Yup, that's the big problem I see with those services.
By uploading your mp3s there, you're giving them recorded proof that you had all those songs, which can be subpoenaed at any time by copyright holder.
The problem is that *many* people won't have the original CDs that they ripped the music from, so if you do get sued by RIAA, such MP3s are for all practical purposes the same as pirated, since you can't prove you bought them.
I can see you're not familiar with the Japanese culture:-)
Let's say that there, regulatory capture is not just inevitable, it's part of the system. They even have a name for it: "amakudari", translates to "Descent from Heaven"...
Yup, it's indeed like several posts mentioned, done for marketing reasons, as they can sell more units since clueless idiots will buy it because it looks nice and shiny:(
I've been looking for a new laptop for quite a while and never could find one with the specs I needed (high-end) with a matte screen, and only recently I managed to find one, the Eurocom Neptune.
That's the most idiotic article i've seen in ages.
You've installed a JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE, which includes BROWSER APPLET SUPPORT.
So yes, it will off course install something on the browser to make it work... which is a plugin (as it's always done in the past, and pretty much what you'd expect), and now they've just added an addon to pre-load the VM to make things faster (and put it as an addon rather than a plugin so that you can disable it more easily).
What's wrong with that ? By installing it, you asked for JAVA SUPPORT on your OS and your WEB BROWSER.
That's what the addon is.
What next, let's complain that adobe secretely install a plugin on your browser without asking when you install flash ??
Note that the EC commission said: "We are already looking into the issues raised in that complaint"
Reading between the lines, and doing some extrapolation based on previous event, I am guessing that what is going in the their minds is something like that:
"Microsoft think they are above our laws and disrespect our authority by ignoring our rulings. That complaint is redundant because we are already investigating the OOXML mess, since it's going to be great ammunition when we need to bash them on the head AGAIN for continuing to break the rules"
This article is such a blatant fake / advertisement, how could the moderators let that be published on the front page ?
As noted by many, no real technical information. Whoever wrote it might have tried to sound 'grassroot', but the whole thing still reads very much like a marketing material... 'Be sure to visit the Museum of Disk-asters too' ? Especially when such page contains nothing but marketing stuff ? Give me a break !
And how many people would go pay 2000$ just to get back some music and photos of the family ???
Slashdot needs a system so that people can RATE THE MODERATORS, because anyone who lets something such blatant fake-grassroot marketing material on the front-page should not be in that position.
The whole thing is just an insult to our intelligence
In today's industry, I've seen two ways that management approaches IT staffing (and all the posts on this topic pretty much confirm this):
First, there's a significant amount of manager who think that IT is just monkey work. Where they can take someone out of the street, send them to a training course, and voila, they're a skilled IT staff who's paid in peanuts and monkeys.
Those type of companies of course do push what could be considered a fake 'IT shortage' agenda. I say 'fake' because it's not really difficult to find a monkey, they just really want the cheapest monkey as possible, preferable someone brought in from a developing country on a 'slavery visa', so that they can pay even less peanuts and possibly not even have to offer bananas.
That whole view of course fundamentally flawed. The software industry is in some ways very similar to the building industry. If you want to build a small shack (or a low quality house), a few friends who know a bit of everything (basic plumbing, basic electricity) can do it.
If you want to build a good quality house, you need a competent plumber, a competent electrician, etc...
If you're building a skyscraper, although you do need a lot of grunts (which is one aspect that is different in IT, because since it's mostly intellectual work, there's much less space for grunts), you need quite a few experts in a myriad of fields like large scale plumbing, electricity, elevators, etc. Not only that, but in working on something on this scale, the consequences of any mistakes are drastically amplified, so anyone incompetent will cause immense harm to the project.
So those manager's view on doing IT with monkeys, is quite similar to someone thinking they can go around building large houses and skyscrapers with just a bunch of people with no real skills to do so, which naturally has very predictable results.
Unfortunately those people only have eyes for the bottom line, and proceed doing business with the same mindset as those in the building industry who will use substandard material in their construction and pocket the difference, because as long as they make money, 'who cares' how much harm is caused to others.
Then, there are companies that understand that to do any kind of real IT, you need a reasonably good team. Now, that doesn't mean the whole team has to be talented experts. There just need to be a good mix of experienced and talented ones, and of less experienced ones, but still reasonably talented or at the very least professional and competent.
Talented IT staff has been hard to find for MANY years, even way before the.com boom (at least as far as 95 from my personal experience). This bad situation has been made worse by the amount of monkeys in the market, which should never have gone into IT in the first place. So in order to find one talented person, you need to interview tons and tons of people, most being a complete waste of interview time.
It's actually quite normal for an industry to be filled up with chaff when there's an industry boom. The main problem is the people who hire and manage IT staff are often clueless about IT (and/or often just plain incompetent). This creates a situation where it's still worthwhile for the monkeys to stick around, because it's still better jobs then shuffling burgers.
So in short, there *do* is a shortage of IT staff, however the main drivers of the 'IT shortage' agenda have the wrong motivation, and have no interest in solving the *REAL* IT shortage, but instead want to drive their own deeply flawed view of how to do IT.
Sorry but i must absolutely disagree with your comment, as well with anyone who has labelled it as 'insightful'
Maybe there is indeed quite a bit of wishful thinking in the author's mind.
However, what a lot of science is about (especially in physics and such), is to make a reasonable hypothesis, and try to find a way to validate (or invalidate) that hypothesis.
For example the theory of the Dark Matter started exactly as this one did. To resume that example it in layman's terms:
"Damn the current accepted theory's number doesn't add up. What about there was some matter in the universe that couldn't be observed ? that would make the number add up. Hell, let's call it 'Dark Matter' "
This theory might sound just as ridiculous and as far-fetched as the wormhole/blackhole ones. But as technology and techniques have improved, the Dark Matter theory has increasingly become more likely, if not completely proven (or has it been?).
That wormhole theory is exactly the same way. Until a technique or technology is found to prove or disprove it, it will be just another hypothesis, as potentially valid as any of those which can't be validated at this time.
Give them time to sue a few thousands more, and sooner or later some lawyers will realize the bloody fortune they will make by suing RIAA for what they've been doing. And when they start doing so... Well, not only those lawsuits will stop, but those execs will be the ones doing some paying up... and it's not going to be thousands but millions.
Weather is really really cold, people are not that social and rather cold in general, except after a certain amount of drinking and then they're the complete inverse. The economy is not that big either.
You do not 'debunk' the objections of a country regarding the specifications of a multinational standard.
What you can do, is to explain to them why you believe their objections are incorrect, and if you convince them that you are correct, they will then drop their objections, and let the standard proceed. If they don't change their mind, it means that YOU are wrong, and that you must address the issues they have raised, if you wish the submission to become a standard.
However, to blatantly ignore them, and push forward even when there is such large amount of objections, on fast-track, to make it even worse, is to clearly demonstrate that the ISO process is a COMPLETE FARCE. Nothing more than a rubber stamp body for whoever can lubricate the right pockets
For most of my life, i've lived and worked (i work as freelance IT consultant) through almost all countries of europe, from Portugal to Finland, and visited many countries abroad.
Last year, i decided to settle down in one place, but wasn't too happy with the balance between money and quality of life (Northern Europe pays well, but the quality of life is not great, the south has better quality of life, but the money and work sucks).
So i decided to take a sabbatical and visit a few countries, the first of which was the USA. I stayed in a few of the major cities like San Francisco, New York, Washington, etc... Traveled a bit around in general, and by the end came to the conclusion there was no way i would want to live there for the long term. Reasons are multiple, but what turned me off the most was the very high level of poverty. I knew that US was a country of extremes, but i didn't realize there was such a big percentage of people on the lower part of ladder.
I guess that's what Gates wants... more people who will earn barely enough to pay their expenses, and will be grateful for being treated like slaves who will be shipped off to their country if they even try to look him into the eyes
Of all the countries i visited, the one most balanced and really nice to live in was Australia... People are fantastic, weather is good, work is good and pays reasonably, infrastructure is good, people are very health-and-environment-aware. Only downside is that it's just bloody far from everywhere else on planet.
It absolutely true that this is just one closed and proprietary company grasping power and control from another group of companies.
The good point about this is, that group of companies had for a very long time held that power completely and absolutely, in a iron grip.
But Apple has made them flinch. Their grasp is no longer absolute, and all other companies will now see that it is actually possible to take that power from the mobile telcos, while planting the seed of doubt into the telco's management (and thus weakening their resolve).
So although it is not an improvement the current situation, it has laid the foundations where that might happen in the future, and in that we can thank Apple.
Of course they want to keep it quiet. Because unlike any other company, if MS were to be exposed at doing such a thing, they'd be buried under anti-trust lawsuits.
I hope it any of that story is true, that one of the people who are being threatened will draw a line in the sand, and blow the whole thing open.
So you accuse the post of being FUD and use FUD to prove your point ? Nice...
Next time you put some security statistics... Please do a full breakdown on the SEVERITY of those vulnerabilities...
Like for example a vulnerability that require you have console access to the machine itself, and that the stars are in the right alignment, might cause cause the server to crash, is *NOT* the same thing as a vulnerability that give root access to the box, just by making an HTTP call to it
Oh, and since you're at it, you could do a small statistical work on how many of the counted vulnerabilities have been found because people have access to the source code, just that you can make a guesstimation of how many lay hidden in the IE codebase.
Errmmm... is your post a troll, or you've never heard of the concept on 'Monopoly'
Rolex is not a monopoly, so indeed i don't have to buy their stuff
Microsoft IS a monopoly (one that has been judged guilty of illegally using that monopoly, on top of it), so NO, most people DONT have the choice not to buy it.
If you still don't understand, look at a dictionary
Actually getting SSSS flagged (SSSS is the indication on your ticket that you're in for a full search) is not random.
I was in US for a month, during which i was flying often, and getting SSSS flagged almost every time. I was talking with one of the security guards asking why that was happening, and he told the computers decide who gets SSSS based on a bunch of factors. For example, if you book your flight within 24 hours of the flight, it raises drastically your chances of being tagged, and i have a feeling if you use a foreign credit card, it also increases those chances (after i changed my CC address to an US address, i started getting flagged less)
Good, let them push... I hope they go around machinegun-firing lawsuits... Let them push until they push too far, until they manage to cause public outrage.
And don't forget that although the politicians are all too happy to oblige big commercial interests, what they really fear is the public, and the *IAA indiscrimate lawsuits of pensioneer, little girls, etc, reach the point where a significant percentage of the population become outraged, the politicans will happily sacrifice the commercial interests to protect their hides, and you'll be seeing alot of new laws that definitely won't be to the *IAA taste (and quite possibly a few investigations on breachs of anti-trust and cartel laws).
Let's hope they will keep suing people in increasingly large number, not tens of thousands, but hundred of thousands.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, for once the chinese have made a very clear and true statement, without a doubt their internet policies are open and clear:
"Whatever we don't like is banned"
Can't get clearer or more open than that
Yup, that's the big problem I see with those services.
By uploading your mp3s there, you're giving them recorded proof that you had all those songs, which can be subpoenaed at any time by copyright holder.
The problem is that *many* people won't have the original CDs that they ripped the music from, so if you do get sued by RIAA, such MP3s are for all practical purposes the same as pirated, since you can't prove you bought them.
I can see you're not familiar with the Japanese culture :-)
Let's say that there, regulatory capture is not just inevitable, it's part of the system. They even have a name for it: "amakudari", translates to "Descent from Heaven" ...
Yup, it's indeed like several posts mentioned, done for marketing reasons, as they can sell more units since clueless idiots will buy it because it looks nice and shiny :(
I've been looking for a new laptop for quite a while and never could find one with the specs I needed (high-end) with a matte screen, and only recently I managed to find one, the Eurocom Neptune.
http://www.ejbca.org
Open source, full featured
I've used the kinesis advantage for close to ten years now, and it's by far the best keyboard i've found out there.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha
*ROTFLMAO*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*Snif*
Ha, good joke, that was a really good one. *wipes tear of laughter from eye*
Well no doubt about, the pirated versions of ubi games will be ridiculously superior to the actually buying the game from ubi
However, i don't really like to download pirated software for security reasons, so I guess I'll just NEVER AGAIN BUY AN UBI SOFT GAME.
Between the choice of paying ubi to screw me and not playing their games, it's a no-brainer decision.
That's the most idiotic article i've seen in ages.
You've installed a JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE, which includes BROWSER APPLET SUPPORT.
So yes, it will off course install something on the browser to make it work... which is a plugin (as it's always done in the past, and pretty much what you'd expect), and now they've just added an addon to pre-load the VM to make things faster (and put it as an addon rather than a plugin so that you can disable it more easily).
What's wrong with that ? By installing it, you asked for JAVA SUPPORT on your OS and your WEB BROWSER.
That's what the addon is.
What next, let's complain that adobe secretely install a plugin on your browser without asking when you install flash ??
Note that the EC commission said: "We are already looking into the issues raised in that complaint"
Reading between the lines, and doing some extrapolation based on previous event, I am guessing that what is going in the their minds is something like that:
"Microsoft think they are above our laws and disrespect our authority by ignoring our rulings. That complaint is redundant because we are already investigating the OOXML mess, since it's going to be great ammunition when we need to bash them on the head AGAIN for continuing to break the rules"
This article is such a blatant fake / advertisement, how could the moderators let that be published on the front page ?
As noted by many, no real technical information. Whoever wrote it might have tried to sound 'grassroot', but the whole thing still reads very much like a marketing material... 'Be sure to visit the Museum of Disk-asters too' ? Especially when such page contains nothing but marketing stuff ? Give me a break !
And how many people would go pay 2000$ just to get back some music and photos of the family ???
Slashdot needs a system so that people can RATE THE MODERATORS, because anyone who lets something such blatant fake-grassroot marketing material on the front-page should not be in that position.
The whole thing is just an insult to our intelligence
In today's industry, I've seen two ways that management approaches IT staffing (and all the posts on this topic pretty much confirm this):
.com boom (at least as far as 95 from my personal experience). This bad situation has been made worse by the amount of monkeys in the market, which should never have gone into IT in the first place. So in order to find one talented person, you need to interview tons and tons of people, most being a complete waste of interview time.
First, there's a significant amount of manager who think that IT is just monkey work. Where they can take someone out of the street, send them to a training course, and voila, they're a skilled IT staff who's paid in peanuts and monkeys.
Those type of companies of course do push what could be considered a fake 'IT shortage' agenda. I say 'fake' because it's not really difficult to find a monkey, they just really want the cheapest monkey as possible, preferable someone brought in from a developing country on a 'slavery visa', so that they can pay even less peanuts and possibly not even have to offer bananas.
That whole view of course fundamentally flawed. The software industry is in some ways very similar to the building industry. If you want to build a small shack (or a low quality house), a few friends who know a bit of everything (basic plumbing, basic electricity) can do it.
If you want to build a good quality house, you need a competent plumber, a competent electrician, etc...
If you're building a skyscraper, although you do need a lot of grunts (which is one aspect that is different in IT, because since it's mostly intellectual work, there's much less space for grunts), you need quite a few experts in a myriad of fields like large scale plumbing, electricity, elevators, etc. Not only that, but in working on something on this scale, the consequences of any mistakes are drastically amplified, so anyone incompetent will cause immense harm to the project.
So those manager's view on doing IT with monkeys, is quite similar to someone thinking they can go around building large houses and skyscrapers with just a bunch of people with no real skills to do so, which naturally has very predictable results.
Unfortunately those people only have eyes for the bottom line, and proceed doing business with the same mindset as those in the building industry who will use substandard material in their construction and pocket the difference, because as long as they make money, 'who cares' how much harm is caused to others.
Then, there are companies that understand that to do any kind of real IT, you need a reasonably good team. Now, that doesn't mean the whole team has to be talented experts. There just need to be a good mix of experienced and talented ones, and of less experienced ones, but still reasonably talented or at the very least professional and competent.
Talented IT staff has been hard to find for MANY years, even way before the
It's actually quite normal for an industry to be filled up with chaff when there's an industry boom. The main problem is the people who hire and manage IT staff are often clueless about IT (and/or often just plain incompetent). This creates a situation where it's still worthwhile for the monkeys to stick around, because it's still better jobs then shuffling burgers.
So in short, there *do* is a shortage of IT staff, however the main drivers of the 'IT shortage' agenda have the wrong motivation, and have no interest in solving the *REAL* IT shortage, but instead want to drive their own deeply flawed view of how to do IT.
Sorry but i must absolutely disagree with your comment, as well with anyone who has labelled it as 'insightful'
Maybe there is indeed quite a bit of wishful thinking in the author's mind.
However, what a lot of science is about (especially in physics and such), is to make a reasonable hypothesis, and try to find a way to validate (or invalidate) that hypothesis.
For example the theory of the Dark Matter started exactly as this one did. To resume that example it in layman's terms:
"Damn the current accepted theory's number doesn't add up. What about there was some matter in the universe that couldn't be observed ? that would make the number add up. Hell, let's call it 'Dark Matter' "
This theory might sound just as ridiculous and as far-fetched as the wormhole/blackhole ones. But as technology and techniques have improved, the Dark Matter theory has increasingly become more likely, if not completely proven (or has it been?).
That wormhole theory is exactly the same way. Until a technique or technology is found to prove or disprove it, it will be just another hypothesis, as potentially valid as any of those which can't be validated at this time.
Oh yeah... like the pros have been doing a great job of it... Yeah, a few good or alright, but what about daredevil ? What about Ghost Rider ?
By the reports from the court proceedings of some of the few cases that have progressed this far, it certainly looks like RIAA has been proceeding without any kind of proof that will stand in court (for example see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200703020 73736822 another good site is http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ ).
Give them time to sue a few thousands more, and sooner or later some lawyers will realize the bloody fortune they will make by suing RIAA for what they've been doing. And when they start doing so... Well, not only those lawsuits will stop, but those execs will be the ones doing some paying up... and it's not going to be thousands but millions.
Weather is really really cold, people are not that social and rather cold in general, except after a certain amount of drinking and then they're the complete inverse. The economy is not that big either.
Debunked ?????
You do not 'debunk' the objections of a country regarding the specifications of a multinational standard.
What you can do, is to explain to them why you believe their objections are incorrect, and if you convince them that you are correct, they will then drop their objections, and let the standard proceed. If they don't change their mind, it means that YOU are wrong, and that you must address the issues they have raised, if you wish the submission to become a standard.
However, to blatantly ignore them, and push forward even when there is such large amount of objections, on fast-track, to make it even worse, is to clearly demonstrate that the ISO process is a COMPLETE FARCE. Nothing more than a rubber stamp body for whoever can lubricate the right pockets
Actually i didn't find US a very place to live...
For most of my life, i've lived and worked (i work as freelance IT consultant) through almost all countries of europe, from Portugal to Finland, and visited many countries abroad.
Last year, i decided to settle down in one place, but wasn't too happy with the balance between money and quality of life (Northern Europe pays well, but the quality of life is not great, the south has better quality of life, but the money and work sucks).
So i decided to take a sabbatical and visit a few countries, the first of which was the USA. I stayed in a few of the major cities like San Francisco, New York, Washington, etc... Traveled a bit around in general, and by the end came to the conclusion there was no way i would want to live there for the long term. Reasons are multiple, but what turned me off the most was the very high level of poverty. I knew that US was a country of extremes, but i didn't realize there was such a big percentage of people on the lower part of ladder.
I guess that's what Gates wants... more people who will earn barely enough to pay their expenses, and will be grateful for being treated like slaves who will be shipped off to their country if they even try to look him into the eyes
Of all the countries i visited, the one most balanced and really nice to live in was Australia... People are fantastic, weather is good, work is good and pays reasonably, infrastructure is good, people are very health-and-environment-aware. Only downside is that it's just bloody far from everywhere else on planet.
Right..... and wrong......
It absolutely true that this is just one closed and proprietary company grasping power and control from another group of companies.
The good point about this is, that group of companies had for a very long time held that power completely and absolutely, in a iron grip.
But Apple has made them flinch. Their grasp is no longer absolute, and all other companies will now see that it is actually possible to take that power from the mobile telcos, while planting the seed of doubt into the telco's management (and thus weakening their resolve).
So although it is not an improvement the current situation, it has laid the foundations where that might happen in the future, and in that we can thank Apple.
Of course they want to keep it quiet. Because unlike any other company, if MS were to be exposed at doing such a thing, they'd be buried under anti-trust lawsuits.
I hope it any of that story is true, that one of the people who are being threatened will draw a line in the sand, and blow the whole thing open.
So you accuse the post of being FUD and use FUD to prove your point ? Nice...
Next time you put some security statistics... Please do a full breakdown on the SEVERITY of those vulnerabilities...
Like for example a vulnerability that require you have console access to the machine itself, and that the stars are in the right alignment, might cause cause the server to crash, is *NOT* the same thing as a vulnerability that give root access to the box, just by making an HTTP call to it
Oh, and since you're at it, you could do a small statistical work on how many of the counted vulnerabilities have been found because people have access to the source code, just that you can make a guesstimation of how many lay hidden in the IE codebase.
Errmmm... is your post a troll, or you've never heard of the concept on 'Monopoly'
Rolex is not a monopoly, so indeed i don't have to buy their stuff
Microsoft IS a monopoly (one that has been judged guilty of illegally using that monopoly, on top of it), so NO, most people DONT have the choice not to buy it.
If you still don't understand, look at a dictionary
Actually getting SSSS flagged (SSSS is the indication on your ticket that you're in for a full search) is not random.
I was in US for a month, during which i was flying often, and getting SSSS flagged almost every time. I was talking with one of the security guards asking why that was happening, and he told the computers decide who gets SSSS based on a bunch of factors. For example, if you book your flight within 24 hours of the flight, it raises drastically your chances of being tagged, and i have a feeling if you use a foreign credit card, it also increases those chances (after i changed my CC address to an US address, i started getting flagged less)
Good, let them push... I hope they go around machinegun-firing lawsuits... Let them push until they push too far, until they manage to cause public outrage.
And don't forget that although the politicians are all too happy to oblige big commercial interests, what they really fear is the public, and the *IAA indiscrimate lawsuits of pensioneer, little girls, etc, reach the point where a significant percentage of the population become outraged, the politicans will happily sacrifice the commercial interests to protect their hides, and you'll be seeing alot of new laws that definitely won't be to the *IAA taste (and quite possibly a few investigations on breachs of anti-trust and cartel laws).
Let's hope they will keep suing people in increasingly large number, not tens of thousands, but hundred of thousands.
In other new, a plane had a near-miss with a flock of pigs while overflying London