Wait, I thought AOL was considering using Mozilla/Netscape instead of MSIE?
They were. They've been playing with beta versions of AOL based on Gecko (Mozilla/Netscape's rendering engine) for years now, and AOL for Mac OS X is based on Gecko. Apparently it was just a scare tactic to get Microsoft to play nice ("do what we want, or we'll switch to Gecko, and here's proof that we're not kidding").
Does it really matter, though? Most people are moving towards broadband, and most geeks don't go near AOL.
The more people use IE, the less reason web designers have to produce standards-compliant web sites in favor of broken sites with MS-specific extensions that only render correctly in IE. And that means when I use Mozilla or Safari or whatever non-Microsoft browser I want to use, I'm more likely to get pages that don't render correctly. In order to view those sites correctly, I'd have to run IE, and in order to do that, I'd have to run Windows, and that means money in Microsoft's pocket (unless I pirate it like everybody else).
Its too bad that there arn't any winners here. Satan can pay Satan all he wants.
AOL and Microsoft are not the same company, and Microsoft is the winner here. AOL has something like 30 million customers, and for the forseeable future most of them will be using Internet Explorer and Windows Media. The more people use IE, the less reason developers have to produce standards-compliant content in favor of IE-specific content, and the less reason people have not to use FrontPage or other products which work well with IE.
The more people use WMP, the less reason content producers have to use QuickTime or Real in favor of whatever Microsoft is selling for content creation and delivery.
AOL will also be licensing Windows Media 9, which could affect WinAmp.
This deal could mean more AOL content will require MSIE and WMP9. Since AOL for Mac OS X uses Gecko and WMP9 isn't available yet, that would mean Mac AOL users wouldn't be able to access that content - exactly the way Microsoft likes it.
It seems AOL either has no idea what they're doing, or has decided they're no longer interested in Netscape or NullSoft. Is it possible both might soon be for sale? Clearly they no longer fit into the rest of the company's plans.
Of course, it would be ridiculously amusing if AOL suddenly announced that they were switching to Gecko anyway, even though they have a license to use MSIE for free. We can dream, can't we?
The second point I want to make is that RealPlayer sucks butt on the Mac platform so Real stands to make zero inroads into the Mac market. I don't know what Real is like on Windows or elsewhere, but the Mac software is mediocrity in action.
It's not better on Windows.
(Let's see, I close the main window and the application's menu bar disappears so I have to force-quit the damn thing. That's the hallmark of quality software.)
RealPlayer on OSX is designed to quit when you close the window; this behavior is the same as a few other apps like Calculator. If it's hanging on quit, try trashing preferences, and make sure you're running the latest version.
For this reason, I will be surprised if Linus doesn't make some sort of statement before much longer.
What would be the point of that? If SCO actually sues him, then he can make a legal defense. If SCO tells him what they might sue him over, he can issue a statement on his position. In the mean time, why bother? SCO will probably be in deep trouble with the SEC pretty soon, and will have other things to worry about.
Could Mozilla use RMX to determine on the fly what relay to use?
No, for two reasons: first, the RMX record points to the source IPs of outgoing mail, which may not also be accepting mail on port 25. Second, the mail server has to be configured to allow you to relay, hopefully with authentication. Most mail servers are set to only allow relaying from a range of IPs; your work's SMTP server won't allow relaying from your DSL ISP at home.
I don't have SMTP authentication set up on my server at home, because I don't know how. Sendmail isn't exactly simple.
So, if you want to listen to music you have at home at work, why not just put the music on a CD-R and bring it in to work?
Choosing a mere 650MB out of your multi-GB collection to burn to CD is annoying and time-consuming. Then, figuring out which CD the song you want to hear is on is annoying, and switching disks and switching back is annoying - unless you copy it all to the hard drive at work, which might be illegal.
As for BBEdit vs. vim, they really are two very different pieces of software. vim is quite a lot more powerful, and is infinitely more configurable.
OK, follow-up question: in what ways is vim more powerful and more configurable than BBEdit? BBEdit has more features than I could ever think of, and is reasonably configurable (menus are very configurable, and you can make plugins and scripts for it). I don't use vim; what am I missing?
What about Macromedia Flash Player? As it runs on most web browsers, I believe that the number of downloads would be quite substantial, rivalling Kazaa. Consider the number of Flash-enabled sites out there.
It comes pre-installed on Windows, Mac OS X, and probably some Linux distros - so not everyone who has it downloaded it.
Kazaa is distributed free. It is not being pirated. So why are you talking about software being pirated and companies wanting it to be pirated?
He's talking about people using Kazaa to download pirated software such as Photoshop. If people couldn't download Photoshop with Kazaa, they might use The Gimp instead, which would be bad for Adobe, because some of those people who pirate Photoshop at home wind up buying it at work. If they used The Gimp for free at home, maybe they'd use The Gimp at work too.
(Yes, I know, The Gimp isn't as good as Photoshop and is completely unacceptable to some, but it may be good enough for most people.)
This is a very odd concept to me. c is in units of m/s...
That's the formula if you solve for c. Solve for m, and you can calculate it if you know c and s (c is constant in a vacuum, and s is a certain number of vibrations or something of Cesium-133).
I hate telephones of any kind. It's an intrusive device. It's push content. I hate push content. That's why I hate instant messaging, too. I am a pull-content person, that's why I love email.
Um, if the infrastructure for something as basic as telephones doesn't exist, how do you propose people should send and receie e-mail?
"Can you teach me how to hack?" "Do you know what IP subnetting is?" "Uhh, no. I don't care about that, I just want to break into people's computers!" "Go away."
I hear this all the time, and it probably applies to the other side of the fence as well. Learn how stuff works and the theory behind it. If you don't know the difference between TCP and UDP, don't try to learn how to do system administration and network security - learn how networking works first. Learn the protocols. If you don't know how to check your POP3 e-mail and retrieve a web page with nothing more than a telnet client, learn how to do that and more. Then you can decide whether security is even where you want to go, or if another path presents itself.
How is this news? Ink jet printers have been cheap for years - they've gotten better and cheaper, but I doubt a new ink jet printer would make it any easier to counterfit currency than an ink jet printer bought two years ago.
It seems to me the texture is the difficult thing to copy. You can't photocopy a bill onto regular paper and pass it off as legitimate, not because it looks wrong, but because it feels wrong.
And of course, this is why new bills are being introduced with difficult-to-fake security features. How are you going to get something as simple as a watermark with an ink jet printer?
Whoever gets appointed to this position won't know ANYTHING about computers, the Internet, or technology in general. He'll have a staff that will build a web site and print out their e-mail for him. He himself won't have the slightest idea what TCP/IP is or why it's important to his job. And yeah, he'll be in close contact with executives from the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft.
One of the questions on an English test I once had was, what does the river in Huckleberry Finn symbolize? We had discussed the "correct answer" in class (although I don't recall what it was). Discussing how it could metaphorically represent something was certainly interesting, and encourages students to think about something they may not otherwise have thought about, but I couldn't help but wonder whether Mark Twain would have gotten the "correct answer".
If Twain had explained that he actually intended that allegorical connection, that would be different, and perhaps he did, but if so that was never mentioned anywhere in class (and I doubt it).
Good point...he's even replaced the mysticism with microorganisms. Lotsa mythic resonance there. Sheez.
Exactly - this was stupid, because if you'll remember from Episode IV, Vader was saying something about the power of the Force, and somebody replied saying nobody believes in that silly old religion anymore. If the power of the Force is proven scientific fact (caused by midichlorians), why would people stop believing in it?
If we assume that Luke and Leia are conceived shortly after the end of Episode II, then from Episode II to Episode IV can't be more than around 25 years or so. That's not enough time to go from the Jedi being seen as they are in Episodes I-II (keepers of the peace working for the Republic, powerful and not to be messed with) to being seen as they are in Episode IV (nobody believes in that foolish religion anymore), especially when you consider that the Empire was born out of the Republic and Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader use the same Force!
Anyway, that's my off-topic rant on midichlorians.:-)
Well, if there was a law that said you had to use ADV in the subject and spammers were forced to comply with such a simple rule then I certainly wouldn't have any more complaints with them.
It sounds like there already is such a law in California, but spammmers can't really be forced to comply with it. However, since the new law increases the penalties, tracking them down becomes a bit more attractive...
If everyone sent 1 (yes that's one) email to thier senator giving thier two cents and perhaps an idea or two, actions would most likely be taken quicker due to the over whelming emails.
You sound like a chain letter.;-)
I recently read an article which claimed that 6% of the people they send to complain about spam, yet they still receive 10% (this article is somewhere on/. but I currently forgot the location.. the percentages may be off) of the people still purchasing those "make your dick bigger" and "viagra" products. That leaves 84% of the rest of the people they send to keeping thier mouth shut.
I have no idea what you're talking about. If you're suggesting 10% of everyone that spam is sent to actually buys the advertised product, you're insane - it's less than 0.01% and dropping.
No, most people don't report spam. Many don't know how, and for others it's too much of a hassle. I used to report all mine, but I don't even report all of it anymore, because even though SpamCop makes it really easy, it still would take too much of my time if I reported all of it.
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The browser wars aren't over until IE and Netscape are but smoldering craters, and Mozilla is the victor.
Who pays for most of Mozilla's development? That's right, AOL, which just announced a licensing deal to use Internet Explorer instead.
Wait, I thought AOL was considering using Mozilla/Netscape instead of MSIE?
They were. They've been playing with beta versions of AOL based on Gecko (Mozilla/Netscape's rendering engine) for years now, and AOL for Mac OS X is based on Gecko. Apparently it was just a scare tactic to get Microsoft to play nice ("do what we want, or we'll switch to Gecko, and here's proof that we're not kidding").
Does it really matter, though? Most people are moving towards broadband, and most geeks don't go near AOL.
The more people use IE, the less reason web designers have to produce standards-compliant web sites in favor of broken sites with MS-specific extensions that only render correctly in IE. And that means when I use Mozilla or Safari or whatever non-Microsoft browser I want to use, I'm more likely to get pages that don't render correctly. In order to view those sites correctly, I'd have to run IE, and in order to do that, I'd have to run Windows, and that means money in Microsoft's pocket (unless I pirate it like everybody else).
So yes, this does matter, and it's a bad thing.
Its too bad that there arn't any winners here. Satan can pay Satan all he wants.
AOL and Microsoft are not the same company, and Microsoft is the winner here. AOL has something like 30 million customers, and for the forseeable future most of them will be using Internet Explorer and Windows Media. The more people use IE, the less reason developers have to produce standards-compliant content in favor of IE-specific content, and the less reason people have not to use FrontPage or other products which work well with IE.
The more people use WMP, the less reason content producers have to use QuickTime or Real in favor of whatever Microsoft is selling for content creation and delivery.
Money shifted from one giant corp to another, big deal. How will this help their customers?
That was never the point. This is all about the executives at both companies making boatloads of cash, which they will.
AOL will also be licensing Windows Media 9, which could affect WinAmp.
This deal could mean more AOL content will require MSIE and WMP9. Since AOL for Mac OS X uses Gecko and WMP9 isn't available yet, that would mean Mac AOL users wouldn't be able to access that content - exactly the way Microsoft likes it.
It seems AOL either has no idea what they're doing, or has decided they're no longer interested in Netscape or NullSoft. Is it possible both might soon be for sale? Clearly they no longer fit into the rest of the company's plans.
Of course, it would be ridiculously amusing if AOL suddenly announced that they were switching to Gecko anyway, even though they have a license to use MSIE for free. We can dream, can't we?
2. If everything is fine, the story is posted, *but* during the first few hours, anyone get the chance to report dupes/fakes or other glaring errors.
That only works if someone's paying attention to those reports. Is Daddypants a real person? Surely he can't be on call 24/7/365.
The second point I want to make is that RealPlayer sucks butt on the Mac platform so Real stands to make zero inroads into the Mac market. I don't know what Real is like on Windows or elsewhere, but the Mac software is mediocrity in action.
It's not better on Windows.
(Let's see, I close the main window and the application's menu bar disappears so I have to force-quit the damn thing. That's the hallmark of quality software.)
RealPlayer on OSX is designed to quit when you close the window; this behavior is the same as a few other apps like Calculator. If it's hanging on quit, try trashing preferences, and make sure you're running the latest version.
For this reason, I will be surprised if Linus doesn't make some sort of statement before much longer.
What would be the point of that? If SCO actually sues him, then he can make a legal defense. If SCO tells him what they might sue him over, he can issue a statement on his position. In the mean time, why bother? SCO will probably be in deep trouble with the SEC pretty soon, and will have other things to worry about.
Yep, everyone I ask about smtp-auth in Sendmail tells me to switch to qmail. I suppose one of these days I'll eventually have to.
Could Mozilla use RMX to determine on the fly what relay to use?
No, for two reasons: first, the RMX record points to the source IPs of outgoing mail, which may not also be accepting mail on port 25. Second, the mail server has to be configured to allow you to relay, hopefully with authentication. Most mail servers are set to only allow relaying from a range of IPs; your work's SMTP server won't allow relaying from your DSL ISP at home.
I don't have SMTP authentication set up on my server at home, because I don't know how. Sendmail isn't exactly simple.
So, if you want to listen to music you have at home at work, why not just put the music on a CD-R and bring it in to work?
Choosing a mere 650MB out of your multi-GB collection to burn to CD is annoying and time-consuming. Then, figuring out which CD the song you want to hear is on is annoying, and switching disks and switching back is annoying - unless you copy it all to the hard drive at work, which might be illegal.
What's in BBEdit that isn't in, say, Vim? I've only used Lite, and wasn't impressed -- is the expensive version any better?
You can download the 30-day demo, and find out for yourself.
As for BBEdit vs. vim, they really are two very different pieces of software. vim is quite a lot more powerful, and is infinitely more configurable.
OK, follow-up question: in what ways is vim more powerful and more configurable than BBEdit? BBEdit has more features than I could ever think of, and is reasonably configurable (menus are very configurable, and you can make plugins and scripts for it). I don't use vim; what am I missing?
What about Macromedia Flash Player? As it runs on most web browsers, I believe that the number of downloads would be quite substantial, rivalling Kazaa. Consider the number of Flash-enabled sites out there.
It comes pre-installed on Windows, Mac OS X, and probably some Linux distros - so not everyone who has it downloaded it.
Kazaa is distributed free. It is not being pirated. So why are you talking about software being pirated and companies wanting it to be pirated?
He's talking about people using Kazaa to download pirated software such as Photoshop. If people couldn't download Photoshop with Kazaa, they might use The Gimp instead, which would be bad for Adobe, because some of those people who pirate Photoshop at home wind up buying it at work. If they used The Gimp for free at home, maybe they'd use The Gimp at work too.
(Yes, I know, The Gimp isn't as good as Photoshop and is completely unacceptable to some, but it may be good enough for most people.)
This is a very odd concept to me. c is in units of m/s...
That's the formula if you solve for c. Solve for m, and you can calculate it if you know c and s (c is constant in a vacuum, and s is a certain number of vibrations or something of Cesium-133).
I hate telephones of any kind. It's an intrusive device. It's push content. I hate push content. That's why I hate instant messaging, too. I am a pull-content person, that's why I love email.
Um, if the infrastructure for something as basic as telephones doesn't exist, how do you propose people should send and receie e-mail?
You weren't actually going to read them, were you?
Are you kidding? Nobody reads the article when there's only one of them!
"Can you teach me how to hack?"
"Do you know what IP subnetting is?"
"Uhh, no. I don't care about that, I just want to break into people's computers!"
"Go away."
I hear this all the time, and it probably applies to the other side of the fence as well. Learn how stuff works and the theory behind it. If you don't know the difference between TCP and UDP, don't try to learn how to do system administration and network security - learn how networking works first. Learn the protocols. If you don't know how to check your POP3 e-mail and retrieve a web page with nothing more than a telnet client, learn how to do that and more. Then you can decide whether security is even where you want to go, or if another path presents itself.
How is this news? Ink jet printers have been cheap for years - they've gotten better and cheaper, but I doubt a new ink jet printer would make it any easier to counterfit currency than an ink jet printer bought two years ago.
It seems to me the texture is the difficult thing to copy. You can't photocopy a bill onto regular paper and pass it off as legitimate, not because it looks wrong, but because it feels wrong.
And of course, this is why new bills are being introduced with difficult-to-fake security features. How are you going to get something as simple as a watermark with an ink jet printer?
Whoever gets appointed to this position won't know ANYTHING about computers, the Internet, or technology in general. He'll have a staff that will build a web site and print out their e-mail for him. He himself won't have the slightest idea what TCP/IP is or why it's important to his job. And yeah, he'll be in close contact with executives from the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft.
One of the questions on an English test I once had was, what does the river in Huckleberry Finn symbolize? We had discussed the "correct answer" in class (although I don't recall what it was). Discussing how it could metaphorically represent something was certainly interesting, and encourages students to think about something they may not otherwise have thought about, but I couldn't help but wonder whether Mark Twain would have gotten the "correct answer".
If Twain had explained that he actually intended that allegorical connection, that would be different, and perhaps he did, but if so that was never mentioned anywhere in class (and I doubt it).
Good point...he's even replaced the mysticism with microorganisms. Lotsa mythic resonance there. Sheez.
:-)
Exactly - this was stupid, because if you'll remember from Episode IV, Vader was saying something about the power of the Force, and somebody replied saying nobody believes in that silly old religion anymore. If the power of the Force is proven scientific fact (caused by midichlorians), why would people stop believing in it?
If we assume that Luke and Leia are conceived shortly after the end of Episode II, then from Episode II to Episode IV can't be more than around 25 years or so. That's not enough time to go from the Jedi being seen as they are in Episodes I-II (keepers of the peace working for the Republic, powerful and not to be messed with) to being seen as they are in Episode IV (nobody believes in that foolish religion anymore), especially when you consider that the Empire was born out of the Republic and Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader use the same Force!
Anyway, that's my off-topic rant on midichlorians.
Well, if there was a law that said you had to use ADV in the subject and spammers were forced to comply with such a simple rule then I certainly wouldn't have any more complaints with them.
It sounds like there already is such a law in California, but spammmers can't really be forced to comply with it. However, since the new law increases the penalties, tracking them down becomes a bit more attractive...
If everyone sent 1 (yes that's one) email to thier senator giving thier two cents and perhaps an idea or two, actions would most likely be taken quicker due to the over whelming emails.
;-)
/. but I currently forgot the location.. the percentages may be off) of the people still purchasing those "make your dick bigger" and "viagra" products. That leaves 84% of the rest of the people they send to keeping thier mouth shut.
You sound like a chain letter.
I recently read an article which claimed that 6% of the people they send to complain about spam, yet they still receive 10% (this article is somewhere on
I have no idea what you're talking about. If you're suggesting 10% of everyone that spam is sent to actually buys the advertised product, you're insane - it's less than 0.01% and dropping.
No, most people don't report spam. Many don't know how, and for others it's too much of a hassle. I used to report all mine, but I don't even report all of it anymore, because even though SpamCop makes it really easy, it still would take too much of my time if I reported all of it.