Re:The IM world is a damn mess...
on
AOL vs. Trillian
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· Score: 2
There is a draft that IETF is working on with AOL. Read hear
Re:Some more points I didnt see mentioned:
on
AOL vs. Trillian
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· Score: 2
Last time I checked, AOL official clients are available in Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm, and Java client. The idea of the java client is that it could run wherever java is able to run. Give me an example of a OS that is out there that AOL does not have an official client for and also there is a third party client.
>Why does AOL have to "own" the protocol?
Because its their protocol and proprietary system. Its almost the same reason that drug companies get a legalized monopoly for the sale of a certain drug for x number of years. During this period, they could recoup the resources put into the research. AOL has put a lot of effort into developing AIM. By releasing it into the wild, they are diluting their profits.
And for that matter, why are all of these big ass companies so freakin greedy? Don't they know they are just holding back progress?
Like I said in my previous post. As a capitalist society the main goal of companies is profits. They are not there to make progress for the world. They are not there to spread wealth. A socialist society [in an ideal setting] guarantees that the wealth is equally spread and the goal of companies is to make progress. Look at social welfare in Canada and the social security system in the US. Canada guarantees everyone free medical coverage whereas the US is run by hefty insurance corporations.
AOL generates ad revenue on a per user basis, not on whether the ad actually made it to the client.
Not true. Advertising agencies take into account the number of active users. In addition, if an ad agency finds that less and less people are going to be using AIM (therefore less people actually viewing their ad), they would not pay as much. Think of it this way..there are going to be a couple million people watching TV on Super Bowl Sunday. Would you pay $1.5 million to advertise on PBS, who won't be showing the super bowl? That's the same logic in this case of Trillian vs AIM.
What trillian does is not illegal, otherwise AOL would have taken them to court (which they did not do with MS/ATT/Jabber/Odigo et al).
Again, another misconception. IANAL. AOL and AIM is a closed system. It is illegal for anybody or any group of people to intrude onto a closed system. AOL owns the servers, networks, etc to run this, why must they allow other people to use it for free? The reason they don't take them to court is 1) bad publicity. Anytime anybody is suing an underdog, it gets them bad publicity. Think of it this way, you and a couple million open source users would be pissed off at AOL if they were to sue Jabber (an open source IM client). They would be viewed as the RIAA of the IM world. 2) Litigations costs a lot of money and time. As a company (regardless of the size) time and money are two essential resources that can disappear rapidly. In the time that they put into this, something new might pop up and now their number 1 position fades to #3.
Reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is granted by law (see VCR).
There are already hacks available for AOL/ICQ et al that strip the ad or replace the ad space and AOL takes no action against them.
AOL has a choice of doing something against a rival or not. It is the same as a police officer letting some speeders go without giving them a ticket. For them to go after EVERYONE would turn them more and more into RIAA.
AOL lies and states that it's a security issue and accuse the competitor of "hacking" to attempt to turn public sentiment against the compititor. If it were "hacking", AOL would be able to call the police, file a lawsuit, or notify the FBI. Since this is not "hacking", in their modified sense of the word, then no law has been broken and AOL can do nothing but shuffle their protocol to attempt to block people out. This comes down to basic fraud.
"hacking" has a wide range of meanings. Again, I responded to the legal aspect above.
The ruling when AOL/Timewarner merged was that they could do so only if they opened their IM service. As far as I know, no timeline was put on that interoperability and therefore AOL could stall indefinitely. The makers of Trillian appear to just be helping we the consumer receive what the ruling had already requested, but in a significantly limited fashion (I.E. not true interoperability)
If this were true, Trillian could sue AOL. But instead of following the legal route, they are trying to do this through the backdoor. What you are saying is that Trillian is taking the law into their own hands. It is the same as shooting a thief instead of reporting it to the police.
AOL took no action against Trillian until it gained significant popularity. Only then did it become a "security concern". Meanwhile any client under a million users is not technically a "security concern". So any of you hackers out there who want to hack into AOL's service feel free to get 900,000 of your compatriots together and nail their system. If there are security concerns with AOL's AIM protocol then why do they suggest that it is the best and most secure and want it as a standard above all others? If there is a security concern with the use/implementation of that protocol why not simply plug the hole and be done with it? Why? Because they are lying about the security risk implemented by alternate clients.
The underlying fact is that, AIM belongs to AOL, they can choose who or what can use it. There is no law saying that any vendor must sell to everyone. The part about the security concern is this [my personal analysis] if I were to build a aim client put it out on the net for everyone to use, but hide a password sniffer in there, this creates a major vulnerability to the AOL system. Some AIM users are also AOL users. I could then access AOL using their account.
Why is it that no other im system has shut out Trillian? Because the rest of the IM systems/companies want interoperability and are working to that goal, only AOL remains apart from that venture because they are serving their own greed and monopolizing the IM market through preditory practices. AOL has the potential to make MS look like an amature when it comes to market predation.
Quite true...I agree with you on this fact.
If through my choice of clients I consume more resources than they gain from me then it's time for them to look at a different business model.
This is false. Any company can limit the amount of resources that you use. For example, there are FAP limits for cable modems and broadband. In addition, an "all you can eat" buffet is legally allowed to kick you out once you consume to much of their food (resources).
AOL does not want business relationships that will do nothing to further their capture of market share.
That is the exact definition of a business relationship. A company makes a business relationship so that it could make more money for itself. It's a fact. Companies aren't out there to save the world, companies sole purpose to to make a profit. This is a fact that a lot of times the people discussing business practices often miss. We often put ourselves in a idealized world where everyone helps out each other. In a capitalistic society that is not what the society is about. If you are looking for an environment where there is a fair sharing of profits where companies don't seek profits but to do some good, this is the socialist ideals at its core. Computer programmers and hackers alike from the very beginning have always been in a mindset of creating something for the shear joy of it and to help out the world. That is what drives many of us. In the past, there was very little profit to be made. Howerver, in the last couple of years, MBAs and marketting teams have taken over the industry. We are now subjected to their goals.
Now, again, I'm not bashing Trillian. I've been a long time trillian user. But it is hard to argue against facts of the law and facts of corporate/business world.
This has been done in a lot of small suburbs. There was one in Norway or something (I don't have the link). But I think this is the first time it's been done to this scale. Just so you know, this would not be possible to do in the US. There are far too many regulations preventing this from happening. In addition, telco companies would fight for this to never happen.
The requirements specify 4 PCI RAID controllers. Each of these could potentially handle 4 hard drives. I'm assuming that he's only putting 2 on each so that it doesn't come across the problem of accessing 2 drives on the same channel. In addition to this, there are 2 more on the motherboard, that I guess he isn't using. Secondly, these cards are bootable. So any one of them can be set to boot from and you can boot from any drive. But I don't think he is doing that because he has an additional 20 gig drive that I'm assuming is going on the motherboard. That is where the OS is going to be installed.
Re:Why pitch Wine as reason to switch?
on
Wired Talks Wine
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· Score: 2
Because of $$. A computer game company is there to make money. It is not there to revolutionize the world. Computer games costs a lot of money to produce. A "killer game" usually costs even more.
Re:No, it needs a better install package
on
Wired Talks Wine
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· Score: 2
Quite true, but if we look at the total population of computer users, how many of them actually install their own OS? 90-95% of computers are purchased from large computer corporations, with pre-installed OS's. Even in a corporate environment, the people installing OS's are the IT Dept. Installation is not the key aspect of the success of Linux, rather than compatibility and ease of use.
I personally feel securing and improving Linux native applications and breaking the corporate grip on the minds of average computer users (aka "I have to have Office 2010 to get any work done!") is far more important to real independence and change.
It is often quite hard to break consumers from that mentality. Part of the issue is that with every "update" to Office, there are very small incompatibility issues (such as bullets, smart quote, etc). If you're in a corporate environment and someone sends you a Word doc in Office 2010 and you can't open it, it could potentially cost you a client. Secondly, it's pretty much the same thing with game consoles. Game console owners must have and must get the latest and newest.
Re:Why not create a MS-Office rip-off?
on
Lindows Reviewed
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· Score: 2
The reason is simple: cost. Microsoft has put in years of time and effort to get Office to where it is now. For a small group to be able to start from scratch to compete with this will be rather difficult. In addition, if the new office does not function exactly like MS Office, millions of business users will not use it because they don't want to have to learn something new.
Secondly, StarOffice is probably the best able to catch up to MS Office, not necessarily to compete but to get a compatible software.
The problem with this is that the majority of the spam mailers do not belong to the DMA. They don't need to follow the rules under this organization. The ones that do belong to this typically (I didn't say always) have an easy opt out policy. Secondly, the corporate spammers have an entity that could be potentially held liable for spam whereas the individual spammers can move and hide easily.
At where I used to work, there was a annual "Document Day." Basically, it is used to 1) clean the office and get rid of junk 2) delete documents that have been over 12 months old or have already been dealt with. It may seem illegal, but this is common practice in large corporations and especially financial companies. We're not talking about shredding documents to hide evidence, but shredding documents so that it cannot be used against you at some point later on. Emails, that may seem quite innocent can later be turned around and used against you.
For example, let's just say that you had a friend working at a competitor company. One day you go out to lunch and plan this over email that you would wait for him in his lobby. Years later, you still have that email. Now your company is being sued for stealing proprietary technology from the other company and the people higher up claim that no employee of that company has ever entered the rival company. This email that you used to make plans could potentially be used against you and your company.
It's a crazy crazy world...
There was always a joke running around the office of how a technophobe manager would print out his emails so that he could shred them.:-)
Re:In case you dont know
on
Woz's New Startup
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you read the article, they tell you EXACTLY what he did:
Wozniak left Apple Computer (NasdaqNM:AAPL - news) in the early 1980s to organize rock festivals and several eccentric ``citizen detente'' ventures between the United States and the former Soviet Union. For the past decade his public activities have been mainly as a philanthropist backing art and science institutions and local Silicon Valley schools.
Im not trying to karma whore just trying to help -- uhhuh..:-)
Before everyone goes off an say that they will never pay for a search engine, please understand what Yahoo's plan is.
Yahoo isn't planning on charging for the searches that you do on its portal now, like the searches for the web pages. What they are offering for a fee is the stuff that you cannot find on any websites out there, where the publishers make them unavailable for free. Yahoo is moving towards the market that Lexis-Nexis is in now.
Many of you claim that this plan is unprofitable or nobody is going to pay for it. Think about this. Lexis Nexis charges $9/law review articles, $3/newspaper article, $4-12/SEC filings, or $129/week for Business news package. My school is paying into the 10K+ range for a site license per year.
I am in no way saying that what you heard might not be true, but read this analysis of it. I don't totally agree with their analysis, but it sure does make you think. According to them, no jets were scrambled until after the fact.
It doesn't say anywhere in the article that the permit for Arcades and the Permit for Internet Cafes are the same permits. If this is the case, than arcades are also required to kick all underage customers out by 8pm. Do you know this information for a fact?
what I meant was...do Arcades also need to get a permit? If not, why are internet cafes required to get a permit? If arcades are required to get a permit, why don't the same permit apply to Internet cafes?
How did government ever obtain to the right to tell me how to raise my kids?
There are a number of laws that deal with children and how they should be raised. The majority of these are to protect their health and development. There are laws that place a parent responsible if their child does not attend school. There are laws on physical and/or sexual abuse of a minor.
If I feel my kids are responsible enough to stay at an Internet cafe until 10pm or 11pm or 2am, they should be able to.
In that line of reasoning, a parent could also say that "I feel my son is reponsible enough to go into a bar and drink." or "I feel my daughter is responsible enough to drive after a six pack of beer"
First of all, I don't think the part you highlighted means what you think it means. Second of all, if you look at a number of laws and regulations, children and minors are often not afforded a good amount of the constitutional rights in exchange for laws to protect the minors.
Another side of the story that is very rarily reported is that in Taiwan at least, Internet Cafes have become a big industry targetting school children. One thing that they found in a number of these internet cafes which eventually lead to the shutdown of these cafes is that a number of them use the ventilation systems to pump high oxygen concentration and drugs into the air. Basically the increase oxygen leads the kids to have more energy and be more addictive, however, when they leave the cafe, into normal air, they become all sluggish, making them want to return to the cafe again. The vaporized drugs leads the customers to develop an "addiction" and make them want to return or spend more time there. Often kids stay at these internet cafes for days on end.
There had also been rumors that during the early years of Las Vegas, the casinos pumped higher oxygen level air into the casinos so that the people don't get tired and leave.
(B) CNN Interactive contains copyrighted material, trademarks and other proprietary information, including, but not limited to, text, software, photos, video, graphics, music and sound, and the entire contents of CNN Interactive are copyrighted as a collective work under the United States copyright laws. CNN owns a copyright in the selection, coordination, arrangement and enhancement of such content, as well as in the content original to it.
Subscriber may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works, or in any way exploit, any of the content, in whole or in part. Subscriber may download copyrighted material for Subscriber's personal use only. Except as otherwise expressly permitted under copyright law, no copying, redistribution, retransmission, publication or commercial exploitation of downloaded material will be permitted without the express permission of CNN and the copyright owner. In the event of any permitted copying, redistribution or publication of copyrighted material, no changes in or deletion of author attribution, trademark legend or copyright notice shall be made. Subscriber acknowledges that it does not acquire any ownership rights by downloading copyrighted material.
I'm sure CNN isn't the only site that has this type of Policy.
If they ever do get sued and are held liable for these copyrighted materials, it would be at a major lost to the global community. The internet is a part of our history and has a history of its own.
Internet cafe has now turned into a modern day, high tech arcade. They should not have to do anything different from a arcade owner. If an arcade owner has to apply for a license, so should internet cafe. If an arcade has to abide by a certain regulation, so should the internet cafe. However, extra burden should not be place on the internet cafe because it is modern and may seem different.
That's what I find troubling with a lot of new regulations coming out. There are a number of prior laws that could be used to cover the computer industry but they often make new laws specifically targetted at it. Remember, computers are only another tool.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a draft that IETF is working on with AOL. Read hear
Last time I checked, AOL official clients are available in Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm, and Java client. The idea of the java client is that it could run wherever java is able to run. Give me an example of a OS that is out there that AOL does not have an official client for and also there is a third party client.
Because its their protocol and proprietary system. Its almost the same reason that drug companies get a legalized monopoly for the sale of a certain drug for x number of years. During this period, they could recoup the resources put into the research. AOL has put a lot of effort into developing AIM. By releasing it into the wild, they are diluting their profits. Like I said in my previous post. As a capitalist society the main goal of companies is profits. They are not there to make progress for the world. They are not there to spread wealth. A socialist society [in an ideal setting] guarantees that the wealth is equally spread and the goal of companies is to make progress. Look at social welfare in Canada and the social security system in the US. Canada guarantees everyone free medical coverage whereas the US is run by hefty insurance corporations.
Not true. Advertising agencies take into account the number of active users. In addition, if an ad agency finds that less and less people are going to be using AIM (therefore less people actually viewing their ad), they would not pay as much. Think of it this way..there are going to be a couple million people watching TV on Super Bowl Sunday. Would you pay $1.5 million to advertise on PBS, who won't be showing the super bowl? That's the same logic in this case of Trillian vs AIM.
Again, another misconception. IANAL. AOL and AIM is a closed system. It is illegal for anybody or any group of people to intrude onto a closed system. AOL owns the servers, networks, etc to run this, why must they allow other people to use it for free? The reason they don't take them to court is 1) bad publicity. Anytime anybody is suing an underdog, it gets them bad publicity. Think of it this way, you and a couple million open source users would be pissed off at AOL if they were to sue Jabber (an open source IM client). They would be viewed as the RIAA of the IM world. 2) Litigations costs a lot of money and time. As a company (regardless of the size) time and money are two essential resources that can disappear rapidly. In the time that they put into this, something new might pop up and now their number 1 position fades to #3.
Again another falsehood. Under DMCA, reverse engineering a system is illegal. Look at Sony vs Modchip or Reverse Engineer of Adobe PDF or Sony Aibo vs Hackers or the DVD decryption... All of these were reverse engineering for interoperability.
AOL has a choice of doing something against a rival or not. It is the same as a police officer letting some speeders go without giving them a ticket. For them to go after EVERYONE would turn them more and more into RIAA.
"hacking" has a wide range of meanings. Again, I responded to the legal aspect above.
If this were true, Trillian could sue AOL. But instead of following the legal route, they are trying to do this through the backdoor. What you are saying is that Trillian is taking the law into their own hands. It is the same as shooting a thief instead of reporting it to the police.
The underlying fact is that, AIM belongs to AOL, they can choose who or what can use it. There is no law saying that any vendor must sell to everyone. The part about the security concern is this [my personal analysis] if I were to build a aim client put it out on the net for everyone to use, but hide a password sniffer in there, this creates a major vulnerability to the AOL system. Some AIM users are also AOL users. I could then access AOL using their account.
Quite true...I agree with you on this fact.
This is false. Any company can limit the amount of resources that you use. For example, there are FAP limits for cable modems and broadband. In addition, an "all you can eat" buffet is legally allowed to kick you out once you consume to much of their food (resources).
That is the exact definition of a business relationship. A company makes a business relationship so that it could make more money for itself. It's a fact. Companies aren't out there to save the world, companies sole purpose to to make a profit. This is a fact that a lot of times the people discussing business practices often miss. We often put ourselves in a idealized world where everyone helps out each other. In a capitalistic society that is not what the society is about. If you are looking for an environment where there is a fair sharing of profits where companies don't seek profits but to do some good, this is the socialist ideals at its core. Computer programmers and hackers alike from the very beginning have always been in a mindset of creating something for the shear joy of it and to help out the world. That is what drives many of us. In the past, there was very little profit to be made. Howerver, in the last couple of years, MBAs and marketting teams have taken over the industry. We are now subjected to their goals.
Now, again, I'm not bashing Trillian. I've been a long time trillian user. But it is hard to argue against facts of the law and facts of corporate/business world.
This has been done in a lot of small suburbs. There was one in Norway or something (I don't have the link). But I think this is the first time it's been done to this scale. Just so you know, this would not be possible to do in the US. There are far too many regulations preventing this from happening. In addition, telco companies would fight for this to never happen.
The requirements specify 4 PCI RAID controllers. Each of these could potentially handle 4 hard drives. I'm assuming that he's only putting 2 on each so that it doesn't come across the problem of accessing 2 drives on the same channel. In addition to this, there are 2 more on the motherboard, that I guess he isn't using. Secondly, these cards are bootable. So any one of them can be set to boot from and you can boot from any drive. But I don't think he is doing that because he has an additional 20 gig drive that I'm assuming is going on the motherboard. That is where the OS is going to be installed.
Go here for the datasheet
Because of $$. A computer game company is there to make money. It is not there to revolutionize the world. Computer games costs a lot of money to produce. A "killer game" usually costs even more.
Quite true, but if we look at the total population of computer users, how many of them actually install their own OS? 90-95% of computers are purchased from large computer corporations, with pre-installed OS's. Even in a corporate environment, the people installing OS's are the IT Dept. Installation is not the key aspect of the success of Linux, rather than compatibility and ease of use.
I personally feel securing and improving Linux native applications and breaking the corporate grip on the minds of average computer users (aka "I have to have Office 2010 to get any work done!") is far more important to real independence and change.
It is often quite hard to break consumers from that mentality. Part of the issue is that with every "update" to Office, there are very small incompatibility issues (such as bullets, smart quote, etc). If you're in a corporate environment and someone sends you a Word doc in Office 2010 and you can't open it, it could potentially cost you a client. Secondly, it's pretty much the same thing with game consoles. Game console owners must have and must get the latest and newest.
The reason is simple: cost. Microsoft has put in years of time and effort to get Office to where it is now. For a small group to be able to start from scratch to compete with this will be rather difficult. In addition, if the new office does not function exactly like MS Office, millions of business users will not use it because they don't want to have to learn something new.
Secondly, StarOffice is probably the best able to catch up to MS Office, not necessarily to compete but to get a compatible software.
The problem with this is that the majority of the spam mailers do not belong to the DMA. They don't need to follow the rules under this organization. The ones that do belong to this typically (I didn't say always) have an easy opt out policy. Secondly, the corporate spammers have an entity that could be potentially held liable for spam whereas the individual spammers can move and hide easily.
At where I used to work, there was a annual "Document Day." Basically, it is used to 1) clean the office and get rid of junk 2) delete documents that have been over 12 months old or have already been dealt with. It may seem illegal, but this is common practice in large corporations and especially financial companies. We're not talking about shredding documents to hide evidence, but shredding documents so that it cannot be used against you at some point later on. Emails, that may seem quite innocent can later be turned around and used against you.
:-)
For example, let's just say that you had a friend working at a competitor company. One day you go out to lunch and plan this over email that you would wait for him in his lobby. Years later, you still have that email. Now your company is being sued for stealing proprietary technology from the other company and the people higher up claim that no employee of that company has ever entered the rival company. This email that you used to make plans could potentially be used against you and your company.
It's a crazy crazy world...
There was always a joke running around the office of how a technophobe manager would print out his emails so that he could shred them.
Sorry, didn't mean to be harsh.. Was just trying to be informative .. and lighten the seriousness and stuff..
:-)
BTW: Let's end this post..
Here is the pricing schedule for Lexis-Nexis
Before everyone goes off an say that they will never pay for a search engine, please understand what Yahoo's plan is.
Yahoo isn't planning on charging for the searches that you do on its portal now, like the searches for the web pages. What they are offering for a fee is the stuff that you cannot find on any websites out there, where the publishers make them unavailable for free. Yahoo is moving towards the market that Lexis-Nexis is in now.
Many of you claim that this plan is unprofitable or nobody is going to pay for it. Think about this. Lexis Nexis charges $9/law review articles, $3/newspaper article, $4-12/SEC filings, or $129/week for Business news package. My school is paying into the 10K+ range for a site license per year.
This is definitely a highly profitable area.
I am in no way saying that what you heard might not be true, but read this analysis of it. I don't totally agree with their analysis, but it sure does make you think. According to them, no jets were scrambled until after the fact.
Make your own decision...
Yahoo does not own Google. They only license Google's search results for web searches.
It doesn't say anywhere in the article that the permit for Arcades and the Permit for Internet Cafes are the same permits. If this is the case, than arcades are also required to kick all underage customers out by 8pm. Do you know this information for a fact?
what I meant was...do Arcades also need to get a permit? If not, why are internet cafes required to get a permit? If arcades are required to get a permit, why don't the same permit apply to Internet cafes?
There are a number of laws that deal with children and how they should be raised. The majority of these are to protect their health and development. There are laws that place a parent responsible if their child does not attend school. There are laws on physical and/or sexual abuse of a minor.
In that line of reasoning, a parent could also say that "I feel my son is reponsible enough to go into a bar and drink." or "I feel my daughter is responsible enough to drive after a six pack of beer"
First of all, I don't think the part you highlighted means what you think it means. Second of all, if you look at a number of laws and regulations, children and minors are often not afforded a good amount of the constitutional rights in exchange for laws to protect the minors.
Another side of the story that is very rarily reported is that in Taiwan at least, Internet Cafes have become a big industry targetting school children. One thing that they found in a number of these internet cafes which eventually lead to the shutdown of these cafes is that a number of them use the ventilation systems to pump high oxygen concentration and drugs into the air. Basically the increase oxygen leads the kids to have more energy and be more addictive, however, when they leave the cafe, into normal air, they become all sluggish, making them want to return to the cafe again. The vaporized drugs leads the customers to develop an "addiction" and make them want to return or spend more time there. Often kids stay at these internet cafes for days on end.
There had also been rumors that during the early years of Las Vegas, the casinos pumped higher oxygen level air into the casinos so that the people don't get tired and leave.
For example, I took the Term of Use Agreement from CNN.com:
I'm sure CNN isn't the only site that has this type of Policy.
If they ever do get sued and are held liable for these copyrighted materials, it would be at a major lost to the global community. The internet is a part of our history and has a history of its own.
Internet cafe has now turned into a modern day, high tech arcade. They should not have to do anything different from a arcade owner. If an arcade owner has to apply for a license, so should internet cafe. If an arcade has to abide by a certain regulation, so should the internet cafe. However, extra burden should not be place on the internet cafe because it is modern and may seem different.
That's what I find troubling with a lot of new regulations coming out. There are a number of prior laws that could be used to cover the computer industry but they often make new laws specifically targetted at it. Remember, computers are only another tool.