I read it and it pretty much says "Windows XP offers this feature, Windows Vista offers this feature in a bit better way".
Security ===== Windows XP offers basic firewall. Commercial software is better. Windows Vista an improved firewall. Commercial software is still better. IE 7 offers a phishing filter which slows down browsing and is only partially successful in catching phishing attacks. New user control access is annoying, so author (and probably you will turn in off).
Home Entertainment ============= Windows XP has basic capabilities, and Windows Media Center upgrade expanded those. Windows Vista has improved media center included in most versions of Vista. An improved version over XP's Windows Media Center (it should be because XP's version is now 2 years old), but not by much.
Graphical Interface ============ Windows XP looks like crap -- especially compared to Mac OS X which has been offering features that Windows Vista will now finally offer. Windows Vista looks very nice, but many computers won't be able to run it in its full glory. System wide desktop search is nice, but XP actually had similar feature that few people knew about. And, finally, a "sidebar" which will allow you to run widgets*.
(*Ask any Mac OS X user how often they actually use "widgets" provided by Dashboard, and you'll see how useful that feature actually is. It also ends up being one of Apple's bigger security headaches, and probably will be a big security headache in Vista too)
Parental Controls =========== Windows XP had no parental controls. Vista has excellent parental controls. (Now all the parent needs is for their kid to help set it up for them.)
Networking ======= Windows XP network's automatic setup sucks. Vista's automatic network setup wizard actually works.
No where did it claim that Apple stole anything from Vista. No where did it give Vista such glowing reviews that it makes people want to immediately upgrade from XP to Vista. The two biggest areas: Protecting you from porn, and a wizard that can help you setup a network if you're a n00b means nothing to the/. crowd.
There is a precedent for this. When Phillips made the cassette tape, they had a deal with the music industry that a certain percentage of the royalties earned by Phillips on the sale of cassette tapes would go to the RIAA. This allowed Phillips to license its cassette tape technology to other companies without worrying about getting sued.
The RIAA cannot have it both ways: If they collect a music tax on each sale of an MP3 player, they cannot go after users who illegally download music because the user has already paid the licensing fee when they bought the MP3 player. This is why it was perfectly legal to record songs from the radio onto cassette tapes, and why they could sell duplicating machines which would duplicate a pre-existing cassette tape. The RIAA may be careful about getting what they wish for.
It was easy for Universal to force Microsoft to charge a music tax because Zune has no market share, and Microsoft needs Universal more than Universal needs Microsoft. It is the other way around with Apple as long as Apple controls 80% of the MP3 market. Universal negotiated with Apple last year, and lost on every single one of its points: No multiple song prices, no multiple release dates, no payments per iPod sold.
> In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, > Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that > the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual > property.
Well, look at the facts.
* Linux uses Microsoft's technology of taking input from a keyboard and displaying it on a monitor. * Both Linux and Windows run programs that can help you create documents and run a webserver. * Both Linux and Windows need "programs" written in "source code" that must be "compiled" in order to operate. Even worse, these "programs" need to be downloaded either over the Internet or from a CD. * Both Linux and Windows communicate with computers that use the Windows OS.
That's pretty damning evidence! The only technology Linux hasn't stolen yet is Window's ability to bloat up with malware causing the system to come crashing down and displaying the Blue Screen of Death.
Dr. V.S. Ramachandran (a disciple of Dr. Sachs) reported something similar in his book Phantoms of the Brain back in 1999. He used mirrors to mirror the existing limb with the phantom limb. Dr. Ramachandran would then tell the patient to move both limbs together. When the patient moved the existing limb and saw the "phantom limb" also move, they could feel the phantom limb move out of the position that may have caused the pain.
I was wondering what if someone setup "Bot Bait". That is, put a PC out on the Internet completely unprotected and let it get infected with a wide variety of spambots.
Then, you watch to see who is attempting to control the bots. Someone, somewhere must be sending the "attack!" command, and maybe you could trace the command back the origin of the perpetrator. Gather some evidence, and bring the long arm of the law upon the dude.
If you can't touch the perpetrator, you could start taking down his botnet. Once you figure out how that spammer is talking to his bots, you could start to track them down. Once you know where the bots are, you could contact the ISPs about shutting them down if the owners of the infected PCs don't clean them up.
There is no specific law that makes the ISPs responsible for bots, but under common law, if you have control over something, and you are warned about potential harm that the particular object could cause, you are liable for any damage caused by that object. Being the gateway to the Internet for these machines certainly does qualify.
Heck, once you know how the bots are activated and who controls them, you could take over the bots and program them them to attack their creator. Talk about irony.
I have five Macs at home, and I think this would be silly. Google's "OS" is Linux based, so why run on what is really premium priced hardware? No, if Google is going to release a Google PC, they'd get their own box made to their own specs, and put their own OS on it. It's cheaper that way, and they would have more control over it.
That said, Google really doesn't see a need to move into the PC hardware arena. Nor, are they interested in distributing their "OS". It's one thing supporting their "OS" at their company where some of the best technical wizards live. It's quite another to give it to the world and have to support people like your parents. That would take lots of resources, provide very little benefit, and have the potential to fail miserably.
Much better for Google to dump web application after web application out there, and declare it all "beta". If people like it, cool. If not, it quietly disappears. That's where Google's strength resides, and they don't have to "take sides" in the hardware/OS wars.
Why buy a crippled laptop when you can, for not much more, get one with a lot more power and compatiblity? The $300 price point was way too high. Even if you want a Linux laptop, it's a lot of money to pony up for a system with so little power and technical specs. Could I even run some of the standard Linux programs like MySql and Apache on it w/o choking? Don't get me wrong. It's an amazing machine, but it was designed for a world where power, money, and network infrastructure are rare and valuble commodities. That doesn't really apply on the Northeast coast of the U.S.
I might like the $100 laptop project, and I may even want one myself, but I don't know if I support it so much to put down a few C notes just to show my solidarity.
Maybe to show my support, I'll get one of those magnetic bumpersticker ribbons instead.
I know better than to answer random emails, and download executables off of websites I never heard of. I know that the "free" software that allows me to search the web or shows me the temperature offered by many websites contains all sorts of malware. I know not to "verify" my financial information on the whim of some email saying my PayPal account needs it. I even know that President Mazutu or whoever he is from Nigeria is not wanting to deposit a couple of million dollars into my bank account. I am a very smart Internet user.
However, some website I trust --maybe a blog I read on a regular basis-- has a video of some sort. It's a clip from The Daily Show -- maybe a ten year tribute to Stephen Colbert. I like the Daily Show...
Wait, Windows Media Player can't seem to be able to show it. Hmmm... Oh, the website tells me that it has something to do with an unusual "codec" (Why can't everyone just use MP3)? Anyway, I'm told if I download this codec, Windows Media Player will play this video.
Sounds harmless enough. It's on a website I trust, and it isn't a program of a webpage. Just some file that's needed to play this video. Seems like everyday there's another video format that needs its own codec. Sure enough, download this "codec", and Windows Media Player comes right up and plays this video.
Boy that was funny! I'll send this off to all of my friends. Except for Joe. He's got a Mac and can never play these types of clips because they never make a Codec that works for a Mac. Too bad for him.
I know one really big reasons for network based applications (they may or may not be "web based"). network based applications are a heck of a lot easier to manage when you're dealing with several hundred or several thousands desktop systems.
Right now, each and every desktop needs to be loaded. When a new version of an application comes out, and users want the newer version, you've got to manually upgrade each system. If someone wants access to an application that isn't on their system, it has to be installed. If a user gets a new PC, you've got to reinstall everything all over again.
Network based applications don't. Users can log onto any desktop system and see the same files, applications, etc. they're use to. Installing a new application simply means changing permissions and maybe some table in a central database. You also don't have to worry about users copying applications around, or loading applications that may contain viruses, malware, or other problems.
It might not be what YOU want for your home machine, but it is what most corporate IT departments want.
Don't worry. Home PCs will continue to use locally installed applications. Home users have administrative rights on their local PCs, more inconsistant network access, and no one who can centrally manage their systems. It wouldn't make sense (like it would in a corporate network) to use network based applications.
I've been programming since the 1970s when we really didn't have screen editors. We used line editors, and had to keep retyping the "list" command to see how our program was shaping.
VI was actually not the first screen editor I used. The first I used was the old Textedit on the Mac. I thought it was wonderful. I could actually move the cursor around and see what I wrote. My introduction to VI was when I first started working with C on Unix. I hated it.
VI was primative. Where my Mac editor was single mode, I had to switch back and forth between command mode and insert mode with VI. Where my Mac editor would wrap text, VI wouldn't. Where I could easily find a command with the menus, with VI, I had to remember archaic key strokes. Who in the hell wrote this junk!
However, once I started getting use to it, VI grew on me. The commands I quickly learned could be combined. For example, "d" deletes. "e" moves to the end of a word. "de" deletes to the end of a word and "3de" deletes the next three words. "xp" transposes two characters. There was an order to them: "d" for delete", "f" for find, "r" for replace. It started making sense. Then I started learning the ins and outs of RegEx, and I never looked back.
Not only that, but I quickly learned that for program editing, VI simply worked better than Textedit or Notepad. Unlike word oriented text editors, VI was line oriented just like a computer program. I've been using VI ever since. Over the years, I've tried GUI editors (Jedit, Nedit, KDEdit, TextPad, etc.) but I keep returning back to VI.
Most of these young whipper JDs (Java Developers) with their "Object Orientation" and "Virtual Machines" think of my preference for this non-graphical editor as quaint. Sort of like the way you'd look at Grandpa playing around with his model trains. That is until they realize that I can write code a lot faster than they can.
Last year, one developer told me it was going to take a few hours to clean up a particular program. I loaded the files in VI and transformed them in a matter of minutes. He was shocked. How can this "obsolete" little text editor do the job much more efficiently and faster than his feature ladened GUI? Why doesn't his editor support regular expressions? Why can VI load the files in less than a second while it takes VisualStudio three or four minutes? How can I write a program and never have to touch the mouse?
My sons have just started taken up programming. My 15 year old kid likes working with PHP, and first refused to even look at VI -- to old fashion and out of date -- just like his dad. He had a *better* IDE that was made specifically for HTML/PHP web development.
I recently caught him using VI. He had to admit that once you get over the basics, VI is faster and easier to use for his needs. My oldest is in college and I saw using VI for writing his term papers and essays. He said he found working with VI better because it kept him concentrating on content than formatting. Plus, it makes writing a lot faster. Takes a lot of time switch to the mouse each time really slows you down. He showed me how he programmed a macro spell checker using an ASCII dictionary and ispell. He also showed me the "linebreak" feature in VIM (something I didn't know about).
After all these years, I still haven't found anything that is as efficient as VI for editing. From what I see in Linux world, a lot of younger programmers who grew up with nothing but graphical interfaces agree with me.
The presenters were very specific. The security hole discovered is below the OS level and is in the drivers. Drivers are written by multiple parties and have always been a vunerable part of the system. However, before you had to be physically connected to the system to exploit a driver hack. That itself made drivers pretty secure. After all, not too many people install hard disk drivers they get in random emails. With WiFi, you no longer need a physical connection, and therefore the danger. Mac, Linux, Unix, BSD, and even (gasp!) MS-Windows are all exploitable to this hack.
This exploit was kept underwraps to allow vendors to release security fixes before the exploit spreads to every two-bit kiddy scripter around. It doesn't make much sense releasing information on how to implement this exploit when there really isn't too much you can do to stop it. It's the reason why the presentation was done on video and not live.
Of course, once the exploit is known to exist, it is only a matter of time before someone else finds it and implements it. I already know at least one person who is on his way to duplicate it, so the vendors better hurry up and fix the security hole. Apple and Microsoft can't take their merry ol' time fixing this one.
I say no iPhone for one simple reason: Too many cellphone companies means too many deals with too many ones specifying restrictions. It took Apple 2 years negotiating with the music industry just to get the ITMS up and running. Imagine negotiating with all the various cell phone networks on what the iPhone can and won't do?
You think Verizon will allow users to download songs directly from ITMS, and bypass their network?
Of course, I was wrong about the Apple stores and Apple switching to the Intel processor. I don't have a very good track record
What would be the legal implications if your neighbor decided to use your WiFi connection to do illegal activities? What would be your liability? Especially if you already knew that your neighbor was using your WiFi access? It's one of the reasons I clapped down on my WiFi access. That can also be one of the problems of having "fun" with your neighbor's free loading your WiFi access. You can't use the claim you didn't know they were doing it.
I also don't buy the idea that "if they didn't secure it, it's an invitation to use it." If I leave my front door unlocked or left a window open, I still don't expect the neighbors to come right in and rummage around my icebox. You certainly won't be successful in that argument if they complained to the police.
If you want to piggy back on someone's network, ask first. It's not that hard to do, and most people don't mind.
If you want to open your network to the public, divide it into two networks (one secured and one unsecured), close potential trouble ports, and direct everyone to an opening page where you make no claims of any warrenty for service, and that your network can only be used for legal purposes. That'll protect you from most legal problems.
Oh boy. You guys waxing nastalgic about the good ol' days back in 1972. Well, I was born back in the early pleolithic around 1958.
Even back then, old people were whining about the toys being so high tech (like requiring batteries), and how kids were no longer able to use their imaginations. Hot Wheels when they first came out were a perfect example of what was wrong with toys! You built a track, and raced them.
"When I was a kid", as people complained back then, "We had big toy trunks that you could actually play with! Not these little tiny cars. Back then, you *pretended* to race them, and that built imagination!" Then, they would go on with some story about walking 9 miles in the snow in uphill both directions every day to school, and having to work in some salt mine and how that built character. In the meantime, I went back playing with my hightech Hotwheels.
Somehow, despite all the high tech toys I played with, I have managed to somehow grow up, avoid becoming a delinquent, and make some contribution to society. However, I worry about my kids. They sit around all day and play with their dang hightech toys. Not like I did in my day. If I wanted a my toys to beep or buzz, I had to do it myself. These kids, they have no imagination.
And, TV only had four channels, and one of those was PBS. And, when we wanted to change channels, we had to get up off the couch, walk all the way to the TV set, and turn a dang knob.
I can see business concerns with the privacy folder business.
If a business is sued, they might need information in that encrypted folder for their case. Either because it is important for their defense, or the information has been requested by the court. There maybe legal ramifications if information is stored on a company PC, and the company cannot unencrypt that information.
I can also imagine problems of users being able to mine proprietary information about the company and then storing it in a file in that encrypted folder. It would make it very easy to compile company information, and not get caught.
I looked at the link. It is on Louisiana State University - Shreveport. The article says it came from "NACE Spotlight Online", but NASE Spotlight Online had no reference to the article, and the reference on LSUS's site had no reference to a webpage or date of publication.
I've found three other copies of this story, all with the same generic NACE Spotlight Online reference.
The article is of an unnamed individual interviewing at an unnamed company located in an unnamed town. It references a well known career site, but with no context about where this article was located or when it was published.
Hear that sound? That's the sound of an URBAN LEGEND!
Unlike these services, Walmart doesn't itself censor CDs. They get their censored versions directly from the record companies -- technically with the artist's permission. The artist has a choice: Sell to Walmart a sanitized version, or risk losing 40% in sales.
Walmart doesn't censor DVDs (at least not yet). They won't sell DVDs which they deem inappropriate for Walmart to sell. Walmart as of yet, hasn't taken to requesting sanitized versions of movies as they do music. Probably because it is harder to get sanitized versions of movies (sanitized versions of songs already exist for the radio), and because sanitized versions of movies basically means cutting out scenes that the directors felt necessary for their movies to begin with. It's one thing to substitute one short four letter word for another without destroying the general meaning of the song, its another to cut out whole scenes in a movie.
Walmart doesn't sell sanitized CDs for their own protection. The Walton family (which owns the majority of stock) is quite religious and conservative and feels they are doing a public service keeping inappropriate songs away from the public. Walmart does not sell other popular magazines or DVDs that they feel are inappropriate due to this same reason.
No one questions Walmart's right to do this. The problem is the power that Walmart has in this market where they control up to 40% of the sales. You don't have to sell to Walmart. Then again, you don't have to afford rent or food either. The choice is yours because it's a free country.
So far, the only thing that the current administration has done with the information the NSA has gleemed from their taps is track down journalists in order to find the government sources of their leaks.
Unless you equate a free press with terrorism or goverment employees with terrorists, I'm afraid I cannot see the connection.
We are repeating history. In the 1960s, the goverment expanded its role in domestic surveillance in order to fight "left wing terrorism" by radical groups like the Weathermen. Instead, the FBI spent most of their time spying on Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congressional opponents, and under Nixon people on his personal "enemies list". The Church Commission recommended much of the restrictions that the Patriot Act trampled over in order to prevent government surveillance on citizens who were using legitimate means of opposing government policy.
Now, we removed these restrictions, and guess what? The government is again using its powers to spy on you and me, and not so much on "Islamic Terrorists". After all, the Islamic terrorists are a pretty smart bunch and probably already figured out not to use electronic communications to contact each other directly. Most of their communication now takes place on websites outside of the United States jurisdiction and most of the conversations are encrypted and coded. Users are anonymous and use public computers in various Internet Cafes making it almost impossible to track down these users. Remote logins, foreign anonymizers, and Tor networks make even domestic users hard to trace.
Gates stepping down and Ozzie taking over. You're going to see a lot of former Gates people stepping down as the new leadership cleans house, and Balmer will probably be one of them too.
What they'll produce is a second rate player and service. It will attempt to be all things to all record companies and not be all that great a service. What you have to understand is how much Apple pushed the music companies in order to get them to support ITMS.
Remember the major record producers originally had their own "stores". They charged a monthly fee, charged for downloading, and then your music couldn't be transfered to other devices and would expire after two or three months. For some strange reason, it wasn't very popular.
Remember that iTunes and the iPod came out before the ITMS. Apple used it as a demonstration on how popular an MP3 player could be, and how easy it was to copy songs from CDs and share them with friends. There was *no* DRM on the original iPods. Jobs turned around and negotiated the store. He insisted that they sell all music for the same price, that the music wouldn't expire, and that users would have some means of sharing it. In return, Apple created FairPlay which made the record executives a bit less nervious about selling electronically.
Apple also made ITMS "Mac Only" as a demonstration product. This way, the music executives could see how it might actually be good for the industry. Once they were satisfied about the security and sales, they allowed Apple to ship the Windows version of iTunes.
Apple recently again did battle against the record industry. Remember a few months ago that the industry wanted to do away with "one price" pricing? Apple insisted that 1). All music would be the same price, and 2). That it would remain under a dollar.
Does Apple do this because they love us? Nope, it's because Jobs has a clue of what people want, and has a vision how things should be done.
Microsoft will simply try to overload the player with features, then use its Windows monopoly to push it upon the market. All PCs will come with the software, and the service. If you put in a CD, the service will be the default way it will play. The Microsoft designed music players will be unhappy on any machine, but Windows, and will insist upon Windows Vista. They'll come up with the service specs, and will design, but not necessarily produce the system. They will put pressure upon their "business partners" to produce the players, and to bundle them with their PCs. You will get the Microsoft approved device and you will love it.
This is a bit old, but explains why Microsoft couldn't make an iPod: .
Excuse me. DId anyone bother looking at the source for this article? This article is from the "Publicity Director" of the High Park Group, a consulting group/PR firm for the Canadian energy industry. What's next, comments on how smoking is actually good for you by the Human Resource Director of Phillip Morris?
Even the President of the United States has admitted that global warming is for real -- and much of its cause is man made. In the last 30 years, there has not been a single article in any environmental peer review journal casting any doubt about the global warming phenomenon. In the last five years, there has not been a single article in any environment peer review journals casting doubt that global warming is occurring, and that much of the source for global warming is man made.
I am sick and tired of this crap. Whether you like it or not, global warming is an absolute fact. The earth has been getting warmer over the last century, and the trend is speeding up. The only question is whether or not man has contributed to this global warming trend, the extent of this contribution, and possible effects, and how bad global warming will be.
I would understand if you want to criticize the movie for being alarmist, or you felt that it simplified the situation. I would understand if you felt that it was too much the story of Al Gore and not enough about global warming. I would understand if you felt that it was like a big, long boring PowerPoint presentation, and didn't get deep enough in the facts. I would disagree with your assessment, but I would understand.
But, to have an industry representative deny that any global warming is taking place, to have an article that claims that "scientists" are criticizing Gore's facts because global warming doesn't exist, that just flies in the face of reality.
Slashdot Mirror
I read it and it pretty much says "Windows XP offers this feature, Windows Vista offers this feature in a bit better way".
/. crowd.
Security
=====
Windows XP offers basic firewall. Commercial software is better.
Windows Vista an improved firewall. Commercial software is still better. IE 7 offers a phishing filter which slows down browsing and is only partially successful in catching phishing attacks. New user control access is annoying, so author (and probably you will turn in off).
Home Entertainment
=============
Windows XP has basic capabilities, and Windows Media Center upgrade expanded those.
Windows Vista has improved media center included in most versions of Vista. An improved version over XP's Windows Media Center (it should be because XP's version is now 2 years old), but not by much.
Graphical Interface
============
Windows XP looks like crap -- especially compared to Mac OS X which has been offering features that Windows Vista will now finally offer.
Windows Vista looks very nice, but many computers won't be able to run it in its full glory. System wide desktop search is nice, but XP actually had similar feature that few people knew about. And, finally, a "sidebar" which will allow you to run widgets*.
(*Ask any Mac OS X user how often they actually use "widgets" provided by Dashboard, and you'll see how useful that feature actually is. It also ends up being one of Apple's bigger security headaches, and probably will be a big security headache in Vista too)
Parental Controls
===========
Windows XP had no parental controls. Vista has excellent parental controls. (Now all the parent needs is for their kid to help set it up for them.)
Networking
=======
Windows XP network's automatic setup sucks. Vista's automatic network setup wizard actually works.
No where did it claim that Apple stole anything from Vista. No where did it give Vista such glowing reviews that it makes people want to immediately upgrade from XP to Vista. The two biggest areas: Protecting you from porn, and a wizard that can help you setup a network if you're a n00b means nothing to the
This is a joke site put out by Brant Walker . He's a photographer, video artist, and web designer from San Diego. Check out who owns the domain name.
Either that, or Brant is getting a bit hard up for money.
Um...
Does the U.S. even make plasma TVs?
While we're at it, why not ban quantum based time machine portals?
> In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions,
> Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that
> the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual
> property.
Well, look at the facts.
* Linux uses Microsoft's technology of taking input from a keyboard and displaying it on a monitor.
* Both Linux and Windows run programs that can help you create documents and run a webserver.
* Both Linux and Windows need "programs" written in "source code" that must be "compiled" in order to operate. Even worse, these "programs" need to be downloaded either over the Internet or from a CD.
* Both Linux and Windows communicate with computers that use the Windows OS.
That's pretty damning evidence! The only technology Linux hasn't stolen yet is Window's ability to bloat up with malware causing the system to come crashing down and displaying the Blue Screen of Death.
Dr. V.S. Ramachandran (a disciple of Dr. Sachs) reported something similar in his book Phantoms of the Brain back in 1999. He used mirrors to mirror the existing limb with the phantom limb. Dr. Ramachandran would then tell the patient to move both limbs together. When the patient moved the existing limb and saw the "phantom limb" also move, they could feel the phantom limb move out of the position that may have caused the pain.
It's an Excellent book, and is still in print.
I was wondering what if someone setup "Bot Bait". That is, put a PC out on the Internet completely unprotected and let it get infected with a wide variety of spambots.
Then, you watch to see who is attempting to control the bots. Someone, somewhere must be sending the "attack!" command, and maybe you could trace the command back the origin of the perpetrator. Gather some evidence, and bring the long arm of the law upon the dude.
If you can't touch the perpetrator, you could start taking down his botnet. Once you figure out how that spammer is talking to his bots, you could start to track them down. Once you know where the bots are, you could contact the ISPs about shutting them down if the owners of the infected PCs don't clean them up.
There is no specific law that makes the ISPs responsible for bots, but under common law, if you have control over something, and you are warned about potential harm that the particular object could cause, you are liable for any damage caused by that object. Being the gateway to the Internet for these machines certainly does qualify.
Heck, once you know how the bots are activated and who controls them, you could take over the bots and program them them to attack their creator. Talk about irony.
I have five Macs at home, and I think this would be silly. Google's "OS" is Linux based, so why run on what is really premium priced hardware? No, if Google is going to release a Google PC, they'd get their own box made to their own specs, and put their own OS on it. It's cheaper that way, and they would have more control over it.
That said, Google really doesn't see a need to move into the PC hardware arena. Nor, are they interested in distributing their "OS". It's one thing supporting their "OS" at their company where some of the best technical wizards live. It's quite another to give it to the world and have to support people like your parents. That would take lots of resources, provide very little benefit, and have the potential to fail miserably.
Much better for Google to dump web application after web application out there, and declare it all "beta". If people like it, cool. If not, it quietly disappears. That's where Google's strength resides, and they don't have to "take sides" in the hardware/OS wars.
Why buy a crippled laptop when you can, for not much more, get one with a lot more power and compatiblity? The $300 price point was way too high. Even if you want a Linux laptop, it's a lot of money to pony up for a system with so little power and technical specs. Could I even run some of the standard Linux programs like MySql and Apache on it w/o choking? Don't get me wrong. It's an amazing machine, but it was designed for a world where power, money, and network infrastructure are rare and valuble commodities. That doesn't really apply on the Northeast coast of the U.S.
I might like the $100 laptop project, and I may even want one myself, but I don't know if I support it so much to put down a few C notes just to show my solidarity.
Maybe to show my support, I'll get one of those magnetic bumpersticker ribbons instead.
Okay...
I know better than to answer random emails, and download executables off of websites I never heard of. I know that the "free" software that allows me to search the web or shows me the temperature offered by many websites contains all sorts of malware. I know not to "verify" my financial information on the whim of some email saying my PayPal account needs it. I even know that President Mazutu or whoever he is from Nigeria is not wanting to deposit a couple of million dollars into my bank account. I am a very smart Internet user.
However, some website I trust --maybe a blog I read on a regular basis-- has a video of some sort. It's a clip from The Daily Show -- maybe a ten year tribute to Stephen Colbert. I like the Daily Show...
Wait, Windows Media Player can't seem to be able to show it. Hmmm... Oh, the website tells me that it has something to do with an unusual "codec" (Why can't everyone just use MP3)? Anyway, I'm told if I download this codec, Windows Media Player will play this video.
Sounds harmless enough. It's on a website I trust, and it isn't a program of a webpage. Just some file that's needed to play this video. Seems like everyday there's another video format that needs its own codec. Sure enough, download this "codec", and Windows Media Player comes right up and plays this video.
Boy that was funny! I'll send this off to all of my friends. Except for Joe. He's got a Mac and can never play these types of clips because they never make a Codec that works for a Mac. Too bad for him.
I know one really big reasons for network based applications (they may or may not be "web based"). network based applications are a heck of a lot easier to manage when you're dealing with several hundred or several thousands desktop systems.
Right now, each and every desktop needs to be loaded. When a new version of an application comes out, and users want the newer version, you've got to manually upgrade each system. If someone wants access to an application that isn't on their system, it has to be installed. If a user gets a new PC, you've got to reinstall everything all over again.
Network based applications don't. Users can log onto any desktop system and see the same files, applications, etc. they're use to. Installing a new application simply means changing permissions and maybe some table in a central database. You also don't have to worry about users copying applications around, or loading applications that may contain viruses, malware, or other problems.
It might not be what YOU want for your home machine, but it is what most corporate IT departments want.
Don't worry. Home PCs will continue to use locally installed applications. Home users have administrative rights on their local PCs, more inconsistant network access, and no one who can centrally manage their systems. It wouldn't make sense (like it would in a corporate network) to use network based applications.
I've been programming since the 1970s when we really didn't have screen editors. We used line editors, and had to keep retyping the "list" command to see how our program was shaping.
VI was actually not the first screen editor I used. The first I used was the old Textedit on the Mac. I thought it was wonderful. I could actually move the cursor around and see what I wrote. My introduction to VI was when I first started working with C on Unix. I hated it.
VI was primative. Where my Mac editor was single mode, I had to switch back and forth between command mode and insert mode with VI. Where my Mac editor would wrap text, VI wouldn't. Where I could easily find a command with the menus, with VI, I had to remember archaic key strokes. Who in the hell wrote this junk!
However, once I started getting use to it, VI grew on me. The commands I quickly learned could be combined. For example, "d" deletes. "e" moves to the end of a word. "de" deletes to the end of a word and "3de" deletes the next three words. "xp" transposes two characters. There was an order to them: "d" for delete", "f" for find, "r" for replace. It started making sense. Then I started learning the ins and outs of RegEx, and I never looked back.
Not only that, but I quickly learned that for program editing, VI simply worked better than Textedit or Notepad. Unlike word oriented text editors, VI was line oriented just like a computer program. I've been using VI ever since. Over the years, I've tried GUI editors (Jedit, Nedit, KDEdit, TextPad, etc.) but I keep returning back to VI.
Most of these young whipper JDs (Java Developers) with their "Object Orientation" and "Virtual Machines" think of my preference for this non-graphical editor as quaint. Sort of like the way you'd look at Grandpa playing around with his model trains. That is until they realize that I can write code a lot faster than they can.
Last year, one developer told me it was going to take a few hours to clean up a particular program. I loaded the files in VI and transformed them in a matter of minutes. He was shocked. How can this "obsolete" little text editor do the job much more efficiently and faster than his feature ladened GUI? Why doesn't his editor support regular expressions? Why can VI load the files in less than a second while it takes VisualStudio three or four minutes? How can I write a program and never have to touch the mouse?
My sons have just started taken up programming. My 15 year old kid likes working with PHP, and first refused to even look at VI -- to old fashion and out of date -- just like his dad. He had a *better* IDE that was made specifically for HTML/PHP web development.
I recently caught him using VI. He had to admit that once you get over the basics, VI is faster and easier to use for his needs. My oldest is in college and I saw using VI for writing his term papers and essays. He said he found working with VI better because it kept him concentrating on content than formatting. Plus, it makes writing a lot faster. Takes a lot of time switch to the mouse each time really slows you down. He showed me how he programmed a macro spell checker using an ASCII dictionary and ispell. He also showed me the "linebreak" feature in VIM (something I didn't know about).
After all these years, I still haven't found anything that is as efficient as VI for editing. From what I see in Linux world, a lot of younger programmers who grew up with nothing but graphical interfaces agree with me.
> Even at the age of 25 I am starting to think that the
> world we be better off if children had a few less freedoms.
I feel the same way. I don't feel kids my children's age should be kept under a tighter leash.
But then, my kids are your age.
Never understood what you whippersnappers sees in all that rock music anyway. All that hootin' an hollerin' by that group Simon and Garfunkle.
Now be a good boy and run off and let Pa get his nap. Why don't you go off and play with those Internet Tubes I bought for you?
The presenters were very specific. The security hole discovered is below the OS level and is in the drivers. Drivers are written by multiple parties and have always been a vunerable part of the system. However, before you had to be physically connected to the system to exploit a driver hack. That itself made drivers pretty secure. After all, not too many people install hard disk drivers they get in random emails. With WiFi, you no longer need a physical connection, and therefore the danger. Mac, Linux, Unix, BSD, and even (gasp!) MS-Windows are all exploitable to this hack.
This exploit was kept underwraps to allow vendors to release security fixes before the exploit spreads to every two-bit kiddy scripter around. It doesn't make much sense releasing information on how to implement this exploit when there really isn't too much you can do to stop it. It's the reason why the presentation was done on video and not live.
Of course, once the exploit is known to exist, it is only a matter of time before someone else finds it and implements it. I already know at least one person who is on his way to duplicate it, so the vendors better hurry up and fix the security hole. Apple and Microsoft can't take their merry ol' time fixing this one.
I say no iPhone for one simple reason: Too many cellphone companies means too many deals with too many ones specifying restrictions. It took Apple 2 years negotiating with the music industry just to get the ITMS up and running. Imagine negotiating with all the various cell phone networks on what the iPhone can and won't do?
You think Verizon will allow users to download songs directly from ITMS, and bypass their network?
Of course, I was wrong about the Apple stores and Apple switching to the Intel processor. I don't have a very good track record
What would be the legal implications if your neighbor decided to use your WiFi connection to do illegal activities? What would be your liability? Especially if you already knew that your neighbor was using your WiFi access? It's one of the reasons I clapped down on my WiFi access. That can also be one of the problems of having "fun" with your neighbor's free loading your WiFi access. You can't use the claim you didn't know they were doing it.
I also don't buy the idea that "if they didn't secure it, it's an invitation to use it." If I leave my front door unlocked or left a window open, I still don't expect the neighbors to come right in and rummage around my icebox. You certainly won't be successful in that argument if they complained to the police.
If you want to piggy back on someone's network, ask first. It's not that hard to do, and most people don't mind.
If you want to open your network to the public, divide it into two networks (one secured and one unsecured), close potential trouble ports, and direct everyone to an opening page where you make no claims of any warrenty for service, and that your network can only be used for legal purposes. That'll protect you from most legal problems.
Oh boy. You guys waxing nastalgic about the good ol' days back in 1972. Well, I was born back in the early pleolithic around 1958.
Even back then, old people were whining about the toys being so high tech (like requiring batteries), and how kids were no longer able to use their imaginations. Hot Wheels when they first came out were a perfect example of what was wrong with toys! You built a track, and raced them.
"When I was a kid", as people complained back then, "We had big toy trunks that you could actually play with! Not these little tiny cars. Back then, you *pretended* to race them, and that built imagination!" Then, they would go on with some story about walking 9 miles in the snow in uphill both directions every day to school, and having to work in some salt mine and how that built character. In the meantime, I went back playing with my hightech Hotwheels.
Somehow, despite all the high tech toys I played with, I have managed to somehow grow up, avoid becoming a delinquent, and make some contribution to society. However, I worry about my kids. They sit around all day and play with their dang hightech toys. Not like I did in my day. If I wanted a my toys to beep or buzz, I had to do it myself. These kids, they have no imagination.
And, TV only had four channels, and one of those was PBS. And, when we wanted to change channels, we had to get up off the couch, walk all the way to the TV set, and turn a dang knob.
And, we liked it!
I can see business concerns with the privacy folder business.
If a business is sued, they might need information in that encrypted folder for their case. Either because it is important for their defense, or the information has been requested by the court. There maybe legal ramifications if information is stored on a company PC, and the company cannot unencrypt that information.
I can also imagine problems of users being able to mine proprietary information about the company and then storing it in a file in that encrypted folder. It would make it very easy to compile company information, and not get caught.
I looked at the link. It is on Louisiana State University - Shreveport. The article says it came from "NACE Spotlight Online", but NASE Spotlight Online had no reference to the article, and the reference on LSUS's site had no reference to a webpage or date of publication.
I've found three other copies of this story, all with the same generic NACE Spotlight Online reference.
The article is of an unnamed individual interviewing at an unnamed company located in an unnamed town. It references a well known career site, but with no context about where this article was located or when it was published.
Hear that sound? That's the sound of an URBAN LEGEND!
Unlike these services, Walmart doesn't itself censor CDs. They get their censored versions directly from the record companies -- technically with the artist's permission. The artist has a choice: Sell to Walmart a sanitized version, or risk losing 40% in sales.
Walmart doesn't censor DVDs (at least not yet). They won't sell DVDs which they deem inappropriate for Walmart to sell. Walmart as of yet, hasn't taken to requesting sanitized versions of movies as they do music. Probably because it is harder to get sanitized versions of movies (sanitized versions of songs already exist for the radio), and because sanitized versions of movies basically means cutting out scenes that the directors felt necessary for their movies to begin with. It's one thing to substitute one short four letter word for another without destroying the general meaning of the song, its another to cut out whole scenes in a movie.
Walmart doesn't sell sanitized CDs for their own protection. The Walton family (which owns the majority of stock) is quite religious and conservative and feels they are doing a public service keeping inappropriate songs away from the public. Walmart does not sell other popular magazines or DVDs that they feel are inappropriate due to this same reason.
No one questions Walmart's right to do this. The problem is the power that Walmart has in this market where they control up to 40% of the sales. You don't have to sell to Walmart. Then again, you don't have to afford rent or food either. The choice is yours because it's a free country.
Don't you see what's going on? Microsoft is shedding the very people who caused Microsoft's current slump and is pawning them off to Google.
Will Bill Gates stop at nothing to keep Microsoft market dominance!
So far, the only thing that the current administration has done with the information the NSA has gleemed from their taps is track down journalists in order to find the government sources of their leaks.
Unless you equate a free press with terrorism or goverment employees with terrorists, I'm afraid I cannot see the connection.
We are repeating history. In the 1960s, the goverment expanded its role in domestic surveillance in order to fight "left wing terrorism" by radical groups like the Weathermen. Instead, the FBI spent most of their time spying on Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congressional opponents, and under Nixon people on his personal "enemies list". The Church Commission recommended much of the restrictions that the Patriot Act trampled over in order to prevent government surveillance on citizens who were using legitimate means of opposing government policy.
Now, we removed these restrictions, and guess what? The government is again using its powers to spy on you and me, and not so much on "Islamic Terrorists". After all, the Islamic terrorists are a pretty smart bunch and probably already figured out not to use electronic communications to contact each other directly. Most of their communication now takes place on websites outside of the United States jurisdiction and most of the conversations are encrypted and coded. Users are anonymous and use public computers in various Internet Cafes making it almost impossible to track down these users. Remote logins, foreign anonymizers, and Tor networks make even domestic users hard to trace.
Gates stepping down and Ozzie taking over. You're going to see a lot of former Gates people stepping down as the new leadership cleans house, and Balmer will probably be one of them too.
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Cringely has some nice comments on the whole process: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060615
What they'll produce is a second rate player and service. It will attempt to be all things to all record companies and not be all that great a service. What you have to understand is how much Apple pushed the music companies in order to get them to support ITMS.
Remember the major record producers originally had their own "stores". They charged a monthly fee, charged for downloading, and then your music couldn't be transfered to other devices and would expire after two or three months. For some strange reason, it wasn't very popular.
Remember that iTunes and the iPod came out before the ITMS. Apple used it as a demonstration on how popular an MP3 player could be, and how easy it was to copy songs from CDs and share them with friends. There was *no* DRM on the original iPods. Jobs turned around and negotiated the store. He insisted that they sell all music for the same price, that the music wouldn't expire, and that users would have some means of sharing it. In return, Apple created FairPlay which made the record executives a bit less nervious about selling electronically.
Apple also made ITMS "Mac Only" as a demonstration product. This way, the music executives could see how it might actually be good for the industry. Once they were satisfied about the security and sales, they allowed Apple to ship the Windows version of iTunes.
Apple recently again did battle against the record industry. Remember a few months ago that the industry wanted to do away with "one price" pricing? Apple insisted that 1). All music would be the same price, and 2). That it would remain under a dollar.
Does Apple do this because they love us? Nope, it's because Jobs has a clue of what people want, and has a vision how things should be done.
Microsoft will simply try to overload the player with features, then use its Windows monopoly to push it upon the market. All PCs will come with the software, and the service. If you put in a CD, the service will be the default way it will play. The Microsoft designed music players will be unhappy on any machine, but Windows, and will insist upon Windows Vista. They'll come up with the service specs, and will design, but not necessarily produce the system. They will put pressure upon their "business partners" to produce the players, and to bundle them with their PCs. You will get the Microsoft approved device and you will love it.
This is a bit old, but explains why Microsoft couldn't make an iPod: .
Excuse me. DId anyone bother looking at the source for this article? This article is from the "Publicity Director" of the High Park Group, a consulting group/PR firm for the Canadian energy industry. What's next, comments on how smoking is actually good for you by the Human Resource Director of Phillip Morris?
Even the President of the United States has admitted that global warming is for real -- and much of its cause is man made. In the last 30 years, there has not been a single article in any environmental peer review journal casting any doubt about the global warming phenomenon. In the last five years, there has not been a single article in any environment peer review journals casting doubt that global warming is occurring, and that much of the source for global warming is man made.
I am sick and tired of this crap. Whether you like it or not, global warming is an absolute fact. The earth has been getting warmer over the last century, and the trend is speeding up. The only question is whether or not man has contributed to this global warming trend, the extent of this contribution, and possible effects, and how bad global warming will be.
I would understand if you want to criticize the movie for being alarmist, or you felt that it simplified the situation. I would understand if you felt that it was too much the story of Al Gore and not enough about global warming. I would understand if you felt that it was like a big, long boring PowerPoint presentation, and didn't get deep enough in the facts. I would disagree with your assessment, but I would understand.
But, to have an industry representative deny that any global warming is taking place, to have an article that claims that "scientists" are criticizing Gore's facts because global warming doesn't exist, that just flies in the face of reality.