And while we're on the subject, fuck public billboard ads, fuck the impulse isle when I just want to buy some milk for my son at the grocery store, and fuck every other invasive, "can't look away" advertising schemes ever invented. I'm so sick of being plundered by the commercial industry.
Is it too much to ask to look up, knowing you'll see the sky and not a Nike commercial? Jesus Christ.
Those are just the ones on the top of my head. Actually, there's a wikipedia page just on criticism of Microsoft, with other resources/references, here:
> If that was Microsoft's goal, it wouldn't be done through a voluntary update, it would be built in to the OS already. It is impractical and also rather unwise to publish such a feature if that was the > objective, as a feature that is identified can be disabled -- a 'feature' that is completely unknown until it is utilized, not so much.
Why do you say that? Do you give no credit to psychological tactics? Pushing it out into the open makes people not worry about it so much. Most people don't know how to NOT install an update like that anyway.
Ok, conspiracy theorist point of view here, apologies... but... I mean, they can basically disable/cripple anyone's computer for any reason without notice.
Think of what governments would like to do with this little feature, during wartimes, etc...
Do you really trust Microsoft that much? Do you really want them to have that much control over your computer at any point in time? Your ability to communicate online?
So youre a fan of sitting on internet explorer 7 for the next 10 years? Or firefox 2.0?
No, those both have plenty of vulnerabilities. They're broken.
The DNS protocol is not broken. In fact, besides the tricks and hacks corporate Earth have tried with it (404 redirection as an example), it's worked pretty damn well for me for the past 20 years.
There are plenty of "open standards", and plenty of "closed standards" as well. If you were starting your own country and had to implement government data practices, which would you choose to implement, given:
1) Open standards can be understood and used by anyone/any program that implements them, and 2) Closed standards are locked down and hidden by the vendor that created them, forcing you to use their software?
Mod parent up. My eee 701 is still the choice for me, even given the higher specs of all the latter models. It's the smallest of them all (didn't netbook used to = subnotebook?), SSD = oops, I dropped my laptop, oh well.., and Ubuntu runs great on it. Asus has lost their netbook roots, now they're just making normal notebooks with a crap OS.
DISCLAIMER: I love Palm Pilots, too. You know, stuff that was made for its purpose.
Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS are still years apart from each other as far as desktop usability goes, or at least the last time I checked that was the case..
that shipping an LTS (Long Term Support) release doesn't mean "This release is just as buggy as all of the other releases were when they shipped, but we'll be updating security issues for longer".:) Don't get me wrong, I 3 Ubuntu more than most people, but this is just something that always irked me (especially since I run multiple production terminal server environments with Ubuntu LTS & LTSP)
"The liberal groups CREW and National Security Archive litigate for sport, distort the facts and have consistently tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard IT issues"
- Former Bush White House spokesman Scott Stanzel
Yeah, those stupid liberal groups are just out to hodgepodge the truth again. All we did was violate 2 federal laws by not keeping records of our communications, and had insanely incompetent I.T. staff at this, the richest and most powerful country in the world. What a bunch of baloney. Just an honest mistake. Tens of millions of e-mails, big whoop. Wanna fight about it?
2. See above. Nobody cares about Shockwave, though.
Nay, say I and the (many) school districts who visit shockwave-only educational sites. Not having Shockwave Director available on Linux has cost me clients. Talk about a slap in the face for trying to give schools a break by using good software, because they are too attached to bad software..
If this kind of technology were made available to EVERYONE, there'd probably be a lot less resistance to it. It's the fact that these politicians, corporate entities and governments think they are above other people that, at least, tick *me* off the most.
That would be an issue of the household, not the technology. Parents should know if the child is using computers for school. Computers are getting everywhere - that's an old way of thinking about computers (I.E. putting them on the same plane as television or video games).
Think schools, students and homework. I work in the world of Linux and LTSP in education. LTSP has already given schools the gift of easily maintained, green, FOSS computing. NX would be *perfect* for kids needing access to their desktop from home, for, say, homework. Like telecommuting, but for school. =)
This story pisses me right off. Have we not come to a point in our history where we realise that preserving our home planet is more important than individual wealth? Inventions and progress regarding ways to better life here on Earth should be exempt from patent law. It should be part of science and geopreservation, which should get international grants and funding. It needs to be like open source.
I was in a very similar situation when I was about 22 (I'm 29 now). I worked for a bank "holding" firm (which basically bought small community banks and used their resources to supposedly give bigger loans at any bank...but it seems their real motivation was to suck up as many smaller banks as possible, then sell the holding firm to Wells Fargo...go corporate!).
Anyway, I spent most of my days on the road for 3-4 hours, traveling to bank sites to do pretty lame things like install someone's keyboard and mouse. Given the job was kush, I got paid well, but...I felt like I was wasting my life away for money. I had a void that needed to be filled, and not by money. I decided to quit after 2 years, "Office Space" style (I literally said "Yeah...I'm just not going to come in anymore" to my bosse's boss on our Nextel phone..I felt so proud of myself). I had no idea what I was going to do, but I know I didn't want to waste more of my life being a well paid slave when I could be *learning* something.
I spent the next 2 1/2 years moonlighting as a residential/small business support person, living off of cheese sandwiches and Top Ramen. Sometimes I couldn't make the $330 rent portion from the 7 person house I lived in (we were all good friends). My friends understood and supported me, and I made it by the next week or so.
I wouldn't trade that for anything. While I was barely scraping by on my own, I was teaching myself Linux, making the house an iptables firewall machine for our 10+ computers (we wired the house for Ethernet ourselves as wireless wasn't as popular back then...and we wanted the bandwidth between each other;) ). I taught myself some basic HTML and made my own company webpage. I did the government paperwork/red tape to start my own actual business. In the meantime, I picked up a part-time job at a much smaller firm doing some other really cool stuff, involving Linux. I learned even more by doing stuff there, and by the time I quit there I could support myself with my small-time support/consulting business.
I look back at the time I spent at the bank doing drone work when I really strived for something more, even for less money.. and I realized my time was worth much more. If you can seriously do it, do it now. You'll thank yourself later, seriously. Being in charge of how you work is much nicer than being told what to do, especially when you don't enjoy doing that stuff anyway. Some people totally love it, and that's cool - but it was definitely not for me long term, and I always kinda knew it. Just didn't want to admit it, because I had bills to pay.
I never said I wanted to track her every move. I want to know she's gets from school to daycare safely. Hence being able to track her from point a to b once a day, when the school is supposed to send her to daycare, is all I need.
But you see, it's not a "But I only track her from here to here" thing. It's on or off, all or nothing. I don't doubt your intentions one bit as a parent. But the implications of having a GPS type device on your daughter is frighteningly prone to abuse, by you later on when you feel like you should be tracking her more places, OR by someone else (a tech savvy child molester, for instance). You need to think that no technology is completely secure..and when you have something like this, the stakes go WAY up as far as your child's safety.
Slashdot Mirror
FUCK airborne advertisements.
And while we're on the subject, fuck public billboard ads, fuck the impulse isle when I just want to buy some milk for my son at the grocery store, and fuck every other invasive, "can't look away" advertising schemes ever invented. I'm so sick of being plundered by the commercial industry.
Is it too much to ask to look up, knowing you'll see the sky and not a Nike commercial? Jesus Christ.
> Did your tinfoil hat tell you some reason why I shouldn't trust them?
If my tinfoil hat talked to me, I don't think it would be doing its job correctly. ;)
Why shouldn't I trust Microsoft? Oh I dunno...
- Antitrust lawsuits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
- IIS Backdoors: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/14/1858201
- OOXML bribery: http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vote
- Naked PC Campaign: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39261437,00.htm
- Vendor lock-in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Microsoft
- "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Those are just the ones on the top of my head. Actually, there's a wikipedia page just on criticism of Microsoft, with other resources/references, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
Want more? I got plenty more.
> If that was Microsoft's goal, it wouldn't be done through a voluntary update, it would be built in to the OS already. It is impractical and also rather unwise to publish such a feature if that was the
> objective, as a feature that is identified can be disabled -- a 'feature' that is completely unknown until it is utilized, not so much.
Why do you say that? Do you give no credit to psychological tactics? Pushing it out into the open makes people not worry about it so much. Most people don't know how to NOT install an update like that anyway.
Just sayin'.
> The computer is not cripped, all you get is notifications and loss of wallpaper and some always on text on the desktop.
Uh huh...until they decide to change it.
"It trickles in so you don't notice where the flood came from." -- Anonymous
Ok, conspiracy theorist point of view here, apologies... but... I mean, they can basically disable/cripple anyone's computer for any reason without notice.
Think of what governments would like to do with this little feature, during wartimes, etc...
Do you really trust Microsoft that much? Do you really want them to have that much control over your computer at any point in time? Your ability to communicate online?
Come on, this is really getting ridiculous.
So youre a fan of sitting on internet explorer 7 for the next 10 years? Or firefox 2.0?
No, those both have plenty of vulnerabilities. They're broken.
The DNS protocol is not broken. In fact, besides the tricks and hacks corporate Earth have tried with it (404 redirection as an example), it's worked pretty damn well for me for the past 20 years.
...don't fix it.
They've been doing this for a while now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h31VSf1_rk
There are plenty of "open standards", and plenty of "closed standards" as well. If you were starting your own country and had to implement government data practices, which would you choose to implement, given:
1) Open standards can be understood and used by anyone/any program that implements them, and
2) Closed standards are locked down and hidden by the vendor that created them, forcing you to use their software?
*Jeopardy music*
Mod parent up. My eee 701 is still the choice for me, even given the higher specs of all the latter models. It's the smallest of them all (didn't netbook used to = subnotebook?), SSD = oops, I dropped my laptop, oh well.., and Ubuntu runs great on it. Asus has lost their netbook roots, now they're just making normal notebooks with a crap OS.
DISCLAIMER: I love Palm Pilots, too. You know, stuff that was made for its purpose.
Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS are still years apart from each other as far as desktop usability goes, or at least the last time I checked that was the case..
that shipping an LTS (Long Term Support) release doesn't mean "This release is just as buggy as all of the other releases were when they shipped, but we'll be updating security issues for longer". :) Don't get me wrong, I 3 Ubuntu more than most people, but this is just something that always irked me (especially since I run multiple production terminal server environments with Ubuntu LTS & LTSP)
"The liberal groups CREW and National Security Archive litigate for sport, distort the facts and have consistently tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard IT issues" - Former Bush White House spokesman Scott Stanzel
Yeah, those stupid liberal groups are just out to hodgepodge the truth again. All we did was violate 2 federal laws by not keeping records of our communications, and had insanely incompetent I.T. staff at this, the richest and most powerful country in the world. What a bunch of baloney. Just an honest mistake. Tens of millions of e-mails, big whoop. Wanna fight about it?
Every LTSP installation ever?
Sounds like a personal problem to me...
Oh, SHOCK block.
2. See above. Nobody cares about Shockwave, though.
Nay, say I and the (many) school districts who visit shockwave-only educational sites. Not having Shockwave Director available on Linux has cost me clients. Talk about a slap in the face for trying to give schools a break by using good software, because they are too attached to bad software..
If this kind of technology were made available to EVERYONE, there'd probably be a lot less resistance to it. It's the fact that these politicians, corporate entities and governments think they are above other people that, at least, tick *me* off the most.
At least they're going this far. Imagine this happening under the Bush office. Nope, I didn't think you could.
P.S. I am *not* an Obama fanboi.
That would be an issue of the household, not the technology. Parents should know if the child is using computers for school. Computers are getting everywhere - that's an old way of thinking about computers (I.E. putting them on the same plane as television or video games).
Think schools, students and homework. I work in the world of Linux and LTSP in education. LTSP has already given schools the gift of easily maintained, green, FOSS computing. NX would be *perfect* for kids needing access to their desktop from home, for, say, homework. Like telecommuting, but for school. =)
This story pisses me right off. Have we not come to a point in our history where we realise that preserving our home planet is more important than individual wealth? Inventions and progress regarding ways to better life here on Earth should be exempt from patent law. It should be part of science and geopreservation, which should get international grants and funding. It needs to be like open source.
Your tax dollars, being thrown away for no good reason.
I say we boycott money. We can get along without it.
I was in a very similar situation when I was about 22 (I'm 29 now). I worked for a bank "holding" firm (which basically bought small community banks and used their resources to supposedly give bigger loans at any bank...but it seems their real motivation was to suck up as many smaller banks as possible, then sell the holding firm to Wells Fargo...go corporate!).
Anyway, I spent most of my days on the road for 3-4 hours, traveling to bank sites to do pretty lame things like install someone's keyboard and mouse. Given the job was kush, I got paid well, but...I felt like I was wasting my life away for money. I had a void that needed to be filled, and not by money. I decided to quit after 2 years, "Office Space" style (I literally said "Yeah...I'm just not going to come in anymore" to my bosse's boss on our Nextel phone..I felt so proud of myself). I had no idea what I was going to do, but I know I didn't want to waste more of my life being a well paid slave when I could be *learning* something.
I spent the next 2 1/2 years moonlighting as a residential/small business support person, living off of cheese sandwiches and Top Ramen. Sometimes I couldn't make the $330 rent portion from the 7 person house I lived in (we were all good friends). My friends understood and supported me, and I made it by the next week or so.
I wouldn't trade that for anything. While I was barely scraping by on my own, I was teaching myself Linux, making the house an iptables firewall machine for our 10+ computers (we wired the house for Ethernet ourselves as wireless wasn't as popular back then...and we wanted the bandwidth between each other ;) ). I taught myself some basic HTML and made my own company webpage. I did the government paperwork/red tape to start my own actual business. In the meantime, I picked up a part-time job at a much smaller firm doing some other really cool stuff, involving Linux. I learned even more by doing stuff there, and by the time I quit there I could support myself with my small-time support/consulting business.
I look back at the time I spent at the bank doing drone work when I really strived for something more, even for less money.. and I realized my time was worth much more. If you can seriously do it, do it now. You'll thank yourself later, seriously. Being in charge of how you work is much nicer than being told what to do, especially when you don't enjoy doing that stuff anyway. Some people totally love it, and that's cool - but it was definitely not for me long term, and I always kinda knew it. Just didn't want to admit it, because I had bills to pay.
They own pretty much everything, don't they?
I never said I wanted to track her every move. I want to know she's gets from school to daycare safely. Hence being able to track her from point a to b once a day, when the school is supposed to send her to daycare, is all I need.
But you see, it's not a "But I only track her from here to here" thing. It's on or off, all or nothing. I don't doubt your intentions one bit as a parent. But the implications of having a GPS type device on your daughter is frighteningly prone to abuse, by you later on when you feel like you should be tracking her more places, OR by someone else (a tech savvy child molester, for instance). You need to think that no technology is completely secure..and when you have something like this, the stakes go WAY up as far as your child's safety.