While this sounds bad, i can read between the lines that you matched the description of a criminal (as you say yourself that there was an alibi involved... no such thing without a special crime you were suspected), so this is _far_ from the "random arrest because we dont like the way you look" kind of arrest you want to make it seem.
There is a BIG difference between being questioned and being arrested and having your house searched unexpectedly without a warrant with your wife, presumably naked, in the bath by three strange men.
Also take into account that this was only burglary. A crime against property, not against people. There is not immediacy in arresting such a person. Shake them down, ask them for an alibi. This guy seems to be a professional/business type, and not a burglar. Aside from the high end burglar that knows what they are looking for, burglars are typically just a parasite. Someone short on cash for some reason or another who is looking for a quick buck. (Correct me if I'm wrong between the distinction between burglars in the US and England).
In this case, here are my problems.
1) immediate arrest with the only evidence being that he dressed like the guy in question 2) immediate search of the home without a warrant.
I don't dress that uniquely. I don't want to get arrested for it. I've had my car ransacked by the police twice, both times were within their rights (kinda), and its still not cool because they are not very concerned with your property during or after the search. They just turn stuff inside out. I've had to police come to my house a few times for suspecting things of me or neighbor complaints or whatever. They never arrested me, nor was my property searched.
Contrary to how it sounds, I really try to stay away from the police, but they seem to like me for some reason, but they have not gotten too out of hand with me yet. Lied to me, hassled me, tried to intimidate me, arrest me. Yeah, thats part of their job and personal adrenaline requirements. Fine.
But the two above mentioned things are wrong. In the US things are a little different because many of the citizens are armed. Especially at their home. Also we are lawsuit happy. Both of these things help keep things in check. Most people are pussies, but if the police state thing keeps increasing, its going to get messy.
The problem here is just poor quality control and cost-cutting.
Thank you. Yes, this is entirely quality control, and that is specifically the term I use when I'm bitching to somebody on the phone about yet another broken electronic device.
Quality control in computers and many other small electronics is almost an oxymoron.
Luckily in the free-market, this type of things tend be a short-lived trend... it just requires the spotlight.
I hope so. Returning things, buying them over and over again when they break, and even lawsuits are not my cup of tea. But I have to do all of these things simply because quality control sucks.
If anybody in the computer/electronics world hears this, take heed. One day the constant and known issues if they do not stop will certainly come to haunt you much more than us end users bitching about it. You are walking on thin ice.
According to the University of Florida 2002 National Retail Security Survey, employee theft was estimated to be responsible for 48% of store inventory shrinkage. That represents an estimated employee theft price tag of about 15-billion dollars per year. This astounding figure makes employee dishonesty the greatest single threat to profitability at the store level.
The study found the average dollar loss per employee theft case to be $1,341.02 compared to $207.18 for the average shoplifting incident.
Or another
Employee theft made up 42.7 percent of the total losses, shoplifting 34.4 percent, administrative error 17.6 percent and vendor fraud 6.3 percent.
I have never heard of any data to the contrary, but _everybody_ might not know that as you implied.
Does your 1990 CD player play DVDs? Does it play 8-tracks? Does it play LPs or 45s? Does it play SACDs? DTS audio disks (sometimes called CDs)?
Technology marches on. Look how quickly and easily DVDs were adopted. Look how quickly and easily CDs were adopted. MP3s too.
The CD came out in what? 1982 or so. MP3s have been around for how long? Almost 10 years now. Its almost a crime to get an MP3. A 40-50 minute CD with 6-12 minutes of good music is expensive compared to all the other crap we buy now that we didn't buy in 1990 or 1982 (cell phones, answering machines, internet, cable was new, satellite almost nonexistant, cars were easily 1/2 to 1/4 the cost they are today. Blah blah.
So again record people, keep doing what you are doing. It will last forever, or at least your working lifetime, right?
At least the department store removes the tag after you buy it.
They are also apologetic and understanding if they forget and the alarm goes off. Many times they don't care. Also, everybody knows that employees are the biggest shoplifters.
Oh, and these stores take stuff back. That is difficult to impossible to do with DRMed media, even if they sold you something different than what you thought you were buying.
Now, take Pro Tools for example. This requires 2 hardware dongles. One is a USB key, the other is a firewire I/O box. And then the USB key has to be activated online with a serial number or something. It is next to impossible for me to easily put the software on another computer (my laptop) to do remote work (Its too easy to forget or loose the small USB key). It is impossible to do any work with the program on another computer or the one I have if the I/O box is not attached and powered on to the computer. I felt like a criminal for buying the software. Honestly, I wish I could take it back and get something else.
And how does research happen? It is funded by Them, primarily large corporations and government.
Now, how these people got aluminum mixed up with tin is beyond me. I guess "They" influenced the study from the git go, with results that pleased and displeased everybody at the same time.
That is how "They" keep the confusion and collusion going. "We" never get that close to Them.
I don't have the packages that are developed for Linux, there isn't any major "killer app" out there to make me want to switch.
The killer app is the kernel itself and its supported utilities. Solaris is very mature and robust, and being able to learn more about its internals and contribute back to the code for future releases by Sun is a good thing. Look at Linux, and to a lesser degree, BSD. Linux is more interesting IMHO because of its development process and the fact that big commercial players have joined in and contributed significant amounts of code. IBM, HP, SGI, and Cray have embraced linux. Linux is a big player in the embedded market. Does anybody even have a ballpark count off the top of their head how many architectures Linux has been ported to? Its nuts, everything from 16bit to 64bit CPUs, SMP and NUMA boxes, all the way to some of the most powerful computers in the world.
Yeah, that was an easy way. However, you had to get a decent number of armies to shield yourself in Australia and grow that number at a constant rate to defend against attacks and store up for the charge across the World (or just be very patient).
That is definitely the most conservative way to play, but there are many ways of defeating it.
Actually, yes. A fan exhausting from the hot aisle in the room was exhausting towards the intake from an AC unit in another room. Another fan is to be installed in the reverse air flow which will predominantly blow cold aisle air into the other room.
Coca-Cola's lawyers are going to have to prove that "American Coke" is likely to cause confusion amongst consumers with the soft drink "Coke"
Most people aren't that bright, but confusing specific byproduct of smelting metal with a soft drink is beyond reason.
Apple Computer and Apple Records have had their legal talks about their names and have agreed upon that Apple Computer will not do music recordings. That was again revisited with the advent of iTunes, which there is still an iTunes from Apple Computers.
Note: I'm not going to argue any of this with anyone. It's just a hypothetical example. Get over it. We'd both end up needing lawyers to figure it out anyway.
The problem is, the vast majority of Windows-based attacks exploit vulnerabilities for which a patch has been available for a long time but not installed.
Maybe, but it should be clear by now that MS does not ship software securely by default. Open file sharing facilities by default, email clients that do silly stuff with attachments and html email by default, hiding extensions by default, insecure scripting controls to unknown remote programmers by default, default passwords, needing to login as Administrator by default. The list goes on and on.
Many if not all of those issues have been fixed or addressed by MS by now, but no other operating system has by default enabled this many of these features without the user having to think about what was going on. Many operating systems can and do have many of the above mentioned capabilities, but they are not enabled by default, and are not exploited nearly as often in terms of by raw numbers or a percentage.
And the thing about patches. Yes, there are hotfixes, that are not automatically available via Windows Update (I don't think, don't ding me if I'm totally wrong here). But the service packs come out fairly infrequently, and they are not installed right after release in many places because people don't know about them, or they were not intentionally installed because their IT staff had not yet finished testing all of their inhouse and 3rd party software yet to make sure that they still work after the service pack. Its not infrequent that a service pack simply cannot be installed on a subset of machines.
Microsoft simply does not have a good record in terms of security. They have other merits, but that is not one. They made a tradeoff between usability and security that favored usability. There will always be a continuum between usability and security.
Oh, what? Like Word for a word processor. Like calc for calculator. Like Windows for a windows based shell to an operating system. Like Access for a database. Like Internet Explorer for a web browser. Like Windows Media Player for their media player. Paint for an image editor. Microsoft Flight Simulator for a flight simulator. Etc, etc.
Microsoft has done well despite using basic names for their software. Yes, the dude should have either not hired his lawyer to begin with (hint, "fuck off" does not require a lawyer to say), or fired him at the advice to give up so easily or at all.
A simple search on google only mentions "Windows Defender" in context with this recent announcement. A trademark has to be filed, and I guess one could pay a lawyer to look up the trademark (I don't know where to look it up, do you?) But if any corporation, especially one in the same field or strong interest in sends me a letter telling me to step aside, I would need much more than that letter to give up anything of mine.
Perpetual motion machines do, but the USPO will not accept applications for those anymore. I guess even if they do work./me wonders what to do with my perpetual motion machine
Yeah, just the other day I saw a guy who had the beak like a bird, track wheels like a tank, the neck like a giraffe, and a tail like a sperm wale, and he was covered with fur like a bear!
But as long as it can stay in the news, it will keep damaging Linux's reputation; other pepole keep hearing the general news of "Linux being under attack".
I believe there was some hurt to Linux when this first started, but I don't think that is the case anymore.
The big question, and what we should hope for is: when will SCO's whining/ever/ stop?
They are almost out of money, their stock is not performing, their products are no longer selling. The only reason this is still in the courts is because they lawyers that they are paying, keep taking their money, and keep it in court. Nobody believes they really have any merit. Or at least that is my perception.
The SCO news was almost a daily thing here on slashdot, it then died down, and now its picking up again. This _should_ be the last round, maybe another series of outbursts, but once this hits trial, I feel comfortable that everything in the Linux world will be fine, and IBM too.
The funny thing is that is not funny. If Sun were doing the marketing, it would be Linux 7, not Linux 3.0. Also its common for competing products to have similar versioning numbers or schemes.
If it weren't for two humans who said "fuck what the computer says!", we might be in a very different place right now.
I guess that is why they were there.
Computers are excellent at performing according to the logic that is programmed into them. For the most part, they cannot "think" or take a step back and say, "I'm sure I did everything right, but something still looks wrong". I used to put on my math tests something like, "I know this is not the right answer, but here is my work". To me, that is much more important than purporting that the answer is correct, and most of the time, I had done something stupid that given more time than the class allowed, I would have found the error.
Just recently, I had an issue with my bank because I had just over my minimum balance to not receive a maintenance fee. But one month I did dip below that minimum value, and I put the money back in shortly after that. Anyway, for a few months I was still getting maintenance fees because the balance was going below the minimum value because the maintenance fee was causing the balance to go below the minimum again. I would go to the bank, show them my balance history, and they would say sorry and refund my account. However, the refund was not applied at the time of incident, but immediately, so next month I would get another fee.
Finally, I said, "Look, I can't keep coming in here to get this fee removed. Especially, when the fee is because of a fee, and I've been able to keep the balance at the agreed upon amount with the exception of when you keep billing me. I could put more money in the account to compensate for a fee so that it would not drop below the minimum, but in my eyes, that is similar to extortion. I can close the account if necessary." Finally, the banker put a fee hold on my account for 45days or so, and its only a memory now.
I think the argument he is trying to make is that even though you have full access to "open source" code, and even though you can make your modifications, they will not be supported by the vendor; therefore, his logic goes, there is no additional value to making the modifications, you can't roll them out world wide for example.
True. We have the saying, "Custom modifications create constant maintenance".
But the thing is that we can and do make bug fixes or custom feature enhancements. Sometimes patches are distributed amongst a group of users, but never folded into the main source. Sometimes they are. I submitted a patch to an open source software package just last week. The person who I emailed with and accepted the patch was from a company that sells a supported and more advanced version of the free, open source version.
There is a great freedom to be able to do this. Closed source software can be excellent, but there are those times when it would be so much better if it only did _________. The blank is often filled in open source software. Its a good thing.
I will also say that OS X has converted many UNIX/Linux people as well. With me being one of them. I still love UNIX and Linux for server "headless" lets get work done here stuff, but as far as I'm concerned, OS X is the best UNIX workstation and general desktop that has ever been around. Just about everybody I work with has switched from either Linux or other UNIX-like desktop or MS Windows to Macs. The only people that haven't switched were already Mac users.
I also think that current Apple software is very top notch. Apple Mail, Preview, Terminal, Soundtrack, and Keynote are all excellent. And there are others that I'm interested in trying Logic Pro. I've heard good stuff about Final Cut, and Aperture really looks nice.
Apple hardware is pretty top notch as well. Just about any notebook or desktop system looks dated or junky compared to a comparable Apple product. The same goes with software. When I see a Windows desktop or Linux one or UNIX one, it looks dated like a picture of people from the 50s or 60s with those funny glasses or a picture of a parking lot from the 70s.
I don't have too much insightful or informative to say, I don't think, but I think Apple has done wonders for computers in the past 5 years. I know they did innovate before that timeframe, but I simply did not like the pre-OS X operating system. I liked my Apple//c, but that was it until now.
I guess I could be considered a "fanboy" or whatever, but in my opinion, they have earned it. Apple is not perfect, but for many things they are the leader of how computing should be.
Maintaining an aura of dignified debate unfortunately gives the false impression that ID is worthy of either dignity or debate (all it's really worthy of is laughing dismissal, a la astrology or flat-Earthism, of course) but looks better in the press.
I have tried to keep an open mind regarding the ID thing. At first glance, its easy to dismiss it, but I've read some pro ID material and "objective" writings about it as well, and I have dismissed it as anything real or a part of science. I think this quote from the summary says it all:
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference.
I'm repeating myself from the last time I posted here about ID (and I promised I stop reading and replying to ID stuff here, but here I am...), but here is a sound argument against ID (IMNSHO):
Lets play and pretend that ID is completely real. Its now proven by the "Intelligent Designer" having a one way worldwide simulcast in a language that every human being understands, and this "Intelligent Designer" says in effect, "Yeah people, I did it", and everybody is completely convinced by the conversation as they are that the sun comes up every day.
OK, now here is the fun part.
What would this information give the world? How would our life change? What would we do differently?
I don't see a single thing that would come from this proof. Regardless if you were previously an ID believer or not.
Would we stop teaching evolution in science class or derivative sciences like genetics? No. They would still would have value. In fact, just as much value as before we were informed by the "Intelligent Designer" directly. Basically, evolution is the theory that living things have genetic variations and that those variations that are best adapted to the current environment are more likely to survive over time.
A simple hypothetical example would be this: Imagine if the atmosphere around the Earth collapsed to the level that no human over 5 feet tall could live (yeah, people I guess could scoot around on their bellies like a worm, but just bear with me in this example).
OK, if that was intelligently designed, which it may have very well been. What could we do then with that belief? I guess, we would just accept it that there are no longer going to be people over 5 feet tall. The same thing if one believed in evolution.
Now, take another example. We have a pond that has always in recent past had many little green frogs in it. Recently, people have noticed that the number of frogs is very few, and those that are left have deformed arms and legs.
With ID being the now proven way of doing things, we would do what? Say, well the Intelligent Designer, wanted these frogs to have deformed arms and legs and for them to disappear just as they were designed to appear.
With evolution, we would assume that something was radically different about the local pond environment. We would look around and find something like a company illegally dumping toxic waste into the pond. Fine the company, and use the money to clean it up, and tada! frogs are back, and this is probably more healthy for people as well.
I could go on, but to me all of this makes complete sense. I'm not formally a religious person who reads religious texts to help me live or whatever. But I do believe in a God, Intelligent Designer, or GUT (Grand Unification Theory). Whatever you want to call it, doesn't matter to me. There does appear to be patterns in the universe instead of everything being random. In fact, ask a computer scientist about how difficult it is to generate a random number.
In other words, we can all get along here. We can use science to "find God" (debatable I guess). Or at the least, God and science are not mutually exclusive. Many of the famous scientists have been christians or religious in one way or another.
Its entirely possible that an "Intelligent Designer" designed everything. So what? That does not change how things are or how things exist or how people live.
It was the same thing with the X-Files. I don't know if it's changed, but it was about $100 when it came out. Totally crazy.
I'm not sure either if they are $100 either still, but my mother bought me a season as a gift. I thought it was nice and thoughtful. Later, I was with her in a store and saw the boxsets with the $100 pricetag. I asked her if that was what she paid, more in the tone of "You didn't pay that much for the X-Files box set you gave me did you?" And she said yes. I told her that was too much, and to not to buy them again. She did buy me another season, and I told her again that it wasn't that I didn't appreciate the gift or whatever, but that was too much to pay for it. I was also a little pissed that it did not have a play through option on the disk, but it stops and goes to the menu after each episode, maybe an obnoxious one that repeats some music over and over again, I don't remember. Also, I don't believe that you could hit the next button to go to the next episode, but had to go back to the menu. For me, its difficult to remember which episode I saw recently by the title on the disk, and I don't notice until it starts playing. Its just a pain. Same with the South Park DVDs. Someday, I'll break the law and burn my own copy with a better interface, but its kinda stupid for me to pay that money, and then have to redo the thing. Or just download them off the net.
In general, just like music CDs, TV show series are too expensive for something that is pretty much already done and paid for. Yes, they have to be transferred to DVD and extra features or whatever, but the shows are already done.
It kills me that whoever puts these things together have either never watched a DVD or some PHB told them to do it that way. Just like shampoo bottle designers. For those that haven't figured it out yet, its much more convenient to have a container that you can have the dispenser or opening on the bottom. Gravity pulls stuff down, and when the bottle is narrower at the dispensing end, its very difficult to convince the bottle to stay upright. But what do I know?
I just wish yahoo would send and receive standard mail. You know, with the headers and whatnot. Just last Friday I spent an hour trying to figure out why I was getting a mail loop, and it was because it was coming from a Yahoo account.
Slashdot Mirror
While this sounds bad, i can read between the lines that you matched the description of a criminal (as you say yourself that there was an alibi involved... no such thing without a special crime you were suspected), so this is _far_ from the "random arrest because we dont like the way you look" kind of arrest you want to make it seem.
There is a BIG difference between being questioned and being arrested and having your house searched unexpectedly without a warrant with your wife, presumably naked, in the bath by three strange men.
Also take into account that this was only burglary. A crime against property, not against people. There is not immediacy in arresting such a person. Shake them down, ask them for an alibi. This guy seems to be a professional/business type, and not a burglar. Aside from the high end burglar that knows what they are looking for, burglars are typically just a parasite. Someone short on cash for some reason or another who is looking for a quick buck. (Correct me if I'm wrong between the distinction between burglars in the US and England).
In this case, here are my problems.
1) immediate arrest with the only evidence being that he dressed like the guy in question
2) immediate search of the home without a warrant.
I don't dress that uniquely. I don't want to get arrested for it. I've had my car ransacked by the police twice, both times were within their rights (kinda), and its still not cool because they are not very concerned with your property during or after the search. They just turn stuff inside out. I've had to police come to my house a few times for suspecting things of me or neighbor complaints or whatever. They never arrested me, nor was my property searched.
Contrary to how it sounds, I really try to stay away from the police, but they seem to like me for some reason, but they have not gotten too out of hand with me yet. Lied to me, hassled me, tried to intimidate me, arrest me. Yeah, thats part of their job and personal adrenaline requirements. Fine.
But the two above mentioned things are wrong. In the US things are a little different because many of the citizens are armed. Especially at their home. Also we are lawsuit happy. Both of these things help keep things in check. Most people are pussies, but if the police state thing keeps increasing, its going to get messy.
The problem here is just poor quality control and cost-cutting.
Thank you. Yes, this is entirely quality control, and that is specifically the term I use when I'm bitching to somebody on the phone about yet another broken electronic device.
Quality control in computers and many other small electronics is almost an oxymoron.
Luckily in the free-market, this type of things tend be a short-lived trend... it just requires the spotlight.
I hope so. Returning things, buying them over and over again when they break, and even lawsuits are not my cup of tea. But I have to do all of these things simply because quality control sucks.
If anybody in the computer/electronics world hears this, take heed. One day the constant and known issues if they do not stop will certainly come to haunt you much more than us end users bitching about it. You are walking on thin ice.
In a retail store that enables tags like the GP mentioned? Yup.
Employee Theft 48.5% $15.1 billion
Shoplifting 31.7% $9.7 billion
Administrative Error 15.3% $4.8 billion
Vendor Fraud 5.4% $1.7 billion
From another source:Or another I have never heard of any data to the contrary, but _everybody_ might not know that as you implied.
it has to work in the CD player I bought in 1990
Does your 1990 CD player play DVDs? Does it play 8-tracks? Does it play LPs or 45s? Does it play SACDs? DTS audio disks (sometimes called CDs)?
Technology marches on. Look how quickly and easily DVDs were adopted. Look how quickly and easily CDs were adopted. MP3s too.
The CD came out in what? 1982 or so. MP3s have been around for how long? Almost 10 years now. Its almost a crime to get an MP3. A 40-50 minute CD with 6-12 minutes of good music is expensive compared to all the other crap we buy now that we didn't buy in 1990 or 1982 (cell phones, answering machines, internet, cable was new, satellite almost nonexistant, cars were easily 1/2 to 1/4 the cost they are today. Blah blah.
So again record people, keep doing what you are doing. It will last forever, or at least your working lifetime, right?
At least the department store removes the tag after you buy it.
They are also apologetic and understanding if they forget and the alarm goes off. Many times they don't care. Also, everybody knows that employees are the biggest shoplifters.
Oh, and these stores take stuff back. That is difficult to impossible to do with DRMed media, even if they sold you something different than what you thought you were buying.
Now, take Pro Tools for example. This requires 2 hardware dongles. One is a USB key, the other is a firewire I/O box. And then the USB key has to be activated online with a serial number or something. It is next to impossible for me to easily put the software on another computer (my laptop) to do remote work (Its too easy to forget or loose the small USB key). It is impossible to do any work with the program on another computer or the one I have if the I/O box is not attached and powered on to the computer. I felt like a criminal for buying the software. Honestly, I wish I could take it back and get something else.
Yeah. You know. "They". As in Them.
And how does research happen? It is funded by Them, primarily large corporations and government.
Now, how these people got aluminum mixed up with tin is beyond me. I guess "They" influenced the study from the git go, with results that pleased and displeased everybody at the same time.
That is how "They" keep the confusion and collusion going. "We" never get that close to Them.
I don't have the packages that are developed for Linux, there isn't any major "killer app" out there to make me want to switch.
The killer app is the kernel itself and its supported utilities. Solaris is very mature and robust, and being able to learn more about its internals and contribute back to the code for future releases by Sun is a good thing. Look at Linux, and to a lesser degree, BSD. Linux is more interesting IMHO because of its development process and the fact that big commercial players have joined in and contributed significant amounts of code. IBM, HP, SGI, and Cray have embraced linux. Linux is a big player in the embedded market. Does anybody even have a ballpark count off the top of their head how many architectures Linux has been ported to? Its nuts, everything from 16bit to 64bit CPUs, SMP and NUMA boxes, all the way to some of the most powerful computers in the world.
australia
Yeah, that was an easy way. However, you had to get a decent number of armies to shield yourself in Australia and grow that number at a constant rate to defend against attacks and store up for the charge across the World (or just be very patient).
That is definitely the most conservative way to play, but there are many ways of defeating it.
Were they sharing an AC or something?
Actually, yes. A fan exhausting from the hot aisle in the room was exhausting towards the intake from an AC unit in another room. Another fan is to be installed in the reverse air flow which will predominantly blow cold aisle air into the other room.
It should work quite well.
Coca-Cola's lawyers are going to have to prove that "American Coke" is likely to cause confusion amongst consumers with the soft drink "Coke"
Most people aren't that bright, but confusing specific byproduct of smelting metal with a soft drink is beyond reason.
Apple Computer and Apple Records have had their legal talks about their names and have agreed upon that Apple Computer will not do music recordings. That was again revisited with the advent of iTunes, which there is still an iTunes from Apple Computers.
Note: I'm not going to argue any of this with anyone. It's just a hypothetical example. Get over it. We'd both end up needing lawyers to figure it out anyway.
You, and who is the other fellow?
The problem is, the vast majority of Windows-based attacks exploit vulnerabilities for which a patch has been available for a long time but not installed.
Maybe, but it should be clear by now that MS does not ship software securely by default. Open file sharing facilities by default, email clients that do silly stuff with attachments and html email by default, hiding extensions by default, insecure scripting controls to unknown remote programmers by default, default passwords, needing to login as Administrator by default. The list goes on and on.
Many if not all of those issues have been fixed or addressed by MS by now, but no other operating system has by default enabled this many of these features without the user having to think about what was going on. Many operating systems can and do have many of the above mentioned capabilities, but they are not enabled by default, and are not exploited nearly as often in terms of by raw numbers or a percentage.
And the thing about patches. Yes, there are hotfixes, that are not automatically available via Windows Update (I don't think, don't ding me if I'm totally wrong here). But the service packs come out fairly infrequently, and they are not installed right after release in many places because people don't know about them, or they were not intentionally installed because their IT staff had not yet finished testing all of their inhouse and 3rd party software yet to make sure that they still work after the service pack. Its not infrequent that a service pack simply cannot be installed on a subset of machines.
Microsoft simply does not have a good record in terms of security. They have other merits, but that is not one. They made a tradeoff between usability and security that favored usability. There will always be a continuum between usability and security.
forced Microsoft to think of something else
Oh, what? Like Word for a word processor. Like calc for calculator. Like Windows for a windows based shell to an operating system. Like Access for a database. Like Internet Explorer for a web browser. Like Windows Media Player for their media player. Paint for an image editor. Microsoft Flight Simulator for a flight simulator. Etc, etc.
Microsoft has done well despite using basic names for their software. Yes, the dude should have either not hired his lawyer to begin with (hint, "fuck off" does not require a lawyer to say), or fired him at the advice to give up so easily or at all.
A simple search on google only mentions "Windows Defender" in context with this recent announcement. A trademark has to be filed, and I guess one could pay a lawyer to look up the trademark (I don't know where to look it up, do you?) But if any corporation, especially one in the same field or strong interest in sends me a letter telling me to step aside, I would need much more than that letter to give up anything of mine.
Does it have to work to be patentable?
/me wonders what to do with my perpetual motion machine
Perpetual motion machines do, but the USPO will not accept applications for those anymore. I guess even if they do work.
How to calculate pi...
:)
That looks nice, but the 4 platforms I tried it on, both 32 and 64bit print 0.250 as the answer.
The missile command game actually works
Oh, I didn't try the pi program on a Pentium with a fdiv bug. Don't have one of those handy...
Just wait till 2006 when the Kansas State Board of Education will have to face the voters on this issue.
Evolution doesn't work that fast. What are you trying to say?
Mutations are random.
Yeah, just the other day I saw a guy who had the beak like a bird, track wheels like a tank, the neck like a giraffe, and a tail like a sperm wale, and he was covered with fur like a bear!
I thought, how random!
What are the odds of that?
My favorite is http://www.ioccc.org/2001/williams.c
Its an entire missile command game for X that is mostly in the shape of a radiation symbol or something.
The crazy thing is that it completely plays like the old game, complete with smartbombs, scoring, increasing levels. Pretty impressive in my book.
But as long as it can stay in the news, it will keep damaging Linux's reputation; other pepole keep hearing the general news of "Linux being under attack".
/ever/ stop?
I believe there was some hurt to Linux when this first started, but I don't think that is the case anymore.
The big question, and what we should hope for is: when will SCO's whining
They are almost out of money, their stock is not performing, their products are no longer selling. The only reason this is still in the courts is because they lawyers that they are paying, keep taking their money, and keep it in court. Nobody believes they really have any merit. Or at least that is my perception.
The SCO news was almost a daily thing here on slashdot, it then died down, and now its picking up again. This _should_ be the last round, maybe another series of outbursts, but once this hits trial, I feel comfortable that everything in the Linux world will be fine, and IBM too.
Next linux versions according to the roadmap:
Linux 3.0
Linux 2k6
Linux ZP
The funny thing is that is not funny. If Sun were doing the marketing, it would be Linux 7, not Linux 3.0. Also its common for competing products to have similar versioning numbers or schemes.
If it weren't for two humans who said "fuck what the computer says!", we might be in a very different place right now.
I guess that is why they were there.
Computers are excellent at performing according to the logic that is programmed into them. For the most part, they cannot "think" or take a step back and say, "I'm sure I did everything right, but something still looks wrong". I used to put on my math tests something like, "I know this is not the right answer, but here is my work". To me, that is much more important than purporting that the answer is correct, and most of the time, I had done something stupid that given more time than the class allowed, I would have found the error.
Just recently, I had an issue with my bank because I had just over my minimum balance to not receive a maintenance fee. But one month I did dip below that minimum value, and I put the money back in shortly after that. Anyway, for a few months I was still getting maintenance fees because the balance was going below the minimum value because the maintenance fee was causing the balance to go below the minimum again. I would go to the bank, show them my balance history, and they would say sorry and refund my account. However, the refund was not applied at the time of incident, but immediately, so next month I would get another fee.
Finally, I said, "Look, I can't keep coming in here to get this fee removed. Especially, when the fee is because of a fee, and I've been able to keep the balance at the agreed upon amount with the exception of when you keep billing me. I could put more money in the account to compensate for a fee so that it would not drop below the minimum, but in my eyes, that is similar to extortion. I can close the account if necessary." Finally, the banker put a fee hold on my account for 45days or so, and its only a memory now.
I think the argument he is trying to make is that even though you have full access to "open source" code, and even though you can make your modifications, they will not be supported by the vendor; therefore, his logic goes, there is no additional value to making the modifications, you can't roll them out world wide for example.
True. We have the saying, "Custom modifications create constant maintenance".
But the thing is that we can and do make bug fixes or custom feature enhancements. Sometimes patches are distributed amongst a group of users, but never folded into the main source. Sometimes they are. I submitted a patch to an open source software package just last week. The person who I emailed with and accepted the patch was from a company that sells a supported and more advanced version of the free, open source version.
There is a great freedom to be able to do this. Closed source software can be excellent, but there are those times when it would be so much better if it only did _________. The blank is often filled in open source software. Its a good thing.
I will also say that OS X has converted many UNIX/Linux people as well. With me being one of them. I still love UNIX and Linux for server "headless" lets get work done here stuff, but as far as I'm concerned, OS X is the best UNIX workstation and general desktop that has ever been around. Just about everybody I work with has switched from either Linux or other UNIX-like desktop or MS Windows to Macs. The only people that haven't switched were already Mac users.
//c, but that was it until now.
I also think that current Apple software is very top notch. Apple Mail, Preview, Terminal, Soundtrack, and Keynote are all excellent. And there are others that I'm interested in trying Logic Pro. I've heard good stuff about Final Cut, and Aperture really looks nice.
Apple hardware is pretty top notch as well. Just about any notebook or desktop system looks dated or junky compared to a comparable Apple product. The same goes with software. When I see a Windows desktop or Linux one or UNIX one, it looks dated like a picture of people from the 50s or 60s with those funny glasses or a picture of a parking lot from the 70s.
I don't have too much insightful or informative to say, I don't think, but I think Apple has done wonders for computers in the past 5 years. I know they did innovate before that timeframe, but I simply did not like the pre-OS X operating system. I liked my Apple
I guess I could be considered a "fanboy" or whatever, but in my opinion, they have earned it. Apple is not perfect, but for many things they are the leader of how computing should be.
Maintaining an aura of dignified debate unfortunately gives the false impression that ID is worthy of either dignity or debate (all it's really worthy of is laughing dismissal, a la astrology or flat-Earthism, of course) but looks better in the press.
I have tried to keep an open mind regarding the ID thing. At first glance, its easy to dismiss it, but I've read some pro ID material and "objective" writings about it as well, and I have dismissed it as anything real or a part of science. I think this quote from the summary says it all:
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference.
I'm repeating myself from the last time I posted here about ID (and I promised I stop reading and replying to ID stuff here, but here I am...), but here is a sound argument against ID (IMNSHO):
Lets play and pretend that ID is completely real. Its now proven by the "Intelligent Designer" having a one way worldwide simulcast in a language that every human being understands, and this "Intelligent Designer" says in effect, "Yeah people, I did it", and everybody is completely convinced by the conversation as they are that the sun comes up every day.
OK, now here is the fun part.
What would this information give the world? How would our life change? What would we do differently?
I don't see a single thing that would come from this proof. Regardless if you were previously an ID believer or not.
Would we stop teaching evolution in science class or derivative sciences like genetics? No. They would still would have value. In fact, just as much value as before we were informed by the "Intelligent Designer" directly. Basically, evolution is the theory that living things have genetic variations and that those variations that are best adapted to the current environment are more likely to survive over time.
A simple hypothetical example would be this: Imagine if the atmosphere around the Earth collapsed to the level that no human over 5 feet tall could live (yeah, people I guess could scoot around on their bellies like a worm, but just bear with me in this example).
OK, if that was intelligently designed, which it may have very well been. What could we do then with that belief? I guess, we would just accept it that there are no longer going to be people over 5 feet tall. The same thing if one believed in evolution.
Now, take another example. We have a pond that has always in recent past had many little green frogs in it. Recently, people have noticed that the number of frogs is very few, and those that are left have deformed arms and legs.
With ID being the now proven way of doing things, we would do what? Say, well the Intelligent Designer, wanted these frogs to have deformed arms and legs and for them to disappear just as they were designed to appear.
With evolution, we would assume that something was radically different about the local pond environment. We would look around and find something like a company illegally dumping toxic waste into the pond. Fine the company, and use the money to clean it up, and tada! frogs are back, and this is probably more healthy for people as well.
I could go on, but to me all of this makes complete sense. I'm not formally a religious person who reads religious texts to help me live or whatever. But I do believe in a God, Intelligent Designer, or GUT (Grand Unification Theory). Whatever you want to call it, doesn't matter to me. There does appear to be patterns in the universe instead of everything being random. In fact, ask a computer scientist about how difficult it is to generate a random number.
In other words, we can all get along here. We can use science to "find God" (debatable I guess). Or at the least, God and science are not mutually exclusive. Many of the famous scientists have been christians or religious in one way or another.
Its entirely possible that an "Intelligent Designer" designed everything. So what? That does not change how things are or how things exist or how people live.
It was the same thing with the X-Files. I don't know if it's changed, but it was about $100 when it came out. Totally crazy.
I'm not sure either if they are $100 either still, but my mother bought me a season as a gift. I thought it was nice and thoughtful. Later, I was with her in a store and saw the boxsets with the $100 pricetag. I asked her if that was what she paid, more in the tone of "You didn't pay that much for the X-Files box set you gave me did you?" And she said yes. I told her that was too much, and to not to buy them again. She did buy me another season, and I told her again that it wasn't that I didn't appreciate the gift or whatever, but that was too much to pay for it. I was also a little pissed that it did not have a play through option on the disk, but it stops and goes to the menu after each episode, maybe an obnoxious one that repeats some music over and over again, I don't remember. Also, I don't believe that you could hit the next button to go to the next episode, but had to go back to the menu. For me, its difficult to remember which episode I saw recently by the title on the disk, and I don't notice until it starts playing. Its just a pain. Same with the South Park DVDs. Someday, I'll break the law and burn my own copy with a better interface, but its kinda stupid for me to pay that money, and then have to redo the thing. Or just download them off the net.
In general, just like music CDs, TV show series are too expensive for something that is pretty much already done and paid for. Yes, they have to be transferred to DVD and extra features or whatever, but the shows are already done.
It kills me that whoever puts these things together have either never watched a DVD or some PHB told them to do it that way. Just like shampoo bottle designers. For those that haven't figured it out yet, its much more convenient to have a container that you can have the dispenser or opening on the bottom. Gravity pulls stuff down, and when the bottle is narrower at the dispensing end, its very difficult to convince the bottle to stay upright. But what do I know?
I just wish yahoo would send and receive standard mail. You know, with the headers and whatnot. Just last Friday I spent an hour trying to figure out why I was getting a mail loop, and it was because it was coming from a Yahoo account.
Grrr.