Tricking people into typing +++ or redirecting command interpreter to their modems com port, uploading infinitely compressed zip files.
Even into the PPP era there were misconfigured modems that didn't need a delay after +++. There were ping utilities that would ping "+++ath0". Go on IRC, find a mod on a channel you didn't like, then ping them to disconnect them.
Or, you can blame the people pirating the movies and music. If they weren't dicks, everyone could use BitTorrent to download all them Linux ISOs.
If they were smart they would use KODI + Exodus Add-on, and get their pirated movie / tv fix without overloading the network with Torrent traffic (I assume linear streaming is better), and eliminate the chances of copyright notices.
Because of the low likely return on a personal infringement case, the likely cost to the potential defendant is a few hundred bucks in legal fees. The *maximum* penalty is $5k, which means the likely award would be far far less, probably around the same is an hour consult to draft a response.
Fuck that. I'm not giving business to a blood sucking lawyer for such a low risk. They don't have the subscriber's information, and likely won't attempt to press charges unless they see a pirate bay being run out of someone's house. I rather risk paying the copyright holder than a lawyer that doesn't do anything.
I've had several notices from the same copyright holder (not the one in the article, but a TV production company). I had a different infringing IP each time, so they can't even pretend to link me. Straight to the trash the notices went.
They have no clue who you are. No one has yet to be prosecuted by this. Even if I have to pay $5k I won't go bankrupt. This has a better payback than betting on a lottery.
It's been 18 years and still nothing. Maybe it's because Google doesn't use Windows? So it looks like you'll be waiting for a very long time.
I remember reading... some time 8-10 years a go... that Google was desperately trying to get their employees off Windows. Something like 66% were using Windows XP internally on their desktops.
For those not familiar with the "notice and notice" scheme, the ISP is required to forward the notice to the subscriber, but does not identify the subscriber to the copyright holder without a court order.
So these notices can be safely discarded, as it's not worth the Copyright holder's time to pursue a court order for a relatively low maximum cap ($5,000). This low cap also prevents the absurd cases seen in the states where grandmas are taken to court for $2,000,000 for a couple Lady Gaga tracks. These notices "seem to be effective" in reducing piracy, so for now it prevents more draconian measures.
However the copyright holders try to trick subscribers with threatening language in the notice to voluntarily identify themselves, and give them money.
I think we pretty much got that with Android Tablets(*). Android (while creating some new issues) did solve a lot that plagued Linux Desktop. Take a flavor of Android, from different manufacturers, across a wide range of versions, download an APK and it works. Play Store providing a better environment to do that.
No end user is expected to have to type in "Sudo apt-get make and make-install" and manually solve dependency issues.
No end user is expected to solve driver issues.
For the majority of tasks people do at home, Android tablets can replace their desktop. Of course they have yet to replace Desktop / Laptops for serious high power work.
I liken to to back in the 80's when there were home computers: Apple II, C64, etc that were simple easy to use machines that would do what most users at home needed, then there were higher power Personal Computers, Mini-computers, workstations, etc for serious work.
*Of course the neckbeards will say when they mean "Linux Desktop" they don't just mean an Open Source OS running Linux kernel like Android, but GNU/Linux with X-Window and crappy window managers.
My issue is with the flavor of the month, particularly on mobile apps and websites. I don't know why there is a drive to re-design the UI every 6 months.
I agree on Ribbon. After getting used to it at my previous job (which really didn't take that long), it felt like a step back when I started at a company that still used Office XP, and it was funny in 2012 to hear the same complaints from 2007 when we moved to Office 2010, though the complaints went away within a few months. While I understand the desire to customize, most of the time Office 2003 ends up looking like this as toolbars get randomly dragged around and random addons get installed. I also can't stand Office 2003's random auto-collapsing menubar as it usually hides the items I'm looking for (though on my computer I always disabled that functionality). With Ribbon in the overwhelming cases buttons don't move so you can sit at a different user's computer and everything is where it should be. They also well implemented hotkeys (ALT+ hotkeys are virtually unchanged from Office 2003).
Microsoft's implementation of Ribbon looks like it's well researched based on most commonly used items before implementation. Outlook wasn't "ribbonized" in 2007, they waited till 2010. Windows explorer wasn't "Ribbonized" until Windows 8. Ribbon automatically compacts itself as the horizontal resolution is decreased. With previous versions of office, toolbars would randomly reorganize themselves and take more vertical resolution. Contrary to popular belief, ribbon takes the same amount of vertical resolution as the default toolbar configuration + menu bar in Office 2003, not more. Ribbon also can collapse (through the "^" on the far right, by double clicking the tab titles, or pressing Ctrl+F1), and will take even less vertical space than 2003, which is dandy when trying to collaborate on a high density spreadsheet on a 1024x768 projector.
I have seen terrible third party implementations of Ribbon, but I think Microsoft has done their homework. They have also learned from their mistakes. When they released 2007, they offered the "Quick Access Toolbar" as a compromise to complete customization. In Office 2010 they moved from the Office "Orb" (trying to mirror the Start button) that people thought was a decoration , to the "File" tab. They also added more customization ability. After Office 2013 with the ALL CAPITAL TABS, and the jarring full screen FILE menu this is questionable.
That said overall Office Ribbon has been fairly consistent since 2007. So if you haven't adjusted after 9 years, I should probably get off your lawn.
Windows 8 I agree the start menu was a disaster. Very jarring for a desktop user to go to the full screen start screen. All start menu folder structure was also lost. Classic shell made short work of that, though it shouldn't require a third party app. Settings are also a disaster. Half are desktop based control panels, have are slide in Metro style menus. Very inconsistent. To their credit the Win+X menu is a nice nod to power users.
Windows 10 replaced the jarring full screen start screen with a mini start screen that still lost the folder structure, has the search feature that was there since Vista (though faster in third party apps like Launchy), and tries to push annoying live content. Windows 10 also still has jarring desktop vs Metro configuration menus, plus the fact that you give up all control of your computer.
The other thing I wonder about is continual refactoring of UI. -CLI -Desktop GUI -Touch GUI
Those are three distinct usage modes that the UI has to be refactored for an app to go between them. I'm not talking about that.
But every time I update apps on my phone, usually they change the UI for no apparent reason other than trying to mimic the latest Android release "lets make them flat ugly colours this time!"
Chrome changes UI at random too "Lets make the 'hamburger menu' three dots now instead of three lines!"
Firefox: Self explanatory.
Apps, programs, and websites keep feeling the need to redesign their UI, usually without any real improvement to user experience.
Meanwhile while Intel US was making the steaming pile of shit known as Netburst / Pentium 4, Intel Israel made "Pentium M", originally designed for laptops, but what eventually became the Core family of processors when Netburst was thrown wholesale into the garbage.
Apple just removed tethering from the iPhone! Totally ridiculous! Next they'll remove ringers, vibration, and screens, and we'll just have a black slab of glassy smooth...
Damn.. That will probably look really fucking good... Shut up and take my money!
That whole "screen" thing really does significantly contribute to the size of a smart phone. Removing it would be revolutionary; nay evolutionary; nay - it would be the iPhone 8:P
You're left with the 3rd generation iPod Shuffle... less the headphone jack.
I have a 20 year old Panasonic Laptop, that at the the time I bought it used (12 years ago), I could not for the life of me find Windows 98 drivers for the Cardbus slot. Panasonic had PDF manuals, other drivers (CD, Graphics, sound), and mentioned names of the files I needed to add to my Windows 98 config.sys, but I couldn't find the files.
I happened to find on Google's Usenet archive a user on a city's buy&sell that bought the same laptop model, struggled to find drivers, then said he found them. Searching recent posts of the same group, the user was still active, and I found his new email address. I emailed him, he had since gotten rid of the laptop, had himself moved to Linux (Mandrake if I recall), but searched his archives and found the drivers. I still owe a beer to a guy in Ottawa.
Since then I always archive a copy of all drivers for a computer when I acquire it. Especially if I have to go through any extraneous effort.
Regular Facebook can be browsed with this very light version... what a joke, at the bottom it says "Install Facebook on your *Phone model* and browse faster". I haven't seen Facebook load this fast in years.
I've been using disa Messenger on my Android. I receive "Facebook Messenger" messages without giving Facebook permission to everything, and without other Facebook notifications.
The other option is to go to www.messenger.com and request Desktop site.
That is what I meant by "e-sign". They rejected it. They could tell because there were several pages requiring signatures, and they were all exactly the same. They can also tell by the size/speed of the transfer. If only the sig is a scanned image the transfer will be much smaller than if the whole page is rasterized.
As much as hospitals charge, do you seriously believe that they aren't staffed up enough to detect fax cheaters?
Could they also tell by the crispness of the fax? I remember being amazed 20 years ago at how aligned and clear things I "printed" with my "fax modem" were. Any time you fax something physical it's every so slightly crooked and jaggy.
10 years ago I remember when the "scanner" on the Multifunction machine at the office actually faxed it, complete with header, and it would end up on the network. I gave up and scanned things with my digital camera.
At my current job, for the past 6 years, I think I've only HAD to send 3 faxes. I usually insult the recipient each time. This works best when they are your customer.
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Can anyone explain why so many pronounced Sysop as Sigh-sop, considering Sysop meant System Operator?
Same reason people pronounce Linux "Line-Ex"
We had a 2400 baud modem. Very familiar with the sounds. Most users are probably familiar with the exact sound of their BBS's phone number:
Click-dial tone-phone number-busy signal-clunk-click-dial tone-phone number-busy signal-clunk-click-dial tone-phone number-busy signal-clunk-click-dial tone-phone number-busy signal-clunk-click-dial tone-phone number-busy signal-clunk-click-dial tone-phone number-busy signal-clunk-click-dial tone-phone number-ring-ring-carrier.
Always very exciting when you finally heard a ring instead of a busy signal.
I also gave a pretty good 2400 baud train up imitation with my voice that could fool some modems.
I also recall being disturbed when the TV show "Halt and catch fire" had modem sounds that were far too advanced for the era.
Tricking people into typing +++ or redirecting command interpreter to their modems com port, uploading infinitely compressed zip files.
Even into the PPP era there were misconfigured modems that didn't need a delay after +++. There were ping utilities that would ping "+++ath0". Go on IRC, find a mod on a channel you didn't like, then ping them to disconnect them.
You should have modified the code to take those fractions of cents, and deposit them in your account.
Or, you can blame the people pirating the movies and music. If they weren't dicks, everyone could use BitTorrent to download all them Linux ISOs.
If they were smart they would use KODI + Exodus Add-on, and get their pirated movie / tv fix without overloading the network with Torrent traffic (I assume linear streaming is better), and eliminate the chances of copyright notices.
Music can just be downloaded off Youtube.
Because of the low likely return on a personal infringement case, the likely cost to the potential defendant is a few hundred bucks in legal fees. The *maximum* penalty is $5k, which means the likely award would be far far less, probably around the same is an hour consult to draft a response.
Fuck that. I'm not giving business to a blood sucking lawyer for such a low risk. They don't have the subscriber's information, and likely won't attempt to press charges unless they see a pirate bay being run out of someone's house. I rather risk paying the copyright holder than a lawyer that doesn't do anything.
I've had several notices from the same copyright holder (not the one in the article, but a TV production company). I had a different infringing IP each time, so they can't even pretend to link me. Straight to the trash the notices went.
They have no clue who you are. No one has yet to be prosecuted by this. Even if I have to pay $5k I won't go bankrupt. This has a better payback than betting on a lottery.
It's been 18 years and still nothing. Maybe it's because Google doesn't use Windows? So it looks like you'll be waiting for a very long time.
I remember reading... some time 8-10 years a go... that Google was desperately trying to get their employees off Windows. Something like 66% were using Windows XP internally on their desktops.
Remember there are companies who store passwords in plaintext. That is not only idiotic, anyone with half a brain knows not to do that.
My mind always boggles when I click a recover password link, and get my old password emailed to me in plain-text.
For those not familiar with the "notice and notice" scheme, the ISP is required to forward the notice to the subscriber, but does not identify the subscriber to the copyright holder without a court order.
So these notices can be safely discarded, as it's not worth the Copyright holder's time to pursue a court order for a relatively low maximum cap ($5,000). This low cap also prevents the absurd cases seen in the states where grandmas are taken to court for $2,000,000 for a couple Lady Gaga tracks. These notices "seem to be effective" in reducing piracy, so for now it prevents more draconian measures.
However the copyright holders try to trick subscribers with threatening language in the notice to voluntarily identify themselves, and give them money.
I think we pretty much got that with Android Tablets(*). Android (while creating some new issues) did solve a lot that plagued Linux Desktop. Take a flavor of Android, from different manufacturers, across a wide range of versions, download an APK and it works. Play Store providing a better environment to do that.
No end user is expected to have to type in "Sudo apt-get make and make-install" and manually solve dependency issues.
No end user is expected to solve driver issues.
For the majority of tasks people do at home, Android tablets can replace their desktop. Of course they have yet to replace Desktop / Laptops for serious high power work.
I liken to to back in the 80's when there were home computers: Apple II, C64, etc that were simple easy to use machines that would do what most users at home needed, then there were higher power Personal Computers, Mini-computers, workstations, etc for serious work.
*Of course the neckbeards will say when they mean "Linux Desktop" they don't just mean an Open Source OS running Linux kernel like Android, but GNU/Linux with X-Window and crappy window managers.
And GIMP is to Paint, as Edlin is to Notepad.
They are getting ready for the "courage" to release the Macbook Wheel
try opening up Netstat or similar on a private network. None of the internet connections list the router's IP as the endpoint.
My issue is with the flavor of the month, particularly on mobile apps and websites. I don't know why there is a drive to re-design the UI every 6 months.
I agree on Ribbon. After getting used to it at my previous job (which really didn't take that long), it felt like a step back when I started at a company that still used Office XP, and it was funny in 2012 to hear the same complaints from 2007 when we moved to Office 2010, though the complaints went away within a few months. While I understand the desire to customize, most of the time Office 2003 ends up looking like this as toolbars get randomly dragged around and random addons get installed. I also can't stand Office 2003's random auto-collapsing menubar as it usually hides the items I'm looking for (though on my computer I always disabled that functionality). With Ribbon in the overwhelming cases buttons don't move so you can sit at a different user's computer and everything is where it should be. They also well implemented hotkeys (ALT+ hotkeys are virtually unchanged from Office 2003).
Microsoft's implementation of Ribbon looks like it's well researched based on most commonly used items before implementation. Outlook wasn't "ribbonized" in 2007, they waited till 2010. Windows explorer wasn't "Ribbonized" until Windows 8. Ribbon automatically compacts itself as the horizontal resolution is decreased. With previous versions of office, toolbars would randomly reorganize themselves and take more vertical resolution. Contrary to popular belief, ribbon takes the same amount of vertical resolution as the default toolbar configuration + menu bar in Office 2003, not more. Ribbon also can collapse (through the "^" on the far right, by double clicking the tab titles, or pressing Ctrl+F1), and will take even less vertical space than 2003, which is dandy when trying to collaborate on a high density spreadsheet on a 1024x768 projector.
I have seen terrible third party implementations of Ribbon, but I think Microsoft has done their homework. They have also learned from their mistakes. When they released 2007, they offered the "Quick Access Toolbar" as a compromise to complete customization. In Office 2010 they moved from the Office "Orb" (trying to mirror the Start button) that people thought was a decoration , to the "File" tab. They also added more customization ability. After Office 2013 with the ALL CAPITAL TABS, and the jarring full screen FILE menu this is questionable.
That said overall Office Ribbon has been fairly consistent since 2007. So if you haven't adjusted after 9 years, I should probably get off your lawn.
Windows 8 I agree the start menu was a disaster. Very jarring for a desktop user to go to the full screen start screen. All start menu folder structure was also lost. Classic shell made short work of that, though it shouldn't require a third party app. Settings are also a disaster. Half are desktop based control panels, have are slide in Metro style menus. Very inconsistent. To their credit the Win+X menu is a nice nod to power users.
Windows 10 replaced the jarring full screen start screen with a mini start screen that still lost the folder structure, has the search feature that was there since Vista (though faster in third party apps like Launchy), and tries to push annoying live content. Windows 10 also still has jarring desktop vs Metro configuration menus, plus the fact that you give up all control of your computer.
I agree on software footprint / resources.
The other thing I wonder about is continual refactoring of UI.
-CLI
-Desktop GUI
-Touch GUI
Those are three distinct usage modes that the UI has to be refactored for an app to go between them. I'm not talking about that.
But every time I update apps on my phone, usually they change the UI for no apparent reason other than trying to mimic the latest Android release "lets make them flat ugly colours this time!"
Chrome changes UI at random too "Lets make the 'hamburger menu' three dots now instead of three lines!"
Firefox: Self explanatory.
Apps, programs, and websites keep feeling the need to redesign their UI, usually without any real improvement to user experience.
Meanwhile while Intel US was making the steaming pile of shit known as Netburst / Pentium 4, Intel Israel made "Pentium M", originally designed for laptops, but what eventually became the Core family of processors when Netburst was thrown wholesale into the garbage.
Intel US at that time was more of a liability.
Apple just removed tethering from the iPhone! Totally ridiculous! Next they'll remove ringers, vibration, and screens, and we'll just have a black slab of glassy smooth...
Damn.. That will probably look really fucking good... Shut up and take my money!
That whole "screen" thing really does significantly contribute to the size of a smart phone. Removing it would be revolutionary; nay evolutionary; nay - it would be the iPhone 8:P
You're left with the 3rd generation iPod Shuffle... less the headphone jack.
I only watched the 1973 movie. But taking place in a future 2022, I assuming it's predicting a world after Trump.
And passing rumors that someone is making an 8-track adapter for their smartphones.
Is someone actually working on this? If not, DIBS! Now to start a kickstarter campaign.
8-track to cassette adapters exist.
Cassette to 3.5mm adapters exist.
Combine the two and you're done
I have a 20 year old Panasonic Laptop, that at the the time I bought it used (12 years ago), I could not for the life of me find Windows 98 drivers for the Cardbus slot. Panasonic had PDF manuals, other drivers (CD, Graphics, sound), and mentioned names of the files I needed to add to my Windows 98 config.sys, but I couldn't find the files.
I happened to find on Google's Usenet archive a user on a city's buy&sell that bought the same laptop model, struggled to find drivers, then said he found them. Searching recent posts of the same group, the user was still active, and I found his new email address. I emailed him, he had since gotten rid of the laptop, had himself moved to Linux (Mandrake if I recall), but searched his archives and found the drivers. I still owe a beer to a guy in Ottawa.
Since then I always archive a copy of all drivers for a computer when I acquire it. Especially if I have to go through any extraneous effort.
Regular Facebook can be browsed with this very light version... what a joke, at the bottom it says "Install Facebook on your *Phone model* and browse faster". I haven't seen Facebook load this fast in years.
https://mbasic.facebook.com/messages
Cool. I've been using the Disa App
I've been using disa Messenger on my Android. I receive "Facebook Messenger" messages without giving Facebook permission to everything, and without other Facebook notifications.
The other option is to go to www.messenger.com and request Desktop site.
That is what I meant by "e-sign". They rejected it. They could tell because there were several pages requiring signatures, and they were all exactly the same. They can also tell by the size/speed of the transfer. If only the sig is a scanned image the transfer will be much smaller than if the whole page is rasterized.
As much as hospitals charge, do you seriously believe that they aren't staffed up enough to detect fax cheaters?
Could they also tell by the crispness of the fax? I remember being amazed 20 years ago at how aligned and clear things I "printed" with my "fax modem" were. Any time you fax something physical it's every so slightly crooked and jaggy.
10 years ago I remember when the "scanner" on the Multifunction machine at the office actually faxed it, complete with header, and it would end up on the network. I gave up and scanned things with my digital camera.
At my current job, for the past 6 years, I think I've only HAD to send 3 faxes. I usually insult the recipient each time. This works best when they are your customer.