I've been working as one of these MS "evangelist" people for over a year now, and I regularly discuss F/OSS issues with customers.
Are you doing that right now by reading and posting to/. during business/working hours? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I really want to know. It used to be a conspiracy theory that Microsoft employees would astroturf slashdot in an attempt to skew community discussion to be more favorable towards them, I'm just wondering if there's any kernel of truth to that.
If you were just Joe Programmer at Microsoft, that's one thing, but you said your job is to be an "evangelist." I'm curious what that job entails.
Yes, there are some Linux fanboys who only use it because they think it's 31337 or whatever (just like there are some Windows fanboys who do the same thing). But most of us are just interested in stuff that "works for them." Of course "works for them" is very subjective. What makes me more productive might not be the same for you. I might need some license-free, royalty-free, scalable system to build into an embedded device. You might need an IDE that can crank out a GUI to an app in 2 minutes. And one size certainly does not fit all. It would just be helpful if Microsoft would stop pretending that it did.
Yeah, it would never happen, because, as you mention, there are too many NDAs, restrictive licenses and copyrights tied up in OS/2's code.
Which is a shame, really, because releasing the source would not only give eternal life to OS/2, it would also vastly improve the other free software out there by allowing them to integrate (or at least port) portions of OS/2 to their systems. Linux might be able to add support to run OS/2 binaries or learn how its scheduler handles pre-emptive or realtime tasking.
Unfortunately, since OS/2 is closed source, the product will eventually die off when the hardware that can run it becomes obsolete. This is one of the real unfortunate sides to closed source software -- when its owner abandons it, it's dead.
The article is just about remembering Netscape. Why does remembering Netscape have to be a competition as to what was more influential in the birth of the web?
And wasn't Marc Andresson, the creator of Mosaic, also Vice-President of Netscape? So let's not fly off the handle with our evil-corporation theories here.
'Hacking in its purest form is not about compensation or about wrecking a Web site. Hacking in its pure form is to show what you can do.'
That's it exactly. Hacking is about putting your skills and knowledge to the test. Such as kernel hacking or writing a device driver without any specs.
Cracking is about breaking into a system. It might require some hacking, but it can also be done by script kiddies.
This "Blow to Linux" issue is just blowing smoke. If FREE Solaris for the x86 wasn't a blow to Linux, then $115 Mac OS X won't be a blow to Linux.
Companies don't use Linux because they like the UI. Companies go with Linux because it's highly customizeable, they have full access to the source and there are no royalties or licensing fees. Mac-Intel won't impact any desktop Linux users because you won't be able to run Mac OS X on an Intel whitebox.
Sure Intel's making the CPU, but what's the architecture going to be? 32bit/x86 is on its way out. Is it going to be IA64? Or will Intel be taking over the G5 line? Or is it a whole new CPU (G6)?
The 32 bit x86 processor line is approaching EOL (end-of-life), so it's extremely unlikely that Apple wants to buy a dying line of CPU's. The question is, will Intel supply Apple IA64's? Or will they takeover the G5 line from IBM? Or will they develop an entirely new processor (G6)?
Taking over the G5 line doesn't seem that farfetched. In today's NY times article on the subject, they reported that losing Apple isn't considered a major loss for IBM; and no one else out there is buying PowerPC chips.
My gut reaction to the.XXX domain was "hey what a great idea." But then I remembered Lawrence Lessig's excellent book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He mentioned exactly what you just did: if pr0n sites start broadcasting that they're pr0n sites, they'll be blocked by ISPs and overzealous community groups faster than you can say "domineering."
He suggests an alternative mechanism where the user requests the type of content they do not wish to see, and the server responds appropriately. So if the user's browser sends:
GET / HTTP/1.1 Site: www.sex.com Filter: no-pr0n
Then the server would respond:
Status: 404
This then puts the ball in the pr0n providers court to determine whether or not to respond to filter requests, but in the interests of being good netizens, they most likely would. It also means the end user determines what they want and don't want to see and it blocks any intermediaries from meddling.
As a quick aside, he also mentions that we shouldn't go too nuts with the filtering because there's an inherent societal benefit in not letting people just get information they only agree with. If people are exposed to contrary beliefs, it can help break down prejudices and preconceptions.
[faced with a 20th century computer] Scotty: Computer. Computer?
[Bones hands him a mouse and he speaks into it] Scotty: Hello, computer. Dr. Nichols: Just use the keyboard. Scotty: Keyboard. How quaint.
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.
I'm sorry, why are we mucking with Driver's Licenses? Isn't issuing and regulating DLs the purview of the states? Especially when we already have a federally issued and regulated ID called a passport!!!
Right now the $2.95 an article is a bit steep -- and you don't get the pictures from the original article.
But $50 for unlimited access to anything in the past year sounds pretty good. Sure, nothing can beat Lexis-Nexus, but LN is EXPENSIVE -- and they only store text. If the NYT deal offered pictures, and maybe archived AP content, $50/year sounds like a good deal to me.
I agree, this isn't a "social contract" type of relationship. It's more of an arms race -- and there are lunatics on both sides.
Some advertisers think that the only way to sell to people is to get in their face, and demand their attention like a screaming child. Hence, you get crappy ad formats like Eyeblaster and Pointroll. This is a way to piss people off, more than a way to induce them to buy your product, and I think their high click rates are only due to people trying to find the "Close" button to make the ad go away. Fortunately, not all advertisers are like this. Many are starting to recognize that something big and flashy is only "cool" once and otherwise subtle and contextual is really the only way to endear you to your customers online.
Meanwhile, some users think that there should be NO ads on the internet. They think that it's their right to access their favorite sites for free and they shouldn't be bothered with the ads that actually pay for the site to exist. Many content publishers work hard to make sure their ads aren't obtrusive, fit well within their site and they fight back against the Bad Advertisers (see above) by refusing their business -- but that doesn't matter to these users. They demand free stuff!
Fortunately users and advertisers recognize there is a middle ground, and so there's still a lot of harmony in the advertising-supported-website / good-user-experience world.
But the lunatics on both sides are forcing the issue to a head. They're starting an arms race, between the AdBlock/FlashBlock software, and designing a site around advertising (instead of vice-versa). If these people keep pushing it, soon lots more free sites will be entirely done in flash (or some other proprietary format) where you can't disable the ads; and the ads will become the content itself. Increasing product placements on tv shows are just a natural evolution of advertising supported broadcasters losing money from increasing use of commercial skipping systems. Pay-tv like HBO is one answer but not the answer to everything. There can be a middle ground, but both sides have to work for it.
How is this different from the RIAA going after its infringers? In both cases, they're intellectual property violations.
Who is saying it's different? I don't have anything against the RIAA suing copyright violators. That's HOW you protect copyright. Same with the GPL, FSF and other attorneys need to sue violators who steal GPL code. There is no difference.
OTOH, Digital Restrictions Management is NOT how you enforce copyright. The principal of first sale is at work here and DRM TAKES AWAY consumers' rights. But going after individual violators in the courts is fair game. Otherwise, how are you supposed to protect your copyright?
I'm told in one situation that copyright is flawed and evil...
Copyright is certainly flawed. 90 years + the life of the author is TOO LONG. It should be closer to patents' lifespan.
I've had good experience with Joker.com (German based) for the past 5 years. Prices are $12 USD per domain per year, they provide registration for all the standard TLD's (org, net, com) and the crap TLD's (biz, info):). Management is all through a self service web UI (renew/transfer/update/etc).
At the company I work for (a large-ish company you've probably heard of), we don't return any dead drives. If a drive is non-functioning, the platters get incinerated and the rest is recycled.
The reason they're having a 2nd shuttle standby is in case the first one suffers damage that makes it unsafe to land (ala the Columbia shuttle).
What I want to know is, why not just pack a capsule into the shuttle's cargo bay? The cargo bay can hold a school bus, so they've got plenty of room to stick a Gemini capsule in there as backup, and still have room for satellites or whatever else they're hauling.
Back when I was a kid I used to hate DST. Of course this was solely because I didn't like the change -- I didn't even consider the benefits of DST -- likewise, I loved going off DST because I got an extra hour of sleep (also forgetting that I lost an hour of daylight).
Now that I'm an adult, I actually like DST. Sure it's a pain in the ass to set the clocks -- and I still don't like the getting up early, but it's only 2 days a year. Plus, whenever I travel between the east coast and the west coast, I have to adjust to the 3 hour difference anyway, so 1 hour is nothing! Having an extra hour of daylight in the evenings is really great -- when I come home from work I can still go running in the daylight; or sit in the hammock in the yard; or go to the outdoor pool (it stays open later). Sleep is great, but having "more" evening after work is even better.
Hawaii is 20 degrees from the equator, the sun rises and sets at almost the same time of day every day of the year. It's also why Hawaii has the same temperature ~80F every day of the year.
SPAM is a MAJOR problem. Some people seem to think it's just a minor nuisance that they need to delete 1 or 2 e-mails every day. They either don't know or care that SPAM sucks up bandwidth, wastes disk space and overloads many a mail system with crap. As long as it's only a minor inconvenience to the end user, they think it's no big deal.
MAPS is being harsh, yes. But too many sysadmins (and now, WAAAAAY too many zombie computer owners) are unwilling to do anything to combat this. So if MAPS blacklisting everyone in an IP block is a way to get the ISP to wake up and deal with the problem on their network, I say more power to them.
I sympathize with this guy's plight (especially since it sounds like he was just a bystander) but his ISP was lax -- and it might have just ignored the whole thing altogether if MAPS hadn't taken action as radical as this. What this really says is that he either needs to demand that ISP enforce stricter no-spam policies or he needs to take his business elsewhere.
I don't have any pity for the few (if any) legitimate users of spam haven networks like Optigate or Genesis II having their e-mails blocked. Spammers are willing to go the extra mile, that's why they're winning.
I can sympathize with your refrigerator problem, I had a harddrive controller die in my laptop one month after my warranty expired. Now I always buy the extended warranty and put all major purchases on my American Express card (double's all effective warranties for products < $10k) for big ticket items.
As for your $40 vs. $10 question -- I don't consider cut-rate product reviews worth anything. When I'm looking for a product review, I want an honest, unbiased report. Saving myself a couple of bucks on the report isn't worth anything if I'm going to get burned because the critic was accepting kickbacks.
And I do consider CR's reviews to be more honest because they buy what they test. The $26/year for Consumer Reports is WELL worth it. Ethically, they are above the board. No one else even comes close. That's what matters from a reviewer.
I'd take overzealous MAPS investigator over being deluged with SPAM any day. You said it yourself:
and all because of a few spam complaints that weren't dealt with quickly enough
So you admit, that you were relaying SPAM -- which hurts everyone on the internet. And yet you're upset because you were inconvienced by servers which check MAPS refusing to accept your mail for a couple of days.
I think MAPS should go further and recommend a 1 week penalty (after fix, of course) for all servers which relay SPAM -- just to make sure they're really fixed.
It's more than just avoiding the appearance of impropriety.
If you actually BUY the product you are reviewing, you're subject to the same likelihood of manufacturing defects, poor workmanship or shipping/transporting accidents as anyone else who buys it -- so you can work that into your review to give an overall impression of what a REAL consumer will face if they buy the product.
If you're testing a product that was specially given to you by the manufacturer, they want as favorable a review as possible, so your product may have been specially checked for defects, or have extra durability built in, and it will likely arrive insured by special courier or some other express guaranteed delivery -- not representative of the average customer experience at all.
IMHO, Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) is THE authority when it comes to honest, reliable and unbiased reviews.
But with current oil prices, more and more people will be tempted to use cheaper -- and cleaner -- sources of energy.
Not to ruin the happy feelings here, but people are only interested in cheaper, not greener. Not everybody feels that way, mind you. But certainly a majority of people do. If the majority was interested in greener, CAFE standards wouldn't be stuck at 24mpg and they wouldn't have a bullshit "light truck" exemption.
Don't get me wrong, I think we should be thinking greener. One of the reasons I bought my car was that it gets 30mpg. And I think gas prices should be at least $4 a gallon -- there's currently a huge disconnect between the cost of gas and the cost to the environment and public health. But in our society, people will drive 3 blocks rather than walk. They'd switch to coal burning cars if it was cheaper.
That's the last hurdle energy efficiency needs to overcome, the economic one.
Btw -- you're not off base. I completely agree. Oil is for making plastics, not for wasting on transportation.
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If you were just Joe Programmer at Microsoft, that's one thing, but you said your job is to be an "evangelist." I'm curious what that job entails.
Yes, there are some Linux fanboys who only use it because they think it's 31337 or whatever (just like there are some Windows fanboys who do the same thing). But most of us are just interested in stuff that "works for them." Of course "works for them" is very subjective. What makes me more productive might not be the same for you. I might need some license-free, royalty-free, scalable system to build into an embedded device. You might need an IDE that can crank out a GUI to an app in 2 minutes. And one size certainly does not fit all. It would just be helpful if Microsoft would stop pretending that it did.
Yeah, it would never happen, because, as you mention, there are too many NDAs, restrictive licenses and copyrights tied up in OS/2's code.
Which is a shame, really, because releasing the source would not only give eternal life to OS/2, it would also vastly improve the other free software out there by allowing them to integrate (or at least port) portions of OS/2 to their systems. Linux might be able to add support to run OS/2 binaries or learn how its scheduler handles pre-emptive or realtime tasking.
Unfortunately, since OS/2 is closed source, the product will eventually die off when the hardware that can run it becomes obsolete. This is one of the real unfortunate sides to closed source software -- when its owner abandons it, it's dead.
That would be really funny if the prompt read, "Press any key" and every key on the keyboard changed to read "Any". :)
Besides, it's not like Tim Berners-Lee has gone forgotten on slashdot... Or Mosaic.
And wasn't Marc Andresson, the creator of Mosaic, also Vice-President of Netscape? So let's not fly off the handle with our evil-corporation theories here.
Cracking is about breaking into a system. It might require some hacking, but it can also be done by script kiddies.
Companies don't use Linux because they like the UI. Companies go with Linux because it's highly customizeable, they have full access to the source and there are no royalties or licensing fees. Mac-Intel won't impact any desktop Linux users because you won't be able to run Mac OS X on an Intel whitebox.
Sure Intel's making the CPU, but what's the architecture going to be? 32bit/x86 is on its way out. Is it going to be IA64? Or will Intel be taking over the G5 line? Or is it a whole new CPU (G6)?
Taking over the G5 line doesn't seem that farfetched. In today's NY times article on the subject, they reported that losing Apple isn't considered a major loss for IBM; and no one else out there is buying PowerPC chips.
He suggests an alternative mechanism where the user requests the type of content they do not wish to see, and the server responds appropriately. So if the user's browser sends:
Then the server would respond:This then puts the ball in the pr0n providers court to determine whether or not to respond to filter requests, but in the interests of being good netizens, they most likely would. It also means the end user determines what they want and don't want to see and it blocks any intermediaries from meddling.As a quick aside, he also mentions that we shouldn't go too nuts with the filtering because there's an inherent societal benefit in not letting people just get information they only agree with. If people are exposed to contrary beliefs, it can help break down prejudices and preconceptions.
[faced with a 20th century computer]
Scotty: Computer. Computer?
[Bones hands him a mouse and he speaks into it]
Scotty: Hello, computer.
Dr. Nichols: Just use the keyboard.
Scotty: Keyboard. How quaint.
But $50 for unlimited access to anything in the past year sounds pretty good. Sure, nothing can beat Lexis-Nexus, but LN is EXPENSIVE -- and they only store text. If the NYT deal offered pictures, and maybe archived AP content, $50/year sounds like a good deal to me.
Some advertisers think that the only way to sell to people is to get in their face, and demand their attention like a screaming child. Hence, you get crappy ad formats like Eyeblaster and Pointroll. This is a way to piss people off, more than a way to induce them to buy your product, and I think their high click rates are only due to people trying to find the "Close" button to make the ad go away. Fortunately, not all advertisers are like this. Many are starting to recognize that something big and flashy is only "cool" once and otherwise subtle and contextual is really the only way to endear you to your customers online.
Meanwhile, some users think that there should be NO ads on the internet. They think that it's their right to access their favorite sites for free and they shouldn't be bothered with the ads that actually pay for the site to exist. Many content publishers work hard to make sure their ads aren't obtrusive, fit well within their site and they fight back against the Bad Advertisers (see above) by refusing their business -- but that doesn't matter to these users. They demand free stuff!
Fortunately users and advertisers recognize there is a middle ground, and so there's still a lot of harmony in the advertising-supported-website / good-user-experience world.
But the lunatics on both sides are forcing the issue to a head. They're starting an arms race, between the AdBlock/FlashBlock software, and designing a site around advertising (instead of vice-versa). If these people keep pushing it, soon lots more free sites will be entirely done in flash (or some other proprietary format) where you can't disable the ads; and the ads will become the content itself. Increasing product placements on tv shows are just a natural evolution of advertising supported broadcasters losing money from increasing use of commercial skipping systems. Pay-tv like HBO is one answer but not the answer to everything. There can be a middle ground, but both sides have to work for it.
OTOH, Digital Restrictions Management is NOT how you enforce copyright. The principal of first sale is at work here and DRM TAKES AWAY consumers' rights. But going after individual violators in the courts is fair game. Otherwise, how are you supposed to protect your copyright?
Copyright is certainly flawed. 90 years + the life of the author is TOO LONG. It should be closer to patents' lifespan.I've had good experience with Joker.com (German based) for the past 5 years. Prices are $12 USD per domain per year, they provide registration for all the standard TLD's (org, net, com) and the crap TLD's (biz, info) :). Management is all through a self service web UI (renew/transfer/update/etc).
At the company I work for (a large-ish company you've probably heard of), we don't return any dead drives. If a drive is non-functioning, the platters get incinerated and the rest is recycled.
What I want to know is, why not just pack a capsule into the shuttle's cargo bay? The cargo bay can hold a school bus, so they've got plenty of room to stick a Gemini capsule in there as backup, and still have room for satellites or whatever else they're hauling.
Now that I'm an adult, I actually like DST. Sure it's a pain in the ass to set the clocks -- and I still don't like the getting up early, but it's only 2 days a year. Plus, whenever I travel between the east coast and the west coast, I have to adjust to the 3 hour difference anyway, so 1 hour is nothing! Having an extra hour of daylight in the evenings is really great -- when I come home from work I can still go running in the daylight; or sit in the hammock in the yard; or go to the outdoor pool (it stays open later). Sleep is great, but having "more" evening after work is even better.
Hawaii is 20 degrees from the equator, the sun rises and sets at almost the same time of day every day of the year. It's also why Hawaii has the same temperature ~80F every day of the year.
MAPS is being harsh, yes. But too many sysadmins (and now, WAAAAAY too many zombie computer owners) are unwilling to do anything to combat this. So if MAPS blacklisting everyone in an IP block is a way to get the ISP to wake up and deal with the problem on their network, I say more power to them.
I sympathize with this guy's plight (especially since it sounds like he was just a bystander) but his ISP was lax -- and it might have just ignored the whole thing altogether if MAPS hadn't taken action as radical as this. What this really says is that he either needs to demand that ISP enforce stricter no-spam policies or he needs to take his business elsewhere.
I don't have any pity for the few (if any) legitimate users of spam haven networks like Optigate or Genesis II having their e-mails blocked. Spammers are willing to go the extra mile, that's why they're winning.
As for your $40 vs. $10 question -- I don't consider cut-rate product reviews worth anything. When I'm looking for a product review, I want an honest, unbiased report. Saving myself a couple of bucks on the report isn't worth anything if I'm going to get burned because the critic was accepting kickbacks.
And I do consider CR's reviews to be more honest because they buy what they test. The $26/year for Consumer Reports is WELL worth it. Ethically, they are above the board. No one else even comes close. That's what matters from a reviewer.
I think MAPS should go further and recommend a 1 week penalty (after fix, of course) for all servers which relay SPAM -- just to make sure they're really fixed.
If you actually BUY the product you are reviewing, you're subject to the same likelihood of manufacturing defects, poor workmanship or shipping/transporting accidents as anyone else who buys it -- so you can work that into your review to give an overall impression of what a REAL consumer will face if they buy the product.
If you're testing a product that was specially given to you by the manufacturer, they want as favorable a review as possible, so your product may have been specially checked for defects, or have extra durability built in, and it will likely arrive insured by special courier or some other express guaranteed delivery -- not representative of the average customer experience at all.
IMHO, Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) is THE authority when it comes to honest, reliable and unbiased reviews.
Don't get me wrong, I think we should be thinking greener. One of the reasons I bought my car was that it gets 30mpg. And I think gas prices should be at least $4 a gallon -- there's currently a huge disconnect between the cost of gas and the cost to the environment and public health. But in our society, people will drive 3 blocks rather than walk. They'd switch to coal burning cars if it was cheaper.
That's the last hurdle energy efficiency needs to overcome, the economic one.
Btw -- you're not off base. I completely agree. Oil is for making plastics, not for wasting on transportation.