I could be wrong, but I believe Ask Jeeves has a few large corporate clients that use it for a kind of "auto-FAQ"/support system within their own sites... but I still wonder if the posted didn't mean 2 *million*.
I for one do not welcome Flickr's Yahoo overlords. I was actually flirting with the idea of subscribing to Flickr after trying it over the last few weeks. Now I fully expect to see a dramatic decrease in the site's responsiveness and a dramatic increase in obnoxious ads.
I've been an Opera supporter for years, but at some point it must become evident that Hakon Wium Lie (and other Opera employees) are simply venting frustration.
While I think the acid test is great, Opera has been uncharacteristically silent on getting XMLHttpRequest up to the Firefox/Safari/IE level. I know Opera will tell you "it is coming in version 8", but I thought the position of the one commerical browser of the bunch was to lead, not follow.
P.S. Why do all the Fire/zilla mouse gesture packages use nearly identical mouse gestures from Opera with the exception of [right button]+down is new window instead of new tab? As an Opera *and* Firefox user, this is frustrating.
a) Started out "free" -- reasoning the bank didn't have to pay so many human tellers. b) Moved to a small fee for the operator of the ATM, which is understandable. C) Fee doubled when your bank realized it could charge you in addition to the charges of the ATM operator. D) Mext the fees nearly doubled to an average of $1.50 each side of the transaction (minus the "free" out of network uses you get per month). E) Finally -- we end up with bank plans where you can be charged to talk to a human teller.
If we figure out where we went wrong with banks and ATMs it might help us not repeat the same mistake.
A) People don't think Windows sucks, they think computers suck. This removes the incentive to switch.
B) Having problems along with 90% of the world yields an illusion that lessens the severity of the issue. If you don't understand a subject, the logical "uneducated" choice is to align with the majority.
C) Those with the knowledge to suggest alternatives are the very same people who fix Windows. Be it pity or greed. My family and friends who use Windows don't need to storm Redmond to fix their problems. They already know my number.
D) People are actually getting good at fixing Windows. There's a crop of Windows users who, while they are not inherently technical people, have garnered the knowledge of self-support. It empowers them. It's like taking pride in fashioning your own crutches when someone breaks your legs.
E) One "investment" aspect of a computer is the x-year support service. Microsoft isn't fielding the calls, because they've farmed support to their vendors. The vendors turn around and sell that support as a value-added feature.
I don't think there are "quite a few" sites that require 3rd party ActiveX to function properly. Things like Gmail use xmlrpc, which in IE is invoked through ActiveX, but that's an internal ActiveX component.
Palm's lineage comes more from the GridPad, the DOS-based PDA of the late 80's. The Newton may have bolstered public acceptance of PDAs in general but it is my opinion that the Palm would have existed with or without the Newton.
They aren't using Windows Media Player to install spyware. They are using WMP to get users to click on a link that takes them to a webpage where, presumably, the user's browser is compromised.
Give the proliferation of spyware *without* this new fishing technique, I don't understand the significance of this. People find spyware all by themselves, they don't need any help.
Forgive my ignorance of the product, but won't it need to continually poll a server to find out if it has an incoming call due to firewalls? Also, does it expect to be able to seamlessly jump wifi networks -- transparent to the user anyway?
I see the use of using it in a Starbucks, or whatever, but it would hardly make a practical mobile phone. And I doubt people would bother carrying two phones around.
I think this is a catch-22. If Microsoft feels threated by an OSX office suite then killing Microsoft Office for OSX would only drive people to use it the alternative more. This would be a poor business move until the development costs for OSX become financially discouraging in relation to sales. Microsoft, after all, is in business of selling software to people who will pay for it.
First -- yes, these stories are sad. But what about the flip-side? Here's a creative soul who was gainfully employed to pursue his own imagination. He was paid to be creative. The problem was his creativity wasn't bound by the context of viability... by what is currently applicable. The patents were sold cheaply because there was no immediate use for them.
This sounds harsh, but the way I see it he got paid to dream. Monetary compensation is only one way of keeping score and from my perspective this man is richer than most.
Which begs the question -- did he lose salary for every failed invention? He probably had a lot of hair-brained flops in his tenure... and I don't see mention on how those things that didn't develop should be compensated by himself just as any success is immediately rewarded.
"At the time, the team speculated that wind may have swept the dust off the panels or frost may have caused it to clump, exposing more of the panels...."
Rice University Computer Scientists Find a Flaw in Google's New Desktop Search Program
By JOHN MARKOFF Published: December 20, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 19 - A Rice University computer scientist and two of his students have discovered a potentially serious security flaw in the desktop search tool for personal computers that was recently distributed by Google.
The glitch, which could permit an attacker to secretly search the contents of a personal computer via the Internet, is what computer scientists call a composition flaw - a security weakness that emerges when separate components interact. "When you put them together, out jumps a security flaw," said Dan Wallach, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice in Houston, who, with two graduate students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, discovered the flaw last month. "These are subtle problems, and it takes a lot of experience to ferret out this kind of flaw," Professor Wallach said.
Google introduced a test version of the desktop search tool on Oct. 14, and it can be downloaded at no cost. The program indexes material on a user's local hard disk and then blends Web search results with local user information like electronic mail, text documents and other files. The flaw would permit a search to reveal only small portions of the files.
Advertisement
The way the software tool is designed, a user's queries, but no locally stored information, is distributed via the Internet. But by reading user queries sent to its search service, Google is able to place its AdWords text advertisements next to the search results displayed in a user's browser window.
In a statement over the weekend, the company said that it had been notified of the flaw by the computer researchers in late November and had begun distributing a new version of the desktop search engine that repairs the potential security hole. Google's introduction of a desktop search tool has touched off a competition with its closest Web search service competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Microsoft made a test version of its desktop search tool available last Monday as part of its MSN toolbar suite, and Yahoo has said that it will begin testing a similar search tool in January.
The Rice University researchers said that they had not yet examined Microsoft's desktop search program, but noted that the service did not appear to integrate Web and local search results in the same manner as the Google tool.
The researchers said that the Google security weakness lay in the way that Google Desktop was designed to intercept outgoing network connections from the user's computer.
The program looks for traffic that appears to be going to Google.com and then inserts results from a user's hard disk for a particular search. They found that it was possible to trick the Google desktop search program into inserting those results into other Web pages where an attacker could read them.
An attack would require a user to visit the attacker's Web site first, and any type of Web browser could make a user vulnerable. Google said there was no evidence that any such attacks had occurred.
The Rice group was able to create a Java program that makes network connections back to the computer from where it was downloaded and then make it appear as if it were asking for a search at Google.com. That was enough to fool the Google desktop software into providing the user's search information. The program was able to do anything with the results, including transmitting them back to the attacking site.
"This began as a student project to study how Google Desktop worked and to see if there were any security flaws," said Professor Wallach. "We started by wondering how Google did the local search integration. Once we figured out how it worked, it wasn't too much extra work to break it."
The researchers said that Google had responded quickly to their alert last month and had begun releasing a corrected version of the program on Dec. 10.
I was really hoping they would add a nice front-end to SQLite, but I can't find mention of the underlying codebase for the "Access like" functionality. Does anyone know what DB code they are using?
The short term effects of OSS on Windows might appear to keep people on Windows but in the long term the OS will become a non-issue. All things being equal, Linux still has "free" going for it. Once all the applications you require run on any OS you choose, why would you choose to pay for that OS when a free version is available.
Two reasons; 1) All the software you require isn't available on "any" OS you'd could choose to run. 2) The operating systems aren't actually equal.
Neither of which has anything to do with OSS being ported to Windows.
Unless one makes the argument that it's a matter of weighing a certain amount of useful applications on a "free" OS vs. those required on your "pay" OS -- but that doesn't seem to be an argument made in the best interest of the user.
I agree, but the obligatory Slashdot Bizarro twist... what if this was about Microsoft Word locking out OO.org with respect to "protected.doc" files....
Number one, this is old, since Microsoft Word was released eons ago.
Number two, Microsoft is under no obligation to support ANYONE else's DRM, period.
Unprotected.doc files from ANY source will open fine on ANY version of Microsoft Word. This is ONLY about OO.org reverse engineering the Microsoft DRM (more power to them) in order to allow their ".doc" DRM-protected files to work with Microsoft Office. They succeeded. And Microsoft is under NO obligation of any kind to allow it to continue. Word DOES NOT SUPPORT DRM files from ANY other source, so this isn't a matter of "doing what you want with something you bought". If you can personally get OpenOffice.org's protected files to open on your version of Word, go for it. If OO.org re-engineers it such that the files work, great. Further, you are not forced to update the software. What's that? You'll eventually have to to get new features and bug fixes? Tough. Don't like it? Don't buy another version of Word.
Microsoft is doing nothing legally, technically, ethically, morally or wrong....
Many of us returned home for the Thanksgiving holiday season to find a lot of very sad computers anxious for our visit. Allow me quick example...
My father recently purchased a new Dell, and um, Dude, he's getting spyware! I fixed him up. A few days later, he asks me why Outlook Express is blocking some attachments via email. It didn't do that "before I was there". *Sigh*. I've deprived him from his Extreme Elf Bowling (Now with Gator,CoolWebSearch *and* Pr0nDialer 2008 at no extra charge.)
Next thanksgiving instead of fixing these zombies I'm just burning a dozen "live" linux CDs. It will allow most of them to still get online and try to fix their own problems. It's tough love but as I titled this reply; we continue to carry the burden of their apathy. In this situation, it's really up to us to stop the cycle.
That plan doesn't really jive well with things like the big AOL proxies, where millions of people appear to be a handful of IP addresses. Thus making "unique" somewhat difficult to determine.
If your employer requires you to have a cell phone sans camera, they should provide you with a cell phone sans camera. Most work environments don't lend themselves well to non-company cell phones anyway. I don't see why they don't just ban cell phones in general. It would be easier to enforce.
CSS support is excellent. Here's there spec sheet: http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/ Feel free to compare that with Firefox and report back to us.
6 one way: "plugins were a hassle"
What plugins are you referring to exactly? You want a hassle? Trying to get a uniform experience out of Firefox. Firefox has let 'extensions' go too far, letting several things that should be in the core application,and UI tested, be thrown to the dogs. You can let extensions change the behavior if you want, but don't make the user jump through hoops on every freaking install.
Let's take the issue of 'tabbed browsing'. Opera brought it to the browser, and it's evolved naturally. It looked like Firefox was going to follow suit, but somehow completely lost sight of what makes it work. I install Firefox at work. Tabs (MDI) is logical. But there is no built-in contsruct to save the tabs as groups (or god-forbid in the unlikely event Firefox crashes the state of the tabs be automatically saved -- standard behavior in Opera). That's an important thing when you allow a user to interact with dozens of information sources under one instance of an application. So now I need an extension. I go trudging off and nothing exists for Firefox 1.0 that seems to fit this bill. Advantage, Opera. But I can live with that... but what about re-arranging tabs? Same problem. I need an extension. Can't find one. P.S: Mozdev? How about a 'Search' button?
NOTE: *I* know these extensions exist, but are they actually compatible from 0.9? And what about those people who don't know they exist? And what about those extensions that actually overlap (and hence, contradict) features?
And finally, let's say I somehow get Firefox behaving logically with respect to tabs and I'm happy. Until I sit down at my co-workers machine and he's got completely different extensions doing similar, but ultimately confusing things.
Sometimes, it's worth a few dollars to have someone else just get it right. Yeah, that's an opinion. Everyone's got one.
Slashdot Mirror
I could be wrong, but I believe Ask Jeeves has a few large corporate clients that use it for a kind of "auto-FAQ"/support system within their own sites
I for one do not welcome Flickr's Yahoo overlords. I was actually flirting with the idea of subscribing to Flickr after trying it over the last few weeks. Now I fully expect to see a dramatic decrease in the site's responsiveness and a dramatic increase in obnoxious ads.
Opera doesn't run on CE. If would be the symbian OS, as in the past: http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?platform=s ymbian
I've been an Opera supporter for years, but at some point it must become evident that Hakon Wium Lie (and other Opera employees) are simply venting frustration.
While I think the acid test is great, Opera has been uncharacteristically silent on getting XMLHttpRequest up to the Firefox/Safari/IE level. I know Opera will tell you "it is coming in version 8", but I thought the position of the one commerical browser of the bunch was to lead, not follow.
P.S. Why do all the Fire/zilla mouse gesture packages use nearly identical mouse gestures from Opera with the exception of [right button]+down is new window instead of new tab? As an Opera *and* Firefox user, this is frustrating.
a) Started out "free" -- reasoning the bank didn't have to pay so many human tellers.
b) Moved to a small fee for the operator of the ATM, which is understandable.
C) Fee doubled when your bank realized it could charge you in addition to the charges of the ATM operator.
D) Mext the fees nearly doubled to an average of $1.50 each side of the transaction (minus the "free" out of network uses you get per month).
E) Finally -- we end up with bank plans where you can be charged to talk to a human teller.
If we figure out where we went wrong with banks and ATMs it might help us not repeat the same mistake.
Exhibit:
A) People don't think Windows sucks, they think computers suck. This removes the incentive to switch.
B) Having problems along with 90% of the world yields an illusion that lessens the severity of the issue. If you don't understand a subject, the logical "uneducated" choice is to align with the majority.
C) Those with the knowledge to suggest alternatives are the very same people who fix Windows. Be it pity or greed. My family and friends who use Windows don't need to storm Redmond to fix their problems. They already know my number.
D) People are actually getting good at fixing Windows. There's a crop of Windows users who, while they are not inherently technical people, have garnered the knowledge of self-support. It empowers them. It's like taking pride in fashioning your own crutches when someone breaks your legs.
E) One "investment" aspect of a computer is the x-year support service. Microsoft isn't fielding the calls, because they've farmed support to their vendors. The vendors turn around and sell that support as a value-added feature.
I don't think there are "quite a few" sites that require 3rd party ActiveX to function properly. Things like Gmail use xmlrpc, which in IE is invoked through ActiveX, but that's an internal ActiveX component.
Seriously. WTF. It's like you plug in "Bill Gates" into Google
Palm's lineage comes more from the GridPad, the DOS-based PDA of the late 80's. The Newton may have bolstered public acceptance of PDAs in general but it is my opinion that the Palm would have existed with or without the Newton.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this Project X? That interesting browsing technique Apple tried in 1996/1997 to XSpace web content?
They aren't using Windows Media Player to install spyware. They are using WMP to get users to click on a link that takes them to a webpage where, presumably, the user's browser is compromised.
Give the proliferation of spyware *without* this new fishing technique, I don't understand the significance of this. People find spyware all by themselves, they don't need any help.
Forgive my ignorance of the product, but won't it need to continually poll a server to find out if it has an incoming call due to firewalls? Also, does it expect to be able to seamlessly jump wifi networks -- transparent to the user anyway?
I see the use of using it in a Starbucks, or whatever, but it would hardly make a practical mobile phone. And I doubt people would bother carrying two phones around.
I think this is a catch-22. If Microsoft feels threated by an OSX office suite then killing Microsoft Office for OSX would only drive people to use it the alternative more. This would be a poor business move until the development costs for OSX become financially discouraging in relation to sales. Microsoft, after all, is in business of selling software to people who will pay for it.
Already have them:
http://www.qvc.com/asp/frameset.asp?nest=%2Fasp%2
First -- yes, these stories are sad. But what about the flip-side? Here's a creative soul who was gainfully employed to pursue his own imagination. He was paid to be creative. The problem was his creativity wasn't bound by the context of viability
This sounds harsh, but the way I see it he got paid to dream. Monetary compensation is only one way of keeping score and from my perspective this man is richer than most.
Which begs the question -- did he lose salary for every failed invention? He probably had a lot of hair-brained flops in his tenure
Maybe.... You didn't read the article did you?
"At the time, the team speculated that wind may have swept the dust off the panels or frost may have caused it to clump, exposing more of the panels.
Rice University Computer Scientists Find a Flaw in Google's New Desktop Search Program
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: December 20, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 19 - A Rice University computer scientist and two of his students have discovered a potentially serious security flaw in the desktop search tool for personal computers that was recently distributed by Google.
The glitch, which could permit an attacker to secretly search the contents of a personal computer via the Internet, is what computer scientists call a composition flaw - a security weakness that emerges when separate components interact. "When you put them together, out jumps a security flaw," said Dan Wallach, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice in Houston, who, with two graduate students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, discovered the flaw last month. "These are subtle problems, and it takes a lot of experience to ferret out this kind of flaw," Professor Wallach said.
Google introduced a test version of the desktop search tool on Oct. 14, and it can be downloaded at no cost. The program indexes material on a user's local hard disk and then blends Web search results with local user information like electronic mail, text documents and other files. The flaw would permit a search to reveal only small portions of the files.
Advertisement
The way the software tool is designed, a user's queries, but no locally stored information, is distributed via the Internet. But by reading user queries sent to its search service, Google is able to place its AdWords text advertisements next to the search results displayed in a user's browser window.
In a statement over the weekend, the company said that it had been notified of the flaw by the computer researchers in late November and had begun distributing a new version of the desktop search engine that repairs the potential security hole. Google's introduction of a desktop search tool has touched off a competition with its closest Web search service competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Microsoft made a test version of its desktop search tool available last Monday as part of its MSN toolbar suite, and Yahoo has said that it will begin testing a similar search tool in January.
The Rice University researchers said that they had not yet examined Microsoft's desktop search program, but noted that the service did not appear to integrate Web and local search results in the same manner as the Google tool.
The researchers said that the Google security weakness lay in the way that Google Desktop was designed to intercept outgoing network connections from the user's computer.
The program looks for traffic that appears to be going to Google.com and then inserts results from a user's hard disk for a particular search. They found that it was possible to trick the Google desktop search program into inserting those results into other Web pages where an attacker could read them.
An attack would require a user to visit the attacker's Web site first, and any type of Web browser could make a user vulnerable. Google said there was no evidence that any such attacks had occurred.
The Rice group was able to create a Java program that makes network connections back to the computer from where it was downloaded and then make it appear as if it were asking for a search at Google.com. That was enough to fool the Google desktop software into providing the user's search information. The program was able to do anything with the results, including transmitting them back to the attacking site.
"This began as a student project to study how Google Desktop worked and to see if there were any security flaws," said Professor Wallach. "We started by wondering how Google did the local search integration. Once we figured out how it worked, it wasn't too much extra work to break it."
The researchers said that Google had responded quickly to their alert last month and had begun releasing a corrected version of the program on Dec. 10.
The
I was really hoping they would add a nice front-end to SQLite, but I can't find mention of the underlying codebase for the "Access like" functionality. Does anyone know what DB code they are using?
The short term effects of OSS on Windows might appear to keep people on Windows but in the long term the OS will become a non-issue. All things being equal, Linux still has "free" going for it. Once all the applications you require run on any OS you choose, why would you choose to pay for that OS when a free version is available.
Two reasons;
1) All the software you require isn't available on "any" OS you'd could choose to run.
2) The operating systems aren't actually equal.
Neither of which has anything to do with OSS being ported to Windows.
Unless one makes the argument that it's a matter of weighing a certain amount of useful applications on a "free" OS vs. those required on your "pay" OS -- but that doesn't seem to be an argument made in the best interest of the user.
I agree, but the obligatory Slashdot Bizarro twist... what if this was about Microsoft Word locking out OO.org with respect to "protected .doc" files. ...
.doc files from ANY source will open fine on ANY version of Microsoft Word. This is ONLY about OO.org reverse engineering the Microsoft DRM (more power to them) in order to allow their ".doc" DRM-protected files to work with Microsoft Office. They succeeded. And Microsoft is under NO obligation of any kind to allow it to continue. Word DOES NOT SUPPORT DRM files from ANY other source, so this isn't a matter of "doing what you want with something you bought". If you can personally get OpenOffice.org's protected files to open on your version of Word, go for it. If OO.org re-engineers it such that the files work, great. Further, you are not forced to update the software. What's that? You'll eventually have to to get new features and bug fixes? Tough. Don't like it? Don't buy another version of Word.
...
Number one, this is old, since Microsoft Word was released eons ago.
Number two, Microsoft is under no obligation to support ANYONE else's DRM, period.
Unprotected
Microsoft is doing nothing legally, technically, ethically, morally or wrong.
Many of us returned home for the Thanksgiving holiday season to find a lot of very sad computers anxious for our visit. Allow me quick example...
My father recently purchased a new Dell, and um, Dude, he's getting spyware! I fixed him up. A few days later, he asks me why Outlook Express is blocking some attachments via email. It didn't do that "before I was there". *Sigh*. I've deprived him from his Extreme Elf Bowling (Now with Gator,CoolWebSearch *and* Pr0nDialer 2008 at no extra charge.)
Next thanksgiving instead of fixing these zombies I'm just burning a dozen "live" linux CDs. It will allow most of them to still get online and try to fix their own problems. It's tough love but as I titled this reply; we continue to carry the burden of their apathy. In this situation, it's really up to us to stop the cycle.
That plan doesn't really jive well with things like the big AOL proxies, where millions of people appear to be a handful of IP addresses. Thus making "unique" somewhat difficult to determine.
I require is a short list of every SMTP server IP address in your state so that I may be informed enough to comply with your legislation.
Thank you,
Nigerian P. Freely
If your employer requires you to have a cell phone sans camera, they should provide you with a cell phone sans camera. Most work environments don't lend themselves well to non-company cell phones anyway. I don't see why they don't just ban cell phones in general. It would be easier to enforce.
Uniformed: "It didn't support CSS properly"
CSS support is excellent. Here's there spec sheet:
http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/
Feel free to compare that with Firefox and report back to us.
6 one way: "plugins were a hassle"
What plugins are you referring to exactly? You want a hassle? Trying to get a uniform experience out of Firefox. Firefox has let 'extensions' go too far, letting several things that should be in the core application,and UI tested, be thrown to the dogs. You can let extensions change the behavior if you want, but don't make the user jump through hoops on every freaking install.
Let's take the issue of 'tabbed browsing'. Opera brought it to the browser, and it's evolved naturally. It looked like Firefox was going to follow suit, but somehow completely lost sight of what makes it work. I install Firefox at work. Tabs (MDI) is logical. But there is no built-in contsruct to save the tabs as groups (or god-forbid in the unlikely event Firefox crashes the state of the tabs be automatically saved -- standard behavior in Opera). That's an important thing when you allow a user to interact with dozens of information sources under one instance of an application. So now I need an extension. I go trudging off and nothing exists for Firefox 1.0 that seems to fit this bill. Advantage, Opera. But I can live with that... but what about re-arranging tabs? Same problem. I need an extension. Can't find one. P.S: Mozdev? How about a 'Search' button?
NOTE: *I* know these extensions exist, but are they actually compatible from 0.9? And what about those people who don't know they exist? And what about those extensions that actually overlap (and hence, contradict) features?
And finally, let's say I somehow get Firefox behaving logically with respect to tabs and I'm happy. Until I sit down at my co-workers machine and he's got completely different extensions doing similar, but ultimately confusing things.
Sometimes, it's worth a few dollars to have someone else just get it right. Yeah, that's an opinion. Everyone's got one.