scammers who want to get your personal info so they can rip you off or add you to a mailing list;
people selling huge mailing list to clueless businesses that want to jump on the internet bandwagon but don't really understand what they're doing.
If a business conducts its own mailings, it will quickly find out that spam doesn't work and change its approach. Well, maybe not quickly, but they'll eventually get the idea that it's costing them both money and sales. But if a buisiness outsources its mass email campaign to an unscrupulous spammer who's more than happy to take their money, they'll probably keep right on spamming. The spammers will probably even show their clients numbers that show the "incredible" success that their other customers have had with the same plan.
Suits are dumb; just show them a upward trending graph with a big pie chart, say a bunch of catchy words that don't mean anything but sound good, and they'll buy anything.
that technology is neutral? It's how you put it to use that can either ensure or take away freedom. When those who control the best technology are few and powerful, if they're unchecked and unbalanced, they'll they'll use technology to imprison. When the masses have technology, with a decent set of laws set up to ensure due process of just laws, everyone will have freedom.
You need to go to MIT to think of this stuff? I dont' think so.
...If the terms and quality of service are agreeable, and the price isn't outrageous.
But saying $100/year is going to put people off. If Apple had come out and said "$10/month for everything", they could probably have gotten over more customers' price resistance... and the ironic thing is that $10/month is $120/year.
Come on, $100/year is $1/day. You can afford to pay Pepsi that much for your daily caffeine allotment. Surely the.Mac services will be worth more to you than brown fizzy sugar water.
Abbot: I'm here to see my doctor. Costello: Who is your doctor? Abbot: Yes. Costello: What? Abbot: No, not what, Who! Costello: I asked you first! Abbot: IAskedYouFirst is my chiropractor. I'm here to see Dr. Who. Costello: Didn't he used to play for the... Abbot: No, that was his brother.
Sure they might go bankrupt, but rather than going offline and disappearing, it's more likely that they'll get bought out by some big media company -- TW/AOL, MSFT, Disney, who knows. After a little housecleaning and a makeover, they'll get re-launched. People will complain that it isn't the same as it was back in the day, and in truth it probably won't be.
One thing to keep in mind is that MS is only able to keep its monopoly through the forced-upgrade cycle if it preserves interoperability.
If they suddenly cut off 90% of the user base who doesn't adapt right away from even being able to connect to a webserver, it could result in a fragmentation of both the marketplace and the internet -- you might have a "trusted" MS-only network competing with the established anarchic net that we're used to. This smaller "trusted" network would have a hard time competing unless there was substantial compromise for the sake of interoperability with the established net.
Now all they have to do is go and remove "In God We Trust" from all the money, and what not.
Ohio's state motto is "With God all things are possible" and this motto was upheld in a case from a few years ago as it "didn't endorse a specific religion." This was a bad ruling, in my opinion, because it's pretty obvious that it's NOT endorsing atheism, pantheism, paganism, hinduism, satanism, etc.
It's pretty clearly a nod to a (almost certainly Judeo-Christian) monotheistic deity who commonly goes by the name God (alias YHWH, alias Jehovah, the Almighty, the Father, etc.) Blech. You'd have to be pretty shortsighted to think that "With God all things are possible" is completely unbiased with regard to religious affiliation!
Maybe tech-savvy fans buy less stuff because it requires intelligence to become tech-savvy, and a side effect of being intelligent is that you acquire discriminating taste and become selective about purchasing stuff, rather than rushing out like a brainwashed lemming every time you see something shiny to buy.
The average well-trained fanboy who instinctively buys everything that happens to have the right logo that he's been brainwashed to respond to, whether or not it's crap, can't really be considered "intelligent".
Seriously, all things being equal, wouldn't you want to have access to the source code if you could have it?
Maybe it's more secure, maybe it isn't. I think security depends as much on the humans who set up and use the system as it does the software. But security is just one selling point.
If you don't have the source, you can't modify the code. All you can do is configure. (Well, unless you like hacking binary.) But if you have the source, you can de-bug, add features, remove unwanted features, etc.
And if you don't have the knowledge, skill, or desire to do this on your own, does it hurt you any to have the source available?
There's another sense in which having the source code makes you more secure: you're not tied to the vendor. If they go out of business, you don't have to go shopping for a new vendor who has a similar product that you'll have to migrate to in order to enjoy upgrades, patches, and tech support. If they decide to add features to a new version that you don't like, you can branch the code off and keep your house version however you like it.
There's a zillion reasons to prefer open source software. It's not just about security.
First get an idea of how much you can afford to spend.
Think a bit about what sort of tasks you want the computer to do. Do you want high end video for gaming? Do you want to build a PVR? Do you want to build a small server to host web/ftp/email services over a broadband connection?
Go online and do some research to see what's out there to fulfill the role you envision for the machine. arstechnica, tom's hardware, anandtech, storage review, and other sites usually have good information on recent and upcoming technologies. I do a lot of looking to see what's out there and what's around the corner, then go back and revise my budget accordingly.
Decide what you need to buy. I don't generally go for the biggest, fastest, best, because it's generally twice as expensive (or more) as it will be in just a few months. I don't buy the cheapest stuff either, as it's usually of inferior quality, obsolete, or will give inferior performance compared to spending a small amount more on something better. I look at the price/performance curve, and generally buy in the "knee-bend" of the curve. The only exception is if there's something dirt cheap available for a non-critical component that doesn't make much of a difference (like a floppy drive, NIC, or keyboard) or an absolutely critical high-priority component that the system *needs* in order to perform its role adequately (like a GeForce card for a gaming station) or a SCSI controller for a file server.
Shop around. You can try pricewatch.com to get an idea what stuff is going for these days. But I find that shipping makes finding a real bargain somewhat difficult. That's especially true if you buy from more than one vendor. I try to go through one vendor, for simplicity's sake, and right now my choice is Newegg.com. They have very good service and their prices are often near the top of the pricewatch search results anyway. You can try local stores, too. Stay away from chains like CompUSA and Best Buy, and support small local businesses run by knowledgable, competant people. Their prices will generally be about twice the lowest you'll find on pricewatch, but you may find the convenience of not paying for shipping, not having to wait for delivery, and having someone to go to for questions and advice useful. If you're more experienced, you probably don't need that, but few people know everything about everything, and everyone you talk to can potentially teach you something.
Put it together. There's plenty of guides out there on the web that will go into detailed instructions on how to put a PC together if you need help. PC Mechanic is a good example, and there are many others out there. Read the instructions a few times until you know what you're doing, then do it.
Would be an archive site that kept versions of news articles before and after they were changed by editors. Often, an article making allegations of corruption or bad intent gets changed shortly after it is published, and the replacement gives a more neutral stance, which doesn't give readers the whole story anymore, and in many instances makes the story a non-story, leading me to wonder why it was even published in the first place.
Check out the monolithic dome institute's website. Some very interesting concepts for building your own house. I don't work for the company, but I am interested in one day building one of these for myself, when I can afford it.
True, but I would think that GIMP developers had a head start by having benefitted by learning the lessons that Adobe learned through trial and error, in terms of what sort of features are useful and desirable, what sort of interface makes the most sense, etc.
I disagree; take a look at other industries. Some of the highest-quality products are produced by the tiny, niche-market manufacturers. The best cigars in the world are not from Phillip-Morris. The finest cuisine on your block is not the mega-corporation with the giant yellow 'M'. The most accurate watches don't come from time-giant Timex. The finest literature on the bookshelf isn't necessarily from the biggest publisher.
But software is different. The finest quality physical commodities come from smaller companies because they're too rare to be sold in mass quantities. Either the materials or the craftsmanship doesn't scale well to mass production.
In general, giant companies thrive on efficiency, the smaller ones on premium quality and discriminating customers.
But once you craft a high quality piece of software, it's a simple matter to duplicate as many copies as you want. It's not like building the 25,000th copy of a CD is any harder than the second. But with a luxury car, like a Rolls Royce, that 25,000th car (if they even made that many, which they don't) would require just as much effort and expense as the second.
I haven't seen the movie yet, because I'm actually boycotting the [MP|RI]AA, and I refuse to pay to see a movie (though I'll watch for free if it's on TV or something) but every time someone brings up Crouching Yoda, Hidden Jedi, I envision the same thing: a hysterical muppet, flying around and whapping things with a lightsaber, grunting and yelling in that high-pitched Frank Oz voice.
I pledge allegiance To the Gates of the Microsoft States of America. And to the company For which he chairs, One monopoly Under Ballmer, Indivisible, With forced upgrades, and blue screens for all.
I have no network. My backups are stored on 5 1/4" floppies.
Not only can no one read these things, they'd need a truck convoy to haul them away. No way in hell they're sneaking past security with a motherfucking semi truck!
Even more shocking was the revelation that Mozilla 1.0 also supports the saving of files, thereby depriving content owners the opportunity to charge web users for multiple downloads of webpages.
Truly revolting.
Hilary Rosen called the "save" feature "preposterous" and "a reckless use of technology designed to harm copyright owners."
Slashdot Mirror
If a business conducts its own mailings, it will quickly find out that spam doesn't work and change its approach. Well, maybe not quickly, but they'll eventually get the idea that it's costing them both money and sales. But if a buisiness outsources its mass email campaign to an unscrupulous spammer who's more than happy to take their money, they'll probably keep right on spamming. The spammers will probably even show their clients numbers that show the "incredible" success that their other customers have had with the same plan.
Suits are dumb; just show them a upward trending graph with a big pie chart, say a bunch of catchy words that don't mean anything but sound good, and they'll buy anything.
that technology is neutral? It's how you put it to use that can either ensure or take away freedom. When those who control the best technology are few and powerful, if they're unchecked and unbalanced, they'll they'll use technology to imprison. When the masses have technology, with a decent set of laws set up to ensure due process of just laws, everyone will have freedom.
You need to go to MIT to think of this stuff? I dont' think so.
Each pixel should be a about an inch tall, assuming 800x600 resolution.
Posting in HTML format, I used a symbol to signify "less than" that prefixed the $100/year part. But when it posted it got removed. Sue me:)
But saying $100/year is going to put people off. If Apple had come out and said "$10/month for everything", they could probably have gotten over more customers' price resistance... and the ironic thing is that $10/month is $120/year.
Come on, $100/year is $1/day. You can afford to pay Pepsi that much for your daily caffeine allotment. Surely the .Mac services will be worth more to you than brown fizzy sugar water.
Unless it has boobs or a big gun attached to it, game companies won't bother trying to market it.
Now I can play Street Fighter II Alpha blah blah on the actual *street*.
I've seen the script. Here's an excerpt:
Abbot: I'm here to see my doctor.
Costello: Who is your doctor?
Abbot: Yes.
Costello: What?
Abbot: No, not what, Who!
Costello: I asked you first!
Abbot: IAskedYouFirst is my chiropractor. I'm here to see Dr. Who.
Costello: Didn't he used to play for the...
Abbot: No, that was his brother.
etc.
Sure they might go bankrupt, but rather than going offline and disappearing, it's more likely that they'll get bought out by some big media company -- TW/AOL, MSFT, Disney, who knows. After a little housecleaning and a makeover, they'll get re-launched. People will complain that it isn't the same as it was back in the day, and in truth it probably won't be.
One thing to keep in mind is that MS is only able to keep its monopoly through the forced-upgrade cycle if it preserves interoperability.
If they suddenly cut off 90% of the user base who doesn't adapt right away from even being able to connect to a webserver, it could result in a fragmentation of both the marketplace and the internet -- you might have a "trusted" MS-only network competing with the established anarchic net that we're used to. This smaller "trusted" network would have a hard time competing unless there was substantial compromise for the sake of interoperability with the established net.
Now all they have to do is go and remove "In God We Trust" from all the money, and what not.
Ohio's state motto is "With God all things are possible" and this motto was upheld in a case from a few years ago as it "didn't endorse a specific religion." This was a bad ruling, in my opinion, because it's pretty obvious that it's NOT endorsing atheism, pantheism, paganism, hinduism, satanism, etc.
It's pretty clearly a nod to a (almost certainly Judeo-Christian) monotheistic deity who commonly goes by the name God (alias YHWH, alias Jehovah, the Almighty, the Father, etc.) Blech. You'd have to be pretty shortsighted to think that "With God all things are possible" is completely unbiased with regard to religious affiliation!
Maybe tech-savvy fans buy less stuff because it requires intelligence to become tech-savvy, and a side effect of being intelligent is that you acquire discriminating taste and become selective about purchasing stuff, rather than rushing out like a brainwashed lemming every time you see something shiny to buy.
The average well-trained fanboy who instinctively buys everything that happens to have the right logo that he's been brainwashed to respond to, whether or not it's crap, can't really be considered "intelligent".
If it's relevant, and true, what's the problem?
What exactly is slashbotting?
Seriously, all things being equal, wouldn't you want to have access to the source code if you could have it?
Maybe it's more secure, maybe it isn't. I think security depends as much on the humans who set up and use the system as it does the software. But security is just one selling point.
If you don't have the source, you can't modify the code. All you can do is configure. (Well, unless you like hacking binary.) But if you have the source, you can de-bug, add features, remove unwanted features, etc.
And if you don't have the knowledge, skill, or desire to do this on your own, does it hurt you any to have the source available?
There's another sense in which having the source code makes you more secure: you're not tied to the vendor. If they go out of business, you don't have to go shopping for a new vendor who has a similar product that you'll have to migrate to in order to enjoy upgrades, patches, and tech support. If they decide to add features to a new version that you don't like, you can branch the code off and keep your house version however you like it.
There's a zillion reasons to prefer open source software. It's not just about security.
- First get an idea of how much you can afford to spend.
- Think a bit about what sort of tasks you want the computer to do. Do you want high end video for gaming? Do you want to build a PVR? Do you want to build a small server to host web/ftp/email services over a broadband connection?
- Go online and do some research to see what's out there to fulfill the role you envision for the machine. arstechnica, tom's hardware, anandtech, storage review, and other sites usually have good information on recent and upcoming technologies. I do a lot of looking to see what's out there and what's around the corner, then go back and revise my budget accordingly.
- Decide what you need to buy. I don't generally go for the biggest, fastest, best, because it's generally twice as expensive (or more) as it will be in just a few months. I don't buy the cheapest stuff either, as it's usually of inferior quality, obsolete, or will give inferior performance compared to spending a small amount more on something better. I look at the price/performance curve, and generally buy in the "knee-bend" of the curve. The only exception is if there's something dirt cheap available for a non-critical component that doesn't make much of a difference (like a floppy drive, NIC, or keyboard) or an absolutely critical high-priority component that the system *needs* in order to perform its role adequately (like a GeForce card for a gaming station) or a SCSI controller for a file server.
- Shop around. You can try pricewatch.com to get an idea what stuff is going for these days. But I find that shipping makes finding a real bargain somewhat difficult. That's especially true if you buy from more than one vendor. I try to go through one vendor, for simplicity's sake, and right now my choice is Newegg.com. They have very good service and their prices are often near the top of the pricewatch search results anyway. You can try local stores, too. Stay away from chains like CompUSA and Best Buy, and support small local businesses run by knowledgable, competant people. Their prices will generally be about twice the lowest you'll find on pricewatch, but you may find the convenience of not paying for shipping, not having to wait for delivery, and having someone to go to for questions and advice useful. If you're more experienced, you probably don't need that, but few people know everything about everything, and everyone you talk to can potentially teach you something.
- Put it together. There's plenty of guides out there on the web that will go into detailed instructions on how to put a PC together if you need help. PC Mechanic is a good example, and there are many others out there. Read the instructions a few times until you know what you're doing, then do it.
Good luck.Would be an archive site that kept versions of news articles before and after they were changed by editors. Often, an article making allegations of corruption or bad intent gets changed shortly after it is published, and the replacement gives a more neutral stance, which doesn't give readers the whole story anymore, and in many instances makes the story a non-story, leading me to wonder why it was even published in the first place.
Check out the monolithic dome institute's website. Some very interesting concepts for building your own house. I don't work for the company, but I am interested in one day building one of these for myself, when I can afford it.
True, but I would think that GIMP developers had a head start by having benefitted by learning the lessons that Adobe learned through trial and error, in terms of what sort of features are useful and desirable, what sort of interface makes the most sense, etc.
But software is different. The finest quality physical commodities come from smaller companies because they're too rare to be sold in mass quantities. Either the materials or the craftsmanship doesn't scale well to mass production.
In general, giant companies thrive on efficiency, the smaller ones on premium quality and discriminating customers.
But once you craft a high quality piece of software, it's a simple matter to duplicate as many copies as you want. It's not like building the 25,000th copy of a CD is any harder than the second. But with a luxury car, like a Rolls Royce, that 25,000th car (if they even made that many, which they don't) would require just as much effort and expense as the second.
That'll show those lousy Koreans to pirate MSFT software!
How much you want to bet M$ offers to release "guaranteed" virus-free software in the future provided that Korea cracks down on software piracy?
I haven't seen the movie yet, because I'm actually boycotting the [MP|RI]AA, and I refuse to pay to see a movie (though I'll watch for free if it's on TV or something) but every time someone brings up Crouching Yoda, Hidden Jedi, I envision the same thing: a hysterical muppet, flying around and whapping things with a lightsaber, grunting and yelling in that high-pitched Frank Oz voice.
I pledge allegiance
To the Gates
of the Microsoft States of America.
And to the company
For which he chairs,
One monopoly
Under Ballmer,
Indivisible,
With forced upgrades, and blue screens for all.
No one can steal my data!
I have no network. My backups are stored on 5 1/4" floppies.
Not only can no one read these things, they'd need a truck convoy to haul them away. No way in hell they're sneaking past security with a motherfucking semi truck!
It's true!
Even more shocking was the revelation that Mozilla 1.0 also supports the saving of files, thereby depriving content owners the opportunity to charge web users for multiple downloads of webpages.
Truly revolting.
Hilary Rosen called the "save" feature "preposterous" and "a reckless use of technology designed to harm copyright owners."