Because the courts have determined that tracking who checks out what has a "chilling effect" on free speech. Would you check out that book on impotence or incontinence if you knew that the librarian was going to look up your partron history and tell the rest of the community about your problems?
And what about that copy of Das Kapital you borrowed, or that Mein Kampf? That might get Ashcroft's attention.
Is any of this getting through? Your first amendment right to free speech means that you have access to an unfettered range of opinions to consult in your life, and it's nobody's place (well definitely not the DA's place) to decide that becuase you rented Demolition Man and haven't returned Catcher in the Rye, you're a "person of interest."
You might argue that "if i'm innocent i've got nothing to hide" but with the laws in place today, mere presumption is enough to get you sent away, on "secret" evidence that would compromise "national security" so you never even know what you're charged with! Face it, scrutinizing people's lives by tracking their every move, looking for "disturbing trends" among the general populous is a Gestapo tactic. We should not be investigating the average person in America unless they've actually performed some action to warrant further scrutiny. Feeding your head at the local library should not be taken as "proof" or "suspicion" of anything whatsoever.
What exactly is Microsoft steering the desktop towards? Who wants or needs more digital media integration in the OS? I can see some uses for a home computer, if they're trying to go the Entertainment Center route. My guess is that in 2005 or whenever it will STILL be easier to burn the video you want to watch onto a DVD or video CD and pop it in your DVD player. I have a s-video cable running from my 'puter to the TV now, and it works, but its kind of a pain in the ass, and the solution doesn't lie in tweaking the OS, it's more like a remote control device such as the one that came with my TV capture card which I haven't bothered to program since it's just a lot easier to get up off the couch and double-click the matrix icon in my Kazaa folder.
But what use, if any, does this digital media integration have in Microsoft's largest market, the business world? I can see that maybe PowerPoint presentations will become spiffier, with video footage spliced in and stuff, but that doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the OS. And beyond that, most people are NEVER going to put AV segments in their powerpoint presentations. It's cool at first but the bloom quickly fades. So, my question is: How do any of these digtial media enhancements actually enhance Windows, how do the ADD VALUE to the product, what kind of USEFUL functionality will they provide? Very little if you ask me.
It seems to me that they should be more focused on building a better mousetrap, not adding niche features to a rickety mousetrap. For example, if I'm playing Enemy Territory in 800x600 and my desktop res is at 1024x768, and I ctrl-shirt-esc to jump out to the desktop to queue up more songs in Winamp, I can't see winamp because my screen in still in 800x600 and winamp is in the lower right corner, off the screen. And you can't alt-tab to it either. Now maybe that's winamp's fault, but something like switching between apps is what a OS is supposed to be good at, and I can't do it, so I don't really give a rat's ass about a more integrated digital multimedia experience if I can't even perform a simple act like listening to my MP3s while fragging nubs!
You want to use the mini-helicopter as radar detector? Come on, you can do better that that! How about loading one up with Anthrax spores and buzzing the set of the Today Show. Now that's entertainment!
I believe that snippet is from the Java license which is tacked on to the end of the Microsoft license. It may not be there anymore; I haven't read the MS EULA in a while. It says don't use Java for mission-critical apps such as life support equipment in hospitals, nuclear power plants, air traffic control, and so on.
Interstingly enough, back in the day I was running trouble tickets at mitre.org. One of their projects is a thing called CAASD, which will network together air traffic control systems from around the globe. One memorable call was to help some uber-geek who was too much of a coder to figure out how to use Eudora on his Mac... anyway, he was busily typing away, coding some part of this CAASD project...in Java.
to understand what is in our oceans, how they work and what effects we are having on them.
The oceans certainly contain many great mysteries. However, the effect we're having on it is pretty clear: destroy and degrade it with pollution. Algae blooms, dying coral, overfishing. We are slowly killing/pillaging the oceans, which doesn't seem to bother anyone enough to stop doing it. (Though occasionally we decide to do it less.) Hey, we don't live there anymore, not our problem!
Ahem, perhaps someone should have thougnt of this sort of thing *before* deploying 75,000 workstations?
It's not like viruses are new. Michelangelo was like what, 20 years ago? (Actually I just looked it up and it was 1992. Which is around 500 BC in computer years.)
It sounds to me like you're understaffed and overworked. Nobody gives a flying fuck so long as your stock is doin' well. God Bless America!
making a general alert -- while maybe not the best thing to do (a private note to the owner would always be a better idea) -- still doesn't amount to anything more than commentary on a situation. And just because the shop owner could not fix the situation himself, does not make you responsible for the situation itself. Not so long ago, the newspapers here ran a story saying there were only a handful of sherriff's (sp?) deputies in a particular county. The obvious implication is that it's a great place to commit crimes.
What they didn't do, which is where I think the line should be drawn, is tell you what the deputy's work schedules are, days off, locations of police stations, etc. Now, you can find out all that information on your own, but providing a "cookbook" for crime is not the right thing to do.
The Grey Man theory comes into play in these issues too. Speaking out is a sure way to get some attention... in this case negative attention. Rather than spam all the customers, the smarter thing would have been to post the 'sploit on BugTraq or some other generally accepted venue for such a discussion. He probably would have been spared if he hadn't become so personally and directly involved with his former employer.
That being said, the bigger problem is that these "crimes" seem to be arbitrarily selected by the feds for prosecution. People get the book thrown at them, slammed in jail, but we (the techie 31337) don't really know if speaking out is going to be protected and weclomed, or get Ashcroft's panties in a bunch. What if someone spoke out about vulnerabilites in the power grid, to use a relevant example? If the New York Times does it, they're probably safe. If a disgruntled engineer does it, he's probably a terrorist. It's definitely getting chilly in America.
The most mixed-up metaphor that I can think of is: The Emperor has no clothes, and a pet ostrich to boot. Got a problem with that? Here come the brownshirts.
Canadian Water = Good for America Canadian Lumber = Bad for America
One thing I really like about the current administration is when they come up with economic policies that can be easily explained to a six-year-old. It's a real timesaver, and much simpler than the "voodoo economics" of administrations past!
In America, we draw the line at.50 cal machine guns. Somehow, I dont' quite see a modchip being quite on par with a gun that is typically used to render industrial equipment functionless.
I love how these capitalists love to push schemes like privatisation of drinking water, even though none of them would ever live in a country with a privatised water suppply.
Here in America, we've got NAFTA, and it's not much better. Well, it's better than being in Iraq, but I swear, Democracy is flourishing at home, too!
It seems to me like this will get more companies brought into court for using MS products. I imagine huge armies of lawyers engaging MS on as many fronts as possible, and like leeches (or ticks maybe) slowly draining the 30 billion or so in cash that MS has around via an all-out war of attrition.
It would be harder to pin the blame on a company when it had to defend itself, but basically this way you're engaging MS legal directly with a lawsuit such as this. Clearly this is supposed to provide companies a warm fuzzy, one they won't get with that Linux product and its troubled IP roots. But I don't think it will work out for MS in the long run.
You should just start publishing a bunch of anti-abortion pieces in the legalese trade rags, and then G.W. Bush will nominate you for at least a Federal judgeship, and possibly a Justice of The Supreme Court.
if you're not producing a profit, and you're causing U.S. companies to lose money, why should the U.S. continue to allow you to do business with us?
Hmmm. Let's outlaw the U.S. Post Office then. Seriously, does this bit of extremism apply to U.S. companies that aren't turning a profit, and competing with other U.S. companies? Or just foreign companies?
For that matter, what makes a U.S. company a U.S. company? Most of the big corps are technically out of The Bahamas or similar countries who've found a nice little niche by shielding companies from the tax men of the countries in which they do business.
I'm no economist, but I think it's pretty obvious that whatever governmental assistance Seoul provides Hynix is pretty much being met tit-for-tat, and then some, with this tarriff. Not surprising that Washington would choose this tactic, though, since they've already imposed tarriffs on Canadian lumber and European steel. While these tarriffs certainly protect American jobs, a cynical view is that the imposition of these tarriffs is not so much about protecting our economy, it's more about protecting electoral votes in Pennsylvania. Though that argument doesn't make a lot of sense when applied to Washington timber. It does make sense in Micron's home state(s) of Idaho (and Virgina, after acquisition of Toshiba's facilities there).
Political cynicism aside, one thing I did learn (Bueller? Bueller?) is that the Hawley-Smoot Tarriff Act was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and led to the Great Depression. Is saving the White House worth a repeat of that?
Finally, you end with the statement "It's hard enough dealing with domestic competitors..." Which domestic competitors are you talking about? Who else makes DRAM in the USA? I was under the impression that Micron was it.
To sum up: I guess we should go ahead and slap a huge tarriff on Airbus as well! Because surely the American consumer will benefit when Boeing, protected by exorbitant tarriffs, can charge the airlines whatever they please for a new 737.
If a company commits massive financial fixing of numbers, lies to the SEC, shareholder fraud, etc (e.g. WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, etc), then the officers can fined/jail time.
Yeah right. The only guy being punished is Sam Waskal from ImClone. The other guys all have their assets tied up in shell corporations, with big ticket lawyers to keep the IRS and Mr. District Attorney at bay.
just drop a rock into the ocean, and there goes the coast line.
Dude! They NEED the water, because of the desparate water shortage on their home planet. Furthermore, they need the people, because of the desparate food shortage on their planet.
Didn't you watch the first series? They explained all this stuff.
I would be perfectly happy with a little hand crank generator to recharge the batteries in my cell phone. You could probably even do it while talking. But nooooo, all this "technology" is really just a way to consume more and more resources in new and exciting ways. Oh, how liberated we will be when we don't have to wait for our cellphone batteries to recharge! THANK YOU MR SONY! Now my nightmare of waiting for the battery to charge, or (gasp) having to purchase a second battery can finally end!
And yes, I am aware of the irony of appearing on TV only to decry it.
I have never liked the idea of "computer ballots" and I wish legislators could think as clearly as you.
Why are we trying to vote "electronically" in the first place? For the most part, paper ballots work fine... butterfly ballots and hanging chads are really more the fault of Florida's legislature than the paper itself.
I'd agree that having the source code open to all improves security and assures an accurate vote but there is absolutely no evidence to prove this.
Well, of course they're isn't any evidence, because there is NO ABILITY to review the code and determine the accuracy of the final tally!
Until then it's mere speculation and assumptions based not in reality
So why not open the source and we won't have to make any assumptions? The closed source code could VERY EASILY do something like, oh, give the incumbent candidate an extra 3% of votes, and there would be NO WAY to know this is happening.
Of course, open source code, or at least code that's subject to independent public review could do the same thing, but we would FIND OUT.
Do you understand the difference? The "security" of open source doesn't mean "protection against haxors." It means "the software actually does what they say it does."
Scientists (from physics to sociology) understand the paramount importance of Peer Review, but I guess Computer Scientists haven't caught on yet. Go figure.
I don't trust comp-sci majors to install plumbing. Many of them would have a hard time assembling a computer from a box of parts ordered at newegg.com, too.
Regradless of the source, the implications of handing over the democratic process to a vote-counting computer, with no capacity for human oversight, should scare you.
It's akin to Terminator, when the defense systems were set up to run completely automatically, and then something went wrong, and there was no way for humans to intervene.
Heck, you even get a printed receipt from an ATM. Why not from a voting booth?
Or, in accounting terms, how can you perform an audit if there's no paper trail?
The fact that closed, paperless voting systems are even being considered tells me that Democracy might not be around too much longer.
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Because the courts have determined that tracking who checks out what has a "chilling effect" on free speech. Would you check out that book on impotence or incontinence if you knew that the librarian was going to look up your partron history and tell the rest of the community about your problems?
And what about that copy of Das Kapital you borrowed, or that Mein Kampf? That might get Ashcroft's attention.
Is any of this getting through? Your first amendment right to free speech means that you have access to an unfettered range of opinions to consult in your life, and it's nobody's place (well definitely not the DA's place) to decide that becuase you rented Demolition Man and haven't returned Catcher in the Rye, you're a "person of interest."
You might argue that "if i'm innocent i've got nothing to hide" but with the laws in place today, mere presumption is enough to get you sent away, on "secret" evidence that would compromise "national security" so you never even know what you're charged with! Face it, scrutinizing people's lives by tracking their every move, looking for "disturbing trends" among the general populous is a Gestapo tactic. We should not be investigating the average person in America unless they've actually performed some action to warrant further scrutiny. Feeding your head at the local library should not be taken as "proof" or "suspicion" of anything whatsoever.
What exactly is Microsoft steering the desktop towards? Who wants or needs more digital media integration in the OS? I can see some uses for a home computer, if they're trying to go the Entertainment Center route. My guess is that in 2005 or whenever it will STILL be easier to burn the video you want to watch onto a DVD or video CD and pop it in your DVD player. I have a s-video cable running from my 'puter to the TV now, and it works, but its kind of a pain in the ass, and the solution doesn't lie in tweaking the OS, it's more like a remote control device such as the one that came with my TV capture card which I haven't bothered to program since it's just a lot easier to get up off the couch and double-click the matrix icon in my Kazaa folder.
But what use, if any, does this digital media integration have in Microsoft's largest market, the business world? I can see that maybe PowerPoint presentations will become spiffier, with video footage spliced in and stuff, but that doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the OS. And beyond that, most people are NEVER going to put AV segments in their powerpoint presentations. It's cool at first but the bloom quickly fades. So, my question is: How do any of these digtial media enhancements actually enhance Windows, how do the ADD VALUE to the product, what kind of USEFUL functionality will they provide? Very little if you ask me.
It seems to me that they should be more focused on building a better mousetrap, not adding niche features to a rickety mousetrap. For example, if I'm playing Enemy Territory in 800x600 and my desktop res is at 1024x768, and I ctrl-shirt-esc to jump out to the desktop to queue up more songs in Winamp, I can't see winamp because my screen in still in 800x600 and winamp is in the lower right corner, off the screen. And you can't alt-tab to it either. Now maybe that's winamp's fault, but something like switching between apps is what a OS is supposed to be good at, and I can't do it, so I don't really give a rat's ass about a more integrated digital multimedia experience if I can't even perform a simple act like listening to my MP3s while fragging nubs!
But do you have point-to-point TV that requires a line of sight between your house and, say, Queen Anne Hill? Didn't think so!
You want to use the mini-helicopter as radar detector? Come on, you can do better that that! How about loading one up with Anthrax spores and buzzing the set of the Today Show. Now that's entertainment!
I believe that snippet is from the Java license which is tacked on to the end of the Microsoft license. It may not be there anymore; I haven't read the MS EULA in a while. It says don't use Java for mission-critical apps such as life support equipment in hospitals, nuclear power plants, air traffic control, and so on.
Interstingly enough, back in the day I was running trouble tickets at mitre.org. One of their projects is a thing called CAASD, which will network together air traffic control systems from around the globe. One memorable call was to help some uber-geek who was too much of a coder to figure out how to use Eudora on his Mac... anyway, he was busily typing away, coding some part of this CAASD project...in Java.
to understand what is in our oceans, how they work and what effects we are having on them.
The oceans certainly contain many great mysteries. However, the effect we're having on it is pretty clear: destroy and degrade it with pollution. Algae blooms, dying coral, overfishing. We are slowly killing/pillaging the oceans, which doesn't seem to bother anyone enough to stop doing it. (Though occasionally we decide to do it less.) Hey, we don't live there anymore, not our problem!
Ahem, perhaps someone should have thougnt of this sort of thing *before* deploying 75,000 workstations?
It's not like viruses are new. Michelangelo was like what, 20 years ago? (Actually I just looked it up and it was 1992. Which is around 500 BC in computer years.)
It sounds to me like you're understaffed and overworked. Nobody gives a flying fuck so long as your stock is doin' well. God Bless America!
making a general alert -- while maybe not the best thing to do (a private note to the owner would always be a better idea) -- still doesn't amount to anything more than commentary on a situation. And just because the shop owner could not fix the situation himself, does not make you responsible for the situation itself.
Not so long ago, the newspapers here ran a story saying there were only a handful of sherriff's (sp?) deputies in a particular county. The obvious implication is that it's a great place to commit crimes.
What they didn't do, which is where I think the line should be drawn, is tell you what the deputy's work schedules are, days off, locations of police stations, etc. Now, you can find out all that information on your own, but providing a "cookbook" for crime is not the right thing to do.
The Grey Man theory comes into play in these issues too. Speaking out is a sure way to get some attention... in this case negative attention. Rather than spam all the customers, the smarter thing would have been to post the 'sploit on BugTraq or some other generally accepted venue for such a discussion. He probably would have been spared if he hadn't become so personally and directly involved with his former employer.
That being said, the bigger problem is that these "crimes" seem to be arbitrarily selected by the feds for prosecution. People get the book thrown at them, slammed in jail, but we (the techie 31337) don't really know if speaking out is going to be protected and weclomed, or get Ashcroft's panties in a bunch. What if someone spoke out about vulnerabilites in the power grid, to use a relevant example? If the New York Times does it, they're probably safe. If a disgruntled engineer does it, he's probably a terrorist. It's definitely getting chilly in America.
The most mixed-up metaphor that I can think of is: The Emperor has no clothes, and a pet ostrich to boot. Got a problem with that? Here come the brownshirts.
Canadian Water = Good for America
Canadian Lumber = Bad for America
One thing I really like about the current administration is when they come up with economic policies that can be easily explained to a six-year-old. It's a real timesaver, and much simpler than the "voodoo economics" of administrations past!
In America, we draw the line at .50 cal machine guns. Somehow, I dont' quite see a modchip being quite on par with a gun that is typically used to render industrial equipment functionless.
But then, I'm kind of a Luddite.
If they want to believe in all this jiggery-pokery raising the ghoulies rot, well... why not let them?
I love how these capitalists love to push schemes like privatisation of drinking water, even though none of them would ever live in a country with a privatised water suppply.
Here in America, we've got NAFTA, and it's not much better. Well, it's better than being in Iraq, but I swear, Democracy is flourishing at home, too!
It seems to me like this will get more companies brought into court for using MS products. I imagine huge armies of lawyers engaging MS on as many fronts as possible, and like leeches (or ticks maybe) slowly draining the 30 billion or so in cash that MS has around via an all-out war of attrition.
It would be harder to pin the blame on a company when it had to defend itself, but basically this way you're engaging MS legal directly with a lawsuit such as this. Clearly this is supposed to provide companies a warm fuzzy, one they won't get with that Linux product and its troubled IP roots. But I don't think it will work out for MS in the long run.
You should just start publishing a bunch of anti-abortion pieces in the legalese trade rags, and then G.W. Bush will nominate you for at least a Federal judgeship, and possibly a Justice of The Supreme Court.
if you're not producing a profit, and you're causing U.S. companies to lose money, why should the U.S. continue to allow you to do business with us?
Hmmm. Let's outlaw the U.S. Post Office then. Seriously, does this bit of extremism apply to U.S. companies that aren't turning a profit, and competing with other U.S. companies? Or just foreign companies?
For that matter, what makes a U.S. company a U.S. company? Most of the big corps are technically out of The Bahamas or similar countries who've found a nice little niche by shielding companies from the tax men of the countries in which they do business.
I'm no economist, but I think it's pretty obvious that whatever governmental assistance Seoul provides Hynix is pretty much being met tit-for-tat, and then some, with this tarriff. Not surprising that Washington would choose this tactic, though, since they've already imposed tarriffs on Canadian lumber and European steel. While these tarriffs certainly protect American jobs, a cynical view is that the imposition of these tarriffs is not so much about protecting our economy, it's more about protecting electoral votes in Pennsylvania. Though that argument doesn't make a lot of sense when applied to Washington timber. It does make sense in Micron's home state(s) of Idaho (and Virgina, after acquisition of Toshiba's facilities there).
Political cynicism aside, one thing I did learn (Bueller? Bueller?) is that the Hawley-Smoot Tarriff Act was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and led to the Great Depression. Is saving the White House worth a repeat of that?
Finally, you end with the statement "It's hard enough dealing with domestic competitors..." Which domestic competitors are you talking about? Who else makes DRAM in the USA? I was under the impression that Micron was it.
To sum up: I guess we should go ahead and slap a huge tarriff on Airbus as well! Because surely the American consumer will benefit when Boeing, protected by exorbitant tarriffs, can charge the airlines whatever they please for a new 737.
If a company commits massive financial fixing of numbers, lies to the SEC, shareholder fraud, etc (e.g. WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, etc), then the officers can fined/jail time.
Yeah right. The only guy being punished is Sam Waskal from ImClone. The other guys all have their assets tied up in shell corporations, with big ticket lawyers to keep the IRS and Mr. District Attorney at bay.
Corporations were invented to shield individuals from the liability of their actions. Perhaps that wasn't the best idea.
just drop a rock into the ocean, and there goes the coast line.
Dude! They NEED the water, because of the desparate water shortage on their home planet. Furthermore, they need the people, because of the desparate food shortage on their planet.
Didn't you watch the first series? They explained all this stuff.
In today's political climate, it's pretty likely that the humans would be sent to the showers -- the showers with no water!
I would be perfectly happy with a little hand crank generator to recharge the batteries in my cell phone. You could probably even do it while talking. But nooooo, all this "technology" is really just a way to consume more and more resources in new and exciting ways. Oh, how liberated we will be when we don't have to wait for our cellphone batteries to recharge! THANK YOU MR SONY! Now my nightmare of waiting for the battery to charge, or (gasp) having to purchase a second battery can finally end!
And yes, I am aware of the irony of appearing on TV only to decry it.
You make that argument all the time. Don't you ever get the feeling you're tyring to close the barn door after the horses have bolted?
Wow, great analysis.
I have never liked the idea of "computer ballots" and I wish legislators could think as clearly as you.
Why are we trying to vote "electronically" in the first place? For the most part, paper ballots work fine... butterfly ballots and hanging chads are really more the fault of Florida's legislature than the paper itself.
I'd agree that having the source code open to all improves security and assures an accurate vote but there is absolutely no evidence to prove this.
Well, of course they're isn't any evidence, because there is NO ABILITY to review the code and determine the accuracy of the final tally!
Until then it's mere speculation and assumptions based not in reality
So why not open the source and we won't have to make any assumptions? The closed source code could VERY EASILY do something like, oh, give the incumbent candidate an extra 3% of votes, and there would be NO WAY to know this is happening.
Of course, open source code, or at least code that's subject to independent public review could do the same thing, but we would FIND OUT.
Do you understand the difference? The "security" of open source doesn't mean "protection against haxors." It means "the software actually does what they say it does."
Scientists (from physics to sociology) understand the paramount importance of Peer Review, but I guess Computer Scientists haven't caught on yet. Go figure.
I don't trust comp-sci majors to install plumbing.
Many of them would have a hard time assembling a computer from a box of parts ordered at newegg.com, too.
Regradless of the source, the implications of handing over the democratic process to a vote-counting computer, with no capacity for human oversight, should scare you.
It's akin to Terminator, when the defense systems were set up to run completely automatically, and then something went wrong, and there was no way for humans to intervene.
Heck, you even get a printed receipt from an ATM. Why not from a voting booth?
Or, in accounting terms, how can you perform an audit if there's no paper trail?
The fact that closed, paperless voting systems are even being considered tells me that Democracy might not be around too much longer.