Did those bozos (as in clown) actually ever consider how bad such a law is for the US economy?
If they really pull that off, R&D and manufacturing will spread around the rest of the world, while the US is assembling dumbed down AOL-compliant Warner-Brothers approved cable TV boxes with embedded, digitally rights managed entertainment capabilities.
Has this system for years and it works pretty well.
In essence, you pay a few bucks upfront (maybe 10-15$ for a system with monitor). When you deem it obsolete you return it to a designated recycling place (there's one in every major metropolitan area) where you dump the parts. From there they are professionally (no not FedEx to China) recycled.
Of course I can here the njanjanja from the "market has to decide" folks but seriously; there's a lot of hidden cost which was swallowed by the public (either in terms of tax money or in terms of polution). This system only applies the cost to those that effectively trigger them. Nothing wrong with it in my book.
Personally, I think Microsoft should not have been prosecuted for negotiating contracts in their favor. Who cares? As long as no one is forced to buy their product.
Er, yes. But exactly there lies the problem. When I founded my company a couple years ago I was on the lookout for a server. Guess what: I was forced to buy their product with any fscking available option, safe for assembling it myself. Sure, I forked out the xx$ for Windoze '98 and grinded my teeth.
A year later I get a laptop. Do you really imply there was any way to avoid being forced to pay Microsoft licensing fees. Sure, a major manufacturer had a "Linux option", which consisted of a two years old clunker with no configurability, whatsover.
Of course you may argue, it's the manufacturers fault for not supplying more options. But this also doesn't quite cut it. There are quite credible rumours (since those OEM contracts are aparently declared trade secrets), that the good boys from Redmond just cut off your air supply in form of much higher licensing fees, which essentially kill your business, if you indeed offer a credible alternative.
Oh, and the fact that only Recovery CD's (yeah, right! recovery) are shipeed with those machines, which disables a double boot unless you cough up umpteen hundred bucks for a retail version didn't really do much to calm my anger.
The problem is not that Microsoft is a monopolly, the problem (as acknowledged by the courts, btw) is the abuse of this monopoly power in order to kill competition.
Re:Tips from the Marquis de Sade School of HCI
on
Computing Pet Peeves?
·
· Score: 1
If yours is a web application, be sure the "Back" button never operates.
Nah! Make sure, that a minimum of two dozen popup adds for Herbal Viagra, Penis Extension Pills or Chats with "19 years old Cindy" fly around the screen. This has two major advantages:
You, the developer, makes some extra dosh on the adds
This will teach those losers never again to press the "Back" button, especially if there are a lot of nudie popups of ol' Cindy flying in his face and his boss is standing behind him (or even better, her).
I don't think this would be a problem if people weren't idiots with their email addresses. If you don't want spam, stop signing up for all the "punch the monkey" banner ads you see!
Well, bub: Apologies, but in my humble opinion you're a pretty arrogant prick.
So, everybody owning an own domain is an idiot? Pretty much a pre-requisite when you own and run a database consultancy. Or do you recommend to set up some "clever" javascript games, in order to be contacted? Or do you recommend not being in the whois database when you own a domain? Pretty much impossible, eh? Or do you recommend not having an e-mail address at all? Looks a bit stupid as a tech company.
My understanding is that a settlement is _not_ an admission or wrongdoing. So while this settlement may give moral support to others, it won't give you legal leverage against a music label in the future.
Agreed. Nevertheless, considering the hardball tactics played by the music industry, the aparently infinite financial resources and their general arrogant attitude this seems to be a major victory.
A little ol' lady (I guess) with bad taste seems to be able to throw the fear of god into those bozos.
If they'd had considered their chances as good, there's no way in hell, that they would have settled.
Is it open source software. Or at the very minimum: is the crypto algorithm reviewed by reputable cryptographers? Further, how large is the key, how strong is the algorithm and do I have to take the software manufacturers word that there is no way to descramble the message?
But that aside. How does the software guarantee that no printouts, no backups of the cleartext and no copy/paste of the cleartext exists?
I'm sure many corporate bigwigs would sure be happy, if some of their e-mails sent/received might have self destructed. (Kenny Boy and his Anderson crownies come to mind).
I fear however that they might be in for a surprise when the apparently "self shredded" messages pop up at all those likely and unlikely places like backup tapes, swap files, printouts and the like.
It's probably safer to employ a clean and transparent corporate culture, then getting kicked in the but by embarassing messages popping up on ol' backup tapes.
One of the more fascinating anecdotes was when Dr. Albert Hofmann inadvertedly tried the stuff on himself (he absorbed 20x the normal dosis through the skin).
After he started on his way home by bicycle the stuff started to kick in. Must have been one helluva bike ride through Basel.
The Albert Hofmann Foundation has more interesting stuff about the inventor of LSD (who to the best of my knowledge is still very much alive).
I only recently learned that my bank was selling my personal information. When I tried to opt-out, I discovered that they have a difficult procedure to do so. Also, I have three accounts, and they expect me to opt-out of each one separately, even though it is the same information.
Where your banker actually goes to jail just for admitting that you have an account with them.
Proabably the marketing drones at BT didn't really think of the fact, that they could use that ridiculous patent (which will never stand up, they are not going against Joe Shmoe, but big money) to polish up the image of one of the worldwide most despised carriers. Just imagine instead of
WE INVENTED HYPERLINKING, SHOW US THE MONEY...
Yeah, we found out that we own this patent and we decided to release it for free for the greater good of the community.
OK, so they pursued option 1. They look like the greatest losers and dickheads. Oh yeah; and they'll never see a cent in the first place. They also wouldn't see a cent with option 2 of course, but would be a really geeky and cool carrier (ok, that's a bit of a stretch for our UK readers) instead of complete jerks, that can't distinguish their arses from a hole in the ground.
The user pays a content charge of between 150 and 350 yen per track, and there is a monthly fee of 200 yen to use the M-stage service.
I don't know a hellofa lot of users, which are willing to pay 1.50 through 3.50 Euros for one single track (which they can't do as they please, due to DRM).
Could it be, that it's this applied greed-freak scheme that prevented the breakthrough of those commercial online music offerings?
Oracle holds 14 international security evaluations
Let's see, there's the
The Rush Limbaugh Institute for Creative Security Assessment (R-LICSA)
The Larry Said It's Safe (LSIS) Certificate
The We Certify All, Send Us The Money Security Price (WCA/SUTM)
And of course 11 other significant, meaningful and important certificates.
Actually Oracle is pretty secure. This unorganized and arbitrarily scattering of files among a number of disks is so obfuscating that it's pretty secure. If you're in the "Security through Obscurity (STO) camp", that is...
Look pilgrim, for all I care you can stuff all the dreck that you want into your body.
I for my part only ask for a declaration of genetically engineered organisms on the food that I purchase.
Now, as a so much determined lobyist for a brave new world, I'm sure you can explain why the Monsantos of this world so vehemently fight such obligations.
Could it be that they know that I and hundreds of millions of people feeling the same way won't buy this shit?
It's not that SuSE is responsible for anything. It's just that they are slapped with an injunction which leaves them three choices:
They can ignore it. The problem being, that judges take a dim view on that and it might be the option calling for the most trouble
They can build a new distribution without Krayon(TM, (R), (c), etc). This means that they have to steamroll the CDs that they have on stock, have a new CD pressed, distribute it and potentially call back CD's from their retailers. Sounds expensive to me, or
They can try to fight it and are likely to win. Within this time frame however, they are barred from distributing the 7.3 release and after they win (for which they quite likely won't see an Euro) 7.3 is outdated anyway.
So they probably did the smart thing from a business perspective, payed off the blackmailer and get on with daily business.
This is extremely disturbing for various reasons. Not the least because my dealings with SuSE (since the 6.2 distro) indicate that they're are great company, listening to their users, going the extra mile to help you out in case of trouble (installation support) and still can be extorted by such scumbags.
Slashdot Mirror
If they really pull that off, R&D and manufacturing will spread around the rest of the world, while the US is assembling dumbed down AOL-compliant Warner-Brothers approved cable TV boxes with embedded, digitally rights managed entertainment capabilities.
Me: "Are you aware that I'm currently in Milan, and paying roughly $20/minute for international cell phone calls?"
Find another carrier!!!
You will save a lot of dosh. And those spam-swines won't gonna reimburse you in the first place.
In essence, you pay a few bucks upfront (maybe 10-15$ for a system with monitor). When you deem it obsolete you return it to a designated recycling place (there's one in every major metropolitan area) where you dump the parts. From there they are professionally (no not FedEx to China) recycled.
Of course I can here the njanjanja from the "market has to decide" folks but seriously; there's a lot of hidden cost which was swallowed by the public (either in terms of tax money or in terms of polution). This system only applies the cost to those that effectively trigger them. Nothing wrong with it in my book.
Er, yes. But exactly there lies the problem. When I founded my company a couple years ago I was on the lookout for a server. Guess what: I was forced to buy their product with any fscking available option, safe for assembling it myself. Sure, I forked out the xx$ for Windoze '98 and grinded my teeth.
A year later I get a laptop. Do you really imply there was any way to avoid being forced to pay Microsoft licensing fees. Sure, a major manufacturer had a "Linux option", which consisted of a two years old clunker with no configurability, whatsover.
Of course you may argue, it's the manufacturers fault for not supplying more options. But this also doesn't quite cut it. There are quite credible rumours (since those OEM contracts are aparently declared trade secrets), that the good boys from Redmond just cut off your air supply in form of much higher licensing fees, which essentially kill your business, if you indeed offer a credible alternative.
Oh, and the fact that only Recovery CD's (yeah, right! recovery) are shipeed with those machines, which disables a double boot unless you cough up umpteen hundred bucks for a retail version didn't really do much to calm my anger.
The problem is not that Microsoft is a monopolly, the problem (as acknowledged by the courts, btw) is the abuse of this monopoly power in order to kill competition.
Nah! Make sure, that a minimum of two dozen popup adds for Herbal Viagra, Penis Extension Pills or Chats with "19 years old Cindy" fly around the screen. This has two major advantages:
You, the developer, makes some extra dosh on the adds
This will teach those losers never again to press the "Back" button, especially if there are a lot of nudie popups of ol' Cindy flying in his face and his boss is standing behind him (or even better, her).
Well, bub: Apologies, but in my humble opinion you're a pretty arrogant prick.
So, everybody owning an own domain is an idiot? Pretty much a pre-requisite when you own and run a database consultancy. Or do you recommend to set up some "clever" javascript games, in order to be contacted? Or do you recommend not being in the whois database when you own a domain? Pretty much impossible, eh? Or do you recommend not having an e-mail address at all? Looks a bit stupid as a tech company.
No need to thank me for some free enlightenment.
Agreed. Nevertheless, considering the hardball tactics played by the music industry, the aparently infinite financial resources and their general arrogant attitude this seems to be a major victory.
A little ol' lady (I guess) with bad taste seems to be able to throw the fear of god into those bozos.
If they'd had considered their chances as good, there's no way in hell, that they would have settled.
while (SHIT_STINKS) {
}No need to thank me
Is it open source software. Or at the very minimum: is the crypto algorithm reviewed by reputable cryptographers? Further, how large is the key, how strong is the algorithm and do I have to take the software manufacturers word that there is no way to descramble the message?
But that aside. How does the software guarantee that no printouts, no backups of the cleartext and no copy/paste of the cleartext exists?
I fear however that they might be in for a surprise when the apparently "self shredded" messages pop up at all those likely and unlikely places like backup tapes, swap files, printouts and the like.
It's probably safer to employ a clean and transparent corporate culture, then getting kicked in the but by embarassing messages popping up on ol' backup tapes.
After he started on his way home by bicycle the stuff started to kick in. Must have been one helluva bike ride through Basel.
The Albert Hofmann Foundation has more interesting stuff about the inventor of LSD (who to the best of my knowledge is still very much alive).
Dozens chime in with different tools approaches and ideas (XML, YAST, linuxconf, etc,etc,etc...)
Guys, that's not a unified approach as defined by the article...
What? You're telling me this stuff actually contains meat???
Where your banker actually goes to jail just for admitting that you have an account with them.
WE INVENTED HYPERLINKING, SHOW US THE MONEY...
Yeah, we found out that we own this patent and we decided to release it for free for the greater good of the community.
OK, so they pursued option 1. They look like the greatest losers and dickheads. Oh yeah; and they'll never see a cent in the first place. They also wouldn't see a cent with option 2 of course, but would be a really geeky and cool carrier (ok, that's a bit of a stretch for our UK readers) instead of complete jerks, that can't distinguish their arses from a hole in the ground.
This is insane. My Nokia 6210 survives over a week on standby and on average four days with normal calling patterns.
The Palm Vx survives a couple weeks easy without charging, provided that it's not accidentally turned on while in the bag or so.
A cell phone requiring daily recharge is simply inacceptable in this day and age.
clickety click...
I don't know a hellofa lot of users, which are willing to pay 1.50 through 3.50 Euros for one single track (which they can't do as they please, due to DRM).
Could it be, that it's this applied greed-freak scheme that prevented the breakthrough of those commercial online music offerings?
And no; I don't download my music from the net.
They have tons of those 5.60$ and hour minimum wage "securtity specialists"
Let's see, there's the
The Rush Limbaugh Institute for Creative Security Assessment (R-LICSA)
The Larry Said It's Safe (LSIS) Certificate
The We Certify All, Send Us The Money Security Price (WCA/SUTM)
And of course 11 other significant, meaningful and important certificates.
Actually Oracle is pretty secure. This unorganized and arbitrarily scattering of files among a number of disks is so obfuscating that it's pretty secure. If you're in the "Security through Obscurity (STO) camp", that is...
And the earth is flat, pigs can fly and nuclear power is safe.
Should I have my er! oregano courier have the next package routed via the US, since the contents might be EXTRA POTENT upon arrival ?
Anxiously awaiting your answer...
Not to piss on your parade, but if you truely believe that I suggest to be a tad more critical towards your ministry of propaganda.
Look pilgrim, for all I care you can stuff all the dreck that you want into your body.
I for my part only ask for a declaration of genetically engineered organisms on the food that I purchase.
Now, as a so much determined lobyist for a brave new world, I'm sure you can explain why the Monsantos of this world so vehemently fight such obligations.
Could it be that they know that I and hundreds of millions of people feeling the same way won't buy this shit?
Anxiously awaiting your answer...
They can ignore it. The problem being, that judges take a dim view on that and it might be the option calling for the most trouble
They can build a new distribution without Krayon(TM, (R), (c), etc). This means that they have to steamroll the CDs that they have on stock, have a new CD pressed, distribute it and potentially call back CD's from their retailers. Sounds expensive to me, or
They can try to fight it and are likely to win. Within this time frame however, they are barred from distributing the 7.3 release and after they win (for which they quite likely won't see an Euro) 7.3 is outdated anyway.
So they probably did the smart thing from a business perspective, payed off the blackmailer and get on with daily business.
This is extremely disturbing for various reasons. Not the least because my dealings with SuSE (since the 6.2 distro) indicate that they're are great company, listening to their users, going the extra mile to help you out in case of trouble (installation support) and still can be extorted by such scumbags.