I don't mind an AOL CD sitting on Drew Carey's coffee table. It's really annoying when the bottom half of the screen is overlaid with a Time Warner RoadRunner advertisement while the show is running. And I don't even have Time Warner cable! That's way beyond product placement.
The book cannot be read aloud? Are PDFs going to come with a voice recognition plugin to make sure that you aren't reading the words in the document out loud.
I think I understand what they are saying. I think they just want public readings to be considered against the terms of the agreement. They should have it worded differently though, and specifically stating that is what they are opposing.
What's next, MS is going to stop me from going to the site and e-mailing it to somebody else. Then what if they forward my message to somebody else yet.
The whole reason for these bulletins is to notify customers of potential problems. The only reason I can see for the redirect to a website is so they can track who is actually looking at these things. Normally I wouldn't worry, but since it's MS I just have this creepy feeling that they're trying to doing something underhanded with the data they're going to collect. Lets face it, what could they possibly do to make the service better by knowing who's reading the bulletins. It can only get worse.
They'll probably do something like try to do a reverse lookup and find out who the customer is and give them a different synopsis so the bug doesn't sound that bad. Or maybe if nobody goes to a bulletin listing, they'll just stop reporting similar bugs so MS doesn't look as bad. Then it's just going to go back to where it was a year ago when everybody just posted the exploits. Then MS will try to use one of those new stupid laws that the techs understand better than the lawyers do, in order to halt posting of the code. Then it will infuriate everybody and they'll post it everywhere like DeCSS. They're just running around in circles. That's pretty normal for a company that can't innovate.
If every company out there is going to lay claim to something-dot-whatever, why are we creating new TLDs? Why not just let a user type in microsoft.crud.sucks.monopoly.whatever and have it pull up the MS homepage?
This issue is getting really stupid. Not that it started off on an intelligent point.
Just make it simple on everybody and switch domain names with TLDs. Reprogram all the routers and switch around DNS. Probably more worthwhile that continuing to argue over this idiotic issue.
I must admit that sounds interesting. I just need to go to work for a company that has more than just me as the programmer.
I love working in an environment that includes other people next to or nearby. Where you can just ask a question out loud at normal volume levels and have somebody answer it vs. having to walk through a maze, schedule a meeting, or call a telecommuter at home.
It's all about instant communication. You need to tell somebody something, they're right there. You need to go over some specs, you give yourself a good shove and slide your chair over. How can that NOT be more productive that isolation.
When everybody is nearby it also turns into somewhat of a competition. I did 1200 lines today, how much did you do? I just fragged my 34th bug of the day.
PC makers will, and probably have been, sick of the mandatory MS license. I don't think that switching to Linux would save them though.
For one thing, they would need to pay the cost of training all their employees on whatever Linux flavor they plan on shipping. I'm not a Linux guy so I don't know the answer to how often updates are released and how much those updates change things that the average user wouldn't understand.
Right now I work at a software dev shop / ISP and the ISP side of it isn't too bad. Anybody that calls up and says they have Linux, all I need to give them is the DNS and phone numbers. I don't know how long it would take for me to master Linux to the point where I could walk somebodies grandfather through setting up dial-up networking. It might not be too bad from what I have seen of Linux. Probably no worse than the different flavors of Windows that they keep moving the network settings around in.
Still, I think the initial cost of retraining and rebuilding knowledge bases would be prohibitive.
However, there may be a coup against MS and the vendors will band together and tell MS who's their daddy. In any case, it'll be interesting.
The argument is that broadcasters now have a larger audience to advertise to. That's true, but they can't target individuals in CA vs. NY and give them advertisements local to them. I really don't hear Intel, Microsoft or other nationwide businesses advertising on the radio. Or maybe they do and I just tune them out.
I'm sure broadcasters are sucking it up for all its worth in advertising though. It probably sounds pretty nice to say to advertiser 'x' that they have 5,000 local listeners and 200,000 net connections. But it still remains that they can't target the listeners like websites with banner ads can.
Are there any companies out there that are advertising on a radio station simply to get national coverage?
My company has recently dived into local radio advertisements and they really didn't generate that much business. Certainly not enough to cover the ad bill.
Hmmm, and there was an article just yesterday about how the rich guys in CA have put more computer equipment in there homes than medium sized companies have.
Anyways, what's the general ideas about Linux boxes vs. NT boxes on power consumption / performance ratios? Linux can obviously be run on lower end systems.
I looked at it. Pretty good. Definitely has the ambience of a BBS. My cable company should have broadband service within a month. So after I get my cable modem I'll have to download the software.
I don't think we could ever get back to the days of knowing one another as was the case with a BBS. The number of users are just to great to get that one on one dialogue going. Instead, the internet has become a large collection of quick, unrelated posts, usually with commercial motives.
That's where I'd say BBSes got their romance from. You weren't constantly bombarded with advertisements on many of the systems. Even if you did, it was usually just a flashing line telling you the sysop hadn't registered a door.
How can the web be like that now? It was that way 5 years ago before everybody and their brother tried to make money in some way. When was the last time you found a good website that wasn't cluttered with banner ads and actually had some functionality?
I ran my own BBS for about 6 months and it was great because I had the ability to be creative with it as well as offer a standard set of functionality. My only investment was $200 for PCBoard software and another phone line, and then only $15.00 a month for the phone line. Who can setup a web server for that amount of money and offer message boards and online games.
The whole site is flash. Nobody should have to go get the latest version of a plugin to at least view the homepage. Flash should be something that accentuates a page. It should NOT be something that IS the page.
I think BBS systems allowed for much more social interaction between users that the internet does. BBSes were limiting in that it was usually people within local calling distance. But that gave you a chance to have user group meetings and have people over to show them how everything worked. There was actual social interaction going on.
While the web and browsers are technically superior to a ANSI art on a terminal program, they just can't match the functionality of a BBS. Just about anywhere you were, you could just post a message and usually get a response. Everything was laid out in a fairly simple format. One keystroke to access different sections. Don't know what commands to use in a section, press the ? key.
For those of you complaining about having to learn an esoteric command structure: What about linux, or DOS, or almost anything else that has any functionality?
While I don't want to give up internet access and my browser for certain things such as reading Dilbert everyday, I would rather play a strategy game like TW in character mode that some commercialized java applet game.
BTW, does anybody have any examples of multi-player games that existed before door games? Ones that didn't require two people physically sitting next to each other.
Does this really count as news. Unconfirmed reports from a news agency in another country. The only part of the article that is factual is that Transmeta had their IPO recently.
This just in:
Two homeless teenagers were overheard discussing that Microsoft will be filing for bankruptcy next week. For the time being we can only assume that this must be the truth as officials at Microsoft have not responded to requests for comments that have been sent to info@microsoft.com 10 minutes ago.
In other news, Slashdot.org has buckled under the load of 50 comments being posted at the same time. Officals at/. have refused all requests for answers.
Not without disabling those features for IE also. While activex and java aren't critical enough, if you disable Javascript almost every site out there craps out.
You can disable those things just for Outlook Express though if you tweak the registry and add a custom security zone just for OE and then tell it to use that. You can even modify the security settings in the standard Internet Options control panel applet.
When Whistler ships and I have to install it on my development machine, I just know the boss will MAKE us turn that option on regardless of the inconvenience. So every time I want to run something I'm developing, I'll have to digitally sign it first.
What the hell's taking so long with that hello world app!!!!
I'm just waiting to get it back from the MS Certification Lab.
MS states that this is in response to the e-mail virii that are going around. But you can't put a digital signature on a VBS file. And the wscript.exe program that runs them will already be signed by MS, so how will that solve Outlook Express security issues?
Personally, the best thing you can do is tweak the registry to give yourself more security. Apparently MS still doesn't have a firm grasp on the complex definition of security. On the other hand, every newbie user seems to have more insight into the subject. Go figure.
I develop webpages for the company I work for, as well as a couple sister companies, one of which is an ISP. We don't have any nazi symbols on the pages, but this raises the question of whether or not I/my company could be susceptible to French law? After all, our users could post pictures on their personal pages.
Is this happening just because Yahoo has an office in France? Wouldn't it be easier to make all the ISPs in France reject Yahoo's IPs. That way they could easily censor other nazi related sites.
I would just hate to think that they could mandate that my company go through the hassle of programming the routers to reject ALL the IPs from France.
A fact is a fact. 1 = 1 is a fact. 2 + 2 = 4 is a fact. Medicine X cures ailment Z would be a fact.
Hopping on one foot while drinking Jolt through your nose will give you super powers, is NOT a fact.
If there is a remedy out there that cures certain diseases, and it hasn't been widely accepted, then maybe the people that are stating it cures something should stand by their convictions and prove they are right.
We just don't need.health sites that say if you take a trip to Mexico, Dr. Jimmy can perform cancer treatements out of the back of his Chevy pickup.
Just think of the possibilities if we all emptied our closets and created a massive cluster. Hell, I think the/. audience alone could beat IBMs new machine with their old junk.
Ooooh, then we could really kill in the distributed.net contests.
Dammit. It doesn't work with all the Javascript I had to write for a site. NS sucks. I already had to code a couple hundred lines just for NS for v4.7 would work somewhat.
Somebody please tell me that my code no longer works because they actually extended the object model and I don't have to jump through those stupid hoops to make a cell change it's background color on the fly!
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mind an AOL CD sitting on Drew Carey's coffee table. It's really annoying when the bottom half of the screen is overlaid with a Time Warner RoadRunner advertisement while the show is running. And I don't even have Time Warner cable! That's way beyond product placement.
Oh, any you forgot about Doritos.
Does this mean that AOL is going to start putting their ads right in the middle of a running show instead of waiting for commercials?
The book cannot be read aloud? Are PDFs going to come with a voice recognition plugin to make sure that you aren't reading the words in the document out loud.
I think I understand what they are saying. I think they just want public readings to be considered against the terms of the agreement. They should have it worded differently though, and specifically stating that is what they are opposing.
What's next, MS is going to stop me from going to the site and e-mailing it to somebody else. Then what if they forward my message to somebody else yet.
The whole reason for these bulletins is to notify customers of potential problems. The only reason I can see for the redirect to a website is so they can track who is actually looking at these things. Normally I wouldn't worry, but since it's MS I just have this creepy feeling that they're trying to doing something underhanded with the data they're going to collect. Lets face it, what could they possibly do to make the service better by knowing who's reading the bulletins. It can only get worse.
They'll probably do something like try to do a reverse lookup and find out who the customer is and give them a different synopsis so the bug doesn't sound that bad. Or maybe if nobody goes to a bulletin listing, they'll just stop reporting similar bugs so MS doesn't look as bad. Then it's just going to go back to where it was a year ago when everybody just posted the exploits. Then MS will try to use one of those new stupid laws that the techs understand better than the lawyers do, in order to halt posting of the code. Then it will infuriate everybody and they'll post it everywhere like DeCSS. They're just running around in circles. That's pretty normal for a company that can't innovate.
If every company out there is going to lay claim to something-dot-whatever, why are we creating new TLDs? Why not just let a user type in microsoft.crud .sucks .monopoly .whatever and have it pull up the MS homepage?
This issue is getting really stupid. Not that it started off on an intelligent point.
Just make it simple on everybody and switch domain names with TLDs. Reprogram all the routers and switch around DNS. Probably more worthwhile that continuing to argue over this idiotic issue.
I must admit that sounds interesting. I just need to go to work for a company that has more than just me as the programmer.
I love working in an environment that includes other people next to or nearby. Where you can just ask a question out loud at normal volume levels and have somebody answer it vs. having to walk through a maze, schedule a meeting, or call a telecommuter at home.
It's all about instant communication. You need to tell somebody something, they're right there. You need to go over some specs, you give yourself a good shove and slide your chair over. How can that NOT be more productive that isolation.
When everybody is nearby it also turns into somewhat of a competition. I did 1200 lines today, how much did you do? I just fragged my 34th bug of the day.
PC makers will, and probably have been, sick of the mandatory MS license. I don't think that switching to Linux would save them though.
For one thing, they would need to pay the cost of training all their employees on whatever Linux flavor they plan on shipping. I'm not a Linux guy so I don't know the answer to how often updates are released and how much those updates change things that the average user wouldn't understand.
Right now I work at a software dev shop / ISP and the ISP side of it isn't too bad. Anybody that calls up and says they have Linux, all I need to give them is the DNS and phone numbers. I don't know how long it would take for me to master Linux to the point where I could walk somebodies grandfather through setting up dial-up networking. It might not be too bad from what I have seen of Linux. Probably no worse than the different flavors of Windows that they keep moving the network settings around in.
Still, I think the initial cost of retraining and rebuilding knowledge bases would be prohibitive.
However, there may be a coup against MS and the vendors will band together and tell MS who's their daddy. In any case, it'll be interesting.
The argument is that broadcasters now have a larger audience to advertise to. That's true, but they can't target individuals in CA vs. NY and give them advertisements local to them. I really don't hear Intel, Microsoft or other nationwide businesses advertising on the radio. Or maybe they do and I just tune them out.
I'm sure broadcasters are sucking it up for all its worth in advertising though. It probably sounds pretty nice to say to advertiser 'x' that they have 5,000 local listeners and 200,000 net connections. But it still remains that they can't target the listeners like websites with banner ads can.
Are there any companies out there that are advertising on a radio station simply to get national coverage?
My company has recently dived into local radio advertisements and they really didn't generate that much business. Certainly not enough to cover the ad bill.
Hmmm, and there was an article just yesterday about how the rich guys in CA have put more computer equipment in there homes than medium sized companies have.
Anyways, what's the general ideas about Linux boxes vs. NT boxes on power consumption / performance ratios? Linux can obviously be run on lower end systems.
I looked at it. Pretty good. Definitely has the ambience of a BBS. My cable company should have broadband service within a month. So after I get my cable modem I'll have to download the software.
:)
Is it open source???
Keep up the good work.
I don't think we could ever get back to the days of knowing one another as was the case with a BBS. The number of users are just to great to get that one on one dialogue going. Instead, the internet has become a large collection of quick, unrelated posts, usually with commercial motives.
That's where I'd say BBSes got their romance from. You weren't constantly bombarded with advertisements on many of the systems. Even if you did, it was usually just a flashing line telling you the sysop hadn't registered a door.
How can the web be like that now? It was that way 5 years ago before everybody and their brother tried to make money in some way. When was the last time you found a good website that wasn't cluttered with banner ads and actually had some functionality?
I ran my own BBS for about 6 months and it was great because I had the ability to be creative with it as well as offer a standard set of functionality. My only investment was $200 for PCBoard software and another phone line, and then only $15.00 a month for the phone line. Who can setup a web server for that amount of money and offer message boards and online games.
Not really a gov site, but nylottery.org.
The whole site is flash. Nobody should have to go get the latest version of a plugin to at least view the homepage. Flash should be something that accentuates a page. It should NOT be something that IS the page.
I think BBS systems allowed for much more social interaction between users that the internet does. BBSes were limiting in that it was usually people within local calling distance. But that gave you a chance to have user group meetings and have people over to show them how everything worked. There was actual social interaction going on.
While the web and browsers are technically superior to a ANSI art on a terminal program, they just can't match the functionality of a BBS. Just about anywhere you were, you could just post a message and usually get a response. Everything was laid out in a fairly simple format. One keystroke to access different sections. Don't know what commands to use in a section, press the ? key.
For those of you complaining about having to learn an esoteric command structure: What about linux, or DOS, or almost anything else that has any functionality?
While I don't want to give up internet access and my browser for certain things such as reading Dilbert everyday, I would rather play a strategy game like TW in character mode that some commercialized java applet game.
BTW, does anybody have any examples of multi-player games that existed before door games? Ones that didn't require two people physically sitting next to each other.
Does this really count as news. Unconfirmed reports from a news agency in another country. The only part of the article that is factual is that Transmeta had their IPO recently.
/. have refused all requests for answers.
This just in:
Two homeless teenagers were overheard discussing that Microsoft will be filing for bankruptcy next week. For the time being we can only assume that this must be the truth as officials at Microsoft have not responded to requests for comments that have been sent to info@microsoft.com 10 minutes ago.
In other news, Slashdot.org has buckled under the load of 50 comments being posted at the same time. Officals at
Not without disabling those features for IE also. While activex and java aren't critical enough, if you disable Javascript almost every site out there craps out.
You can disable those things just for Outlook Express though if you tweak the registry and add a custom security zone just for OE and then tell it to use that. You can even modify the security settings in the standard Internet Options control panel applet.
When Whistler ships and I have to install it on my development machine, I just know the boss will MAKE us turn that option on regardless of the inconvenience. So every time I want to run something I'm developing, I'll have to digitally sign it first.
What the hell's taking so long with that hello world app!!!!
I'm just waiting to get it back from the MS Certification Lab.
You're right about that. But knowing MS's history, they've never shipped anything that had high security defaults.
MS states that this is in response to the e-mail virii that are going around. But you can't put a digital signature on a VBS file. And the wscript.exe program that runs them will already be signed by MS, so how will that solve Outlook Express security issues?
Personally, the best thing you can do is tweak the registry to give yourself more security. Apparently MS still doesn't have a firm grasp on the complex definition of security. On the other hand, every newbie user seems to have more insight into the subject. Go figure.
It's going to be a security option. Something that can be toggled on and off.
upcoming Windows release known as "Whistler" will include a range of new security options - quote from ZDNet article.
Notice how they state option
I develop webpages for the company I work for, as well as a couple sister companies, one of which is an ISP. We don't have any nazi symbols on the pages, but this raises the question of whether or not I/my company could be susceptible to French law? After all, our users could post pictures on their personal pages.
Is this happening just because Yahoo has an office in France? Wouldn't it be easier to make all the ISPs in France reject Yahoo's IPs. That way they could easily censor other nazi related sites.
I would just hate to think that they could mandate that my company go through the hassle of programming the routers to reject ALL the IPs from France.
A fact is a fact. 1 = 1 is a fact. 2 + 2 = 4 is a fact. Medicine X cures ailment Z would be a fact.
.health sites that say if you take a trip to Mexico, Dr. Jimmy can perform cancer treatements out of the back of his Chevy pickup.
Hopping on one foot while drinking Jolt through your nose will give you super powers, is NOT a fact.
If there is a remedy out there that cures certain diseases, and it hasn't been widely accepted, then maybe the people that are stating it cures something should stand by their convictions and prove they are right.
We just don't need
Innovation in making up bogus medical reports? It should only be facts.
Just think of the possibilities if we all emptied our closets and created a massive cluster. Hell, I think the /. audience alone could beat IBMs new machine with their old junk.
Ooooh, then we could really kill in the distributed.net contests.
Holy Codebase Batman!
Dammit. It doesn't work with all the Javascript I had to write for a site. NS sucks. I already had to code a couple hundred lines just for NS for v4.7 would work somewhat.
Somebody please tell me that my code no longer works because they actually extended the object model and I don't have to jump through those stupid hoops to make a cell change it's background color on the fly!