"This I just don't understand. Are you saying that if you have an existing Windows server infrastructure, you should be prevented from using Linux servers when that's more suitable?"
I do understand it. He is saying it doesn't benefit anyone except those who want to run Linux under Hyper-V on Windows. It does not improve the Linux kernel in any other way.
It also seems that he doesn't care about people who want to use Windows. Go use it. It doesn't benefit him that you can run Linux on Hyper-V. Frankly, I don't give a fuck either. I'm neither for, nor against it, as long as my compiler doesn't have to touch those code paths.
This certainly doesn't impress me. (Microsoft's "contributions" to the Linux kernel). People on the kernel mailing list who may or may not even contribute one line of code, may contribute more to the Linux kernel than this, in helping to get problems fixed. For example, the guy who does a git bisect to track down a commit that broke something is to be commended more than this. What he does may benefit all users.
Well, that's exactly how things should be dealt with on the Internet. People post rubbish, other people counter it.
I read Slashdot at -1 because I don't really want all the idiotic comments to be censored. I would rather make up my own mind, and see other people's opinions. I like the way Slashdot does this (a rating system that people can use on their own to filter with) instead of having a bunch of small minded nannying moderators going 'round deleting people's posts to protect us from nasty words that we don't agree with.
I am in the Banana Republic of The Harper Government of Canada as well. (Don't expect things to stay the way we like them, with right wing Christian ideology in a position of power)
That's another reason to use third party DNS, as well as TOR for anything that has any possibility at all of being used against you, even by a stretch. I never trust an ISP to respect my privacy. I don't think I do anything wrong but I think to myself "do I want anyone knowing I went to this site?" If the answer is no, I don't go there naked.
Be warned though, using a third party DNS service might get you the short end of the stick with load balancing download services. It's a silly way of doing things, but often the choice is made according to the location of the DNS server that was used to perform the lookup. I have not found this to be a problem, though.
OpenDNS doesn't block anything, if you're just using its DNS servers in place of your ISP's. It's not until you create an account on their web site, add a network and configure the filter settings that it blocks any lookups. You can disable the smart caching, typo corrections, DNS proxying etc. if you register. I choose "none" myself, because I don't want anyone fucking with my name lookups.
I sure as Hell don't trust an ISP's DNS server to return unaltered results, or to return results quickly for that matter. OpenDNS has been working very well for me, for years and I certainly do look up porn sites.
I'm definitely with you on that. The end result is that people will distrust the upgrades and not get the fixes that they need. I don't blame them, for it can be pretty disruptive.
It is going to break extensions for sure, due to versioning alone even if those interfaces haven't changed. It's not like they allow extensions to report compatibility with non existent versions.
I do in house computer service, and in many cases my users are the typical "grandma" (sorry, but it is apt in this case). If I can't set them up with Firefox and have them live in peace, then I'm going to be turning off the updates and they'll get them next time they see me. When I upgraded people to 4.x, I did it properly, upgrading extensions and plugins and set it up with the toolbars the way they are supposed to be etc. so it wouldn't confuse them. If I change something, and it leaves them unable to do something, then it costs me time.
Yes, I agree, the arbitrary version compatibility strings are the problem, for extensions in a lot of cases. A move from 4.x to 5.0 should not actually break many (or any?) extensions, because they haven't changed those interfaces.
If there's no update for an extension that is essential and the versioning doesn't jibe, there's this extension:
That allows you to ignore the compatibility version check, enable disabled extensions and submit "this extension works" or "this extension doesn't work" to developers.
I'm using Firefox 5.0 in Linux (self compiled), but in Windows I use Nightly, because it gives me a 64 bit firefox that gets updates. When Nightly reached a version number that was to disable my Status4Evar addon, I used the tool to enable it again and it's still working with the firefox version being 7.0a1
I agree that it's righteously anal to ban the practice, though it is certainly a distraction. I hadn't been to a movie in many years and I noticed people doing that shit. It was a new phenomenon to me, when I started to go to the movies again. Yes, it did bug me but I can ignore it (just don't look at it... pay attention to the screen).
The biggest problem is, that it distracts people who can think of nothing other than that rude, inconsiderate person texting instead of watching the movie:-)
To be fair, this doesn't sound like your average "fat lady gargling popcorn in front of you, farting, and bitching at her horde of unruly brats" type theater, though. (I'm sure you've all been to that movie theater before lol)
It's too classy a place for the girl in that recording, it seems. (Not to be an elitist, because I hate that shit, but it seems that if she wants to chew her cud and text, she could go to the matinee or something where nobody will notice)
You can also do a whois lookup on the domain name, note the authoritative DNS servers for the domain, and query them directly. I've done that before to find the IP address of a site that had moved, yet the ISP's DNS server was still caching old records. (That doesn't seem to be as common nowadays, but some of the larger ISPs used to be absolute bastards with DNS caching. It often took days before you got updated records.) I am sure that could be done programatically as well.
You could always just take responsibility for your own activities, and secure your network so that others cannot do unwanted things using your Internet service.
It works for me.
I don't need to use other people's wifi networks either. If I need access urgently, I can always pull a 3G stick out of my ass. (In more rural areas, I might have to drive a bit closer to a tower to get a better cellular signal, but it still beats trolling for open wireless networks.) Barring that, I'm always up for a good cup of coffee anyway.
When I first started using Windows 95, to copy a document to my floppy drive I used to go to File/Open in Microsoft Word and browse for the file to right click on it, and use Send To -> 3 1/2 Floppy A. I soon learned that there were different ways of accomplishing the same thing in Windows and mine wasn't the best.
I was exposed to Windows 3.1 before that, but I didn't really understand it until I got my own Windows computer and learned some concepts retroactively. I had an old hand me down IBM XT clone that had DOS and Word Perfect and stuff... I just knew how to turn it on, and press 5 to start Word Perfect from the autoexec.bat/config.sys menu that was set up for me. I learned DOS retroactively too, around the time I was learning to fix Windows 98.
Of course now, I can figure out any GUI program just by clicking around. They don't all have to use the same interface. For example, Gimp 1.x (Mandrake 7... what a great distro that was in 2000) was weird at first, being used to Paint Shop Pro in Windows but everything I was looking for was in the right click menus on the image itself. That's probably one of the more difficult programs to adapt to. Star Office wasn't a problem at all.
I refuse to buy anything blu-ray because of the nasty DRM. I've talked people out of blu-ray drives in computers (isn't that a pain in the ass to get blu-ray playback working... might as well forget it and just do rips. (On some OEM PC's it's difficult without using the factory image.) I've vetoed gift purchases within my family too.
If something I want is only available on blu-ray I'll download blu-ray rips from torrents and fuck them. I'm not buying into blu-ray technology.
Fuck Sony and their PS3 systems too. Sony is the very model of everything I hate, rolled into one.
I obviously don't care what the law says, but I do know what I'm talking about. It's not so much what the law says at this point, but what it doesn't say. The photo was licensed to the original news site and if anything, it is they who made the image available to the public and allowed Google to index it. Find a judge that's going to award royalties to the photographer [i]again[/i] because Google used a low res, scaled down thumbnail image to essentially promote the site, which is considered fair use by all but the likes of you. When you find a court that will take you seriously, then we'll get the letter of the law straightened out.
Be careful what you wish for... we're all getting tired of this sense of entitlement from copyright holders who expect to be paid again and again for the same work, forever.
I'd actually love it if Google just completely delisted these assholes from all of the databases for their whining. What they really want is for the service only to direct people into their hands, without providing any sort of benefit to the reader (Like a summary and thumbnail image so they can decide whether or not they actually want to waste their time going to the sites. That's what it's all about, isn't it?). If they really wanted to keep Google from indexing their content, they would use robots.txt directives, which Google most certainly honours.
As for "the photographer" he's already been paid for the image to be used on the original news site that is being indexed. I doubt that's even his problem anymore. (only in his own mind) Of course Google is going to flip you the bird when you demand money for their thumbnails instead of using existing remedies. They probably do it far more politely than deserved, too.
Any photo posted on the web is copied many times. It's the very nature of it. Any content (including images) posted to the web is going to get indexed, unless the sites tell the bots not to. That's just how it works. If you don't like it, go find another sandbox to play in.
Copyright infringement is a separate concept. Nobody has the right to DEMAND to make a living from some vaporous imaginary property. If you can, that's great, and your product must be worth the money but you're not going to stop people from doing whatever they want. If it's crap, they may download it and discard it but they weren't ever going to pay for it and they never will.
Doing something other than what you demand, with a bunch of 0's and 1's doesn't necessarily make anyone a thief. It infringes on arbitrary laws that protect the owner/creator, but it is not theft, not even conceptually, if it doesn't take their property away from them. (hint: our money that you didn't get to take, never was your property)
If folks really want to use a food analogy, it's more like me coming into a restaurant, ordering food, taking a few bites and refusing to pay for it because it's crap. The only difference in that analogy is that it's perfectly legal for me to refuse to pay for improperly prepared food. They don't make me regurgitate the bites I took either... they'll be assimilated. There are no arbitrary laws that protect a restaurant that serves up a shit sandwich in disguise and expects people to pay for the privilege.
The Internet does expose people to writings that would ordinarily not be published. It exposes writings to people in places where they may not otherwise have access to it. It exposes people to others that they would not otherwise communicate with. It exposes younger people to information and groups or individuals that their parents would try to keep them away from etc. It exposes people to many others who think that that some things are OK, despite them being against catholic values. It is also, for the most part, uncontrolled and uncensored and it's very difficult for them to suppress.
The catholic church has much to fear about the internet... even worse than satanists, it puts their flock in contact with people who know the truth: There are no such things as gods or devils.
Fuck that... Harper needs to go. I don't care if I have to vote for Bozo The Clown and we have to fix it later.
Harper is a danger to our way of life and freedom. His answer is more unfriendly laws and more jails to put all the unhappy, destitute, disaffected people in while his corporatocracy walks all over us.
No, "dumbing down" doesn't just mean making it easier for users, it means changing things to make it easier for users, according to what the developer thinks a user should be, at the expense of making it more difficult for more advanced users, or impossible for them to carry on in the manner they are accustomed to. Taking away their choices.
Windows Vista/7 are like that in their user interface. Gnome is like that. KDE 4 is like that (though in their case, I think it's a matter of adding options later as it's improving in configurability with every release). New versions of Microsoft's programs are often like that (I despise what's become of Microsoft Office for that). Most new PC game titles are like that. (dumbed down like the consoles)
Linux/ARM/Whatever aren't necessarily failing... these technologies aren't trying to dominate the desktop computing scene. It's getting quite tiring to see this time and time again.
If you think Windows is smart for maintaining all that backwards compatibility cruft, think again. Have you ever poked your head into the WinSxS directory? Check all the different versions of runtime libraries stored there, that get called when you run older applications. The size of that directory increases to mammoth proportions as the Windows installation ages, too, as more things get installed and upgraded. Irresponsible gyrations... fuck I hate that crap.
Linux doesn't break old binaries either if they can help it. There are still backwards compatible kernel options that will take you back to libc5, aout binaries. I don't run anything that old, but I've still got stuff from many years ago that still can be made to run, by (at worst) dropping older versions of a few libraries into the program directory and setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Me, pay to watch a limited selection of movies? I don't think so.
I didn't realize it was not an opt-in thing for Netflix though, so thanks for that tidbit. I heard about them offering a silverlight based player a while back. I've always scoffed, because it was a Windows only service with Windows Media Player anyway.
In Canada, you should see the pitiful selection of movies available.
Ed Bott is just a pro-Microsoft troll (usually... though he has done a few good pieces). His job is to piss people off, and generate visitor sessions for ZDNet.
Any "Microsoft App Platform" will be for Windows. Microsoft's definition of targetting code for multiple platforms means multiple versions of Windows. XP, Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit etc.
Funny how their crap doesn't catch on like it used to. For example, they have resorted to forcing Silverlight on people's computers. If you want MSN Messenger, or anything in the Live Essentials suite you get Silverlight. I have yet to see any content I couldn't view for lack of having silverlight. (That doesn't mean there isn't, just that I haven't encountered it. It's really not that popular). No sane developer is going to put their money on that, and risk alienating visitors. There's a reason that Flash is the most widely used technology today and that is because there's a good chance that most all of your visitors have a Flash plugin available. It's the closest thing to multi platform there is, for media content. Flash Player Square allows pure 64 bit browsers to participate too now..Net Framework is rubbish. Fragile, hardware intensive rubbish (They work around that now by having services that run all the time to pre-compile byte code) that produces apps chock full of GUI annoyances. Many computers need to have multiple implementations of it too. 1.1, 3.5 (which covers 2.x) and now 4.
So I think we'll be seeing Firefox survive Internet Explorer 9, or Chrome, or Opera regardless of what nonsense Ed Fucking Bott extrudes from his flabby rectum. With a more level playing field in this day and age, it will remain a viable choice.
I sympathize. Chrome could be a nice browser, but I hate the user interface too much to use it. Some prominent developer once said something to the effect of "If you treat your users like idiots, only idiots will use your software". It's foolish and arrogant to assume that everyone's workflow is the same, or that everyone should change theirs to suit your software.
The user interface is too dumbed down, and it's not configurable enough for me.
I don't care how fast a browser is, if I hate it. I stick with Firefox because I like it, not because it renders some unlikely test case faster. While actually using the browser to read pages, a few milliseconds in rendering time don't really matter. Lagged scrolling sucks though and I find Firefox 4.x to be an improvement over Firefox 3 in Linux, with or without 3D acceleration enabled with MOZ_GLX_IGNORE_BLACKLIST=1 (I use the ATI fglrx driver and while it fails some test elements, it seems to work for real world demos)
The only browsing I do in Windows is to check my forums, download drivers and the occasional game patch so it's unlikely that I'll ever install IE9 (I never open IE as a browser anyway... it sickens me)
The best impression goes to the guy who says "Windoze and Linux boxen" because he's a real person, who probably has some real experience.
But that's just me. I'm not impressed by the use of IT buzzwords. "I worked on all the boxes" is better than "I was a visionary who was entrusted with integration, management, monitoring and analysis of the first and second tier systems" (or some such inflated language for a technician)
You don't have to reinstall from that media. I never use it when I have to "format" people's computers, for that very reason. It puts back all the shitware. Using their product key on the sticker, I do a proper install of Windows and drivers, and I fix them up with free alternatives to things they may have had. (e.g. burning software for their dvd writer that may have come from the OEM, or OpenOffice). When they get it, they have a sensible, non crippling Antivirus program (Antivir is the one I mostly use) and no other rubbish in startup. When they get it back, it feels like a new computer for them. When I do this, they even have more disk space. Not only is there less crap, but I have repartitioned, deleting any OEM partitions with recovery data on them:-)
It does sicken me. Nowadays when someone buys a new computer it can take me 2 to 3 hours to set up, clean up the rubbish, uninstall any 60 day McNorton shit (and run their respective removal tools) and finally do the things the customer actually wants. Most people don't lift a finger and I have to unpack the boxes when I arrive and turn them on for the first time, and accept Eulas and wait half an hour before it goes through the post install gyrations. Fuck... I might as well just redo it.
I would never be happy with a brand name computer personally, but custom builds can't really compete on price which is all the sheeple waddling out of Wally World care about. "Hey, this one in the flyer says Intel too, and it's only $500. That guy is a crook!". They don't perceive the value in paying a little more for better quality hardware. I mean, why would you build a shit computer? It can be done cheaply (note that I'm talking about building/selling/supporting etc. not for personal use), but then it won't be much better than a Comcrap/HP with some crappy SiS chipset anyway. They may as well buy an Acer if they want a budget computer of reasonable quality.
I'm still not really blaming the tool, but the way it was used is the way it was designed to be used. It's a fairly standard configuration by default. (e.g. some hosting providers put that on their dedicated servers configured that way). I said it was a ridiculous "security" situation (in quotes, because it was yet another security measure that thwarted the user), not so much the tool.
Yes, some simple rules that allow communications on the desired ports and not others is fine, and would not be a bottleneck like the (misconfigured?) hardware devices in question, in the article and summary here. I still don't bother with that. I understand, and I know you're right, but not everyone needs to do that. I care more about preventing that from happening, than I do mitigating an intrusion by trying to limit what ports they can use. If someone has root access to start telnet, for example, it's certainly game over. (I know you don't have to be root to start servers listening on non privileged ports but still... I keep pretty close watch over my servers and there is no tomfoolery)
I realize this is pretty obtuse but to me, an internet server is, well, an internet server. A machine that you don't care is exposed to the Internet (again, it depends on the situation as to how serious the box is). Things like PHP worry me more because they can be the source of the intrusion in the first place.
However, that's not what Port Sentry is. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it at all, but it's more a port intrusion detection system. It simply has a list of ports in its configuration file that it listens on, with the idea that port scanners hit a range of ports. Once a triggered port is hit, it denies the ip with ipchains/iptables and sets up the logging rules so you can see what they unsuccessfully try next (that part is really dumb). That's all it does and it's not bad for that purpose (blocking lamers probing ports) if used conservatively. (without the reaction to SYN packets and UDP and log target rule). Pointless though, far more so than using a firewall.
I was simply sharing an experience I thought was funny, that this article reminded me of.
Anyway, thanks for your reply. I too have seen circular logic in logging/alert emailing with crippling results, with sendmail going apeshit nuts. Another bad one can be "logwatch" when you have 20 Gb maillog files filled with "relaying denied"
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"This I just don't understand. Are you saying that if you have an existing Windows server infrastructure, you should be prevented from using Linux servers when that's more suitable?"
I do understand it. He is saying it doesn't benefit anyone except those who want to run Linux under Hyper-V on Windows. It does not improve the Linux kernel in any other way.
It also seems that he doesn't care about people who want to use Windows. Go use it. It doesn't benefit him that you can run Linux on Hyper-V. Frankly, I don't give a fuck either. I'm neither for, nor against it, as long as my compiler doesn't have to touch those code paths.
This certainly doesn't impress me. (Microsoft's "contributions" to the Linux kernel). People on the kernel mailing list who may or may not even contribute one line of code, may contribute more to the Linux kernel than this, in helping to get problems fixed. For example, the guy who does a git bisect to track down a commit that broke something is to be commended more than this. What he does may benefit all users.
Using statistics inappropriately is dishonesty.
Well, that's exactly how things should be dealt with on the Internet. People post rubbish, other people counter it.
I read Slashdot at -1 because I don't really want all the idiotic comments to be censored. I would rather make up my own mind, and see other people's opinions. I like the way Slashdot does this (a rating system that people can use on their own to filter with) instead of having a bunch of small minded nannying moderators going 'round deleting people's posts to protect us from nasty words that we don't agree with.
I am in the Banana Republic of The Harper Government of Canada as well. (Don't expect things to stay the way we like them, with right wing Christian ideology in a position of power)
That's another reason to use third party DNS, as well as TOR for anything that has any possibility at all of being used against you, even by a stretch. I never trust an ISP to respect my privacy. I don't think I do anything wrong but I think to myself "do I want anyone knowing I went to this site?" If the answer is no, I don't go there naked.
Be warned though, using a third party DNS service might get you the short end of the stick with load balancing download services. It's a silly way of doing things, but often the choice is made according to the location of the DNS server that was used to perform the lookup. I have not found this to be a problem, though.
OpenDNS doesn't block anything, if you're just using its DNS servers in place of your ISP's. It's not until you create an account on their web site, add a network and configure the filter settings that it blocks any lookups. You can disable the smart caching, typo corrections, DNS proxying etc. if you register. I choose "none" myself, because I don't want anyone fucking with my name lookups.
I sure as Hell don't trust an ISP's DNS server to return unaltered results, or to return results quickly for that matter. OpenDNS has been working very well for me, for years and I certainly do look up porn sites.
I'm definitely with you on that. The end result is that people will distrust the upgrades and not get the fixes that they need. I don't blame them, for it can be pretty disruptive.
It is going to break extensions for sure, due to versioning alone even if those interfaces haven't changed. It's not like they allow extensions to report compatibility with non existent versions.
I do in house computer service, and in many cases my users are the typical "grandma" (sorry, but it is apt in this case). If I can't set them up with Firefox and have them live in peace, then I'm going to be turning off the updates and they'll get them next time they see me. When I upgraded people to 4.x, I did it properly, upgrading extensions and plugins and set it up with the toolbars the way they are supposed to be etc. so it wouldn't confuse them. If I change something, and it leaves them unable to do something, then it costs me time.
Yes, I agree, the arbitrary version compatibility strings are the problem, for extensions in a lot of cases. A move from 4.x to 5.0 should not actually break many (or any?) extensions, because they haven't changed those interfaces.
If there's no update for an extension that is essential and the versioning doesn't jibe, there's this extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/
That allows you to ignore the compatibility version check, enable disabled extensions and submit "this extension works" or "this extension doesn't work" to developers.
I'm using Firefox 5.0 in Linux (self compiled), but in Windows I use Nightly, because it gives me a 64 bit firefox that gets updates. When Nightly reached a version number that was to disable my Status4Evar addon, I used the tool to enable it again and it's still working with the firefox version being 7.0a1
I agree that it's righteously anal to ban the practice, though it is certainly a distraction. I hadn't been to a movie in many years and I noticed people doing that shit. It was a new phenomenon to me, when I started to go to the movies again. Yes, it did bug me but I can ignore it (just don't look at it... pay attention to the screen).
The biggest problem is, that it distracts people who can think of nothing other than that rude, inconsiderate person texting instead of watching the movie :-)
To be fair, this doesn't sound like your average "fat lady gargling popcorn in front of you, farting, and bitching at her horde of unruly brats" type theater, though. (I'm sure you've all been to that movie theater before lol)
It's too classy a place for the girl in that recording, it seems. (Not to be an elitist, because I hate that shit, but it seems that if she wants to chew her cud and text, she could go to the matinee or something where nobody will notice)
You can also do a whois lookup on the domain name, note the authoritative DNS servers for the domain, and query them directly. I've done that before to find the IP address of a site that had moved, yet the ISP's DNS server was still caching old records. (That doesn't seem to be as common nowadays, but some of the larger ISPs used to be absolute bastards with DNS caching. It often took days before you got updated records.) I am sure that could be done programatically as well.
You could always just take responsibility for your own activities, and secure your network so that others cannot do unwanted things using your Internet service.
It works for me.
I don't need to use other people's wifi networks either. If I need access urgently, I can always pull a 3G stick out of my ass. (In more rural areas, I might have to drive a bit closer to a tower to get a better cellular signal, but it still beats trolling for open wireless networks.) Barring that, I'm always up for a good cup of coffee anyway.
When I first started using Windows 95, to copy a document to my floppy drive I used to go to File/Open in Microsoft Word and browse for the file to right click on it, and use Send To -> 3 1/2 Floppy A. I soon learned that there were different ways of accomplishing the same thing in Windows and mine wasn't the best.
I was exposed to Windows 3.1 before that, but I didn't really understand it until I got my own Windows computer and learned some concepts retroactively. I had an old hand me down IBM XT clone that had DOS and Word Perfect and stuff... I just knew how to turn it on, and press 5 to start Word Perfect from the autoexec.bat/config.sys menu that was set up for me. I learned DOS retroactively too, around the time I was learning to fix Windows 98.
Of course now, I can figure out any GUI program just by clicking around. They don't all have to use the same interface. For example, Gimp 1.x (Mandrake 7... what a great distro that was in 2000) was weird at first, being used to Paint Shop Pro in Windows but everything I was looking for was in the right click menus on the image itself. That's probably one of the more difficult programs to adapt to. Star Office wasn't a problem at all.
I refuse to buy anything blu-ray because of the nasty DRM. I've talked people out of blu-ray drives in computers (isn't that a pain in the ass to get blu-ray playback working... might as well forget it and just do rips. (On some OEM PC's it's difficult without using the factory image.) I've vetoed gift purchases within my family too.
If something I want is only available on blu-ray I'll download blu-ray rips from torrents and fuck them. I'm not buying into blu-ray technology.
Fuck Sony and their PS3 systems too. Sony is the very model of everything I hate, rolled into one.
I obviously don't care what the law says, but I do know what I'm talking about. It's not so much what the law says at this point, but what it doesn't say. The photo was licensed to the original news site and if anything, it is they who made the image available to the public and allowed Google to index it. Find a judge that's going to award royalties to the photographer [i]again[/i] because Google used a low res, scaled down thumbnail image to essentially promote the site, which is considered fair use by all but the likes of you. When you find a court that will take you seriously, then we'll get the letter of the law straightened out.
Be careful what you wish for... we're all getting tired of this sense of entitlement from copyright holders who expect to be paid again and again for the same work, forever.
It's fair use... get over it.
I'd actually love it if Google just completely delisted these assholes from all of the databases for their whining. What they really want is for the service only to direct people into their hands, without providing any sort of benefit to the reader (Like a summary and thumbnail image so they can decide whether or not they actually want to waste their time going to the sites. That's what it's all about, isn't it?). If they really wanted to keep Google from indexing their content, they would use robots.txt directives, which Google most certainly honours.
As for "the photographer" he's already been paid for the image to be used on the original news site that is being indexed. I doubt that's even his problem anymore. (only in his own mind) Of course Google is going to flip you the bird when you demand money for their thumbnails instead of using existing remedies. They probably do it far more politely than deserved, too.
Any photo posted on the web is copied many times. It's the very nature of it. Any content (including images) posted to the web is going to get indexed, unless the sites tell the bots not to. That's just how it works. If you don't like it, go find another sandbox to play in.
Copyright infringement is a separate concept. Nobody has the right to DEMAND to make a living from some vaporous imaginary property. If you can, that's great, and your product must be worth the money but you're not going to stop people from doing whatever they want. If it's crap, they may download it and discard it but they weren't ever going to pay for it and they never will.
Doing something other than what you demand, with a bunch of 0's and 1's doesn't necessarily make anyone a thief. It infringes on arbitrary laws that protect the owner/creator, but it is not theft, not even conceptually, if it doesn't take their property away from them. (hint: our money that you didn't get to take, never was your property)
If folks really want to use a food analogy, it's more like me coming into a restaurant, ordering food, taking a few bites and refusing to pay for it because it's crap. The only difference in that analogy is that it's perfectly legal for me to refuse to pay for improperly prepared food. They don't make me regurgitate the bites I took either... they'll be assimilated. There are no arbitrary laws that protect a restaurant that serves up a shit sandwich in disguise and expects people to pay for the privilege.
The Internet does expose people to writings that would ordinarily not be published. It exposes writings to people in places where they may not otherwise have access to it. It exposes people to others that they would not otherwise communicate with. It exposes younger people to information and groups or individuals that their parents would try to keep them away from etc. It exposes people to many others who think that that some things are OK, despite them being against catholic values. It is also, for the most part, uncontrolled and uncensored and it's very difficult for them to suppress.
The catholic church has much to fear about the internet... even worse than satanists, it puts their flock in contact with people who know the truth: There are no such things as gods or devils.
They are losing their means of control.
Fuck that... Harper needs to go. I don't care if I have to vote for Bozo The Clown and we have to fix it later.
Harper is a danger to our way of life and freedom. His answer is more unfriendly laws and more jails to put all the unhappy, destitute, disaffected people in while his corporatocracy walks all over us.
But yes, the timing is bad.
No, "dumbing down" doesn't just mean making it easier for users, it means changing things to make it easier for users, according to what the developer thinks a user should be, at the expense of making it more difficult for more advanced users, or impossible for them to carry on in the manner they are accustomed to. Taking away their choices.
Windows Vista/7 are like that in their user interface. Gnome is like that. KDE 4 is like that (though in their case, I think it's a matter of adding options later as it's improving in configurability with every release). New versions of Microsoft's programs are often like that (I despise what's become of Microsoft Office for that). Most new PC game titles are like that. (dumbed down like the consoles)
Linux/ARM/Whatever aren't necessarily failing... these technologies aren't trying to dominate the desktop computing scene. It's getting quite tiring to see this time and time again.
If you think Windows is smart for maintaining all that backwards compatibility cruft, think again. Have you ever poked your head into the WinSxS directory? Check all the different versions of runtime libraries stored there, that get called when you run older applications. The size of that directory increases to mammoth proportions as the Windows installation ages, too, as more things get installed and upgraded. Irresponsible gyrations... fuck I hate that crap.
Linux doesn't break old binaries either if they can help it. There are still backwards compatible kernel options that will take you back to libc5, aout binaries. I don't run anything that old, but I've still got stuff from many years ago that still can be made to run, by (at worst) dropping older versions of a few libraries into the program directory and setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Me, pay to watch a limited selection of movies? I don't think so.
I didn't realize it was not an opt-in thing for Netflix though, so thanks for that tidbit. I heard about them offering a silverlight based player a while back. I've always scoffed, because it was a Windows only service with Windows Media Player anyway.
In Canada, you should see the pitiful selection of movies available.
Ed Bott is just a pro-Microsoft troll (usually... though he has done a few good pieces). His job is to piss people off, and generate visitor sessions for ZDNet.
Any "Microsoft App Platform" will be for Windows. Microsoft's definition of targetting code for multiple platforms means multiple versions of Windows. XP, Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit etc.
Funny how their crap doesn't catch on like it used to. For example, they have resorted to forcing Silverlight on people's computers. If you want MSN Messenger, or anything in the Live Essentials suite you get Silverlight. I have yet to see any content I couldn't view for lack of having silverlight. (That doesn't mean there isn't, just that I haven't encountered it. It's really not that popular). No sane developer is going to put their money on that, and risk alienating visitors. There's a reason that Flash is the most widely used technology today and that is because there's a good chance that most all of your visitors have a Flash plugin available. It's the closest thing to multi platform there is, for media content. Flash Player Square allows pure 64 bit browsers to participate too now. .Net Framework is rubbish. Fragile, hardware intensive rubbish (They work around that now by having services that run all the time to pre-compile byte code) that produces apps chock full of GUI annoyances. Many computers need to have multiple implementations of it too. 1.1, 3.5 (which covers 2.x) and now 4.
So I think we'll be seeing Firefox survive Internet Explorer 9, or Chrome, or Opera regardless of what nonsense Ed Fucking Bott extrudes from his flabby rectum. With a more level playing field in this day and age, it will remain a viable choice.
I sympathize. Chrome could be a nice browser, but I hate the user interface too much to use it. Some prominent developer once said something to the effect of "If you treat your users like idiots, only idiots will use your software". It's foolish and arrogant to assume that everyone's workflow is the same, or that everyone should change theirs to suit your software.
The user interface is too dumbed down, and it's not configurable enough for me.
I don't care how fast a browser is, if I hate it. I stick with Firefox because I like it, not because it renders some unlikely test case faster. While actually using the browser to read pages, a few milliseconds in rendering time don't really matter. Lagged scrolling sucks though and I find Firefox 4.x to be an improvement over Firefox 3 in Linux, with or without 3D acceleration enabled with MOZ_GLX_IGNORE_BLACKLIST=1 (I use the ATI fglrx driver and while it fails some test elements, it seems to work for real world demos)
The only browsing I do in Windows is to check my forums, download drivers and the occasional game patch so it's unlikely that I'll ever install IE9 (I never open IE as a browser anyway... it sickens me)
Actually, a more appropriate response is:
"America can pucker their lips on my great big, hairy, Canadian, baboon ass, as I present to them a nice, swollen, prolapsed, goatse rectum stretch."
Fuck those bullying creeps.
The best impression goes to the guy who says "Windoze and Linux boxen" because he's a real person, who probably has some real experience.
But that's just me. I'm not impressed by the use of IT buzzwords. "I worked on all the boxes" is better than "I was a visionary who was entrusted with integration, management, monitoring and analysis of the first and second tier systems" (or some such inflated language for a technician)
You don't have to reinstall from that media. I never use it when I have to "format" people's computers, for that very reason. It puts back all the shitware. Using their product key on the sticker, I do a proper install of Windows and drivers, and I fix them up with free alternatives to things they may have had. (e.g. burning software for their dvd writer that may have come from the OEM, or OpenOffice). When they get it, they have a sensible, non crippling Antivirus program (Antivir is the one I mostly use) and no other rubbish in startup. When they get it back, it feels like a new computer for them. When I do this, they even have more disk space. Not only is there less crap, but I have repartitioned, deleting any OEM partitions with recovery data on them :-)
It does sicken me. Nowadays when someone buys a new computer it can take me 2 to 3 hours to set up, clean up the rubbish, uninstall any 60 day McNorton shit (and run their respective removal tools) and finally do the things the customer actually wants. Most people don't lift a finger and I have to unpack the boxes when I arrive and turn them on for the first time, and accept Eulas and wait half an hour before it goes through the post install gyrations. Fuck... I might as well just redo it.
I would never be happy with a brand name computer personally, but custom builds can't really compete on price which is all the sheeple waddling out of Wally World care about. "Hey, this one in the flyer says Intel too, and it's only $500. That guy is a crook!". They don't perceive the value in paying a little more for better quality hardware. I mean, why would you build a shit computer? It can be done cheaply (note that I'm talking about building/selling/supporting etc. not for personal use), but then it won't be much better than a Comcrap/HP with some crappy SiS chipset anyway. They may as well buy an Acer if they want a budget computer of reasonable quality.
I'm still not really blaming the tool, but the way it was used is the way it was designed to be used. It's a fairly standard configuration by default. (e.g. some hosting providers put that on their dedicated servers configured that way). I said it was a ridiculous "security" situation (in quotes, because it was yet another security measure that thwarted the user), not so much the tool.
Yes, some simple rules that allow communications on the desired ports and not others is fine, and would not be a bottleneck like the (misconfigured?) hardware devices in question, in the article and summary here. I still don't bother with that. I understand, and I know you're right, but not everyone needs to do that. I care more about preventing that from happening, than I do mitigating an intrusion by trying to limit what ports they can use. If someone has root access to start telnet, for example, it's certainly game over. (I know you don't have to be root to start servers listening on non privileged ports but still... I keep pretty close watch over my servers and there is no tomfoolery)
I realize this is pretty obtuse but to me, an internet server is, well, an internet server. A machine that you don't care is exposed to the Internet (again, it depends on the situation as to how serious the box is). Things like PHP worry me more because they can be the source of the intrusion in the first place.
However, that's not what Port Sentry is. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it at all, but it's more a port intrusion detection system. It simply has a list of ports in its configuration file that it listens on, with the idea that port scanners hit a range of ports. Once a triggered port is hit, it denies the ip with ipchains/iptables and sets up the logging rules so you can see what they unsuccessfully try next (that part is really dumb). That's all it does and it's not bad for that purpose (blocking lamers probing ports) if used conservatively. (without the reaction to SYN packets and UDP and log target rule). Pointless though, far more so than using a firewall.
I was simply sharing an experience I thought was funny, that this article reminded me of.
Anyway, thanks for your reply. I too have seen circular logic in logging/alert emailing with crippling results, with sendmail going apeshit nuts. Another bad one can be "logwatch" when you have 20 Gb maillog files filled with "relaying denied"