Dude, Vista is a failure. Now that will get me a -5 Troll rating, but the journal entry I just pointed to has links to every tech and mainstream press organization saying the same things. Users, vendors and "partners" have revolted and M$ has even lost it's grip on the press. Their one and only success in the last year was their desperate beat down of the ISO with M$XML but even that's uncertain and largely pointless. No one is really willing to pay the M$ tax anymore.
EEE PC already has enough horsepower to play movies and music as well as anything else. Battery life could be improved and it already is up to 7.5 hours.
Apple dominates the high end market and GNU/Linux rules the low. Soon the ends will meet and M$ will be squeezed out. Vista is a failure and it has taken M$ down with it.
The change is permenant. Vendors have revolted, M$ won't be able to come back. Good riddance.
Anyone mentioning IE, Windows and the shame of passing off McAffee's press release as news has been modded troll. The people doing this would rather shove goatse in your face. Look at it:
Start of thread, subverted a goatse thread with something sensible.
All of these posts had valid and interesting points and a lot of mod points were used to bury it all. Wake up moderators! Do the trolls really have that much over this place?
Who marked the parent troll? It's true that "Microsoft" and "Windows" are never mentioned in the article and that this is what makes those other sites "dangerous".
Yahoo would not have survived to 2009 if all it's employees quit. That's why Yang made sure $2 billion of the purchase price would go to employee severance plans. There's probably been some disruption anyway. Wouldn't you have a resume on the street with all of the FUD and BS being flung? The severance plans gave employees a reason to stick around and be fired by M$, or just keep on working if the deal fell through.
Painting this to be a personal thing by Yang is nuts. Yahoo and M$ were getting along famously until M$ decided to launch a hostile takeover.
Ask her how she thinks "pirates" can be shut down without interfering with legitimate traffic. Ask her if she knows about the recent Media Defender DoS. The *AAs, aka "rights holders", are criminals that continue to abuse laws to shut down all alternate distribution channels. Any power given to them will be abused in a similar way. From there you can move the discussion to the benefits of free publication and copyright reform.
Dial up rocks. At only $40/month for a land line and $15/month for an ISP on that line I can download all the goodness I want at 36 kbs, just like I did 15 years ago.
DSL, you ask? Not available and owned by a company known for FU practices.
See the choices most people have? Don't you wish something other than GWB had happened over the last eight years?
Was nothing learned in the Java fiasco? Do you trust Microsoft to be kinder to Mono than they were to Sun when Microsoft holds the patents this time? Moonlight is a colossal waste of time because Microsoft will never let it thrive on or off their platform.
Peter Gutmann can be trusted because he's an independent expert who's usually right. He's a academic imaging expert with no concealed interests and someone who cared enough about Windows to investigate Vista. His account of being raped in the Wintel press for it is well written. Ou took it to the next level by writing letters to Gutmann's University to get him canned. All of this because Gutmann dared publish a careful and objective review of Vista's DRM. Everything Gutmann said has proved correct.
Most clients come with upload limits and most people know this.
Why is slashdot linking to stories by a troll like George Ou? His treatment of Peter Gutmann is unforgivable. His articles look reasonable, but you can never tell with that guy. He's using all M$, so his results are suspect even if he were honest. Then again, the conclusion - don't burn up all of your upload bandwith - is something most people already know. The question it begs, why are cable networks so crappy, is never asked. If Slashdot must cover such basic information, it should do so from a reputable source.
Open Spectrum needs little more regulation than a body that warns radio operators if their equipment is out of spec and harmful to other traffic. There is so much spectrum available that a device would have to be broken or operating in primitive broadcast mode to interfere with anyone else. No licenses are needed, just reasonable standards using proven technology. It will quickly kill wired communications and broadcasters and it's the most important thing to happen to publication since movable type.
In many ways, broadcast was a step backward from freedom of press. Government regulations strictly limited the number of broadcasters and gave a false sense of authority for those granted the privilege. That concentration of power has been harmful to democracy everywhere. Open spectrum will open the floodgates the internet has primed. DRM and other unfriendly technology will join broadcast in the dustbin of history.
I'd rather see real competition in network service than some kind of BS regulation for monopoly service. It's fine to require neutrality out of companies that use public servitude lines but it's not OK to limit access to that servitude. A better solution will be open spectrum.
The details of the box are going to be what you expect. A tivo like mix of free and non free code that GPL 3 is designed to bust. I want one of these things like I want a tivo or a paperweight.
You may be more involved than you think you are.
on
China's Cyber-Militia
·
· Score: 1
If you run Windows on a cable modem or DSL, there's a good chance your computer is part of a botnet.
What if I write a browser for OS X that doesn't mark the file as dangerous? I bet Finder will execute it with nary a warning.
Noting gets executed on unix unless the user or a program sets the execute bit. Microsoft does it's own thing, which everyone told them was wrong and has proved inadequate. The first mechanism was none, so anything with ".exe" at the end would run as root. Now they have some other "internet" bit and a UAC which they admit was designed to annoy their customers. The root cause is that the OS itself does not have a sane method of determining what can be executed.
I have little faith in The Register's reporting because they don't seem to have tried it for themselves. Konqueror does not download things without asking the user and the GP claims the same. You would think that Register staff would have tested this for themselves when they ran the last article and got that comment about warning messages. The whole thing is half baked Microsoft FUD passed off a news.
Thanks for the link. Konqueror on GNU/Linux brings up a save file dialog. Safari on OSX does the same. It seems like the problem is not with the browser.
Thanks for the pdf link. Important passages of it are available in text here. The most delicious text is this:
From: James Plamondon
Sent: Tuesday, January 11,2000 4:32 PM
.... I'm leaving the company In early March, and indeed will be on vacation until then, starting at the end of next week. Upon departure from Microsoft. I'm moving my family to Australia, where I will sit on the beach, drink pina coladas, and laugh at the world.
Here are some documents from the Good Old Days that you might find to be handy in starting this new group. Don't worry about them leaking; they were already entered into the public record by Bristol Technologies as part of their private anti-trust case.
[Timeline.doc]
Hoping that these will help you keep the flame alive after the old war-horses like me go out to pasture, I remain
Yours
His regret for releasing these documents was as complete as his company's contempt for anti-trust rulings and records. M$'s legal team had managed to mop up a lot of damaging email from previous anti-trust cases, then these dopes go and brag about what a bunch of assholes they really are. The author apologized and tried to act like times had changed, but it should be obvious times will never change at that company. Somehow, I think he's still sitting on that beach laughing at everyone, especially M$ as it collapses. There must be thousands of people who feel like suckers for signing LOAs, taking grants and otherwise acting like pawns, that will never ever trust the Soft again.
The GSL is mostly C. It's useful for students to take a numerical methods class and recreate the basics and to understand the limitations. Once they know, they can use libraries like GSL to get real work done.
Excel is not only a joke for real problems, it's a real problem to grade.
All of the libraries and programs of interest are in C and FORTRAN. C++ is interesting and used but the other two still dominate. If you had to chose between the two for teaching people to program, take C. For utility, the two are about equal.
Free software gives users choices. It is non free software that presumes what's best for users.
Non free software does not even get what one user think is best to the customer. If Bill Gates thinks Win95 is a high point, shouldn't Vista be more like it? Market pressure has forced them to make superficial changes that confuse the user. The design by committee process has created glaring inconsistencies. A single person's vision consistently delivered would be better than what they have. All of it would be better if they made it free so that users could change it into what they really want.
Like I said, KDE did things better. Any modern Linux distribution is better for me and 99% of all users.
One of the main reasons Linux is better is the choice it gives. Windows users don't really have a choice about which version they use. Hardware and non free software vendors move on and old versions of Windows are left stranded. I might be able to run Win95 in a virtual machine but what would I run on it, Office95? What printers could I use? I have not used Windows at home for years and I have not missed anything. Free software users have dozens of good choices for everything they want to do with their computer.
Ballmer tried to counter Vista's reputation as a mistake and failure. CBS did not miss this.
Both Gates and Ballmer were asked about the success, or lack thereof, of Windows Vista, with Walt Mossberg asking if Vista was a failure or a mistake.
"It's not a failure and not a mistake," responded Ballmer. "With 20/20 hindsight, there are things we would do differently." Ballmer said Vista has sold 150 million units so far, but he did say that business customers will be able to request a "downgrade" to Windows XP after the company stops selling XP in June - obviously a response to the fact that many customers prefer XP to Vista.
The Register has an article that focuses on this and what it means.
I agree with Gates, Win95 was as good as Windows got. No, I'm not Bill Gate's sockpupet. Their vision of a unified desktop and web browser has been better implemented by KDE since. XP's copy protection and Vista's digital restrictions were tremendous mistakes. The seeds of M$'s demise were expressed early on.
Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist
can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his
product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested
a lot of money in hobby software.
Free software has done all of these things better than non free software.
Remember that stupid $250,000 judgement the RIAA managed to get out of a jury? That the jury was stacked full of people who had never used the internet? How they were given improper instructions and bogus theories of "making available"?
Think how much easier it would be to find a jury that knew nothing about YouTube. They would eat up bullshit from Viacom about how Google became popular and made all of it's money off their garbage. They would know even less about slimy operations like Media Defender. Google could show them quirky home videos and free professional videos from the site and tell them that this is what the site was all about but it would be too foreign for the to understand. Society still has expectations that are warped by 90 years of government granted monopoly broadcast.
It will take another generation to heal and that will only happen if this trial goes right.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, Vista is a failure. Now that will get me a -5 Troll rating, but the journal entry I just pointed to has links to every tech and mainstream press organization saying the same things. Users, vendors and "partners" have revolted and M$ has even lost it's grip on the press. Their one and only success in the last year was their desperate beat down of the ISO with M$XML but even that's uncertain and largely pointless. No one is really willing to pay the M$ tax anymore.
No one is going to spend $400 on an OS so they can run a $450 word processor. The Microsoft era is closed.
EEE PC already has enough horsepower to play movies and music as well as anything else. Battery life could be improved and it already is up to 7.5 hours.
Apple dominates the high end market and GNU/Linux rules the low. Soon the ends will meet and M$ will be squeezed out. Vista is a failure and it has taken M$ down with it.
The change is permenant. Vendors have revolted, M$ won't be able to come back. Good riddance.
Anyone mentioning IE, Windows and the shame of passing off McAffee's press release as news has been modded troll. The people doing this would rather shove goatse in your face. Look at it:
All of these posts had valid and interesting points and a lot of mod points were used to bury it all. Wake up moderators! Do the trolls really have that much over this place?
Who marked the parent troll? It's true that "Microsoft" and "Windows" are never mentioned in the article and that this is what makes those other sites "dangerous".
Yahoo would not have survived to 2009 if all it's employees quit. That's why Yang made sure $2 billion of the purchase price would go to employee severance plans. There's probably been some disruption anyway. Wouldn't you have a resume on the street with all of the FUD and BS being flung? The severance plans gave employees a reason to stick around and be fired by M$, or just keep on working if the deal fell through.
Painting this to be a personal thing by Yang is nuts. Yahoo and M$ were getting along famously until M$ decided to launch a hostile takeover.
Ask her how she thinks "pirates" can be shut down without interfering with legitimate traffic. Ask her if she knows about the recent Media Defender DoS. The *AAs, aka "rights holders", are criminals that continue to abuse laws to shut down all alternate distribution channels. Any power given to them will be abused in a similar way. From there you can move the discussion to the benefits of free publication and copyright reform.
Dial up rocks. At only $40/month for a land line and $15/month for an ISP on that line I can download all the goodness I want at 36 kbs, just like I did 15 years ago.
DSL, you ask? Not available and owned by a company known for FU practices.
See the choices most people have? Don't you wish something other than GWB had happened over the last eight years?
Was nothing learned in the Java fiasco? Do you trust Microsoft to be kinder to Mono than they were to Sun when Microsoft holds the patents this time? Moonlight is a colossal waste of time because Microsoft will never let it thrive on or off their platform.
Peter Gutmann can be trusted because he's an independent expert who's usually right. He's a academic imaging expert with no concealed interests and someone who cared enough about Windows to investigate Vista. His account of being raped in the Wintel press for it is well written. Ou took it to the next level by writing letters to Gutmann's University to get him canned. All of this because Gutmann dared publish a careful and objective review of Vista's DRM. Everything Gutmann said has proved correct.
Most clients come with upload limits and most people know this.
Why is slashdot linking to stories by a troll like George Ou? His treatment of Peter Gutmann is unforgivable. His articles look reasonable, but you can never tell with that guy. He's using all M$, so his results are suspect even if he were honest. Then again, the conclusion - don't burn up all of your upload bandwith - is something most people already know. The question it begs, why are cable networks so crappy, is never asked. If Slashdot must cover such basic information, it should do so from a reputable source.
Open Spectrum needs little more regulation than a body that warns radio operators if their equipment is out of spec and harmful to other traffic. There is so much spectrum available that a device would have to be broken or operating in primitive broadcast mode to interfere with anyone else. No licenses are needed, just reasonable standards using proven technology. It will quickly kill wired communications and broadcasters and it's the most important thing to happen to publication since movable type.
In many ways, broadcast was a step backward from freedom of press. Government regulations strictly limited the number of broadcasters and gave a false sense of authority for those granted the privilege. That concentration of power has been harmful to democracy everywhere. Open spectrum will open the floodgates the internet has primed. DRM and other unfriendly technology will join broadcast in the dustbin of history.
I'd rather see real competition in network service than some kind of BS regulation for monopoly service. It's fine to require neutrality out of companies that use public servitude lines but it's not OK to limit access to that servitude. A better solution will be open spectrum.
The details of the box are going to be what you expect. A tivo like mix of free and non free code that GPL 3 is designed to bust. I want one of these things like I want a tivo or a paperweight.
If you run Windows on a cable modem or DSL, there's a good chance your computer is part of a botnet.
What if I write a browser for OS X that doesn't mark the file as dangerous? I bet Finder will execute it with nary a warning.
Noting gets executed on unix unless the user or a program sets the execute bit. Microsoft does it's own thing, which everyone told them was wrong and has proved inadequate. The first mechanism was none, so anything with ".exe" at the end would run as root. Now they have some other "internet" bit and a UAC which they admit was designed to annoy their customers. The root cause is that the OS itself does not have a sane method of determining what can be executed.
I have little faith in The Register's reporting because they don't seem to have tried it for themselves. Konqueror does not download things without asking the user and the GP claims the same. You would think that Register staff would have tested this for themselves when they ran the last article and got that comment about warning messages. The whole thing is half baked Microsoft FUD passed off a news.
Thanks for the link. Konqueror on GNU/Linux brings up a save file dialog. Safari on OSX does the same. It seems like the problem is not with the browser.
Thanks for the pdf link. Important passages of it are available in text here. The most delicious text is this:
His regret for releasing these documents was as complete as his company's contempt for anti-trust rulings and records. M$'s legal team had managed to mop up a lot of damaging email from previous anti-trust cases, then these dopes go and brag about what a bunch of assholes they really are. The author apologized and tried to act like times had changed, but it should be obvious times will never change at that company. Somehow, I think he's still sitting on that beach laughing at everyone, especially M$ as it collapses. There must be thousands of people who feel like suckers for signing LOAs, taking grants and otherwise acting like pawns, that will never ever trust the Soft again.
The GSL is mostly C. It's useful for students to take a numerical methods class and recreate the basics and to understand the limitations. Once they know, they can use libraries like GSL to get real work done.
Excel is not only a joke for real problems, it's a real problem to grade.
All of the libraries and programs of interest are in C and FORTRAN. C++ is interesting and used but the other two still dominate. If you had to chose between the two for teaching people to program, take C. For utility, the two are about equal.
Free software gives users choices. It is non free software that presumes what's best for users.
Non free software does not even get what one user think is best to the customer. If Bill Gates thinks Win95 is a high point, shouldn't Vista be more like it? Market pressure has forced them to make superficial changes that confuse the user. The design by committee process has created glaring inconsistencies. A single person's vision consistently delivered would be better than what they have. All of it would be better if they made it free so that users could change it into what they really want.
Like I said, KDE did things better. Any modern Linux distribution is better for me and 99% of all users.
One of the main reasons Linux is better is the choice it gives. Windows users don't really have a choice about which version they use. Hardware and non free software vendors move on and old versions of Windows are left stranded. I might be able to run Win95 in a virtual machine but what would I run on it, Office95? What printers could I use? I have not used Windows at home for years and I have not missed anything. Free software users have dozens of good choices for everything they want to do with their computer.
Ballmer tried to counter Vista's reputation as a mistake and failure. CBS did not miss this.
The Register has an article that focuses on this and what it means.
I agree with Gates, Win95 was as good as Windows got. No, I'm not Bill Gate's sockpupet. Their vision of a unified desktop and web browser has been better implemented by KDE since. XP's copy protection and Vista's digital restrictions were tremendous mistakes. The seeds of M$'s demise were expressed early on.
Free software has done all of these things better than non free software.
I'd say this makes Google the good guy again.
Let's hope Google can do better than these other two companies did against the same attack. If Google loses, no one can win.
Remember that stupid $250,000 judgement the RIAA managed to get out of a jury? That the jury was stacked full of people who had never used the internet? How they were given improper instructions and bogus theories of "making available"?
Think how much easier it would be to find a jury that knew nothing about YouTube. They would eat up bullshit from Viacom about how Google became popular and made all of it's money off their garbage. They would know even less about slimy operations like Media Defender. Google could show them quirky home videos and free professional videos from the site and tell them that this is what the site was all about but it would be too foreign for the to understand. Society still has expectations that are warped by 90 years of government granted monopoly broadcast.
It will take another generation to heal and that will only happen if this trial goes right.