WIRED: It's been more than a month since the first news of Download.Ject, and you still haven't issued a real fix for Internet Explorer. How long is it going to take?
In other words: So, when will you stop beating your wife?
Not quite the same. There was a vulnerability, e.g. the wife-beating. It was since fixed half-heartedly (that's why the question asks about a "real" fix), but the Bad Thing was actually happening - the wife was being beaten.
Meanwhile, Firefox and Opera look awfully appealing.
Ok, the guy really stepped in it here when he plugged Firefox (though I'm an Opera fan, myself).
The Microsoft dude himself uses Firefox! What's so loaded about this question? CERT recommended using anything-but-IE. That adds to their appeal, right? The Microsoft dude missed an opportunity to say somthing like "we're committed to providing a secure and useful platform for people to enjoy yadayada".
What about removing capabilities from IE to beef up security?
You think you'll get him to promise to cut off "capability"-dependent programs (and their programmers) at the knees?
Why not? Servicepack 2 for XP "broke" a lot of applications in its default behavior. It's not unthinkable that Microsoft will take a long hard look at Internet Explorer and decide to ship the next version (or a patch) with less features turned on by default.
If they're not considering doing that, why, then this question is a golden opportunity to reassure their users that it won't happen. In fact, the answer is "we're constantly looking at trade offs".
The hack could have followed up with indignation about the lack of clarity about what functionality might be broken in the future. He didn't. He also didn't ask "why did it take so long to switch off popups by default?". He's going light on the fella here.
Seems like you're fighting a losing battle.
Objection: counsel is badgering the witness. The only appropriate answer would probably be, "Yes, we are, f*** you very much."
Oh come on. He didn't even say "aren't you?". It's perfectly OK for a journalist to make this statement, allowing the interviewee to say "no we're not".
This could have been phrased much, much more antagonistically. Like "So, you admit Internet Explorer is a piece of crap?" or "Do you realize that health professionals use Internet Explorer, and that lives are at risk?" or even "So Microsoft will continue pushing a product out the door that enables terrorists..." - preferably cutting off the interviewee when he answers, because "time is up".
The journo could have asked the question in a nicer form, like "How would you respond to those that say you're fighting a losing battle?", but that's just sucking up.
Asking a direct question actually allows the Microsoft dude to present himself more charismatically, exactly by not being offended.. "Well buddy, I wouldn't say we're losing quite yet!" rather than "How dare you question Microsoft?! You will be assimilated!".
Just because the reporter is asking "hard" questions, doesn't mean he's magically biased. It just means he didn't feel like writing a piece consisting entirely of fluff (though this is close as it is, for a lack of follow-up questions).
And it's not "badgering" it's "leading the witness" or "stating conclusions".
Despite the fact he was wounded in Iraq, he doesn't consider it an unjust war, and plans to vote for Bush. He told me he saw first-hand the difference we've made in that country, and there's no way anyone can convince him that the war was wrong.
Now, while the iPod is kinda cool for being white when everything else is black, grey and silver, and it's kinda cool for being early-ish on the scene with a small form factor the iPod is not the only MP3 player out there..
There are many, many alternatives that are cheaper, also look cool and have way better functionality than the iPod. I mean, forcing you to use iTunes to load music on it, or else it won't play? What's that all about? Just about every other MP3 player (ok, the creative ones suck in that way too) let's you use it as an USB Mass Storage device, no drivers, no software, and it will play any MP3 you put on there.. Nice and simple!
I have an ancient, big, archos player, and it even has an open source (the device was reverse engineered by some geeks) operating system (rockbox). How cool is that? And it takes regular NiMH batteries in case the ones provided with it crap out..
And get this, if you buy argos, creative, iRiver, or any other brand -- You're not contractually required to give Steve Jobs a rim-job..
>You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first.
Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
There is no system of mandatory licensing in effect that would prohibit a patent owner from seeking unrealistic license fees.
In fact, the patent system is used by the NSA to prevent progress in the field of cryptology for example; patents can be designated "secret" and still be in effect. Their staturory timespan even only kicks in after they've been declassified.
So if you independently invent a means of cryptography, or of code cracking, that has been patented by the NSA, unbeknownst to yourself, they can force you not to implement it, without even telling you what they've patented. And when they get round to telling you, you still have to wait 17 years.
Copyright and patents aren't "ownership rights" or even "monopoly rights" (which implies that you're at least selling something); they're prohibition rights (look ma, no act of congress!).
Some define capitalism as free markets period. Others as a system whereby capital means are primarily owned by non-state entities. And then there's Marx. Stock markets are just a by product, and don't actually contribute much to raising capital except for IPOs and additional offerings (in which a company sells its own stock, rather than day-to-day trades). Commodity markets aren't about capital at all, they trade commodities.
Outsourcing in general should be good for the economy - wealth of nations, and all. However, that doesn't take into account the fact that there's no level playing field at the moment (e.g. agricultural subsidies, freedom of movement, etc.). Globalization is catching so much flack at the moment precisely because the "free trade" aspect is being implemented in such a way as to benefit multi-national corporations (and their shareholders), whilst giving the shaft to developing nations and out-sourced tech support people.
Second hand sales don't hurt Capitalism at all! In fact, they promote the efficient allocation of capital means, which is surely a good thing. After all, that's what the "Invisible Hand" is supposed to do!
You seem to have fallen for the the stock market myth of the need for ever-growing profits, an ever growing economy etc. There's really no need for all of that. Many small companies simply make a stable profit each year and don't feel the need to expand. In fact, a large chunk of the economy is chugging along happily, neither experiencing explosive growth or busts. That's because an ever-expanding economy is either unsustainable (both from an economic, as from an ecological perspective - yeah, I said ecological, very un-Capitalistic, but hey, oil will peak) or, more simply, a myth (i.e. you make more money, but you spend more too, and in the end you don't get any additional tangible thing in return.. That doesn't just include inflation, but cost-of-living/doing-business as well - lawyers will always have a rising income because there are always additional laws being made, rather than less - but they don't add value to your products.)
I liked the "second hand sales hurt Capitalism" bit though. Very RIAA-esque. If we don't expand copyright to stamp out second hand and public domain sales, then the world will come to an end because anything that's free has no value. Indeed, freedom has no value! Only (monopoly-)"rights" do.
As the poster noted, caesium is not radio-active. Good job you figured out to post anonymously. As any one who's had some high-school physics (or noticed the chunk of caesium floating in a jar filled with oil and figured out its nefarious uses) caesium "is highly explosive in cold water" as the wikipedia article notes in red letters.
Just fire up a MIDI sequencer and make the loudest beep you can. The sounds on an Ericsson that actually are annoyingly loud are also MIDI files, just not polished polyphonic ones.
This is still a free beta email service. I can't believe I am reading a complaint about a beta service. You are there to fix bugs and offer suggestions.
They spent years in the dark that the "disk is full" error was caused by too many open files. You'd think that if the disk isn't actually full, you'd look at other places that can generate that error. Even though obviously the error should have been along the lines of "too many open files".
Note that this underlying problem isn't just a technical one. You get over-general error messages on windows (and with various badly designed software) all the time.
The least you can do when you pop-up an error is to give some additional information; like where it occurred ("Bad Thing Happened in somefile.c line #456"), so even if, like in this case, you can't reproduce the error in a debugger, you know where the error got kicked into being. Not quite as useful as a full stacktrace like in Java, but pretty usefull.
Compare this to how (non-Microsoft) geeks write error codes; from man ep;
ep0: 3c509 in test mode. Erase pencil mark!
This means that someone has scribbled with pencil in the test area on the card. Erase the pencil mark and reboot. (This is not a joke).
Even if you don't understand the error code, at least you can google for its pretty unique description "erase pencil mark".
Is loudhaler a legit word? Dictionary.com doesn't seem to know about it, the google hits are not many.. It's a cool word though (perfectly cromulent, in fact) so I wouldn't mind adding it to my vocabulary. A nice woody word.
Actually, in this case, it was Marvel Comics that made as if there was not profit linky here.
It's common practice in the movie industry for a movie to not make a profit, on paper that is. This is so the studios don't have to pay out royalties to all the suckers that worked for "points". That's why savvy actors specify in their contract that they get "gross points" - a percentage of the gross of the movie, rather than the profit.
here is a good overview of the costs and receipts that go into making a movie. Charging interest on all sorts of costs is the way Rain Man, Forrest Gump and The English Patient haven't made a single penny -- on paper that is.
If you had net profit participation in those movies, you were reamed.
Is this unethical? Yes. Immoral? Yes. Illegal? Well, it's the movie industry doing it, and as we all know, producers of intellectual property can do no wrong.
Ah yes, hindsight is always 20-20.. Had you indeed informed the publishers, and had there been a clampdown, there would never have been the Textbook shortage of 1999, or the hours upon hours of newscoverage on TV of literally starving authors..
We would instead have textbook upon textbook competing for the same spot, each only slightly different, new versions each year and students being forced to buy the new version (sometime authored by the professor that gives the course) because of minor differences, like the ordering of chapters..
Oh wait. There are plenty textbooks. Authors aren't starving, and they are forcing people to "upgrade" each year.
Moral outrage is all good and well, but in this case, the social contract that is copyright (and yes, that includes enforcement that is not 100% airtight, as we don't live in a police state (yet) resulting in the occasional infringement) seems to have worked out pretty well. Except from the forced-upgrade shenannigans, of course. Or professors making their own textbooks required reading. (A-holes).
It's interesting to see the results of this study unfold. I'd like to see the experiments and data replicated in some way.
Forgive me for being sceptical, but from a European perspective, it's hard to see any significant (i.e. more than 5%?) difference between the GOP's and DNC's political viewpoints..;-)
"Also, under the bsd license commercial proprietary software can integrate the open-source work"
And the freeddom to use the code in closed commercial applications makes it *even more free* than restricting it to only other open source projets.
Including the freedom to restrict it further. Or to pull SCO shenannigans, like sueing IBM for copying their precious code, whilst giving it away for free themselves.
If killing wasn't a felony, you'd be "free" to kill AND to get killed. Is that true freedom?
In other words, they're afraid of taking a position and standing by it. Since they make fun of EVERYONE, nobody can accuse them of having a liberal/conservative bias, because nobody can figure out what exactly they stand for. The only message that comes through is "everybody is wrong, don't trust anyone".
They mostly make fun of people who're breaching good old non-partisan values like "don't be a hypocrite", "fair play", "thou shalt not bear false testament" etc.
I fail to see how that's not taking a stand.
And I fail to see why you should only criticise people who you're not politically allied with. To me that smacks of hypocrisy. And not a little bit of blind stupid faith, or noticing a splinter in some one's eyes whilst having a beam in your own..
This wouldn't be so bad if the criticism was actually justified, but most of the time it's just incredibly stupid things like "lets tear down the rain forest because it's filled with bugs and environmental groups annoy us" or "lets make corporations look good because all the slack they get annoy us" or "lets make Native Americans look bad on national television (but never blacks or latinos... that would be racism, heh) because people thinking highly of them annoy us".
Gee, I seem to remember that episode when Timmy went to join a gang.. And that episode when succesfull Hollywood black people suddenly all moved into Southpark on a whim. The episode where Cartman's hand channeled Jennifer Lopez ("I like burrito's!"). The black kid is called "Token". Not to mention the fact that their highschool cafetaria chef is an over-amorous Isaac Hayes..
But perhaps you didn't notice those episodes ripping on blacks or latino's because those stereotypes are truthful in your eyes? Or perhaps you're bitching about Southpark without having watched it? (Come on! Chef is in almost every episode!)
I mean, it's not like you could buy your own PC for a few hundred bucks and then just play games on that and keep hard copies too..
Running an operating system owned by the people who brought you the X-Box is a really great idea too, it's not like that's a company that's ever engaged in unfair competition..
They should have game publishers eating out of their hands, what with no one else having good contacts and exclusive deals with them (like say, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony).
It's a good thing they thought up this subscription/download deal, I've never heard of that before.. Let alone heard of any one failing miserably at it. (Or perhaps I have).
I don't think any other company ever tried entering the console market with basically a stripped-down PC. And if they did, they wouldn't have been forced to sell them at loss, right?
So, it's all good. I'm just wondering whether the console will support Duke Nukem Forever AND Daikatana..
Europe is already switching to the third generation of mobile communications (3G)
"is switching" is a good way of saying it. In reality, 3G is not going anywhere soon. While there are some networks being rolled out (3 in the UK was the first), most have pretty crappy coverage for the moment. Now, they're mostly operated by pre-existing GSM operators, so your phone will just handover to GSM for phone coverage, but there goes your "fast" data connection.
In the Netherlands only 2 of 5 of the networks that received a license have actually built a "network" (spotty coverage of the largest cities); at least one operator is on record as saying they won't even bother building it and are writing the license off as a loss, unless they can sell it.
The bandwidth is of course a joke. We were promised 2Mbps (at a time when that was a top of the range DSL connection), not 384, and in practice it turns out to be more like 144kbps. Not too mention if it were to get crowded. I say integrate 802.11g in handsets already. Or better yet, leave networking to your pda/laptop and let your handset go on the internet via bluetooth (or let your laptop connect via your handset, depending on conditions).
And why you'd want to receive *broadcast* signals over a unicast channel beats me. It just sucks up bandwidth for each user.
All you have to do is stop buying one way tickets, or stop buying your tickets at the last minute. Harassing people that buy cheap tickets? Making people show ID "for security" so you can't resell the return leg cheaply?
3) install firewall or activate build-in FW Pre-XP SP2 the built-in functionality is called IP filtering, and it is NOT active as soon as the NIC comes up; it takes a few seconds. Likewise, it's shut down before the NIC is. So if you're using that, unplug your ethernet when you reboot. Also, don't forget to restrict UDP (but not port 53 for DNS).
It's more convenient to just have a copy of sygate personal firewall, or tdi_fw (from sourceforge).
Microsoft should have an auto-update during install feature. (If you have broadband). During the install process it could run the windows update, blah blah blah once your nic was initialized for the first time and IP granted etc.
Microsoft should have the firewall on by default. IP filtering restricting incoming TCP connections has been in windows since NT 4.0, but it was never on by default. Not even only during the installation process. In fact, it doesn't even come up the same time the NIC does, there's some precious unprotected moments.
Only now does SP2 have a firewall that's on by default.
Do you lock your car, your house? Why, someone can pick the lock??
I lock my door because my insurance company won't pay out if I get burgled and the door wasn't locked. It keeps teenage punks out, but it's no deterrent to axe murderers; nor to fire fighters, which is a good thing.
It's a minor inconvenience to me but to no one else, and if I'm ever locked out, I can just ask my friendly neighborhood axe murderer to bash in the door - no harm done.
Showing ID before boarding a national flight is bad security for a few good reasons; it's intended to catch future terrorists, who will have fake IDs or a spotless record. It's an inconvenience to everyone else. Issueing reasonably secure IDs to every one who travels is very expensive, even with the travellers themselves picking up the bills.
But unlike locking your door (which I'm told Canadians don't bother with) it doesn't provide any deterrent to lesser crimes than being a naughty person on the verboten-to-travel list.
Apart from ensuring you don't sell cheap return-leg tickets to others.
Unless I'm contractually bound to do so, no. Just like you can spell Easyjet like so if you feel you should because it's a proper noun (remember, there is no Law Of English); or spam in lowercase because all-caps just looks silly, or if you're using it as a verb for sending unsollicited mail.
Trademark owners only own their trademark for their exclusive use as a mark in trade. It let's them stamp their branding on their product, and prohibits competitors (or their resalers) from using the same name or logo.
That doesn't mean they get to control the use of the word. If I feel like saying kleenex or xerox, even referring to a competitor, that's just fine and dandy as long as I'm not in the business of selling paper towels or copying machines.
If capitalization was an issue, you could brand your cheap imitation product "rolex" instead of "Rolex" and get away with it.
Slashdot Mirror
WIRED: It's been more than a month since the first news of Download.Ject, and you still haven't issued a real fix for Internet Explorer. How long is it going to take?
In other words: So, when will you stop beating your wife?
Not quite the same. There was a vulnerability, e.g. the wife-beating. It was since fixed half-heartedly (that's why the question asks about a "real" fix), but the Bad Thing was actually happening - the wife was being beaten.
Meanwhile, Firefox and Opera look awfully appealing.
Ok, the guy really stepped in it here when he plugged Firefox (though I'm an Opera fan, myself).
The Microsoft dude himself uses Firefox! What's so loaded about this question? CERT recommended using anything-but-IE. That adds to their appeal, right?
The Microsoft dude missed an opportunity to say somthing like "we're committed to providing a secure and useful platform for people to enjoy yadayada".
What about removing capabilities from IE to beef up security?
You think you'll get him to promise to cut off "capability"-dependent programs (and their programmers) at the knees?
Why not? Servicepack 2 for XP "broke" a lot of applications in its default behavior. It's not unthinkable that Microsoft will take a long hard look at Internet Explorer and decide to ship the next version (or a patch) with less features turned on by default.
If they're not considering doing that, why, then this question is a golden opportunity to reassure their users that it won't happen. In fact, the answer is "we're constantly looking at trade offs".
The hack could have followed up with indignation about the lack of clarity about what functionality might be broken in the future. He didn't. He also didn't ask "why did it take so long to switch off popups by default?". He's going light on the fella here.
Seems like you're fighting a losing battle.
Objection: counsel is badgering the witness. The only appropriate answer would probably be, "Yes, we are, f*** you very much."
Oh come on. He didn't even say "aren't you?". It's perfectly OK for a journalist to make this statement, allowing the interviewee to say "no we're not".
This could have been phrased much, much more antagonistically. Like "So, you admit Internet Explorer is a piece of crap?" or "Do you realize that health professionals use Internet Explorer, and that lives are at risk?" or even "So Microsoft will continue pushing a product out the door that enables terrorists..." - preferably cutting off the interviewee when he answers, because "time is up".
The journo could have asked the question in a nicer form, like "How would you respond to those that say you're fighting a losing battle?", but that's just sucking up.
Asking a direct question actually allows the Microsoft dude to present himself more charismatically, exactly by not being offended.. "Well buddy, I wouldn't say we're losing quite yet!" rather than "How dare you question Microsoft?! You will be assimilated!".
Just because the reporter is asking "hard" questions, doesn't mean he's magically biased. It just means he didn't feel like writing a piece consisting entirely of fluff (though this is close as it is, for a lack of follow-up questions).
And it's not "badgering" it's "leading the witness" or "stating conclusions".
Despite the fact he was wounded in Iraq, he doesn't consider it an unjust war, and plans to vote for Bush. He told me he saw first-hand the difference we've made in that country, and there's no way anyone can convince him that the war was wrong.
He was there BEFORE the US invaded as well?
Now, while the iPod is kinda cool for being white when everything else is black, grey and silver, and it's kinda cool for being early-ish on the scene with a small form factor the iPod is not the only MP3 player out there..
There are many, many alternatives that are cheaper, also look cool and have way better functionality than the iPod. I mean, forcing you to use iTunes to load music on it, or else it won't play? What's that all about? Just about every other MP3 player (ok, the creative ones suck in that way too) let's you use it as an USB Mass Storage device, no drivers, no software, and it will play any MP3 you put on there.. Nice and simple!
I have an ancient, big, archos player, and it even has an open source (the device was reverse engineered by some geeks) operating system (rockbox). How cool is that? And it takes regular NiMH batteries in case the ones provided with it crap out..
And get this, if you buy argos, creative, iRiver, or any other brand -- You're not contractually required to give Steve Jobs a rim-job..
>You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first.
Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
There is no system of mandatory licensing in effect that would prohibit a patent owner from seeking unrealistic license fees.
In fact, the patent system is used by the NSA to prevent progress in the field of cryptology for example; patents can be designated "secret" and still be in effect. Their staturory timespan even only kicks in after they've been declassified.
So if you independently invent a means of cryptography, or of code cracking, that has been patented by the NSA, unbeknownst to yourself, they can force you not to implement it, without even telling you what they've patented. And when they get round to telling you, you still have to wait 17 years.
Copyright and patents aren't "ownership rights" or even "monopoly rights" (which implies that you're at least selling something); they're prohibition rights (look ma, no act of congress!).
Some define capitalism as free markets period. Others as a system whereby capital means are primarily owned by non-state entities. And then there's Marx.
Stock markets are just a by product, and don't actually contribute much to raising capital except for IPOs and additional offerings (in which a company sells its own stock, rather than day-to-day trades).
Commodity markets aren't about capital at all, they trade commodities.
Outsourcing in general should be good for the economy - wealth of nations, and all. However, that doesn't take into account the fact that there's no level playing field at the moment (e.g. agricultural subsidies, freedom of movement, etc.). Globalization is catching so much flack at the moment precisely because the "free trade" aspect is being implemented in such a way as to benefit multi-national corporations (and their shareholders), whilst giving the shaft to developing nations and out-sourced tech support people.
Second hand sales don't hurt Capitalism at all! In fact, they promote the efficient allocation of capital means, which is surely a good thing. After all, that's what the "Invisible Hand" is supposed to do!
You seem to have fallen for the the stock market myth of the need for ever-growing profits, an ever growing economy etc. There's really no need for all of that. Many small companies simply make a stable profit each year and don't feel the need to expand. In fact, a large chunk of the economy is chugging along happily, neither experiencing explosive growth or busts. That's because an ever-expanding economy is either unsustainable (both from an economic, as from an ecological perspective - yeah, I said ecological, very un-Capitalistic, but hey, oil will peak) or, more simply, a myth (i.e. you make more money, but you spend more too, and in the end you don't get any additional tangible thing in return.. That doesn't just include inflation, but cost-of-living/doing-business as well - lawyers will always have a rising income because there are always additional laws being made, rather than less - but they don't add value to your products.)
I liked the "second hand sales hurt Capitalism" bit though. Very RIAA-esque. If we don't expand copyright to stamp out second hand and public domain sales, then the world will come to an end because anything that's free has no value. Indeed, freedom has no value! Only (monopoly-)"rights" do.
As the poster noted, caesium is not radio-active. Good job you figured out to post anonymously.
As any one who's had some high-school physics (or noticed the chunk of caesium floating in a jar filled with oil and figured out its nefarious uses) caesium "is highly explosive in cold water" as the wikipedia article notes in red letters.
You might not have noticed that.
Just fire up a MIDI sequencer and make the loudest beep you can. The sounds on an Ericsson that actually are annoyingly loud are also MIDI files, just not polished polyphonic ones.
This is still a free beta email service. I can't believe I am reading a complaint about a beta service. You are there to fix bugs and offer suggestions.
ICQ has been in beta now for what, ten years?
They spent years in the dark that the "disk is full" error was caused by too many open files.
You'd think that if the disk isn't actually full, you'd look at other places that can generate that error. Even though obviously the error should have been along the lines of "too many open files".
Note that this underlying problem isn't just a technical one. You get over-general error messages on windows (and with various badly designed software) all the time.
The least you can do when you pop-up an error is to give some additional information; like where it occurred ("Bad Thing Happened in somefile.c line #456"), so even if, like in this case, you can't reproduce the error in a debugger, you know where the error got kicked into being. Not quite as useful as a full stacktrace like in Java, but pretty usefull.
Compare this to how (non-Microsoft) geeks write error codes; from man ep;
ep0: 3c509 in test mode. Erase pencil mark!
This means that someone has scribbled with pencil in the test area on the card. Erase the pencil mark and reboot. (This is not a joke).
Even if you don't understand the error code, at least you can google for its pretty unique description "erase pencil mark".
According to the article, they think the CEO's skipped town to Morocco. Don't we have an extradition treaty w/them?
Yes.
A quick google turns up:
lists of countries with (no) extradition treaties with the US.
Apparently, that CEO guy is still stupid.
Is loudhaler a legit word? Dictionary.com doesn't seem to know about it, the google hits are not many.. It's a cool word though (perfectly cromulent, in fact) so I wouldn't mind adding it to my vocabulary. A nice woody word.
Actually, in this case, it was Marvel Comics that made as if there was not profit linky here.
It's common practice in the movie industry for a movie to not make a profit, on paper that is. This is so the studios don't have to pay out royalties to all the suckers that worked for "points". That's why savvy actors specify in their contract that they get "gross points" - a percentage of the gross of the movie, rather than the profit.
here is a good overview of the costs and receipts that go into making a movie. Charging interest on all sorts of costs is the way Rain Man, Forrest Gump and The English Patient haven't made a single penny -- on paper that is.
If you had net profit participation in those movies, you were reamed.
Is this unethical? Yes. Immoral? Yes. Illegal? Well, it's the movie industry doing it, and as we all know, producers of intellectual property can do no wrong.
Ah yes, hindsight is always 20-20.. Had you indeed informed the publishers, and had there been a clampdown, there would never have been the Textbook shortage of 1999, or the hours upon hours of newscoverage on TV of literally starving authors..
We would instead have textbook upon textbook competing for the same spot, each only slightly different, new versions each year and students being forced to buy the new version (sometime authored by the professor that gives the course) because of minor differences, like the ordering of chapters..
Oh wait. There are plenty textbooks. Authors aren't starving, and they are forcing people to "upgrade" each year.
Moral outrage is all good and well, but in this case, the social contract that is copyright (and yes, that includes enforcement that is not 100% airtight, as we don't live in a police state (yet) resulting in the occasional infringement) seems to have worked out pretty well. Except from the forced-upgrade shenannigans, of course. Or professors making their own textbooks required reading. (A-holes).
It's interesting to see the results of this study unfold. I'd like to see the experiments and data replicated in some way.
;-)
Forgive me for being sceptical, but from a European perspective, it's hard to see any significant (i.e. more than 5%?) difference between the GOP's and DNC's political viewpoints..
"Also, under the bsd license commercial proprietary software can integrate the open-source work"
And the freeddom to use the code in closed commercial applications makes it *even more free* than restricting it to only other open source projets.
Including the freedom to restrict it further. Or to pull SCO shenannigans, like sueing IBM for copying their precious code, whilst giving it away for free themselves.
If killing wasn't a felony, you'd be "free" to kill AND to get killed. Is that true freedom?
In other words, they're afraid of taking a position and standing by it. Since they make fun of EVERYONE, nobody can accuse them of having a liberal/conservative bias, because nobody can figure out what exactly they stand for. The only message that comes through is "everybody is wrong, don't trust anyone".
They mostly make fun of people who're breaching good old non-partisan values like "don't be a hypocrite", "fair play", "thou shalt not bear false testament" etc.
I fail to see how that's not taking a stand.
And I fail to see why you should only criticise people who you're not politically allied with. To me that smacks of hypocrisy. And not a little bit of blind stupid faith, or noticing a splinter in some one's eyes whilst having a beam in your own..
This wouldn't be so bad if the criticism was actually justified, but most of the time it's just incredibly stupid things like "lets tear down the rain forest because it's filled with bugs and environmental groups annoy us" or "lets make corporations look good because all the slack they get annoy us" or "lets make Native Americans look bad on national television (but never blacks or latinos... that would be racism, heh) because people thinking highly of them annoy us".
Gee, I seem to remember that episode when Timmy went to join a gang.. And that episode when succesfull Hollywood black people suddenly all moved into Southpark on a whim. The episode where Cartman's hand channeled Jennifer Lopez ("I like burrito's!"). The black kid is called "Token". Not to mention the fact that their highschool cafetaria chef is an over-amorous Isaac Hayes..
But perhaps you didn't notice those episodes ripping on blacks or latino's because those stereotypes are truthful in your eyes? Or perhaps you're bitching about Southpark without having watched it? (Come on! Chef is in almost every episode!)
I mean, it's not like you could buy your own PC for a few hundred bucks and then just play games on that and keep hard copies too..
Running an operating system owned by the people who brought you the X-Box is a really great idea too, it's not like that's a company that's ever engaged in unfair competition..
They should have game publishers eating out of their hands, what with no one else having good contacts and exclusive deals with them (like say, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony).
It's a good thing they thought up this subscription/download deal, I've never heard of that before.. Let alone heard of any one failing miserably at it. (Or perhaps I have).
I don't think any other company ever tried entering the console market with basically a stripped-down PC. And if they did, they wouldn't have been forced to sell them at loss, right?
So, it's all good. I'm just wondering whether the console will support Duke Nukem Forever AND Daikatana..
Europe is already switching to the third generation of mobile communications (3G)
"is switching" is a good way of saying it. In reality, 3G is not going anywhere soon. While there are some networks being rolled out (3 in the UK was the first), most have pretty crappy coverage for the moment. Now, they're mostly operated by pre-existing GSM operators, so your phone will just handover to GSM for phone coverage, but there goes your "fast" data connection.
In the Netherlands only 2 of 5 of the networks that received a license have actually built a "network" (spotty coverage of the largest cities); at least one operator is on record as saying they won't even bother building it and are writing the license off as a loss, unless they can sell it.
The bandwidth is of course a joke. We were promised 2Mbps (at a time when that was a top of the range DSL connection), not 384, and in practice it turns out to be more like 144kbps. Not too mention if it were to get crowded. I say integrate 802.11g in handsets already. Or better yet, leave networking to your pda/laptop and let your handset go on the internet via bluetooth (or let your laptop connect via your handset, depending on conditions).
And why you'd want to receive *broadcast* signals over a unicast channel beats me. It just sucks up bandwidth for each user.
All you have to do is stop buying one way tickets, or stop buying your tickets at the last minute.
Harassing people that buy cheap tickets?
Making people show ID "for security" so you can't resell the return leg cheaply?
Sounds more like airline job-security...
What the public wants now is quality, better reception, and higher reliability.
Just pick a phone with an external antenna and a big honking battery with outrageous SAR values.
Though if you gauge what the public want by what they actually buy, they want the exact opposite.
3) install firewall or activate build-in FW
Pre-XP SP2 the built-in functionality is called IP filtering, and it is NOT active as soon as the NIC comes up; it takes a few seconds. Likewise, it's shut down before the NIC is. So if you're using that, unplug your ethernet when you reboot. Also, don't forget to restrict UDP (but not port 53 for DNS).
It's more convenient to just have a copy of sygate personal firewall, or tdi_fw (from sourceforge).
Microsoft should have an auto-update during install feature. (If you have broadband). During the install process it could run the windows update, blah blah blah once your nic was initialized for the first time and IP granted etc.
Microsoft should have the firewall on by default. IP filtering restricting incoming TCP connections has been in windows since NT 4.0, but it was never on by default. Not even only during the installation process. In fact, it doesn't even come up the same time the NIC does, there's some precious unprotected moments.
Only now does SP2 have a firewall that's on by default.
Do you lock your car, your house? Why, someone
can pick the lock??
I lock my door because my insurance company won't pay out if I get burgled and the door wasn't locked. It keeps teenage punks out, but it's no deterrent to axe murderers; nor to fire fighters, which is a good thing.
It's a minor inconvenience to me but to no one else, and if I'm ever locked out, I can just ask my friendly neighborhood axe murderer to bash in the door - no harm done.
Showing ID before boarding a national flight is bad security for a few good reasons; it's intended to catch future terrorists, who will have fake IDs or a spotless record. It's an inconvenience to everyone else. Issueing reasonably secure IDs to every one who travels is very expensive, even with the travellers themselves picking up the bills.
But unlike locking your door (which I'm told Canadians don't bother with) it doesn't provide any deterrent to lesser crimes than being a naughty person on the verboten-to-travel list.
Apart from ensuring you don't sell cheap return-leg tickets to others.
Sound like bash.org needs an mp3 section. :-)
Unless I'm contractually bound to do so, no. Just like you can spell Easyjet like so if you feel you should because it's a proper noun (remember, there is no Law Of English); or spam in lowercase because all-caps just looks silly, or if you're using it as a verb for sending unsollicited mail.
Trademark owners only own their trademark for their exclusive use as a mark in trade. It let's them stamp their branding on their product, and prohibits competitors (or their resalers) from using the same name or logo.
That doesn't mean they get to control the use of the word. If I feel like saying kleenex or xerox, even referring to a competitor, that's just fine and dandy as long as I'm not in the business of selling paper towels or copying machines.
If capitalization was an issue, you could brand your cheap imitation product "rolex" instead of "Rolex" and get away with it.