So if porn is so wildly popular, any politician who opposes it must be pretty dumb. Forget soccer moms, the elderly, the Hispanic population.. the real critical demographic is the porn segment. Any senator who cuts off millions of registered voters from their Internet porn isn't going to be around come Election Day.
People, RTFA. Turning the key doesn't make one hard drive available and the other not available -- it just selects which is bootable. So you don't need three drives (i.e. Linux, Windows, Common Files), just two -- both drives are accessible at all times.
Yeah, and it's a good thing we only have one kind of car, or else you wouldn't be able to get into a different model than the one you're used to and drive off. Oh, wait, we don't, and you can.
If HyperTerminal sucked and Telix/Procomm were so great, why is Hyperterminal still around while Telix and Procomm are either dead or insignificant?
If your answer is, "Because nobody needs a terminal emulation program anymore", then s/Hyperterminal/Notepad.
Notepad sucks. There are a million better programs (not necessarily more complex, though) I'd be happy if Notepad had three new features:
* Arbitrarily large file support
* Proper handling of UNIX newlines (MS-DOS editor handles them just fine)
* Search-and-replace
Dell could easily write a program that was as simple as Notepad but had these three features, and then pull out Notepad and replace it with this.
Similar things have happened with Stacker/DoubleSpace, HIMEM/QEMM, Speedisk/Defrag, NDD/ScanDisk, Anything/Pbrush, Anything/HyperTerminal, Winamp/Windows Media Player, Netscape/IE, ICQ/MSN Messenger, Anything/Command Prompt,...
When was the last time you called MS for tech support? If you are having trouble running Microsoft Word on Microsoft Windows ME on your new Dell computer, you call Dell tech support. That's just what everyone does. It's not like Dell would be taking on an extra burden.
It's high time OEMs stopped passing Windows to the consumer verbatim as it comes from Microsoft. Each OEM should put together their own Windows "distro". Just like we have Redhat Linux and Debian Linux, there should be Dell Windows XP and Gateway Windows XP.
The OEMs should look at products and choose what to bundle. If Dell decides Mozilla is better than IE, they should pull off IE and put on Mozilla.
That way, MS can't destroy a competitor just by bundling a moderately good imitation.
Think back to the bundling of, say, HyperTerminal. It sucked, but nobody would bother to go out and find a good replacement when something adequate comes with the system. But if Dell had had the balls to say, "Screw that, we're including FooComm in our Windows distribution, it's better" then HyperTerminal would have faced competition and would be better today.
During the antitrust trial, MS kept saying, "We don't have a monopoly! There are alternatives! You can use a Mac! You can use Linux! You can use BeOS! And we didn't preclude Netscape from having a distribution channel! You could have downloaded it, or got it from CompUSA!"
I for one hope AOL gets every single major OEM to put AOL products all over the default installation, and then says to MS, "What? They can always download MSN. They can always download Windows Media Player."
Or paraphrase MS's excuse from Windows Refund Day: "Sure, most major OEMs will bundle AOL, but you don't have to use a major OEM. Just use some fly-by-night mail-order distributor if you don't want AOL bundled with your computer."
Sure, i hate AOL as much as the next guy, but the delight of seeing MS get a taste of their own medicine is worth it.
Yes, breaking into your house is illegal and should be. And using eBook reader to "steal" a book is illegal and should be.
But that's not what we're talking about.
This Russian guy has not been accused of stealing an electronic book. He's been accused of trafficking in software which could theoretially be used to steal a book.
It would be like arresting me for saying, "Hey, if you throw a brick through a window, you can break into TomV's house!" or for releasing a report saying, "Yale brand locks are ineffective -- you can break them with a screwdriver!"
It's a good thing the RIAA sued Napster instead of cooperating -- if they had played Let's Make a Deal, they could have done something evil like this back when Napster had 30 million users and gotten the bulk of them to use their new, tightly controlled standard.
But instead, they destroyed Napster and along with it their last chance to coopt the music-trading community.
Like that old guy said, If you strike [Napster] down, [the music-sharing community] will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
But protocols are hardly ever broken by brute force: usually you just wait for the other guy to make a design, implementation, or protocol error, and pounce there. Or use human factors.
Well, yes, of course. But the original comment suggested that distributed computing efforts would crack the key via brute force in a reasonable amount of time.
I agree that such centralization is begging for trouble, but...
I'd expect there to be distributed.net style contests to crack the root M$ keys.
... that's completely ridiculous. Let's say Microsoft merely uses a 512-bit key, and you get one billion people with computers fast enough to check 10 billion keys per second to work on the problem around the clock. It would take 10^135 seconds to go through the keyspace. That's 42,515,880 million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million years, give or take a few hundred trillion millenia.
Although i guess on average it would only take half that until you hit the key.
Slashdot Mirror
It's "viruses", not virii.
A story on how Yahoo's testing pop-under advertising, and it's running on... Yahoo.
That would like it if boycottadobe.com was made with Adobe products...
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe GoLive 5">
Oh, er, i mean...
Speaking of Star Wars toys, this should be good for a chuckle.
That should be $WHOMEVER.
:)
Just being a grammar nazi.
So if porn is so wildly popular, any politician who opposes it must be pretty dumb. Forget soccer moms, the elderly, the Hispanic population .. the real critical demographic is the porn segment. Any senator who cuts off millions of registered voters from their Internet porn isn't going to be around come Election Day.
People, RTFA. Turning the key doesn't make one hard drive available and the other not available -- it just selects which is bootable. So you don't need three drives (i.e. Linux, Windows, Common Files), just two -- both drives are accessible at all times.
Let's look to telephones for an analogy. Is it legal for your employer to monitor your personal telephone calls made from work?
(I don't know; is it?)
What does "Blue Went" mean?
Yeah, and it's a good thing we only have one kind of car, or else you wouldn't be able to get into a different model than the one you're used to and drive off. Oh, wait, we don't, and you can.
So corporations will standardize on Dell Windows instead of Microsoft Windows. How exactly is that harder?
The benefit, of course, is that Dell Windows had better be superior to Micron Windows or else no corporations will use it. And so on.
If HyperTerminal sucked and Telix/Procomm were so great, why is Hyperterminal still around while Telix and Procomm are either dead or insignificant?
...
If your answer is, "Because nobody needs a terminal emulation program anymore", then s/Hyperterminal/Notepad.
Notepad sucks. There are a million better programs (not necessarily more complex, though) I'd be happy if Notepad had three new features:
* Arbitrarily large file support
* Proper handling of UNIX newlines (MS-DOS editor handles them just fine)
* Search-and-replace
Dell could easily write a program that was as simple as Notepad but had these three features, and then pull out Notepad and replace it with this.
Similar things have happened with Stacker/DoubleSpace, HIMEM/QEMM, Speedisk/Defrag, NDD/ScanDisk, Anything/Pbrush, Anything/HyperTerminal, Winamp/Windows Media Player, Netscape/IE, ICQ/MSN Messenger, Anything/Command Prompt,
When was the last time you called MS for tech support? If you are having trouble running Microsoft Word on Microsoft Windows ME on your new Dell computer, you call Dell tech support. That's just what everyone does. It's not like Dell would be taking on an extra burden.
It's high time OEMs stopped passing Windows to the consumer verbatim as it comes from Microsoft. Each OEM should put together their own Windows "distro". Just like we have Redhat Linux and Debian Linux, there should be Dell Windows XP and Gateway Windows XP.
The OEMs should look at products and choose what to bundle. If Dell decides Mozilla is better than IE, they should pull off IE and put on Mozilla.
That way, MS can't destroy a competitor just by bundling a moderately good imitation.
Think back to the bundling of, say, HyperTerminal. It sucked, but nobody would bother to go out and find a good replacement when something adequate comes with the system. But if Dell had had the balls to say, "Screw that, we're including FooComm in our Windows distribution, it's better" then HyperTerminal would have faced competition and would be better today.
During the antitrust trial, MS kept saying, "We don't have a monopoly! There are alternatives! You can use a Mac! You can use Linux! You can use BeOS! And we didn't preclude Netscape from having a distribution channel! You could have downloaded it, or got it from CompUSA!"
I for one hope AOL gets every single major OEM to put AOL products all over the default installation, and then says to MS, "What? They can always download MSN. They can always download Windows Media Player."
Or paraphrase MS's excuse from Windows Refund Day: "Sure, most major OEMs will bundle AOL, but you don't have to use a major OEM. Just use some fly-by-night mail-order distributor if you don't want AOL bundled with your computer."
Sure, i hate AOL as much as the next guy, but the delight of seeing MS get a taste of their own medicine is worth it.
A new sound ... that is less intrusive yet easy to pinpoint
Cellphones that fart. That's just great.
Why haven't market forces, supply and demand, driven the price down?
--
Jamie: Got it. No problem. The Washington Times and the New York Post.
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But that's not what we're talking about.
This Russian guy has not been accused of stealing an electronic book. He's been accused of trafficking in software which could theoretially be used to steal a book.
It would be like arresting me for saying, "Hey, if you throw a brick through a window, you can break into TomV's house!" or for releasing a report saying, "Yale brand locks are ineffective -- you can break them with a screwdriver!"
--
--
Good point. Oh, uh, by the way, Microsoft Office has how many hundred million users?
:)
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But instead, they destroyed Napster and along with it their last chance to coopt the music-trading community.
Like that old guy said, If you strike [Napster] down, [the music-sharing community] will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
--
Well, yes, of course. But the original comment suggested that distributed computing efforts would crack the key via brute force in a reasonable amount of time.
--
I'd expect there to be distributed.net style contests to crack the root M$ keys.
... that's completely ridiculous. Let's say Microsoft merely uses a 512-bit key, and you get one billion people with computers fast enough to check 10 billion keys per second to work on the problem around the clock. It would take 10^135 seconds to go through the keyspace. That's 42,515,880 million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million years, give or take a few hundred trillion millenia.
Although i guess on average it would only take half that until you hit the key.
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