OK, I admit, I actually read the article -- please don't shoot me! From what I read, the new law legitimizes electronic signatures (I'm sure it does more, but the article didn't say) and the only registration requirement is for companies providing cryptographic services. It said nothing about individuals having to turn over their private keys.
Frankly, I'd be very happy if public key encryption became standard, and there were government-registered companies to certify people's public keys. How do you know that this key purportedly from John Smith is really from John Smith? Why not welcome the government's seal of approval that the company verifying John Smith's identity isn't "Fly-By-Night Enterprises"? Or are you happy trusting Microsoft to verify this stuff for you?
Don't forget that ATTBI is trying to give itself to Comcast, who forbid any use of VPN on "residential" service. But Comcast doesn't offer a "commercial" service! This is the first step toward offering a (naturally, higher-priced) "service" where VPN will be allowed -- same crap, but you get to pay more! So yes, it will affect your current "service" in that Real Soon Now they'll either block VPN or cut you off if they detect it; or, more likely, bump you into the more expensive package if they detect it. For those of us who occasionally work from home, this is a Bad Thing, and it's a kick in the crotch after the wedgies of recent price increases.
The reviewer says that IE's arrangement is more flexible. Since I can change the skin on Mozilla, I'd say that Mozilla is more flexible, and I can get it to look the way I want mare easily,
The average user isn't going to learn how to create skins just to change font sizes or colors. Skins are cool and all, but applications should also follow Windows standards on the Windows OS. Windows Media Player supports skins and also, skinless, looks like a standard Windows application.
And what is so wrong with allowing the user to customize the UI so they can put "Close" at the bottom of the File menu if that's where they want it? If you want to go Microsoft one better, let us modify everything. Only allowing us to modify what you want us to modify is exactly the attitude that makes me hate Microsoft.
Is consistant useability bad? Yes (see below); will someone please show me a platform with consistant useability -- I've yet to find one anywhere. My classic example is back from the command-line days. Our group decided to standardize on the command-line user interface for all our applications, and we couldn't even agree on what pressing the "Enter" key should do: These were IBM Mainframe applications, and if you did nothing for five minutes you timed out and were logged off the system, so some folks wanted "Enter" to do nothing, to just keep the session alive. Some wanted to make things easier on the users and have default selections for all prompts, with "Enter" selecting the default. Others were building script engines for their applications, and sometimes the scripts would get out of sync with the command prompts; in those cases the system would hit the end of the script and start supplying "Enter"s (Well, CRs, but you get the idea), so those guys wanted "Enter" to back you up to the previous prompt, with "Enter" at the first prompt terminating the program.
I conclude that "consistant useability" is indeed bad; each application should go with what's best for its circumstances. And each application should allow complete user customization, so if the user wants to impose their own "consistant useability" they can. This lack of complete customization is my greatest disappointment in Open Source software. Yes, I have the source and can add it myself, but why should I have to re-write each and every damn application? Why can't this be the going-in philosophy? My first editor (circa 1972) had a code for every command, and you could assign any code to any keystroke combination -- a completely user-configurable UI. I've never seen another application like it, and naturally they went out of business long ago. (Please don't mention emacs, as I know it offers the same ability; the problem with emacs is once you've learned how to modify it, you've gotten used to the default commands and lost the desire to modify it -- if you pick up emacs with the idea of making it do what you want, you're wasting your time)
I'm curious why Mozilla is so slow on your system.
You know, I'm curious why Mozilla is so slow on my systems. I run it on two machines (Windows 2000 500MHz Pentium something and Windows ME 500MHz K6-2) and it's slow on both.
One thing I've noticed is that when I save an image (say, a Dilbert or a political cartoon) Mozilla downloads it again, even though it's in the cache; MSIE just saves it from the cache. Mozilla treats images as if they were marked max-age=0 -- what's up with that? Same with printing a page -- reloads it first, every time. This simply sucks, and if it's a setting I've munged I'd love to be able to fix it. But that still doesn't explain the overall slowness of the beast. Maybe they slowed Mozilla on purpose to make Netscape look better.
I'll bet his dad's PC has "MSN Explorer" and you wife's PC has "Internet Explorer" -- there's a difference! You can tell which is which by looking at the icon in the upper right corner: It's a Windows logo in Internet Explorer and it's an MSN logo in MSN Explorer. You get MSN Explorer if you use MSN or your PC came with "2 free years of MSN" or if you've ever loaded one of those MSN trial CDs. I don't know how to remove it -- once you have MSN Explorer it appears impossible to restore Internet Explorer. (/. geeks will now post flames saying it's possible, but not telling me how)
Actually, the only question in the article is "Can anybody provide some insight?" -- "Why does Windows XP connect to sa.windows.com?" is the title, which usually has little connection to the subject, as any/. veteran would know. So, has anyone provided any insight into "brvread"? So far, no. If "People have already [installed a packet sniffer and analyzed it] and written up summaries," as you say, where are they? A Google search for "brvread packet sniffer summaries" turns up nothing. So how exactly would you phrase the search so Google finds these summaries? Surely you found them, since you cite them, right?
Let's see: You can't go anywhere in public without being photographed. You have to show ID to even go to an airport, let alone get on an airplane. Same for trains and boats. Soon, if you use a cell phone the cops can track your location anywhere on the planet (well, at least they can track the cell phone's location). Taken to the logical extreme, copyright violation is subject to the death penalty (Using a computer to copy music is a crime; using a computer to commit a crime is terrorism; terrorism is punishible by death). The cops can read any email and check any ISP's records without a court order. American citizens have been arrested by the miltary and are being held indefinately without charges and without access to lawyers or their family; we only have the millitary's word that there are only two of them so far and that they are sill alive. Citizens are asked to spy on fellow citizens and report anything "suspicious." Most of the United States government is being re-organized into one huge department that will be exempt from labor laws and the Freedom of Information Act.
I say the terrorists have already won. We're no longer the land of the free; those brave enough to object are subject to arrest.
The best part is that the other, earlier, story has just one post, and it's a -1, Offtopic "FP". LOL! Here we have proof that not only do the/. "editors" not read Slashdot, the readers don't either.
What is Michael smoking, and where can I get some?
(There are so few posts with information about Armada 100s that I figure another OT post won't hurt)
I used to work at Oldsmobile, back when they made Diesel engines. They saw bunches of cracked wrist pins in the field that we couldn't duplicate in the lab. We tried running engines on starter fluid. We tried overloading them to the point of stalling. We even twisted some con rods so the wrist pin was flexing sideways as the piston went up and down and we never could crack one. The boss was going nuts, wondering why they stood up to our super abuse yet cracked for "Casper Milktoast" (as he put it). The point? Maybe something similar is going on here; maybe there's some residual stress in the lids that must be relieved, either through heavy use ("carrying in a bag to university every day") or by cracking ("on a VP's desk, no abuse").
Does this mean I'll finally get to see Real videos? I refuse to install their software as long as their license means I grant them the "right" to load anything they please on my computer. The relevant section of their license is "6. AUTOMATIC COMMUNICATIONS FEATURES." where they say stuff like "RN may match the user id to personally identifiable information" and "However, as we describe above, certain updates to RealOne Player functionality will happen automatically and without advance notification." Naturally, I can't provide a link as this license is not on-line, and naturally I'm not allowed to copy it here:
"REALNETWORKS, INC.
"END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
"REALNETWORKS PRODUCTS
"REDISTRIBUTION NOT PERMITTED"
Yeah, whatever. But your crap ain't go'n on my PC under those terms, buddy!
So, how soon before we see a spy-ware free, non-self-"updating" version?
Or: The larger brains might have given them an advantage, but other mutations caused them to evolve into something other than mice. Perhaps rats are desended from mice that got the big-brain gene along with some other non-mouse genes (maybe the larger brain didn't work without a larger skull to put it in, and in getting that they also got an overall larger body to go with it).
Maybe? Maybe? The editors should do a lot of things they aren't doing, but this is Slashdot so they're not interested in runing a quality news site, they're just interested in, in, in -- hell, I can't tell what the fuck they're interested in. Video games, better graphics cards for those video games, Linux, and Microsoft bashing, apparantly. Certainly not editing or any other activity that might require thought. I'm not even sure why they're called editors -- ever notice that they don't edit the stories they post?
Those of us who got it, got it and didn't need to reply. Those who didn't get it and replied with inane comments probably won't get it; you're wasting your bandwith trying to explain yourself to them. I'm slowly learning (ok, so I'm a slow learner -- I'm man^h^h^hstupid enough to admit my failings) not to reply to replies to my posts -- I find myself arguing when I meant to debate, but this is/.; the people here aren't interested in debate.
The TIPS program isn't about catching terrorists, it's about catching people growing dope in their garages and running meth labs in their basements. Mark my words, the TIPS program will result in 1000 times more drug arrests than terrorist arrests.
I agree completely! I used to work for a Fortune 500 company that refused to use Open Source because there was nobody to sue. We (the people who wanted to use Open Source) kept pointing out that they'd been screwed several times by several proprietary vendors and had never sued any of them, and they kept ignoring us and refusing to allow Open Source. Any excuse to protect the Status Quo, no matter how bogus. We began to suspect the real reason they opposed Open Source is that no Open Source vendor ever bought them lunch.
Imagine that in the 60's and 70's the 20 year olds were getting exited about the music from the 1930's or the 1940's.
Not hard to imagine at all. In the '70s I was a 20-something getting excited about music from the 1930s and 1940s. And music from the 1830s and 1740s and all that! As well as the 1950s and 1960s and even the 1970s (although Disco sucked then and it still sucks). The best thing about music is that every year there's more of it to enjoy. I'm in my 40s now and my car radio is set to KEXP, KISM, KFNK, and KNDD (among others). "The hits just keep on coming!"
I highly recommend it. I'm sure you'll recognize some of the music when you hear it. What you'll miss by downloading it are the instructions on the album cover: "To be played at maximum volume." Those words sure got my attention in 1972, and to this day I always play "Ziggy" at maximum volume. (of course, nowadays I stand back a bit further:-)
Around here (Seattle) we have a radio station that once a year or so plays "Classic Rock A to Z" and as they say, "It isn't over until Ziggie plays guitar," because "Ziggy Stardust" is the only Classic Rock song that begins with Z.
Seriously, visit the album's page and learn a bit about how, with this album, David invented Glam Rock and turned the music world on its ear.
OK, I didn't make myself clear. The idea is to protest the pop-up ads, not ads in general. So while you're writing to those who sponsor pop-up ads, telling them that you're taking your business elsewhere, cc: that note to the folks who stick to the 30 and 60 second ads, telling them that you're giving them your business because they don't run pop-up ads, and making it clear that you'll switch again if they ever do.
I thought the discussion was about killing pop-up ads, and the article makes it clear TNT is trying them because they're afraid the 30 second spots aren't working anymore. Letters to advertizers saying you prefer one over the other will be heard; these pop-ups are still experimental.
As to your other point, you're right. And I do support pay-TV, but as others point out I'm already paying for my TV, dammit, and if AT&T Broadband doesn't share enough of my money with Ted Turner (AT&T Broadband pays for TNT, you know -- it's not a broadcast channel they skim off the air for nothing -- and now they have to pay for those channels as well) that's Ted's problem. If I get so fed up with TNT that I start watching AMC instead, then it really becomes Ted's problem, so I guess that's the other tactic to use here: tell Ted you're mad as Hell and you're not going to take it anymore! And remember to cc: him on those letters to his customers. Oh, and a few letters to the cable companies wouldn't hurt (you know, things like: "Please drop TNT, I don't watch it since it's all ads now")
(yes, I know Ted sold out to Time-Warner, now AOL-T-W)
Yes, there's no way to watch the show and avoid the American Express ad superimposed on the bottom quarter of the screen. But there's nothing stopping you from cutting up your American Express card and sending it back to them with a note explaining why you cut it up, or sending a photocopy of your Visa/MasterCard/Discover application (with suitable info obscured).
Apply this to all similar ads: Let them know you're going to switch to their competitor's products, and why you're switching. This tactic is used by those who would prevent the broadcast of programmingthey find objectionable; there's no reason the technique can't work for other protests.
That can go both ways. I once had a Compaq Presario 1230 laptop, which I bought used on eBay. Go look up information on it and just about every site you check will tell you it has two PCMCIA slots. But it only has one! The problem is that the chip they used does support two slots, so Windows and all the diagnostic software reports "two slots" -- but there's only one physical slot -- I guess the people who report these things take the software at its word and don't physically look at the computers they test. Since I bought it used I don't know what Compaq claimed for it, but the lesson is to not believe everything you read on the web. Fortunately one PCMCIA slot wasn't a limitation, since I didn't need both a modem and a network card (the internal winmodem was worthless under Linux).
As far as I know, I haven't been corresponding with any pedophiles in prison.
Dude, think -- this is Slashdot! No one can tell you're a dog, or wearing Hello, Kitty panties, or whatever floats your particular boat. There's no telling what you've been corrisponding with.
And we all have every right to not do business with Yahoos who support supressive governments. By "not do business" I mean not visit their web sites (fewer hits == lower ad rates).
Of course, it's easy to boycott something that sucks so much I haven't used it in over a year anyway:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I'd be very happy if public key encryption became standard, and there were government-registered companies to certify people's public keys. How do you know that this key purportedly from John Smith is really from John Smith? Why not welcome the government's seal of approval that the company verifying John Smith's identity isn't "Fly-By-Night Enterprises"? Or are you happy trusting Microsoft to verify this stuff for you?
Is consistant useability bad? Yes (see below); will someone please show me a platform with consistant useability -- I've yet to find one anywhere. My classic example is back from the command-line days. Our group decided to standardize on the command-line user interface for all our applications, and we couldn't even agree on what pressing the "Enter" key should do: These were IBM Mainframe applications, and if you did nothing for five minutes you timed out and were logged off the system, so some folks wanted "Enter" to do nothing, to just keep the session alive. Some wanted to make things easier on the users and have default selections for all prompts, with "Enter" selecting the default. Others were building script engines for their applications, and sometimes the scripts would get out of sync with the command prompts; in those cases the system would hit the end of the script and start supplying "Enter"s (Well, CRs, but you get the idea), so those guys wanted "Enter" to back you up to the previous prompt, with "Enter" at the first prompt terminating the program.
I conclude that "consistant useability" is indeed bad; each application should go with what's best for its circumstances. And each application should allow complete user customization, so if the user wants to impose their own "consistant useability" they can. This lack of complete customization is my greatest disappointment in Open Source software. Yes, I have the source and can add it myself, but why should I have to re-write each and every damn application? Why can't this be the going-in philosophy? My first editor (circa 1972) had a code for every command, and you could assign any code to any keystroke combination -- a completely user-configurable UI. I've never seen another application like it, and naturally they went out of business long ago. (Please don't mention emacs, as I know it offers the same ability; the problem with emacs is once you've learned how to modify it, you've gotten used to the default commands and lost the desire to modify it -- if you pick up emacs with the idea of making it do what you want, you're wasting your time)
One thing I've noticed is that when I save an image (say, a Dilbert or a political cartoon) Mozilla downloads it again, even though it's in the cache; MSIE just saves it from the cache. Mozilla treats images as if they were marked max-age=0 -- what's up with that? Same with printing a page -- reloads it first, every time. This simply sucks, and if it's a setting I've munged I'd love to be able to fix it. But that still doesn't explain the overall slowness of the beast. Maybe they slowed Mozilla on purpose to make Netscape look better.
I say the terrorists have already won. We're no longer the land of the free; those brave enough to object are subject to arrest.
What is Michael smoking, and where can I get some?
I used to work at Oldsmobile, back when they made Diesel engines. They saw bunches of cracked wrist pins in the field that we couldn't duplicate in the lab. We tried running engines on starter fluid. We tried overloading them to the point of stalling. We even twisted some con rods so the wrist pin was flexing sideways as the piston went up and down and we never could crack one. The boss was going nuts, wondering why they stood up to our super abuse yet cracked for "Casper Milktoast" (as he put it). The point? Maybe something similar is going on here; maybe there's some residual stress in the lids that must be relieved, either through heavy use ("carrying in a bag to university every day") or by cracking ("on a VP's desk, no abuse").
"REALNETWORKS, INC.
"END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
"REALNETWORKS PRODUCTS
"REDISTRIBUTION NOT PERMITTED"
Yeah, whatever. But your crap ain't go'n on my PC under those terms, buddy!
So, how soon before we see a spy-ware free, non-self-"updating" version?
Around here (Seattle) we have a radio station that once a year or so plays "Classic Rock A to Z" and as they say, "It isn't over until Ziggie plays guitar," because "Ziggy Stardust" is the only Classic Rock song that begins with Z.
Seriously, visit the album's page and learn a bit about how, with this album, David invented Glam Rock and turned the music world on its ear.
Reminds me of a 20-foot pole.
What's a 20-foot pole? It's what I wouldn't use to not touch what I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, twice.
I thought the discussion was about killing pop-up ads, and the article makes it clear TNT is trying them because they're afraid the 30 second spots aren't working anymore. Letters to advertizers saying you prefer one over the other will be heard; these pop-ups are still experimental.
As to your other point, you're right. And I do support pay-TV, but as others point out I'm already paying for my TV, dammit, and if AT&T Broadband doesn't share enough of my money with Ted Turner (AT&T Broadband pays for TNT, you know -- it's not a broadcast channel they skim off the air for nothing -- and now they have to pay for those channels as well) that's Ted's problem. If I get so fed up with TNT that I start watching AMC instead, then it really becomes Ted's problem, so I guess that's the other tactic to use here: tell Ted you're mad as Hell and you're not going to take it anymore! And remember to cc: him on those letters to his customers. Oh, and a few letters to the cable companies wouldn't hurt (you know, things like: "Please drop TNT, I don't watch it since it's all ads now")
(yes, I know Ted sold out to Time-Warner, now AOL-T-W)
Apply this to all similar ads: Let them know you're going to switch to their competitor's products, and why you're switching. This tactic is used by those who would prevent the broadcast of programming they find objectionable; there's no reason the technique can't work for other protests.
That can go both ways. I once had a Compaq Presario 1230 laptop, which I bought used on eBay. Go look up information on it and just about every site you check will tell you it has two PCMCIA slots. But it only has one! The problem is that the chip they used does support two slots, so Windows and all the diagnostic software reports "two slots" -- but there's only one physical slot -- I guess the people who report these things take the software at its word and don't physically look at the computers they test. Since I bought it used I don't know what Compaq claimed for it, but the lesson is to not believe everything you read on the web. Fortunately one PCMCIA slot wasn't a limitation, since I didn't need both a modem and a network card (the internal winmodem was worthless under Linux).
Of course, it's easy to boycott something that sucks so much I haven't used it in over a year anyway :-)