This isn't even remotely funny, however it was posted by someone with a low ID who was trying to be funny so it was good enough.
Actually the reason it got modded up so high is probably not because of my low UID, but rather because everybody on Slashdot thinks it's funny to make fun of Microsoft, even if it's a really lame comment. To be honest, I didn't think mine was worthy of +5 either.
If you really want to be a karma whore, just subscribe - then you'll get to see articles before anyone can post to them. Reload the front page until you see one with a red bar, read the article, compose an insightful comment in a text editor, reload until the red bar turns green, and copy & paste as soon as you can. Guaranteed to get modded up to +5 in about 15 minutes.
That's the old saw about the ctrl-alt-del, but apparently it's possible for user-mode-code to intercept ctrl-alt-del through DirectX's DirectInput API. So MS designed a good security feature, then designed a hole for it. Yay, MS.
Gates are definitely a good first step for security, if additional security is required, I would also recommend a pirhana infested moat and barbed wire fences.
In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?
I think Apple just got tired of hearing how PCs are faster and what not.
The impression I get is that Apple has had a ball and chain attached to their ankle for the past several years that they've finally gotten rid of, and as soon as they did they took off running.
Also, for anyone wondering I'm using the developer preview now and if the release of Panther is anything like the preview, holy crap. It is nice.
I have one question: what I've wanted Apple to do for years now is make a Mac OS 9-style spatially-oriented Finder (where files and windows stay where I put them), AND a browser interface that gives a more abstract view of things. Only the latter was demonstrated at WWDC and on Apple's web site; is the former still there? I don't really mind if it's hidden by default (I'm envisioning no disk icons on the desktop by default, unless you enable that in Preferences, which would let you open them in Aqua [not brushed metal] windows with no sidebar; Cmd-N would open a new brushed-metal browser window with sidebar).
Have they done what I wanted, or taken away functionality so many of us depend on?
I think Asia Carrera said everyone gets tested every month, not every few months, and they do check the paperwork. Interesting site, if this sort of thing intrigues you. One of the few celebrities who wrote their own web site.
In addition to all of this, what the fuck does the programmers opinion of the customers even matter? Is the customer *ever* going to have to deal with the programmer in a support situation? In a corporate environment I would highly doubt it.
This kind of attitude is what makes tech support jobs so annoying and difficult - programmers who are isolated in their own little world, with little regard for the customers.
OBSERVATION: In System Preferences, several things seem to be missing. Login Items, ColorSync, and Internet don't seem to fit in with anything else. I love the idea of.Mac and Print & Fax being their own panels, though.
OBSERVATION: The "More Info" button in the About Finder window, which launches Apple System Profiler, is missing.
OBSERVATION: System Preferences is an inactive window (titlebar widgets aren't colored), and the titlebar is not translucent.
Observation: The brushed metal Finder window includes what appears vaguely to be a list of mounted volumes (along with a Network icon). However, the disk image icon is that of an image file, not a mounted volume!
OBSERVATION: The Applications, Documents, etc. links in the aforementioned Finder window aren't vertically aligned very well.
OBSERVATION: In the same Finder window, the Xdrive volume is selected in blue, and what appears to be an Applications (Mac OS 9) folder behind it (no menu transparency!) is ALSO selected, making it unclear which item the displayed menu would apply to. It seems REALLY strange to have a toolbar button with a menu that contains precisely the same menu items that are also in the main system menu bar. Contextual menus are neat time-savers, but that's just stupid. Apple does seem to like non-descript graphical labels like that, though (see iTunes - grrrr!).
There are bazillions of residential broadband customers in the US running unpatched Windows boxes. No need to hack one in China. Just forward the mail from your hacked box in the US to an open relay in China, and you're set!
Every piece of mail my wife sends on her hotmail account has an advert in it. Everytime she goes to look at that mail, her screen lights up with dozens of blinking images.
Please M$ add Network Solutions in your list to sue. Those frickin bastards tell users their whois database is not to be used for commercial spam, and yet they turn around and do the same anyways.
I rarely get junk mail from NSI; I don't consider it spam because I have an actual honest-to-god business relationship with them that involves me paying them money in exchange for their services, I knowingly and willingly gave them my e-mail address, and I believe the opt-out link actually works.
I don't know whether they've sold their database in the past or not. Probably so. But the spam doesn't come from NSI, it comes from people who used NSI's whois database with or without NSI's permission. Do you really get spam from NSI, or just spam at the e-mail address you used on your domain registration?
Re:"Actively searching for new suppliers"?
on
iBox Episode 2
·
· Score: 1
Erecting artificial barriers to entry - this is not legal no matter what your marketshare is.
I guess what I was thinking was, certain actions that erect barriers to entry when you're a monopoly do not erect barriers to entry when you're not, because you don't control the whole market. For example, I can create an OS, and license it to a PC manufacturer with a contract saying the manufacturer cannot sell any PCs with any other OS on them. It'd be stupid for the manufacturer to sign such a contract, but not illegal, as far as I'm aware. It is, however, illegal for Microsoft to do the same thing. The difference is, the mfgr can easily refuse me; they can't refuse Microsoft, because of Microsoft's position in the market.
Re:Microsoft is responsible for macromedia's succe
on
Platform Evangelism
·
· Score: 1
What does Windows have to do with this? This isn't the job of the OS; it's the job of the browser,
Didn't Microsoft testify in court that the OS and the browser are the same piece of software?
Wait, what's that you say? They were lying through their teeth? Ohhh.
Re:Microsoft is responsible for macromedia's succe
on
Platform Evangelism
·
· Score: 1
No, in the old days, Navigator would throw in a box with a "missing plugin" icon in it.
After popping up a dialog with a link to Netscape's plugin download page.
Um, sure, just create a hosts file with a bogus IP address so IE can't find Macromedia's download site. That's a nice user-friendly solution! Most people will just click the button to install Flash.
Re:"Actively searching for new suppliers"?
on
iBox Episode 2
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You're right that monopolies are legal in the U.S. -- natural monopolies, that is.
My understanding is that a "natural monopoly" is an industry where it "seems natural" that one company should have a monopoly, because for multiple companies to compete would be an inefficient and wasteful use of resources - for example, the telephone network. One company has a monopoly on the telephone lines in your area. For a second company to provide you phone service, they would have to run their own physical telephone wires (stringing them between poles, closing streets so they can dig up pavement and run cable underground, etc.). That would be stupid, so the government granted one company the right to a monopoly on phone lines, but the government carefully regulates that company, dictating what rates they can charge and imposing penalties if their customer service isn't up to par. Of course that's the theory; practice is a little different.
But any time a company tries to acquire a monopoly or maintain a natural monopoly using unreasonable methods,
Almost all companies try to gain market share. There's no line drawn in the sand between trying to get 20% and trying to get 100%. Trying to achieve monopoly status is not illegal. Trying to maintain existing monopoly status, by doing things like erecting artificial barriers to entry (which is perfectly legal for a company that has not achieved monopoly status) is illegal. And of course, leveraging one monopoly in an attempt to attain one in a new market is illegal.
But don't listen to me; I'm just a Slashdotter.:-)
Drive letters you mean? About damn time. Imagine explaining to a new computer user in 2005 why drive letters start with C:, when no new computers come with floppy drives and having TWO floppy drives is completely unheard of.
It's bad enough trying to explain that multiple partitions on the same hard drive show up as different "drives", even though they're the same physical drive, and backing up files from one to another won't help you if the drive fails.
Re:What in the world are you talking about?
on
iBox Episode 2
·
· Score: 1
Do you think Sony would allow a repair center to resell PS2 components to a third party, who would in turn sell something called a "Play Stashun?" Is anyone jumping down Sony's throat for not allowing cloning of PlayStations?
Connectix wrote an emulator called Virtual GameStation. Sony bought and killed it. I don't recall whether this was after Sony sued and lost or not (I know Sony sued the creators of another PlayStation emulator).
On the VirtualPC front, I do think it would be nice if Apple were to throw its open-source development weight into enhancing Bochs to make it the best emulation out there, and then integrate it into OS X so you could have double-clickable Windows apps in an emulation layer such as Classic mode, but I haven't heard anything about that one way or another.
This was a possible feature Apple considered for Mac OS X from the beginning, code-named RedBox (Classic and Cocoa were code-named BlueBox and YellowBox, respectively). RedBox may only have been available on Mac OS X for Intel (which of course also didn't happen), or it may have been a full x86 emulator that could run on PPC.
In any case, Apple's not going to do it now. No real reason to. If an app you need is Windows-only and no alternatives are available, you should ask the developer to port it - but those are getting more and more rare as OSX matures.
"Actively searching for new suppliers"?
on
iBox Episode 2
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I was under the impression that every Apple-authorized repair center had a similar contract with Apple, which is why I didn't put too much stock in the original story (I expected this to happen - similar things have been tried before). Where are they going to find reliable suppliers who are not authorized by Apple?
I remember that one of the CPU upgrade makers had a deal where they'd send you a new CPU and daughtercard, and give you a major discount if you sent in your old daughtercard (so they could swap CPUs and resell it, since they had no other way to obtain the daughtercards the CPUs were soldered to). I don't think that strategy would really work in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
...won't be picked up anywhere else.
Um, anywhere else, like Slashdot? Huh?
This isn't even remotely funny, however it was posted by someone with a low ID who was trying to be funny so it was good enough.
Actually the reason it got modded up so high is probably not because of my low UID, but rather because everybody on Slashdot thinks it's funny to make fun of Microsoft, even if it's a really lame comment. To be honest, I didn't think mine was worthy of +5 either.
If you really want to be a karma whore, just subscribe - then you'll get to see articles before anyone can post to them. Reload the front page until you see one with a red bar, read the article, compose an insightful comment in a text editor, reload until the red bar turns green, and copy & paste as soon as you can. Guaranteed to get modded up to +5 in about 15 minutes.
That's the old saw about the ctrl-alt-del, but apparently it's possible for user-mode-code to intercept ctrl-alt-del through DirectX's DirectInput API. So MS designed a good security feature, then designed a hole for it. Yay, MS.
Yes, I've heard this as well. Anyone have a link?
Gates are definitely a good first step for security, if additional security is required, I would also recommend a pirhana infested moat and barbed wire fences.
In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?
I think Apple just got tired of hearing how PCs are faster and what not.
The impression I get is that Apple has had a ball and chain attached to their ankle for the past several years that they've finally gotten rid of, and as soon as they did they took off running.
Also, for anyone wondering I'm using the developer preview now and if the release of Panther is anything like the preview, holy crap. It is nice.
I have one question: what I've wanted Apple to do for years now is make a Mac OS 9-style spatially-oriented Finder (where files and windows stay where I put them), AND a browser interface that gives a more abstract view of things. Only the latter was demonstrated at WWDC and on Apple's web site; is the former still there? I don't really mind if it's hidden by default (I'm envisioning no disk icons on the desktop by default, unless you enable that in Preferences, which would let you open them in Aqua [not brushed metal] windows with no sidebar; Cmd-N would open a new brushed-metal browser window with sidebar).
Have they done what I wanted, or taken away functionality so many of us depend on?
I dread getting tested for STDs every few months.
I think Asia Carrera said everyone gets tested every month, not every few months, and they do check the paperwork. Interesting site, if this sort of thing intrigues you. One of the few celebrities who wrote their own web site.
In addition to all of this, what the fuck does the programmers opinion of the customers even matter? Is the customer *ever* going to have to deal with the programmer in a support situation? In a corporate environment I would highly doubt it.
This kind of attitude is what makes tech support jobs so annoying and difficult - programmers who are isolated in their own little world, with little regard for the customers.
Whoopsie. You can tell I've been a Mac user for awhile; I forgot those aren't the same window anymore. Thanks for pointing out my error. :-)
OBSERVATION: In System Preferences, several things seem to be missing. Login Items, ColorSync, and Internet don't seem to fit in with anything else. I love the idea of .Mac and Print & Fax being their own panels, though.
OBSERVATION: The "More Info" button in the About Finder window, which launches Apple System Profiler, is missing.
OBSERVATION: Corners for activating Exposé would conflict with the screen saver in a confusing way. Also, if Exposé is a real feature, it's a development code name - no way in hell Apple would ship it with that name.
OBSERVATION: System Preferences is an inactive window (titlebar widgets aren't colored), and the titlebar is not translucent.
Observation: The brushed metal Finder window includes what appears vaguely to be a list of mounted volumes (along with a Network icon). However, the disk image icon is that of an image file, not a mounted volume!
OBSERVATION: The Applications, Documents, etc. links in the aforementioned Finder window aren't vertically aligned very well.
OBSERVATION: In the same Finder window, the Xdrive volume is selected in blue, and what appears to be an Applications (Mac OS 9) folder behind it (no menu transparency!) is ALSO selected, making it unclear which item the displayed menu would apply to. It seems REALLY strange to have a toolbar button with a menu that contains precisely the same menu items that are also in the main system menu bar. Contextual menus are neat time-savers, but that's just stupid. Apple does seem to like non-descript graphical labels like that, though (see iTunes - grrrr!).
Isn't this exactly what AIM Enterprise was created for? Why have I not seen anyone mention it?
There are bazillions of residential broadband customers in the US running unpatched Windows boxes. No need to hack one in China. Just forward the mail from your hacked box in the US to an open relay in China, and you're set!
Every piece of mail my wife sends on her hotmail account has an advert in it. Everytime she goes to look at that mail, her screen lights up with dozens of blinking images.
Ummm.
And she continues to use Hotmail?
Why?
You should definitely upgrade.
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/74 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/74
Please M$ add Network Solutions in your list to sue. Those frickin bastards tell users their whois database is not to be used for commercial spam, and yet they turn around and do the same anyways.
I rarely get junk mail from NSI; I don't consider it spam because I have an actual honest-to-god business relationship with them that involves me paying them money in exchange for their services, I knowingly and willingly gave them my e-mail address, and I believe the opt-out link actually works.
I don't know whether they've sold their database in the past or not. Probably so. But the spam doesn't come from NSI, it comes from people who used NSI's whois database with or without NSI's permission. Do you really get spam from NSI, or just spam at the e-mail address you used on your domain registration?
Hate Microsoft; hate spam.
Hate Microsoft; hate spam.
Evil greedy corporation; slimy pollution of the Internet.
Illegally abusing their monopoly; illegally hijacking servers.
Overpriced software; lowest mortgage rates ever.
Bug-ridden products; barnyard porn.
Embrace and extend; extend your manhood.
No concept of security; special offers on SystemWorks 2003.
Never innovating; always innovating.
I'm siding with Microsoft.
*sob*
Erecting artificial barriers to entry - this is not legal no matter what your marketshare is.
I guess what I was thinking was, certain actions that erect barriers to entry when you're a monopoly do not erect barriers to entry when you're not, because you don't control the whole market. For example, I can create an OS, and license it to a PC manufacturer with a contract saying the manufacturer cannot sell any PCs with any other OS on them. It'd be stupid for the manufacturer to sign such a contract, but not illegal, as far as I'm aware. It is, however, illegal for Microsoft to do the same thing. The difference is, the mfgr can easily refuse me; they can't refuse Microsoft, because of Microsoft's position in the market.
What does Windows have to do with this? This isn't the job of the OS; it's the job of the browser,
Didn't Microsoft testify in court that the OS and the browser are the same piece of software?
Wait, what's that you say? They were lying through their teeth? Ohhh.
No, in the old days, Navigator would throw in a box with a "missing plugin" icon in it.
After popping up a dialog with a link to Netscape's plugin download page.
Um, sure, just create a hosts file with a bogus IP address so IE can't find Macromedia's download site. That's a nice user-friendly solution! Most people will just click the button to install Flash.
You're right that monopolies are legal in the U.S. -- natural monopolies, that is.
:-)
My understanding is that a "natural monopoly" is an industry where it "seems natural" that one company should have a monopoly, because for multiple companies to compete would be an inefficient and wasteful use of resources - for example, the telephone network. One company has a monopoly on the telephone lines in your area. For a second company to provide you phone service, they would have to run their own physical telephone wires (stringing them between poles, closing streets so they can dig up pavement and run cable underground, etc.). That would be stupid, so the government granted one company the right to a monopoly on phone lines, but the government carefully regulates that company, dictating what rates they can charge and imposing penalties if their customer service isn't up to par. Of course that's the theory; practice is a little different.
But any time a company tries to acquire a monopoly or maintain a natural monopoly using unreasonable methods,
Almost all companies try to gain market share. There's no line drawn in the sand between trying to get 20% and trying to get 100%. Trying to achieve monopoly status is not illegal. Trying to maintain existing monopoly status, by doing things like erecting artificial barriers to entry (which is perfectly legal for a company that has not achieved monopoly status) is illegal. And of course, leveraging one monopoly in an attempt to attain one in a new market is illegal.
But don't listen to me; I'm just a Slashdotter.
file letters are hidden from the end user
Drive letters you mean? About damn time. Imagine explaining to a new computer user in 2005 why drive letters start with C:, when no new computers come with floppy drives and having TWO floppy drives is completely unheard of.
It's bad enough trying to explain that multiple partitions on the same hard drive show up as different "drives", even though they're the same physical drive, and backing up files from one to another won't help you if the drive fails.
Do you think Sony would allow a repair center to resell PS2 components to a third party, who would in turn sell something called a "Play Stashun?" Is anyone jumping down Sony's throat for not allowing cloning of PlayStations?
Connectix wrote an emulator called Virtual GameStation. Sony bought and killed it. I don't recall whether this was after Sony sued and lost or not (I know Sony sued the creators of another PlayStation emulator).
On the VirtualPC front, I do think it would be nice if Apple were to throw its open-source development weight into enhancing Bochs to make it the best emulation out there, and then integrate it into OS X so you could have double-clickable Windows apps in an emulation layer such as Classic mode, but I haven't heard anything about that one way or another.
This was a possible feature Apple considered for Mac OS X from the beginning, code-named RedBox (Classic and Cocoa were code-named BlueBox and YellowBox, respectively). RedBox may only have been available on Mac OS X for Intel (which of course also didn't happen), or it may have been a full x86 emulator that could run on PPC.
In any case, Apple's not going to do it now. No real reason to. If an app you need is Windows-only and no alternatives are available, you should ask the developer to port it - but those are getting more and more rare as OSX matures.
I was under the impression that every Apple-authorized repair center had a similar contract with Apple, which is why I didn't put too much stock in the original story (I expected this to happen - similar things have been tried before). Where are they going to find reliable suppliers who are not authorized by Apple?
I remember that one of the CPU upgrade makers had a deal where they'd send you a new CPU and daughtercard, and give you a major discount if you sent in your old daughtercard (so they could swap CPUs and resell it, since they had no other way to obtain the daughtercards the CPUs were soldered to). I don't think that strategy would really work in this case.
Thank you. :-)