What will it take for the stranglehold on Microsoft Office to be overcome?
One big stumbling block is finding employees who know how to use the new software. I work for an employment service, and people with MS Office skills are thinner on the ground than you would think. So given the high costs of finding, hiring, and training workers, if it's hard enough for an employer to find new employees who know MS Office, they will be unlikely to want to switch to a different product, where skilled individuals are even rarer. I would think that breaking MSFT's stranglehold would require, along with file compatibility, making the UI of competing office suites as similar to MS Office as possible, so that it will be easy for people who only know MS Office to switch over. I don't know how feasible this is, especially re: "plagarism" concerns.
Plaintiffs in the present case ask this Court to strike down the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), or to declare that their conduct, academic research into computer technology, is not prohibited by that statute . Their claim should be dismissed because it is not justiciable
And given that the DMCA specific exceptions from its prohibitions, including:
conduct (1) by a school or library to determine whether to purchase a copyrighted product ; (2) for law enforcement purposes; (3) to achieve interoperability of computer programs; (4) necessary to engage in encryption research; (5) necessary to limit the Internet access of minors; (6) necessary to protect personally identifying information; or (7) necessary to engage in security testing of a computer system. 17 U.S.C. 1201 (d) -(j).
It seems that any research by Felten & Co. would be covered under (3), (4), (6), and (7). Thus, isn't the DoJ's motion for dimissial justified?
Well, this sort of thing does have a way of getting out of hand. Take asset-forfeiture narcotics laws. They were desinged to allow law-enforcement officials to seize drug-dealers' property. Now we hear horror stories all the time about cops finding junior's stash the glove compartment of his mom's Subaru, and next thing you know, mom's riding the bus to work.
I wasn't referring to privacy, I was referring to giving free reign to the authorities to legally screw with people, as in this excerpt from this article:
...Imagine this: You illegally download a copyrighted MP3 file, violating your terms of service contract with America Online. Without your knowledge, AOL proceeds to authorize the federal government to monitor every e-mail you send and every website you visit in order to collect evidence to prosecute you as a "computer trespasser."
The scary part about legislation like this is that once it is adopted, it tends to stay in place. Today's ant-terrorism initiaitve is tommorow's rationale of the cops to packet-sniff your ISP...
What are the potential adcantages of a 3d interface? Most of us are satisfied with a 2d interface (the GUI) and there are lots of people who are are perfectly happy using 1d interface (the CLI). I can't think of any reason why adding another dimension to the workspace would be necessary other than the coolness factor. Plus, once 3d interfaces are the norm, these message boeards will be full of complaints from angry sisadmins about having to go and "find" users who keep "wandering off" and getting themselves "lost"...
I do, however, think a nice crudproof touchscreen monitor (like on ATM, only more crudproof for heavy-duty use) would be a good upgrade. I could ditch the mouse and just use keyboard shortcuts and the touchscreen. Also, think of the prOn applications a touchscreen would make possible...
I also expect computers to have video cameras and to be responsive to our body language and facial expressions. They will be able to judge whether what they're doing is interesting or useful, and will ask for guidance or attempt to correct based on that feedback.
Computer: "I'm sorry, I can't open your document. It appears the data is corrputed... Hey! Did you just give me the finger?
Me: "Umm, no... I was, uh, scratching my nose..."
Speech recognition would be neat, but imagine an office full of people saying: "Highlight! Save! Open new Speadsheet!" To their compters all day long. Everyone would need a soundproof cubicle to get away form the noise... come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea.
Does anyone know if the riders of these bikes are tested for performance-enhancing drugs? All the aerodynamic tweaking would be moot if the human-powered vehicle land speed record gets broken because one of the riders went on a 'roid binge.
Re:not the quickiest muscle powered human
on
Biking @ 80 MPH
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· Score: 1
Howard rode a special biclcle that used a compound chainwheel setup to achieve the necessary gear ratios to reach the high speeds. Here is an article about Howard's effort, which has a nice picture of him pedalling along behind the car that was used to cut air resistance. Looks pretty hairy.
Corrporate interests and scientific goals
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NASA to Go Commercial?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
One potential problem with corporate involvement with scientific ventures is that the rational interests of the corporate sponsors (profit maximization) can potentially conflict with the goals of the scientific community (in its purest form, the pursuit of knowlege for its own sake). While slapping Nike logos onto shuttles and delivering Pizzas shouldn't pose any problems, a future corporate sponsor of, say a Mars mission may be tempted to fudge reports of the riskiness of said mission in hopes of gaining, say, first grabs on mineral rights. This paper by the American Association of University Professors gives an overview of the problems involved in corporate research and proposes some solutions (be warned, it's kind of a dry read).
Just a thought, and yes, I am aware that NASA as it presently exists is hardly a perfect example of an organization selflessly pursuing knowledge for its own sake.
Someone could develop a virus that gets into PowerPoint and obliterates those little stick figure illustrations (the lightbulb guy, the bomb guy, etc. - there's a word for them, but I forget what it is) that everyone uses to illustrate their slides and documents (our HR dept. used to stick those things on every handout, regardless of whether the stick figure picture had anything to do with the text).
Corporate communications systems would be brought to their knees! That would get people's attention.
The article does not address this question, so I'll ask it here.
This does not seem to be a problem unique to Miscrosoft Office. Wouldn't this type of security hole be possible in any office suite with scripting/macro capabilities? Do KOffice or StarOffice not support macros (I've never used them, so I don't know)?
Kudos to MSFT for making a patch immediately available, but I must say that MSFT's constantly having to play catch-up with secuirty holes does not make me real confident in.NET's data safeguard capabilities.
I hope they've got good security. I'd hate for Lee not to be able to bend his leg beacase his knee brace got hit with a DoS attack from a rival school...
We need to port crypto apps to these MEMS devices, because given our culture of ubiquitous surveillance, it's just a matter of time before someone starts snooping on the data in the micromachines operating my computerized knee brace. Next thing you know, my inbox is filled with spam from physical therapists and asprin companies...
I can't believe nobody caught the eerie similarity between: "CCTV watching for you!" and "Big Brother is watching you!"
If this whole biometric surveillance thing gets really pervasive in our cities, the effect on people of constantly being watched will be to turn the urban experience into the small town one, where everybody knows your name, and all your neighbors know about whatever nasty stuff you've been up to. Precisely the kind of claustrophobic atmosphere that people move to the cities to try to get away from.
Oh, so that's what it's calld....
on
IgNobel Awards
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· Score: 3, Funny
All this time I've been thinking I was a freak, it turns out I'm just suffer from Rhinotillexomania. Gross activities seem so much more benign once you stick a scientific name on them. Now I just need to do something about all the crud stuck to the underside of my desk.
So how exactly do you hold a rocket drag race? Is the finish line held aloft by baloons? Or is it like: "first one to crack the ionosphere wins!" That second option sounds like some bad joke you'd hear on The Jetsons. Plus, if somebody false starts, you have to wait until the rocket comes back down to restart the race.
It would be cool to see what kind of logo the liquid-oxygen and isopropyl alchohol manufacturers come up with to plaster on the sides of the rockets, however. Also: all monkey pilots!
I think that folks with the money to spend on wireless net access would just fork over a couple hundred more and get a full-on laptop. This not-quite-a-PDA-not-quite-a-laptop thing seems to fill a nonexistent market niche, the way those Sony "internet appliance" whatsits did.
scientists have decoded the genome of the bubonic plague bacterium. This will now (hopefully soon) lead to vaccinations and treatments for the disease it causes."
Great! Now I can finally get rid of that bird mask, holy relic, and incense burner I'd been keeping around in case the Black Death returned...
I'm at a loss as to what this has to do with copyright law protecting big business rather than artists. Are phone numbers supposed to represent artists, and the two pranksters supposed to represent big business, or what?
Seems more like a publicity stunt to me...
Slashdot Mirror
What will it take for the stranglehold on Microsoft Office to be overcome? One big stumbling block is finding employees who know how to use the new software. I work for an employment service, and people with MS Office skills are thinner on the ground than you would think. So given the high costs of finding, hiring, and training workers, if it's hard enough for an employer to find new employees who know MS Office, they will be unlikely to want to switch to a different product, where skilled individuals are even rarer. I would think that breaking MSFT's stranglehold would require, along with file compatibility, making the UI of competing office suites as similar to MS Office as possible, so that it will be easy for people who only know MS Office to switch over. I don't know how feasible this is, especially re: "plagarism" concerns.
OK I see what the DoJ is up to (the sneaky bastards). Thanks to TheMidget and mj6798 for their help.
Plaintiffs in the present case ask this Court to strike down the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), or to declare that their conduct, academic research into computer technology, is not prohibited by that statute . Their claim should be dismissed because it is not justiciable
And given that the DMCA specific exceptions from its prohibitions, including:
conduct (1) by a school or library to determine whether to purchase a copyrighted product ; (2) for law enforcement purposes; (3) to achieve interoperability of computer programs; (4) necessary to engage in encryption research; (5) necessary to limit the Internet access of minors; (6) necessary to protect personally identifying information; or (7) necessary to engage in security testing of a computer system. 17 U.S .C. 1201 (d) -(j).
It seems that any research by Felten & Co. would be covered under (3), (4), (6), and (7). Thus, isn't the DoJ's motion for dimissial justified?
Well, this sort of thing does have a way of getting out of hand. Take asset-forfeiture narcotics laws. They were desinged to allow law-enforcement officials to seize drug-dealers' property. Now we hear horror stories all the time about cops finding junior's stash the glove compartment of his mom's Subaru, and next thing you know, mom's riding the bus to work.
The scary part about legislation like this is that once it is adopted, it tends to stay in place. Today's ant-terrorism initiaitve is tommorow's rationale of the cops to packet-sniff your ISP...
Perhaps you are thinking of the American missle defense system nicknamed "Star Wars". That's something different.
What are the potential adcantages of a 3d interface? Most of us are satisfied with a 2d interface (the GUI) and there are lots of people who are are perfectly happy using 1d interface (the CLI). I can't think of any reason why adding another dimension to the workspace would be necessary other than the coolness factor. Plus, once 3d interfaces are the norm, these message boeards will be full of complaints from angry sisadmins about having to go and "find" users who keep "wandering off" and getting themselves "lost"... I do, however, think a nice crudproof touchscreen monitor (like on ATM, only more crudproof for heavy-duty use) would be a good upgrade. I could ditch the mouse and just use keyboard shortcuts and the touchscreen. Also, think of the prOn applications a touchscreen would make possible...
Computer: "I'm sorry, I can't open your document. It appears the data is corrputed... Hey! Did you just give me the finger?
Me: "Umm, no... I was, uh, scratching my nose..."
Speech recognition would be neat, but imagine an office full of people saying: "Highlight! Save! Open new Speadsheet!" To their compters all day long. Everyone would need a soundproof cubicle to get away form the noise... come to think of it, that may not be such a bad idea.
Does anyone know if the riders of these bikes are tested for performance-enhancing drugs? All the aerodynamic tweaking would be moot if the human-powered vehicle land speed record gets broken because one of the riders went on a 'roid binge.
Howard rode a special biclcle that used a compound chainwheel setup to achieve the necessary gear ratios to reach the high speeds. Here is an article about Howard's effort, which has a nice picture of him pedalling along behind the car that was used to cut air resistance. Looks pretty hairy.
Just a thought, and yes, I am aware that NASA as it presently exists is hardly a perfect example of an organization selflessly pursuing knowledge for its own sake.
Corporate communications systems would be brought to their knees! That would get people's attention.
This does not seem to be a problem unique to Miscrosoft Office. Wouldn't this type of security hole be possible in any office suite with scripting/macro capabilities? Do KOffice or StarOffice not support macros (I've never used them, so I don't know)?
Kudos to MSFT for making a patch immediately available, but I must say that MSFT's constantly having to play catch-up with secuirty holes does not make me real confident in .NET's data safeguard capabilities.
I hope they've got good security. I'd hate for Lee not to be able to bend his leg beacase his knee brace got hit with a DoS attack from a rival school...
We need to port crypto apps to these MEMS devices, because given our culture of ubiquitous surveillance, it's just a matter of time before someone starts snooping on the data in the micromachines operating my computerized knee brace. Next thing you know, my inbox is filled with spam from physical therapists and asprin companies...
I can't believe nobody caught the eerie similarity between: "CCTV watching for you!" and "Big Brother is watching you!" If this whole biometric surveillance thing gets really pervasive in our cities, the effect on people of constantly being watched will be to turn the urban experience into the small town one, where everybody knows your name, and all your neighbors know about whatever nasty stuff you've been up to. Precisely the kind of claustrophobic atmosphere that people move to the cities to try to get away from.
All this time I've been thinking I was a freak, it turns out I'm just suffer from Rhinotillexomania. Gross activities seem so much more benign once you stick a scientific name on them. Now I just need to do something about all the crud stuck to the underside of my desk.
It would be cool to see what kind of logo the liquid-oxygen and isopropyl alchohol manufacturers come up with to plaster on the sides of the rockets, however. Also: all monkey pilots!
I think that folks with the money to spend on wireless net access would just fork over a couple hundred more and get a full-on laptop. This not-quite-a-PDA-not-quite-a-laptop thing seems to fill a nonexistent market niche, the way those Sony "internet appliance" whatsits did.
scientists have decoded the genome of the bubonic plague bacterium. This will now (hopefully soon) lead to vaccinations and treatments for the disease it causes." Great! Now I can finally get rid of that bird mask, holy relic, and incense burner I'd been keeping around in case the Black Death returned...
I'm at a loss as to what this has to do with copyright law protecting big business rather than artists. Are phone numbers supposed to represent artists, and the two pranksters supposed to represent big business, or what? Seems more like a publicity stunt to me...