1) I'm an owner of a web design firm, and let me tell you, Microsoft screwing with CSS, HTML etc is a MAJOR problem that affects more than just web designers.
The only fair way to approach the problem is to compare the world with and without this tactic. We know what it is with this tactic (spend a few minutes surfing the net, or a few hours designing a site and trying to get it to look right in the different browsers).
If Microsoft played nice with the other children, CSS would be a far more powerful standard, reducing filesizes and load times for all, the energy and time wasted screwing with Microsoft could be spent on more productive things, I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this comment, and new and exciting features could be created as part of the open standard.
Instead we have to settle with what we have, a bunch of half broken, half implemented standards.
And this is just CSS, the problem is just as bad with JavaScript & worse with XML. And no, 99.9% of the sites do not work correctly in Firefox (and it's not because Firefox isn't a good browser, because it's a great browser). I still need to open IE daily for sites with broken JavaScript or pages that only partially render.
Open standards benefit everyone. Period.
2) I read your entire linked post, and can see why the decision makes sense for OEM's. It's a no-brainer for them. But it is a clear case of Microsoft abusing their monopoly status to crush the little guys. Is Microsoft threatened by Linux? You bet. Do they want Dell shipping servers with Red Hat on them? No way.
And the difference between market domination and a monopoly are that one can be abused, the other cannot.
Ford does not have the leverage to go to the gas stations and demand they only sell Ford compatible gas. But that is exactly what Microsoft does, and gets away with in the computer industry. (Ford doesn't have the same type of market dominance as Microsoft. Few do. That is the point.)
3) Bundling is just another abuse of monopoly power and it isn't good for consumers. Microsoft constantly and consistently tries to keep consumers dumb, and they succeed. 90% of the desktops out there don't show file extensions, this is bad for consumers (think virus's, in particular) and good for Microsoft (no one knows what a.doc file is, they just know it has a big blue W on it).
I don't want to force open source on people anymore than I want Microsoft jammed down my throat. I should have the right to buy a Dell computer with nothing on it, if I so choose. That isn't (or at least hasn't been) the case.
But there have been a number of instances in which company A meets with Microsoft about Microsoft licensing company A's new technology, only to have Microsoft either just plain come out with the exact same thing 2 months later, or threaten to do so if company A doesn't sell at a ridiculously low price.
In that case, your only choice is get what you can out of the company and move on, or fight a (usually) losing battle in court against a heavily funded beheamoth with more lawyers that the District of Columbia.
There have been a number of small companies fight back (and some have won), and for that they have my respect. But I can't blame the others for selling out.
But no, I have no problem with a legitimate buy-out.
I don't think it is the same "Micro$oft Sux!" banter we hear so much from us Linux zealots. At least it was not intended in that spirit.
I admire what Microsoft has accomplished technologically. XP really is a good operating system, especially considering how young 32 bit GUI operating systems are in the scheme of things.
My point is not what Microsoft has accomplished, but how they've gone about it.
Take for instance their efforts to keep IE on top of the mountain:
1) With CSS they released their own buggy variant of the code, with carefully chosen deviations from the open standard, knowing full well that 90% of websites would be developed to their munged standard instead of the actual open CSS specification. The result they were after? When someone looks at a site in another browser, it mysteriously doesn't render right. "This browser sucks!", they say, as they go back to IE.
Similar tactics were used with HTML, JavaScript, JAVA, XML, and a host of others. Microsoft knows exactly what they are doing in this arena, and it is dirty pool!
2) Using their monopoly status to strongarm computer manufacturers to put IE and only IE on the desktop. Imagine if Microsoft no longer allowed Dell to ship Microsoft OS's on their computers. So, of course, Dell MUST comply, or wither and die on the vine. It took the feds stepping in to sort of stop this particular instance, but they same type of tactics are used against the computer manufacturers continually to meet Microsofts objectives.
3) Claiming IE must be part of the OS and can't be removed. This is a load of crap tantamount to perjury. I have standalone versions of IE 6, 5.5, and 5 that all run independantly on my XP just fine.
Over and over again Microsoft has shown they'll play dirty pool doing whatever they can get away with, very well orchestrated and thought out (as in the case of CSS), unless they are forced by more than an act of congress.
Everyone loses except Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft deserves our appreciation for creating the digital world we have today, but a world of open standards is far preferred from here on out. And Microsoft won't take that future lying down. They'll just plain take the future by lying (and cheating, and stealing, and strongarming, and...).
Too true. That is funny, thanks for pointing that out.
Speaking of irony, you've worked for Microsoft in the past and may in the future, and yet your sig is "It's not what you live, but how you live it.".
In light of the current topic it should be: "It's not what your business is, but how you conduct it." How Microsoft conducts themselves (see my other posts in this thread) is my only complaint. Technologically (except for murdering and munging standards) they are a great company.
1) Don't kid yourself, Bill never spent any time starving in a basement doing development. Grandpa Gates and all his grandkids, Bill included, have always had plenty to go around. Bills education was handed to him on a silver platter, and his success (which he deserves, he is a shrewd business man with an eye for opportunity) owes it's existence to that fact.
And if you review a little Micro-Soft history (hyphen intentional) you'll see that control has always been an underlying factor in their decisions and actions. Bill certainly never said it's about being open, even when the entire software industry was open.
2) Red Hat, SUSE, and Intel to name a few. Intel? Yes, Intel supports many open standards and by and large I'd say they "play by the rules". Are the agressive at business? Absolutely. But does that mean they sabotage open standards (like Microsoft repeatedly does to CSS) to ensure their success? No, they don't.
Make no mistake, the current IT environment (except for open source) is just how Microsoft wants it. They continually do things to keep consumers stupid (like hiding file extensions by default, still! All that does is ensure that everyone and their dog clicks on hot_sex.jpg.exe and gets the latest virus, but it keeps consumers stupid, just the way Microsoft likes it). They continually do things to break standards, knowing that 90% of websites will be designed to Microsofts munged versions of the standard and look great in IE, but somehow not render right in other browsers.
There's plenty more, but it's getting late and you don't want to hear it anyway...
Actually I'm the president of a company that has used open source profitably for over 5 years, and it does pay the bills. Very nicely in fact.
Thanks goes to the developers of Linux, Apache, MySQL (and other databases), PHP, and others.
And yes, I want my company to make money, which it does. But there are more important things than that, and there are plenty of profitable companies (open source or otherwise) to prove that money can be made hand over fist without resorting to Microsofts tactics.
when the governments of the world learn that this is how capitalism works.
I disagree.
There are plenty of companies in the IT world that play fair, work together to form open protocols for the greater good, and don't stoop to what amounts to sabotage (think of how Microsoft has bastardized CSS to protect IE's market dominance) to increase their straglehold on the market.
I'm all for capitalization, but Microsoft doesn't play by any of the rules, written or otherwise, unless they are forced to or it meets their objectives.
When will the governments of the world learn that Microsoft WILL do absolutely anything it can to achieve and maintain market dominance.
Microsoft's objective hasn't changed since day 1: control.
Microsoft would much rather control a broken protocol than use or contribute to an open one.
Microsoft would rather squash or buy out competitors instead of compete on a level playing field.
The only 2 things that can change this behavior are Open Source and government restrictions, in that order. (Increased public awareness and understanding is considered part of Open Source.)
uhm all of things you listed were improvements on already already concieved ideas
And what part of secure, spam-free email hasn't already been conceived? The community at large has discussed it to death, and there are little snippets of the solution here and there. All I'm asking for is a new RFC, globally adopted, that incorporates them all as a new standard, not necessarily a new protocol (there is a huge difference).
The protocol doesn't need to be completely new and different (I never said it did), in fact I'm perfectly happy with it building upon SMTP as long as it meets the objectives I already stated, AND is easy enough for grandma to use and has global deployment.
The very thing that makes email so usable is that everyone has it.
And the very thing that is killing email (and email IS dying for all but casual users, and spam will catch up with them as well) is that there are dozens of different clients and different servers conforming to different versions of the same RFC to different degrees of conformity.
What you end up with is a mess that is WIDE open for spam, content sniffing, password sniffing, and forgery.
And that is the very thing you defend to the death as being good enough.
Well lots of things have been good enough (I listed a LOT), but I'm glad someone had the balls to improve upon them and standardize on them.
Imagine if you have to find a Ford gas station to fill up your Ford car. Widely deployed, consistent standards (like unleaded gasoline) are a Good Thing. I'm not asking for anything but that.
Why not just stick with the telegraph & wagons, they worked just fine? They were both flexible and extensible?
Or why ever invent mountain bikes, when a road bike with bigger tires would work good enough?
For that matter, what was wrong with the 2.4 kernel? Moving to 2.6 is breaking some of my packages that already work?
Why move to MPEG4, MPEG2 worked just fine?
MP3? What was wrong with wav files?
Why create the internet with browsers? I love my BBS?
Flat Panels? What was wrong with CRT's? Speaking of which, where did all the PCI video cards go?
CSS? HTML already did all that, just differently.
And speaking of phones, do you honestly think we'll be using analog over copper forever? Or should we leave good enough alone, just because it's been that way for so long, and works?
I suppose NASA should just stick with the shuttle fleet because it works? And instead of the Rovers we should have remade Voyager and sent it to Mars instead?
Why the attachment to SMTP when all else changes?
The internet is growing really, really fast. Change will happen. We should welcome it. And if it increases security and decreases spam, I'd welcome it today.
So grandma's just supposed to download stunnel and whip up a tunnel so she can check her email without broadcasting her password to the world?
And while she's at it, I'm sure she'll download OpenPGP and drop in some encryption. Heck, maybe she'll learn perl or C and whip up a few extensions of her own!
I'm not saying the solutions don't exist, I'm saying they only exist in forms that only 5% of the population can easily take advantage of.
The new SMTP should offer at least the following, off the shelf:
1. Encrypted authentication period (zero support for plain text) 2. Encrypted messages / attachments 3. Protection against forged headers 4. Verified sender
There are more, but those 4 would make email useful again. I'm webmaster for dozens of domains, and get over 1,300 spams a day which I filter quite well, but you still get false positives which are unacceptable in the business world.
The current SMTP for the average user is lacking in many ways, and the only way to fix the problem for the average user is to, well, fix the problem. Once and for all. Globally. Simultaneously.
Yes, the possibilities are endless. That is part of the problem. They are so endless that none of them get done or widely implemented.
SMTP Auth & secure login methods have never caught on, because everyone puts their own bandaid on SMTP. It is a standard without standards.
What percentage of SMTP logins (to check email) do you think are secure (either the contents or the authentication)? I'd bet it's lower than 5%. As it is, there is nothing in the even remotely near future that will change that.
And as a sysadmin the whole thing ~feels~ like it's held together with bubblegum and duct tape. I tried to get Postfix (which is a great MTA) to work with some form of secure authentication and finally gave up.
Yes, SMTP ~works~. But that doesn't mean 1 year dedicated to a replacement can't give us the same advances that would take 10 years of hacks and hooks.
Email doesn't need more bandaids and half-@ssed fixes, we need a ground-up rewrite that replaces SMTP.
It would be a very easy thing for the standards bodies to hash out the best SMTP replacement in 90 days (we've been talking about all of the changes for years, just decide already and take action!) and then announce to the world: "On January 1st, 2005 all SMTP email will be phased out in a 90 day transition period. It will be replaced by [acronym], which will prevent spam in it's various forms".
Anything short of this is a hack that will enjoy only very limited success and only prolong the inevitable.
There is far more wrong with email than just spam, and the protocol is showing it's age. A lot has happened in 20 years (not to mention the last 5 in particular), and it is time for complete replacement (that doesn't involve me paying money for email stamps...).
With one exception I have no problem with this post. In the past other hobbies and entire industries have fallen to "progress", and it will happen in the future.
However, in the case of hurricanes, earthquakes, etc a major form of communication is amateur radio. If those airwaves are messed up by interference, we lose that blessing.
I'd say the responsibility belongs with those bringing about Internet over powerlines to come up with a solution to stepping on so many frequencies.
A solution may not be cheap or easy, but it is absolutely necessary if they want to continue.
I bought a used 2001 Silverado 4 x 4 in October and really liked it.
Then I bought my wife a new Ford F-150 SuperCrew, and now I hate my Chevy. Those new F-150's (and all of the nicer newest generation Ford's) are incredible!
The active suspension is great, and the whole truck just seems ~intelligent~, where my Chevy is just a dumb truck.
The turning radius on the F-150 makes the Chevy feel like you're turning around an aircraft carrier in a small river (no, I've never turned around an aircraft carrier in a small river. Just a big one...).
So here's to getting my wife whatever she wants this summer so I can have the F-150!
I attribute my success (6 figures last year working at home in pajama and tiger slippers when I want to) to blessings from keeping this (and the other) commandment to the best of my ability.
My week consistently goes better when I have taken off Sunday and spent it as a day of rest and reflection (accept for Alias at 8 PM...).
I was once doing a contract for a company in Taiwan, and had spent 3 days trying to wrap my head around a nasty piece of recursive code, with no success. Sunday had rolled around and I needed that portion of the project due and ready to demo on Tuesday morning.
I had the choice between going to a church meeting that night or working. After a struggle I chose the meeting. And right in the middle of the meeting my head literally filled up with line upon line of code. I took notes as fast as I could for about 3 minutes.
The next morning I used the code in my project, as I had written and understood it the previous night, and it ran perfectly the first time! That was 3 years ago and I still look back to that experience as a source of strength.
Our country (and all) would be a far better place if we kept our promises to the Lord, honored the sabbath, and weren't so quick to kick God out of our schools, government, and everyday lives.
I honestly feel that it broke God's heart to turn his head on September 11th and allow our enemies to humble us. But that is exactly what we, as a nation, had asked Him repeatedly to do: Leave us alone.
And it breaks my heart how little we, as a nation, learned from that experience, and how quickly we forget.
I should have been more clear that I wasn't referring to my ability to get a job with my skillset. In fact, I hope I never have to apply for a job again.
I was referring to those that are self-employed and have clients, and the lack of importance ~most~ clients place on certifications and degrees.
Granted my average contract is only $20,000 - $45,000, so I'm dealing with clients that are used to dealing with individuals rather than larger shops or corporations.
But I reaffirm that it has worked well for me, and I wouldn't choose it any other way.
Would I recommend it for others? That depends on what they want.
I spent 5 years of REALLY long hours with almost zero vacations or "days off", except Sundays which I always take off. It took this long to really get up to speed and refine my technical & business skills.
Now, however, I have plenty of work and projects of my own, I get to work from home and love it, I get to pick the projects I work on, and I set my own hours.
Not everyone is made to work for themselves. I couldn't and won't have it any other way.
I am both self-taught and self-employed, and I have never once had a client ask me about my college degree (I don't have one, by choice), certifications, grades, diplomas, or anything else related.
When I managed a computer store and someone came in who was A+ certified, it was almost a strike against them. I found repeatedly that the technicians that were self-taught were far better at maintaining their skills in a rapidly changing environment.
I place zero value in any of these certifications.
It really makes me mad when people get away with crap like this. This man defrauds investors over and over and over, and gets away with it in full public view.
Martha Stewart acts on a tip from her investor and dumps her stock and she'll likely go to prison and lose it all after being dragged through a lengthy federal process.
This idiot, on the other hand, really defrauds people again and again for millions of dollars, and does so blatantly while bragging about the size of his house (among other things, I'm sure) and walks away scott-free.
That is him selling the house to a relative or associate for $100, to protect the house from litigation and bankrupcy.
That way, when his virtual house of cards comes falling down, which it will, he still has a physical house to go back to.
Dishonest people filing for bankrupcy (which accounts for about 98% of bankrupcies) often transfer assets into the names of their children, etc to avoid losing them.
OK, maybe the computer itself is a little further down the road, and the LCD monitor is somewhere in between, but perhaps you'd like to place a wager on the rest:
Actually, wireless power may not be that far away, at least in the future I envision...
They have a number of medical devices that get embedded in a persons arm, leg, chest, etc that are charged by induction rather than a direct connection.
It is a safe way of powering devices. One example is an artificial heart or kidney (can't remember) that is recharged by putting on a cuff like a blood pressure cuff for 30 minutes per day.
Now the application for nerds:
I envision a desk with an induction plate just below the formica on the desktop. Your wireless keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, PDA, phone, cell phone, iPod, etc can all be powered by induction.
It's safe, wireless, fairly efficient, and available today.
Slashdot Mirror
1) I'm an owner of a web design firm, and let me tell you, Microsoft screwing with CSS, HTML etc is a MAJOR problem that affects more than just web designers.
.doc file is, they just know it has a big blue W on it).
The only fair way to approach the problem is to compare the world with and without this tactic. We know what it is with this tactic (spend a few minutes surfing the net, or a few hours designing a site and trying to get it to look right in the different browsers).
If Microsoft played nice with the other children, CSS would be a far more powerful standard, reducing filesizes and load times for all, the energy and time wasted screwing with Microsoft could be spent on more productive things, I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this comment, and new and exciting features could be created as part of the open standard.
Instead we have to settle with what we have, a bunch of half broken, half implemented standards.
And this is just CSS, the problem is just as bad with JavaScript & worse with XML. And no, 99.9% of the sites do not work correctly in Firefox (and it's not because Firefox isn't a good browser, because it's a great browser). I still need to open IE daily for sites with broken JavaScript or pages that only partially render.
Open standards benefit everyone. Period.
2) I read your entire linked post, and can see why the decision makes sense for OEM's. It's a no-brainer for them. But it is a clear case of Microsoft abusing their monopoly status to crush the little guys. Is Microsoft threatened by Linux? You bet. Do they want Dell shipping servers with Red Hat on them? No way.
And the difference between market domination and a monopoly are that one can be abused, the other cannot.
Ford does not have the leverage to go to the gas stations and demand they only sell Ford compatible gas. But that is exactly what Microsoft does, and gets away with in the computer industry. (Ford doesn't have the same type of market dominance as Microsoft. Few do. That is the point.)
3) Bundling is just another abuse of monopoly power and it isn't good for consumers. Microsoft constantly and consistently tries to keep consumers dumb, and they succeed. 90% of the desktops out there don't show file extensions, this is bad for consumers (think virus's, in particular) and good for Microsoft (no one knows what a
I don't want to force open source on people anymore than I want Microsoft jammed down my throat. I should have the right to buy a Dell computer with nothing on it, if I so choose. That isn't (or at least hasn't been) the case.
Here's to the future! May it be open.
Buy-outs on the up and up I have no problem with.
But there have been a number of instances in which company A meets with Microsoft about Microsoft licensing company A's new technology, only to have Microsoft either just plain come out with the exact same thing 2 months later, or threaten to do so if company A doesn't sell at a ridiculously low price.
In that case, your only choice is get what you can out of the company and move on, or fight a (usually) losing battle in court against a heavily funded beheamoth with more lawyers that the District of Columbia.
There have been a number of small companies fight back (and some have won), and for that they have my respect. But I can't blame the others for selling out.
But no, I have no problem with a legitimate buy-out.
I don't think it is the same "Micro$oft Sux!" banter we hear so much from us Linux zealots. At least it was not intended in that spirit.
I admire what Microsoft has accomplished technologically. XP really is a good operating system, especially considering how young 32 bit GUI operating systems are in the scheme of things.
My point is not what Microsoft has accomplished, but how they've gone about it.
Take for instance their efforts to keep IE on top of the mountain:
1) With CSS they released their own buggy variant of the code, with carefully chosen deviations from the open standard, knowing full well that 90% of websites would be developed to their munged standard instead of the actual open CSS specification. The result they were after? When someone looks at a site in another browser, it mysteriously doesn't render right. "This browser sucks!", they say, as they go back to IE.
Similar tactics were used with HTML, JavaScript, JAVA, XML, and a host of others. Microsoft knows exactly what they are doing in this arena, and it is dirty pool!
2) Using their monopoly status to strongarm computer manufacturers to put IE and only IE on the desktop. Imagine if Microsoft no longer allowed Dell to ship Microsoft OS's on their computers. So, of course, Dell MUST comply, or wither and die on the vine. It took the feds stepping in to sort of stop this particular instance, but they same type of tactics are used against the computer manufacturers continually to meet Microsofts objectives.
3) Claiming IE must be part of the OS and can't be removed. This is a load of crap tantamount to perjury. I have standalone versions of IE 6, 5.5, and 5 that all run independantly on my XP just fine.
Over and over again Microsoft has shown they'll play dirty pool doing whatever they can get away with, very well orchestrated and thought out (as in the case of CSS), unless they are forced by more than an act of congress.
Everyone loses except Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft deserves our appreciation for creating the digital world we have today, but a world of open standards is far preferred from here on out. And Microsoft won't take that future lying down. They'll just plain take the future by lying (and cheating, and stealing, and strongarming, and...).
Too true. That is funny, thanks for pointing that out.
Speaking of irony, you've worked for Microsoft in the past and may in the future, and yet your sig is "It's not what you live, but how you live it.".
In light of the current topic it should be:
"It's not what your business is, but how you conduct it." How Microsoft conducts themselves (see my other posts in this thread) is my only complaint. Technologically (except for murdering and munging standards) they are a great company.
1) Don't kid yourself, Bill never spent any time starving in a basement doing development. Grandpa Gates and all his grandkids, Bill included, have always had plenty to go around. Bills education was handed to him on a silver platter, and his success (which he deserves, he is a shrewd business man with an eye for opportunity) owes it's existence to that fact.
And if you review a little Micro-Soft history (hyphen intentional) you'll see that control has always been an underlying factor in their decisions and actions. Bill certainly never said it's about being open, even when the entire software industry was open.
2) Red Hat, SUSE, and Intel to name a few. Intel? Yes, Intel supports many open standards and by and large I'd say they "play by the rules". Are the agressive at business? Absolutely. But does that mean they sabotage open standards (like Microsoft repeatedly does to CSS) to ensure their success? No, they don't.
Make no mistake, the current IT environment (except for open source) is just how Microsoft wants it. They continually do things to keep consumers stupid (like hiding file extensions by default, still! All that does is ensure that everyone and their dog clicks on hot_sex.jpg.exe and gets the latest virus, but it keeps consumers stupid, just the way Microsoft likes it). They continually do things to break standards, knowing that 90% of websites will be designed to Microsofts munged versions of the standard and look great in IE, but somehow not render right in other browsers.
There's plenty more, but it's getting late and you don't want to hear it anyway...
Actually I'm the president of a company that has used open source profitably for over 5 years, and it does pay the bills. Very nicely in fact.
Thanks goes to the developers of Linux, Apache, MySQL (and other databases), PHP, and others.
And yes, I want my company to make money, which it does. But there are more important things than that, and there are plenty of profitable companies (open source or otherwise) to prove that money can be made hand over fist without resorting to Microsofts tactics.
when the governments of the world learn that this is how capitalism works.
I disagree.
There are plenty of companies in the IT world that play fair, work together to form open protocols for the greater good, and don't stoop to what amounts to sabotage (think of how Microsoft has bastardized CSS to protect IE's market dominance) to increase their straglehold on the market.
I'm all for capitalization, but Microsoft doesn't play by any of the rules, written or otherwise, unless they are forced to or it meets their objectives.
When will the governments of the world learn that Microsoft WILL do absolutely anything it can to achieve and maintain market dominance.
Microsoft's objective hasn't changed since day 1: control.
Microsoft would much rather control a broken protocol than use or contribute to an open one.
Microsoft would rather squash or buy out competitors instead of compete on a level playing field.
The only 2 things that can change this behavior are Open Source and government restrictions, in that order. (Increased public awareness and understanding is considered part of Open Source.)
Long live Open Source!
At least now I know I've been arguing with the collective intelligence of pocket lint, and it's pre-pubescent friend, so I can move on without guilt.
uhm all of things you listed were improvements on already already concieved ideas
And what part of secure, spam-free email hasn't already been conceived? The community at large has discussed it to death, and there are little snippets of the solution here and there. All I'm asking for is a new RFC, globally adopted, that incorporates them all as a new standard, not necessarily a new protocol (there is a huge difference).
The protocol doesn't need to be completely new and different (I never said it did), in fact I'm perfectly happy with it building upon SMTP as long as it meets the objectives I already stated, AND is easy enough for grandma to use and has global deployment.
The very thing that makes email so usable is that everyone has it.
And the very thing that is killing email (and email IS dying for all but casual users, and spam will catch up with them as well) is that there are dozens of different clients and different servers conforming to different versions of the same RFC to different degrees of conformity.
What you end up with is a mess that is WIDE open for spam, content sniffing, password sniffing, and forgery.
And that is the very thing you defend to the death as being good enough.
Well lots of things have been good enough (I listed a LOT), but I'm glad someone had the balls to improve upon them and standardize on them.
Imagine if you have to find a Ford gas station to fill up your Ford car. Widely deployed, consistent standards (like unleaded gasoline) are a Good Thing. I'm not asking for anything but that.
I'm guessing you didn't read the article either, because I did, and I didn't see that quote or anything like it.
Why not just stick with the telegraph & wagons, they worked just fine? They were both flexible and extensible?
Or why ever invent mountain bikes, when a road bike with bigger tires would work good enough?
For that matter, what was wrong with the 2.4 kernel? Moving to 2.6 is breaking some of my packages that already work?
Why move to MPEG4, MPEG2 worked just fine?
MP3? What was wrong with wav files?
Why create the internet with browsers? I love my BBS?
Flat Panels? What was wrong with CRT's? Speaking of which, where did all the PCI video cards go?
CSS? HTML already did all that, just differently.
And speaking of phones, do you honestly think we'll be using analog over copper forever? Or should we leave good enough alone, just because it's been that way for so long, and works?
I suppose NASA should just stick with the shuttle fleet because it works? And instead of the Rovers we should have remade Voyager and sent it to Mars instead?
Why the attachment to SMTP when all else changes?
The internet is growing really, really fast. Change will happen. We should welcome it. And if it increases security and decreases spam, I'd welcome it today.
What planet did you say you were from?
So grandma's just supposed to download stunnel and whip up a tunnel so she can check her email without broadcasting her password to the world?
And while she's at it, I'm sure she'll download OpenPGP and drop in some encryption. Heck, maybe she'll learn perl or C and whip up a few extensions of her own!
I'm not saying the solutions don't exist, I'm saying they only exist in forms that only 5% of the population can easily take advantage of.
The new SMTP should offer at least the following, off the shelf:
1. Encrypted authentication period (zero support for plain text)
2. Encrypted messages / attachments
3. Protection against forged headers
4. Verified sender
There are more, but those 4 would make email useful again. I'm webmaster for dozens of domains, and get over 1,300 spams a day which I filter quite well, but you still get false positives which are unacceptable in the business world.
The current SMTP for the average user is lacking in many ways, and the only way to fix the problem for the average user is to, well, fix the problem. Once and for all. Globally. Simultaneously.
Yes, the possibilities are endless. That is part of the problem. They are so endless that none of them get done or widely implemented.
SMTP Auth & secure login methods have never caught on, because everyone puts their own bandaid on SMTP. It is a standard without standards.
What percentage of SMTP logins (to check email) do you think are secure (either the contents or the authentication)? I'd bet it's lower than 5%. As it is, there is nothing in the even remotely near future that will change that.
And as a sysadmin the whole thing ~feels~ like it's held together with bubblegum and duct tape. I tried to get Postfix (which is a great MTA) to work with some form of secure authentication and finally gave up.
Yes, SMTP ~works~. But that doesn't mean 1 year dedicated to a replacement can't give us the same advances that would take 10 years of hacks and hooks.
Email doesn't need more bandaids and half-@ssed fixes, we need a ground-up rewrite that replaces SMTP.
It would be a very easy thing for the standards bodies to hash out the best SMTP replacement in 90 days (we've been talking about all of the changes for years, just decide already and take action!) and then announce to the world: "On January 1st, 2005 all SMTP email will be phased out in a 90 day transition period. It will be replaced by [acronym], which will prevent spam in it's various forms".
Anything short of this is a hack that will enjoy only very limited success and only prolong the inevitable.
There is far more wrong with email than just spam, and the protocol is showing it's age. A lot has happened in 20 years (not to mention the last 5 in particular), and it is time for complete replacement (that doesn't involve me paying money for email stamps...).
With one exception I have no problem with this post. In the past other hobbies and entire industries have fallen to "progress", and it will happen in the future.
However, in the case of hurricanes, earthquakes, etc a major form of communication is amateur radio. If those airwaves are messed up by interference, we lose that blessing.
I'd say the responsibility belongs with those bringing about Internet over powerlines to come up with a solution to stepping on so many frequencies.
A solution may not be cheap or easy, but it is absolutely necessary if they want to continue.
I bought a used 2001 Silverado 4 x 4 in October and really liked it.
Then I bought my wife a new Ford F-150 SuperCrew, and now I hate my Chevy. Those new F-150's (and all of the nicer newest generation Ford's) are incredible!
The active suspension is great, and the whole truck just seems ~intelligent~, where my Chevy is just a dumb truck.
The turning radius on the F-150 makes the Chevy feel like you're turning around an aircraft carrier in a small river (no, I've never turned around an aircraft carrier in a small river. Just a big one...).
So here's to getting my wife whatever she wants this summer so I can have the F-150!
I attribute my success (6 figures last year working at home in pajama and tiger slippers when I want to) to blessings from keeping this (and the other) commandment to the best of my ability.
My week consistently goes better when I have taken off Sunday and spent it as a day of rest and reflection (accept for Alias at 8 PM...).
I was once doing a contract for a company in Taiwan, and had spent 3 days trying to wrap my head around a nasty piece of recursive code, with no success. Sunday had rolled around and I needed that portion of the project due and ready to demo on Tuesday morning.
I had the choice between going to a church meeting that night or working. After a struggle I chose the meeting. And right in the middle of the meeting my head literally filled up with line upon line of code. I took notes as fast as I could for about 3 minutes.
The next morning I used the code in my project, as I had written and understood it the previous night, and it ran perfectly the first time! That was 3 years ago and I still look back to that experience as a source of strength.
Our country (and all) would be a far better place if we kept our promises to the Lord, honored the sabbath, and weren't so quick to kick God out of our schools, government, and everyday lives.
I honestly feel that it broke God's heart to turn his head on September 11th and allow our enemies to humble us. But that is exactly what we, as a nation, had asked Him repeatedly to do: Leave us alone.
And it breaks my heart how little we, as a nation, learned from that experience, and how quickly we forget.
I had no intention of trolling...
I should have been more clear that I wasn't referring to my ability to get a job with my skillset. In fact, I hope I never have to apply for a job again.
I was referring to those that are self-employed and have clients, and the lack of importance ~most~ clients place on certifications and degrees.
Granted my average contract is only $20,000 - $45,000, so I'm dealing with clients that are used to dealing with individuals rather than larger shops or corporations.
But I reaffirm that it has worked well for me, and I wouldn't choose it any other way.
Would I recommend it for others? That depends on what they want.
I spent 5 years of REALLY long hours with almost zero vacations or "days off", except Sundays which I always take off. It took this long to really get up to speed and refine my technical & business skills.
Now, however, I have plenty of work and projects of my own, I get to work from home and love it, I get to pick the projects I work on, and I set my own hours.
Not everyone is made to work for themselves. I couldn't and won't have it any other way.
I am both self-taught and self-employed, and I have never once had a client ask me about my college degree (I don't have one, by choice), certifications, grades, diplomas, or anything else related.
When I managed a computer store and someone came in who was A+ certified, it was almost a strike against them. I found repeatedly that the technicians that were self-taught were far better at maintaining their skills in a rapidly changing environment.
I place zero value in any of these certifications.
It's finding a way to scan in your farts that is the hard part...
It really makes me mad when people get away with crap like this. This man defrauds investors over and over and over, and gets away with it in full public view.
Martha Stewart acts on a tip from her investor and dumps her stock and she'll likely go to prison and lose it all after being dragged through a lengthy federal process.
This idiot, on the other hand, really defrauds people again and again for millions of dollars, and does so blatantly while bragging about the size of his house (among other things, I'm sure) and walks away scott-free.
It ain't right.
That is him selling the house to a relative or associate for $100, to protect the house from litigation and bankrupcy.
That way, when his virtual house of cards comes falling down, which it will, he still has a physical house to go back to.
Dishonest people filing for bankrupcy (which accounts for about 98% of bankrupcies) often transfer assets into the names of their children, etc to avoid losing them.
OK, maybe the computer itself is a little further down the road, and the LCD monitor is somewhere in between, but perhaps you'd like to place a wager on the rest:
A minute on Google shows it's available now: http://splashpower.com/
Surely a desk built around this technology isn't far off (or far out). End tables could even recharge wireless clocks, watches, and remote controls.
I even see them use the words "safe" and "efficient" repeatedly on the site.
Actually, wireless power may not be that far away, at least in the future I envision...
They have a number of medical devices that get embedded in a persons arm, leg, chest, etc that are charged by induction rather than a direct connection.
It is a safe way of powering devices. One example is an artificial heart or kidney (can't remember) that is recharged by putting on a cuff like a blood pressure cuff for 30 minutes per day.
Now the application for nerds:
I envision a desk with an induction plate just below the formica on the desktop. Your wireless keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, PDA, phone, cell phone, iPod, etc can all be powered by induction.
It's safe, wireless, fairly efficient, and available today.