But how exactly does this tactic work? If the merger doesn't go through (especially if the Hewletts and Packards aren't behind it), then Carly is out. So she has no authority to talk about what HP will do if the merger doesn't happen. She won't be there.
The only effect this tactic has is to shoot the company in the foot right now by causing potential customers (who might not have thought this through) to reconsider buying PCs from HP.
"Sid plays the game once or twice a week right now." So begins my conversation with Jeff Briggs, President of Firaxis. But although Sid Meier isn't actually coding this game, it's still his baby. He and Jeff sat down at the beginning of the development process to come up with ways to enlarge and improve the existing game. The idea is to make this the "ultimate" version of Civ. Sid's taking an active role in the design but Jeff Briggs is responsible for leading the team. Jeff Morris is acting as producer for the title and showed us quite a bit of the game.
The quote is from halfway down the page in the section titled E3 2001. There's no anchor tag I can link directly to... won't XPointer support be nice some day?.
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
Yeah, that means you. You're giving up liberty-- not yours, but theirs....
Dear old Mr. Franklin must be turning over in his grave! I assume you realize you are misquoting the person who authored the following phrase:
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. -- the (US) Declaration of Independence
How in the world do you "give up" someone else's liberty? To Franklin, liberty is a right afforded to each person by his Creator, and in the quote you included he was bemoaning those who would sacrifice their own liberty.
I'm not saying that you don't present a rather strong ethical argument, but don't twist Ben Franklin's words. He was a revolutionary, not a pacifist.
No, I'm afraid you've got it backwards. You see, to these "jerks", you're just another "jerk". The solution isn't knocking everyone in line. The solution is for people to learn to respect each other from where they're coming from.
Changing folks' attitudes are the solution. Your message makes it seem you want to go bust heads (though I grant messages can be interpreted quite differently than intended). Why? Because you're upset that others aren't appreciating you. At the root, this is the same attitude problem that the others have. You just behave differently and have developed a martyr complex as a result.
Please don't take this as a personal attack. It's just that I used to get just as worked up and have since learned that confronting folks doesn't solve anything. The solution is to change your own attitude, and ironically, by so doing you can change others.
So you'd trust Passport if MS "claimed" they kept the info encrypted?
The problem with what you're proposing is that you still have to rely on MS (or any other Authentication Provider) not getting your pass phrase from some commercial site you trusted and using it to decrypt your info. You're obviously more trusting of corporations than I.
It would be safer to either drop a step or add one:
Drop the AP: Your scheme would work if you were the Authentication Provider. Data is stored on your system and you selectively give it out... a more advanced version of what most web browsers already do with remembering forms/passwords.
Add a step: Instead of giving the pass phrase out to commercial sites and allowing them to get data from the Authentication Provider, you retrieve the appropriate encrypted data from the Authentication Provider (via some password) yourself, decrypt it, and forward it to the commercial site.
The problem with option 1, of course, is that your info must be reentered into every device/system you use. The problem with option 2 is that you have to trust the device/system you're using to not do something it shouldn't with your data. But I think that's better than trusting some corporation. At least you can restrict yourself to devices/systems you trust, use open source code, etc., etc.
Although you're anti-rant is a bit of a rant itself, I agree with the point you make about this being a high school phenomenon. If there is some human tendency to be cool as jamie mentions, it's a tendency we have when we're young and impressionable. It probably has to do with the drive to establish one's own identity independent of one's parents. It dissipates with maturity.
When we're young, we believe the old folks are old and square, they just don't "get it." But when we become older ourselves we discover there really wasn't anything to "get" and we wonder how we could have been so naïve.
Neither the young nor the old are wrong, it's just a difference in perspective.
I'm glad to see someone explain this clearly instead of simply asking "why?" or whining about Microsoft.
However, one slight correction: Sun doesn't own ebXML. ebXML was created by UN/CEFACT (a division of the United Nations), OASIS (the consortium who owns xml.org) and a whole slew of companies, especially those with a heavy investment in EDI. I don't believe Sun's contribution was any greater than IBM's.
Anyone here work for Netscape? Their web-based mail has been down since sometime yesterday afternoon. Once you log in, you are forwarded to a page that claims they're upgrading their system.
Since most web sites handle planned upgrades w/o a 24 hour downtime, does this mean they shut the system down to fix the JavaScript bug? (And even if so, how long does it take to add code to parse out <SCRIPT> tags anyway?)
I hope you're not saying that CGI script is an invalid term. It is a script that conforms to the CGI protocol, not a script that implements the CGI protocol.
However, you're right; this question is clearly misstated. There is one clear favorite language for developing CGI scripts: Perl. You can write CGI scripts in virtually any language (that was the goal when defining the interface), but few people do. Not with CGI.
However, there are a wide variety of languages for web development, including Java (servlets and JSP), VisualBasic (ASP), PHP, ColdFusion's CFML, C/C++ (via NSAPI, Apache module), etc. Few people use these languages for CGI; each of these languages has its own respective interfaces for communicating with the server instead. (Incidentally, so does Perl: mod_perl or PerlEx.)
Have you wandered over to www.apache.org recently? There is much more to the Apache Foundation than just the web server project. Most of the others (tomcat, coccoon, xerxes, etc.) are still relatively young. And although other companies (e.g., Sun, IBM) are helping out on many of these projects, the help comes through staff, not money.
I don't think your comment was off-topic at all. I think this is the very core of this topic. However, I'm worried that the trend may be against you when you say that investment in these high tech companies cannot be considered anything more than speculation. The AOL/Time Warner merger and this purchase (if it happens) may prove that pyramid schemes don't always collapse after all.
I remember a few years ago when many analysts were saying the stock market was a bubble that had grown to its limit and couldn't take much more, but then along came Internet stocks. Many people laughed at these ridiculously unprofitable Internet companies (yeah, some of them may post meager profits, but their P/E ratios certainly don't warrant their absurd valuations), and believed it was another small bubble that couldn't last.
But Internet stocks continue to grow and their valuations keep going up. Some people have cashed out and retired, but it hasn't slowed the prices any. These aren't bubbles, they are more like pyramids. These companies' true values are based upon their perceived value as investors continued to flock to them.
But look out! Now they're buying real companies with real assets and worth real money! Sure they may have once been floating on investors' overpriced valuation, now they're buying well-established companies as foundations.
Ack. Despite the fact that I work in this industry, I must be too old-fashioned to appreciate this new economy. I have no special regard for an institution like Sotheby's, but if eBay manages to purchase it, I'll be sick.
Release the source! Moderate the stories!/. sucks now that Andover owns it!/. panders to special interests! Fire Katz/Roblimo/Hemos/Taco...
<rant>
sigh. You know, the biggest problem with geeks is they have a #$@#ing opinion about everything. They find a news site that gives them a forum for their rants and suddenly they feel they own the place.
/. doesn't owe you anything. Nor does the rest of the world. Open source/Linux/Geekdom/whatever isn't about you getting cool free stuff from other people according to your specs. It's about giving, not getting; helping, not complaining.
It's just becoming ridiculous how many times they've lost (or at least not won) in court this past year. This is the one issue I was rooting for them about.
I enjoy the freedom and flexibility that being a contractor affords. I've never (even back in the 80s) worked as a temp or contractor for more than a week at a place and not been offered a full-time position. Most I turned down, a few I accepted.
I can imagine that others working in other markets may not have been so fortunate, but in this case I cannot imagine every member of the action against MS truly felt discriminated against back before the stock price started really moving.
In any event the real problem for contractors is how the industry will react to this. Several people here are posting in order to describe technical distinctions between contractors and employees, but when it comes down to it, it'll be up to the industry to interpret. Hopefully, they're content with the changes they've already made, but I'm nervous they'll go further in order to "play it safe" and that'll reduce the number of opportunities for contractors.
The problem with dynamic content is that you pretty much have to query the target web servers at the time the user enters the search request.
One solution that attempts to address this is Apple's Sherlock. It uses XML to pass queries to web sites and return results. There are certainly some limitations: you have to choose which web sites you want to search (although this isn't always a bad thing), these web sites have to support Sherlock queries, and it only works on the MacOS. Currently lots of big name and Apple-specific sites support it.
The dev info at Apple is pretty clear though. It wouldn't be difficult for others to create clones for Sherlock that either work over a web interface or on other OSes too. (dunno if Apple could...or would... make any claim against this)
Slashdot Mirror
But how exactly does this tactic work? If the merger doesn't go through (especially if the Hewletts and Packards aren't behind it), then Carly is out. So she has no authority to talk about what HP will do if the merger doesn't happen. She won't be there.
The only effect this tactic has is to shoot the company in the foot right now by causing potential customers (who might not have thought this through) to reconsider buying PCs from HP.
You can find the following at this Civ review at ign.com.
The quote is from halfway down the page in the section titled E3 2001. There's no anchor tag I can link directly to... won't XPointer support be nice some day?.
Dear old Mr. Franklin must be turning over in his grave! I assume you realize you are misquoting the person who authored the following phrase:
How in the world do you "give up" someone else's liberty? To Franklin, liberty is a right afforded to each person by his Creator, and in the quote you included he was bemoaning those who would sacrifice their own liberty.
I'm not saying that you don't present a rather strong ethical argument, but don't twist Ben Franklin's words. He was a revolutionary, not a pacifist.
No, I'm afraid you've got it backwards. You see, to these "jerks", you're just another "jerk". The solution isn't knocking everyone in line. The solution is for people to learn to respect each other from where they're coming from.
Changing folks' attitudes are the solution. Your message makes it seem you want to go bust heads (though I grant messages can be interpreted quite differently than intended). Why? Because you're upset that others aren't appreciating you. At the root, this is the same attitude problem that the others have. You just behave differently and have developed a martyr complex as a result.
Please don't take this as a personal attack. It's just that I used to get just as worked up and have since learned that confronting folks doesn't solve anything. The solution is to change your own attitude, and ironically, by so doing you can change others.
This story really brought it home to me:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC04/Dobson.htm
So you'd trust Passport if MS "claimed" they kept the info encrypted?
The problem with what you're proposing is that you still have to rely on MS (or any other Authentication Provider) not getting your pass phrase from some commercial site you trusted and using it to decrypt your info. You're obviously more trusting of corporations than I.
It would be safer to either drop a step or add one:
The problem with option 1, of course, is that your info must be reentered into every device/system you use. The problem with option 2 is that you have to trust the device/system you're using to not do something it shouldn't with your data. But I think that's better than trusting some corporation. At least you can restrict yourself to devices/systems you trust, use open source code, etc., etc.
Although you're anti-rant is a bit of a rant itself, I agree with the point you make about this being a high school phenomenon. If there is some human tendency to be cool as jamie mentions, it's a tendency we have when we're young and impressionable. It probably has to do with the drive to establish one's own identity independent of one's parents. It dissipates with maturity.
When we're young, we believe the old folks are old and square, they just don't "get it." But when we become older ourselves we discover there really wasn't anything to "get" and we wonder how we could have been so naïve.
Neither the young nor the old are wrong, it's just a difference in perspective.
I'm glad to see someone explain this clearly instead of simply asking "why?" or whining about Microsoft.
However, one slight correction: Sun doesn't own ebXML. ebXML was created by UN/CEFACT (a division of the United Nations), OASIS (the consortium who owns xml.org) and a whole slew of companies, especially those with a heavy investment in EDI. I don't believe Sun's contribution was any greater than IBM's.
- Scott
Anyone here work for Netscape? Their web-based mail has been down since sometime yesterday afternoon. Once you log in, you are forwarded to a page that claims they're upgrading their system.
Since most web sites handle planned upgrades w/o a 24 hour downtime, does this mean they shut the system down to fix the JavaScript bug? (And even if so, how long does it take to add code to parse out <SCRIPT> tags anyway?)
I hope you're not saying that CGI script is an invalid term. It is a script that conforms to the CGI protocol, not a script that implements the CGI protocol.
However, you're right; this question is clearly misstated. There is one clear favorite language for developing CGI scripts: Perl. You can write CGI scripts in virtually any language (that was the goal when defining the interface), but few people do. Not with CGI.
However, there are a wide variety of languages for web development, including Java (servlets and JSP), VisualBasic (ASP), PHP, ColdFusion's CFML, C/C++ (via NSAPI, Apache module), etc. Few people use these languages for CGI; each of these languages has its own respective interfaces for communicating with the server instead. (Incidentally, so does Perl: mod_perl or PerlEx.)
For more info:
- Original CGI spec
- CGI RFC Project
- O'Reilly's new Programming CGI (2nd Edition) to be published this summer (*cough*
;-)
- Scott GuelichHave you wandered over to www.apache.org recently? There is much more to the Apache Foundation than just the web server project. Most of the others (tomcat, coccoon, xerxes, etc.) are still relatively young. And although other companies (e.g., Sun, IBM) are helping out on many of these projects, the help comes through staff, not money.
I don't think your comment was off-topic at all. I think this is the very core of this topic. However, I'm worried that the trend may be against you when you say that investment in these high tech companies cannot be considered anything more than speculation. The AOL/Time Warner merger and this purchase (if it happens) may prove that pyramid schemes don't always collapse after all.
I remember a few years ago when many analysts were saying the stock market was a bubble that had grown to its limit and couldn't take much more, but then along came Internet stocks. Many people laughed at these ridiculously unprofitable Internet companies (yeah, some of them may post meager profits, but their P/E ratios certainly don't warrant their absurd valuations), and believed it was another small bubble that couldn't last.
But Internet stocks continue to grow and their valuations keep going up. Some people have cashed out and retired, but it hasn't slowed the prices any. These aren't bubbles, they are more like pyramids. These companies' true values are based upon their perceived value as investors continued to flock to them.
But look out! Now they're buying real companies with real assets and worth real money! Sure they may have once been floating on investors' overpriced valuation, now they're buying well-established companies as foundations.
Ack. Despite the fact that I work in this industry, I must be too old-fashioned to appreciate this new economy. I have no special regard for an institution like Sotheby's, but if eBay manages to purchase it, I'll be sick.
Hey didn't anyone else notice that The Age actually tries to set a cookie for the entire .com.au domain?
It's the JavaScript ad banner, which responds with the following header:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:46:05 GMT
Server: Netscape-Enterprise/3.6
Content-Type: application/x-javascript
Client-Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 02:48:04 GMT
Client-Peer: 203.26.51.180:80
Set-Cookie: NGUserID=cb1a33b7-24076-951014765-17; expires=Wednesday, 30-Dec-2037 16:00:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.com.au
Set-Cookie: NGUserID=cb1a33b7-24076-951014765-18; expires=Wednesday, 30-Dec-2037 16:00:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.com.au
Set-Cookie: NGUserID=cb1a33b7-24076-951014765-20; expires=Wednesday, 30-Dec-2037 16:00:00 GMT; path=/; domain=.com.au
These cookies will then be echoed back to every single Austrialian .com domain! Forget about the US and NSA, what are these crazy Aussies up to?!! ;-)
- Scott
Release the source! Moderate the stories!
<rant>
sigh. You know, the biggest problem with geeks is they have a #$@#ing opinion about everything. They find a news site that gives them a forum for their rants and suddenly they feel they own the place.
/. doesn't owe you anything. Nor does the rest of the world. Open source/Linux/Geekdom/whatever isn't about you getting cool free stuff from other people according to your specs. It's about giving, not getting; helping, not complaining.
Try practicing a little gratitude for a change.
</rant>
It's just becoming ridiculous how many times they've lost (or at least not won) in court this past year. This is the one issue I was rooting for them about.
I enjoy the freedom and flexibility that being a contractor affords. I've never (even back in the 80s) worked as a temp or contractor for more than a week at a place and not been offered a full-time position. Most I turned down, a few I accepted.
I can imagine that others working in other markets may not have been so fortunate, but in this case I cannot imagine every member of the action against MS truly felt discriminated against back before the stock price started really moving.
In any event the real problem for contractors is how the industry will react to this. Several people here are posting in order to describe technical distinctions between contractors and employees, but when it comes down to it, it'll be up to the industry to interpret. Hopefully, they're content with the changes they've already made, but I'm nervous they'll go further in order to "play it safe" and that'll reduce the number of opportunities for contractors.
-skew
Personally, I thought that reply was ridiculously funny.
Cool. I should have assumed as much and checked freshmeat first... :-)
The problem with dynamic content is that you pretty much have to query the target web servers at the time the user enters the search request.
One solution that attempts to address this is Apple's Sherlock. It uses XML to pass queries to web sites and return results. There are certainly some limitations: you have to choose which web sites you want to search (although this isn't always a bad thing), these web sites have to support Sherlock queries, and it only works on the MacOS. Currently lots of big name and Apple-specific sites support it.
The dev info at Apple is pretty clear though. It wouldn't be difficult for others to create clones for Sherlock that either work over a web interface or on other OSes too. (dunno if Apple could...or would... make any claim against this)
Scott