From the much vaunted Code of Ethics (in addition to the public/private clause floating around):
On rare occasions, computing staff may access others' files, but only when strictly necessary for the maintenance of a system or in active pursuit of serious security or abuse incidents.
This was indeed a rare occasion and, at least to CMU, this was a serious abuse incident. People are quick to point out that CMU broke the rules, but being skeptical, I read the whole privacy statement and found this line. This line right here, which students (I'm assuming) agreed to as part of agreeing to policy, gives them the right to access those files as part of their 'sweep'.
I don't think it's a great thing, what CMU did, but I think people are directing attention away from the real issue which is that people were breaking the law and got caught. Yes, it's rather fascist and if the government did this to me (and who's to say they haven't already), I'd be in an uproar, but this is a private institution that runs a private network. If you break the law on it, damned if they won't bust your ass for it. People need to read all of the terms when they sign up, not just the parts that they think will let them get away with what they want on their own personal machines.
Guess what people. These students abused the system and the system called them on it by their own rules. There are 179 kids right now who aren't in trouble and are laughing at the other 71.
p.s. (because I've seen this a couple of times) Borrowing CDs is not copyright infringement anymore than borrowing a book is. Copying a CD and giving it away (which is very akin to making an MP3 and distributing it) is copyright infringement, just like xeroxing a book and giving it away ain't legal, either.
Is it really in the DOJ's interests to take this thing to the Supreme Court right now? I may be wrong here (and if anyone has the current statistics, please post them), but I think the Court is majority Republican right now, which means that getting a decision against Microsoft would be a little harder to do (even impartiality is reliant on human views). I can understand the DOJ's pursuit of this quickly in light of what looks like a strong Republican showing in the polls, but I think the Supreme Court will be a lot more sympathetic to Microsoft's arguments than Judge Jackson was.
Again, I may be wrong about the makeup (I'm just going by my current events knowledge), but the DOJ has to remember that they are still playing in a very political arena now.
Let's begin by playing devil's advocate, and then we'll see what erupts.
Any technology that can lead the cops to your door is potentially dangerous technology.
It's this idea that has completely shackled law enforcement when it has come to dealing with computer crimes. The idea that people should be allowed to be completely anonymous in everything that they do is completely unparalleled in the real world. I, for one, am very happy that some method of accountability was unknowingly in Microsoft's products so that they could track down the author of the Melissa virus. People can and should have an identity on the Internet, and while that identity should be protected, it shouldn't be removed because people are afraid that law enforcement will be able to find you.
I also don't think that TRUSTe is as important an organization as it is made out to be in this article. It may shock some members of the Slashdot community, but I had never heard of TRUSTe until the Hotmail debacle, and even then, I didn't stop using Hotmail, nor did I start regulating my product usage by the TRUSTe symbol. I'm sure many others haven't, either.
I really think people are beginning to accept the fact that the growth of the Internet has resulted in a certain lack of online privacy. One may lament it and one may try and fight it, but the idea of a completely open but anonymous society is contradictory. Where there is a data stream, there is a way. People may have a right to certain information privacy, but they don't have a right to anonymity, and the only rights they have to what information a product sends back about itself are market rights. Somehow, I don't think Real Networks is going under because they sent back UIDs from their product. In fact, I'm happy they can track their software.
The constant attacks against companies that engage in marketing devices, information gathering schemes, and content labeling is akin to McCarthy's (Joe, not Jamie) crusade against Communists. Anything that doesn't fit into the ideal is suspect. Guess what? Direct marketers have been using these tools for decades and, *gasp* people have been able to go through your trash for even longer.
I say the Internet needs to start strengthening itself around responsibility. Protecting one's rights is important, but a certain accountability is expected with those rights. So far, I see very little accountability, both on the part of the commercial organizations with their rampant use of undocumented 'features' and with individuals who try to both use and separate their lives from the system. As with all things in life, the middle ground is where I think the answer is. Rampant positioning on either extreme just ruffles feathers and leads to no solutions at all.
Saw the mention about them going after Slashdot and I immediately thought, "For what reason?" but then I thought, "Hey, let's give them a reason!" We all know that Rob doesn't censor Slashdot, hopefully removing him from liability. What if someone, say an Anonymous Coward (or in this case, Hero) were to post the source code for the entire project to Slashdot? Would Rob be liable?
If it worked, you'd have a great source that potentially couldn't be attacked anymore than an anonymous post to a newsgroup.
Fact checking is a good thing in the journalism biz.
And/. has reached its pinnacle. It's now gotten to the point where Slashdot has indeed become a journalistic force. The real question is: how responsible will it be. In the media world, while the companies may be ruthless, they do a good job of checking to make sure that at least their information is correct (it's not always this way, but for the most part...). For example, if a news station were to broadcast false information that led to civic unrest or a violent murder, I believe they can be held accountable. I wouldn't be surprised in the future if Slashdot mistakenly posted a story like this and then got sued because the onslaught of the Slashdot effect caused the servers to crash. Something like this is very easy to prevent. A quick call or e-mail to Corel for verification would have prevented this whole little mess.
This is the second time this has happened in recent memory (a new Apache release put up for distribution to mirror sites being the other). In the effort for the freshest scoop,/. posters, don't give us bad ice cream.
First off, the ADA is about providing for people with disabilities, not designing for them. I've seen some pretty moronic posts about how the 'Net is going to have to be all text and no images to satisfy the blind. Have you ever seen Sneakers?! Don't you know that a man doesn't have to see the porn to realize that Playboy is a great magazine? The web is, after all, a text-based medium and can still be presented as such, even if you can't see your favorite Flash program.
With that in mind, sure, using ALT tags is a great step. So is understanding how forms are put together. Do you ever wonder why Hotmail's label for it's login name is above the entry box? It's because blind readers read the text in the order it sees it. If you put the login textbox first, it reads, "(edit)", then you enter whatever, then "login (edit)" where the second edit is the password and then "password blah blah". It makes sense to put it in order and doesn't really harm the design.
And finally, Microsoft and other companies have put some effort into making their operating environments accessible for blind people. AOL could do the same. AOL is more than just the web site. It's also a proprietary service that has an incredibly graphics-rich interface. I don't know if the blind can use this interface, and I bet that that is even more of a problem then their web site.
The blind don't want AOL to get rid of all the cool stuff that us seeing people enjoy, they just want the door opened to some of the fun. If you think that means ruining your party, then you need to take a step back and think about how you would feel in the same situation.
Customers confused about the previous pricing plan precipitated the change, said Mike Nash, a general manager for Windows 2000. "We found many customers were buying CALs when they didn't need them and still others weren't buying them when they did need them."
I think we can all see why this statement shows that Microsoft at least has a twisted sense of humor. Now, on to more serious things.
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would contradict that. They are squarely saying that if you're going to have multiple people connecting to your system, you're going to pay for it. This is similar to news outsourcing where a company pays for a number of concurrent connections. They don't pay for all their customers, just the ones they'll expect to be connected at once. Now come the interesting questions. What if you use Apache as your web server and someone tries to connect. Do you have to pay for it? Can you charge for connections to an operating system? This doesn't sound like a feasible pricing scheme to me unless Microsoft is going to implement some sort of connection limiting scheme in its software (highly unlikely, although, like I said, they have a twisted sense of humor).
Microsoft is going to scare off customers. Either people are going to switch away from MS altogether or they're simply not going to upgrade (more likely). If MS's pricing scheme was iffy before, this one is even more so because it's not based on any real concrete numbers. HTTP connections fluctuate and who's to say that at any given moment you're not going to exceed that limit. Customers are not, under any circumstances, going to pay for connections that, theoretically, they will probably never use. Buying NT for a number of in-house stations is one thing. Buying it for people to buy stuff from is yet another.
The operating system should be scalable, not the pricing scheme.
Clarke, Technology, and this Interview
on
Sir Arthur Speaks
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· Score: 3
Given the fact that this item is up on the NYT home page and not buried in a paper somewhere (although I'm sure it's there, too), I wonder what Sir Arthur's connection to all this technology that he's always seemed to predict is. Does he use the Internet? Does he think computers with HAL's intellect will one day exist and should we fear them?
He'd make a great target for a Slashdot interview. The questions from the NYT were nice, but I don't think they were posed by a geek. Given the reverence to which we hold Clarke, I'm sure that if we were asking the questions, you could probably write a whole 'nother novel with the answers.
Of course not. In delivering the ad, DoubleClick just collects your user ID. It probably already has your name, address, phone number and email address, somewhere in the Abacus database
This is an incredible assumption that is made to clarify the point, an assumption which is most likely overlooked by most people reading this. To be able to function as an article, one must assume that Doubleclick already has your name and e-mail address and I honestly fail to see how unless they're gathering it through corporate partnerships (most companies have policies about distributing the information gathered on web forms). Just clicking through on links can't give this information to Doubleclick since it's not a form query and I don't know if I've ever seen an ad that directs to a web page that enables them to track the user ID of the person who clicked through to get to it. If this was the case, then more people than just Doubleclick are using your 'user ID'.
YRO continually impresses me with their targeted propaganda. Phrases like 'user ID' make it seem like Doubleclick's identifiers are personal in some way when they're really just fancy tracking numbers. And to fault Doubleclick for it's partnership with Abacus Direct is to fault the town butcher for working with the town guy-who-packages-meat. It only makes sense for the two companies to get together. One may not have a very high opinion of direct marketing (I certainly don't), but companies working with Abacus Direct do far, far worse than Doubleclick when it comes to tracking down what you're buying.
I'm sick of paranoia in my news. Slashdot used to be 'News for nerds' and now, at least with YRO, it's becoming a soapbox for privacy champions. Let the soapboxes remain in the commenting section and quit making faulty assumptions to sell your story to me.
You'd think that with so many people concentrated in one are with a Net-centric attitude that you'd see less crap coming out of the area with regard to regulating said attitude.
*sigh*
Put a million monkeys in front of million computers, and you still just get a lot of dumb looking monkeys.
The Federal Deficit Counter We're above 4 trillion dollars and the computers designed to consistently add US$0.01 to the total were built back in 198x, so they must be having problems. A few more CPU cycles and our deficit counter can go up faster than ever!
Slashdot Ever notice how Slashdot slows down sometimes? Ever think to yourself, "Man, if my spare CPU could go to speeding this bad puppy up"? Well, now you can speed up the experience with the only distributed client that actually sends CPU processing to Slashdot (warning: still in beta, no ETA).
World Resources Destructo-meter Ever wonder how much consumable energy we have left? Well, with the World Resources Destructo-meter, you can help keep track of how many of our precious resources are left! As an added bonus, the more and more computers use this program, the more and more energy is used and thus, the program counts down faster and faster. It's fun for the whole family!
The Salvation Army Ever given something you don't want to the Salvation Army? Ever wondered how anyone could use whatever it was you gave them? Now you can do the same thing with your CPU cycles! (NOTE: the Salvation Army is also selling used CPU cycles in their thrift stores for older computers).
NASA NASA may not seem like it needs more CPU cycles, but, as current events recently showed, the CPU-intensive conversions from standard to metric and back again sometimes hit a brick wall. Donate CPU to NASA and make sure that we don't lose anymore multi-million dollar probes!
Brought to you by The Computer(tm), now with new games that you play when you're not using your computer.
If one thing, history has shown us that the software industry, while it parallels many other industries, cannot be compared accurately to other industries. The developmentally fast and easily adjusted nature of software development means that while large companies like Microsoft may easily be toppled by a relative newcomer, those same large companies can make small changes very fast return the favor. People talk about what a behemoth Microsoft is, and they are quite large, but that largesse does not compare to, say, a large steel company. Adjusting a steel company means developing new technology, constructing new facilities only after producing the same thing for many years. In software, developing new technology is an ongoing process. New facilities simply aren't needed, just new computers. And, if the same exact thing is produced for many years, something is incredibly wrong with the world around us. It's unfair to Microsoft to assume that they can't quickly change to address the oncoming threats of smaller companies. I think they've already shown with the Netscape fiasco that they can, and ruthlessly, and they've shown that they're on the ball regarding the Linux threat, at least in terms of recognizing and addressing it. Barnes & Noble got shafted because they had to setup all the back-end stuff to implement their plans and that takes time and money, but there's very little back-end stuff in software development. If something's amiss, you just put the programmer on a new task and set him to it. If anything, many open-source projects are followers, not innovators (notable exceptions being Apache and mySQL) as they simply react to other people's innovations. Yes, their product won't cost anything, but something has to become established before someone decides that a free program would be a better implementation of it. This has gotten a little off-topic, but basically, Microsoft won't go the way of Barnes & Noble because a) they can adjust much much quicker as a result of their product and b) because they recognize the threat.
I'm sorry, but I'm all for new products if they're better and free and everything, but Opera is simply a horrible browser. Say what you will about Netscape and IE, but they're pretty damn easy to use, and almost every web browser on the planet has followed their UI leads, even the simple ones like the one found in KDE. The few times that I've been required to use Opera for testing web designs, I've found it's UI to be horrendous at best. They split the concept of the browsing pane into multiple windows, almost like a separate sub-desktop. Their fonts always rendered a size too high. Their HTML compatibility was awful (this was the 3.0 release). And they had so many extra things bundled into the system that I couldn't even beging to configure it to do anything even remotely like what I wanted it to do. There is something to be said for the simplicity of IE and Netscape, which made the web about as easy to use as a cheap hooker (which, honestly, is what the web has become).
As far as I'm concerned, Opera is nowhere near the browser that Netscape/Mozilla is and is only getting recognition because they're an 'alternative'. When they concentrate on making web browsing as painless as their competitors, then they'll have a product they can market.
Why not? Let them still charge for Windows and let them maintain it as a monopoly, I don't mind. The difference is that they'd be subject to public regulation and rules similar to the phone company. See how they like the pressure of having to be required to make their sh*t work. I'm sure someone will say, "Yeah, but public utilities don't innovate unless they have to." How much is Microsoft innovating now?
I say if Microsoft wants to be a monopoly, so be it. Make them an official monopoly and let them have at it. Let's see how much they really like it.
And yeah, you can still use Linux, just like you can still use a diesel generator in your home.
This has only minorly to do with Intel. This is simply another episode in the long running line of Alien Involvements(tm). The Pyramids, Stonehenge, Superman's death, and now, this. One needs only to look to their company roster to see the obviousness of this statement: Linus Torvalds. Ever heard the guy speak? World domination and a community of friendly programmers repeatedly crop up. This is the same idea presented in such based-on-soon-to-be-true alien invasion stories as Independence Day and Mars Attacks.
No, what this really is is a human brain emulator. Able to compile human instruction code on the fly, aliens will be able to infiltrate our culture and control us from the inside, using Linux as the OS of choice. We will be as helpless as that pharaoh dude they locked up in the pyramid.
What really scares companies like Microsoft about open-source software is the fundamental shift in philosophy it will require them to make. It's not about how secure the software is or who has access to it. Fundamentally, Microsoft wants everyone to have access to its programs, just like OSS preachers. The difference is that Microsoft is primarily a product driven company which provides some limited service for its product, similar to a car dealer. OSS companies like Redhat are a service driven company that sell some product on the side. Service-oriented industries are, by and large, dependent on the product and what scares Microsoft is that if they must turn into a service oriented company, they won't have control over the product and thus fall under many more market influences. Redhat can succeed as long as the product is there since they don't have to sell it (what they sell for $80 now isn't Linux but technical support for Linux). Microsoft, on the other hand, sells Windows and tech support comes with it. If they were forced to open-source Windows or Office, they would lost a very, very large chunk of change, and honestly, do we really need Microsoft for technical support. There are much better avenues for that (like your local computer dealer or manufacturer).
But that begs the question, will open-source survive or even thrive. Right now, OSS has made it because they haven't needed that service. The mainstream market (the people who need support organizations) haven't bought into it. Now that the masses are beginning to understand and accept this concept, you see companies like Redhat thriving because of their expertise, but currently, it's not enough. There's too many problems for the typical newbie to overcome. The support channels aren't strong enough to support it yet. When those support channels strengthen (and the product becomes easier to use, meaning the support channels don't have to necessarily be as strong), then you'll see greater acceptance. If, for some reason, the support level can never truly match customers' needs, then you'll see OSS flounder in minimal usage. OSS will only thrive as long as the service industry can support it. Windows thrives now partially because that service industry is already in place. Microsoft doesn't have to worry about it because they make the money off the product.
The threat to Microsoft is the same as the challenge to OSS. Hopefully, more organizations like Redhat will come along (some may consider that blasphemous) and broaden the support (and customer) base. But OSS can't truly grow on its own unless the underlying infrastructure begins to also develop for the people that use it.
Well, at the request that this not turn into austin.internet, that's why one has to do research into what's best in the area. The name of the game is researching options, and Roadrunner is certainly one of them.
The relative merits of DSL vs. cable modem really all rests on whether or not the network built to hold those technologies can provide the type of service. He mentions that his DSL service goes through San Jose and Chicago and New York before getting back to Boston. That's just a crappy network for that person. It hurts performance and if the lines between any of those routers get cut or saturated, you're screwed. The same can be true of cable modem service. Luckily, most cable companies operate their systems locally, so your network infrastructure is going to be local. DSL, especially in the case of national providers, may not have their infrastructure local.
I had DSL in Austin through Texas.Net this summer. Texas.Net is a regional Texas provider with massive amounts of money invested in their network, their machines, and their connections. They're ahead of their bandwidth curve, which means they have the bandwidth to support the maximum throughput possible. Thus, with DSL in Austin, local sites were pulling in at a 100K (that's kilobytes, not bits) per second, and up near the theoretical limit (150K/sec) for sites local to Texas.Net's network. BTW, if you're in Texas and want to check out this service, residential DSL service (low-speed: 1.5Mbps) is $19.95/mo plus the Bell fees. Contrary to this, my friend at MIT, who was on a shared MediaOne cable line split among an entire housing unit, never got above 60K downloading things from MIT. Routing and infrastructure take their tolls.
The key to finding the best technology is research. Concentric was probably not the best choice for DSL for a Boston-area business. You've got to ask about the network, check what their routing is like, and find out about competitors. The best place to do this is on the newsgroups for the area. While the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty crappy, you can piece together a pretty accurate description of what is good by asking the question and then sifting through the ashes.
Personally, I think DSL is better as it is guaranteed bandwidth (provided the external 'Net connections can support it), but maybe not in your area. If you find many, many stories in your area like this article, you'll be ready to make an informed decision. But don't make it based just on thisarticle.
They found the probe, but still, facts need to be pointed out.
First off, the loss to us now would have been much greater than the loss would've been in the future. Not only would we lose the climatological data, but we'd also lose the Mars Polar lander, which may be our best bet for finding water on Mars.
As for use in future missions, there's only one possible mission that it would be used as a relay for (in 2003, I believe) and even then, it wouldn't be a primary tool, but a backup in case the main transceiver goes down in orbit. The mission is only scheduled for a 3-4 year life span, so any use after that is purely speculative.
Give the box to your average Joe Schmoe luser and let him set it up on a relatively bandwidth-capable link. Then have someone hack that. See what happens.
Give the box to your average Joe Schmoe luser and see how long it stays up during average use (word processing, standard updates). Make sure to log how they use it.
Give a Linux box to a bunch of Windows NT techs and see if they can set it up for (input server type here). Time how long it takes. Repeat task with Windows NT box and Linux admin.
Setup a kiosk with with two boxes, one NT and one Linux running a Window Manager of choice. Give them passersby the choice of looking at Netscape on one or looking at Netscape on the other. See which one people use the most. Ask them why they don't use the other.
Honestly, security is a nice issue and all, but there are so many other areas that both operating systems need improvement in. Security is such a function of administration that these contests show very little of the capabilities of the operating system. Try combining them with other aspects, like setup, administration, use, and scalability, and then your contest will really say something about the operating system.
And the point is that the corporation isn't a government entity. It's not ruled by the people. It can't make treaties, etc. In the view of the government, the corporation has many of the same rights as the individual, and individuals have the right to monitor themselves how they seem fit, to a degree.
Where's that degree? I don't know. It probably hasn't been defined, but people on Slashdot act as if it has been defined and is being violated. It needs to be defined first, and that's where trade organizations and unions come in.
Exactly when did employees monitoring their employee's activities become invasion of privacy? I could see the wrongdoing if the government was doing this to its citizens, but that's not the case. Companies own the product, they own the space, and as far as they're concerned you should be working on it. This isn't an issue of "Your Rights Online". Your rights in the workplace aren't the same as your rights in the workplace. Drug tests, mental screenings, and performance evaluations are all part of the game of corporate management.
There's paranoia and there's stupidity. The line is fine, but geez, you can still see it.
If you don't like the corporate policies, don't work for them. Either that, or get enough people to agree with you and form a union. In this country, workplace rights issues are usually hammered out by unions.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine the number of MP3s you could download from Carnegie-Mellon with this sucker!
DoH!
From the much vaunted Code of Ethics (in addition to the public/private clause floating around):
On rare occasions, computing staff may access others' files, but only when strictly necessary for the maintenance of a system or in active pursuit of serious security or abuse incidents.
This was indeed a rare occasion and, at least to CMU, this was a serious abuse incident. People are quick to point out that CMU broke the rules, but being skeptical, I read the whole privacy statement and found this line. This line right here, which students (I'm assuming) agreed to as part of agreeing to policy, gives them the right to access those files as part of their 'sweep'.
I don't think it's a great thing, what CMU did, but I think people are directing attention away from the real issue which is that people were breaking the law and got caught. Yes, it's rather fascist and if the government did this to me (and who's to say they haven't already), I'd be in an uproar, but this is a private institution that runs a private network. If you break the law on it, damned if they won't bust your ass for it. People need to read all of the terms when they sign up, not just the parts that they think will let them get away with what they want on their own personal machines.
Guess what people. These students abused the system and the system called them on it by their own rules. There are 179 kids right now who aren't in trouble and are laughing at the other 71.
p.s. (because I've seen this a couple of times)
Borrowing CDs is not copyright infringement anymore than borrowing a book is. Copying a CD and giving it away (which is very akin to making an MP3 and distributing it) is copyright infringement, just like xeroxing a book and giving it away ain't legal, either.
Just thought I'd get that off my chest.
Is it really in the DOJ's interests to take this thing to the Supreme Court right now? I may be wrong here (and if anyone has the current statistics, please post them), but I think the Court is majority Republican right now, which means that getting a decision against Microsoft would be a little harder to do (even impartiality is reliant on human views). I can understand the DOJ's pursuit of this quickly in light of what looks like a strong Republican showing in the polls, but I think the Supreme Court will be a lot more sympathetic to Microsoft's arguments than Judge Jackson was.
Again, I may be wrong about the makeup (I'm just going by my current events knowledge), but the DOJ has to remember that they are still playing in a very political arena now.
Let's begin by playing devil's advocate, and then we'll see what erupts.
Any technology that can lead the cops to your door is potentially dangerous technology.
It's this idea that has completely shackled law enforcement when it has come to dealing with computer crimes. The idea that people should be allowed to be completely anonymous in everything that they do is completely unparalleled in the real world. I, for one, am very happy that some method of accountability was unknowingly in Microsoft's products so that they could track down the author of the Melissa virus. People can and should have an identity on the Internet, and while that identity should be protected, it shouldn't be removed because people are afraid that law enforcement will be able to find you.
I also don't think that TRUSTe is as important an organization as it is made out to be in this article. It may shock some members of the Slashdot community, but I had never heard of TRUSTe until the Hotmail debacle, and even then, I didn't stop using Hotmail, nor did I start regulating my product usage by the TRUSTe symbol. I'm sure many others haven't, either.
I really think people are beginning to accept the fact that the growth of the Internet has resulted in a certain lack of online privacy. One may lament it and one may try and fight it, but the idea of a completely open but anonymous society is contradictory. Where there is a data stream, there is a way. People may have a right to certain information privacy, but they don't have a right to anonymity, and the only rights they have to what information a product sends back about itself are market rights. Somehow, I don't think Real Networks is going under because they sent back UIDs from their product. In fact, I'm happy they can track their software.
The constant attacks against companies that engage in marketing devices, information gathering schemes, and content labeling is akin to McCarthy's (Joe, not Jamie) crusade against Communists. Anything that doesn't fit into the ideal is suspect. Guess what? Direct marketers have been using these tools for decades and, *gasp* people have been able to go through your trash for even longer.
I say the Internet needs to start strengthening itself around responsibility. Protecting one's rights is important, but a certain accountability is expected with those rights. So far, I see very little accountability, both on the part of the commercial organizations with their rampant use of undocumented 'features' and with individuals who try to both use and separate their lives from the system. As with all things in life, the middle ground is where I think the answer is. Rampant positioning on either extreme just ruffles feathers and leads to no solutions at all.
Saw the mention about them going after Slashdot and I immediately thought, "For what reason?" but then I thought, "Hey, let's give them a reason!" We all know that Rob doesn't censor Slashdot, hopefully removing him from liability. What if someone, say an Anonymous Coward (or in this case, Hero) were to post the source code for the entire project to Slashdot? Would Rob be liable?
If it worked, you'd have a great source that potentially couldn't be attacked anymore than an anonymous post to a newsgroup.
Fact checking is a good thing in the journalism biz.
/. has reached its pinnacle. It's now gotten to the point where Slashdot has indeed become a journalistic force. The real question is: how responsible will it be. In the media world, while the companies may be ruthless, they do a good job of checking to make sure that at least their information is correct (it's not always this way, but for the most part ...). For example, if a news station were to broadcast false information that led to civic unrest or a violent murder, I believe they can be held accountable. I wouldn't be surprised in the future if Slashdot mistakenly posted a story like this and then got sued because the onslaught of the Slashdot effect caused the servers to crash. Something like this is very easy to prevent. A quick call or e-mail to Corel for verification would have prevented this whole little mess.
/. posters, don't give us bad ice cream.
And
This is the second time this has happened in recent memory (a new Apache release put up for distribution to mirror sites being the other). In the effort for the freshest scoop,
First off, the ADA is about providing for people with disabilities, not designing for them. I've seen some pretty moronic posts about how the 'Net is going to have to be all text and no images to satisfy the blind. Have you ever seen Sneakers?! Don't you know that a man doesn't have to see the porn to realize that Playboy is a great magazine? The web is, after all, a text-based medium and can still be presented as such, even if you can't see your favorite Flash program.
With that in mind, sure, using ALT tags is a great step. So is understanding how forms are put together. Do you ever wonder why Hotmail's label for it's login name is above the entry box? It's because blind readers read the text in the order it sees it. If you put the login textbox first, it reads, "(edit)", then you enter whatever, then "login (edit)" where the second edit is the password and then "password blah blah". It makes sense to put it in order and doesn't really harm the design.
And finally, Microsoft and other companies have put some effort into making their operating environments accessible for blind people. AOL could do the same. AOL is more than just the web site. It's also a proprietary service that has an incredibly graphics-rich interface. I don't know if the blind can use this interface, and I bet that that is even more of a problem then their web site.
The blind don't want AOL to get rid of all the cool stuff that us seeing people enjoy, they just want the door opened to some of the fun. If you think that means ruining your party, then you need to take a step back and think about how you would feel in the same situation.
Customers confused about the previous pricing plan precipitated the change, said Mike Nash, a general manager for Windows 2000. "We found many customers were buying CALs when they didn't need them and still others weren't buying them when they did need them."
I think we can all see why this statement shows that Microsoft at least has a twisted sense of humor. Now, on to more serious things.
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would contradict that. They are squarely saying that if you're going to have multiple people connecting to your system, you're going to pay for it. This is similar to news outsourcing where a company pays for a number of concurrent connections. They don't pay for all their customers, just the ones they'll expect to be connected at once. Now come the interesting questions. What if you use Apache as your web server and someone tries to connect. Do you have to pay for it? Can you charge for connections to an operating system? This doesn't sound like a feasible pricing scheme to me unless Microsoft is going to implement some sort of connection limiting scheme in its software (highly unlikely, although, like I said, they have a twisted sense of humor).
Microsoft is going to scare off customers. Either people are going to switch away from MS altogether or they're simply not going to upgrade (more likely). If MS's pricing scheme was iffy before, this one is even more so because it's not based on any real concrete numbers. HTTP connections fluctuate and who's to say that at any given moment you're not going to exceed that limit. Customers are not, under any circumstances, going to pay for connections that, theoretically, they will probably never use. Buying NT for a number of in-house stations is one thing. Buying it for people to buy stuff from is yet another.
The operating system should be scalable, not the pricing scheme.
Given the fact that this item is up on the NYT home page and not buried in a paper somewhere (although I'm sure it's there, too), I wonder what Sir Arthur's connection to all this technology that he's always seemed to predict is. Does he use the Internet? Does he think computers with HAL's intellect will one day exist and should we fear them?
He'd make a great target for a Slashdot interview. The questions from the NYT were nice, but I don't think they were posed by a geek. Given the reverence to which we hold Clarke, I'm sure that if we were asking the questions, you could probably write a whole 'nother novel with the answers.
In this article, it's said:
Of course not. In delivering the ad, DoubleClick just collects your user ID. It probably already has your name, address, phone number and email address, somewhere in the Abacus database
This is an incredible assumption that is made to clarify the point, an assumption which is most likely overlooked by most people reading this. To be able to function as an article, one must assume that Doubleclick already has your name and e-mail address and I honestly fail to see how unless they're gathering it through corporate partnerships (most companies have policies about distributing the information gathered on web forms). Just clicking through on links can't give this information to Doubleclick since it's not a form query and I don't know if I've ever seen an ad that directs to a web page that enables them to track the user ID of the person who clicked through to get to it. If this was the case, then more people than just Doubleclick are using your 'user ID'.
YRO continually impresses me with their targeted propaganda. Phrases like 'user ID' make it seem like Doubleclick's identifiers are personal in some way when they're really just fancy tracking numbers. And to fault Doubleclick for it's partnership with Abacus Direct is to fault the town butcher for working with the town guy-who-packages-meat. It only makes sense for the two companies to get together. One may not have a very high opinion of direct marketing (I certainly don't), but companies working with Abacus Direct do far, far worse than Doubleclick when it comes to tracking down what you're buying.
I'm sick of paranoia in my news. Slashdot used to be 'News for nerds' and now, at least with YRO, it's becoming a soapbox for privacy champions. Let the soapboxes remain in the commenting section and quit making faulty assumptions to sell your story to me.
You'd think that with so many people concentrated in one are with a Net-centric attitude that you'd see less crap coming out of the area with regard to regulating said attitude.
*sigh*
Put a million monkeys in front of million computers, and you still just get a lot of dumb looking monkeys.
We're above 4 trillion dollars and the computers designed to consistently add US$0.01 to the total were built back in 198x, so they must be having problems. A few more CPU cycles and our deficit counter can go up faster than ever!
Ever notice how Slashdot slows down sometimes? Ever think to yourself, "Man, if my spare CPU could go to speeding this bad puppy up"? Well, now you can speed up the experience with the only distributed client that actually sends CPU processing to Slashdot (warning: still in beta, no ETA).
Ever wonder how much consumable energy we have left? Well, with the World Resources Destructo-meter, you can help keep track of how many of our precious resources are left! As an added bonus, the more and more computers use this program, the more and more energy is used and thus, the program counts down faster and faster. It's fun for the whole family!
Ever given something you don't want to the Salvation Army? Ever wondered how anyone could use whatever it was you gave them? Now you can do the same thing with your CPU cycles! (NOTE: the Salvation Army is also selling used CPU cycles in their thrift stores for older computers).
NASA may not seem like it needs more CPU cycles, but, as current events recently showed, the CPU-intensive conversions from standard to metric and back again sometimes hit a brick wall. Donate CPU to NASA and make sure that we don't lose anymore multi-million dollar probes!
Brought to you by The Computer(tm), now with new games that you play when you're not using your computer.
If one thing, history has shown us that the software industry, while it parallels many other industries, cannot be compared accurately to other industries. The developmentally fast and easily adjusted nature of software development means that while large companies like Microsoft may easily be toppled by a relative newcomer, those same large companies can make small changes very fast return the favor. People talk about what a behemoth Microsoft is, and they are quite large, but that largesse does not compare to, say, a large steel company. Adjusting a steel company means developing new technology, constructing new facilities only after producing the same thing for many years. In software, developing new technology is an ongoing process. New facilities simply aren't needed, just new computers. And, if the same exact thing is produced for many years, something is incredibly wrong with the world around us. It's unfair to Microsoft to assume that they can't quickly change to address the oncoming threats of smaller companies. I think they've already shown with the Netscape fiasco that they can, and ruthlessly, and they've shown that they're on the ball regarding the Linux threat, at least in terms of recognizing and addressing it. Barnes & Noble got shafted because they had to setup all the back-end stuff to implement their plans and that takes time and money, but there's very little back-end stuff in software development. If something's amiss, you just put the programmer on a new task and set him to it. If anything, many open-source projects are followers, not innovators (notable exceptions being Apache and mySQL) as they simply react to other people's innovations. Yes, their product won't cost anything, but something has to become established before someone decides that a free program would be a better implementation of it. This has gotten a little off-topic, but basically, Microsoft won't go the way of Barnes & Noble because a) they can adjust much much quicker as a result of their product and b) because they recognize the threat.
I'm sorry, but I'm all for new products if they're better and free and everything, but Opera is simply a horrible browser. Say what you will about Netscape and IE, but they're pretty damn easy to use, and almost every web browser on the planet has followed their UI leads, even the simple ones like the one found in KDE. The few times that I've been required to use Opera for testing web designs, I've found it's UI to be horrendous at best. They split the concept of the browsing pane into multiple windows, almost like a separate sub-desktop. Their fonts always rendered a size too high. Their HTML compatibility was awful (this was the 3.0 release). And they had so many extra things bundled into the system that I couldn't even beging to configure it to do anything even remotely like what I wanted it to do. There is something to be said for the simplicity of IE and Netscape, which made the web about as easy to use as a cheap hooker (which, honestly, is what the web has become).
As far as I'm concerned, Opera is nowhere near the browser that Netscape/Mozilla is and is only getting recognition because they're an 'alternative'. When they concentrate on making web browsing as painless as their competitors, then they'll have a product they can market.
Why not? Let them still charge for Windows and let them maintain it as a monopoly, I don't mind. The difference is that they'd be subject to public regulation and rules similar to the phone company. See how they like the pressure of having to be required to make their sh*t work. I'm sure someone will say, "Yeah, but public utilities don't innovate unless they have to." How much is Microsoft innovating now?
I say if Microsoft wants to be a monopoly, so be it. Make them an official monopoly and let them have at it. Let's see how much they really like it.
And yeah, you can still use Linux, just like you can still use a diesel generator in your home.
This has only minorly to do with Intel. This is simply another episode in the long running line of Alien Involvements(tm). The Pyramids, Stonehenge, Superman's death, and now, this. One needs only to look to their company roster to see the obviousness of this statement: Linus Torvalds. Ever heard the guy speak? World domination and a community of friendly programmers repeatedly crop up. This is the same idea presented in such based-on-soon-to-be-true alien invasion stories as Independence Day and Mars Attacks.
No, what this really is is a human brain emulator. Able to compile human instruction code on the fly, aliens will be able to infiltrate our culture and control us from the inside, using Linux as the OS of choice. We will be as helpless as that pharaoh dude they locked up in the pyramid.
What really scares companies like Microsoft about open-source software is the fundamental shift in philosophy it will require them to make. It's not about how secure the software is or who has access to it. Fundamentally, Microsoft wants everyone to have access to its programs, just like OSS preachers. The difference is that Microsoft is primarily a product driven company which provides some limited service for its product, similar to a car dealer. OSS companies like Redhat are a service driven company that sell some product on the side. Service-oriented industries are, by and large, dependent on the product and what scares Microsoft is that if they must turn into a service oriented company, they won't have control over the product and thus fall under many more market influences. Redhat can succeed as long as the product is there since they don't have to sell it (what they sell for $80 now isn't Linux but technical support for Linux). Microsoft, on the other hand, sells Windows and tech support comes with it. If they were forced to open-source Windows or Office, they would lost a very, very large chunk of change, and honestly, do we really need Microsoft for technical support. There are much better avenues for that (like your local computer dealer or manufacturer).
But that begs the question, will open-source survive or even thrive. Right now, OSS has made it because they haven't needed that service. The mainstream market (the people who need support organizations) haven't bought into it. Now that the masses are beginning to understand and accept this concept, you see companies like Redhat thriving because of their expertise, but currently, it's not enough. There's too many problems for the typical newbie to overcome. The support channels aren't strong enough to support it yet. When those support channels strengthen (and the product becomes easier to use, meaning the support channels don't have to necessarily be as strong), then you'll see greater acceptance. If, for some reason, the support level can never truly match customers' needs, then you'll see OSS flounder in minimal usage. OSS will only thrive as long as the service industry can support it. Windows thrives now partially because that service industry is already in place. Microsoft doesn't have to worry about it because they make the money off the product.
The threat to Microsoft is the same as the challenge to OSS. Hopefully, more organizations like Redhat will come along (some may consider that blasphemous) and broaden the support (and customer) base. But OSS can't truly grow on its own unless the underlying infrastructure begins to also develop for the people that use it.
Well, at the request that this not turn into austin.internet, that's why one has to do research into what's best in the area. The name of the game is researching options, and Roadrunner is certainly one of them.
The relative merits of DSL vs. cable modem really all rests on whether or not the network built to hold those technologies can provide the type of service. He mentions that his DSL service goes through San Jose and Chicago and New York before getting back to Boston. That's just a crappy network for that person. It hurts performance and if the lines between any of those routers get cut or saturated, you're screwed. The same can be true of cable modem service. Luckily, most cable companies operate their systems locally, so your network infrastructure is going to be local. DSL, especially in the case of national providers, may not have their infrastructure local.
I had DSL in Austin through Texas.Net this summer. Texas.Net is a regional Texas provider with massive amounts of money invested in their network, their machines, and their connections. They're ahead of their bandwidth curve, which means they have the bandwidth to support the maximum throughput possible. Thus, with DSL in Austin, local sites were pulling in at a 100K (that's kilobytes, not bits) per second, and up near the theoretical limit (150K/sec) for sites local to Texas.Net's network. BTW, if you're in Texas and want to check out this service, residential DSL service (low-speed: 1.5Mbps) is $19.95/mo plus the Bell fees. Contrary to this, my friend at MIT, who was on a shared MediaOne cable line split among an entire housing unit, never got above 60K downloading things from MIT. Routing and infrastructure take their tolls.
The key to finding the best technology is research. Concentric was probably not the best choice for DSL for a Boston-area business. You've got to ask about the network, check what their routing is like, and find out about competitors. The best place to do this is on the newsgroups for the area. While the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty crappy, you can piece together a pretty accurate description of what is good by asking the question and then sifting through the ashes.
Personally, I think DSL is better as it is guaranteed bandwidth (provided the external 'Net connections can support it), but maybe not in your area. If you find many, many stories in your area like this article, you'll be ready to make an informed decision. But don't make it based just on thisarticle.
They found the probe, but still, facts need to be pointed out.
First off, the loss to us now would have been much greater than the loss would've been in the future. Not only would we lose the climatological data, but we'd also lose the Mars Polar lander, which may be our best bet for finding water on Mars.
As for use in future missions, there's only one possible mission that it would be used as a relay for (in 2003, I believe) and even then, it wouldn't be a primary tool, but a backup in case the main transceiver goes down in orbit. The mission is only scheduled for a 3-4 year life span, so any use after that is purely speculative.
Honestly, security is a nice issue and all, but there are so many other areas that both operating systems need improvement in. Security is such a function of administration that these contests show very little of the capabilities of the operating system. Try combining them with other aspects, like setup, administration, use, and scalability, and then your contest will really say something about the operating system.
This is ridiculous. The first rule of web programming is preventing things like this from happening. I mean, this is friggin' retarded.
Some of these programmers need to go back and take "Security 101" and learn the basics of web programming.
And the sad thing is, these people get paid at least twice as much as they're worth. Sad.
And the point is that the corporation isn't a government entity. It's not ruled by the people. It can't make treaties, etc. In the view of the government, the corporation has many of the same rights as the individual, and individuals have the right to monitor themselves how they seem fit, to a degree.
Where's that degree? I don't know. It probably hasn't been defined, but people on Slashdot act as if it has been defined and is being violated. It needs to be defined first, and that's where trade organizations and unions come in.
Exactly when did employees monitoring their employee's activities become invasion of privacy? I could see the wrongdoing if the government was doing this to its citizens, but that's not the case. Companies own the product, they own the space, and as far as they're concerned you should be working on it. This isn't an issue of "Your Rights Online". Your rights in the workplace aren't the same as your rights in the workplace. Drug tests, mental screenings, and performance evaluations are all part of the game of corporate management.
There's paranoia and there's stupidity. The line is fine, but geez, you can still see it.
If you don't like the corporate policies, don't work for them. Either that, or get enough people to agree with you and form a union. In this country, workplace rights issues are usually hammered out by unions.
I could've so used one of these in English writing classes. I bet that's why these doods originally started writing this software.