Quit whining - it's a web site article. Somebody read your submission, and somebody else read this one. Grow up. Are you more concerned with the article's content or getting credit for reading it??
I've always argued that it doesn't really have to matter to Linux users if MS survives, grow, shrinks, or starts breeding monkeys. We're using Linux because we see the benefits to it, we get faster internet connections (at least I've noticed with my cable modem), we have much more attractive desktops and are not faced with AOL "free trial" icons every time we install new software, we don't have to reboot all the time or pay for expensive software, and we have much more secure systems.
Linux doesn't look at software as an industry. The idea behind it is that we can use it if we want, for no charge. If operating systems were parks, Linux would let you bring your dog, move a picnic table, have a cookout, even invite 200 of your closest friends for a party on its lawn. Windows would charge $250 at the entrance or $90 if you could prove you'd been there before (and there's only one entrance in the Windows park, if you don't count the holes), only one of you could be in at a time, you couldn't move anything, or look too closely at the grass, and if you tried to have too much fun it would freeze and you'd land on your ass outside the fence.
That's the best analogy I could come up with. But you see, it doesn't matter if your boss wants to use MS software. So use it, that's what they pay you for. If you can convince him/her of the benefits of a Linux solution, then that's great for your company, but that's as far as it goes. Even if 99% of the world uses Windows, Linux won't die, because it's not dependant on sales -- it's made by people who want to use it, not by people who get a check every time somebody else uses it.
Yeah, it sucks that they're raising prices before the six month contract even ends. But then again, $50 for an ISP that lets you run your own servers isn't bad.
Now think about this: which is worse, paying $10/month more for a service, or having your ISP go out of business (like most DSL providers have been)? You are then dealing with downtime shopping for a new provider and then waiting 45+ days to get service with a new provider and a new contract and a new IP and not knowing anything about the new company.
A 25% increase in revenue for Earthlink from its current subscribers is probably enough to save them if they were in trouble (which they probably were if they had to raise prices). And if you're using DSL for business purposes, then the downtime would cost you a lot more than $50 per month.
What does one do if one has the legal right to reverse engineer IE? I do, and it has been upheld on appeal to the Supreme Court of the US.
MS can do little to stop me in the courts. Even better, I have the cash on hand to pay off anything MS might win in...
So you've gotten the rights to reverse-engineer the source code of a company more powerful than the US, faced off against them in the supreme court and won, and you're loaded with cash, but you can't afford a slashdot username?
I think if you want people to take you seriously you're going to have to reveal your identity, and maybe provide us with a hyperlink to your supreme court victory (I would think any/. poster would have submitted the story himself if he had won in the Supreme Court against MS). But at least you're not posting goatsex links.
Don't get me wrong, I support free speech, but this wall isn't free speech so much as it is a place to leave a temporary message. According to the FAQ:
There are two ways in which a private citizen may respond to something they don't like on the chalkboard. They may either write a response stating why they don't like what they see or, they may clean all or part of the slate. In addition, regardless of what is on it, the slate will be cleaned by maintenance staff on a regularly scheduled basis. Thus, everything placed on the monument is temporary.
The whole thing seems more like an art exhibit than a public place for free speech. And frankly, it isn't all that exciting.
How can we trust his knowledge of the net...
on
Congress@Work
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· Score: 1
How can we trust his knowledge of the net when he doesn't even have an email address?
If you want to complain to him, you'll have to use the old fashioned methods listed on his barely-functional web site:
Felix J. Grucci, Jr.
31 West Main Street, Suite 306
Patchogue, New York 11772
Phone: (631) 758-4600
Fax: (631) 758-6776
Now, if he doesn't have an email address, isn't he surfing the net anonymously? That is, if he has ever surfed the net... Either way, this guy is making completely uninformed decisions, and hopefully all the/.ers in his district will be sure to complain to him. Hell, I think I'll go to my local library and complain to him anonymously.
I'm curious - how much code do you have to incorporate before it is subject to licenses? Obviously, copying int c; from a GPL'd program shouldn't count, and a feature to filter email should count, but where do we draw the line? Sorting algorithms? Constructor functions? How about an entire class with a few methods? What if a programmer creates a new class from scratch, but uses the same internal variable names? To enforce a policy like the GPL, we need to know how to differentiate between copying somebody else's code, and using the same algorithm (maybe with different variable names). Can a big company look at the source code from GPL'd software and tackle the problem in the same way but altered slightly for the particular situation?
You paid your $25 for "Schindler's List," you took it home, you're color blind. You want to use DeCSS to download it and change the pickles from blue to green so you can see it better. Cant' do that, can't use DeCSS to do that.
I have to watch that movie again. I totally missed the whole blue pickle scene...
And isn't its ability to change the color of pickles considered "fair use" for DeCSS?
It can't require a programming language to be considered a computer - what about buying a complete system with an empty HD and no included software? It's still a computer, but no language. Maybe including a language is one of many possible requirements. I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
My (possibly wrong) understanding was that you can charge for the product when it's delivered on some sort of media (like a boxed version of RedHat) but it has be available free somehow (like an ftp site). So Sony charging $200 for their kit, including HD and ethernet and the media and a colorful box and shrinkwrap is fine, but they should somehow offer the software aspect free somehow, like ISO's on an anonymous ftp site.
Given that, I'll still buy the kit, because it'll be easier to get the hard drive and ethernet that way and I'll pay Sony for their work in porting the OS to a new platform. But when the next release of PSLinux (or whatever the distro will be called, I can't read Japanese) comes out, I'll probably just download and burn the ISO files.
And their are a lot of "Offtopic" moderations going on here for what I would consider "Ontopic" posts. Has the power fallen into the wrong hands?
If it's like previous RH distros, you can boot from the CD and select the "upgrade" option. I've never done an upgrade that way, but I've seen the option for a few versions of Red Hat and they have all included the option to upgrade.
The web site they set up is actually fairly humorous, even if the animations are full of Office XP plugs (http://www.officeclippy.com/). The mouseovers on the left are worth checking out, too - you know something is big when Microsoft web pages say "All your base are belong to us"! And plenty of bleeped-out swearing in the shockwave animations... But why does Gilbert Gottfried still get work?
The morals of the story:
For once, M$ has gone the way of humor and entertainment over crappy politically-correct propaganda.
"All your base are belong to us" is almost famous enough now that I can say it as a joke, rather than just type it to an audience of hard-core geeks.
Microsoft is showing some respect for Macromedia - using their product, instead of coming up with "Visual Flash" which would have become bundled with Windows XP, been incompatible with Macromedia Flash, required the use of an overly-bloated-and-filled-with-useless-eye-candy media player (say Windows Media Player 7), and crashed repeatedly, bringing down the whole OS. I had Windows ME installed on my home machine until I realized I couldn't get rid of Media Player 7. The next copy of Windows I use will not contain that program.
I'm still not going to buy it, I would still be using Office 97 if 2000 hadn't mysteriously landed on my desk at work one day.
Gilbert Gottfried needs to be eliminated. I was hoping Hollywood Squares could take care of that, but somebody keeps watching it.
That wasn't insightful! Who modded this?? No conspiracy, just people who don't care about putting out good code.
Re:And that's only with a little bit of filtering
on
Napster Traffic Drops
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· Score: 1
If they had tried to charge for the service, as they said, who wants to guess as to the drop?
There is not a direct link between the two. In our curent situation, you have no choice, you can't download a filtered song (at least in theory, I haven't tried). If they charge, then there is a clear option for getting that music with the record company's blessings. Not that their blessings are a concern to me, but it might entice some people. 60% for filtering doesn't mean an even smaller population will pay for the service without filtering.
With Microsoft and the incident with their so-called 'trade secrets' Slashdot fought to the end to keep those comments up. I just am wondering why is this time different?
I think it's different this time because/. is choosing its battles, and choosing them wisely. Maybe they could win this scientology thing, but what would they win? The right to keep a comment about scientology up, while hundreds of other sites carry the info already.
Any time you fight something in court, you've got to make sure it's worth winning. Does/. want to spend money and time for this? I doubt it. I think it was a very intelligent decision, one not based on emotion. The "winner" gets to spend a lot of money and have a scientology quote on his web site.
Does anybody know what the average amount an artist makes per copy of an album? By average artist, I mean the ones we hear on the radio, the ones who get their music frequently downloaded on Napster.
I think they make at most $0.25 per album if they're on one of the big five labels. So for an album with 12-13 songs, each song gets them two cents. Which would mean that in the worst case scenario (the scenario that the RIAA is assuming) every song on my computer is causing the artists to lose two cents. Not the individual artists, the whole band, so in a five-piece group, they're losing 0.4 cents per song. My collection is robbing the artists I listen to a total of $30.50, then. Actually, about 75% of the songs were ripped from CD's I bought, but for the sake of arugment here let's pretend I got them all from Napster.
I've since bought several albums based on the fact that I could listen to the artists' music first and see if I liked them. For example, I had never heard of the Brand New Heavies until my friend came over and downloaded a few of their songs. I have since bought two of their albums because I knew what songs were on them. Same thing goes for Jaco Pastorius, Pancho Sanchez, and Jimmy Smith. I downloaded a bunch of Grateful Dead songs and then bought a few albums based on which of those songs I liked best. And I can't be the only person out there who has done this.
But how can these artists make back the $30? Well, I plan on going to see a few groups when they come to town. That costs me $30-$50 per ticket, and maybe the band gets a couple dollars from that. Maybe more, but that's a conservative estimate. If I "stole" two albums first to see if I liked the music ($0.50) then went to see them play once, they'll make $2.50 more because of Napster and it's variants.
Once again, let's review:
I take $0.50 from the artists by getting their music from Napster. (musicians at -$0.50)
I may buy an album based on the music, artists get $0.25, but maybe not. (musicians still at -$0.50)
I will probably go to their show when they come to town, unless it's sold out - they make $3.00 from my ticket. (musicians at $2.50)
The record company doesn't make any money here except maybe royalties from the concert, but then again it didn't cost them anything for me to get the music off Napster. At worst, they break even.
This model is not going to disappear because of the RIAA. It's too big. The only people who stand to lose are the record companies, not the artists. And I don't even think they will lose, unless they keep angering the public (their customers). If they die off, it'll be from their own PR, not from P2P.
Ahh... antialiased icon... much better
on
Announcing PHP-GTK
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· Score: 1
Glad/. fixed the image for PHP.
And in order to not get modded down, I just have to say that this is not necessarily a Good Thing(tm), but certainly not a Bad Thing(tm). How could the world be hurt by the introduction of another alternative?
Worst case scenario is that it never gets used, nobody paid money for the install, and the PHP gang gets back to web-based stuff. The world would be no worse off than if this was never tried in the first place.
I just don't see why people are complaining about this! It's not like you're going to have to use it, even if it is successful!
While I don't have a problem with a book focusing on the West Coast, I wonder if there's a good resource for the history of Commodore? I had a C64, then an Amiga 2000 before resorting to a 486 in the early 90s, and was sad to see Commodore lose more and more market share. I lived through that history, cheering for the underdog all the way, but I'd love to read somebody else's account of it.
If Blizzard wanted the title, they should have started making the movie sooner.
Yeah, I would have thought of the video game first, but then again, that's what trailers are for! Tell the audience what the name means. And I would assume that New Line isn't using Blizzard's style of flaming text (although I haven't checked that out to confirm it) so it looks like they're using a word that could lead consumers to think it was something different than it actually is. Kinda like Reservoir Dogs (no dogs in the movie!) or The Grapes of Wrath (those grapes were pretty apathetic about the world around them, weren't they?).
Besides, if Blizzard wants to make a movie, what's wrong with calling it Tristram, or something else related to the game? I mean, many times in history people have found that the name/title they wanted was taken, so they came up with another name! No big problem, the name is not what makes the movie/band/game/whatever. Except for sequels.
I'd rather it be Netscape. Not because I like Microsoft, but because IE is a better browser. I used to use Netscape exclusively until I stopped ignoring all the annoyances (mainly how much slower it is - and NS6 is even worse!) and realized I may as well go with what works.
As a web designer, also, I run into a lot of cross-browser compatibility issues. Usually the code is smaller easier to read on IE. Ever notice how an input box will be one size on IE and different on Netscape? Now try explaining this to your CEO who uses IE, and wants to make the "Contact Us" input fields line up perfectly with the company letterhead at the top of the page (part of that issue is dependent on the web in general, but it would still be easier if input size=25 meant the same thing on all browsers).
A single web browser would make things easier, but IE's not the one. I think browser makers would be better off trying to conform to IE's DOM and features (why is Netscape still not using document.all[]?) if they want people to use their browsers. I hate the fact that MS defies the standards whenver possible (remember Visual J++?) but it's a big company and sometimes the best way to compete with a company like that is to mimic the feature set. Until a sleek, powerful, open-source, cross-platform, unbloated, fast, and mature (sorry Mozilla) browser comes out, though, I want to see fellow web designers respect their users' right to choose browsers. Yeah, it's more work to make pages compatible with more than one browser setup, but buck up! It's your damn job! Do it!
You've got the wrong approach...
on
What is 'IT'?
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· Score: 1
To figure this out, we have to look at the acronym. IT.
I could stand for Invisible, Infrared, Intergalactic, Interoffice, Internet, Incredible, Industrial, Illiterate, Immediate, Inverted, etc.
T could stand for Traffic, Turkey, Tampon, Turbine, Trip, Telethon, Turtle, Trampoline, Thermometer, etc.
So, by powers of deduction, I predict that we are either on the verge of using Intergalactic Trampolines for super-fast space travel, or Invisible Tampons (Bezos' laugh was probably more of a suprised yelp when it was demonstrated on him).
I can also see excellent reasons why people might not be allowed to use either of these items.
Here's the section that I guess would prohibit viewing porn:
7.1.2 post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, indecent, profane, hateful, bigoted or otherwise objectionable information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions, constituting or encouraging, conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law, including without limitation U.S. export control laws and regulations;
If you request a porn page, it's being transmitted by your request. Notice it's wrong if it violates any local law, not necessarily the one for where you live.
Here's quote from the CNN article (which is a quote of the original report) that I found interesting, complete with my translations:
"Whoever stole proprietary secrets [
looked at source code] at the heart of the ubiquitous Windows program [it's surprising that this unreleased OS is already ubiquitous, or maybe this is magic source code that automatically recompiles all copies of Windows... but I digress] can [interpret that snippet of source code, understand its context, classes and general structure and purpose, and find big wide security openings that the programmers, who wrote the code themselves didn't see, letting them] hack into any PC in the world that uses it [it being the yet-to-be released operating system] and is connected to the Internet," the report states.
Now I don't program too much, but the source code I have looked at required a lot of examining to find out what the functions do, where these constant variables came from and what they mean, what this class means, and so on. And something tells me it would be difficult for a hacker to understand any one part of the Windows source code, especially since s/he wouldn't have access to all the source code (they don't keep all the source in one nfs, obviously). Then on top of that, the hacker has to add his/her own little hack that knows the name of the class to instantiate, how to contact the internet from within Windows code (which I doubt all that information was contained in the same location in the network) and then leave the source code there, with the new hack glaring at any programmer who looks at it (especially since all info has to be hard-coded in there).
I don't mind not using Windows because I don't trust its security, but this seems like a little bit too much. If you want to credibly bash Windows, don't overexaggerate problems like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Quit whining - it's a web site article. Somebody read your submission, and somebody else read this one. Grow up. Are you more concerned with the article's content or getting credit for reading it??
Good call, I'd mod you up if I had the points.
But I don't, sadly...
I've always argued that it doesn't really have to matter to Linux users if MS survives, grow, shrinks, or starts breeding monkeys. We're using Linux because we see the benefits to it, we get faster internet connections (at least I've noticed with my cable modem), we have much more attractive desktops and are not faced with AOL "free trial" icons every time we install new software, we don't have to reboot all the time or pay for expensive software, and we have much more secure systems.
Linux doesn't look at software as an industry. The idea behind it is that we can use it if we want, for no charge. If operating systems were parks, Linux would let you bring your dog, move a picnic table, have a cookout, even invite 200 of your closest friends for a party on its lawn. Windows would charge $250 at the entrance or $90 if you could prove you'd been there before (and there's only one entrance in the Windows park, if you don't count the holes), only one of you could be in at a time, you couldn't move anything, or look too closely at the grass, and if you tried to have too much fun it would freeze and you'd land on your ass outside the fence.
That's the best analogy I could come up with. But you see, it doesn't matter if your boss wants to use MS software. So use it, that's what they pay you for. If you can convince him/her of the benefits of a Linux solution, then that's great for your company, but that's as far as it goes. Even if 99% of the world uses Windows, Linux won't die, because it's not dependant on sales -- it's made by people who want to use it, not by people who get a check every time somebody else uses it.
Beep ... beep ... beep ... beeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....
Nurse: Doctor! We're losing him!
Doctor: No, the heart monitor just BSOD'ed... reboot.
Yeah, it sucks that they're raising prices before the six month contract even ends. But then again, $50 for an ISP that lets you run your own servers isn't bad.
Now think about this: which is worse, paying $10/month more for a service, or having your ISP go out of business (like most DSL providers have been)? You are then dealing with downtime shopping for a new provider and then waiting 45+ days to get service with a new provider and a new contract and a new IP and not knowing anything about the new company.
A 25% increase in revenue for Earthlink from its current subscribers is probably enough to save them if they were in trouble (which they probably were if they had to raise prices). And if you're using DSL for business purposes, then the downtime would cost you a lot more than $50 per month.
So you've gotten the rights to reverse-engineer the source code of a company more powerful than the US, faced off against them in the supreme court and won, and you're loaded with cash, but you can't afford a slashdot username?
I think if you want people to take you seriously you're going to have to reveal your identity, and maybe provide us with a hyperlink to your supreme court victory (I would think any /. poster would have submitted the story himself if he had won in the Supreme Court against MS). But at least you're not posting goatsex links.
Don't get me wrong, I support free speech, but this wall isn't free speech so much as it is a place to leave a temporary message. According to the FAQ:
The whole thing seems more like an art exhibit than a public place for free speech. And frankly, it isn't all that exciting.
How can we trust his knowledge of the net when he doesn't even have an email address?
If you want to complain to him, you'll have to use the old fashioned methods listed on his barely-functional web site:
31 West Main Street, Suite 306
Patchogue, New York 11772
Phone: (631) 758-4600
Fax: (631) 758-6776
Now, if he doesn't have an email address, isn't he surfing the net anonymously? That is, if he has ever surfed the net... Either way, this guy is making completely uninformed decisions, and hopefully all the /.ers in his district will be sure to complain to him. Hell, I think I'll go to my local library and complain to him anonymously.
I'm curious - how much code do you have to incorporate before it is subject to licenses? Obviously, copying int c; from a GPL'd program shouldn't count, and a feature to filter email should count, but where do we draw the line? Sorting algorithms? Constructor functions? How about an entire class with a few methods? What if a programmer creates a new class from scratch, but uses the same internal variable names? To enforce a policy like the GPL, we need to know how to differentiate between copying somebody else's code, and using the same algorithm (maybe with different variable names). Can a big company look at the source code from GPL'd software and tackle the problem in the same way but altered slightly for the particular situation?
I have to watch that movie again. I totally missed the whole blue pickle scene...
And isn't its ability to change the color of pickles considered "fair use" for DeCSS?
It can't require a programming language to be considered a computer - what about buying a complete system with an empty HD and no included software? It's still a computer, but no language. Maybe including a language is one of many possible requirements. I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
My (possibly wrong) understanding was that you can charge for the product when it's delivered on some sort of media (like a boxed version of RedHat) but it has be available free somehow (like an ftp site). So Sony charging $200 for their kit, including HD and ethernet and the media and a colorful box and shrinkwrap is fine, but they should somehow offer the software aspect free somehow, like ISO's on an anonymous ftp site.
Given that, I'll still buy the kit, because it'll be easier to get the hard drive and ethernet that way and I'll pay Sony for their work in porting the OS to a new platform. But when the next release of PSLinux (or whatever the distro will be called, I can't read Japanese) comes out, I'll probably just download and burn the ISO files.
And their are a lot of "Offtopic" moderations going on here for what I would consider "Ontopic" posts. Has the power fallen into the wrong hands?
If it's like previous RH distros, you can boot from the CD and select the "upgrade" option. I've never done an upgrade that way, but I've seen the option for a few versions of Red Hat and they have all included the option to upgrade.
The web site they set up is actually fairly humorous, even if the animations are full of Office XP plugs (http://www.officeclippy.com/). The mouseovers on the left are worth checking out, too - you know something is big when Microsoft web pages say "All your base are belong to us"! And plenty of bleeped-out swearing in the shockwave animations... But why does Gilbert Gottfried still get work?
The morals of the story:
That wasn't insightful! Who modded this?? No conspiracy, just people who don't care about putting out good code.
There is not a direct link between the two. In our curent situation, you have no choice, you can't download a filtered song (at least in theory, I haven't tried). If they charge, then there is a clear option for getting that music with the record company's blessings. Not that their blessings are a concern to me, but it might entice some people. 60% for filtering doesn't mean an even smaller population will pay for the service without filtering.
I think it's different this time because /. is choosing its battles, and choosing them wisely. Maybe they could win this scientology thing, but what would they win? The right to keep a comment about scientology up, while hundreds of other sites carry the info already.
Any time you fight something in court, you've got to make sure it's worth winning. Does /. want to spend money and time for this? I doubt it. I think it was a very intelligent decision, one not based on emotion. The "winner" gets to spend a lot of money and have a scientology quote on his web site.
Does anybody know what the average amount an artist makes per copy of an album? By average artist, I mean the ones we hear on the radio, the ones who get their music frequently downloaded on Napster.
I think they make at most $0.25 per album if they're on one of the big five labels. So for an album with 12-13 songs, each song gets them two cents. Which would mean that in the worst case scenario (the scenario that the RIAA is assuming) every song on my computer is causing the artists to lose two cents. Not the individual artists, the whole band, so in a five-piece group, they're losing 0.4 cents per song. My collection is robbing the artists I listen to a total of $30.50, then. Actually, about 75% of the songs were ripped from CD's I bought, but for the sake of arugment here let's pretend I got them all from Napster.
I've since bought several albums based on the fact that I could listen to the artists' music first and see if I liked them. For example, I had never heard of the Brand New Heavies until my friend came over and downloaded a few of their songs. I have since bought two of their albums because I knew what songs were on them. Same thing goes for Jaco Pastorius, Pancho Sanchez, and Jimmy Smith. I downloaded a bunch of Grateful Dead songs and then bought a few albums based on which of those songs I liked best. And I can't be the only person out there who has done this.
But how can these artists make back the $30? Well, I plan on going to see a few groups when they come to town. That costs me $30-$50 per ticket, and maybe the band gets a couple dollars from that. Maybe more, but that's a conservative estimate. If I "stole" two albums first to see if I liked the music ($0.50) then went to see them play once, they'll make $2.50 more because of Napster and it's variants.
Once again, let's review:
This model is not going to disappear because of the RIAA. It's too big. The only people who stand to lose are the record companies, not the artists. And I don't even think they will lose, unless they keep angering the public (their customers). If they die off, it'll be from their own PR, not from P2P.
Glad /. fixed the image for PHP.
And in order to not get modded down, I just have to say that this is not necessarily a Good Thing(tm), but certainly not a Bad Thing(tm). How could the world be hurt by the introduction of another alternative?
Worst case scenario is that it never gets used, nobody paid money for the install, and the PHP gang gets back to web-based stuff. The world would be no worse off than if this was never tried in the first place.
I just don't see why people are complaining about this! It's not like you're going to have to use it, even if it is successful!
While I don't have a problem with a book focusing on the West Coast, I wonder if there's a good resource for the history of Commodore? I had a C64, then an Amiga 2000 before resorting to a 486 in the early 90s, and was sad to see Commodore lose more and more market share. I lived through that history, cheering for the underdog all the way, but I'd love to read somebody else's account of it.
Or in the humor category?
Actually, there should be a new category for crazy lawsuits like this.
I'm just glad the makers of Civilizations haven't sued the textbook makers for using their word to describe ancient people.
Yeah, I would have thought of the video game first, but then again, that's what trailers are for! Tell the audience what the name means. And I would assume that New Line isn't using Blizzard's style of flaming text (although I haven't checked that out to confirm it) so it looks like they're using a word that could lead consumers to think it was something different than it actually is. Kinda like Reservoir Dogs (no dogs in the movie!) or The Grapes of Wrath (those grapes were pretty apathetic about the world around them, weren't they?).
Besides, if Blizzard wants to make a movie, what's wrong with calling it Tristram, or something else related to the game? I mean, many times in history people have found that the name/title they wanted was taken, so they came up with another name! No big problem, the name is not what makes the movie/band/game/whatever. Except for sequels.
I'd rather it be Netscape. Not because I like Microsoft, but because IE is a better browser. I used to use Netscape exclusively until I stopped ignoring all the annoyances (mainly how much slower it is - and NS6 is even worse!) and realized I may as well go with what works.
As a web designer, also, I run into a lot of cross-browser compatibility issues. Usually the code is smaller easier to read on IE. Ever notice how an input box will be one size on IE and different on Netscape? Now try explaining this to your CEO who uses IE, and wants to make the "Contact Us" input fields line up perfectly with the company letterhead at the top of the page (part of that issue is dependent on the web in general, but it would still be easier if input size=25 meant the same thing on all browsers).
A single web browser would make things easier, but IE's not the one. I think browser makers would be better off trying to conform to IE's DOM and features (why is Netscape still not using document.all[]?) if they want people to use their browsers. I hate the fact that MS defies the standards whenver possible (remember Visual J++?) but it's a big company and sometimes the best way to compete with a company like that is to mimic the feature set. Until a sleek, powerful, open-source, cross-platform, unbloated, fast, and mature (sorry Mozilla) browser comes out, though, I want to see fellow web designers respect their users' right to choose browsers. Yeah, it's more work to make pages compatible with more than one browser setup, but buck up! It's your damn job! Do it!
To figure this out, we have to look at the acronym.
IT.
I could stand for Invisible, Infrared, Intergalactic, Interoffice, Internet, Incredible, Industrial, Illiterate, Immediate, Inverted, etc.
T could stand for Traffic, Turkey, Tampon, Turbine, Trip, Telethon, Turtle, Trampoline, Thermometer, etc.
So, by powers of deduction, I predict that we are either on the verge of using Intergalactic Trampolines for super-fast space travel, or Invisible Tampons (Bezos' laugh was probably more of a suprised yelp when it was demonstrated on him).
I can also see excellent reasons why people might not be allowed to use either of these items.
Here's the section that I guess would prohibit viewing porn:
7.1.2 post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, indecent, profane, hateful, bigoted or otherwise objectionable information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions, constituting or encouraging, conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law, including without limitation U.S. export control laws and regulations;
If you request a porn page, it's being transmitted by your request. Notice it's wrong if it violates any local law, not necessarily the one for where you live.
Now I don't program too much, but the source code I have looked at required a lot of examining to find out what the functions do, where these constant variables came from and what they mean, what this class means, and so on. And something tells me it would be difficult for a hacker to understand any one part of the Windows source code, especially since s/he wouldn't have access to all the source code (they don't keep all the source in one nfs, obviously). Then on top of that, the hacker has to add his/her own little hack that knows the name of the class to instantiate, how to contact the internet from within Windows code (which I doubt all that information was contained in the same location in the network) and then leave the source code there, with the new hack glaring at any programmer who looks at it (especially since all info has to be hard-coded in there).
I don't mind not using Windows because I don't trust its security, but this seems like a little bit too much. If you want to credibly bash Windows, don't overexaggerate problems like this.