Cars are much more complex, both mechanically and technologically speaking.
No they aren't, not even close, not remotely. For example, a single human being is rarely capable of thoroughly understanding the implementation of a single non-trivial application. There is just no comparison. Even if you talk about modern cars, many of which have embedded systems, these are often specialized systems running very particular narrowly defined programs.
Cars still just work.
Sure, up until the very day they stop working. My dad's VW bus went through four engines. I'm not saying computers don't have mechanical failures, I'm just saying cars are often plagued with mechanical problems.
and it doesn't delete your groceries when it crashes either.
But then again, nobody dies when your home pc crashes do they? You know, there are obviously serious flaws in the orange growing industry because the oranges they are producing aren't as red as these apples.
A 1940s car was still much more stable and easy to operate than your consumer based car.
First your comparing a 1940's personal car, a 40 year old technology astronomically simpler than a computer, to what is essentially a 20 year old technology, the home pc. How much do you think a car's complexity increases in a year? Let's look at some satistics for the rate of increase in complexity of various software systems.
This is why a self-patching computer is a good thing!
I couldn't possibly agree more provided of course people have the option to turn off self-patching.
Why is there an issue with self-patching computers?
Patches can break things and sometimes it's not a matter of it being an accident. Also, people don't like things they own doing things without their permissions. Some people have expressed privacy concerns because a service like windows update reports on some of the software installed on your pc. I don't think these risks are justification enough. Also, and this is a Microsoft(Tm) problem, but MS has been known to tack on additional license agreements to their updates.
you cannot do something like this, using information gained while working for said company.
Why not?
And contacting all of the companys customers? That was just malicious.
I don't really like what he did, but the customers were the victims of the company's willfull deception. In a certain sense, they could be construed as the most important people to be contacted.
And secure is such a vague term as well, any piece of software can be compromised, especially if you worked on said particular piece of software.
I don't see how secure is a vague term. It has a very unambiguous definition. The reason why you think it is a vague term is because so many companies misrepresent their products as being secure. The word has been abused so much that its usage in marketing materials has become synonymous with snake oil.
there are no laws dictating that a company that says its software is secure have to be secure
I'm not a lawyer and apparently laws on this subject vary from state to state, but here's a description of the legal definition of Fraud within the state of California. http://www.hartley.com/natfraud.htm#legfraud
A company or person can befound guilty of fraud when the following five conditions are met.
(a) misrepresentation (false representation, concealment, or nondisclosure);
The company had been informed of a severe security flaw in their product and they continued to advertise it as secure. Additionally, they failed to disclose that a problem existed.
(b) knowledge of falsity (or "scienter");
They were informed of the security flaw therefore they were aware the claims they made were false.
(c) intent to defraud, i.e., to induce reliance;
They advertised security in an effort to gain the trust and reliance of customers, potential customers, and investors.
(d) justifiable reliance; and
Undoubtedly, people relied on their communications being secure.
(e) resulting damage.
Data could have been compromised. At the very least, customers or companies who chose this service for security reasons will have to spend time and money re-evaluating their choice of service. There may be down time as clients switch to alternate providers. And then there are all of the big investors.
Well, ok, that did give me a chuckle, but seriously. I think they've made some very substantial progress towards improving Windows security, and I'm not just talking bugs in code. For example, Active Directory allows administrators to set security settings for all the computers in a domain so you can more effectively control things like script execution and active x controls and lots and lots of other stuff. We now have free tools like SUS (Software Update Services) to help us distribute patches across our network. Now XP ships with it's own built in software firewall. Also the authentication mechanisms supported in 2000 and XP are greatly improved over NT. We've also got neat semi useful tools like MBSA (Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer) and the iis_lockdown wizard. And let's not forget the Windows Dos line is dead. I'm not saying they have the best security around, but they have definitely made some very real very substantive improvements.
Sorry to double reply but here's another point. If we were talking about a guy working for a tobacco company who found out the company was deliberately making their product more addictive while running a PR campaign saying the cigarette smoking was safe, would we even be having this debate?
I agree that the guy's actions sounded malicious, but when it comes down to it, he was a whistle blower. He demonstrated that the company continued to advertise its services as secure even while they knew about a blatant security flaw which they did nothing to fix for six months.
you also can't gain knowledge of security exploits while you're under their employment, leave, and then tell the entire world about it... THe feds were completely right in going after this guy.
This sounds very much like a civil matter. An NDA would definitely be a civil matter. Why would the feds be involved at all?
The real cure it to get rid of insecure software like Microsoft makes.
I have seen and worked in plenty of networks in which windows based systems ran every bit as securely as their Unix counterparts. I've even seen Windows systems deployed that were far more secure than their Unix counterparts.
Companies that don't start moving toward secure platforms deserve to die.
So does that include the Cancer Research Institute who happens to be running IIS? Besides, if microsoft hasn't been moving towards securing their systems, I don't know who has.
When a spammer sends out an advertisement for penis enlargement, he doesn't have to worry about the people who are not going to pursue his sizable offer. If Howard Dean embarks on a massive email campaign advertising penis enlargement, he has to worry about the negative impact his campaign may have on voters.
For example, while I'm not a democrat, I usually vote that way given the options. Also, I'm very much for worker's rights/anti corporation, and on the outset, that seems to align my views with Dean. But if he is going to send me offer's to enlarge my genitalia, I may have to rethink my support.
I've been out of high school for six or seven years now, but one thing I remember from back then was that students and definitely some teachers did not like using the Mac lab. During my three years at the high school, I spent maybe a total of two hours in that lab. Each time a group would visit the lab, they would spend the first several minutes trying to figure out how to do simple things like locate the web browser. We never had enough exposure to those machines to develop any skills with them and our lack of skills tainted the usefulness of the time we had with them. At least in my mind, it would be impossible to construe that lab, which contained the only new computers on campus, as a success.
On the other hand, we did have some more successful computer labs. For instance, the intro programming courses (basic and pascal) were taught in a lab full of old 486's. Since we spent an entire semester working with these machines, they became extremely useful. Incidentally, I went on to major in computer science, spend two years working in industry, and am just now returning to grad school.
Another semi-successful lab we had was a writing lab populated by old 386's and 486's with word perfect installed. Like the Mac lab, we didn't go here very often. There were maybe one or two class trips there and a lot of before class printing out of essays and papers. Word Perfect was what I had used at home for several years so for me, it was a breeze to go in and get out quickly. Other classmates without wp experience might not have shared my enthusiasm for this lab but surely you can see the utility of familiar software.
I guess what I am trying to say is, there is a place and time in school systems where it makes sense to have particular operating systems. If computers are incidental to the course, then they should run systems the students will be familiar with (cough windows). If computers are central to the course, then perhaps they should run whatever operating system would be best for the courses they are used for. I would recommend linux for programming and maybe macs for graphic classes.
Note, I think if you work on a campus where students constantly use computers, it would be ok to standardize on a non windows platform for general purpose computing needs just so long as the amount of time spent familiarizing oneself to the system is trivial compared to the time spent using the system. Of course, with the improvements in usability over the past six or seven years, maybe these things aren't that big of a deal anymore.
No offense, but it's clear that you have no idea how this works.
None taken. While it is true that I don't have a clue about the funding structure of IDC or GISTICS reports, I do not believe that invalidates my original point. I will never go to a vendor's website or the site of an apparently biased media source (macrules.com) to hear why that vendor is better than everyone else.
You said that typically only the vendor would fund or purchase a copy of the report for publication. So let's say a vendor publishes the report, the story gets picked up by different tech news distributors like slashdot, pcmag, cnet, zdnet, etc. These agencies might have their own analysis of the report which would almost certainly have less spin than the vendor's.
Now I'm not questioning the findings of any of these reports, I'm actually not interested in that. When pointing out studies/reports to convince someone of something like lower tco for macs, you can't send them to a bunch of apple/mac sites and expect to be taken seriously. If anything, from an outsider's perspective, it might actually help invalidate your message in that it appears the only people reporting on the information were clearly in the pro-mac camp. In a snese, this is the difference between news and propaganda.
This is not to say that sites like a vendor site, macrules.com, or slashdot can't be useful. Vendor's sites can (but not always) be good for explaining the features of their product. Macrules and Slashdot might both be very good at covering news in their particular niches. But no one should trust any of these sites publishing a comparison of a product they actively advocate versus another product, especially when their story is favorable.
There [applelinks.com] are [apple.com] a [hubster.com] lot [hubster.com] of [apple.com] studies [xephon.com] that [apple.com] support [apple.com.au] Cringley's [216.239.57.104] statement [macworld.co.uk] etc. [macrules.com], and you'd be hard pressed to find a single study in the reverse!
No offense, but that was probably the funniest thing I've read all day. Next time you try convince an agnostic, try to get more sites without apple or mac in the domain name. Let me just cruise over to Microsoft.com to see their latest review on Windows Server 2003, nah let's see what RedHat.com has to say about Linux enterprise servers first.
Software Update Services. It is Microsoft's free solution for managing the installation of critical updates across a network. As I understand it, you are basically running your own mini Windows Update service to which your clients subscribe. You can download updates on the server and roll them out if and when you want to. I think it has reasonably good scheduling features. All the Windows Update clients need to be updated to a new version, but I think this was already been sent out in older service packs.
Caveats:
Requires Windows 2000/2003 Server (for the server)
Only updates Windows 2000/XP/2003 (Professional or higher?)
Until recently (SUS sp1), you could not install the SUS server on a domain controller.
I think it only installs critical updates, not recommended updates, and not 3rd party software... so (tear, sniffle) no euro conversion tool.
Other than that, I don't know a lot about it either... but I did very recently start a job where I desperately need to deploy something like this. There's a lot of questions I have like how do you ensure the clients actually update? Is there any reporting? Are the updates pushed or pulled? Does anyone have any SUS stories good or bad?
Whether or not you actually pay for the media in question, by listening to and redistributing it you are supporting the companies behind it. For these companies, popularity equates to profitability. By listening to a particular song, you are increasing the exposure that song gets for you, your friends, your neighbors, and any people they may affect as a result of hearing you play a particular song. Similarly, how many people will download the song from you, how many will download the song from people who downloaded the song from you? How many of the downloaders friends and neighbors will like the song? How many people you supplied with or otherwise advertised the song to will go out and buy the cd? It's all about market share, if you strongly oppose an organization or group, don't be part of theirs.
Ok, I didn't read any of the MPAA's propaganda, but let's give this a try.
You're cheating yourself.
Let's start off with the assumption that the vast majority of P2P copy right infringement exists because content providers do not make their content available to the public at a price that reflects the value of the content and the convenience of the delivery mechanism. The natural way for individuals to combat these industries is to simply not buy their products and more to the point, to not use their products, distribute them, or in any way contribute to their popularity. Every time a friend hears one of your infringed songs and everytime some anonymous chap downloads an infringed movie from your p2p share, there's a chance that this person will go out and buy the cd or the dvd. I remember at least one study linking file sharing to increased music purchasing which everyone here rallied around. By file sharing copy righted content, you are supporting today's media moguls and their failure to adapt to a changing market. Imagine for a second how the content industries and even our nation's laws would be different if 60 million americans weren't trading copy righted material online right now. Would the DMCA have been passed? Would we have cds that don't play in computers? Might we either have lower cd prices or perhaps thoroughly established legitimate online content distribution or maybe an increase in the number of independent labels? When the value of a product is less than the asking price, something has to give. It's interesting how much more obvious this argument becomes when we start talking about computers with Microsoft and Linux. If there is something you don't like about a product, don't support it, don't use it. Infringing something does not often hurt the owner and can often help them.
Your computer is vulnerable
I have no idea what the MPAA said in this section, but if they left it at that single statement, they'd be absolutely right. First, the number one source of crappy spyware & software that has screwed up friends' computers is P2P file sharing programs. Not everyone knows to carefully examine an application before installing it. Second, I am pretty sure there have been vulnerabilities and exploits found in the clients of various networks. At the very least, you are most likely running a server whose author has given little thought to security.
You're breaking the law
How often on slashdot have we whined about legislators coming up with new laws to combat technology related crimes? Do we need a new set of cyberterrorism laws or will the existing tresspass and wire fraud laws suffice? Yet on the other side of the coin, whenever a new technology enables us to conveniently break a law with little or no risk of prosecution, we have absolutely no qualms about taking advantage of it. Many people use civil disobedience as an excuse for illegal file sharing, but there are several problems with this argument. First, their motivation is not really civil disobedience. They are ignoring the law for personal profit and pleasure, not violating it for the sake of bringing about change. Second, many of the people who infringe over P2P would probably agree that the notion of copy right is not a bad idea. I know of relatively few individuals who would object to the copy right terms put forth by the original founding fathers (one 14 year term with an option for one 14 year extension). Most of the objections involving copy right law stem from the recent extensions which have the effect of perpetuating the owner's "right" forever. However, the vast majority of content being shared online is less than 28 years old, in the case of movies, it is often less than 28 days old.
In summary... If you are file sharing copy righted material, you are still supporting the industries whose unsavory businesses pushed you to file sharing in the first place. If you are illegally trading music online in order to make some kind o
Now I'm not sure I'm permitted to do this or not but I ended up giving the license to someone else because... I hate supporting windows 98.
On another note, the more work I do with computers, the less interesting the prospect of assembling my own pcs is. It is time consuming and generally just about as monetarily expensive as buying a new Dell. Basically, my time has increased in value and my computing needs have changed in practice to the point where I no longer feel the need to get the perfect optimized uber graphics self assembled pc. So while all but my first pc have been self assembled, I'm not so sure that will be the case for the next system.
I've never seen anyone do this before either, however, the second they did, they'd lose my business, and that of everyone who comes to me. Why do people put up with behavior like that? I like having a brick and mortar shop for accountability but not that much. There are plenty of online dealers that will sell you computer barebones kits sans evidence of a windows license. It's our country. Vote with your wallets.
First, aren't those printer/scanners free after rebate? Second, do you really want that printer/scanner? In my experience, you'd have trouble convincing me to take one of those things for free.
Jobs that don't require training are pretty hard to find...actually, I'd say harder to find than jobs that require education
I'm coming up on my 10th job in just over 8 years, so I consider myself to be something of an expert in looking for jobs both trained and untrained. It is much much much easier to find an unskilled job. All of the unskilled jobs I have had required virtually no job search. All of the skilled jobs I have had (requiring a level of higher education), each took me months to find. Now I suppose if it might be harder to find an unskilled job that payed well enough to support a family....
How can they be sure aliens will live close to a star?
The assumption is that you'd have a much better chance of finding aliens around a star. This seems reasonable since one might expect aliens to be made out of matter and live in areas where there were copius quantities of matter. The other inescapable truth is that you need some place to look and stars represent a barely finite set of possible locations whereas "not stars" doesn't.
Parent: yeah, right. Imagine this - you're going at full speed. Downhill. You'd better keep your feet as far away from the pedals as possible
My first two bikes both had this style of single gear chain based breaking. It's actually fairly common, especially in little kiddie bmx bikes and the like.
The article says nothing about charging for bug fixes. It says...
Mr. Gates said the company was considering the possibility of charging for some of its software updates that are now made available free over the Internet.
I'm not saying their not evil, I'm just saying that the stuff they may start charging for might not be bug fixes. They could start charging for upgrades to Internet Explorer, DirectX, Media Player, or any number of products whose updates tend to add features.
I read through that, but I've got to admit some level of confusion. In the Snapster model, what is the motivation for an artist to create music? I mean if millions of people share a single cd, are we giving up on profits from license of copy right? What prevents the RIAA or some other collective body to prohibit Snapster-esque usage in their license of copy right?
Along similar lines, I used to live about two miles from the Marshal Space Museum around Huntsville Alabama. They've got a full size replica of a space shuttle with all the boosters that you can just walk right under. Similarly, there's outdoor area litterally filled with scale rockets/replicas (dozens). When I was there they also had (for no apparent reason) and SR-71 blackbird (I think that's what it was) on display. I found the inside of the museum to be a little less impressive, seemed kind of dated, but still entertaining. I think this is where they do space camp too. http://spacecamp.com/spacecamp/museum/welcome.jsp
Also, I haven't been there in forever but there's an excellent Airforce/Space museum in Dayton near Wright Patterson Airforce base.
That's the way I interpretted it, but I couldn't find any other section that he could have been referencing. It's likely he is trying to twist it to his purposes. Maybe his logic goes something like this, under the terms of the GPL we did not have the write to distribute this proprietary stuff, ergo, any gpl licenses distributed as such by us are invalid.
Of course, since it was their code they did have the right to distribute it, but I guess that's where the federal provision against accidental giving away of copyright thing he sited steps in.
I was under the impression that the license was a binary license or maybe just exemption from the lawsuit machine. Either way, you'd have a hard time twisting that into a way to view the eledgedly infringing lines.
Slashdot Mirror
Cars are much more complex, both mechanically and technologically speaking.
No they aren't, not even close, not remotely. For example, a single human being is rarely capable of thoroughly understanding the implementation of a single non-trivial application. There is just no comparison. Even if you talk about modern cars, many of which have embedded systems, these are often specialized systems running very particular narrowly defined programs.
Cars still just work.
Sure, up until the very day they stop working. My dad's VW bus went through four engines. I'm not saying computers don't have mechanical failures, I'm just saying cars are often plagued with mechanical problems.
and it doesn't delete your groceries when it crashes either.
But then again, nobody dies when your home pc crashes do they? You know, there are obviously serious flaws in the orange growing industry because the oranges they are producing aren't as red as these apples.
A 1940s car was still much more stable and easy to operate than your consumer based car.
First your comparing a 1940's personal car, a 40 year old technology astronomically simpler than a computer, to what is essentially a 20 year old technology, the home pc. How much do you think a car's complexity increases in a year? Let's look at some satistics for the rate of increase in complexity of various software systems.
This is why a self-patching computer is a good thing!
I couldn't possibly agree more provided of course people have the option to turn off self-patching.
Why is there an issue with self-patching computers?
Patches can break things and sometimes it's not a matter of it being an accident. Also, people don't like things they own doing things without their permissions. Some people have expressed privacy concerns because a service like windows update reports on some of the software installed on your pc. I don't think these risks are justification enough. Also, and this is a Microsoft(Tm) problem, but MS has been known to tack on additional license agreements to their updates.
you cannot do something like this, using information gained while working for said company.
Why not?
And contacting all of the companys customers? That was just malicious.
I don't really like what he did, but the customers were the victims of the company's willfull deception. In a certain sense, they could be construed as the most important people to be contacted.
And secure is such a vague term as well, any piece of software can be compromised, especially if you worked on said particular piece of software.
I don't see how secure is a vague term. It has a very unambiguous definition. The reason why you think it is a vague term is because so many companies misrepresent their products as being secure. The word has been abused so much that its usage in marketing materials has become synonymous with snake oil.
there are no laws dictating that a company that says its software is secure have to be secure
I'm not a lawyer and apparently laws on this subject vary from state to state, but here's a description of the legal definition of Fraud within the state of California. http://www.hartley.com/natfraud.htm#legfraud
A company or person can befound guilty of fraud when the following five conditions are met.
(a) misrepresentation (false representation, concealment, or nondisclosure);
The company had been informed of a severe security flaw in their product and they continued to advertise it as secure. Additionally, they failed to disclose that a problem existed.
(b) knowledge of falsity (or "scienter");
They were informed of the security flaw therefore they were aware the claims they made were false.
(c) intent to defraud, i.e., to induce reliance;
They advertised security in an effort to gain the trust and reliance of customers, potential customers, and investors.
(d) justifiable reliance; and
Undoubtedly, people relied on their communications being secure.
(e) resulting damage.
Data could have been compromised. At the very least, customers or companies who chose this service for security reasons will have to spend time and money re-evaluating their choice of service. There may be down time as clients switch to alternate providers. And then there are all of the big investors.
Well, ok, that did give me a chuckle, but seriously. I think they've made some very substantial progress towards improving Windows security, and I'm not just talking bugs in code. For example, Active Directory allows administrators to set security settings for all the computers in a domain so you can more effectively control things like script execution and active x controls and lots and lots of other stuff. We now have free tools like SUS (Software Update Services) to help us distribute patches across our network. Now XP ships with it's own built in software firewall. Also the authentication mechanisms supported in 2000 and XP are greatly improved over NT. We've also got neat semi useful tools like MBSA (Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer) and the iis_lockdown wizard. And let's not forget the Windows Dos line is dead. I'm not saying they have the best security around, but they have definitely made some very real very substantive improvements.
Sorry to double reply but here's another point. If we were talking about a guy working for a tobacco company who found out the company was deliberately making their product more addictive while running a PR campaign saying the cigarette smoking was safe, would we even be having this debate?
I agree that the guy's actions sounded malicious, but when it comes down to it, he was a whistle blower. He demonstrated that the company continued to advertise its services as secure even while they knew about a blatant security flaw which they did nothing to fix for six months.
you also can't gain knowledge of security exploits while you're under their employment, leave, and then tell the entire world about it... THe feds were completely right in going after this guy.
This sounds very much like a civil matter. An NDA would definitely be a civil matter. Why would the feds be involved at all?
The real cure it to get rid of insecure software like Microsoft makes.
I have seen and worked in plenty of networks in which windows based systems ran every bit as securely as their Unix counterparts. I've even seen Windows systems deployed that were far more secure than their Unix counterparts.
Companies that don't start moving toward secure platforms deserve to die.
So does that include the Cancer Research Institute who happens to be running IIS? Besides, if microsoft hasn't been moving towards securing their systems, I don't know who has.
When a spammer sends out an advertisement for penis enlargement, he doesn't have to worry about the people who are not going to pursue his sizable offer. If Howard Dean embarks on a massive email campaign advertising penis enlargement, he has to worry about the negative impact his campaign may have on voters.
For example, while I'm not a democrat, I usually vote that way given the options. Also, I'm very much for worker's rights/anti corporation, and on the outset, that seems to align my views with Dean. But if he is going to send me offer's to enlarge my genitalia, I may have to rethink my support.
I've been out of high school for six or seven years now, but one thing I remember from back then was that students and definitely some teachers did not like using the Mac lab. During my three years at the high school, I spent maybe a total of two hours in that lab. Each time a group would visit the lab, they would spend the first several minutes trying to figure out how to do simple things like locate the web browser. We never had enough exposure to those machines to develop any skills with them and our lack of skills tainted the usefulness of the time we had with them. At least in my mind, it would be impossible to construe that lab, which contained the only new computers on campus, as a success.
On the other hand, we did have some more successful computer labs. For instance, the intro programming courses (basic and pascal) were taught in a lab full of old 486's. Since we spent an entire semester working with these machines, they became extremely useful. Incidentally, I went on to major in computer science, spend two years working in industry, and am just now returning to grad school.
Another semi-successful lab we had was a writing lab populated by old 386's and 486's with word perfect installed. Like the Mac lab, we didn't go here very often. There were maybe one or two class trips there and a lot of before class printing out of essays and papers. Word Perfect was what I had used at home for several years so for me, it was a breeze to go in and get out quickly. Other classmates without wp experience might not have shared my enthusiasm for this lab but surely you can see the utility of familiar software.
I guess what I am trying to say is, there is a place and time in school systems where it makes sense to have particular operating systems. If computers are incidental to the course, then they should run systems the students will be familiar with (cough windows). If computers are central to the course, then perhaps they should run whatever operating system would be best for the courses they are used for. I would recommend linux for programming and maybe macs for graphic classes.
Note, I think if you work on a campus where students constantly use computers, it would be ok to standardize on a non windows platform for general purpose computing needs just so long as the amount of time spent familiarizing oneself to the system is trivial compared to the time spent using the system. Of course, with the improvements in usability over the past six or seven years, maybe these things aren't that big of a deal anymore.
No offense, but it's clear that you have no idea how this works.
None taken. While it is true that I don't have a clue about the funding structure of IDC or GISTICS reports, I do not believe that invalidates my original point. I will never go to a vendor's website or the site of an apparently biased media source (macrules.com) to hear why that vendor is better than everyone else.
You said that typically only the vendor would fund or purchase a copy of the report for publication. So let's say a vendor publishes the report, the story gets picked up by different tech news distributors like slashdot, pcmag, cnet, zdnet, etc. These agencies might have their own analysis of the report which would almost certainly have less spin than the vendor's.
Now I'm not questioning the findings of any of these reports, I'm actually not interested in that. When pointing out studies/reports to convince someone of something like lower tco for macs, you can't send them to a bunch of apple/mac sites and expect to be taken seriously. If anything, from an outsider's perspective, it might actually help invalidate your message in that it appears the only people reporting on the information were clearly in the pro-mac camp. In a snese, this is the difference between news and propaganda.
This is not to say that sites like a vendor site, macrules.com, or slashdot can't be useful. Vendor's sites can (but not always) be good for explaining the features of their product. Macrules and Slashdot might both be very good at covering news in their particular niches. But no one should trust any of these sites publishing a comparison of a product they actively advocate versus another product, especially when their story is favorable.
There [applelinks.com] are [apple.com] a [hubster.com] lot [hubster.com] of [apple.com] studies [xephon.com] that [apple.com] support [apple.com.au] Cringley's [216.239.57.104] statement [macworld.co.uk] etc. [macrules.com], and you'd be hard pressed to find a single study in the reverse!
No offense, but that was probably the funniest thing I've read all day. Next time you try convince an agnostic, try to get more sites without apple or mac in the domain name. Let me just cruise over to Microsoft.com to see their latest review on Windows Server 2003, nah let's see what RedHat.com has to say about Linux enterprise servers first.
Software Update Services. It is Microsoft's free solution for managing the installation of critical updates across a network. As I understand it, you are basically running your own mini Windows Update service to which your clients subscribe. You can download updates on the server and roll them out if and when you want to. I think it has reasonably good scheduling features. All the Windows Update clients need to be updated to a new version, but I think this was already been sent out in older service packs.
Caveats:
Requires Windows 2000/2003 Server (for the server)
Only updates Windows 2000/XP/2003 (Professional or higher?)
Until recently (SUS sp1), you could not install the SUS server on a domain controller.
I think it only installs critical updates, not recommended updates, and not 3rd party software... so (tear, sniffle) no euro conversion tool.
Other than that, I don't know a lot about it either... but I did very recently start a job where I desperately need to deploy something like this. There's a lot of questions I have like how do you ensure the clients actually update? Is there any reporting? Are the updates pushed or pulled? Does anyone have any SUS stories good or bad?
More info
Server Download Page
Random dated article found on google.
Whether or not you actually pay for the media in question, by listening to and redistributing it you are supporting the companies behind it. For these companies, popularity equates to profitability. By listening to a particular song, you are increasing the exposure that song gets for you, your friends, your neighbors, and any people they may affect as a result of hearing you play a particular song. Similarly, how many people will download the song from you, how many will download the song from people who downloaded the song from you? How many of the downloaders friends and neighbors will like the song? How many people you supplied with or otherwise advertised the song to will go out and buy the cd? It's all about market share, if you strongly oppose an organization or group, don't be part of theirs.
Ok, I didn't read any of the MPAA's propaganda, but let's give this a try.
You're cheating yourself.
Let's start off with the assumption that the vast majority of P2P copy right infringement exists because content providers do not make their content available to the public at a price that reflects the value of the content and the convenience of the delivery mechanism. The natural way for individuals to combat these industries is to simply not buy their products and more to the point, to not use their products, distribute them, or in any way contribute to their popularity. Every time a friend hears one of your infringed songs and everytime some anonymous chap downloads an infringed movie from your p2p share, there's a chance that this person will go out and buy the cd or the dvd. I remember at least one study linking file sharing to increased music purchasing which everyone here rallied around. By file sharing copy righted content, you are supporting today's media moguls and their failure to adapt to a changing market. Imagine for a second how the content industries and even our nation's laws would be different if 60 million americans weren't trading copy righted material online right now. Would the DMCA have been passed? Would we have cds that don't play in computers? Might we either have lower cd prices or perhaps thoroughly established legitimate online content distribution or maybe an increase in the number of independent labels? When the value of a product is less than the asking price, something has to give. It's interesting how much more obvious this argument becomes when we start talking about computers with Microsoft and Linux. If there is something you don't like about a product, don't support it, don't use it. Infringing something does not often hurt the owner and can often help them.
Your computer is vulnerable
I have no idea what the MPAA said in this section, but if they left it at that single statement, they'd be absolutely right. First, the number one source of crappy spyware & software that has screwed up friends' computers is P2P file sharing programs. Not everyone knows to carefully examine an application before installing it. Second, I am pretty sure there have been vulnerabilities and exploits found in the clients of various networks. At the very least, you are most likely running a server whose author has given little thought to security.
You're breaking the law
How often on slashdot have we whined about legislators coming up with new laws to combat technology related crimes? Do we need a new set of cyberterrorism laws or will the existing tresspass and wire fraud laws suffice? Yet on the other side of the coin, whenever a new technology enables us to conveniently break a law with little or no risk of prosecution, we have absolutely no qualms about taking advantage of it. Many people use civil disobedience as an excuse for illegal file sharing, but there are several problems with this argument. First, their motivation is not really civil disobedience. They are ignoring the law for personal profit and pleasure, not violating it for the sake of bringing about change. Second, many of the people who infringe over P2P would probably agree that the notion of copy right is not a bad idea. I know of relatively few individuals who would object to the copy right terms put forth by the original founding fathers (one 14 year term with an option for one 14 year extension). Most of the objections involving copy right law stem from the recent extensions which have the effect of perpetuating the owner's "right" forever. However, the vast majority of content being shared online is less than 28 years old, in the case of movies, it is often less than 28 days old.
In summary... If you are file sharing copy righted material, you are still supporting the industries whose unsavory businesses pushed you to file sharing in the first place. If you are illegally trading music online in order to make some kind o
Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop: Knoppix
Now I'm not sure I'm permitted to do this or not but I ended up giving the license to someone else because... I hate supporting windows 98.
On another note, the more work I do with computers, the less interesting the prospect of assembling my own pcs is. It is time consuming and generally just about as monetarily expensive as buying a new Dell. Basically, my time has increased in value and my computing needs have changed in practice to the point where I no longer feel the need to get the perfect optimized uber graphics self assembled pc. So while all but my first pc have been self assembled, I'm not so sure that will be the case for the next system.
I've never seen anyone do this before either, however, the second they did, they'd lose my business, and that of everyone who comes to me. Why do people put up with behavior like that? I like having a brick and mortar shop for accountability but not that much. There are plenty of online dealers that will sell you computer barebones kits sans evidence of a windows license. It's our country. Vote with your wallets.
First, aren't those printer/scanners free after rebate? Second, do you really want that printer/scanner? In my experience, you'd have trouble convincing me to take one of those things for free.
Jobs that don't require training are pretty hard to find...actually, I'd say harder to find than jobs that require education
I'm coming up on my 10th job in just over 8 years, so I consider myself to be something of an expert in looking for jobs both trained and untrained. It is much much much easier to find an unskilled job. All of the unskilled jobs I have had required virtually no job search. All of the skilled jobs I have had (requiring a level of higher education), each took me months to find. Now I suppose if it might be harder to find an unskilled job that payed well enough to support a family....
How can they be sure aliens will live close to a star?
The assumption is that you'd have a much better chance of finding aliens around a star. This seems reasonable since one might expect aliens to be made out of matter and live in areas where there were copius quantities of matter. The other inescapable truth is that you need some place to look and stars represent a barely finite set of possible locations whereas "not stars" doesn't.
Parent: yeah, right. Imagine this - you're going at full speed. Downhill. You'd better keep your feet as far away from the pedals as possible
My first two bikes both had this style of single gear chain based breaking. It's actually fairly common, especially in little kiddie bmx bikes and the like.
The article says nothing about charging for bug fixes. It says...
Mr. Gates said the company was considering the possibility of charging for some of its software updates that are now made available free over the Internet.
I'm not saying their not evil, I'm just saying that the stuff they may start charging for might not be bug fixes. They could start charging for upgrades to Internet Explorer, DirectX, Media Player, or any number of products whose updates tend to add features.
I read through that, but I've got to admit some level of confusion. In the Snapster model, what is the motivation for an artist to create music? I mean if millions of people share a single cd, are we giving up on profits from license of copy right? What prevents the RIAA or some other collective body to prohibit Snapster-esque usage in their license of copy right?
Along similar lines, I used to live about two miles from the Marshal Space Museum around Huntsville Alabama. They've got a full size replica of a space shuttle with all the boosters that you can just walk right under. Similarly, there's outdoor area litterally filled with scale rockets/replicas (dozens). When I was there they also had (for no apparent reason) and SR-71 blackbird (I think that's what it was) on display. I found the inside of the museum to be a little less impressive, seemed kind of dated, but still entertaining. I think this is where they do space camp too. http://spacecamp.com/spacecamp/museum/welcome.jsp
Also, I haven't been there in forever but there's an excellent Airforce/Space museum in Dayton near Wright Patterson Airforce base.
That's the way I interpretted it, but I couldn't find any other section that he could have been referencing. It's likely he is trying to twist it to his purposes. Maybe his logic goes something like this, under the terms of the GPL we did not have the write to distribute this proprietary stuff, ergo, any gpl licenses distributed as such by us are invalid.
Of course, since it was their code they did have the right to distribute it, but I guess that's where the federal provision against accidental giving away of copyright thing he sited steps in.
Heh perhaps a better question is how did they manage to miss an infringement of this magnitude as long as they did while distributing their linux.
I was under the impression that the license was a binary license or maybe just exemption from the lawsuit machine. Either way, you'd have a hard time twisting that into a way to view the eledgedly infringing lines.