[...] it may "alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface [...]
Oh no! How terrible! But what if THATS WHAT THE USER WANTS?!
"Duplication of functionality" is weaselspeak for "It competes with something that provides a functionality we want to have a monopoly on".
Hey Apple: users should be able to *choose* from among multiple applications and service providers. This is a good thing. Its called competition, and it drives each competitor to provide the best service. Its a win for users. When users only have one provider and are blocked from choosing anything else, users and technological progress both lose. The iPhone is big enough now that you don't need AT&T anymore. Ditch the exclusive crap with AT&T - offer the next revision of the iPhone without a simlock or mandatory contract. The sheeple of the world will buy it and go to AT&T anyway - plus you will get all the informed buyers as customers too.
Any person or business can charge for access to their site if they want to. Others may choose to give information away free. Still others might give information away free, but include ads from sponsors on their sites. Some individuals might choose to directly exchange information, either for free or in exchange for value.
Regardless, no one is forced to use any particular website - if one chooses, and another provides the same information free, you can choose either one. If the one charging has unique information that no one else offers, you can decide whether to pay and get it, or not. If you have information you'd like to charge for, but there are a dozen other sites offering it free, you probably aren't going to do well. It would be wrong for you to try to get laws or regulations to block the ones giving it away for free.
This essay is a bit dated with some of its references, but the underlying concepts still apply:
Earlier this year, I dragged out some old RA and RA2 discs, and put together some low end win98 machines to run them on with my son. They do not have, and WILL NOT EVER have, any connection to the Internet. RA(/2) are getting a bit boring, and I was thinking of finding something newer. Obviously C&C 4 will not be appearing on the list of potential 'something newer', as I *refuse* to connect any wintendo machine to the Internet. I've got a perfectly good set of Ethernet cables connecting the machines, there is *NO* good reason they should need to connect to some remote server over the Internet in order to interplay.
Just something for EA to note. I wonder how many other people will refuse to buy this for the same reason, how many lost sales it will amount to that they will never be able to count.
The problem is a chicken and egg one. Until there is a critical mass of people using something other than Windows, most 'consumer' software (incl games) will only run on Windows. And until there is a critical mass of software (incl games) for other-than-Windows platforms, most people will only use Windows. Its a self-serving cycle.
And this situation is one that MS does *everything* it possibly can to maintain (legal or otherwise) They will lie about security, about reliability, about compatibility. They will threaten to lock PC vendors out that offer a competing platform on their hardware. They will change their protocols and file formats with every product revision, to ensure competing software cannot hope interoperate, and that current users have no way to migrate They will use software patents where they can, to make anything that does manage to do so, illegal. They will collude with the RIAA, MPAA, and chipset and BIOS makers to make palladium-like systems where "non-approved" software will first not have access to some online services, and then eventually won't be allowed to run at all. The hardware vendors go along because they are, individually, powerless against the combined forces of the MS monopoly and the RIAA/MPAA lawsuit machines.
They will even use marketing to make it look like people 'choose' Windows - the fallacy here is that the vast majority of people aren't' really aware there is a choice, something else that MS does everything in its power to maintain.
The situation is so far gone that there is little hope that normal market forces will correct it. The only solution is an extreme - I for one refuse to use *anything* from Microsoft for any reason. I support legislation that requires government software to use free and open formats, or even better to use Free Software - that doesn't lock out MS, they are welcome to provide software that complies.
The simplest way for a *CR*acker to "intercept packets" that you send to the Internet is by infecting your machine. In general, ISP networks, and even the average home router/firewall are *far* more secure than your windoze machine . And once they've done that, why would they bother sniffing packets when its far more trivial to just poke through stored password files and/or run a keylogger?
No one competent would *ever* run any sort of Internet-connected server on a Windows platform, period. And while I'm sure the astroturfers will point out all sorts of well-known websites that run Windows, however that does not change my point.
Re:Missing the point...
on
R.I.P. FTP
·
· Score: 1
encrypting the connection isnt going to do you any good when the crapware is running *on* the client machine, which has to have the cleartext pasword and/or private key in order to establish the connection. Really 'packet sniffing' isn't really the big danger. ISP networks rarely have windows machines (at least not connected where they have access to sniff anything,) and the network routers and switches are rock solid.
using windows to (ftp *or* sftp) vs using a secure platform to (ftp *or* sfp) is the issue.
Switching to use sftp using going to do you any good if you are still working from a windows based client, and your stored passwords will still be stolen by the deluge of crapware that windows is specifically designed to support.
Taking a a photograph of something is not an original work, for the most part. Painting a picture of it might be.
But to be honest (while leaving out entirely my position on Obama's politics themselves) I would think that Obama himself should have copyright on any images of himself, to hell with who made them.
I think this should apply in general, although photo studios certainly believe otherwise and go out of their way to tell you so. If the subject of a photo is a person, then that person should have an overriding right to use that photograph in any way they see fit, at the very least, in addition to, any rights that the photographer might have. If the photograph is of a privately owned object, then ditto for the owner of said object. If of a publicly owned object, then the photo, once released, should be public domain.
Absolutely right. Blueray, at least as a format for purchasing anything in, has no major advantages over standard DVD. Stick with dvd's. Encourage your friends, family, and neighbors to avoid blueray and stick with dvd.
Now, as a writable optical data format for data storage, while still kinda expensive, it looks pretty cool. Just imagine how many ripped DVD movies you could store on one BD-R disc, especially if you compress them a little bit more.
Ditch the requirement to be a wired comcast subscriber. Seriously, there are probably tons of people who arent serviced by comcast (or any cable company) that would love the opportunity to pay $45/mo for high speed wireless. But they are too shortsighted to recognize the potential, and instead want to use this as leverage to sell their cable.
Setup a linux box on the same network next to the windows box that is at the 'remote' end of the transfer (eg, not the end the transfer is initiated from).
Use ssh from the 'local' end to transfer the file to the linux box. Then run something appropriate (ftpd? apache? samba?) on the linux box that makes the files directly available to the windows box.
Alternatively, rip the Windows crap out and replace both ends with a real OS.
No, because that is where all *computer* keyboards had it. This 'shift lock' nonsense only came about when they tried to mimic typewriters. Caps lock serves *no* good purpose and should be ditched, or at least relegated to somewhere away from the useful keys. And who the hell needs an extra 'right' control key anyway? Why is it even there? There was never one on any original *computer* keyboard. If a keyboard has this stupid 'shift (caps) lock' key to the left of A, its a *typewriter keyboard* layout, NOT a computer keyboard layout.
As for num lock, I routinely set the CMOS on any machine I use to force it *off*. And I never use it - there's a perfectly good set of numbers right above the QWERTY.
Or the new 3GS one. It has a GPS receiver, and there are a variety of applications which can utilize that to offer mapping and directions. Plus the backend is OSX - once you jailbreak it, you can ssh in and do all sorts of hacking.
The level of either laziness or ignorance that post implies is astonishing. How does Safari not allow you to use a search engine other than Google?
If you type in "www.yahoo.com" do you not get to Yahoo, and are able to enter a search term and hit submit?
If you type in www.bing.com (I assume thats the address, I have no intention of ever bothering with it) does it not take you to MS' latest attempt at relevance, and allow you to use its search form?
All I can figure is you are assuming that the built in 'search' form in the browser is the only way to use a search engine. Possibly you aren't even aware of the 'address' field in your browser or what it is for (Its astonishing the number of people that have [for instance] Yahoo as their home page, and I tell them to go to a specific page address and instead of typing the address into their browser's address bar they *search* for that address in Yahoo - like calling information to ask what the number for 911 is [999 for you UK folk] )
, and just as valid, If they replaced the 'analog' printed books with digital CD/DVD media, with the book 'content' in a standards-based, open format.
While still having the benefit of massive cost-savings in terms of paper and binding, and printing, as well as not being 'heavy' (I'm sure the books for an entire semester would easily fit on a handful of DVDROMs), there would also be the benefits of:
1. The student actually gets to keep the books after their term ends, or optionally sell them to an incoming student. 2. The college isn't forcing any specific brands of software or operating systems on students 3. Far easier to make a backup copy, in case the originally issued discs get damaged.
Now of course, the book publishers may not like this, because they don't get to charge over and over for the same content. As a solution, I suggest that instead of having to separately purchase books, an amount be added to the tuition (not nearly as much as the current purchase-new cost of printed books, since the publisher would be avoiding all those costs) to cover 'book fees' for each student, which gives them the right to access any book which they either currently taking a class for, and once the have taken the class gives them the right to keep a copy (of that specific edition) afterwards. They can either pay media(blank DVD) and duplication costs to a college service, or they can do it themselves. There's no loss with them giving copies to new students, because new students will have paid the fees anyway. There's no worry them selling them anywhere else, since who buys textbooks except college students?
This would make sense, while priving benefits to the students, the publishers, and the colleges. Unfortunately, that pretty much guarantees nothing like it will ever see the light of day.
Anyone designing systems for hospitals, the failure of which would interfere with the hospital's ability to provide care, especially emergency care, to patients (whether the failure of a records and billing system _should_ interfere is a separate debate, but if the hospital considers it so, then it counts here) that doesn't ensure that something as simple as a *power surge* can't cause it to fail, is utterly incompetent to be remotely involved in the designing of systems for hospitals.
That would include building anything on any Microsoft platform, as well as not having 100% fault tolerant isolated power systems.
Who cares what the excuse is. You aren't wasting your time supporting broken MS-ware. If some one is at a company and cant figure out how to update their browser, they will call *their* tech support department, and eventually someone in the 'administrators' office will get the message.
Slashdot Mirror
[...] it may "alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface [...]
Oh no! How terrible! But what if THATS WHAT THE USER WANTS?!
# dig @a.root-servers.net eco ns
[...]
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 54643
[...]
"Duplication of functionality" is weaselspeak for "It competes with something that provides a functionality we want to have a monopoly on".
Hey Apple: users should be able to *choose* from among multiple applications and service providers. This is a good thing. Its called competition, and it drives each competitor to provide the best service. Its a win for users. When users only have one provider and are blocked from choosing anything else, users and technological progress both lose. The iPhone is big enough now that you don't need AT&T anymore. Ditch the exclusive crap with AT&T - offer the next revision of the iPhone without a simlock or mandatory contract. The sheeple of the world will buy it and go to AT&T anyway - plus you will get all the informed buyers as customers too.
Any person or business can charge for access to their site if they want to. Others may choose to give information away free. Still others might give information away free, but include ads from sponsors on their sites. Some individuals might choose to directly exchange information, either for free or in exchange for value.
Regardless, no one is forced to use any particular website - if one chooses, and another provides the same information free, you can choose either one. If the one charging has unique information that no one else offers, you can decide whether to pay and get it, or not. If you have information you'd like to charge for, but there are a dozen other sites offering it free, you probably aren't going to do well. It would be wrong for you to try to get laws or regulations to block the ones giving it away for free.
This essay is a bit dated with some of its references, but the underlying concepts still apply:
http://www.worldofends.com/
Hubs? Good luck finding a new hub retail, period. You'll pretty much only be finding switches these days (at that same price point, however).
Earlier this year, I dragged out some old RA and RA2 discs, and put together some low end win98 machines to run them on with my son. They do not have, and WILL NOT EVER have, any connection to the Internet. RA(/2) are getting a bit boring, and I was thinking of finding something newer. Obviously C&C 4 will not be appearing on the list of potential 'something newer', as I *refuse* to connect any wintendo machine to the Internet. I've got a perfectly good set of Ethernet cables connecting the machines, there is *NO* good reason they should need to connect to some remote server over the Internet in order to interplay.
Just something for EA to note. I wonder how many other people will refuse to buy this for the same reason, how many lost sales it will amount to that they will never be able to count.
The problem is a chicken and egg one. Until there is a critical mass of people using something other than Windows, most 'consumer' software (incl games) will only run on Windows. And until there is a critical mass of software (incl games) for other-than-Windows platforms, most people will only use Windows. Its a self-serving cycle.
And this situation is one that MS does *everything* it possibly can to maintain (legal or otherwise) They will lie about security, about reliability, about compatibility. They will threaten to lock PC vendors out that offer a competing platform on their hardware. They will change their protocols and file formats with every product revision, to ensure competing software cannot hope interoperate, and that current users have no way to migrate They will use software patents where they can, to make anything that does manage to do so, illegal. They will collude with the RIAA, MPAA, and chipset and BIOS makers to make palladium-like systems where "non-approved" software will first not have access to some online services, and then eventually won't be allowed to run at all. The hardware vendors go along because they are, individually, powerless against the combined forces of the MS monopoly and the RIAA/MPAA lawsuit machines.
They will even use marketing to make it look like people 'choose' Windows - the fallacy here is that the vast majority of people aren't' really aware there is a choice, something else that MS does everything in its power to maintain.
The situation is so far gone that there is little hope that normal market forces will correct it. The only solution is an extreme - I for one refuse to use *anything* from Microsoft for any reason. I support legislation that requires government software to use free and open formats, or even better to use Free Software - that doesn't lock out MS, they are welcome to provide software that complies.
The simplest way for a *CR*acker to "intercept packets" that you send to the Internet is by infecting your machine. In general, ISP networks, and even the average home router/firewall are *far* more secure than your windoze machine . And once they've done that, why would they bother sniffing packets when its far more trivial to just poke through stored password files and/or run a keylogger?
No one competent would *ever* run any sort of Internet-connected server on a Windows platform, period. And while I'm sure the astroturfers will point out all sorts of well-known websites that run Windows, however that does not change my point.
encrypting the connection isnt going to do you any good when the crapware is running *on* the client machine, which has to have the cleartext pasword and/or private key in order to establish the connection. Really 'packet sniffing' isn't really the big danger. ISP networks rarely have windows machines (at least not connected where they have access to sniff anything,) and the network routers and switches are rock solid.
ftp vs sftp is not the issue.
using windows to (ftp *or* sftp) vs using a secure platform to (ftp *or* sfp) is the issue.
Switching to use sftp using going to do you any good if you are still working from a windows based client, and your stored passwords will still be stolen by the deluge of crapware that windows is specifically designed to support.
Taking a a photograph of something is not an original work, for the most part. Painting a picture of it might be.
But to be honest (while leaving out entirely my position on Obama's politics themselves) I would think that Obama himself should have copyright on any images of himself, to hell with who made them.
I think this should apply in general, although photo studios certainly believe otherwise and go out of their way to tell you so. If the subject of a photo is a person, then that person should have an overriding right to use that photograph in any way they see fit, at the very least, in addition to, any rights that the photographer might have. If the photograph is of a privately owned object, then ditto for the owner of said object. If of a publicly owned object, then the photo, once released, should be public domain.
So file charges on and/or sue the criminals, don't sue the owner of the property that the telephone pole that they stapled their ad to sits on.
Absolutely right. Blueray, at least as a format for purchasing anything in, has no major advantages over standard DVD. Stick with dvd's. Encourage your friends, family, and neighbors to avoid blueray and stick with dvd.
Now, as a writable optical data format for data storage, while still kinda expensive, it looks pretty cool. Just imagine how many ripped DVD movies you could store on one BD-R disc, especially if you compress them a little bit more.
Hey, I happen to prefer women with small breasts. That works for me, because I like nice butts even more.
Ditch the requirement to be a wired comcast subscriber. Seriously, there are probably tons of people who arent serviced by comcast (or any cable company) that would love the opportunity to pay $45/mo for high speed wireless. But they are too shortsighted to recognize the potential, and instead want to use this as leverage to sell their cable.
Setup a linux box on the same network next to the windows box that is at the 'remote' end of the transfer (eg, not the end the transfer is initiated from).
Use ssh from the 'local' end to transfer the file to the linux box. Then run something appropriate (ftpd? apache? samba?) on the linux box that makes the files directly available to the windows box.
Alternatively, rip the Windows crap out and replace both ends with a real OS.
No, because that is where all *computer* keyboards had it. This 'shift lock' nonsense only came about when they tried to mimic typewriters. Caps lock serves *no* good purpose and should be ditched, or at least relegated to somewhere away from the useful keys. And who the hell needs an extra 'right' control key anyway? Why is it even there? There was never one on any original *computer* keyboard. If a keyboard has this stupid 'shift (caps) lock' key to the left of A, its a *typewriter keyboard* layout, NOT a computer keyboard layout.
As for num lock, I routinely set the CMOS on any machine I use to force it *off*. And I never use it - there's a perfectly good set of numbers right above the QWERTY.
I think you have confused the delete key with the backspace key (Which on any sane keyboard, is already extra-large)
Or the new 3GS one. It has a GPS receiver, and there are a variety of applications which can utilize that to offer mapping and directions. Plus the backend is OSX - once you jailbreak it, you can ssh in and do all sorts of hacking.
The level of either laziness or ignorance that post implies is astonishing. How does Safari not allow you to use a search engine other than Google?
If you type in "www.yahoo.com" do you not get to Yahoo, and are able to enter a search term and hit submit?
If you type in www.bing.com (I assume thats the address, I have no intention of ever bothering with it) does it not take you to MS' latest attempt at relevance, and allow you to use its search form?
All I can figure is you are assuming that the built in 'search' form in the browser is the only way to use a search engine. Possibly you aren't even aware of the 'address' field in your browser or what it is for (Its astonishing the number of people that have [for instance] Yahoo as their home page, and I tell them to go to a specific page address and instead of typing the address into their browser's address bar they *search* for that address in Yahoo - like calling information to ask what the number for 911 is [999 for you UK folk] )
Show your professor this, perhaps:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
, and just as valid, If they replaced the 'analog' printed books with digital CD/DVD media, with the book 'content' in a standards-based, open format.
While still having the benefit of massive cost-savings in terms of paper and binding, and printing, as well as not being 'heavy' (I'm sure the books for an entire semester would easily fit on a handful of DVDROMs), there would also be the benefits of:
1. The student actually gets to keep the books after their term ends, or optionally sell them to an incoming student.
2. The college isn't forcing any specific brands of software or operating systems on students
3. Far easier to make a backup copy, in case the originally issued discs get damaged.
Now of course, the book publishers may not like this, because they don't get to charge over and over for the same content.
As a solution, I suggest that instead of having to separately purchase books, an amount be added to the tuition (not nearly as much as the current purchase-new cost of printed books, since the publisher would be avoiding all those costs) to cover 'book fees' for each student, which gives them the right to access any book which they either currently taking a class for, and once the have taken the class gives them the right to keep a copy (of that specific edition) afterwards. They can either pay media(blank DVD) and duplication costs to a college service, or they can do it themselves. There's no loss with them giving copies to new students, because new students will have paid the fees anyway. There's no worry them selling them anywhere else, since who buys textbooks except college students?
This would make sense, while priving benefits to the students, the publishers, and the colleges. Unfortunately, that pretty much guarantees nothing like it will ever see the light of day.
Anyone designing systems for hospitals, the failure of which would interfere with the hospital's ability to provide care, especially emergency care, to patients (whether the failure of a records and billing system _should_ interfere is a separate debate, but if the hospital considers it so, then it counts here) that doesn't ensure that something as simple as a *power surge* can't cause it to fail, is utterly incompetent to be remotely involved in the designing of systems for hospitals.
That would include building anything on any Microsoft platform, as well as not having 100% fault tolerant isolated power systems.
Who cares what the excuse is. You aren't wasting your time supporting broken MS-ware. If some one is at a company and cant figure out how to update their browser, they will call *their* tech support department, and eventually someone in the 'administrators' office will get the message.