Good point. But it does fit in with the trend towards more closed networks that the article discussed.
The point is, "aol.com" pages are only on the *real* web as long as AOL decides they are. That's hardly the same as having a (for lack of a better word) "real" web page up somewhere else.
Yeah, $20 a month will allow you to run a web site - as long as it doesn't get a lot of traffic. I know a couple of guys who run a web site that gets hundreds of thousands of hits per week, and it costs them several thousand dollars per month (fortunately they're pretty well-to-do, but they still have to beg for donations to keep the place running).
So the entry cost is low, but only as long as your site stays small. With the horrible on-line advertising market, if you generate a lot of traffic, you're probably going to have to go out of business, or come up with some other revenue model.
Not only that, but 90% of the "traditional media" (newspapers, television, and radio stations) are owned by a grand total of eleven corporations. The fact that web usage is beginning to trend the same way surprises me not at all (and in the end, I suspect it will be the same players - already AOL/TW is in there).
Of the current MS innovations I think it is the most dangerous, because it has the potential to concentrate a lot of responsibility in one private organisation.
And this isn't just *any* "private organization", either. Let's not lose sight of who we're talking about here.
The big question with.Net is how widely it is adopted by online merchants. Currently, Visa/MasterCard/Discover/AmEx take a few percent of each transaction as a fee, which is how they make their money (well, that and charging huge interest rates and outrageous late fees, but I digress...). If I were Billy and his minions, I'd undercut the CC companies (ever wonder why AmEx is "less accepted" than Visa/MC? They charge a higher percentage of each sale, which is paid by the merchant.), and give the merchant an even *better* deal if they agreed to *only* accept transactions using Passport.
MS can afford it as a loss leader - they're rich. It's the same old story out of Redmond - essentially give away a product to develop a huge market penetration, then once you've eliminated the competition, raise prices out the ying-yang.
I agree. Not only is KDE well-designed and fundamentally stable, but the development team is remarkably receptive to both suggestions and questions. As a result, we have KDE desktops in all the stores (more than 300) of the retail chain I work for, and they Just Work - not to mention save us thousands of dollars per year by not having to pay the Microsoft Tax.
But the moral of this story is that no matter how many computers you have, you still need somebody to show the kids how to use it.
If I had to guess, I'd say there's a lot more free documentation out there for how to use Unix/Linux than there is for Windows 95/98/ME... It doesn't take much poking around to get Netscape running, and once you have that, you've got tons of documentation at your fingertips.
Of course, then we get to the little problem of getting people to RTFM...
Apple once had a huge foothold in schools, with the strategy (or is that "strategery"?) that once those little Apple users grew up, they'd go into businesses and get them to buy more Apples.
Of course, the problem is that closed-architecture Apple can't compete with the generic Intel-platform makers on price. All things being roughly the same, Intel wins just on price.
However, with Linux, the price point works *against* Microsoft. It runs on the same hardware. It runs *better* on cheaper (older) hardware. It comes without per-seat licensing costs. In other words, a lot of Apple's weaknesses in education vs. business are actually strengths for Linux.
Where the hell are all these sites that I can't view correctly? I virtually never use IE and I've never noticed a "good number" of sites that I supposedly can't see.
Just as we've seen in DMCA cases, all the companies have to do is shop for a judge in a friendlier district that doesn't give a crap about online privacy (and there are plenty of them out there). This issue won't be resolved until it is addressed by Congress (almost certainly with undesirable consequences) or the US supreme court (ditto).
I think the difference is best expressed by the terms "popular culture" (which is the mainstream media consisting of AOL/TW, ABC/Disney&Co, MS/NBC, Murdoch/Faux, insert-giant-media-conglomerate-here) and "pop culture", which is the random bits of popular culture that, for whatever reason, get picked out and woven into the common tapestry of the culture of our generation (whichever generation that may be). Pop culture draws on parts of popular culture and other cultural flotsam and jetsam ("All Your Base Are Belong To Us", anyone?) and occasionally (and increasingly) popular culture will recycle a bit of pop culture for its own nefarious purposes (generally, to induce us to buy stuff).
Or maybe I've just had too much caffeine today.
Why Slahdot Readers Sometimes Don't Follow Links..
on
Seanbaby.com
·
· Score: 1
Access to the desired Web page is restricted at this time.
Reason:
* The Websense category "Tasteless" is restricted.
Because if they do, I feel compassionate for them. Word sucks, but StarOffice sucks even more. Word hangs up very easily, but StarOffice hangs up, in Linux and Windows, and, besides, botches installation, so you have to install all over from scratch!
Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. I work for a retail chain that has installed Linux systems in all our (350+) stores. Mostly they run our custom app, but fire up KDE to get their email from the corporate center. When someone sends them a MSWord document, they can read it by just clicking on the attachment, which fires up StarOffice.
The problem is, StarOffice takes *forever* (and a day) to start up! I mean, 30+ seconds is not unusual. So what happens is impatient people at the store click on it half-a-dozen times, which - several minutes later - brings up half-a-dozen instances of SO.
I'm trying to get them to swtich from SO to something that starts up almost instantly (AbiWord or KWord), but they're reluctant to change (needless to say, I came on board after it was too late to get them to install something that would actually work...)
Honestly, I don't think that's how The Revolution is going to come about.
What will happen is that places like Largo do stuff like this, and it gets written up and circulated in technical journals (which is effectively what we're talking about here). Technical people see it, and now they have something to show to *their* bosses (assuming they're lucky enough not to have a PHB). Maybe 1000 people do this, and maybe in 5 cases it actually goes far enough to happen in that organization. Three of those five write up something about what they did, and then 3000 bosses get emails saying "Hey, maybe we should try this."
And five years from now, someone in the Wall Street Journal will write an article about how "10% of all Businesses Saving Thousands with Free Software". Boom! *Then* we'll see it explode.
Yes, KOffice has import filters for MS binary document formats. They're not perfect, but that's what happens when you have to reverse-engineer a proprietary protocol.
I would generally agree that Linux Setup is much easier than Windows. But given an OS is installed, its much easier to double-click on a self-extracting exe and get a program installed, than it is in Linux. Consider RPM. Do an rpm -Uvh, and if you have the dependencies, its all good. But if you don't, it spews and barfs about not having some random ass library. The best thing you can do is googlize the library name it spewed, and hope you can find it.
Just go to rpmfind.net and put in the name of the missing library. Heck of a lot easier than "Install Driver Diskette" that Windows would ask you for ("WHAT driver diskette???").
I'm emailing this to my boss, as it sounds exactly like the kind of thing our (dirt cheap) organization would want to use. (But no, we'll keep on paying Bill his danegeld...)
Re:Perhaps we should reconsider...
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 1
That's basically what I would do, with the caveat that I'd make sure they were running the default IIS home page before I turned off IIS. It's far from a perfect solution, but it's better than nothing...
Re:Perhaps we should reconsider...
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 1
However, as others have pointed out in other articles, "unauthorized access" is illegal, no matter what. Plus, if you shut someone down and they lose $50,000 in data (and find out you were the one who did it), they're going to have you arrested and sue you, probably for $50 million. Ask Kevin Mitnick about inflation from "damages" for "unauthorized access".
Yeah, I thought about that too. Of course, while one could argue that anyone propogating CR is asking to get shut down, that won't help you when The Man knocks on your door in the middle of the night.
If one was going to be smart (we're all smart, right?;), one could query the offending web server IP, and if it's got the default IIS home page (easy to recognize), shut down IIS. It's obviously not being used.
It's tricky, though. Obviously, those (l)users can't be counted on to do even minimal administration on their servers (which many apparently don't even know they are running - nice going, Bill!)(Though to be fair, some Linux distributions - cought, RedHat, cough - turn on all sorts of random services by default that the user probably doesn't want/need.) The ISP's have been ridiculously slow to respond to the problem (though I read that finally RoadRunner is shutting off people who are infected - which *I* appreciate, since my cable modem light has been going bananas for days). I don't see another solution besides having the technical community take a proactive stance.
The kicker about all this is, now there are literally *thousands* of rooted boxen out there just waiting to be used in the biggest DDOS attack the world has ever seen. What we've seen so far is just the prologue to the real problem.
Perhaps we should reconsider...
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I know the reaction to a suggestion that someone create a worm that "fixes" the effects of the various CR worms provoked a highly negative response, but I wonder if the right thing to do to protect against the worm (actually, against all the morons still running these unpatched servers) would be to log an "attacking" IP, then "counterattack" by executing a command on those servers to shut them down, so they'd quit trying to infect everything in sight? I mean, geez, I know it's probably ethically (and legally) wrong to exploit the back doors, even if it's just to shut down the servers, but wouldn't that be better than sitting around doing nothing? (Since the various ISPs don't seem to be doing anything other than sending out e-mail - at this point, ignorance can't be an excuse for anyone still running an unpatched server).
Well, since I live in Florida (and I'm pretty sure you don't), suffice it to say that you don't have a damn clue what you're talking about.
Rather than get into explaining the myriad of things you're misinformed about, let me just say that you should try and get your information from independent sources before repeating GOP spin as fact.
Re:What is it about DSL and wireless companies?
on
Rhythms Flatlines
·
· Score: 1
Unless your provider blocks your port 80 to stop Code Red on you... then no inbound connection. the tragedy!
It's a sad day when you can't even get lucky with a web server...
Ah, a Shrubby mouthpiece said it, therefore it must be so.
Next you'll be quoting the Faux News Channel as a source...
Re:What is it about DSL and wireless companies?
on
Rhythms Flatlines
·
· Score: 1
DSL (which I use at home) seems like a really good service, especially given that my cable company doesn't offer cable modem yet. But, of course, I'm a geek and I love having plenty of bandwidth and high transfer speeds. The average Joe still doesn't base his life around his PC, so selling Joe on a high-speed connection is still incredibly difficult.
This is a good point. My experience is, once someone tries it (if they're at all net-addicted, even if it's AOL), they're hooked. Thus, all the "free modem! first month free!" business. Once you try it, you can't go back.
Perhaps instead of a War on Drugs, we should have a War on Broadband, instead? It's equally addictive, and more expensive than most drug habits.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, "aol.com" pages are only on the *real* web as long as AOL decides they are. That's hardly the same as having a (for lack of a better word) "real" web page up somewhere else.
So the entry cost is low, but only as long as your site stays small. With the horrible on-line advertising market, if you generate a lot of traffic, you're probably going to have to go out of business, or come up with some other revenue model.
Not only that, but 90% of the "traditional media" (newspapers, television, and radio stations) are owned by a grand total of eleven corporations. The fact that web usage is beginning to trend the same way surprises me not at all (and in the end, I suspect it will be the same players - already AOL/TW is in there).
As AOL consumes more and more of the net, their incentive to make user sites accessible to the rest of the non-AOL net decreases.
And this isn't just *any* "private organization", either. Let's not lose sight of who we're talking about here.
The big question with .Net is how widely it is adopted by online merchants. Currently, Visa/MasterCard/Discover/AmEx take a few percent of each transaction as a fee, which is how they make their money (well, that and charging huge interest rates and outrageous late fees, but I digress...). If I were Billy and his minions, I'd undercut the CC companies (ever wonder why AmEx is "less accepted" than Visa/MC? They charge a higher percentage of each sale, which is paid by the merchant.), and give the merchant an even *better* deal if they agreed to *only* accept transactions using Passport.
MS can afford it as a loss leader - they're rich. It's the same old story out of Redmond - essentially give away a product to develop a huge market penetration, then once you've eliminated the competition, raise prices out the ying-yang.
I agree. Not only is KDE well-designed and fundamentally stable, but the development team is remarkably receptive to both suggestions and questions. As a result, we have KDE desktops in all the stores (more than 300) of the retail chain I work for, and they Just Work - not to mention save us thousands of dollars per year by not having to pay the Microsoft Tax.
s/Tech Journalism/Political Journalism/g, while you're at it.
If I had to guess, I'd say there's a lot more free documentation out there for how to use Unix/Linux than there is for Windows 95/98/ME... It doesn't take much poking around to get Netscape running, and once you have that, you've got tons of documentation at your fingertips.
Of course, then we get to the little problem of getting people to RTFM...
Apple once had a huge foothold in schools, with the strategy (or is that "strategery"?) that once those little Apple users grew up, they'd go into businesses and get them to buy more Apples.
Of course, the problem is that closed-architecture Apple can't compete with the generic Intel-platform makers on price. All things being roughly the same, Intel wins just on price.
However, with Linux, the price point works *against* Microsoft. It runs on the same hardware. It runs *better* on cheaper (older) hardware. It comes without per-seat licensing costs. In other words, a lot of Apple's weaknesses in education vs. business are actually strengths for Linux.
Where the hell are all these sites that I can't view correctly? I virtually never use IE and I've never noticed a "good number" of sites that I supposedly can't see.
Just as we've seen in DMCA cases, all the companies have to do is shop for a judge in a friendlier district that doesn't give a crap about online privacy (and there are plenty of them out there). This issue won't be resolved until it is addressed by Congress (almost certainly with undesirable consequences) or the US supreme court (ditto).
Or maybe I've just had too much caffeine today.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. I work for a retail chain that has installed Linux systems in all our (350+) stores. Mostly they run our custom app, but fire up KDE to get their email from the corporate center. When someone sends them a MSWord document, they can read it by just clicking on the attachment, which fires up StarOffice.
The problem is, StarOffice takes *forever* (and a day) to start up! I mean, 30+ seconds is not unusual. So what happens is impatient people at the store click on it half-a-dozen times, which - several minutes later - brings up half-a-dozen instances of SO.
I'm trying to get them to swtich from SO to something that starts up almost instantly (AbiWord or KWord), but they're reluctant to change (needless to say, I came on board after it was too late to get them to install something that would actually work...)
What will happen is that places like Largo do stuff like this, and it gets written up and circulated in technical journals (which is effectively what we're talking about here). Technical people see it, and now they have something to show to *their* bosses (assuming they're lucky enough not to have a PHB). Maybe 1000 people do this, and maybe in 5 cases it actually goes far enough to happen in that organization. Three of those five write up something about what they did, and then 3000 bosses get emails saying "Hey, maybe we should try this."
And five years from now, someone in the Wall Street Journal will write an article about how "10% of all Businesses Saving Thousands with Free Software". Boom! *Then* we'll see it explode.
Yes, KOffice has import filters for MS binary document formats. They're not perfect, but that's what happens when you have to reverse-engineer a proprietary protocol.
Just go to rpmfind.net and put in the name of the missing library. Heck of a lot easier than "Install Driver Diskette" that Windows would ask you for ("WHAT driver diskette???").
I'm emailing this to my boss, as it sounds exactly like the kind of thing our (dirt cheap) organization would want to use. (But no, we'll keep on paying Bill his danegeld...)
That's basically what I would do, with the caveat that I'd make sure they were running the default IIS home page before I turned off IIS. It's far from a perfect solution, but it's better than nothing...
Yeah, I thought about that too. Of course, while one could argue that anyone propogating CR is asking to get shut down, that won't help you when The Man knocks on your door in the middle of the night.
If one was going to be smart (we're all smart, right? ;), one could query the offending web server IP, and if it's got the default IIS home page (easy to recognize), shut down IIS. It's obviously not being used.
It's tricky, though. Obviously, those (l)users can't be counted on to do even minimal administration on their servers (which many apparently don't even know they are running - nice going, Bill!)(Though to be fair, some Linux distributions - cought, RedHat, cough - turn on all sorts of random services by default that the user probably doesn't want/need.) The ISP's have been ridiculously slow to respond to the problem (though I read that finally RoadRunner is shutting off people who are infected - which *I* appreciate, since my cable modem light has been going bananas for days). I don't see another solution besides having the technical community take a proactive stance.
The kicker about all this is, now there are literally *thousands* of rooted boxen out there just waiting to be used in the biggest DDOS attack the world has ever seen. What we've seen so far is just the prologue to the real problem.
Thoughts?
If you want to talk about dirt, she's the Swamp Thing.
Rather than get into explaining the myriad of things you're misinformed about, let me just say that you should try and get your information from independent sources before repeating GOP spin as fact.
It's a sad day when you can't even get lucky with a web server...
Next you'll be quoting the Faux News Channel as a source...
This is a good point. My experience is, once someone tries it (if they're at all net-addicted, even if it's AOL), they're hooked. Thus, all the "free modem! first month free!" business. Once you try it, you can't go back.
Perhaps instead of a War on Drugs, we should have a War on Broadband, instead? It's equally addictive, and more expensive than most drug habits.