Maybe not... it could still be MP3 format and simply managed in software by iTunes to sync only with your iPod. So, not real DRM, or new codecs, but something along the lines of how you "cannot" currently copy your iPod's music to another machine.
Um, I don't see how. Open your ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder and option-drag the MP3s out. Whoo, copying!
Any organization that uses a groupware (e.g. Exchange/Outlook) package already has virtually instant messaging through their standard email conduit.
This isn't always a good thing. Nothing like showing up for work Monday morning and having to sift through 30 e-mails that were sent to your entire department on Saturday, such as:
"Who wants in on pizza for lunch? Reply with your favorite toppings."
"There's some leftover pizza in the breakroom if anyone wants it."
"If you drive a blue Toyota with license plate ABC-123, your lights are on."
Those kinds of time-sensitive messages are great if you're there, but really annoying if you don't get them until later.
I have used many instant messaging clients over the years, and have only used AIM for very short periods of time. Every time I use it, I am very surprised at what a spartan piece of software it really is; any other messenger is easily more feature rich, so why don't people use them instead?
Weird - I feel exactly the same way, except backwards. AIM has just about everything I can think of, while other clients lack even the most obvious features. OK, Yahoo has webcam support, which is neat, but that's all I use it for, and not for very long before it crashes.
Is the situation that much different on Windows? I've used AIM on Windows, and it had all the same functionality, although the layout was horrible (although the Windows version has gotten a little better while the Mac OS X version is significantly worse than the Mac OS 9 version).
For backwards compatability, it should probably implement AIM/ICQ or Yahoo suport.
Yeah, and AOL does NOT want you doing that, because they want you to use their client, with their ad banners. There are two AIM protocols, TOC (text-based, documented, limited functionality) and OSCAR (binary, undocumented, reverse-engineered). AOL says using TOC is fine, but you're not supposed to use OSCAR. TOC doesn't let you do things like change your password. Last I heard AOL was exploiting a buffer overflow in their own client to make it return a particular hashed value back to the server, and if the server didn't get the correct response it would kick you offline - so, it was impossible for 3rd-party apps to use OSCAR. Obviously Gaim uses OSCAR now, so they must have backed off.
Cryptography support.
Can't encrypt messages if you want to chat with anyone who doesn't use your software. AIM for Mac OS X encrypts log files. Not sure how you'd sign log files in a useful way, since I only ever want to copy & paste an excerpt, not the whole log - but copy & paste is enough to satisfy anyone I talk to that the conversation really took place.
Stability.
See above - one reason they crash so much is because they're always trying to stay one step ahead of AOL, which is always trying to get rid of them. And I was told once that the Gaim code is a tangled mess of spaghetti, but that was a long time ago.
It should be IM client, and nothing else. Do one thing, and do it well.
Some of the features they add are actually useful, but nobody knew just how useful they'd be until they were implemented. Personally a stock ticker is a retarded thing to put in an IM client, but things like webcam & voice chat support are cool ideas.
Portability.
I agree here - why is this so hard? If only Apple had released Cocoa (YellowBox) for win32 and *nix, and everybody started using that. Or if only Qt was free on win32. Or whatever.
Zero tolerance policy on SPAM.
It amazes me that AOL hasn't caught onto this, after so many years of abuse.
Support for modules.
Might be hard to develop generic module support if you have no idea what kinds of modules might be created. Which feature enhancements need what functionality? Some Apache modules make you patch the source to install them, because if it were strictly a module the functionality wouldn't be available.
Why are AOL/ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, etc so scared of competition?
A real revenue model, not based on ads or spyware.
How many people will pay money for an IM client, when there are so many free ones available? How much would they be willing to pay? Are these two numbers multiplied together anywhere near the cost of operating the service, let alone developing it?
I've come to the conclusion that I must write this software myself. Nobody else is going to implement a portable, spyware and ad free IM client that doesn't constantly crash.
Please do! I'd like to see what you can come up with. Make sure you release a Mac OS X version - you did mention portability.:-)
Not sure about the answer to your question but support for pdf is included in the postscript 3 spec (i.e. a full postscript 3 implementation must included pdf).
Ah, good, I had been told that PDF was a subset of PostScript. Just wondering about getting it to play nicely over a network between operating systems. Looks like Apple may not be supporting it in OSX though. Hopefully they will.
Display Postscript: Whatever happened to L. Peter Deutsch's old Display Ghostscript X Server extension?
Could Display Ghostscript be made to work with Mac OS X's DisplayPDF, so we could run OSX applications remotely over a LAN and display them on a Linux box?
Does Apple support this on their end yet? I've heard this kind of thing was possible with NeXTStep, but I don't think it's implemented in Mac OS X yet...
I think one of the main advantages to having UML (User-Mode Linux) will be able to have Linux running on top of Linux, and be able to create environments similar to these partitions you mention.
Random off-topic thought: is UML portable? Might be fun to run it on top of something other than Linux, kinda like VirtualPC/VMWare/Bochs.
Name one other company right now except for Google that even has the slightest possibility to become the Microsoft of the first decade of this century?
AOL Time Warner, if they'd pull their heads out of their asses. It could happen.
Typically they stall for 24 hours or so at which point the spamming has stopped and they say "Sorry, its stopped, there is nothing we can do".
For the first 24 hours, we did nothing but send a warning letter to the customer. If it was an honest mistake, that gave them a chance to fix the problem before we took action.
Even if it got to the point where they get shut off, they just call the next provider. In major areas there can be a dozen or more broadband providers.
That doesn't seem to match your previous assertion often free thanks to parents, and yes I am asserting that much spam is from teenagers. What parent is going to put up with ISP-hopping because their kid keeps getting their service disconnected?
Also, spammers aren't exactly the most honest businesspeople, so the credit card they gave you, if it was legit, was probably cancelled and your legal department will laugh at you if you want to pursue anything more than standard bill collection on a few hundred bucks.
Spammer signs up for broadband Internet access. Spammer works with his buddies on IRC to identify open proxy servers, or explot security holes and install open proxy servers, on other networks. Spammer finds open relay servers in other countries.
Spammer connects to the open proxy server, and from there to the open relay server. Spammer sends one message with several thousand recipients. Message is accepted for delivery, and spammer disconnects.
Relay server spends the next several hours spewing out spam. Headers show the IP of the relay and the IP of the proxy server. No way to identify the original spammer (since the proxy server didn't keep any log).
So, you're saying my ISP should figure out what ISP is responsible for the open relay server, and send them a bill? What if the ISP doesn't pay - start rejecting mail from that IP? Well, guess what - the IP address is already blacklisted, because it's an open relay! You've changed nothing. Your idea doesn't work unless everybody participates, and if we could get everybody to participate in something, we could get the open relays closed. It's not gonna happen.
Most spammers don't use open relays, and they don't use their ISP's mail server!
Do you have any facts or specific experience to back this up, or are you talking out of your ass?
I used to work with the abuse department of a broadband ISP. The majority of the spam complaints we received were due to our customers who were running SMTP servers and didn't realize they were configured as open relays. Spammers would scan blocks of IPs on our network, find somebody with port 25 open, see if it's an open relay, and if so, start sending spam. Over the next 24-72 hours we would receive complaints, mostly from SpamCop. We'd identify the customer and send them an e-mail notifying them of the problem. 24 hours later we'd suspend their service. Then the customer would call into Tech Support confused about why they can't get online, and we'd have to explain what was going on. Most of the time they had no idea. Some of these customers don't know what an SMTP server is, let alone an open relay - yet somehow they've got one set up. Others know, but just forgot to fix it.
Of course, open SMTP servers is not the only problem - open proxy servers work too, usually to connect to an open relay somewhere else so the spammer's real IP doesn't show up in the headers.
I do agree that most spammers don't use their ISP's mail server, although several do. Some ISPs such as Earthlink firewall port 25 so you can't send mail except through their servers (unless you exploit an open proxy; see above) - this helps Earthlink to greatly reduce the amount of spam coming out of their network, since customers with open relays are not a problem for them.
So if we could please move on, the problem is that spammers are doing the same thing as many people on slashdot, they are running their own mail server off their cheap (often free thanks to parents, and yes I am asserting that much spam is from teenagers) broadband connections
Spamming directly from your own broadband connection is retarded; that's why most spammers don't do it. Our policy was to suspend your service until you agree to quit spamming, then suspend it again until you agree to quit spamming again, then cancel your account and charge you a $250 early-termination fee for breaking your one-year contract. We've already got your credit card number, and it's in the service agreement.
I think this is something that needs to happen more often: ISPs need to start making it really expensive for spammers to operate, by charging them large fines when they do. Don't just cancel their account, but make them pay.
The biggest problem with this is, there are so many incompetent people with hacked/infected machines that it's often impossible to tell the difference between an innocent victim whose system was compromised and a die-hard spammer who's lying through his teeth. The latter you want to get rid of ASAP; the former may pay you a lot of money over the next several years (and refer all his friends) if you can help get this little issue resolved.
Slashdot Mirror
Name could be confused with the upcoming game from Cyan, which sounds like sort of a cross between Myst and EverQuest.
It's MS-DOS from Microsoft and not PC-DOS from IBM?
What version of BASIC was included?
But for everything else, if they charged $.25 per song, they couldn't upload them fast enough for me.
;-)
Maybe they're concerned about bandwidth?
Maybe not... it could still be MP3 format and simply managed in software by iTunes to sync only with your iPod. So, not real DRM, or new codecs, but something along the lines of how you "cannot" currently copy your iPod's music to another machine.
Um, I don't see how. Open your ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder and option-drag the MP3s out. Whoo, copying!
Any organization that uses a groupware (e.g. Exchange/Outlook) package already has virtually instant messaging through their standard email conduit.
This isn't always a good thing. Nothing like showing up for work Monday morning and having to sift through 30 e-mails that were sent to your entire department on Saturday, such as:
"Who wants in on pizza for lunch? Reply with your favorite toppings."
"There's some leftover pizza in the breakroom if anyone wants it."
"If you drive a blue Toyota with license plate ABC-123, your lights are on."
Those kinds of time-sensitive messages are great if you're there, but really annoying if you don't get them until later.
Enterprise AIM.
I have used many instant messaging clients over the years, and have only used AIM for very short periods of time. Every time I use it, I am very surprised at what a spartan piece of software it really is; any other messenger is easily more feature rich, so why don't people use them instead?
Weird - I feel exactly the same way, except backwards. AIM has just about everything I can think of, while other clients lack even the most obvious features. OK, Yahoo has webcam support, which is neat, but that's all I use it for, and not for very long before it crashes.
Is the situation that much different on Windows? I've used AIM on Windows, and it had all the same functionality, although the layout was horrible (although the Windows version has gotten a little better while the Mac OS X version is significantly worse than the Mac OS 9 version).
Try that when Bob lives in another state or country. Face-to-face contact is almost always better when it's available, but often it's not.
For backwards compatability, it should probably implement AIM/ICQ or Yahoo suport.
:-)
Yeah, and AOL does NOT want you doing that, because they want you to use their client, with their ad banners. There are two AIM protocols, TOC (text-based, documented, limited functionality) and OSCAR (binary, undocumented, reverse-engineered). AOL says using TOC is fine, but you're not supposed to use OSCAR. TOC doesn't let you do things like change your password. Last I heard AOL was exploiting a buffer overflow in their own client to make it return a particular hashed value back to the server, and if the server didn't get the correct response it would kick you offline - so, it was impossible for 3rd-party apps to use OSCAR. Obviously Gaim uses OSCAR now, so they must have backed off.
Cryptography support.
Can't encrypt messages if you want to chat with anyone who doesn't use your software. AIM for Mac OS X encrypts log files. Not sure how you'd sign log files in a useful way, since I only ever want to copy & paste an excerpt, not the whole log - but copy & paste is enough to satisfy anyone I talk to that the conversation really took place.
Stability.
See above - one reason they crash so much is because they're always trying to stay one step ahead of AOL, which is always trying to get rid of them. And I was told once that the Gaim code is a tangled mess of spaghetti, but that was a long time ago.
It should be IM client, and nothing else. Do one thing, and do it well.
Some of the features they add are actually useful, but nobody knew just how useful they'd be until they were implemented. Personally a stock ticker is a retarded thing to put in an IM client, but things like webcam & voice chat support are cool ideas.
Portability.
I agree here - why is this so hard? If only Apple had released Cocoa (YellowBox) for win32 and *nix, and everybody started using that. Or if only Qt was free on win32. Or whatever.
Zero tolerance policy on SPAM.
It amazes me that AOL hasn't caught onto this, after so many years of abuse.
Support for modules.
Might be hard to develop generic module support if you have no idea what kinds of modules might be created. Which feature enhancements need what functionality? Some Apache modules make you patch the source to install them, because if it were strictly a module the functionality wouldn't be available.
Why are AOL/ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, etc so scared of competition?
Banner ads.
Even better yet, make it an official RFC.
Nobody took it seriously when they tried.
A real revenue model, not based on ads or spyware.
How many people will pay money for an IM client, when there are so many free ones available? How much would they be willing to pay? Are these two numbers multiplied together anywhere near the cost of operating the service, let alone developing it?
I've come to the conclusion that I must write this software myself. Nobody else is going to implement a portable, spyware and ad free IM client that doesn't constantly crash.
Please do! I'd like to see what you can come up with. Make sure you release a Mac OS X version - you did mention portability.
Not sure about the answer to your question but support for pdf is included in the postscript 3 spec (i.e. a full postscript 3 implementation must included pdf).
Ah, good, I had been told that PDF was a subset of PostScript. Just wondering about getting it to play nicely over a network between operating systems. Looks like Apple may not be supporting it in OSX though. Hopefully they will.
I don't think there was an MS-DOS 4.0 either.
Display Postscript: Whatever happened to L. Peter Deutsch's old Display Ghostscript X Server extension?
Could Display Ghostscript be made to work with Mac OS X's DisplayPDF, so we could run OSX applications remotely over a LAN and display them on a Linux box?
Does Apple support this on their end yet? I've heard this kind of thing was possible with NeXTStep, but I don't think it's implemented in Mac OS X yet...
I think one of the main advantages to having UML (User-Mode Linux) will be able to have Linux running on top of Linux, and be able to create environments similar to these partitions you mention.
Random off-topic thought: is UML portable? Might be fun to run it on top of something other than Linux, kinda like VirtualPC/VMWare/Bochs.
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the name
CAN-2002-1337 to this issue
The number comes up from time to time.
Name one other company right now except for Google that even has the slightest possibility to become the Microsoft of the first decade of this century?
AOL Time Warner, if they'd pull their heads out of their asses. It could happen.
Burgundy, perhaps?
I'm sorry, but there is only one OS that is cross compatible with PDAs, desktops, phones, servers, and laptops. And it isn't Windows.
NetBSD?
In case anyone hasn't seen them, the Steve Ballmer music videos are available here among other places.
Typically they stall for 24 hours or so at which point the spamming has stopped and they say "Sorry, its stopped, there is nothing we can do".
For the first 24 hours, we did nothing but send a warning letter to the customer. If it was an honest mistake, that gave them a chance to fix the problem before we took action.
Even if it got to the point where they get shut off, they just call the next provider. In major areas there can be a dozen or more broadband providers.
That doesn't seem to match your previous assertion often free thanks to parents, and yes I am asserting that much spam is from teenagers. What parent is going to put up with ISP-hopping because their kid keeps getting their service disconnected?
Also, spammers aren't exactly the most honest businesspeople, so the credit card they gave you, if it was legit, was probably cancelled and your legal department will laugh at you if you want to pursue anything more than standard bill collection on a few hundred bucks.
Excellent point I hadn't considered.
There all you have to worry about is Anthrax.
Oh, is that all? Phew! Had me worried for a minute.
Patch available from the usual place.
Spammer signs up for broadband Internet access. Spammer works with his buddies on IRC to identify open proxy servers, or explot security holes and install open proxy servers, on other networks. Spammer finds open relay servers in other countries.
Spammer connects to the open proxy server, and from there to the open relay server. Spammer sends one message with several thousand recipients. Message is accepted for delivery, and spammer disconnects.
Relay server spends the next several hours spewing out spam. Headers show the IP of the relay and the IP of the proxy server. No way to identify the original spammer (since the proxy server didn't keep any log).
So, you're saying my ISP should figure out what ISP is responsible for the open relay server, and send them a bill? What if the ISP doesn't pay - start rejecting mail from that IP? Well, guess what - the IP address is already blacklisted, because it's an open relay! You've changed nothing. Your idea doesn't work unless everybody participates, and if we could get everybody to participate in something, we could get the open relays closed. It's not gonna happen.
Second, how do you define bulk? Mail that goes out to more than 20 recipients?
I've seen several churches get their mailbox suspended for sending out a newsletter to members of their congregation.
Most spammers don't use open relays, and they don't use their ISP's mail server!
Do you have any facts or specific experience to back this up, or are you talking out of your ass?
I used to work with the abuse department of a broadband ISP. The majority of the spam complaints we received were due to our customers who were running SMTP servers and didn't realize they were configured as open relays. Spammers would scan blocks of IPs on our network, find somebody with port 25 open, see if it's an open relay, and if so, start sending spam. Over the next 24-72 hours we would receive complaints, mostly from SpamCop. We'd identify the customer and send them an e-mail notifying them of the problem. 24 hours later we'd suspend their service. Then the customer would call into Tech Support confused about why they can't get online, and we'd have to explain what was going on. Most of the time they had no idea. Some of these customers don't know what an SMTP server is, let alone an open relay - yet somehow they've got one set up. Others know, but just forgot to fix it.
Of course, open SMTP servers is not the only problem - open proxy servers work too, usually to connect to an open relay somewhere else so the spammer's real IP doesn't show up in the headers.
I do agree that most spammers don't use their ISP's mail server, although several do. Some ISPs such as Earthlink firewall port 25 so you can't send mail except through their servers (unless you exploit an open proxy; see above) - this helps Earthlink to greatly reduce the amount of spam coming out of their network, since customers with open relays are not a problem for them.
So if we could please move on, the problem is that spammers are doing the same thing as many people on slashdot, they are running their own mail server off their cheap (often free thanks to parents, and yes I am asserting that much spam is from teenagers) broadband connections
Spamming directly from your own broadband connection is retarded; that's why most spammers don't do it. Our policy was to suspend your service until you agree to quit spamming, then suspend it again until you agree to quit spamming again, then cancel your account and charge you a $250 early-termination fee for breaking your one-year contract. We've already got your credit card number, and it's in the service agreement.
I think this is something that needs to happen more often: ISPs need to start making it really expensive for spammers to operate, by charging them large fines when they do. Don't just cancel their account, but make them pay.
The biggest problem with this is, there are so many incompetent people with hacked/infected machines that it's often impossible to tell the difference between an innocent victim whose system was compromised and a die-hard spammer who's lying through his teeth. The latter you want to get rid of ASAP; the former may pay you a lot of money over the next several years (and refer all his friends) if you can help get this little issue resolved.
"I see dumb people. They're everywhere! And they don't even know they're dumb."