if the gartner group is correct, and licensing is only 8% of the total cost of using software, then california would have had a slightly larger bill to pay in the end. not $95M but $1,187 M:)
perhaps they read the recent letter from Nunez to Microsoft, wherein this 8% rule is writ large..?
"Kellner, a launcher of broadcast networks, sits atop the empire built by Ted Turner, who acquired programming libraries and turned them into cable leaders."
ummm... last time i looked, using a credit card is patently NOT the same as handing someone the keys to your safe. the money is NOT yours, and if someone other than yourself manages to gain access to it, you do NOT have to pay it back (at least, above a certain limit, $50, whatever).
that is the whole point of credit cards, after all. a way to deal with cashless transactions in a way that ensures your money is not technically at stake should something go tits up with the system. now, if we are talking about DEBIT cards, such as the Switch cards in the UK, that is a totally different kettle of fish, and your point about the safe is entirely correct.
far too much is being made of the use of the word here. last time i looked - OK, IANAL - copyright is all about permission to include quoted material in an original work, whether this quoting is done with speech, text, music, whatever. linking to someone's article is not by any stretch of the imagination quoting someone's work. it is, simply put, saying 'this guy has said something similar, go an look the work up'. that it is now faster to do this, and one does not perhaps require a library card on the way (although many sites offer registration-only news) makes no conceptual difference. me telling someone about how great iain m. banks' book Consider Phlebas is does NOT, under any circumstances, require me to put a (c) anywhere in that statement.
a more pertinent example: i did not, in the course of my doctoral thesis, have to write off to the n authors whose works i consulted asking their permission to be referred to in my work. for material i quoted, above a certain length (and yes, there are international rules on this, something like 10% of an article, or similar), sure, THEN i did have to.
"But the more times I see [the Matrix], the more it's luster wears off... it actually looses appeal every time I watch it, while TPM, strangly, seems to get better."
"By the way, I will venture to say that today Excel (for the common business user) is probably Microsoft most well put together apps minus all the bloat."
bzzzzzt! wrong.
the following applies to excel 2000, maybe they actually got a decent product out the door with XP, i have no idea. excel 2000 must anyway be the standard at the moment. just two examples to start us off:
Example #1. open a file, save it as 'myfile.xls'. open another file, save it in *another folder* (very important!) as 'myfile.xls'. close excel. reopen excel. now try and open both those files at the same time. you can't: the program does not allow two files with the same name - *even in different folders* - to be open at the same time. that is, pardon my french, f**ked.
Example #2. Autosave is an 'optional extra' that you have to install with the 'Add-Ins Manager'. WTF? That is also A Bad Thing.
From my experience excel should be spelt Exhell. Excel it certainly doesn't.
just emailed them on this account - suggest anyone who thinks the same, does the same.
the issues with the programs you mention are simply issues with bad programming. the old story with shareware like winzip that allows you simply to click 'yeah, i know i should buy it' and carry right on using it. dumb. 30 days is 30 days. after that, make the frickin' software stop working or lose the revenue from sales. it's a simple equation.
a thornier problem with demoes is if someone cracks the software - and that's usually in direct relation to how useful/cool it is, since its these programs that receive the attention, and gobe might well have a problem there. but unfortunately software houses have to eventually bite the bullet. for those in my position as IT evaluator for my company, without a demo - no way. if software 602 can do it (OK they're operating from a semi-free as in beer licence model), why not gobe?
i don't care how good they say it is. i can't find a demo on the site and if they think i'm buying without testing it first they must be frickin' idiots.
or am i the idiot who can't see a big fat DEMO link somewhere on the site?
true, i remember reading something on these lines a while back - 'big bird' for plane etc. you end up with a decent encoding but everything takes nine times as long since it has to be first translated into babyspeak.
as for chip-fabrication technique, that's at least relatively simple: you just need to adapt the account of the creation of the Silmarils to the subject-matter at hand:P
do check out the voynich link though: it's a beautiful-sounding script, just no-one knows what the hell they were on about.
i thought of putting this in 'ask slashdot' to be honest, but here goes... what kind of effort is required to invent a reasonably efficient language which of course only you and your confederates would be able to use. esperanto, es an example, required a mere *eight* years.
the advantage with this is that it requires practically no encryption, if any.
"jan? khlaz tuirt'kah dar gangan Mbou!"
any idea what it means? nope, me either. and if you want an example of how strong this kind of 'encryption' is, simply take a look at the puzzles linguistics has tried to crack over the years: Linear B, (Linear A is still a mystery), hieroglyphics, etc., etc. For an example of something which is *still in plaintext and not deciphered*, check out the Voynich Manuscript.
OK, I'm not saying that one can simply go off and invent a perfect language in a coupla weeks, but look at the pseudo-languages like Elvish, Klingon and whatnot. Ideas, criticisms, reactions??
Plus of course, if someone is holding a cattleprod to your crown jewels and you're standing in a bucket of water, it doesn't *really* matter whether u used gazillion-bit keys anyway...
luckily the firm i work for is small, so getting 35-odd users off Outlook and onto Eudora wasn't too tricky. Eudora works OK, has all the features one needs (including a few extra neat things like the ability for global, text-based addressbooks and sig files), and regarding viruses, well, the figures speak for themselves (from a search on antivirus.com):
'eudora' "1 - 2 of 2 records match your query 'netscape' "1 - 10 of 21 records match your query"
but...
'outlook' "1 - 10 of 390 records match your query"
Sorry, but *no* amount of eyecandy, added 'features' (most of which require Exchange anyhow) or supposed compatibility (read: sharing stuff with MS apps) are worth this, folks.
it's the case for *all* pronouns: none of them use a possessive apostrophe. it's nothing to do with avoiding having two words with the same orthography but different meanings. that happens all the time in english. consider the following sentence, what's it mean?
"the frog's well"
does the frog own one, or is he simply OK?
nalfy
Re:Check the web site license: lewd & lascivio
on
Borland Backs Down
·
· Score: 1
concerning these terms, and where it talks about 'chat room' communications, would someone care to comment on the legal distinction between 'lewd' and 'lascivious'..?
And as for the list of products 'with confusingly similar names to Windows' that the CEO of Lindows is asking people to help compile - well if his case rests on this then he's going down bigtime.
95% of the products on this list are SPECIFICALLY FOR USE ON THE MICROSOFT WINDOWS PLATFORM. So their names are not confusing but perfectly accurate references to the environment in which they operate. From which argument we conclude that Lindows is also making plain reference to Windows OS as well. Doh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot with a minigun.
actually this post isn't about what u think at all. i just thought it amusing to note that an announcement about a major update to PHP gets a measly 20 comments, whilst a more general and waffly piece about Perl (interesting as it is tho') gets nearly ten times as many.
do i take it from this that/. readers are Perl hackers rather than PHP scripters? thought so.
no, it's not non-destructive. it got a high risk rating from trend micro, and that is most unusual (the only one in the last ten or so advisories). read the tech. breakdown on the thing here: here.
Slashdot Mirror
if the gartner group is correct, and licensing is only 8% of the total cost of using software, then california would have had a slightly larger bill to pay in the end. not $95M but $1,187 M:)
perhaps they read the recent letter from Nunez to Microsoft, wherein this 8% rule is writ large..?
nalfy.
"Kellner, a launcher of broadcast networks, sits atop the empire built by Ted Turner, who acquired programming libraries and turned them into cable leaders."
new dists list for debian:
cable,potato,sid,stable,testing,unstable,woody
nalfy.
ummm ... last time i looked, using a credit card is patently NOT the same as handing someone the keys to your safe. the money is NOT yours, and if someone other than yourself manages to gain access to it, you do NOT have to pay it back (at least, above a certain limit, $50, whatever).
that is the whole point of credit cards, after all. a way to deal with cashless transactions in a way that ensures your money is not technically at stake should something go tits up with the system. now, if we are talking about DEBIT cards, such as the Switch cards in the UK, that is a totally different kettle of fish, and your point about the safe is entirely correct.
nalfy.
a more pertinent example: i did not, in the course of my doctoral thesis, have to write off to the n authors whose works i consulted asking their permission to be referred to in my work. for material i quoted, above a certain length (and yes, there are international rules on this, something like 10% of an article, or similar), sure, THEN i did have to.
bzzzzt! logic check!
.net similarly, i.e. seeing delays to both debian woody and .net releases in a critical light?
so taco is dealing with debian and
and this is favouring linux over windows exactly how? seems to me he's being even-handed.
nalfy.
re:
"But the more times I see [the Matrix], the more it's luster wears off... it actually looses appeal every time I watch it, while TPM, strangly, seems to get better."
you, sir, are weird.
last time i looked, the bat had proprietary format mailboxes. this still the case?
now that would exclude it from any sensible list from the outset.
nalfy
"By the way, I will venture to say that today Excel (for the common business user) is probably Microsoft most well put together apps minus all the bloat."
bzzzzzt! wrong.
the following applies to excel 2000, maybe they actually got a decent product out the door with XP, i have no idea. excel 2000 must anyway be the standard at the moment. just two examples to start us off:
Example #1. open a file, save it as 'myfile.xls'. open another file, save it in *another folder* (very important!) as 'myfile.xls'. close excel. reopen excel. now try and open both those files at the same time. you can't: the program does not allow two files with the same name - *even in different folders* - to be open at the same time. that is, pardon my french, f**ked.
Example #2. Autosave is an 'optional extra' that you have to install with the 'Add-Ins Manager'. WTF? That is also A Bad Thing.
From my experience excel should be spelt Exhell. Excel it certainly doesn't.
Thankyou,
Nalfy
just emailed them on this account - suggest anyone who thinks the same, does the same.
the issues with the programs you mention are simply issues with bad programming. the old story with shareware like winzip that allows you simply to click 'yeah, i know i should buy it' and carry right on using it. dumb. 30 days is 30 days. after that, make the frickin' software stop working or lose the revenue from sales. it's a simple equation.
a thornier problem with demoes is if someone cracks the software - and that's usually in direct relation to how useful/cool it is, since its these programs that receive the attention, and gobe might well have a problem there. but unfortunately software houses have to eventually bite the bullet. for those in my position as IT evaluator for my company, without a demo - no way. if software 602 can do it (OK they're operating from a semi-free as in beer licence model), why not gobe?
Nalfy
i don't care how good they say it is. i can't find a demo on the site and if they think i'm buying without testing it first they must be frickin' idiots.
or am i the idiot who can't see a big fat DEMO link somewhere on the site?
Nalfy
true, i remember reading something on these lines a while back - 'big bird' for plane etc. you end up with a decent encoding but everything takes nine times as long since it has to be first translated into babyspeak.
:P
as for chip-fabrication technique, that's at least relatively simple: you just need to adapt the account of the creation of the Silmarils to the subject-matter at hand
do check out the voynich link though: it's a beautiful-sounding script, just no-one knows what the hell they were on about.
cheers,
nalfy
i thought of putting this in 'ask slashdot' to be honest, but here goes ... what kind of effort is required to invent a reasonably efficient language which of course only you and your confederates would be able to use. esperanto, es an example, required a mere *eight* years.
the advantage with this is that it requires practically no encryption, if any.
"jan? khlaz tuirt'kah dar gangan Mbou!"
any idea what it means? nope, me either. and if you want an example of how strong this kind of 'encryption' is, simply take a look at the puzzles linguistics has tried to crack over the years: Linear B, (Linear A is still a mystery), hieroglyphics, etc., etc. For an example of something which is *still in plaintext and not deciphered*, check out the Voynich Manuscript.
OK, I'm not saying that one can simply go off and invent a perfect language in a coupla weeks, but look at the pseudo-languages like Elvish, Klingon and whatnot. Ideas, criticisms, reactions??
Plus of course, if someone is holding a cattleprod to your crown jewels and you're standing in a bucket of water, it doesn't *really* matter whether u used gazillion-bit keys anyway...
nalfy
well said that man.
luckily the firm i work for is small, so getting 35-odd users off Outlook and onto Eudora wasn't too tricky. Eudora works OK, has all the features one needs (including a few extra neat things like the ability for global, text-based addressbooks and sig files), and regarding viruses, well, the figures speak for themselves (from a search on antivirus.com):
'eudora' "1 - 2 of 2 records match your query
'netscape' "1 - 10 of 21 records match your query"
but...
'outlook' "1 - 10 of 390 records match your query"
Sorry, but *no* amount of eyecandy, added 'features' (most of which require Exchange anyhow) or supposed compatibility (read: sharing stuff with MS apps) are worth this, folks.
just my 0,2 Eurocents.
Nalfy
if you're the kind of parent that needs site-blocking software in the first place, then you're not much of a parent.
don't worry??? i guess the last one, by definition, wasn't 'expected', either :=)
well said. oh, and 'compliment' should be 'complement' (unless the parts of the machine are indulging in mutual gratulation).
anyway, totally agree: i've read explanations of quantum mechanics that were easier to read than this!
sex was hardly *invented*. so:
no, that would be cloning.
nalfy.
this is *really* quibbling, but:
it's the case for *all* pronouns: none of them use a possessive apostrophe. it's nothing to do with avoiding having two words with the same orthography but different meanings. that happens all the time in english. consider the following sentence, what's it mean?
"the frog's well"
does the frog own one, or is he simply OK?
nalfy
concerning these terms, and where it talks about 'chat room' communications, would someone care to comment on the legal distinction between 'lewd' and 'lascivious'..?
interested parties want to know!
ed
Well said.
And as for the list of products 'with confusingly similar names to Windows' that the CEO of Lindows is asking people to help compile - well if his case rests on this then he's going down bigtime.
95% of the products on this list are SPECIFICALLY FOR USE ON THE MICROSOFT WINDOWS PLATFORM. So their names are not confusing but perfectly accurate references to the environment in which they operate. From which argument we conclude that Lindows is also making plain reference to Windows OS as well. Doh! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot with a minigun.
Nalfy.
... by the Scottish Sci-Fi writer Iain M. Banks has a great take on this.
In fact pretty much anything by him is to be recommended.
actually this post isn't about what u think at all. i just thought it amusing to note that an announcement about a major update to PHP gets a measly 20 comments, whilst a more general and waffly piece about Perl (interesting as it is tho') gets nearly ten times as many.
do i take it from this that /. readers are Perl hackers rather than PHP scripters? thought so.
nalfy.
"Thus, children's books by Dr. Suess, J.K. Rowling, Tolkien, etc. are still readable and enjoyable by adults."
Please don't mention the lame 'fantasy-book-by-numbers' authoress in the same breath as greats like Seuss and Tolkein.
Thankyou.
no, it's not non-destructive. it got a high risk rating from trend micro, and that is most unusual (the only one in the last ten or so advisories). read the tech. breakdown on the thing here: here.
certainly seems M$ is heading that way in the current climate
*G*