If this were windows media player (again - it phoned home when you played DVDs, and was resoundly condemded in many circles) there wouldn't be a person on slashdot without a torch or pitchfork.
Very true. At least here Apple comes out and explains what it is doing and manages to reasure people. What I often hear from Microsoft when something like this happens is either silence or some sort of arrogant remark. Microsoft could deal with their PR battles with a little more grace than they have up to now.
How about protecting adults from spam too? I think this issue affects everyone, not just kids.
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If the user bothered to read the features list they would know it was there. You're absolving the end user from personal responsibility.
While the poster might be absolving the user from all responsibility, you are doing the same with Apple. Privacy is something that needs to be respected by the vendor and they should be required to ask the user what elements of their privacy they are willing to give up. There are just too many contracts for too many different things to be able to read them all - it would be nice, but in reality people give up on reading them.
I think to understand what it means to companies, then we need to look at what the patents are:
Patent: 5,579,517 Title: Common name space for long and short filenames Filed: 24 April 1995
An operating system provides a common name space for both long filenames and short filenames. In this common namespace, a long filename and a short filename are provided for each file. Each file has a short filename directory entry and may have at least one long filename directory entry associated with it. The number of long filename directory entries that are associated with a file depends on the number of characters in the long filename of the file. The long filename directory entries are configured to minimize compatibility problems with existing installed program bases.
Patent: 5,758,352 Title: Common name space for long and short filenames Filed: 5 September 1996
An operating system provides a common name space for both long filenames and short filenames. In this common namespace, a long filename and a short filename are provided for each file. Each file has a short filename directory entry and may have at least one long filename directory entry associated with it. The number of long filename directory entries that are associated with a file depends on the number of characters in the long filename of the file. The long filename directory entries are configured to minimize compatibility problems with existing installed program bases.
Patent: 6,286,013 Title: Method and system for providing a common name space for long and short file names in an operating system Filed: 28 January 1997
An operating system provides a common name space for both long filenames and short filenames. In this common namespace, a long filename and a short filename are provided for each file. Each file has a short filename directory entry and may have at least one long filename directory entry associated with it. The number of long filename directory entries that are associated with a file depends on the number of characters in the long filename of the file. The long filename directory entries are configured to minimize compatibility problems with existing installed program bases.
So the patents in question all cover the same issue of a "common name space for long and short filenames". This would effect anyone using vfat and also potentially effect Rockridge and Joliet extensions for ISO 9660.
One thing to note, from looking at the licensing page, is that only "consumer electronics devices" and "removable solid state media manufacturers" are targeted. For the moment operating systems aren't listed.
One thing I have to ask myself whether makers of digital cameras would be legaly required to have to pay this license, despite them being listed in the "consumer electronics devices" section. The reason I ask this is because all the digital cameras I have seen to date still use 8.3 format file names (for example my Nikon is DSCN0000.jpg), therefore they are not using the technologies referenced by the patents.
The issue is horse power and power consumption. The Portables haven't really has any major revision. The only thing that have had are incremental updates. The reason being that neither IBM or Freescale were willing to provide a low-power high horse-power CPU. Because of this the portables have been left behind. This is why the PowerBook range was an ideal candidate for the upgrade. Most people were expecting this. The PowerMacs and Xserves already have all the horse-power they need and power consumption is not an issue for them. For this reason Apple prefered to concentrate on models that needed an overhaul.
Now why the iMac over the Mini? You guess is as good as mine, though maybe the iMac has a bigger margin and is more important to Apple than the mini.
o even with a camera and Bluetooh module, you'd still save about $450 over the MacBook. Face it, there's a stiff premium to run OS X and for the Apple name.
There is, but you buy a Mac because you want to, not because you are trying to get best value for money. Gateway doesn't have the 'cool' factor, or the design aspect, the Mac has. Also the other player in the PC arena that Apple should be compared to is Sony, who also sells the Vaio for a premium.
As stupid as I think the censorship of the internet is, it IS the site of the corporation. They can limit what you do on the site.
What you say it true and I have been modded down to -1 for pointing this out in the past. At the same time trying not to be evil is also a great way of winning people over. When a company takes an anti-social tactic on a social site, then people will get unnerved and feel upset about it. Censorship is a great way of scaring people off, especially if you did not indicate clearly that it was one of the rules of the site.
The other problem is we see companys say one thing and then saying the opposite in the small print. I get fed up with small print licenses that I need a lawyer to decipher. How about providing some of that info in a FAQ?
MS is under no obligation to obey Chinese law on servers located in the US
It depends by who's set of laws you go by. There is nothing to stop a counry indicating what sort of content can be served to their country. Most companies will simply filter out the country as necessary to avoid any problems. I never said that it was the right thing to do, but that is just the way the game is played.
Occasionally, as in China, local laws and practices require consideration of unique elements...
Like the suppression of independent, free thought? Way to support 'em, Microsoft! Sleep well at night!
While I may not like some of the laws as laid out in China, I am not so sure that its up to a company to break laws, even if it is in the name of 'free-speech'. I don't think going in front of a judge and claiming you broke the law because you didn't believe in it would be good sense. Imagine another scenario: going up to a judge in the USA and saying the reason you did not pay your tax is because you don't believe the state has the moral right to them. While just as absurd it gives you an idea of what that would be like.
We have laws in our own countries that companies and individuals are expected to abide to. If we don't believe that those laws are right, then it is up to us the people to motivate our respective politicians to change those laws. Until then you have to play within the bounds of the laws, or face the consenquences as described by them.
The internet is a special place since your site is international, even without trying, so national politics and laws come into play. How you deal with those issues is up to you, but the solution is not necessarily one that you would like the most, or at all.
Just get Google to insert some cloud cover, since there already appear to be areas hidden by clouds. Since my home is covered by clouds in the Google photos, maybe it sugests that the is something to hide near;)
I must admit I used to be in that camp, until I realised that JS does have uses. The problem is not so much JS itself as it being used for the wrong reasons. If it blocks accessability then it is being used in the wrong way. If something cool feature is added, but the important stuff is still visible and navigable without JS active then it is being used well.
It should be noted while Google uses a lot of JavaScript, all the services, that I have used to far, are accessible with it turned off. Take a look at Google Maps without JS activated and you will notice that while you can't drag the page around you can still view the maps.
If it fits anywhere is in a class of religious studies. When I was at school I had class by this name, and it taught about all religions and did not try proving that one religion was better than another. It was more about trying to provide intellectual insight into the basis and beliefs of each religion.
The other places that would be suitable for teaching this is bible school, church or even private Christian schools.
BTW Don't forget that even the Catholic Church recently came out and declared their support for evolution.
If they can do it in such a way that it has class and taste and is not visually annoying then I don't mind. I just hope AOL's tackiness does not influence Google in the wrong ways.
Well this could be the other argument: "Gnome is for idiots, KDE is too, for that matter any windowing system is designed with idiots in mind. They are just dumbed down. My choice is CLI, there are so many programs written for it and it is not intuitive at all, just like a system interface should be."
The best security exists in a world where nobody understands how it works or knows it exists. Taking that into account tomorrow's secure technology is secure with the knowledge and tools we have today, but may not be so ten years after the secure technology is in the wild.
The best you can hope for is being a few steps ahead of the people who want to take advantage of your provide data. This is not to say that working on security improvements is worthless, rather that you will always have to work on better technology, since nothing will be forever secure. Though in the event of a knowledge void, say after a critical war, all secure data is lost to everyone, even to the owners. A physical door is the realm of the understandable, secure data is less so.
C|Net has added the following correction at the end of the story:
"Correction: This story incorrectly stated the affiliation of Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's results in verifying the Firefox 1.5 flaw, and the nature of the problem. Schroepfer is vice president of engineering with Mozilla Corp., and Mozilla has not been able to verify its browser can crash and lead to a denial-of-service condition. The problem itself was not a security vulnerability but actually a flaw in the browser."
Is this further evidence of the sorry state of the USA? Other examples being record companies treating customers as potential pirates, the government holding people without due process. Sorry, but there just seems to be so much of treating people like criminals, before they have even beed judged.
The truth is what makes a technology bad is using it in the wrong way. When it comes to the web we see much more of this happening. Take Flash as one example, where IMHO it is used badly most of the time, yet there are some things which can benefit from Flash, such as an embeded game. AJAX is the same, there are a few valid uses for the technology. For example one good use of the technology is Google Maps.
In many ways a good number of companies still don't "get it", and in France there are a fair number of companies who fall into that category. A few reasons I say this:
- A good number of sites feel like they were designed with the Minitel in mind
- A good number of sites just don't work. I tried doing something as simple a trying to buy a product with a Belgian credit card and have the product sent to an address in France. I really wanted to avoid Amazon, and give the other guys a go. In the end I went to Amazon - they really do seem to get it and do their QA.
- No sense of design. The number of sites that I have seen that are overlaiden with Flash, have poor navigation and look like they were put together in one day. Yes I am generalising and I generally feel that a wake call is needed.
Slashdot Mirror
If this were windows media player (again - it phoned home when you played DVDs, and was resoundly condemded in many circles) there wouldn't be a person on slashdot without a torch or pitchfork.
Very true. At least here Apple comes out and explains what it is doing and manages to reasure people. What I often hear from Microsoft when something like this happens is either silence or some sort of arrogant remark. Microsoft could deal with their PR battles with a little more grace than they have up to now.
How about protecting adults from spam too? I think this issue affects everyone, not just kids.
If the user bothered to read the features list they would know it was there. You're absolving the end user from personal responsibility.
While the poster might be absolving the user from all responsibility, you are doing the same with Apple. Privacy is something that needs to be respected by the vendor and they should be required to ask the user what elements of their privacy they are willing to give up. There are just too many contracts for too many different things to be able to read them all - it would be nice, but in reality people give up on reading them.
So the patents in question all cover the same issue of a "common name space for long and short filenames". This would effect anyone using vfat and also potentially effect Rockridge and Joliet extensions for ISO 9660.
One thing to note, from looking at the licensing page, is that only "consumer electronics devices" and "removable solid state media manufacturers" are targeted. For the moment operating systems aren't listed.
One thing I have to ask myself whether makers of digital cameras would be legaly required to have to pay this license, despite them being listed in the "consumer electronics devices" section. The reason I ask this is because all the digital cameras I have seen to date still use 8.3 format file names (for example my Nikon is DSCN0000.jpg), therefore they are not using the technologies referenced by the patents.
Would this not also effect the Joliet and Rockridge extensions used on ISO 9660 CDs?
The issue is horse power and power consumption. The Portables haven't really has any major revision. The only thing that have had are incremental updates. The reason being that neither IBM or Freescale were willing to provide a low-power high horse-power CPU. Because of this the portables have been left behind. This is why the PowerBook range was an ideal candidate for the upgrade. Most people were expecting this. The PowerMacs and Xserves already have all the horse-power they need and power consumption is not an issue for them. For this reason Apple prefered to concentrate on models that needed an overhaul.
Now why the iMac over the Mini? You guess is as good as mine, though maybe the iMac has a bigger margin and is more important to Apple than the mini.
o even with a camera and Bluetooh module, you'd still save about $450 over the MacBook. Face it, there's a stiff premium to run OS X and for the Apple name.
There is, but you buy a Mac because you want to, not because you are trying to get best value for money. Gateway doesn't have the 'cool' factor, or the design aspect, the Mac has. Also the other player in the PC arena that Apple should be compared to is Sony, who also sells the Vaio for a premium.
As stupid as I think the censorship of the internet is, it IS the site of the corporation. They can limit what you do on the site.
What you say it true and I have been modded down to -1 for pointing this out in the past. At the same time trying not to be evil is also a great way of winning people over. When a company takes an anti-social tactic on a social site, then people will get unnerved and feel upset about it. Censorship is a great way of scaring people off, especially if you did not indicate clearly that it was one of the rules of the site.
The other problem is we see companys say one thing and then saying the opposite in the small print. I get fed up with small print licenses that I need a lawyer to decipher. How about providing some of that info in a FAQ?
MS is under no obligation to obey Chinese law on servers located in the US
It depends by who's set of laws you go by. There is nothing to stop a counry indicating what sort of content can be served to their country. Most companies will simply filter out the country as necessary to avoid any problems. I never said that it was the right thing to do, but that is just the way the game is played.
Occasionally, as in China, local laws and practices require consideration of unique elements...
Like the suppression of independent, free thought? Way to support 'em, Microsoft! Sleep well at night!
While I may not like some of the laws as laid out in China, I am not so sure that its up to a company to break laws, even if it is in the name of 'free-speech'. I don't think going in front of a judge and claiming you broke the law because you didn't believe in it would be good sense. Imagine another scenario: going up to a judge in the USA and saying the reason you did not pay your tax is because you don't believe the state has the moral right to them. While just as absurd it gives you an idea of what that would be like.
We have laws in our own countries that companies and individuals are expected to abide to. If we don't believe that those laws are right, then it is up to us the people to motivate our respective politicians to change those laws. Until then you have to play within the bounds of the laws, or face the consenquences as described by them.
The internet is a special place since your site is international, even without trying, so national politics and laws come into play. How you deal with those issues is up to you, but the solution is not necessarily one that you would like the most, or at all.
You make a good point. 'GPL' is not the same as 'Public Domain'.
Just get Google to insert some cloud cover, since there already appear to be areas hidden by clouds. Since my home is covered by clouds in the Google photos, maybe it sugests that the is something to hide near ;)
I must admit I used to be in that camp, until I realised that JS does have uses. The problem is not so much JS itself as it being used for the wrong reasons. If it blocks accessability then it is being used in the wrong way. If something cool feature is added, but the important stuff is still visible and navigable without JS active then it is being used well.
It should be noted while Google uses a lot of JavaScript, all the services, that I have used to far, are accessible with it turned off. Take a look at Google Maps without JS activated and you will notice that while you can't drag the page around you can still view the maps.
I think proponents of mmddyyyy would love my mm:hh:ss format ;)
If it fits anywhere is in a class of religious studies. When I was at school I had class by this name, and it taught about all religions and did not try proving that one religion was better than another. It was more about trying to provide intellectual insight into the basis and beliefs of each religion.
The other places that would be suitable for teaching this is bible school, church or even private Christian schools.
BTW Don't forget that even the Catholic Church recently came out and declared their support for evolution.
If they can do it in such a way that it has class and taste and is not visually annoying then I don't mind. I just hope AOL's tackiness does not influence Google in the wrong ways.
None. The Mozilla team were happy to let them use it. ( see here ).
Actually in some browsers, such a Firefox, you can actually change the DPI. I have mine set to 96dpi on my MS-Windows machine.
Makes no sense. Why not just produce an image from the server for all its worth? Surely a PNG is going to be much smaller in comparison?
What would make more sense it a truetype or opentype font reference.
Bias: I don't appreciate Flash in web pages unless there is a good argument for it. I have seen a few web sites with valid uses, but they are few.
Well this could be the other argument: "Gnome is for idiots, KDE is too, for that matter any windowing system is designed with idiots in mind. They are just dumbed down. My choice is CLI, there are so many programs written for it and it is not intuitive at all, just like a system interface should be."
The best security exists in a world where nobody understands how it works or knows it exists. Taking that into account tomorrow's secure technology is secure with the knowledge and tools we have today, but may not be so ten years after the secure technology is in the wild.
The best you can hope for is being a few steps ahead of the people who want to take advantage of your provide data. This is not to say that working on security improvements is worthless, rather that you will always have to work on better technology, since nothing will be forever secure. Though in the event of a knowledge void, say after a critical war, all secure data is lost to everyone, even to the owners. A physical door is the realm of the understandable, secure data is less so.
C|Net has added the following correction at the end of the story:
"Correction: This story incorrectly stated the affiliation of Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's results in verifying the Firefox 1.5 flaw, and the nature of the problem. Schroepfer is vice president of engineering with Mozilla Corp., and Mozilla has not been able to verify its browser can crash and lead to a denial-of-service condition. The problem itself was not a security vulnerability but actually a flaw in the browser."
So Firefox crashes, but no security vunerabilty.
Is this further evidence of the sorry state of the USA? Other examples being record companies treating customers as potential pirates, the government holding people without due process. Sorry, but there just seems to be so much of treating people like criminals, before they have even beed judged.
The truth is what makes a technology bad is using it in the wrong way. When it comes to the web we see much more of this happening. Take Flash as one example, where IMHO it is used badly most of the time, yet there are some things which can benefit from Flash, such as an embeded game. AJAX is the same, there are a few valid uses for the technology. For example one good use of the technology is Google Maps.
In many ways a good number of companies still don't "get it", and in France there are a fair number of companies who fall into that category. A few reasons I say this:
- A good number of sites feel like they were designed with the Minitel in mind
- A good number of sites just don't work. I tried doing something as simple a trying to buy a product with a Belgian credit card and have the product sent to an address in France. I really wanted to avoid Amazon, and give the other guys a go. In the end I went to Amazon - they really do seem to get it and do their QA.
- No sense of design. The number of sites that I have seen that are overlaiden with Flash, have poor navigation and look like they were put together in one day.
Yes I am generalising and I generally feel that a wake call is needed.