This clame sounds like a farce. Political smoke. Hackers are advanced techno spys. Announcing you have them really screws up how effective they are. If they were as effective as the CIA counterparts they aren't anymore. Sure everyone knows the CIA has hackers but as a rule nobody thinks about them. You make your hackers know everyone is on guard against you.
As for how good they are, If they exist there is no way to know if they are any good at all. They could be the authors of all the spam zombie viruses. They may have created the root kits. Or there hacking may be limited to TV ads saying you should share your passwords with the state.
Yeah ad they'll say Linux is a hackers tool with no valid application. They'll e-mail this comment as it's routed by a Linux server. And promply upload it to a website running apachi and Linux.
Then they'll go on about the evils of peer to peer software using an off the shelf telephony application in it's default peer to peer mode.
Then finish the day denouncing the use of personal recording equipment on a tape recorder.
I'm gona guess he did like everyone else would. He sat there and waited.
You scream and yell like that even in a hospital they'll cart you out and drop you off on the corner.
At least in America they will and the French seam to be far less tolerent so I imagin they'd do the same.
Now if you were screaming in pain that'd be diffrent. But generally bitching will get you the boot every time.
As far as the medical system. I don't care.
As far as I'm conserned let the French have what ever system they like and if it's stupid then we have Darwinism on a national scale. No bombs. Let them do it to themselfs.
However if socalised medicen is a good thing and the American medical system is bad then I'll die wrong and those who survive me will only be able to blame me for my own stupidity.
This is paranoia and nothing more than that. While no case involving the GPL has ever gone to cort open source is hardly the only case where code ownership is split up amoung sevral partys.
Many commertal products have sevral owners. You might notice a long list of copyrights in the manuals for some advanced applications.
Co-Develuped apps, libarys and code slippets all contribute to this issue.
Multi owner code has come to cort and the corts have no problem letting one owner of code enforce his copyright on a violator.
The corts have addressed the more complex issues of multi owner code where one owner violates the liccens of annother owner.
IBM vs Microsoft reguarding OS/2.
Thies issues of multi owner code had to be resolved otherwise porting code to annother platform would be a significant legal risk.
Every so often people think they can simply erase a persons copyright with an eraser.
It's never been an issue.
Interview with Bill Gates Lissen carefully to Mr Gates explain how he will prove his ownership of a given program with out need or benifit of a registered copyright.
The truth is if you regester your code to the copyright office it will make enforcing your copyright easier. However that has absolutly nothing to do with the GPL.
The GPL is simply a liccens and the ability to identify and prove code ownership is an unrelated issue.
Microsoft has taken a hit every battle. No this won't kill Microsoft however Microsoft is far from immortal.
The browser wars for example. Microsoft could crush healthy strong companys before the browser wars started. Netscape was far from healthy. Netscape admitted it was very easy to crush them. However to date Microsoft has failed to do that.
This is becouse Microsoft weaker than they were. Tactics they could use before would get them in sereous trubble today.
5 years ago all the computers on the store shelfs ran Windows. Today the Apple Macintosh has a strong representation and Linux PCs are making an apperence.
20 years ago MaBell and IBM were indistructable. Today IBM is pushing Linux to survive and AT&T barely exists anymore.
Microsoft is far from dead. This won't kill them. There have been many many predictions of Microsofts death. However... In years past the predictions were of the death of Linux. Now it's the death of Microsoft. And people are taking thies predictions sereously.
"When Linux gains the majority marketshare there will be a pleage of Linux viruses" The cry of the antivirus industry in recent years. And people OUTSIDE the Linux community take it sereously. (However not a drop of truth to it. First becouse Linux will never have majority marketshare and the other flaws with this clame don't matter)
Nasa would offer 20% of losses in exchange for a signature on a long contract that would make the typical NDA look like "Please don't tell anyone ok?" They'd show up with MIBish lawyers that make it sound like if they don't sign they'll go to jail as trators.
Over time rummors will leak and a famaly will move in exclusively to get hit. The Nasa MIB legal team shows up only to meet the famalys layer carrying a heavy lawsute.
The MIB quickly offer 200% of losses and forget the NDA. No go. They want emotional damages for the loss of guppy the gold fish famaly pet (for a whole 10 seconds even).
The MIB legal team is at a loss. They rely entirely on scaring the piss out of people with fake threats and this famaly is countering with REAL threats.
They plan and are ready to cast this famaly in the light of con artists when the news media already has the famalys version of the story.
Eventualy Nasa has to fork it over (but only to this one famaly and not to the others with REAL damages.)
Nasa is about to close it's doors forever when the fedral government comes it to save the day.
And that timmy is why Daddy has to pay most of his paycheck to the fedral government.
I think he was making a joke from the populare american TV show "The Simpsons"
Apu is an Indian convence store clerk in the show. He is suggesting the next step is to find Linux distro CDs at convence stores for like $5 a disk.
That would turely rock. However my dream is to see Linux distributed like AoL disks. Linux distro CDs dropping out of mags. In everyones mail boxes.
"I'm sick of Windows. Give me one of those coasters zeek I'm going to install it."
Insert evil laugh.
Yeah it'd need to have some service attached or you couldn't fund it. Earthlink Linux, AoL Linux, Compuserve Linux, (Insert ISP) Linux. Also folowing in the steps of Lindows would be Linux destros with automated update services that you pay monthly or yearly to keep your system up to date.
Not sure what your trying to get at so I'll cover a wide range of possabilitys.
iSpell vs MsWord: Ms Word has some very bad habbits when it comes to spellchecking. There is some major defect that once triggered Ms Word will produce incorrect results. One might accuse the Slashdot team of using Ms Word to find spelling errors.
Slashdot: Yeah they are kinda in a hurry. A normal newspaper will have profesional proff readers. Slashdot has nothing, nada, zip and nada III.
Lastly merging points 1 and 2. Microsoft has a history of screwing up forgen languages. If Slashdot was using a version of Linux localised for India they probably wouldn't have access to an ENGLISH spell checker.
If I were in charge of designing and building a massive space ship for a routhless psycopath and the manager over me has a habbit of killing people who piss him off. I'd use off the shelf proven standards systems and I'd drop anything (and I mean ANYTHING) not entirely vital to making the ship work. Such as wepons to repell small fighters. I mean who in there right mind attacks a moon sized ship in tiny fighters?
Oh yeah... I have an endless supply of storm troupers to defend everything. I've got phisical security down pat so what do I need electronic security for?
After all if only a R2 unit can access the computers it's not a problem. R2 units don't have personalitys. After each flight they get wiped. You don't let them develup indupendence. Oh sure occasonally a an R2 unit saves roialty and is preserved or a nutty pilot gets attached to his. However that is the exception rather than the rule.
However an R2 with a complex personality can pritty much punch a hole in security systems. It's the ability to outsmart the much simpler lock. Of course I wouldn't include one becouse that would slow down develupment of the death star.
The empire learns. By eppisode 6 the empire is using security codes and shields. The rebels fully expect an old frighter code to still work becouse the Empire hasn't been very smart about security in the past. However instead of just blindly accepting the code the security officer calles the emperor.
The original death star, No codes, no security officer and hotline to the emperor should something odd happen.
The new super death star, shields, codes, security officer, emperor using the force to recognise what is going on.
Napster: A P2P service intended to share free music that got premoted by the RIAA as a pirate service creating a flood of piracy before Napster was able do anything. If left to nature Napster could have addressed the problems as they arrised. However instead everything happend at once rendering it useless for it's intended purpous.
Gnutella: Lesser known more effective for the puropus of research. Quite a bit of piracy and no way to address it. For Gnutellas survival no central athority exists so there is no shutting it down and no eliminating pirated copys of movies, TV shows and music. However I've used it to track down long deceased code archives.
Bit Torrent: A way to make large files available by people who can not afford the bandwith. Example: Slackware Linux CDs.
Yes people DO use it for piracy but you can shut down the source by finding who put the file up in the first place.
HTTP: The main diffrence between using HTTP and BT for piracy is that HTTP is not a P2P protocal. Large files eat up bandwith fees. Byond that try knocking down a website that others mirror. Same as BT.
FTP: Like HTTP only more so.
IRC: Using it's own P2P protocal you can pirate stuff on IRC. It's reasonably easy. Ferther more if your MPAA, RIAA etc you'll never find the pirates. This is becouse there are humans involved. A verification process to insure only pirates can get access to the pirated matereal.
Usenet: Check alt.binaries.*
Google: No easier way to find pirated stuff than with a good search engen.
Floppy disks: The original P2P network.
Xmodem/Ymodem/Zmodem: Created to trade FREE programs and abused by some. Generally used approprately.
However in the 1980s certen organisations argued that it was nessisary to shut this problem down by making it illegal to own a modem and the suggestion was made that home computers (of any sort) served no other function than to hack into mainframes and needed to be banned.
Look it's just wrong to download a movie. It may appear minnor to rob say $5 from a person making $50M in a day. However there is the princaple. Also that $50M is more due to the fact that there are more Jedi in the fan base than Sith downloaders (Sorry bad joke). Not everyone enjoys a mostly enlightend fanbase. Preticularly many of the musicians who are under the RIAA protection racket.
However RIAA and MPAA are getting into a habbit of attacking anything calling itself P2P. Might as well go after word of mouth advertising.
They got lucky with Napster and Gnutella dose have quite a bit of piracy. But... Bit Torrent dosen't really have the key element that makes P2P "evil".
To shut down Napster priacy they shut down Napster. You can't do even that much to GnuTella. But Bit Torrent is more a matter of tracking down the person who put the file up and arresting him.
They aren't making the tab browsing basic becouse they think it'll scare users. As you indicated they intend to expand on it SLOWLY. This is the right thing to do from a company known for puking up features. Do it slow and get it right. Good.
What the artical dose say is that they thought it would scare users IN THE PAST. The popularity of tabbed browsing shows Microsoft was dead wrong on this and (gasp) Microsoft is now recognising it.
There are a lot of firsts here. Microsoft refusing to add a feature. Microsoft admitting they were wrong. Microsoft installing the feature SLOWLY and CAREFULLY to avoid flaws and defects.
Gasp...
Now if they'd quit trying to break nmap. I'd like to be able to scan the Windows XP boxes at work for security flaws.
First let's get the terminology clear: A virus scanner stops viruses before it infects the computer. Once your infected the virus scanner is worthless. Worms and hijacks install themselfs, trojens are easy to make before you're detecting one there are 5 new varents.
However the anti-virus industry has come to use the word "virus" as a catch all.
Malware is the proper term.
What we've learnned from REAL viruses is that a well designed and secure operating system is reistant (but not immune) to attack. It's harder to make a virus for Unix than it is for Windows. It CAN be done but it requires a security defect to work.
The great Internet worm infected BSD based computers. About 90% of the Internet at the time. Zap. Anything else was perfictly safe.
The lesson here? Wait there is more.
The virus industry dose report that Windows is the target of choice becouse of the large userbase.
Ready? Yes? Divsersity. Look at your phone. Look at your friends phone. Now keep going. Odds are good your friends all use diffrent brands with diffrent operating systems. Presumably those operating systems use some form of user security. Most at least run from rom or run all software in isolation of some sort.
Cell phone malware can exploite a defect in the security of one brand. Maybe an SMS exploite. Then transmit to your friends all of whom use diffrent phones than you. Dead end. Shut your phone off take it back to the store and get a replacement.
Palm Os and WinCE might have some consern as they are a bit more than cell phones and the market is still split between Palm, WinCE and Linux (with Linux having a very small peace of the pie). A virus has an almost 50-50 chance of working. Worth a shot.
But with cell phones your in a dead end and so long as there remains divsersity in the cell phone industry this will remain the case.
Ahhh man and I just got that code that tracks the target to work right. Oh sure sure it only targets burrocrats however I had to have a basis for the simulations and burrocrats are dumbest most predictable animal so a simulation was simple.
With blatently bies news outlets spining to the left hard when Fox trys to give "fair and ballenced" they end up bodyslamming into the right.
There is no reasonable guide for what is "fair". The extreams (both left and right) have been bashing away at the means of determining if something has gone off ballence.
At best Fox provides a diffrent spin from the rest of the news media.
I've watched the BBC news feeds and while there is spin it's not that bad.
Between BBC, CNN and Fox you'll have enough peaces to figure out what is spin and what is fact. I don't beleave it's remotely reasonable to expect any news agentcy to be entirely free of bies so it's up to the viewers to be fair and balenced due to there being no such animal in the press.
Salons lacks journalistic credability and the artical on Salon can only complain about the editorials. The editorials in any give newspaper are the editor or publishers opinions. Salon should know this by now.
As far as Spitzer, There may be issues he shouldn't be taking on becouse they are issues that need to be addressed with new laws not exsisting laws. There is a problem in government today called "Legislating from the bench". However give Spitzer some lattatude here. The problem with "Legislating from the bench" is you have unelected officals creating law. Spitzer is an elected offical and represents how the people of NY wish the laws to be enforced. Besides Spitzer isn't in a possition to create law even from the bench. He isn't a judge and ultimately has no say in the matter.
From what I can see he is doing what I think should be done. Using existing law to address existing issues instead of creating newer more restrictive laws. That IS his job.
Nobody else has any issues with publishing the file formats they create. For most people portability is important. Costummers don't wish to be locked into a product line if they can avoid it.
They have the ability to bundle Microsoft office and Windows together. More and more PCs are being shipped with Office preinstalled as part of a pacage deal.
You mentioned rabid supporters. Intresting but every give a thought why Linux has so many supporters and Windows dosen't? Or why Macintosh has so many rabid supporters?
Oh heck I mean the Amiga has more supporters that Microsoft Windows.
Why would a long dead platform have more supporters than the most widely used?
If your product is good you get fanatics. If your product sucks you complain about other peoples fanatics.
Last time I checked Microsoft has agreed in cort to document it's file formats. Basicly Microsoft is requiring a liccens for something they are required to do.
It would be like if someone made an agreement and then when it came time to make good they start making demands.
They don't want to play in our sandpit. They just want to take the standpit away from us.
Microsoft may get the most attention for it but honnestly they aren't the only ones trying.
Remember Epyx Rogue? Epyx basicly took the Unix Rogue from public domain and made a commertal product compleate with copyrite.
Remember SCO?
The Linux trademark scam?
Bottom line some commertal software entitys fear free software.
Netscape discontinued Netscape for OS/2 becouse IBM started pacaging a free web browser for OS/2. Netscape basicly admitted they could not compeate with a free web browser.
Some new users are picking portable office bundles instead of Microsoft office to avoid being locked into Microsofts product line. If Microsoft can convince nieve new users they won't be locked in they'll go ahead and use MS Office only to find themselfs locked in. It's called bait and switch. It's been done before.
The way to beat Microsoft is to convence companys to use better standards. Part of that requires making products that are backwards compatable and can use the companys exsisting files. However thies files ARE in Microsofts file formats.
When we ask businesses to switch to products that can not read the files they already have we are also asking them to retype everything.
The solution is to open microsoft file formats ourselfs with reverse engenearing.
As for the liccensing of Microsoft XML. Asking Microsoft to actually open the format is a bit much to ask for. However hilighting the fact that it isn't open is not at all unreasonable. Liccensing the format is a farce. It's a way to fake being open and it's something that needs to be said loud and clear for everyone to hear. At least everyone who might think the file formats are open.
Slashdot Mirror
First hire a bunch of hot babes to work for you.
Now use those hot babes to make geeks post randomly on Slashdot.
Now your hacking as good as the hackers in the CIA.
3 Green tea and ramen are effective alternitives to doritos and pepsi.
(Speaking from experence)
2 Automated farm equipment. Back in the 1980s somebody connected a Commodore 64 to a milking system to automate it.
1 Umm yeah. AoL cds and long distence phone calls?
This clame sounds like a farce. Political smoke.
Hackers are advanced techno spys. Announcing you have them really screws up how effective they are.
If they were as effective as the CIA counterparts they aren't anymore. Sure everyone knows the CIA has hackers but as a rule nobody thinks about them. You make your hackers know everyone is on guard against you.
As for how good they are, If they exist there is no way to know if they are any good at all.
They could be the authors of all the spam zombie viruses. They may have created the root kits. Or there hacking may be limited to TV ads saying you should share your passwords with the state.
Yeah ad they'll say Linux is a hackers tool with no valid application.
They'll e-mail this comment as it's routed by a Linux server.
And promply upload it to a website running apachi and Linux.
Then they'll go on about the evils of peer to peer software using an off the shelf telephony application in it's default peer to peer mode.
Then finish the day denouncing the use of personal recording equipment on a tape recorder.
I'm gona guess he did like everyone else would.
He sat there and waited.
You scream and yell like that even in a hospital they'll cart you out and drop you off on the corner.
At least in America they will and the French seam to be far less tolerent so I imagin they'd do the same.
Now if you were screaming in pain that'd be diffrent.
But generally bitching will get you the boot every time.
As far as the medical system.
I don't care.
As far as I'm conserned let the French have what ever system they like and if it's stupid then we have Darwinism on a national scale. No bombs. Let them do it to themselfs.
However if socalised medicen is a good thing and the American medical system is bad then I'll die wrong and those who survive me will only be able to blame me for my own stupidity.
This is paranoia and nothing more than that.
While no case involving the GPL has ever gone to cort open source is hardly the only case where code ownership is split up amoung sevral partys.
Many commertal products have sevral owners. You might notice a long list of copyrights in the manuals for some advanced applications.
Co-Develuped apps, libarys and code slippets all contribute to this issue.
Multi owner code has come to cort and the corts have no problem letting one owner of code enforce his copyright on a violator.
The corts have addressed the more complex issues of multi owner code where one owner violates the liccens of annother owner.
IBM vs Microsoft reguarding OS/2.
Thies issues of multi owner code had to be resolved otherwise porting code to annother platform would be a significant legal risk.
Ok this was addressed a very long time ago.
Every so often people think they can simply erase a persons copyright with an eraser.
It's never been an issue.
Interview with Bill Gates
Lissen carefully to Mr Gates explain how he will prove his ownership of a given program with out need or benifit of a registered copyright.
The truth is if you regester your code to the copyright office it will make enforcing your copyright easier. However that has absolutly nothing to do with the GPL.
The GPL is simply a liccens and the ability to identify and prove code ownership is an unrelated issue.
Microsoft has taken a hit every battle.
No this won't kill Microsoft however Microsoft is far from immortal.
The browser wars for example.
Microsoft could crush healthy strong companys before the browser wars started.
Netscape was far from healthy. Netscape admitted it was very easy to crush them.
However to date Microsoft has failed to do that.
This is becouse Microsoft weaker than they were.
Tactics they could use before would get them in sereous trubble today.
5 years ago all the computers on the store shelfs ran Windows.
Today the Apple Macintosh has a strong representation and Linux PCs are making an apperence.
20 years ago MaBell and IBM were indistructable.
Today IBM is pushing Linux to survive and AT&T barely exists anymore.
Microsoft is far from dead. This won't kill them.
There have been many many predictions of Microsofts death.
However...
In years past the predictions were of the death of Linux. Now it's the death of Microsoft.
And people are taking thies predictions sereously.
"When Linux gains the majority marketshare there will be a pleage of Linux viruses" The cry of the antivirus industry in recent years.
And people OUTSIDE the Linux community take it sereously.
(However not a drop of truth to it. First becouse Linux will never have majority marketshare and the other flaws with this clame don't matter)
Your both wrong.
Nasa would offer 20% of losses in exchange for a signature on a long contract that would make the typical NDA look like "Please don't tell anyone ok?"
They'd show up with MIBish lawyers that make it sound like if they don't sign they'll go to jail as trators.
Over time rummors will leak and a famaly will move in exclusively to get hit.
The Nasa MIB legal team shows up only to meet the famalys layer carrying a heavy lawsute.
The MIB quickly offer 200% of losses and forget the NDA. No go. They want emotional damages for the loss of guppy the gold fish famaly pet (for a whole 10 seconds even).
The MIB legal team is at a loss. They rely entirely on scaring the piss out of people with fake threats and this famaly is countering with REAL threats.
They plan and are ready to cast this famaly in the light of con artists when the news media already has the famalys version of the story.
Eventualy Nasa has to fork it over (but only to this one famaly and not to the others with REAL damages.)
Nasa is about to close it's doors forever when the fedral government comes it to save the day.
And that timmy is why Daddy has to pay most of his paycheck to the fedral government.
I think he was making a joke from the populare american TV show "The Simpsons"
Apu is an Indian convence store clerk in the show.
He is suggesting the next step is to find Linux distro CDs at convence stores for like $5 a disk.
That would turely rock.
However my dream is to see Linux distributed like AoL disks.
Linux distro CDs dropping out of mags. In everyones mail boxes.
"I'm sick of Windows. Give me one of those coasters zeek I'm going to install it."
Insert evil laugh.
Yeah it'd need to have some service attached or you couldn't fund it.
Earthlink Linux, AoL Linux, Compuserve Linux, (Insert ISP) Linux.
Also folowing in the steps of Lindows would be Linux destros with automated update services that you pay monthly or yearly to keep your system up to date.
Not sure what your trying to get at so I'll cover a wide range of possabilitys.
iSpell vs MsWord: Ms Word has some very bad habbits when it comes to spellchecking. There is some major defect that once triggered Ms Word will produce incorrect results.
One might accuse the Slashdot team of using Ms Word to find spelling errors.
Slashdot: Yeah they are kinda in a hurry. A normal newspaper will have profesional proff readers. Slashdot has nothing, nada, zip and nada III.
Lastly merging points 1 and 2.
Microsoft has a history of screwing up forgen languages.
If Slashdot was using a version of Linux localised for India they probably wouldn't have access to an ENGLISH spell checker.
If I were in charge of designing and building a massive space ship for a routhless psycopath and the manager over me has a habbit of killing people who piss him off.
I'd use off the shelf proven standards systems and I'd drop anything (and I mean ANYTHING) not entirely vital to making the ship work.
Such as wepons to repell small fighters. I mean who in there right mind attacks a moon sized ship in tiny fighters?
Oh yeah... I have an endless supply of storm troupers to defend everything. I've got phisical security down pat so what do I need electronic security for?
After all if only a R2 unit can access the computers it's not a problem. R2 units don't have personalitys. After each flight they get wiped. You don't let them develup indupendence.
Oh sure occasonally a an R2 unit saves roialty and is preserved or a nutty pilot gets attached to his. However that is the exception rather than the rule.
However an R2 with a complex personality can pritty much punch a hole in security systems. It's the ability to outsmart the much simpler lock.
Of course I wouldn't include one becouse that would slow down develupment of the death star.
The empire learns. By eppisode 6 the empire is using security codes and shields.
The rebels fully expect an old frighter code to still work becouse the Empire hasn't been very smart about security in the past.
However instead of just blindly accepting the code the security officer calles the emperor.
The original death star, No codes, no security officer and hotline to the emperor should something odd happen.
The new super death star, shields, codes, security officer, emperor using the force to recognise what is going on.
Don't know about the grandparent but I knew more than two girls when I was in high school.
... Ok No more than +5 and no less than -10.)
I dated a few of them.
Now (as then) I prefer to hang out with females that are in my age group (+/- 10 years of my age
Napster: A P2P service intended to share free music that got premoted by the RIAA as a pirate service creating a flood of piracy before Napster was able do anything.
If left to nature Napster could have addressed the problems as they arrised. However instead everything happend at once rendering it useless for it's intended purpous.
Gnutella: Lesser known more effective for the puropus of research.
Quite a bit of piracy and no way to address it.
For Gnutellas survival no central athority exists so there is no shutting it down and no eliminating pirated copys of movies, TV shows and music.
However I've used it to track down long deceased code archives.
Bit Torrent: A way to make large files available by people who can not afford the bandwith.
Example: Slackware Linux CDs.
Yes people DO use it for piracy but you can shut down the source by finding who put the file up in the first place.
HTTP: The main diffrence between using HTTP and BT for piracy is that HTTP is not a P2P protocal. Large files eat up bandwith fees.
Byond that try knocking down a website that others mirror. Same as BT.
FTP: Like HTTP only more so.
IRC: Using it's own P2P protocal you can pirate stuff on IRC.
It's reasonably easy.
Ferther more if your MPAA, RIAA etc you'll never find the pirates. This is becouse there are humans involved. A verification process to insure only pirates can get access to the pirated matereal.
Usenet: Check alt.binaries.*
Google: No easier way to find pirated stuff than with a good search engen.
Floppy disks: The original P2P network.
Xmodem/Ymodem/Zmodem: Created to trade FREE programs and abused by some. Generally used approprately.
However in the 1980s certen organisations argued that it was nessisary to shut this problem down by making it illegal to own a modem and the suggestion was made that home computers (of any sort) served no other function than to hack into mainframes and needed to be banned.
Look it's just wrong to download a movie. It may appear minnor to rob say $5 from a person making $50M in a day. However there is the princaple. Also that $50M is more due to the fact that there are more Jedi in the fan base than Sith downloaders (Sorry bad joke). Not everyone enjoys a mostly enlightend fanbase. Preticularly many of the musicians who are under the RIAA protection racket.
However RIAA and MPAA are getting into a habbit of attacking anything calling itself P2P.
Might as well go after word of mouth advertising.
They got lucky with Napster and Gnutella dose have quite a bit of piracy.
But... Bit Torrent dosen't really have the key element that makes P2P "evil".
To shut down Napster priacy they shut down Napster.
You can't do even that much to GnuTella.
But Bit Torrent is more a matter of tracking down the person who put the file up and arresting him.
If it continues there won't be an IE monopoly anymore.
Tabbed browsing is just a bonus really. People are sick of browser hijacks.
The text is misleading.
...
They aren't making the tab browsing basic becouse they think it'll scare users. As you indicated they intend to expand on it SLOWLY. This is the right thing to do from a company known for puking up features. Do it slow and get it right. Good.
What the artical dose say is that they thought it would scare users IN THE PAST. The popularity of tabbed browsing shows Microsoft was dead wrong on this and (gasp) Microsoft is now recognising it.
There are a lot of firsts here.
Microsoft refusing to add a feature.
Microsoft admitting they were wrong.
Microsoft installing the feature SLOWLY and CAREFULLY to avoid flaws and defects.
Gasp
Now if they'd quit trying to break nmap.
I'd like to be able to scan the Windows XP boxes at work for security flaws.
First let's get the terminology clear:
A virus scanner stops viruses before it infects the computer. Once your infected the virus scanner is worthless.
Worms and hijacks install themselfs, trojens are easy to make before you're detecting one there are 5 new varents.
However the anti-virus industry has come to use the word "virus" as a catch all.
Malware is the proper term.
What we've learnned from REAL viruses is that a well designed and secure operating system is reistant (but not immune) to attack.
It's harder to make a virus for Unix than it is for Windows. It CAN be done but it requires a security defect to work.
The great Internet worm infected BSD based computers. About 90% of the Internet at the time. Zap. Anything else was perfictly safe.
The lesson here?
Wait there is more.
The virus industry dose report that Windows is the target of choice becouse of the large userbase.
Ready? Yes?
Divsersity.
Look at your phone. Look at your friends phone. Now keep going. Odds are good your friends all use diffrent brands with diffrent operating systems.
Presumably those operating systems use some form of user security. Most at least run from rom or run all software in isolation of some sort.
Cell phone malware can exploite a defect in the security of one brand. Maybe an SMS exploite. Then transmit to your friends all of whom use diffrent phones than you. Dead end. Shut your phone off take it back to the store and get a replacement.
Palm Os and WinCE might have some consern as they are a bit more than cell phones and the market is still split between Palm, WinCE and Linux (with Linux having a very small peace of the pie). A virus has an almost 50-50 chance of working. Worth a shot.
But with cell phones your in a dead end and so long as there remains divsersity in the cell phone industry this will remain the case.
Also avoid Blackburry. It's a poor design.
Ahhh man and I just got that code that tracks the target to work right.
Oh sure sure it only targets burrocrats however I had to have a basis for the simulations and burrocrats are dumbest most predictable animal so a simulation was simple.
With blatently bies news outlets spining to the left hard when Fox trys to give "fair and ballenced" they end up bodyslamming into the right.
There is no reasonable guide for what is "fair". The extreams (both left and right) have been bashing away at the means of determining if something has gone off ballence.
At best Fox provides a diffrent spin from the rest of the news media.
I've watched the BBC news feeds and while there is spin it's not that bad.
Between BBC, CNN and Fox you'll have enough peaces to figure out what is spin and what is fact.
I don't beleave it's remotely reasonable to expect any news agentcy to be entirely free of bies so it's up to the viewers to be fair and balenced due to there being no such animal in the press.
Salons lacks journalistic credability and the artical on Salon can only complain about the editorials.
The editorials in any give newspaper are the editor or publishers opinions. Salon should know this by now.
As far as Spitzer, There may be issues he shouldn't be taking on becouse they are issues that need to be addressed with new laws not exsisting laws. There is a problem in government today called "Legislating from the bench".
However give Spitzer some lattatude here. The problem with "Legislating from the bench" is you have unelected officals creating law. Spitzer is an elected offical and represents how the people of NY wish the laws to be enforced.
Besides Spitzer isn't in a possition to create law even from the bench. He isn't a judge and ultimately has no say in the matter.
From what I can see he is doing what I think should be done. Using existing law to address existing issues instead of creating newer more restrictive laws.
That IS his job.
Microsoft agreed to it in cort.
Nobody else has any issues with publishing the file formats they create.
For most people portability is important.
Costummers don't wish to be locked into a product line if they can avoid it.
They have the ability to bundle Microsoft office and Windows together. More and more PCs are being shipped with Office preinstalled as part of a pacage deal.
You mentioned rabid supporters. Intresting but every give a thought why Linux has so many supporters and Windows dosen't?
Or why Macintosh has so many rabid supporters?
Oh heck I mean the Amiga has more supporters that Microsoft Windows.
Why would a long dead platform have more supporters than the most widely used?
If your product is good you get fanatics. If your product sucks you complain about other peoples fanatics.
Last time I checked Microsoft has agreed in cort to document it's file formats.
Basicly Microsoft is requiring a liccens for something they are required to do.
It would be like if someone made an agreement and then when it came time to make good they start making demands.
I'm using Windows at the moment (At work).
The spell checker is broken and only makes things worse.
They don't want to play in our sandpit.
They just want to take the standpit away from us.
Microsoft may get the most attention for it but honnestly they aren't the only ones trying.
Remember Epyx Rogue? Epyx basicly took the Unix Rogue from public domain and made a commertal product compleate with copyrite.
Remember SCO?
The Linux trademark scam?
Bottom line some commertal software entitys fear free software.
Netscape discontinued Netscape for OS/2 becouse IBM started pacaging a free web browser for OS/2. Netscape basicly admitted they could not compeate with a free web browser.
Some new users are picking portable office bundles instead of Microsoft office to avoid being locked into Microsofts product line.
If Microsoft can convince nieve new users they won't be locked in they'll go ahead and use MS Office only to find themselfs locked in.
It's called bait and switch. It's been done before.
The way to beat Microsoft is to convence companys to use better standards.
Part of that requires making products that are backwards compatable and can use the companys exsisting files.
However thies files ARE in Microsofts file formats.
When we ask businesses to switch to products that can not read the files they already have we are also asking them to retype everything.
The solution is to open microsoft file formats ourselfs with reverse engenearing.
As for the liccensing of Microsoft XML. Asking Microsoft to actually open the format is a bit much to ask for. However hilighting the fact that it isn't open is not at all unreasonable.
Liccensing the format is a farce. It's a way to fake being open and it's something that needs to be said loud and clear for everyone to hear. At least everyone who might think the file formats are open.