What does MS have to gain by not further developing Outlook Express? Do they think that most OE users will by Outlook? Do they think they'll go MSN? Do they not care about losing their monopoly on email? Perhaps they believe that people will still use an outdated version of OE over anything else that's out there, that there isn't any competition. If so, they're being overconfident. This could enable Mozilla to give them some real competition, which would be a Good Thing.
Actually, it is. It is responsible directly for half of all Windows crashes and indirectly for the vast majority of the rest. A good, modern OS should not be crought down by a program. Thus it is M$'s shitty code that allows that to happen.
That sure is encouraging. What a wonderful operating system you have when half the time it crashes, the crash is caused by third party code. A properly designed OS shouldn't allow third party software to crash it. No OS is perfect, but half the time is just silly.
wouldn't it have been incredibly stupid of IBM to have put that code in the Linux kernel, since the Linux kernel is wide opened and everyone has access to it. It doesn't make a lot of sense, unless one buys into a conspiracy theory about IBM eventually buying SCO and then trying to own Linux in the same way that SCO is now trying to own Linux, which I personally don't.
Still, the very knowledge that I may be undergoing a lie-detector test that is imperfect enough to be inadmissible in court could cause significant stress.
I walk around with that in my pocket until a rent-a-cop, or paranoid faculty member, at college sees me with it and, after inspecting it, accuses me of trying to hack into the college computer system. After all, its like carrying around a lockpick set, at least to some people.
I think that the teacher has no reasonable expectation of privacy whatsoever when teaching a class in a public school. Neither, for that matter, does the individual student who takes the class.
If they are going to do this, I think that the parents should have a right to request a copy of the recording of any given class that their child is taking. Parents have a right to know what their children are being taught and need to know that to properly influence what is taught in their school district. Public schools need to be accountable to the parents of the children that attend them, especially because not all parents are able to afford to vote with their feet, i.e., put their children in a non-free private school.
How do we know that there isn't any SCO IP in the binaries that they are selling. They could have slipped it in just to make their sale more legally defensible when their court case fails.
You'd think that Musharraf would at least take over Russia if Vajpayee was going to president of the US. I wonder where old Pervez stands on independence for Quebec.
Oh wait! Despite the landslide victory in the popular vote, Linux looses in the electoral college. His miraculous four hundred billion votes were almost entirely contained in California, Oregon, and Washington State.
I think that the "not-the-heck-yet" response is the correct one. Now, I only play text-based muds, and those only occasionally, and am confident that those will never, ever have voice. Yes, you could write an extended Telnet that included voice (sort of like what was done with Pueblo), but I think it would only prove to ruin the experience.
Graphical MMORPGs on the other hand could benefit from voice. When you are interacting in a graphical world, actually speaking to each other just makes sense, more sense than chatting through text. I do not think the bandwidth is here yet for thousands upon thousands of people to be talking away in games, but it will be someday, probably soon.
I do not think that voices will ruin the roleplaying experience, for the simple reasons that a) they can develop voice filters to make you sound like a troll, or a dwarf, or whatever, b) that you can speak in an altered voice all by yourself (the best solution, IMHO) and c) hearing people's natural voices in table-top RPGs never ruined it for anyone before, as at least one other person has mentioned.
Logging voice to prevent abuse could be a problem, but perhaps not in a couple of years. It may be that they will then have enough computer power and HD space to record all voice exchange. Hell, logging all voice conversations on the client side shouldn't be a problem now if you have a good enough system.
As monitors get bigger, and go LCD, resolutions will go up and reading for long periods of time on a computer will become, and has become, less irritating. This combined with better readers, whether they are built as book readers or are high-res PDAs, is making book piracy more of a reality.
Books can be expensive, at least when they are released in hardback only (which many are at first) and so many people are doing what they did with music, i.e., saving money by downloading off the web and not making the rich (e.g., J.K Rowling) richer. The problem is that this "peccadillo", this "little vice" might come back to haunt all of us if it gets as out of hand as have music and movie piracy. If all the content providers of the country simultaneously lobby congress and complain that their copyrighted material is being pirated and that they are losing money, congress *will* pass a (another?) draconian law to remedy the situation and the freedom of all of us online will be compromised.
I think it would be a Bad Thing if government became the primary supporter of Free and Open Source Software. I want the government to control my software, via controlling the direction of Open Source projects through funding, even less than I want M$ to control my software. But a National Endowment for Free Software to provide grants to a limited number of projects could be helpful.
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then I'd move to another country.
What does MS have to gain by not further developing Outlook Express? Do they think that most OE users will by Outlook? Do they think they'll go MSN? Do they not care about losing their monopoly on email? Perhaps they believe that people will still use an outdated version of OE over anything else that's out there, that there isn't any competition. If so, they're being overconfident. This could enable Mozilla to give them some real competition, which would be a Good Thing.
If the search engine were open-sourced, then more people, probably many more, would know how to manipulate the rankings to the fullest.
for them not to have made backups of the MD5SUMS at least? Especially considering how tiny that would be, especially in a tarball?
Actually, it is. It is responsible directly for half of all Windows crashes and indirectly for the vast majority of the rest. A good, modern OS should not be crought down by a program. Thus it is M$'s shitty code that allows that to happen.
That sure is encouraging. What a wonderful operating system you have when half the time it crashes, the crash is caused by third party code. A properly designed OS shouldn't allow third party software to crash it. No OS is perfect, but half the time is just silly.
Ah, but SCO paid their own liscensing fee so that's okay in their book.
wouldn't it have been incredibly stupid of IBM to have put that code in the Linux kernel, since the Linux kernel is wide opened and everyone has access to it. It doesn't make a lot of sense, unless one buys into a conspiracy theory about IBM eventually buying SCO and then trying to own Linux in the same way that SCO is now trying to own Linux, which I personally don't.
My fear is that it might prejudice the investigator to have an investigatee who has already flunked a lie-detector test.
Still, the very knowledge that I may be undergoing a lie-detector test that is imperfect enough to be inadmissible in court could cause significant stress.
And some people (like me) would find any such interrogation stressful.
Now they will be able to refuse you insurance payment based upon a method that doesn't hold up in court, at least not in the U.S. Does it in Europe?
If Martha Stewart gets nailed on that, why not Darl McBride?
I walk around with that in my pocket until a rent-a-cop, or paranoid faculty member, at college sees me with it and, after inspecting it, accuses me of trying to hack into the college computer system. After all, its like carrying around a lockpick set, at least to some people.
against setting company policy solely so you can cash in your stock for a good price and screw the rest of the stockholders who don't know better?
I think that the teacher has no reasonable expectation of privacy whatsoever when teaching a class in a public school. Neither, for that matter, does the individual student who takes the class.
If they are going to do this, I think that the parents should have a right to request a copy of the recording of any given class that their child is taking. Parents have a right to know what their children are being taught and need to know that to properly influence what is taught in their school district. Public schools need to be accountable to the parents of the children that attend them, especially because not all parents are able to afford to vote with their feet, i.e., put their children in a non-free private school.
How do we know that there isn't any SCO IP in the binaries that they are selling. They could have slipped it in just to make their sale more legally defensible when their court case fails.
Neither does /. for that matter.
You'd think that Musharraf would at least take over Russia if Vajpayee was going to president of the US. I wonder where old Pervez stands on independence for Quebec.
Which is why we should go back to using paper. A pen and checkboxes will prevent hacking and will prevent hanging, dimpled and pregnant chads.
Oh wait! Despite the landslide victory in the popular vote, Linux looses in the electoral college. His miraculous four hundred billion votes were almost entirely contained in California, Oregon, and Washington State.
It should be done early and often. Hard drives do fail and can do so without warning. Therefore it is very important to back up that valuable data.
I think that the "not-the-heck-yet" response is the correct one. Now, I only play text-based muds, and those only occasionally, and am confident that those will never, ever have voice. Yes, you could write an extended Telnet that included voice (sort of like what was done with Pueblo), but I think it would only prove to ruin the experience.
Graphical MMORPGs on the other hand could benefit from voice. When you are interacting in a graphical world, actually speaking to each other just makes sense, more sense than chatting through text. I do not think the bandwidth is here yet for thousands upon thousands of people to be talking away in games, but it will be someday, probably soon.
I do not think that voices will ruin the roleplaying experience, for the simple reasons that a) they can develop voice filters to make you sound like a troll, or a dwarf, or whatever, b) that you can speak in an altered voice all by yourself (the best solution, IMHO) and c) hearing people's natural voices in table-top RPGs never ruined it for anyone before, as at least one other person has mentioned.
Logging voice to prevent abuse could be a problem, but perhaps not in a couple of years. It may be that they will then have enough computer power and HD space to record all voice exchange. Hell, logging all voice conversations on the client side shouldn't be a problem now if you have a good enough system.
As monitors get bigger, and go LCD, resolutions will go up and reading for long periods of time on a computer will become, and has become, less irritating. This combined with better readers, whether they are built as book readers or are high-res PDAs, is making book piracy more of a reality.
Books can be expensive, at least when they are released in hardback only (which many are at first) and so many people are doing what they did with music, i.e., saving money by downloading off the web and not making the rich (e.g., J.K Rowling) richer. The problem is that this "peccadillo", this "little vice" might come back to haunt all of us if it gets as out of hand as have music and movie piracy. If all the content providers of the country simultaneously lobby congress and complain that their copyrighted material is being pirated and that they are losing money, congress *will* pass a (another?) draconian law to remedy the situation and the freedom of all of us online will be compromised.
I think it would be a Bad Thing if government became the primary supporter of Free and Open Source Software. I want the government to control my software, via controlling the direction of Open Source projects through funding, even less than I want M$ to control my software. But a National Endowment for Free Software to provide grants to a limited number of projects could be helpful.