I started using Intuit products with Quicken 2.0 and Quit after buying Quickbooks Pro 2000. It deliberately disables many obvious features in attempts to sell add-ons and internet services. It has a very heavy-handed registration process and contacts Intuit's servers later without asking. And worst, it has essentially no open interfaces so it traps your data within itself and refuses to allow itself to integrate with other applications.
That was my last purchase from Intuit. I have removed it from my system and it sits on a shelf.
Stephen Evans's article presents a serious and sloppy accusation against Linux programmers as fact while citing zero evidence. He accuses a class of people of a serious crime based only on the fact that one of the victims of that crime has been publicly attacking that class of people. That is pretty sloppy reporting.
Interestingly enough, the MyDoom virus's author would have had to use Windows development tools to produce the virus. It is more accurate to say that the author is a Windows developer.
Once the author is caught, we will all have an opportunity to evaluate that person's motives.
In the meantime, the most likely scenario is that the virus was either created by a single idiot or for a commercial purpose such as relaying spam and using the SCO attack only for cover. To declare otherwise is irresponsible journalism at best and libel at worst.
Most of us geeks have been dealing with the impact of this virus on our networks and mail transport systems that are caused by the combination of this virus with windows machines that amplify the immense stupidity of some of their users. I will admit to a brief smirk when I heard of the target of MyDoom's DDoS attack.
In 1994, the US government imposed technical requirements on telecom carriers that
automatically became mandatory features on every equipment provider selling to US telecom carriers. Since almost all such equipment is sold worldwide, that means that additional repressive technology is being forced into the hands of all repressive governemnts worldwide. (Including our current administration)
Note that CALEA is about making the technology capable of snooping rather than authorizing that snooping to be done. In the US, it takes further bad legislation like the Patriot act to authorize the snooping. CALEA just makes it (too) easy.
That one, at least, has only 2 really independent claims. One that is limited to card games, the second to advertising.
Go carefully claim by claim through the patents (you can skip all the nice pictures and go straight to the claims). If a claim starts with "a method as claimed in claim 18" and claim 18 does not apply, neither does the one that references it.
The modem hardware on most motherboards is merely an A/D and D/A. The actual modem you pay for is implemented in DSP firmware that has been ported to the driver.
If modem companies are forced to release the source of that to support Linux, there will be no Linux modem support for any of these.
So, the community is left a choice of learning to accept supported binaries or no support at all.
Alternatively, you could wait for the GNU Radio project to echo cancel, then equalize, then demodulate QAM, then trellis, then LAPM, then V42bis. Then, you'll be within 8 years of up-to-date.
I am a big believer in open-source. But I don't expect every company to give their products away just to make Linux users happy.
Many good companies will take a few extra steps to support Linux drivers, but not if they have to give away their own products to do it.
Think the worst jobs in science are bad? I can think of nothing worse than examining patents. I have a hard time keeping my eyes open to read a few a month.
Actually, it would be better to sue based on the copyright of a non-kernel component. There is no opportunity to create confusion about Kernel patches if the suit is about bash or binutils.
This patent only covers a system where the client reports failures, checks to see if the failure is a duplicate, then follows server-based instructions to see if someone at Microsoft want's the user's bank account information before sending it.
The first thing that makes a VoIP call bothersome as latency rises is the echo. If the person you talk to has a good echo canceller, you will be OK up to about 150msec. After that, you start to attribute delays in each others' reactions to emotions, usually reluctance, reulting in anger.
Consider 2 elections. In one, you and I and everyone else have exactly a 75% chance of having their votes counted. In the other, the affluent young technocracy has a 99% chance of having their votes counted and the poor, old, or low-tech population has a 95% chance of having their votes counted. At first blush, the seond electiuon sounds more fair, but it is very clear that the first is totally fair and the second is terribly biased.
The problems in recent elections were not caused by technological failures. Dangling chads and the like are just a smokescreen and the recounts bore that out. The problems in elections are a lack of uniformity within the areas in which votes are pooled. Since the votes for president are done by electoral votes rather than popular vote, it is not necessary to have the entire country have identical machines and ballots, but this does need to happen at the state level. When I walk into my polling place, I should see an identical machine to every other voter in the state (randomly selected from the state pool). All the state ballots should be identical to every other ballot in the state. All the county ballots should be identical to every other ballot in the county, etc....
To do otherwise not only fails to solve the fairness problem, but it disinfranchises people for whom a mouse is a household pest.
This finally proves the assertion that the reason for the ban on in-flight electronics was to protect Airfone and in-flight movies from competition and had nothing to do with RF interference. Now that the airlines found a way to extract revenue from this, suddenly spread-spectrum RF signals are perfectly safe.
Turn off your cellphone please. And put away that gameboy.
It's hard to feel sorry for the struggling airlines when lie as much as they do.
It is amazing that people will abhor this kind of a test and then do far worse without even thinking about it.
Every time you buy a cheap product that was made by workers who are put in daily peril of death, you trade a dollar for one-in-a-million chance of killing a worker.
For a real eye-opener that goes far beyone fast-food, read Fast Food Nation (isbn: 0395977894). It's not an easy read, but its quite an eye-opener. A lot of reviews are linked
here.
Now I understand what some of the protests are about. It makes it hard to go shopping without thinking.
If you tell 3000 people what your WEP key is, you don't have a secret anymore.
When you combine that problem with the logistical mess of giving out keys and the loss of your ability to provide access for visitors, you would be better of putting your wireless network outside your company firewall. Then, use VPN clients to pierce your firewall the same way you would if you were home, in a hotel room, or at an airport.
Since most of us don't vote in Peru, all of us in the OSS community should pay special attention to any requests for tech assistance from Peruvian sources.
Why on earth would anyone (other than Micro$oft) design an OS for something where all of the substance is contained in the protocols?
A new set of protocols for this sort of thing, suppoted by applications sold in appliances, set-top-boxes, and games and available on commercial and non-commercial software for a variety of OSs seems more like the right model for this.
As many other posters have pointed out, your current path is pointing towards the exit door. You have very little to lose by sitting down with your IT director either alone or with your boss and discussing his thoughts on your job performance. To do this properly, you must be very open and non-defensive. Granted, he or your boss should have come to you, but don't let that failing cause your career to get derailed. Find the problem and address it.
Since you are in an early part of your career, I have a guess. I have worked with sysadmins that were technical experts and adminstratively incompetent as well as some who were technically marginal and administratively adept. Guess which is more important... (donning flameproof suit here)... it is the administrative skills. If you were hired as a crack technical expert, you could have made a big splash by initially fixing many broken things, then the job could have evolved beyond your organizational skills. You may have to hook up with a strong mentor and start working on that end of the job.
Be open-minded and try not to leap to assuming conspiracy or discrimination first. This is your career to manage so take charge of finding out what is really going on in this situation
The only way to be certain that Micro$oft does not profit by accidental ommissions and inaccuracies in the API information shared with competitors is to require that differrent parts of Micro$oft share information with each other SOLELY through the published information.
Slashdot Mirror
That was my last purchase from Intuit. I have removed it from my system and it sits on a shelf.
Stephen Evans's article presents a serious and sloppy accusation against Linux programmers as fact while citing zero evidence. He accuses a class of people of a serious crime based only on the fact that one of the victims of that crime has been publicly attacking that class of people. That is pretty sloppy reporting.
Interestingly enough, the MyDoom virus's author would have had to use Windows development tools to produce the virus. It is more accurate to say that the author is a Windows developer.
Once the author is caught, we will all have an opportunity to evaluate that person's motives.
In the meantime, the most likely scenario is that the virus was either created by a single idiot or for a commercial purpose such as relaying spam and using the SCO attack only for cover. To declare otherwise is irresponsible journalism at best and libel at worst.
Most of us geeks have been dealing with the impact of this virus on our networks and mail transport systems that are caused by the combination of this virus with windows machines that amplify the immense stupidity of some of their users. I will admit to a brief smirk when I heard of the target of MyDoom's DDoS attack.
Note that CALEA is about making the technology capable of snooping rather than authorizing that snooping to be done. In the US, it takes further bad legislation like the Patriot act to authorize the snooping. CALEA just makes it (too) easy.
So far, I just read the claims for 5823879.
That one, at least, has only 2 really independent claims. One that is limited to card games, the second to advertising.
Go carefully claim by claim through the patents (you can skip all the nice pictures and go straight to the claims). If a claim starts with "a method as claimed in claim 18" and claim 18 does not apply, neither does the one that references it.
How does providing a PDF of the GPL itself help??
They do not seem to provide a source-code download.
If modem companies are forced to release the source of that to support Linux, there will be no Linux modem support for any of these.
So, the community is left a choice of learning to accept supported binaries or no support at all.
Alternatively, you could wait for the GNU Radio project to echo cancel, then equalize, then demodulate QAM, then trellis, then LAPM, then V42bis. Then, you'll be within 8 years of up-to-date.
I am a big believer in open-source. But I don't expect every company to give their products away just to make Linux users happy. Many good companies will take a few extra steps to support Linux drivers, but not if they have to give away their own products to do it.
Think the worst jobs in science are bad? I can think of nothing worse than examining patents. I have a hard time keeping my eyes open to read a few a month.
Actually, it would be better to sue based on the copyright of a non-kernel component. There is no opportunity to create confusion about Kernel patches if the suit is about bash or binutils.
This patent only covers a system where the client reports failures, checks to see if the failure is a duplicate, then follows server-based instructions to see if someone at Microsoft want's the user's bank account information before sending it.
The first thing that makes a VoIP call bothersome as latency rises is the echo. If the person you talk to has a good echo canceller, you will be OK up to about 150msec. After that, you start to attribute delays in each others' reactions to emotions, usually reluctance, reulting in anger.
Unfortunately, Mailblocks does not cite their patent number and it is not listed under either of the principles' names.
Possible prior art:
Patent Filed December 1998....
US6546416: Method and system for selectively blocking delivery of bulk electronic mail.
Owned by Infoseek.
TMDA on Sourceforge, April 2001
The fundamental issue is as follows....
Consider 2 elections. In one, you and I and everyone else have exactly a 75% chance of having their votes counted. In the other, the affluent young technocracy has a 99% chance of having their votes counted and the poor, old, or low-tech population has a 95% chance of having their votes counted. At first blush, the seond electiuon sounds more fair, but it is very clear that the first is totally fair and the second is terribly biased.
The problems in recent elections were not caused by technological failures. Dangling chads and the like are just a smokescreen and the recounts bore that out. The problems in elections are a lack of uniformity within the areas in which votes are pooled. Since the votes for president are done by electoral votes rather than popular vote, it is not necessary to have the entire country have identical machines and ballots, but this does need to happen at the state level. When I walk into my polling place, I should see an identical machine to every other voter in the state (randomly selected from the state pool). All the state ballots should be identical to every other ballot in the state. All the county ballots should be identical to every other ballot in the county, etc....
To do otherwise not only fails to solve the fairness problem, but it disinfranchises people for whom a mouse is a household pest.
This finally proves the assertion that the reason for the ban on in-flight electronics was to protect Airfone and in-flight movies from competition and had nothing to do with RF interference. Now that the airlines found a way to extract revenue from this, suddenly spread-spectrum RF signals are perfectly safe.
Turn off your cellphone please. And put away that gameboy.
It's hard to feel sorry for the struggling airlines when lie as much as they do.
It is amazing that people will abhor this kind of a test and then do far worse without even thinking about it.
Every time you buy a cheap product that was made by workers who are put in daily peril of death, you trade a dollar for one-in-a-million chance of killing a worker.
For a real eye-opener that goes far beyone fast-food, read Fast Food Nation (isbn: 0395977894). It's not an easy read, but its quite an eye-opener. A lot of reviews are linked here. Now I understand what some of the protests are about. It makes it hard to go shopping without thinking.
If you tell 3000 people what your WEP key is, you don't have a secret anymore.
When you combine that problem with the logistical mess of giving out keys and the loss of your ability to provide access for visitors, you would be better of putting your wireless network outside your company firewall. Then, use VPN clients to pierce your firewall the same way you would if you were home, in a hotel room, or at an airport.
Since most of us don't vote in Peru, all of us in the OSS community should pay special attention to any requests for tech assistance from Peruvian sources.
Spread the word.
Why on earth would anyone (other than Micro$oft) design an OS for something where all of the substance is contained in the protocols?
A new set of protocols for this sort of thing, suppoted by applications sold in appliances, set-top-boxes, and games and available on commercial and non-commercial software for a variety of OSs seems more like the right model for this.
As many other posters have pointed out, your current path is pointing towards the exit door. You have very little to lose by sitting down with your IT director either alone or with your boss and discussing his thoughts on your job performance. To do this properly, you must be very open and non-defensive. Granted, he or your boss should have come to you, but don't let that failing cause your career to get derailed. Find the problem and address it.
Since you are in an early part of your career, I have a guess. I have worked with sysadmins that were technical experts and adminstratively incompetent as well as some who were technically marginal and administratively adept. Guess which is more important... (donning flameproof suit here)... it is the administrative skills. If you were hired as a crack technical expert, you could have made a big splash by initially fixing many broken things, then the job could have evolved beyond your organizational skills. You may have to hook up with a strong mentor and start working on that end of the job.
Be open-minded and try not to leap to assuming conspiracy or discrimination first. This is your career to manage so take charge of finding out what is really going on in this situation
The only way to be certain that Micro$oft does not profit by accidental ommissions and inaccuracies in the API information shared with competitors is to require that differrent parts of Micro$oft share information with each other SOLELY through the published information.