For a while now, Microsoft has been trying to "clean up" its image, but for anyone who's been around here for any amount of time will remember why they've needed to in the first place. History isn't a cheery place, and it makes no sense to try to look at it with rose tinted glasses. Steve Ballmer is still around, Gates still has influence, and the company hasn't really changed much. The software it has produced has increased in quality over time, but there are economic reasons for that.
Well put. Every time I get close to thinking maybe I should give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, they do something like sue TomTom or B&N for using long filenames in FAT.
First of all, WTF is a "password scrambler"? If you feel the need to dumb down the phrase "hash algorithm", you're probably submitting to the wrong site.
I LOLed at this article[1] on ZDNet this morning for its sensationalist, lowest-common-denominator "OMG computer hackery stuff" reporting, with its implied link between MD5's weakness (which has been known for years) and the LinkedIn breach (even though they use SHA1), and its ridiculous accompanying screen cap (running user-space tools while logged in as root, which no security-minded user would ever do, but hey "root@" at a shell prompt with lots of hackery output looks l33t).
And now here's basically the same thing on Slashdot. Yawn...
Having read the entire order (and having followed this case from near the beginning), all I can say is that I *wish* that all orders were so well prepared and presented. It appears to close all avenues for appeals, and I think the best 'showing' of any parties to this case has been Judge Alsup.
This this this. Most of those old fart judges would have thrown their hands up in exasperation at trying to understand all this computery gobbledygook, not written an order that explains the difference between public and private or instance vs. static methods. Couldn't have gotten a better judge for this case.
I still have a hard time stomaching Chrome. Even looking past the fact that they don't have NoScripts, I'm very reluctant to turn yet another part of my life over to a huge corporation with a checked past when it comes to privacy issues. Mozilla may be largely in Google's pocket too, but at least they maintain some semblance of independence. I trust them a lot more than Google itself.
I hear ya... I resisted the switch from Firefox to Chrome for a long time. I love Mozilla. They singlehandedly saved the friggin' web and are one of the few organizations who consistently at least tries to hold true to their ideals of a free, open, user-focused web. But at some point I just could no longer live with the dog that Firefox had become.
Who would've thought that the company who let their browser stagnate & become bloated in the absence of real competition would be Mozilla. It looks like they're on the right path to steer Firefox back into its leadership position and I hope they succeed & I can switch back. But until then Chrome is faster, lighter, more versatile, runs everywhere I want it to & has all the features I need.
This is also very informative, at least for me, as it gives me one more reason to avoid Win 8 as i had no idea everything in their new appstore was tied to hotmail.
Haha no kidding. I wonder if they still delete your Hotmail account if you don't log in for 30 days or whatever. Because that would be awesome to find out all my purchased apps were inaccessible because they deleted my "inactive" account...
Personally I believe Oracle is pushing the question of copyright on Java as a means of getting it clarified by the courts that languages are not copyrightable, rather than in any actual hope of winning such a claim. Because if they win such a claim, they're immediately subject to the copyrights of the C/C++ like syntax from which Java derives, and would effectively kill Java completely. Oracle and the rest of the consortium members won't want that, so it has to be a case of "we want to make sure no one ever tries to copyright a language again."
Uh, what?? Oracle's goal is to lose in court? You're giving them way too much credit; they aren't anywhere near that farsighted. They just want money from Google. This was at first mostly a patent lawsuit, and then when Google's lawyers shot their invalid patents full of holes, they switched strategy to copyright. Groklaw has plenty of history on that if you're interested.
I hope that they do something similar to what the April fools joke did to google maps.
Dragon Quest EVERYWHERE.
That *does* raise interesting implications for geo-caching! Once you find the loot it could even play the Zelda "da da da daaaaah!" victory sound while you hold it above your head...
You realise you have to have a needle stuck in your eye to get an implant? It doesn't hurt but it does kind of freak you out.
Is it any worse than lasik? In that case they slice the front of your eyeball so a flap is hanging off, lift the flap up, fire the laser into the exposed cornea, then lay the flap back down & smooth it out with a stick. All while you're awake & lucid of course.
Getting lasik was one of the best decisions I've made, but I have no idea how I got through the process without being drugged into oblivion.
Sure, we're not cuddly little bunny rabbits, but many lines of evidence over the past few decades have pointed toward some distinctly physical underpinning of basic morality and aversion to violence, implying that humans (and probably many other animals to) have a strong built-in 'try-not-to-punch-that-dude' mechanism
"And probably many other animals to"? Really? I swear to God the next time the editors of this site let such a glaring and obvious spelling mistake through on the summary I'm gonna personally head down there and rip their fucking heads off.
I hope it makes sense and is well done. I guess the sign of it becoming real is when google applauds it at the same time as apple/microsoft sue Mozilla.
Google probably will applaud it publicly but this is absolutely a big threat to Android. Google has been paying lip service to "open" claims for a long time while Android becomes more & more proprietary. It has never been developed in the open, which has been a sticking point for many since its inception.
So now we have B2G and WebOS, two truly open OSes, one of which is backed by (arguably) the single biggest open source success story in history when it comes to a consumer-facing product. Mozilla lives & breathes openness and user empowerment; it's their entire reason for being. I could easily see this quickly gaining mindshare with enough geeks to have genuine crossover appeal to the masses (just like Firefox).
And I wonder if they told Google, "this is what you get for releasing Chrome."
Great, yet another "unified language"
on
Unicode 6.1 Released
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· Score: -1, Troll
First Google Dart, then Mozilla Rust, and now this "Unicode"? Yet another attempt for a universal "one language for all uses" that is destined to fail.
People struggling to pay their bills don't have the means to donate to political candidates, so their voice is ignored. This must end.
So you're proposing a scheme in which people struggling to pay their bills are forced to donate to political candidates? That is, after all, how taxes work. Oh wait, let me guess: raise taxes on the rich! That'll solve it!
It seems like it should be possible for reality to extend beyond whatever is defined by law, yet this seems to be the litmus in most people's minds. If I have a name which literally everyone in my life since childhood has known me by, it seems to me that this should be the definition of "reality," not whether the government (who, by contrast, has a pretty cold and distant relationship with me as far as acquaintances go) agrees.
I'm guessing you'd find out rather quickly what the distinction is if (for example) a deceased relative willed part of their estate to "Moxie Marlinspike" and the government (regardless of how cold or distant) has no record of such a name. "Oh they really meant me, everyone knows that" may not hold up in probate. Why not just have your name legally changed?
This is modded Funny but let's be honest with ourselves here: 95% of us thought the exact same thing when we saw "retina implant" in the headline and then were bummed to learn it's just some stupid medical procedure for blind people.
I guess we are talking different languages. I said nothing about installing another OS on the iPhone nor do I believe that all that can be accomplished requires me to insert custom code into the kernel.
I guess the reason I make the distinction in this case is that, when we're talking about something like Carrier IQ that is buried deep into many libraries throughout the system (see this post from March in XDA: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=11763089&postcount=3 ), performing a complete OS wipe and installing an open-source OS from the ground up gives me a much better assurance that no one is tracking what I'm doing. (Yes, aside from the issues you mention such as chipset and firmware code).
But yes, for many/most cases that users actually care about, gaining root privileges is "enough".
So yes the "android is open mantra" is a pretty big deal to myself and many others, it's not just lip service.
This is where we really differ. I support open source (professionally on occasion) yet my support doesn't rise to the level of zealotry. I do not disqualify any product solely on the basis that it's less open then other options.
Thanks for your contributions to the kernel. But please don't assume that support of openness is "zealotry". Myself and many others are very pragmatic about this and realize there are many places where it doesn't make sense or isn't feasible. If you read comments from the CM devs they aren't on some Free Software crusade, they just enjoy hacking their phones and having a (more) open platform to do that on makes a big difference. I don't care that the GPS or 4G drivers on my Nexus are proprietary binary blobs as long as they're supported by Google and they work well.
But when this is a device that basically holds all the most personal details of my life, and we see stories every day about Carrier IQ and shopping malls tracking cell phone users and everyone else who wants to know more about me than I want them to, you bet I'm gonna support more open devices and support the companies that promote them. Yes there's a lot of zealotry out there but in this particular case it's very relevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Shut up, Flanders.
Well put. Every time I get close to thinking maybe I should give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, they do something like sue TomTom or B&N for using long filenames in FAT.
While that would certainly be good for MSFT, I'm having loads of fun watching him run the company into the ground.
First of all, WTF is a "password scrambler"? If you feel the need to dumb down the phrase "hash algorithm", you're probably submitting to the wrong site.
I LOLed at this article[1] on ZDNet this morning for its sensationalist, lowest-common-denominator "OMG computer hackery stuff" reporting, with its implied link between MD5's weakness (which has been known for years) and the LinkedIn breach (even though they use SHA1), and its ridiculous accompanying screen cap (running user-space tools while logged in as root, which no security-minded user would ever do, but hey "root@" at a shell prompt with lots of hackery output looks l33t).
And now here's basically the same thing on Slashdot. Yawn...
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/md5-password-scrambler-no-longer-safe/12317
I wonder if this qualifies as just "regular" porn or "extremely gross" porn?
This this this. Most of those old fart judges would have thrown their hands up in exasperation at trying to understand all this computery gobbledygook, not written an order that explains the difference between public and private or instance vs. static methods. Couldn't have gotten a better judge for this case.
Class-action lawsuits are intended to make lawyers rich while individuals get worthless token compensation
FTFY.
I hear ya... I resisted the switch from Firefox to Chrome for a long time. I love Mozilla. They singlehandedly saved the friggin' web and are one of the few organizations who consistently at least tries to hold true to their ideals of a free, open, user-focused web. But at some point I just could no longer live with the dog that Firefox had become.
Who would've thought that the company who let their browser stagnate & become bloated in the absence of real competition would be Mozilla. It looks like they're on the right path to steer Firefox back into its leadership position and I hope they succeed & I can switch back. But until then Chrome is faster, lighter, more versatile, runs everywhere I want it to & has all the features I need.
It is not Skype they use, but the gullibility of the users. Skype is only remotely involved...
No kidding, what a misleading title. Makes it sound like they're using some Skype vulnerability.
Haha no kidding. I wonder if they still delete your Hotmail account if you don't log in for 30 days or whatever. Because that would be awesome to find out all my purchased apps were inaccessible because they deleted my "inactive" account...
Uh, what?? Oracle's goal is to lose in court? You're giving them way too much credit; they aren't anywhere near that farsighted. They just want money from Google. This was at first mostly a patent lawsuit, and then when Google's lawyers shot their invalid patents full of holes, they switched strategy to copyright. Groklaw has plenty of history on that if you're interested.
That *does* raise interesting implications for geo-caching! Once you find the loot it could even play the Zelda "da da da daaaaah!" victory sound while you hold it above your head...
Is it any worse than lasik? In that case they slice the front of your eyeball so a flap is hanging off, lift the flap up, fire the laser into the exposed cornea, then lay the flap back down & smooth it out with a stick. All while you're awake & lucid of course.
Getting lasik was one of the best decisions I've made, but I have no idea how I got through the process without being drugged into oblivion.
Nope. Still funny.
FTFS:
"And probably many other animals to"? Really? I swear to God the next time the editors of this site let such a glaring and obvious spelling mistake through on the summary I'm gonna personally head down there and rip their fucking heads off.
FFS, Angry Birds is still a thing?
They would be life threatening if they were so massive as to render the victim unable to perform a BM.
Google probably will applaud it publicly but this is absolutely a big threat to Android. Google has been paying lip service to "open" claims for a long time while Android becomes more & more proprietary. It has never been developed in the open, which has been a sticking point for many since its inception.
So now we have B2G and WebOS, two truly open OSes, one of which is backed by (arguably) the single biggest open source success story in history when it comes to a consumer-facing product. Mozilla lives & breathes openness and user empowerment; it's their entire reason for being. I could easily see this quickly gaining mindshare with enough geeks to have genuine crossover appeal to the masses (just like Firefox).
And I wonder if they told Google, "this is what you get for releasing Chrome."
Bravo, sir.
First Google Dart, then Mozilla Rust, and now this "Unicode"? Yet another attempt for a universal "one language for all uses" that is destined to fail.
So you're proposing a scheme in which people struggling to pay their bills are forced to donate to political candidates? That is, after all, how taxes work. Oh wait, let me guess: raise taxes on the rich! That'll solve it!
I'm guessing you'd find out rather quickly what the distinction is if (for example) a deceased relative willed part of their estate to "Moxie Marlinspike" and the government (regardless of how cold or distant) has no record of such a name. "Oh they really meant me, everyone knows that" may not hold up in probate. Why not just have your name legally changed?
How much for the model with the Heads Up Display?
This is modded Funny but let's be honest with ourselves here: 95% of us thought the exact same thing when we saw "retina implant" in the headline and then were bummed to learn it's just some stupid medical procedure for blind people.
Just keep in mind that if your boss asks you to set up a new server in the DMZ, he may mean something different than what you're expecting.
I guess the reason I make the distinction in this case is that, when we're talking about something like Carrier IQ that is buried deep into many libraries throughout the system (see this post from March in XDA: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=11763089&postcount=3 ), performing a complete OS wipe and installing an open-source OS from the ground up gives me a much better assurance that no one is tracking what I'm doing. (Yes, aside from the issues you mention such as chipset and firmware code).
But yes, for many/most cases that users actually care about, gaining root privileges is "enough".
Thanks for your contributions to the kernel. But please don't assume that support of openness is "zealotry". Myself and many others are very pragmatic about this and realize there are many places where it doesn't make sense or isn't feasible. If you read comments from the CM devs they aren't on some Free Software crusade, they just enjoy hacking their phones and having a (more) open platform to do that on makes a big difference. I don't care that the GPS or 4G drivers on my Nexus are proprietary binary blobs as long as they're supported by Google and they work well.
But when this is a device that basically holds all the most personal details of my life, and we see stories every day about Carrier IQ and shopping malls tracking cell phone users and everyone else who wants to know more about me than I want them to, you bet I'm gonna support more open devices and support the companies that promote them. Yes there's a lot of zealotry out there but in this particular case it's very relevant.