Here's what's going to happen: All those "commercial-free" satellite radio stations will start adding commercials when they can't sustain themselves. Then they'll go under. Then you'll see a slashdot article pointing to a web page written by a Stanford professor on how to interface an XM receiver to your toaster.
#define EPERM 1/* Operation not permitted */ #define ENOENT 2/* No such file or directory */ #define ESRCH 3/* No such process */ #define EINTR 4/* Interrupted system call */ #define EIO 5/* Input/output error */ #define ENXIO 6/* Device not configured */ #define E2BIG 7/* Argument list too long */ #define ENOEXEC 8/* Exec format error */ #define EBADF 9/* Bad file descriptor */
Everyone logs IP addresses, but not everyone collects detailed information on their visitors and is working with a monopolistic corporation that has demonstrated a casual disregard for security and privacy. You make the call - I'm not being paranoid. It just seems to make common sense that this survey has more insideous purposes than benevolent. But that's just my opinion. I don't think if Microsoft gets an abundance of glowing reviews of Unix, it's going to suddenly open-source all their software, so why bother and risk the privacy/security aspects?
In case you haven't figured out, we are now a reactive society as opposed to proactive. We fix things, or usually replace them, when they break, not before. Americans don't think much about the future beyond what's on television later that day.
Yes, we could fix the bug now. Likewise, we could also address world hunger, the deficit, the exploding crime problem, terrorism and a host of other issues with such cautious, preventative measures, but doing so wouldn't give us the instant gratification we desire now, so we'll let your children deal with the deficit, crime, terrorism, poverty, hunger and the time bug. We have better things to do. I'd write more, but I think "Friends" is coming on.
The purpose of the survey is to identify the IP addresses of people, cross-referenced with their feelings about Windows and Linux. As an added bonus, they get a nice identity database of Slashdot users due to this article. They'll log the referer and the IP address along with the survey answers and then they've got a nifty database that includes the physical location and personal information of people online and their level of hostility towards Microsoft. Now the next time you run Windows update, your IP is also logged there, with more direct information on your personal identity. They cross reference this with the survey info and they know: a) who you are, b) where you are, c) if you're a slashdot user and d) how you feel about them and all the other details of the survey. It's a huge privacy issue if you don't have an anonymous IP from which to complete the survey from.
I would never complete this survey. Aside from the information collected within the survey itself, your IP will be logged and who knows what they'll do with the info. If you think completing a survey is going to give Microsoft some epiphany that they've been going in the wrong direction, I'd beg to differ. However, it might give them a huge database of IPs and personal information that they can use in the future to fine-tune the demographic and location of those they consider unsupportive of their efforts.
I've never understood the "blind loyalty" issue with people and inanimate objects or companies.
If you're an Apple fan, that's fine, but making excuses for any shortcoming of their products doesn't help your cause. It's the people that complain about deficiencies that are most-likely to get the company to resolve these issues. If the sycophants get uppity at the slightest mention of a flaw, they do themselves and the object of their affection a great disservice.
This reminds me of another piece of audio equipment I purchased recently, and thought was very good. I found an online forum where enthusiasts discussed the product. When I discovered a bug in the product's firmware, a number of "locals" on the board engaged me in hostile argument that it wasn't a "bug." Eventually a rep from the company actually made a post and acknowledged the bug and promised to fix it in a future release. The sycophants harbored animosity towards me for not blindly, unconditionally accepting the product as it was. Think about this the next time something doesn't work right, and rally against the boneheads that harbor unconditional loyalty towards any corporate interest. It helps no one.
It is a bad design for the device to not have a user-replaceable battery. But Apple has a long history of embracing proprietary technology so that their customers have as few recourses as possible to avoid dealing with them for peripherals and maintenance. It's sad to take such a great product and cripple it so that the whole device becomes useless without sending it back to the factory. But unfortunately, this isn't surprising when one considers it came from Apple.
By law, with few exceptions relating to the government, you are not obligated to give *anyone* your social security number. This is protected by the Fair Credit Billing Act of 1976 and the 1974 Privacy ACt. The ACLU has some good info on your rights andn your SSN.
Oracle's PL-SQL is a NIGHTMARE. While it does work, the language of their stored procedures is so inconsistent and archaic that it boggles description. Just the error messages alone from PLSQL send most new developers off on a wild goose chasing trying to figure out what's actually wrong. But it would be nice to have stored procs and functions within MySQL. Even PHP extensions within MySQL would have been my choice over Java.
Winamp is the superior alternative to all the crap companies who insist on harassing their users every time they play a video clip and making it incredibly difficult to remove the secret hooks and nagware they install. Quicktime is even worse than Real IMO.
One of my favorite channels on television is LINK TV. This is available on DirecTV satellite and it's a wonderful resource of alternative news and information.
While not specifically technical in nature, this network runs a lot of documentaries and shows that the mainstream media would never show. There was a great documentary shown recently where they placed Internet Kiosks in a middle eastern country and didn't tell anyone how to use them, and observed how quickly the children learned to use the Internet and what information they sought out (another segment of the show features the developer of the Kiosks meeting with Issac Asimov and watching 2001 with him! He likened the un-explained Internet kiosk to the monolith in the movie and discussed it with Asimov).
Another great show on this network is Mosaic which is a daily news program which features excerpts from news broadcasts throughout the middle east. The video footage is much more substantive and you can almost always see an entirely different angle on the daily news stories, as well as a lot more information (and best of all, J-Lo is never mentioned).
This network is a MUST SEE channel. And had I known about it prior, it would have easily justified switching cable/sat companies.
Contact your local Attorney General. Ask him why he hasn't prosecuted any spammers? There are spammers operating in virtually every jurisdiction and they are trackable. The problem is the local law enforcement authorities are not prosecuting these people. The FBI has plenty of cases against these spammers but they're at the mercy of the AGs who don't take the cases.
In honor of the many replies on whether this is a waste of money, let me suggest some better things to do with $20 Million:
* Hire Van Halen and The Who to play at your birthday party
* Run 5 commercials during the Superbowl
* Kill yourself and watch every distant relative you've hardly ever spent time with come out of the wood work and crawl over your material posessions like maggots.
* Get into some questionable relationship with a young child and pay off the parents who threaten to take it public.
* Hire a D.C. lobbyist to promote the further reduction of the capital gains tax.
* Fund the new "Reagan Dime"
* Create a new reality TV show that makes contestants watch other reality TV shows. Call it "Really Real TV."
* Buy a bunch of SCOX stock
* Fund a feasibility study into the mating habits of the Duckbill Platapus
* Hire Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey and make them scrub your toilets.
* Sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom
* Change the name of your favorite sports arena or convention center
Fidonet was great. I was one of the original systems in the network. One thing that killed Fidonet were that a few less-than-honorable people managed to take control of some of the primary hubs in the network and exert biased influence over the network - jacking people on fees and controlling which content ended up being distributed. Fidonet ended up becoming political in nature and there was a minor rebellion, at a time when usenet was gaining attention. A few overzealous fidonet backbone operators ruined it for everyone.
What really blows me away about this whole debacle is the value of SCOX. At around $15/share, this same time last year it was only a few bucks per share. Someone's buying this crap and someone's going to get raped. People better check to see their mutual fund managers aren't taking them for a ride. All these shady court arrangements are only prolonging the inevitable decline of SCO, and when that happens a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money. I hope the SEC is looking into the stock dealings.
Slashdot Mirror
Kudos to Microsoft for once again being on the cutting edge of copying 20-year old technology.
I hear next month they'll be introducing a text-only browser called MS-Hedgehog.
Here's what's going to happen: All those "commercial-free" satellite radio stations will start adding commercials when they can't sustain themselves. Then they'll go under. Then you'll see a slashdot article pointing to a web page written by a Stanford professor on how to interface an XM receiver to your toaster.
Whoa is us!
/* Operation not permitted */ /* No such file or directory */ /* No such process */ /* Interrupted system call */ /* Input/output error */ /* Device not configured */ /* Argument list too long */ /* Exec format error */ /* Bad file descriptor */
#define EPERM 1
#define ENOENT 2
#define ESRCH 3
#define EINTR 4
#define EIO 5
#define ENXIO 6
#define E2BIG 7
#define ENOEXEC 8
#define EBADF 9
Everyone logs IP addresses, but not everyone collects detailed information on their visitors and is working with a monopolistic corporation that has demonstrated a casual disregard for security and privacy. You make the call - I'm not being paranoid. It just seems to make common sense that this survey has more insideous purposes than benevolent. But that's just my opinion. I don't think if Microsoft gets an abundance of glowing reviews of Unix, it's going to suddenly open-source all their software, so why bother and risk the privacy/security aspects?
In case you haven't figured out, we are now a reactive society as opposed to proactive. We fix things, or usually replace them, when they break, not before. Americans don't think much about the future beyond what's on television later that day.
Yes, we could fix the bug now. Likewise, we could also address world hunger, the deficit, the exploding crime problem, terrorism and a host of other issues with such cautious, preventative measures, but doing so wouldn't give us the instant gratification we desire now, so we'll let your children deal with the deficit, crime, terrorism, poverty, hunger and the time bug. We have better things to do. I'd write more, but I think "Friends" is coming on.
Think anyone's going to pay retail for that?
You're supposed to shake it? Maybe that was the problem. No wonder I never see any diagnal lines.
The purpose of the survey is to identify the IP addresses of people, cross-referenced with their feelings about Windows and Linux. As an added bonus, they get a nice identity database of Slashdot users due to this article. They'll log the referer and the IP address along with the survey answers and then they've got a nifty database that includes the physical location and personal information of people online and their level of hostility towards Microsoft. Now the next time you run Windows update, your IP is also logged there, with more direct information on your personal identity. They cross reference this with the survey info and they know: a) who you are, b) where you are, c) if you're a slashdot user and d) how you feel about them and all the other details of the survey. It's a huge privacy issue if you don't have an anonymous IP from which to complete the survey from.
The survey crashed my latest version of Internet Explorer.
I would never complete this survey. Aside from the information collected within the survey itself, your IP will be logged and who knows what they'll do with the info. If you think completing a survey is going to give Microsoft some epiphany that they've been going in the wrong direction, I'd beg to differ. However, it might give them a huge database of IPs and personal information that they can use in the future to fine-tune the demographic and location of those they consider unsupportive of their efforts.
I've never understood the "blind loyalty" issue with people and inanimate objects or companies.
If you're an Apple fan, that's fine, but making excuses for any shortcoming of their products doesn't help your cause. It's the people that complain about deficiencies that are most-likely to get the company to resolve these issues. If the sycophants get uppity at the slightest mention of a flaw, they do themselves and the object of their affection a great disservice.
This reminds me of another piece of audio equipment I purchased recently, and thought was very good. I found an online forum where enthusiasts discussed the product. When I discovered a bug in the product's firmware, a number of "locals" on the board engaged me in hostile argument that it wasn't a "bug." Eventually a rep from the company actually made a post and acknowledged the bug and promised to fix it in a future release. The sycophants harbored animosity towards me for not blindly, unconditionally accepting the product as it was. Think about this the next time something doesn't work right, and rally against the boneheads that harbor unconditional loyalty towards any corporate interest. It helps no one.
It is a bad design for the device to not have a user-replaceable battery. But Apple has a long history of embracing proprietary technology so that their customers have as few recourses as possible to avoid dealing with them for peripherals and maintenance. It's sad to take such a great product and cripple it so that the whole device becomes useless without sending it back to the factory. But unfortunately, this isn't surprising when one considers it came from Apple.
By law, with few exceptions relating to the government, you are not obligated to give *anyone* your social security number. This is protected by the Fair Credit Billing Act of 1976 and the 1974 Privacy ACt. The ACLU has some good info on your rights andn your SSN.
This is called Fraud Alert and it's a very useful utility and a device to get free copies of all your credit reports.
Oracle's PL-SQL is a NIGHTMARE. While it does work, the language of their stored procedures is so inconsistent and archaic that it boggles description. Just the error messages alone from PLSQL send most new developers off on a wild goose chasing trying to figure out what's actually wrong. But it would be nice to have stored procs and functions within MySQL. Even PHP extensions within MySQL would have been my choice over Java.
I completely agree. Java is overkill for this, and IMO not as stable or reliable as other alternatives.
Quicktime is as much a virus as the Real Player.
Winamp is the superior alternative to all the crap companies who insist on harassing their users every time they play a video clip and making it incredibly difficult to remove the secret hooks and nagware they install. Quicktime is even worse than Real IMO.
One of my favorite channels on television is LINK TV. This is available on DirecTV satellite and it's a wonderful resource of alternative news and information.
While not specifically technical in nature, this network runs a lot of documentaries and shows that the mainstream media would never show. There was a great documentary shown recently where they placed Internet Kiosks in a middle eastern country and didn't tell anyone how to use them, and observed how quickly the children learned to use the Internet and what information they sought out (another segment of the show features the developer of the Kiosks meeting with Issac Asimov and watching 2001 with him! He likened the un-explained Internet kiosk to the monolith in the movie and discussed it with Asimov).
Another great show on this network is Mosaic which is a daily news program which features excerpts from news broadcasts throughout the middle east. The video footage is much more substantive and you can almost always see an entirely different angle on the daily news stories, as well as a lot more information (and best of all, J-Lo is never mentioned).
This network is a MUST SEE channel. And had I known about it prior, it would have easily justified switching cable/sat companies.
Contact your local Attorney General. Ask him why he hasn't prosecuted any spammers? There are spammers operating in virtually every jurisdiction and they are trackable. The problem is the local law enforcement authorities are not prosecuting these people. The FBI has plenty of cases against these spammers but they're at the mercy of the AGs who don't take the cases.
In honor of the many replies on whether this is a waste of money, let me suggest some better things to do with $20 Million:
* Hire Van Halen and The Who to play at your birthday party
* Run 5 commercials during the Superbowl
* Kill yourself and watch every distant relative you've hardly ever spent time with come out of the wood work and crawl over your material posessions like maggots.
* Get into some questionable relationship with a young child and pay off the parents who threaten to take it public.
* Hire a D.C. lobbyist to promote the further reduction of the capital gains tax.
* Fund the new "Reagan Dime"
* Create a new reality TV show that makes contestants watch other reality TV shows. Call it "Really Real TV."
* Buy a bunch of SCOX stock
* Fund a feasibility study into the mating habits of the Duckbill Platapus
* Hire Johnny Cochran and F. Lee Bailey and make them scrub your toilets.
* Sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom
* Change the name of your favorite sports arena or convention center
* Buy every employee at Apple a brand new VW
* Produce a new Nick Cage or Van Damme movie
Fidonet was great. I was one of the original systems in the network. One thing that killed Fidonet were that a few less-than-honorable people managed to take control of some of the primary hubs in the network and exert biased influence over the network - jacking people on fees and controlling which content ended up being distributed. Fidonet ended up becoming political in nature and there was a minor rebellion, at a time when usenet was gaining attention. A few overzealous fidonet backbone operators ruined it for everyone.
/*
String Copy PLUS(tm)
(c) AT&T,SCO
*/
char *sppy(const char *s2) {
static char s[100];
strncpy(s,s2,200);
return(s);
}
What really blows me away about this whole debacle is the value of SCOX. At around $15/share, this same time last year it was only a few bucks per share. Someone's buying this crap and someone's going to get raped. People better check to see their mutual fund managers aren't taking them for a ride. All these shady court arrangements are only prolonging the inevitable decline of SCO, and when that happens a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money. I hope the SEC is looking into the stock dealings.
A good analogy would be comparing the setup to Fidonet and their "echo" messageboards. It's a very efficient method to distribute news.
The key to usefulness however, is enabling technology to prioritize and authenticate the RSS feeds in some way.
You can never have enough hot sauce or handcuffs.