> And somehow I felt that Katz was getting ripped off when most Windows people started downloading WinZip in droves.
No. Katz was _not_ getting ripped off. While WinZip may not be a perfect program, it's so much better than PKZip for Windows it's not funny. It took PKWare something like 5 years to come up with a 32-bit command-line version of PKZip (which I use), and PKZip for Windows was so limited it was ridiculous. They threw away their advantage as far as I'm concerned.
However, I prefer to remember to good ol' days when S.E.A. came after Phil Katz for selling software that used the.ARC format, so Katz came up with a far superior format (ZIP) and proceeded to walk all over S.E.A. by making the ZIP format and the PKZIP good enough to become the de facto compression standard in the PC world for about 12 years now. The ZIP format was much more robust and PKZip was faster and compressed better that hardly anyone remembers ARC any more.
Phil did an amazingly useful thing for the industry and deserves to be remembered for it.
But I heard a rumor once (and was never sure if there was any truth to it) that Gilette held a patent for a ceramic razor blade that would put metal blades to shame, but wouldn't license it to anyone because they didn't want to give up selling metal blades. I guess that wouldn't be possible if what you state is true.
If every kid has a computer two things will happen:
1. A portion (probably large) of classroom time will be spent with the kids running "educational" software packages while the teacher sits idly by, either fuming because he or she can't properly teach the kids the 3 R's, or grinnig like a fool because he or she gets paid for doing nothing.
2. A portion (probably large) of classroom time will be spent with the kids screwing around with their computers, trying to get them to work, or playing games, or surfing the Web or whatever
The American education establishment is already rushing away from actual education and towards mindless warehousing of children for 12 years. This will only hasten that descent. If children are _educated_, they will succeed in the 21st century even if they don't see a computer until high school or later.
I never owned a computer (nor did my parents) until I bought my Commodore Amiga at age 23 and yet I was already on my way to becoming a highly paid computer programmer. Why? I had parents who went out of their way to make sure I was taught to read early and well, and made sure that my education was good quality. Furthermore, I had a great interest in computers and made do with what I could... computer labs at college, etc.
I am looking at sending my kids to Annunciation Academy in Reston, Virginia. Not only do the children not have computers, but there are no computers in the school. The school emphasizes the classical education (the trivium and quadrivium). Rather than training the students to do tasks, they are teaching the kids to LEARN and REASON.
I talked with the headmaster recently and told him I approved of the "no computers" policy despite the fact that I personally am a computer nerd par excellance as are my 4- and 6-year-old children. He said he's got fifth-graders running Web sites, and with the discipline and hard work that this school provides, I have no doubts that these children are years ahead of their peers in public schools no matter how much money the politicans throw at them.
Why do children need something (laptops) that I as a highly paid software developer am perfectly capable of doing without? It's ludicrous!
Here's my message to the schools:
Get off you lazy asses, throw away all the goofy fads and TEACH THE CHILDREN TO READ. Quit trying to replace yourself by throwing expensive toys at the kids and just do your jobs.
Re:Start digging some graves folks!
on
Battlefield Earth
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Ummm... I don't recall anyone calling to censor the movie, just boycott it.
Everyone has a right to free speech, no one has a "right" to be listened to.
Frodo had a lot of help from Gandalf (often working behind the scenes) as well as the other members of the Fellowship. He also had a magic sword once he reached Rivendell: Bilbo gave him Sting, as well as his suit of elven mail.
It's my understanding that one country (the UK?) legalized heroin and quickly reversed it after the number of addicts quadrupled in a short time.
I'm all for letting people do to themselves what they want, but what happens when someone screws up and overdoses? The government or insurance companies (depending on your country of origin) pays to rescue you, and of course those costs are passed on to you and me.
This is something that all the drug legalizers neglect to consider. I don't want my health insurance rates to go up because of treatment for overdoses of legal drugs (and don't tell me there wouldn't be more once the drug is legalized!).
Here's the way I see the legalizing drugs issue:
Enjoy doing what you want to your body, but when you do something stupid or dangerous, don't come crying to me to fix it.
It's simple. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful. The problem is, that it's almost impossible to "do what you want with your own body" without affecting someone else.
I'm not defending the tobacco companies in any way, but I do have a problem with the way the government is treating them.
Tobacco use causes cancer and kills people. Nobody disagrees with that. If a new product were introduced on the market today that were one-tenth as deadly for similar reasons, the manufacturer would not only be banned from selling it, but would probably be ostracized as a corporation and compared to the Nazis (see my other post:) ). However, tobacco makes a ton of money and is extremely popular (in no small part because it is addictive).
So what the government is saying is, "Clearly you produce a poisonous product that is unequivocably dangerous to the people who use it, you have lied about its addictive effects are evil people, BUT since you are making a lot of money, we'll just look the other way as long as you give us a big cut."
To me, the government is profiting off of tobacco's success while claiming that they are opposed to what the industry is doing. In other words, they are extorting those companies because, let's face it, it's just too politically expensive to ban the product, which is the only way to really save lives.
I don't like the fact that these companies are being penalized for selling a product that is legal to sell. You can't have it both ways. But there's too much money being made for Congress to do the right thing, so they just try to skim some off the top. That sounds more like something the mob would do than a democratically-controlled government.
I cannot think of a large company that doesn't do at least one thing (usually mercilessly exploiting poor people) that would make me want to boycott them, except for the fact that I'm not ready to chuck it all and go live in the woods writing cryptic manifestos. But if something is legal, then the government should treat it as legal, if it's not then ban it and be done with it.
If, as you say, the tobacco executives are murderers, then prosecute them as such. However, If the government is willing to let tobacco be legal for the reason that this is a free country people are free to consume products they know to be dangerous, then the tobacco executives are not murderers and the government should let the companies alone.
Yes, I didn't mention the Nazis by name, but I was thinking of them. Since so many people invoke the Nazis when describing the radical right wing or the radical left wing, or anyone they don't like in general, it's become an almost meaningless perjorative. However, a lot of the things that are being pushed in our society in the last thirty years are frighteningly similar to much of what the Nazi's were doing in the 30's.
okay, gun control, state control of education, ratting out your friends and neighbors, sure, but at least we're not gassing people by the millions.
Well, let's consider:
Abortion becomes legal in 1973 and the Supreme Court decides that the definition of human being is based on the convenience or whim of the pareents of the unborn child, perhaps it's based on the level of technology or how much money you have. In any event, the definition varies from case to case and reminds me that Jews weren't considered people, and slaves weren't considered people. 27 years and something like 40 million murdered babies later, children are being aborted for having life-threatening defects, then children are being aborted for serious diseases, then children are being aborted because because the parents feel they can't afford them, then children are being aborted because they are the wrong sex.
Then we get into the whole euthanasia issue and don't tell me that the convenience (and expense!) of the relatives of some poor soul being considered for mercy killing doesn't play heavily into the decision. Euthanasia candidates quickly change from people with terminal illnesses in great pain, to people who are old and infirm to people who are just handicapped to people who are just too damn inconvenient.
Maybe it's not based on race or religion this time, but the genocide can and will continue.
There's the positive side of peace, love and understanding, but there was also a lot of really strong bad influences on the Boomer generation too.
Let's not forget that the communist/socialist influence of college faculties and other academics was at least as powerful as it is today. The government was moving toward socialist policies in the 60's (the Great Society, et al). Revolutionaries in the Third World were being idolized by American adolescents, most of whom had know idea who they were really admiring, and a lot of people were buying the Communist propoganda.
We had MLK marching for civil rights (who coincidently was a communist sympathizer, although he had much to admire), but we also had Hanoi Jane sitting on VC anti-aircraft guns cheering the destruction of U.S. forces.
The fact of the matter is, that the Boomer majority is starting to act like a lot of the folks they were enamored with in the 60's, and many of the things they are pushing have a lot in common with the governments of Soviet Russia, China and Nazi Germany.
Taking away guns, dumbing down education, extorting powerful industries (like tobacco), micromanagement of peoples lives through excessively complex regulation and encouraging people to rat out their friends to the Party or Thought Police or whatever you call it, were and are all tactics of totalitarian regimes the world over, and are all being pushed heavily in the U.S.
I don't think we are about to become the Britannia of George Orwell's 1984, but so many of his concepts have come to pass in the U.S. and elsewhere that it worries me. We have to remember that the good intentions of the Boomer generation are sometimes subverted by the people that influenced them in their formative years.
I think Pinkerton needs to consider the example they are setting and keep the interests of the millions of disenfranchised outcasts in proportions with the interests of a very small number of potential victims.
Good Times had technobabble that sounded believeable to the uninitiated. I don't think anyone with a whit of technical knowledge was ever fooled by it.
Well, for the Win32 API we have that, in theory. However, we all know that the documentation (or any documentation for a closed source API of this complexity) is insufficient to develop anything Microsoft is capable of developing. When I am trying to do something new with Windows, I spend far more time trying to "reverse-engineer" what the API actually does through trial-and-error than anything else.
Fortunately, MFC _does_ come with the source, otherwise it would be useless for anyone who doesn't use the highly-restrictive and unpowerful ClassWizard tool to generate code. Having the source is the only way to understand much of what goes on in MFC and to use it most effectively. Actually, my experience in effective use of MFC is systematic replacement with my own class library, no small task, but doable a piece at a time.
You're absolutely right, but given the Micros~1 track record with documentation, even when they _are_ trying to be forthright, I think they will always have an unfiar advantage. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to level the playing field, but I think investing your energy in open-source alternatives is probably the best way to change things for the better.
Of course, Microsoft could document their file formats, keep their OLE interfaces consistent from version to version, and give copious and less trivial source code examples with their development tools. Those won't fix all the problems, but it could help a lot.
Another crazy idea that they will never do is to release the source to Windows 3. It's dead, unsupported technology that still has millions of users. Micros~1 could earn lots of good will and actually help a lot of people by doing that. Furthermore, since so much of Windows 3 is still in Windows 4 (er, Windows 98), it would give developers of current code more insight into how this stuff works.
The fact remains, that no one will ever be able to compete on level ground with Micros~1 in the Windows OS territory or, to a large extent, the the office applications market, because everything is closed source. We will never be able to understand Windows as well as Microsoft can, and we will never learn the hard-won lessons of most vendors writing Windows software. Thankfully, there are projects like Mozilla to help turn the tide, but the only alternative to put power in the hands of the software developers is platform that is open source from the ground up.
Micros~1 won a long time ago, and it's up to the software community to evolve the industry to something more mature, powerful and productive. Micros~1 wants to maintain the status quo and any meddling from the government, however well intentioned, will AT BEST fail to improve the situation.
You know, I've heard this argument quite a bit and I think it is completely wrong.
In the Microsoft world, you have thousands and thousands of barely-competent software vendors writing code for Windows. They test their code (in theory) on Microsoft Windows (and many of them _still_ ignore supporting NT).
If Microsoft's code is opened (and I think you'll see Ice Capades in the Iron city of Dis before that ever happens), suddenly you've got lots of spin-off versions of Windows... and guess what... a lot of this marginal software (including most of Microsoft's own products) will stop working.
Look at it from the 3rd party's point of view, it's already too much trouble to support Windows 98 and Windows NT for many of them... and their stuff barely works in many instances as it is.
What happens when suddenly there's RedHat Windows and AOL Windows and GNUWindows and Corel Windows... and suddenly every software vendor starts getting hundred of calls because their software crashes under Fred's-Windows-and-Video-Strip-Poker.
Don't support it? Fine. Then no one buys anything but Microsoft and then you're in the same places as you are now.
It's a wonderful thought, but Windows is so big and bloated and depends on it's own maddening complexity to work that no one could ever duplicate it.
Remember TASM's "quirks" mode to support the bugs in the MASM assembler for compatibility? Well, just think what you'd have to maintain compatibility with the _whole_ operating system.
While the April Fool's stuff is always excessive and tedious, this is obviously humor and is even more amusing since it was published (even if it was in the WWN).
This story isn't really much different from the Good Times hoax from a few years back, and we all know how many people believed that. Just sit back and have a chuckle. I'm sure the editors of WWN do.
As always, if the story doesn't interest you, skip over it.
After last year's excrucuatingly tedious April Fool's day, you would think the guys at Slashdot would have learned a little moderation, but apparently not. I guess skipping over all these infantile pranks for one day isn't too much payment for 364 days a year of interesting material.
I seem to remember that around 1980 give or take a few years, when personal computers were starting to become affordable, a lot of people used to say things like "You could use it to store your recipes."
It sounds quaint now, in fact, it seems to be a running joke. However, it reflects two things:
One, people really _didn't_ know what personal computers would be useful for back then (except for the technophiles, and those of us who were writing games in Apple II BASIC).
Two, people were predicting a use that never came to be. I might have downloaded a recipe or two over the years, but I (nor anyone else, I imagine) would never store recipes in a computer. It doesn't make sense. It would be too hard to input all that data, and impractical to have to print one out in order to use it (unless you are one of those lucky sods with an iOpener XWindows terminal on your kitchen counter).
The point is the technology exists to easily connect any piece of electronics to the Internet, but no one has figured out why anyone would ever want to do it, and it's obvious because the marketing hype is just plain stupid.
Maybe someday, someone will figure out a killer appliation for having a refrigerator connected to the Internet (much like someone eventually wrote Electric Pencil, 1-2-3 and dBase for the PC). Until then sit back and enjoy the stupid hype of a technology in search of a non-pointless use and another example of good old American run-away consumerism at its best.
> The super-advanced 3D graphics chips in the PlayStation are cost way more than the selling price, but Sony makes it up in license fees for the games.
>Hence why Sony is attacking Bleem so ferociously
Um, assuming people aren't just outright pirating games, doesn't bleem mean that they aren't buying the underly-prices hardware and still buying the overly-priced games?
Sony has plenty of reason to be annoyed if bleem steals sales of Playstations (whether the makers of bleem are acting illegally or not is not my point), but I think your logic is backwards, since according to your statement, they lose money on the consoles but make it up on the games.
It would be nice to assume everyone will behave like adults and I see nothing wrong with surfing on over to interplay.com for a work break if your company allows it.
Installing a filter, however poorly it works, is less work than actively monitoring what people are actually doing, so they're going to be used.
It's generally easier to treat people like children and prevent them from having to be repsonsible than to treat them like adults and require them to be responsible. Welcome to modern corporate life.
Proxomitron is an implementation of a very simple but effective concept. It filters the HTML (body as well as headers) coming in and going out.
It's only for Windows (which I use) as far as I know, but the idea should be easily implementable on any platform. The real brains are the configuration file (i.e., what tags to filter).
Sounds like a return to the old days where DM's were encouraged to pick-and-choose and modify or enhance the rules to suit their own world/audience/imagination.
After the suits took control in the mid to late 80's everything became "Oh you can't do that because it's not OFFICIAL", which we all took as the utter BS it was. It was about this time that Gary Gygax was driven out.
At least WotC are acknowledging the way everyone who's ever been involved with D&D thinks and acts anyway.
This is wonderful news for the players and the future of the game and RPG's as a whole.
"Ever since you installed that NetNuisance(tm) censorware package, I can no longer download the latest x-bone updates. Our VPN just went down and we've lost 3 million dollars."
I worked at a place that had one of these packages installed, which also filtered timesuck places like interplay.com, etc. The problem is it would also regularly slam me when trying to read things like hardware or software reviews that could in no way be construed as "harmful".
So, here's what you do. You write a CD ripper that extracts WAV files (or whatever lossless format you like) and twiddle the LSB of every millionth byte to make the legally acceptable "degraded" copy.
The argument that is happening here is going in circles:
1: I should be able to do what I want with CD's for my own personal use.
2: That's ridiculous. You can't Xerox(TM) a book and pass out copies on a street corner.
1: That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about making copies for my use only.
2: You criminal.
Personally, I've always understood that making any copies of copyrighted material is probably illegal, but I just don't care. I'm ripping my CD's for my use only (I don't give them away) and if someone really wants to bust me for that I guess they can go ahead and do it.
I'll take it one step further, I will be happy to make illegal copies of something long enough to evaluate it. There is so much garbage software and crappy music that I am willing to break the law temporarily to make sure I don't waste my money. OTOH, if I really do want to use something I will pay for it. My pirating friends think I'm an idiot, but my attitude is that I don't want unfairly deprive someone of money, especially MYSELF.
As long as governments continue to try to apply 19th century law (or new laws with 19th century thinking) to 21st century technology we will have these problems, and it's only going to get worse.
Perhaps the desciption of the actual device is too vague, but the part about the intent to use the device for breaking and entering isn't.
As was stated before, if you're not doing anything illegal, owning the tools (or the software) is not a crime. Proving intent is much harder than proving possession, and rightly so.
Unfortunately, the same logic is not always applied to firearms, radar detectors and many other devices that are not inherently criminal but are used by some people to commit crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
> And somehow I felt that Katz was getting ripped off when most Windows people started downloading WinZip in droves.
.ARC format, so Katz came up with a far superior format (ZIP) and proceeded to walk all over S.E.A. by making the ZIP format and the PKZIP good enough to become the de facto compression standard in the PC world for about 12 years now. The ZIP format was much more robust and PKZip was faster and compressed better that hardly anyone remembers ARC any more.
No. Katz was _not_ getting ripped off. While WinZip may not be a perfect program, it's so much better than PKZip for Windows it's not funny. It took PKWare something like 5 years to come up with a 32-bit command-line version of PKZip (which I use), and PKZip for Windows was so limited it was ridiculous. They threw away their advantage as far as I'm concerned.
However, I prefer to remember to good ol' days when S.E.A. came after Phil Katz for selling software that used the
Phil did an amazingly useful thing for the industry and deserves to be remembered for it.
Rest in Peace
Rick
That's a useful piece of information. Thanks.
But I heard a rumor once (and was never sure if there was any truth to it) that Gilette held a patent for a ceramic razor blade that would put metal blades to shame, but wouldn't license it to anyone because they didn't want to give up selling metal blades. I guess that wouldn't be possible if what you state is true.
Of course, when you're worth half a trillion dollars, money shouldn't be an object for licensing Grafitti yourself...
Assuming whoever holds the patent _wants_ to license it.
Rick
If every kid has a computer two things will happen:
1. A portion (probably large) of classroom time will be spent with the kids running "educational" software packages while the teacher sits idly by, either fuming because he or she can't properly teach the kids the 3 R's, or grinnig like a fool because he or she gets paid for doing nothing.
2. A portion (probably large) of classroom time will be spent with the kids screwing around with their computers, trying to get them to work, or playing games, or surfing the Web or whatever
The American education establishment is already rushing away from actual education and towards mindless warehousing of children for 12 years. This will only hasten that descent. If children are _educated_, they will succeed in the 21st century even if they don't see a computer until high school or later.
I never owned a computer (nor did my parents) until I bought my Commodore Amiga at age 23 and yet I was already on my way to becoming a highly paid computer programmer. Why? I had parents who went out of their way to make sure I was taught to read early and well, and made sure that my education was good quality. Furthermore, I had a great interest in computers and made do with what I could... computer labs at college, etc.
I am looking at sending my kids to Annunciation Academy in Reston, Virginia. Not only do the children not have computers, but there are no computers in the school. The school emphasizes the classical education (the trivium and quadrivium). Rather than training the students to do tasks, they are teaching the kids to LEARN and REASON.
I talked with the headmaster recently and told him I approved of the "no computers" policy despite the fact that I personally am a computer nerd par excellance as are my 4- and 6-year-old children. He said he's got fifth-graders running Web sites, and with the discipline and hard work that this school provides, I have no doubts that these children are years ahead of their peers in public schools no matter how much money the politicans throw at them.
Why do children need something (laptops) that I as a highly paid software developer am perfectly capable of doing without? It's ludicrous!
Here's my message to the schools:
Get off you lazy asses, throw away all the goofy fads and TEACH THE CHILDREN TO READ. Quit trying to replace yourself by throwing expensive toys at the kids and just do your jobs.
Ummm... I don't recall anyone calling to censor the movie, just boycott it.
Everyone has a right to free speech, no one has a "right" to be listened to.
HOWTO's are better than any software or hardware documentation I've ever seen.... especially Microsoft's!
Frodo had a lot of help from Gandalf (often working behind the scenes) as well as the other members of the Fellowship. He also had a magic sword once he reached Rivendell: Bilbo gave him Sting, as well as his suit of elven mail.
It's my understanding that one country (the UK?) legalized heroin and quickly reversed it after the number of addicts quadrupled in a short time.
I'm all for letting people do to themselves what they want, but what happens when someone screws up and overdoses? The government or insurance companies (depending on your country of origin) pays to rescue you, and of course those costs are passed on to you and me.
This is something that all the drug legalizers neglect to consider. I don't want my health insurance rates to go up because of treatment for overdoses of legal drugs (and don't tell me there wouldn't be more once the drug is legalized!).
Here's the way I see the legalizing drugs issue:
Enjoy doing what you want to your body, but when you do something stupid or dangerous, don't come crying to me to fix it.
It's simple. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful. The problem is, that it's almost impossible to "do what you want with your own body" without affecting someone else.
I'm not defending the tobacco companies in any way, but I do have a problem with the way the government is treating them.
:) ). However, tobacco makes a ton of money and is extremely popular (in no small part because it is addictive).
Tobacco use causes cancer and kills people. Nobody disagrees with that. If a new product were introduced on the market today that were one-tenth as deadly for similar reasons, the manufacturer would not only be banned from selling it, but would probably be ostracized as a corporation and compared to the Nazis (see my other post
So what the government is saying is, "Clearly you produce a poisonous product that is unequivocably dangerous to the people who use it, you have lied about its addictive effects are evil people, BUT since you are making a lot of money, we'll just look the other way as long as you give us a big cut."
To me, the government is profiting off of tobacco's success while claiming that they are opposed to what the industry is doing. In other words, they are extorting those companies because, let's face it, it's just too politically expensive to ban the product, which is the only way to really save lives.
I don't like the fact that these companies are being penalized for selling a product that is legal to sell. You can't have it both ways. But there's too much money being made for Congress to do the right thing, so they just try to skim some off the top. That sounds more like something the mob would do than a democratically-controlled government.
I cannot think of a large company that doesn't do at least one thing (usually mercilessly exploiting poor people) that would make me want to boycott them, except for the fact that I'm not ready to chuck it all and go live in the woods writing cryptic manifestos. But if something is legal, then the government should treat it as legal, if it's not then ban it and be done with it.
If, as you say, the tobacco executives are murderers, then prosecute them as such. However, If the government is willing to let tobacco be legal for the reason that this is a free country people are free to consume products they know to be dangerous, then the tobacco executives are not murderers and the government should let the companies alone.
Yes, I didn't mention the Nazis by name, but I was thinking of them. Since so many people invoke the Nazis when describing the radical right wing or the radical left wing, or anyone they don't like in general, it's become an almost meaningless perjorative. However, a lot of the things that are being pushed in our society in the last thirty years are frighteningly similar to much of what the Nazi's were doing in the 30's.
okay, gun control, state control of education, ratting out your friends and neighbors, sure, but at least we're not gassing people by the millions.
Well, let's consider:
Abortion becomes legal in 1973 and the Supreme Court decides that the definition of human being is based on the convenience or whim of the pareents of the unborn child, perhaps it's based on the level of technology or how much money you have. In any event, the definition varies from case to case and reminds me that Jews weren't considered people, and slaves weren't considered people. 27 years and something like 40 million murdered babies later, children are being aborted for having life-threatening defects, then children are being aborted for serious diseases, then children are being aborted because because the parents feel they can't afford them, then children are being aborted because they are the wrong sex.
Then we get into the whole euthanasia issue and don't tell me that the convenience (and expense!) of the relatives of some poor soul being considered for mercy killing doesn't play heavily into the decision. Euthanasia candidates quickly change from people with terminal illnesses in great pain, to people who are old and infirm to people who are just handicapped to people who are just too damn inconvenient.
Maybe it's not based on race or religion this time, but the genocide can and will continue.
Don't eat the Soylent Green.
Well said.
With respect to the Boomers:
There's the positive side of peace, love and understanding, but there was also a lot of really strong bad influences on the Boomer generation too.
Let's not forget that the communist/socialist influence of college faculties and other academics was at least as powerful as it is today. The government was moving toward socialist policies in the 60's (the Great Society, et al). Revolutionaries in the Third World were being idolized by American adolescents, most of whom had know idea who they were really admiring, and a lot of people were buying the Communist propoganda.
We had MLK marching for civil rights (who coincidently was a communist sympathizer, although he had much to admire), but we also had Hanoi Jane sitting on VC anti-aircraft guns cheering the destruction of U.S. forces.
The fact of the matter is, that the Boomer majority is starting to act like a lot of the folks they were enamored with in the 60's, and many of the things they are pushing have a lot in common with the governments of Soviet Russia, China and Nazi Germany.
Taking away guns, dumbing down education, extorting powerful industries (like tobacco), micromanagement of peoples lives through excessively complex regulation and encouraging people to rat out their friends to the Party or Thought Police or whatever you call it, were and are all tactics of totalitarian regimes the world over, and are all being pushed heavily in the U.S.
I don't think we are about to become the Britannia of George Orwell's 1984, but so many of his concepts have come to pass in the U.S. and elsewhere that it worries me. We have to remember that the good intentions of the Boomer generation are sometimes subverted by the people that influenced them in their formative years.
I think Pinkerton needs to consider the example they are setting and keep the interests of the millions of disenfranchised outcasts in proportions with the interests of a very small number of potential victims.
Good Times had technobabble that sounded believeable to the uninitiated. I don't think anyone with a whit of technical knowledge was ever fooled by it.
Rick
Well, for the Win32 API we have that, in theory. However, we all know that the documentation (or any documentation for a closed source API of this complexity) is insufficient to develop anything Microsoft is capable of developing. When I am trying to do something new with Windows, I spend far more time trying to "reverse-engineer" what the API actually does through trial-and-error than anything else.
Fortunately, MFC _does_ come with the source, otherwise it would be useless for anyone who doesn't use the highly-restrictive and unpowerful ClassWizard tool to generate code. Having the source is the only way to understand much of what goes on in MFC and to use it most effectively. Actually, my experience in effective use of MFC is systematic replacement with my own class library, no small task, but doable a piece at a time.
You're absolutely right, but given the Micros~1 track record with documentation, even when they _are_ trying to be forthright, I think they will always have an unfiar advantage. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to level the playing field, but I think investing your energy in open-source alternatives is probably the best way to change things for the better.
Of course, Microsoft could document their file formats, keep their OLE interfaces consistent from version to version, and give copious and less trivial source code examples with their development tools. Those won't fix all the problems, but it could help a lot.
Another crazy idea that they will never do is to release the source to Windows 3. It's dead, unsupported technology that still has millions of users. Micros~1 could earn lots of good will and actually help a lot of people by doing that. Furthermore, since so much of Windows 3 is still in Windows 4 (er, Windows 98), it would give developers of current code more insight into how this stuff works.
The fact remains, that no one will ever be able to compete on level ground with Micros~1 in the Windows OS territory or, to a large extent, the the office applications market, because everything is closed source. We will never be able to understand Windows as well as Microsoft can, and we will never learn the hard-won lessons of most vendors writing Windows software. Thankfully, there are projects like Mozilla to help turn the tide, but the only alternative to put power in the hands of the software developers is platform that is open source from the ground
up.
Micros~1 won a long time ago, and it's up to the software community to evolve the industry to something more mature, powerful and productive. Micros~1 wants to maintain the status quo and any meddling from the government, however well intentioned, will AT BEST fail to improve the situation.
Rick
You know, I've heard this argument quite a bit and I think it is completely wrong.
In the Microsoft world, you have thousands and thousands of barely-competent software vendors writing code for Windows. They test their code (in theory) on Microsoft Windows (and many of them _still_ ignore supporting NT).
If Microsoft's code is opened (and I think you'll see Ice Capades in the Iron city of Dis before that ever happens), suddenly you've got lots of spin-off versions of Windows... and guess what... a lot of this marginal software (including most of Microsoft's own products) will stop working.
Look at it from the 3rd party's point of view, it's already too much trouble to support Windows 98 and Windows NT for many of them... and their stuff barely works in many instances as it is.
What happens when suddenly there's RedHat Windows and AOL Windows and GNUWindows and Corel Windows... and suddenly every software vendor starts getting hundred of calls because their software crashes under Fred's-Windows-and-Video-Strip-Poker.
Don't support it? Fine. Then no one buys anything but Microsoft and then you're in the same places as you are now.
It's a wonderful thought, but Windows is so big and bloated and depends on it's own maddening complexity to work that no one could ever duplicate it.
Remember TASM's "quirks" mode to support the bugs in the MASM assembler for compatibility? Well, just think what you'd have to maintain compatibility with the _whole_ operating system.
Lighten up, Jeremy.
While the April Fool's stuff is always excessive and tedious, this is obviously humor and is even more amusing since it was published (even if it was in the WWN).
This story isn't really much different from the Good Times hoax from a few years back, and we all know how many people believed that. Just sit back and have a chuckle. I'm sure the editors of WWN do.
As always, if the story doesn't interest you, skip over it.
Rick
After last year's excrucuatingly tedious April Fool's day, you would think the guys at Slashdot would have learned a little moderation, but apparently not. I guess skipping over all these infantile pranks for one day isn't too much payment for 364 days a year of interesting material.
If anyone cares, there's a relevant article on Salon in which the above was quoted.
e n_dungeon/index.html
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/03/29/op
I seem to remember that around 1980 give or take a few years, when personal computers were starting to become affordable, a lot of people used to say things like "You could use it to store your recipes."
It sounds quaint now, in fact, it seems to be a running joke. However, it reflects two things:
One, people really _didn't_ know what personal computers would be useful for back then (except for the technophiles, and those of us who were writing games in Apple II BASIC).
Two, people were predicting a use that never came to be. I might have downloaded a recipe or two over the years, but I (nor anyone else, I imagine) would never store recipes in a computer. It doesn't make sense. It would be too hard to input all that data, and impractical to have to print one out in order to use it (unless you are one of those lucky sods with an iOpener XWindows terminal on your kitchen counter).
The point is the technology exists to easily connect any piece of electronics to the Internet, but no one has figured out why anyone would ever want to do it, and it's obvious because the marketing hype is just plain stupid.
Maybe someday, someone will figure out a killer appliation for having a refrigerator connected to the Internet (much like someone eventually wrote Electric Pencil, 1-2-3 and dBase for the PC). Until then sit back and enjoy the stupid hype of a technology in search of a non-pointless use and another example of good old American run-away consumerism at its best.
> The super-advanced 3D graphics chips in the PlayStation are cost way more than the selling price, but Sony makes it up in license fees for the games.
>Hence why Sony is attacking Bleem so ferociously
Um, assuming people aren't just outright pirating games, doesn't bleem mean that they aren't buying the underly-prices hardware and still buying the overly-priced games?
Sony has plenty of reason to be annoyed if bleem steals sales of Playstations (whether the makers of bleem are acting illegally or not is not my point), but I think your logic is backwards, since according to your statement, they lose money on the consoles but make it up on the games.
You're right.
It would be nice to assume everyone will behave like adults and I see nothing wrong with surfing on over to interplay.com for a work break if your company allows it.
Installing a filter, however poorly it works, is less work than actively monitoring what people are actually doing, so they're going to be used.
It's generally easier to treat people like children and prevent them from having to be repsonsible than to treat them like adults and require them to be responsible. Welcome to modern corporate life.
Proxomitron is an implementation of a very simple but effective concept. It filters the HTML (body as well as headers) coming in and going out.
It's only for Windows (which I use) as far as I know, but the idea should be easily implementable on any platform. The real brains are the configuration file (i.e., what tags to filter).
Sounds like a return to the old days where DM's were encouraged to pick-and-choose and modify or enhance the rules to suit their own world/audience/imagination.
After the suits took control in the mid to late 80's everything became "Oh you can't do that because it's not OFFICIAL", which we all took as the utter BS it was. It was about this time that Gary Gygax was driven out.
At least WotC are acknowledging the way everyone who's ever been involved with D&D thinks and acts anyway.
This is wonderful news for the players and the future of the game and RPG's as a whole.
I think it helps to delegitimize censorware.
Hypothetical argument to PHB:
"Ever since you installed that NetNuisance(tm) censorware package, I can no longer download the latest x-bone updates. Our VPN just went down and we've lost 3 million dollars."
I worked at a place that had one of these packages installed, which also filtered timesuck places like interplay.com, etc. The problem is it would also regularly slam me when trying to read things like hardware or software reviews that could in no way be construed as "harmful".
So, here's what you do. You write a CD ripper that extracts WAV files (or whatever lossless format you like) and twiddle the LSB of every millionth byte to make the legally acceptable "degraded" copy.
The argument that is happening here is going in circles:
1: I should be able to do what I want with CD's for my own personal use.
2: That's ridiculous. You can't Xerox(TM) a book and pass out copies on a street corner.
1: That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about making copies for my use only.
2: You criminal.
Personally, I've always understood that making any copies of copyrighted material is probably illegal, but I just don't care. I'm ripping my CD's for my use only (I don't give them away) and if someone really wants to bust me for that I guess they can go ahead and do it.
I'll take it one step further, I will be happy to make illegal copies of something long enough to evaluate it. There is so much garbage software and crappy music that I am willing to break the law temporarily to make sure I don't waste my money. OTOH, if I really do want to use something I will pay for it. My pirating friends think I'm an idiot, but my attitude is that I don't want unfairly deprive someone of money, especially MYSELF.
As long as governments continue to try to apply 19th century law (or new laws with 19th century thinking) to 21st century technology we will have these problems, and it's only going to get worse.
Perhaps the desciption of the actual device is too vague, but the part about the intent to use the device for breaking and entering isn't.
As was stated before, if you're not doing anything illegal, owning the tools (or the software) is not a crime. Proving intent is much harder than proving possession, and rightly so.
Unfortunately, the same logic is not always applied to firearms, radar detectors and many other devices that are not inherently criminal but are used by some people to commit crimes.