Knowing how determined hackers are about the PlayStation, and considering that a CD-R drive was unheard-of in the consumer market when the PlayStation came out, I wouldn't worry about this. In a few years, the PlayStation 2 will still be going strong despite the influx of new 256-bit and 512-bit video game systems from Sega and Nintendo, due in no small part to the high availability of DVD copiers.
Early Japanese PlayStation 2's had a "bug" in that you could circumvent the DVD region locking. If it wasn't done by default, you could type a secret key sequence to disable the region locking.
This actually prompted Sony to issue a recall, even though there were no functional defects with the unit. That was possibly the first time in history that a product has been recalled because it had too many features.
MP3.com did not provide a digital locker where you could upload your own MP3's. It would take many hours for Joe AOLuser to upload his collection of Britney Spears music that way. Instead, they provided a service called "Beam It" where you would insert a CD into your drive, and the disc info would be "beamed" to My.MP3.com. This certified that you did indeed own the CD. Once there, MP3.com would then let you listen to digital recordings (from its collection, not yours) of that CD that you say you own.
Think now about how easy it would be to send bogus packets to dupe My.MP3.com into thinking that you own every CD ever created. You would be able to listen to music you don't own, which as we all know is a Crime Against Humanity.
Actually, the founder of mp3.com bought the domain for about $1,000 from a man who had bought it because it contained his initials. However, they have been around for a few years, and they're no more a "domain squatter" than news.com, tv.com, computers.com, etc.
Funny, I've been using IE5 at home for months without installing Outlook or even Outlook Express. Mailto links don't work, obviously, but the browser is otherwise fully functional.
It's true that you can't install Microsoft Office 2000 without installing Internet Explorer, but that certainly doesn't mean that IE and Outlook are "considered to be one product."
Currently on my machine here at work, I have Internet Explorer 5.5, Mozilla M17, Netscape 4.74, and now K-meleon. K-meleon seems a bit rough around the edges (for the same reasons Mozilla does) but it doesn't crash constantly.
All four of these browsers appear to get along just fine.
There was a force-feedback mouse last year that was hardwired to a special mouse pad, and provided varying levels of resistance (like the controls of a plane or car) as configured by a game. It was very expensive, wouldn't work without the mouse pad, and didn't gain too much support form the industry. Sounds similar to the story we hear 40,000 times every time we see a comment about the optical mouse.:)
Re:Good luck, maybe you can set Hollywood straight
on
Computer Historian?
·
· Score: 2
And computer screens generally don't have BIG progress bars or countdown timers. Remember the dramatic "uploading virus" scene in the spaceship, or the "countdown to arrival" scene on Air Force One in Independence Day? Boy, those Powerbooks sure are versatile machines, aren't they:)
Certain people and departments *cough*HR*cough* in our company cannot fathom the possibility of typing the content of an e-mail in the e-mail body. Instead, everything from a six-line memo to a 9MB spreadsheet gets sent as an attachment.
I was talking to a co-worker who had been working here at the start of the Melissa virus outbreak. As the virus was first detected at our site, he received an urgent message saying "DO NOT OPEN ANY E-MAIL ATTACHMENTS!" For further information, he was referred to the enclosed Word document.
The virus security team now copies and pastes text into e-mail, the old-fashioned way.:)
The article seemed to hint that MS is more trusted than Red Hat as a purveyor of software. In my opinion, few companies can be less trusted than Microsoft. They release new features like e-mail scripting, with no regard for security whatsoever. When this is exploited, it takes them several weeks to release a patch (all the while shooting out press releases that the patch is "coming soon"). Even the patch doesn't ensure a problem-free setup -- it breaks functionality with Palm Outlook conduits, for example.
Remember when we could laugh at e-mail forwards like "Do not open a message with 'Good times' in the subject"? Well, thanks to Microsoft innovations, these are now very real advisories. The IT department at the large office where I work put up hundreds of flyers to ensure that people didn't open these attachments. Many people still did, out of curiosity or just plain stupidity. The solution? Reconfigure the mail server to reject these things outright.
Microsoft has cost many people hours in overtime reconfiguring systems that were designed poorly from the get-go, and then has the gall to blame administrators. Good Lord, man, someone needs a whooping with the clue stick.
Good -- Napster is preventing a lawsuit from users who feel that the software takes too many liberties with the computer it's installed on. I believe earlier betas of the software didn't bother to ask. My bad.
Still, though, most users probably say "yes" anyway just because it sounds safe enough. They can then also use the built-in MP3 player (!) to play their existing and newly downloaded files. (Windows Media Player 7 offers to build a "library" of your songs, as well. It can also rip your CD's into "secure" WMA files, which go right into your library. Man, was I ever glad that the uninstaller worked.)
When you install Napster, it automatically creates an index of every MP3 on your system, and starts sharing from the second you connect to the server. It also doesn't exit if you merely click the Windows "X" button; that only minimizes it to the tray (!). This keeps Napster going on high-speed persistent connections, like those at universities where it's very popular.
Gnutella is too nice. It doesn't automatically share every media file on your system unless you tell it to specifically, and it exits when you say so. Most people don't mess around with configuration settings. Napster's defaults benefit Napster. Gnutella's defaults benefit the user who wants control. Guess who wins.
I offered, but they refused. When I was in school, any computer-savvy student that wasn't sleeping with the head of the "educational technology" department was considered a dangerous hacker, unfit to do anything useful. And they spit out a web site that originally was written in mostly day-glo blue with a hideous black-and-red texture background. I've seen haxx0r pages on Geocities that looked better. Eventually they roped some kids looking for independent study credit into hacking out some new HTML, and finding a better layout for the blurry distant photos they took of the schools. The layout is far from consistent, and barely usable. Some pages appear helpful or well-designed, but are filled with "Under Construction," "coming soon," or "we have not yet moved in" links under their snazzy JavaScript facades.
Yeah, the content is all there, but the design is laughable. For example, the front page has two frames, but the links all open in the full window. This breaks compatibility with non-frames-compliant browsers. Textured backgrounds are so three years ago, too.
The only useful content on that site, like homework and school-specific information, takes a good deal of clicking. A casual visitor to the site wouldn't even know that such resources exist, and that the site is actually useful.
But I'm just bitter, I guess, because my past experiences with the technologically backward staff there. At least the district saved money by hiring a couple of high school kids and paying them in independent study credits for their HTML coding.
Obscure software makes you l33t because of the uniqueness factor. I've leaned over people's shoulders in computer clusters and asked them, "Wow, how did you get that l33t transparent terminal / window manager / melty clock / ICQ client?" Usually, they'll tell me (aterm, E over remote X, xdaliclock, ICQ for Java). It works the same way for the OS, or even the gadgets you carry around.
Heck, I keep my plain but interesting-looking watch on not only because I like the way it looks, but because I've had dozens of people come up to me and ask, "Does that thing tell time?" Serves them right for trying to crane their neck around and find the time out from my watch without asking.:)
When enough people use a product or service, it instantly becomes lame to use it, and l33t to use something more obscure. See: Winamp vs. Sonique; Internet Explorer/Netscape vs. Opera, iCab, and the list goes on; mIRC vs. any other IRC client; Windows vs. Linux (vs. FreeBSD?); and of course AOL vs. any other ISP in existence. You can hype the competition's features all you like, but people usually stick to what they know. Using what people don't know is l33t beyond all comprehension.
Optimistically, I'd say that Linux has a couple more years to go, just as long as Microsoft keeps its appeals process running. Pessimistically, and I hate to side with obvious trolls, Linux still has a ways to go before it overcomes its UI limitations and can truly be fit for the masses.
Oh wow, you're right. After IHBT many times on this thread, I've now been nicked two points. Oh well, it's been fun abusing the +1 bonus, but all good things must come to an end.
Go ahead. Moderate me down all day. That 82 karma of mine is frozen. You could moderate me down 94 times and I'd still have 94 more karma points than you do.
I hadn't thought of that. However, just taking government, military, and educational sites into consideration still wouldn't provide a good cross-section of the US web market. And.com,.net, and.org domains are still free for the taking by anyone who ponies up the cash.
That's right, I guess I didn't. But Slashdot has certified that my opinions are worth their weight in gold, whereas your opinions don't even deserve to be seen unless specifically requested. Shouldn't you be downloading the daily security patch for your excellent people's-choice-because-they-have-no-alternative OS today?
Everyone uses Windows, so it has to be good. Everyone used AT&T and Standard Oil, who provided excellent service for most of their customers but shut out competition. Why don't you let people choose what they want, instead of telling them what they want?
Don't worry. When Linux gets very popular, we'll start to see more exploits and shell-script viruses (RUN TH!S @S R00T F0R FR33 PR0N) and people will complain how it's all the sell-out commercial Linux vendors' fault for including support for such horrible features. Then everyone will switch to FreeBSD, complain that there aren't enough good apps out for it, rejoice when buggy ports of obsolete applications are released, and proclaim it as the Next Big Thing.
There are enough niche OS's out there to make sure that the true geek never uses a popular, "conformist" OS, and always gets to stand out from the crowd.
Slashdot Mirror
Knowing how determined hackers are about the PlayStation, and considering that a CD-R drive was unheard-of in the consumer market when the PlayStation came out, I wouldn't worry about this. In a few years, the PlayStation 2 will still be going strong despite the influx of new 256-bit and 512-bit video game systems from Sega and Nintendo, due in no small part to the high availability of DVD copiers.
Early Japanese PlayStation 2's had a "bug" in that you could circumvent the DVD region locking. If it wasn't done by default, you could type a secret key sequence to disable the region locking.
This actually prompted Sony to issue a recall, even though there were no functional defects with the unit. That was possibly the first time in history that a product has been recalled because it had too many features.
MP3.com did not provide a digital locker where you could upload your own MP3's. It would take many hours for Joe AOLuser to upload his collection of Britney Spears music that way. Instead, they provided a service called "Beam It" where you would insert a CD into your drive, and the disc info would be "beamed" to My.MP3.com. This certified that you did indeed own the CD. Once there, MP3.com would then let you listen to digital recordings (from its collection, not yours) of that CD that you say you own.
Think now about how easy it would be to send bogus packets to dupe My.MP3.com into thinking that you own every CD ever created. You would be able to listen to music you don't own, which as we all know is a Crime Against Humanity.
Actually, the founder of mp3.com bought the domain for about $1,000 from a man who had bought it because it contained his initials. However, they have been around for a few years, and they're no more a "domain squatter" than news.com, tv.com, computers.com, etc.
Funny, I've been using IE5 at home for months without installing Outlook or even Outlook Express. Mailto links don't work, obviously, but the browser is otherwise fully functional.
It's true that you can't install Microsoft Office 2000 without installing Internet Explorer, but that certainly doesn't mean that IE and Outlook are "considered to be one product."
I think I'll stay with Kmeleon for one reason and one reason only: FADING MENUS. Now I can have all the slow UI touches of Windows 2000 today!
(View > Preferences... > Menu to set. And they don't have the cool fade-out effect like in Windows 2000 -- yet.)
Currently on my machine here at work, I have Internet Explorer 5.5, Mozilla M17, Netscape 4.74, and now K-meleon. K-meleon seems a bit rough around the edges (for the same reasons Mozilla does) but it doesn't crash constantly.
All four of these browsers appear to get along just fine.
Yeah, but I can only hear "Huzzah!" shouted so many times before going insane. I don't care how attractive the woman is who's shouting.
There was a force-feedback mouse last year that was hardwired to a special mouse pad, and provided varying levels of resistance (like the controls of a plane or car) as configured by a game. It was very expensive, wouldn't work without the mouse pad, and didn't gain too much support form the industry. Sounds similar to the story we hear 40,000 times every time we see a comment about the optical mouse. :)
Damn. I gotta start going to these conventions.
And computer screens generally don't have BIG progress bars or countdown timers. Remember the dramatic "uploading virus" scene in the spaceship, or the "countdown to arrival" scene on Air Force One in Independence Day? Boy, those Powerbooks sure are versatile machines, aren't they :)
Certain people and departments *cough*HR*cough* in our company cannot fathom the possibility of typing the content of an e-mail in the e-mail body. Instead, everything from a six-line memo to a 9MB spreadsheet gets sent as an attachment.
:)
I was talking to a co-worker who had been working here at the start of the Melissa virus outbreak. As the virus was first detected at our site, he received an urgent message saying "DO NOT OPEN ANY E-MAIL ATTACHMENTS!" For further information, he was referred to the enclosed Word document.
The virus security team now copies and pastes text into e-mail, the old-fashioned way.
The article seemed to hint that MS is more trusted than Red Hat as a purveyor of software. In my opinion, few companies can be less trusted than Microsoft. They release new features like e-mail scripting, with no regard for security whatsoever. When this is exploited, it takes them several weeks to release a patch (all the while shooting out press releases that the patch is "coming soon"). Even the patch doesn't ensure a problem-free setup -- it breaks functionality with Palm Outlook conduits, for example.
Remember when we could laugh at e-mail forwards like "Do not open a message with 'Good times' in the subject"? Well, thanks to Microsoft innovations, these are now very real advisories. The IT department at the large office where I work put up hundreds of flyers to ensure that people didn't open these attachments. Many people still did, out of curiosity or just plain stupidity. The solution? Reconfigure the mail server to reject these things outright.
Microsoft has cost many people hours in overtime reconfiguring systems that were designed poorly from the get-go, and then has the gall to blame administrators. Good Lord, man, someone needs a whooping with the clue stick.
Good -- Napster is preventing a lawsuit from users who feel that the software takes too many liberties with the computer it's installed on. I believe earlier betas of the software didn't bother to ask. My bad.
Still, though, most users probably say "yes" anyway just because it sounds safe enough. They can then also use the built-in MP3 player (!) to play their existing and newly downloaded files. (Windows Media Player 7 offers to build a "library" of your songs, as well. It can also rip your CD's into "secure" WMA files, which go right into your library. Man, was I ever glad that the uninstaller worked.)
When you install Napster, it automatically creates an index of every MP3 on your system, and starts sharing from the second you connect to the server. It also doesn't exit if you merely click the Windows "X" button; that only minimizes it to the tray (!). This keeps Napster going on high-speed persistent connections, like those at universities where it's very popular.
Gnutella is too nice. It doesn't automatically share every media file on your system unless you tell it to specifically, and it exits when you say so. Most people don't mess around with configuration settings. Napster's defaults benefit Napster. Gnutella's defaults benefit the user who wants control. Guess who wins.
Relax, man. I'm just counter-trolling. It's one of the more entertaining ways to burn karma and have fun while doing it.
I offered, but they refused. When I was in school, any computer-savvy student that wasn't sleeping with the head of the "educational technology" department was considered a dangerous hacker, unfit to do anything useful. And they spit out a web site that originally was written in mostly day-glo blue with a hideous black-and-red texture background. I've seen haxx0r pages on Geocities that looked better. Eventually they roped some kids looking for independent study credit into hacking out some new HTML, and finding a better layout for the blurry distant photos they took of the schools. The layout is far from consistent, and barely usable. Some pages appear helpful or well-designed, but are filled with "Under Construction," "coming soon," or "we have not yet moved in" links under their snazzy JavaScript facades.
But enough ranting.
Yeah, the content is all there, but the design is laughable. For example, the front page has two frames, but the links all open in the full window. This breaks compatibility with non-frames-compliant browsers. Textured backgrounds are so three years ago, too.
The only useful content on that site, like homework and school-specific information, takes a good deal of clicking. A casual visitor to the site wouldn't even know that such resources exist, and that the site is actually useful.
But I'm just bitter, I guess, because my past experiences with the technologically backward staff there. At least the district saved money by hiring a couple of high school kids and paying them in independent study credits for their HTML coding.
Obscure software makes you l33t because of the uniqueness factor. I've leaned over people's shoulders in computer clusters and asked them, "Wow, how did you get that l33t transparent terminal / window manager / melty clock / ICQ client?" Usually, they'll tell me (aterm, E over remote X, xdaliclock, ICQ for Java). It works the same way for the OS, or even the gadgets you carry around.
:)
Heck, I keep my plain but interesting-looking watch on not only because I like the way it looks, but because I've had dozens of people come up to me and ask, "Does that thing tell time?" Serves them right for trying to crane their neck around and find the time out from my watch without asking.
When enough people use a product or service, it instantly becomes lame to use it, and l33t to use something more obscure. See: Winamp vs. Sonique; Internet Explorer/Netscape vs. Opera, iCab, and the list goes on; mIRC vs. any other IRC client; Windows vs. Linux (vs. FreeBSD?); and of course AOL vs. any other ISP in existence. You can hype the competition's features all you like, but people usually stick to what they know. Using what people don't know is l33t beyond all comprehension.
Optimistically, I'd say that Linux has a couple more years to go, just as long as Microsoft keeps its appeals process running. Pessimistically, and I hate to side with obvious trolls, Linux still has a ways to go before it overcomes its UI limitations and can truly be fit for the masses.
Oh wow, you're right. After IHBT many times on this thread, I've now been nicked two points. Oh well, it's been fun abusing the +1 bonus, but all good things must come to an end.
Go ahead. Moderate me down all day. That 82 karma of mine is frozen. You could moderate me down 94 times and I'd still have 94 more karma points than you do.
You on the other hand...
I hadn't thought of that. However, just taking government, military, and educational sites into consideration still wouldn't provide a good cross-section of the US web market. And .com, .net, and .org domains are still free for the taking by anyone who ponies up the cash.
Wow. That is so close to being relevant.
That's right, I guess I didn't. But Slashdot has certified that my opinions are worth their weight in gold, whereas your opinions don't even deserve to be seen unless specifically requested. Shouldn't you be downloading the daily security patch for your excellent people's-choice-because-they-have-no-alternative OS today?
Everyone uses Windows, so it has to be good. Everyone used AT&T and Standard Oil, who provided excellent service for most of their customers but shut out competition. Why don't you let people choose what they want, instead of telling them what they want?
Don't worry. When Linux gets very popular, we'll start to see more exploits and shell-script viruses (RUN TH!S @S R00T F0R FR33 PR0N) and people will complain how it's all the sell-out commercial Linux vendors' fault for including support for such horrible features. Then everyone will switch to FreeBSD, complain that there aren't enough good apps out for it, rejoice when buggy ports of obsolete applications are released, and proclaim it as the Next Big Thing.
There are enough niche OS's out there to make sure that the true geek never uses a popular, "conformist" OS, and always gets to stand out from the crowd.