I'm just going with past experience on outsourcing details. In every case where I've seen outsourcing done, the terms of uptime guarantees, access guarantees, priveleges, security -- all were negotiable items with give and take by both the outsourcing provider and the service purchaser.
If Google and Microsoft aren't allowing customers to set terms on critical things like system access and the validity of content, then companies are being very foolish to contract with them at all. Your provider should never be allowed to dictate terms you disagree with, even if you only disagree in principle.
But I can't see any provider of software of services explicitly allowing users to reverse engineer their software. I think that's a perfectly reasonable stipulation for a service that is based on proprietary software. If you wanted to "know how it works", you should have badgered your school to sign up with a provider that uses open source software instead.
Can you provide an example of a policy that would get the students and educators up in arms?
Can you provide an example where the terms of access to outsourced services are not set by the organization who set the terms in their contract rather than blindly accepting whatever the outsourcing company tabled as a "standard" contract?
I thought not. More FUD. "Please panic, people, because they might possibly maybe perhaps breach their contract and do something we don't like."
I hate it when people try to act as if IT isn't subject to budget constraints and having to prioritize spending like any other department of a large organization. Sure the money comes out of the "client" departments, but it's an issue that IT does have to plan for and deal with.
The summary asks "How can IT people solve things like this?"
Forward the emails and responses to the demands for planned capacity growth to the public.
Oh, you didn't keep the email from your manager refusing to pay for a needed capacity upgrade? I guess you haven't been in IT long enough to learn to cover your own butt.
I get your point, but I think both you and the GP are missing something.
People do use phones and pads to access their email, but they don't often reply to those emails because it's so cumbersome to do. I've often gotten emails that said something like "will reply later" if someone got an email on their portable device, and do get one after the owner has a chance to get to a keyboard.
For most people, the internet is a "passive experience." Those of us in tech circles may not like it and may use our devices more fully than the average user, but we are not "average" ourselves by doing so.
Techies are not the market for smart phones and pads.
Quite frankly, companies like Apple don't give two shits about whether "the techs" are happy with their products.
If the movie stars and special effects artists who make their money have an issue with the copyright system, they certainly have the money to fight that battle themselves, but it seems they're mostly content to see things continue as they have for decades. Seeing as those people are mostly Americans or people with valid work visas, I would think they are being protected by these takedowns.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: If you're profiting from piracy by selling access to content, you deserve to be crushed the same as any profiteering thief.
And once again, the US government has not gone after the "freetard" sites that don't charge a fee. There are no lost sales with a free site, because the people who use them clearly aren't willing to pay for content, while those who use the pay sites are willing to pay, just not as much as Hollywood would like.
I would say 95% of PCs that get shipped end up with a an office suite, an accounting package, and some web interfaces installed. As people shift more and more to console based gaming because there are fewer PC based games produced and shipped, there are correspondingly fewer people who need or want to install extra applications on their PCs.
For most individuals, the question is not whether they can find a package to do what they want, it's whether there is already a package installed that does it. Even the most basic software installer causes panic for too many of my "computer literate" relatives. The barrier to claiming literacy is now "can you surf? Can you email? Can you type with two fingers? Good -- you may now consider yourself computer literate!"
Why is there this unspoken assumption that the Apple model will take over?
Just because other companies are providing downloads through "App Stores" does NOT mean that they're inspecting that software for malware any more than FreeCode does when it advertises someone's open source release. There have been cases of malware in both Android and Apple app stores, so it's definitely not providing protection from malware.
Web interface distribution does not equal a walled garden.
Gotta love the panicy flame-bait articles that make the front page of Slashdot sometimes. They spark discussion, but they're not "good" articles for much else.
I was surprised the judge thought that one might be novel enough to succeed, too. Using anti-glare and blackout glass was STANDARD for CRT monitors for many years. A backlit LCD with blackout glass seems kind of obvious to me. The dark glass improves contrast ratios, or at least looks like it does (it's probably an inaccurate picture, though.)
But I think Sony was the one who had the patent on the dark glass tubes, which would beat Apple by a substantial margin. The fact that apple used it in a small form factor is NOT innovation; it's applying already existing standards for manufacturing to a new product. You shouldn't be able to patent USING something that already existed for substantially the same purpose: a high contrast screen.
To each their own. I found Facebook more lacking for features I use, like being able to edit and update posts to turn them into little essays over time.
Facebook's UI is constantly jumping around in the browser, making it very annoying to read or watch content. Google's doesn't do that, even if other people are posting to your feed.
Most importantly of all, I'm not stuck with an epic "friend" hangover from when I played Zynga games and needed Mafia members. And right from the get-go, Google lets you group those friends as "Gamers" or some such so you can get rid of them when you're done playing. Facebook added lists long after I'd started with them, so it was too late for such organization.
I still don't see the difference between "social media" and a well run forum other than the lack of indexed topics.
Isn't it Anonymous that came up with this ludicrous scheme? Anonymous does not control, own, rule, drive, steer, or otherwise control Occupy. The only thing they have in common is the use of the Guy Fawkes masks.
The nice thing about email is I can ignore it until I have time to deal with it, instead of constantly being interrupted by inane questions.
The other nice thing about email is there is a trail of the conversation I can use to say "No, you said this" and forward them a copy when they change their mind about something and claim I "misunderstood" them, which has saved my butt more than once on bad specs.
It's also pretty much impossible to get everyone online with a chat-type system at the same time, but easy to CC everyone concerned.
How is that different from a paid-for product that provides a framework or otherwise simplifies a task? The whole goal of computing is automation. It's the very definition of what computers do -- make the complex mundane.
Any luddite who ever thought otherwise clearly had their head stuck somewhere other than in reality.
True, but international domains are subject to international law. And when the products being sold through the website are things like NFL jersey rip-offs, it's pretty clear that the owner of the domain is hoping to con US citizens who would be interested in those products, and that they're doing so for profit.
Every one of those sites uses an international.com or.net address, not a country TLD. If they were using country TLDs, I could see the argument that they're under a foreign nation's jurisdiction. But.coms and.nets are international, and have to abide by international law, including those protecting businesses from blatant rip-offs of their products.
The list of sites reads like a "who's who" of counterfeit goods, not torrent sites. I didn't see a single torrent-related site that I recognized on the list.
No kidding. The average gamer doesn't know how to download pirated games in the first place.
I read this as Ubisoft saying "We don't like the PC market, it's too small. But we can't piss everyone off by telling them that, so we'll blame piracy. Again."
I mean, seriously, some thousands of people pirate a game so you skip the revenue from millions?
...the Pentium 350 lacks features such as integrated graphics, which are on most of Intel's laptop and desktop processors.
Somehow I doubt that integrated graphics are on "most" of their chips, unless you're talking about the volume shipped for laptops, and even then I thought the graphics were on a separate chip in most cases.
Me and my buddies always referred to these as "dog and pony shows." Trot out the dogs and the ponies for people to hear, but little if anything useful is actually accomplished.
If the stockholders are expecting to get answers in a presentation, they're clueless and need to start reading the company info broadcasts. The idea that you can summarize a multi-billion dollar, thousands of employees corporation in 15 minutes and give meaningful answers even in 30 minutes or an hour is absolutely asinine.
Tempest in a teapot, methinks. Big money involved, but still just lazy-assed sheeple complaining instead of learning how to work within the system.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just going with past experience on outsourcing details. In every case where I've seen outsourcing done, the terms of uptime guarantees, access guarantees, priveleges, security -- all were negotiable items with give and take by both the outsourcing provider and the service purchaser.
If Google and Microsoft aren't allowing customers to set terms on critical things like system access and the validity of content, then companies are being very foolish to contract with them at all. Your provider should never be allowed to dictate terms you disagree with, even if you only disagree in principle.
But I can't see any provider of software of services explicitly allowing users to reverse engineer their software. I think that's a perfectly reasonable stipulation for a service that is based on proprietary software. If you wanted to "know how it works", you should have badgered your school to sign up with a provider that uses open source software instead.
Ah, I get it. 500MB of 2010 emails. I'd misread that as gigabytes.
Still, you've got as much email for one year as I've saved my entire life. Something doesn't add up.
My personal email archive goes back to 1996, and is still only 262MB.
My Google archive uses 164MB.
I've no idea what my Yahoo account uses.
But 500GB of email?!?!?!?! Are your relatives sending you entire videos as attachments or accidentally copying their entire music archives?
Can you provide an example of a policy that would get the students and educators up in arms?
Can you provide an example where the terms of access to outsourced services are not set by the organization who set the terms in their contract rather than blindly accepting whatever the outsourcing company tabled as a "standard" contract?
I thought not. More FUD. "Please panic, people, because they might possibly maybe perhaps breach their contract and do something we don't like."
Pfffftttttt.
I hate it when people try to act as if IT isn't subject to budget constraints and having to prioritize spending like any other department of a large organization. Sure the money comes out of the "client" departments, but it's an issue that IT does have to plan for and deal with.
The summary asks "How can IT people solve things like this?"
Forward the emails and responses to the demands for planned capacity growth to the public.
Oh, you didn't keep the email from your manager refusing to pay for a needed capacity upgrade? I guess you haven't been in IT long enough to learn to cover your own butt.
I get your point, but I think both you and the GP are missing something.
People do use phones and pads to access their email, but they don't often reply to those emails because it's so cumbersome to do. I've often gotten emails that said something like "will reply later" if someone got an email on their portable device, and do get one after the owner has a chance to get to a keyboard.
For most people, the internet is a "passive experience." Those of us in tech circles may not like it and may use our devices more fully than the average user, but we are not "average" ourselves by doing so.
Techies are not the market for smart phones and pads.
Quite frankly, companies like Apple don't give two shits about whether "the techs" are happy with their products.
If the movie stars and special effects artists who make their money have an issue with the copyright system, they certainly have the money to fight that battle themselves, but it seems they're mostly content to see things continue as they have for decades. Seeing as those people are mostly Americans or people with valid work visas, I would think they are being protected by these takedowns.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: If you're profiting from piracy by selling access to content, you deserve to be crushed the same as any profiteering thief.
And once again, the US government has not gone after the "freetard" sites that don't charge a fee. There are no lost sales with a free site, because the people who use them clearly aren't willing to pay for content, while those who use the pay sites are willing to pay, just not as much as Hollywood would like.
I would say 95% of PCs that get shipped end up with a an office suite, an accounting package, and some web interfaces installed. As people shift more and more to console based gaming because there are fewer PC based games produced and shipped, there are correspondingly fewer people who need or want to install extra applications on their PCs.
For most individuals, the question is not whether they can find a package to do what they want, it's whether there is already a package installed that does it. Even the most basic software installer causes panic for too many of my "computer literate" relatives. The barrier to claiming literacy is now "can you surf? Can you email? Can you type with two fingers? Good -- you may now consider yourself computer literate!"
Shhh. The truth will be suppressed in favour of knee jerks and flamebait.
Why is there this unspoken assumption that the Apple model will take over?
Just because other companies are providing downloads through "App Stores" does NOT mean that they're inspecting that software for malware any more than FreeCode does when it advertises someone's open source release. There have been cases of malware in both Android and Apple app stores, so it's definitely not providing protection from malware.
Web interface distribution does not equal a walled garden.
Gotta love the panicy flame-bait articles that make the front page of Slashdot sometimes. They spark discussion, but they're not "good" articles for much else.
I was surprised the judge thought that one might be novel enough to succeed, too. Using anti-glare and blackout glass was STANDARD for CRT monitors for many years. A backlit LCD with blackout glass seems kind of obvious to me. The dark glass improves contrast ratios, or at least looks like it does (it's probably an inaccurate picture, though.)
But I think Sony was the one who had the patent on the dark glass tubes, which would beat Apple by a substantial margin. The fact that apple used it in a small form factor is NOT innovation; it's applying already existing standards for manufacturing to a new product. You shouldn't be able to patent USING something that already existed for substantially the same purpose: a high contrast screen.
To each their own. I found Facebook more lacking for features I use, like being able to edit and update posts to turn them into little essays over time.
Facebook's UI is constantly jumping around in the browser, making it very annoying to read or watch content. Google's doesn't do that, even if other people are posting to your feed.
Most importantly of all, I'm not stuck with an epic "friend" hangover from when I played Zynga games and needed Mafia members. And right from the get-go, Google lets you group those friends as "Gamers" or some such so you can get rid of them when you're done playing. Facebook added lists long after I'd started with them, so it was too late for such organization.
I still don't see the difference between "social media" and a well run forum other than the lack of indexed topics.
Isn't it Anonymous that came up with this ludicrous scheme? Anonymous does not control, own, rule, drive, steer, or otherwise control Occupy. The only thing they have in common is the use of the Guy Fawkes masks.
'nuff said.
The nice thing about email is I can ignore it until I have time to deal with it, instead of constantly being interrupted by inane questions.
The other nice thing about email is there is a trail of the conversation I can use to say "No, you said this" and forward them a copy when they change their mind about something and claim I "misunderstood" them, which has saved my butt more than once on bad specs.
It's also pretty much impossible to get everyone online with a chat-type system at the same time, but easy to CC everyone concerned.
How is that different from a paid-for product that provides a framework or otherwise simplifies a task? The whole goal of computing is automation. It's the very definition of what computers do -- make the complex mundane.
Any luddite who ever thought otherwise clearly had their head stuck somewhere other than in reality.
True, but international domains are subject to international law. And when the products being sold through the website are things like NFL jersey rip-offs, it's pretty clear that the owner of the domain is hoping to con US citizens who would be interested in those products, and that they're doing so for profit.
Every one of those sites uses an international .com or .net address, not a country TLD. If they were using country TLDs, I could see the argument that they're under a foreign nation's jurisdiction. But .coms and .nets are international, and have to abide by international law, including those protecting businesses from blatant rip-offs of their products.
The list of sites reads like a "who's who" of counterfeit goods, not torrent sites. I didn't see a single torrent-related site that I recognized on the list.
If the patent in question was already invalidated, then WTF are these bozos suing for? They don't have a valid patent to sue with!
No kidding. The average gamer doesn't know how to download pirated games in the first place.
I read this as Ubisoft saying "We don't like the PC market, it's too small. But we can't piss everyone off by telling them that, so we'll blame piracy. Again."
I mean, seriously, some thousands of people pirate a game so you skip the revenue from millions?
Yeah, that's a rational business decision.
Somehow I doubt that integrated graphics are on "most" of their chips, unless you're talking about the volume shipped for laptops, and even then I thought the graphics were on a separate chip in most cases.
Where does it say they're going under?
I'd mod you troll if I had the points.
Me and my buddies always referred to these as "dog and pony shows." Trot out the dogs and the ponies for people to hear, but little if anything useful is actually accomplished.
If the stockholders are expecting to get answers in a presentation, they're clueless and need to start reading the company info broadcasts. The idea that you can summarize a multi-billion dollar, thousands of employees corporation in 15 minutes and give meaningful answers even in 30 minutes or an hour is absolutely asinine.
Tempest in a teapot, methinks. Big money involved, but still just lazy-assed sheeple complaining instead of learning how to work within the system.