Is this such a bad thing? OK so you have to trust Microsoft here but how else can Windowsupdate work?
Windowsupdate scans your computer for required updates and, depending on your settings, it downloads the appropriate updates and presents a notification on the taskbar that they need to be installed. One click and the updates are installed.
In principle, this system works great for your average Joe User. Of course, for this system to be "allowed", you need to grant Windowsupdate control of your computer hence this section in the EULA.
Now of course, this part of the EULA does open the possibility of Microsoft being malicious but I guess I would trust Microsoft just enough not to deliberately screw over all home consumers in this way
I do wonder sometimes about the term "Open source". While under the open source definition, this does not count due to restrictive clauses, if I were a non/. techie, I would say: "Hey, I get to see the source for free and modify it. I'd say the source is open for the world to see and maybe use"
Putting OSI aside, I wonder if it would be more helpful to say that the source is Open (as in transparent) but not Free (as in speech since it is restricted).
And would you believe it, all the software required is FREE when you use Windows!
I have a WinTV Hauppauge PCI card (one of the older versions) and can use it to broadcast television live off my PC, over the internet where I can watch it on my laptop in laboratories at university =)
There is this wonderful FREE WINDOWS tool called Windows Media Encoder. Download it off Microsoft's site (for free). Use WinTV to select the channel you want to broadcast. Then run up Windows Media Encoder. This tool will perform REALTIME compression of the audio/video and broadcast it over the internet (out of my ADSL line) using Windows Media
On my laptop, I simply type in my hostname in Windows Media player (or use dyndns for my hostname) and from labs at internet, I get to watch telly =)
Ahh... it may tell you which keys you press but not which part of the key.
"this would explain why my spacebars always seem to break on my laptops"
If I look closely at my laptop spacebar, I notice that the texture on the right edge of the spacebar is much smoother than the left side. Conclusion: I press the spacebar with my right hand much more often than my left.
Hah, your program couldn't figure that out =P
(And pressing just one side of a wide key will probably cause it to break in the long run!)
That's one of the more interesting articles I've read about at Slashdot. Unlike our perpetual motion machine, this sounds genuine and not *too* good to be true. High bandwidth, low interference and perfect for that last mile problem! If the technology becomes mainstream, it will be revolutionary
I have questions though:
- Can an enthusiast make one of these "impossibly cheap" devices?
- Are as the article suggests these devices really going to take off within the next year or will they be suppressed as the article suggests other technologies will be.
- Is it really that resistant to interference? We're using so many frequencies at one time, can they really not clash?
- Will it interfere with traditional radio signals? I.e, it seems to clobber other reserved EM frequencies to make use of high bandwidth. Would this mess up our telly or radio?
- Does anyone have experience to say whether this stuff is really as good as it proclaims to be?
- Finally, there must be more downsides than just messing up radio astronomers
On this serious note, it would have to be from different code as that is the way the virtual machine works. Elements such as DLL's and registry are part of the OS and vary from VM to VM and hence require separate installations.
Now as to the EULA, I guess noone at Microsoft have considered multiple Windows installations on a machine. Like any normal person, I haven't read the MS EULA either =P
Well, at worst it is only consistent with their general policy of internet filtering/censorship. If they have their "Great firewall of China" this is a logical extension of that firewall.
Think carefully... how do you make software secure in the first place? Microsoft try to go through extensive software testing to detect bugs. Who knows, maybe if test software is good enough, they can catch most bugs
How does the OSS world make its software so secure? Through peer review. People find bugs and report them. With OSS these bugs are found fast. And these bugs get fixed fast. But what would be ludicrous would be to sue for bugs since at V1.0.0 there are bound to be bugs. Suing would kill the project. Peer review has made OSS strong and that is the way it should be.
This is another one of those catch-all blanket decisions that seem alright at first thought but if you apply to all cases, you see that it is just disastrous. Let's look who it affects the most
BETA SOFTWARE
Well of course that has bugs. So we exempt this? OK, all (Microsoft) software will be beta
NEWBIE / EDUCATIONAL
Some newbie developer or uni student writes a piece of toy software and makes it available on his home page to boost his ego. Some other newbie academic downloads it and a bug in the "file manager" software deletes his C: drive.
Exempt educational software??
FREE BEER
Some people make software out of the goodness of their hard. "YMMV, maybe you like it maybe you don't. No warranty". Maybe it is superb. But it might have a horendous bug. So people will no longer release freeware
OPEN SOURCE
Same as above but with source open, people can deliberately find bugs and cry out. Worse, there is plenty of open source software in commercial use (Apache etc). What if in some new iteration of Apache, there is a security hole and this will happen. Can people sue for this?! Can people sue the developers who worked on it for free? What exemption do you want now?
MICROSOFT
Well, by now, OSS has dried up because everyone is too scared to give work away. Maybe top projects that have been so heavily scrutinised in the past might be ok (Apache, Linux Kernel). Microsoft might just last a little longer than expected due to security through obscurity but of course they too will perish
If it is paid for with US money then the code should belong to the US. I'm sure there is *some* software that exists that you really don't want some non-US country to get hold of. That is why it is dangerous to have a blanket policy for *all* software made by public money. That said, having as much software under GPL would be a good thing
Ok, so X should sue Microsoft for trademark infringement and during discovery, force Microsoft to hand over every and all email addresses and real names that Microsoft have collected =p
I think you've got half the point here. There is definitely a market for small machines but there is a conflict of interests here. You say you have several Linux and Windows workstations, plus a couple of FreeBSD servers and that there are other people in the world besides you (i.e geek type), and many of us have been waiting for exactly this kind of integration in commodity PCs for quite some time
Yes, so as a result, I reckon these things could sell very well at the low end market. All my uncles and aunts don't care about games. Heck, they still hear of things thing called Word Processor to write their articles and maybe possibly want to learn email. A low end compact device like this would be great for them
But the article says build your own machine. Now no newbie would go building their own machine let alone one like this and if you have several workstations to build yourself then probably no. You will get your Dell or whoever to mass build them for you and quality assurance since that is what you want as a business
And what about the geeks? Well frankly, we do want all the 3D graphics and super dooper CPU's. And myself, I built myself a cheapo machine for $500 or so but the thing I am most happy about is its upgradeability. Rather than having to upgrade the entire machine (which you would have to do with the integrated boards) I can upgrade component by component which is just that much harder to do with compact machines
I'm sure a recently graduated student from Imperial College, UK worked on this as a project. Rather than using speech recognition which consumes vast amounts of computing power and probably storage, it took the much easier approach of indexing subtitles to programmes. And since you'd probably be most interested in searching news reports which are almost always subtitled, you end up with a excellent search system without the flaws of speech recognition
I strongly doubt anyone will write something to detect Magic Lantern. Why? To detect it, you have to catch it first. The FBI are only going to install it on a very very small number of machines. Now to get Magic Lantern
- You would need to be a bad guy
- You need to be dumb enough to click on attachments (according to their statements)
- Yet smart enough to suspect you might have it and get a super-techie person to track down this novel virus
The is security by obscurity at its best and this time it works
I am un undergraduate at Imperial College and I must say the issue hasn't cropped up here. Of all the individual projects us final years have been taken, none of the students have been worried about IP. Indeed, some project supervisors *insist* that their student's projects are put under the GPL because they are Open Source advocates. I guess the issue depends from university to university
This is my first look qt QT and based on the comments here, it is obviously the way to go for cross platform GUI development.
Now, I have my love with Perl too and I'm trying to find the latest Perl QT binding but couldn't find one! All I have found is PerlQT which really stopped 4 years ago. Is there no interest for this?
Slashdot Mirror
Where are my mod points when I need them?! While +1 Funny, Mr. Taco, this is a +1 Insightful post. Take heed =P
*Almost* tempted to Troll mod this one just for the sake of virgin newbies in Slashdot. But I'll let ya off just this once =P
Is this such a bad thing? OK so you have to trust Microsoft here but how else can Windowsupdate work?
Windowsupdate scans your computer for required updates and, depending on your settings, it downloads the appropriate updates and presents a notification on the taskbar that they need to be installed. One click and the updates are installed.
In principle, this system works great for your average Joe User. Of course, for this system to be "allowed", you need to grant Windowsupdate control of your computer hence this section in the EULA.
Now of course, this part of the EULA does open the possibility of Microsoft being malicious but I guess I would trust Microsoft just enough not to deliberately screw over all home consumers in this way
I do wonder sometimes about the term "Open source". While under the open source definition, this does not count due to restrictive clauses, if I were a non /. techie, I would say: "Hey, I get to see the source for free and modify it. I'd say the source is open for the world to see and maybe use"
Putting OSI aside, I wonder if it would be more helpful to say that the source is Open (as in transparent) but not Free (as in speech since it is restricted).
And would you believe it, all the software required is FREE when you use Windows!
I have a WinTV Hauppauge PCI card (one of the older versions) and can use it to broadcast television live off my PC, over the internet where I can watch it on my laptop in laboratories at university =)
There is this wonderful FREE WINDOWS tool called Windows Media Encoder. Download it off Microsoft's site (for free). Use WinTV to select the channel you want to broadcast. Then run up Windows Media Encoder. This tool will perform REALTIME compression of the audio/video and broadcast it over the internet (out of my ADSL line) using Windows Media
On my laptop, I simply type in my hostname in Windows Media player (or use dyndns for my hostname) and from labs at internet, I get to watch telly =)
Fun stuff
Merci d' être le visiteur 7
Depuis le 14 Juillet 1998 [une révolution n'est-il-pas ?]
Ok, so maybe this isn't one of them cos the slashdot effect hasn't got there. Oh, oops, sorry...
This is a civil case against a company's US presence. If the case is won, Elcomsoft will have to pay money, not go to jail.
"Asking me about Linux is like asking the Pope about the existence of God"
Linus Torvalds
"this would explain why my spacebars always seem to break on my laptops"
If I look closely at my laptop spacebar, I notice that the texture on the right edge of the spacebar is much smoother than the left side. Conclusion: I press the spacebar with my right hand much more often than my left.
Hah, your program couldn't figure that out =P (And pressing just one side of a wide key will probably cause it to break in the long run!)
That's one of the more interesting articles I've read about at Slashdot. Unlike our perpetual motion machine, this sounds genuine and not *too* good to be true. High bandwidth, low interference and perfect for that last mile problem! If the technology becomes mainstream, it will be revolutionary
I have questions though:
- Can an enthusiast make one of these "impossibly cheap" devices?
- Are as the article suggests these devices really going to take off within the next year or will they be suppressed as the article suggests other technologies will be.
- Is it really that resistant to interference? We're using so many frequencies at one time, can they really not clash?
- Will it interfere with traditional radio signals? I.e, it seems to clobber other reserved EM frequencies to make use of high bandwidth. Would this mess up our telly or radio?
- Does anyone have experience to say whether this stuff is really as good as it proclaims to be?
- Finally, there must be more downsides than just messing up radio astronomers
As I said, you can't mount a Windows OS volume read-only as you would need write access to the registry etc.
On this serious note, it would have to be from different code as that is the way the virtual machine works. Elements such as DLL's and registry are part of the OS and vary from VM to VM and hence require separate installations.
Now as to the EULA, I guess noone at Microsoft have considered multiple Windows installations on a machine. Like any normal person, I haven't read the MS EULA either =P
Cool! Not only are you allowed to run Linux on your computer for FREE but you are allowed to run 1000 copies of Linux on your computer for FREE!!
Now, 1000 copies of Windows on a machine would cost... $100,000? Nehehe. Linux rocks =P
Lol! A well deserved "funny" post. Then on further thought, I could almost class this as "insightful" because it might actually work...
Well, at worst it is only consistent with their general policy of internet filtering/censorship. If they have their "Great firewall of China" this is a logical extension of that firewall.
Think carefully... how do you make software secure in the first place? Microsoft try to go through extensive software testing to detect bugs. Who knows, maybe if test software is good enough, they can catch most bugs
How does the OSS world make its software so secure? Through peer review. People find bugs and report them. With OSS these bugs are found fast. And these bugs get fixed fast. But what would be ludicrous would be to sue for bugs since at V1.0.0 there are bound to be bugs. Suing would kill the project. Peer review has made OSS strong and that is the way it should be.
This is another one of those catch-all blanket decisions that seem alright at first thought but if you apply to all cases, you see that it is just disastrous. Let's look who it affects the most
BETA SOFTWARE
Well of course that has bugs. So we exempt this? OK, all (Microsoft) software will be beta
NEWBIE / EDUCATIONAL
Some newbie developer or uni student writes a piece of toy software and makes it available on his home page to boost his ego. Some other newbie academic downloads it and a bug in the "file manager" software deletes his C: drive.
Exempt educational software??
FREE BEER
Some people make software out of the goodness of their hard. "YMMV, maybe you like it maybe you don't. No warranty". Maybe it is superb. But it might have a horendous bug. So people will no longer release freeware
OPEN SOURCE
Same as above but with source open, people can deliberately find bugs and cry out. Worse, there is plenty of open source software in commercial use (Apache etc). What if in some new iteration of Apache, there is a security hole and this will happen. Can people sue for this?! Can people sue the developers who worked on it for free? What exemption do you want now?
MICROSOFT
Well, by now, OSS has dried up because everyone is too scared to give work away. Maybe top projects that have been so heavily scrutinised in the past might be ok (Apache, Linux Kernel). Microsoft might just last a little longer than expected due to security through obscurity but of course they too will perish
The end of software =)
If it is paid for with US money then the code should belong to the US. I'm sure there is *some* software that exists that you really don't want some non-US country to get hold of. That is why it is dangerous to have a blanket policy for *all* software made by public money. That said, having as much software under GPL would be a good thing
Ok, so X should sue Microsoft for trademark infringement and during discovery, force Microsoft to hand over every and all email addresses and real names that Microsoft have collected =p
Yes, so as a result, I reckon these things could sell very well at the low end market. All my uncles and aunts don't care about games. Heck, they still hear of things thing called Word Processor to write their articles and maybe possibly want to learn email. A low end compact device like this would be great for them
But the article says build your own machine. Now no newbie would go building their own machine let alone one like this and if you have several workstations to build yourself then probably no. You will get your Dell or whoever to mass build them for you and quality assurance since that is what you want as a business
And what about the geeks? Well frankly, we do want all the 3D graphics and super dooper CPU's. And myself, I built myself a cheapo machine for $500 or so but the thing I am most happy about is its upgradeability. Rather than having to upgrade the entire machine (which you would have to do with the integrated boards) I can upgrade component by component which is just that much harder to do with compact machines
The average Joe User doesn't know what an operating system is. Seriously. But at least they know what Microsoft Windows is.
I'm sure a recently graduated student from Imperial College, UK worked on this as a project. Rather than using speech recognition which consumes vast amounts of computing power and probably storage, it took the much easier approach of indexing subtitles to programmes. And since you'd probably be most interested in searching news reports which are almost always subtitled, you end up with a excellent search system without the flaws of speech recognition
I strongly doubt anyone will write something to detect Magic Lantern. Why? To detect it, you have to catch it first. The FBI are only going to install it on a very very small number of machines. Now to get Magic Lantern
- You would need to be a bad guy
- You need to be dumb enough to click on attachments (according to their statements)
- Yet smart enough to suspect you might have it and get a super-techie person to track down this novel virus
The is security by obscurity at its best and this time it works
I am un undergraduate at Imperial College and I must say the issue hasn't cropped up here. Of all the individual projects us final years have been taken, none of the students have been worried about IP. Indeed, some project supervisors *insist* that their student's projects are put under the GPL because they are Open Source advocates. I guess the issue depends from university to university
This is my first look qt QT and based on the comments here, it is obviously the way to go for cross platform GUI development.
Now, I have my love with Perl too and I'm trying to find the latest Perl QT binding but couldn't find one! All I have found is PerlQT which really stopped 4 years ago. Is there no interest for this?