I used to think like that, then I realised something: writing good multi-threaded code is very, very much harder than writing good, single-threaded code. There are all sorts of extra things that you have to take into account; suddenly the load on the system can cause weird, unexpected failures as race conditions are introduced (or avoided), and so on.
Moving to a multi-threaded design increases the amount of time, effort and skill required across all stages of a project, from design, through coding to testing and bug fixing. It's that extra level of effort and time that you're paying for when you pay a per-CPU licence.
Not if I buy the magazine from a shop, they don't. Sure, then I don't get the discount that a subscription usually brings, but I have a choice. With a website, I have the choice to block the ads, submit to the profiling, or not visit.
I've said this years ago: software liability should apply on programs you pay for but for which you don't get the source.
The vast majority of end users wouldn't know what to do with the source if you gave it to them. What you're suggesting amounts to giving security only to developers, and even then only to those with sufficient skill in the relevant area (i.e. combination of programming language and software type). Everyone else is in exactly the same situation they're in now.
I also fail to see why making the software free (as in beer) should absolve the vendor of all responsibility. Either it's intended to be used, or it isn't, cost shouldn't be a factor. Besides which, that leaves a huge get out clause for the very companies you're seeking to hit with this - they'll just shift the cost to something else (e.g. mandatory support contracts) and call the software free.
If I encrypt everything else I do on the network (ever hear of https?) then there isn't much for them to steal. It is no more dangerous than any other computer on any other network. It's actually safer than your Windows XP box connected to a cable modem. Much.
Look at slashdot, look at how often the shills call people who use linux or program in open source zealots and hippies?
"Zealot, n: a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too"
From Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Now, are you honestly trying to argue that that description doesn't fit an awful lot of people here? Not just about Linux or open source, you get Intel zealots, AMD zealots, Windows zealots, language zealots, XML zealots, Oracle vs MySQL vs postgres vs emacs vs vi - the list goes on and on.
In the literal sense of the word, slashdot is full of zealots. There aren't that many opinions expressed here that aren't strongly held by people who would seek to convince others.
Why should I pay for any mismatches that might come up? Whats next? Should I pay for the privilege of looking at billboards when I drive along the interstate?
Dude, they don't want you to pay when you do a Google Video search for Madonna, they want a cut of the money that google makes showing you adverts along with the search results.
Just as ridiculous of course, but a different person paying.
The location of the form is irrelevant, all that matters is that the action that it submits to is secured, and from a quick look at the HTML it is.
and puts a "lock" image on the page. This does not teach users where the proper lock is and dumbs down security.
That I agree with; putting the padlock icon there is not a good idea.
Amex - does the same thing that Chase does on americanexpress.com.
I had to do a little more digging for this one, as the actual action of the form is set via a javascript function, but again, it's secured over SSL.
CitiBank - Another bad problem, weird domain names.
I agree with this point - a company really ought to pick a single domain name for a single purpose, and stick to it. Hanging domains off that (e.g. credit-cards.bank.com, accounts.bank.com) is fine, but having a bunch of totally unrelated domains with similar (or in some cases, not so similar) names is a bad idea.
I wish these people would just realize that the way to beat piracy is simply to establish channels for distributing the movies that are neither too costly nor too burdensome to the public.
What makes you think that they don't realise that?
What makes you think that this is really about beating piracy?
Possession of tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. Even for personal use.
there goes Linux...
How so? Windows "allows circumventing copy protection mechanisms" just as much as Linux does, in that neither of them currently attempt to prevent it.
If the law outlaws Linux, it also outlaws Windows (and BSD, Solaris, etc).
and there goes the entire point of owning a personal MP3 player
Here in the UK, it is technically illegal to format-shift content - that is, it is technically illegal for me to rip my legally-purchased CDs to mp3 to play on my iRiver. It doesn't stop anyone, no-one has ever been sued for it and you know what? No-one's ever *going* to be sued for it either. That doesn't make it right, of course, but it does make it something to not bother worrying about (there's already plenty enough of that sort of thing as it is)
More to the point, in an assissination, you only have a single target - the people with him/her are largely irrelevant. Unless you think you can take them all down, then I imagine there's not a lot of point taking any of them down, as you have to get out either way.
The sniper running is a win for his targets because while he's running, he's not shooting more of them. Given the choice between definitely being shot at now, and maybe being shot at at some point in the future, I know which I'd choose, everything else being equal.
This isn't a case of "hah, the coward fled! We are VICTORIOUS!!", this is a case of "thank fuck the bot managed to scare him enough to stop shooting us, now let's get out of here before he finds another position and starts firing again".
Yeah, I was thinking along those lines. I didn't run through the numbers, but my immediate reaction was "200kW? Are you sure?" I also noted the odd "kWs"; during the course of 4 years of degree study in Physics, I never once saw a watt referred to as a joule-second, *or* watts pluralised in that way.
For what it's worth, 1hp = 745W, which would give a rough equivalence of 1 human to 268 horses. As you say, he's screwed his figures up somewhere bigtime.
While I agree with you, for a lot of people the concessions are all part of the movie-going experience. For me, that means that there have been a number of times when I've had a meal, gone to the cinema and *still* bought drinks and popcorn. Sure, I could've gone without with ease - but then it wouldn't have been quite the same.
Of course, I didn't moan about the price while I was doing it; sure, it's expensive, but I don't go very often (hard to when you're the parent of a young child), so I like to make the most of it.
OK you got me. It's a bit of a pain getting programs written for windows to run under Linux.
Quake 3 has a native Linux port; your reply therefore somewhat misses the target. I remember downloading and installing it, and it was a bit of a pain. Not as big a pain as the native UT port though - for that, I had to install Perl and download a bunch of stuff from CPAN using Perl's built-in facility for doing so. I'm a programmer who'd been running Linux as his primary environment for a couple of years at the time, and it was a right pain in the arse.
Contrast with the UT install on Windows, which consisted of clicking "Next" a few times.
No, that's not Linux's fault; yes, it's the software vendor's fault. You know what though? That doesn't matter. People don't give a shit who's fault it is, all they know is that on *this* OS they can get stuff to work, while on *that* OS they can't, or can but only with a lot of time and effort.
Things are a lot better in that respect nowadays, but they're nowhere near good enough. The average person on the street couldn't give two figs for Freedom; they have a task to perform and want to perform it as quickly and painlessly as possible, so they can get on with the rest of their lives. If OS A gets in the way of that, they'll use OS B instead.
Most people I know who still run windows have at least a once a month cussing session when they get hosed, and have to haul their borked windows box to the smiling local MS fixit guy for folding money "repair".
Then, with respect, most of the people you know are idiots, who'd hose their Linux installs jsut as quickly. I've been running Windows in one form or another for 8 years and haven't managed to hose a single install.
this "most people" person IS getting hip and won't be putting up with their ridiculous rip off buggy stuff for much longer.
Windows is free to most people, it comes with the PC, and they can't save money by buying one without it even if they wanted to. As for buggy, my XP installs crash about as often as my Linux installs - that is to say, almost never. Of course, I know what I'm doing, but see my original point...
Might take 5 to 10 more years, but once the big slide happens, watch out, it will go FAST.
Not to burst your bubble, but people have been saying that for the last ten years that I remember. In that time, Firefox has seen some success, as has OS X, and that's about it. People are not switching to Linux in their droves; even the geeks aren't. (Unless part of your definition of geek is "runs something other than Windows, preferably Linux", but that's not in mine)
No, I don't think you can study to become a good scientist any more than you can study to become a good artist. With science, you can learn the equations, and the maths (although there's no guarantee you'll be any good at it), and still not truly understand any of it. That will prevent you from doing any of your own research; at best, you'll be a walking text book, but certainly not a scientist.
If you do have that grasp of the subject, though, it's a different matter, just as it is for those who can draw and those of us who "can't". (*Everyone* can draw, it's just that some of us churn out stuff that's not even vaguely accurate or pleasing...)
I have a number of books on my shelf right now that contain verbiage somewhere in the first few pages that set out a lot of things that I agree not to do. This generally includes things like lend it, rent it, sell it, reproduce it, etc. Copyright law does not grant most of those restrictions.
Now, there's no guarantee that anyone would be successfully sued for violating the terms, but it's still an attempt to licence my use of the book.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to think like that, then I realised something: writing good multi-threaded code is very, very much harder than writing good, single-threaded code. There are all sorts of extra things that you have to take into account; suddenly the load on the system can cause weird, unexpected failures as race conditions are introduced (or avoided), and so on.
Moving to a multi-threaded design increases the amount of time, effort and skill required across all stages of a project, from design, through coding to testing and bug fixing. It's that extra level of effort and time that you're paying for when you pay a per-CPU licence.
Magazine advertisers get this information
Not if I buy the magazine from a shop, they don't. Sure, then I don't get the discount that a subscription usually brings, but I have a choice. With a website, I have the choice to block the ads, submit to the profiling, or not visit.
Shakespeare was great, but would we want to have saved every piece of parchment he scribbled on?
Depends who you ask. If you ask a historian or serious literature buff, the answer is going to be a resounding "yes".
I've said this years ago: software liability should apply on programs you pay for but for which you don't get the source.
The vast majority of end users wouldn't know what to do with the source if you gave it to them. What you're suggesting amounts to giving security only to developers, and even then only to those with sufficient skill in the relevant area (i.e. combination of programming language and software type). Everyone else is in exactly the same situation they're in now.
I also fail to see why making the software free (as in beer) should absolve the vendor of all responsibility. Either it's intended to be used, or it isn't, cost shouldn't be a factor. Besides which, that leaves a huge get out clause for the very companies you're seeking to hit with this - they'll just shift the cost to something else (e.g. mandatory support contracts) and call the software free.
If I encrypt everything else I do on the network (ever hear of https?) then there isn't much for them to steal. It is no more dangerous than any other computer on any other network. It's actually safer than your Windows XP box connected to a cable modem. Much.
Two words: hardware keylogger.
Look at slashdot, look at how often the shills call people who use linux or program in open source zealots and hippies?
"Zealot, n: a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too"
From Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Now, are you honestly trying to argue that that description doesn't fit an awful lot of people here? Not just about Linux or open source, you get Intel zealots, AMD zealots, Windows zealots, language zealots, XML zealots, Oracle vs MySQL vs postgres vs emacs vs vi - the list goes on and on.
In the literal sense of the word, slashdot is full of zealots. There aren't that many opinions expressed here that aren't strongly held by people who would seek to convince others.
Why should I pay for any mismatches that might come up? Whats next? Should I pay for the privilege of looking at billboards when I drive along the interstate?
Dude, they don't want you to pay when you do a Google Video search for Madonna, they want a cut of the money that google makes showing you adverts along with the search results.
Just as ridiculous of course, but a different person paying.
I'm guessing two things, having read your comment:
1) You don't have kids
2) You've never tried to play a badly scratched DVD, let alone one you've pieced back together
If Microsoft does give this away, then the other anti-virus companies will go out of business.
Just like all the third party firewall vendors went out of business.
I would hate to be locked out of my house because of a power cut
I'd hate to be locked in my burning house because the door had suffered a malfunction (perhaps due to the fire).
That said, I'm all for high tech gizmos, so as long as they can iron out the obvious potential problems, I say go for it.
Chase - has a login on their insecure site http://www.chase.com/,
The location of the form is irrelevant, all that matters is that the action that it submits to is secured, and from a quick look at the HTML it is.
and puts a "lock" image on the page. This does not teach users where the proper lock is and dumbs down security.
That I agree with; putting the padlock icon there is not a good idea.
Amex - does the same thing that Chase does on americanexpress.com.
I had to do a little more digging for this one, as the actual action of the form is set via a javascript function, but again, it's secured over SSL.
CitiBank - Another bad problem, weird domain names.
I agree with this point - a company really ought to pick a single domain name for a single purpose, and stick to it. Hanging domains off that (e.g. credit-cards.bank.com, accounts.bank.com) is fine, but having a bunch of totally unrelated domains with similar (or in some cases, not so similar) names is a bad idea.
I wish these people would just realize that the way to beat piracy is simply to establish channels for distributing the movies that are neither too costly nor too burdensome to the public.
What makes you think that they don't realise that?
What makes you think that this is really about beating piracy?
Possession of tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms will be illegal. Even for personal use.
there goes Linux...
How so? Windows "allows circumventing copy protection mechanisms" just as much as Linux does, in that neither of them currently attempt to prevent it.
If the law outlaws Linux, it also outlaws Windows (and BSD, Solaris, etc).
and there goes the entire point of owning a personal MP3 player
Here in the UK, it is technically illegal to format-shift content - that is, it is technically illegal for me to rip my legally-purchased CDs to mp3 to play on my iRiver. It doesn't stop anyone, no-one has ever been sued for it and you know what? No-one's ever *going* to be sued for it either. That doesn't make it right, of course, but it does make it something to not bother worrying about (there's already plenty enough of that sort of thing as it is)
More to the point, in an assissination, you only have a single target - the people with him/her are largely irrelevant. Unless you think you can take them all down, then I imagine there's not a lot of point taking any of them down, as you have to get out either way.
The sniper running is a win for his targets because while he's running, he's not shooting more of them. Given the choice between definitely being shot at now, and maybe being shot at at some point in the future, I know which I'd choose, everything else being equal.
This isn't a case of "hah, the coward fled! We are VICTORIOUS!!", this is a case of "thank fuck the bot managed to scare him enough to stop shooting us, now let's get out of here before he finds another position and starts firing again".
If you forget a tag or two, your HTML is broken. Would it be to forget word or in a sentence? Because what you're doing forget tag two in HTML...
If you want to write HTML, learn HTML. If you don't, don't be surprised when things don't understand you.
All of that is true, and all of it points to one conclusion: don't invest in the originating company.
Yeah, I was thinking along those lines. I didn't run through the numbers, but my immediate reaction was "200kW? Are you sure?" I also noted the odd "kWs"; during the course of 4 years of degree study in Physics, I never once saw a watt referred to as a joule-second, *or* watts pluralised in that way.
For what it's worth, 1hp = 745W, which would give a rough equivalence of 1 human to 268 horses. As you say, he's screwed his figures up somewhere bigtime.
What's wrong with existing anti-fraud legislation? Just because something involves computers doesn't mean it automatically requires a whole new law...
While I agree with you, for a lot of people the concessions are all part of the movie-going experience. For me, that means that there have been a number of times when I've had a meal, gone to the cinema and *still* bought drinks and popcorn. Sure, I could've gone without with ease - but then it wouldn't have been quite the same.
Of course, I didn't moan about the price while I was doing it; sure, it's expensive, but I don't go very often (hard to when you're the parent of a young child), so I like to make the most of it.
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
OK you got me. It's a bit of a pain getting programs written for windows to run under Linux.
Quake 3 has a native Linux port; your reply therefore somewhat misses the target. I remember downloading and installing it, and it was a bit of a pain. Not as big a pain as the native UT port though - for that, I had to install Perl and download a bunch of stuff from CPAN using Perl's built-in facility for doing so. I'm a programmer who'd been running Linux as his primary environment for a couple of years at the time, and it was a right pain in the arse.
Contrast with the UT install on Windows, which consisted of clicking "Next" a few times.
No, that's not Linux's fault; yes, it's the software vendor's fault. You know what though? That doesn't matter. People don't give a shit who's fault it is, all they know is that on *this* OS they can get stuff to work, while on *that* OS they can't, or can but only with a lot of time and effort.
Things are a lot better in that respect nowadays, but they're nowhere near good enough. The average person on the street couldn't give two figs for Freedom; they have a task to perform and want to perform it as quickly and painlessly as possible, so they can get on with the rest of their lives. If OS A gets in the way of that, they'll use OS B instead.
Most people I know who still run windows have at least a once a month cussing session when they get hosed, and have to haul their borked windows box to the smiling local MS fixit guy for folding money "repair".
Then, with respect, most of the people you know are idiots, who'd hose their Linux installs jsut as quickly. I've been running Windows in one form or another for 8 years and haven't managed to hose a single install.
this "most people" person IS getting hip and won't be putting up with their ridiculous rip off buggy stuff for much longer.
Windows is free to most people, it comes with the PC, and they can't save money by buying one without it even if they wanted to. As for buggy, my XP installs crash about as often as my Linux installs - that is to say, almost never. Of course, I know what I'm doing, but see my original point...
Might take 5 to 10 more years, but once the big slide happens, watch out, it will go FAST.
Not to burst your bubble, but people have been saying that for the last ten years that I remember. In that time, Firefox has seen some success, as has OS X, and that's about it. People are not switching to Linux in their droves; even the geeks aren't. (Unless part of your definition of geek is "runs something other than Windows, preferably Linux", but that's not in mine)
which translates into massive cash
Massive on any sane scale, but compared to the amount MS has in the bank?
No, I don't think you can study to become a good scientist any more than you can study to become a good artist. With science, you can learn the equations, and the maths (although there's no guarantee you'll be any good at it), and still not truly understand any of it. That will prevent you from doing any of your own research; at best, you'll be a walking text book, but certainly not a scientist.
If you do have that grasp of the subject, though, it's a different matter, just as it is for those who can draw and those of us who "can't". (*Everyone* can draw, it's just that some of us churn out stuff that's not even vaguely accurate or pleasing...)
I have a number of books on my shelf right now that contain verbiage somewhere in the first few pages that set out a lot of things that I agree not to do. This generally includes things like lend it, rent it, sell it, reproduce it, etc. Copyright law does not grant most of those restrictions.
Now, there's no guarantee that anyone would be successfully sued for violating the terms, but it's still an attempt to licence my use of the book.