"...the new partnership between Sun and Oracle, designed to provide an alternative to.NET.... Designed specifically as an alternative to Microsoft's.NET technology stack..."
That's kinda funny, 'cause here I was thinking that.NET (which is only a couple of years old) was the alternative to Java (which is 10+ years old).
IBM billed for $20,350, at a rate of $50/hr. That comes out to 407 man-hours worth of work.
While I do not mean to dismiss the severity of Mr. Millot's crime, I do have to ask: It took 407 man-hours worth of work for Big Blue to figure out what happened and to simply restore access/file-backups?
If that isn't over-billing, I have no idea what is.
"Rather than being critics who add to the industry as film and music journalists arguably did back in the heady days of the 50's - 70's"
A certain percentage of reviewers of any kind have always sold out. Be it music, movie, or some other form of entertainment such as video games. For example, take the Payola scandal(s) of the 1950's, where DJ's & radio stations were paid to play certain songs and music "critics" were paid to write enthusiastic, favorable reviews.
If you dig deep enough in your history books, you'll find all kinds of examples of this behavior -- even through the "heady days of the 50's - 70's." I'm not saying this is good, but I am saying that this is neither new or shocking. As such, I don't see why this is news-worthy.
Oh, and not only is it a dupe, but it's an exact duplicate. Word-for-word. Someone copy & pasted the entire article description of the one from august, and Taco still let it get through!
Notice that it's an AC that did it, too. It's actually pretty funny, in a sorry sort of way.
"So, as New Year's Eve is coming, remember to use only tall glasses for your party!!!"
I don't know what kind of parties you're going to on New Years, but if this research is correct then I prefer the short/wide glasses for my New Years party!:)
Some estimates put p2p traffic at between 60 percent and 80 percent of your ISP's bandwidth.
So, YES, more bandwidth would be nice. Especially on the upstream (which is typically 1/10 or less of the downstream). People may not notice when that web page loads.05s faster, but they'll sure notice when the DVD that they're downloading gets done in a couple hours vs. a couple days!
"This resolution is significant because it expresses the will of the U.S. Congress that Russia must take effective action against those who would steal America's knowledge-intensive intellectual property-based goods and services."
A similar act of robbery, as the hijacking of an airplane.
The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy.
I'm not condoning piracy. But I am very tired of everyone assuming that piracy and theft are the same thing. Theft actually deprives someone of something, costing them a loss. Piracy might be depriving the creator of sales, but only if the pirate would have actually bought the product. At worst, piracy deprives a company of sales but does not cost them a loss in any other form. As often as not, however, piracy probably deprives the owner/creator of the product nothing (because the pirate does not feel the product is worth the price, or because the pirate cannot afford the cost of the product (as is the case in Russia and many other impoverished countries)).
There is a small mistake on page 3 of the article, in the first table: WinZip no longer offers free upgrades. If you have a serial for an older version (1-9), that serial will only work on the older versions. You need a new serial for v10.0, and that serial will not work when v11.0 comes out.
Since WinZip does not handle.7z,.ace or.rar files, it has lost much of its appeal for me. With my old serial no longer working, I now have absolutely no reason to use it. Now when I need a compressor for Windows I choose WinAce & 7-Zip. Between those two programs, I can de-/compress just about any format you're likely to encounter online.
"Expert users need not worry, though, as this book has plenty for them too.... The chapter on Extensions starts with an introduction to what Extensions are, and why they're so important."
A description of what extension are and how to install/configure them is deemed expert. Eh.. I'm sorry, but even my technologically illiterate mother could figure this one out.
Though there is a section on about:config and the.css &.js files, is there any information here that could not be found with 2 minutes of your time and google? I doubt it. And, this book, unlike the information you can find using google, will be out of date in a matter of months.
"Firefox Secrets balances between beginning users who have yet to install their first extension, and experts who want to take their browsing to the next level."
<shrugs> I'm not saying this book is bad.. I'm just saying that the author of this review doesn't seem to understand what an "expert" is. From the review, I see little here that most/.'ers won't already know.
"They didn't fix the problem you wanted to have fixed right away. That is saying they are supposed to act like your servants."
I never asked them to fix it right away. I merely brought it to their attention -- asking if they knew of a solution (I had assumed that I was doing something wrong, until that point) -- and was summarily treated like crap. So, you seem to think that the appropriate response from a coder/developer (whom has his IM publicly listed for the masses to contact) is to basically say, "kiss off. I know it's broken, and I don't care. Go find someone who does care." ??? You must be one of the most obtuse people I've ever met, to believe that this type of response was reither warranted or proper.
"How friendly they were is completely besides the point. The point was, I'd much, much rather have rude people that actually FIX problems and LISTEN to complaints, rather than polite people that accomplish nothing, and really ignore what you've got to say."
Yes... so, when the developer in charge of NAT traversal said that it was unlikely he would ever fix it, this was what you call good? Obviously you are not versed on this gaim issue. Let me help you: gaim was supposed to be able to traverse NAT'd environments years ago. This was not some small, obscure bug. It was well known, and affected a large number of (potential) users. Yet the person in charge of this code decided to let it continue until just recently. (For all I know, the developer was replaced, or someone outside the core developers finally submitted changes to fix it.) At any rate, I find it amazing that you would declare this acceptable. I have rarely found a closed source company that was willing to let such a large problem go so long unfixed. Not when so many people were driven away from the program because of it.
"You're just upset that your ego got bruised. That's all there is to this bullshit complaining of yours."
Nope. I'm merely pointing out that you are purposefully ignorant, to the point where you can only be a zealot. You need to get off your zealot-horse, and come back to a little place called, "Earth." Here on Earth, we realise that this type of behavior from official spokesmen towards users is unexceptable, no matter whether it is FOSS or closed-source. Their attitude drives away not only end-users, but potential coders for their projects.
"How polite was Bill Gates the last time you contacted him about a bug in MSN Messenger?"
#1 Bill Gates is not a developer (ie. programmer) of MSN Messenger. The people I contacted were.
#2 Bill Gates does not have his IM screenname publically listed so that users can contact him. The people I contacted had their screennames sitting on the gaim website just so people like me could contact them with gaim-related issues. The first developer even put me in contact with the second one.
"... They certainly aren't your personal servants, and free software, although often run by rude people, is (in ALL my experience) FAR, FAR, FAR more responsive to user requests than big commercial software companies...."
#1 I never said they were my personal servants. But they are the people that their own website lists as contacts for technical help and bug reports, as stated above. If they did not wish to be IM'd by end users seeking technical assistance, then they shouldn't have their screennames listed on their website as official contacts for just such a purpose!! #2 Saying that FOSS developers are more responsive than closed source companies in no way means that they are good. Case in hand. The two developers that I spoke with are official representatives of the gaim project, and they were complete dicks. You cannot excuse that with a mere, "well, that's better than Microsoft would give you.."
"It's not a bug. They don't care that you are missing a minor feature you would like to have. Sounds pretty fair to me."
NAT traversal was supposed to work long, long ago. It didn't. It is a bug. It's a well-known bug. It's been reported as a bug for some time, now.
You're trolling, buddy. You need to get over your ideological beliefs about FOSS and realise that the people in charge of gaim had no excuse for their attitudes towards me and their attitudes concerning the quality of their code.
"What? How do you know? It's closed & proprietary. You have no way of verifying its integrity. How do you know AOL employees aren't sitting at the head office giggling at your conversations?"
*sigh*
Before responding, it'd be nice if you took the time to research your viewpoints. You don't even deserve a reply... but I'll give you one anyways.
With AIM's encryption method: each client must have a digital certificate (PKI) installed (I, for instance, have a 2048bit RSA certificate). The AIM clients use the digital certificates to encrypt each and every message (including the message headers) that is sent by the parties using AES. These packets do not bounce off of AOL's servers, but are sent directly from client to client.
The method isn't as closed an proprietary as you seem to think. The technique (and exact methods, indeed) are available online if you take the time to google. Also, Trillian Pro supports AIM encryption as well.
From your lack of knowledge, I surmise that you are either so paranoid that you probably wear tinfoil on your head, or are just plain ignorant.
"How do you know it's very secure? Because AOL tells you so?"
Of course not. I know it's secure because I've read up on it. Google around a little.
If you'd rather not, then I'll give you a short overview: when both clients have a digital certificate, it will use those certificates to generate a private key. From that point on, AIM encrypts the entire message (headers and all) with AES.
From a programmers point of view: this should not be terribly difficult to implement in other clients (indeed: trillian-pro supports it), and it is as secure as the digitial certificates being used are. (So make sure you have your own certificate and not some cert that 50,000 other people got off www.aimsecure.com. Go to www.thawte.com if you want a good digital certificate for free.)
As I've been mod'd "flamebait" and have a few responses to my parent noting how hard NAT traversal is and such, I'm going to post a generic response to y'all:
Firstly: let me reiterate: I was beyond polite to both developers. I didn't bitch and moan, and I didn't flood them with unrequested details. I simply said that I had noted that NAT'd environments seemed to be causing gaim clients problems. Their responses were totally uncalled for. If they knew of the problems, and didn't want to discuss it.. there are more polite ways than saying, "Yeah, we know. And I'll probably never fix it, since I don't use NAT. Only loosers use NAT. Don't like it? Fine. Find another client." (yes, this is a paraphrase, but more accurate than you would like to think. It's both immature and uncalled for.)
Secondly: I never claimed that NAT traversal was easy. I have total sympathy for anyone coding to make it work... but that does not excuse the gaim developers' attitudes. There is little excuse for being a dick to a user. And not even caring if your code causes everyone under NAT to have headaches? Sorry.. but with attitudes like that.. their product will rarely improve, and they will drive away a large number of people that might have migrated to their product.
If you wish to use an IM client developed by people like that... fine. Just remember that next time you're bashing the poor quality of code and corporate apathy of companies like Microsoft or Real-Networks. (mind you, I am not a fan of either.)
"AIM's encryption is closed-source and proprietory. How it works would have to be reverse engineered."
True, to an extent. While there is no official API to their encypted oscar sessions, that I know of, you would not have to reverse engineer their client: simply record an encrypted chat conversation's packets.
And, as luck would have it: this was done a couple of years ago. I don't remember the exact details, but it was pretty simple: AIM uses each clients' digital certificate to set up a private key, and then wraps the entire message in a signed data block (using AES). All-in-all, it looks to be a pretty clean and simple implementation.
I'll never use gaim, personally. Or would I recommend anyone else. Why?
Simple. A little over a year ago, I contacted one of gaim's core developers about gaim's difficulties with file transfers when any of the party is NAT'd. He didn't know or care about the file transfer stuff, so he put me in contact w/ another core developer. The second guy was even worse; he was in charge of file transfers and such, but outright told me that he didn't care if things didn't work in NAT'd environments and that things would probably never change. Though I cannot remember the conversation, verbatim, I do remember this: not only was he pretty damn rude (whereas I had been more than polite), but he didn't care that the code he was in charge of didn't work well.
I gave it some thought, and decided that if the developers of gaim have attitudes like this, it is not a project that I want any part of. <shrugs> What's more: IM has become an integral part of staying in touch with people. It's right up there with email. If the developers of the defacto standard IM client for *nix don't care if it has issues and don't care to fix those issues, how in the hell do people honestly expect anyone to switch from windows to a FOSS *nix (ie. linux, freebsd, etc). Having bugs is one thing, but not even caring about those bugs? Psssh.
(And, yes, I know the changelog says that they've fixed some of the NAT issues... but for me, I've already decided that the apathy about the quality of their product is cause enough to permanently stay away from gaim.)
And it still doesn't support AIM encryption. The only way to have a secure IM with gaim is to talk to another gaim user.
I still don't understand why their developers chose to do this. One of the few things that is right with AIM is the secure-chat feature. It's fairly easy to set up, and its very secure.
Personally, I'd like to hear the other side to the story from podkeyword.com.
While I am not calling Erik Marcus a liar, his story is full of opinion and unsubstantiated claims. It seems to me like he subscribed to a listing that would help him publish his podcast, and claims that there was never any notice that his listings would help generate revenue for the listing service. He freely admits that he wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing while he signed up with this service, and so his claim that he wasn't told about advertising becomes a little more difficult to believe.
To me, I guess I just don't quite see how he was taken advantage, as he claims. This podkeyword.com site was providing him a service, which was free to him, and only added some advertising space to his feed. From his own blog on this, it seems like these advertisements had been going for over a year, and he never even noticed. No one had complained. He would still be unaware if some technical glitch hadn't disrupted things.
So, why shouldn't podkeyword.com use unobtrusive advertising space to break even, given that they didn't charge Mr. Marcus a dime?
"With way too many players on the field, there's bound to be some kind of shakeout coming, right?"
Not necessarily. How many E-Mail services, Web Hosting services, DNS Registrars, and IM protocols and clients are there? How many telephone companies are there in the U.S., currently?
Diversity and competition do not always lead to a "shakeout." With any luck, however, it will lead to a better situation than exists with the current (stagnant) telephone service.
"If you need a song to understand the difference between glucose and fructose, then why bother taking the course in the first place?"
Many of us were forced to take non-major classes that we had no interest in, in order to get our degrees. I'm going to hazard a guess that you either never attended an institution of higher-education, or you attended a technical/trade school.
Also, one of the reasons that universities force you to learn so many things that you will later forget is so that your future employer knows that you are capable of learning these things. The knowledge itself is often secondary to the ability to acquire that knowledge.
It has always been easy to use. You get a digital certificate, and you tell AIM to use it.
Getting the digital certificate is what most people don't know how to do. But, as most of the people that want encryption are geek.. this shouldn't be that big of an issue.
I'm not sure where you "heard" that it was difficult... but i recommend trying it out before labeling it as such.
Slashdot Mirror
While I do not mean to dismiss the severity of Mr. Millot's crime, I do have to ask: It took 407 man-hours worth of work for Big Blue to figure out what happened and to simply restore access/file-backups?
If that isn't over-billing, I have no idea what is.
Cold Fusion. And, I quote, "I'll believe that when me shit turns purple and smells of rainbow sherbert."
If you dig deep enough in your history books, you'll find all kinds of examples of this behavior -- even through the "heady days of the 50's - 70's." I'm not saying this is good, but I am saying that this is neither new or shocking. As such, I don't see why this is news-worthy.
Notice that it's an AC that did it, too. It's actually pretty funny, in a sorry sort of way.
When are the /. editors going to start paying some attention to their own freagin' website?!
So, YES, more bandwidth would be nice. Especially on the upstream (which is typically 1/10 or less of the downstream). People may not notice when that web page loads .05s faster, but they'll sure notice when the DVD that they're downloading gets done in a couple hours vs. a couple days!
Piracy
piracy
I'm not condoning piracy. But I am very tired of everyone assuming that piracy and theft are the same thing. Theft actually deprives someone of something, costing them a loss. Piracy might be depriving the creator of sales, but only if the pirate would have actually bought the product. At worst, piracy deprives a company of sales but does not cost them a loss in any other form. As often as not, however, piracy probably deprives the owner/creator of the product nothing (because the pirate does not feel the product is worth the price, or because the pirate cannot afford the cost of the product (as is the case in Russia and many other impoverished countries)).
Since WinZip does not handle .7z, .ace or .rar files, it has lost much of its appeal for me. With my old serial no longer working, I now have absolutely no reason to use it. Now when I need a compressor for Windows I choose WinAce & 7-Zip. Between those two programs, I can de-/compress just about any format you're likely to encounter online.
Though there is a section on about:config and the .css & .js files, is there any information here that could not be found with 2 minutes of your time and google? I doubt it. And, this book, unlike the information you can find using google, will be out of date in a matter of months.
<shrugs> I'm not saying this book is bad.. I'm just saying that the author of this review doesn't seem to understand what an "expert" is. From the review, I see little here that most /.'ers won't already know.
#2 Bill Gates does not have his IM screenname publically listed so that users can contact him. The people I contacted had their screennames sitting on the gaim website just so people like me could contact them with gaim-related issues. The first developer even put me in contact with the second one. #1 I never said they were my personal servants. But they are the people that their own website lists as contacts for technical help and bug reports, as stated above. If they did not wish to be IM'd by end users seeking technical assistance, then they shouldn't have their screennames listed on their website as official contacts for just such a purpose!!
#2 Saying that FOSS developers are more responsive than closed source companies in no way means that they are good. Case in hand. The two developers that I spoke with are official representatives of the gaim project, and they were complete dicks. You cannot excuse that with a mere, "well, that's better than Microsoft would give you.." NAT traversal was supposed to work long, long ago. It didn't. It is a bug. It's a well-known bug. It's been reported as a bug for some time, now.
You're trolling, buddy. You need to get over your ideological beliefs about FOSS and realise that the people in charge of gaim had no excuse for their attitudes towards me and their attitudes concerning the quality of their code.
END OF STORY.
Before responding, it'd be nice if you took the time to research your viewpoints. You don't even deserve a reply... but I'll give you one anyways.
With AIM's encryption method: each client must have a digital certificate (PKI) installed (I, for instance, have a 2048bit RSA certificate). The AIM clients use the digital certificates to encrypt each and every message (including the message headers) that is sent by the parties using AES. These packets do not bounce off of AOL's servers, but are sent directly from client to client.
The method isn't as closed an proprietary as you seem to think. The technique (and exact methods, indeed) are available online if you take the time to google. Also, Trillian Pro supports AIM encryption as well.
From your lack of knowledge, I surmise that you are either so paranoid that you probably wear tinfoil on your head, or are just plain ignorant.
If you'd rather not, then I'll give you a short overview: when both clients have a digital certificate, it will use those certificates to generate a private key. From that point on, AIM encrypts the entire message (headers and all) with AES.
From a programmers point of view: this should not be terribly difficult to implement in other clients (indeed: trillian-pro supports it), and it is as secure as the digitial certificates being used are. (So make sure you have your own certificate and not some cert that 50,000 other people got off www.aimsecure.com. Go to www.thawte.com if you want a good digital certificate for free.)
Firstly: let me reiterate: I was beyond polite to both developers. I didn't bitch and moan, and I didn't flood them with unrequested details. I simply said that I had noted that NAT'd environments seemed to be causing gaim clients problems. Their responses were totally uncalled for. If they knew of the problems, and didn't want to discuss it.. there are more polite ways than saying, "Yeah, we know. And I'll probably never fix it, since I don't use NAT. Only loosers use NAT. Don't like it? Fine. Find another client." (yes, this is a paraphrase, but more accurate than you would like to think. It's both immature and uncalled for.)
Secondly: I never claimed that NAT traversal was easy. I have total sympathy for anyone coding to make it work... but that does not excuse the gaim developers' attitudes. There is little excuse for being a dick to a user. And not even caring if your code causes everyone under NAT to have headaches? Sorry.. but with attitudes like that.. their product will rarely improve, and they will drive away a large number of people that might have migrated to their product.
If you wish to use an IM client developed by people like that... fine. Just remember that next time you're bashing the poor quality of code and corporate apathy of companies like Microsoft or Real-Networks. (mind you, I am not a fan of either.)
Though this is not the most comprehensive article I have seen on the topic, a basic primer of AIM security for IM developers is available here.
And, as luck would have it: this was done a couple of years ago. I don't remember the exact details, but it was pretty simple: AIM uses each clients' digital certificate to set up a private key, and then wraps the entire message in a signed data block (using AES). All-in-all, it looks to be a pretty clean and simple implementation.
Simple. A little over a year ago, I contacted one of gaim's core developers about gaim's difficulties with file transfers when any of the party is NAT'd. He didn't know or care about the file transfer stuff, so he put me in contact w/ another core developer. The second guy was even worse; he was in charge of file transfers and such, but outright told me that he didn't care if things didn't work in NAT'd environments and that things would probably never change. Though I cannot remember the conversation, verbatim, I do remember this: not only was he pretty damn rude (whereas I had been more than polite), but he didn't care that the code he was in charge of didn't work well.
I gave it some thought, and decided that if the developers of gaim have attitudes like this, it is not a project that I want any part of. <shrugs> What's more: IM has become an integral part of staying in touch with people. It's right up there with email. If the developers of the defacto standard IM client for *nix don't care if it has issues and don't care to fix those issues, how in the hell do people honestly expect anyone to switch from windows to a FOSS *nix (ie. linux, freebsd, etc). Having bugs is one thing, but not even caring about those bugs? Psssh.
(And, yes, I know the changelog says that they've fixed some of the NAT issues... but for me, I've already decided that the apathy about the quality of their product is cause enough to permanently stay away from gaim.)
And it still doesn't support AIM encryption. The only way to have a secure IM with gaim is to talk to another gaim user.
I still don't understand why their developers chose to do this. One of the few things that is right with AIM is the secure-chat feature. It's fairly easy to set up, and its very secure.
While I am not calling Erik Marcus a liar, his story is full of opinion and unsubstantiated claims. It seems to me like he subscribed to a listing that would help him publish his podcast, and claims that there was never any notice that his listings would help generate revenue for the listing service. He freely admits that he wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing while he signed up with this service, and so his claim that he wasn't told about advertising becomes a little more difficult to believe.
To me, I guess I just don't quite see how he was taken advantage, as he claims. This podkeyword.com site was providing him a service, which was free to him, and only added some advertising space to his feed. From his own blog on this, it seems like these advertisements had been going for over a year, and he never even noticed. No one had complained. He would still be unaware if some technical glitch hadn't disrupted things.
So, why shouldn't podkeyword.com use unobtrusive advertising space to break even, given that they didn't charge Mr. Marcus a dime?
For podkeyword.com's blog, check it here.
Diversity and competition do not always lead to a "shakeout." With any luck, however, it will lead to a better situation than exists with the current (stagnant) telephone service.
Also, one of the reasons that universities force you to learn so many things that you will later forget is so that your future employer knows that you are capable of learning these things. The knowledge itself is often secondary to the ability to acquire that knowledge.
Getting the digital certificate is what most people don't know how to do. But, as most of the people that want encryption are geek.. this shouldn't be that big of an issue.
I'm not sure where you "heard" that it was difficult... but i recommend trying it out before labeling it as such.