Hell, with the ability to replace one image with another in a frame, and the power the politicos have, all senators and congresscritters will have the system preset to replace any image of a person who is not their spouse with an image of their spouse.
This will occur ahead of the image arriving at the watchers, or, in Dave Brin's society, the public.
Cynical, a'int I? Or is it just the pragmatism of inevitability.
IIRC, the engine was from a DC-3 and turned a horizontal prop that provided the upward air motion. Of course I never actually flew there, but did go in a check out the facility. (I lived there when it was operational in the early 80's.)
Also, the baggy suit was what made all the difference. You had to wear a pair of coveralls (you can see them in the link in Reality Masters additional post) that had vent holes to fill up with air and help your total surface area and therefore lift.
(Please don't flame me if I don't have the science of the aerodynamics right.:)
I manage lots of workstations and several servers in a state agency. We use Dameware for remote information collection and control.
In the past we used SMS but it was waaay too slow, especially across some of our 56k lines. Dameware is a wonderful product. There may be some way to script it's use as well. I was provided with the product by the department, so I don't know what the licensing issues are, but it looks like it's around $200.00 or less for download and is available for a 30 day free trial.
I really endorse this product. Hope the info helps.
Marvelous concept, but define porn... and then step back from the blast of litigation for having removed the constitutionally protected (well, until recently - see DMCA) copyright.
And who says porn will disappear just because there is not a profit motive. There are plenty of newsgroups with individuals posting for their own non-profit motives - exhibitionism, revenge, pride, shock-effect, whatever.
Also, how many copyright lawsuits have you seen brought by 'porn' producers? They have a tendency to lay a little bit low.
While we are about codifying natural law as morality, how about a law limiting each human being to only being responsible for two new lives on the planet?
I'm sure that we can all agree that the destruction of our environment, the depletion of our resources world-wide, starvation, and a general degradation of the quality of life are amoral. These problems all relate to the number of persons requiring food, water, housing, transportation, a new DVD player, a second car, a vacation home in the Poconos, etc. Actually all these things are driven by the amorality of greed as well, but that's another thread.
As the previous poster (marxmarv) noted: "You mean like how excessive procreation, in the era of lengthened lifespans, minuscule incidence of infant mortality, and the overvaluing of human life, might be harmful to society and the planet?"
The action of continuing to contribute to this damage is amoral. (I've done my part as I had a Vasectomy 20+ years ago and have never contributed my genetic material to the pool.) How about some law to prevent this act? Are you opposed to this? It certainly has personal and societal consequences. Your own children will have a lower standard of living - to say nothing of the tens of thousands of children who starve to death in third world countries every day.
Applying the logic of your "natural law" argument, we are all responsible for those deaths.
In villages in India (Hindus primarily) one of the first questions asked about any decision regarding the whole is: "How will this affect our great-grandchildren?"
Is this position more, or less moral than our short-sighted, next-quarter stock price position?
I know that nothing is going to change until the circumstances become grave - for the ones with the money - but I just thought I'd throw the concepts out.
All of the above aside, far more harm has been done to individuals and societies by religious and ideological conflicts and their attendant violence than any sexual interaction between consenting people.
"But if enough corporate sites go to Apache on Linux you'll likely see a lot more worms/viruses/trojans writen for Linux and Apache."
I'm confused. Elsewhere on the front page of/. is a link to a site where the survey indicates that Apache is in use by roughly 60% of sites and IIS is less than 30%.
With Apache having a larger market share (by 2 to 1), wouldn't Apache be more likely to be attacked? Or is there some other reason why we don't see as many exploits on Apache? Perhaps because it's designed to be secure instead of to be everything to everybody and be incetuous with the Windows OS?
I guess you're differentiating between servers running corporate sites and private/non-profit/etc. sites, but since Apache has the larger share, why should a difference in the ratio of the *type* of site matter?
I do agree that Apache servers are more often administered by clueful admins that the average MCSE, but your logic that the product with the largest market share is most likely to be attacked is not borne out by the numbers.
If I'm missing something here, please let me know.
I will trade away color for battery life any day. My PDA (TRGPro) is supposed to be a PD*A*, not an entertainment device.
I know that color can help the GUI a bit in quicker human recognition and differentiation, but it sucks a lot of power. I don't need color until a Palm with a color screen runs 4 weeks on a pair of AAA batteries.
I do agree that wireless networking is an essential feature for the near future and GPS could be very valuable.
I think it was a poor choice for Handspring to use a proprietary expansion slot. One of the reasons I selected my TRG was that it had a standard Compact Flash slot. I can use almost any CF peripheral, including additional memory, modem, barcode wand, whatever.
I work with broken... sorry, Token Ring every day. I work for a state agency with near 5,000 nodes (server, workstation, printer, etc) which until just last year were all on TR. The switch has only just started to Ethernet and going office by office as budget allows.
I came from an all Ethernet environment prior to the this job and have had some experience with ARCNet as well. (Hows that for you old/.'ers out there?)
Token Ring is a logical ring topology, ususally implemented in a physical star or bus topology. Some of our rings have upward of 200 nodes with thousands of feet of cabling connecting them. We have MAU's (Multiple Access Units - a hub) connected to each other with copper and fiber. Most of the cabling that runs to the workstations is type I - 4 conductor, big gauge stuff that comes to large data connectors at the wall. If you haven't seen these, you'd love them, about 1 1/4" square and 2 1/2" long. Then a lobe cable goes to a db-9 connector on the NIC card.
TR works by passing a token (electrically) to each node in sequence. When a node has data to be transmitted, it hangs the data on the token and sends it on it's way. All subsequent cards check to see if the data is for them and then pass it all on if it's not. The intended recipient strips the data and sends the token on it's way. In a 4Mb ring, there is one token and on a 16 Mb ring there are two, 180 deg. to each other (timing-wise) on the ring. I don't know how the 100 Mb version does it, but almost nobody uses that.
This has an advantage in that there are no such things as collisions like on Ethernet. This allows for the massive number of nodes per ring and high efficiency in data transfer - perhaps 80 - 90% For comparison, Ethernet starts having problems due to collisions at 40% or so - depending on the number of nodes.
It also has the disadvantage that a single break at any point in the ring breaks the whole ring. (Think Christmas lights in series rather than parallel.) Another disadvantage is exactly the problem the poster reports - timing errors. I don't know if the problem was just timing errors, but the other problem - beaconing - would have brought the whole ring down right away and he said that it was was just noise with the potential to bring the ring down.
Indeed, timing is critical. Beacon errors are worse as the NIC put out spurious signal that doesn't allow any node to hear the token as they attempt to pass it around.
Early in my employment, I attempted to put a linux box on the ring, but couldn't get the TR drivers to work with a Madge or old IBM card. About a year in, they got all tight-assed and concerned about security and prohibited all alternate OS's. We're an all M$ house, how's that for irony. Security, what security? At least we're behind a pretty good firewall.
As far as the problem with this particular installation, I agree with other posters who have said that the author of the driver needs to be contacted to report the bug and maybe get a fix. It would be good to set up a separate ring with just the two nodes (and the fluke) to try to ID the problem. But he may also be facing administrative/political issues as well. Those are hard to overcome, especially in a large organization, and even more in a government agency - as I have found.
I'm not karma whoring, I just thought that since this technology (TR) is so ancient and in use by so few places, readers unfamiliar with it might like a little info.
BTW, the aforementioned ARCNet is also a token passing design that runs on a bus or a star and runs at 2 Mb. It can run on UTP or 93 ohm coax (RG-62) It's relatively robust, if slow. A boss of mine went to a Novell Admin class where the instructor hooked a server and workstation together on ARCNet with BNC connectors crimped to a piece of barbed wire. It passed data acceptably.
Far worse is the level of revisionism that will be possible a la 1984 (everyone read it if you haven't). Already when I go to MS' web site, I have a helluva time finding information on anything earlier than the current product, and we won't go into how they redefine 'innovation'. (I don't theenk that word means what you theenk it does. -- Princess Bride)
At least paper books can't be changed remotely to display something different than they did last week.
A damn fine idea. I already know a little spanish. This is how the labor movement started decades ago. We control the means of production... and now even infrastructure. We are much more powerful than we realize.
Of course, if this doesn't work, I'll have to look at whether I want to move to Mexico or Canada. Or is there some place better?
With Vincente Fox buddying up to Dubya, he may be willing to make all kinds of concessions to open the border and get amnesty for the illegals now in the US, including passing some of his own draconian laws at the request of American corporations (the request via thier toadies, the government).
It might be better to move to a country that is somewhat at odds philosophically with the US. Or at least has a streak of independence. Canada seems to have exhibited this.
Well, well, well. I'm having flashbacks to draft protesters heading up north in the sixties.
(And I wrote this sentence before checking the link in your.sig file - how ironic)
The balance is shifting and you, our fine neighbors to the north, seem to be more protective of personal liberties than the much touted US of A. You even have a rational universal medical plan.
I'm afraid that it's becoming (to put it in standardized test form) freedom is to America as innovation is to Microsoft. It's a sad and frightening prospect.
My country (US) is no longer representative of the *peoples* interests. Is this what generations of Americans have fought and died for, so that corporate profit-making interests could be placed above the interests of the people?
(Actually, considering the Viet Nam and Gulf wars, I guess that is true... *sigh*.)
If this continues, I will have to consider moving somewhere else and officially giving up my citizenship. I may one day have to say: "As a result of the non-representative nature of my former government (US), I'm proud to be a Canadian."
On a practical note, could someone fill me (us) in on the immigration requirements for Canada? I just want to be prepared. It's time to start looking around for a new home.
Maybe we should do an ask Slashdot for people to make an argument for the desirablity of their country in terms of freedom, living conditions, etc.
Hey Bob, could I stay at your place for a month or two while I get established and learn to say 'aboot'? I don't take up much room, I'm quiet, and I clean up after myself. I could even chip in for bandwidth.:)
America, love it or leave it? Bu-bye.
(Although this should say: 'Corporate States of America, love them or leave them.)
Funny that the Universal Life Church, Inc. has been brought up repeatedly in this thread.
The founder, Kirby J. Hensley, was a guy who didn't believe in tax-exempt status for churches. He fought this law for a long time, even including suing the IRS, and he lost at every turn - (big surprise, eh?).
As an extreme effort, he figured that he might try to form his own church and make it profit oriented , but not so much that it would look like a disingenous effort. Then, when the IRS turned him down for tax-exempt status, he could use this as a precedent to fight again for repeal of the tax-exempt status of the more mainstream churches.
Much to his surprise, the IRS granted him tax-exempt status. I think he folded at that point and I guess he figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
At least that's the condensed version of the story I heard when I became a minister with the Universal Life Church, Inc. in 1979. Five bucks and I was a minister. I can marry people, bury people, and legally avoid the draft on concientious objector status. I qualify for any benefit that any other clergy would receive. (I even signed the certificate for my step-daughters marriage. My now ex-wife performed the Pagan ceremony.)
Additionally, myself and two others can form a local chapter of the church, take a vow of poverty, donate all our secular income to our church (which then takes care of all our bills), and donate our home(s) to our chapter of the church - then the home comes off the property tax rolls as church property.
The potential tax savings are incredible.
What does it take to create your own religion? I guess if you follow in the footsteps of ULC, that should be close enough. If someone does, please let me know, I'd join up.
Open Source Software - it's the difference between Trust and Anti-Trust.
It's shareware - $20.00. It works on Open Transport and Classic Networking. And even though it's page hasn't been updated since 1997, it works on MacOS 8.x and 9.x and is browser independent.
It's a control panel that intercepts URL requests - much like the hosts file, I imagine - and blocks anything on the list using regex. It adds a contextual menu item for blocking images that can be used to select a particular image and then go back later and expand to the directory level, etc. It also will supress cookies, block the blink tag, and stop gif animations after the first cycle. It also has a tab on the control panel where it gives stats of how many images are blocked, animations stopped, etc.
I sure hope the Lyons Partnership got their own 'intellectual property' house in order and paid the royalties due to whoever for the use of that annoying 'nick nack, paddywhack' song.
If they didn't, it's ok for them to steal, but not ok for us to criticize them?
I loved the cybercheese response, and agree totally with the poster who suggested a federal version of the SLAPP law.
When I used to teach beginning internet classes and manage the student lab at a community college, I made the same suggestion.
If I picked up that the students/users were savvy or interested, I also suggested adding other modifications to the acronymized sentence.
Substitute punctuation or numerals for words, suffixes, prefixes, etc.
@ = at
contempl8 = contempl(ate)
4nick8 = (for)nic(ate)
(Way too obvious, I know)
Alternate case in the acronymized sentence.
Now is the time for all good men to = NiTt4AgM2
If they insisted on using the 'family' category, I had them '1eet 5pe@k' the family name.
Where I work now, passwords must be changed monthly so I suggest all of the above with alternatingly prefixing or suffixing the two digit month offset by some number they can remember.
Isn't this thing in beta now? Where is the lawsuit that needs to be filed?
Barring that, where are the links to the patches that either permanently disable this feature or modify it to some fair or even nefarious use?
I would have thought these things would be on the table already. Or is someone just holding them to claim 0-day warez bragging rights? I would have thought that -60-day bragging rights would be much cooler.
Seriously, where is the EFF? Where are the State's Attorneys General? (We know that the prez won't let the DOJ do it's job anymore.)
Or maybe with our new US administration, the only folks with the moxy to lay down (and more importantly, enforce) the law are the Europeans?
2.) They run Hotmail. Everybody's used this at least once.
I beg to differ. I'm sure there are many people who do not use and have not used Hotmail. I am one of them.
As a matter of fact, most of the spam I get is from Hotmail accounts. If I could convince two more of my friends to give up Hotmail and switch to something else, I would send all incoming mail from Hotmail accounts to/dev/null.
They are not using open standards to distribute the music, that's the whole point to the article.
The content may be transmitted via TCP/IP, but they are encoding in their own media format (including DRM and being proprietary source just for starters) and trying to kill the Real format.
MS will never do anything with.ogg, they can't apply Digital Rights Management to it to make the RIAA happy and they can't control it....Well maybe they could if they attempted to 'pollute' it like they did to Java. But why would they bother, they just use their desktop monopoly to force people to use their own Media Player formats by breaking the competitors product. "It ain't done 'til Lotus won't run."
MS using open standards? I think not. They have subverted or attempted to subvert every single standard they have come near (Kerberos, smart tags, anybody?)
One doesn't trust an addict until they have admitted that they have a problem, apologized/made amends *and* exhibited changed behavior. MS has made no steps whatsoever of this kind. They continue to thumb thier nose at government anti-trust action, lie, deceive and subvert to this very moment.
...endeavours outside software...
Well, they don't have a monopoly on endeavours outside software, they are at least required to compete on the merits of the product.
Kudos to Microsoft and shame on you if you revert to your proprietary tactics of yesteryear!
??? Huh? Revert? Yesteryear?
Shame on them? Proprietary tactics? Yup. To this very day. That's what the whole problem is in the negotiations between them and AOL.
And shame on AOL too. They're no angels. They demand proprietary solutions as well. They just don't have quite as large a monopoly to leverage.
As long as we all keep using MP3 (and it's not going to go away) or Open Source altervatives, this will be like two fleas fighting over the dog.
I guess mindshare is everything... and MP3 has it. Sorry AOL/MS.
I will, however, have to reassess the statement that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
How ironic that since we have a government not interested in enforcing anti-trust law, the major force for promoting competition in the sheep-consumer marketplace is the merged corporate monolith AOL/Time-Warner.
That's a good point about the cost and the commercials. The cost thing I can get past, I live in a smaller town and we're only $6.00. The town I moved from 3 years ago was only $4.50.
However the commercial thing bugs me too. I hadn't thought about that in my earlier post. Perhaps the right solution for that problem is that, when I come home from the movie, I remember who the advertiser was and contact them - by email, phone or even snailmail - and let them know that I don't appreciate the advertising and I won't be buying their product - ever.
I'm the kind of contrary dude to do that too. I have contacted many companies to object to their advertising. Several months back, there was an ad for the Mercury Sable on comedy central that ran twice in every break in primetime for two days in a row. I submitted negative feedback on the comeday central site and wrote snailmail to Ford to complain about this. I don't have a big enough ego to think that my comments had any impact, but within a couple of days, I didn't see the ad any more and haven't seen it since.
So, while I'm not quite ready to give up going to the theater entirely, I guess I'll have to make an EFF donation and contact the advertisers to make my displeasure know. Come to think of it, I should complain to theater management as well. I already paid for the product (the movie), I shouldn't have to sit through commercials as well. Maybe I should demand a partial refund.
If enough of us do this, we might have some impact.
Well... Still do that and have felt guilty about it. I saw a post the other day suggesting that for every dollar I spend at a movie theater (including concession? - yeah, I guess) or renting tapes, send a dollar to the EFF. Will do that the next time I go and every time until this blight on our freedom is lifted. So, Check - sort of.
Check out the live theater options in your city
Check - I have and I do. There are many forms of entertainment available to me. Of course, I live in a college town, small to medium sized, and quite intellectual and savvy. My condolences to those/. readers who do not have the same advantage.
Being involved in the arts may not be the same as coding or sysadmining, but the arts folks probably have more in common with us than differences. The arts folks have always been somewhat out of the mainstream and tend to think more freely and creatively... just like us. Maybe some of them are already some of us. Anyway, if you don't already have an arts community in your town, perhaps you could try to contact like minded people and do a little networking (social this time) to see if you can get people enthused about developing a performance community. If you don't have it, make it. Others will thank you as well.
...and can be used for good or evil -
Or: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction...
How long will it be before this is used against them as some creative virus writer (not the ususal script kiddie), who is further offended by being directed to MS approved content, uses the no doubt present security holes in XP to write a cute little stealth virus that changes all those 'smart tag' registry settings and/or code? The potential is unlimited.
It would have to propogate without any other change to the operation of the target machine using Outlookwhatever, or even as an activeX control using one of the authentic MS security certificates that should be in the wild by now (although may be specifically decertified in this new XP release.) People will click on anything, especially when all these new squiggly links appear unbidden in their web pages. A truly elegant version of this would install itself through a 'smart tag'.
The modified version might squiggle-underline appropriate keywords with links to content or sites with objective or even anti-MS information - yes, even goatse.cx or pr0n, but that would be over the top and pop up on their radar screen way too quickly. The goal here would be to have every second or third link or so be changed so it could stay relatively invisible. It might be much like RTmark's:CueJack system.
With the quality of MS tech support, even if the end user could talk to them, MS would insist that it's not happening. Based on MS's ususal fixes for problems of this nature, the said code would have to reside somewhere where it could reinstall itself after the user reloaded the OS (burning up another of their five authorized installs) or it would have to be so pervasive that it existed on many frequently visited sites and reloaded itself easily - web-bugs, steganography or maybe some version of the Ken Thompson CC hack?
After all,.net is supposed to be an open standard, right? And MS will have all of your information...
Just don't link to/. or any pro-open source sites - less is more in this case, ok?
This sounds like a job for the fine back orifice team at CDC.
Disclaimer: IANAC (I am not a coder.) This is total speculation and I don't know if any of this is actually possible. Smarter folks than me may know. It just seems a likely next step.
This is weird. How come there is so much pro-Microsoft Astroturfing going on the early posts under this article? Initially, I get the impression that so many people have blocked Katz's stuff that all that are left are trolls and Microsoft apologists. Did I say apologists? Maybe I meant employees...
The only other time I have seen this many people come to Bill's defense is on bad days at ZDNET's Anchodesk.
As one other poster indicated, the real problem is with the corpratist system completely unchecked by government. I know that's an essential element to what Jon is saying, but, whether you consider Microsoft evil or the best thing since sliced bread MS is merely a symptom, not the disease. To see what is happening, follow the money. And that's exactly what the officials you elected are doing, following the money.
Microsoft is apparently above the law - because they can buy the law. If you own it, you have nothing to fear from it since you control it. Thanks, G. W. (Our first unelected president since Gerald Ford.)
America is changing from a Democracy/Repulic to a Corporatocracy. (And so is the world mostly) That's the real danger. If we were truly a democracy or even a republic, the officials we elected to represent us would carry out our desires and work for the benefit of the *people*, not the *corporations*. (Who, strangely enough, are "people", but not subject to the same rules that you and I are.)
I know, there are those of you who will say that the stockholders are people and they *are* the corporation. But very few stockholders have enough of those little scraps of paper to influence the direction or behavior of the corporations they have invested in. That is reserved for the rarified few who have *lots* of those little scraps of paper, and they seem to have lots of little scraps of paper, but few moral or ethical beliefs and most a desire to collect more of those little scraps of paper. The average stockholder has *absolutely* no input into the corporation they invest it.
I think I heard this somewhere before, "We must all hang together, or we will certainly hang separately." It's never been more true than today. It's too bad that it seems that today, apathy reigns supreme.
It's gonna be an interesting ride, I hope we can survive it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, with the ability to replace one image with another in a frame, and the power the politicos have, all senators and congresscritters will have the system preset to replace any image of a person who is not their spouse with an image of their spouse.
This will occur ahead of the image arriving at the watchers, or, in Dave Brin's society, the public.
Cynical, a'int I? Or is it just the pragmatism of inevitability.
IIRC, the engine was from a DC-3 and turned a horizontal prop that provided the upward air motion. Of course I never actually flew there, but did go in a check out the facility. (I lived there when it was operational in the early 80's.)
:)
Also, the baggy suit was what made all the difference. You had to wear a pair of coveralls (you can see them in the link in Reality Masters additional post) that had vent holes to fill up with air and help your total surface area and therefore lift.
(Please don't flame me if I don't have the science of the aerodynamics right.
I manage lots of workstations and several servers in a state agency. We use Dameware for remote information collection and control.
In the past we used SMS but it was waaay too slow, especially across some of our 56k lines. Dameware is a wonderful product. There may be some way to script it's use as well. I was provided with the product by the department, so I don't know what the licensing issues are, but it looks like it's around $200.00 or less for download and is available for a 30 day free trial.
I really endorse this product. Hope the info helps.
Marvelous concept, but define porn... and then step back from the blast of litigation for having removed the constitutionally protected (well, until recently - see DMCA) copyright.
And who says porn will disappear just because there is not a profit motive. There are plenty of newsgroups with individuals posting for their own non-profit motives - exhibitionism, revenge, pride, shock-effect, whatever.
Also, how many copyright lawsuits have you seen brought by 'porn' producers? They have a tendency to lay a little bit low.
While we are about codifying natural law as morality, how about a law limiting each human being to only being responsible for two new lives on the planet?
I'm sure that we can all agree that the destruction of our environment, the depletion of our resources world-wide, starvation, and a general degradation of the quality of life are amoral. These problems all relate to the number of persons requiring food, water, housing, transportation, a new DVD player, a second car, a vacation home in the Poconos, etc. Actually all these things are driven by the amorality of greed as well, but that's another thread.
As the previous poster (marxmarv) noted: "You mean like how excessive procreation, in the era of lengthened lifespans, minuscule incidence of infant mortality, and the overvaluing of human life, might be harmful to society and the planet?"
The action of continuing to contribute to this damage is amoral. (I've done my part as I had a Vasectomy 20+ years ago and have never contributed my genetic material to the pool.) How about some law to prevent this act? Are you opposed to this? It certainly has personal and societal consequences. Your own children will have a lower standard of living - to say nothing of the tens of thousands of children who starve to death in third world countries every day. Applying the logic of your "natural law" argument, we are all responsible for those deaths.
In villages in India (Hindus primarily) one of the first questions asked about any decision regarding the whole is: "How will this affect our great-grandchildren?" Is this position more, or less moral than our short-sighted, next-quarter stock price position?
I know that nothing is going to change until the circumstances become grave - for the ones with the money - but I just thought I'd throw the concepts out.
All of the above aside, far more harm has been done to individuals and societies by religious and ideological conflicts and their attendant violence than any sexual interaction between consenting people.
"But if enough corporate sites go to Apache on Linux you'll likely see a lot more worms/viruses/trojans writen for Linux and Apache."
/. is a link to a site where the survey indicates that Apache is in use by roughly 60% of sites and IIS is less than 30%.
I'm confused. Elsewhere on the front page of
With Apache having a larger market share (by 2 to 1), wouldn't Apache be more likely to be attacked? Or is there some other reason why we don't see as many exploits on Apache? Perhaps because it's designed to be secure instead of to be everything to everybody and be incetuous with the Windows OS?
I guess you're differentiating between servers running corporate sites and private/non-profit/etc. sites, but since Apache has the larger share, why should a difference in the ratio of the *type* of site matter?
I do agree that Apache servers are more often administered by clueful admins that the average MCSE, but your logic that the product with the largest market share is most likely to be attacked is not borne out by the numbers.
If I'm missing something here, please let me know.
I will trade away color for battery life any day. My PDA (TRGPro) is supposed to be a PD*A*, not an entertainment device.
I know that color can help the GUI a bit in quicker human recognition and differentiation, but it sucks a lot of power. I don't need color until a Palm with a color screen runs 4 weeks on a pair of AAA batteries.
I do agree that wireless networking is an essential feature for the near future and GPS could be very valuable.
I think it was a poor choice for Handspring to use a proprietary expansion slot. One of the reasons I selected my TRG was that it had a standard Compact Flash slot. I can use almost any CF peripheral, including additional memory, modem, barcode wand, whatever.
I work with broken... sorry, Token Ring every day. I work for a state agency with near 5,000 nodes (server, workstation, printer, etc) which until just last year were all on TR. The switch has only just started to Ethernet and going office by office as budget allows.
/.'ers out there?)
I came from an all Ethernet environment prior to the this job and have had some experience with ARCNet as well. (Hows that for you old
Token Ring is a logical ring topology, ususally implemented in a physical star or bus topology. Some of our rings have upward of 200 nodes with thousands of feet of cabling connecting them. We have MAU's (Multiple Access Units - a hub) connected to each other with copper and fiber. Most of the cabling that runs to the workstations is type I - 4 conductor, big gauge stuff that comes to large data connectors at the wall. If you haven't seen these, you'd love them, about 1 1/4" square and 2 1/2" long. Then a lobe cable goes to a db-9 connector on the NIC card.
TR works by passing a token (electrically) to each node in sequence. When a node has data to be transmitted, it hangs the data on the token and sends it on it's way. All subsequent cards check to see if the data is for them and then pass it all on if it's not. The intended recipient strips the data and sends the token on it's way. In a 4Mb ring, there is one token and on a 16 Mb ring there are two, 180 deg. to each other (timing-wise) on the ring. I don't know how the 100 Mb version does it, but almost nobody uses that.
This has an advantage in that there are no such things as collisions like on Ethernet. This allows for the massive number of nodes per ring and high efficiency in data transfer - perhaps 80 - 90% For comparison, Ethernet starts having problems due to collisions at 40% or so - depending on the number of nodes.
It also has the disadvantage that a single break at any point in the ring breaks the whole ring. (Think Christmas lights in series rather than parallel.) Another disadvantage is exactly the problem the poster reports - timing errors. I don't know if the problem was just timing errors, but the other problem - beaconing - would have brought the whole ring down right away and he said that it was was just noise with the potential to bring the ring down.
Indeed, timing is critical. Beacon errors are worse as the NIC put out spurious signal that doesn't allow any node to hear the token as they attempt to pass it around.
Early in my employment, I attempted to put a linux box on the ring, but couldn't get the TR drivers to work with a Madge or old IBM card. About a year in, they got all tight-assed and concerned about security and prohibited all alternate OS's. We're an all M$ house, how's that for irony. Security, what security? At least we're behind a pretty good firewall.
As far as the problem with this particular installation, I agree with other posters who have said that the author of the driver needs to be contacted to report the bug and maybe get a fix. It would be good to set up a separate ring with just the two nodes (and the fluke) to try to ID the problem. But he may also be facing administrative/political issues as well. Those are hard to overcome, especially in a large organization, and even more in a government agency - as I have found.
I'm not karma whoring, I just thought that since this technology (TR) is so ancient and in use by so few places, readers unfamiliar with it might like a little info.
BTW, the aforementioned ARCNet is also a token passing design that runs on a bus or a star and runs at 2 Mb. It can run on UTP or 93 ohm coax (RG-62) It's relatively robust, if slow. A boss of mine went to a Novell Admin class where the instructor hooked a server and workstation together on ARCNet with BNC connectors crimped to a piece of barbed wire. It passed data acceptably.
Hope this all helps a bit.
Far worse is the level of revisionism that will be possible a la 1984 (everyone read it if you haven't). Already when I go to MS' web site, I have a helluva time finding information on anything earlier than the current product, and we won't go into how they redefine 'innovation'. (I don't theenk that word means what you theenk it does. -- Princess Bride)
At least paper books can't be changed remotely to display something different than they did last week.
A damn fine idea. I already know a little spanish. This is how the labor movement started decades ago. We control the means of production... and now even infrastructure. We are much more powerful than we realize.
Of course, if this doesn't work, I'll have to look at whether I want to move to Mexico or Canada. Or is there some place better?
With Vincente Fox buddying up to Dubya, he may be willing to make all kinds of concessions to open the border and get amnesty for the illegals now in the US, including passing some of his own draconian laws at the request of American corporations (the request via thier toadies, the government).
It might be better to move to a country that is somewhat at odds philosophically with the US. Or at least has a streak of independence. Canada seems to have exhibited this.
Well, well, well. I'm having flashbacks to draft protesters heading up north in the sixties. (And I wrote this sentence before checking the link in your .sig file - how ironic)
:)
The balance is shifting and you, our fine neighbors to the north, seem to be more protective of personal liberties than the much touted US of A. You even have a rational universal medical plan.
I'm afraid that it's becoming (to put it in standardized test form) freedom is to America as innovation is to Microsoft. It's a sad and frightening prospect.
My country (US) is no longer representative of the *peoples* interests. Is this what generations of Americans have fought and died for, so that corporate profit-making interests could be placed above the interests of the people? (Actually, considering the Viet Nam and Gulf wars, I guess that is true... *sigh*.)
If this continues, I will have to consider moving somewhere else and officially giving up my citizenship. I may one day have to say: "As a result of the non-representative nature of my former government (US), I'm proud to be a Canadian."
On a practical note, could someone fill me (us) in on the immigration requirements for Canada? I just want to be prepared. It's time to start looking around for a new home.
Maybe we should do an ask Slashdot for people to make an argument for the desirablity of their country in terms of freedom, living conditions, etc.
Hey Bob, could I stay at your place for a month or two while I get established and learn to say 'aboot'? I don't take up much room, I'm quiet, and I clean up after myself. I could even chip in for bandwidth.
America, love it or leave it? Bu-bye.
(Although this should say: 'Corporate States of America, love them or leave them.)
Funny that the Universal Life Church, Inc. has been brought up repeatedly in this thread.
The founder, Kirby J. Hensley, was a guy who didn't believe in tax-exempt status for churches. He fought this law for a long time, even including suing the IRS, and he lost at every turn - (big surprise, eh?).
As an extreme effort, he figured that he might try to form his own church and make it profit oriented , but not so much that it would look like a disingenous effort. Then, when the IRS turned him down for tax-exempt status, he could use this as a precedent to fight again for repeal of the tax-exempt status of the more mainstream churches.
Much to his surprise, the IRS granted him tax-exempt status. I think he folded at that point and I guess he figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
At least that's the condensed version of the story I heard when I became a minister with the Universal Life Church, Inc. in 1979. Five bucks and I was a minister. I can marry people, bury people, and legally avoid the draft on concientious objector status. I qualify for any benefit that any other clergy would receive. (I even signed the certificate for my step-daughters marriage. My now ex-wife performed the Pagan ceremony.)
Additionally, myself and two others can form a local chapter of the church, take a vow of poverty, donate all our secular income to our church (which then takes care of all our bills), and donate our home(s) to our chapter of the church - then the home comes off the property tax rolls as church property.
The potential tax savings are incredible.
What does it take to create your own religion? I guess if you follow in the footsteps of ULC, that should be close enough. If someone does, please let me know, I'd join up.
Open Source Software - it's the difference between Trust and Anti-Trust.
have an affair with Judge Marilyn Patel...
Tonight! - On Springer!
A very good solution is Webfree.
It's shareware - $20.00. It works on Open Transport and Classic Networking. And even though it's page hasn't been updated since 1997, it works on MacOS 8.x and 9.x and is browser independent.
It's a control panel that intercepts URL requests - much like the hosts file, I imagine - and blocks anything on the list using regex. It adds a contextual menu item for blocking images that can be used to select a particular image and then go back later and expand to the directory level, etc. It also will supress cookies, block the blink tag, and stop gif animations after the first cycle. It also has a tab on the control panel where it gives stats of how many images are blocked, animations stopped, etc.
Wonderful product, I recommend it highly.
I sure hope the Lyons Partnership got their own 'intellectual property' house in order and paid the royalties due to whoever for the use of that annoying 'nick nack, paddywhack' song.
If they didn't, it's ok for them to steal, but not ok for us to criticize them?
I loved the cybercheese response, and agree totally with the poster who suggested a federal version of the SLAPP law.
I agree.
When I used to teach beginning internet classes and manage the student lab at a community college, I made the same suggestion.
If I picked up that the students/users were savvy or interested, I also suggested adding other modifications to the acronymized sentence.
Substitute punctuation or numerals for words, suffixes, prefixes, etc.
@ = at
contempl8 = contempl(ate)
4nick8 = (for)nic(ate)
(Way too obvious, I know)
Alternate case in the acronymized sentence.
Now is the time for all good men to = NiTt4AgM2
If they insisted on using the 'family' category, I had them '1eet 5pe@k' the family name.
Where I work now, passwords must be changed monthly so I suggest all of the above with alternatingly prefixing or suffixing the two digit month offset by some number they can remember.
Isn't this thing in beta now? Where is the lawsuit that needs to be filed?
Barring that, where are the links to the patches that either permanently disable this feature or modify it to some fair or even nefarious use?
I would have thought these things would be on the table already. Or is someone just holding them to claim 0-day warez bragging rights? I would have thought that -60-day bragging rights would be much cooler.
Seriously, where is the EFF? Where are the State's Attorneys General? (We know that the prez won't let the DOJ do it's job anymore.)
Or maybe with our new US administration, the only folks with the moxy to lay down (and more importantly, enforce) the law are the Europeans?
2.) They run Hotmail. Everybody's used this at least once.
/dev/null.
I beg to differ. I'm sure there are many people who do not use and have not used Hotmail. I am one of them.
As a matter of fact, most of the spam I get is from Hotmail accounts. If I could convince two more of my friends to give up Hotmail and switch to something else, I would send all incoming mail from Hotmail accounts to
Naysayer checking in here...
.ogg, they can't apply Digital Rights Management to it to make the RIAA happy and they can't control it. ...Well maybe they could if they attempted to 'pollute' it like they did to Java. But why would they bother, they just use their desktop monopoly to force people to use their own Media Player formats by breaking the competitors product. "It ain't done 'til Lotus won't run."
...endeavours outside software...
They are not using open standards to distribute the music, that's the whole point to the article.
The content may be transmitted via TCP/IP, but they are encoding in their own media format (including DRM and being proprietary source just for starters) and trying to kill the Real format.
MS will never do anything with
MS using open standards? I think not. They have subverted or attempted to subvert every single standard they have come near (Kerberos, smart tags, anybody?)
One doesn't trust an addict until they have admitted that they have a problem, apologized/made amends *and* exhibited changed behavior. MS has made no steps whatsoever of this kind. They continue to thumb thier nose at government anti-trust action, lie, deceive and subvert to this very moment.
Well, they don't have a monopoly on endeavours outside software, they are at least required to compete on the merits of the product.
Kudos to Microsoft and shame on you if you revert to your proprietary tactics of yesteryear!
??? Huh? Revert? Yesteryear?
Shame on them? Proprietary tactics? Yup. To this very day. That's what the whole problem is in the negotiations between them and AOL.
And shame on AOL too. They're no angels. They demand proprietary solutions as well. They just don't have quite as large a monopoly to leverage.
As long as we all keep using MP3 (and it's not going to go away) or Open Source altervatives, this will be like two fleas fighting over the dog.
I guess mindshare is everything... and MP3 has it. Sorry AOL/MS.
I will, however, have to reassess the statement that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
How ironic that since we have a government not interested in enforcing anti-trust law, the major force for promoting competition in the sheep-consumer marketplace is the merged corporate monolith AOL/Time-Warner.
What a world...
That's a good point about the cost and the commercials. The cost thing I can get past, I live in a smaller town and we're only $6.00. The town I moved from 3 years ago was only $4.50.
However the commercial thing bugs me too. I hadn't thought about that in my earlier post. Perhaps the right solution for that problem is that, when I come home from the movie, I remember who the advertiser was and contact them - by email, phone or even snailmail - and let them know that I don't appreciate the advertising and I won't be buying their product - ever.
I'm the kind of contrary dude to do that too. I have contacted many companies to object to their advertising. Several months back, there was an ad for the Mercury Sable on comedy central that ran twice in every break in primetime for two days in a row. I submitted negative feedback on the comeday central site and wrote snailmail to Ford to complain about this. I don't have a big enough ego to think that my comments had any impact, but within a couple of days, I didn't see the ad any more and haven't seen it since.
So, while I'm not quite ready to give up going to the theater entirely, I guess I'll have to make an EFF donation and contact the advertisers to make my displeasure know. Come to think of it, I should complain to theater management as well. I already paid for the product (the movie), I shouldn't have to sit through commercials as well. Maybe I should demand a partial refund.
If enough of us do this, we might have some impact.
Don't buy a DVD player.
/. readers who do not have the same advantage.
Check - haven't
Don't buy DVDs.
Check - don't
Don't go to the Movie Theater.
Well... Still do that and have felt guilty about it. I saw a post the other day suggesting that for every dollar I spend at a movie theater (including concession? - yeah, I guess) or renting tapes, send a dollar to the EFF. Will do that the next time I go and every time until this blight on our freedom is lifted. So, Check - sort of.
Check out the live theater options in your city
Check - I have and I do. There are many forms of entertainment available to me. Of course, I live in a college town, small to medium sized, and quite intellectual and savvy. My condolences to those
Being involved in the arts may not be the same as coding or sysadmining, but the arts folks probably have more in common with us than differences. The arts folks have always been somewhat out of the mainstream and tend to think more freely and creatively... just like us. Maybe some of them are already some of us. Anyway, if you don't already have an arts community in your town, perhaps you could try to contact like minded people and do a little networking (social this time) to see if you can get people enthused about developing a performance community. If you don't have it, make it. Others will thank you as well.
...and can be used for good or evil -
:CueJack system.
.net is supposed to be an open standard, right? And MS will have all of your information...
/. or any pro-open source sites - less is more in this case, ok?
Or: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction...
How long will it be before this is used against them as some creative virus writer (not the ususal script kiddie), who is further offended by being directed to MS approved content, uses the no doubt present security holes in XP to write a cute little stealth virus that changes all those 'smart tag' registry settings and/or code? The potential is unlimited.
It would have to propogate without any other change to the operation of the target machine using Outlookwhatever, or even as an activeX control using one of the authentic MS security certificates that should be in the wild by now (although may be specifically decertified in this new XP release.) People will click on anything, especially when all these new squiggly links appear unbidden in their web pages. A truly elegant version of this would install itself through a 'smart tag'.
The modified version might squiggle-underline appropriate keywords with links to content or sites with objective or even anti-MS information - yes, even goatse.cx or pr0n, but that would be over the top and pop up on their radar screen way too quickly. The goal here would be to have every second or third link or so be changed so it could stay relatively invisible. It might be much like RTmark's
With the quality of MS tech support, even if the end user could talk to them, MS would insist that it's not happening. Based on MS's ususal fixes for problems of this nature, the said code would have to reside somewhere where it could reinstall itself after the user reloaded the OS (burning up another of their five authorized installs) or it would have to be so pervasive that it existed on many frequently visited sites and reloaded itself easily - web-bugs, steganography or maybe some version of the Ken Thompson CC hack?
After all,
Just don't link to
This sounds like a job for the fine back orifice team at CDC.
Disclaimer: IANAC (I am not a coder.) This is total speculation and I don't know if any of this is actually possible. Smarter folks than me may know. It just seems a likely next step.
This is weird. How come there is so much pro-Microsoft Astroturfing going on the early posts under this article? Initially, I get the impression that so many people have blocked Katz's stuff that all that are left are trolls and Microsoft apologists. Did I say apologists? Maybe I meant employees...
The only other time I have seen this many people come to Bill's defense is on bad days at ZDNET's Anchodesk.
As one other poster indicated, the real problem is with the corpratist system completely unchecked by government. I know that's an essential element to what Jon is saying, but, whether you consider Microsoft evil or the best thing since sliced bread MS is merely a symptom, not the disease. To see what is happening, follow the money. And that's exactly what the officials you elected are doing, following the money.
Microsoft is apparently above the law - because they can buy the law. If you own it, you have nothing to fear from it since you control it. Thanks, G. W. (Our first unelected president since Gerald Ford.)
America is changing from a Democracy/Repulic to a Corporatocracy. (And so is the world mostly) That's the real danger. If we were truly a democracy or even a republic, the officials we elected to represent us would carry out our desires and work for the benefit of the *people*, not the *corporations*. (Who, strangely enough, are "people", but not subject to the same rules that you and I are.)
I know, there are those of you who will say that the stockholders are people and they *are* the corporation. But very few stockholders have enough of those little scraps of paper to influence the direction or behavior of the corporations they have invested in. That is reserved for the rarified few who have *lots* of those little scraps of paper, and they seem to have lots of little scraps of paper, but few moral or ethical beliefs and most a desire to collect more of those little scraps of paper. The average stockholder has *absolutely* no input into the corporation they invest it.
I think I heard this somewhere before, "We must all hang together, or we will certainly hang separately." It's never been more true than today. It's too bad that it seems that today, apathy reigns supreme.
It's gonna be an interesting ride, I hope we can survive it.
Why? Because all that is necessary for evil to prosper in the world is for good men to do nothing.