What's the motivation behind the study? Is someone trying to make a case for a large scale Kerberos+OpenLDAP implementation?
Anyway, it's not like you can actually verify these are real passwords. It's more like a psychology study: would you lie about your password in exchange for some pens / chocolate / head?
The suite of formats referred to as MS-Word do not contain the fonts. I've seen more trouble from that and from minor differences in the formats for different versions, especially in areas where there are large groups of each version.
If it's distributed for printing, then there's no excuse not to use PDF which contains all the necessary information for it to be printed out as the author(s) intended.
Half right. Windows 2000 is better than Windows 95/98 and, according to the majority of my Windows-using contacts, even better than Windows XP.
However, if you're still using some MS product older than Windows 2000, odds are you're not in the market for a C++ compiler. If you are looking for a C++ compiler on that hardware, then you will need one of the BSD distros or a Linux distro. BTW both come with best of breed C++ compilers.
And though it was a retorical question, the answer is yes. Yes, I still run the 2.2 series Linux kernel where applicable. And yes, it's from 1999. It's small, rock solid, secure and been tested hard for 5 years. One such 2.2 installation provided %100 availability around the clock for three classes of students, requiring only 10 minutes of preventative maintenance for the 6 month duration of the project. No corrective maintenance was required.
Just try to get that much mileage out of Redmond. For other things, more complex firewall rules for example, there is the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.
The problem with going from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000 is that not only do you change the kernel, but also the GUI, shell and all the apps. That's not the case with BSD, OS X, Linux, QNX and others - drop in a new kernel and keep using the old tools until you decide that it's time.
No one said that the library has to give out CDs for free, eitehr let peolple bring them their own
The problem of inventory and lost staff time are two categories of reasons.
Easier all around, for right now, to provide copies where library patrons can borrow a CD and take it home or to a friend's house and burn it on familiar equipment, with familiar software, with familiar surroundings and familiar tech 'support'.
Suited for corporate environment for same reasons
on
GNOME for Grandma
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, that is an example of why Linux is perfectly suited for grandparents for much the same reasons that it is so well suited for the corporate environment.
Grandmas don't typically install/uninstall things, buy new hardware or software, upgrade their drivers, but when they do their IT staff (children or grandchildren) take care of it. It would be assinine to expect everyone in the world to become amateur sysadmins, most people just want to use their computer not fiddle with it.
Linux provides a rock solid, easy to use system to check e-mail, surf the web, write letters or balance the check book. If major changes in functionality are needed, then call in the IT support (grandkids, etc.). Many issues can be handled remotely via SSH.
Two generations ago study of the hard sciences in Western universities required fluency in German or Russian. English probably won't go away very soon, due to its dominance in the WWW/Internet, but research might move back overseas.
People study where the best departments and research centers are. The US attracted many of the world's top students during the 70's, 80's and 90's, because in some fields, research was most advanced. Part of the reason was because not only was Europe devastated in WWII but many of its researchers emmigrated to the U.S. before and during the war as well as during the early phases of the Cold War. It became self-perpetuating. When the leading centers were in pre-war Europe, Europe was sought ought. When the leading centers were in post-war U.S., the U.S. was sought ought.
Now the have been two generations of post-war reconstruction and there is increasing incentive for them to stay home or return back home. The pull of good centers is augmented by the push provided by the Dept. Homespun Security, Patriot Act I-III, etc.
So the U.S. is losing the safe haven benefit and the dynamic equilibrium is changing. This will eventually stabilize even with things like CAPPS II and a general increasingly anti-research climate (many businesses have already cut their R&D, even Xerox PARC is gone).
However, a real tipping effect can be achieved by adding quality of life and economic issues to the equation. Many businesses have been cutting health coverage. And while there are still some good areas many cities are lacking in basic services like public transportation (could you commute if you wished?) and decent schools (where hard math and science is mastered). Furthermore, businesses have been downsizing and look to be doing so making it a hard climate.
The climate is getting harder as the interest rates are at the bottom and both the national decificit and trade deficits are growing. Add the weak dollar to the mix, which might be hiding deflation behind the trade deficit, and it might be better to earn instead of $.
Then you have patents and litigation to deal with, if some corporation objects to your results -- e.g. Felton.
Behaviors like that are just going to ensure that a few more researchers choose to go home and build their centers in Europe, Aus/NZ, India or China.
Everyone expected that these technologies would bring huge benefits to everybody along the value chain. Creators would be given new ways to express themselves, end users would enjoy new kinds of experiences, and industries would find new opportunities for business. Ten years later, this is not happening. I don't see any industry that is really thriving on digital audio and video
Sounds like a myopic view. Creators were given new ways to express themselves and are using them:
Any band, big or small, that goes on tour has it's own CDs, I've even seen buskers in the subway with their own CDs.
Old and young people are compiling playlists from CDs they've bought or been given and playing them on the stereo or via a jukebox on their computer.
Amateur films and short films have been made very easy. No need to book time weeks in advance on equipment costing hundreds or millions. Go see a short film or youth film festival these days.
Home films and photography have taken off. Even retired people are sending around digital images, raw or touched up, of family and friends. I know people pushing 70 that edit and burn their holiday videos to DVD. Try that with 8mm or Super8.
Many musical instruments now have MIDI ports -- and they're being used.
There are more and more Zines on every subject imaginable. 15 years ago these were made with effort, but now there are many tools like Quark, Illustrator, PageMaker, etc.
Plain old books are being written and published like never before.
So, yes, maybe industry has missed the boat like he says, but let's not forget that industry is the result of customer demand not the other way around. If no one is buying buggy whips, then stop selling them, look around and sell what people are buying.
The end users are enjoying new kinds of experiences as predicted, but some of the former players in industry have ignored or fought the new opportunities for business. Why should they be subsidized with our effort if they cannot find a profitable business model that suits the times and technology?
Granted MPEG is not broadcast / archival quality (correct me if I am wrong), but regardless there will be a lot of material that exists only in MPEG.
Long term preservation and access need to be addressed, and are hobbled by kludges like DRM and vendor lock-in.
If you don't have the technology to render the file, then it's as good as gone. Even physical safes, lock boxes and fire boxes only slow down an intruder, and are rated at the estimated number of minutes needed to circumvent. Electronic restrictions yesterday are laughable with today's computing power and today's will be laughable with tomorrow's. Even passively, there is a difference: you have to expend effort (and probably money) to dispose of a heavy safe that you don't feel like opening. Whereas electronic documents can be erased with the active motion of only a few fingers or through neglect by letting the physical medium deteriorate or letting the specs vanish.
Authenticity is not possible either so electronic sources can not be used for authoritative research or testimony. Physical artifacts contain intentional and unitentional combinations of materials and these in turn have specific ratios isotopes which, if lucky, may provide enough data points to evaluate the origin of the artifact. Authenticity would be a much more useful issue to solve rather than pursuing the DRM pipe dream.
Digital copyright management is not the missing piece that we need. I think Leonardo Chiariglione may have (willfully) missed the implications of networked technologies, and that reform of copyright is needed rather than fighting against the very nature of computing. Earlier leaders and governements fought the printing press, but eventually learned to work with it. He's right though, about P2P and Gnutella like services not being monsters, but effort should be spent finding ways to exploit the strengths of these technologies, not fight them. It would be a long, expensive loss.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that clear channel is into relaying content. It's a marketing company pure and simple.
Clear Channel's main service is piping advertising to the populace and their customers are those who pay Clear Channel to pump ads. Though they would prefer to stay out of the public's attention, the executives are very, very up front about it. To achieve that goal, a minimum of music or other non-revenue generating transmissions must be used until people can get by on just the ads.
Personally, I look on advertising as noise at best and disinformation at worst. Given the effectiveness of marketing and lobbying, you can also raise questions about it subverting or circumventing the democratic process.
...when a dog owner was letting her mutt shit on the footpath just ahead of me...
Again, there might be something to be learned from the Danes. An anecdote about cleaning the streets of dog shit was relayed to me by the Danish author Svend Åge Madsen. For my own part, I'd like to know more about when and where.
A large city in Denmark was quite plagued by dog shit on the sidewalks despite every effort until the terds started sprouting little Danish flags on toothpicks during the night, throughout the city. After a few weeks of seeing a flag in each and every terd, people stopped leaving their dog's shit on the streets and sidewalks.
I don't know how many times a wanker with one of those walkie-talkie phones has ruined a meal for me. I have been tempted to stand behind the person making comments...
Go for it.
Shout them down. It's seems to be standard practice in Denmark. If some idiot is rude enough to let their phone go off in a restaurant and then have the gall to answer it, the noise level goes way up for the duration of the conversation. Those nearest the idiot, talk to each other or themselves and make every excuse to clank silverware or dishes until the conversation is over.
Actually, as other posters have and will point out, Usenet has been syndicating informal news for over 20 years. Later, ClariNet started to use Usenet to syndicate Reuters, Tass, AFP, AP, UPI and other, real news. Interesting to note, ClariNet was one of the first (IIRC the first) profitable, Internet based company that wasn't an ISP or similar.
Many of the big players would like Usenet to go away as it is decentralized and distributed which makes it hard to censor and control. ISP what a bottleneck though which users must pass and view ads while doing so.
The BBC article brings up a good point, but perhaps it is more practical to look to Usenet again. It is the only decentralized, distributed service I have seen. Mozilla, Opera and other web browsers include news readers so there is no need to install extra software, though dedicated news readers do have advantages. (Ask your ISP for details on how to connect) I prefer when mailing lists have SMTP/NTTP gateways so that I can check the list with a threaded news reader.
Maybe it's time to look at a new version of the NNTP protocol, and/or to the message format to make up for shortcomings. RSS is trying to do something with the web, which is perhaps more suited to NNTP or its successor.
It's more than a few weeks old. There's been a Wiki entry for some time and The Register had an article in early Feb.
I realize that many wish to pump MS sites and their content partners, but could the editors filter out these and stick with less dangerous secondary sources?
Ignore it and it will go away. Reuters, AP , UPI, BBC, etc. usually provide the content reported anyway. Other sources, e.g. The Reg., often do their own reporting as well.
If you see any problems with the how-to, let me know and I will fix it.
Cool, a colleague has been asking about something like this. How about links to the tar ball? Or cross links between the one-chapter-per-page version and the the monolithic version?
My work style may change again, but for right now having a monolithic version for easy download is a big bonus. Not much use getting on the train, boat, airplane and discovering that I only got a portion of the material and probably won't make time later to try again.
You could make similar complaints against the other surveilance services that Google is getting into. The privacy statement for their 6-degrees/friendster ripoff amounts to that any data you're dumb enough to enter about yourself or others is private unless a laywer asks for it and mentions DMCA in the request.
Basically between the archived e-mail, the search engine cookies and the social networking engine, there is an excellent, detailed data set.
European privacy law is, for the time being, much stricter than in the U.S. and it would be a good thing to bring the U.S. up to standard. Likewise, some countries are years (238 years) ahead of the U.S., Britain, France and a few others in regards to keeping public records accessible. If the U.S. and the EU had the same public access as Sweden and Finland have written into their constitution, more than a few expensive scandals could have been prevented.
You know, some people do need to send and receive binary executable and non-executable files through email.
Not really. That's what file sharing (e.g. CIFS/Samba or AFS) is for. The same can be accomplished with SFTP or HTTP, both can be done securely and even allow for access restrictions, if desired. Furthermore, both (S)FTP and HTTP are more efficient at file transfer than SMTP, which is designed for ASCII only.
Too many MTAs are configured to truncate large messages or their attachments. Likewise, various mail filters sometimes cut all attachements.
an unprecedented level of (MS-related) virus alerts, or
the fact that these viruses only affect one line of products from one manufacturer, or
the fact that the press gives no coverage of platforms and applications that are immune?
Yes, OS X, BSD, and the various Linux distributions (i.e. Debian, Mandrake, SUSE, or RedHat ). All easy to install, all easy to maintain, all easy to use. OS X comes pre-installed by the OEM and an increasing number of Linux distros are, too.
Furthermore, the layered structure of the OSes and separation of privileges means that these are resistent to future viruses as well as immune to those available today.
Yes, apologists and astroturfers like to ignore that as well as blame users. But even if, and that's a big if, market share has more effect than design flaws, it will take quite some time for the virus activity to shift and during that time, businesses and users have come out ahead. Right now, die hard ideologs who refuse to drop a defective product are costing billions of dollars per quarter, a not insignificant number when you think how many jobs could be kept rather than downsized or outsourced in these increasingly bad economic times for the U.S.
How about a little focus? The title should have been "An Unprecedented level of MS Virus Alerts" and steer users off of the hamster wheel. From easy to hard, these are just a few of the many options:
1. Use WordPerfect, StarOffice or OpenOffice instead.
2a. Use Eudora, Evolution, or Pine instead.
2b. Use Mozilla, Firebird, or Opera instead.
3. Use one of the above resistent / immune OSes instead.
But the dent in the gaming market may not be so big, there will be time to port applications to more profitable plaftorms. Or, as may be the case of EQ on the PS2, improve the existing port to the point where it becomes attractive. It also sounds like third party hardware like keyboards and joysticks could be an advantage.
For the home user, perhaps there is a point to having a general purpose computer with games, but I can't see lack of games being an issue at work. Likewise, I can see that specialized game units (like the Game Cube or Playstation) might be easier to develop for.
A big marketing behemoth like Microsoft won't (isn't) going down quietly, it's going to scream and kick and produce copious amounts of FUD and legal shenanigans. The more its bottom line hurts the more noise it will make. So there will be plenty of warning so developers have time to prepare exit strategies from the Wintel duopoly.
The average user just wants it to work, when they plug in a device, they just want it to work. They just want to install a program, not compile it. Yes, that's related to my main point which I will re-iterate.
The system which is pre-installed at time of purchase determines what system will be used for the life of the hardware in most cases. Thus you have a situations where OEMs, by preloading an OS, decide what the public buy and use.
Talk of compiling applications makes it sound like it's been more than 5 years since you've installed or even used any of the major Linux distros (except Gentoo) or have been run them on a very unusual or uncommon architecture. Both Gnome and KDE are as easy to use or easier (definitely more flexible) than the various MS-Windows incarnations, even when measured using MS-Windows users. Yes, OS X has them all beat.
Furthermore, installing Linux based software is very easy for the major distros, especially if you run using most common architecture, Intel. There are graphic interfaces to manage any dependencies, it's just click and run. Look for that to improve further this year as good parts from Yast, RPM and APT are extended. But that's for mainstream packages, you're always going to be able to pull some weird package off the net which will give you a hard time regardless of your OS.
If OEMs like Compaq/HP, Dell, IBM, Apple, and others provided pre-installed Linux, there would be even more software. Most people want a computer + OS + applications to work off the shelf, thus you need OEMs to install and configure things. Most users don't want to worry about maintenance, security or viruses, thus the need for Linux, BSD, or OS X.
Last I heard, businesses are interested in using computers for work, not playing games. Lack of games might be considered an asset at most sites.
Regardless of game playing on general purpose microcomputers, games were thiving on Atari and other platforms long before Chairman Bill got money from IBM
Now days I hear that there are still dedicate game console that handle animation and sound quite well. Whether the M$ pyramid scheme continues to slowly deflate, or if it happens suddenly Enron-style pop, does not matter more game makers will put their money on the Playstation or Gamecube.
Seems that anything short of singing hymns in praise of Chairman Bill and his perfection of software gets called Microsoft Bashing (R). Whatever happed to discussion of technical issues or, gasp, software reviews? Or has M$ become such a religion that this is not allowed?
The core of the issue is not that the public chooses or does not choose M$ Windows, they have no choice, yet. They buy what is on the shelf and what is pre-installed. OEMs decide what is preinstalled, thus all the ruckus in the courts about what can be pre-installed and by whom. As of 5 years ago the U.S. courts found that around 65% of users left the bundled apps pretty much the way they were, thus the war for the desktop icon. I'd bet that that number is even smaller nowadays.
Not only that, a computer is very much like a car, if it is not looked after, it will eventually die, be it Linux, Windows, UNIX or MAC OS.
There is a big difference between a Trabant (Win95/98), Lada (Win NT 3/4/5/6) and Saab ( BSD) or Saturn (Linux)
Microsoft has shown that it cannot compete on merits, so it seems it are trying to make it technically and legally imposible for others to do anything.
Actually I have yet to see a medical donation that does not involve the recipient purchasing vast quantities of medicine or vacine manufactured by his other stock investments.
Furthermore, these donations are usually targeted at areas, coincidentally, also looking into F/OSS or other non-MS solutions.
Before Microsoft, it was posible to install a system an it would run more or less indefinitely without need for the "three fingered salute". If Microsoft were to disappear, businesses and later home users would migrate to more stable platforms and spend less time trying to maintain or diagnose their machines and more time using them as tools to get their work done.
Aside from the psychological shock to the MBAs who worship Chairman Bill, a marketing behemoth like Microsoft could disappear and the economy would pick up. How much time is and money is wasted on MSTDs like Bagle, which are the result of design flaws? How much time is wasted on incompatibility issues between different versions of MS-Office? How much time is wasted with end users being shoe-horned into being amateur sysadmins and security specialists? How much time is wasted reinstalling a system after a supposed patch or upgrade or general cruft takes it down? How much time is wasted getting back to where you left off after such an interruption? How much time and money is wasted on "upgrading" hardware and software every 12 - 18 months?
All that comes out of your company's or organization's result.
Identity theft would be harder ( or involve more social engineering). Industrial espionage would be much harder since other OSs are more secure, designed for a networked multi-user environment.
Communication would be easier, sendmail/exim/postfix/qmail just don't lose mail like MS-Exchange which has 5% to 15% just vanish without trace or, perhaps worse, generate a "user does not exist" error.
In all, I see the disappearance of Microsoft as a positive and, really, a necessary step not just for the advancement of technology but also for the re-growth of the world's economy.
The different versions of MS-Word use slightly diffferent file format even though they all end in ".DOC" Even if you have the same version, you may not have the same fonts which definitely can screw up a layout.
The astroturfer posing as an AC is inadvertantly making a case for the use of PDFs for syllabi and other read-only course material. PDF is the only effective way to ensure that layout won't get screwed up, it is well documented (so it will be available in the future), and it is supported any common platform.
By the way, RTF is becoming less of an option. After it became common knowledge that RTF met all the usual word processing needs, the next version of MS Word started making RTFs without all the needed formatting. However, the "missing" formatting is still there in the RTF, as it can be restored when opened again by MS-Word. So it is still a good format to use in a M$ shop to avoid viruses.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, it's not like you can actually verify these are real passwords. It's more like a psychology study: would you lie about your password in exchange for some pens / chocolate / head?
If it's distributed for printing, then there's no excuse not to use PDF which contains all the necessary information for it to be printed out as the author(s) intended.
However, if you're still using some MS product older than Windows 2000, odds are you're not in the market for a C++ compiler. If you are looking for a C++ compiler on that hardware, then you will need one of the BSD distros or a Linux distro. BTW both come with best of breed C++ compilers.
And though it was a retorical question, the answer is yes. Yes, I still run the 2.2 series Linux kernel where applicable. And yes, it's from 1999. It's small, rock solid, secure and been tested hard for 5 years. One such 2.2 installation provided %100 availability around the clock for three classes of students, requiring only 10 minutes of preventative maintenance for the 6 month duration of the project. No corrective maintenance was required. Just try to get that much mileage out of Redmond. For other things, more complex firewall rules for example, there is the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.
The problem with going from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000 is that not only do you change the kernel, but also the GUI, shell and all the apps. That's not the case with BSD, OS X, Linux, QNX and others - drop in a new kernel and keep using the old tools until you decide that it's time.
Easier all around, for right now, to provide copies where library patrons can borrow a CD and take it home or to a friend's house and burn it on familiar equipment, with familiar software, with familiar surroundings and familiar tech 'support'.
Grandmas don't typically install/uninstall things, buy new hardware or software, upgrade their drivers, but when they do their IT staff (children or grandchildren) take care of it. It would be assinine to expect everyone in the world to become amateur sysadmins, most people just want to use their computer not fiddle with it.
Linux provides a rock solid, easy to use system to check e-mail, surf the web, write letters or balance the check book. If major changes in functionality are needed, then call in the IT support (grandkids, etc.). Many issues can be handled remotely via SSH.
OS X is another low maintenance option.
People study where the best departments and research centers are. The US attracted many of the world's top students during the 70's, 80's and 90's, because in some fields, research was most advanced. Part of the reason was because not only was Europe devastated in WWII but many of its researchers emmigrated to the U.S. before and during the war as well as during the early phases of the Cold War. It became self-perpetuating. When the leading centers were in pre-war Europe, Europe was sought ought. When the leading centers were in post-war U.S., the U.S. was sought ought.
Now the have been two generations of post-war reconstruction and there is increasing incentive for them to stay home or return back home. The pull of good centers is augmented by the push provided by the Dept. Homespun Security, Patriot Act I-III, etc.
So the U.S. is losing the safe haven benefit and the dynamic equilibrium is changing. This will eventually stabilize even with things like CAPPS II and a general increasingly anti-research climate (many businesses have already cut their R&D, even Xerox PARC is gone).
However, a real tipping effect can be achieved by adding quality of life and economic issues to the equation. Many businesses have been cutting health coverage. And while there are still some good areas many cities are lacking in basic services like public transportation (could you commute if you wished?) and decent schools (where hard math and science is mastered). Furthermore, businesses have been downsizing and look to be doing so making it a hard climate. The climate is getting harder as the interest rates are at the bottom and both the national decificit and trade deficits are growing. Add the weak dollar to the mix, which might be hiding deflation behind the trade deficit, and it might be better to earn instead of $.
Then you have patents and litigation to deal with, if some corporation objects to your results -- e.g. Felton.
Behaviors like that are just going to ensure that a few more researchers choose to go home and build their centers in Europe, Aus/NZ, India or China.
Any band, big or small, that goes on tour has it's own CDs, I've even seen buskers in the subway with their own CDs.
Old and young people are compiling playlists from CDs they've bought or been given and playing them on the stereo or via a jukebox on their computer.
Amateur films and short films have been made very easy. No need to book time weeks in advance on equipment costing hundreds or millions. Go see a short film or youth film festival these days.
Home films and photography have taken off. Even retired people are sending around digital images, raw or touched up, of family and friends. I know people pushing 70 that edit and burn their holiday videos to DVD. Try that with 8mm or Super8.
Many musical instruments now have MIDI ports -- and they're being used.
There are more and more Zines on every subject imaginable. 15 years ago these were made with effort, but now there are many tools like Quark, Illustrator, PageMaker, etc.
Plain old books are being written and published like never before.
So, yes, maybe industry has missed the boat like he says, but let's not forget that industry is the result of customer demand not the other way around. If no one is buying buggy whips, then stop selling them, look around and sell what people are buying. The end users are enjoying new kinds of experiences as predicted, but some of the former players in industry have ignored or fought the new opportunities for business. Why should they be subsidized with our effort if they cannot find a profitable business model that suits the times and technology?
Granted MPEG is not broadcast / archival quality (correct me if I am wrong), but regardless there will be a lot of material that exists only in MPEG. Long term preservation and access need to be addressed, and are hobbled by kludges like DRM and vendor lock-in.
If you don't have the technology to render the file, then it's as good as gone. Even physical safes, lock boxes and fire boxes only slow down an intruder, and are rated at the estimated number of minutes needed to circumvent. Electronic restrictions yesterday are laughable with today's computing power and today's will be laughable with tomorrow's. Even passively, there is a difference: you have to expend effort (and probably money) to dispose of a heavy safe that you don't feel like opening. Whereas electronic documents can be erased with the active motion of only a few fingers or through neglect by letting the physical medium deteriorate or letting the specs vanish.
Authenticity is not possible either so electronic sources can not be used for authoritative research or testimony. Physical artifacts contain intentional and unitentional combinations of materials and these in turn have specific ratios isotopes which, if lucky, may provide enough data points to evaluate the origin of the artifact. Authenticity would be a much more useful issue to solve rather than pursuing the DRM pipe dream.
Digital copyright management is not the missing piece that we need. I think Leonardo Chiariglione may have (willfully) missed the implications of networked technologies, and that reform of copyright is needed rather than fighting against the very nature of computing. Earlier leaders and governements fought the printing press, but eventually learned to work with it. He's right though, about P2P and Gnutella like services not being monsters, but effort should be spent finding ways to exploit the strengths of these technologies, not fight them. It would be a long, expensive loss.
Clear Channel's main service is piping advertising to the populace and their customers are those who pay Clear Channel to pump ads. Though they would prefer to stay out of the public's attention, the executives are very, very up front about it. To achieve that goal, a minimum of music or other non-revenue generating transmissions must be used until people can get by on just the ads.
Personally, I look on advertising as noise at best and disinformation at worst. Given the effectiveness of marketing and lobbying, you can also raise questions about it subverting or circumventing the democratic process.
A large city in Denmark was quite plagued by dog shit on the sidewalks despite every effort until the terds started sprouting little Danish flags on toothpicks during the night, throughout the city. After a few weeks of seeing a flag in each and every terd, people stopped leaving their dog's shit on the streets and sidewalks.
It's worth a thought...
Shout them down. It's seems to be standard practice in Denmark. If some idiot is rude enough to let their phone go off in a restaurant and then have the gall to answer it, the noise level goes way up for the duration of the conversation. Those nearest the idiot, talk to each other or themselves and make every excuse to clank silverware or dishes until the conversation is over.
The comp.* and sci.* hierarchies, from my experience, have been good. e.g. comp.text.xml, comp.protocols.kerberos, etc.
Many of the big players would like Usenet to go away as it is decentralized and distributed which makes it hard to censor and control. ISP what a bottleneck though which users must pass and view ads while doing so.
The BBC article brings up a good point, but perhaps it is more practical to look to Usenet again. It is the only decentralized, distributed service I have seen. Mozilla, Opera and other web browsers include news readers so there is no need to install extra software, though dedicated news readers do have advantages. (Ask your ISP for details on how to connect) I prefer when mailing lists have SMTP/NTTP gateways so that I can check the list with a threaded news reader.
Maybe it's time to look at a new version of the NNTP protocol, and/or to the message format to make up for shortcomings. RSS is trying to do something with the web, which is perhaps more suited to NNTP or its successor.
I realize that many wish to pump MS sites and their content partners, but could the editors filter out these and stick with less dangerous secondary sources?
Ignore it and it will go away. Reuters, AP , UPI, BBC, etc. usually provide the content reported anyway. Other sources, e.g. The Reg., often do their own reporting as well.
My work style may change again, but for right now having a monolithic version for easy download is a big bonus. Not much use getting on the train, boat, airplane and discovering that I only got a portion of the material and probably won't make time later to try again.
Spam bots are not the only thing which can dig through your mail. The same mechanism to target ads can be used for political persecution as well.
Basically between the archived e-mail, the search engine cookies and the social networking engine, there is an excellent, detailed data set.
European privacy law is, for the time being, much stricter than in the U.S. and it would be a good thing to bring the U.S. up to standard. Likewise, some countries are years (238 years) ahead of the U.S., Britain, France and a few others in regards to keeping public records accessible. If the U.S. and the EU had the same public access as Sweden and Finland have written into their constitution, more than a few expensive scandals could have been prevented.
Too many MTAs are configured to truncate large messages or their attachments. Likewise, various mail filters sometimes cut all attachements.
Yes, OS X, BSD, and the various Linux distributions (i.e. Debian, Mandrake, SUSE, or RedHat ). All easy to install, all easy to maintain, all easy to use. OS X comes pre-installed by the OEM and an increasing number of Linux distros are, too.
Furthermore, the layered structure of the OSes and separation of privileges means that these are resistent to future viruses as well as immune to those available today. Yes, apologists and astroturfers like to ignore that as well as blame users. But even if, and that's a big if, market share has more effect than design flaws, it will take quite some time for the virus activity to shift and during that time, businesses and users have come out ahead. Right now, die hard ideologs who refuse to drop a defective product are costing billions of dollars per quarter, a not insignificant number when you think how many jobs could be kept rather than downsized or outsourced in these increasingly bad economic times for the U.S.
How about a little focus? The title should have been "An Unprecedented level of MS Virus Alerts" and steer users off of the hamster wheel. From easy to hard, these are just a few of the many options:
1. Use WordPerfect, StarOffice or OpenOffice instead. 2a. Use Eudora, Evolution, or Pine instead. 2b. Use Mozilla, Firebird, or Opera instead. 3. Use one of the above resistent / immune OSes instead.For the home user, perhaps there is a point to having a general purpose computer with games, but I can't see lack of games being an issue at work. Likewise, I can see that specialized game units (like the Game Cube or Playstation) might be easier to develop for.
A big marketing behemoth like Microsoft won't (isn't) going down quietly, it's going to scream and kick and produce copious amounts of FUD and legal shenanigans. The more its bottom line hurts the more noise it will make. So there will be plenty of warning so developers have time to prepare exit strategies from the Wintel duopoly.
The system which is pre-installed at time of purchase determines what system will be used for the life of the hardware in most cases. Thus you have a situations where OEMs, by preloading an OS, decide what the public buy and use.
Talk of compiling applications makes it sound like it's been more than 5 years since you've installed or even used any of the major Linux distros (except Gentoo) or have been run them on a very unusual or uncommon architecture. Both Gnome and KDE are as easy to use or easier (definitely more flexible) than the various MS-Windows incarnations, even when measured using MS-Windows users. Yes, OS X has them all beat.
Furthermore, installing Linux based software is very easy for the major distros, especially if you run using most common architecture, Intel. There are graphic interfaces to manage any dependencies, it's just click and run. Look for that to improve further this year as good parts from Yast, RPM and APT are extended. But that's for mainstream packages, you're always going to be able to pull some weird package off the net which will give you a hard time regardless of your OS.
If OEMs like Compaq/HP, Dell, IBM, Apple, and others provided pre-installed Linux, there would be even more software. Most people want a computer + OS + applications to work off the shelf, thus you need OEMs to install and configure things. Most users don't want to worry about maintenance, security or viruses, thus the need for Linux, BSD, or OS X.
Regardless of game playing on general purpose microcomputers, games were thiving on Atari and other platforms long before Chairman Bill got money from IBM
Now days I hear that there are still dedicate game console that handle animation and sound quite well. Whether the M$ pyramid scheme continues to slowly deflate, or if it happens suddenly Enron-style pop, does not matter more game makers will put their money on the Playstation or Gamecube.
The core of the issue is not that the public chooses or does not choose M$ Windows, they have no choice, yet. They buy what is on the shelf and what is pre-installed. OEMs decide what is preinstalled, thus all the ruckus in the courts about what can be pre-installed and by whom. As of 5 years ago the U.S. courts found that around 65% of users left the bundled apps pretty much the way they were, thus the war for the desktop icon. I'd bet that that number is even smaller nowadays.
There is a big difference between a Trabant (Win95/98), Lada (Win NT 3/4/5/6) and Saab ( BSD) or Saturn (Linux)Microsoft has shown that it cannot compete on merits, so it seems it are trying to make it technically and legally imposible for others to do anything.
Furthermore, these donations are usually targeted at areas, coincidentally, also looking into F/OSS or other non-MS solutions.
Call me cynical.
Aside from the psychological shock to the MBAs who worship Chairman Bill, a marketing behemoth like Microsoft could disappear and the economy would pick up. How much time is and money is wasted on MSTDs like Bagle, which are the result of design flaws? How much time is wasted on incompatibility issues between different versions of MS-Office? How much time is wasted with end users being shoe-horned into being amateur sysadmins and security specialists? How much time is wasted reinstalling a system after a supposed patch or upgrade or general cruft takes it down? How much time is wasted getting back to where you left off after such an interruption? How much time and money is wasted on "upgrading" hardware and software every 12 - 18 months?
All that comes out of your company's or organization's result.
Identity theft would be harder ( or involve more social engineering). Industrial espionage would be much harder since other OSs are more secure, designed for a networked multi-user environment.
Communication would be easier, sendmail/exim/postfix/qmail just don't lose mail like MS-Exchange which has 5% to 15% just vanish without trace or, perhaps worse, generate a "user does not exist" error.
In all, I see the disappearance of Microsoft as a positive and, really, a necessary step not just for the advancement of technology but also for the re-growth of the world's economy.
The astroturfer posing as an AC is inadvertantly making a case for the use of PDFs for syllabi and other read-only course material. PDF is the only effective way to ensure that layout won't get screwed up, it is well documented (so it will be available in the future), and it is supported any common platform.
By the way, RTF is becoming less of an option. After it became common knowledge that RTF met all the usual word processing needs, the next version of MS Word started making RTFs without all the needed formatting. However, the "missing" formatting is still there in the RTF, as it can be restored when opened again by MS-Word. So it is still a good format to use in a M$ shop to avoid viruses.