Applekid, a long time Slashdot poster, plummeted to earth earlier today. He was last heard from criticizing the Slashdot editors(**). An anonymous poster who was apparently a witness to the scene describe is as "horrific. These guys in black suits came up and pushed him to the ground. I think I saw blood on his knee!"
The incident is being investigated by the Slashdot Lynch Mob in an effort to find those responsible.
(*) For certain values of "fatal" (**) For certain values of "edit".
As if they'd admit to having prime-factoring methods to bust a couple of drug dealers. That kind of thing is/much/ better kept secret to use in intelligence circles...
Well, these companies know that their customers aren't using anything other than IE, because they can't be...
Cognos, for example, makes server-side components that work on UNIX as well as the Windows version, so they know very well that their customers could be using something other than Windows... yet parts of their 'client' software insist that you MUST have IE as a browser.
It was relevant to the antitrust case because it generates platform lock-in.
For two perfect examples, you have to look no further than some major software out there. I will give two examples of software that we have implemented at my workplace. Maybe you'll recognize these (major, multinational) companies?
Cognos 8 Business Intelligence: Works 100% with IE. Works for report consumers with Firefox (with some loss of functionality). However, Report Studio (one of the report-authoring tools) doesn't work on anything but IE. There's no reason it couldn't be implemented with standard AJAX-type code.
BMC Software Service Desk Express (baby brother to the "Magic" helpdesk software that is very common): Works *only* on IE, doesn't work at all on other browsers.
Yes, part of the problem is these software vendors coding for IE-specific things. However, if they knew that most of their customers are probably using something else, they would code their products to support open standards. However, because MSFT has such a huge marketshare of browsers due to antitrust practices, third-parties code to support that, thus tying THEIR customers to MSFT as well.
It's a circular loop, but one possible only because MSFT used their OS dominance to push a certain browser 'standard'.
The problem is that Vista uses a non-standard implementation of TCP in its network stack. A router just passes packets verbatim from one place to another verbatim, so no, using a router wouldn't change anything unless you someone implemented packet scrubbing or normalization rules.
They should tell us how many parsecs it could do the Kessel run in.
A parsec is a measure of distance... and the Kessel Run is a measure of distance (18 parsecs). So we're measuring how far we can travel in... a given distance?
I don't even want to think about the equations required to move in 3D^2 space. Must be some kind of wormhole involved in there somewhere.
Very depressing that people are now hacking content they paid for:(
What's the difference between this and breaking DRM on a music CD so that you can rip it to MP3 to play on your iPod? Or do you enjoy being ass-raped by the media companies?
According to the terms of MS' license for Office, yes, you need one license per concurrent user, even in a Terminal Services/Citrix environment. (Nitpick: It's not 'illegal' to not be licensed, since it's not a felony, but rather you could be sued for civil damages) Things blur a little bit when you have a hybrid published-app/installed-on-local-workstation environment, but you still have to show due diligence.
As for the second part -- the purpose of Citrix is not to violate licenses by allowing concurrent connections. Its purpose is centralized access AND MAINTENANCE of programs, as well as providing better efficiencies. Instead of updating software 1000 workstations, you update 20 (or 30, or whatever) Citrix servers. Instead of having clients query the database across the WAN/VPN (using up potentially a lot of bandwidth for the result sets), you let published apps do it from colocation, and then just push the visual results to the workstation. Another advantage of Citrix is that you can save quite a bit of capital expenditure by buying lower end desktop machines, since in a Citrix environment they're essentially just a dumb terminal... you don't need the latest and greatest to run it. Hell... we still have some offices running on Pentium-2 and -3's.
We have a decently sized Citrix installation at work (~40 Citrix servers, over 1000 users), and yes, in most cases (e.g. Office), we demand proof of appropriate licensing for a user before we grant them access to the published app. There are some exceptions for programs which have their own licensing schemes (e.g. our accounting software has its own concurrent license management, as does our scheduling software), but on the whole we can show due diligence if we were ever audited (and we have been, by the way, from Microsoft, a few times in the past. We've passed with flying colors every time.)
I completely disagree with this software 'licensing' bullshit, by the way. I use OpenBSD wherever I can. But as an IT professional, I will not knowingly expose my company to potential legal action, the costs of which would far outweigh the cost of complying with our license agreements.
Its fun to imagine how the world would reshape itself. Would it be good, or a disaster.
Wife: Why are you home so late? Husband: Ah, me and the guys went out for a few beers after work. *BUZZ* Husband: I mean, me and the guys left work early for a few beers. *DING* Wife: You skipped work?! Husband: No, no, it's OK. We just finished a big proposal and my boss... *BUZZ* Husband: Well, we started a big proposal... *BUZZ* Husband: My boss took us out... *BUZZ* Husband: OK, I played hooky. *DING* Wife: How many did you have, anyways? Husband: Just 2 or 3... *BUZZ* Husband: per hour. *DING* Wife: You know where the extra blankets and the couch are?
As someone who grew up in Northern Ontario (Timmins), I would honestly say that you'll never see a data centre there. Why? No one wants to live there.:p
The DMCA encryption question is another deal, but I'm sure the argument can be made that CSS is not an *effective* copy protection measure.
Irrelevant. Technically, the DMCA forbids ANY cracking of copy protection. xor x,0x01 would be sufficient 'encryption' under the DMCA to sue anyone who unencrypted the content.
I once saw a shipment of ~20 NIC cards which had 3 pairs of identical MACs (6 non-unique cards in the batch, with 2 cards sharing each of 3 MACs). THAT caused quite a bit of confusion when we couldn't figure out why the PCs they were installed in had extremely flaky network connections.:p
Freak manufacturing error? Maybe. We never did find out how it happened. But duplicate MACs are definitely possible in practice.
This was quite a few years ago, so I don't remember exactly... but I/think/ the cards were D-Link.
Why are you so surprised? This is what insultants (err, I mean consultants) do for a living. They pull something out of their ass, call it a solution, then worry about whether it can actually be done. Whether it's the 'right' solution doesn't enter into that process.
Concrete examples of the above are left to the experience of the reader.
I agree that if it takes you 3 days to get a server up and running, then your disaster plans suck.
However, consider the following:
- Server crashes due to hardware failure - Techs follow the existing standard procedure to restore (i.e. replace motherboard) - Service is restored on time according to SLAs. - The server continues to happily serve out data and requests. - Three days pass and suddenly the server is offline *AGAIN* because it wasn't activated and is now refusing requests. - Spend more time on the phone with Microsoft than it took to replace the motherboard.
Suddenly, that hardware failure had a MUCH larger impact than it had to.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdotter Involved in Fatal(*) Plummet
Applekid, a long time Slashdot poster, plummeted to earth earlier today. He was last heard from criticizing the Slashdot editors(**). An anonymous poster who was apparently a witness to the scene describe is as "horrific. These guys in black suits came up and pushed him to the ground. I think I saw blood on his knee!"
The incident is being investigated by the Slashdot Lynch Mob in an effort to find those responsible.
(*) For certain values of "fatal"
(**) For certain values of "edit".
As if they'd admit to having prime-factoring methods to bust a couple of drug dealers. That kind of thing is /much/ better kept secret to use in intelligence circles...
Well, these companies know that their customers aren't using anything other than IE, because they can't be...
Cognos, for example, makes server-side components that work on UNIX as well as the Windows version, so they know very well that their customers could be using something other than Windows... yet parts of their 'client' software insist that you MUST have IE as a browser.
It was relevant to the antitrust case because it generates platform lock-in.
For two perfect examples, you have to look no further than some major software out there. I will give two examples of software that we have implemented at my workplace. Maybe you'll recognize these (major, multinational) companies?
Cognos 8 Business Intelligence: Works 100% with IE. Works for report consumers with Firefox (with some loss of functionality). However, Report Studio (one of the report-authoring tools) doesn't work on anything but IE. There's no reason it couldn't be implemented with standard AJAX-type code.
BMC Software Service Desk Express (baby brother to the "Magic" helpdesk software that is very common): Works *only* on IE, doesn't work at all on other browsers.
Yes, part of the problem is these software vendors coding for IE-specific things. However, if they knew that most of their customers are probably using something else, they would code their products to support open standards. However, because MSFT has such a huge marketshare of browsers due to antitrust practices, third-parties code to support that, thus tying THEIR customers to MSFT as well.
It's a circular loop, but one possible only because MSFT used their OS dominance to push a certain browser 'standard'.
More likely noise-cancelling earphones. You don't know how stupid someone is until they open their mouth, after all.
The problem is that Vista uses a non-standard implementation of TCP in its network stack. A router just passes packets verbatim from one place to another verbatim, so no, using a router wouldn't change anything unless you someone implemented packet scrubbing or normalization rules.
They should tell us how many parsecs it could do the Kessel run in.
A parsec is a measure of distance... and the Kessel Run is a measure of distance (18 parsecs). So we're measuring how far we can travel in... a given distance?
I don't even want to think about the equations required to move in 3D^2 space. Must be some kind of wormhole involved in there somewhere.
Very depressing that people are now hacking content they paid for :(
What's the difference between this and breaking DRM on a music CD so that you can rip it to MP3 to play on your iPod? Or do you enjoy being ass-raped by the media companies?
According to the terms of MS' license for Office, yes, you need one license per concurrent user, even in a Terminal Services/Citrix environment. (Nitpick: It's not 'illegal' to not be licensed, since it's not a felony, but rather you could be sued for civil damages) Things blur a little bit when you have a hybrid published-app/installed-on-local-workstation environment, but you still have to show due diligence.
As for the second part -- the purpose of Citrix is not to violate licenses by allowing concurrent connections. Its purpose is centralized access AND MAINTENANCE of programs, as well as providing better efficiencies. Instead of updating software 1000 workstations, you update 20 (or 30, or whatever) Citrix servers. Instead of having clients query the database across the WAN/VPN (using up potentially a lot of bandwidth for the result sets), you let published apps do it from colocation, and then just push the visual results to the workstation. Another advantage of Citrix is that you can save quite a bit of capital expenditure by buying lower end desktop machines, since in a Citrix environment they're essentially just a dumb terminal... you don't need the latest and greatest to run it. Hell... we still have some offices running on Pentium-2 and -3's.
We have a decently sized Citrix installation at work (~40 Citrix servers, over 1000 users), and yes, in most cases (e.g. Office), we demand proof of appropriate licensing for a user before we grant them access to the published app. There are some exceptions for programs which have their own licensing schemes (e.g. our accounting software has its own concurrent license management, as does our scheduling software), but on the whole we can show due diligence if we were ever audited (and we have been, by the way, from Microsoft, a few times in the past. We've passed with flying colors every time.)
I completely disagree with this software 'licensing' bullshit, by the way. I use OpenBSD wherever I can. But as an IT professional, I will not knowingly expose my company to potential legal action, the costs of which would far outweigh the cost of complying with our license agreements.
It's hard to believe anything on MySpace (including MySpace itself) is worth that much.
I heard about the TJX breach a long time ago, but didn't know who it affected until my bank sent me a new VISA card too. :p
No, only crappy sites can be YouTube or YouTube clones. :p
(I'll let you know what good ones are called when one shows up.)
Never give users a choice. They invariable choose the wrong one.
It's a win-win-win for everybody!
Except for that manager, who's about to get lynched by a mob armed with hard-drive-stuffed-socks.
... Tigerdirect didn't even have any, only DVD's. ...
clicky
Its fun to imagine how the world would reshape itself. Would it be good, or a disaster.
Wife: Why are you home so late?
Husband: Ah, me and the guys went out for a few beers after work.
*BUZZ*
Husband: I mean, me and the guys left work early for a few beers.
*DING*
Wife: You skipped work?!
Husband: No, no, it's OK. We just finished a big proposal and my boss...
*BUZZ*
Husband: Well, we started a big proposal...
*BUZZ*
Husband: My boss took us out...
*BUZZ*
Husband: OK, I played hooky.
*DING*
Wife: How many did you have, anyways?
Husband: Just 2 or 3...
*BUZZ*
Husband: per hour.
*DING*
Wife: You know where the extra blankets and the couch are?
As someone who grew up in Northern Ontario (Timmins), I would honestly say that you'll never see a data centre there. Why? No one wants to live there. :p
The DMCA encryption question is another deal, but I'm sure the argument can be made that CSS is not an *effective* copy protection measure.
Irrelevant. Technically, the DMCA forbids ANY cracking of copy protection. xor x,0x01 would be sufficient 'encryption' under the DMCA to sue anyone who unencrypted the content.
...IceRocket, a search engine which scours the blogosphere for content.
Well, at least the database backups fit on an 8" floppy...
y0! my m0M, taht wh0r3, shez l1k3, m4k1ng M3 p4Y r3N7 'n 5h17 n0wz. 1t'z l1k3 sH3 h4z sumpt1ng ag41n5t m3 ch1ll1n' iN h3R b4s3men7>>..
0h w3llllz, Il'l ju57 us3 |\/|y b0t5 7o m4k3 mr0e m0nnnn3333yyyyy and t0 sh0w th4t b1tch.
(Do I really need the humour tags around this post?)
MACs are /supposed/ to be unique, yes. However...
:p
/think/ the cards were D-Link.
I once saw a shipment of ~20 NIC cards which had 3 pairs of identical MACs (6 non-unique cards in the batch, with 2 cards sharing each of 3 MACs). THAT caused quite a bit of confusion when we couldn't figure out why the PCs they were installed in had extremely flaky network connections.
Freak manufacturing error? Maybe. We never did find out how it happened. But duplicate MACs are definitely possible in practice.
This was quite a few years ago, so I don't remember exactly... but I
Never give users a choice, they'll invariably choose the wrong one.
Why are you so surprised? This is what insultants (err, I mean consultants) do for a living. They pull something out of their ass, call it a solution, then worry about whether it can actually be done. Whether it's the 'right' solution doesn't enter into that process.
Concrete examples of the above are left to the experience of the reader.
even possibly that you were inarticulate.
Nah, my money is on the HR person spacing out after the word "computational". More than 2 syllables and all that.
I agree that if it takes you 3 days to get a server up and running, then your disaster plans suck.
However, consider the following:
- Server crashes due to hardware failure
- Techs follow the existing standard procedure to restore (i.e. replace motherboard)
- Service is restored on time according to SLAs.
- The server continues to happily serve out data and requests.
- Three days pass and suddenly the server is offline *AGAIN* because it wasn't activated and is now refusing requests.
- Spend more time on the phone with Microsoft than it took to replace the motherboard.
Suddenly, that hardware failure had a MUCH larger impact than it had to.