Were these little devices sold to the consumer market, they'd become feature competition devices and the prices would go up.
But if they are only delivered as sponsored charity hardware, any future design changes can incorporate additional "obsolete" hardware that normally gets "dumped" by the VLSI and hardware manufacturers into secondary or tertiary markets. By shifting that inventory to charity hardware, they get a tax write off, good press, and help out a lot of people.
A friend of mine works with digital cellular application technologies. They have to obtain the deployment and development licensing rights from a US-based third party, which is responsible for coordinating with all the various cellular providers that follow the North American standards.
There are no programmable cellular devices which bypass this process, and there shouldn't be. Otherwise worms, viruses, and trojans take on a whole new level of infectiousness and risk, as you can't very well start loading up anti-virus and other such protections on a cell phone or other cell device.
While I'm personally annoyed as a Canadian to see that the licensing/regulatory management company is in the US, meaning we pay to US services when targetting a Canadian market, I do understand the need for that restriction on data/cell technology deployments.
In fact, you might even say that because the *AA has done nothing to catch and prosecute those who are releasing the screeners to the public networks, the *AA is actually putting the media into the public domain with the tacit approval of the *AA itself.
Had the *AA posted real copies instead of fakes, then it might not be a case of entrapment. But their whole approach was fraudulent, using false advertising of the contents to trick the accused into downloading the material in the first place.
How many people wouldn't watch a movie for free if it were tossed out into the general public?
How can it be that with all the watermarks, serial numbers, and other issues the "screeners" still make it to the networks without the leaks amongst the reviewers and other receivers of DVD screeners getting caught?
If the *AA are going to act as a vigilante police force, then they have to be held accountable to the same regulations as the regular security agencies.
eventually put me through to a Windows Activation support guy in India who will interrogate me
I'm getting nervous about the number of times I've read about bank data, credit card info, and other such data that would be protected under Canadian or US legislation being sold by Indian tech workers for their own profit.
Clearly many of the staff over there have no respect for the law if breaking it can put cash in their own pocket.
Without trust, access to secure systems must be denied.
Mass-deployment boxen such as Dell, Compaq, or Lenovo systems are prepared using a single image at the factory. They are not installed with the license string printed on the side. In some cases, they may be left with a default OEM license string rather than registering the printed license id properly as that would slow down the manufacturing and shipping process.
What I hate is that the id's uniquely identify the hardware hash of a system, including the hard drive serial numbers. Whenever I mirror/copy a drive to update the recovery backup, I have to re-register and obtain a new id string from Microsoft, even though it is the same machine I'd been running all along, with a properly licensed installation copied at the block level of the hard drive.
3. Install OS clean from media without all the crap, or use an existing corporate image.
But the idea of blaming third-party products for Vista's perception problems is the clumsiest FUD to come out of Microsoft's spin-doctor department in years. They have bugs that log to system files in WinXP that haven't been fixed for THREE YEARS or longer, so I don't buy the "it's the driver" excuses any more.
I realize companies are concerned about potential lawsuits, and they need to phrase responses carefully, but if they are going to take the time and effort to panel-interview a candidate, they have already invested a significant amount of money in the process.
In the case of senior staff, they are also having the opportunity for an idea-bounce with skill sets they don't have in-house, a service one would normally pay a management consulting firm for. It is a bare minimum courtesy to follow up on such interviews in a timely fashion, and have some mutual respect. Otherwise no one learns anything, regardless of whether a job is offered.
I've often heard that a company didn't offer a job because they didn't think they could offer enough. Shouldn't that be my decision? No one knows all my motives, and the past three years could have been 3/5 of the commitment I'd been willing to offer companies before now. Now time is running out, and they're right -- I might not be willing to "stick around" as long as they'd like.
I despise companies that power play with people lives, and I'm glad I haven't had to deal with such organizations in a long time.
Sometimes industry and government realize that public outrage is so extreme that there is no need to enshrine the restriction with case law. Fools forget that.
Why is Microsoft allowed to "embed" an id string like the WGA identifiers that allow them to identify and traceback any individual who does an update of LEGALLY LICENSED SOFTWARE?!?!?
Why do I see a 3 year backlog of error/debug messages in certain WinXP system log files, and receive advice on how to disable error logging instead of someone FIXING THE PROBLEM?
I've relied on the same stylesheets with MS Word through many iterations from the earliest versions running on Windows 3.1 to the Office 2000 release. That aspect of Word works fine, and has since around the Win95/SE days.
Losing that feature is what would have me tossing Word in the circular file permanently.
I used to do document processing with nroff/troff, so named paragraph styles and such just come naturally. What I don't understand is why no one seems to have just used CSS configurations to control display formatting of documents instead of just web pages.
Why not have more standardized tags so a web user's interface preferences can be easily rendered by browsers anywhere they go? i.e. Fill in the CSS attributes with your preferences and save them to your web profile. Anywhere you log in, you point the web profile to your "home" CSS sheet, and from thereon you get your display configs instead of CSS being abused to force tiny unreadable fonts onto big monitors, or inch-high text on older monitors.
In this specific case, Microsoft and SFLC are both supporting the position that U.S. software patents have no right to cover activity outside of the United States, especially in places that have specifically rejected software patents.
I don't even ascribe to that narrow restriction. Any patent or IP system should be national or managed by a trade union like the EU, not shoved down the throats of foreign citizens and businesses by one country. The current approach allows patent holders to literally leverage the military and economic pressures of the United States for their own personal gain.
Having the OSS symbol of evil (Microsoft) standing alongside the pro-OSS representatives on this issue highlights the broken nature of the current US patent system in double-height, double-width, bold, italic, flashing, underlined text.
Really? I know we can access the websites from Canada, but given the vocal resistance to having satellite or cable feeds of some foreign news media, you'd think competition meant the sky was falling!
Why not spin the independance of nations, accept that Russia is an seperate country not subject to US law, and block the traffic? The US already blocks traffic from "hate" and "counter-insurgency" sites like Al Jazeera news feeds, the same as people complain about China doing.
I'd rather see Americans complaining about censorship than the world tolerating Jackboot enforcement of US law on foreign soil.
I can't imagine people will stop creating special purpose or concept-hybrid languages as time goes on. If you could treat data structures and communication pipes or backbones as easily as you do lower level constructs, you could begin manipulating them more flexibly. Much as object-oriented concepts cleaned up the package or shared library so that you could begin to see the abstract interfaces and the patterns they represent.
Each layer of abstraction over the decades has allowed people to see the next layer or two up, or at least to try to see and implement those layers.
Slashdot Mirror
Were these little devices sold to the consumer market, they'd become feature competition devices and the prices would go up.
But if they are only delivered as sponsored charity hardware, any future design changes can incorporate additional "obsolete" hardware that normally gets "dumped" by the VLSI and hardware manufacturers into secondary or tertiary markets. By shifting that inventory to charity hardware, they get a tax write off, good press, and help out a lot of people.
Win-win-win-win... there is no limit to n.
A friend of mine works with digital cellular application technologies. They have to obtain the deployment and development licensing rights from a US-based third party, which is responsible for coordinating with all the various cellular providers that follow the North American standards.
There are no programmable cellular devices which bypass this process, and there shouldn't be. Otherwise worms, viruses, and trojans take on a whole new level of infectiousness and risk, as you can't very well start loading up anti-virus and other such protections on a cell phone or other cell device.
While I'm personally annoyed as a Canadian to see that the licensing/regulatory management company is in the US, meaning we pay to US services when targetting a Canadian market, I do understand the need for that restriction on data/cell technology deployments.
In fact, you might even say that because the *AA has done nothing to catch and prosecute those who are releasing the screeners to the public networks, the *AA is actually putting the media into the public domain with the tacit approval of the *AA itself.
Had the *AA posted real copies instead of fakes, then it might not be a case of entrapment. But their whole approach was fraudulent, using false advertising of the contents to trick the accused into downloading the material in the first place.
How many people wouldn't watch a movie for free if it were tossed out into the general public?
How can it be that with all the watermarks, serial numbers, and other issues the "screeners" still make it to the networks without the leaks amongst the reviewers and other receivers of DVD screeners getting caught?
Entrapment.
Had the bait or "fake cocaine" not been made available, the crime would not have taken place.
If the *AA are going to act as a vigilante police force, then they have to be held accountable to the same regulations as the regular security agencies.
I'm getting nervous about the number of times I've read about bank data, credit card info, and other such data that would be protected under Canadian or US legislation being sold by Indian tech workers for their own profit.
Clearly many of the staff over there have no respect for the law if breaking it can put cash in their own pocket.
Without trust, access to secure systems must be denied.
Mass-deployment boxen such as Dell, Compaq, or Lenovo systems are prepared using a single image at the factory. They are not installed with the license string printed on the side. In some cases, they may be left with a default OEM license string rather than registering the printed license id properly as that would slow down the manufacturing and shipping process.
What I hate is that the id's uniquely identify the hardware hash of a system, including the hard drive serial numbers. Whenever I mirror/copy a drive to update the recovery backup, I have to re-register and obtain a new id string from Microsoft, even though it is the same machine I'd been running all along, with a properly licensed installation copied at the block level of the hard drive.
1. Buy box.
2. Reformat drive.
3. Install OS clean from media without all the crap, or use an existing corporate image.
But the idea of blaming third-party products for Vista's perception problems is the clumsiest FUD to come out of Microsoft's spin-doctor department in years. They have bugs that log to system files in WinXP that haven't been fixed for THREE YEARS or longer, so I don't buy the "it's the driver" excuses any more.
Not bad. Not bad at all! *g*
I realize companies are concerned about potential lawsuits, and they need to phrase responses carefully, but if they are going to take the time and effort to panel-interview a candidate, they have already invested a significant amount of money in the process.
In the case of senior staff, they are also having the opportunity for an idea-bounce with skill sets they don't have in-house, a service one would normally pay a management consulting firm for. It is a bare minimum courtesy to follow up on such interviews in a timely fashion, and have some mutual respect. Otherwise no one learns anything, regardless of whether a job is offered.
I've often heard that a company didn't offer a job because they didn't think they could offer enough. Shouldn't that be my decision? No one knows all my motives, and the past three years could have been 3/5 of the commitment I'd been willing to offer companies before now. Now time is running out, and they're right -- I might not be willing to "stick around" as long as they'd like.
I despise companies that power play with people lives, and I'm glad I haven't had to deal with such organizations in a long time.
I always liked the fiddly bits...
Like the "porn beaches" of France and the rest of Europe. *ROTFLMAO*
Sometimes industry and government realize that public outrage is so extreme that there is no need to enshrine the restriction with case law. Fools forget that.
Intel had to allow people to disable CPU ids.
Why is Microsoft allowed to "embed" an id string like the WGA identifiers that allow them to identify and traceback any individual who does an update of LEGALLY LICENSED SOFTWARE?!?!?
Why do I see a 3 year backlog of error/debug messages in certain WinXP system log files, and receive advice on how to disable error logging instead of someone FIXING THE PROBLEM?
I thought ODF was an updated version of the venerable OpenDoc standard pioneered by IBM, Apple, and others. Doesn't it mean "Open Doc Format"?
If so, it was a defacto industry standard long, long, long before OpenOffice existed.
Ever notice detractors like to bury posts they don't agree with as flamebait or off-topic, regardless of content?
Perhaps they just aren't intelligent or literate enough to understand the relevance. Ah well, they can keep reading, and eventually they'll "get it".
I've relied on the same stylesheets with MS Word through many iterations from the earliest versions running on Windows 3.1 to the Office 2000 release. That aspect of Word works fine, and has since around the Win95/SE days.
Losing that feature is what would have me tossing Word in the circular file permanently.
Right. Unh-hunh. And you can fly the Queen Mary without explosives.
I thought Congress had to prepare the legislation and the only right Bush had was to veto their proposals.
Did the American people ratify a new Constitution? Has the old one been burned?
I used to do document processing with nroff/troff, so named paragraph styles and such just come naturally. What I don't understand is why no one seems to have just used CSS configurations to control display formatting of documents instead of just web pages.
Why not have more standardized tags so a web user's interface preferences can be easily rendered by browsers anywhere they go? i.e. Fill in the CSS attributes with your preferences and save them to your web profile. Anywhere you log in, you point the web profile to your "home" CSS sheet, and from thereon you get your display configs instead of CSS being abused to force tiny unreadable fonts onto big monitors, or inch-high text on older monitors.
I don't even ascribe to that narrow restriction. Any patent or IP system should be national or managed by a trade union like the EU, not shoved down the throats of foreign citizens and businesses by one country. The current approach allows patent holders to literally leverage the military and economic pressures of the United States for their own personal gain.
Having the OSS symbol of evil (Microsoft) standing alongside the pro-OSS representatives on this issue highlights the broken nature of the current US patent system in double-height, double-width, bold, italic, flashing, underlined text.
Maybe they're planning to spin off Micro-Soft, a line of electronic and latex toys for the petite? :p
Really? I know we can access the websites from Canada, but given the vocal resistance to having satellite or cable feeds of some foreign news media, you'd think competition meant the sky was falling!
Why not spin the independance of nations, accept that Russia is an seperate country not subject to US law, and block the traffic? The US already blocks traffic from "hate" and "counter-insurgency" sites like Al Jazeera news feeds, the same as people complain about China doing.
I'd rather see Americans complaining about censorship than the world tolerating Jackboot enforcement of US law on foreign soil.
I can't imagine people will stop creating special purpose or concept-hybrid languages as time goes on. If you could treat data structures and communication pipes or backbones as easily as you do lower level constructs, you could begin manipulating them more flexibly. Much as object-oriented concepts cleaned up the package or shared library so that you could begin to see the abstract interfaces and the patterns they represent.
Each layer of abstraction over the decades has allowed people to see the next layer or two up, or at least to try to see and implement those layers.