Until a distribution such as Red Hat / Mandrake becomes a mass-market, consumer friendly operating system there is little chance of having AOL. Can you imagine the support calls AOL would be getting if they shipped on Linux now? Hell, how many people alone would call up complaining that they put the AOL CD into the drive but no CD appeared on their desktop?
I recall someone from AOL saying that partner sites are contractually obliged to support all versions of the AOL client - Windows AND Mac which of course means that most sites are likely to be pretty browser-neutral anyway. Hell, I bet all but a few are totally ready to switch to Gecko right now. There can't be many sites that are so profitable that they will turn away even 3% of their customers for "not using the right browser".
The issue is not with the big guys. It's with the home user / enthusiast dorks who've decided for whatever reason to code their sites in VBScript, ActiveX and proprietary DHTML. These people will kick up a stink, but frankly they've made their bed and now they'll have to lie in it. Boo hoo for them.
Who says it crashes more? AOL hates support calls (read the article) so perhaps they're switching to Gecko because they can make it crash less than IE.
Think about it. Microsoft is a mortal enemy of AOL. If AOL discovers a crash bug in IE, how much effort do you think MS would put into fixing it? At best I bet the bug would end up in a big pile of other bugs from other big customers and no particular effort would be made to fix. Hell, I bet MS could turn around and say they won't fix it.
Now think what the situation would be with Gecko. AOL can modify their own copy of the source if they need but they also have a direct line to the Netscape developers. It means the action time on bugs is going to be dramatically less than with IE and more bugs will be fixed.
Actually there are several straightforward ways to get encryption to the masses without requiring them to think about whether they need it much.
Use Plain English to describe encryption. Make analogies to envelopes and stuff. Don't blabber on about S/MIME or other gibberish.
Integrate encryption into the mail program. Seamlessly and visibily. S/MIME support in most email programs is too complicated.
Make generating a key easy, a question while setting up an account. None of the current rigmarole of having to give your life history to Verisign or whoever for some worthless uncertified key which expires in 6 months.
Make key exchange on by default. Automatically insert a X-pgp-key-id header or somesuch into each mail sent out. Scan for this header in received mail and add to the address book entry by default.
Make encryption the default behaviour when you have the key for someone you're sending to.
Encourage e-tailers such as Amazon to put a "Encrypt your order details" checkbox on their order screens.
Most people would happily use encryption if it happened automatically and painlessly. The current problems arise because PGP is not integrated and S/Mime frankly sucks, having an overly complicated UI, difficulty getting a key and is dog slow to boot.
The most consistent UI I've ever used was under OS/2, and IBM did a LOT of development on that, I wish windows would catch up, but it was far from perfect for me, and I bet the majority.
I hope you're kidding here. The Workplace shell was reasonably consistent but the rest was consistently awful. I don't recall a single app from IBM or anyone else that shared much consistency to the next whatsover. Yes, most paid lip service to CUA guidelines so menus looked the same and a few keyboard accelerators, but everything else was different - toolbars, tooltips, tabs, icons, integration into the WPS - everything. I half think IBM did this on purpose thinking it would boost sales of their training courses.
And consistent doesn't mean user-friendly. I worked at IBM developing OS/2 apps and I don't recall anyone looking at it from a usability standpoint. Basically the UI was whatever the developer made it to look like with a few CUA tweaks near ship date. Worse yet, every IBM division suffered from Not Invented Here syndrome so there was no sharing of common control libraries. That meant some IBM apps sported some pretty bizarre user interfaces.
So what if perfect obfuscation is impossible? So is encryption short of employing one time pads or exotic quantum devices.
The point of obfuscation, however imperfect is to drive crackers crazy to the point that they give up trying to break it. It really isn't necessary to have perfect obfuscation (even if there were such a thing). All you have to do is make the code so twisty-turny, redundant checks, weird loops, self modifying code and more that the cracker gives up exasperated.
Let's face it, there are very few programs that good to warrant someone sitting down for weeks trying to break them. Hell, there comes a point where its simply cheaper to buy them than the time you waste trying to crack them.
If you want to see some good tips on making software crack resistant, try here.
It was ahead of its time, but time moved on and it didn't.
I tried to buy an A4000 when they came out but CBM hiked the price that week. This caused me to think again and I bought a PC instead. For less money, I got twice as much memory (4mb wow!), a monitor, twice as much hard drive space, 24-bit graphics at 800x600 and a faster processor.
In fact, once I replaced Windows 3.1 with OS/2 2.1 on it I didn't miss the Amiga one iota.
It didn't have to be this way. Commodore just fucked up on the marketing big time. I had been an avid Amiga fan but I was exasperated that CBM seemed to be twiddling their thumbs. The price hike was the last straw for me and I'm glad I bailed out.
The Amiga world has been rife with one bullshit rumour after another of next generations Amiga for the last 10 years. This has bred a hard core of rabid fans who even now probably would claim the Amiga isn't dead.
I owned Atari STs and various Amigas but even I saw the death knell nearly a decade ago. It came when I tried to purchase an A4000 around 1994 and the bastards in Commodore hiked the price by £100! They went bust soon after. So instead I bought a 486sx which, including monitor was £200 cheaper and never looked back.
Company after company have bought the "Amiga" trademark and used it as a cheap way to garner publicity for their vapourware products. Perhaps this company actually has some real software behind it but it has absolutely zero to do with the original Amiga.
The Segway is just another C5 flop waiting to happen. It's not a bad invention but it suffers from a glaring and fatal flaw - only people with no sense of embarrassment will use one.
The vast, vast majority of people would rightfully surmise that they'd look like a complete dork riding a Segway so the thing is pretty much doomed. Derision aside, it's not very practical either, requiring charging on a daily basis and likely to cost silly money. What is wrong with walking or using a bicycle I wonder?
The segway might find a use in warehouses and such like where scooters, carts & other devices don't work but I don't see a big market there either.
Ummm, the security libs (NSS) that are part of Mozilla and do SSL amongst other things have been developed over years and are use in all kinds of Netscape & Sun server & client products. I'd love to know how this is "reinventing the wheel".
I'm sure they could have used OpenSSL, but what is the point? Why throw away all that robust, mature, cross-platform, MPL/GPL licenced code (that does a lot more besides SSL) for something that does a subset of what is required and isn't very cross-platform either?
The important word here is developing. Ximian are developing their own C# compiler, but that doesn't mean it's finished (far from it) or that it will ever catch up with Microsoft.
The best they can hope for is a runtime, that is reasonably fast and implements a reasonable subset of classes in a cross-platform manner. It is doubtful that it will ever be as fast or complete enough to compete with the the MS offering, simply because MS have the $$$ to keep moving the goalposts.
Come now, Apple computers have built-in obsolescence. Long term for a Mac is 3 year or so after which the cord is cut and you *cannot* upgrade to the latest MacOS whether you want to or not. I reckon this G4 I'm writing this message on has a year or so more to do before it's declared "obselete". What are you meant to do after that; keep on running Mac OS X 10.1 when the world is up to Mac OS XI?
OTOH Linux runs on everything and anything. Sure it takes a but longer to configure, but then it puts new life into your hardward. Once you have it configured you can run the hardware until it literally fails on you. I know because my firewall/dialup box is running on 9-year old hardware which would be useless for anything else but Linux makes it superbly useful.
I do believe Mac OS X is easier to maintain than either Linux or Win32 in normal desktop use and I like Aqua a lot. However if I started using it as a server I don't think there would be anything easier about it.
It's interesting that companies intend to make tamper-proof cartridges and sell them for $3 to $5 when the raw ingredients sell for cents.
It sounds like just like razors and razorblades - sell a cheap razor requiring proprietary razorblades and lock-in your consumers to your brand.
Until companies snap out of this mindset I don't see the technology taking off. You can still make a massive profit by selling them for a buck each or even making refillable ones and your customers will love you for it. The first company to get a clue is likely to see their sales rocket.
I play about an hour a day maybe when I have the time but there is no way that it would ever replace real life.
Frankly it doesn't deserve to. It's an amusing diversion but it's pretty repetitive and tiresome if played for too long. Kill, med, kill, med ad nauseum.
I have to question the sanity of those who spend their whole lives on it. I don't know if its funny or tragic considering many of them are still in school.
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Until a distribution such as Red Hat / Mandrake becomes a mass-market, consumer friendly operating system there is little chance of having AOL. Can you imagine the support calls AOL would be getting if they shipped on Linux now? Hell, how many people alone would call up complaining that they put the AOL CD into the drive but no CD appeared on their desktop?
The issue is not with the big guys. It's with the home user / enthusiast dorks who've decided for whatever reason to code their sites in VBScript, ActiveX and proprietary DHTML. These people will kick up a stink, but frankly they've made their bed and now they'll have to lie in it. Boo hoo for them.
Think about it. Microsoft is a mortal enemy of AOL. If AOL discovers a crash bug in IE, how much effort do you think MS would put into fixing it? At best I bet the bug would end up in a big pile of other bugs from other big customers and no particular effort would be made to fix. Hell, I bet MS could turn around and say they won't fix it.
Now think what the situation would be with Gecko. AOL can modify their own copy of the source if they need but they also have a direct line to the Netscape developers. It means the action time on bugs is going to be dramatically less than with IE and more bugs will be fixed.
Besides which, is funding Mozilla for nearly 4 years to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars nothing either?
Mozilla runs just fine on my 450Mhz laptop
Most people would happily use encryption if it happened automatically and painlessly. The current problems arise because PGP is not integrated and S/Mime frankly sucks, having an overly complicated UI, difficulty getting a key and is dog slow to boot.
I hope you're kidding here. The Workplace shell was reasonably consistent but the rest was consistently awful. I don't recall a single app from IBM or anyone else that shared much consistency to the next whatsover. Yes, most paid lip service to CUA guidelines so menus looked the same and a few keyboard accelerators, but everything else was different - toolbars, tooltips, tabs, icons, integration into the WPS - everything. I half think IBM did this on purpose thinking it would boost sales of their training courses.
And consistent doesn't mean user-friendly. I worked at IBM developing OS/2 apps and I don't recall anyone looking at it from a usability standpoint. Basically the UI was whatever the developer made it to look like with a few CUA tweaks near ship date. Worse yet, every IBM division suffered from Not Invented Here syndrome so there was no sharing of common control libraries. That meant some IBM apps sported some pretty bizarre user interfaces.
The point of obfuscation, however imperfect is to drive crackers crazy to the point that they give up trying to break it. It really isn't necessary to have perfect obfuscation (even if there were such a thing). All you have to do is make the code so twisty-turny, redundant checks, weird loops, self modifying code and more that the cracker gives up exasperated.
Let's face it, there are very few programs that good to warrant someone sitting down for weeks trying to break them. Hell, there comes a point where its simply cheaper to buy them than the time you waste trying to crack them.
If you want to see some good tips on making software crack resistant, try here.
You are trespassing if you damage property (e.g. fences), poach or enter private grounds of a dwelling or other private property.
The law reasonably only applies if you're moving from point A to point B and have to cross private land to do it.
Let's hope it involves torturing the spammers on the rack, hanging them up by their thumbs and shoving red hot pokers up their backsides.
I tried to buy an A4000 when they came out but CBM hiked the price that week. This caused me to think again and I bought a PC instead. For less money, I got twice as much memory (4mb wow!), a monitor, twice as much hard drive space, 24-bit graphics at 800x600 and a faster processor.
In fact, once I replaced Windows 3.1 with OS/2 2.1 on it I didn't miss the Amiga one iota.
It didn't have to be this way. Commodore just fucked up on the marketing big time. I had been an avid Amiga fan but I was exasperated that CBM seemed to be twiddling their thumbs. The price hike was the last straw for me and I'm glad I bailed out.
NOTHING
I owned Atari STs and various Amigas but even I saw the death knell nearly a decade ago. It came when I tried to purchase an A4000 around 1994 and the bastards in Commodore hiked the price by £100! They went bust soon after. So instead I bought a 486sx which, including monitor was £200 cheaper and never looked back.
Not in the slightest.
Company after company have bought the "Amiga" trademark and used it as a cheap way to garner publicity for their vapourware products. Perhaps this company actually has some real software behind it but it has absolutely zero to do with the original Amiga.
The vast, vast majority of people would rightfully surmise that they'd look like a complete dork riding a Segway so the thing is pretty much doomed. Derision aside, it's not very practical either, requiring charging on a daily basis and likely to cost silly money. What is wrong with walking or using a bicycle I wonder?
The segway might find a use in warehouses and such like where scooters, carts & other devices don't work but I don't see a big market there either.
How long will it be before someone produces a varnish like coating to apply to play-once DVDs so the surface does not deteriorate?
RMS is just pissed he didn't get on the GNOME board and is just bitching from the sidelines.
I'm sure they could have used OpenSSL, but what is the point? Why throw away all that robust, mature, cross-platform, MPL/GPL licenced code (that does a lot more besides SSL) for something that does a subset of what is required and isn't very cross-platform either?
The best they can hope for is a runtime, that is reasonably fast and implements a reasonable subset of classes in a cross-platform manner. It is doubtful that it will ever be as fast or complete enough to compete with the the MS offering, simply because MS have the $$$ to keep moving the goalposts.
A few 100gb to cache the entire internet?
PDAs don't sell very well if they ship with a half-baked OS and the expectation that your customers will fix it for you.
Come now, Apple computers have built-in obsolescence. Long term for a Mac is 3 year or so after which the cord is cut and you *cannot* upgrade to the latest MacOS whether you want to or not. I reckon this G4 I'm writing this message on has a year or so more to do before it's declared "obselete". What are you meant to do after that; keep on running Mac OS X 10.1 when the world is up to Mac OS XI?
OTOH Linux runs on everything and anything. Sure it takes a but longer to configure, but then it puts new life into your hardward. Once you have it configured you can run the hardware until it literally fails on you. I know because my firewall/dialup box is running on 9-year old hardware which would be useless for anything else but Linux makes it superbly useful.
I do believe Mac OS X is easier to maintain than either Linux or Win32 in normal desktop use and I like Aqua a lot. However if I started using it as a server I don't think there would be anything easier about it.
It sounds like just like razors and razorblades - sell a cheap razor requiring proprietary razorblades and lock-in your consumers to your brand.
Until companies snap out of this mindset I don't see the technology taking off. You can still make a massive profit by selling them for a buck each or even making refillable ones and your customers will love you for it. The first company to get a clue is likely to see their sales rocket.
Frankly it doesn't deserve to. It's an amusing diversion but it's pretty repetitive and tiresome if played for too long. Kill, med, kill, med ad nauseum.
I have to question the sanity of those who spend their whole lives on it. I don't know if its funny or tragic considering many of them are still in school.
Rush Limbaugh should be blasted for ruining the listeners experience.