just because DOS won't do what you want it to...
Seriously, you're right. NT4.0 on MS approved hardware crashes like a sick dog driving a ferrari. 95/98 on normal hardware is an order of magnitude worse. HOWEVER...
There's the UI question. Win98 _without_ ActiveFuckup is still the best UI going for most day-to-day stuff. Linux pretty much sucks in that respect, unfortunately. Mac could be far better than any of 'em, since the OS was designed around the GUI, rather than the other way around; but it isn't.
Honestly, computers aren't idiot proof yet, and MS is lying through their teeth everytime they come out with "an EVEN MORE idiotproof" OS. Balls!
For single-vendor products (say Windows or Solaris), you can at least pretend that the vendor is a single source of information. The job that MS has done (shit poor) is one of the big reasons they get complained about so much.
But Linux has no single source of information, no single point of contact, and so forth. The best bet in this case is to run a major distribution (say RedHat, for the sake of argument), and check their web sites.
Is that a very good answer? Not really--it's only as good as the least of the Unix vendors. HP, for instance, patches security holes and the like so aggressively that even usenet is seldom ahead of them. Sun, on the other hand, is much slower, as is RedHat. Microsoft is appalling.
NO operating system has a single point of information that's up to date, unfortunately. The decentralised nature of Linux makes it worse than most (boo, hiss! He said something bad about linux!!!!:-), but that's one of the reasons for vendors like RedHat. Unix in general has a problem as an end-user OS, because it allows you to royally screw yourself, if you so desire. It is not, never has been, and maybe never will be a luser OS--it requires knowledge and maintenance.
Bottom line is this: If you're going to run *ix of any flavour, get "the Unix Administrator's Handbook" (Evi Nemeth et. al.) and start reading usenet. And depending on your need for security (i.e. how much data will you lose WHEN you get hacked), read at least the vendor's web site but ideally (sigh!) the sites for the individual services. wu-ftpd sendmail, bind, and so on.
Yeah, it's a drag. That's security these days.
If you want proper security and you're not willing to unattach yourself from the 'net, then consider running OpenBSD, possibly on a cheap P-166 or something like.
Oh, that's easy--Jon is the owner and founder of the revolution. He decided what day it started, what day it's going to end, and can naturally calculate how far along we are as a consequence.
The fact that nobody else seems to think there's a revolution going on at all is irrelevant.
OK, some of this sucks. Some of the implications DEFINITELY suck.
But ultimately, nearly all of the cases they're talking about fall into one of two categories:
1) A non-compete contract has been signed, and the question is one of geographica jurisdiction. (since competitors can now be halfway around the world)
2) Misappropriation of trade secrets, which is illegal regardless of non-compete contracts, and always has been. Furthermore, it should be remembered that companies are _required_ to aggressively protect trade secrets, or they lose them. If they let one employee go start up a company and ignore what might be misappropriation, then they lose the right to prosecute anyone else over the same claim in the future.
The inevitable disclosure concept is a fine line to tread, of that there's no doubt. Also, the nature of what defines a trade secret is a tough question. All this article really says, after you strip out the hype and paranoia, is that some judges are coming down harder than they might, while others aren't.
Is this worth an article in C|Net and another on/.? Maybe to make people aware of the issues, but it's not a particularly big deal.
Oh yes. Europe is such a hell-hole, and the US is so perfect.
So tell me, how does letting SSH (the company) suing to prevent the use of the term SSH (as a protocol, as part of the openSSH implementation, etc.) equate to letting the market figure it out?
SSH was NOT just trying to make an honest buck--they were trying to use market restricting laws to unfairly quash (what has developed into) their competition.
True enough; freedom is a right once you legally become an adult. However, we're talking about raising kids here, so that's something of a moot point.
Regardless, even as an adult your right to freedom only goes so far. You're only free to operate within the law, in what amounts to a responsible manner. As parents, we have to teach our kids what responsibility is, what it means with regards to freedom, and then give them some space to learn for themselves. Following your kids around every single minute for 18 years is _not_ the best way to raise adults capable of dealing with society, etc.
Oh yeah. This from someone who can't even take responsibility for their POSTS!
So how do you propose raising kids? Chain them up until they're 18? This is a serious question here--are you planning on not giving your kids any freedom at all as they grow up?
And my kids are doing just fine, thank you. They're learning that freedom requires responsibility, and is not a right.
Anyone who installs Junkbuster or sets up a packet filter on their system is pretty obviously NOT going to be paying attention to the ads, let alone supporting the companies placing them.
In other words, as long as Junkbuster (etc.) is a voluntary and active install (as opposed to being installed as part of the browser), it's revenue neutral for the advertisers. They don't care.
As for paying for web sites, I suspect that web-ads won't work in the long run. People don't like them, people don't read them, and people don't click on them. Sooner or later, advertisers will quit paying for them. Then we'll be faced with web sites falling into the following categories:
1) Personal interest (amateur) sites. The cost of these will be covered by ISP fees.
2) Vendor websites. These sites (toyota.com, seagate.com, ncix.com) are their own advertising, and support the company. By merely existing and serving product information (and often allowing the product to be bought online) they generate far more revenue than is needed to cover their costs.
3) The sticky one: Information portals (using portal in a more general sense). News sites,/., search engines, etc. need to support themselves, and also need to provide information for free or no one will use them. Would you pay $0.001/search on Google, followed by more micropayments to check out each result until you found the useful one? Probably it'd come to about $10/month, over and above your access fees, which is not very friendly!
Many of these portals will go out of business. Many others will be bought by profit-making companies, and advertised in a different manner. ("Google.com, brought to you by Toyota!") Still others might charge for access from ISPs, so that your monthly access fee goes up by $0.50, and you get access to Google. This might actually not be a bad idea, come to think of it.
I collected those stupid floppies. Got about 15 or 20 of them back when they were still selling for $1.50 per around here. However, all but two failed to format error-free.
I can't imagine AOL going to the expense of deliberately damaging the disks, so I suspect they bought the QC rejects from Verbatim or whoever.
There IS no "Net revolution." What revolution there was has already happened, and the goofiness with IPOs, the stock market problems (which will turn around--they always do), and annoyed lusers, is nothing but fallout from trying to cash in on a done deal.
Of course, what ELSE do you expect from Katz? He seems to think that his pathetic life will be made triumphant via the net. Dream on Jon!
There is a problem with your proposed system, though. Industry, if left to their own means, would only implemement a ratings system that would increase sales. Stores would carry whichever games sell the best, ignoring the ratings unless they increased sales.
So you'd end up with some small, unadvertised, and cryptic code on the box that only the kids knew about, designed to entice them into buying more games.
I'm not a big fan of government intervention, but I'm less of a fan of unrestricted industry.
Staples has the _upgrade_ to Office2000 _basic_ for that price maybe. Current price for complete O2k-pro is $850 Canadian, which comes out to about $550 US.
Well the space shuttle guys are now using radiation-hardened 80486's. That's a step forward.
But consider this: If we look at the Wintel platform in the business world, we're trading off pure performance for a certain level of hardware abstraction. We don't write for the hardware, we write for Windows. Now if Windows (any version) was bug-free and stable, and our app was bug-free and stable, then we would be able to upgrade our hardware without any concern. From '486 to Pentium (except for the one with the FP bug!), to P-III.
The real point is this: If we had a bug-free platform, then buggy software/hardware/drivers would stand out like a sore thumb. Since we live in a buggy world, vendors can get away with more bugs.
Or more succinctly: Buggy software promotes buggy software. Bug-free software promotes bug-free software.
Yeah, I knew this argument was coming. It's got some validity to it, although only some.
You're talking about writing bug-free software from scratch. How about taking Office97 and spending three years debugging it? That's what Office2000 could have been, instead of even crappier, buggier, "web-enabled" bloatware shite. How many programmers does MS have working on Office?
As for the price, it's already nearly $700 for Office-Pro, and it's got _thousands_ of bugs in it.
"...But we've said it before, Reps don't understand bits and bytes. If you don't send them dead trees, they don't think you vote."
Oh, they don't, do they? How about those clueless reps who are fighting the DMCA, and worked to get encryption software delisted as a weapon?
Let's face it fifty thousand emails a month is WAY too much to read. That's over 2000/business day. If you had a secretary to do nothing but read email 40 hr/week, you _might_ get through it all.
Of course they're going to ignore it. The sheer volume pretty much proves that any idiot with a computer and too much time can bash out an email to his rep. Write a real letter if you want to be heard.
"Anyways, the only bug-free program anymore might be hello world...."
OK, time for a personal rant.
I keep hearing this--hearing that bugs are inevitable, and that bug-free software is impossible. This leads to the development of software with bugs, because "we can't catch everything!"
Y'know, there's damned little on the web that's really become essential. Getting information from vendor sites is an INCREDIBLE boon to us all, but that's not likely to be banned or severly regulated any time soon--it's non-dangerous information first, and advertising second.
As for all that other stuff, who really CARES if you can't buy Nazi memorabilia in France from a website? If you really desperately want it, you'll find a way to get it.
I know, I know--Freedom! Freedom of information, freedom from artificial (or even natural) boundaries, freedom from government intervention, etc. But at the end of the day, when the writing is on the wall, how much will this affect your crucial day-to-day activities? (emphasis on crucial)
As a final aside, I'm quite sure that the internet as a whole will survive and thwart any attempts at geolocation, although it may mean a revitalisation of the glory days of Usenet.
I always thought that the usefulness of the OSI model as a tool for wrapping your head around TCP/IP networking concepts sucked, because the relationship was so strained. The TCP/IP model was sort of created after the fact, but is just as good at helping conceptualisation, and actually matches the protocols in use.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the thing--broadcasters have been loosening up on censoring continuously for 50 years. Nearly every year has brought out something that couldn't have been shown previously. This chip certainly isn't going to reverse that!
Huh? I don't get it. Windows released a very stable, lightweight, bombproof OS YEARS ago! Just because DOS won't do what you want it to...
Seriously, you're right. NT4.0 on MS approved hardware crashes like a sick dog driving a ferrari. 95/98 on normal hardware is an order of magnitude worse. HOWEVER...
There's the UI question. Win98 _without_ ActiveFuckup is still the best UI going for most day-to-day stuff. Linux pretty much sucks in that respect, unfortunately. Mac could be far better than any of 'em, since the OS was designed around the GUI, rather than the other way around; but it isn't.
Honestly, computers aren't idiot proof yet, and MS is lying through their teeth everytime they come out with "an EVEN MORE idiotproof" OS. Balls!
Good question!
:-), but that's one of the reasons for vendors like RedHat. Unix in general has a problem as an end-user OS, because it allows you to royally screw yourself, if you so desire. It is not, never has been, and maybe never will be a luser OS--it requires knowledge and maintenance.
For single-vendor products (say Windows or Solaris), you can at least pretend that the vendor is a single source of information. The job that MS has done (shit poor) is one of the big reasons they get complained about so much.
But Linux has no single source of information, no single point of contact, and so forth. The best bet in this case is to run a major distribution (say RedHat, for the sake of argument), and check their web sites.
Is that a very good answer? Not really--it's only as good as the least of the Unix vendors. HP, for instance, patches security holes and the like so aggressively that even usenet is seldom ahead of them. Sun, on the other hand, is much slower, as is RedHat. Microsoft is appalling.
NO operating system has a single point of information that's up to date, unfortunately. The decentralised nature of Linux makes it worse than most (boo, hiss! He said something bad about linux!!!!
Bottom line is this: If you're going to run *ix of any flavour, get "the Unix Administrator's Handbook" (Evi Nemeth et. al.) and start reading usenet. And depending on your need for security (i.e. how much data will you lose WHEN you get hacked), read at least the vendor's web site but ideally (sigh!) the sites for the individual services. wu-ftpd sendmail, bind, and so on.
Yeah, it's a drag. That's security these days.
If you want proper security and you're not willing to unattach yourself from the 'net, then consider running OpenBSD, possibly on a cheap P-166 or something like.
Oh, that's easy--Jon is the owner and founder of the revolution. He decided what day it started, what day it's going to end, and can naturally calculate how far along we are as a consequence.
The fact that nobody else seems to think there's a revolution going on at all is irrelevant.
"Last of a series."
Whew!
OK, some of this sucks. Some of the implications DEFINITELY suck.
/.? Maybe to make people aware of the issues, but it's not a particularly big deal.
But ultimately, nearly all of the cases they're talking about fall into one of two categories:
1) A non-compete contract has been signed, and the question is one of geographica jurisdiction. (since competitors can now be halfway around the world)
2) Misappropriation of trade secrets, which is illegal regardless of non-compete contracts, and always has been. Furthermore, it should be remembered that companies are _required_ to aggressively protect trade secrets, or they lose them. If they let one employee go start up a company and ignore what might be misappropriation, then they lose the right to prosecute anyone else over the same claim in the future.
The inevitable disclosure concept is a fine line to tread, of that there's no doubt. Also, the nature of what defines a trade secret is a tough question. All this article really says, after you strip out the hype and paranoia, is that some judges are coming down harder than they might, while others aren't.
Is this worth an article in C|Net and another on
Oh yes. Europe is such a hell-hole, and the US is so perfect.
So tell me, how does letting SSH (the company) suing to prevent the use of the term SSH (as a protocol, as part of the openSSH implementation, etc.) equate to letting the market figure it out?
SSH was NOT just trying to make an honest buck--they were trying to use market restricting laws to unfairly quash (what has developed into) their competition.
How free market, Ayn Rand is that?
And for that matter, what's wrong with socialism?
Ah, Finally!
Wonderful post. WONDERFUL post. Your kids will almost certainly turn out just fine. Thanks.
True enough; freedom is a right once you legally become an adult. However, we're talking about raising kids here, so that's something of a moot point.
Regardless, even as an adult your right to freedom only goes so far. You're only free to operate within the law, in what amounts to a responsible manner. As parents, we have to teach our kids what responsibility is, what it means with regards to freedom, and then give them some space to learn for themselves. Following your kids around every single minute for 18 years is _not_ the best way to raise adults capable of dealing with society, etc.
Oh yeah. This from someone who can't even take responsibility for their POSTS!
So how do you propose raising kids? Chain them up until they're 18? This is a serious question here--are you planning on not giving your kids any freedom at all as they grow up?
And my kids are doing just fine, thank you. They're learning that freedom requires responsibility, and is not a right.
"Garcia also said that downloading and installing the software over the net is too difficult for anyone over 30 years old to install."
Maybe Mr. Garcia should learn that just because he's an idiot, not everyone in his age-group is equally idiotic.
Or in other words, "I'm stupid, I've got power, I'm going to keep dangerous objects away from EVERYONE else, because I can."
*shrug* Yeah, so? All's fair in love and war.
/., search engines, etc. need to support themselves, and also need to provide information for free or no one will use them. Would you pay $0.001/search on Google, followed by more micropayments to check out each result until you found the useful one? Probably it'd come to about $10/month, over and above your access fees, which is not very friendly!
Anyone who installs Junkbuster or sets up a packet filter on their system is pretty obviously NOT going to be paying attention to the ads, let alone supporting the companies placing them.
In other words, as long as Junkbuster (etc.) is a voluntary and active install (as opposed to being installed as part of the browser), it's revenue neutral for the advertisers. They don't care.
As for paying for web sites, I suspect that web-ads won't work in the long run. People don't like them, people don't read them, and people don't click on them. Sooner or later, advertisers will quit paying for them. Then we'll be faced with web sites falling into the following categories:
1) Personal interest (amateur) sites. The cost of these will be covered by ISP fees.
2) Vendor websites. These sites (toyota.com, seagate.com, ncix.com) are their own advertising, and support the company. By merely existing and serving product information (and often allowing the product to be bought online) they generate far more revenue than is needed to cover their costs.
3) The sticky one: Information portals (using portal in a more general sense). News sites,
Many of these portals will go out of business. Many others will be bought by profit-making companies, and advertised in a different manner. ("Google.com, brought to you by Toyota!") Still others might charge for access from ISPs, so that your monthly access fee goes up by $0.50, and you get access to Google. This might actually not be a bad idea, come to think of it.
But web-banner ads? Don't work, won't last.
HAH!
I collected those stupid floppies. Got about 15 or 20 of them back when they were still selling for $1.50 per around here. However, all but two failed to format error-free.
I can't imagine AOL going to the expense of deliberately damaging the disks, so I suspect they bought the QC rejects from Verbatim or whoever.
Oh, this is just lovely. Would this be one of the Reps who doesn't understand bits and bytes?" Must be, since yesterday that was all of them, according to CmdrTaco.
No questions for the Rep. I'll leave that to the US folks.
There IS no "Net revolution." What revolution there was has already happened, and the goofiness with IPOs, the stock market problems (which will turn around--they always do), and annoyed lusers, is nothing but fallout from trying to cash in on a done deal.
Of course, what ELSE do you expect from Katz? He seems to think that his pathetic life will be made triumphant via the net. Dream on Jon!
There is a problem with your proposed system, though. Industry, if left to their own means, would only implemement a ratings system that would increase sales. Stores would carry whichever games sell the best, ignoring the ratings unless they increased sales.
So you'd end up with some small, unadvertised, and cryptic code on the box that only the kids knew about, designed to entice them into buying more games.
I'm not a big fan of government intervention, but I'm less of a fan of unrestricted industry.
No no, forget about parallel development. Forget about new features that no one uses. Forget about the @#$$@ paperclip.
This is what we should see: "Office 2000: Faster, smaller, better. Increase your productivity by reducing your down-time...to zero!"
If word got out (and it would!) that this was a bug-free, tightly coded rerelease of Office97, I bet that it would sell like mad!
Staples has the _upgrade_ to Office2000 _basic_ for that price maybe. Current price for complete O2k-pro is $850 Canadian, which comes out to about $550 US.
Well the space shuttle guys are now using radiation-hardened 80486's. That's a step forward.
But consider this: If we look at the Wintel platform in the business world, we're trading off pure performance for a certain level of hardware abstraction. We don't write for the hardware, we write for Windows. Now if Windows (any version) was bug-free and stable, and our app was bug-free and stable, then we would be able to upgrade our hardware without any concern. From '486 to Pentium (except for the one with the FP bug!), to P-III.
The real point is this: If we had a bug-free platform, then buggy software/hardware/drivers would stand out like a sore thumb. Since we live in a buggy world, vendors can get away with more bugs.
Or more succinctly: Buggy software promotes buggy software. Bug-free software promotes bug-free software.
Yeah, I knew this argument was coming. It's got some validity to it, although only some.
You're talking about writing bug-free software from scratch. How about taking Office97 and spending three years debugging it? That's what Office2000 could have been, instead of even crappier, buggier, "web-enabled" bloatware shite. How many programmers does MS have working on Office?
As for the price, it's already nearly $700 for Office-Pro, and it's got _thousands_ of bugs in it.
"...But we've said it before, Reps don't understand bits and bytes. If you don't send them dead trees, they don't think you vote."
Oh, they don't, do they? How about those clueless reps who are fighting the DMCA, and worked to get encryption software delisted as a weapon?
Let's face it fifty thousand emails a month is WAY too much to read. That's over 2000/business day. If you had a secretary to do nothing but read email 40 hr/week, you _might_ get through it all.
Of course they're going to ignore it. The sheer volume pretty much proves that any idiot with a computer and too much time can bash out an email to his rep. Write a real letter if you want to be heard.
"Anyways, the only bug-free program anymore might be hello world...."
OK, time for a personal rant.
I keep hearing this--hearing that bugs are inevitable, and that bug-free software is impossible. This leads to the development of software with bugs, because "we can't catch everything!"
Hogwash!
Check out this article for proof to the contrary.
We have become FAR too accepting of bugs in commercial software. It's only because we accept it that the companies can get away with it.
OK, rant over. Back to watching the snow.
Y'know, there's damned little on the web that's really become essential. Getting information from vendor sites is an INCREDIBLE boon to us all, but that's not likely to be banned or severly regulated any time soon--it's non-dangerous information first, and advertising second.
As for all that other stuff, who really CARES if you can't buy Nazi memorabilia in France from a website? If you really desperately want it, you'll find a way to get it.
I know, I know--Freedom! Freedom of information, freedom from artificial (or even natural) boundaries, freedom from government intervention, etc. But at the end of the day, when the writing is on the wall, how much will this affect your crucial day-to-day activities? (emphasis on crucial)
As a final aside, I'm quite sure that the internet as a whole will survive and thwart any attempts at geolocation, although it may mean a revitalisation of the glory days of Usenet.
I always thought that the usefulness of the OSI model as a tool for wrapping your head around TCP/IP networking concepts sucked, because the relationship was so strained. The TCP/IP model was sort of created after the fact, but is just as good at helping conceptualisation, and actually matches the protocols in use.
Fundamentally we agree, though.
OK, true enough. There's still a _reason_ to put that apostrophe there.