That's why I love buying old police cars - they rip out lots of those happy little devices and they never seem to get back in the vehicle when they auction them off.
I think this is kinda dirty pool on AOL/TW's part... I bet the real reason they're doing it is to save on QA and regression testing - after all, if their entire employee base is testing their product day in and day out, it will mean they can pinkslip all those useless Quality Assurance people...
Oh, wait, I forgot - from the way their products run, it's pretty obvious they never had anyone QA their software and email systems.
As a Network Admin, I have been pretty happy with Windows 2000 overall.... but the more I hear about XP, the more I think I will just sit and wait for consumer outcry to kill it off.
Look at the &*$^% paperclip - it took 2 or 3 versions of Office, but they finally bought a clue...
Actually, I couldn't be more offended by those incipit male bimbo sports-caster wannabes on Battle Bots.
Anyone who is annoyed with Craig Charles has obviously never watched Red Dwarf... (My personal prejudice, but I CAN'T believe that anyone who has seen RD could not love it.)
You know?... DSL is one of many of those technologies that has such incredible potential, but ends up being nearly ruined by legislation or corporate stupidity.
ISDN never really took off mostly due to the INSANE pay-per-bit fee structure... even though it is and was far superior to standard modems.
In DSL's case, It's the STUPIDITY of the local phone companies.. for one thing, the PPPOE (PPP over Ethernet) that many insist on using is unnecessarry, but because phone companies only seem to understand virtual circuits.
I live under 2000' from my local Central Office, and so when Verizon told me my local loop was good for their top level 7.1Mbps down and 640Kbps Up, I signed right up. Due to various issues with their "supported operating systems" and their insistance of using PPPOE that was several versions behind the current level, I ws never able to get it to work and had them cancel the whole thing.
My first reaction was, "Oh geez, there goes privacy." but as I read the article, I realized what others have posted here - the range is not going to get much bigger than that of those anti-shoplifting scanners in yer local Barnes and Noble.
I think it comes down to "No thing in and of itself is evil, but its manner of usage may make it so."
Now, with that said... IF some smartass actually comes up with some kind of cellular system where the limited range of the transmitter is made up by having a grid of LOTS of receivers, I'll get worried. Instead of taking up arms, the geeks of the world should unite and take up soldering irons against our oppressors!
Well, my big problem with all this is that with Netscape 6's rather poor "plays nicely with older code" performance, coupled with the 25Million or so AOL users, the NEWER stuff is currently causing more problems than the tried-and-true.
Seriously, Netscape6 seems to operate on entirely different rules of how to implement HTML... I have seen pages work fine in Opera5 and fall apart in NS6.
I may not win many points by saying this, but I strongly disagree with those in the "HTML should only describe the document structure, not lay it out" camp. I mean, the ability to force the page to lay out as a designer sees fit is central to the functioning of many sites, both commercial and non-commercial. Yet, the HTML standards people will tell us that we need to do it with style sheets and with desctiptive markup - the end result of that is that we either have to do all sorts of user agent detection and redirection to different pages optimized for particular agents, or else live with not being able to predict how the page will look for different segments of your user population.
Honestly, the web seems to work well the way its been going - those who REALLY want to be HTML purists are free to follow their hearts and have pages that 95% of visitors will not know or care that they have been given a document that they can control the presentation on, and those of us who are building/maintaining big commercial sites can tell our marketing folks, "Yeah, anyone using IE4-5.x, IE4.x, or AOL 4-5 should have nearly the same experience on our site, and that is about 80% of our users."
Sounds fair to me.
"When all else fails... Lower your standards"
-Goat
What people seem to be failing to grasp is that this whole.NET thing is only what MS would LIKE to see happen. Look at how many times in the past they've come out with some new product that they truly, honestly believed would change the face of computing, and due to price or performance or conplexity or any other number of things, has just completely flopped... Remember MS BOB??? Look at WebTV... look at how they kept trying to "steal" the internet by co-opting standards with their own proprietary extensions and "enhancements" and failing (Visual J++ Early MS Internet Explorer, Front Page extensions)
Two words: Paper Tiger
Maybe big businesses (the main profit center for M$) will go for this subscription based stuff if it can be shown to bring down TCO, but honestly, I think those that go for it will just be trading one set of problems (keeping lots of users up to date and functioning) for another set (maintaining a big enough and reliable enough bandwidth pipeline to handle hundreds or thousands of users doing all their work over the net).
Besides, with the Microsoft record of poor security, would any sane company want to risk having all their corporate info (accounting, documents, spreadsheets, email, etc...) and mission-critical files at the mercy of the internet?(especially MS's concept of the internet) I mean, yeah, everything can be set up to run on VPNs or run SSL or something, but it juse seems risky to me.
On the other end of things, I bet John Q. WindowsUser who didn't get off Win3.1 until 1999 will just figure that their Works Suite2000 and Windows98 will do just fine for quite some time.
On the topic of John Q. WindowsUser, I bet I know why adoption of Office 2000 is so slow - LOOK AT THE EFFING PRICE!!! I mean, at something like $650 a copy($350 for the UPGRADE), I think MS has invented possibly the best incentive for software stagnation and/or piracy that has ever existed. If I hadn't been able to get my employer to upgrade mine, I would NEVER have bothered.
6 more words: Screw you guys, I'm installing Linux
I used to work for a newspaper where part of my job was maintaining 16 PDP-11's... LOTS of blinkity lights which could, at a glance, give the experienced tech a good idea what the systems were up to: I miss that.
I am one of those folks who dislikes working on MACs partly because they don't have hard disk activity lights (at least the ones I've used)... I'm a feedback junkie.
Sound feedback (so long as the sounds are subtle) is an excellent way for one to not have to keep constant vigilence on something, but still be able to INSTANTLY know if something out-of-the-ordinary id going on. As long as I get to chose what sound plays and can tell the system which events I am interested in, I think something like this would be worth looking into.
Seeems to me that MS has always believed most strongly in "Security by Obscurity" and that admitting to vulnerabilities is something that is bad for the bottom line. The fact that they aren't just trying to sue anyone who even THINKS bad thoughts about Microsoft is a mystery to me.
They remind me of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal: "...so amazingly stupid that it thinks that if you can't see it, then it can't see you..."
I don't know about you, but no matter how many of these things I try, nothing has yet beat the speed and usability of my good old straight keyboard and a mouse.
I mean, the addition of more buttons and a mouse wheel a-la the M$ Intellimouse Explorer is a definate plus, but the mouse itself is still the fastest way I've found to work.
others may prefer trackballs or touchpads, and that's fine, still others like those bizarre "natural keyboards" that set my teeth on edge...
Final Analysis: These things may be fine for some people, but as far as I can see, if they were looking for the "killer-app" of keyboard input, this ain't it.
I don't know about any of you, but I rather enjoy the irony of the fact that English is fast becoming the Lingua Franca.
But seriously, the greatest benefit to mankind from the internet and computerization is enhanced communication. Geography means nearly nothing to an email or to surfing a web page (though, poor infrastructure(sp?) certainly does)... you certainly can't tell if I'm Black, White, Hispanic, Oriental, etc... without digging a little. (Yes, I know that it's more likely that I'm hispanic if I regularly visit spanish-language sites)
So, if one of the not-directly technology-related changes brought about by the internet is to break down language barriers between people whether they be next door or halfway around the world, I think it's a good thing.
Though, selfishly, I am kind of happy that the language in question is one that I can already read, write, and speak, and that being the case, my argument is somewhat suspect.
It's not that more laws will hurt business or any other conspiracy...
The big problem here is that we have all kinds of laws, but unfortunately, they have no teeth. American politicians are VERY quick to make a new law when some public issue arises, but they are not really concerned with solving the particular problem, they are more interested in LOOKING LIKE THEY DID SOMETHING.
I don't know about any of you, but I don't know if I like the idea that this game is looking at other files on your system.. I mean, how long before some multi-player cheat allows script kiddies to start accessing the data that your game has access to.
Nope, I don't know much about this game other than what I have read here, but I think I'm a little uneasy about it.
Well, For starters, would you REALLY want the government of Communist China to be able to put you on trial just because you posted something critical of their government here in the US? After all, just because saying that China has a corrupt government is legal here in the States, it does not mean that it's legal in China.
If we were to say that if something is illegal somewhere in the world that it should be removed from the net, we might as well pull the plug on all of it.
Whenever I go to a computer show, I notice an awful lot of the copies of MS software clearly say "For distribution only with new computers" read, OEM software. However, we all know that these versions work just as well as the full proced versions.
This new scheme of theirs would probably put a big dent in the "Gray Market" for OEM versions of their products
Of course, before you jump on me, I personally feel this "subscription based" Office is really insulting, and it is yet another straw on that camel's back... Linux here I come.
Okay, If the French courts or government want to stop their citizens from accessing Yahoo, let them go at it. Let them censor their net access until the cows come home, but why must they insist that Yahoo do this?
If Yahoo France has a physical presense within the country, then I see no problem with rulings and regulations of them, but for a French court to order Yahoo Inc. to do ANYTHING is absurd. If they truly feel that something needs to be done, let the French Government order all French ISPs (which are probably government owned anyway) to block access to Yahoo and any other offensive content they wish.
With the global nature of the Internet, and with vastly different standards of legal / illegal speach, the only sane way to handle the debate of "illegal content" vs "legal content" is for each country to say what kind of content can be physically hosted within its borders, and what is legal/illegal for people within their borders to view.
Hopefully, Yahoo, Inc. will have the backbone to fight this stupidity... I mean, what if it is also against French law to say that the French Government is a bunch of IDIOTS?? Now, I am an American citizen and I have posted this statement to a site hosted in the US from a computer located within the US... Who here would argue that it would be just for a French Court to find me guilty of that crime. IDIOTS... ya hear that? IDIOTS!!!!. There, see you in 5 to 10.
What really bugs me is the bit about how Rambus participated in open standards meetings and apparently took part in creating those standards without mentioning its patents to anyone... the Conspiracy Monger in me has a new way to get rich:
get the patent on something but be quiet about it
Sit in on an open standards panel, and sprinkle in a few bits and pieces of your patented ideas
Wait until the standard becomes universally accepted and that everyone assumes its safe to use the information because it's a standard
(and this is the twisted bit) Make a shocked public announcement that this standard has used ideas that you have patented and sue everyone in site
Ahh, I see it all so clearly. now, all I need is a terriffic idea, a patent, enough status to be asked to participate on a standards panel, and a team of lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why I love buying old police cars - they rip out lots of those happy little devices and they never seem to get back in the vehicle when they auction them off.
+++++++++++++++++++++
The PVR (both TiVo and ReplayTV) hacking community is really quite a large and active...
Here are some exceptionally helpful resources:
Have fun...
+++++++++++++++++++++
I think this is kinda dirty pool on AOL/TW's part... I bet the real reason they're doing it is to save on QA and regression testing - after all, if their entire employee base is testing their product day in and day out, it will mean they can pinkslip all those useless Quality Assurance people...
Oh, wait, I forgot - from the way their products run, it's pretty obvious they never had anyone QA their software and email systems.
+++++++++++++++++++++
As a Network Admin, I have been pretty happy with Windows 2000 overall.... but the more I hear about XP, the more I think I will just sit and wait for consumer outcry to kill it off.
Look at the &*$^% paperclip - it took 2 or 3 versions of Office, but they finally bought a clue...
Linux is lookin' better to me every day.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Actually, I couldn't be more offended by those incipit male bimbo sports-caster wannabes on Battle Bots.
Anyone who is annoyed with Craig Charles has obviously never watched Red Dwarf... (My personal prejudice, but I CAN'T believe that anyone who has seen RD could not love it.)
+++++++++++++++++++++
My only thought here, not being at all an expert on cryptography, but here goes...
The one problem I have with "Unbreakable" is that it sounds a lot like "Unsinkable"...
As Dr.Who once said: "... and what's wrong with 'unsinkable?'... `Nothing`, said the iceburg to the Titanic"
+++++++++++++++++++++
You know?... DSL is one of many of those technologies that has such incredible potential, but ends up being nearly ruined by legislation or corporate stupidity.
ISDN never really took off mostly due to the INSANE pay-per-bit fee structure... even though it is and was far superior to standard modems.
In DSL's case, It's the STUPIDITY of the local phone companies.. for one thing, the PPPOE (PPP over Ethernet) that many insist on using is unnecessarry, but because phone companies only seem to understand virtual circuits.
I live under 2000' from my local Central Office, and so when Verizon told me my local loop was good for their top level 7.1Mbps down and 640Kbps Up, I signed right up. Due to various issues with their "supported operating systems" and their insistance of using PPPOE that was several versions behind the current level, I ws never able to get it to work and had them cancel the whole thing.
Such potential... such dissapointment.
+++++++++++++++++++++
My first reaction was, "Oh geez, there goes privacy." but as I read the article, I realized what others have posted here - the range is not going to get much bigger than that of those anti-shoplifting scanners in yer local Barnes and Noble.
I think it comes down to "No thing in and of itself is evil, but its manner of usage may make it so."
Now, with that said... IF some smartass actually comes up with some kind of cellular system where the limited range of the transmitter is made up by having a grid of LOTS of receivers, I'll get worried. Instead of taking up arms, the geeks of the world should unite and take up soldering irons against our oppressors!
Vive La Resisters!
+++++++++++++++++++++
Well, my big problem with all this is that with Netscape 6's rather poor "plays nicely with older code" performance, coupled with the 25Million or so AOL users, the NEWER stuff is currently causing more problems than the tried-and-true.
Seriously, Netscape6 seems to operate on entirely different rules of how to implement HTML... I have seen pages work fine in Opera5 and fall apart in NS6.
I may not win many points by saying this, but I strongly disagree with those in the "HTML should only describe the document structure, not lay it out" camp. I mean, the ability to force the page to lay out as a designer sees fit is central to the functioning of many sites, both commercial and non-commercial. Yet, the HTML standards people will tell us that we need to do it with style sheets and with desctiptive markup - the end result of that is that we either have to do all sorts of user agent detection and redirection to different pages optimized for particular agents, or else live with not being able to predict how the page will look for different segments of your user population.
Honestly, the web seems to work well the way its been going - those who REALLY want to be HTML purists are free to follow their hearts and have pages that 95% of visitors will not know or care that they have been given a document that they can control the presentation on, and those of us who are building/maintaining big commercial sites can tell our marketing folks, "Yeah, anyone using IE4-5.x, IE4.x, or AOL 4-5 should have nearly the same experience on our site, and that is about 80% of our users."
Sounds fair to me.
"When all else fails... Lower your standards"
-Goat
+++++++++++++++++++++
What people seem to be failing to grasp is that this whole .NET thing is only what MS would LIKE to see happen. Look at how many times in the past they've come out with some new product that they truly, honestly believed would change the face of computing, and due to price or performance or conplexity or any other number of things, has just completely flopped ... Remember MS BOB??? Look at WebTV... look at how they kept trying to "steal" the internet by co-opting standards with their own proprietary extensions and "enhancements" and failing (Visual J++ Early MS Internet Explorer, Front Page extensions)
Two words: Paper Tiger
Maybe big businesses (the main profit center for M$) will go for this subscription based stuff if it can be shown to bring down TCO, but honestly, I think those that go for it will just be trading one set of problems (keeping lots of users up to date and functioning) for another set (maintaining a big enough and reliable enough bandwidth pipeline to handle hundreds or thousands of users doing all their work over the net).
Besides, with the Microsoft record of poor security, would any sane company want to risk having all their corporate info (accounting, documents, spreadsheets, email, etc...) and mission-critical files at the mercy of the internet?(especially MS's concept of the internet) I mean, yeah, everything can be set up to run on VPNs or run SSL or something, but it juse seems risky to me.
On the other end of things, I bet John Q. WindowsUser who didn't get off Win3.1 until 1999 will just figure that their Works Suite2000 and Windows98 will do just fine for quite some time.
On the topic of John Q. WindowsUser, I bet I know why adoption of Office 2000 is so slow - LOOK AT THE EFFING PRICE!!! I mean, at something like $650 a copy($350 for the UPGRADE), I think MS has invented possibly the best incentive for software stagnation and/or piracy that has ever existed. If I hadn't been able to get my employer to upgrade mine, I would NEVER have bothered.
6 more words: Screw you guys, I'm installing Linux
+++++++++++++++++++++
Big square metal box, sharp 90 degree corners - looks like carpal tunnel syndrome just BEGGING to happen if you ask me.
+++++++++++++++++++++
I used to work for a newspaper where part of my job was maintaining 16 PDP-11's ... LOTS of blinkity lights which could, at a glance, give the experienced tech a good idea what the systems were up to: I miss that.
I am one of those folks who dislikes working on MACs partly because they don't have hard disk activity lights (at least the ones I've used)... I'm a feedback junkie.
Sound feedback (so long as the sounds are subtle) is an excellent way for one to not have to keep constant vigilence on something, but still be able to INSTANTLY know if something out-of-the-ordinary id going on. As long as I get to chose what sound plays and can tell the system which events I am interested in, I think something like this would be worth looking into.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Seeems to me that MS has always believed most strongly in "Security by Obscurity" and that admitting to vulnerabilities is something that is bad for the bottom line. The fact that they aren't just trying to sue anyone who even THINKS bad thoughts about Microsoft is a mystery to me.
They remind me of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal: "...so amazingly stupid that it thinks that if you can't see it, then it can't see you..."
+++++++++++++++++++++
I don't know about you, but no matter how many of these things I try, nothing has yet beat the speed and usability of my good old straight keyboard and a mouse.
I mean, the addition of more buttons and a mouse wheel a-la the M$ Intellimouse Explorer is a definate plus, but the mouse itself is still the fastest way I've found to work.
others may prefer trackballs or touchpads, and that's fine, still others like those bizarre "natural keyboards" that set my teeth on edge...
Final Analysis: These things may be fine for some people, but as far as I can see, if they were looking for the "killer-app" of keyboard input, this ain't it.
+++++++++++++++++++++
I don't know about any of you, but I rather enjoy the irony of the fact that English is fast becoming the Lingua Franca.
But seriously, the greatest benefit to mankind from the internet and computerization is enhanced communication. Geography means nearly nothing to an email or to surfing a web page (though, poor infrastructure(sp?) certainly does)... you certainly can't tell if I'm Black, White, Hispanic, Oriental, etc... without digging a little. (Yes, I know that it's more likely that I'm hispanic if I regularly visit spanish-language sites)
So, if one of the not-directly technology-related changes brought about by the internet is to break down language barriers between people whether they be next door or halfway around the world, I think it's a good thing.
Though, selfishly, I am kind of happy that the language in question is one that I can already read, write, and speak, and that being the case, my argument is somewhat suspect.
+++++++++++++++++++++
You know, I was thinking the same thing... That was a GREAT Nova too.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Nice fnord Picture there, but fnord could that article have fnord mentioned the word fnord "Subaru" a little more? fnord
+++++++++++++++++++++
It's not that more laws will hurt business or any other conspiracy...
The big problem here is that we have all kinds of laws, but unfortunately, they have no teeth. American politicians are VERY quick to make a new law when some public issue arises, but they are not really concerned with solving the particular problem, they are more interested in LOOKING LIKE THEY DID SOMETHING.
+++++++++++++++++++++
I don't know about any of you, but I don't know if I like the idea that this game is looking at other files on your system.. I mean, how long before some multi-player cheat allows script kiddies to start accessing the data that your game has access to.
Nope, I don't know much about this game other than what I have read here, but I think I'm a little uneasy about it.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Well, For starters, would you REALLY want the government of Communist China to be able to put you on trial just because you posted something critical of their government here in the US? After all, just because saying that China has a corrupt government is legal here in the States, it does not mean that it's legal in China.
If we were to say that if something is illegal somewhere in the world that it should be removed from the net, we might as well pull the plug on all of it.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Yes, a Seperate and Distinct Culture... oh wait, that's Quebec.... hmmm NO WONDER it sounded familiar!
+++++++++++++++++++++
Whenever I go to a computer show, I notice an awful lot of the copies of MS software clearly say "For distribution only with new computers" read, OEM software. However, we all know that these versions work just as well as the full proced versions.
This new scheme of theirs would probably put a big dent in the "Gray Market" for OEM versions of their products
Of course, before you jump on me, I personally feel this "subscription based" Office is really insulting, and it is yet another straw on that camel's back... Linux here I come.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Okay, If the French courts or government want to stop their citizens from accessing Yahoo, let them go at it. Let them censor their net access until the cows come home, but why must they insist that Yahoo do this?
If Yahoo France has a physical presense within the country, then I see no problem with rulings and regulations of them, but for a French court to order Yahoo Inc. to do ANYTHING is absurd. If they truly feel that something needs to be done, let the French Government order all French ISPs (which are probably government owned anyway) to block access to Yahoo and any other offensive content they wish.
With the global nature of the Internet, and with vastly different standards of legal / illegal speach, the only sane way to handle the debate of "illegal content" vs "legal content" is for each country to say what kind of content can be physically hosted within its borders, and what is legal/illegal for people within their borders to view.
Hopefully, Yahoo, Inc. will have the backbone to fight this stupidity... I mean, what if it is also against French law to say that the French Government is a bunch of IDIOTS?? Now, I am an American citizen and I have posted this statement to a site hosted in the US from a computer located within the US... Who here would argue that it would be just for a French Court to find me guilty of that crime. IDIOTS... ya hear that? IDIOTS!!!!. There, see you in 5 to 10.
+++++++++++++++++++++
What really bugs me is the bit about how Rambus participated in open standards meetings and apparently took part in creating those standards without mentioning its patents to anyone... the Conspiracy Monger in me has a new way to get rich:
Ahh, I see it all so clearly. now, all I need is a terriffic idea, a patent, enough status to be asked to participate on a standards panel, and a team of lawyers.
+++++++++++++++++++++
All I can think about is how great Half-Life would look at that kind of resolution.
+++++++++++++++++++++