Can it run on Windows.... been waiting a while to say that.
Dunno. Don't care either, but it might. Its based on rrdtool which does run on Windows. I don't know if this article is a slashvertisement, or just void of information. I've linked to rrdtool, and here is the munin homepage.
There are _tons_ of these things running around. In my opinion, rrdtool is one of the best tools that has come to computing in a long time. Its awesome. Other packages that use rrdtool are cricket, ganglia, and many others. I believe that the rrdtool site has a listing of some of these.
For those not familiar with it, rrdtool is a database that is designed for time series data. Its kinda like a smart FIFO where it looses details the further back in time you go by storing running averages. I have rolled my own monitoring stuff with rrdtool and perl to monitor CPU, load, temperatures, you name it. One of the cool things about rrdtool is that the database is fixed in size. rrdtool is not easy to initially set up and work with, but the effort is definitely worth it.
Basically, if your a sysadmin in 2006 and you do not have rrdtool based monitoring going on. Well, maybe the job is not for you. Its that important and good. A simple click on a link of a webpage with a rrdtool graph can demonstrate to even the pointiest of pointy PHB that you need more equipment or a trend is going on or whatever.
This is the kind of stuff I would like to see more talked about here on slashdot.
I suppose that you mean that the literacy is substandard here? I would rather claim the opposite, especially when I read at treshold 2 or 3. Yes, there is the occasional it's/its/loose/lose mistake, but the vast majority of up-moderated posts is^H^Hare written well (both in grammar and in bringing across the message).
Emphasis, backspaces and correction added:)
I browse at +4.
Back on topic:
What has made you more comfortable with your writing, or eager to improve what you've written?
Honestly, years of slashdot and email.
I'm embarrassed to say this, but I got a 450 on my verbal SAT test. I don't know why, probably because I got bored with the questions or something, but I wasn't verbally challenged. I went to a good highschool. A private one, and one of the best around. I took Latin, Spanish, and of course English. I _always_ loved grammar.
But as far as written skills as a "engineer" goes (I'm a sysadmin which may or may not be an engineer depending on how you look at it), I would say that slashdot and email have helped me the most. As far as written communication goes for my job, email is what I use every day. I honestly do not know how people who do desk-type jobs survived without it.
Forum posting and email are not "normal" or formal types of writing. But both are important. I typically reply by interleaving my comments with the comments of others. Italics here on/., >s in email. I break up "paragraphs". I have that in quotes, because frequently my "paragraphs" would not be paragraphs in writing for a newspaper, journal, or book.
Things I have learned over the years:
Always make indefinite pronouns clear, or don't use them.
Break up thoughts vertically into "paragraphs".
I put things between double quotes as they literally are. I don't put periods or commas inside of quotes unless they are essential to what is quoted. When I say: Do "rm -rf/*" as root, I mean type what is between the quotes. No extra punctuation is required
Keep to the point.
Be clear. If you're asking a simple question, just ask a simple question.
Use commas and periods or other intrasentence or intraparagraph punctuation for clarity.
Spell check!
Proofread.
Make sure the communication sounds like well articulated verbal speech.
Don't use run-on sentences or long ones.
Be polite, and personal.
Address people by name.
Say thank you.
I use par. Emacs or other emailers may or may not have the same. I hate it when text goes beyond 80 characters or so unless formatting requires it. How people read run-on sentences in a maximized window is beyond me.
I'm sure I could add more to the list when I wake up, but those are some of the biggies.
I'd like it if my spam filter could "mod up" non english email.
Get a better spam filter. I highly recommend SpamAssassin. With all the bells and whistles, it can be a little difficult to run on a large site, but people do use it, and most commercial spam filters are based on SpamAssassin.
SA is point based. There are positive points for spam, and negative points for "ham". SA has bayesian filters, allows custom rules (great for ham rules that are NOT published and available for spammers:), points for URIs that resolve to certain countries. Last time I checked, about 50% of the spam mails had URIs pointing to China or Korea. SA also has trusted networks (hopefully spam comes from the outside not on your network). Currently, SA blocks on average 80 spams/day that were heading towards my inbox. Very few slip through, no false positives in years (aside from a few spammy marketing stuff like the FA is about).
SA is very slick. I guess its not as easy to use as say Apple's Mail.app filter, but its the best filter that I know of.
The real solution is to extend or replace SMTP completely.
People say this from time to time, but they conclude that its still best the way it is. I value mailing lists, and making people pay or whatever proposed mechanism there is simply does not cut it.
I get spam sent via email. I get spam in my snail mailbox. I get spam on my fax machine. I get spammed by cold calls from sales drones/marketers. I've never had this happen (yet), but I've seen someone's phone get spammed with hundreds of porn text messages over a 10 or 15 minute time period. The user was initially billed for the porn spams and had to call the phone company to get them taken off of there bill.
It just seems as though open communication is just going to be subject to spam. Don't want it? Use your own private network to communicate.
I don't need to know about This week's hot deals on Electronics & Photo at Amazon.co.uk.
I don't either that is why I use http://www.spamgourmet.com/ and create a new account for every online purchase.
From the FA, "False positives have been a problem with e-mail marketing for a very long time".
I run a small mail server, use SpamAssassin, and I check for false positives periodically, and the only thing close to false positives that I get are marketing mails, and I don't care (nor do my users).
When I look at these mails, they suck. They often use known spam mass mailers. They are very close to spam, and its not a loss in my eye to have them quarantined with the V1agra mails as well.
I also go through my snail mail beside a trashcan and put all of the mass mail marketing junk in the trashcan without opening it.
These guys already have a much lower than 1% success rate with mass snail mail and email. I don't care if their success rate is another 10% lower than it is already.
I am not required to buy stuff from anybody. Also, there is no requirement for a business to make money. Businesses fail every day. So be it.
Hybrids are good cars, and getting better. I've heard of people using their Prius as a quiet and efficient generator after a massive power outage. I've heard of people driving their Prius half way across Texas during the hurricane evacuation on half a tank of gas. They got something like 100mpg because of the stop and go (mostly stop) situation on the highway. They passed a number of people pushing their gas cars because they had no gas.
Trains are hybrids.
So what is your beef? You can't afford a 350z or an NSX?
Any engineer worth his salt can tell you that electric motors put out a hell of a lot more torque than gasoline engines.
The electric motor in my cellphone that makes it vibrate would not make my car go very fast:)
Gasoline and electric motors are different beasts. For the most part, gas/diesel are better at constant RPMs*, while electric is better at variable RPMs.
* There is an exception for high torque gasoline motors. They are called rotary motors. And on that note, the reason rotary motors and electric motors provide so much torque is because the power is applied in the direction of the rotation. Traditional gas motor's cylinders basically go tangential to the rotation, and then go the opposite direction, and with a 4 stroke motor they take breaks between firing.
I'm a big fan of rotary motors. A 1.3 liter RX-8 goes 0-60 mph in about 6.8 secs. According to this list its number 5 of the accelerators there, and I would assume it has at least 1/2 the displacement of any other motor on the list.
Another thing to note is that big workhorses like trains are pretty much diesel/oil at basically constant RPMs that go to generators to create electricity for electric motors.
I believe hybrids are here to stay.
(I could go on and on about this stuff, I love it:)
No marketing to speak of, hmmmm I guess some people are unaware of the secret world of supermarket checkout aisles. Hey, you know how when you go to the grocery store there are always the same certain items at the checkout aisle? Grocery store chains do not randomly select the same items from coast to coast...or do they. Talk about mass marketing.
That marketing does not bother me. In fact, I would rather the lighters be at the checkout line vs the back of the store, like where all of the drug stores keep their drugs.
In fact, its common for there to be lighters at about 1/2 the price right beside the Bics, but most people, including myself, get the Bic instead. I'm not brand loyal, I'm quality loyal.
I'm sorry, but McAfee putting out a security report is like Exxon putting out an environmental assessment for Alaskan drilling. Slight conflict of interest there. It doesn't matter who they quote. They simply cannot be trusted because making a profit will always be their number one priority.
But you see, there are companies that make products, even have "monopolies" in their market, yet don't spread FUD or even advertise to my knowledge.
Take Bic for example. There revenue comes from: stationery (pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, crayons, and correction products): 50%, lighters (disposable, utility, and special-edition): 25%, and shavers (men's and women's): 19%.
Their lighters are arguably the best and pretty much the monopoly on disposable lighters. The price of them has not gone up in 20 years. They are excellent lighters.
No FUD, no marketing to speak of, whatever. There are many, many companies with products that simply do well on their own merits.
Of course, since it's all on public display, uploading crappy badly-rating bug-ridden slop would probably have the opposite effect:/
Unfortunately, much of the closed source stuff I've worked with is crappy poorly-written bug-ridden slop. With the bugs in many closed source apps, I would guess that under the hood there is more of the same. I find that a vast majority of the GNU stuff to be very well written, easy to understand, and relatively bug free. I'm talking "real" GNU stuff, not slop that is GPLed and thrown on sourceforge (I'm not bashing all of sourceforge by any stretch of the imagination, I have stuff there:)
Personally, I owe my career to open source. I learned the inside out of a kernel, how to program, the whole nine yards. Open source taught me as much or more than college did. College did not get me a career.
Now, I'm going to nitpick the original post, because it seems confusing.
1) In the past few years, OSS has proven that sharing one's source code can be beneficial to both businesses and their customers. OK, pretty much a statement of fact.
2) More than a few young programmers are thankful that they were allowed to learn from professional developers by browsing through and hacking on 'enterprise quality' code. OK, pretty much a statement of fact reinforced by my experience as noted above.
3) My question to developers of commercial OSS is this: Have you, personally, ever benefited from having the source code to your project freely available and dowloadable, instead of being kept under lock-and-key?
Yes. I've gotten job offers from it. Having the source enabled me to fix bugs in things and/or customize them.
4) Have you ever fixed a bug in your spare time? Yup. Even when I was "working".
5) Have you ever sought outside help (providing source code snippets) on a particularly nasty problem?"
I guess this is where I got confused, and by the previous posts, this seems to be the problem.
Open source is _the_ way to go. It actually should be mandatory. Also, I wish it was that way with hardware as well. Even if its a pseudo-schematic, I would like to know how things work. I have some semi-pro audio gear, and they provided pseudo-schematics and I was able to figure out the signal path and what the adjustments did. English text is not anywhere as good as seeing a signal path so I know the chain of events, just like OSS.
If you were to ask me on any day of the week, "Would you like to go see one of the Star Wars movies on the big screen?" You bet I would.
Actually, that is what I did in 77, 80, and 83. Which is what I thought
That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.
meant.
I haven't read the FA yet. But I'm wondering how "original" these are. Personally, I liked all of the remastering and cleanups they did to the special addition ones. I liked the introduction of Jabba in IV. The _only_ thing that disgusted me about the remakes was the Han Solo/Greedo thing. That was BS.
In most countries, states, cities, etc, there is not regulation on "black/grey market" goods. I'm talking about "taboo" things like good drugs, sex, you know, the things people want, and there is a market, no regulation and better than average quality control.
Cocaine in the US has not gone up in price in about 20 years. Marijuana has gone up in price, but so has the quality. Sex is always at market value.
What is the difference between a $1,000 hooker and a $50 hooker?
Well, depending on how you look at it, about $950.
I've been ripped off more times by "legitimate" sources than otherwise. The Sony rootkit is a perfect example.
"You could delete all the data from your laptop, but that's not good for you because the more data you have, the bigger your possibilities," he said.
Makes no sense or apparent relevance. Maybe an illusion to using security by obscurity? Dunno.
Does anybody know more about the article than what it says?
What kind of technology does the security software use? I'm assuming its wireless, RFID, bluetooth, retinal scan, or something. I don't know.
Also, I'm curious what country this is based? The 12 years in prison for stealing a car seems a bit excessive, even for US standards. I mean, stealing a car is only an inconvenience. Most people with such a car can't afford it so they finance it which requires full coverage, and so you get a new car.
Also, its so easy to steal a car, so what is new? People used to be able to use standard radio scanners to open garage doors and keyless entry things. Snatching a purse with keys is probably the easiest way to score an SUV today. The problem is really what do you do with the car? That is much more difficult than stealing it in the first place.
1) delayed and cut features have been status quo from the beginning, at least with Windows OS releases.
2) Nothing new in Office. Aside from new document formats, there has been little new for years from what I hear.
3) MSN has been nothing really since WebTV and that was a failure as well.
4) MSN search. That will succeed if they are allowed to slap that into IE by default, just like bundling IE.
5) Xbox 360. Dunno, the PS3 and the game market will determine this. From what I understand the 360 is a decent gaming platform, but lacking in games at this time.
6) Pad based computing. Microsoft has had a number of products fail, but Windows Tablet edition is not that significant of a product and it will sell as long as tablets will sell.
7).NET - dunno. Visual Studio has done well, Microsoft's version of Java died for some reason. Regardless of.NET's success, I don't see Microsoft's development environments going anywhere before Windows and derived platforms go away as well.
8) Google. Microsoft has never liked competition. The funny thing is that they silently ignore Apple because (IMHO) they can't touch them.
However, I do see MS as becoming kinda obsolete. They are _NOT_ a monopoly. Plenty of people use plenty of platforms and software products. MS does have a slight edge now because so many companies have custom/3rd party apps for their platforms, including DOS still to this day. Apps drive the OS. Once Windows apps are able to be virtualized or emulated in some way, the extra crap that comes with using windows might be their own demise.
Windows operating system is a monopoly as defined by the US and EU.
What grounds does this claim come from? I know they have been "convicted" in the US, but I would say it was more shady and unethical business practices vs illegal.
I know many people that are either MS free or don't use MS exclusively (at least at the OS level). In fact, the only people that I know that use MS exclusively know practically nothing about computers. In fact, I only now one Microsoft developer that does not use other OSes for certain tasks. He's actually a damn good programmer, and he's in the "I hate Microsoft, but I use their stuff exclusively" camp (makes no sense to me).
I mean, where I work, I don't think any of the Windows admins use Windows anymore, at least not as their primary desktop machine. I'll have to take a poll one day. There may be one or two around, but off the top of my head they are all happier with their 2-4 display G5s.
Regarding you're sister in law and other "smart" people, well its all relative. I know and have worked with engineers, chemists, physicists, MBAs, lawyers, you name it. Basically people with more than 6 years of college, and have specialty careers. Well, something has to give. I know computers pretty damn well. But then again, I've been doing it for over 20 years now, and I know the basics of engineering, chemistry, physics, business, law, etc just like these people know the basics of computers. But then again, I don't have degrees, nor have worked in all of these fields, so I would hope that they know more than me.
I do get a little frustrated when people treat computers as some kind of magical or animate object. I've heard (albeit incompetent) computer professions say things like, "The computer/program is _confused_". Its probably just projection:)
While I'm on the soapbox, I do get frustrated by _anyone_ who purports or acts as though they know more or understand something that they don't. Maybe I'm the same way when I talk about politics or law or business, but I sure hope not.
Will MS make more money from this? Sure. Is it bad? Only if MS is leveraging a monopoly. My sister-in-law won't care; frankly, I don't really care either. Google, on the other hand, probably DOES care. Which is why they have raised the issue.
Personally, I don't think Google has any business in this. My primary browser, Safari, has 0 options as to what the convenient search box does, and all inquiries to to Google. There may be a way to change it, but if I could I would leave it or change it back to Google.
However, the DOJ should at least pay lip service to this regarding Microsoft's continuing violation of anti-trust laws. I personally think bundling IE, WMP, etc is fine, all of those types of programs are expected for any modern computer system today. I believe its BS that they are supposed to go out of their way and install a competitors program, even if its freeware. I personally believe that MS is wayyy behind other OSes with their PDF and other kinds of support that have become standard.
But, integrating searches to MSN and IE is not necessary, and is a blatant abuse of their marketshare. I'm a niche kinda guy, so I don't understand the whole "jack of all trades, master of none" approach, and that is what MS is. They are barely good enough of an OS, barely good enough to browse the web, barely good enough to search the web, etc. From what I've heard and just a wild opinion out of the blue, from what I understand AD and Project are their best products. I'm not saying that there are many other popular products out there, but again from my limited understanding, these two fill a real void where other products don't. I guess Office is a #3 choice, and is basically all that is left in the generic word processing and spreadsheet world. Personally, I found it to be a more interesting market when there was WordPerfect, Lotus123, and other products out there like their are OSes and browsers today, but it will be a while before there is competition in these markets again.
"QDOS became MS-DOS, ForeThought became Powerpoint, SoftDesign became Microsoft Project, Vermeer became FrontPage, PlaceWare became Live Meeting, Vicinity became a key part of MapPoint, nCompass Labs became Content Management Server, Bungie Studios became Halo, HotMail, Visio, Great Plains, Groove Networks"
Wow, I didn't realize all of that. I know many of the Software titles, but haven't or don't use them, but I had no clue that they acquired most all of their products like that.
To add onto the list there is also IE taken from Spyglass/Mosaic. The disk compression stuff (doublespace or whatnot) that they ripped off and lost in court over.
So, is Word and Windows and maybe a handfull of other products real Microsoft products?
With apologies to all the Google fans out there, the Internet has changed the top search engine several times in the past and it will change it again.
Everything is temporary, but Google has a brand name that is pretty strong with the world.
Compare Google to yahoo. Yahoo did not start as a "search engine" but rather as a directory or organization kind of thing. I've never found Yahoo as any kind of value to me personally, but like Google now, they are a hell of a brand name, and they have good enough real estate on the web to continue doing business.
None of the "big players" have really disappeared on the web besides maybe Altavista. But Altavista has/had its issues as well. Being owned by DEC then Compaq then HP. Their searches stopped being as useful. Their ads became totally obnoxious, they lost their audience and brand recognition.
I mean, look at Netscape. Who are they besides a brand name from the mid to late 90s? But they still exist as a brand name, and apparently even some people still use their browser.
Predicting Google's demise at this time is a bit premature.
Slashdot Mirror
Can it run on Windows .... been waiting a while to say that.
Dunno. Don't care either, but it might. Its based on rrdtool which does run on Windows. I don't know if this article is a slashvertisement, or just void of information. I've linked to rrdtool, and here is the munin homepage.
There are _tons_ of these things running around. In my opinion, rrdtool is one of the best tools that has come to computing in a long time. Its awesome. Other packages that use rrdtool are cricket, ganglia, and many others. I believe that the rrdtool site has a listing of some of these.
For those not familiar with it, rrdtool is a database that is designed for time series data. Its kinda like a smart FIFO where it looses details the further back in time you go by storing running averages. I have rolled my own monitoring stuff with rrdtool and perl to monitor CPU, load, temperatures, you name it. One of the cool things about rrdtool is that the database is fixed in size. rrdtool is not easy to initially set up and work with, but the effort is definitely worth it.
Basically, if your a sysadmin in 2006 and you do not have rrdtool based monitoring going on. Well, maybe the job is not for you. Its that important and good. A simple click on a link of a webpage with a rrdtool graph can demonstrate to even the pointiest of pointy PHB that you need more equipment or a trend is going on or whatever.
This is the kind of stuff I would like to see more talked about here on slashdot.
Emphasis, backspaces and correction added
I browse at +4.
Back on topic:
What has made you more comfortable with your writing, or eager to improve what you've written?
Honestly, years of slashdot and email.
I'm embarrassed to say this, but I got a 450 on my verbal SAT test. I don't know why, probably because I got bored with the questions or something, but I wasn't verbally challenged. I went to a good highschool. A private one, and one of the best around. I took Latin, Spanish, and of course English. I _always_ loved grammar.
But as far as written skills as a "engineer" goes (I'm a sysadmin which may or may not be an engineer depending on how you look at it), I would say that slashdot and email have helped me the most. As far as written communication goes for my job, email is what I use every day. I honestly do not know how people who do desk-type jobs survived without it.
Forum posting and email are not "normal" or formal types of writing. But both are important. I typically reply by interleaving my comments with the comments of others. Italics here on
Things I have learned over the years:
I'm sure I could add more to the list when I wake up, but those are some of the biggies.
Not according to the RIAA...
And they have power over me -- how?
without forcing your mother to pay to e-mail you
I would pay for my mother not to email me.
I'd like it if my spam filter could "mod up" non english email.
:), points for URIs that resolve to certain countries. Last time I checked, about 50% of the spam mails had URIs pointing to China or Korea. SA also has trusted networks (hopefully spam comes from the outside not on your network). Currently, SA blocks on average 80 spams/day that were heading towards my inbox. Very few slip through, no false positives in years (aside from a few spammy marketing stuff like the FA is about).
Get a better spam filter. I highly recommend SpamAssassin. With all the bells and whistles, it can be a little difficult to run on a large site, but people do use it, and most commercial spam filters are based on SpamAssassin.
SA is point based. There are positive points for spam, and negative points for "ham". SA has bayesian filters, allows custom rules (great for ham rules that are NOT published and available for spammers
SA is very slick. I guess its not as easy to use as say Apple's Mail.app filter, but its the best filter that I know of.
The real solution is to extend or replace SMTP completely.
People say this from time to time, but they conclude that its still best the way it is. I value mailing lists, and making people pay or whatever proposed mechanism there is simply does not cut it.
I get spam sent via email. I get spam in my snail mailbox. I get spam on my fax machine. I get spammed by cold calls from sales drones/marketers. I've never had this happen (yet), but I've seen someone's phone get spammed with hundreds of porn text messages over a 10 or 15 minute time period. The user was initially billed for the porn spams and had to call the phone company to get them taken off of there bill.
It just seems as though open communication is just going to be subject to spam. Don't want it? Use your own private network to communicate.
I don't need to know about This week's hot deals on Electronics & Photo at Amazon.co.uk.
I don't either that is why I use http://www.spamgourmet.com/ and create a new account for every online purchase.
From the FA, "False positives have been a problem with e-mail marketing for a very long time".
I run a small mail server, use SpamAssassin, and I check for false positives periodically, and the only thing close to false positives that I get are marketing mails, and I don't care (nor do my users).
When I look at these mails, they suck. They often use known spam mass mailers. They are very close to spam, and its not a loss in my eye to have them quarantined with the V1agra mails as well.
I also go through my snail mail beside a trashcan and put all of the mass mail marketing junk in the trashcan without opening it.
These guys already have a much lower than 1% success rate with mass snail mail and email. I don't care if their success rate is another 10% lower than it is already.
I am not required to buy stuff from anybody. Also, there is no requirement for a business to make money. Businesses fail every day. So be it.
Build me a 350Z, not a Previa. Build me an NSX, not a Civic.
Wow, and people look back to when they thought the earth was the center of the universe and think that is silly now.
They make 350Zs and NSXs. And, yes, they both are killer cars.
However, hybrids are doing well, despite the fact that you don't want one. Take a look at http://www.greencarcongress.com/sales/index.html
Hybrids are good cars, and getting better. I've heard of people using their Prius as a quiet and efficient generator after a massive power outage. I've heard of people driving their Prius half way across Texas during the hurricane evacuation on half a tank of gas. They got something like 100mpg because of the stop and go (mostly stop) situation on the highway. They passed a number of people pushing their gas cars because they had no gas.
Trains are hybrids.
So what is your beef? You can't afford a 350z or an NSX?
Why in the world would Matsushita Electric sell their patent to Exxon-Mobile? That doesn't make any sense.
Why do people pay up to and over 300% interest on their loans or debts to bookies or mafia people?
They like walking more than money.
Any engineer worth his salt can tell you that electric motors put out a hell of a lot more torque than gasoline engines.
:)
:)
The electric motor in my cellphone that makes it vibrate would not make my car go very fast
Gasoline and electric motors are different beasts. For the most part, gas/diesel are better at constant RPMs*, while electric is better at variable RPMs.
* There is an exception for high torque gasoline motors. They are called rotary motors. And on that note, the reason rotary motors and electric motors provide so much torque is because the power is applied in the direction of the rotation. Traditional gas motor's cylinders basically go tangential to the rotation, and then go the opposite direction, and with a 4 stroke motor they take breaks between firing.
I'm a big fan of rotary motors. A 1.3 liter RX-8 goes 0-60 mph in about 6.8 secs. According to this list its number 5 of the accelerators there, and I would assume it has at least 1/2 the displacement of any other motor on the list.
Another thing to note is that big workhorses like trains are pretty much diesel/oil at basically constant RPMs that go to generators to create electricity for electric motors.
I believe hybrids are here to stay.
(I could go on and on about this stuff, I love it
No marketing to speak of, hmmmm I guess some people are unaware of the secret world of supermarket checkout aisles. Hey, you know how when you go to the grocery store there are always the same certain items at the checkout aisle? Grocery store chains do not randomly select the same items from coast to coast...or do they. Talk about mass marketing.
That marketing does not bother me. In fact, I would rather the lighters be at the checkout line vs the back of the store, like where all of the drug stores keep their drugs.
In fact, its common for there to be lighters at about 1/2 the price right beside the Bics, but most people, including myself, get the Bic instead. I'm not brand loyal, I'm quality loyal.
I'm sorry, but McAfee putting out a security report is like Exxon putting out an environmental assessment for Alaskan drilling. Slight conflict of interest there. It doesn't matter who they quote. They simply cannot be trusted because making a profit will always be their number one priority.
But you see, there are companies that make products, even have "monopolies" in their market, yet don't spread FUD or even advertise to my knowledge.
Take Bic for example. There revenue comes from: stationery (pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, crayons, and correction products): 50%, lighters (disposable, utility, and special-edition): 25%, and shavers (men's and women's): 19%.
Their lighters are arguably the best and pretty much the monopoly on disposable lighters. The price of them has not gone up in 20 years. They are excellent lighters.
No FUD, no marketing to speak of, whatever. There are many, many companies with products that simply do well on their own merits.
For anyone who believes that it is all hype, or knows little about bird flu
http://www.google.com/search?q=rumsfeld+tamiflu
Brought to you by the WMD inventor, Rumsfeld, himself.
Why do people keep believing lies?
What's next? Domino theory?
if-we-throw-enough-money-at-a-problem-it-will-go-a way department.
Wake me up when they dedicate 20% of all their employees time to R&D.
Feel free to shoot me when Microsoft innovates something.
Of course, since it's all on public display, uploading crappy badly-rating bug-ridden slop would probably have the opposite effect :/
:)
Unfortunately, much of the closed source stuff I've worked with is crappy poorly-written bug-ridden slop. With the bugs in many closed source apps, I would guess that under the hood there is more of the same. I find that a vast majority of the GNU stuff to be very well written, easy to understand, and relatively bug free. I'm talking "real" GNU stuff, not slop that is GPLed and thrown on sourceforge (I'm not bashing all of sourceforge by any stretch of the imagination, I have stuff there
Personally, I owe my career to open source. I learned the inside out of a kernel, how to program, the whole nine yards. Open source taught me as much or more than college did. College did not get me a career.
Now, I'm going to nitpick the original post, because it seems confusing.
1) In the past few years, OSS has proven that sharing one's source code can be beneficial to both businesses and their customers. OK, pretty much a statement of fact.
2) More than a few young programmers are thankful that they were allowed to learn from professional developers by browsing through and hacking on 'enterprise quality' code. OK, pretty much a statement of fact reinforced by my experience as noted above.
3) My question to developers of commercial OSS is this: Have you, personally, ever benefited from having the source code to your project freely available and dowloadable, instead of being kept under lock-and-key?
Yes. I've gotten job offers from it. Having the source enabled me to fix bugs in things and/or customize them.
4) Have you ever fixed a bug in your spare time? Yup. Even when I was "working".
5) Have you ever sought outside help (providing source code snippets) on a particularly nasty problem?"
I guess this is where I got confused, and by the previous posts, this seems to be the problem.
Open source is _the_ way to go. It actually should be mandatory. Also, I wish it was that way with hardware as well. Even if its a pseudo-schematic, I would like to know how things work. I have some semi-pro audio gear, and they provided pseudo-schematics and I was able to figure out the signal path and what the adjustments did. English text is not anywhere as good as seeing a signal path so I know the chain of events, just like OSS.
If you were to ask me on any day of the week, "Would you like to go see one of the Star Wars movies on the big screen?" You bet I would.
Actually, that is what I did in 77, 80, and 83. Which is what I thought
That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.
meant.
I haven't read the FA yet. But I'm wondering how "original" these are. Personally, I liked all of the remastering and cleanups they did to the special addition ones. I liked the introduction of Jabba in IV. The _only_ thing that disgusted me about the remakes was the Han Solo/Greedo thing. That was BS.
Without regulations, a market is impossible.
Bullshit.
In most countries, states, cities, etc, there is not regulation on "black/grey market" goods. I'm talking about "taboo" things like good drugs, sex, you know, the things people want, and there is a market, no regulation and better than average quality control.
Cocaine in the US has not gone up in price in about 20 years. Marijuana has gone up in price, but so has the quality. Sex is always at market value.
What is the difference between a $1,000 hooker and a $50 hooker?
Well, depending on how you look at it, about $950.
I've been ripped off more times by "legitimate" sources than otherwise. The Sony rootkit is a perfect example.
>Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA, testifying before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, April 12, 1982
>> I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
Never before I heard this quote was I was aware that the Boson Stranger was a fan of women.
Amazing!
Wow, who wrote this stuff?
Unless I'm way off base here, this sentence:
"You could delete all the data from your laptop, but that's not good for you because the more data you have, the bigger your possibilities," he said.
Makes no sense or apparent relevance. Maybe an illusion to using security by obscurity? Dunno.
Does anybody know more about the article than what it says?
What kind of technology does the security software use? I'm assuming its wireless, RFID, bluetooth, retinal scan, or something. I don't know.
Also, I'm curious what country this is based? The 12 years in prison for stealing a car seems a bit excessive, even for US standards. I mean, stealing a car is only an inconvenience. Most people with such a car can't afford it so they finance it which requires full coverage, and so you get a new car.
Also, its so easy to steal a car, so what is new? People used to be able to use standard radio scanners to open garage doors and keyless entry things. Snatching a purse with keys is probably the easiest way to score an SUV today. The problem is really what do you do with the car? That is much more difficult than stealing it in the first place.
Okay, but where will we find a dead hooker, a llama, and 12 gallons of motor oil at this time of night?
Always right next to your local ATF convenience store.
Seriously:
1) delayed and cut features have been status quo from the beginning, at least with Windows OS releases.
2) Nothing new in Office. Aside from new document formats, there has been little new for years from what I hear.
3) MSN has been nothing really since WebTV and that was a failure as well.
4) MSN search. That will succeed if they are allowed to slap that into IE by default, just like bundling IE.
5) Xbox 360. Dunno, the PS3 and the game market will determine this. From what I understand the 360 is a decent gaming platform, but lacking in games at this time.
6) Pad based computing. Microsoft has had a number of products fail, but Windows Tablet edition is not that significant of a product and it will sell as long as tablets will sell.
7)
8) Google. Microsoft has never liked competition. The funny thing is that they silently ignore Apple because (IMHO) they can't touch them.
However, I do see MS as becoming kinda obsolete. They are _NOT_ a monopoly. Plenty of people use plenty of platforms and software products. MS does have a slight edge now because so many companies have custom/3rd party apps for their platforms, including DOS still to this day. Apps drive the OS. Once Windows apps are able to be virtualized or emulated in some way, the extra crap that comes with using windows might be their own demise.
Windows operating system is a monopoly as defined by the US and EU.
What grounds does this claim come from? I know they have been "convicted" in the US, but I would say it was more shady and unethical business practices vs illegal.
I know many people that are either MS free or don't use MS exclusively (at least at the OS level). In fact, the only people that I know that use MS exclusively know practically nothing about computers. In fact, I only now one Microsoft developer that does not use other OSes for certain tasks. He's actually a damn good programmer, and he's in the "I hate Microsoft, but I use their stuff exclusively" camp (makes no sense to me).
I mean, where I work, I don't think any of the Windows admins use Windows anymore, at least not as their primary desktop machine. I'll have to take a poll one day. There may be one or two around, but off the top of my head they are all happier with their 2-4 display G5s.
Regarding you're sister in law and other "smart" people, well its all relative. I know and have worked with engineers, chemists, physicists, MBAs, lawyers, you name it. Basically people with more than 6 years of college, and have specialty careers. Well, something has to give. I know computers pretty damn well. But then again, I've been doing it for over 20 years now, and I know the basics of engineering, chemistry, physics, business, law, etc just like these people know the basics of computers. But then again, I don't have degrees, nor have worked in all of these fields, so I would hope that they know more than me.
I do get a little frustrated when people treat computers as some kind of magical or animate object. I've heard (albeit incompetent) computer professions say things like, "The computer/program is _confused_". Its probably just projection
While I'm on the soapbox, I do get frustrated by _anyone_ who purports or acts as though they know more or understand something that they don't. Maybe I'm the same way when I talk about politics or law or business, but I sure hope not.
Will MS make more money from this? Sure. Is it bad? Only if MS is leveraging a monopoly. My sister-in-law won't care; frankly, I don't really care either. Google, on the other hand, probably DOES care. Which is why they have raised the issue.
Personally, I don't think Google has any business in this. My primary browser, Safari, has 0 options as to what the convenient search box does, and all inquiries to to Google. There may be a way to change it, but if I could I would leave it or change it back to Google.
However, the DOJ should at least pay lip service to this regarding Microsoft's continuing violation of anti-trust laws. I personally think bundling IE, WMP, etc is fine, all of those types of programs are expected for any modern computer system today. I believe its BS that they are supposed to go out of their way and install a competitors program, even if its freeware. I personally believe that MS is wayyy behind other OSes with their PDF and other kinds of support that have become standard.
But, integrating searches to MSN and IE is not necessary, and is a blatant abuse of their marketshare. I'm a niche kinda guy, so I don't understand the whole "jack of all trades, master of none" approach, and that is what MS is. They are barely good enough of an OS, barely good enough to browse the web, barely good enough to search the web, etc. From what I've heard and just a wild opinion out of the blue, from what I understand AD and Project are their best products. I'm not saying that there are many other popular products out there, but again from my limited understanding, these two fill a real void where other products don't. I guess Office is a #3 choice, and is basically all that is left in the generic word processing and spreadsheet world. Personally, I found it to be a more interesting market when there was WordPerfect, Lotus123, and other products out there like their are OSes and browsers today, but it will be a while before there is competition in these markets again.
"QDOS became MS-DOS, ForeThought became Powerpoint, SoftDesign became Microsoft Project, Vermeer became FrontPage, PlaceWare became Live Meeting, Vicinity became a key part of MapPoint, nCompass Labs became Content Management Server, Bungie Studios became Halo, HotMail, Visio, Great Plains, Groove Networks"
Wow, I didn't realize all of that. I know many of the Software titles, but haven't or don't use them, but I had no clue that they acquired most all of their products like that.
To add onto the list there is also IE taken from Spyglass/Mosaic. The disk compression stuff (doublespace or whatnot) that they ripped off and lost in court over.
So, is Word and Windows and maybe a handfull of other products real Microsoft products?
With apologies to all the Google fans out there, the Internet has changed the top search engine several times in the past and it will change it again.
Everything is temporary, but Google has a brand name that is pretty strong with the world.
Compare Google to yahoo. Yahoo did not start as a "search engine" but rather as a directory or organization kind of thing. I've never found Yahoo as any kind of value to me personally, but like Google now, they are a hell of a brand name, and they have good enough real estate on the web to continue doing business.
None of the "big players" have really disappeared on the web besides maybe Altavista. But Altavista has/had its issues as well. Being owned by DEC then Compaq then HP. Their searches stopped being as useful. Their ads became totally obnoxious, they lost their audience and brand recognition.
I mean, look at Netscape. Who are they besides a brand name from the mid to late 90s? But they still exist as a brand name, and apparently even some people still use their browser.
Predicting Google's demise at this time is a bit premature.