Because I can drag a program I'm tired of to the trash can.. Because I can go to one location - the Applications folder - to find any new program I install.
Does that mean that OS X applications don't use any shared libraries? Sounds like 1990. Or do they put a hell lot of hard work into their package-management to let everything fit together? Sounds like Debian.
The future of commercial music
on
lowercase music
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I think this is an experiment by the RIAA to test whether they can leave out the music around their audio watermarks and sell them standalone. If the market reacts positive, their profit will skyrocket up to 100.05%, because they don't have to pay those greedy musicians anymore.
With apologies to Willian Shakespeare, or anyone with taste for that matter
Same applies to this peace:
Mozilla, Prince of Denmark
To release, or not to release, - that is the question: -
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of everchanging interfaces,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by freezing end them? - To freeze, - to release, -
No more; and by a release to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That C++ is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wisht. To freeze, - to release; -
To release! perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that release of 1.0 what dreams may come...
Well, we all know that AOL is no slouch at slipping it hard and rough to their users but even AOL isn't going to be stupid enough to try foisting a noticeably slower browser on their users.
I use both IE and Mozilla at work. Mozilla is indeed *not* noticeably slower than IE.
Many of you may refuse to use IE for idealogical reasons, and that's valid, but nothing can change the fact that, when it comes to the simple activity of browsing, the MS product gives a smoother user experience.
I tried to use IE on my computer, but the experience was very bumpy, because I didn't want to install this really huuuuuge runtime-environment (Windows) it needs to run smoothly.
I mean, given that he makes a personal attack against Linus for valuing pragmatism over ideals, and makes it clear that no compromise is acceptable, ever, then it would be breaktakingly hypocritical of him to decry Linux as non-free while at the same time actually making use of it, right?
The paragraph you are refering says that if "freedom" had been a stated goal of the Linux-developers, they would have reverse-engineered the non-free software since day one, providing free source-code. As compared to the situation now, where a pile of binary-data for various machines has to be rewritten to build a completely source-only version of Linux - a huge task that nobody wants to do now, because most people think it is not necessary. He didn't say that Linux is non-free, he said that parts of Linux are not free, which is certainly true for the firmware-binaries. He thinks that having free source-code is important, while most others don't mind the hidden proprietary binaries. He think's that this attitude is wrong, because the problem will grow over time. I don't see hypocrisy here.
Only one device per channel can work at a given time.
So what? ATA100 transferes at 100MB/sec, regardless of the speed of the drives attached. If the drive can deliver 50MB/sec, the data will go over the bus at a speed of 100MB/sec and the bus will be idle half of the remaining time (where the other drive has the chance to transfer). So, in theory, two drives at 50MB/sec will push 100MB/sec over the bus. In reality there are some losses, though...
The main point why ATA133 is pointless (speedwise) is that we don't have IDE-drives yet which can transfer much more than 40-50MB/sec. So ATA133 can't bring a performance win over ATA100, because the bus simply isn't a bottleneck.
Think twice... There are plenty of OSS developers who abandon their projects in fear of liability due to laws like the DMCA. And on the other hand there's MS which is found guilty to hold a monopoly by illegal means - and they just laugh.
So it's good for them to have laws that make making software as impossible as possible. While the playing field will clear and the prices will sky-rocket, MS will circumvent the laws and get away with it. Maybe we need a law that forbids any curcumvention of laws? DMCA generalized!
zeus.kernel.org has suffered what appears to be a multiple disk RAID
failure, and no longer appears to boot. I can't do any further
diagnostic without physical access to the machine; however, there is a
good chance we have lost a RAID.
I will attempt to bring the machine back, but, in the meantime, I
would like to ask if there is anyone or any company who would be
willing to donate eight (8) 73 GB SCA SCSI disks on short notice. We
have been suffering from a shortage of space on the affected RAID for
quite a while, and if it is truly dead it might be reasonable to
replace the drives with higher-capacity ones instead.
Here's another useful post from Russel King on linux-kernel for those who ran into troubles:
> What kind of breakage are we looking at here? I had a system that ran 2.4.15
> and got shut down without a sync. What kind of corruption will occur and is
> it something a simple fsck will fix?
fsck does seem to fix it, but it won't automatically detect the problem
(since the filesystem is marked clean).
It basically removes the inodes from the disk, but leaves the names in
the directory. On the next boot, init scripts which clear out certain
directories fail, and various daemons fail to start because of it.
It seems that the only solution is to force a fsck at boot:
A bug in the inode handling of 2.4.15 can leave stale inodes (unremovable files) when a filesystem is unmounted. The problem exists for all filesystem types. Do not use 2.4.15-pre9 and 2.4.15-final and wait for the patch.
Al Viro on linux-kernel: Sigh... Supposed fix to problems with stale inodes was completely
broken.
What we need is "if we are doing last iput() on fs that is getting
shut, sync it and don't leave it in cache". And yes, we have a similar
path in iput(). Similar, but not quite the same.
Al Viro on linux-kernel:Breakage happens when you umount filesystem (_any_ local filesystem, be
it ext2, reiserfs, whatever) that still has dirty inodes.
IOW, if you are running 2.4.15 - build a patched kernel, install it and
do the following:
* switch to single-user
* sync
* umount everything non-busy
* remount the rest read-only
* turn the thing off
* boot with patched kernel or with anything before 2.4.15-pre9
Russel King on linux-kernel: I think 2.4.15-greased-turkey should be renamed to 2.4.15-dead-duck. 8)
I think they should go further. They should allow the RIAA to break into people's houses to check that they don't have any music copies on cassette. If they do, the RIAA should be allowed to smash up their music system. And crap on their carpet.
I hate postings like this. Today they may sound funny, but they tend to become federal law after a short incubation period. Don't spread those memes! Your thoughts can change the world.
What should be a <ul> is emulated with CSS and windings 8-bit characters
(bullets, I suppose - they don't display on my system, because I'm not using windows!).
A Frontpage-Consultant confesses his secret love for goto's and teaches us software-aesthetics using VB-examples. Strange times.
It's easy: Each client maintains a system of non-linear equations that is quantum-mechanically
coupled with the another system of euquations that resides on the server. Thanks to
quantum mechanics (no-one really understands this stuff, anyway) every change
of the server's matrix induces an equal change in the clients matrix in no-time.
The 28.8kbit connection is only needed to establish and keep-alive the quantum-coupling.
So Einstein's laws are preserved: information can't be transmitted faster than light.
Because nobody would believe this shit otherwise.
How 'bout this: rip the CD as WAV, Ogg and De-Ogg to WAV. Then write a
couple of CDRs with all songs in the same order as the CD, but with
some songs from the original WAV, and others the Ogged&De-Ogged WAV.
Then do a blind classification trying to see if ou can tell if it's the
original WAV or not by listening to the CDRs. If you are correct 50% of
the time, then for you Ogg is lossless for your ears.
I had the same idea after I did my posting. I think this is psychologicaly a
very positve setting, beside from the technical benefit: the tester isn't
confronted with any computer, but only with his CD-player (people don't
count CD-players to computers...). So it's just a CD. No compression voodoo.
Because many people have hard-wired in their brains that "lossy compression
sounds bad and I can hear this, and even if I can't hear it I'm sure there
are strange subconscious effects in my psyche going on that make me feel
less good than with uncompressed audio... bla."
In my opinion that's the only way to really test. The lower quality of
the soundcard output might hide differences in your suggestion. Plus
the blind classification removes any psychological effects of expecting
to hear differences or not.
TMTOWTDI! I think it depends on what you want to measure. If
you want to check the quality of the codec in isolation, then this may
be a very good test.
But even the "unscientific" method of the original poster has a real
"practical validity": he compared his old configuration (CD-player
and heaps of CDs) and a new configuration (ogg, soundcard, tape-input
and a biiig harddisk), because it's the whole configuration that matters
in last consequence (nobody can use a codec in isolation). The best codec
doesn't help anything if, say, your amp is trash. He came to the conclusion,
that his new configuration was inferior to the old configuration and so
he didn't implement it. His only error was to think, that he did a test
about the codec, which is certainly not true. And because he thought to
test the codec, he failed to see other possibilities to improve the configuration.
(the input-line, the soundcard-DAC...)
But, by stating my methods, my opinion can be weighed against others as
much as it deserves-- as you point out, perhaps with not as much weight
as others.
My posting wasn't meant to be offensive. You stated your methods, so
your posting was still informative. I was just a bit angry about a test
in a newspaper that was on slashdot some time ago, which was obviously
rigged (or just incompetent, who knows).
I have low-end audio-equipment and there is a very noticable
difference between my CD-player and my soundcard (playing uncompressed
wav) - pop and jazz are no problem, but classical music sounds bad. If
you have a good soundcard, the difference may not be huge, but you still
have to be careful with comparisons.
The artifact was there, verified by a "no blind" and a "double blind" who
made the same observation.
You did a biased
single-blind
test. But I don't want to be pedantic, because I believe that there
was indeed a difference. As
another poster
pointed out, different amp-inputs can have a very different frequency
response, because they were designed to be optimal for the device connecting
to it. In the case of a casette-player the frequency-response isn't linear
at all.
The only difference was that the low end was less impressive on the OGG
than the CD. I put on a few songs and started them simultanously and switched
the amp from CD to cassette in (which happened to be my computer). Although
it is possible that the casette input amp is less accurate near the low end
than the CD input amp, I doubt it. The speakers used were Bose 501s. Conclusion:
at 256k/sec, OGG was fine at the high end, but strangely enough, not good
enough at the low end.
You are comaring:
a) OGG -- decoded stream -- soundcard -- casette input -- amp -- speakers
b) CD -- decoded stream -- CD-D/A-converter -- CD-input -- amp -- speakers
If alternative a doesn't sound as good as b, this doesn't say anything about the
ogg-encoding, because it isn't the only variable. Maybe the difference is caused
by the different audio-characteristics of soundcard and CD-D/A-converter.
To get a valid comparison, rip the content of the CD as WAV. Then compare the WAV and
the OGG, using the same soundcard and the same amp-input. Everything else is totally
meaningless.
But even with this setting, there remains one additional variable: your psyche. If
ogg and wav were bit-per-bit equal you will still recognize a difference when you
know which one of the two you are hearing. So if you want to get meaningful results,
you have to make a double-blind-test.
It's really sad how easy it is for the marketing guys to convince people that alternative
codecs are inferior, because 95% don't understand anything about scientific methods
or statistics. And they will do that, because they have the budget and we have not.
But the tendency to use words and analogies drawn from current technology
has a long history. Popular-science accounts of the working of the brain
used to compare it with a telephone exchange. At the time they were written,
this was the highest vaguely relevant technology. Fifty years later, comparisons
were being made with computers.
The history of these analogies actually predates the age of information technology.
Aristotle (284-322 B.C.), one of the greatest western philosophers, said that the purpose of
the brain is to cool the blood.
And he deduced this by the way of pure thinking. He never read slashdot.
From http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/CodeRedII.html:
Pattern scanning algorithm for Code Red II variant
The algorithm used by this new variant is designed to infect lots of "local" machines that are presumably more fully populated than picking random IPs out there. A blend of the local IP and a random number is used, and the number of octets in each depends on yet another random number that can go eight ways:
* 1 out of 8: entirely random IP
* 4 out of 8: stay in same class A (192.X.Y.Z)
* 3 out of 8: stay in same class B (192.168.X.Y)
The code to do this starts with a table of masks, but remember that on the Intel platform, "network" byte order is the inverse of the native CPU order, so we have to think backwards. This made it much more difficult for a non-assembler guy like me to follow:-(
For instance, 192.168.1.7 in "native" word order is 0xC0A0107, but in network order it's 0x07010AC0. This means that to stay in the same class A, we're keeping the LOW bits, not the high.
In this case, only CURRENT versions of these programs are blocked, because
they access Windows internals which causes instability on XP.
And they are establishing a mechanism to block third-party software
in a very elegant and unsuspicious way. This isn't bad per se, but the company
has shown in the past that nobody can trust them.
Microsoft preventing this software from installing is like having different
plugs for 220 V and 9 V devices so you won't plug your shaver directly
into a high voltage outlet.
Most of the time Microsoft puts "Beware: 220V - use at your own risk!"-stickers
on their opponents interfaces. Now this will be easier than ever.
It's a perfect example of double standards: when Windows crashes this
is always the fault of Microsoft, not of bad drivers or programs which access
Windows internals, while in fact they often are (especially video drivers).
When Microsoft tries to do something about it, it's suddenly only done
for promotion of their own firewall software.
We are talking about driver problems like if(check_drdos()) complain(),exit();
XP will have a generic solution for this program-fragment. Not scary?
Make up your mind. If you are against Microsoft for monopoly reasons or
anything else, that's your right. But mangling any piece of information
to something negative only hurts the credibility of the anti-Microsoft camp.
They maintain their monopoly with technical measures like this. That's
the point.
Slashdot Mirror
Because I can drag a program I'm tired of to the trash can.. Because I can go to one location - the Applications folder - to find any new program I install.
Does that mean that OS X applications don't use any shared libraries? Sounds like 1990. Or do they put a hell lot of hard work into their package-management to let everything fit together? Sounds like Debian.
I think this is an experiment by the RIAA to test whether they can leave out the music around their audio watermarks and sell them standalone. If the market reacts positive, their profit will skyrocket up to 100.05%, because they don't have to pay those greedy musicians anymore.
Remove the cheap solvent, and, by weight, inkjet ink is more expensive than gold.
Yeah. Even if you printed counterfeit money with an inkjet, you *still* couldn't afford its cartridges!
With apologies to Willian Shakespeare, or anyone with taste for that matter
Same applies to this peace:
Mozilla, Prince of Denmark
To release, or not to release, - that is the question: -
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of everchanging interfaces,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by freezing end them? - To freeze, - to release, -
No more; and by a release to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That C++ is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wisht. To freeze, - to release; -
To release! perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that release of 1.0 what dreams may come...
I tried compiling it but it wont work.
What is wrong? I am using VC++ 6 on Windows XP, with all updates, why wont it work?!
This kernel is protected by the GPL.
As a reaction Windows protects itself using the GPF.
Can anyone please explain what a modchip is
Modchips fix hardware-bugs in game consoles: e.g. inability to play backuped games or DVDs.
Well, we all know that AOL is no slouch at slipping it hard and rough to their users but even AOL isn't going to be stupid enough to try foisting a noticeably slower browser on their users.
I use both IE and Mozilla at work. Mozilla is indeed *not* noticeably slower than IE.
Many of you may refuse to use IE for idealogical reasons, and that's valid, but nothing can change the fact that, when it comes to the simple activity of browsing, the MS product gives a smoother user experience.
I tried to use IE on my computer, but the experience was very bumpy, because I didn't want to install this really huuuuuge runtime-environment (Windows) it needs to run smoothly.
I mean, given that he makes a personal attack against Linus for valuing pragmatism over ideals, and makes it clear that no compromise is acceptable, ever, then it would be breaktakingly hypocritical of him to decry Linux as non-free while at the same time actually making use of it, right?
The paragraph you are refering says that if "freedom" had been a stated goal of the Linux-developers, they would have reverse-engineered the non-free software since day one, providing free source-code. As compared to the situation now, where a pile of binary-data for various machines has to be rewritten to build a completely source-only version of Linux - a huge task that nobody wants to do now, because most people think it is not necessary. He didn't say that Linux is non-free, he said that parts of Linux are not free, which is certainly true for the firmware-binaries. He thinks that having free source-code is important, while most others don't mind the hidden proprietary binaries. He think's that this attitude is wrong, because the problem will grow over time. I don't see hypocrisy here.
Only one device per channel can work at a given time.
So what? ATA100 transferes at 100MB/sec, regardless of the speed of the drives attached. If the drive can deliver 50MB/sec, the data will go over the bus at a speed of 100MB/sec and the bus will be idle half of the remaining time (where the other drive has the chance to transfer). So, in theory, two drives at 50MB/sec will push 100MB/sec over the bus. In reality there are some losses, though...
The main point why ATA133 is pointless (speedwise) is that we don't have IDE-drives yet which can transfer much more than 40-50MB/sec. So ATA133 can't bring a performance win over ATA100, because the bus simply isn't a bottleneck.
Microsoft is our friend here. :)
Think twice... There are plenty of OSS developers who abandon their projects in fear of liability due to laws like the DMCA. And on the other hand there's MS which is found guilty to hold a monopoly by illegal means - and they just laugh.
So it's good for them to have laws that make making software as impossible as possible. While the playing field will clear and the prices will sky-rocket, MS will circumvent the laws and get away with it. Maybe we need a law that forbids any curcumvention of laws? DMCA generalized!
Afraid of BT?
...and by the way: kernel.org just crashed.
H. Peter Anvin wrote on linux-kernel:
zeus.kernel.org has suffered what appears to be a multiple disk RAID
failure, and no longer appears to boot. I can't do any further
diagnostic without physical access to the machine; however, there is a
good chance we have lost a RAID.
I will attempt to bring the machine back, but, in the meantime, I
would like to ask if there is anyone or any company who would be
willing to donate eight (8) 73 GB SCA SCSI disks on short notice. We
have been suffering from a shortage of space on the affected RAID for
quite a while, and if it is truly dead it might be reasonable to
replace the drives with higher-capacity ones instead.
Please email me if you would be able to help.
-hpa
Here's another useful post from Russel King on linux-kernel for those who ran into troubles:
> What kind of breakage are we looking at here? I had a system that ran 2.4.15
> and got shut down without a sync. What kind of corruption will occur and is
> it something a simple fsck will fix?
fsck does seem to fix it, but it won't automatically detect the problem
(since the filesystem is marked clean).
It basically removes the inodes from the disk, but leaves the names in
the directory. On the next boot, init scripts which clear out certain
directories fail, and various daemons fail to start because of it.
It seems that the only solution is to force a fsck at boot:
shutdown -F -r now
should do the trick.
A bug in the inode handling of 2.4.15 can leave stale inodes (unremovable files) when a filesystem is unmounted. The problem exists for all filesystem types. Do not use 2.4.15-pre9 and 2.4.15-final and wait for the patch.
Al Viro on linux-kernel: Sigh... Supposed fix to problems with stale inodes was completely broken.
What we need is "if we are doing last iput() on fs that is getting shut, sync it and don't leave it in cache". And yes, we have a similar path in iput(). Similar, but not quite the same.
Al Viro on linux-kernel:Breakage happens when you umount filesystem (_any_ local filesystem, be it ext2, reiserfs, whatever) that still has dirty inodes.
IOW, if you are running 2.4.15 - build a patched kernel, install it and do the following:
* switch to single-user
* sync
* umount everything non-busy
* remount the rest read-only
* turn the thing off
* boot with patched kernel or with anything before 2.4.15-pre9
Russel King on linux-kernel: I think 2.4.15-greased-turkey should be renamed to 2.4.15-dead-duck. 8)
I think they should go further. They should allow the RIAA to break into people's houses to check that they don't have any music copies on cassette. If they do, the RIAA should be allowed to smash up their music system. And crap on their carpet.
I hate postings like this. Today they may sound funny, but they tend to become federal law after a short incubation period. Don't spread those memes! Your thoughts can change the world.
Software aesthetics? Just look at the crappy HTML-code of this article:
<p class="DefaultText" style="text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0in">
<span style="font-family:Wingdings">?<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span>Cooperation</p>
What should be a <ul> is emulated with CSS and windings 8-bit characters (bullets, I suppose - they don't display on my system, because I'm not using windows!). A Frontpage-Consultant confesses his secret love for goto's and teaches us software-aesthetics using VB-examples. Strange times.
It's easy: Each client maintains a system of non-linear equations that is quantum-mechanically
coupled with the another system of euquations that resides on the server. Thanks to
quantum mechanics (no-one really understands this stuff, anyway) every change
of the server's matrix induces an equal change in the clients matrix in no-time.
The 28.8kbit connection is only needed to establish and keep-alive the quantum-coupling.
So Einstein's laws are preserved: information can't be transmitted faster than light.
Because nobody would believe this shit otherwise.
How 'bout this: rip the CD as WAV, Ogg and De-Ogg to WAV. Then write a couple of CDRs with all songs in the same order as the CD, but with some songs from the original WAV, and others the Ogged&De-Ogged WAV. Then do a blind classification trying to see if ou can tell if it's the original WAV or not by listening to the CDRs. If you are correct 50% of the time, then for you Ogg is lossless for your ears.
I had the same idea after I did my posting. I think this is psychologicaly a very positve setting, beside from the technical benefit: the tester isn't confronted with any computer, but only with his CD-player (people don't count CD-players to computers...). So it's just a CD. No compression voodoo. Because many people have hard-wired in their brains that "lossy compression sounds bad and I can hear this, and even if I can't hear it I'm sure there are strange subconscious effects in my psyche going on that make me feel less good than with uncompressed audio... bla."
In my opinion that's the only way to really test. The lower quality of the soundcard output might hide differences in your suggestion. Plus the blind classification removes any psychological effects of expecting to hear differences or not.
TMTOWTDI! I think it depends on what you want to measure. If you want to check the quality of the codec in isolation, then this may be a very good test.
But even the "unscientific" method of the original poster has a real "practical validity": he compared his old configuration (CD-player and heaps of CDs) and a new configuration (ogg, soundcard, tape-input and a biiig harddisk), because it's the whole configuration that matters in last consequence (nobody can use a codec in isolation). The best codec doesn't help anything if, say, your amp is trash. He came to the conclusion, that his new configuration was inferior to the old configuration and so he didn't implement it. His only error was to think, that he did a test about the codec, which is certainly not true. And because he thought to test the codec, he failed to see other possibilities to improve the configuration. (the input-line, the soundcard-DAC...)
But, by stating my methods, my opinion can be weighed against others as much as it deserves-- as you point out, perhaps with not as much weight as others.
My posting wasn't meant to be offensive. You stated your methods, so your posting was still informative. I was just a bit angry about a test in a newspaper that was on slashdot some time ago, which was obviously rigged (or just incompetent, who knows).
I have low-end audio-equipment and there is a very noticable difference between my CD-player and my soundcard (playing uncompressed wav) - pop and jazz are no problem, but classical music sounds bad. If you have a good soundcard, the difference may not be huge, but you still have to be careful with comparisons.
The artifact was there, verified by a "no blind" and a "double blind" who made the same observation.
You did a biased single-blind test. But I don't want to be pedantic, because I believe that there was indeed a difference. As another poster pointed out, different amp-inputs can have a very different frequency response, because they were designed to be optimal for the device connecting to it. In the case of a casette-player the frequency-response isn't linear at all.
The only difference was that the low end was less impressive on the OGG than the CD. I put on a few songs and started them simultanously and switched the amp from CD to cassette in (which happened to be my computer). Although it is possible that the casette input amp is less accurate near the low end than the CD input amp, I doubt it. The speakers used were Bose 501s. Conclusion: at 256k/sec, OGG was fine at the high end, but strangely enough, not good enough at the low end.
You are comaring:
a) OGG -- decoded stream -- soundcard -- casette input -- amp -- speakers
b) CD -- decoded stream -- CD-D/A-converter -- CD-input -- amp -- speakers
If alternative a doesn't sound as good as b, this doesn't say anything about the ogg-encoding, because it isn't the only variable. Maybe the difference is caused by the different audio-characteristics of soundcard and CD-D/A-converter.
To get a valid comparison, rip the content of the CD as WAV. Then compare the WAV and the OGG, using the same soundcard and the same amp-input. Everything else is totally meaningless.
But even with this setting, there remains one additional variable: your psyche. If ogg and wav were bit-per-bit equal you will still recognize a difference when you know which one of the two you are hearing. So if you want to get meaningful results, you have to make a double-blind-test.
It's really sad how easy it is for the marketing guys to convince people that alternative codecs are inferior, because 95% don't understand anything about scientific methods or statistics. And they will do that, because they have the budget and we have not.
Netscape has released a new Toy Factory theme for Netscape 6.1. Big bright buttons!
Cool! Now we've even got a XP-compatiblility-extension!
After all, if nobody writes viruses for, say, UNIX platforms, it must mean that they aren't as popular!
So true! And that's also the reason masturbation is safe - all those virii spread per sex, because it's so much more popular!
I'm convinced that software companies now WANT viruses to run on their software, because it "proves" the software is popular.
Yea, imagine the proud geek who can say from himself that he managed to get syphilis...
But the tendency to use words and analogies drawn from current technology has a long history. Popular-science accounts of the working of the brain used to compare it with a telephone exchange. At the time they were written, this was the highest vaguely relevant technology. Fifty years later, comparisons were being made with computers.
The history of these analogies actually predates the age of information technology. Aristotle (284-322 B.C.), one of the greatest western philosophers, said that the purpose of the brain is to cool the blood.
And he deduced this by the way of pure thinking. He never read slashdot.
From http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/CodeRedII.html:
:-(
Pattern scanning algorithm for Code Red II variant
The algorithm used by this new variant is designed to infect lots of "local" machines that are presumably more fully populated than picking random IPs out there. A blend of the local IP and a random number is used, and the number of octets in each depends on yet another random number that can go eight ways:
* 1 out of 8: entirely random IP
* 4 out of 8: stay in same class A (192.X.Y.Z)
* 3 out of 8: stay in same class B (192.168.X.Y)
The code to do this starts with a table of masks, but remember that on the Intel platform, "network" byte order is the inverse of the native CPU order, so we have to think backwards. This made it much more difficult for a non-assembler guy like me to follow
For instance, 192.168.1.7 in "native" word order is 0xC0A0107, but in network order it's 0x07010AC0. This means that to stay in the same class A, we're keeping the LOW bits, not the high.
In this case, only CURRENT versions of these programs are blocked, because they access Windows internals which causes instability on XP.
And they are establishing a mechanism to block third-party software in a very elegant and unsuspicious way. This isn't bad per se, but the company has shown in the past that nobody can trust them.
Microsoft preventing this software from installing is like having different plugs for 220 V and 9 V devices so you won't plug your shaver directly into a high voltage outlet.
Most of the time Microsoft puts "Beware: 220V - use at your own risk!"-stickers on their opponents interfaces. Now this will be easier than ever.
It's a perfect example of double standards: when Windows crashes this is always the fault of Microsoft, not of bad drivers or programs which access Windows internals, while in fact they often are (especially video drivers). When Microsoft tries to do something about it, it's suddenly only done for promotion of their own firewall software.
We are talking about driver problems like if(check_drdos()) complain(),exit();
XP will have a generic solution for this program-fragment. Not scary?
Make up your mind. If you are against Microsoft for monopoly reasons or anything else, that's your right. But mangling any piece of information to something negative only hurts the credibility of the anti-Microsoft camp.
They maintain their monopoly with technical measures like this. That's the point.