HP are monopolist wannabees. They aren't big enough to pull this off. They also have enough competition that it won't take long for buyers to wise up -- and with the price of printers so low (1000 for the color laser) and toner so high (750 for a full round of consumables) it's not like the economic incentive is there for people to stay locked into HP.
Carly is an idiot who is rearranging the furnitre on deck while the ship is taking on water from hitting an iceberg years ago.
I'd love to see a list of top-ten "good software patents". In other words, patents that meet (at least) the following criteria:
There is no such thing as a good software patent First, you are patenting the use of a general purpose constructed of general purpose devices being used as it was intended by it's inventor. Second, you are using development tools and software components for their intended purpose. At the end of the day you are riding on the backs of too many others who have far more claim to a novel invention than your software ever ever can.
Meanwhile the government is pushng that ridiculous food pyramid, with its over-emphasis on grains and causing carbohydrate overload without being balanced by proteins and fat (the 4 food groups were better - much less diabetes when that was popular - and type 2 was NEVER seen in kids back then, even the fat ones)
Diabetes is a huge problem right now. So are stress injuries caused by hauling around an oversized carcas. When you look at your health insurance bill, think this:
This bill costs me 40% more than it should because people don't eat right.
It cost another 20% more becaus people won't get in the gym.
Call me when smart means homing ammunition, variable rate of fire, adjusting powder load based on target/range, etc... Then the electronics improve the utility of a gun. Until then the last thing I need is a gun that has two supplies that run out (ammo and batteries) and even more parts that can fail.
I'll bite on this one seeing as how I have a couple of daughters that are approaching cell phone age.
There are a couple of practices in the cell phone business that I find to be highly unethical.
When your plan minutes are up you pay per minute (usually really high per minute) for each additional minute. This is especially troubling given that there are usually a multitude of higher priced plans that provide more minutes. I could pay $39 per month and $300 for a total of 3500 minutes on one plan, but had I had the foresight, $59.95 per month for 3500 minutes.
Solution: Automatically bump the customer to the next better plan when their bill exceeds price of the next better plan. This goes for SMS, too.
Locked-Out Handsets: Some model handsets have features locked out or crippled. Often this involves serial communication or the ability to install software on the phone. Compounding the problem is the marketing done by the manufacturer that touts the capabilities of the device.
Solution: Cell carriers should have to diclose on all marketing materials what differs from the stock configuration of the device. Saying "some features disabled" isn't good enough. Tell people that Serial communication, outlook sync, and handset to to handset address transfer have been disabled. Or even better: web browser is limited to just carrier X's little tiny corner of the internet.
Some downloads cost but don't tell you.
Solution: Customer must enter their PIN to approve any purchase of a feature from the carrier. And no, entering it in a wallet isn't good enough.
Apps that don't run do so because they are shoddily programmed. The user protection concept has been around since NT4, maybe it's time we ask developers to actually follow secure coding practices?
This has less to do with coding and more to do with your instal system. Regardless, I still don't have this problem with nn redmond Oses because user rights aren't a recent addition.
"The scheme, from Hewlett-Packard and Philips, targets DVD+R and DVD+RW and is an attempt to enforce the FCC broadcast flag on DVD recorders."
In case the engineers at HP forgot: The DVD drive in my computer is a data storage device, not a video recorder. I don't want a DVD drive in my computer that works like my $39 Sams club special DVD player connected to my TV. I'd overlook this if you charged a fair price for ink and toner.
Most people would agree with you, there, but what's not obvious is that the defendant is guilty. It's possible that what he says is true, the he and his daughter were out pointing a laser at trees and the sky when the FBI swooped in.
It's a frickin' laser beam. It can blind people. It is actually a really dangerous choice in toys. You don't let you kid take a handgun out back and shoot in the air...
This is what the 'RIGHT WINGERS' don't want you to know. They reply with propoganda that government will only hurt broadband when in fact most monopolies of this countries have been private companies.
You have the right/left slant 180 degrees out of phase. The right wing position would be deregulate and competition is good. The left wing position is to regulate and control the market. The situation with broadband is fairly simple:
* Telecom/Cable Company spent millions building out a fiber and copper network five years ago. * Said network is basically obsolete the day it goes on line. * Costs fall, technology improves so building a new network is a better deal over five or ten years for the end user customer than using the freshly built obsolete one. So for municipalities, universities and even large corporations, it's better to make your own. * Every private fiber build out cuts into telecom company's topline of income (topline would mean sales). Lower topline makes having a profitable bottom line next to impossible. * Government has created a regulatory structure that protects investments in network build outs because no one in their right mind would fund them without some kind of guarantee of return. Thus, the regulations that are preventing a lot of the new high bandwith and wireless build outs.
There you have it. Now instead of bellyaching about right and left wing, why not look for a way to let all parties win on this:
* Get the telecom company involved as an investor in the buildout. If the telecom sees $millions in monthly bills for a DSL market, you are going to have to find a way to show them how this investment will return the same bottom line to investors that their DSL buildout would. If the telecom doesn't have the cash to invest up front, find ways they can invest with in kind or even cashflow. Basically what you are doing is letting the telecom get a piece of the action in return for having them not disrupt the startup.
* Make sure the local customer is going to get what they want. Less expensive and/or better, faster bandwith. That doesn't mean you have to lowball everyone (this is a huge problem with municipal networks - they sell at 1/2 the price or less of commercial carriers).
* Investors - make sure that there is an appropriate ROI. Don't build something that will have to be sold to pay off creditors and leave the investors with an empty bag.
My question is what are they going to do as digital LF spread spectrum starts to come into it's own... Wired telecom and wireless are going to be on a collision course in the next five years, and air is a lot less expensive than wires or fiber. Air is slower... for now.
They are trying to crush competition ! They don't want poor folk to get broadband because it cuts into profit margin !
LOL. Please. Everything isn't about class warfare. They don't want to give away their services. There are many cases where private/public coolitions have developed that subsidize broadband connections for less affluent people. The telecoms in a lot of cases even donate to these groups - for them it's giving a dollar, getting.50 back and getting.25 in tax advantages. So they give.25 and get credit for giving $1.00.
Solving problems requires you look beyond simple ideologies and stereotypes and find ways to make everyone at the table win. When you only see two ways (righ/left, rich/poor, capitalist/socialist) to get something done, you are faced with a "sucker's choice." Probably close to 99% of all scams, bad deals and rip-offs come dressed as a sucker's choice. But, people buy into them because it's easier than thinking for yourself.
My point, which I should have made clearer, is that the "network-is-the-computer" approach didn't work because the bandwidth simply was not there. Now it is getting to be.
There was more to the failure of the network is the computer than bandwidth. Software wasn't ready for the wholesale switch to running elsewhere on the network. Even now, the idea of ASP is still too closely associated with a big server running something like Citrix that basically forces the server to share cycles to run multiple instance of some huge gui and userspace applications.
Its main effect is to take out all the small/medium players and polarize the market into FOSS and the commercial giants which is unfortunate because the smaller commercial endeavours are where (as far as I can see) most of the innovation tends to come from
Maybe a more positive way to view this is that FOSS commoditizes markets that are way overpriced. This is especially true of:
* Compilers and software development tools. * Operating Systems * Productivity suites * Web servers & Application servers * e-Mail services
Now even the tiniest organizations can use FOSS to gain an advantage. I was able to start a regional online advertising network for less than $500 by using a commercial, open source ad manager that I've retooled to fit my needs.
FOSS also tends to lag behind the technology curve so by the time it starts to mature the market has moved on, creating new options for commercial software so FOSS will constantly be chasing a moving target.
I have got to disagree with this on many, many levels. A great many of the innovations you take for granted now were invented via FOSS (try basically, the internet as a platform, web browser, email, etc). FOSS has nothing to do with commercial or not. It's about the app coming with the source with rights to modify (oss) or source + right to mod + right to redistribute (free). There are plenty of commercial apps that are oss. There are also commercial apps that are Free as in speech. I think what you are comparing, is for example, OpenOffice vs. MS Office, which compares a commercial closed source with a semi-commercial FOSS one. Even so, OpenOffice has capabilities that MS office does not and MS Office has capabilies that Open Office does not. The technology curve is more of a 3d wave than a 2d curve - it's possible to lead in one area and follow in another.
Don't assume that because an application is FOSS that it is somehow inferior to a closed source product.
Right, it appears you are mistaking "user control" with "freedom of choice"; the two are not equivalent. Windows has ample user control, and is nowhere near as difficult to configure as Linux (though it is still fundamentally flawed).
Firefox allows the user to have far greater control over how web content is presented and what web content is presented. It also doesn't allow for unannounced installation of software. It gives the user far better control than does IE. Windows gives the user some control, but also gives software often the same control that the system administrator login has.
The only real difference between the blessed file permissions and the evil DRM is perspective: its OK when you don't want people messing with your stuff, but not all right when others don't want you messing with their stuff.
No. The real difference is who has control - the owner of a computer versus the supposed owner of some binary data. I should determine if a file should be able to be opened by a user on my computer, not the DRM owner.
Please define "runaway success". 10% of the total user base? 50%? 90%? I ask so in a years time I can point out how your prediction failed to take into account the herd mentality that makes IE a "standard"
real world code (laws) have little effect on executable code. what does have effect: better user control of their computer. Let the user decide what gets installed and what doesn't.
That's why I love FOSS. Better control. That's why windows and IE have issues - little user control. The soloution to a lot of the mess out there is to give users better control of their system. It's firefox vs IE that best illustrates the concept. Firefox will be a runaway success in 2005.
Giving the user better control also ultimately requires a security archetecture -- NOT DRM -- that does not exist in Windows. You need to be able to control what rights a piece of software has -- and that has always been one of *nix's strong suits.
Bad guess. If there is no afterlife, when you die, you'll simply cease to exist, and won't find anything out.
How is my guess any worse than anyone elses guess when there is 100% certainty that none of us can possibly know the answer until we die. And then we can't tell anyone what the answer is.
I'd recommend you find a way to get out of the assignment. You will not find what you seek as it is one of the holy grails of computing that should exist but does not and does not for good reason (money).
Unlikely. We'll be dead. We won't have any cognitive abilities remaining to appreciate that fact.
I'll tell you what - look me up after we're both dead if you are wrong about that no God thing. If you are right, you will have no cognitive ability to say I told you so.
This is just one more reason why God is a bunch of crap. Study the origin of ethics and look into hard vs. soft command, and you'll begin to come towards my point of view, which is that ethics in and of themselves point to the non-existence of God via contradiction.
I guess we'll find out the truth when we are dead.
Back in the day to do this you needed Corel Draw (it had a neat little tool called the Corel BarCode) and a decent 24 pin dot matrix printer with a fresh ribbon and a pack of labels.
Re:Plone is an overdesigned piece of crap
on
Two Books On Plone
·
· Score: 1
f you want to do a small application with less than one hit per second, go ahead. But for a big site: forget it.
Not true at all. Yes zope is slower than many other application servers. It's also vastly more powerful.
If you want better performance, the turn off debug mode, clean up your skins so you aren't 12 layers deep and enjoy. If you really need to, with ZEO you can easily deal with the need for more processing horsepower by throwing servers at it.
Re:Python versus Plone/Zope
on
Two Books On Plone
·
· Score: 2, Informative
What are the advantages of using Plone/Zope versus straight up python? It seems to be just another layer of complexity and slowdown.
This question is like asking why use a library instead of writing everything in c from scratch.
Reagan sold arms to hostage takers and terror sponsors in order to fund latin american drug-dealing terrorists who committed some of the worst human rights abuses in the western hemisphere this century because he was scared of the communist boogieman.
What does Regan have to do with the present situation: nothing.
Communism is only a bogeyman because it collapsed (with Reagan's help). There was a time when the west feared communism for good reason. There is a reason that literature and movies from the 1950s through the 1980s often viewed the world as a west vs. communist east. The Communists were committed to destroying the west - and invested billions of dollars to do so. When a leader of a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons says "We will bury you," you listen. And you act. Or, you get burried.
Global government: the worst of capitalism and communism mixed together under one roof, with no accountability and ultimately no pretense of the rule of real law.
Well said. The problem is that a great deal of good is done by the UN in spite of itself. With reform, it could work. At present, it's problematic.
Better to be unsure how much more secure your browser than 100% certain that it is not.
Incidentally, signed code makes no real difference when the signing does nothing to ensure the security of the code - only that it is a genuine copy with nothing added or removed. In the case of IE the signature means:
Slashdot Mirror
HP are monopolist wannabees. They aren't big enough to pull this off. They also have enough competition that it won't take long for buyers to wise up -- and with the price of printers so low (1000 for the color laser) and toner so high (750 for a full round of consumables) it's not like the economic incentive is there for people to stay locked into HP.
Carly is an idiot who is rearranging the furnitre on deck while the ship is taking on water from hitting an iceberg years ago.
How is DDoSing a site extortion?
All you have to do is threaten to do something with the exception being if you pay a small fee.
I'd love to see a list of top-ten "good software patents". In other words, patents that meet (at least) the following criteria:
There is no such thing as a good software patent First, you are patenting the use of a general purpose constructed of general purpose devices being used as it was intended by it's inventor. Second, you are using development tools and software components for their intended purpose. At the end of the day you are riding on the backs of too many others who have far more claim to a novel invention than your software ever ever can.
Meanwhile the government is pushng that ridiculous food pyramid, with its over-emphasis on grains and causing carbohydrate overload without being balanced by proteins and fat (the 4 food groups were better - much less diabetes when that was popular - and type 2 was NEVER seen in kids back then, even the fat ones)
Diabetes is a huge problem right now. So are stress injuries caused by hauling around an oversized carcas. When you look at your health insurance bill, think this:
This bill costs me 40% more than it should because people don't eat right.
It cost another 20% more becaus people won't get in the gym.
Call me when smart means homing ammunition, variable rate of fire, adjusting powder load based on target/range, etc... Then the electronics improve the utility of a gun. Until then the last thing I need is a gun that has two supplies that run out (ammo and batteries) and even more parts that can fail.
I'll bite on this one seeing as how I have a couple of daughters that are approaching cell phone age.
There are a couple of practices in the cell phone business that I find to be highly unethical.
When your plan minutes are up you pay per minute (usually really high per minute) for each additional minute. This is especially troubling given that there are usually a multitude of higher priced plans that provide more minutes. I could pay $39 per month and $300 for a total of 3500 minutes on one plan, but had I had the foresight, $59.95 per month for 3500 minutes.
Solution: Automatically bump the customer to the next better plan when their bill exceeds price of the next better plan. This goes for SMS, too.
Locked-Out Handsets: Some model handsets have features locked out or crippled. Often this involves serial communication or the ability to install software on the phone. Compounding the problem is the marketing done by the manufacturer that touts the capabilities of the device.
Solution: Cell carriers should have to diclose on all marketing materials what differs from the stock configuration of the device. Saying "some features disabled" isn't good enough. Tell people that Serial communication, outlook sync, and handset to to handset address transfer have been disabled. Or even better: web browser is limited to just carrier X's little tiny corner of the internet.
Some downloads cost but don't tell you.
Solution: Customer must enter their PIN to approve any purchase of a feature from the carrier. And no, entering it in a wallet isn't good enough.
Apps that don't run do so because they are shoddily programmed. The user protection concept has been around since NT4, maybe it's time we ask developers to actually follow secure coding practices?
This has less to do with coding and more to do with your instal system. Regardless, I still don't have this problem with nn redmond Oses because user rights aren't a recent addition.
Given this fact, a buffer overflow in Mozilla as Administrator threatens the OS just as much as an IE vulnerability.
Problem with XP is that so much software just doesn't run unless you are an admin. This is no big deal if you run a non redmond os.
"The scheme, from Hewlett-Packard and Philips, targets DVD+R and DVD+RW and is an attempt to enforce the FCC broadcast flag on DVD recorders."
In case the engineers at HP forgot: The DVD drive in my computer is a data storage device, not a video recorder. I don't want a DVD drive in my computer that works like my $39 Sams club special DVD player connected to my TV. I'd overlook this if you charged a fair price for ink and toner.
Most people would agree with you, there, but what's not obvious is that the defendant is guilty. It's possible that what he says is true, the he and his daughter were out pointing a laser at trees and the sky when the FBI swooped in.
It's a frickin' laser beam. It can blind people. It is actually a really dangerous choice in toys. You don't let you kid take a handgun out back and shoot in the air...
This is what the 'RIGHT WINGERS' don't want you to know. They reply with propoganda that government will only hurt broadband when in fact most monopolies of this countries have been private companies.
.50 back and getting .25 in tax advantages. So they give .25 and get credit for giving $1.00.
You have the right/left slant 180 degrees out of phase. The right wing position would be deregulate and competition is good. The left wing position is to regulate and control the market. The situation with broadband is fairly simple:
* Telecom/Cable Company spent millions building out a fiber and copper network five years ago.
* Said network is basically obsolete the day it goes on line.
* Costs fall, technology improves so building a new network is a better deal over five or ten years for the end user customer than using the freshly built obsolete one. So for municipalities, universities and even large corporations, it's better to make your own.
* Every private fiber build out cuts into telecom company's topline of income (topline would mean sales). Lower topline makes having a profitable bottom line next to impossible.
* Government has created a regulatory structure that protects investments in network build outs because no one in their right mind would fund them without some kind of guarantee of return. Thus, the regulations that are preventing a lot of the new high bandwith and wireless build outs.
There you have it. Now instead of bellyaching about right and left wing, why not look for a way to let all parties win on this:
* Get the telecom company involved as an investor in the buildout. If the telecom sees $millions in monthly bills for a DSL market, you are going to have to find a way to show them how this investment will return the same bottom line to investors that their DSL buildout would. If the telecom doesn't have the cash to invest up front, find ways they can invest with in kind or even cashflow. Basically what you are doing is letting the telecom get a piece of the action in return for having them not disrupt the startup.
* Make sure the local customer is going to get what they want. Less expensive and/or better, faster bandwith. That doesn't mean you have to lowball everyone (this is a huge problem with municipal networks - they sell at 1/2 the price or less of commercial carriers).
* Investors - make sure that there is an appropriate ROI. Don't build something that will have to be sold to pay off creditors and leave the investors with an empty bag.
My question is what are they going to do as digital LF spread spectrum starts to come into it's own... Wired telecom and wireless are going to be on a collision course in the next five years, and air is a lot less expensive than wires or fiber. Air is slower... for now.
They are trying to crush competition ! They don't want poor folk to get broadband because it cuts into profit margin !
LOL. Please. Everything isn't about class warfare. They don't want to give away their services. There are many cases where private/public coolitions have developed that subsidize broadband connections for less affluent people. The telecoms in a lot of cases even donate to these groups - for them it's giving a dollar, getting
Solving problems requires you look beyond simple ideologies and stereotypes and find ways to make everyone at the table win. When you only see two ways (righ/left, rich/poor, capitalist/socialist) to get something done, you are faced with a "sucker's choice." Probably close to 99% of all scams, bad deals and rip-offs come dressed as a sucker's choice. But, people buy into them because it's easier than thinking for yourself.
My point, which I should have made clearer, is that the "network-is-the-computer" approach didn't work because the bandwidth simply was not there. Now it is getting to be.
There was more to the failure of the network is the computer than bandwidth. Software wasn't ready for the wholesale switch to running elsewhere on the network. Even now, the idea of ASP is still too closely associated with a big server running something like Citrix that basically forces the server to share cycles to run multiple instance of some huge gui and userspace applications.
Its main effect is to take out all the small/medium players and polarize the market into FOSS and the commercial giants which is unfortunate because the smaller commercial endeavours are where (as far as I can see) most of the innovation tends to come from
Maybe a more positive way to view this is that FOSS commoditizes markets that are way overpriced. This is especially true of:
* Compilers and software development tools.
* Operating Systems
* Productivity suites
* Web servers & Application servers
* e-Mail services
Now even the tiniest organizations can use FOSS to gain an advantage. I was able to start a regional online advertising network for less than $500 by using a commercial, open source ad manager that I've retooled to fit my needs.
FOSS also tends to lag behind the technology curve so by the time it starts to mature the market has moved on, creating new options for commercial software so FOSS will constantly be chasing a moving target.
I have got to disagree with this on many, many levels. A great many of the innovations you take for granted now were invented via FOSS (try basically, the internet as a platform, web browser, email, etc). FOSS has nothing to do with commercial or not. It's about the app coming with the source with rights to modify (oss) or source + right to mod + right to redistribute (free). There are plenty of commercial apps that are oss. There are also commercial apps that are Free as in speech. I think what you are comparing, is for example, OpenOffice vs. MS Office, which compares a commercial closed source with a semi-commercial FOSS one. Even so, OpenOffice has capabilities that MS office does not and MS Office has capabilies that Open Office does not. The technology curve is more of a 3d wave than a 2d curve - it's possible to lead in one area and follow in another.
Don't assume that because an application is FOSS that it is somehow inferior to a closed source product.
Right, it appears you are mistaking "user control" with "freedom of choice"; the two are not equivalent. Windows has ample user control, and is nowhere near as difficult to configure as Linux (though it is still fundamentally flawed).
Firefox allows the user to have far greater control over how web content is presented and what web content is presented. It also doesn't allow for unannounced installation of software. It gives the user far better control than does IE. Windows gives the user some control, but also gives software often the same control that the system administrator login has.
The only real difference between the blessed file permissions and the evil DRM is perspective: its OK when you don't want people messing with your stuff, but not all right when others don't want you messing with their stuff.
No. The real difference is who has control - the owner of a computer versus the supposed owner of some binary data. I should determine if a file should be able to be opened by a user on my computer, not the DRM owner.
Please define "runaway success". 10% of the total user base? 50%? 90%? I ask so in a years time I can point out how your prediction failed to take into account the herd mentality that makes IE a "standard"
Already closing on 10%.
real world code (laws) have little effect on executable code. what does have effect: better user control of their computer. Let the user decide what gets installed and what doesn't.
That's why I love FOSS. Better control. That's why windows and IE have issues - little user control. The soloution to a lot of the mess out there is to give users better control of their system. It's firefox vs IE that best illustrates the concept. Firefox will be a runaway success in 2005.
Giving the user better control also ultimately requires a security archetecture -- NOT DRM -- that does not exist in Windows. You need to be able to control what rights a piece of software has -- and that has always been one of *nix's strong suits.
Bad guess. If there is no afterlife, when you die, you'll simply cease to exist, and won't find anything out.
How is my guess any worse than anyone elses guess when there is 100% certainty that none of us can possibly know the answer until we die. And then we can't tell anyone what the answer is.
I'd recommend you find a way to get out of the assignment. You will not find what you seek as it is one of the holy grails of computing that should exist but does not and does not for good reason (money).
Unlikely. We'll be dead. We won't have any cognitive abilities remaining to appreciate that fact.
I'll tell you what - look me up after we're both dead if you are wrong about that no God thing. If you are right, you will have no cognitive ability to say I told you so.
This is just one more reason why God is a bunch of crap. Study the origin of ethics and look into hard vs. soft command, and you'll begin to come towards my point of view, which is that ethics in and of themselves point to the non-existence of God via contradiction.
I guess we'll find out the truth when we are dead.
Happy New Year.
Back in the day to do this you needed Corel Draw (it had a neat little tool called the Corel BarCode) and a decent 24 pin dot matrix printer with a fresh ribbon and a pack of labels.
f you want to do a small application with less than one hit per second, go ahead. But for a big site: forget it.
Not true at all. Yes zope is slower than many other application servers. It's also vastly more powerful.
If you want better performance, the turn off debug mode, clean up your skins so you aren't 12 layers deep and enjoy. If you really need to, with ZEO you can easily deal with the need for more processing horsepower by throwing servers at it.
What are the advantages of using Plone/Zope versus straight up python? It seems to be just another layer of complexity and slowdown.
This question is like asking why use a library instead of writing everything in c from scratch.
Reagan sold arms to hostage takers and terror sponsors in order to fund latin american drug-dealing terrorists who committed some of the worst human rights abuses in the western hemisphere this century because he was scared of the communist boogieman.
What does Regan have to do with the present situation: nothing.
Communism is only a bogeyman because it collapsed (with Reagan's help). There was a time when the west feared communism for good reason. There is a reason that literature and movies from the 1950s through the 1980s often viewed the world as a west vs. communist east. The Communists were committed to destroying the west - and invested billions of dollars to do so. When a leader of a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons says "We will bury you," you listen. And you act. Or, you get burried.
Global government: the worst of capitalism and communism mixed together under one roof, with no accountability and ultimately no pretense of the rule of real law.
Well said. The problem is that a great deal of good is done by the UN in spite of itself. With reform, it could work. At present, it's problematic.
Better to be unsure how much more secure your browser than 100% certain that it is not.
Incidentally, signed code makes no real difference when the signing does nothing to ensure the security of the code - only that it is a genuine copy with nothing added or removed. In the case of IE the signature means:
"This is a genuine MS security hole."