It is worth pointing out that there is a flip side which has happened a few times. This is when someone doesn't feel well, is told that they're fine and it's all in their mind, only to look it up on the web and find out that they really do have some rare disease.
Another one (here in the UK) has been where someone is told that there is nothing that can be done for some problem only for them to find out using the web that something can be done about it (usually in another country).
A good example is this story about a baby born with a deformed head who was wrongly told that nothing was wrong and to live with the deformity. Thankfully, in the next four months the baby will be fine.
Not that I'm suggesting that all doctors get it wrong but once in a while the web has been a life-saver.
One thing I notice that most posters haven't got is the fact that Microsoft doesn't just provide functionality for end users, they are also in to provide functionality to corporations that can ensure that they make more money.
Take DRM, Microsoft isn't probably that interested in it, however the music and film industries are and Microsoft sees the fact that getting them on board will help to ultimately boost it's bottom line.
These music and film companies want to sell content to customers over the internet and to their PC, but they don't want any chance of potential piracy. Microsoft is activily courting their requirement, not because customers want to do less with their content, but because MS can turn to those companies and say "hey, you complained that computers were insecure, but Longhorn means you can sell secure content and we are here to help you achieve that".
Microsoft's biggest advantage is that when Longhorn comes out, it will be pre-loaded onto computers and when Bob gets downloadable video content for his PC, Frank will want some of that too although he'll find that XP just doesn't cut it and he has to upgrade.
Look to the money. There are huge amounts to be made in music and video downloads, however Microsoft has to include functionality (DRM) into their computers to be able to persuade those companies that their content isn't copyable otherwise they'll never dip their toes into that market. When they do (through the assurances of Microsoft that the PC can ensure secure content stays secure) I can only assume that they'll also have to use a MS subscription based service to serve that content and all the associated licence fees for wrapping their content into the MS DRM.
In short, including DRM in Longhorn opens up another market for Microsoft to dominate. They'll force people who want to have downloadable video to upgrade and also gain licencing fees from their DRM solution used by the content providers under the illusion that their content really is secure.
How long until we see something similar with audio? "Users without an appropriately DRM-equipped soundcard will hear down-sampled audio played back through the Windows PC Speaker driver"
From this page, Protected User Mode Audio (PUMA) will do exactly that as it (and I quote) "provides a safer environment for audio playback, as well as checking that the enabled outputs are consistent with what the content allows".
In addition, Protected Audio Path (PAP) is "a future initiative under investigation for how to provide encryption of audio over user accessible buses." which sounds equally ominous.
I can think of plenty of people who look great on paper but are either clueless, have the wrong skills, have no people skills, no business acumen and/or just plain lied/exaggerated on their CV.
No-one is above a "pop quiz", everyone is potentially a bad choice and if Microsoft's tactics mean they reduce the chance of hiring a dud, well, good for them.
However if they are turning away genuinely good people then thats their fault - but this guy sounds a little arrogant and, from what I've read, I don't fancy being in his team.
Errrr... no it isn't. Last time I checked articles on 9/11 and manga were posted but they certainly weren't technical.
Now I don't have a problem with Slashdot not reporting on the London bombs (I do actually live there) but if significant non-technical American news or Taco's non-technical hobby is posted then I can understand how some people might get a little upset if significant non-American events aren't posted.
What I'm trying to say is this isn't a technical forum at all, its Taco's and he can pretty much post what he wants - technical or not. Trying to justify a lack of some article in this way doesn't work so please don't try to do it.
I seem to recall some cases of software firewalls (if this is what you meant) which don't initiate before the NIC driver comes online, meaning the PC has a few seconds where it can acquire an IP and receive packets before protection commences.
This, I believe, was a problem fixed in service pack 2. Windows now waits until all applications (which should include the software firewall) have started up before the NIC driver comes online.
Redhat 7.2 is not the latest and greatest version of Linux.
Neither is XP pre-sp1. As I said, it was released in 2001 (same time as 7.2). The latest version is Windows XP SP2.
You can easily download the latest version of whatever distro you want.
When you do, you're then compairing a distribution released in 2005 with a distribution released in 2001. Your comparison becomes null and void because it is unbalanced (and unfair).
Either compare Windows XP pre-sp1 with Redhat 7.1 or compare Windows XP SP2 with the latest version of Redhat. You can't have one and not the other otherwise it looks like you're deliberately skewing the results.
If you want to make it a valid comparison, convince Microsoft to begin a program where you can trade in your version of Windows XP for Windows XP + Service Pack 2 + Updates, etc.
All new PC's come with Windows XP SP2 installed and even the boxes in my local PC World have SP2 installed as well. I think even the hardened Linux advocate would agree that getting them to re-ship a new CD every time an update is released is a tad harsh.
I can't think of any Linux distributions that get rebuilt every single time the kernal or an application within it gets patched.
If your Windows computer is not properly protected,it will take 12 minutes before it becomes infected, according to London-based security company, Sophos.
By "Windows" they mean Windows XP pre-service pack 1 which was released in 2001.
So, what they're saying is: "if your unpatched 4 year old operating system is connected to the internet, it'll get infected pretty quickly."
Granted, pre-sp2 versions of XP has security that wasn't exactly the greatest and, granted, post-sp2 it still isn't perfect (and I'm not defending that) - but the above statement is like saying "if your vanilla install of Redhat 7.2 is connected to the internet, it'll get infected in a couple of hours".
The latter isn't fair to Redhat and so I don't see why it's particulary fair to Microsoft either.
Do you even read what the discussion is about or just blindly reply whenver certain terms come up? Legally neither did anything wrong, however even if something is legal doesn't mean people will not complain. Welcome to the great field of "ethics."
I read the discussion quite clearly.
This has nothing to do with "ethics". Both companies adhered the the BSD licence. End of story.
Like the parent poster, you are trying to imply that one company is better than another for doing something that is simply not a requirement in the BSD licence.
And Apple has and is contributing back, and MS hasn't contributed anything back so far.
There is nothing in the BSD licence that says you have to contribute back.
Both Apple and Microsoft have correctly followed the BSD licence and you cannot claim that one has followed it "better" than another based on a requirement that doesn't exist.
As someone who pays a licence fee (rather than a lot of people here on Slashdot), if the BBC is spending more of my money than it is worth on maintaining a site with very few visitors then I would prefer that they use put my money to better use.
If not, then I would be contributing to the maintenance and upkeep of a 101 sites of which are of little interest to anyone.
The BBC serves the public licence-paying viewers interests and if they are not interested in something, then it should not be wasting its money on such a project.
Without trying to sound completely negative, I hope that the BBC will be sensible enough to allow someone else to host the content and continue to maintain it.
Microsofts Antispyware's cred just took a dive for no fault of its own. Pity, since Giant (which it was before MS purchased it) was one of the better antispyware apps.
Crikey, nothing like jumping the gun on limited information.
If Microsoft bought Claria, killed the spyware division and used their personalisation tools to launch a Google Adwords competitor... how exactly would that make the AntiSpyware's cred "take a dive"?
Quite a few people have complained about the lack of functionality of iTunes and I've noticed that it can be accessed using the SDK provided by Apple.
Short of the vbs examples that Apple provide, does anyone know of any decent links/documentation on accessing and manipulating track data using Visual Basic?
With this kind of information, accessing and manipulating the music files would be easier and allow of a greater range of functionality outside of iTunes, the advantage of VB would that a basic frontend could be knocked up in a couple of hours - but there doesn't seem to be much help out there.
Could it be that women are more sensible than men and realise that somewhere that forces you to work 80 hour weeks, have no weekends off, work to near impossible deadlines and thinks that "crunch time" is part of normal working life is not quite the kind of industry they'd like to go into?
Of course it could be that they're just not plainly interested - but then again, the games industry isn't exactly looking like the most appealing recruitment choice right now...
Although it'll probably annoy a lot of people here, I can generally put up with sites that render stuff badly or try to get you to "upgrade" to IE when you're using Firefox because at least I can still get at the content.
However, the Odeon site is completely inaccessible. It's not a case of stuff not looking or formatting correctly, but once you followed the "entire site" link it was more a case of nothing actually being displayed to the user - no listings, no cinemas, nothing.
Even worse, if you emailed them to complain, they told you the site was undergoing a re-design. To my mind that has had to be at least a couple of years ago all because they couldn't be arsed to change some IE only javascript.
Anyway, if you've got GreaseMonkey this script will make the site accessable again.
ps. Whilst we're at it, if you have a phone or PDA then you might be interested in Movie Guide which provides you with you with detailed listings of all films showing in UK Cinema's.
Theater: Price of movie anywhere from $2.00 (no more dollar shows anymore, apparently:( ) to $9.50, and that's PER PERSON.
$2? $9.50? Hah, I went to a Vue cinema in London (zone 2, not central) and ended up paying £16.20 for two tickets to watch "Mr and Mrs Smith". That works out at $29.58 before you've even thought about some popcorn.
I have no doubt that someone else can better that - hell, Central London can easily be over £11 per ticket - but I refuse to believe that we earn, in the UK (after you've discounted currency conversion rates), 1.6 times more than you lot in America to even begin to justify this kind of pricing.
Home Theater: You don't have to spend $9.50 on a ticket to watch 20 minutes of TV ads and commercials.
Unless, of course, you're watching the DVD of "Master and Commander", where you're forced to watch 20 minutes of adverts and the fast-forward and menu buttons have been kindly disabled during this time.
"This technology is a speed bump. It's trying to dissuade the average consumer from making as many copies as they like," said First4Internet Chief Executive Mathew Gilliat-Smith.
This is a fallacy for two reasons: one technical, and one social. They're both bad for society, though.
Here's the technical reason: I don't need to be a cracker to break your DRM. I only need to know how to search Google, or Kazaa, or any of the other general-purpose search tools for the cleartext that someone smarter than me has extracted. ...
Here's the social reason that DRM fails: keeping an honest user honest is like keeping a tall user tall. DRM vendors tell us that their technology is meant to be proof against average users, not organized criminal gangs like the Ukranian pirates who stamp out millions of high-quality counterfeits. It's not meant to be proof against sophisticated college kids. It's not meant to be proof against anyone who knows how to edit her registry, or hold down the shift key at the right moment, or use a search engine. At the end of the day, the user DRM is meant to defend against is the most unsophisticated and least capable among us.
If you're trying to make a copy and the DRM won't let you, you're probably savvy enough to plug the correct terms into Google and get something to help you do just that. Or you just go ask your "geek friend".
They had the most zombies but a lower rate than others. They spin this as good.
It's not stupid at all, infact it is pretty good as it is completely unreasonable to compare numbers directly when one ISP has several times more customers than another.
This is why a lot of comparisons are measured in percentages. It is so that the big players don't have a skew towards them (either for good or for bad) simply because of their larger customer base.
To use an analogy, that would be like saying that you're fat because you have more grammes of fat in your body than my friend and completely ignoring the fact that he is only 4 foot high. If you used percentages, it would be clear that your body fat ratio would be far better than his and it was him that is the fat one. This is how someones BMI is calculated - it takes into account the size of the individual. Comparing figures directly would be meaningless (and potentially very harmful).
(I have no idea what your weight is nor do i care, it's just an example, please don't take offense)
The biometric aspect can (and should be) discussed, but I still don't see why the paper ID card is worse than a passport or a driver license regarding privacy?
Interestingly enough, a lot of people aren't happy about the fact it could cost each person £93 (approximately $168) for a card which will do little to resolve the very issues it claims to be required for.
I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but ID cards will be just like the EU Constitution and the Iraq war.
No-one will want it, people will campaign against it , newspapers will argue against it and the government will stick their fingers in their ears, say "la la la I can't hear you" and implement it anyway.
Not that it means we shouldn't try and get Labour to see some sense, but given that they've been deeply unpopular for several years but still got voted in for another four years (on the basis that they might be bad, but the competition is even worse), they realise that they can get away with doing almost what they want with little recourse.
As such, I'm not holding out much of a hope on this one.
Slashdot Mirror
Another one (here in the UK) has been where someone is told that there is nothing that can be done for some problem only for them to find out using the web that something can be done about it (usually in another country).
A good example is this story about a baby born with a deformed head who was wrongly told that nothing was wrong and to live with the deformity. Thankfully, in the next four months the baby will be fine.
Not that I'm suggesting that all doctors get it wrong but once in a while the web has been a life-saver.
Take DRM, Microsoft isn't probably that interested in it, however the music and film industries are and Microsoft sees the fact that getting them on board will help to ultimately boost it's bottom line.
These music and film companies want to sell content to customers over the internet and to their PC, but they don't want any chance of potential piracy. Microsoft is activily courting their requirement, not because customers want to do less with their content, but because MS can turn to those companies and say "hey, you complained that computers were insecure, but Longhorn means you can sell secure content and we are here to help you achieve that".
Microsoft's biggest advantage is that when Longhorn comes out, it will be pre-loaded onto computers and when Bob gets downloadable video content for his PC, Frank will want some of that too although he'll find that XP just doesn't cut it and he has to upgrade.
Look to the money. There are huge amounts to be made in music and video downloads, however Microsoft has to include functionality (DRM) into their computers to be able to persuade those companies that their content isn't copyable otherwise they'll never dip their toes into that market. When they do (through the assurances of Microsoft that the PC can ensure secure content stays secure) I can only assume that they'll also have to use a MS subscription based service to serve that content and all the associated licence fees for wrapping their content into the MS DRM.
In short, including DRM in Longhorn opens up another market for Microsoft to dominate. They'll force people who want to have downloadable video to upgrade and also gain licencing fees from their DRM solution used by the content providers under the illusion that their content really is secure.
From this page, Protected User Mode Audio (PUMA) will do exactly that as it (and I quote) "provides a safer environment for audio playback, as well as checking that the enabled outputs are consistent with what the content allows".
In addition, Protected Audio Path (PAP) is "a future initiative under investigation for how to provide encryption of audio over user accessible buses." which sounds equally ominous.
Here on the UK trains, ticket inspectors have badges proclaiming their job title to be "revenue protection officers".
I kid you not.
No-one is above a "pop quiz", everyone is potentially a bad choice and if Microsoft's tactics mean they reduce the chance of hiring a dud, well, good for them.
However if they are turning away genuinely good people then thats their fault - but this guy sounds a little arrogant and, from what I've read, I don't fancy being in his team.
Missed that as I'd filtered out politics ... however it does prove my point that Slashdot isn't exclusively technology based :)
Errrr... no it isn't. Last time I checked articles on 9/11 and manga were posted but they certainly weren't technical.
Now I don't have a problem with Slashdot not reporting on the London bombs (I do actually live there) but if significant non-technical American news or Taco's non-technical hobby is posted then I can understand how some people might get a little upset if significant non-American events aren't posted.
What I'm trying to say is this isn't a technical forum at all, its Taco's and he can pretty much post what he wants - technical or not. Trying to justify a lack of some article in this way doesn't work so please don't try to do it.
This, I believe, was a problem fixed in service pack 2. Windows now waits until all applications (which should include the software firewall) have started up before the NIC driver comes online.
Neither is XP pre-sp1. As I said, it was released in 2001 (same time as 7.2). The latest version is Windows XP SP2.
You can easily download the latest version of whatever distro you want.
When you do, you're then compairing a distribution released in 2005 with a distribution released in 2001. Your comparison becomes null and void because it is unbalanced (and unfair).
Either compare Windows XP pre-sp1 with Redhat 7.1 or compare Windows XP SP2 with the latest version of Redhat. You can't have one and not the other otherwise it looks like you're deliberately skewing the results.
If you want to make it a valid comparison, convince Microsoft to begin a program where you can trade in your version of Windows XP for Windows XP + Service Pack 2 + Updates, etc.
All new PC's come with Windows XP SP2 installed and even the boxes in my local PC World have SP2 installed as well. I think even the hardened Linux advocate would agree that getting them to re-ship a new CD every time an update is released is a tad harsh.
I can't think of any Linux distributions that get rebuilt every single time the kernal or an application within it gets patched.
By "Windows" they mean Windows XP pre-service pack 1 which was released in 2001.
So, what they're saying is: "if your unpatched 4 year old operating system is connected to the internet, it'll get infected pretty quickly."
Granted, pre-sp2 versions of XP has security that wasn't exactly the greatest and, granted, post-sp2 it still isn't perfect (and I'm not defending that) - but the above statement is like saying "if your vanilla install of Redhat 7.2 is connected to the internet, it'll get infected in a couple of hours".
The latter isn't fair to Redhat and so I don't see why it's particulary fair to Microsoft either.
I read the discussion quite clearly.
This has nothing to do with "ethics". Both companies adhered the the BSD licence. End of story.
Like the parent poster, you are trying to imply that one company is better than another for doing something that is simply not a requirement in the BSD licence.
There is nothing in the BSD licence that says you have to contribute back.
Both Apple and Microsoft have correctly followed the BSD licence and you cannot claim that one has followed it "better" than another based on a requirement that doesn't exist.
If not, then I would be contributing to the maintenance and upkeep of a 101 sites of which are of little interest to anyone.
The BBC serves the public licence-paying viewers interests and if they are not interested in something, then it should not be wasting its money on such a project.
Without trying to sound completely negative, I hope that the BBC will be sensible enough to allow someone else to host the content and continue to maintain it.
Crikey, nothing like jumping the gun on limited information.
If Microsoft bought Claria, killed the spyware division and used their personalisation tools to launch a Google Adwords competitor ... how exactly would that make the AntiSpyware's cred "take a dive"?
Short of the vbs examples that Apple provide, does anyone know of any decent links/documentation on accessing and manipulating track data using Visual Basic?
With this kind of information, accessing and manipulating the music files would be easier and allow of a greater range of functionality outside of iTunes, the advantage of VB would that a basic frontend could be knocked up in a couple of hours - but there doesn't seem to be much help out there.
Any suggestions?
Of course it could be that they're just not plainly interested - but then again, the games industry isn't exactly looking like the most appealing recruitment choice right now ...
So what they're saying is that, come November, the Hotmail spam filter might actually start to catch some spam?
If you outsource to a country which pays significantly lower wages to reduce your own costs, then that "price" also becomes significantly lower.
However, the Odeon site is completely inaccessible. It's not a case of stuff not looking or formatting correctly, but once you followed the "entire site" link it was more a case of nothing actually being displayed to the user - no listings, no cinemas, nothing.
Even worse, if you emailed them to complain, they told you the site was undergoing a re-design. To my mind that has had to be at least a couple of years ago all because they couldn't be arsed to change some IE only javascript.
Anyway, if you've got GreaseMonkey this script will make the site accessable again.
ps. Whilst we're at it, if you have a phone or PDA then you might be interested in Movie Guide which provides you with you with detailed listings of all films showing in UK Cinema's.
$2? $9.50? Hah, I went to a Vue cinema in London (zone 2, not central) and ended up paying £16.20 for two tickets to watch "Mr and Mrs Smith". That works out at $29.58 before you've even thought about some popcorn.
I have no doubt that someone else can better that - hell, Central London can easily be over £11 per ticket - but I refuse to believe that we earn, in the UK (after you've discounted currency conversion rates), 1.6 times more than you lot in America to even begin to justify this kind of pricing.
Unless, of course, you're watching the DVD of "Master and Commander", where you're forced to watch 20 minutes of adverts and the fast-forward and menu buttons have been kindly disabled during this time.
It's not stupid at all, infact it is pretty good as it is completely unreasonable to compare numbers directly when one ISP has several times more customers than another.
This is why a lot of comparisons are measured in percentages. It is so that the big players don't have a skew towards them (either for good or for bad) simply because of their larger customer base.
To use an analogy, that would be like saying that you're fat because you have more grammes of fat in your body than my friend and completely ignoring the fact that he is only 4 foot high. If you used percentages, it would be clear that your body fat ratio would be far better than his and it was him that is the fat one. This is how someones BMI is calculated - it takes into account the size of the individual. Comparing figures directly would be meaningless (and potentially very harmful).
(I have no idea what your weight is nor do i care, it's just an example, please don't take offense)
Interestingly enough, a lot of people aren't happy about the fact it could cost each person £93 (approximately $168) for a card which will do little to resolve the very issues it claims to be required for.
No-one will want it, people will campaign against it , newspapers will argue against it and the government will stick their fingers in their ears, say "la la la I can't hear you" and implement it anyway.
Not that it means we shouldn't try and get Labour to see some sense, but given that they've been deeply unpopular for several years but still got voted in for another four years (on the basis that they might be bad, but the competition is even worse), they realise that they can get away with doing almost what they want with little recourse.
As such, I'm not holding out much of a hope on this one.