I think Microsoft probably has hundreds of patents for things they don't ever intend to actually make, but just in case someone else does they want to be there to make a buck off of licensing. Not only that, but I actually think this kind of software would have greater value in situations like airline pilots and freight train engineers. In fact, for freight train engineers, there exists an alarm system that sounds every 10 minutes that they need to manually reset. If they don't reset the alarm and it times out, then the brakes are applied, the train stops and emergency personnel are notified. So as far as that goes, I could see the value in this type of software for that type of operator.
No. Really. Have you ever hit up paypal or ebay regarding a fraudulent transaction? Nothing usually ever comes of it. Why think that they will change now? No, it's just that people are THAT stupid. If you're stupid enough to follow these phishing deals, then you get what you deserve. It's akin to walking down to and asking people where you can buy a nice and handing them your wallet. If you don't know HOW to distinguish genuine emails from from a phishing attack, then you should put your credit card away, step away from the computer, get in your car, and go shopping at the mall like the olden days. To an extent, the banks and businesses can do a better job, but it falls on the consumer to act responsibly with their money and information.
I always though of Parrot as of a project that was born dead.
It's not dead, it's resting. the norwigian blue prefers kippin' on its back. its a beautiful bird....loverly plumage
Uh, didn't I read an article not too long ago about how the update.microsoft.com site was broken into Uh...no. The article was about a domain name close to update.microsoft.com being hijacked and used to distribute trojans. I'm actually surprised, considering what a huge trophy it'd be to at least deface their site, that it doesn't ever really happen.
Of course they have a firewall, just watch the difference between a tcptraceroute to a public port (like 80) and tcptraceroute to the same ip but some other port (like 110 pop3 for example). You'll see that packets get dropped at some point indicating a firewall. It's not a RST (port closed) it's just dropping packets for nonpublic services. That is a packet filtering firewall. Actually you're wrong. They're blocking ports. Port blocking != firewall.
You signed an agreement when you bought the device. I don't think anyone signed an agreement to publish their stock watching habits to Apple though. Name? Sure...Email? No problem...All the stocks I'm watching? Um...no.
Is there a WRT firmware somewhere that has that stuff already set up? Yep. dd-wrt can do it with some of their QoS stuff. I use it for hotspot throttling. Also to do some porn filtering. (NSFW is NSF[public_hotspot] too.)
Wait a minute! You're a Windows sysadmin and you said this...
Heh,actually, buying Windows Vista solved a problem I'd been having, random reboots during WoW and only WoW under xp. No blue screens nothing, just poof death and hey look, I have 2gb of ram wheeeeeeeeee.
Well, after buying Vista (was only +/- 18 euros since I work for an educational institution) I got a reboot too, after a nice blue screen. Best part about Vista for me is, it shows the info from the blue screen next time you boot up. I googled the error, did a little digging and it turns out 1 bios setting was wonky. How can you be a sysadmin and NOT know that you could have been doing the same thing with XP? And if you DID know, then why didn't you do the same thing when you were in XP? Doesn't sound like you're a very good sysadmin.
It's true. I finish a double major in University, worked in a relevent field the whole time, have excellent references, and now I can't find work... Hire me and I will do this for you. Perhaps it's your grammar?
Your observation has some validity, but it completely ignores the effect of an actual useable web browser on this class of device. I'm one of the customers who got a huge bill (in terms of pages) from AT&T, and it wasn't because of pull email -- it was because I actually spent a lot of time using the web browser. My email wasn't even configured for the first couple of weeks, and thereafter it was only set to fetch manually. Moreover, I rarely checked it. the "DATA" entries on my bill, I can assure you, were all Safari hits. If other devices in this class had been offering as good a web experience, AT&T would have discovered the issue in their billing system long before the release of the iPhone. Perhaps, but the article is about what the phone is doing while you're not paying attention or while you think it's off. Your safari hits are completely not relevant in the discussion. So...you used Safari and got a large (pages) bill. Good for you, what's the point?
What do you have against truth in advertising? If a link is sponsored, it should say so. It's not about that at all though. It's about Adwords and how Google allows someone to purchase adwords that are trademarked by other entities. Which by the way is the same thing that millions of domain registrars have been doing for years. If I register your trademark for something, anything really, then it should be me who suffers the consequences and not Google for allowing me to do it. Really, how can Google KNOW that some car dealership in East Bumblefuck exists while trying to process their billion adwords?
Suppose I had a free service which pretended doing something good but consisted of smashing your head several times with a baseball bat? But it's not that at all. It's 100% totally different expect for the words "free service". That's a mildly retarded metaphor in fact. Giving biased search results vs. getting physically assaulted is just retarded and you should try harder. Google's results do not shape my behaviour without me knowing it. It's why I go there in the first place. Plus, the article was about them selling adwords that were trademarked by another company. So you metaphor should have been something like Go-Daddy allowing people to register other entities trademarks as domain names. What is that you say...they do? Oh...um...
Personally, if Google was not specifying that the links were "sponsored", I would agree that is was deceptive behavior and think it was wrong. From my understanding, though, they do seperate their paid for links from the other search results so as a consumer I feel I am well informed... Meaning, when I look as the "sponsored links" section, I am fully aware that these companies paid for these links. That to me is what matters... And how much is Google charging you for their service again? Oh right, it's free. So....nothing. Maybe you can get your money back.
Seriously, why a lawsuit? If you don't agree with their policies, then get them to change them through bad press. Why does everybody have to sue for everything that a company does or doesn't do?
Sponsored or not, the link they provide either works for you or it doesn't. Meaning, you get the content you were looking for or you don't. If you get the content you're looking for, you come back. If you don't (consistently) then you find another search engine. It's that simple. Obviously, Google is better at finding what people are looking for quicker an easier than everyone else. Sponsored or not, I don't care. If I find what I'm looking for, I come back.
I suspect this problem is related in a curious way to the 300 page phone bill issue, in that it reveals billing-process (or, arguably, "user training") issues which are unintended consequences of the success of some of the design goals of the device. This may sound a bit odd, but let me explain. 1. Sleep/Wake vs. Power Off for iPhone So, it's a feature? I leave my Blackberry on 24/7 and my phone bill is 3 pages long.
I can only imagine the bad press that would be in the air if this was a Microsoft phone instead of an Apple phone. But, since it's an Apple product, it's the user's fault for not knowing that turning their phones off isn't really turning their phones off.
As far as this bit...
The really interesting part is that nobody at AT&T realized this would happen to people, because it probably doesn't happen to other people using other devices. Why not? Well, it certainly isn't because they don't have devices that automatically fetch IMAP or POP email. It's because they were trained by other quirks of the device to learn the difference between OFF and Sleep right away. I've taken my Blackberry (From the good ole US of A) into Mexico and the BVI's, left it on and running, and had no extra charges for data. So...like...go Verizon.
And besides, this is moot. China does not have to resort to high-tech fantasy tricks to beat us. China has a GDP of 7 trillion dollars, while the US has one of 12 trillion. Their economy is growing at 10% per year, ours grows at 3%. Do the math, in a decade or so, even if Chinese have one 5th the per capita income of the US, they will have a larger GDP. To use your word, "Bullshit". While their GDP might match ours, their per captia GDP barely beats out the Philippines and lies slightly under the vast military power of the Republic of the Congo. Of course their GDP is huge, they have billions of people. The problem is, they have billions of people. GDP by itself is a useless metric.
'It will be interesting to see why Google didn't choose to include OpenOffice.org, the primary difference between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being that StarOffice includes some proprietary components like clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration.' Ahem...isn't that enough? Tools for MS Office integration being a must_have these days and all....
I do that simply to reduce the amount of fecal particles that end up on my toothbrush. Every time you flush, it's a poo fountain (think tubgirl only more diluted). You don't want aerosol feces on your toothbrush, hairbrush, drinking glass, or whatever else is around the sink, so just close the lid when you flush. If you're done, leave it closed. That's silly. My father always said "You know, you have to eat a pound of shit before you die...". Aerosol feces on your toothbrush...please - listen to yourself.
I'm not going to try and disagree with any particular one of those suggestions. I, too, sometimes find that a given topic is being over-hyped. However I think we should keep in mind that if Slashdot were to really stop reporting on all those topics, then we would basically have no content on Slashdot. Moreover, important trends would indeed pass by without Slashdot picking up on them. So, I don't think the answer is to have a "Microsoft-free" week or a "Google-free" week... but rather for Slashdot users to agree to skip stories if they are on a topic that they are currently bored with. Seriously though, this article is barely a "topic". It's a MS basher bashing MS. Which I fine I guess, but if you RTA, it's so weak and such a stretch that it's hardly worth mentioning. A guy gets up in a financial meeting, spouts a whole bunch of corporate speak, and the article_author calls it FUD. It wasn't really FUD though in my option, it was just crap. So what's the big deal, find me one corporate financial meeting where there isn't some stiff spouting about how and why they're the best company in the best financial position. Jesus.
A bare-bones Firefox will get the browser into more houses
I think this comment is just silly. What evidence is there to support this? I mean, Firefox isn't that big as it is. Plus, does hard drive space even matter anymore? The smallest hard drive you can find if you stolled into a best buy is like a 160 GB so what's the point.
Why does everything always have to be some Orwellian plot against the masses? Why can't this just be... Remote control warplanes. Why *wouldn't* you want pilots to be able to fly warplanes from a safe place? Jesus. But nooooo, it's got to be the government taking more control from you. It's a fucking remote control plane! It's not "roboticized military that can be controlled from the Pentagon and White House", it's a remote control plane. Plus, where do you think that the non-roboticized military controlled? (Um...the Pentagon and the White House)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah...Huzzah...Let's all go down and riot at the punctuation factory.
It's nobody's fault but his own...
"You're a good guy your whole life...then you suck *one* dick and all of a sudden you're a cocksucker."
Seriously, why a lawsuit? If you don't agree with their policies, then get them to change them through bad press. Why does everybody have to sue for everything that a company does or doesn't do?
Sponsored or not, the link they provide either works for you or it doesn't. Meaning, you get the content you were looking for or you don't. If you get the content you're looking for, you come back. If you don't (consistently) then you find another search engine. It's that simple. Obviously, Google is better at finding what people are looking for quicker an easier than everyone else. Sponsored or not, I don't care. If I find what I'm looking for, I come back.
1. Sleep/Wake vs. Power Off for iPhone So, it's a feature? I leave my Blackberry on 24/7 and my phone bill is 3 pages long.
I can only imagine the bad press that would be in the air if this was a Microsoft phone instead of an Apple phone. But, since it's an Apple product, it's the user's fault for not knowing that turning their phones off isn't really turning their phones off.
As far as this bit... The really interesting part is that nobody at AT&T realized this would happen to people, because it probably doesn't happen to other people using other devices. Why not? Well, it certainly isn't because they don't have devices that automatically fetch IMAP or POP email. It's because they were trained by other quirks of the device to learn the difference between OFF and Sleep right away.
I've taken my Blackberry (From the good ole US of A) into Mexico and the BVI's, left it on and running, and had no extra charges for data. So...like...go Verizon.
I suppose we could argue semantics all day but in the end, you'd still be an AC cunt after it's all said and done....
I think this comment is just silly. What evidence is there to support this? I mean, Firefox isn't that big as it is. Plus, does hard drive space even matter anymore? The smallest hard drive you can find if you stolled into a best buy is like a 160 GB so what's the point.
Why does everything always have to be some Orwellian plot against the masses? Why can't this just be ... Remote control warplanes. Why *wouldn't* you want pilots to be able to fly warplanes from a safe place? Jesus. But nooooo, it's got to be the government taking more control from you. It's a fucking remote control plane! It's not "roboticized military that can be controlled from the Pentagon and White House", it's a remote control plane. Plus, where do you think that the non-roboticized military controlled? (Um...the Pentagon and the White House)