this is nothing new, you can shutdown a remote computer (as long as you have administrative privileges), there's a shutdown tool in the windows2000 resource kit, freely available on MS's website.
Jesus, I get so pissed off about people say, on one hand, 'you don't need microsoft software, all the freely available stuff is just as good' and in the same breath bitching that microsoft bundles all those features in its operating system - many of the same features that you'll find in the free distributions, i might add.
If you don't like the software or you don't like the price, then don't buy it. it's as simple as that. nobody's forcing you to.
it's not like someone's pointing a gun at your head, although that's exactly what'll happen if you're stubborn enough in your refusal to pay taxes. I find it ironic that micosoft's competitors are employing exactly those guns to force their advantage in the marketplace under the pretence that microsoft is tying you into their technology.
You know, as well as I, that's just not the case. Especially now with the meteoric rise of the free software movement, there's not much you can't do without microsoft software. it's just that in many cases, and for most people, microsoft just makes it easier.
why bother waiting for downloads when you can just stream the music you want to hear from all over the web? No charges, no registration necessary, no adverts, no delays.
The truth of the matter is that ActiveX web components on non-Windows machines was even less used than ActiveX web components in Windows operating systems.
Yeah, right. XPCOM (the object model in Mozilla) is based on COM. Bonobo is based on COM. RNA (real-networks platform) is based on COM.
Recognition from software professionals that Microsoft had at least one good cross-platform idea.
Unfortunately your choice has nothing to do with the reasons why this is a bad thing. The problem is that since sales drives the production of videogames, just like the movie industry, the market pressures that such censorship devices (much like the NC-17 movie rating) put on game developers makes it very difficult for them to profit off such content. Many stores will refuse to stock 'R' rated games (as many cinemas refuse to show NC-17 movies). It's not the parent or the guy at the ticket stand preventing kids from seeing these types of contents, its the business execs in the marketing divisions of the production companies that are mandating that the game/film MUST get the softer rating because some guy at the head of wall-mart just got himself a brand-new shiny batteries-included remote-control conscience.
Censorship devices like this don't just censor content from the kids, they censor it from everyone. Freedom of choice goes surreptitiously out the window .
I'm still very unhappy about the current state of plugin support in Mozilla. My main gripe is with the total lack of support for LiveConnect, specifically the ability (or inability, as the case may be) to access DHTML elements (including script) from a Java applet.
LiveConnect is undoubtedly a hugely powerful feature which allows for great flexibility and programmability of web pages and applications without the need for page-specific downloads. You can get the benifits of the power of the Java language, networking and speed combined with the excellent layout and display capabilities of DHTML/script that provide a very rich user experience on the client side, without having to refresh pages or access dynamic server content.
LiveConnect has been available in one for or another in Netscape browsers from very early on and although not initially documented as being supported in Internet Explorer, it also provides a very high level of compliance and has done from very early on (3.02, i think).
There have been many bug reports made against the Mozilla project concerning the inability to call script from Java, so many in fact that you'd think they'd feel that it was important enough an issue to fix.
It's a shame, 'cos otherwise it's a pretty good effort.
sure, they added keywords and other stuff, but none of this broke any existing code. The only features they didn't support were RMI and JNI. Jar support was fine. I suggest you check your facts...
Someone did this with snooker a while back (>15 years) in England. There was a spot on Tomorrow's World about it. They had a robot setup overhanging a half-size snooker table. The software looked like it was quite sophisticated - looking ahead in the break and taking account of error, but the robotics part wasn't very good. I seem to remember Steve Davis commentated a game between the machine and a famous snooker referee.
but you yourself could (given time and intellectual capabilities) implement a JVM for any platform you like.
Actually this statement is false (no, not this one, the one above, silly).
Java is neither standardized or open. Sun owns the trademark on Java and has the right to sue anyone using that trademark without their consent.
Microsoft payed Sun nearly $50 million for a Java license and when they failed to comply with 'the standard' they found that all they'd bought was a lawsuit - never mind the fact that they had agreed to provide the reference implementation of the JVM on windows for free. How is this 'open'?
In submitting the.NET specification to ECMA, Microsoft is providing an open standard for their technology. You won't need a license to sell products containing.NET implementations, and you won't get a lawsuit if/when your implementation doesn't conform to the standard - you just won't be conforming to the standard. This sounds much more open to me.
Sun's argument that.NET is bound to Windows is fatuous. I'm sure that while Sun was developing Java it was just as bound to their operating systems. It was only when they ported their environment to other platforms was it considered cross-platform. The only way any language or system could be considered not cross-platform is if there's a legal protection against porting that system. This is exactly the case when porting Java, so arguably Java is not cross platform. It's only available on those platforms for which Java has been ported by JVM implementors that Sun has not threatened with lawsuits. It has done this on at least one occasion and there's no reason to believe they won't protect their 'standard' again. Why they'd need to protect a standard that was supposedly 'open' I have no idea...
As to this stupid PR bullshit. All I read in the article is Chuck wazzitsname asking pointed questions and the Sun representative just avoiding answering the questions. Sounds like politics as usual to me. Not interesting.
Ever cracked open an ASIC and poked around with a logic analyzer?
I can just see it now, "all you need to copy music illegally is an EE degree, an ASIC burner and some software that's been banned - build your own ripper - yours for only $1,299.95"
Alternatively, maybe the price of CDs will come down when people stop ripping off the labels...
The record industry isn't interested in analog copyright theft. There's nothing they can do about it now, and there never has been. They are mostly interested in people making copies of the media that are undiscernable from the original, which in the digital domain has previously been incredibly easy. Besides, I don't think you're going to get a good copy from a power amplifier tuned to the characteristics of the speakers it was designed to be attached to. There's that, or you could hack the ASIC on the sound card...
I doubt it. The kernel will only pass said data to signed drivers. In order to get your driver signed you'll need to talk to Microsoft. Your driver certificate and probably freedom of movement will be quickly revoked if you break their license agreement. Especially if they're in cahoots with the FBI, which, since this is a legal issue, they probably are.
Freedom to choose your your browser:
Freedom. Microsoft hasn't taken this choice away from you.
Freedom to choose your wordprocessor:
Freedom. Microsoft hasn't taken this choice away from you either.
Freedom to copy music:
Bzzzt! Not freedom. Abuse of copyright laws, more like.
Microsoft isn't protecting you from anyone, it's protecting the copyright holders from YOU. You're only whining because you think they might have actually succeeded this time.
Yup, there's marketing. There's also
a rather nice set of tools Something that Sun has failed to come up with in its many years of pushing Java.
And a free SDK if you're not interested in spending lots of money.
err i just thought of a way to find out the way to travel faster than light. it's completely impractical but in theory it would work. does that make me really clever? not really. damn.
Seriously, this is really unimpressive. I cannot imagine one single thing that this plugin enables you to do that the Java VM built into Internet Explorer already gives you. Apart from a 750k download, that is. It's got Tk, whoopy-f'n-doo: IE's got dhtml, Java, COM/ActiveX, Script, XML/XSLT.
And why does your dis file need to be signed in order for you to do communication back to the originating server? Even the Java sandbox allows you this luxury.
We've already got the wheel, folks. Haven't you worked out what color to paint it yet?
The "Nirvana of text presentation" is not achievable on today's monitors. Windows does as good a job as I've seen anywhere at making fonts readable at both large and small point sizes.
Antialiasing at small point sizes is unhelpful on most display technologies as all it does it makes the text blurry - try it, it looks crap. That's why they don't do it.
The font renderer in RiscOS was OK, but it didn't handle things like asymetric sub-pixel alignment very well - it just relied on the antialising to 'blurr' our the errors at small point sizes.
For a good example of the difference between a good font rendere and a god-awful one, use notepad and AcrobatReader side-by-side with various fonts and sizes. Check by zooming the pixels, too.
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maybe the price of extending your support contract is the price of the upgrade.
If you don't like the software or you don't like the price, then don't buy it. it's as simple as that. nobody's forcing you to.
it's not like someone's pointing a gun at your head, although that's exactly what'll happen if you're stubborn enough in your refusal to pay taxes. I find it ironic that micosoft's competitors are employing exactly those guns to force their advantage in the marketplace under the pretence that microsoft is tying you into their technology.
You know, as well as I, that's just not the case. Especially now with the meteoric rise of the free software movement, there's not much you can't do without microsoft software. it's just that in many cases, and for most people, microsoft just makes it easier.
is that really so much of a crime?
That's just short-sighted. There's no reason why a C++ compiler can't produce (assembly) code that's just as efficient as a C compieler.
In fact there are many opportunities in the C++ language and libraries that allow for much better performance than C programs.
For example. compare:
with Firstly the C++ version is much easier to read and understand. And it will generate far better performance in most cases.Seriously, try it. See the code generated, run your own perf tests, learn from it and write good code with this knowledge in mind.
Actually, it's not a plugin. It's just an applet running on a web page, hence no download.
why bother waiting for downloads when you can just stream the music you want to hear from all over the web? No charges, no registration necessary, no adverts, no delays.
Yeah, right. XPCOM (the object model in Mozilla) is based on COM. Bonobo is based on COM. RNA (real-networks platform) is based on COM.
Recognition from software professionals that Microsoft had at least one good cross-platform idea.
Knee-jerk ignoramus.
Censorship devices like this don't just censor content from the kids, they censor it from everyone. Freedom of choice goes surreptitiously out the window .
LiveConnect is undoubtedly a hugely powerful feature which allows for great flexibility and programmability of web pages and applications without the need for page-specific downloads. You can get the benifits of the power of the Java language, networking and speed combined with the excellent layout and display capabilities of DHTML/script that provide a very rich user experience on the client side, without having to refresh pages or access dynamic server content.
LiveConnect has been available in one for or another in Netscape browsers from very early on and although not initially documented as being supported in Internet Explorer, it also provides a very high level of compliance and has done from very early on (3.02, i think).
There have been many bug reports made against the Mozilla project concerning the inability to call script from Java, so many in fact that you'd think they'd feel that it was important enough an issue to fix.
It's a shame, 'cos otherwise it's a pretty good effort.
Actually this statement is false (no, not this one, the one above, silly).
Java is neither standardized or open. Sun owns the trademark on Java and has the right to sue anyone using that trademark without their consent.
Microsoft payed Sun nearly $50 million for a Java license and when they failed to comply with 'the standard' they found that all they'd bought was a lawsuit - never mind the fact that they had agreed to provide the reference implementation of the JVM on windows for free. How is this 'open'?
In submitting the .NET specification to ECMA, Microsoft is providing an open standard for their technology. You won't need a license to sell products containing .NET implementations, and you won't get a lawsuit if/when your implementation doesn't conform to the standard - you just won't be conforming to the standard. This sounds much more open to me.
Sun's argument that .NET is bound to Windows is fatuous. I'm sure that while Sun was developing Java it was just as bound to their operating systems. It was only when they ported their environment to other platforms was it considered cross-platform. The only way any language or system could be considered not cross-platform is if there's a legal protection against porting that system. This is exactly the case when porting Java, so arguably Java is not cross platform. It's only available on those platforms for which Java has been ported by JVM implementors that Sun has not threatened with lawsuits. It has done this on at least one occasion and there's no reason to believe they won't protect their 'standard' again. Why they'd need to protect a standard that was supposedly 'open' I have no idea...
As to this stupid PR bullshit. All I read in the article is Chuck wazzitsname asking pointed questions and the Sun representative just avoiding answering the questions. Sounds like politics as usual to me. Not interesting.
Yeah, but there's only ever 4 good songs on a CD anyway ;-)
I can just see it now, "all you need to copy music illegally is an EE degree, an ASIC burner and some software that's been banned - build your own ripper - yours for only $1,299.95"
Alternatively, maybe the price of CDs will come down when people stop ripping off the labels...
I doubt it. The kernel will only pass said data to signed drivers. In order to get your driver signed you'll need to talk to Microsoft. Your driver certificate and probably freedom of movement will be quickly revoked if you break their license agreement. Especially if they're in cahoots with the FBI, which, since this is a legal issue, they probably are.
Freedom. Microsoft hasn't taken this choice away from you.
Freedom to choose your wordprocessor:
Freedom. Microsoft hasn't taken this choice away from you either.
Freedom to copy music:
Bzzzt! Not freedom. Abuse of copyright laws, more like.
Microsoft isn't protecting you from anyone, it's protecting the copyright holders from YOU. You're only whining because you think they might have actually succeeded this time.
err i just thought of a way to find out the way to travel faster than light. it's completely impractical but in theory it would work. does that make me really clever? not really. damn.
And why does your dis file need to be signed in order for you to do communication back to the originating server? Even the Java sandbox allows you this luxury.
We've already got the wheel, folks. Haven't you worked out what color to paint it yet?
yeah, makes you wonder about the guy that actually wins doesn't it...
Antialiasing at small point sizes is unhelpful on most display technologies as all it does it makes the text blurry - try it, it looks crap. That's why they don't do it.
The font renderer in RiscOS was OK, but it didn't handle things like asymetric sub-pixel alignment very well - it just relied on the antialising to 'blurr' our the errors at small point sizes.
For a good example of the difference between a good font rendere and a god-awful one, use notepad and AcrobatReader side-by-side with various fonts and sizes. Check by zooming the pixels, too.