Actually, in Germany (and in some other countries in Europe, too, I believe) we now have a company that offers paying via mobile phone: If your merchant wants to get money from you you give him your mobile phone number (or an alias name you might choose freely) and the request is send to the server of Paybox (the company that is offering the service). The Paybox server than calls you on your mobile phone, repeats the amount that will be charged from your bank account and asks you to enter your PIN. If you authorize the payment the merchant will get his money and you will be billed at the end of the month.
So far the system works quite well but until now it is only available with some cabs and online stores, you can't use it to pay in offline shops yet.
There's no way AOL could monitor everything. If Germany wants to make it so that the cost of monitoring is more than the benefit of providing an online service, the online services will shut down. Then Germany can sit around and fall behind while the rest of the Internet-connected world laughs at them (or forgets that they exist).
Well, as AOL is the only online service in Germany that is offering and advertising their own closed content and services, that won't be that much of a problem. (And the ruling is about that closed content, and not about the Internet.) And if that really should happen I have to repeat what was already said above: Germany (and the rest of the world) would be far better off without AOL.;)
As the article doesn't give that much information you might look here. This (German) article does offer some more information about the case. (If you don't speak German ask Babelfish.;))
The most important thing to note, however, is that the case is _not_ about the Internet. The protected MIDI (!) files (no, no MP3s involved) were offered by AOL members in an AOL forum.
But, yes, you're right if you think that German courts often make stupid decisions when the Net is involved: About five years ago the German CompuServe CEO was accused of distributing child pornography, because CompuServe operated a news server for their customers which offered some news groups in which child pornography was made available. That was one of the reasons why the so called "Teledienstegesetz" was created: It should protect the ISPs, so that they were no longer responsible for the crimes their users commit. But this ruling against AOL stated, that copyright is more important than the "Teledienstegesetz" - as the reasons for this decision aren't available yet we have to keep wondering what the "Teledienstegesetz" is for if not for protecting ISPs.
Well, I can't say much more about this article than that I really like the idea - especially the things about the "ad karma". And, hey, if I should ever need to create a fancy ad system, you already know where I will steal my ideas. Or maybe I could patent the "ad karma" thing and earn lots of money by collecting licensing fess from OSDN? (Or am I too late for that?)
Well, perhaps it's interesting to add here that the "Deutsche Telekom", the largest German telecom because she was (and still is, even if many politicans don't admit it) governmental-owned, turned this logical approach around: Here you have to pay _more_ if you want to get an ISDN flatrate than if you want to get a DSL flatrate.
And btw, the Deutsche Telekom is the only flatrate provider in Germany now after they pushed all the other carriers who were around out of the market. The reason is simple: Almost all phone lines are owned by the Deutsche Telekom and they don't give it away unmetered - so somebody has to pay metered (on a per-minute basis) to the Telekom. And if you don't have to (because you use the flatrate your provider offers) your provider has to!
From memory, he said that.doc is sort-of a diff file.
Yes, it is. But only if you activate the switch to speed up file saving! (It is switched on by default, so I think about 90% of the Word files are created this way, but you _can_ switch it off.)
Have you ever used MacOS? Or BeOS? If you would have tried one of these alternative operating systems you would learn that Windows is very _complicated_ to install, and it is not _that_ easy to install new software or drivers. Of course, it's a lot less difficult than doing this with Linux, but it is definitely more difficult than with MacOS / BeOS.
Who says that everybody is talking about Linux? I talk about the fact that there should be _more than one_ product with a solid userbase on the market. And I think that's exactly what the DoJ said. It's not neccesarily Linux, no, I dream of a future that will offer the right operating system for the specific needs of the users. Desktop users might choose BeOS and administrators will choose a *nix system. But I think if Microsoft didn't have those enormous userbase nobody would use Windows. No, I am not a total Anti-Microsoft fanatic, but there is really nothing special about Windows - the only thing that makes it almost necessary is the fact that most of the professional software is written for Windows.
If you intentionally write software that's purpose is to spread without the users knowledge and/or control and/or permission, and intentionally release it in such a manner that it would begin to spread in this manner, then you ARE doing something that has no useful purpose in society, and hence, wasting others time.
Right. But nonetheless it seems to me that this is more a "public affairs" law then anything based on serious thoughts: The I Love You worm got a lot of attention in the press and so the government thought this may help for the next votes. 7 years are quite a lot, if you compare this to other crimes - at least you don't harm people with virii.
Although many of you already said it, I have to say it again:
You can use PHP3 for almost every project. Used as Apache module it is fast enough even for big projects. And it makes the task of writing web applications a lot easier than any other scripting language. The tons of available functions allow you to manage almost any task easily, and, after all, it's very easy to learn, so it's a great idea to start with PHP3 if you just want to begin creating web applications.
And, if you need some things you can't or don't want to do with PHP3, you can easily switch to Perl: Perl and PHP3 have many things in common, although Perl has many additional features, which makes Perl code often very hard to read, but fast to develop. And what you can find on CPAN is just unbelievable!
I also tried creating scripts in C, because I wanted to try something new, but I didn't finish my experiment: It's just too uncomfortable compared to PHP3 or Perl. Especially the missing features for string processing are terrible if you want to do database apps or large customized interfaces. And it's not _that_ fast: If you use mod_perl and/or mod_php the httpd doesn't have to execute an external program, like it has to when using C apps. This is true especially for smaller applications, of course.
Another thing, I ever wanted to try are Java Servlets, it is said that they are fast, and it seems to me they are also very powerful. But they aren't that easy to develop than PHP3 or Perl. This makes developing more time consuming and difficult, but it normally forces you to think more about what you want to do. You often forget to think about what you're doing if you use PHP3 or Perl - at least I'm often just starting to hack my progs without thinking about it if I use these scripting languages, because that's possible. This won't happen with Java - there you _have_ to think about a structure (thanks to OOP).
And now a small tip: It was already noted somewhere, but you really should _never_ forget it: Usually it's best to split the design (HTML code) from the application code. With Perl, you don't have much of a choice. (At least if you are not using EmbPerl.) But with PHP3, it is very easy to just put HTML in the application. But _don't do it_. Use include() instead. Otherwise it might happen that the webmaster is unable to edit the design or somebody might even destroy your script while editing it.
The idea is stupid: there are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to look at suspicious looking files. If I found *real* pedophilia, I would probably report it to the police. But you would have to know what it is before doing this: hence you'd have to download it.
Although this is totaly true, I won't suggest doing this to you, at least not here in Germany: We had people wo downloaded this stuff and brought it to the police, and then _their_ houses were searched, etc... because downloading pedophilia is illegal, regardless of what you're doing with it. Of course, that's stupid, but that's how it is here.
It's not just the thing that Microsoft always manages it to produce software, that is not made for the daily use: They want to put all their new "innovations" in it, but while they are doing this, they forget important things: They don't fix the tons of bugs and they don't even think about security. But, after all, they don't make _that_ bad products. (oh-oh, I think with this sentence I might get many enemies on/.;))
The true problem is, that over 90% of all PCs are running Windows - and most of them also OE and IE. And that's the only reason why this virus could so awfully fast spread over the world. If we would have more competition in the OS and browser markets, this could not have happened: If only every 4th PC or so (although I think this is till far too many:P) had been using Windows, we would not have had such a disaster now. And _that's_ why they should break up Microsoft.
Without content, any domain becomes less desirable But what really is content? Must content really be a running HTTPD with Webpages? Can't content also be a bbs that's only reachable via telnet? Or a newsserver? We shouldn't forget that there are other services on the Internet beside HTTP.
But you don't know how happy every online user in Germany will be, if we would have flatrate phone calls. I would be really happy if I have to try twenty times until I can connect to my ISP and then I don't have to pay any time charges.
We had a flatrate two months ago. Yes, it's right, this ISP had MANY trouble with jammed phone lines, BUT firstly they were complete idiots and unable to configure their systems and secondly it was ONE ISP for nearly the WHOLE German online community. And I was really happy with it, it's a complete different way to surf the web. You don't have to open twenty different browser windows to get all the informations you want and then disconnect quick. You can stay online as long as you want and you're able to use all those fantastic possibilities the internet offers. (You can also use them if you have to pay on a time-charge basis, but you WILL not use them, because it's just too expensive.)
You have to know, here nearly nobody shops online, because you can save a LOT of money if you spend your time in real shops instead of the internet.
Okay, you're right, this post is the post of a totally frustrated and unhappy Internet User, beacuse his last phone bill was over 150 $, but that's the truth:(
Yes, Im not a gaming freak (I dont have time for gaming much...) but its right, if you can get many games for Linux, Linux WILL succeed against Microsoft. Yesteraday I downloaded the Quake3 Test for Linux, and I told some friends. Today they all wanted to install Linux;) And the biggest problem is, that many people WILL change to Linux, but they also want to play some nice games, and at the moment the only really great game they can play is Quake2... Im sure I WILL buy Civilication:CTP just because its the first commercial game which is released for Linux in a box.
... I dont think anybody wants bad webpages about himself. And if he is smart enough to buy those domain names BEFORE anybody else does, then he is just clever and yes, perhaps hes sending the message "dont hurt me", but it is his right to do so and anybody else does it, perhaps not in the same way, but the other candidates are having this message too. And In my opinion dies was not meant as "dont hurt me", I think it was just a trick to get some articles in the press, like this one here at Slashdot, because registering some domain names is not the way to stop pages like BushSucks... you WILL find unregistered domains (like many people wrote before) but it IS a way to get articles in the press. (as you can see here)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, in Germany (and in some other countries in Europe, too, I believe) we now have a company that offers paying via mobile phone: If your merchant wants to get money from you you give him your mobile phone number (or an alias name you might choose freely) and the request is send to the server of Paybox (the company that is offering the service). The Paybox server than calls you on your mobile phone, repeats the amount that will be charged from your bank account and asks you to enter your PIN. If you authorize the payment the merchant will get his money and you will be billed at the end of the month.
So far the system works quite well but until now it is only available with some cabs and online stores, you can't use it to pay in offline shops yet.
There's no way AOL could monitor everything. If Germany wants to make it so that the cost of monitoring is more than the benefit of providing an online service, the online services will shut down. Then Germany can sit around and fall behind while the rest of the Internet-connected world laughs at them (or forgets that they exist).
;)
Well, as AOL is the only online service in Germany that is offering and advertising their own closed content and services, that won't be that much of a problem. (And the ruling is about that closed content, and not about the Internet.) And if that really should happen I have to repeat what was already said above: Germany (and the rest of the world) would be far better off without AOL.
As the article doesn't give that much information you might look here. This (German) article does offer some more information about the case. (If you don't speak German ask Babelfish. ;))
The most important thing to note, however, is that the case is _not_ about the Internet. The protected MIDI (!) files (no, no MP3s involved) were offered by AOL members in an AOL forum.
But, yes, you're right if you think that German courts often make stupid decisions when the Net is involved: About five years ago the German CompuServe CEO was accused of distributing child pornography, because CompuServe operated a news server for their customers which offered some news groups in which child pornography was made available. That was one of the reasons why the so called "Teledienstegesetz" was created: It should protect the ISPs, so that they were no longer responsible for the crimes their users commit. But this ruling against AOL stated, that copyright is more important than the "Teledienstegesetz" - as the reasons for this decision aren't available yet we have to keep wondering what the "Teledienstegesetz" is for if not for protecting ISPs.
Well, I can't say much more about this article than that I really like the idea - especially the things about the "ad karma". And, hey, if I should ever need to create a fancy ad system, you already know where I will steal my ideas. Or maybe I could patent the "ad karma" thing and earn lots of money by collecting licensing fess from OSDN? (Or am I too late for that?)
Well, perhaps it's interesting to add here that the "Deutsche Telekom", the largest German telecom because she was (and still is, even if many politicans don't admit it) governmental-owned, turned this logical approach around: Here you have to pay _more_ if you want to get an ISDN flatrate than if you want to get a DSL flatrate.
And btw, the Deutsche Telekom is the only flatrate provider in Germany now after they pushed all the other carriers who were around out of the market. The reason is simple: Almost all phone lines are owned by the Deutsche Telekom and they don't give it away unmetered - so somebody has to pay metered (on a per-minute basis) to the Telekom. And if you don't have to (because you use the flatrate your provider offers) your provider has to!
From memory, he said that .doc is sort-of a diff file.
Yes, it is. But only if you activate the switch to speed up file saving! (It is switched on by default, so I think about 90% of the Word files are created this way, but you _can_ switch it off.)
Have you ever used MacOS? Or BeOS? If you would have tried one of these alternative operating systems you would learn that Windows is very _complicated_ to install, and it is not _that_ easy to install new software or drivers. Of course, it's a lot less difficult than doing this with Linux, but it is definitely more difficult than with MacOS / BeOS.
Who says that everybody is talking about Linux? I talk about the fact that there should be _more than one_ product with a solid userbase on the market. And I think that's exactly what the DoJ said. It's not neccesarily Linux, no, I dream of a future that will offer the right operating system for the specific needs of the users. Desktop users might choose BeOS and administrators will choose a *nix system. But I think if Microsoft didn't have those enormous userbase nobody would use Windows. No, I am not a total Anti-Microsoft fanatic, but there is really nothing special about Windows - the only thing that makes it almost necessary is the fact that most of the professional software is written for Windows.
Right. But nonetheless it seems to me that this is more a "public affairs" law then anything based on serious thoughts: The I Love You worm got a lot of attention in the press and so the government thought this may help for the next votes. 7 years are quite a lot, if you compare this to other crimes - at least you don't harm people with virii.
Although many of you already said it, I have to say it again:
You can use PHP3 for almost every project. Used as Apache module it is fast enough even for big projects. And it makes the task of writing web applications a lot easier than any other scripting language. The tons of available functions allow you to manage almost any task easily, and, after all, it's very easy to learn, so it's a great idea to start with PHP3 if you just want to begin creating web applications.
And, if you need some things you can't or don't want to do with PHP3, you can easily switch to Perl: Perl and PHP3 have many things in common, although Perl has many additional features, which makes Perl code often very hard to read, but fast to develop. And what you can find on CPAN is just unbelievable!
I also tried creating scripts in C, because I wanted to try something new, but I didn't finish my experiment: It's just too uncomfortable compared to PHP3 or Perl. Especially the missing features for string processing are terrible if you want to do database apps or large customized interfaces. And it's not _that_ fast: If you use mod_perl and/or mod_php the httpd doesn't have to execute an external program, like it has to when using C apps. This is true especially for smaller applications, of course.
Another thing, I ever wanted to try are Java Servlets, it is said that they are fast, and it seems to me they are also very powerful. But they aren't that easy to develop than PHP3 or Perl. This makes developing more time consuming and difficult, but it normally forces you to think more about what you want to do. You often forget to think about what you're doing if you use PHP3 or Perl - at least I'm often just starting to hack my progs without thinking about it if I use these scripting languages, because that's possible. This won't happen with Java - there you _have_ to think about a structure (thanks to OOP).
And now a small tip: It was already noted somewhere, but you really should _never_ forget it: Usually it's best to split the design (HTML code) from the application code. With Perl, you don't have much of a choice. (At least if you are not using EmbPerl.) But with PHP3, it is very easy to just put HTML in the application. But _don't do it_. Use include() instead. Otherwise it might happen that the webmaster is unable to edit the design or somebody might even destroy your script while editing it.
It's not just the thing that Microsoft always manages it to produce software, that is not made for the daily use: They want to put all their new "innovations" in it, but while they are doing this, they forget important things: They don't fix the tons of bugs and they don't even think about security. But, after all, they don't make _that_ bad products. (oh-oh, I think with this sentence I might get many enemies on /. ;))
:P) had been using Windows, we would not have had such a disaster now. And _that's_ why they should break up Microsoft.
The true problem is, that over 90% of all PCs are running Windows - and most of them also OE and IE. And that's the only reason why this virus could so awfully fast spread over the world. If we would have more competition in the OS and browser markets, this could not have happened: If only every 4th PC or so (although I think this is till far too many
Without content, any domain becomes less desirable But what really is content? Must content really be a running HTTPD with Webpages? Can't content also be a bbs that's only reachable via telnet? Or a newsserver? We shouldn't forget that there are other services on the Internet beside HTTP.
Yes, it does.
:(
But you don't know how happy every online user in Germany will be, if we would have flatrate phone calls. I would be really happy if I have to try twenty times until I can connect to my ISP and then I don't have to pay any time charges.
We had a flatrate two months ago. Yes, it's right, this ISP had MANY trouble with jammed phone lines, BUT firstly they were complete idiots and unable to configure their systems and secondly it was ONE ISP for nearly the WHOLE German online community. And I was really happy with it, it's a complete different way to surf the web. You don't have to open twenty different browser windows to get all the informations you want and then disconnect quick. You can stay online as long as you want and you're able to use all those fantastic possibilities the internet offers. (You can also use them if you have to pay on a time-charge basis, but you WILL not use them, because it's just too expensive.)
You have to know, here nearly nobody shops online, because you can save a LOT of money if you spend your time in real shops instead of the internet.
Okay, you're right, this post is the post of a totally frustrated and unhappy Internet User, beacuse his last phone bill was over 150 $, but that's the truth
Yes, Im not a gaming freak (I dont have time for gaming much...) but its right, if you can get many games for Linux, Linux WILL succeed against Microsoft. Yesteraday I downloaded the Quake3 Test for Linux, and I told some friends. Today they all wanted to install Linux ;) And the biggest problem is, that many people WILL change to Linux, but they also want to play some nice games, and at the moment the only really great game they can play is Quake2... Im sure I WILL buy Civilication:CTP just because its the first commercial game which is released for Linux in a box.
... I dont think anybody wants bad webpages about himself. And if he is smart enough to buy those domain names BEFORE anybody else does, then he is just clever and yes, perhaps hes sending the message "dont hurt me", but it is his right to do so and anybody else does it, perhaps not in the same way, but the other candidates are having this message too.
And In my opinion dies was not meant as "dont hurt me", I think it was just a trick to get some articles in the press, like this one here at Slashdot, because registering some domain names is not the way to stop pages like BushSucks... you WILL find unregistered domains (like many people wrote before) but it IS a way to get articles in the press. (as you can see here)