See, when commercial developers create a product, they start by trying to solve a problem that customers need solved. The focus is always on the customer. What do they need? What do they want (which isn't always the same thing:)? Can they use this software? How much handholding will they need to make this work? Can we make this experience so great that the competition can't sway them back?
Yeah. And I'll bet little woodland sprites come to turn back the corners of your bedcovers every morning, too.
If there's one thing that working in the computer industry has taught me, it's this: the most common problem with IT projects, whether they're web sites, custom software development, or COTS software, is not paying attention to what's going to be best for the customer.
Or, viewed the other way: the problem with most IT projects is that they're based either on what the programmer thinks would be useful in a product, or what the (potentially non-technical) customer is capable of articulating. Armed with what may be a faulty conception of the problem, a programming team is almost certainly doomed to failure. For example: I'm sure that the folks at Microsoft had the best interests of the casual user at heart when the put that goddamn "Clippy" into MS Word, but when was the last time you heard anyone say, "Thank God for Clippy, the demonic fucking paper clip?"
Of course, lots of people may disagree with me. But face it, anyone who really likes Clippy, especially in the default Word configuration, is plainly on crack. How can you trust the judgement of such a person?;)
Incidentally: I think that this is the secret weapon of the whole Open Source raft of software. I use the phrase "direct consumer" to refer to people who must directly interact with a piece of software, as opposed to merely taking advantage of a service provided by it. A webmaster/sysadmin, for example, is a direct consumer of Apache, while web site visitors are not. The direct consumers of the most successful pieces of open source software are techies. The authors are techies. The whole thing has worked so well because if there's one group of people techies know how to design for, it's other techies. Thus, in this arena, the deck is stacked in OSS' favor right from the start.
My experience with educators seems to corroborate your own. I know far too many teachers who know not a thing about computers, and have no real interest in learning. However, I'm less quick to blame this on individual teachers as administrators and politicians.
For example: my own aunt is an elementary school teacher in a public school in downtown Philadelphia. She knows not a thing about computers, despite having a nephew and a neice who are IT professionals. And why should she? Her principal dropped a single computer into her classroom and said, "Here, now you have a computer." No software, no recommendations on how the computer should be integrated in the curriculum, and barely an hour's instruction on how to make the computer run. If I were in her place, I'd be angry and resentful too.
Meanwhile, my own manager recently went to an educator's conference on technology in Harrisburg. A school administrator there informed him that she'd solved her school's Internet connectivity problems with an incredibly simple decision: she'd purchased a line of HP Pavillion computers, each of which have little "Internet" buttons on their keyboards. Unbelievable! Broadband connectivity to our schools, solved with the touch of a button!
In my own line of work, I hear a lot of tripe about "the wired classroom," and how "putting computers in the classroom" is the first priority for our "public servants," but precious little analysis as to how computers can be used positively in the classroom. Until someone can tell me - and the teachers - why the computers are there at all, I'm going to try not to get too upset at the teachers for being reluctant to waste time on them.
if a cracker really screwed something up and the astronaut died as a result, is it murder?
(IANAL)
It depends on how the perpetrator was charged. If charged with a felony (which is the likely scenario), then the "felony murder" rule is invoked. This states that any death which occurs as a result of the commission of a felony is automatically murder, not manslaughter. Examples:
A shopkeeper catches you stealing a candy bar, flies into an apoplectic rage, has a heart attack, and dies. Since stealing a candy bar is a misdemeanor, you might be charged with manslaughter, but no prosecutor would bother taking the time to pursue it.
A shopkeeper catches you stealing a candy bar, you pull a gun on him, and he has a heart attack and dies. Because armed robbery is a felony, and because your actions precipitated his heart attack, you can, and most likely will, be charged with felony murder.
Same situation, but instead of having a heart attack, the shopkeeper flees out into the street, where he's hit by a car and dies. Because he was fleeing you and the big gun you pointed at him during the commission of a felony, you get charged with felony murder.
Largely, to keep one program from snatching sensitive information from another program's swap space. Like, for example, passwords that are held in memory. A hostile program running on a box could scan through available swap in search of username/password pairs. Encrypting swap makes this less likely.
I acutally did buy a copy of this book, and to the limited degree which I've been able to read it (life? what life?), it's been quite enjoyable. However, I do have one beef with the author.
In his initial description of what constitutes Open Source, the author describes OSS licenses as falling into one of two broad categories: the GNU Public License, and "everything else". Given the constant flamewars which seem to erupt over "which is really more free," I would have thought that a mention of the BSD license as an alternative was appropriate.
Is it a critical flaw? Probably not. Anyone interested in OSS enough to purchase this book has probably already heard of the BSD license. But it bothered me to see the GPL presented as the be-all, end-all when there are other licenses with substantial differences and large followings.
(disclaimer: other than a mild personal preference for the GPL, I have no opinion on the relative worth of either the GPL or BSD license.)
The author actually includes several chapters which relate specifically to the development of Open Source Software. So here, the distinction is actually relevant.
There are historical reasons for why MySQL has acheived its current level of popularity. First off, older versions of MySQL have been GPLed, and all are available at no cost (unless you're going to repackage & sell it). That puts it in a very limited category of databases.
Until very recently, MySQL's only competition within this segment has been Postgres. Many people perceive Postgres as being more difficult to use than MySQL. And frankly, it is, especially if you're using only the command-line tools that come with the distribution. Furthermore, MySQL actually does offer some flexibility that Postgres doesn't, especially when it comes to modifying table properties later on.
Frankly, I'm not at all surprised that there are so many people using MySQL. It's great for jobs where transactions aren't of blinding importance, like, say, discussion boards just like this one.
You may find MySQL inadequate for your needs, but I'm willing to bet that most of the users of the software don't use it to handle $50K+ orders.
Your point is well taken, but re-read the court's order:
Microsoft shall create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrogate and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation of Microsoft Platform Software for the sole purpose of enabling their products to interoperate effectively with Microsoft Platform Software (including exercising any of the options in section 3.a.iii).
It's not the GPL, but I'll bet you anything that Microsoft is pissing its collective pants over this.
The popular media has grown fond of saying that the court has "opened the source" to the Windows operating system. That's not really the case. Windows isn't going to be GPLed (or BSDed, or YAOSLed) any time soon. What the document requires Microsoft to do (see section 3b of the decision) is to:
...create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrorgate, and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation...
That's a far cry from downloading GNU Win9x to your dorm room. With all that said, you have to remember that there's a real control issue at stake here for Microsoft. The poster of the original question is on the right track when he suggests that "Not publishing the source code simply gives Microsoft a chance to leverage their monopoly on the market," but perhaps not in the way that he meant. Microsoft isn't worreid about all these people sending in representatives, grabbing copies of the operating system, then releasing them to the world, and if they are... well, they probably shouldn't be. Precisely because they're protected by copyright.
I suspect that MS is scared for three reasons:
Microsoft isn't going to have the same advantage over other applications vendors that they once did.
Microsoft actually will have to show the world its dirty laundry, which - if the source code is as ugly as rumors suggest - could be pretty embarassing.
If Microsoft doesn't comply "in a Timely Manner" with updates, or obfuscates, or is even perceived as doing such, all those ISVs are going to raise a hue and cry. Which brings further investigation by the government. Which is pretty scary to them right now.
Incidentally: the Adidas company took its name from the name of its founder, Adi Dassler, and not after the whole sex thing. Adi's brother Rudolf also went on to form his own shoe company, but rather than use his own name, he decided to name the company after an animal.
Actually, I don't think that's appropriate. Most of the reviews I'm seeing agree that Daikatana (which I haven't yet played) isn't completely devoid of merit, it's just bad. No one has said anything so good about Battlefield Earth.
The thing that makes Daikatana's badness so hard to swallow is the amount of time and money invested in it. With that in mind, I suggest the following alternative: Daikatana is the Waterworld of computer games.
Someone with a better memory than I will surely fill in the details (please?), but Apple used to make a box which dual-booted Windows and MacOS. The thing had dual CPUs (Motorola and Intel) and needed to be rebooted to use one or the other. It was piggishly slow in both modes.
The problem with the KVM-in-a-box idea is that both operating systems would expect to have the run of all bus-attached devices (sound cards, video cards, SCSI, whatever). To my knowledge, no one has ever come up with a good way to handle this kind of problem: modern computer designs can handle disks appearing and disappearing, and even SCSI attached devices, but not actual SCSI interfaces and whatnot.
Actually, your last idea - a KVM adapter which does split-screen displays - is a great idea. I don't know if its been done already, but it should be, if only for the coolness factor.
Sure occasionally an app will hang and need killed, but it will never take down the OS. How often does netscape segfault in linux?
You're conflating two completely seperate things here. First, you praise NT's uptimes, with allowances for applications that occasionally die. In the very next sentence, you criticize Netscape's stability under Linux. That's like me saying, "Linux is rock solid. Oh, sure, occasionally I need to kill -9 Netscape every once in a while, but it never takes down the OS. How often does IE hang on NT?"
I don't doubt that "with good hardware and drivers, [NT] can be as stable as linux," but those hardware requirements are pretty discouraging when you're on a budget. And if you're not on a budget, you don't really need to use either.
In fact, the original recommendation by the government does, indeed, demand that Microsoft open the source. Not as in open source writ large, but certainly to a large number of developers.
Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs in a Timely Manner, in whatever media Microsoft disseminates such information to its own personnel, all APIs, Technical Information and Communications Interfaces... Microsoft shall create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrogate and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation of Microsoft Platform Software.
In other words, give all developers the same level of access to documentation of the system API as you give Microsoft employees. The document goes on to add that developers must be using the code strictly for the purpose of developing programs to run on that platform, rather than to use it in a product which would compete with the OS.
Microsoft, as you might have guessed, wasn't real pleased with this, and they added their own language, including the right to charge a royalty to see that code, plus the right to inspect whatever the developer produces, "for the sole purpose of ensuring their compliance with the requirement that Microsoft's source code be used only to enable third-party products to Interoperate with Microsoft Platform Software.".
Shady. On the one hand, the language of the document essentially demands that they set up a "secure facility" for the purpose of showing people this code. That's mucho bucks, which might justify them charging a royalty fee. And, since the opening of the code is supposed to be for the purpose of developing software on the platform, I can see why they'd want some kind of enforcement policy (the "we get to see the code" part). But in all other respects, very very shady.
Apple, often lauded for having sparked revolutions in the design of the personal computer in the form of its "Macintosh" line, is now poised to ignite a whole new revolution in the field of teledildonics. With the advent of the new "Touchy-Feelie Force Feedback Mouse," Internet pervs all over the world will enjoy a whole new range of virtual tittilation.
The new Touchie-Feelie mouse responds not by clicking buttons, but by manipulating in a provocitive manner: lightly tapping, stroking, and rhythmic squeezing all produce distinct results. A waterproofed version is in the works to enable oral stimulation, and a force-feedback model has already reached the testing phase.
"These new mice are amazing," said Roy Farbengrinkle, a vendor of pornographic software lucky enough to get to beta test the force-feedback model. "They resist just the right amount when stroking digital [expletive deleted]. And the way that it shakes when I use it to [deleted] her in the [deleted] with a [deleted] camshaft [deleted] really [deleted] my [deleted], let me tell you."
Farbengrinkle warned, however, that the mice may not be suitable for every purpose. "The other day I was checking my stocks and I sneezed - I guess the way my hand squeezed the mouse caused me to buy 200 shares of Alcatel. So they're not really all that good for, you know. Business stuff." He then shrugged. "But hey, who really uses their computer for anything but porn, anyway?"
I've done a fair amount of work for a regional ISP which also works with Bell Atlantic (although the ISP concentrates on frame relay services, rather than DSL). My experiences with BA have varied pretty wildly in quality. I'll summarize a couple for you here, in descending order of quality.
A day following a lightning storm, one of our clients goes down. I phone the regional SNCC (their service center) to open a ticket. Within about 45 minutes, they call me back to let me know that the circuit ran cleanly in diagnostic all the way to the CSU/DSU, which usually indicates broken hardware on the customer end. We go out to replace it, and voila.
One of our client sites goes down for no apparently good reason. After having the client reboot the router (and power-cycle the CSU/DSU), we open a ticket with Bell. Half an hour later, the problem is magically fixed. Ten minutes after that, Bell calls to let us know that they ran a diagnostic on the line, but nothing was wrong with it.
Driving into work, we see a couple of Bell guys working on an access point. We hold our collective breath. Shortly thereafter, our monitor detects one of our largest clients (500-1000 employees, and politically signifigant) has gone down. After a good deal of finger pointing, BA finally admits that their work on the access point had precipitated the outage, but that it was really our fault, since the setup there should never have worked in the first place, so what are you gonna do about it? Our response: if it shouldn't have worked in the first place, why did you set it up for us, and why did it work until today? And by the way, fix it, or our client is liable to sue you.
In short, the thing to remember when dealing with Bell Atlantic is that the weather may be bad, ISPs are usually clueless, and customer premise equipment is always faulty, but in the eyes of Bell Atlantic, Bell Atlantic is never wrong. As long as you remember this, you and Bell can get along fine.
In the scope of world tragedy, I have to agree that this isn't a huge loss. In the much smaller scope of game developers, however, this sucks rocks.
IMNSHO, Looking Glass has been the only company around to produce games which were not only extremely immersive, but of uniformly high quality. These guys just couldn't write bad games (although they did release a couple of games which weren't huge hits).
As for overspending on advertising: I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that's a function of the publisher. Eidos. The guys who were gonna buy them, then backed out. The guys who have spent the last couple of years propping up Ion Storm long enough to get Daikatana out the door.
In the end, that's the real tragedy of the whole thing. Looking Glass released Thief, and System Shock 2, and Thief 2, all fantastic games, all within the time it took Ion Storm to get Daikatana out the door. And which company is still running? As a footnote: I distinctly remember Ion Storm running ads advertising John Romero's desire to "make you his bitch." If that's not over-spending on advertsing, I don't know what is.
Another thought is the fact that with linux clusters becoming more common it doesn't take as long to break the encryption. With a very powerfull cluster the encryption becomes a minor anoyance, to the average hacker its a bit harder.
(Warning: I'm not a cryptography wonk.)
It's all a matter of degree. The reason public key cryptography is an attractive prospect is because the difficulty involved in cracking the scheme grows exponentially as key sizes increase. At that rate of increase, you can't just add more/bigger computers into the mix and expect to get results. Of course, no one is actually sure of exactly how hard it is to perform the computations necessary to crack big-key public key algorithims, but they all seem to agree that it's pretty damn hard. Check the sci.crypt FAQ, part 6.
The reason that the government is concerned is because, for the first time, they're really worried that they can't crack these codes. Or, at least, not quickly enough to be able to do anything with them.
Allow me to respectfully suggest that you, sir, are on crack.
I agree to this. Metallica does have all the right in the world. However, the wealthier you are, the more responsibility you have to share that wealth.
Unilateral assertions regarding the moral and ethical responsibilities of other people aside, this is a shocking thing to say. You seem to concede that Metallica's rights have been abridged, but justify it on the basis of the fact that they've got money. Please explain to me how your assertion differs signifigantly from the following statement: "I agree that rich people have the rights to things they own, but they have a responsibility to let other people take it."
Microsoft, on the other hand, got a lot of bad press, when Bill Gates commented that they would NOT give ANY money to any charities any time soon.
There is also the other factor, that what you give to the world, you get back threefold. It really is good karma to give things away. Within limits, of course, (gotta maintain that self sustaining balance) but the better off you are, the more you're able to give.
Oh, I'm sure there are. I'm just saying that the breakup isn't a "we're doing this because you've been bad" thing, but rather a "we're doing this to make sure it doesn't happen again." Remember that in 1994, Microsoft entered into a "consent decree" saying that... well, basically, that they wouldn't be monopolistic bastards. The DOJ is saying that since the consent decree didn't work, it's time to move on to harsher measures.
Why the hell are Microsoft allowed to suggest penalties or restrictions?
<disclaimer> IANAL </disclaimer>
That's because breaking up Microsoft isn't being suggested as a punitive measure: it's being suggested as a remedy.
Defendants that are found guilty of crimes in criminal proceedings are always expected to argue for leniency when they're being punished. But the situation here isn't even really punishment, which is why the government keeps using the terms "structural remedy," as opposed to "punitive measures."
That's also why Microsoft could argue that breaking up the company wouldn't make sense in the face of things like the AOL/Time Warner deal. Essentially, they were saying that the IT industry obviously wasn't in need of any help, because there were plenty of superpowers already being formed which have a reach at least equal to MS'.
1) How many corporate pages EVER link outside their site?
There's actually a very good reason for this: include a link on your page, and there's a non-zero chance that the viewer will follow it. If the web page in question is essentially an ad (which many pages are, these days), having someone follow a link off-site is like watching them change the channel when your commercial comes on the TV. Why provide them with the out?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. And I'll bet little woodland sprites come to turn back the corners of your bedcovers every morning, too.
If there's one thing that working in the computer industry has taught me, it's this: the most common problem with IT projects, whether they're web sites, custom software development, or COTS software, is not paying attention to what's going to be best for the customer.
Or, viewed the other way: the problem with most IT projects is that they're based either on what the programmer thinks would be useful in a product, or what the (potentially non-technical) customer is capable of articulating. Armed with what may be a faulty conception of the problem, a programming team is almost certainly doomed to failure. For example: I'm sure that the folks at Microsoft had the best interests of the casual user at heart when the put that goddamn "Clippy" into MS Word, but when was the last time you heard anyone say, "Thank God for Clippy, the demonic fucking paper clip?"
Of course, lots of people may disagree with me. But face it, anyone who really likes Clippy, especially in the default Word configuration, is plainly on crack. How can you trust the judgement of such a person? ;)
Incidentally: I think that this is the secret weapon of the whole Open Source raft of software. I use the phrase "direct consumer" to refer to people who must directly interact with a piece of software, as opposed to merely taking advantage of a service provided by it. A webmaster/sysadmin, for example, is a direct consumer of Apache, while web site visitors are not. The direct consumers of the most successful pieces of open source software are techies. The authors are techies. The whole thing has worked so well because if there's one group of people techies know how to design for, it's other techies. Thus, in this arena, the deck is stacked in OSS' favor right from the start.
Hey - I remember that. Damn good thing that machine knew how to play tic-tac-toe, or we all would have needed some serious friggin' sunscreen.
My experience with educators seems to corroborate your own. I know far too many teachers who know not a thing about computers, and have no real interest in learning. However, I'm less quick to blame this on individual teachers as administrators and politicians.
For example: my own aunt is an elementary school teacher in a public school in downtown Philadelphia. She knows not a thing about computers, despite having a nephew and a neice who are IT professionals. And why should she? Her principal dropped a single computer into her classroom and said, "Here, now you have a computer." No software, no recommendations on how the computer should be integrated in the curriculum, and barely an hour's instruction on how to make the computer run. If I were in her place, I'd be angry and resentful too.
Meanwhile, my own manager recently went to an educator's conference on technology in Harrisburg. A school administrator there informed him that she'd solved her school's Internet connectivity problems with an incredibly simple decision: she'd purchased a line of HP Pavillion computers, each of which have little "Internet" buttons on their keyboards. Unbelievable! Broadband connectivity to our schools, solved with the touch of a button!
In my own line of work, I hear a lot of tripe about "the wired classroom," and how "putting computers in the classroom" is the first priority for our "public servants," but precious little analysis as to how computers can be used positively in the classroom. Until someone can tell me - and the teachers - why the computers are there at all, I'm going to try not to get too upset at the teachers for being reluctant to waste time on them.
(IANAL)
It depends on how the perpetrator was charged. If charged with a felony (which is the likely scenario), then the "felony murder" rule is invoked. This states that any death which occurs as a result of the commission of a felony is automatically murder, not manslaughter. Examples:
Largely, to keep one program from snatching sensitive information from another program's swap space. Like, for example, passwords that are held in memory. A hostile program running on a box could scan through available swap in search of username/password pairs. Encrypting swap makes this less likely.
I acutally did buy a copy of this book, and to the limited degree which I've been able to read it (life? what life?), it's been quite enjoyable. However, I do have one beef with the author.
In his initial description of what constitutes Open Source, the author describes OSS licenses as falling into one of two broad categories: the GNU Public License, and "everything else". Given the constant flamewars which seem to erupt over "which is really more free," I would have thought that a mention of the BSD license as an alternative was appropriate.
Is it a critical flaw? Probably not. Anyone interested in OSS enough to purchase this book has probably already heard of the BSD license. But it bothered me to see the GPL presented as the be-all, end-all when there are other licenses with substantial differences and large followings.
(disclaimer: other than a mild personal preference for the GPL, I have no opinion on the relative worth of either the GPL or BSD license.)
The author actually includes several chapters which relate specifically to the development of Open Source Software. So here, the distinction is actually relevant.
Oh, save us, Bob. Here comes another flamewar. :)
There are historical reasons for why MySQL has acheived its current level of popularity. First off, older versions of MySQL have been GPLed, and all are available at no cost (unless you're going to repackage & sell it). That puts it in a very limited category of databases.
Until very recently, MySQL's only competition within this segment has been Postgres. Many people perceive Postgres as being more difficult to use than MySQL. And frankly, it is, especially if you're using only the command-line tools that come with the distribution. Furthermore, MySQL actually does offer some flexibility that Postgres doesn't, especially when it comes to modifying table properties later on.
Frankly, I'm not at all surprised that there are so many people using MySQL. It's great for jobs where transactions aren't of blinding importance, like, say, discussion boards just like this one.
You may find MySQL inadequate for your needs, but I'm willing to bet that most of the users of the software don't use it to handle $50K+ orders.
I suspect that MS is scared for three reasons:
Heh. I remember that. Funny. :)
Incidentally: the Adidas company took its name from the name of its founder, Adi Dassler, and not after the whole sex thing. Adi's brother Rudolf also went on to form his own shoe company, but rather than use his own name, he decided to name the company after an animal.
Actually, I don't think that's appropriate. Most of the reviews I'm seeing agree that Daikatana (which I haven't yet played) isn't completely devoid of merit, it's just bad. No one has said anything so good about Battlefield Earth.
The thing that makes Daikatana's badness so hard to swallow is the amount of time and money invested in it. With that in mind, I suggest the following alternative: Daikatana is the Waterworld of computer games.
Ancient Greece. The technical term for this system is "Direct Democracy."
Someone with a better memory than I will surely fill in the details (please?), but Apple used to make a box which dual-booted Windows and MacOS. The thing had dual CPUs (Motorola and Intel) and needed to be rebooted to use one or the other. It was piggishly slow in both modes.
The problem with the KVM-in-a-box idea is that both operating systems would expect to have the run of all bus-attached devices (sound cards, video cards, SCSI, whatever). To my knowledge, no one has ever come up with a good way to handle this kind of problem: modern computer designs can handle disks appearing and disappearing, and even SCSI attached devices, but not actual SCSI interfaces and whatnot.
Actually, your last idea - a KVM adapter which does split-screen displays - is a great idea. I don't know if its been done already, but it should be, if only for the coolness factor.
You're conflating two completely seperate things here. First, you praise NT's uptimes, with allowances for applications that occasionally die. In the very next sentence, you criticize Netscape's stability under Linux. That's like me saying, "Linux is rock solid. Oh, sure, occasionally I need to kill -9 Netscape every once in a while, but it never takes down the OS. How often does IE hang on NT?"
I don't doubt that "with good hardware and drivers, [NT] can be as stable as linux," but those hardware requirements are pretty discouraging when you're on a budget. And if you're not on a budget, you don't really need to use either.
In fact, the original recommendation by the government does, indeed, demand that Microsoft open the source. Not as in open source writ large, but certainly to a large number of developers.
In other words, give all developers the same level of access to documentation of the system API as you give Microsoft employees. The document goes on to add that developers must be using the code strictly for the purpose of developing programs to run on that platform, rather than to use it in a product which would compete with the OS.
Microsoft, as you might have guessed, wasn't real pleased with this, and they added their own language, including the right to charge a royalty to see that code, plus the right to inspect whatever the developer produces, "for the sole purpose of ensuring their compliance with the requirement that Microsoft's source code be used only to enable third-party products to Interoperate with Microsoft Platform Software.".
Shady. On the one hand, the language of the document essentially demands that they set up a "secure facility" for the purpose of showing people this code. That's mucho bucks, which might justify them charging a royalty fee. And, since the opening of the code is supposed to be for the purpose of developing software on the platform, I can see why they'd want some kind of enforcement policy (the "we get to see the code" part). But in all other respects, very very shady.
1 October, 2000
For immediate distribution
Apple, often lauded for having sparked revolutions in the design of the personal computer in the form of its "Macintosh" line, is now poised to ignite a whole new revolution in the field of teledildonics. With the advent of the new "Touchy-Feelie Force Feedback Mouse," Internet pervs all over the world will enjoy a whole new range of virtual tittilation.
The new Touchie-Feelie mouse responds not by clicking buttons, but by manipulating in a provocitive manner: lightly tapping, stroking, and rhythmic squeezing all produce distinct results. A waterproofed version is in the works to enable oral stimulation, and a force-feedback model has already reached the testing phase.
"These new mice are amazing," said Roy Farbengrinkle, a vendor of pornographic software lucky enough to get to beta test the force-feedback model. "They resist just the right amount when stroking digital [expletive deleted]. And the way that it shakes when I use it to [deleted] her in the [deleted] with a [deleted] camshaft [deleted] really [deleted] my [deleted], let me tell you."
Farbengrinkle warned, however, that the mice may not be suitable for every purpose. "The other day I was checking my stocks and I sneezed - I guess the way my hand squeezed the mouse caused me to buy 200 shares of Alcatel. So they're not really all that good for, you know. Business stuff." He then shrugged. "But hey, who really uses their computer for anything but porn, anyway?"
Copyright 2000, Amalgamated Dress
- A day following a lightning storm, one of our clients goes down. I phone the regional SNCC (their service center) to open a ticket. Within about 45 minutes, they call me back to let me know that the circuit ran cleanly in diagnostic all the way to the CSU/DSU, which usually indicates broken hardware on the customer end. We go out to replace it, and voila.
- One of our client sites goes down for no apparently good reason. After having the client reboot the router (and power-cycle the CSU/DSU), we open a ticket with Bell. Half an hour later, the problem is magically fixed. Ten minutes after that, Bell calls to let us know that they ran a diagnostic on the line, but nothing was wrong with it.
- Driving into work, we see a couple of Bell guys working on an access point. We hold our collective breath. Shortly thereafter, our monitor detects one of our largest clients (500-1000 employees, and politically signifigant) has gone down. After a good deal of finger pointing, BA finally admits that their work on the access point had precipitated the outage, but that it was really our fault, since the setup there should never have worked in the first place, so what are you gonna do about it? Our response: if it shouldn't have worked in the first place, why did you set it up for us, and why did it work until today? And by the way, fix it, or our client is liable to sue you.
In short, the thing to remember when dealing with Bell Atlantic is that the weather may be bad, ISPs are usually clueless, and customer premise equipment is always faulty, but in the eyes of Bell Atlantic, Bell Atlantic is never wrong. As long as you remember this, you and Bell can get along fine.Unfortunately, it takes approximately four years to download one single.
In the scope of world tragedy, I have to agree that this isn't a huge loss. In the much smaller scope of game developers, however, this sucks rocks.
IMNSHO, Looking Glass has been the only company around to produce games which were not only extremely immersive, but of uniformly high quality. These guys just couldn't write bad games (although they did release a couple of games which weren't huge hits).
As for overspending on advertising: I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that's a function of the publisher. Eidos. The guys who were gonna buy them, then backed out. The guys who have spent the last couple of years propping up Ion Storm long enough to get Daikatana out the door.
In the end, that's the real tragedy of the whole thing. Looking Glass released Thief, and System Shock 2, and Thief 2, all fantastic games, all within the time it took Ion Storm to get Daikatana out the door. And which company is still running? As a footnote: I distinctly remember Ion Storm running ads advertising John Romero's desire to "make you his bitch." If that's not over-spending on advertsing, I don't know what is.
(Warning: I'm not a cryptography wonk.)
It's all a matter of degree. The reason public key cryptography is an attractive prospect is because the difficulty involved in cracking the scheme grows exponentially as key sizes increase. At that rate of increase, you can't just add more/bigger computers into the mix and expect to get results. Of course, no one is actually sure of exactly how hard it is to perform the computations necessary to crack big-key public key algorithims, but they all seem to agree that it's pretty damn hard. Check the sci.crypt FAQ, part 6.
The reason that the government is concerned is because, for the first time, they're really worried that they can't crack these codes. Or, at least, not quickly enough to be able to do anything with them.
Unilateral assertions regarding the moral and ethical responsibilities of other people aside, this is a shocking thing to say. You seem to concede that Metallica's rights have been abridged, but justify it on the basis of the fact that they've got money. Please explain to me how your assertion differs signifigantly from the following statement: "I agree that rich people have the rights to things they own, but they have a responsibility to let other people take it."
Clearly, we do not live in the same world. I refer you to The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the world, which gave $57 million dollars this year to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa. Or to the official "Microsoft Giving" page.
Perhaps you were thinking of Eric Raymond, who warned charitable organizations against hitting him up for money?
Oh, I'm sure there are. I'm just saying that the breakup isn't a "we're doing this because you've been bad" thing, but rather a "we're doing this to make sure it doesn't happen again." Remember that in 1994, Microsoft entered into a "consent decree" saying that... well, basically, that they wouldn't be monopolistic bastards. The DOJ is saying that since the consent decree didn't work, it's time to move on to harsher measures.
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IANAL
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That's because breaking up Microsoft isn't being suggested as a punitive measure: it's being suggested as a remedy.
Defendants that are found guilty of crimes in criminal proceedings are always expected to argue for leniency when they're being punished. But the situation here isn't even really punishment, which is why the government keeps using the terms "structural remedy," as opposed to "punitive measures."
That's also why Microsoft could argue that breaking up the company wouldn't make sense in the face of things like the AOL/Time Warner deal. Essentially, they were saying that the IT industry obviously wasn't in need of any help, because there were plenty of superpowers already being formed which have a reach at least equal to MS'.
Incidentally: while I believe that Microsoft was clearly as guilty as charged, and that remedies are clearly needed, I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I am with the idea of them being broken up. Further, I'm seriously worried that the AOL/TW merger is going to make MS' transgressions look like a bully in a schoolyard sandbox. Klein has already warned to expect many more of these suits in the future, and even Orrin Hatch is saying that he has misgivings about the merger. Especially now that the FCC is saying that Time Warner acted illegally during its recent spat with ABC.
There's actually a very good reason for this: include a link on your page, and there's a non-zero chance that the viewer will follow it. If the web page in question is essentially an ad (which many pages are, these days), having someone follow a link off-site is like watching them change the channel when your commercial comes on the TV. Why provide them with the out?