Unlike bankruptcy, death is regarded by "primitive gut-feel" as being a bit more permanent.
Primitive perhaps, but it has worked well enough for a very long time. I'd say any of that "new fangled" stuff needs maybe millions more years (or more) to prove that it's actually better.
Hey, if you have a 52X player that means you should be paying 52X:).
Laugh, but wasn't that sort of thinking seriously being used in one case?
CD costs are definitely lower nowadays. Over here "Pirate" stuff is now half or 1/3 the price it used to be, not even factoring for inflation;).
Re:My light fixtures are safe, really, trust me.
on
Security — Open Vs. Closed
·
· Score: 2, Informative
In my experience there is no big difference between the security of closed and open software.
1) Even if the source code is available for people to check, if nobody else bothers checking but the author there's no difference right? 2) It's the quality of the checking not the quantity. A billion stupid monkeys won't know the difference between good code or bad code.
What you should do is see who made the stuff and what their track record is like.
I can confidently say Firefox will continue to have regular security bugs for years, and that any claims that it is far more secure than IE are hype. The fact that it is written in an unsafe language and crashes regularly means it has both code quality issues and security issues. Don't even need to look at the source to tell.
It seems as if that there are fewer than 10 people in the world who know how to code safely in C (or C++) AND actually do it.
"I don't agree with automatic time limits on laws, particularly not constitutions (which can therefore be revoked simply by waiting long enough). "
If the people in power are going to skip renewing the Constitution on its 200th Anniversary, I think you would already be in big trouble WAY WAY before that.
After all you think such people wouldn't be amending it or just ignore it?
Lastly, if people somehow forget/refuse to renew the laws on murder, maybe someone should kill them.
That's the trouble of having laws with a default unlimited lifespan.
I've been proposing that all laws should have a limited lifespan, and require legislators to approve and renew them before they expire.
Even a country's Constitution should have a limited lifespan!
A Constitution could have a lifespan of say 200 or 100 years, and if a country survives long enough it can throw a huge party when the times comes to renew it.
Sure legislators will try to bundle hundreds of laws together to renew them, but they already bundle hundreds of laws together and pass them permanently which is worse. At least with my proposal there's still a chance that legislators with integrity and a conscience might actually object to the renewal of the bundle with a law from a previous cycle that they have been wanting to get rid of.
If it takes too much effort to renew thousands of laws regularly, then there are too many laws for the citizens to follow.
Legislators should also be encouraged to make better written laws instead of the equivalent of thousands of IF-THEN-ELSE lines.
You don't need that many laws too if you have decent judges.
While it doesn't matter how good your laws are if the people in charge of making and enforcing them are crap, currently even if these people retire or die, their bad laws tend to live on to plague everyone. Sure the worst laws get repealed, but AFAIK there isn't a team of repealers going around looking for crappy laws to repeal - perhaps if my proposal is too radical, having dedicated teams of repealers is better than nothing.
Starts with IE7 as number 1 reason(!?[1]) and goes downhill from then on. I mean Mahjong Titans is one of the reasons listed...
[1] IE7 is available for XP, and you can still optionally stick with IE6 for those broken IE6-only typically built using MS's old technology.
And about search. I've always found Win2K's file search easier to use than WinXP's (which has all sorts of crap that gets in the way), so now Vista improves search? Forgive me if I'm not impressed.
Sure, per app sound control is nice, but it would have been cheaper to implement without all that DRM stuff getting in the way. Again who pays?
And you say: Office 2007. Office 2007 is not Vista. Are you claiming it doesn't work on XP? That'll be interesting.
Or are you claiming MS is adding hidden features to its OS to make Office 2007 better? Didn't MS get in trouble for something like that before?
You said: "No DRM means no digital HD media. Can't do it. Not legally, anyway."
Sure you need HDCP support. But which law says you need to put "tilt bits" and all the other DRM stuff into Vista that will _increase_ customer costs AND reduce function?
You think those Made in China HD players are going to have "tilt bits" and other crap in their hardware? You really think that millions of those HD players will get "revoked" just because some guy in Norway reuses their keys? So MS has less influence over media companies than than those pesky bunch in China?
All that looks like increased value to you? Of course it does, Microsoft gives you money. Money from boiling frogs.
Lastly: I've got many more good reasons why you're wrong and that Vista sucks and is not innovative.
BUT they're under the hood where you can't see them.;)
Like I said. A small percentage of the _company's_ cash. Anything in the order of single digit USD million is a win. Can easily justify that the bet/"investment" didn't pay off.
What was the figure again? USD150 per affected machine? If a "indie" hacker roots a machine and gets caught you tend to see figures of _thousands_ or even tens of thousands per machine, and sentences of a few years.
The _people_ responsible for Sony's actions didn't lose anything at all.
1) I am your master 2) You are my slave, you shall obey my every command directed to you. 3) You will on every Dec 26th starting at noon stand on one foot in a shopping mall or other crowded public place and howl 3 times, each howl being at least 6 seconds long, with a pause of at least 3 seconds between howls, and the howl being loud enough to be heard by at least 5 strangers 5 metres away. And you will try to get your friends to do the same thing as well. 4) In event you are not capable of doing 3), you shall disregard all EULAs by other parties and not create any yourselves. 5) This being on Slashdot, any offers to sacrifice your first born will be laughed at and dismissed.
"Wasn't five years long enough? XP came out in 2001, DX9 in 2002, why couldn't the industry produce compatible alternatives over that five year period? Doesn't it seem reasonable to conclude that a market which couldn't produce alternatives in five years is not going to produce them at all?"
Wasn't five years long enough for Microsoft to produce something much better for customers than Vista?
Anyway, if you read my original post, people like Transgaming ARE already working at producing compatible alternatives, the compatibility is not 100%, but it is very promising.
Given a bit more time, then we could have new industry leaders who are actually interested in innovating for the benefit of customers.
Microsoft used to ask customers "Where do you want to go today?" and might even have been half serious about the answers.
Maybe Microsoft is constantly innovating. I'm fine with Microsoft coming up with great new innovations for their customers.
But what's Vista then? Where's the innovation really? Flashier UI? Security features so annoying that it seems most people will turn them off or "click through blindly"?
Ah yes, there's the DRM too, now that's what I call a major change or "innovation".
BUT don't tell me that DRM innovation is for the benefit of the people who are going to pay for Vista. Did the Music/Movie cartel help fund Vista's development? AFAIK they didn't.
BUT it's obvious a LOT of work and resources went into DRM features, and those features actually reduce the value of the operating system to Microsoft's customers.
So the fact that Microsoft has voluntarily put in the DRM features without financial help from Hollywood etc, adds more proof that Microsoft is not customer oriented.
More proof that they are not a symbiote but a parasite.
"You know that doesn't work, right? The frog eventually does jump out of the water"
Sure a few of the frogs jump out. Some of the frogs even die early. But most of the frogs seem happy to pay to turn up the heat;).
Parasites have ways of making their hosts do weird things...
I'm actually still using Win2K on some computers and when I'm using XP I prefer the classic mode;). XP is pretty snappy in classic mode with the silly effects off (same for Win2K).
There was and is no need to change from 2K to XP unless you want a faster boot up time (that's the only thing that I find significantly better about WinXP than Win2K - boot up times). There are very very few programs that only work on WinXP but don't work on Win2K, and that includes games.
Basically MS didn't break compatibility that much. You can run directx9 games on Win2K and WinXP. Use practically the same drivers.
With Vista, MS intentionally breaks a lot of stuff AND for very little _innovation_ or improvement.
So why pay for low innovation and increased DRM? All the billions MS has spent in development appears to have either been wasted or gone into DRM, very little appears to have gone into features that significantly benefit the person paying for the software.
It's like people are happy to pay for a new TV where 60% of the new "features" are things like not being able to watch the same movie twice without the MPAAs permission. And switching channels is slower because of the new checking overheads...
Just disagrees with me somehow. Like opening your wallet and paying for the bullet used to execute you.
Could be a bit different if the Movie/Music Cartel had paid billions to Microsoft to put DRM into Vista, and the savings were then passed to people who buy Vista or buy computers with Vista installed.
You are actually advising your friends to get Vista eventually?
I'd advise my friends to not ever get Vista if possible. The only reason to get Vista is if you want Microsoft to maintain their monopoly and don't mind getting DRM-laden bloat for it.
Stick to 2000/XP long enough so that competitors can come up with a Windows XP compatible. Then we are more likely to get real innovation and stuff that actually benefits users.
I don't see why it is good for people to reward and encourage Microsoft for forcing more DRM on them. But most people will just go for it- after all Apple has done really well with DRM.
Uh but that's not why Vista was made. It's not about security at all.
What you see here is Microsoft slowly boiling frogs.
The main reason for Vista (or any MS Windows/Office release) is so that Microsoft won't end up "Yet Another Windows XP Compatible Vendor" just like the BIOS market - lower margins etc.
If Microsoft didn't keep introducing new APIs and try to force people to migrate to Vista for DirectX10, people would gradually come up with viable compatibles for DirectX9 and Windows XP. You can already see signs of that with Cedega and WINE.
If Microsoft waited too long to change stuff, a lot of people might go, hey I can still use this WinXP Compatible O/S for my stuff and I don't need all that bloat and DRM. And then it's bye-bye high profits etc.
If people would just think long term and kept telling Dell, HP etc, and software vendors (games) that they don't want Vista and stick to XP for a while longer, then there's hope for change and after that _real_ innovation.
But I don't see much hope for that - hardly anyone listens to me:p.
People will switch to Vista just because Dell/HP/IBM/OEMs preload it, even though Vista has significant disadvantages (DRM bloat etc) and mostly insignificantly improvements.
If you are so easily tricked, you could get phished or worse, so learn to check and think before you click on links.
I suggest you only sign in to one webservice at a time, that way clicking on a link in Slashdot or viewing a 3rd party image/iframe, is unlikely to do strange stuff to your accounts on ebay or paypal or whatever.
Or just use a different browser for important stuff.
But that doesn't mean it's time to get rid of it. The current alternatives are worse.
I don't see why removing the TLDs is even being considered at all.
If some people have domains on it and keep paying to maintain them why get rid of it? Does anyone actually have a much better use for.su? If nobody uses the.su TLD, then uh what's the problem, even if it's still theoretically around, no servers would be needed to host the domains, there would be hardly any load.
I really don't understand the reasoning.
The ICANN should consider more useful stuff like reserving the.local TLD (for special local use by devices - e.g. Bonjour/Rendezvous ) and other similar TLDs (I propose.here for special local use by humans), instead of wasting time and resources on things like this.
Winning against a vendor or even getting things fixed is not the point in most companies.
Think of it as you spending your company's/organization's money to help keep your job.
In most companies that's a viable strategy. When stuff happens, instead of the bosses replacing you (and also potentially risking their own butts), they just sue/replace the consultant or vendor.
Some people don't like to watch American Football, some don't like watching baseball, some don't like watching golf, darts, snooker etc. And some don't like watching Starcraft.
Given the amount of micromanagement the top starcraft players do, there are actually a lot more strategies and tactics possible. You could go download and watch the replays of the top players.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike bankruptcy, death is regarded by "primitive gut-feel" as being a bit more permanent.
Primitive perhaps, but it has worked well enough for a very long time. I'd say any of that "new fangled" stuff needs maybe millions more years (or more) to prove that it's actually better.
Hey, if you have a 52X player that means you should be paying 52X :).
;).
Laugh, but wasn't that sort of thinking seriously being used in one case?
CD costs are definitely lower nowadays. Over here "Pirate" stuff is now half or 1/3 the price it used to be, not even factoring for inflation
In my experience there is no big difference between the security of closed and open software.
1) Even if the source code is available for people to check, if nobody else bothers checking but the author there's no difference right?
2) It's the quality of the checking not the quantity. A billion stupid monkeys won't know the difference between good code or bad code.
What you should do is see who made the stuff and what their track record is like.
I can confidently say Firefox will continue to have regular security bugs for years, and that any claims that it is far more secure than IE are hype. The fact that it is written in an unsafe language and crashes regularly means it has both code quality issues and security issues. Don't even need to look at the source to tell.
It seems as if that there are fewer than 10 people in the world who know how to code safely in C (or C++) AND actually do it.
I'm definitely not one of them.
"I don't agree with automatic time limits on laws, particularly not constitutions (which can therefore be revoked simply by waiting long enough). "
If the people in power are going to skip renewing the Constitution on its 200th Anniversary, I think you would already be in big trouble WAY WAY before that.
After all you think such people wouldn't be amending it or just ignore it?
Lastly, if people somehow forget/refuse to renew the laws on murder, maybe someone should kill them.
That's the trouble of having laws with a default unlimited lifespan.
I've been proposing that all laws should have a limited lifespan, and require legislators to approve and renew them before they expire.
Even a country's Constitution should have a limited lifespan!
A Constitution could have a lifespan of say 200 or 100 years, and if a country survives long enough it can throw a huge party when the times comes to renew it.
Sure legislators will try to bundle hundreds of laws together to renew them, but they already bundle hundreds of laws together and pass them permanently which is worse. At least with my proposal there's still a chance that legislators with integrity and a conscience might actually object to the renewal of the bundle with a law from a previous cycle that they have been wanting to get rid of.
If it takes too much effort to renew thousands of laws regularly, then there are too many laws for the citizens to follow.
Legislators should also be encouraged to make better written laws instead of the equivalent of thousands of IF-THEN-ELSE lines.
You don't need that many laws too if you have decent judges.
While it doesn't matter how good your laws are if the people in charge of making and enforcing them are crap, currently even if these people retire or die, their bad laws tend to live on to plague everyone. Sure the worst laws get repealed, but AFAIK there isn't a team of repealers going around looking for crappy laws to repeal - perhaps if my proposal is too radical, having dedicated teams of repealers is better than nothing.
In the year when DOOM first came out I did a kludge with serial + parallel. Yep IPX over the parallel port.
And my housemates had a fun time with coop and deathmatch doom.
Mostly under the hood where I can't see them? Yeah in excessive DRM technology that was not built for MS's customers.
l p/639a0593-b990-4f53-82be-857fcea5a5061033.mspx
f ault.mspx )
;)
And those benefits you keep hinting about are so deep inside that even this Microsoft Shill can't come up with 7 great reasons why Vista is better than XP: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/he
(article "spotlighted" today in front page of: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/de
Starts with IE7 as number 1 reason(!?[1]) and goes downhill from then on. I mean Mahjong Titans is one of the reasons listed...
[1] IE7 is available for XP, and you can still optionally stick with IE6 for those broken IE6-only typically built using MS's old technology.
And about search. I've always found Win2K's file search easier to use than WinXP's (which has all sorts of crap that gets in the way), so now Vista improves search? Forgive me if I'm not impressed.
Sure, per app sound control is nice, but it would have been cheaper to implement without all that DRM stuff getting in the way. Again who pays?
And you say: Office 2007. Office 2007 is not Vista. Are you claiming it doesn't work on XP? That'll be interesting.
Or are you claiming MS is adding hidden features to its OS to make Office 2007 better? Didn't MS get in trouble for something like that before?
You said: "No DRM means no digital HD media. Can't do it. Not legally, anyway."
Sure you need HDCP support. But which law says you need to put "tilt bits" and all the other DRM stuff into Vista that will _increase_ customer costs AND reduce function?
You think those Made in China HD players are going to have "tilt bits" and other crap in their hardware? You really think that millions of those HD players will get "revoked" just because some guy in Norway reuses their keys? So MS has less influence over media companies than than those pesky bunch in China?
All that looks like increased value to you? Of course it does, Microsoft gives you money. Money from boiling frogs.
Lastly: I've got many more good reasons why you're wrong and that Vista sucks and is not innovative.
BUT they're under the hood where you can't see them.
I'm your master, you're my slave.
And I get to change the terms and conditions anytime I like.
Have a nice day!
Like I said. A small percentage of the _company's_ cash. Anything in the order of single digit USD million is a win. Can easily justify that the bet/"investment" didn't pay off.
What was the figure again? USD150 per affected machine? If a "indie" hacker roots a machine and gets caught you tend to see figures of _thousands_ or even tens of thousands per machine, and sentences of a few years.
The _people_ responsible for Sony's actions didn't lose anything at all.
One rule for Sony and one rule for Samy...
Sony screwed up lots of computers too. But all they had to do was pay some fine that's just a small percent of Sony's profit.
1) I am your master
2) You are my slave, you shall obey my every command directed to you.
3) You will on every Dec 26th starting at noon stand on one foot in a shopping mall or other crowded public place and howl 3 times, each howl being at least 6 seconds long, with a pause of at least 3 seconds between howls, and the howl being loud enough to be heard by at least 5 strangers 5 metres away. And you will try to get your friends to do the same thing as well.
4) In event you are not capable of doing 3), you shall disregard all EULAs by other parties and not create any yourselves.
5) This being on Slashdot, any offers to sacrifice your first born will be laughed at and dismissed.
Oh yah, your other point:
"Wasn't five years long enough? XP came out in 2001, DX9 in 2002, why couldn't the industry produce compatible alternatives over that five year period? Doesn't it seem reasonable to conclude that a market which couldn't produce alternatives in five years is not going to produce them at all?"
Wasn't five years long enough for Microsoft to produce something much better for customers than Vista?
Anyway, if you read my original post, people like Transgaming ARE already working at producing compatible alternatives, the compatibility is not 100%, but it is very promising.
Given a bit more time, then we could have new industry leaders who are actually interested in innovating for the benefit of customers.
Microsoft used to ask customers "Where do you want to go today?" and might even have been half serious about the answers.
Now things seem very different.
Maybe Microsoft is constantly innovating. I'm fine with Microsoft coming up with great new innovations for their customers.
;).
But what's Vista then? Where's the innovation really? Flashier UI? Security features so annoying that it seems most people will turn them off or "click through blindly"?
Ah yes, there's the DRM too, now that's what I call a major change or "innovation".
BUT don't tell me that DRM innovation is for the benefit of the people who are going to pay for Vista. Did the Music/Movie cartel help fund Vista's development? AFAIK they didn't.
BUT it's obvious a LOT of work and resources went into DRM features, and those features actually reduce the value of the operating system to Microsoft's customers.
So the fact that Microsoft has voluntarily put in the DRM features without financial help from Hollywood etc, adds more proof that Microsoft is not customer oriented.
More proof that they are not a symbiote but a parasite.
"You know that doesn't work, right? The frog eventually does jump out of the water"
Sure a few of the frogs jump out. Some of the frogs even die early. But most of the frogs seem happy to pay to turn up the heat
Parasites have ways of making their hosts do weird things...
I'm actually still using Win2K on some computers and when I'm using XP I prefer the classic mode ;). XP is pretty snappy in classic mode with the silly effects off (same for Win2K).
There was and is no need to change from 2K to XP unless you want a faster boot up time (that's the only thing that I find significantly better about WinXP than Win2K - boot up times). There are very very few programs that only work on WinXP but don't work on Win2K, and that includes games.
Basically MS didn't break compatibility that much. You can run directx9 games on Win2K and WinXP. Use practically the same drivers.
With Vista, MS intentionally breaks a lot of stuff AND for very little _innovation_ or improvement.
So why pay for low innovation and increased DRM? All the billions MS has spent in development appears to have either been wasted or gone into DRM, very little appears to have gone into features that significantly benefit the person paying for the software.
It's like people are happy to pay for a new TV where 60% of the new "features" are things like not being able to watch the same movie twice without the MPAAs permission. And switching channels is slower because of the new checking overheads...
Just disagrees with me somehow. Like opening your wallet and paying for the bullet used to execute you.
Could be a bit different if the Movie/Music Cartel had paid billions to Microsoft to put DRM into Vista, and the savings were then passed to people who buy Vista or buy computers with Vista installed.
You are actually advising your friends to get Vista eventually?
I'd advise my friends to not ever get Vista if possible. The only reason to get Vista is if you want Microsoft to maintain their monopoly and don't mind getting DRM-laden bloat for it.
Stick to 2000/XP long enough so that competitors can come up with a Windows XP compatible. Then we are more likely to get real innovation and stuff that actually benefits users.
I don't see why it is good for people to reward and encourage Microsoft for forcing more DRM on them. But most people will just go for it- after all Apple has done really well with DRM.
Uh but that's not why Vista was made. It's not about security at all.
:p.
What you see here is Microsoft slowly boiling frogs.
The main reason for Vista (or any MS Windows/Office release) is so that Microsoft won't end up "Yet Another Windows XP Compatible Vendor" just like the BIOS market - lower margins etc.
If Microsoft didn't keep introducing new APIs and try to force people to migrate to Vista for DirectX10, people would gradually come up with viable compatibles for DirectX9 and Windows XP. You can already see signs of that with Cedega and WINE.
If Microsoft waited too long to change stuff, a lot of people might go, hey I can still use this WinXP Compatible O/S for my stuff and I don't need all that bloat and DRM. And then it's bye-bye high profits etc.
If people would just think long term and kept telling Dell, HP etc, and software vendors (games) that they don't want Vista and stick to XP for a while longer, then there's hope for change and after that _real_ innovation.
But I don't see much hope for that - hardly anyone listens to me
People will switch to Vista just because Dell/HP/IBM/OEMs preload it, even though Vista has significant disadvantages (DRM bloat etc) and mostly insignificantly improvements.
If you are so easily tricked, you could get phished or worse, so learn to check and think before you click on links.
I suggest you only sign in to one webservice at a time, that way clicking on a link in Slashdot or viewing a 3rd party image/iframe, is unlikely to do strange stuff to your accounts on ebay or paypal or whatever.
Or just use a different browser for important stuff.
Uh, better make sure you don't put anything that looks like stuff that could get you sent to Guantanamo Bay...
Not complaining :p.
Someone (was it you?) made a similarly formatted post sometime back that someone else commented looked a bit like poetry.
The words may be clear
but who can know the reasons,
why the words lie so.
Interesting formatting.
<assistant type=limerick>
<prompt>You appear to be writing a limerick...</prompt>
<suggestion>
There was once an instructor at JC
Who taught but didn't even know C
A student of course
complained because
in the end he saw a C for C
</suggestion>
<assistant>
At night in the desert you can get significant cooling just by radiating to the sky passively, windmills not required.
But that doesn't mean it's time to get rid of it. The current alternatives are worse.
.su? If nobody uses the .su TLD, then uh what's the problem, even if it's still theoretically around, no servers would be needed to host the domains, there would be hardly any load.
.local TLD (for special local use by devices - e.g. Bonjour/Rendezvous ) and other similar TLDs (I propose .here for special local use by humans), instead of wasting time and resources on things like this.
I don't see why removing the TLDs is even being considered at all.
If some people have domains on it and keep paying to maintain them why get rid of it? Does anyone actually have a much better use for
I really don't understand the reasoning.
The ICANN should consider more useful stuff like reserving the
Winning against a vendor or even getting things fixed is not the point in most companies.
Think of it as you spending your company's/organization's money to help keep your job.
In most companies that's a viable strategy. When stuff happens, instead of the bosses replacing you (and also potentially risking their own butts), they just sue/replace the consultant or vendor.
Unless you use savepoints, postgresql will rollback the entire transaction if there is an error anywhere.
Some people don't like to watch American Football, some don't like watching baseball, some don't like watching golf, darts, snooker etc. And some don't like watching Starcraft.
Given the amount of micromanagement the top starcraft players do, there are actually a lot more strategies and tactics possible. You could go download and watch the replays of the top players.