>Mac users are very protective of their computers, and will
>go to great lengths to ensure that people don't steal them.
Fine, I'm with you, BUT this guy wasn't protective of his computer - he sent it to someone else! He was protective of his money.
OK, the Mac heads helped him out, Mac users are all one big team, wonderful. But some of the lines in the article puzzle me: "It's hard to sleep comfortably knowing some asshole has your Mac and is doing god knows what with it."
Was it easier for him to sleep when he thought the cashier's check was good?
There are few people off the street that I would say can do the job.
Well, different people can do the job differently, some better than others. I would say that understanding software has a higher barrier to entry than bridges, but a shallower learning curve. A person unfamiliar with computers will not understand that spaghetti code is bad as he would intuitively know a bridge held up by toothpicks is bad. A 2nd year comp-sci student, though, would could better evaluate a given piece of software than a 2nd year civil engineering major could a normal bridge. To fully understand either, many years of study would be required.
When you write, "not even a Civil Engineer can do a bridge inspection", I think we have a different meaning of inspection. When I say inspection in this context, I'm referring mostly to the ability to look and something and better predict its behavior. There's no guarantee that the prediction will be correct, but it should be correct more than, say, 95% of the time. I think civil engineers can easily do better than this (or else we should go back to caves).
The article is targeted mostly towards software sold by one company to another, and I think most medium- to large-sized companies have people on their staffs who can do a decent job evaluating code quality. It's not that "anyone off the street" can do a decent job, it's more like "someone in the building". Certainly the reviewers can better evaluate the design with the source than without!
When I said that software design is usually (or should usually be) easier to inspect, I'm also referring to the logistics; I can get a feel for Apache's design by reading the code while sitting in my skivvies, but I can't see how well a bridge is built without going there.
To get around this, we've put copies of source code, with docs, build environments/scripts, etc., in escrow. This way, if we DO go down in flames, all registered license holders of our software are entitled to complete access to EVERYTHING required to support the software themselves.
This is better than nothing, but a bankruptcy judge can rule that the escrowed code is an asset of the company and must be sold, not distributed. He can just take that pre-bankruptcy contract and toss it out the window to satisfy the creditors. IANAL, and I don't know how often it happens, but it can. Of course, you don't need to worry about it if your customers don't, and there's no sense telling them. Caveat emptor!
If your key code is buried deep in some subroutine, then how can you "remove" it from your product and still make it functional?
The code would not be functional, as the article states: "Customers could even compile and link the source files, but the resulting executable would not operate in a meaningful way without the key routines".
And somewhat OT, but I was unaware the Verrazano Narrows fell down! What a mess that will cause for holiday traffic! Or did you mean the Tacoma Narrows? Your point on bridge design being non-obvious is noted, but software design is usually (or should usually be) easier to inspect, if you know what to look for. And Joe User doesn't have to know how to inspect it, but a software professional should. Well-designed software can still fall down under load testing or other types of tests, but good design is at least a good start.
When I view Slashdot's source in my browser (Mozilla 1.2b), I get the following HTML:
<html><head><title>Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters</title></head>
which doesn't have the <LINK> tags, so Slashdot isn't using them all the time. However, I should not have spoken so definitively - I forgot that I turned off the Site Navigation bar, which shows when the <LINK> tags are used. So it's quite possible that other sites are using the <LINK> tags correctly. But I doubt there are many.
I understood your point originally, but I just had to make a joke because the sentence was so self-contradictory. I agree entirely with your assessment about their pushiness. With this change, I'll avoid them less now, though I'll still pay cash when I go there. I don't recall them saying they'd stop using your personal info, though to be fair I didn't RTFA.
I really wanted to get their catalog, but I'll be damned if I'll give them a name and address.
Um, if you didn't want to give them a name and address, you wanted to get their catalog how? By extra-sensory perception or something? Maybe Santa Claus could bring it?
This is pure bullshit. If you read the Amazon TOS, you would see this part,
If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media.
Nowhere in here does it say that "all reviews become the exclusive property of Amazon." All this item, and the rest of the TOS, says is that Amazon can publish the review, and that you have the right to grant Amazon the right. This is perfectly fair, IMHO. If you're submitting a review to Amazon, OF COURSE they should have the right to publish it - why else would you submit it.
Why is this so scary? Let me put your question another way:
What if Microsoft knew when you were reading email that's stored on their servers?
Answer: They already know! You opened the message! They don't need webbugs, they have their server logs. If you don't want Microsoft to know what emails you're reading and when, you shouldn't store your email on their servers.
As H.L. Mencken said, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
The list of what is taxable and what is not is very complicated. You've got your "sin" taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, which can also vary by ZIP+4 code. Another example (from New York) is that large marshmallows are taxable because they're considered candy, but small marshmallows are non-taxable because they're baking ingredients (it's been a while since I was in retail, I might have gotten it backwards). So you need another lookup table for that.
Your lookup table might be good enough for 99.9% of the items out there. But you'll have some angry customers and zealous prosecutors to remind you when you're wrong.
Perhaps a better idea would be to simply allow the end user to enter the amount of tax due. Give them an online calculator to help them with the math. This is what mail-order houses sometimes do. Yes, it's voluntary, and subject to abuse, and people will get it wrong. However, it is much easier to implement. A bonus feature is that you can start a pool for the date of the first Slashdot story about a site getting hacked by someone entering a negative tax.
**sigh** I wish there was a mod category for "wrong" or "what the hell are you talking about" or "FUD", because I'd mod this instead of posting. I have never seen a publishing company make trivial changes to a work and claim copyright on it. I don't mean "The Wind Done Gone" or a major work like that. When I see classic books, I check the copyright page. They always say "Foreward (c) 2002 John Doe", but I have never seen that copyright was claimed over a whole work. I think a company that intentionally misrepresented an altered work as that of a famous author would be liable to fraud charges.
Please provide specific examples of this, so that I can be proved wrong. Please give the ISBN and perhaps a link to an online bookseller.
His point is to slap some real useable software on top of any OS
Um, not quite. His point was that, "Since MS won the case and Windows is universal, now we can not worry about OS differences. This gives us the chance to make real change and re-examine the folder/file metaphor and discover new ways of dealing with objects in a more intuitive way. Fortunately, I have already done that and you can download the software today."
Implicit in this is that Linux is irrelevant - it doesn't conform, and in fact it would be better if it would just go away so we could get some work done with our Win32 apps.
He also mentions that Microsoft will be doing something like this in future OS versions. He apparently hasn't figured out (or doesn't care) that this will put him out of business. I guess he can go back to teaching.
Re:I have not figured that one out yet
on
Blogger Hacked
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Why not run the webserver on port 21? So the users have to type http://myserver:21/foo.thml in their browsers - no big deal. Of course, you can't run an FTP service, or use AIM, and your bandwidth still sucks, but it's a start.
...So I for one would be satisfied if the concept of a corporate copyright was much more limited than an individual's copyright,
I'm with you so far...
although this is probably impossible to implement because films, etc. may have more than one source in terms of composers, authors, etc.
Well, no, because the corporation has the copyright, not the composers or authors or anybody else. So the law can simply state that, for works published by a corporation after 2002, the copyright is 28 years. I would say this is impossible to implement because a majority of Congress is unwilling to pass legislation to this effect.
The basic premise of copyright law is to encourage the development of art for the benefit of mankind by providing incentive -- the right to profit from it-- to create it. Copyright law is (or, more realistically, should) not designed to maximize profit.
It's not, "They own it, they should get to keep it forever", but "It's everybody's, but they should get to make some money from it for a while."
Your points about downloading MP3s and individuals not being prosecuted for copyright violations are irrelevant. It isn't whether they're prosecuted, it's whether the act is illegal.
P.S. Don't feel silly for not understanding this. A majority of the United States Congress is the same way. Or to quote H.L. Mencken (I think): "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."
If not, delete any keys in HKLM->Software -> Microsoft -> Windows -> RunOnce
Also, run Task Manager and kill-9 (or whatever the Windows equivalent is) any random 3- or 4-letter processes after you've cleared the Run Once keys and Startup folder.
The reg key is... -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> RunOnce (sorry, had to nitpick).
I disagree with your second recommendation. There are several services (smss.exe,for example) that run as part of a normal Windows installation. Killing them is ill-advised.
Well, it does violate the GPL (IANAL), but not for the reasons you specify. In fact, the first question in the GPL quiz says that it's a GPL violation :
He can put the source code on his web site, and put the URL on the CD
This is essentially what Lindows.com is doing. Lindows.com does not have to distribute the source code to anyone who asks (if this was the case, nobody would GPL their software, because the bandwidth charges might kill them). The "written offer" section 3b of the GPL is a little vague, but IMHO Lindows.com is violating it because their web site is not how they distributed the binaries. They should just put the source on the CD.
But this does not seem to me to be a terrible GPL violation. I think Lindows.com could very well make the argument that their site is a "a medium customarily used for software interchange" as stated in section 3b of the GPL, and that they are therefore GPL-compliant.
It is good to know that not everyone in D.C. is a corrupt pawn of a corporation out to make money and nothing more
I'm sure that not everyone in DC is a corrupt pawn. But I wonder, how many Senators and Representatives will use the threat of this bill to extort^H^H^H^H^H^H request more campaign donations from their corporate benefactors?
I agree that Thawte is as good as Verisign. But they are a subsidiary of Verisign, so that's not too much of a surprise. They seem to operate pretty independently.
What is surprising is that their prices are cheaper than the parent company's. I like their SPKI program, which allows you to get 5 certificates for $500.
I prefer TightVNC to VNC, though it sounds vaguely like a porn flick, because it has better compression. But either version of VNC is a good choice.
Also, in case it wasn't clear, Microsoft is promoting remote control software, but their own remote control software, not VNC. If you read the Windows 2000/XP EULA, you'll see that it's against the EULA to use VNC from a Linux box to a Windows box:
Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product.
According to this page, WebSphere 5 hasn't even shipped: "Install V4 now and be ready for V5 when it becomes available." I did a search for downloading V5 software, but they only have "preview" versions.
Does IBM not plan to support CMP 2.0 in WebSphere 5?
similarity of desktops is how MS can easily have people upgrade from Win98 to NT to 2000 to XP
I agree with most of your post, but the part above is incorrect. XP, by default, has a very different desktop than the other Windows variants, though it can be configured to run with the "Classic" interface which is quite similar. The 2000 interface is also different than the NT / 9x interface, though not radically so. How does this apply to what RedHat has done? I'm not really sure. Perhaps the best way to put it is that Microsoft has evolved and improved the desktop, which is a good thing if you're hooked on their software. Let's hope RedHat and others do the same to KDE and Gnome.
Slashdot Mirror
>go to great lengths to ensure that people don't steal them.
Fine, I'm with you, BUT this guy wasn't protective of his computer - he sent it to someone else! He was protective of his money.
OK, the Mac heads helped him out, Mac users are all one big team, wonderful. But some of the lines in the article puzzle me: "It's hard to sleep comfortably knowing some asshole has your Mac and is doing god knows what with it."
Was it easier for him to sleep when he thought the cashier's check was good?
When you write, "not even a Civil Engineer can do a bridge inspection", I think we have a different meaning of inspection. When I say inspection in this context, I'm referring mostly to the ability to look and something and better predict its behavior. There's no guarantee that the prediction will be correct, but it should be correct more than, say, 95% of the time. I think civil engineers can easily do better than this (or else we should go back to caves).
The article is targeted mostly towards software sold by one company to another, and I think most medium- to large-sized companies have people on their staffs who can do a decent job evaluating code quality. It's not that "anyone off the street" can do a decent job, it's more like "someone in the building". Certainly the reviewers can better evaluate the design with the source than without!
When I said that software design is usually (or should usually be) easier to inspect, I'm also referring to the logistics; I can get a feel for Apache's design by reading the code while sitting in my skivvies, but I can't see how well a bridge is built without going there.
And somewhat OT, but I was unaware the Verrazano Narrows fell down! What a mess that will cause for holiday traffic! Or did you mean the Tacoma Narrows? Your point on bridge design being non-obvious is noted, but software design is usually (or should usually be) easier to inspect, if you know what to look for. And Joe User doesn't have to know how to inspect it, but a software professional should. Well-designed software can still fall down under load testing or other types of tests, but good design is at least a good start.
When I view Slashdot's source in my browser (Mozilla 1.2b), I get the following HTML:
<html><head><title>Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters</title></head>
which doesn't have the <LINK> tags, so Slashdot isn't using them all the time. However, I should not have spoken so definitively - I forgot that I turned off the Site Navigation bar, which shows when the <LINK> tags are used. So it's quite possible that other sites are using the <LINK> tags correctly. But I doubt there are many.
But since only <LINK> tags are prefetched, that's not likely to be a problem. Prefetching LINKs is also not likely to be much benefit, at least until web sites support it more (I have never seen a commercial site use the <LINK> in this way, though it has been part of the HTML spec forever. General <A> prefetching, which the FAQ mentions as a future possibility, would make a big performance difference, but in general I think it's a bad idea, and worthy of paranoia.
I understood your point originally, but I just had to make a joke because the sentence was so self-contradictory. I agree entirely with your assessment about their pushiness. With this change, I'll avoid them less now, though I'll still pay cash when I go there. I don't recall them saying they'd stop using your personal info, though to be fair I didn't RTFA.
What if Microsoft knew when you were reading email that's stored on their servers?
Answer: They already know! You opened the message! They don't need webbugs, they have their server logs. If you don't want Microsoft to know what emails you're reading and when, you shouldn't store your email on their servers.
The list of what is taxable and what is not is very complicated. You've got your "sin" taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, which can also vary by ZIP+4 code. Another example (from New York) is that large marshmallows are taxable because they're considered candy, but small marshmallows are non-taxable because they're baking ingredients (it's been a while since I was in retail, I might have gotten it backwards). So you need another lookup table for that.
Your lookup table might be good enough for 99.9% of the items out there. But you'll have some angry customers and zealous prosecutors to remind you when you're wrong.
Perhaps a better idea would be to simply allow the end user to enter the amount of tax due. Give them an online calculator to help them with the math. This is what mail-order houses sometimes do. Yes, it's voluntary, and subject to abuse, and people will get it wrong. However, it is much easier to implement. A bonus feature is that you can start a pool for the date of the first Slashdot story about a site getting hacked by someone entering a negative tax.
Please provide specific examples of this, so that I can be proved wrong. Please give the ISBN and perhaps a link to an online bookseller.
Um, not quite. His point was that, "Since MS won the case and Windows is universal, now we can not worry about OS differences. This gives us the chance to make real change and re-examine the folder/file metaphor and discover new ways of dealing with objects in a more intuitive way. Fortunately, I have already done that and you can download the software today."
Implicit in this is that Linux is irrelevant - it doesn't conform, and in fact it would be better if it would just go away so we could get some work done with our Win32 apps.
He also mentions that Microsoft will be doing something like this in future OS versions. He apparently hasn't figured out (or doesn't care) that this will put him out of business. I guess he can go back to teaching.
Why not run the webserver on port 21? So the users have to type http://myserver:21/foo.thml in their browsers - no big deal. Of course, you can't run an FTP service, or use AIM, and your bandwidth still sucks, but it's a start.
It's not, "They own it, they should get to keep it forever", but "It's everybody's, but they should get to make some money from it for a while."
Your points about downloading MP3s and individuals not being prosecuted for copyright violations are irrelevant. It isn't whether they're prosecuted, it's whether the act is illegal.
P.S. Don't feel silly for not understanding this. A majority of the United States Congress is the same way. Or to quote H.L. Mencken (I think): "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."
here (or http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2002/10/04/verizon/ print.html for the link afraid).
I disagree with your second recommendation. There are several services (smss.exe,for example) that run as part of a normal Windows installation. Killing them is ill-advised.
But this does not seem to me to be a terrible GPL violation. I think Lindows.com could very well make the argument that their site is a "a medium customarily used for software interchange" as stated in section 3b of the GPL, and that they are therefore GPL-compliant.
What is surprising is that their prices are cheaper than the parent company's. I like their SPKI program, which allows you to get 5 certificates for $500.
Also, in case it wasn't clear, Microsoft is promoting remote control software, but their own remote control software, not VNC. If you read the Windows 2000/XP EULA, you'll see that it's against the EULA to use VNC from a Linux box to a Windows box:
Does IBM not plan to support CMP 2.0 in WebSphere 5?