Who else is on the hit list? Microsoft and Sun are out, since MS already apparently has a license for the patents, and Sun just paid them off...
Is Apple next? They have their own Java implementation, don't they? IBM and Ximian/Novell, perhaps, too? IBM's VM could be infringing, and so could Mono's VM... and that's just sticking in Java-ish territory. Who knows what else they can hit with such a broad patent.
I don't see what's ridiculous about performing regular restarts of a mission critical system. Would you rather have a a system that booted correctly this morning routing your flight, or one that booted correctly last year and may have its components functioning properly anymore? Do you think that people incapable of rebooting a computer every 30 days are going to perform regular maintenance and testing of electronic components? Do you think they're going to remember to fsck their disks every day?
If someone doesn't have the money for a nice computer with a legit copy of WinXP Pro and all the other goodies, they probably don't have the money to run their own home LAN or the RAM/CPU power to run lots of demanding apps at once. I don't see how this is a bad idea. Sure, it's MS being manipulative, but look at it this way - less features means less security holes!
99 buffer checks don't do you any good if one buffer is missing a check, and that one gets exploited.
That's what their compiler modifications are intended to help with, and from my experience, they help. I do agree that it should have been done sooner, though.
This is probably due to them recompiling a large number of libraries and system components with the buffer checking and other security features they added into the recent versions of Visual C++. If you ask me, it's worth it, just to know that my Windows box has a few less wide open holes to be exploited.
It definitely has proven its worth so far - I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the reason SP2 isn't vulnerable to that GDI+ JPEG exploit is that they recompiled GDI+ with buffer checks.
This sounds like good news to me. If this succeeds, it's just another nail in the coffin for RIAA and their overpriced, bullshit CDs. Hopefully once MS and Apple kill off the RIAA by burdening them with DRM and outcompeting them with online sales, I'll be able to get real music at decent prices without having to import it from russia.
Am I the only person who, when reading "yours would too if you were in his position", thought, 'Gee, thanks roblimo, I guess I am a sellout!'?
I don't see why being a CEO automatically means you must be dishonest with your customers. Is this some rule of economics that I haven't learned in school yet?
Just to add my voice to Saxton's, the Hiptop is probably one of the best all-in-one devices I've ever used. When it worked, it worked extremely well. The web browser was very well designed and made it a pleasure to browse most websites, as long as you had signal, and the AIM and Email functionality was more than adequate for conversations with friends and checking your inbox while you're on the go. The SMS was a bit weak, but honestly with AIM and Email I never needed to use it. The keyboard, in particular, made it a pleasure to type in notes or messages. I wrote entire short stories on the Hiptop's keyboard, and it was a pleasure. For someone who likes to write in particular, the Hiptop is excellent, because it allows you to have an efficient way to jot down an idea or note the moment you get an idea, and just slip the phone back in your pocket. No need to carry around a big notebook, and no forgetting great ideas.
I remember them switching manufacturers before, but it's good to hear that they've found a reputable company to manufacture their phones. If Sharp can't manufacture a solid cell-phone, I can't think of many other companies that could.
Good to see that you're still around, by the way. I remember you from the Hiptop boards. The hiptop Community was always one of the best parts of owning a Hiptop, and it's good to see that it's still going strong.
A while back when the first Sidekick came out, I bought one. Signed up for the one year contract with the $40/mo plan, with T-Mobile. Got the whole little kit - phone, camera, headset, etc. All was well. For a while.
You see, the manufacturers that Danger contracted to build the first sidekick sucked. They sucked bad. My first Sidekick's keyboard began to bail on me within months: a few keys became almost impossible to press and the E key stopped working entirely. Then the scroll wheel and Back button (yes, the BACK button) started to go out. So, I called up on the phone and spent a few days negotiating with T-Mobile's people to get a replacement. They were originally going to charge me $70 (gee, what a cheap price to replace a faulty product), but I convinced them to give me the replacement for free, since I wasn't the only person having problems.
So, anyway, fast forward a few weeks. I've got my replacement sidekick (by a new manufacturer), and all is well.
Not. The new one has dust inside the screen casing, and the Menu button has absolutely no resistance so it's possible to press it just by breathing on it.
I don't have any experience with the Color sidekick or the Sidekick 2, obviously, so I hope that the manufacturing problems have been solved. But manufacturing problems were just the beginning for me...
See, one of the major reasons I decided to get a Sidekick was for the devkit. I wanted to be able to write little apps to use on the phone, so I could carry some notes and info around with me. I also wanted to be able to keep my address book on the phone in sync with the one on my desktop. That's not too much to ask, right? You can do that with most J2ME phones nowadays.
Well, apparently it is too much to ask. Practically from the day the original Sidekick was released, Danger promised that there would be sync software so you could keep your phone's data in sync with your desktop. From the day I got my phone to the day I cancelled the service on my second one, Danger never released any sync software, and the only way to get your data off your phone was to use their flimsy, slow, buggy web interface, and manually copy-and-paste information from the textboxes on the webpage - one address book entry at a time.
And the devkit, of course. I signed the NDA, etc. Installed the dev tools, read the docs, messed around. Even wrote a small program just to get the hang of things.
Then I discovered that the API was horrible. Vague/incorrect documentation, slow performance, and an obscene lack of basic features. It was well below the standard set by J2ME 1.0 (and that's saying a lot, considering that J2ME 1.0 is one of the worst APIs I've ever had the misfortune of using). The dev tools were flimsy as well. For example, the Hiptop and its development tools would crash when fed PNGs that didn't match its exact format specifications. Apparently Danger has never heard of libpng, because you had to make sure to feed every PNG file you created through pngcrush with a specific set of options before Danger's software would even touch it. Resources were also a pain. In J2ME, your app's resources are stored in a JAR file (basically a ZIP plus a manifest). You can store files of any type you wish in there, and easily load them up at runtime and read them. Not so with the Hiptop. All data, whether it be a string, an image, or an arbitrary block of bytes, had to have a unique integer identifier, and be compiled into a proprietary resource format by their horrible resource editor. Once it was compiled, you had to copy those identifier constants into your application somewhere, and use a switch statement or something to load up that data at runtime. Not only did this make hiptop development a pain, but it meant that it was extremely difficult to port J2ME applications to the Hiptop or develop an application for both platforms at once.
And of course, once you had your application written, the fun truly began. First you had to download a buggy, unsupported USB driver for
Actually, it wouldn't work on my box even when I registered the activex control. I know, because I tested the activex control by itself in VB and it couldn't find some moz components. YMMV, I guess.
Yeah, I remember that option. Funny, it never worked. I'm still not sure if it was Nullsoft's fault, or if moz embedding is just flaky. I can't really think of any apps I have that embed Gecko - it's all pretty much IE these days.
Wrong. I have automatic updates set to Ask Before Installing and it doesn't consider that a problem. It also detected my installation of AVG6 perfectly. I'm willing to bet Unreal2 and FarCry are fine too, and you just have a crappy computer loaded to the brim with spyware.
Prey is actually an interesting novel. The writing isn't as good as some of his previous novels, but from a technical perspective, I found it somewhat intriguing. It's barely plausible, like most sci-fi, but the elements that are plausible make you think.
If I remember correctly, the basic concept was that instead of trying to design algorithms for nanomachines, the programmers responsible for developing them just used a form of natural selection to 'evolve' an optimal algorithm. Of course, the problem was that because they didn't write the algorithm, they didn't fully understand it, so later on it turned out that it wasn't functioning as intended.
If you consider Windows CE running on portables as Windows, it's not so far-fetched. WinCE is getting a bit of a foothold in the cell phone and PDA markets, and it wouldn't suprise me to see cell phones and PDAs running fully-fledged OSes become more popular...
The one somewhat key difference here is that this application overlays a video feed from your webcam on the desktop, so that you can point at things on your screen, and the person on the other end sees you pointing at them.
However, that could probably still be done, using a hardware DirectDraw/Direct3D video overlay to draw the webcam feed over the desktop with reduced opacity or per-pixel alpha.
Because, of course, racism is not a problem anywhereelse.
The problem isn't just distinctions based on skin color, ancestry, religion, or anything else.
The problem is that people want to hate each other, and they will find any necessary excuse to do so. Skin color is just extremely convenient, because you can tell what color someone's skin is by looking at them. Even if you make it unacceptable to discriminate based on skin color, the root problem still exists. People want to hate. And they do.
The reason our country still has a problem with racism is because our people still want to hate. And instead of solving the root problem (hate), we're putting bandages on it by trying to eliminate the symptoms (racism, discrimination) with laws and manipulation.
I agree with your main point, but your statement about racism is just plain wrong. Racism isn't a disease you can cure with some sort of vaccine or magic treatment. People truly, deeply hate each other.
I rather like it, but that's because I used the Color Chooser (in Enhancements) to make it look less gaudy and blend in with my windows and winamp skins.
I don't see how the fact that the problems are in components makes it untrue that Linux (as a desktop OS with all the useful features it has) has problems. It does! All I see in this article is him pointing out some of those problems (even if they're ones that have been pointed out before), and saying that based on those problems he thinks Fedora Core 2 has serious issues. That doesn't mean the issues are specific to Fedora Core 2, but does that matter? So what, maybe Mandrake is just as broken as FC2, or Gentoo is just as broken. That doesn't make FC2 any less broken!
How is this software going to improve if nobody is willing to criticize it and point out flaws?
So if this 'idiot' (who wrote an article that was apparently good enough to get posted on Linux.com) doesn't like the software included in FC2, or finds it to be inadequate for his needs, that's his fault? It's not at all useful that he thinks that FC2 is missing some important features? Oh, right, the COMPONENTS.
So GNOME is innovating with 2.6. That's all well and good - I like some of the ideas, and I'm interested in trying it out. But how is it wrong for the guy not to like it? So he thinks it sucks - get over it! Just because he differs in opinion from you doesn't make him wrong.
So the dual boot problem isn't Fedora only - it still affects Fedora.
Almost all his 'fedora sucks' items are about component software because Linux is made up of component software. Unlike windows, a lot of the 'critical' and 'important' system components and software are written by people other than the authors of the OS. You don't have Fedora HTTPD and Fedora Explorer and Fedora Web Browser running on a Fedora system - you've probably got Apache, Nautilus, and Firefox/Mozilla running on it. So if the stock Fedora distribution comes with a broken version of Firefox, is that not a 'fedora problem'? Yes, it's not necessarily specific only to Fedora, but it affects fedora.
Slashdot Mirror
.NET is apparently safe, as according to the news.com.com article, MS already has a license for Kodak's patents.
Who else is on the hit list? Microsoft and Sun are out, since MS already apparently has a license for the patents, and Sun just paid them off...
Is Apple next? They have their own Java implementation, don't they? IBM and Ximian/Novell, perhaps, too? IBM's VM could be infringing, and so could Mono's VM... and that's just sticking in Java-ish territory. Who knows what else they can hit with such a broad patent.
I don't see what's ridiculous about performing regular restarts of a mission critical system. Would you rather have a a system that booted correctly this morning routing your flight, or one that booted correctly last year and may have its components functioning properly anymore? Do you think that people incapable of rebooting a computer every 30 days are going to perform regular maintenance and testing of electronic components? Do you think they're going to remember to fsck their disks every day?
I don't think so.
People like you would have us leave computer technology development in the hands of the government, too.
No thanks.
I still don't understand what purpose is served by having two NIC cards and a hub if they don't have computers to connect them to.
Yeah, I'm your average russian has 3 or 4 PCs sitting around plus the spare money for NIC cards and a router.
If someone doesn't have the money for a nice computer with a legit copy of WinXP Pro and all the other goodies, they probably don't have the money to run their own home LAN or the RAM/CPU power to run lots of demanding apps at once. I don't see how this is a bad idea. Sure, it's MS being manipulative, but look at it this way - less features means less security holes!
Well, hopefully it does...
99 buffer checks don't do you any good if one buffer is missing a check, and that one gets exploited.
That's what their compiler modifications are intended to help with, and from my experience, they help. I do agree that it should have been done sooner, though.
This is probably due to them recompiling a large number of libraries and system components with the buffer checking and other security features they added into the recent versions of Visual C++. If you ask me, it's worth it, just to know that my Windows box has a few less wide open holes to be exploited.
It definitely has proven its worth so far - I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the reason SP2 isn't vulnerable to that GDI+ JPEG exploit is that they recompiled GDI+ with buffer checks.
This sounds like good news to me. If this succeeds, it's just another nail in the coffin for RIAA and their overpriced, bullshit CDs. Hopefully once MS and Apple kill off the RIAA by burdening them with DRM and outcompeting them with online sales, I'll be able to get real music at decent prices without having to import it from russia.
Am I the only person who, when reading "yours would too if you were in his position", thought, 'Gee, thanks roblimo, I guess I am a sellout!'?
I don't see why being a CEO automatically means you must be dishonest with your customers. Is this some rule of economics that I haven't learned in school yet?
Just to add my voice to Saxton's, the Hiptop is probably one of the best all-in-one devices I've ever used. When it worked, it worked extremely well. The web browser was very well designed and made it a pleasure to browse most websites, as long as you had signal, and the AIM and Email functionality was more than adequate for conversations with friends and checking your inbox while you're on the go. The SMS was a bit weak, but honestly with AIM and Email I never needed to use it. The keyboard, in particular, made it a pleasure to type in notes or messages. I wrote entire short stories on the Hiptop's keyboard, and it was a pleasure. For someone who likes to write in particular, the Hiptop is excellent, because it allows you to have an efficient way to jot down an idea or note the moment you get an idea, and just slip the phone back in your pocket. No need to carry around a big notebook, and no forgetting great ideas.
I remember them switching manufacturers before, but it's good to hear that they've found a reputable company to manufacture their phones. If Sharp can't manufacture a solid cell-phone, I can't think of many other companies that could.
Good to see that you're still around, by the way. I remember you from the Hiptop boards. The hiptop Community was always one of the best parts of owning a Hiptop, and it's good to see that it's still going strong.
A while back when the first Sidekick came out, I bought one. Signed up for the one year contract with the $40/mo plan, with T-Mobile. Got the whole little kit - phone, camera, headset, etc. All was well. For a while.
You see, the manufacturers that Danger contracted to build the first sidekick sucked. They sucked bad. My first Sidekick's keyboard began to bail on me within months: a few keys became almost impossible to press and the E key stopped working entirely. Then the scroll wheel and Back button (yes, the BACK button) started to go out. So, I called up on the phone and spent a few days negotiating with T-Mobile's people to get a replacement. They were originally going to charge me $70 (gee, what a cheap price to replace a faulty product), but I convinced them to give me the replacement for free, since I wasn't the only person having problems.
So, anyway, fast forward a few weeks. I've got my replacement sidekick (by a new manufacturer), and all is well.
Not. The new one has dust inside the screen casing, and the Menu button has absolutely no resistance so it's possible to press it just by breathing on it.
I don't have any experience with the Color sidekick or the Sidekick 2, obviously, so I hope that the manufacturing problems have been solved. But manufacturing problems were just the beginning for me...
See, one of the major reasons I decided to get a Sidekick was for the devkit. I wanted to be able to write little apps to use on the phone, so I could carry some notes and info around with me. I also wanted to be able to keep my address book on the phone in sync with the one on my desktop. That's not too much to ask, right? You can do that with most J2ME phones nowadays.
Well, apparently it is too much to ask. Practically from the day the original Sidekick was released, Danger promised that there would be sync software so you could keep your phone's data in sync with your desktop. From the day I got my phone to the day I cancelled the service on my second one, Danger never released any sync software, and the only way to get your data off your phone was to use their flimsy, slow, buggy web interface, and manually copy-and-paste information from the textboxes on the webpage - one address book entry at a time.
And the devkit, of course. I signed the NDA, etc. Installed the dev tools, read the docs, messed around. Even wrote a small program just to get the hang of things.
Then I discovered that the API was horrible. Vague/incorrect documentation, slow performance, and an obscene lack of basic features. It was well below the standard set by J2ME 1.0 (and that's saying a lot, considering that J2ME 1.0 is one of the worst APIs I've ever had the misfortune of using). The dev tools were flimsy as well. For example, the Hiptop and its development tools would crash when fed PNGs that didn't match its exact format specifications. Apparently Danger has never heard of libpng, because you had to make sure to feed every PNG file you created through pngcrush with a specific set of options before Danger's software would even touch it.
Resources were also a pain. In J2ME, your app's resources are stored in a JAR file (basically a ZIP plus a manifest). You can store files of any type you wish in there, and easily load them up at runtime and read them. Not so with the Hiptop. All data, whether it be a string, an image, or an arbitrary block of bytes, had to have a unique integer identifier, and be compiled into a proprietary resource format by their horrible resource editor. Once it was compiled, you had to copy those identifier constants into your application somewhere, and use a switch statement or something to load up that data at runtime. Not only did this make hiptop development a pain, but it meant that it was extremely difficult to port J2ME applications to the Hiptop or develop an application for both platforms at once.
And of course, once you had your application written, the fun truly began. First you had to download a buggy, unsupported USB driver for
They're not members of a committee. They're delegates.
Actually, it wouldn't work on my box even when I registered the activex control. I know, because I tested the activex control by itself in VB and it couldn't find some moz components. YMMV, I guess.
Yeah, I remember that option. Funny, it never worked. I'm still not sure if it was Nullsoft's fault, or if moz embedding is just flaky. I can't really think of any apps I have that embed Gecko - it's all pretty much IE these days.
Wrong. I have automatic updates set to Ask Before Installing and it doesn't consider that a problem. It also detected my installation of AVG6 perfectly. I'm willing to bet Unreal2 and FarCry are fine too, and you just have a crappy computer loaded to the brim with spyware.
Prey is actually an interesting novel. The writing isn't as good as some of his previous novels, but from a technical perspective, I found it somewhat intriguing. It's barely plausible, like most sci-fi, but the elements that are plausible make you think.
If I remember correctly, the basic concept was that instead of trying to design algorithms for nanomachines, the programmers responsible for developing them just used a form of natural selection to 'evolve' an optimal algorithm. Of course, the problem was that because they didn't write the algorithm, they didn't fully understand it, so later on it turned out that it wasn't functioning as intended.
If you consider Windows CE running on portables as Windows, it's not so far-fetched. WinCE is getting a bit of a foothold in the cell phone and PDA markets, and it wouldn't suprise me to see cell phones and PDAs running fully-fledged OSes become more popular...
The one somewhat key difference here is that this application overlays a video feed from your webcam on the desktop, so that you can point at things on your screen, and the person on the other end sees you pointing at them.
However, that could probably still be done, using a hardware DirectDraw/Direct3D video overlay to draw the webcam feed over the desktop with reduced opacity or per-pixel alpha.
Yeah, let's forbid this technology because it might compromise our privacy.
Also, let's forbid P2P file sharing because it might allow people to download music and movies and games without paying for them.
*rolls eyes*
Because, of course, racism is not a problem anywhere else.
The problem isn't just distinctions based on skin color, ancestry, religion, or anything else.
The problem is that people want to hate each other, and they will find any necessary excuse to do so. Skin color is just extremely convenient, because you can tell what color someone's skin is by looking at them. Even if you make it unacceptable to discriminate based on skin color, the root problem still exists. People want to hate. And they do.
The reason our country still has a problem with racism is because our people still want to hate. And instead of solving the root problem (hate), we're putting bandages on it by trying to eliminate the symptoms (racism, discrimination) with laws and manipulation.
I agree with your main point, but your statement about racism is just plain wrong. Racism isn't a disease you can cure with some sort of vaccine or magic treatment. People truly, deeply hate each other.
I rather like it, but that's because I used the Color Chooser (in Enhancements) to make it look less gaudy and blend in with my windows and winamp skins.
I don't see how the fact that the problems are in components makes it untrue that Linux (as a desktop OS with all the useful features it has) has problems. It does! All I see in this article is him pointing out some of those problems (even if they're ones that have been pointed out before), and saying that based on those problems he thinks Fedora Core 2 has serious issues. That doesn't mean the issues are specific to Fedora Core 2, but does that matter? So what, maybe Mandrake is just as broken as FC2, or Gentoo is just as broken. That doesn't make FC2 any less broken!
How is this software going to improve if nobody is willing to criticize it and point out flaws?
So if this 'idiot' (who wrote an article that was apparently good enough to get posted on Linux.com) doesn't like the software included in FC2, or finds it to be inadequate for his needs, that's his fault? It's not at all useful that he thinks that FC2 is missing some important features? Oh, right, the COMPONENTS.
So GNOME is innovating with 2.6. That's all well and good - I like some of the ideas, and I'm interested in trying it out. But how is it wrong for the guy not to like it? So he thinks it sucks - get over it! Just because he differs in opinion from you doesn't make him wrong.
So the dual boot problem isn't Fedora only - it still affects Fedora.
Almost all his 'fedora sucks' items are about component software because Linux is made up of component software. Unlike windows, a lot of the 'critical' and 'important' system components and software are written by people other than the authors of the OS. You don't have Fedora HTTPD and Fedora Explorer and Fedora Web Browser running on a Fedora system - you've probably got Apache, Nautilus, and Firefox/Mozilla running on it. So if the stock Fedora distribution comes with a broken version of Firefox, is that not a 'fedora problem'? Yes, it's not necessarily specific only to Fedora, but it affects fedora.