Windows doesn't encrypt cache and temporary files... The Apple solution, on the other hand, encrypts your entire home directory
Now, I've not actually tried it, but I can't imagine that there's anything stopping me from setting my entire home directory on Windows (ie Documents and Settings\username) as encrypted. Sure, the average user wouldn't know to do that, but then the average user probably wouldn't care, either.
Your point about filenames and other meta data still holds, though.
I have a Nokia 3650, which has very limited PDA capabilities, camera, games, etc, and it all works just fine, thank you very much.
I don't find that anything gets in the way of what I want to do. I have it set up (almost the default config) so that the camera is accessed from the left hand "large button", text messaging from the right hand one, and my contact list from the "joypad" centre button. I don't really use the PDA capabilities, but I have successfully synced my contacts, etc with my PC via Bluetooth.
No, the camera isn't going to win any prizes, but with a little care you can produce reasonable quality images. It's not a replacement for a dedicated camera, but it's not meant to be. I wanted it so that if I was out and about, and suddenly wanted to capture an image, I could, without having to lug an expensive camera around with me all the time.
As for the manual, I'd love to disprove your claim of 200+ pages, but I can't, as I haven't even opened it, let alone read it:p
True, the 3650 isn't really in the same league as this thing, but it is a "jack of all trades" phone, and I love it.
But I assume that employees will still be able to print emails
Why do you assume that? Why do you assume that the print function will be enabled for protected emails or other documents?
Now, I grant you that no technological scheme can completely prevent information from being leaked - it can't stop me taking it down with paper and pen, or photographing the screen, etc, but it can at least make it difficult to do. Also, while the photogrpah would be harder to refute, my hand-written scrawl copy of an email could easily be dismissed as a forgery...
I can see this being very useful for companies and even some individuals, but essentially, there is no technological way of protecting data from redistribution by its intended recipient. It's not going to be as easy as just hitting print, though.
Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book.
I have books I bought well over a decade ago, that are still in perfect working order. I have CD-Rs that were burnt around that time (a year or two more recent) that are all-but unusable now. These CD-Rs have been stored, in jewel cases, in a rack of other CDs, in a room in a country with a temperate climate (the UK).
In 3000 years time, normal CDs that have been dug-up from archaelogical sites will almost certainly be damaged beyond reading. Even if any are still readable, the hardware to read them will no longer exist and the format will have been long-since forgotten.
I'll ignore the sheer scale of the problem of thrown-out CDs, as others have pointed out that flaw in your argument.
so I don't have to spend 3 minutes arranging the ribbon cable out of the airflow way.
And nor do the people churning out the home PCs being discussed at places like Dell and Compaq, and if nothing else, that's why IDE drives will probably disappear from consumer-level pre-built PCs. It's just plain easier for the systems builders.
While we're being picky, my little home network uses (part of) 192.168.0.0/16, yet it can most certainly access the internet. True, external machines can't connect to it, but that would be the case for a machine with a routable IP address running a firewall (i.e. my gateway box, which I'm currently typing this on)
So, is my home LAN on "The Internet", or not? If not, how would you describe it?
a) the closest recorded asteriod fly-by occurred recently, and we only knew about it *after* it had passed us
b) deflecting the path of an asteriod on a collision course would be a hell of a lot more difficult than you seem to think. I've not done the maths, but I'm not entirely sure that we're even up to the challenge just yet
I and my girlfriend both have 3650s, and I've had no trouble connecting them to her PC (running XP Home) via Bluetooth. I can't get the Nokia software to recognise the device (probably because I installed it before I installed the Bluetooth adaptor), but Belkin's connectivity software is fine. I've successfully transferred files to and from the phones.
There's a memory leak in XP which will slow any HW down to a crawl in a matter of a month.
I have XP Pro installed on my desktop machine at work, which I never switch off, and which is rebooted only when absolutely necessary. I get uptimes well in excess of your quoted one month figure, with no noticeable slow-down at all.
Now, I'm not saying that you didn't experience problems, but your reported experience is at odds with mine, and I've not heard of it from anyone else, either.
Re:I'm not sure I want to use Windows XP that long
on
Longhorn in 2006
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· Score: 1
I don't believe you. I have XP Pro installed on a machine that's connected to an ADSL line not quite 24 hours a day, but not that far off it either. So far, since installing it in January, I've not had a single virus infection, or been hit with any trojans, etc.
Still, assuming for a moment that you are telling the truth, go here and download and install the free version of AVG, and say goodbye to viruses.
Except that Chevys and Fords are basically interchangable, and IE and anything else are sure as hell not.
Are you sure about that? It's been a long time since I visited a site that actually required IE to work properly. Even my online banking site only "advises" that I use IE, and that's only because it's not certain that the browser I use supports 128bit SSL (it does, of course).
Right now, I'd say that IE and Mozilla are pretty-much interchangeable.
if computers were sold with Linux, for hundreds cheaper than comparable Windows PCs
That's not going to happen, though - the only way to make a *comparable* Linux-based PC hundreds (of dollars, I assume) cheaper than a Windows-based one would be to take a loss on it. I bought an OEM copy of XP Pro for 116 sterling (about $200) in January. There's no way that a commercial PC manufacturer would be spending anything like that much money per licence.
To make a Linux-based PC that much cheaper than a Windows one, they would have to lower the specs, it's as simple as that.
maybe it would put some pressure on Microsoft to drop prices and stop making shitty products
Well, as we're talking specifically about operating systems, I have to say that I find very little wrong with XP. It crashes on me about as often as Mandrake does (which is to say, almost never), and compared to a lot of the software I use on a daily basis (eg JBuilder Enterprise, Oracle 8i, etc) it's very cheap. No, it's not as cheap as freely downloadable, but using software costing in excess of 100,000 sterling at work makes it seem pretty inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.
If someone runs an extension cord from one of your outside outlets to power their woodshop, you're going to get a big bill from the power company too. The argument "no I didn't, the guy next door did" just ain't gonna fly.
Well, I ANAL, etc, but I think you'll find that if that happened, and you could prove it, you could almost certainly have the guy prosecuted, and wouldn't be liable for the bill. Chances are they'd just estimate how much to charge you based on previous bills - when I moved into my current house, the previous owner hadn't taken a meter reading, so we received a bill for their electricity use, and that of their builders, decorators, etc while they were doing the place up to sell it. We phoned the electricty company, explained the situation, and they cancelled the bill and estimated a new one based on the amount we used in the following week.
On the other hand, if a scheme like the one in the article were implemented, and my kid downloaded loads of stuff without my knowledge or consent, that would be tough. She's not an adult, so I'd almost certainly be responsible and have to pay the bill in full.
That's the whole point though, you file enough patents that it never comes to suing or being sued. As soon as a company starts to make noises about suing you for patent infringement, you just inform them of all of your patents that they are (or appear to be) infringing on.
That's why it's "necessary" to file so many patents - for defence against cases like this. True, it doesn't really work against companies that exist more or less solely to bring patent infringement cases; it's hard to infringe on someone's patents when you don't actually produce anything much...
I can't remember the last time I tried to access a site with Mozilla, to find that it only worked in IE.
True, my online banking service advises me to use IE, but I ignore that advice, and it works just fine in Mozilla. Every other site I use is fine. Perhaps that's more indicative of the sorts of sites I visit, though.
Mozilla's mail client, Netscape's mail client, KMail and Evolution can all access mail on Exchange servers. There are probably others, but those four I have used personally.
Unfortunately, they're intolerably slow (imho) compared to Outlook, and obviously don't support calendaring. Still, if all you need is mail access, and don't mind it being a little stately, then they work fine.
I have never heard of Microsoft retroactively terminating a license.
Nor have I, but I believe that they reserve the right to do so in the EULA. It's late, though, and I can't be bothered to read through it now to check:-)
Shit, for all I know there's an "as-is" clause in the EULA already, I didn't read it.
There are a number of appendices in the Windows XP EULA that deal with warranties in a number of applicable legal jurisdictions. The one for England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland essentially says that the software is guaranteed to work substantially as described in the manual for a period of 90 days, and that any hardware supplied is guaranteed for one year. Everything else, where possible, is disclaimed.
This is a non-issue, though, as I have yet to see any software EULA that doesn't say the equivalent of "if it's buggy, tough", and that includes the GPL.
I'm not aware of a single piece of software that I own that does come with a warranty. Furthermore, I do not remember ever even so much as hearing of any that did.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three clauses that are common to all EULAs for proprietary software:
* no reverse engineering * no copying * no warranty
If MS can be held liable for defects, then so can all software producers. Speaking as one, I don't like the sound of that.
*If* there is infringing code in a product of the size of Windows or Office, then it'll be a routine or two here and there, an algorithm, perhaps a particularly clever data structure/class. It sure as hell won't be an entire file, let alone a whole module. For one thing, you'd never get that amount of infringing code past any half-decent team leader or manager.
As for the chance being zero, you're probably right if you include public domains and BSD-licensed code
Well, the original question specified "open source", rather than a particular licence, so yes, you have to include public domain and BSD-licensed code.
if you sell it, you're much more liable for defects than if you give it away
Now, I'm not saying that that isn't the case, but I really don't think that it should be, especially with software. If I run Linux on mission-critical machines, and an exploit leads to those machines getting rooted and all my data trashed (or worse), I'm not going to think "Oh well, at least it was free!". Cost of the OS, in that case, is going to be utterly irrelevant.
Just because you arrest an accomplice doesn't mean you don't arrest the robber too.
For that analogy to hold, you'd have to prove that Microsoft purposefully introduced the security holes in order to allow people to exploit them. A better analogy would be that of a security guard who forgot to lock a door or window, which a robber then used to gain access. He'd probably be fired, but certainly wouldn't be arrested, unless you could prove that he was in cahoots with the robber.
In this case, the very most you can reasonably argue is that Microsoft is complicit; they are most certainly not the 'most guilty' party.
Since the cards are mandatory for people who buy season tickets
I buy a monthly travel card, and this is the first I've heard of that. If you have a source for that, I'd love to know it, as none of the advertising I've seen has said anything about it - in fact, the closest I've seen is that Oyster card users will be charged the old price for their "tickets" when the price goes up in January, while those who continue to buy (real) tickets will not. That alone implies that they are not mandatory...
For what it's worth, though, if you want to buy a ticket for any period longer than a week, you have to give your name and address details, so even the current paper-based season tickets are not entirely anonymous.
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Windows doesn't encrypt cache and temporary files... The Apple solution, on the other hand, encrypts your entire home directory
Now, I've not actually tried it, but I can't imagine that there's anything stopping me from setting my entire home directory on Windows (ie Documents and Settings\username) as encrypted. Sure, the average user wouldn't know to do that, but then the average user probably wouldn't care, either.
Your point about filenames and other meta data still holds, though.
I have a Nokia 3650, which has very limited PDA capabilities, camera, games, etc, and it all works just fine, thank you very much.
:p
I don't find that anything gets in the way of what I want to do. I have it set up (almost the default config) so that the camera is accessed from the left hand "large button", text messaging from the right hand one, and my contact list from the "joypad" centre button. I don't really use the PDA capabilities, but I have successfully synced my contacts, etc with my PC via Bluetooth.
No, the camera isn't going to win any prizes, but with a little care you can produce reasonable quality images. It's not a replacement for a dedicated camera, but it's not meant to be. I wanted it so that if I was out and about, and suddenly wanted to capture an image, I could, without having to lug an expensive camera around with me all the time.
As for the manual, I'd love to disprove your claim of 200+ pages, but I can't, as I haven't even opened it, let alone read it
True, the 3650 isn't really in the same league as this thing, but it is a "jack of all trades" phone, and I love it.
But I assume that employees will still be able to print emails
Why do you assume that? Why do you assume that the print function will be enabled for protected emails or other documents?
Now, I grant you that no technological scheme can completely prevent information from being leaked - it can't stop me taking it down with paper and pen, or photographing the screen, etc, but it can at least make it difficult to do. Also, while the photogrpah would be harder to refute, my hand-written scrawl copy of an email could easily be dismissed as a forgery...
I can see this being very useful for companies and even some individuals, but essentially, there is no technological way of protecting data from redistribution by its intended recipient. It's not going to be as easy as just hitting print, though.
Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book.
I have books I bought well over a decade ago, that are still in perfect working order. I have CD-Rs that were burnt around that time (a year or two more recent) that are all-but unusable now. These CD-Rs have been stored, in jewel cases, in a rack of other CDs, in a room in a country with a temperate climate (the UK).
In 3000 years time, normal CDs that have been dug-up from archaelogical sites will almost certainly be damaged beyond reading. Even if any are still readable, the hardware to read them will no longer exist and the format will have been long-since forgotten.
I'll ignore the sheer scale of the problem of thrown-out CDs, as others have pointed out that flaw in your argument.
so I don't have to spend 3 minutes arranging the ribbon cable out of the airflow way.
And nor do the people churning out the home PCs being discussed at places like Dell and Compaq, and if nothing else, that's why IDE drives will probably disappear from consumer-level pre-built PCs. It's just plain easier for the systems builders.
While we're being picky, my little home network uses (part of) 192.168.0.0/16, yet it can most certainly access the internet. True, external machines can't connect to it, but that would be the case for a machine with a routable IP address running a firewall (i.e. my gateway box, which I'm currently typing this on)
So, is my home LAN on "The Internet", or not? If not, how would you describe it?
Two things:
a) the closest recorded asteriod fly-by occurred recently, and we only knew about it *after* it had passed us
b) deflecting the path of an asteriod on a collision course would be a hell of a lot more difficult than you seem to think. I've not done the maths, but I'm not entirely sure that we're even up to the challenge just yet
I and my girlfriend both have 3650s, and I've had no trouble connecting them to her PC (running XP Home) via Bluetooth. I can't get the Nokia software to recognise the device (probably because I installed it before I installed the Bluetooth adaptor), but Belkin's connectivity software is fine. I've successfully transferred files to and from the phones.
If there was an ultra-slick jaw-dropping eye-candy feature, you can bet it wouldn't be a whole 6 months before there was a KDE that could do it.
Three words: mouse cursor shadows.
There's a memory leak in XP which will slow any HW down to a crawl in a matter of a month.
I have XP Pro installed on my desktop machine at work, which I never switch off, and which is rebooted only when absolutely necessary. I get uptimes well in excess of your quoted one month figure, with no noticeable slow-down at all.
Now, I'm not saying that you didn't experience problems, but your reported experience is at odds with mine, and I've not heard of it from anyone else, either.
I don't believe you. I have XP Pro installed on a machine that's connected to an ADSL line not quite 24 hours a day, but not that far off it either. So far, since installing it in January, I've not had a single virus infection, or been hit with any trojans, etc.
Still, assuming for a moment that you are telling the truth, go here and download and install the free version of AVG, and say goodbye to viruses.
Except that Chevys and Fords are basically interchangable, and IE and anything else are sure as hell not.
Are you sure about that? It's been a long time since I visited a site that actually required IE to work properly. Even my online banking site only "advises" that I use IE, and that's only because it's not certain that the browser I use supports 128bit SSL (it does, of course).
Right now, I'd say that IE and Mozilla are pretty-much interchangeable.
if computers were sold with Linux, for hundreds cheaper than comparable Windows PCs
That's not going to happen, though - the only way to make a *comparable* Linux-based PC hundreds (of dollars, I assume) cheaper than a Windows-based one would be to take a loss on it. I bought an OEM copy of XP Pro for 116 sterling (about $200) in January. There's no way that a commercial PC manufacturer would be spending anything like that much money per licence.
To make a Linux-based PC that much cheaper than a Windows one, they would have to lower the specs, it's as simple as that.
maybe it would put some pressure on Microsoft to drop prices and stop making shitty products
Well, as we're talking specifically about operating systems, I have to say that I find very little wrong with XP. It crashes on me about as often as Mandrake does (which is to say, almost never), and compared to a lot of the software I use on a daily basis (eg JBuilder Enterprise, Oracle 8i, etc) it's very cheap. No, it's not as cheap as freely downloadable, but using software costing in excess of 100,000 sterling at work makes it seem pretty inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.
If someone runs an extension cord from one of your outside outlets to power their woodshop, you're going to get a big bill from the power company too. The argument "no I didn't, the guy next door did" just ain't gonna fly.
Well, I ANAL, etc, but I think you'll find that if that happened, and you could prove it, you could almost certainly have the guy prosecuted, and wouldn't be liable for the bill. Chances are they'd just estimate how much to charge you based on previous bills - when I moved into my current house, the previous owner hadn't taken a meter reading, so we received a bill for their electricity use, and that of their builders, decorators, etc while they were doing the place up to sell it. We phoned the electricty company, explained the situation, and they cancelled the bill and estimated a new one based on the amount we used in the following week.
On the other hand, if a scheme like the one in the article were implemented, and my kid downloaded loads of stuff without my knowledge or consent, that would be tough. She's not an adult, so I'd almost certainly be responsible and have to pay the bill in full.
That's the whole point though, you file enough patents that it never comes to suing or being sued. As soon as a company starts to make noises about suing you for patent infringement, you just inform them of all of your patents that they are (or appear to be) infringing on.
That's why it's "necessary" to file so many patents - for defence against cases like this. True, it doesn't really work against companies that exist more or less solely to bring patent infringement cases; it's hard to infringe on someone's patents when you don't actually produce anything much...
I can't remember the last time I tried to access a site with Mozilla, to find that it only worked in IE.
True, my online banking service advises me to use IE, but I ignore that advice, and it works just fine in Mozilla. Every other site I use is fine. Perhaps that's more indicative of the sorts of sites I visit, though.
Mozilla's mail client, Netscape's mail client, KMail and Evolution can all access mail on Exchange servers. There are probably others, but those four I have used personally.
Unfortunately, they're intolerably slow (imho) compared to Outlook, and obviously don't support calendaring. Still, if all you need is mail access, and don't mind it being a little stately, then they work fine.
Valve would have no way of getting that widely distributed code back!!!
More to the point, if they had lost their only copy, they'd probably have no way of verifying that the code they retrieved hadn't been altered.
I have never heard of Microsoft retroactively terminating a license.
:-)
Nor have I, but I believe that they reserve the right to do so in the EULA. It's late, though, and I can't be bothered to read through it now to check
Shit, for all I know there's an "as-is" clause in the EULA already, I didn't read it.
There are a number of appendices in the Windows XP EULA that deal with warranties in a number of applicable legal jurisdictions. The one for England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland essentially says that the software is guaranteed to work substantially as described in the manual for a period of 90 days, and that any hardware supplied is guaranteed for one year. Everything else, where possible, is disclaimed.
This is a non-issue, though, as I have yet to see any software EULA that doesn't say the equivalent of "if it's buggy, tough", and that includes the GPL.
I'm not aware of a single piece of software that I own that does come with a warranty. Furthermore, I do not remember ever even so much as hearing of any that did.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three clauses that are common to all EULAs for proprietary software:
* no reverse engineering
* no copying
* no warranty
If MS can be held liable for defects, then so can all software producers. Speaking as one, I don't like the sound of that.
Indeed.
*If* there is infringing code in a product of the size of Windows or Office, then it'll be a routine or two here and there, an algorithm, perhaps a particularly clever data structure/class. It sure as hell won't be an entire file, let alone a whole module. For one thing, you'd never get that amount of infringing code past any half-decent team leader or manager.
As for the chance being zero, you're probably right if you include public domains and BSD-licensed code
Well, the original question specified "open source", rather than a particular licence, so yes, you have to include public domain and BSD-licensed code.
if you sell it, you're much more liable for defects than if you give it away
Now, I'm not saying that that isn't the case, but I really don't think that it should be, especially with software. If I run Linux on mission-critical machines, and an exploit leads to those machines getting rooted and all my data trashed (or worse), I'm not going to think "Oh well, at least it was free!". Cost of the OS, in that case, is going to be utterly irrelevant.
Just because you arrest an accomplice doesn't mean you don't arrest the robber too.
For that analogy to hold, you'd have to prove that Microsoft purposefully introduced the security holes in order to allow people to exploit them. A better analogy would be that of a security guard who forgot to lock a door or window, which a robber then used to gain access. He'd probably be fired, but certainly wouldn't be arrested, unless you could prove that he was in cahoots with the robber.
In this case, the very most you can reasonably argue is that Microsoft is complicit; they are most certainly not the 'most guilty' party.
Since the cards are mandatory for people who buy season tickets
I buy a monthly travel card, and this is the first I've heard of that. If you have a source for that, I'd love to know it, as none of the advertising I've seen has said anything about it - in fact, the closest I've seen is that Oyster card users will be charged the old price for their "tickets" when the price goes up in January, while those who continue to buy (real) tickets will not. That alone implies that they are not mandatory...
For what it's worth, though, if you want to buy a ticket for any period longer than a week, you have to give your name and address details, so even the current paper-based season tickets are not entirely anonymous.