... every year people fall for it. It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke.
Doesn't surprise me at all. But please don't describe them as "gullible", that's not even a real word. If you don't believe me, look it up.
=brian
These just aren't funny. Next thing you know someone will be posting that George Bush Jr. was elected president, trashed the economy and started WWIII. Sheesh.
My theory is that java's so easy, so after conquering an API a day (JDOM, Swing,...) I just came home and carried on conquering.
Could be. Or perhaps it was just spring and you are too young to notice these patterns.
I wonder what Occam's Razor would suggest?
=brian
So my point, and question, is: Since when is it the government's job to promote public interest in a certain area, especially with regards to entertainment????
I notice that the press used the phrase "the size of Delaware" to describe the ice flow several times. I recall that Israel is roughly the size of Delaware.
Somehow, I imagine that the story would have a different impact if they said that the ice flow was "the size of Israel".
Sounds like American high tech workers are going to have to learn to say the word "eh?" a lot.
After WWII, the US economy had a serious expansion for about 2 decades. People got to think of it as the norm.
When the economy tanked hard in the 1970s, they were shocked, they didn't have a word for it. They sure as hell didn't want to call it a depression. That conjured up images of soup-lines, the dust bowl, failing banks, etc. So they called it a recession, but it was a global depression.
The banks that failed were in South East Asia and South America this time, the soup-lines were in Eastern Eurpoe this time, but it was still a depression. The pain was on foreign faces, so it was easier to miss.
We just came out of a fairly long sustained economic expansion again. And peole think that is the norm, again. We are now in a recession / depression again. (They are now afraid of the word 'recession', they call it a down-turn, etc.)
You can't just pop out of school and into a 6 figure job quite as easily as you could in the 90s. Get used to it. People have to make sacrifices, even move to other cities sometimes.
We, the techies, are used to having the world at our feet, being sought after. That may change for a while.
But if it did, do you think we commoners would ever see it?
I believe Microsoft has a program which allows university students to view their current code base, for research purposes. Anyone out there have experience with this?
The wedding will be broadcast as streaming media over a wireless T3 link from the home network of Hemos, who has graciously, if unknowingly, offered the hoSPITality of his home. The ceremony will be performed by a JP, offending everybody, but offending everybody EQUALLY.
As a sign of their approval of this solemn event, the families of the happy couple have generously allowed them the satisfaction of paying for their own arrangements.
To insure that the guests feast on their favorite foods, the happy couple have decided to make it a pot-luck. Bring a covered dish! This means you! Guests are invited to feast on all the food they can bring, in a sumptuous atmosphere including: genuine plastic cutlery, dishes made of the finest paper and a wine so good, it comes in a box.
The wedding will be semi-formal and the reception semi-informal. The bride and groom will exchange matched rings - twice. (Something old, something gnu...) The token rings will be made by Hemos, a close, personal friend, and the flowers will be provided by CowboyNeal, a less close, more impersonal friend. Music will be borrowed from the top bands in the world, via mp3. (You got a problem with that?) Suspence will be provived by the bride's mother, who may or may not attend.
FEEL the tension as the in-laws meet for the FIRST TIME!
SEE the happy couple nervuously approach their STATE OF WEDDED BLISS!
WATCH as people you know dress in FUNNY CLOTHES and ACT SILLY! (Pants are manditory.)
THRILL to the luxery of FOLDING TABLES AND CHAIRS!
HEAR the bride's mother cry VERY, VERY LOUD!
The happy couple would prefer not to allow their friends, or even their families to drive home drunk, so bring a sleeping bag. (You know who you are.)
(This invitation is covered by the GNU product license.)
---
If Microsoft claims it doesn't know where all of the source code is stored (yeah, right), that's not a problem. The Marshals can seize the entire Redmond campus just as easily as they can seize a few server rooms. They should be able to seize the computers and media from all offices within a week or so, then they can sort it out back in the lab. Microsoft can easily afford to replace all of those computers. (The contents are another matter, but they'll have to request copies from the Marshals.)
Gosh, I wish that were true. Seems like I recall that way back in dinosaur days, Netscape noticed that Navigator ran quite well under Win3.1, but very poorly under Win3.11. Hmm... maybe a little too poorly. So Netscape sued, eventually a federal judge ordered Microsoft to turn over the source to Win3.11. Microsoft then claimed that it had lost the source.
No federal marshals were sent in to confiscate source code. The judge slapped Microsoft's hand and that was the end of it. This all took years and Netscape was dying by then anyway.
I would love to believe that we could rely on the law to save the day, but I just can't.
Compound this with the fact that Microsoft was a huge campaign contributor in 2000.
The GOP has hated the space program since Kennedy; it's a proven winner for the Democrats.
Sounds like they can finally kill it (in the name of fiscal responsibility); outsource everything and absorb what remains of NASA into the military.
The emphasis on nuclear propulsion... hmm... There are a lot of very hot, very promising technologies out there just dying for research money. The one they single out sounds suspiciously like a barely disguised weapon's program. Be prepared for double-talk like: "defensive weapon" or "humanitarian bombing".
Why is the govt against strong crypto exports? Terrorists might use it, they say. Many people point out, this reasoning is quite flawed, because... criminals break laws, etc. But, never-the-less, the govt wants to ban exports.
Might they have another, more legitimate reason to do so? I can think of one.
The NSA has a very large and effective project called Echelon, which allows it to sniff a lot of international satellite traffic. It's successfully filtering a huge volume of data on foreign govts and businesses. This is the biggest feather in the NSA's hat.
I believe they are worried that other govts and businesses will embrace strong crypto for routine communications. Getting an entire huge organization to use add-ons like PGP would be hard, but getting them to use something at the OS level or something built into the app, that would definitely work and would definitely screw up their lovely machine.
The NSA has a very good source of intel here and wants to make the most of it, milk it as long as they can. Mass exports of strong crypto would definitely allow other govts to counter that.
As to why they allow Win2k w/ 128 bit encryption: I seriously believe that it has a back door. Until we see the code, we'll never know.
I am a little disgusted at the replies. This guy sacrificed a whole year of his life, not for money or fame, but for the common good, to save the community from being eaten by microsoft. A whole year.
I would like to congratulate Rhys for his huge efforts.
Could we maybe say "thanks" instead of carping like accountants about the exact number of lines he wrote? Big picture, guys.
I would rather the conservative nations of the world had access a filtered net than no net at all.
Filters can be gotten around. But a total ban on the Internet, as was once in Afghanistan, can't.
Internet access in China is filtered. At least that it the theory. In practice, you can still get to many sites on forbiden topics.
So it might be that the current politics in Saudi Arabia demands some filtering. Fine. These rules will be scrapped by the next generation.
Consider the old Soviet Union. During the 50s, 60s, 70s and early 80s, the govt had a real monopoly on communication media. They tapped the phones heavily. If you wanted to use a photocopier, you had to fill out a stack of forms. Why? Because that machine allowed you to easily communicate with many people.
Then in the 80s, cheap fax machines, modems & ethernet equipment flooded the world, including the communist world. And in 1989, when one soviet block counrty started allowing it's people to freely enter west germany, the authorities in neighboring soviet block nations couldn't keep this news quiet. 10 years earlier, they could have done so. That is how powerful communications tech is.
Tiennman Square was kept secret from most people in China for weeks. That couldn't happen again today.
So I say, give them a filtered Internet. It lets the old guard feel safe, while the horizons of the next generation broaden beyond anything that can be controlled.
Off topic, but what's hard about tapping a fax machine?
Typing up a transcript of a phone conversation is easy. Compare this to recording and interpreting a fax machine's signals (remember handshaking, negotiation, etc). It can be done, but it takes real talent and lots of time, more talent and time than the KGB had to go around in the late 80s. Multipy that by the millions of cheap fax machines and modems that flooded the soviet block at the time. They just gave up.
The same thing will happen in China. Cheap technology is Pandora's box and they've opened it. Tiannemen Square can't happen again because they couldn't keep a lid on it again.
The China govt succeeded in putting the demonstration down because they could control people's means of communication. In much of the country, many people didn't even hear about this until months after the event.
In the 12 years since then, China has been flooded with cheap fax machines, computers, modems, networks, copiers, digital cameras. If Tiannemen happened again today, news of the event would be all over the country and the world in minutes, complete with pictures and video. You could not stop it.
This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union when the wall fell. The old guard discovered they can't easily tap a fax machine.
Don't even suggest that they will just shut down the entire nation's phone system and Internet. Too much of it's new economy relies on it heavily. Too many of the greedy rich would be upset.
... but the truth is they're as big a bunch of Reds as the Soviets ever were.
I disagree. China today is a capitalist nation. There is a lot of small scale capitalism there, all elected officials are corrupt, nothing gets done without bribes. The country is mostly run by a handful of extremely greedy military men and their families. In theory, the state will take care of those most needy, but in practice, they are entirely on their own.
America however, has a true social safety net. And the lowest person can take down the highest using only the courts. You decide.
... Are our principles now to be sacrificed because we want cheap Chinese products?
Cheap products? Like what? No. Every nation in the world wants access to china's huge market. No one cares about buying China's products.
If you think this stinks, do something about it. Write your congressmen. Today. Tomorrow is way too late.
This site will send your senators and representatives a fax for free.
If you really care about this, then write. All it takes is time and will. Keep it short, polite, on topic, just 2 or 3 points and tell them you are a constituent.
=brian
"Drop a frog in boiling water and it will jump out. Heat the water slowly and it will die."
I'm surprised no one gave this guy a little better advice.
Consider getting a Myers-Briggs personality typing test. It suggests which careers you might do best in. Do some research. Visit a business or two. Use your BA as a spring board into a masters program in the right field.
I wish people did this before college. You will be spending a huge percentage of your life doing something for a living. Don't let it be something you hate.
Slashdot Mirror
... every year people fall for it. It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke. Doesn't surprise me at all. But please don't describe them as "gullible", that's not even a real word. If you don't believe me, look it up. =brian
These just aren't funny. Next thing you know someone will be posting that George Bush Jr. was elected president, trashed the economy and started WWIII. Sheesh.
=brian
My theory is that java's so easy, so after conquering an API a day (JDOM, Swing,...) I just came home and carried on conquering. Could be. Or perhaps it was just spring and you are too young to notice these patterns. I wonder what Occam's Razor would suggest? =brian
Progress.
=brian
Um, pretty much since Rome.
=brian
I notice that the press used the phrase "the size of Delaware" to describe the ice flow several times. I recall that Israel is roughly the size of Delaware.
Somehow, I imagine that the story would have a different impact if they said that the ice flow was "the size of Israel".
=brian
After WWII, the US economy had a serious expansion for about 2 decades. People got to think of it as the norm.
When the economy tanked hard in the 1970s, they were shocked, they didn't have a word for it. They sure as hell didn't want to call it a depression. That conjured up images of soup-lines, the dust bowl, failing banks, etc. So they called it a recession, but it was a global depression.
The banks that failed were in South East Asia and South America this time, the soup-lines were in Eastern Eurpoe this time, but it was still a depression. The pain was on foreign faces, so it was easier to miss.
We just came out of a fairly long sustained economic expansion again. And peole think that is the norm, again. We are now in a recession / depression again. (They are now afraid of the word 'recession', they call it a down-turn, etc.)
You can't just pop out of school and into a 6 figure job quite as easily as you could in the 90s. Get used to it. People have to make sacrifices, even move to other cities sometimes.
We, the techies, are used to having the world at our feet, being sought after. That may change for a while.
=brian
I believe Microsoft has a program which allows university students to view their current code base, for research purposes. Anyone out there have experience with this?
=brian
Kathleen Fent and Cmdr "Rob" Taco
The wedding will be broadcast as streaming media over a wireless T3 link from the home network of Hemos, who has graciously, if unknowingly, offered the hoSPITality of his home. The ceremony will be performed by a JP, offending everybody, but offending everybody EQUALLY.
As a sign of their approval of this solemn event, the families of the happy couple have generously allowed them the satisfaction of paying for their own arrangements.
To insure that the guests feast on their favorite foods, the happy couple have decided to make it a pot-luck. Bring a covered dish! This means you! Guests are invited to feast on all the food they can bring, in a sumptuous atmosphere including: genuine plastic cutlery, dishes made of the finest paper and a wine so good, it comes in a box.
The wedding will be semi-formal and the reception semi-informal. The bride and groom will exchange matched rings - twice. (Something old, something gnu...) The token rings will be made by Hemos, a close, personal friend, and the flowers will be provided by CowboyNeal, a less close, more impersonal friend. Music will be borrowed from the top bands in the world, via mp3. (You got a problem with that?) Suspence will be provived by the bride's mother, who may or may not attend.
FEEL the tension as the in-laws meet for the FIRST TIME!
SEE the happy couple nervuously approach their STATE OF WEDDED BLISS!
WATCH as people you know dress in FUNNY CLOTHES and ACT SILLY! (Pants are manditory.)
THRILL to the luxery of FOLDING TABLES AND CHAIRS!
HEAR the bride's mother cry VERY, VERY LOUD!
The happy couple would prefer not to allow their friends, or even their families to drive home drunk, so bring a sleeping bag. (You know who you are.)
(This invitation is covered by the GNU product license.) ---
Alright, it's just a first draft.
=brian
Embarassing? If she said "no", now that would be embarassing.
=brian
Gosh, I wish that were true. Seems like I recall that way back in dinosaur days, Netscape noticed that Navigator ran quite well under Win3.1, but very poorly under Win3.11. Hmm... maybe a little too poorly. So Netscape sued, eventually a federal judge ordered Microsoft to turn over the source to Win3.11. Microsoft then claimed that it had lost the source.
No federal marshals were sent in to confiscate source code. The judge slapped Microsoft's hand and that was the end of it. This all took years and Netscape was dying by then anyway.
I would love to believe that we could rely on the law to save the day, but I just can't.
Compound this with the fact that Microsoft was a huge campaign contributor in 2000.
=brian
The GOP has hated the space program since Kennedy; it's a proven winner for the Democrats.
Sounds like they can finally kill it (in the name of fiscal responsibility); outsource everything and absorb what remains of NASA into the military.
The emphasis on nuclear propulsion... hmm... There are a lot of very hot, very promising technologies out there just dying for research money. The one they single out sounds suspiciously like a barely disguised weapon's program. Be prepared for double-talk like: "defensive weapon" or "humanitarian bombing".
=brian
Why is the govt against strong crypto exports? Terrorists might use it, they say. Many people point out, this reasoning is quite flawed, because ... criminals break laws, etc. But, never-the-less, the govt wants to ban exports.
Might they have another, more legitimate reason to do so? I can think of one.
The NSA has a very large and effective project called Echelon, which allows it to sniff a lot of international satellite traffic. It's successfully filtering a huge volume of data on foreign govts and businesses. This is the biggest feather in the NSA's hat.
I believe they are worried that other govts and businesses will embrace strong crypto for routine communications. Getting an entire huge organization to use add-ons like PGP would be hard, but getting them to use something at the OS level or something built into the app, that would definitely work and would definitely screw up their lovely machine.
The NSA has a very good source of intel here and wants to make the most of it, milk it as long as they can. Mass exports of strong crypto would definitely allow other govts to counter that.
As to why they allow Win2k w/ 128 bit encryption: I seriously believe that it has a back door. Until we see the code, we'll never know.
=surfcow
They should be careful how deep they dig. No telling what they might wake up.
=surfcow
I am a little disgusted at the replies. This guy sacrificed a whole year of his life, not for money or fame, but for the common good, to save the community from being eaten by microsoft. A whole year.
I would like to congratulate Rhys for his huge efforts.
Could we maybe say "thanks" instead of carping like accountants about the exact number of lines he wrote? Big picture, guys.
Grumpy, I know.
=surfcow
I would rather the conservative nations of the world had access a filtered net than no net at all.
Filters can be gotten around. But a total ban on the Internet, as was once in Afghanistan, can't.
Internet access in China is filtered. At least that it the theory. In practice, you can still get to many sites on forbiden topics.
So it might be that the current politics in Saudi Arabia demands some filtering. Fine. These rules will be scrapped by the next generation.
Consider the old Soviet Union. During the 50s, 60s, 70s and early 80s, the govt had a real monopoly on communication media. They tapped the phones heavily. If you wanted to use a photocopier, you had to fill out a stack of forms. Why? Because that machine allowed you to easily communicate with many people.
Then in the 80s, cheap fax machines, modems & ethernet equipment flooded the world, including the communist world. And in 1989, when one soviet block counrty started allowing it's people to freely enter west germany, the authorities in neighboring soviet block nations couldn't keep this news quiet. 10 years earlier, they could have done so. That is how powerful communications tech is.
Tiennman Square was kept secret from most people in China for weeks. That couldn't happen again today.
So I say, give them a filtered Internet. It lets the old guard feel safe, while the horizons of the next generation broaden beyond anything that can be controlled.
=brian
Typing up a transcript of a phone conversation is easy. Compare this to recording and interpreting a fax machine's signals (remember handshaking, negotiation, etc). It can be done, but it takes real talent and lots of time, more talent and time than the KGB had to go around in the late 80s. Multipy that by the millions of cheap fax machines and modems that flooded the soviet block at the time. They just gave up.
The same thing will happen in China. Cheap technology is Pandora's box and they've opened it. Tiannemen Square can't happen again because they couldn't keep a lid on it again.
=brian
... unfortunately, this figure was calculated using a DNA computer ...
signed,
a small spec of drool.
As I recall, it didn't work out so well.
The China govt succeeded in putting the demonstration down because they could control people's means of communication. In much of the country, many people didn't even hear about this until months after the event.
In the 12 years since then, China has been flooded with cheap fax machines, computers, modems, networks, copiers, digital cameras. If Tiannemen happened again today, news of the event would be all over the country and the world in minutes, complete with pictures and video. You could not stop it.
This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union when the wall fell. The old guard discovered they can't easily tap a fax machine.
Don't even suggest that they will just shut down the entire nation's phone system and Internet. Too much of it's new economy relies on it heavily. Too many of the greedy rich would be upset.
=brian
I disagree. China today is a capitalist nation. There is a lot of small scale capitalism there, all elected officials are corrupt, nothing gets done without bribes. The country is mostly run by a handful of extremely greedy military men and their families. In theory, the state will take care of those most needy, but in practice, they are entirely on their own.
America however, has a true social safety net. And the lowest person can take down the highest using only the courts. You decide.
Cheap products? Like what? No. Every nation in the world wants access to china's huge market. No one cares about buying China's products.
=brian
If you think this stinks, do something about it. Write your congressmen. Today. Tomorrow is way too late.
This site will send your senators and representatives a fax for free.
If you really care about this, then write. All it takes is time and will. Keep it short, polite, on topic, just 2 or 3 points and tell them you are a constituent.
=brian
"Drop a frog in boiling water and it will jump out. Heat the water slowly and it will die."
I'm surprised no one gave this guy a little better advice.
Consider getting a Myers-Briggs personality typing test. It suggests which careers you might do best in. Do some research. Visit a business or two. Use your BA as a spring board into a masters program in the right field.
I wish people did this before college. You will be spending a huge percentage of your life doing something for a living. Don't let it be something you hate.
=brian
"If you would like to send the Antitrust Division your comments on this case, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov"
From: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm
=brian
... and shares will no doubt be available on ebay.
=brian
They are starting production of the product this Friday ... and don't have a price set for it yet.
Sounds like a dot com business model.
=brian