Unless I seriously misunderstand this, the placement of these small GIFs on the web page gives the GIF server no information that is not in your typical HTTP header. In the Slashdot case, both the page server and the "non-bug" server belong to Slashdot. What this provides them is no more or less than they already have. What it might provide is the ability to turn off some logging on a busier server and turn that duty over to a less busy server (i.e. the one that exists only to pump out single pixel GIFs). This is also useful if you have multiple servers doing the bulk of the work, and would like to track usage centrally. This way the bug-server gets a unified sense of all visits, while the page-server is able to distribute the load as needed without worrying about discontinuous visit information. Simply put, this is the most efficient way to track this. They could theoretically track it 100 other ways, but I can't think of a way that improves on this technique.
I think the Slashdot usage is not only understandable, but acceptable. However, I think the undisclosed gathering of even this readily available HTTP header information, where the bug URL is not in the same domain as the referring page is as objectionable as using banners to enable cookies from a single domain to be activated by what appears to be a completely separate. It's a tradeoff, since they get only HTTP header information out of the deal, they get less information, but there is also no way to turn off these GIFs, like there is with cookies. Well, yeah, you could use Lynx. *smirk*
Hmmm. Mac hardware is fully capable of dual-booting Linux and Mac OS. The real question is, what could possibly induce you to use Windows at that point? *grin*
(Oh. Video games? Hmmm. Well. That's what Dreamcast/Playstation/Arcades are for.)
OK. your reply is a lot more insightful than your original post and this whole thing is, imho, a lot more complex than fans versus majors versus RIAA versus napster. as far as i can tell, napster doesn't give any more of a rat's ass about artists than a major label might. a good example of an alternative to the majors and napster is the way Mordam records distributes.mp3s at 79 cents a track, with streaming samples so you can listen before you buy. this is probably the most artist and fan friendly way to accomplish your lofty goals that exists at the moment, perhaps a consortium of distributors like Mordam could be developed and use a Napster-style client/server system to create a peer-to-peer transfer where one of the peers is the band/label and one is the fan. this would certainly help in the quality control and file validation areas as well.
I thought the same way until I went and looked at a list of all the labels belonging to the RIAA. With the exception of a few DIY punk "labels", RRRecords, and Alternative Tentacles, I couldn't think of a single label that I'd bought a CD from in the last ten years that wasn't on the list of RIAA members. I can think of a few more labels that aren't on the list, but to claim that they churn out a better product than all these "majors" is a highly suspect assertion.
Releasing useful scripts that easily exploit the bug is much different than releasing useful information to help fix/prevent the bug (even if the solution is to turn off said service until a patch is available). That said, I totally agree that as much information as possible should be released as soon as possible. In the case of free (as in speech) software, some genius might even have a patch ready for the maintainers of Foo when they get back from vacation or the drunk tank or wherever. In the case of proprietary software, well, as much should be done to discredit that model, so biasing the public by inducing a panic can only be a Good Thing(r). Or something like that.
Actually, my experiences with Kinko's (now about two years stale) lead me to believe that they have an "important warning" type sticker about copyright on every machine. And certainly if you ask them to copy something for you, they will make you go through serious hoops if it even appears to be someone else's copyrighted work. Additionally, I seem to recall many lawsuits a bunch of years ago about this precise issue at Kinko's, where they would prepare student packets filled with "pirated" texts that exceeded any rational definition of fair use. So far as I can tell, this is either a bad analogy or a very incorrect conclusion based on the analogy.
And yes, I realize that Kinko's is not likely to throw you out of the store if they see you copying a book, but who in their right mind would do that at 8 cents a page? If there were a per-song copy fee on Napster, then this analogy would be stronger. And in fact, I'm surprised that Napster isn't more willing to look at a per song transfer fee which is then used to pay a royalty to the copyright owner, such as what happens when songs are broadcast over the radio. Of course, that would hamper their ability to attract hordes of new lusers (and hence insane venture capital investments) because a lot of people would balk at even a nominal fee.
Yeah. But just wait until we start getting spam advertising full screen, surround-sound streaming pr0n that includes vibrating floor-boards and "synchronized" anything! That WILL be Internet History.
BWAHAHA. Sorry, but this is why I love Apple-- flawless execution of great ideas *smirk*. You can still see a picture at www.apple.com, and I've been browsing the pages just fine. But you're absolutely right, it's messed. I get very spotty servage from them on this. I've gotten 403 and pages w/o pix. But it's there.
It's the internet. And while I'm certain I understand the complaint here, I'm not sure I agree that clinging to potentially outmoded paradigms about information is useful-- especially since this instance so much resembles fair use. AFAICT, all Deja is doing is providing a service to their users which relies on one of the supposed strengths of the web-- the ability to link to other resources. This saves Deja users the time it would take to copy & paste text from your post into the input line of a search engine and sift through the results. Personally, I think this implementation is completely useless (see below), but that's me. I do find it useful when I'm reading anything and there are salient links, either to detailed information or external sites created by entities mentioned in the text. Sadly, Deja may link to things that the original poster may not like. The original poster may have biases which are contradicted completely in the "reference" materials. So what? Maybe there will arise in the East a great new shiny thing like "Gnuja Ve!" which has much better links (i.e. links that align more closely with the biases of the person posting on Usenet).
Having looked at the example, yes, I think it is awful the way it is done-- little orange triangle or no. I would prefer my reference links in a clearly marked "reference" section before or after or off to the side of the post. Most amusing is that it links to some really lame telephone modem when the posting is clearly in a group devoted to cable modems.
actually, department stores can and do decide which specific individuals are to be treated as trespassers. these individuals may include, but are not limited to: people taking photos, people eating or drinking in violation of posted signs, people behaving in ways which disturb other customers, people who are suspected of shoplifting, and natalie portman fanatics on a rampage.
the only way the department store will be "in trouble" is if they are in violation of either common sense or local/state/federal discrimination laws. i agree with you, however, that ebay has ways of making their case a lot more secure. for starters, they could deny access from IP addresses which appear to be browsing large numbers of unrelated auctions and/or have been verified as the addresses of those who are reusing auction info for Nefarious Purposes.
frankly, i think all of these lawsuits are just a way to get cheap advertising that doesn't look like advertising. it keeps the company's or band's moniker in the public eye/ear just a little bit longer at way less cost than airtime. and it doesn't look like an ad, which means that the unwitting consumer is more likely NOT to gloss it over.
Why two screens, and two cameras? You could completely eliminate any and all protrusions from the side of the doors by axing one camera and one LCD screen, and instead mounting one camera (maybe with a wide-angle lens) at the rear of the car (beside the CHMSL maybe). Then you'd also only need one LCD screen. Voila - half the cost, with all the nerdity preserved!
That would have to be one seriously wide angle lens to have the same type of view provided by the typical side view mirrors (or cameras in this case). The view provided by such mirrors is mostly to the sides of the vehicle. There would be no good way to accomplish this from the rear of the car with only one camera. The distortion that such a wide angle would produce would be more suited to a funhouse. If it were me, I'd mount these cameras up near the front of the vehicle and get a much better field of view with less "blind spot" action.
Their browser is basically an advertisement for their web design and server tools-- my guess is that most of these extensions are nearly impossible to develop without ASP or FrontPage2k or some other MS product. Those they make money on. One could argue that they would sell more of those products if their browser had a larger audience or other browsers had the ability to easily embrace those extensions, but right now the only people who don't have the capacity to use IE are Linux users and zealots (and is there really a difference? *smirk*). In either case, once the extensions are needed, it is no more difficult to obtain IE than it is to obtain any other extended browser
One reason they don't GPL their software is that Bill Gates is one of the prime forces behind the idea of "software piracy"-- he is probably physically unable to share software at this point. Another is that they gain no revenue by doing so. In fact, this would make it possible for some other company to develop extensions on their current version-- extensions that can only be developed using other, proprietary software that is sold by some non-MS shop. Sure MS has the ability to incorporate the extension into their browser, but this would break their development and server tools, since they don't necessarily have GPL-enforced access to that code.
Frankly, I believe it is up to web designers to use extensions and non-standards carefully and appropriately. IMHO, if your web page doesn't render legibly in Lynx (or at least an old Mosaic), you have a major problem in the design department. Most extensions are used only to make sites more impressive, without truly adding functionality or content. Yes, exceptions like www.superbad.com exist. But most sites' use of propriety extensions only serve to break those sites in other browsers. This is something we consumers can influence by encouraging web designers to fix their pages or provide ready alternatives. If the designers feel it is worthwhile to provide a flashy version of their page for every browser, that's their problem. If I were actually a web designer, I'd stick to the stricter standards so this wouldn't be an issue.
I haven't read the article or all of the existing posts on this topic. I will now toss in my two cents anyway.
Let's assume a few things. First, that a court will decide that a service like Napster cannot exist unless they make more serious efforts to combat "piracy". Second, that mp3s will continue to be ripped and traded by many (the format will endure, that is). Third, that advertisers can be found who will consider this a valid cost-- I mean, they fell for banners, and this is actually much better. Fourth, that the industry at large will go for this.
With those fairly reasonable assumptions we as persons who desire "free" music will suddenly be able to download mp3s from the britneyspears.com site or the cant-sing-cant-dance-but-got-a-big-label-contract- anyway.com site and load them onto our home PCs, our Rios and (yes, saw this in Crutchfield's) our car stereos. This will be similar to our ability to turn on the radio and record all the free music we want. But wait! The catch, just like radio, is that some hack will be pimping a product for the first 10 seconds of the song-- right over the damn music.
So the companies are able to maintain status quo basically. Oh, and then Napster is allowed to share all the files they want, but now that there are official, ad-laden versions of these songs available, files offered for sharing must match the name, bitrate, and filesize of the official version or be disallowed. Or, why bother sharing files over Napster when they are finally available from the source for free-- and perhaps a bit more reliably (I've dl'ed way too many partial cuts off Napster to be overly optimistic about the service).
What's going to be really annoying is when, once they've trashed the ability to share files independently and once they've accustomed users to going directly to the company to download their ad-laden mp3, that they will initiate the process of data collection. "Please fill out this form that tells us everything about you to start the download of your free songs! Never mind that we're still going to make you listen to ads! Don't look behind that curtain!"
With Windows what's to hack? I mean, how is that even the least bit exciting? "Look ma! I hacked a Windows box! I can download their pitiful Starcraft high scores and post them to usenet!"
Besides, it's so much easier to write a trojan that uses the e-mail program or the paperclip "assistant" to foul the network or erase the drive.
I know, I know, you specifically mentioned the server OSes, but I couldn't resist.
"You've got Spam, Doc!" Better Steve Jobs in charge of entertaining the masses with Disnixarple (which they already do, btw) than Steve Case with AOL-Time-Warner-Brothers.
Jobs is already top dog at two out of three firms in question and Disney would be much less well off right now if not for Pixar and several hit movies in a row. The reason this rumor is getting passed around is because it is so reasonable. Jobs is not a geek, he's a visionary type of CEO-- like Walt was. If there's any truth to this, maybe Eisner's looking to retire. The go.com thing isn't going nearly as well as Disney wanted it to and several other Disney divisions are anemic. Jobs might be just the guy to get the company cruising again.
I'd love to buy a Winnie-the-Pooh branded iMac for my daughter (which, of course, will have Yellow Dog Linux installed on it before she ever touches it).
I subsequently had numerous problems with AAA battery drain which caused me to lose data. Never figured out if this was the battery brand or the hardware.
It also lost its appeal when I was travelling due to the addition of a laptop to my work life. That, and I had some bizarro usb/cradle problems with my (ugh) iMac. It just got to be more trouble than it was worth. Some day, when I decide I need a replacement Palm, I'll probably go with the best color Visor/Palm I can afford. I understand that the battery situation is radically different nowadays and that the cradle connector situation is equally advanced. Or maybe I'll just wait until my dream touchpad-notebook described above is an affordable alternative. The Palm was nice to have on buses and planes though, because of the small form factor.
Before you get your panties in a bunch, you should read the article. Before you compare pings and traceroutes to read world property examples, you should take a deep breath and visualize a computer network as a bunch of beeps and boops or ones and zeros or whatever it takes to remind you that computer invasion, while potentially destructive to information, is not the same as home invasion. For the record, no, I don't think I'd like to have my systems hacked or my credit card number stolen any more than I'd like you to come into my house and pummel me with rotten fruit, but thanks for thinking of me!
Now, they say they are pinging and tracerouting. According to the article no one is complaining that Quova is portscanning or attempting connections. They haven't even started trying for reasonable connections like having a web browser attempt to get index.html via port 80 from IP addresses they've verified. So, at most what they have is a semi-accurate picture of which addresses have working machines connected to them (successful pings) and which IPs are wired to which other IPs (traceroute)--and based on ping times they might get a sense of where small pipes and/or congestion occur. The only thing that's annoying about this so far is that they are keeping this publicly available information to themselves in its compiled form. Any one of us could write simple Perl scripts that hook into a SQL db to record the same or similar information. Why I would care or who I could possibly sell this information to is beyond me, though.
If they were portscanning machines, they would be stretching the boundaries of courtesy, but they have still done little more than add information to their map of the network. Whether you've advertised the existence of your "private" ftp or apache server is irrelevant, especially since these guys don't appear to be planning anything harmful, perhaps immoral, but not harmful. If you are concerned about regular, non-damaging network traffic to your machine, either build different firewall rules or pull the plug.
Disclaimer: IANAPornStar or RealGeek and if I actually know what I'm talking about it's coincidence. These opinions are for entertainment purposes only.
are already working on a super-cooled potato powered version of these shoes. I expect to see the RIAA sue the makers since it will be easier to carry pirated CDs from one house to a friend's house across town. Besides, doesn't Ford have a patent on the piston? I may not be a lawyer, but I smell the liability lawsuits on these shoes four continents away.
I used Fitaly on my Palm for quite a while (until I discontinued use of the Palm, in fact). It was very easy to use and made the device a lot more useful in that I could get text in at a closer to "normal" rate. I envision future computing devices that incorporate a pen keyboard and a touch capable screen for the majority of the work. For major text needs (writing books, text mode programming/scripting, IRC) a regular ten-finger keyboard or something along those lines is obviously needed, but for web surfing, non-action games (which seem to require joysticks or such), graphics work, general GUI interaction, the Palm/Fitaly model is my preference. I like that direct interaction with the screen and like having a keyboard that is functional but does not require the hands to switch devices (from keyboard to mouse) by being part of the screen. Heck, if you're ambidextrous, the pen model makes you twice as efficient, right?
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that's a hell of a lot of words to choose from when all I want is one-- the exact command I need at the moment.
Frustration with point and click mouse-dependency is one of the major factors I switched to Linux. Of course, having started computing on command-line-only machines, I may be suffering from some sort of phobia or rut myself.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless I seriously misunderstand this, the placement of these small GIFs on the web page gives the GIF server no information that is not in your typical HTTP header. In the Slashdot case, both the page server and the "non-bug" server belong to Slashdot. What this provides them is no more or less than they already have. What it might provide is the ability to turn off some logging on a busier server and turn that duty over to a less busy server (i.e. the one that exists only to pump out single pixel GIFs). This is also useful if you have multiple servers doing the bulk of the work, and would like to track usage centrally. This way the bug-server gets a unified sense of all visits, while the page-server is able to distribute the load as needed without worrying about discontinuous visit information. Simply put, this is the most efficient way to track this. They could theoretically track it 100 other ways, but I can't think of a way that improves on this technique.
I think the Slashdot usage is not only understandable, but acceptable. However, I think the undisclosed gathering of even this readily available HTTP header information, where the bug URL is not in the same domain as the referring page is as objectionable as using banners to enable cookies from a single domain to be activated by what appears to be a completely separate. It's a tradeoff, since they get only HTTP header information out of the deal, they get less information, but there is also no way to turn off these GIFs, like there is with cookies. Well, yeah, you could use Lynx. *smirk*
+1, Hits-Nail-on-Head.
Hmmm. Mac hardware is fully capable of dual-booting Linux and Mac OS. The real question is, what could possibly induce you to use Windows at that point? *grin*
(Oh. Video games? Hmmm. Well. That's what Dreamcast/Playstation/Arcades are for.)
OK. your reply is a lot more insightful than your original post and this whole thing is, imho, a lot more complex than fans versus majors versus RIAA versus napster. as far as i can tell, napster doesn't give any more of a rat's ass about artists than a major label might. a good example of an alternative to the majors and napster is the way Mordam records distributes .mp3s at 79 cents a track, with streaming samples so you can listen before you buy. this is probably the most artist and fan friendly way to accomplish your lofty goals that exists at the moment, perhaps a consortium of distributors like Mordam could be developed and use a Napster-style client/server system to create a peer-to-peer transfer where one of the peers is the band/label and one is the fan. this would certainly help in the quality control and file validation areas as well.
I thought the same way until I went and looked at a list of all the labels belonging to the RIAA. With the exception of a few DIY punk "labels", RRRecords, and Alternative Tentacles, I couldn't think of a single label that I'd bought a CD from in the last ten years that wasn't on the list of RIAA members. I can think of a few more labels that aren't on the list, but to claim that they churn out a better product than all these "majors" is a highly suspect assertion.
Releasing useful scripts that easily exploit the bug is much different than releasing useful information to help fix/prevent the bug (even if the solution is to turn off said service until a patch is available). That said, I totally agree that as much information as possible should be released as soon as possible. In the case of free (as in speech) software, some genius might even have a patch ready for the maintainers of Foo when they get back from vacation or the drunk tank or wherever. In the case of proprietary software, well, as much should be done to discredit that model, so biasing the public by inducing a panic can only be a Good Thing(r). Or something like that.
Actually, my experiences with Kinko's (now about two years stale) lead me to believe that they have an "important warning" type sticker about copyright on every machine. And certainly if you ask them to copy something for you, they will make you go through serious hoops if it even appears to be someone else's copyrighted work. Additionally, I seem to recall many lawsuits a bunch of years ago about this precise issue at Kinko's, where they would prepare student packets filled with "pirated" texts that exceeded any rational definition of fair use. So far as I can tell, this is either a bad analogy or a very incorrect conclusion based on the analogy.
And yes, I realize that Kinko's is not likely to throw you out of the store if they see you copying a book, but who in their right mind would do that at 8 cents a page? If there were a per-song copy fee on Napster, then this analogy would be stronger. And in fact, I'm surprised that Napster isn't more willing to look at a per song transfer fee which is then used to pay a royalty to the copyright owner, such as what happens when songs are broadcast over the radio. Of course, that would hamper their ability to attract hordes of new lusers (and hence insane venture capital investments) because a lot of people would balk at even a nominal fee.
Yeah. But just wait until we start getting spam advertising full screen, surround-sound streaming pr0n that includes vibrating floor-boards and "synchronized" anything! That WILL be Internet History.
BWAHAHA. Sorry, but this is why I love Apple-- flawless execution of great ideas *smirk*. You can still see a picture at www.apple.com, and I've been browsing the pages just fine. But you're absolutely right, it's messed. I get very spotty servage from them on this. I've gotten 403 and pages w/o pix. But it's there.
Why go to a mirror? Why not go to the Apple Site? Lots of pretty pictures of the eight inch box they call a computer.
So much technology. So little space. This is the cube you're looking for.
It's the internet. And while I'm certain I understand the complaint here, I'm not sure I agree that clinging to potentially outmoded paradigms about information is useful-- especially since this instance so much resembles fair use. AFAICT, all Deja is doing is providing a service to their users which relies on one of the supposed strengths of the web-- the ability to link to other resources. This saves Deja users the time it would take to copy & paste text from your post into the input line of a search engine and sift through the results. Personally, I think this implementation is completely useless (see below), but that's me. I do find it useful when I'm reading anything and there are salient links, either to detailed information or external sites created by entities mentioned in the text. Sadly, Deja may link to things that the original poster may not like. The original poster may have biases which are contradicted completely in the "reference" materials. So what? Maybe there will arise in the East a great new shiny thing like "Gnuja Ve!" which has much better links (i.e. links that align more closely with the biases of the person posting on Usenet).
Having looked at the example, yes, I think it is awful the way it is done-- little orange triangle or no. I would prefer my reference links in a clearly marked "reference" section before or after or off to the side of the post. Most amusing is that it links to some really lame telephone modem when the posting is clearly in a group devoted to cable modems.
actually, department stores can and do decide which specific individuals are to be treated as trespassers. these individuals may include, but are not limited to: people taking photos, people eating or drinking in violation of posted signs, people behaving in ways which disturb other customers, people who are suspected of shoplifting, and natalie portman fanatics on a rampage.
the only way the department store will be "in trouble" is if they are in violation of either common sense or local/state/federal discrimination laws. i agree with you, however, that ebay has ways of making their case a lot more secure. for starters, they could deny access from IP addresses which appear to be browsing large numbers of unrelated auctions and/or have been verified as the addresses of those who are reusing auction info for Nefarious Purposes.
frankly, i think all of these lawsuits are just a way to get cheap advertising that doesn't look like advertising. it keeps the company's or band's moniker in the public eye/ear just a little bit longer at way less cost than airtime. and it doesn't look like an ad, which means that the unwitting consumer is more likely NOT to gloss it over.
Why two screens, and two cameras? You could completely eliminate any and all protrusions from the side of the doors by axing one camera and one LCD screen, and instead mounting one camera (maybe with a wide-angle lens) at the rear of the car (beside the CHMSL maybe). Then you'd also only need one LCD screen. Voila - half the cost, with all the nerdity preserved!
That would have to be one seriously wide angle lens to have the same type of view provided by the typical side view mirrors (or cameras in this case). The view provided by such mirrors is mostly to the sides of the vehicle. There would be no good way to accomplish this from the rear of the car with only one camera. The distortion that such a wide angle would produce would be more suited to a funhouse. If it were me, I'd mount these cameras up near the front of the vehicle and get a much better field of view with less "blind spot" action.
Their browser is basically an advertisement for their web design and server tools-- my guess is that most of these extensions are nearly impossible to develop without ASP or FrontPage2k or some other MS product. Those they make money on. One could argue that they would sell more of those products if their browser had a larger audience or other browsers had the ability to easily embrace those extensions, but right now the only people who don't have the capacity to use IE are Linux users and zealots (and is there really a difference? *smirk*). In either case, once the extensions are needed, it is no more difficult to obtain IE than it is to obtain any other extended browser
One reason they don't GPL their software is that Bill Gates is one of the prime forces behind the idea of "software piracy"-- he is probably physically unable to share software at this point. Another is that they gain no revenue by doing so. In fact, this would make it possible for some other company to develop extensions on their current version-- extensions that can only be developed using other, proprietary software that is sold by some non-MS shop. Sure MS has the ability to incorporate the extension into their browser, but this would break their development and server tools, since they don't necessarily have GPL-enforced access to that code.
Frankly, I believe it is up to web designers to use extensions and non-standards carefully and appropriately. IMHO, if your web page doesn't render legibly in Lynx (or at least an old Mosaic), you have a major problem in the design department. Most extensions are used only to make sites more impressive, without truly adding functionality or content. Yes, exceptions like www.superbad.com exist. But most sites' use of propriety extensions only serve to break those sites in other browsers. This is something we consumers can influence by encouraging web designers to fix their pages or provide ready alternatives. If the designers feel it is worthwhile to provide a flashy version of their page for every browser, that's their problem. If I were actually a web designer, I'd stick to the stricter standards so this wouldn't be an issue.
So basically it would "sooner or later result" in exactly the status quo. Neat!
I haven't read the article or all of the existing posts on this topic. I will now toss in my two cents anyway.
- anyway.com site and load them onto our home PCs, our Rios and (yes, saw this in Crutchfield's) our car stereos. This will be similar to our ability to turn on the radio and record all the free music we want. But wait! The catch, just like radio, is that some hack will be pimping a product for the first 10 seconds of the song-- right over the damn music.
Let's assume a few things. First, that a court will decide that a service like Napster cannot exist unless they make more serious efforts to combat "piracy". Second, that mp3s will continue to be ripped and traded by many (the format will endure, that is). Third, that advertisers can be found who will consider this a valid cost-- I mean, they fell for banners, and this is actually much better. Fourth, that the industry at large will go for this.
With those fairly reasonable assumptions we as persons who desire "free" music will suddenly be able to download mp3s from the britneyspears.com site or the cant-sing-cant-dance-but-got-a-big-label-contract
So the companies are able to maintain status quo basically. Oh, and then Napster is allowed to share all the files they want, but now that there are official, ad-laden versions of these songs available, files offered for sharing must match the name, bitrate, and filesize of the official version or be disallowed. Or, why bother sharing files over Napster when they are finally available from the source for free-- and perhaps a bit more reliably (I've dl'ed way too many partial cuts off Napster to be overly optimistic about the service).
What's going to be really annoying is when, once they've trashed the ability to share files independently and once they've accustomed users to going directly to the company to download their ad-laden mp3, that they will initiate the process of data collection. "Please fill out this form that tells us everything about you to start the download of your free songs! Never mind that we're still going to make you listen to ads! Don't look behind that curtain!"
With Windows what's to hack? I mean, how is that even the least bit exciting? "Look ma! I hacked a Windows box! I can download their pitiful Starcraft high scores and post them to usenet!"
Besides, it's so much easier to write a trojan that uses the e-mail program or the paperclip "assistant" to foul the network or erase the drive.
I know, I know, you specifically mentioned the server OSes, but I couldn't resist.
"You've got Spam, Doc!"
Better Steve Jobs in charge of entertaining the masses with Disnixarple (which they already do, btw) than Steve Case with AOL-Time-Warner-Brothers.
Jobs is already top dog at two out of three firms in question and Disney would be much less well off right now if not for Pixar and several hit movies in a row. The reason this rumor is getting passed around is because it is so reasonable. Jobs is not a geek, he's a visionary type of CEO-- like Walt was. If there's any truth to this, maybe Eisner's looking to retire. The go.com thing isn't going nearly as well as Disney wanted it to and several other Disney divisions are anemic. Jobs might be just the guy to get the company cruising again.
I'd love to buy a Winnie-the-Pooh branded iMac for my daughter (which, of course, will have Yellow Dog Linux installed on it before she ever touches it).
I dropped it. :)
I subsequently had numerous problems with AAA battery drain which caused me to lose data. Never figured out if this was the battery brand or the hardware.
It also lost its appeal when I was travelling due to the addition of a laptop to my work life. That, and I had some bizarro usb/cradle problems with my (ugh) iMac. It just got to be more trouble than it was worth. Some day, when I decide I need a replacement Palm, I'll probably go with the best color Visor/Palm I can afford. I understand that the battery situation is radically different nowadays and that the cradle connector situation is equally advanced. Or maybe I'll just wait until my dream touchpad-notebook described above is an affordable alternative. The Palm was nice to have on buses and planes though, because of the small form factor.
Before you get your panties in a bunch, you should read the article. Before you compare pings and traceroutes to read world property examples, you should take a deep breath and visualize a computer network as a bunch of beeps and boops or ones and zeros or whatever it takes to remind you that computer invasion, while potentially destructive to information, is not the same as home invasion. For the record, no, I don't think I'd like to have my systems hacked or my credit card number stolen any more than I'd like you to come into my house and pummel me with rotten fruit, but thanks for thinking of me!
Now, they say they are pinging and tracerouting. According to the article no one is complaining that Quova is portscanning or attempting connections. They haven't even started trying for reasonable connections like having a web browser attempt to get index.html via port 80 from IP addresses they've verified. So, at most what they have is a semi-accurate picture of which addresses have working machines connected to them (successful pings) and which IPs are wired to which other IPs (traceroute)--and based on ping times they might get a sense of where small pipes and/or congestion occur. The only thing that's annoying about this so far is that they are keeping this publicly available information to themselves in its compiled form. Any one of us could write simple Perl scripts that hook into a SQL db to record the same or similar information. Why I would care or who I could possibly sell this information to is beyond me, though.
If they were portscanning machines, they would be stretching the boundaries of courtesy, but they have still done little more than add information to their map of the network. Whether you've advertised the existence of your "private" ftp or apache server is irrelevant, especially since these guys don't appear to be planning anything harmful, perhaps immoral, but not harmful. If you are concerned about regular, non-damaging network traffic to your machine, either build different firewall rules or pull the plug.
Disclaimer: IANAPornStar or RealGeek and if I actually know what I'm talking about it's coincidence. These opinions are for entertainment purposes only.
are already working on a super-cooled potato powered version of these shoes. I expect to see the RIAA sue the makers since it will be easier to carry pirated CDs from one house to a friend's house across town. Besides, doesn't Ford have a patent on the piston? I may not be a lawyer, but I smell the liability lawsuits on these shoes four continents away.
I used Fitaly on my Palm for quite a while (until I discontinued use of the Palm, in fact). It was very easy to use and made the device a lot more useful in that I could get text in at a closer to "normal" rate. I envision future computing devices that incorporate a pen keyboard and a touch capable screen for the majority of the work. For major text needs (writing books, text mode programming/scripting, IRC) a regular ten-finger keyboard or something along those lines is obviously needed, but for web surfing, non-action games (which seem to require joysticks or such), graphics work, general GUI interaction, the Palm/Fitaly model is my preference. I like that direct interaction with the screen and like having a keyboard that is functional but does not require the hands to switch devices (from keyboard to mouse) by being part of the screen. Heck, if you're ambidextrous, the pen model makes you twice as efficient, right?
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that's a hell of a lot of words to choose from when all I want is one-- the exact command I need at the moment.
Frustration with point and click mouse-dependency is one of the major factors I switched to Linux. Of course, having started computing on command-line-only machines, I may be suffering from some sort of phobia or rut myself.