All of the big companies and the government talk about how much they like capitalism, but then complain about things like this. But when you think about it, it's capitalism working exactly as it's supposed to: The market is assigning a dollar value to exploits.
Microsoft has been very lax in the area of security, enabling a market to evolve around exploiting it's weaknesses. Microsoft got it's self into this position by maintaining a monopoly. Absent a monopoly, M$ would have had to compete on quality and would have been forced, by way of competing, more secure products, to secure it's own systems.
So, they may be able to cheat consumers, influence the US government's regulators, but in the long run they cannot escape market forces.
If M$ research has a to fight an up-hill battle, it's because Microaoft has lied in so many ways in the past. Especially when it comes to innovation. From DOS to Internet Explorer, Microsoft has had a habit of:
1. Buying the second or third ranked player in a market segment. 2. Rebranding it. 3. Throwing their advertising dollars behind it. 4. Calling it "Innovation."
Worse is when they steal other's ideas and call it "Innovation." How many time have they been sued?
I hope they are on the path to reform, but it will take a significant pattern of honest behavour before I believe what they say.
For some of us, blocking flashing ads is more of an ergonomic issue than anything else. Excessive movement on a web page give me a headache fast. I don't install flash on my computers so I can avoid flashing ads. I edit firefox to play animated gif's once only instead of looping. I run the ad-blocking plugin and have a bunch on 127.0.0.1 entries in my hosts file to block ads. The problem with this is that some site are flash-only. Sometimes I use the flash-click-to-play plugin.
If their method of advertising causes me pain, I'm going to do my best to thwart it.
A failed business model does not equate to a breach of an implied "social contract."
I'm guessing that 'ergonomic' is the correct term. I find most animation very distracting, to the point that I just can't read a site with multiple flash animations and animated gif's. It gives me a headache in no time. It was so bad that I used to have to un-install flash on some Linux distro's (before click-to-play). If I can't block the animation on a site, I usually just go somewhere else. I usually don't block any non-animated ads. Sometimes I'd move a window over a particularly annoying ad if I had to use the site. I used to use privoxy but with the combination of adblock and click to play, the Internet is ussable again for me.
I wish advertising people would realise that they are totally alienating some potential customers.
I really don't watch TV anymore, but when I see scientific or medical claims on TV or in movies I think about the (in)acuracy with which they show thinks I DO know something about...like when someone is encrypting/decrypting something and I see some computer graphics gibberish flashing all over the screen that in realy life would just eat up CPU ticks. Or when someone is supposedly getting hacked and again I see fancy graphics on the screen that can't possibly have anything to do with what might plausably be happening. Point being that it's not very accurate at all. I assume that most anything they show is, to be generous, "dramatized."
If the effect is as described, it might not be such a bad thing because "eye witnesses" are notoriously inaccurate and presecutors rely on them too much, because juries have tended to believe them. With death row cases being overturned from DNA evidence (cases that I would like to think recieve more than average scrutiny) demanding more "hard" evidence up front might save a lot of injustice down the road.
I do like the "camera following the wire" effect, though.
I have a theory that says that, all things considered, the only way you can tell if a fight is fairly matched is if it ends in a draw. Otherwise one side had some cumulative advantage.
If true, this means that few fights are fair. But who who would willingly enter into a fight if they didn't think they posessed some advantage that would lead to victory?
I think there are two uses of "fair" at work here; one meaning "evenly matched" and one meaning "playing by the same set of rules."
If >50% of all Internet traffic is spam, who's really making the most money off spam?
Backbone providers get paid by the amount of traffic, not the type or quality of traffic. It is in their financial interests to pass any kind of traffic and sign up anyone who will generate alot of traffic. There was a recent Slashdot article about how spammers are just acting logically, in their best financial interests. Isn't this equally true of backbone providers?
While I'd prefer to see a solution in code, like some kind of server authentication/certificate. If we want an effective law, I think it needs to be directed at backbone providers. Spammers are many in number, always moving and hard to regulate. Backbone providers are few in number and more likely to feel the reach of Law.
We've all heard of "pink" or spam-friendly contracts that go against the TOS. That's one target. If we wanted someting really effective, how about a law that says ISP's only have to pay for legitimate traffic, or perhaps pay a reduced rate for spam traffic? That would light a fire under backbone providers to do something about spam!
Did you read the article? Try building your own laptop.
The point is that these click-thru and shrink-wrap licenses are getting worse every year and something needs to be done about it. He's just pointing out how absurd it has become. Dell expects him to agree with something he can't even read and be bound by it's terms!
Of course Dell doesn't want customers like this. They just want his money and ANY support costs money.
Note that he wasn't even trying to use any of the software that came with it. He was trying to boot a Linux CD and and a license popped up that wanted him to agree to a bunch of software licenses when all he wanted to do was use the hardware.
Correct, all of the cheap cards are basically software RAID with a BIOS screen. All of the processing is done with the system CPU. That's part of why none support RAID 5 -- the CPU overhead is too high.
That said, older (usually SCSI) hardware RAID cards (with dedicated CPU) can actually be slower than than modern software RAID (0,1,7,10) given today's fast CPU's.
The only entities in any position to implement one are the banks and credit card companies who have no incentive to do so! Why would they make a system where they would make less money per transaction than they are currently?
The one thing that the Internet has really brought to light for me is the awsome power of the status quo. Just look at the RIAA/MPAA.
Slashdot Mirror
All of the big companies and the government talk about how much they like capitalism, but then complain about things like this. But when you think about it, it's capitalism working exactly as it's supposed to: The market is assigning a dollar value to exploits.
Microsoft has been very lax in the area of security, enabling a market to evolve around exploiting it's weaknesses. Microsoft got it's self into this position by maintaining a monopoly. Absent a monopoly, M$ would have had to compete on quality and would have been forced, by way of competing, more secure products, to secure it's own systems.
So, they may be able to cheat consumers, influence the US government's regulators, but in the long run they cannot escape market forces.
If M$ research has a to fight an up-hill battle, it's because Microaoft has lied in so many ways in the past. Especially when it comes to innovation. From DOS to Internet Explorer, Microsoft has had a habit of:
1. Buying the second or third ranked player in a market segment.
2. Rebranding it.
3. Throwing their advertising dollars behind it.
4. Calling it "Innovation."
Worse is when they steal other's ideas and call it "Innovation." How many time have they been sued?
I hope they are on the path to reform, but it will take a significant pattern of honest behavour before I believe what they say.
I can't believe that the Network time Protocol would sue anyone.
Why can a business collect and sell your personal information for profit?
...when it's convenient. But always pro business.
Because America is first and formost PRO BUSINESS.
A Democracy? A "Christian Nation?" The Land of the Free(TM)?
For some of us, blocking flashing ads is more of an ergonomic issue than anything else. Excessive movement on a web page give me a headache fast.
I don't install flash on my computers so I can avoid flashing ads. I edit firefox to play animated gif's once only instead of looping. I run the ad-blocking plugin and have a bunch on 127.0.0.1 entries in my hosts file to block ads.
The problem with this is that some site are flash-only. Sometimes I use the flash-click-to-play plugin.
If their method of advertising causes me pain, I'm going to do my best to thwart it.
A failed business model does not equate to a breach of an implied "social contract."
The problem with XP's sp2 is that if it fails, you're likely in for a complete re-install.
I think ambiguity is a strength of natural language, when properly employed. In a programing language, it's a bad thing.
These cold start/warm start times don't mean much if you only reboot a few times a year.
I'm guessing that 'ergonomic' is the correct term. I find most animation very distracting, to the point that I just can't read a site with multiple flash animations and animated gif's. It gives me a headache in no time. It was so bad that I used to have to un-install flash on some Linux distro's (before click-to-play). If I can't block the animation on a site, I usually just go somewhere else. I usually don't block any non-animated ads. Sometimes I'd move a window over a particularly annoying ad if I had to use the site. I used to use privoxy but with the combination of adblock and click to play, the Internet is ussable again for me.
I wish advertising people would realise that they are totally alienating some potential customers.
I really don't watch TV anymore, but when I see scientific or medical claims on TV or in movies I think about the (in)acuracy with which they show thinks I DO know something about...like when someone is encrypting/decrypting something and I see some computer graphics gibberish flashing all over the screen that in realy life would just eat up CPU ticks. Or when someone is supposedly getting hacked and again I see fancy graphics on the screen that can't possibly have anything to do with what might plausably be happening. Point being that it's not very accurate at all. I assume that most anything they show is, to be generous, "dramatized."
If the effect is as described, it might not be such a bad thing because "eye witnesses" are notoriously inaccurate and presecutors rely on them too much, because juries have tended to believe them. With death row cases being overturned from DNA evidence (cases that I would like to think recieve more than average scrutiny) demanding more "hard" evidence up front might save a lot of injustice down the road.
I do like the "camera following the wire" effect, though.
After all that, I'd:
1. defrag the disk
2. download the pagefile defragger from Sysinternals, and
3. defrag the pagefile and system files.
I have a theory that says that, all things considered, the only way you can tell if a fight is fairly matched is if it ends in a draw. Otherwise one side had some cumulative advantage.
If true, this means that few fights are fair. But who who would willingly enter into a fight if they didn't think they posessed some advantage that would lead to victory?
I think there are two uses of "fair" at work here; one meaning "evenly matched" and one meaning "playing by the same set of rules."
can be found on there site: Matrix
Mostly because they end up re-installing the OS every year or so!
> as is likely when you have a near-full disk
Most defraggers won't run on a near-full disk, complaining about not having enought free space.
The old-school trick is to back up the file system to tape, reformat the disk and do a restore.
You are doing backups?
Backbone providers get paid by the amount of traffic, not the type or quality of traffic. It is in their financial interests to pass any kind of traffic and sign up anyone who will generate alot of traffic. There was a recent Slashdot article about how spammers are just acting logically, in their best financial interests. Isn't this equally true of backbone providers?
While I'd prefer to see a solution in code, like some kind of server authentication/certificate. If we want an effective law, I think it needs to be directed at backbone providers. Spammers are many in number, always moving and hard to regulate. Backbone providers are few in number and more likely to feel the reach of Law. We've all heard of "pink" or spam-friendly contracts that go against the TOS. That's one target. If we wanted someting really effective, how about a law that says ISP's only have to pay for legitimate traffic, or perhaps pay a reduced rate for spam traffic? That would light a fire under backbone providers to do something about spam!
I got my copy of Fedora via bittorrent and just want to say Thank You for keeping your client up!
Unused bandwidth is wasted bandwidth.
Uninstalling Ghost does not uninstall all the Ghost software.
I always use the Ghost boot floppy -- nothing to un-install. That and newsid.exe from WinInternals.
As far as updates go:
/var/spool/up2date via http or ftp
1. Buy one copy and install "everything"
2. Configure up2date to not delete the rpm's it downloads
3. share
I just puchased a '87 Subaru 4wd wagon for $1400 for most of the reasons you just mentioned:
1. Montana winters
2. Room for passangers
3. Room for cargo
4. Doing my part to NOT FUND OIL WARS
What I really hate about all of the "super trucks" is trying to see past them at intersections.
SUVS: Safer for the owners, more dangerous for everyone else on the road.
Did you read the article? Try building your own laptop.
The point is that these click-thru and shrink-wrap licenses are getting worse every year and something needs to be done about it. He's just pointing out how absurd it has become. Dell expects him to agree with something he can't even read and be bound by it's terms!
Of course Dell doesn't want customers like this. They just want his money and ANY support costs money.
Note that he wasn't even trying to use any of the software that came with it. He was trying to boot a Linux CD and and a license popped up that wanted him to agree to a bunch of software licenses when all he wanted to do was use the hardware.
Correct, all of the cheap cards are basically software RAID with a BIOS screen. All of the processing is done with the system CPU. That's part of why none support RAID 5 -- the CPU overhead is too high.
That said, older (usually SCSI) hardware RAID cards (with dedicated CPU) can actually be slower than than modern software RAID (0,1,7,10) given today's fast CPU's.
The only entities in any position to implement one are the banks and credit card companies who have no incentive to do so! Why would they make a system where they would make less money per transaction than they are currently?
The one thing that the Internet has really brought to light for me is the awsome power of the status quo. Just look at the RIAA/MPAA.
As I see it, most of the law enforcement efforts go toward stemming "little guy" (perhaps, blue collar versus white or poor versus rich?) crime.
But one Enron steals from thousands of pensioners and investers versus, say, a liquor store hold up.
The really big guys influence congress to make their shady dealings legal (but never just).
Somebody needs a better way to handle rejection.