For me, the inclusion or addition of an FM tuner to an mp3 player has now become a negative rather than a plus. My experience has been the FM tuners are all pretty bad, and so the only conclusion I can draw is the FM tuner has been added solely for the sake of making it more attractive, not enhancing the quality of the user experience.
Actually, what I want is an AM tuner. I have a 5GB iPod, and if I had an AM tuner, it would be great. On the way to work in the morning, I want to listen to the news, and decent news stations around here are all AM. Then, during the day and on the way back, I like to listen to my music.
The whole point of an iPod (and to a lesser degree a Walkman or Discman), for me, is that I can listen to stuff I *know* I like, as opposed to songs with mindless DJ prattle over the intro and the same playlist every day. The last thing I want on my iPod is an FM receiver.
The site is down, so I can't check it, but I would imagine that the pop up window is made so that the Address bar is not showing and people can't easily see that it is a bad URL.
Paypal got this right. When the Phishers started going after them in earnest, they sent a bunch of e-mails to registered users saying "Paypal will never ask you to click on a link in e-mail". And all their e-mails about transactions or special offers say "If you would like to do this, enter www.paypal.com in your browser, and then click on tab $foo and then link $bar". It's a bit more effort for the consumer, but it eliminates the "Is this a real or fake e-mail" problem - if it contains any hyperlink at all, it's fake.
My credit card does the same thing. I get automated notifications that say "Your new statement is available online. To access it, go to www..com, and click on "My Statement".
Even if you don't count Apple's actions this week as a potential threat to first amendment rights (Apple's crackdown on Web sites that love the company), they do nothing to bolster Apple's public image.
Sigh. That's total crap (and most of it is straight from the article - way to plagiarize on the part of the submitter). Is Apple suing the guy who opened up his Mini and said "Hrm, I think there might be a firewire connector riser for the iPod?" Is Apple suing the guy who is explaining how to get the firmware off your iPod using a series of clicking sounds? No.
The person who leaked information broke an NDA. It's not like some enterprising college student sat in his dorm and said "You know what would be cool? If Apple made a tiny nano-ITX sized computer! And a USB flash-based iPod, too!" and then posted that on his blog and got sued for it.
Suppose you have a cool idea for a new product, and hire some folks to help you work on it, and make them sign an agreement that says they won't talk about the product. And then one of those goes and tells the local newspaper all about, and some company across town markets your product while you're still figuring out what happened. Are you going to be pissed off? Or are you going to say "Oh, well, gee, freedom of the press, I guess I can't be upset with him."
Violence must be caused by video games. There was no murder or violent crime before Grand Theft Auto came out and tainted all of the children!!
We all know that's not true. What would be an interesting study though would be one that focuses on people up to, say, age 25. Human violence has been around since one caveman kicked another caveman in the balls for no reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if video game content led to an increase in violence among people age 12-25, or resulted in first offences being committed at earlier ages.
It's stupid to say that video games are responsible for violence, but it's equally stupid to say that since violence existed before video games, video games cannot possibly be responsible for any violence. Those are both false statements. Video games are more realistic than ever, there's no denying that. And there's no denying that children are heavily influenced by their surroundings and environment, even well into their teen years. Is there a connection? Clearly more study is needed.
No, it's a historical nickname for Massachusetts. In the '80s, MA was indeed Taxachusetts, with high taxes (something like the 15th in the nation or thereabouts). Calling it a "right wing myth" implies that it never existed and was a creation of Carl Rove, or something. That's not true.
Does it deserve the name "Taxachusetts" now? Probably not. And "Waco, TX" probably doesn't deserve to be associated with cults and the ATF, but that's still what most people think of when they hear it.
The law, then, would disallow Gator and their ilk but would not hamper Microsoft's Genuine Advantage Program.
Much as I hate Genuine Advantage, it is good that things like that are explicitly allowed. Of course, there should be some sort of notification that this is happening (which, with Genuine Advantage, I believe there is). Apple has a similar feature when you make an Installer Package. When you run it, the user will see a dialog that says something like "This Installer needs to run a program to see if it can be installed, is that ok?". The program can either be a simple version check of the OS, or it can be something that checks for an older version of the software before updating, etc. I've used it in some projects to check for prequisites and libraries to prevent users from shooting themselves in the foot. If the exception were not in the law, I could easily imagine some company targeting some small FOSS project and claiming that something like that falls under spyware.
If a simple subpoena of customer data allows them to easily go after lost cigarette taxes, how long until state treasuries across the country subpoena Amazon.com or other big online retailers to collect unpaid sales taxes?"
I'd like to say that this is a little different, but I'm not fully confident that's true. From what I can tell, there was an explicit law preventing sale in the state of cigarette packs that did not contains a stamp proving the taxes were paid.
But now I'm not so sure. Several states (including good old Taxachusetts) get very grumpy about "use tax" (what you're supposed to pay if you purchased something in another state and didn't pay sales tax), and occasionally go after people. Usually, however, they don't do that unless it's a big ticket item (car, boat, etc). The state was losing a lot of money on cigarette tax (much, much more than sales tax on the same amount), which is what motivated them in this case.
If the state was to go after everyone who purchased a few books from Amazon, they'd be so overwhelmed with paperwork, it wouldn't be worth their while. Then again, Amazon keeps selling more and more expensive things tax-free (I got a $1900 radial arm saw in my Gold Box a while back), so maybe it'll happen.
Stop by some local places like BestBuy, CompUSA, etc and see what they're charging for that. You'll find it's something like $50 just to get them to talk to you, and then $40-$70/hr, and the only operation they support is full reinstall of the machine.
Charge what you think you need to charge. If you want to discourage them from coming to you for every little thing, charge more (like $20-$30/hr). If you simply want some compensation for your time, charge $10-$20 per hour.
Also, decide if you're going to charge for things like travel ($0.36/mile is standard for that) or special services such as backing up their machine, etc.
Summary: here's documentation of my illegal access to a system, please prosecute me, thanks.
Well, I was totally on his side until the "I changed the access mode from 'credit card' to 'free'". That's bullshit. I know he immediately changed it back, but that's wrong. Nothing gives him the right to do that. Surely bringing up the admin page was enough to be able to contact the admins and tell them they fucked up. Before he did that, he might have had a chance of claiming complete innocence.
It's like the the people who abused the ATMs in New York after 9/11. When they made the first withdrawal and saw that their balance didn't decline, they should have called the bank and reported it. Nothing gave them the right to keep making withdrawals. If I leave me door unlocked, it may make me an idiot, but it doesn't give some dude the right to come in to my house, and take something and walk out the door, even if you come right back in and put it back.
Um, this is simply an electronic version of stealing the answer key from the teacher's office. And I'd expect a student to be charged with a crime for breaking into a teacher's office to steal an answer key. This, of course, is even worse, since the student could easily have obtained other information, such as credit card numbers (plenty of teachers order supplies online), usernames, passwords, etc.
This isn't some poor misguided kid who got thrown in jail because the "lab monitor" saw him using "that Linux hacking tool" on the school Windows machines. Nor is it some grey-hat hacker pushing boundaries. When you actively go and install a keystroke monitor on a machine that is not yours, you're out to get information that you shouldn't have, period. It's totally premeditated, too - it's not like he was poking around in/tmp and found a MS Word auto-save backup file with the answer key in it, or was rummaging around in the trash can because he dropped his retainer and found the answer key - he deliberately went and got a keystroke logger and put it on the machine. There's no possible way to spin this as an innocent kid getting screwed.
I don't see this happening anytime soon. My SP asked me today why we ever broke up "Ma Bell" in the first place. I half-joked we'd still be dialing like this: (making circular motion) if we hadn't...
Well, Ma Bell was certainly being as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft. Forcing operating companies to purchase equipment from a subsidiary (Western Electric), routinely undercutting competitors such as MCI, and most importantly in this day and age of companies deciding what users can and can't do, doing everything to prevent users from using non-Bell equipment on their phone lines, despite an FCC ruling that the consumers had a right to do that.
On the other hand, perhaps all these consolidations of the Baby Bells are trying to tell us something - maybe that's just the way the market works. Certainly it would make life easier for consumers to not have to switch phone companies every 5 years. I've gone from New England Telephone to NYNEX to Bell Atlantic, and finally Verizon. And it's been barely 20 years since AT&T broke up. OTOH, service has suffered - I used be able to make a call from a pay phone for a dime in Massachusetts, even 7 years ago. Now it's 50 cents minimum charge, and you're lucky if you can even find a phone booth, let alone one that's run by Verizon and not one of these 10-10-whatever companies. Is that because the big companies don't care? Or is that because of cell phones become more commonplace? Who knows. But I bet in 5-10 years we'll be right back where we started, and someone will have been laughing all the way to the bank.
This article really reads like a marketing press release.
And a stupid one, at that. Particularly the bit about senior citizens. I've worked with quite a few senior citizens - getting them to "learn computers" (ie: word processing). The hardest part is familiarizing them with the mouse (particularly double-clicking, right-clicking, and dragging), and with concepts such as cutting and pasting. The keyboard was the easiest part, since it was the most familiar to them -- aside from some extra keys, it was basically a typewriter.
I recently got back from a trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand and I had the exact same experience at in all three countries. It was just a simple little line on the county entrance form.
Alas, the summary left out the important point. This was not a customs or INS form. He was not asked to do this by INS agents. This was at the American Airlines security counter, on a BLANK piece of paper, administered by an American Airlines rent-a-cop. This is very different.
Normally, you provide your details to the INS or Customs. He was asked to provide them to AA.
please, dear media (and also dear slashdot), make an effort to educate people in security matters instead of putting some solution on the "security pedestal". don't make claims about the absolute security of any alternative.
Very true. Only this time, it's solely Slashdot ath's responsible for putting the solution on the pedestal. The article merely mentions that default install settings on most Linux distributions have gotten better, which is a fair statement. The article was comparing default installations of Solaris, Window, and Linux, and mentioned that Linux has improved recently. This says nothing about Linux security, but says everything about judgements made by vendors/distributors. This shouldn't be taken as saying Linux itself is more secure. That's not to say that it is or it isn't, merely that this article contains no data on that.
I think even the most hardcore audiophile in a blind test can be tricked into thinking a digital signal is analog.
However, by the same token, digital music is sampling. It may be pretty darn fast sampling, but it's still sampling. You'll never get a completely pure waveform with no rough edges. The question of course is, if the ear can't distinguish it, why does it matter? And I don't pretend to have the answer.
I just find it amusing that people can extoll the virtues of lossless audio compression while at the same time believe that digital recordings are of a higher quality than professional-grade analog. Do they last longer and reproduce better? Sure. But there's still information in the analog recording that gets eliminated in sampling.
I work for a large cable company and we are adding VOIP to our line up as fast as we can provide the guaranteed up times mandated by the government. Like 99.99 uptime and independent power supply and such. And yes if your ticked at the cable company you can call the P.U.C
Which is fine. But suppose I only get connectivity from your cable company, and get VoIP from, say, Vonage. (Just an example, I'm not saying anything's wrong with them) And then suppose they charge me for some service I never signed up for. Or simply disappear off the face of the earth. I have no recourse at all. I can call the P.U.C., but I doubt they'd care. And certainly the cable company would be no more liable than if I bought some other online service (like, say, video conferencing) and it went down.
if they were willing to point it out to each customer prioring to signing them up, that courts have ruled that it's not phone service, and that they have no recourse through the utility commission should it have
Exactly. This is not entirely good. It's good in that it gives the VoIP providers a bit more flexibility in what they can do, and where they can offer service, and what service they can offer. By the same token, there's nothing to stop a fly-by-nite VoIP provider from scewing everyone over.
Some states have regulations that currently prevent phone companies from turning service off completely in the case of non-payment (ie: you can still call 911). And they allow you to dispute a portion of the bill and pay the undisputed portion and still have no service cutoff until the dispute is resolved. Those regulations are among those that states would not be allowed to enforce under this ruling.
However, all the courts said is that you don't get to regulate VoIP in the same method as phone service. There's nothing to stop the states from setting up new regulations for "information providers", etc.
Meanwhile, from what I can tell much more powerful alternatives to Microsoft's MCE bloatware are thriving: commercial products like Snapstream (see their 6-tuner Medusa PVR built for about $1200), Showshifter and open-source freeware like Mediaportal and MythTV.
First of all, MythTV and Mediaportal are not competitors. Not yet. For them to be true competitors, they need to just work out of the box. Don't get me wrong, they're great products, but they're not true competitors in the average consumer market, just like Gentoo Linux is not a competitor with Windows XP.
And the other two products mentioned are not real competitors. If you hate "Microsoft bloatware", these are not the products for you. From the Snapstream Beyond TV System Requirements page:
Microsoft Windows XP Home, XP Professional or 2000
It doesn't get much more Microsoft-centric than that.
If Media Center Edition fails, it will be because of price and competition from the cable companies, not because of competing software. Users who buy media center PCs will stick with Windows Media CEnter Edition, because that's what it'll come with. Just like people stick with XP Home, because that's what came on their computers.
Consumers want something that just works. Hobbyists, enthusiasts, and power users may be interested in picking their own TV tuner card, and setting up MythTV, but they do not form a large percentage of the market. You have people now who have Tivos because they "just work". Tivo made something that looks like a VCR and has a remote, and that (combined with cable and satellite companies giving them away for free) more than anything is what will kill windows MCE.
From what I've read about Microsoft MCE and all of its DRM and content restrictions, I have to agree with both of these articles.
The average consumer (again, they're the ones who influence the market, not us) doesn't care about DRM, yet. They can play their CDs in the car or on their stereo - it doesn't matter if they can't rip them to MP3.
However, ironically, MCE may be the thing that wakes up Joe Consumer to the dangers of DRM. If this doesn't, the broadcast flag of HDTV might. Currently, if Joe Consumer misses a show, he can stick a tape in the VCR. And even tape the game, despite the NFL telling him not to. When he fires up his Media Center PC, and hits record, and gets a message saying "You are not allowed to do this", there's going to be a huge backlash. But we're not there yet.
It doesn't have to be a success, it just has to be non-infinging. If a major company, which has previously been pretty darn vigorous in defending its "intellectual property" (think bnetd) decides to use this technology, that's a pretty good indication that it has a legitimate use. Now, if it turns out that the technology doesn't work, for whatever reason, that's a different issue. But if it were technology that could only be used for "evil", no company would be stupid enough to use it, no matter how fast it might be.
Similar software on Linux and Windows makes it easier to move users from Windows to Linux... it's the OpenOffice argument.
I couldn't agree more. The original comment (in the summary) is completely short-sighted. Note the following:
we eliminate the majority of the competitive advantage of Free Software desktops in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers while Microsoft has all the rope they need to shut the door once again on us
Except, if there's wide adoption of a program, and MS "shuts the door", you'll have a ton of angry users. Some of them might yell at MS or bring it to the attention of the press. Others might say "hey, maybe I'll give this linux thing a try".
Saying "You shouldn't use Open Source software except on Open Source platforms" is no better than the shit that Microsoft spouts about Linux. I thought the "Free" in "Free Software" was all about freedom - you know, like freedom of choice, and all that. The developers are welcome to be grumpy about it, but if they're actively trying to prevent their software from being ported to Windows, then maybe it's time for them to step down. Or release their code under a new license that prevents porting to Windows.
Yeah. And Nelson Mandela was wrong to disobey the apartheid laws.
A bad law is a bad thing, and civil disobedience is one way to protest it.
Just one problem. Civil disobedience only works when you can tell people your side of the story, or let them see for themselves. People saw the protests, people saw the marches, people heard famous musicians like Hugh Masekela writing songs and thought "Well, huh, maybe these protestors are on to something, maybe these laws do suck."
That hasn't happened yet in the anti-DMCA world. Sure, we've seen a few articles about the 90 year-old Grandma who doesn't own a computer get sued for sharing hundreds of gangsta rap songs. But they're usually there just for a sound bite, or a brief laugh while reading the paper, and it's forgotten by the next day. And since the middle class came to the stock market in the '90s, even the average Joe is interested in companies making profits, and all the {RI,MP}AA has to do is say "pirates" and keep blanketing the media with ads portraying file swappers as the devil incarnate, and it's over.
Historically, you used to be able to write a protest song, and if it was catchy, people would remember it and might start to think about supporting your cause. Or, an aspiring film maker could make a movie about a cause, and have it gain national attention. (One good example for both types of media is the story of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter. Bob Dylan's song gained the case national attention, and 30 years later, the movie with Denzel Washington brought it back into the spotlight. Of course, he's still in jail, so that doesn't always work, but it was a good shot). The only problem is that the protestors are up against the two organizations that completely control both types of media. Good luck getting national airtime on a song that's not marketed by the RIAA. (Satellite radio was the last hope for that, but so much for a "non-RIAA affiliated artists" channel on XM). And good luck getting national distribution with a non-MPAA distributor. Even "independent" films like Super Size Me are distributed by the large companies (in that case, Samuel Goldwyn - a re-branded arm of MGM)
I firmly believe it's going to get worse until it gets better. I think that it's going to take more crappy laws, and someone getting sued for fast-forwarding through ads on a DVD or finding out that their shiny new HDTV/VCR won't let them tape last night's American Idol because of the broadcast flag. Then it'll start to get fixed.
AllOfMP3... won't limit your options with formats/encoding/drm--not to mention that it's much, much cheaper.
Largely due to their unqiue intellectual property model, which is surpsingly under-utilised elsewhere on the 'net. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's called the "Ha ha, fuck you - we're all the way over in Russia. Come get us!:-)" model.
Amen to that. Now, admittedly, having one password for all your services is kind of bad, since it's a single point of failure. But what's worse is the obscure requirements some websites have. Here's a list of the password requirements for all sites I use ona daily basis:
6-8 characters, containing at least 1 number and 1 letter, the number must not be the first or last character. No special characters. Password cannot be the old one if you change it.
4 character maximum, only letters and numbers.
6 characters, only capital letters and numbers, no lowercase
8 characters, may not share any characters with your login id
And that's just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Of course, my main account that I use daily, uses Kerberos, so I can have passwords up to 255 characters, including punctuation. My bank website also has a sane system that allows me to use my usual password-derivation method (pick interesting phrase or sentence, take first letter of every word, and punctuation marks, and combine with a number.
The thing that really got me was the 4 character password. I called them and they said it was "more secure". Alas it was only a phone droid, so there was no point arguing, but wow.
Of course, the most insecure password for anyone in the US is probably their PIN for their ATM card. It's only 4 digits, each from the set 0-9. That's pretty trivial to brute-force. The only reason not to is because all ATMs have cameras, so the more you visit (most ATMS eat the card after 3-4 incorrect PINs), the more chance you have of being caught on camera. Why we can't move to variable length PIN numbers is beyond me.
<troll>
Probably because Diebold is too busy rigging elections to come out with better ATMs </troll>
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Actually, what I want is an AM tuner. I have a 5GB iPod, and if I had an AM tuner, it would be great. On the way to work in the morning, I want to listen to the news, and decent news stations around here are all AM. Then, during the day and on the way back, I like to listen to my music.
The whole point of an iPod (and to a lesser degree a Walkman or Discman), for me, is that I can listen to stuff I *know* I like, as opposed to songs with mindless DJ prattle over the intro and the same playlist every day. The last thing I want on my iPod is an FM receiver.
That should have said www..com. Stupid HTML.
Paypal got this right. When the Phishers started going after them in earnest, they sent a bunch of e-mails to registered users saying "Paypal will never ask you to click on a link in e-mail". And all their e-mails about transactions or special offers say "If you would like to do this, enter www.paypal.com in your browser, and then click on tab $foo and then link $bar". It's a bit more effort for the consumer, but it eliminates the "Is this a real or fake e-mail" problem - if it contains any hyperlink at all, it's fake.
My credit card does the same thing. I get automated notifications that say "Your new statement is available online. To access it, go to www..com, and click on "My Statement".
Sigh. That's total crap (and most of it is straight from the article - way to plagiarize on the part of the submitter). Is Apple suing the guy who opened up his Mini and said "Hrm, I think there might be a firewire connector riser for the iPod?" Is Apple suing the guy who is explaining how to get the firmware off your iPod using a series of clicking sounds? No.
The person who leaked information broke an NDA. It's not like some enterprising college student sat in his dorm and said "You know what would be cool? If Apple made a tiny nano-ITX sized computer! And a USB flash-based iPod, too!" and then posted that on his blog and got sued for it.
Suppose you have a cool idea for a new product, and hire some folks to help you work on it, and make them sign an agreement that says they won't talk about the product. And then one of those goes and tells the local newspaper all about, and some company across town markets your product while you're still figuring out what happened. Are you going to be pissed off? Or are you going to say "Oh, well, gee, freedom of the press, I guess I can't be upset with him."
We all know that's not true. What would be an interesting study though would be one that focuses on people up to, say, age 25. Human violence has been around since one caveman kicked another caveman in the balls for no reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if video game content led to an increase in violence among people age 12-25, or resulted in first offences being committed at earlier ages.
It's stupid to say that video games are responsible for violence, but it's equally stupid to say that since violence existed before video games, video games cannot possibly be responsible for any violence. Those are both false statements. Video games are more realistic than ever, there's no denying that. And there's no denying that children are heavily influenced by their surroundings and environment, even well into their teen years. Is there a connection? Clearly more study is needed.
No, it's a historical nickname for Massachusetts. In the '80s, MA was indeed Taxachusetts, with high taxes (something like the 15th in the nation or thereabouts). Calling it a "right wing myth" implies that it never existed and was a creation of Carl Rove, or something. That's not true.
Does it deserve the name "Taxachusetts" now? Probably not. And "Waco, TX" probably doesn't deserve to be associated with cults and the ATF, but that's still what most people think of when they hear it.
Or, to put it another way: "It's a joke, son."
Much as I hate Genuine Advantage, it is good that things like that are explicitly allowed. Of course, there should be some sort of notification that this is happening (which, with Genuine Advantage, I believe there is). Apple has a similar feature when you make an Installer Package. When you run it, the user will see a dialog that says something like "This Installer needs to run a program to see if it can be installed, is that ok?". The program can either be a simple version check of the OS, or it can be something that checks for an older version of the software before updating, etc. I've used it in some projects to check for prequisites and libraries to prevent users from shooting themselves in the foot. If the exception were not in the law, I could easily imagine some company targeting some small FOSS project and claiming that something like that falls under spyware.
I'd like to say that this is a little different, but I'm not fully confident that's true. From what I can tell, there was an explicit law preventing sale in the state of cigarette packs that did not contains a stamp proving the taxes were paid.
But now I'm not so sure. Several states (including good old Taxachusetts) get very grumpy about "use tax" (what you're supposed to pay if you purchased something in another state and didn't pay sales tax), and occasionally go after people. Usually, however, they don't do that unless it's a big ticket item (car, boat, etc). The state was losing a lot of money on cigarette tax (much, much more than sales tax on the same amount), which is what motivated them in this case.
If the state was to go after everyone who purchased a few books from Amazon, they'd be so overwhelmed with paperwork, it wouldn't be worth their while. Then again, Amazon keeps selling more and more expensive things tax-free (I got a $1900 radial arm saw in my Gold Box a while back), so maybe it'll happen.
Charge what you think you need to charge. If you want to discourage them from coming to you for every little thing, charge more (like $20-$30/hr). If you simply want some compensation for your time, charge $10-$20 per hour.
Also, decide if you're going to charge for things like travel ($0.36/mile is standard for that) or special services such as backing up their machine, etc.
Well, I was totally on his side until the "I changed the access mode from 'credit card' to 'free'". That's bullshit. I know he immediately changed it back, but that's wrong. Nothing gives him the right to do that. Surely bringing up the admin page was enough to be able to contact the admins and tell them they fucked up. Before he did that, he might have had a chance of claiming complete innocence.
It's like the the people who abused the ATMs in New York after 9/11. When they made the first withdrawal and saw that their balance didn't decline, they should have called the bank and reported it. Nothing gave them the right to keep making withdrawals. If I leave me door unlocked, it may make me an idiot, but it doesn't give some dude the right to come in to my house, and take something and walk out the door, even if you come right back in and put it back.
This isn't some poor misguided kid who got thrown in jail because the "lab monitor" saw him using "that Linux hacking tool" on the school Windows machines. Nor is it some grey-hat hacker pushing boundaries. When you actively go and install a keystroke monitor on a machine that is not yours, you're out to get information that you shouldn't have, period. It's totally premeditated, too - it's not like he was poking around in /tmp and found a MS Word auto-save backup file with the answer key in it, or was rummaging around in the trash can because he dropped his retainer and found the answer key - he deliberately went and got a keystroke logger and put it on the machine. There's no possible way to spin this as an innocent kid getting screwed.
Well, Ma Bell was certainly being as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft. Forcing operating companies to purchase equipment from a subsidiary (Western Electric), routinely undercutting competitors such as MCI, and most importantly in this day and age of companies deciding what users can and can't do, doing everything to prevent users from using non-Bell equipment on their phone lines, despite an FCC ruling that the consumers had a right to do that.
On the other hand, perhaps all these consolidations of the Baby Bells are trying to tell us something - maybe that's just the way the market works. Certainly it would make life easier for consumers to not have to switch phone companies every 5 years. I've gone from New England Telephone to NYNEX to Bell Atlantic, and finally Verizon. And it's been barely 20 years since AT&T broke up. OTOH, service has suffered - I used be able to make a call from a pay phone for a dime in Massachusetts, even 7 years ago. Now it's 50 cents minimum charge, and you're lucky if you can even find a phone booth, let alone one that's run by Verizon and not one of these 10-10-whatever companies. Is that because the big companies don't care? Or is that because of cell phones become more commonplace? Who knows. But I bet in 5-10 years we'll be right back where we started, and someone will have been laughing all the way to the bank.
And a stupid one, at that. Particularly the bit about senior citizens. I've worked with quite a few senior citizens - getting them to "learn computers" (ie: word processing). The hardest part is familiarizing them with the mouse (particularly double-clicking, right-clicking, and dragging), and with concepts such as cutting and pasting. The keyboard was the easiest part, since it was the most familiar to them -- aside from some extra keys, it was basically a typewriter.
Alas, the summary left out the important point. This was not a customs or INS form. He was not asked to do this by INS agents. This was at the American Airlines security counter, on a BLANK piece of paper, administered by an American Airlines rent-a-cop. This is very different.
Normally, you provide your details to the INS or Customs. He was asked to provide them to AA.
please, dear media (and also dear slashdot), make an effort to educate people in security matters instead of putting some solution on the "security pedestal". don't make claims about the absolute security of any alternative.
Very true. Only this time, it's solely Slashdot ath's responsible for putting the solution on the pedestal. The article merely mentions that default install settings on most Linux distributions have gotten better, which is a fair statement. The article was comparing default installations of Solaris, Window, and Linux, and mentioned that Linux has improved recently. This says nothing about Linux security, but says everything about judgements made by vendors/distributors. This shouldn't be taken as saying Linux itself is more secure. That's not to say that it is or it isn't, merely that this article contains no data on that.
However, by the same token, digital music is sampling. It may be pretty darn fast sampling, but it's still sampling. You'll never get a completely pure waveform with no rough edges. The question of course is, if the ear can't distinguish it, why does it matter? And I don't pretend to have the answer.
I just find it amusing that people can extoll the virtues of lossless audio compression while at the same time believe that digital recordings are of a higher quality than professional-grade analog. Do they last longer and reproduce better? Sure. But there's still information in the analog recording that gets eliminated in sampling.
In the words of Stan Marsh: "Dude, what the fuck is wrong with German people?!"
Which is fine. But suppose I only get connectivity from your cable company, and get VoIP from, say, Vonage. (Just an example, I'm not saying anything's wrong with them) And then suppose they charge me for some service I never signed up for. Or simply disappear off the face of the earth. I have no recourse at all. I can call the P.U.C., but I doubt they'd care. And certainly the cable company would be no more liable than if I bought some other online service (like, say, video conferencing) and it went down.
Exactly. This is not entirely good. It's good in that it gives the VoIP providers a bit more flexibility in what they can do, and where they can offer service, and what service they can offer. By the same token, there's nothing to stop a fly-by-nite VoIP provider from scewing everyone over.
Some states have regulations that currently prevent phone companies from turning service off completely in the case of non-payment (ie: you can still call 911). And they allow you to dispute a portion of the bill and pay the undisputed portion and still have no service cutoff until the dispute is resolved. Those regulations are among those that states would not be allowed to enforce under this ruling.
However, all the courts said is that you don't get to regulate VoIP in the same method as phone service. There's nothing to stop the states from setting up new regulations for "information providers", etc.
First of all, MythTV and Mediaportal are not competitors. Not yet. For them to be true competitors, they need to just work out of the box. Don't get me wrong, they're great products, but they're not true competitors in the average consumer market, just like Gentoo Linux is not a competitor with Windows XP.
And the other two products mentioned are not real competitors. If you hate "Microsoft bloatware", these are not the products for you. From the Snapstream Beyond TV System Requirements page:
From the Showshifter System Requirements page:
It doesn't get much more Microsoft-centric than that.
If Media Center Edition fails, it will be because of price and competition from the cable companies, not because of competing software. Users who buy media center PCs will stick with Windows Media CEnter Edition, because that's what it'll come with. Just like people stick with XP Home, because that's what came on their computers.
Consumers want something that just works. Hobbyists, enthusiasts, and power users may be interested in picking their own TV tuner card, and setting up MythTV, but they do not form a large percentage of the market. You have people now who have Tivos because they "just work". Tivo made something that looks like a VCR and has a remote, and that (combined with cable and satellite companies giving them away for free) more than anything is what will kill windows MCE.
From what I've read about Microsoft MCE and all of its DRM and content restrictions, I have to agree with both of these articles.
The average consumer (again, they're the ones who influence the market, not us) doesn't care about DRM, yet. They can play their CDs in the car or on their stereo - it doesn't matter if they can't rip them to MP3.
However, ironically, MCE may be the thing that wakes up Joe Consumer to the dangers of DRM. If this doesn't, the broadcast flag of HDTV might. Currently, if Joe Consumer misses a show, he can stick a tape in the VCR. And even tape the game, despite the NFL telling him not to. When he fires up his Media Center PC, and hits record, and gets a message saying "You are not allowed to do this", there's going to be a huge backlash. But we're not there yet.
It doesn't have to be a success, it just has to be non-infinging. If a major company, which has previously been pretty darn vigorous in defending its "intellectual property" (think bnetd) decides to use this technology, that's a pretty good indication that it has a legitimate use. Now, if it turns out that the technology doesn't work, for whatever reason, that's a different issue. But if it were technology that could only be used for "evil", no company would be stupid enough to use it, no matter how fast it might be.
I couldn't agree more. The original comment (in the summary) is completely short-sighted. Note the following:
we eliminate the majority of the competitive advantage of Free Software desktops in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers while Microsoft has all the rope they need to shut the door once again on us
Except, if there's wide adoption of a program, and MS "shuts the door", you'll have a ton of angry users. Some of them might yell at MS or bring it to the attention of the press. Others might say "hey, maybe I'll give this linux thing a try".
Saying "You shouldn't use Open Source software except on Open Source platforms" is no better than the shit that Microsoft spouts about Linux. I thought the "Free" in "Free Software" was all about freedom - you know, like freedom of choice, and all that. The developers are welcome to be grumpy about it, but if they're actively trying to prevent their software from being ported to Windows, then maybe it's time for them to step down. Or release their code under a new license that prevents porting to Windows.
A bad law is a bad thing, and civil disobedience is one way to protest it.
Just one problem. Civil disobedience only works when you can tell people your side of the story, or let them see for themselves. People saw the protests, people saw the marches, people heard famous musicians like Hugh Masekela writing songs and thought "Well, huh, maybe these protestors are on to something, maybe these laws do suck."
That hasn't happened yet in the anti-DMCA world. Sure, we've seen a few articles about the 90 year-old Grandma who doesn't own a computer get sued for sharing hundreds of gangsta rap songs. But they're usually there just for a sound bite, or a brief laugh while reading the paper, and it's forgotten by the next day. And since the middle class came to the stock market in the '90s, even the average Joe is interested in companies making profits, and all the {RI,MP}AA has to do is say "pirates" and keep blanketing the media with ads portraying file swappers as the devil incarnate, and it's over.
Historically, you used to be able to write a protest song, and if it was catchy, people would remember it and might start to think about supporting your cause. Or, an aspiring film maker could make a movie about a cause, and have it gain national attention. (One good example for both types of media is the story of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter. Bob Dylan's song gained the case national attention, and 30 years later, the movie with Denzel Washington brought it back into the spotlight. Of course, he's still in jail, so that doesn't always work, but it was a good shot). The only problem is that the protestors are up against the two organizations that completely control both types of media. Good luck getting national airtime on a song that's not marketed by the RIAA. (Satellite radio was the last hope for that, but so much for a "non-RIAA affiliated artists" channel on XM). And good luck getting national distribution with a non-MPAA distributor. Even "independent" films like Super Size Me are distributed by the large companies (in that case, Samuel Goldwyn - a re-branded arm of MGM)
I firmly believe it's going to get worse until it gets better. I think that it's going to take more crappy laws, and someone getting sued for fast-forwarding through ads on a DVD or finding out that their shiny new HDTV/VCR won't let them tape last night's American Idol because of the broadcast flag. Then it'll start to get fixed.
Largely due to their unqiue intellectual property model, which is surpsingly under-utilised elsewhere on the 'net. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's called the "Ha ha, fuck you - we're all the way over in Russia. Come get us! :-)" model.
- 6-8 characters, containing at least 1 number and 1 letter, the number must not be the first or last character. No special characters. Password cannot be the old one if you change it.
- 4 character maximum, only letters and numbers.
- 6 characters, only capital letters and numbers, no lowercase
- 8 characters, may not share any characters with your login id
And that's just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Of course, my main account that I use daily, uses Kerberos, so I can have passwords up to 255 characters, including punctuation. My bank website also has a sane system that allows me to use my usual password-derivation method (pick interesting phrase or sentence, take first letter of every word, and punctuation marks, and combine with a number.The thing that really got me was the 4 character password. I called them and they said it was "more secure". Alas it was only a phone droid, so there was no point arguing, but wow.
Of course, the most insecure password for anyone in the US is probably their PIN for their ATM card. It's only 4 digits, each from the set 0-9. That's pretty trivial to brute-force. The only reason not to is because all ATMs have cameras, so the more you visit (most ATMS eat the card after 3-4 incorrect PINs), the more chance you have of being caught on camera. Why we can't move to variable length PIN numbers is beyond me.
<troll> Probably because Diebold is too busy rigging elections to come out with better ATMs </troll>