I did file a patent once, myself. It was freakin' expensive, and ultimately turned up too much prior art.
Funny, that -- my own patent lawyers were able to turn up prior art that was SUBTLE prior art, yet nobody in these big corporations seem to be digging up the obvious stuff.
Until someone convinces me otherwise, I've decided that the patent office realized they can blindly collect money from anyone who will give it to them, secure in the knowledge that if anyone wants to challenge a bad patent at their own expense, they will -- so the patent office folks don't have to bothing doing it up front.
Looking back, I should have filed the patent without doing a search for prior art. The patent office likely would have accepted it, and I would be the proud owner of a patent for very little money, although it would likely be completely unenforceable if I tried to collect on it.
One of my old 80s VWs had a similar issue -- the check engine light came on (around 70,000 or so, can't remember exactly) and I did a lot of digging around (no money for a dealer visit).
Finally, my local garage guy (who once fixed, with a $20 part and ten minutes labor, an overheating problem that other mechanics couldn't solve after several visits and several hundred dollars down the drain) told me in broken english that was an automatic light for that mileage to indicate timing belt replacement.
I checked the owner's manual, and sure enough, that was the mileage at which the timing belt was supposed to be replaced -- so I had him do the belt (for pennies versus the dealer estimate) and reset the light. He even showed me the button.
FWIW, VWs are too troublesome to own without a golden mechanic like that in your back pocket -- but boy, they're great cars if you know someone who fixes 'em cheap.
On one hand, I brought home "Animal Crossing" and "Tony Hawk 3" when I bought our GameCube, and my wife dug both games -- for months, we beat on each other every few evenings in TH3, and for months, we burned so much of our time in AC (each trying to be the first to the console to play while the other gnashed their teeth waiting for their turn) that we finally had to stop lest we go crazy. So in that case, MP gaming just made us closer. We also occasionally fire up the old copies of "Worms World Party" and sheep each other's worms to death (sounds dirty if you've never played the game, doesn't it?)
On the other hand, I used to love playing Nascar 2002 online, until my wife (who evidentally posted an article on "Ask Not-Slashdot" on how to stop her husband from playing online games) started scheduling social events for the same evenings as my organized online races, each time claiming she "forgot". I finally gave up.
So get 'em into the game, or find a game that you both enjoy.
The IT peon and myself (the non-IT peon) set up a local server that thought it was www.google.com, and looked like google.com -- until you tried to search (or click any other link) at which point it delivered a page in googlesque legalese suggesting that searches "from your IP address" are not allowed, and that google was "cooperating fully with the authorities in an ongoing investigation".
Then we changed 1/3 of the office machines' hosts file to point google.com domain requests to it.
In mid-may, a few people still had it on their machines, and had NOT sought assistance in removing it because they didn't want to call attention to it. Heh.
If Microsoft and Sun think that hardware will be free, shouldn't every single hardware manufacturer (from the smallest peripherals on up) be writing drivers for Linux, commoditizing the software before the software makers commoditize the hardware?
Create a slideshow of pictures of your coworkers -- if necessary, photoshop their faces onto other people's bodies, in a SAFE FOR WORK and APPROPRIATE but funny fashion (i.e., no nudes, no sex, and nothing involving politics or race or sexual orientation). Include everyone, even people you hate.
Set it to music (a midi file of "The Way We Were" or Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" would be pretty darn funny), compress it all into a flash (or similar) slideshow, and set everyone's homepage to the page that lets them launch it.
Sensitive types will cry, easily amused types will laugh, and they'll all think about their coworkers in a more positive light.
I don't think you should give in to the tyranny of your coworkers. Buy THEM all noise-cancelling headphones, and listen to your music at any volume you like.
>"...average users are no longer tech savvy." "Which is to say that they at one point were?"
Yes. Once upon a time, the only people with access to computers were people with knowledge and/or connections to people with knowledge. They also generally had to spend a lot more money to get the computer gear, and while money != technical competency, people are much more likely to spend that kind of cash if it's something they have a genuine interest in.
As prices get lower, as the social stigma of being a computer geek is replaced by a tech-is-cool ethic, and as computers become "easier" to use (i.e., you can do lots of things -- including bad things -- without training), the level of technical savvy in the average end user becomes much, much lower.
I actually think that specific wording in the article indicates the author has a really good grasp of computing history in the consumer sector, actually.
Agreed about the email. Parent mentioned not expecting a bank to purge your information, but you would certainly expect them to close your active checking and savings accounts (or in an ISP's case, email accounts).
I had a terrible, terrible bank in Chicago some years back, and when I closed all the accounts and took the last of my money out (in person, I might add) they assured me that the account was closed.
Well, a check that was still floating around hit the bank a week later (it was months old and very small, so I had chalked it up to a balancing error) and rather than not pay it or contact me first, they paid it out, then sent me a bill for the overdraft charge in addition to the amount. The kicker: I tried to talk to them about it, but all I got were circles of:
them: "we only honor checks to open accounts, and yours is closed, so we couldn't have paid it"
me: "but you sent me this overdraft for the closed account saying you paid this out"
them: "well, the account must not have been closed"
me: "I have this piece of paper from you saying it was closed a week before this check was paid"
them: "if you had a check out there, you should have left enough money in the account to cover it"
me: "I didn't know it was still out there, and how can I leave money in a closed account?"
them: "You can't leave money in a closed account, but once an account is closed, you don't need to leave money, because we don't honor checks to closed account"
I work on a site that allowed Opera in, although it wasn't on the official browser support list. I made it a personal goal to make as much of the site Opera-compatible as possible.
Then, while I wasn't looking, another person "upgraded" the browser detection -- and the new system blocked Opera.
Once I found out, I added Opera detection back in...but it's worth noting that many of the Javascript browser detection scripts available for purchase or free reuse break Opera by default. Tsk.
Oh, and I also did my best to make sure it was compatible with Mozilla, even in Linux -- and it was. Then one day, we received a hostile email from a Linux user (via our clients, to whom it was sent) claiming that we had our heads up in our arses and such because we weren't allowing Linux Mozilla users in -- but we WERE. I had a box right there, and proved it to the client on the spot. To this day, I have no idea what was going on with that person's machine. Bluh.
The problem here isn't Opera incompatibility -- it's artificial incompatibility with ANY browser that fakes MSIE compatibility.
After all, you said it yourself: MSIE == sheet #1, unidentified browsers with no MSIE faking == sheet #1, identified browser(s) with MSIE faking == broken sheet #2.
Once upon a time, alternative browser users visited sites and the sites broke because the browsers weren't identifiable. Later, alternative browsers pretended to be MSIE, and got through to those sites. I guess this is MSIE's way of pushing back, saying essentially "you may have found a trick that works on other sites, but you're not going to be able to do it on ours!"
The one thing I wonder is this: what happens when you change the browser ID string in Opera to read as Opera, versus the "identify as MSIE 5.0"?
Putting aside the other issues for a moment, is an article that essentially cherry-picks forum posts from random people -- specifically the ones that look the most foolish and are most easily refuted -- anything other than sensationalistic journalism?
Before you answer, keep in mind I'm going to pick the most foolish replies that are most easily refuted and write an article about it.;)
I love it when people complain about bloggers, and QUOTE THEM when they complain.
Such people are the same as folks who complain about shows like American Idol, and quote the judges when they complain.
Either way, even though you may hate and despise the thing that you're mocking, YOU'RE STILL IN THE AUDIENCE. You're still part of their audience, albeit one that mocks the performer, and even if you quit watching or reading, you still advertise for them when you complain.
And that, my friends, is why advertisers love shows like American Idol -- even if you hate the show, you're probably going to watch it. And though blogs aren't an advertiser's wet dream, there is something compelling about watching somebody vomit personal information onto a public web site, no matter how distasteful you find it.
And no, I don't have a blog. Any time I have something to say, I come here.;)
Once upon a time, my wife and I started a bulletin board for people with a specific problem. Lots of people had been discussing this problem on another board, but huge TOS limitations and draconian, inconsistent enforcement of same made it an undesirable place to talk.
Within a few days of our board going online, the other board's "administrators" contacted us. It seems that OTHER people were telling each other on THEIR board about OUR board, and they wanted it to stop. They told us to shut our board down or they'd report us to our ISP as spammers. Extortion, essentially.*
Now here's the thing: when the other board contacted us (via the yahoo address my wife had used when setting up an account on the old board) I replied with a newly created email account on my domain. The only email I ever sent from that address, in fact the only time I ever used that address EVER, was during the email exchange between myself and the other board's folks.
The end result? Well, we didn't give in, so they complained to our ISP. As "proof" of our spamming, they submitted a huge pile of URLs linked to forums (most old and no longer actively administrated) filled with recent posts containing ONLY the email address I used with them, and links to other identical forum posts. You guessed it -- they took my email address and posted all of these forum links THEMSELVES to make it look like we did it. Even now, I can find tons of these posts on google -- they never seem to go away.
Oh, and my mail server gets hundreds of emails A DAY to that address, all of which is spam (I finally set the server to/dev/null 'em.) Thanks, fellas.
So yeah, I could see why the SpamCop folks hide the address, and even though I don't use their service, I think they're terrific for taking that approach.
*Note: we basically called our ISP, sent them the extortion letters, and were told "we'll look into it and let you know." They were supportive and professional, and did in fact investigate it just in case we WERE spamming -- which was the right thing to do -- eventually returning a verdict of "you did nothing wrong, their complain is not legitimate, and you did not violate our TOS". Best. ISP. Ever.
My family has two Nissan Sentra GXEs. My 2001 5-speed gets 30-32 mpg regularly, and that's in stop-and-go traffic on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles twice a day! It's surprisingly fast for such an efficient car, as well. Lots of low-end torque.
Before I bought the Sentras, I looked into the first-generation Toyota Prius and the Toyota Echo. The comments about both cars on Edmunds.com really surprised me -- Prius owners were complaining about low gas mileage, while the Echo owners (in a different forum) were raving about their fantastic mileage. Both the Prius owners and the Echo owners were getting mileage in the high 30s/low 40s. The difference? The Prius had a much higher EPA rating and cost $20,000, while the Echo had a LOWER EPA rating and cost $13,000.
Oh, and did I mention that the newest Sentras are considered very low-emission vehicles? (SULEV rating, I believe).
Makes the whole hybrid question sort of moot, at least for now...
I just felt the need to mention this, because even as they roll out new applications and names, the "Lin*" people seem to be dropping the ball in other (traditionally strong in the Linux world) areas.
Several months ago, I purchased LindowsOS 2.0 and XandrOS 2.0 Deluxe, both of which use installers based on the old Corel Linux installer. I have several HP Omnibook 4150B (not 4150) laptops, and neither installer would work with my laptops.
The bug itself is known -- the 4150B cannot boot Linux without passing 'NOAGP' to the kernel at boot time -- but neither distribution's installer would pass the parameter correctly.
I contacted both companies with the problem, and the solution.
The Xandros people suggested a few alternative workarounds (that didn't work), then did the sensible thing: they fixed the installer so that the 'NOAGP' parameter can be passed. I use XandrOS almost daily.
The Lin* people suggested a few alternative workarounds (that didn't work), then sent me this note:
"Dear Customer, I am sorry but with LindowsOS, you cannot change the boot parameters."
End of line. I wrote back, suggesting they change their compatibility listing for the HP Omnibook 4150B to "KNOWN TO BE INCOMPATIBLE", but here it is several months later and they still list it as "Believed to be compatible".
LindowsOS has yet to be installed on any of my computers, even the ones it is compatible with, for this reason.
Just something I thought the Linux community would like to know about.
>I would have thought LinSpire might have learned from the whole Lindows name fiasco...
They did learn -- they learned that you get a LOT of publicity when you release software that closely resembles a much better-known product. In fact, lawsuit or not, that's the intent here (I would imagine): not to say "these are the same products", but to say "our products should be considered as peers to similar apps from our competitors, not inferior apps".
I thought it was sound card MANUFACTURERS who wrote these drivers, if they wanted to sell their cards to people who use Windows.
In fact, I remember once upon a time when every piece of hardware you purchased came with a driver disk, and not all of them were compatible with Windows...
Normally, I'm the first out of the box in support of privacy, but in this case I'm all for the black boxes (provided they continue to operate as they do now, with five seconds of rotating data stored longer only in the event of an impact).
In this case, it fundamentally falls to "rights" versus "privileges": driving is NOT a right, but many people drive as if (a) they have the right to drive even if they're really, really bad at it, and (b) driving isn't really that dangerous, and can be done casually and taken lightly. Neither is the case.
The flipside, of course, is tracking WHERE YOU GO in a car, and WHERE YOU ARE at any given moment. That is nobody's business but your own. Oh, and if you think a little black box is going to tell people that information, you might want to pay more attention to the cell phone tracking that's starting to surface...
The easier you make something, the more likely it is that an inexperienced and/or incompetent person will feel that they know how to use it -- and increase the likelihood that they will make a mistake.
On the other hand, the harder you make something, the more likely it is that an experienced and/or competent person will make a mistake inadvertently.
The sweet spot for danger seems to be:
Hard enough to make mistakes possible, but not hard enough to make mistakes obvious.
For example, let's say you need to set up a network card.
If it's so difficult to do that you need to be extremely knowledgeable just to bring the card up in the first place, you will make lots of mistakes, but you'll have to get everything perfect to get it working -- which means you won't have random incorrect settings or unnecessary options selected (if you did, it wouldn't work.)
If it's so easy to do that you just click a button and the network card comes up, then you don't have any opportunity to make mistakes.
Split the difference, though -- click a button to launch the network card, but provide thirty little options that may or may not be necessary to change -- and suddenly mistakes become likely, and you might go a month using a configuration that "works", but is (harmlessly) slower than it needs to be or (harmfully) woefully insecure.
GNU/Linux programmers need to make a choice: make it really, really foolproof, or make it strict and demanding.
Note: It should be obvious that, historically, UNIX leans toward the strict, Mac leans toward the foolproof, and Windows floats in the middle, which causes a lot of security problems. Don't believe me? Consider networking via NFS vs Rendevous vs NetBIOS...
1. No driving below the age of 18; if you can't be charged as an adult for a crime, you can't be given the responsibility of driving a vehicle that can kill if you're careless.
2. No driving until you've completed a TRUE driving school, one that teaches you accident avoidance and skid control, like motorcycle schools and high-performance driving schools currently offer.
3. No driving until you've learned to change a tire, check your oil and diagnose a broken fan belt...and until you know what every gauge in your car means.
4. If you want to drive a truck, SUV, or performance car, you have to take an additional course focusing on the specific dangers and control issues that these vehicles have before you can get license plates and/or permission to drive that class of vehicle.
5. Your license is a lifetime document, and after a certain number of points, you lose your license for good.
6. MUCH stiffer penalties for speeding and reckless driving*.
This will never, ever, ever happen, because people in the US for the most part believe driving is a right, not a privelege.
*in Chicago, speeding tickets were cheap, and you could get probation (to avoid the ticket showing on your record) even more cheaply. I sped more often than not. In Los Angeles, speeding tickets are a few hundred dollars, and getting traffic school to avoid the ticket showing on your record costs EVEN MORE. After my first speeding ticket in Los Angeles, I stopped speeding. Period.
Unti his retirement, my father worked for the same corporation since 1964; he was heavily involved in the creation of their in-house mainframe accounting system at the time.
In the mid-90s, they attempted to switch over to a new and modern accounting package, the same kind that the corporation I was working for (in the same business) was in the process of implementing.
Within a year, his company had given up, and reverted back to the software that he had written in the late sixties. My company, on the other hand, pressed on for a few more years before giving up the ghost and starting over with another software package.
Working on a CD-ROM many, many years ago for a large corporation, via a third party (we did the work, they managed the client, and they paid us per hour.)
Spent 3 months designing and building the CD-ROM, got to beta, and suddenly a person at the corporation that the third party "forgot" to bring in for reviews saw it, hated it, and said "start over". Was assigned a new producer.
Spent 3 months designing and building a second, all-new version of the CD-ROM, got to beta, and a person who had been part of the reviews "changed their mind" and we needed to start over. Was assigned a new producer.
Spent 3 months designing and building a third CD-ROM (midway through the producer resigns and I get another one), and at beta, they decide they want "changes" -- then "significant changes" -- then "let's just start over one more time". Was assigned a new producer.
Spent 3 months designing and building a FOURTH CD-ROM, and a month before beta submitted my resignation, to take effect the day we hit beta. My company heads begged me to stay "until the CD-ROM (was) done", but based on what had happened in the past, I dedided the likely completion date would be 2018, so bailed the day we hit beta.
I have no idea what ultimately happened to that project. At least I learned quite a bit about the subject matter, more than any user of the CD-ROM ever will.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I did file a patent once, myself. It was freakin' expensive, and ultimately turned up too much prior art.
Funny, that -- my own patent lawyers were able to turn up prior art that was SUBTLE prior art, yet nobody in these big corporations seem to be digging up the obvious stuff.
Until someone convinces me otherwise, I've decided that the patent office realized they can blindly collect money from anyone who will give it to them, secure in the knowledge that if anyone wants to challenge a bad patent at their own expense, they will -- so the patent office folks don't have to bothing doing it up front.
Looking back, I should have filed the patent without doing a search for prior art. The patent office likely would have accepted it, and I would be the proud owner of a patent for very little money, although it would likely be completely unenforceable if I tried to collect on it.
Which is what the big companies are doing.
Bluh.
One of my old 80s VWs had a similar issue -- the check engine light came on (around 70,000 or so, can't remember exactly) and I did a lot of digging around (no money for a dealer visit).
Finally, my local garage guy (who once fixed, with a $20 part and ten minutes labor, an overheating problem that other mechanics couldn't solve after several visits and several hundred dollars down the drain) told me in broken english that was an automatic light for that mileage to indicate timing belt replacement.
I checked the owner's manual, and sure enough, that was the mileage at which the timing belt was supposed to be replaced -- so I had him do the belt (for pennies versus the dealer estimate) and reset the light. He even showed me the button.
FWIW, VWs are too troublesome to own without a golden mechanic like that in your back pocket -- but boy, they're great cars if you know someone who fixes 'em cheap.
On one hand, I brought home "Animal Crossing" and "Tony Hawk 3" when I bought our GameCube, and my wife dug both games -- for months, we beat on each other every few evenings in TH3, and for months, we burned so much of our time in AC (each trying to be the first to the console to play while the other gnashed their teeth waiting for their turn) that we finally had to stop lest we go crazy. So in that case, MP gaming just made us closer. We also occasionally fire up the old copies of "Worms World Party" and sheep each other's worms to death (sounds dirty if you've never played the game, doesn't it?)
On the other hand, I used to love playing Nascar 2002 online, until my wife (who evidentally posted an article on "Ask Not-Slashdot" on how to stop her husband from playing online games) started scheduling social events for the same evenings as my organized online races, each time claiming she "forgot". I finally gave up.
So get 'em into the game, or find a game that you both enjoy.
The IT peon and myself (the non-IT peon) set up a local server that thought it was www.google.com, and looked like google.com -- until you tried to search (or click any other link) at which point it delivered a page in googlesque legalese suggesting that searches "from your IP address" are not allowed, and that google was "cooperating fully with the authorities in an ongoing investigation".
Then we changed 1/3 of the office machines' hosts file to point google.com domain requests to it.
In mid-may, a few people still had it on their machines, and had NOT sought assistance in removing it because they didn't want to call attention to it. Heh.
If Microsoft and Sun think that hardware will be free, shouldn't every single hardware manufacturer (from the smallest peripherals on up) be writing drivers for Linux, commoditizing the software before the software makers commoditize the hardware?
;)
More than it already is, I mean.
Create a slideshow of pictures of your coworkers -- if necessary, photoshop their faces onto other people's bodies, in a SAFE FOR WORK and APPROPRIATE but funny fashion (i.e., no nudes, no sex, and nothing involving politics or race or sexual orientation). Include everyone, even people you hate.
Set it to music (a midi file of "The Way We Were" or Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" would be pretty darn funny), compress it all into a flash (or similar) slideshow, and set everyone's homepage to the page that lets them launch it.
Sensitive types will cry, easily amused types will laugh, and they'll all think about their coworkers in a more positive light.
I don't think you should give in to the tyranny of your coworkers. Buy THEM all noise-cancelling headphones, and listen to your music at any volume you like.
>"...average users are no longer tech savvy." "Which is to say that they at one point were?"
Yes. Once upon a time, the only people with access to computers were people with knowledge and/or connections to people with knowledge. They also generally had to spend a lot more money to get the computer gear, and while money != technical competency, people are much more likely to spend that kind of cash if it's something they have a genuine interest in.
As prices get lower, as the social stigma of being a computer geek is replaced by a tech-is-cool ethic, and as computers become "easier" to use (i.e., you can do lots of things -- including bad things -- without training), the level of technical savvy in the average end user becomes much, much lower.
I actually think that specific wording in the article indicates the author has a really good grasp of computing history in the consumer sector, actually.
Agreed about the email. Parent mentioned not expecting a bank to purge your information, but you would certainly expect them to close your active checking and savings accounts (or in an ISP's case, email accounts).
I had a terrible, terrible bank in Chicago some years back, and when I closed all the accounts and took the last of my money out (in person, I might add) they assured me that the account was closed.
Well, a check that was still floating around hit the bank a week later (it was months old and very small, so I had chalked it up to a balancing error) and rather than not pay it or contact me first, they paid it out, then sent me a bill for the overdraft charge in addition to the amount. The kicker: I tried to talk to them about it, but all I got were circles of:
them: "we only honor checks to open accounts, and yours is closed, so we couldn't have paid it"
me: "but you sent me this overdraft for the closed account saying you paid this out"
them: "well, the account must not have been closed"
me: "I have this piece of paper from you saying it was closed a week before this check was paid"
them: "if you had a check out there, you should have left enough money in the account to cover it"
me: "I didn't know it was still out there, and how can I leave money in a closed account?"
them: "You can't leave money in a closed account, but once an account is closed, you don't need to leave money, because we don't honor checks to closed account"
me: "but you DID..."
And so on. Took weeks to straighten out. Bluh.
I work on a site that allowed Opera in, although it wasn't on the official browser support list. I made it a personal goal to make as much of the site Opera-compatible as possible.
Then, while I wasn't looking, another person "upgraded" the browser detection -- and the new system blocked Opera.
Once I found out, I added Opera detection back in...but it's worth noting that many of the Javascript browser detection scripts available for purchase or free reuse break Opera by default. Tsk.
Oh, and I also did my best to make sure it was compatible with Mozilla, even in Linux -- and it was. Then one day, we received a hostile email from a Linux user (via our clients, to whom it was sent) claiming that we had our heads up in our arses and such because we weren't allowing Linux Mozilla users in -- but we WERE. I had a box right there, and proved it to the client on the spot. To this day, I have no idea what was going on with that person's machine. Bluh.
You know, you're right.
The problem here isn't Opera incompatibility -- it's artificial incompatibility with ANY browser that fakes MSIE compatibility.
After all, you said it yourself: MSIE == sheet #1, unidentified browsers with no MSIE faking == sheet #1, identified browser(s) with MSIE faking == broken sheet #2.
Once upon a time, alternative browser users visited sites and the sites broke because the browsers weren't identifiable. Later, alternative browsers pretended to be MSIE, and got through to those sites. I guess this is MSIE's way of pushing back, saying essentially "you may have found a trick that works on other sites, but you're not going to be able to do it on ours!"
The one thing I wonder is this: what happens when you change the browser ID string in Opera to read as Opera, versus the "identify as MSIE 5.0"?
Putting aside the other issues for a moment, is an article that essentially cherry-picks forum posts from random people -- specifically the ones that look the most foolish and are most easily refuted -- anything other than sensationalistic journalism?
;)
Before you answer, keep in mind I'm going to pick the most foolish replies that are most easily refuted and write an article about it.
I love it when people complain about bloggers, and QUOTE THEM when they complain.
;)
Such people are the same as folks who complain about shows like American Idol, and quote the judges when they complain.
Either way, even though you may hate and despise the thing that you're mocking, YOU'RE STILL IN THE AUDIENCE. You're still part of their audience, albeit one that mocks the performer, and even if you quit watching or reading, you still advertise for them when you complain.
And that, my friends, is why advertisers love shows like American Idol -- even if you hate the show, you're probably going to watch it. And though blogs aren't an advertiser's wet dream, there is something compelling about watching somebody vomit personal information onto a public web site, no matter how distasteful you find it.
And no, I don't have a blog. Any time I have something to say, I come here.
Once upon a time, my wife and I started a bulletin board for people with a specific problem. Lots of people had been discussing this problem on another board, but huge TOS limitations and draconian, inconsistent enforcement of same made it an undesirable place to talk.
/dev/null 'em.) Thanks, fellas.
Within a few days of our board going online, the other board's "administrators" contacted us. It seems that OTHER people were telling each other on THEIR board about OUR board, and they wanted it to stop. They told us to shut our board down or they'd report us to our ISP as spammers. Extortion, essentially.*
Now here's the thing: when the other board contacted us (via the yahoo address my wife had used when setting up an account on the old board) I replied with a newly created email account on my domain. The only email I ever sent from that address, in fact the only time I ever used that address EVER, was during the email exchange between myself and the other board's folks.
The end result? Well, we didn't give in, so they complained to our ISP. As "proof" of our spamming, they submitted a huge pile of URLs linked to forums (most old and no longer actively administrated) filled with recent posts containing ONLY the email address I used with them, and links to other identical forum posts. You guessed it -- they took my email address and posted all of these forum links THEMSELVES to make it look like we did it. Even now, I can find tons of these posts on google -- they never seem to go away.
Oh, and my mail server gets hundreds of emails A DAY to that address, all of which is spam (I finally set the server to
So yeah, I could see why the SpamCop folks hide the address, and even though I don't use their service, I think they're terrific for taking that approach.
*Note: we basically called our ISP, sent them the extortion letters, and were told "we'll look into it and let you know." They were supportive and professional, and did in fact investigate it just in case we WERE spamming -- which was the right thing to do -- eventually returning a verdict of "you did nothing wrong, their complain is not legitimate, and you did not violate our TOS". Best. ISP. Ever.
My family has two Nissan Sentra GXEs. My 2001 5-speed gets 30-32 mpg regularly, and that's in stop-and-go traffic on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles twice a day! It's surprisingly fast for such an efficient car, as well. Lots of low-end torque.
Before I bought the Sentras, I looked into the first-generation Toyota Prius and the Toyota Echo. The comments about both cars on Edmunds.com really surprised me -- Prius owners were complaining about low gas mileage, while the Echo owners (in a different forum) were raving about their fantastic mileage. Both the Prius owners and the Echo owners were getting mileage in the high 30s/low 40s. The difference? The Prius had a much higher EPA rating and cost $20,000, while the Echo had a LOWER EPA rating and cost $13,000.
Oh, and did I mention that the newest Sentras are considered very low-emission vehicles? (SULEV rating, I believe).
Makes the whole hybrid question sort of moot, at least for now...
I just felt the need to mention this, because even as they roll out new applications and names, the "Lin*" people seem to be dropping the ball in other (traditionally strong in the Linux world) areas.
Several months ago, I purchased LindowsOS 2.0 and XandrOS 2.0 Deluxe, both of which use installers based on the old Corel Linux installer. I have several HP Omnibook 4150B (not 4150) laptops, and neither installer would work with my laptops.
The bug itself is known -- the 4150B cannot boot Linux without passing 'NOAGP' to the kernel at boot time -- but neither distribution's installer would pass the parameter correctly.
I contacted both companies with the problem, and the solution.
The Xandros people suggested a few alternative workarounds (that didn't work), then did the sensible thing: they fixed the installer so that the 'NOAGP' parameter can be passed. I use XandrOS almost daily.
The Lin* people suggested a few alternative workarounds (that didn't work), then sent me this note:
"Dear Customer,
I am sorry but with LindowsOS, you cannot change the boot parameters."
End of line. I wrote back, suggesting they change their compatibility listing for the HP Omnibook 4150B to "KNOWN TO BE INCOMPATIBLE", but here it is several months later and they still list it as "Believed to be compatible".
LindowsOS has yet to be installed on any of my computers, even the ones it is compatible with, for this reason.
Just something I thought the Linux community would like to know about.
>I would have thought LinSpire might have learned from the whole Lindows name fiasco...
They did learn -- they learned that you get a LOT of publicity when you release software that closely resembles a much better-known product. In fact, lawsuit or not, that's the intent here (I would imagine): not to say "these are the same products", but to say "our products should be considered as peers to similar apps from our competitors, not inferior apps".
I thought it was sound card MANUFACTURERS who wrote these drivers, if they wanted to sell their cards to people who use Windows.
In fact, I remember once upon a time when every piece of hardware you purchased came with a driver disk, and not all of them were compatible with Windows...
Normally, I'm the first out of the box in support of privacy, but in this case I'm all for the black boxes (provided they continue to operate as they do now, with five seconds of rotating data stored longer only in the event of an impact).
In this case, it fundamentally falls to "rights" versus "privileges": driving is NOT a right, but many people drive as if (a) they have the right to drive even if they're really, really bad at it, and (b) driving isn't really that dangerous, and can be done casually and taken lightly. Neither is the case.
The flipside, of course, is tracking WHERE YOU GO in a car, and WHERE YOU ARE at any given moment. That is nobody's business but your own. Oh, and if you think a little black box is going to tell people that information, you might want to pay more attention to the cell phone tracking that's starting to surface...
The easier you make something, the more likely it is that an inexperienced and/or incompetent person will feel that they know how to use it -- and increase the likelihood that they will make a mistake.
On the other hand, the harder you make something, the more likely it is that an experienced and/or competent person will make a mistake inadvertently.
The sweet spot for danger seems to be:
Hard enough to make mistakes possible, but not hard enough to make mistakes obvious.
For example, let's say you need to set up a network card.
If it's so difficult to do that you need to be extremely knowledgeable just to bring the card up in the first place, you will make lots of mistakes, but you'll have to get everything perfect to get it working -- which means you won't have random incorrect settings or unnecessary options selected (if you did, it wouldn't work.)
If it's so easy to do that you just click a button and the network card comes up, then you don't have any opportunity to make mistakes.
Split the difference, though -- click a button to launch the network card, but provide thirty little options that may or may not be necessary to change -- and suddenly mistakes become likely, and you might go a month using a configuration that "works", but is (harmlessly) slower than it needs to be or (harmfully) woefully insecure.
GNU/Linux programmers need to make a choice: make it really, really foolproof, or make it strict and demanding.
Note: It should be obvious that, historically, UNIX leans toward the strict, Mac leans toward the foolproof, and Windows floats in the middle, which causes a lot of security problems. Don't believe me? Consider networking via NFS vs Rendevous vs NetBIOS...
Here's the right way to make driving safer:
1. No driving below the age of 18; if you can't be charged as an adult for a crime, you can't be given the responsibility of driving a vehicle that can kill if you're careless.
2. No driving until you've completed a TRUE driving school, one that teaches you accident avoidance and skid control, like motorcycle schools and high-performance driving schools currently offer.
3. No driving until you've learned to change a tire, check your oil and diagnose a broken fan belt...and until you know what every gauge in your car means.
4. If you want to drive a truck, SUV, or performance car, you have to take an additional course focusing on the specific dangers and control issues that these vehicles have before you can get license plates and/or permission to drive that class of vehicle.
5. Your license is a lifetime document, and after a certain number of points, you lose your license for good.
6. MUCH stiffer penalties for speeding and reckless driving*.
This will never, ever, ever happen, because people in the US for the most part believe driving is a right, not a privelege.
*in Chicago, speeding tickets were cheap, and you could get probation (to avoid the ticket showing on your record) even more cheaply. I sped more often than not. In Los Angeles, speeding tickets are a few hundred dollars, and getting traffic school to avoid the ticket showing on your record costs EVEN MORE. After my first speeding ticket in Los Angeles, I stopped speeding. Period.
Unti his retirement, my father worked for the same corporation since 1964; he was heavily involved in the creation of their in-house mainframe accounting system at the time.
In the mid-90s, they attempted to switch over to a new and modern accounting package, the same kind that the corporation I was working for (in the same business) was in the process of implementing.
Within a year, his company had given up, and reverted back to the software that he had written in the late sixties. My company, on the other hand, pressed on for a few more years before giving up the ghost and starting over with another software package.
The "soft rollout" begins tomorrow. On April 1st. I think I'll just wait until Friday to sign up. ;)
I don't like the game. Too many trans fats.
Working on a CD-ROM many, many years ago for a large corporation, via a third party (we did the work, they managed the client, and they paid us per hour.)
:)
Spent 3 months designing and building the CD-ROM, got to beta, and suddenly a person at the corporation that the third party "forgot" to bring in for reviews saw it, hated it, and said "start over". Was assigned a new producer.
Spent 3 months designing and building a second, all-new version of the CD-ROM, got to beta, and a person who had been part of the reviews "changed their mind" and we needed to start over. Was assigned a new producer.
Spent 3 months designing and building a third CD-ROM (midway through the producer resigns and I get another one), and at beta, they decide they want "changes" -- then "significant changes" -- then "let's just start over one more time". Was assigned a new producer.
Spent 3 months designing and building a FOURTH CD-ROM, and a month before beta submitted my resignation, to take effect the day we hit beta. My company heads begged me to stay "until the CD-ROM (was) done", but based on what had happened in the past, I dedided the likely completion date would be 2018, so bailed the day we hit beta.
I have no idea what ultimately happened to that project. At least I learned quite a bit about the subject matter, more than any user of the CD-ROM ever will.