Wifi/Bluetooth etc are going to be the next trends, with phones being more like PDAs there will be all sorts of things like file sharing on the street and people sitting on the tube in silence chatting to the stranger 3 seats down by text. All those dating/friendship things that beep when someone with similar interests walks past will actually take off because it will only be a software download away, and gangs of geeks will go around DoSing shops that spam passers by, gaming has just started to take off with the nokia thing and that will get much bigger and, then there'll be the standard media hype and Microsoft will do something stupid that allows some worm to spread or for anyone to accesses private data on certain phones or pedophiles will use it and then suddenly more media hype and people turning bluetooth off and so stupid trends continue.
Maybe Microsoft should stick to the desktop? They have most of the market share of home users and most of the hardware support:
3 of the most important applications to home users are web/net, office and games and Microsoft has the biggest share with all of them: IE, MS Office, Outlook - Microsoft has it all and every major game on their platform.
Then there are the security and stability issues: most home users believe that crashing twice a day is normal and that VB script worms or NetBIOS security issues have nothing to do with Microsoft. Also they will accept that windows messaging pop-up windows with spam will appear from time to time while an admin would go ape!
DRM is also a selling point: the RIAA/MPAA etc want it and the only way it can happen is with closed source software integrated with controlled hardware: home users won't even know or care about it but bussiness users will flat out refuse to have their machines controlled by a 3rd party.
In short, Microsoft: stick to making windows with pretty colours and naming disks after the alphabet.
I think this trend is mainly linked to the stange name that IIS has - its hard to pronounce two I's together where as 'Apache' is not only easy to say but sounds cool: Apache Indian, Apache Helicopter, A Patchy Web Server. Ok forget the last one.
Also IIS is for windows only while Apache runs on a matchbox. And IIS had that little drugs problem in its past (code red), still that didnt stop bush winning. Oh and Apache is free, and open source, and not too hard to set-up.
No whats needed is an end to this bull shit that politicians get up to. If you have any vested interests or friends who happen to own a few large corporations then you cant be a politician. It wouldnt hold up in a court if OJ's best friend was on the jury so why should it hold up in the government?
Hm your system sounds ok but i can immeadiately see a flaw: since you have to actually mark on each card it would be very hard for people to mass-mark a bunch of blank cards to one candidate! Also the paper trail left behind would be pretty risky - if someone looked through it they might find out that the election had been rigged. You Canadians have a long way to come before you have the sort of bribery and rigging that America enjoys.
If the American government felt that it was elected by the world then it would feel that it could run the world to an even greater extent and i just dont think people can trust American democracy or corporate bribery.
Is it illigal to share a file that you bought off iTunes/Napster etc? Assuming that you dont modify it in any way? I ask because when these systems get cracked this will happen.
I really cant see why people use MS Office. I think 99% of users dont even go past the most basic features, few even use styles! If it comes with your computer and you have no choice in that then fair enough but ive actually seen people (who will remain nameless to honor the family) buy full copies of MS Office!? yes im not joking people have actually paid for office! Now when you come to a business or organisation all those office licenses add up. At my uni all the windows machines run MS Office and it pains me to think that they spent money on that instead of things we actually need (like power supplies that arnt from the 40's) because i see students using this very expensive software to make cheesy 3d headings for their work!
Any alternative to Office is good because it opens peoples minds up to the fact that Microsoft isnt the only company out there, that said, if OpenOffice can just juice abit more speed out of their start-up time ill be happy, how fast is Ability?
better mail clients would help - some sort of threading:
you send an email, you get a challenge, the mail client figures out "oh you sent an email to that domain 20 mins ago and the address you sent to is contained in the body of that challenge so i'll weight this is very confident and alert the user showing the original message they sent aswell" or something like that, however if you never sent a message to that domain and it doesnt contain any address you've recently sent to then the client will stick it somewhere else.
Ok so its unlikely that Microsoft would ever actually add something useful to outlook but id much rather recieve challenges from a bunch of mail servers than spam from a bunch of spam servers, atleast the challenges will mostly be more honest (ie. not try to hide what they are) and clearly labeled, and i could script my client to handle them where as spammers are always trying to get past filters.
your right i wasnt thinking before i posted, however knowing the internet im pretty sure that sort of solution will become the norm - look at flash vs svg or the sorry state of css implementation.
Although some of these problems could be worked around, instead of coded-image you could use random logic questions, ie
"the rabbit is blue, what colour is the rabbit?"
although they would have to be kept simple enough so that anyone could answer but randomly structured so spammers couldnt just cleaverly script responses.
That would be viable over voice, ascii and to the blind and deaf.
Can someone explain what this means (im not in America)? theres obviously prior art examples of software installation, updating and settings everywhere does that mean someone can just patent an idea thats not even new and then no-one else can use it? or am i missing something, because that seems like the most stupid law ever?
earthlink.net seems to have a pretty good way of dealing with spam - when you send an email to an earthlink account for the first time it gets put in the user's "suspect" folder, then you immediately get an automated response with a url, you go to the page and enter the standard coded-number-in-a-distorted-image and can optionally add a short request message and your name, then the recipient can accept you and all further emails go straight through with no problem. You would only need to check the suspect folder if you were expecting something like a password reminder or welcome message. This is the sort of solution that will end up being adopted not some stupid "charge for emails" idea and we dont need laws that add to the complexity of everything and could potentially restrict freedom of speech (a law saying you cant send spam could provide ammo to the courts/legislators for starting other laws which go much further).
Its so absurd its not even funny that these sort of things happen, and the worst thing is that people will start saying "oh those damn hackers" or something stupid like that. People really need educating about technology and not just some "IT training course" proper education about computers and technology and the people who need it most are the politicians and judges and anyone else in important positions.
And if they are "too old" to learn then its time to get rid of them, people who cant learn shouldnt be in those positions.
Software copy-protection is like CD copy protection: its just not going to work: Anything you do to try and restrict software someone will find a way around it simply because every system out there is based on the same line of code:
if(product activated){run product} else {don't}
what ever method they use it all boils down to just running the program or not running it, at the most there will be afew extras that keep checking or individual modules activating, and the most complex might involve running some parts on a dongle but all these can essentially be bypassed. This is why microsoft is so keen to get TCPA off the ground because they know full well that they and most of their windows-developer friends' business models will colapse unless they can totally restrict the platform and have anyones ass if they try and bypass it.
The ultimate test will be 2004, if bush wins then for me thats 100% conclusive evidence that Diebold's machines are rigged because after the last 4 years no sane person (unless they owned a big corporation) would vote Bush. But ofcourse if he does win no-one will do anything about it, remember politicians dont listen to the people anymore.
No clearly you have no understanding of the American political system, ill bring you up to date:
Basically the various companies/corporations/associations all have interests in various aspects of the law. Now normally if they wanted to put their interests into reality and have the laws changed (for example a chemical company might want to dump waste in a certain area) then the heads of the company would have to be friends with the heads of the government and then a "special" law could be made. However in this modern world politicians sometimes demand a little more for their services, and seeing as bribery would be totally illegal, the "little more" is called a "campaign contribution" which basically means "you give us some money and we will do our best to look the other way"
Now you may think that this is totally outrageous and how can anyone live knowing this is going on? well don't worry, you see the American way is to just accept that the president is god and that it must probably be wrong because it sounds like a conspiracy theory and someone else must be dealing with it. Oh and don't feel ashamed about it because lots of countries have bent politicians, its ok.
Yes i often find that you dont need perfect code, merly bodging things together with spagetti code if and obscure variables and blocks of code that you quickly set up because you were testing something and wanted to get it working, but then were left there to because you went home and forgot to redo it the next day works fine infact you dont need even to write good english, notice my lack of full stops and i only put a few commas in for the sake of it, also i left afew words in that i forgot to take out when i retyped the line but thats ok because you can still read it right?
No Mr Gates you dont need to write perfect code because your company has the perfect business model - monopolise the market and persude people who dont know better that your software is the best, then leave gaping holes (outlook) and hype up the "hacker" blame until your next upgrade that promises to fix the problem (that you created) by adding totally un needed layers of drm. Then lock out competition and complain everytime a government looks into open source while making sure computer manufactures pre install only your OS or they dont get squat from you and get locked out of the market.
I think this sums it up for me in suggesting that the music industry is merely an annoying tune that you hear over and over in your head until you buy it just to shut your head up. Also the last episode of southpark said it all for me: if artists went on strike i wouldnt care id just download some old music or some other bands and most artists are arrogent assholes that are only in it for the money. This sounds totally trolling and mod me down if you have to but the RIAA does not have an absolute just moral cause, their arguments are debatable at best, and threatening people with their vast legal power is just not cool.
Face it the public would love stuff like this today. Im surprised that producers havnt started milking this form of reality tv and have instead chose an interesting, yet slightly shit path of "*-stars", "something island" and "i dont give a fuck why is this the 3rd sequel big brother", not to mention "im going to sit in a plastic box and the 24hr live cam is on pay per view because its so fucking in your face cutting edge of your seat tv david blaine" (who btw has disappeared from media attention and is still waiting in a hostpital corridor). People love police chase videos and any other sort action reality compilations, people also love the news when something exciting is happening, and if series 2 of 24 was anything to go by people love nukes and planes. So tv producers:
Combine nukes, planes, aliens (maybe) and police, in a real-time news coverage style (like that cheap 80's "special bulletin" but with better effects and acting) and you'll have a winner! Then you can cash in by constantly quoting phone lines that people can call to get "more information" and alternatives to 911 (all these numbers are priemium rate and loop advertising)
Not only can you shoot them, its your duty to shoot them and prevent them from attacking someone else, so do your duty for you country and shoot RIAA members on sight!
Yeah i realise that but people seem to think that just because the plane itself is 20 years old it must be bad, i dont think the shuttle missions suffered poor maintenance either - just managers totally ignoring what the engineers had to say about what could and couldnt be done
I dont know about the space shuttle, but planes are designed to last a long time and 20 years is reasonable. There havnt been any accidents because of old equipment - the accidents happen because of management PHB's who are the turds of any system and need to be flushed.
The whole legal system around the world is dominated by money and the big money holders (i.e corporations) can just stamp on everyone else.
If an expensive (i.e better) lawyer is more likely to win a case, something is wrong. If you can use money to persuede politicians to implement your policies over other peoples then something is wrong. Both these statements seem to be true (anyone disagree?) and this isnt the sort of problem you say "oh thats the way it is, thats life to" its the sort of problem you say "OMG jesus F christ you mean its like that??? quick call CNN call the police! lock the doors" to, or the way there would be public out cry if some companys kids toy had sharp razor blades and aspestos in it. But no, even tho the entire system is totally screwed no-one seems to care, am i missing something?
cool, i think theres a difference - in america people love their automatics but in britain they love their manuals? and sitting in london traffic jams (that congestion charging doesnt do anything to help) makes me go totally ape:P
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Wifi/Bluetooth etc are going to be the next trends, with phones being more like PDAs there will be all sorts of things like file sharing on the street and people sitting on the tube in silence chatting to the stranger 3 seats down by text. All those dating/friendship things that beep when someone with similar interests walks past will actually take off because it will only be a software download away, and gangs of geeks will go around DoSing shops that spam passers by, gaming has just started to take off with the nokia thing and that will get much bigger and, then there'll be the standard media hype and Microsoft will do something stupid that allows some worm to spread or for anyone to accesses private data on certain phones or pedophiles will use it and then suddenly more media hype and people turning bluetooth off and so stupid trends continue.
Maybe Microsoft should stick to the desktop? They have most of the market share of home users and most of the hardware support:
3 of the most important applications to home users are web/net, office and games and Microsoft has the biggest share with all of them: IE, MS Office, Outlook - Microsoft has it all and every major game on their platform.
Then there are the security and stability issues: most home users believe that crashing twice a day is normal and that VB script worms or NetBIOS security issues have nothing to do with Microsoft. Also they will accept that windows messaging pop-up windows with spam will appear from time to time while an admin would go ape!
DRM is also a selling point: the RIAA/MPAA etc want it and the only way it can happen is with closed source software integrated with controlled hardware: home users won't even know or care about it but bussiness users will flat out refuse to have their machines controlled by a 3rd party.
In short, Microsoft: stick to making windows with pretty colours and naming disks after the alphabet.
I think this trend is mainly linked to the stange name that IIS has - its hard to pronounce two I's together where as 'Apache' is not only easy to say but sounds cool: Apache Indian, Apache Helicopter, A Patchy Web Server. Ok forget the last one.
Also IIS is for windows only while Apache runs on a matchbox. And IIS had that little drugs problem in its past (code red), still that didnt stop bush winning. Oh and Apache is free, and open source, and not too hard to set-up.
Sorry why does IIS run 1/3 of webservers again?
No whats needed is an end to this bull shit that politicians get up to. If you have any vested interests or friends who happen to own a few large corporations then you cant be a politician. It wouldnt hold up in a court if OJ's best friend was on the jury so why should it hold up in the government?
Hm your system sounds ok but i can immeadiately see a flaw: since you have to actually mark on each card it would be very hard for people to mass-mark a bunch of blank cards to one candidate! Also the paper trail left behind would be pretty risky - if someone looked through it they might find out that the election had been rigged. You Canadians have a long way to come before you have the sort of bribery and rigging that America enjoys.
If the American government felt that it was elected by the world then it would feel that it could run the world to an even greater extent and i just dont think people can trust American democracy or corporate bribery.
Is it illigal to share a file that you bought off iTunes/Napster etc? Assuming that you dont modify it in any way? I ask because when these systems get cracked this will happen.
I really cant see why people use MS Office. I think 99% of users dont even go past the most basic features, few even use styles! If it comes with your computer and you have no choice in that then fair enough but ive actually seen people (who will remain nameless to honor the family) buy full copies of MS Office!? yes im not joking people have actually paid for office! Now when you come to a business or organisation all those office licenses add up. At my uni all the windows machines run MS Office and it pains me to think that they spent money on that instead of things we actually need (like power supplies that arnt from the 40's) because i see students using this very expensive software to make cheesy 3d headings for their work!
Any alternative to Office is good because it opens peoples minds up to the fact that Microsoft isnt the only company out there, that said, if OpenOffice can just juice abit more speed out of their start-up time ill be happy, how fast is Ability?
better mail clients would help - some sort of threading:
you send an email, you get a challenge, the mail client figures out "oh you sent an email to that domain 20 mins ago and the address you sent to is contained in the body of that challenge so i'll weight this is very confident and alert the user showing the original message they sent aswell" or something like that, however if you never sent a message to that domain and it doesnt contain any address you've recently sent to then the client will stick it somewhere else.
Ok so its unlikely that Microsoft would ever actually add something useful to outlook but id much rather recieve challenges from a bunch of mail servers than spam from a bunch of spam servers, atleast the challenges will mostly be more honest (ie. not try to hide what they are) and clearly labeled, and i could script my client to handle them where as spammers are always trying to get past filters.
your right i wasnt thinking before i posted, however knowing the internet im pretty sure that sort of solution will become the norm - look at flash vs svg or the sorry state of css implementation.
Although some of these problems could be worked around, instead of coded-image you could use random logic questions, ie
"the rabbit is blue, what colour is the rabbit?"
although they would have to be kept simple enough so that anyone could answer but randomly structured so spammers couldnt just cleaverly script responses.
That would be viable over voice, ascii and to the blind and deaf.
Can someone explain what this means (im not in America)? theres obviously prior art examples of software installation, updating and settings everywhere does that mean someone can just patent an idea thats not even new and then no-one else can use it? or am i missing something, because that seems like the most stupid law ever?
earthlink.net seems to have a pretty good way of dealing with spam - when you send an email to an earthlink account for the first time it gets put in the user's "suspect" folder, then you immediately get an automated response with a url, you go to the page and enter the standard coded-number-in-a-distorted-image and can optionally add a short request message and your name, then the recipient can accept you and all further emails go straight through with no problem. You would only need to check the suspect folder if you were expecting something like a password reminder or welcome message. This is the sort of solution that will end up being adopted not some stupid "charge for emails" idea and we dont need laws that add to the complexity of everything and could potentially restrict freedom of speech (a law saying you cant send spam could provide ammo to the courts/legislators for starting other laws which go much further).
Its so absurd its not even funny that these sort of things happen, and the worst thing is that people will start saying "oh those damn hackers" or something stupid like that. People really need educating about technology and not just some "IT training course" proper education about computers and technology and the people who need it most are the politicians and judges and anyone else in important positions.
And if they are "too old" to learn then its time to get rid of them, people who cant learn shouldnt be in those positions.
Software copy-protection is like CD copy protection: its just not going to work: Anything you do to try and restrict software someone will find a way around it simply because every system out there is based on the same line of code:
if(product activated){run product} else {don't}
what ever method they use it all boils down to just running the program or not running it, at the most there will be afew extras that keep checking or individual modules activating, and the most complex might involve running some parts on a dongle but all these can essentially be bypassed. This is why microsoft is so keen to get TCPA off the ground because they know full well that they and most of their windows-developer friends' business models will colapse unless they can totally restrict the platform and have anyones ass if they try and bypass it.
negative numbers is a feature not a bug - otherwise how would the republicans be able to subtract votes from other people??
The ultimate test will be 2004, if bush wins then for me thats 100% conclusive evidence that Diebold's machines are rigged because after the last 4 years no sane person (unless they owned a big corporation) would vote Bush. But ofcourse if he does win no-one will do anything about it, remember politicians dont listen to the people anymore.
No clearly you have no understanding of the American political system, ill bring you up to date:
Basically the various companies/corporations/associations all have interests in various aspects of the law. Now normally if they wanted to put their interests into reality and have the laws changed (for example a chemical company might want to dump waste in a certain area) then the heads of the company would have to be friends with the heads of the government and then a "special" law could be made. However in this modern world politicians sometimes demand a little more for their services, and seeing as bribery would be totally illegal, the "little more" is called a "campaign contribution" which basically means "you give us some money and we will do our best to look the other way"
Now you may think that this is totally outrageous and how can anyone live knowing this is going on? well don't worry, you see the American way is to just accept that the president is god and that it must probably be wrong because it sounds like a conspiracy theory and someone else must be dealing with it. Oh and don't feel ashamed about it because lots of countries have bent politicians, its ok.
Yes i often find that you dont need perfect code, merly bodging things together with spagetti code if and obscure variables and blocks of code that you quickly set up because you were testing something and wanted to get it working, but then were left there to because you went home and forgot to redo it the next day works fine infact you dont need even to write good english, notice my lack of full stops and i only put a few commas in for the sake of it, also i left afew words in that i forgot to take out when i retyped the line but thats ok because you can still read it right?
No Mr Gates you dont need to write perfect code because your company has the perfect business model - monopolise the market and persude people who dont know better that your software is the best, then leave gaping holes (outlook) and hype up the "hacker" blame until your next upgrade that promises to fix the problem (that you created) by adding totally un needed layers of drm. Then lock out competition and complain everytime a government looks into open source while making sure computer manufactures pre install only your OS or they dont get squat from you and get locked out of the market.
I think this sums it up for me in suggesting that the music industry is merely an annoying tune that you hear over and over in your head until you buy it just to shut your head up. Also the last episode of southpark said it all for me: if artists went on strike i wouldnt care id just download some old music or some other bands and most artists are arrogent assholes that are only in it for the money. This sounds totally trolling and mod me down if you have to but the RIAA does not have an absolute just moral cause, their arguments are debatable at best, and threatening people with their vast legal power is just not cool.
Face it the public would love stuff like this today. Im surprised that producers havnt started milking this form of reality tv and have instead chose an interesting, yet slightly shit path of "*-stars", "something island" and "i dont give a fuck why is this the 3rd sequel big brother", not to mention "im going to sit in a plastic box and the 24hr live cam is on pay per view because its so fucking in your face cutting edge of your seat tv david blaine" (who btw has disappeared from media attention and is still waiting in a hostpital corridor). People love police chase videos and any other sort action reality compilations, people also love the news when something exciting is happening, and if series 2 of 24 was anything to go by people love nukes and planes. So tv producers:
Combine nukes, planes, aliens (maybe) and police, in a real-time news coverage style (like that cheap 80's "special bulletin" but with better effects and acting) and you'll have a winner! Then you can cash in by constantly quoting phone lines that people can call to get "more information" and alternatives to 911 (all these numbers are priemium rate and loop advertising)
Not only can you shoot them, its your duty to shoot them and prevent them from attacking someone else, so do your duty for you country and shoot RIAA members on sight!
Yeah i realise that but people seem to think that just because the plane itself is 20 years old it must be bad, i dont think the shuttle missions suffered poor maintenance either - just managers totally ignoring what the engineers had to say about what could and couldnt be done
I dont know about the space shuttle, but planes are designed to last a long time and 20 years is reasonable. There havnt been any accidents because of old equipment - the accidents happen because of management PHB's who are the turds of any system and need to be flushed.
The whole legal system around the world is dominated by money and the big money holders (i.e corporations) can just stamp on everyone else.
If an expensive (i.e better) lawyer is more likely to win a case, something is wrong. If you can use money to persuede politicians to implement your policies over other peoples then something is wrong. Both these statements seem to be true (anyone disagree?) and this isnt the sort of problem you say "oh thats the way it is, thats life to" its the sort of problem you say "OMG jesus F christ you mean its like that??? quick call CNN call the police! lock the doors" to, or the way there would be public out cry if some companys kids toy had sharp razor blades and aspestos in it. But no, even tho the entire system is totally screwed no-one seems to care, am i missing something?
cool, i think theres a difference - in america people love their automatics but in britain they love their manuals? and sitting in london traffic jams (that congestion charging doesnt do anything to help) makes me go totally ape :P