Darl can totally turn this thing around. Just you watch. It's just another minor setback. They'll be vindicated - just you see. Soon as they get over this small bump, they'll start raking in the cash from all those UNIX licenses that they're going to get from every single Linux user out there. Just as soon as...
Ok, a joke's a joke but I can't type anymore. My fingers started spontaneously bleeding.
Simple solution, and one I've been advocating for years now.
Never give a Windows box access to the internet. Ever.
Play your games on it, use MS Word, whatever. But if you must hit the ol' intertubes - use Linux. Or Mac OS. Hell, even your C64. ANYTHING but your Windows box.
Which would be a fatal flaw in their EULA....... IF anyoen else sold a software product that didn't include the exact same language.
You must be new to marketing.;)
It doesn't matter if you're guilty of the exact same thing. It's still a selling point. For further clarification, see 'politics'.
Ok, joking aside - there isn't anybody out there that sells a server that doesn't have a completely dismissive contract with it? Nobody? Not the servers running nuclear power plants, or submarines, or anything?
Laws have been changed/created over less. DESPITE what the EULA would like you to believe.
Exactly.
It's like trucks that have the "not responsible for objects leaving the road" stickers on them. It may or may not be true, but they'd sure like everyone to think it's true.
I have to admit that I've never read a Microsoft EULA. So I have to say...really?
Look at Microsoft's license agreement, there is NO WARRANTY, not even FITNESS for a PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Does it really say that? Holy crap.
Why hasn't any marketing genius snapped up on that and said that MS products are so unreliable and unsuited for business purposes that they have to use that as a disclaimer? It sort of screams "We're the exact opposite of mission critical! Use us if you have zero expectations!"
I know, I know - we here on/. feel that way already, but someone in marketing somewhere could make a killing off of this.
It just seems strange that a company that sells server software to a huge percentage of businesses all over the world would say that. Think about it - "IIS, no suitability for any particular purpose, and no warranty! But please, place your web hosted business on it! Don't think of it as downtime - think of it as random vacations!"
Anybody remember "back in the day" when they just charged you for the pipe, and not how many bits you push through it? Soon as they started this dollars-per-megabyte bullshit payment scheme, that's when this kind of crap was born.
And now that the business people have that set up as the payment model, the exact same business types who saw the internet as a commercial opportunity are complaining. Well guess what? You can't have things both ways. Boo freaking hoo.
And it'll only get worse when net neutrality goes away. Suddenly, adblock and utilities like it are going to be the only way to view "non-preferred" web pages in a timely fashion. When the blocking software gets a notch better to cope with it, you can bet the same slack-jawed money grubbers are going to be absolutely stunned to find that people want to work a way around their clusterfuck of a revenue stream.
Windows Genuine Advantage Servers Down, Taking Users With Them
Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:26PM EDT
Breaking news: Some of Microsoft's WGA servers reportedly went offline last night or early this morning. What's that mean? If your copy of Windows tries to validate itself with Microsoft, it might be marked as unvalidated, or put simply, counterfeit.
I can't wait until Vista tries to dial home, and they have another server blackout. I wonder if MS can be held legally liable the same way virus/worm authors are? You know, whenever some huge worm takes everybody's machines down for a day or two they tally up some outrageous dollar amount due to lost productivity? I smell a huge class action lawsuit waiting in the wings.
This is going to be seriously entertaining when it happens.
I had only written in basic up until then. Losing the line numbers and gotos was like having a light shine down from heaven.
I will always think fondly of Pascal. To this day, whenever I'm writing in C, when I see an opening brace I think "begin". When I see a close brace I think "end".
Also, this may be a stupid question, but I wonder how one measures the 'randomness' of a generator?
Read James Gleick's Chaos.
There is a method in that book that describes how they extracted attractors from a stream of data. Here's how it works.
A team of researchers had a bathtub with a dripping faucet. They tuned the dripping until the drips fell at random intervals. Nothing rhythmic about it. As the drop broke away from the faucet, it was setting up a vibration in the remaining water that would jiggle until the next drop fell. It was highly nonlinear.
They constructed a phase space where you would look at the time between any two drops. On the other axis was the time between the one previous to that. So on one axis you have the time bewteen drops 1 and 2, and on the other axis between drops 2 and 3.
It turns out that an attractor would emerge. The times did not scatter around the page randomly, they grouped in clusters. There was an underlying order that this method would expose.
So - to answer your question, what you could do would be to take your stream of numbers, and examine them in phase space looking at the differences between each data point. If nothing shows up in a two dimensional plot, go for three. Use n1-n2, n2-n3 and n3-n4 on your axis. Add dimensions if you need to beyond that. See what it takes to make your data cluster, if it ever does. The more complex your data is, the more dimensions it will take to visualize that.
Fair use for people is in Googles and MS best interest.
How so? I could maybe see Google but have a hard time thinking of why MS would care about fair use rights. If anything, I would guess they would be doing their best to work against fair use, seeing as how they are currently partnered with the entertainment industry. The entertainment folks see fair use as a lost sale. If they can forbid you from ripping your CD to MP3, that means they can sell you the CD and then turn around and sell you the MP3 file for your portable.
Of course, I still can't figure out why MS cares about the entertainment industry.
Money.
Anyone with pockets the size of the entertainment industry automatically looks like a good customer. MS didn't put all that fancy DRM in there on a whim.
Plus, they're both in a similar racket anyways. Selling you and reselling you the exact same thing over and over again.
It's great, but a long way from anyone defending personal fair use. This is just corporations fighting over who gets to disseminate sports scores. In short, companies fighting over money. Just using fair use as the angle of attack.
Wake me when the megacorporations start fighting for my right to rip my CDs and play them on my MP3 player.
We have a tracking proxy here too. I set up an old P3-550 in my basement. It's running a proxy, and zebedee.
At work, I run the other side of zebedee with a key on a usb drive. Point your browser to localhost:8080 and you're ready to rock! To the admins, they just see a stream of traffic to some webpage at notmy.real.address.com:443.
Another great slack tool is VMware. Make virtual disks with fun stuff on them and take them to work. Or bring in books in pdf format on your usb drive. Music and movies, if you're daring enough. Use VLC Portable for that. Leaves no trace on your PC.
Another good tool is AutoHotKey. Perfect for making custom panic/boss keys.
I guess the whole point of this is that employees, if motivated enough, will be able to slack off at work. No matter what.
Oh wow I never thought of that AC! I was up ALL NIGHT worrying about this fictional other person who makes unfounded guesses better than I can. If only I could find a programmer's magic 8 ball - then I'd have that job security I'm craving.
I like your hammer story. Here's one that I use. I'm not a system admin, I'm a programmer so it doesn't map very well to the problem at hand...but since we're discussing these kinds of things, here goes...
I've had managers who ask me how long something will take. "How long will it take you to finish item Q on this Gantt chart?"
They ask this because they think all work is alike. Programming is task/hours=rate. Like bricklayers. If the wall has 120 bricks in it, and a worker can place a brick a minute, then one guy can build the wall in two hours. Or two workers can build the wall in an hour.
Of course, programming is not like that at all. I tell them it's more like trying to find something you've lost. Their question, in another form is like this. "I've lost my car keys." "Well, how long do you think it'll take you to find them?"
My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?
"Yesterday morning, I received word from Assistant U.S. Attorney William
Keane in San Jose, California, that the government's three-year
investigation of Philip Zimmermann is over."
Slashdot Mirror
The Undead do not sleep.
That somebody else is Microsoft.
See the Halloween X document.. Details here.
Dude, this is the best time to get in on it! It can ONLY GO UP!
Darl can totally turn this thing around. Just you watch. It's just another minor setback. They'll be vindicated - just you see. Soon as they get over this small bump, they'll start raking in the cash from all those UNIX licenses that they're going to get from every single Linux user out there. Just as soon as...
Ok, a joke's a joke but I can't type anymore. My fingers started spontaneously bleeding.
True. A corporation is a person when it's convenient, and a non-person when it's convenient.
Simple solution, and one I've been advocating for years now.
Never give a Windows box access to the internet. Ever.
Play your games on it, use MS Word, whatever. But if you must hit the ol' intertubes - use Linux. Or Mac OS. Hell, even your C64. ANYTHING but your Windows box.
Phase one - embrace.
Phase two - extend.
Phase three - extinguish.
Been good knowing you, Novell.
Which would be a fatal flaw in their EULA....... IF anyoen else sold a software product that didn't include the exact same language.
You must be new to marketing. ;)
It doesn't matter if you're guilty of the exact same thing. It's still a selling point. For further clarification, see 'politics'.
Ok, joking aside - there isn't anybody out there that sells a server that doesn't have a completely dismissive contract with it? Nobody? Not the servers running nuclear power plants, or submarines, or anything?
Seems...hard to believe.
Laws have been changed/created over less. DESPITE what the EULA would like you to believe.
Exactly.
It's like trucks that have the "not responsible for objects leaving the road" stickers on them. It may or may not be true, but they'd sure like everyone to think it's true.
I have to admit that I've never read a Microsoft EULA. So I have to say...really?
Look at Microsoft's license agreement, there is NO WARRANTY, not even FITNESS for a PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Does it really say that? Holy crap.
Why hasn't any marketing genius snapped up on that and said that MS products are so unreliable and unsuited for business purposes that they have to use that as a disclaimer? It sort of screams "We're the exact opposite of mission critical! Use us if you have zero expectations!"
I know, I know - we here on /. feel that way already, but someone in marketing somewhere could make a killing off of this.
It just seems strange that a company that sells server software to a huge percentage of businesses all over the world would say that. Think about it - "IIS, no suitability for any particular purpose, and no warranty! But please, place your web hosted business on it! Don't think of it as downtime - think of it as random vacations!"
Anybody remember "back in the day" when they just charged you for the pipe, and not how many bits you push through it? Soon as they started this dollars-per-megabyte bullshit payment scheme, that's when this kind of crap was born.
And now that the business people have that set up as the payment model, the exact same business types who saw the internet as a commercial opportunity are complaining. Well guess what? You can't have things both ways. Boo freaking hoo.
And it'll only get worse when net neutrality goes away. Suddenly, adblock and utilities like it are going to be the only way to view "non-preferred" web pages in a timely fashion. When the blocking software gets a notch better to cope with it, you can bet the same slack-jawed money grubbers are going to be absolutely stunned to find that people want to work a way around their clusterfuck of a revenue stream.
Anybody remember this?
Windows Genuine Advantage Servers Down, Taking Users With Them
Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:26PM EDT
Breaking news: Some of Microsoft's WGA servers reportedly went offline last night or early this morning. What's that mean? If your copy of Windows tries to validate itself with Microsoft, it might be marked as unvalidated, or put simply, counterfeit.
The rest of the story is here.
I can't wait until Vista tries to dial home, and they have another server blackout. I wonder if MS can be held legally liable the same way virus/worm authors are? You know, whenever some huge worm takes everybody's machines down for a day or two they tally up some outrageous dollar amount due to lost productivity? I smell a huge class action lawsuit waiting in the wings.
This is going to be seriously entertaining when it happens.
I had only written in basic up until then. Losing the line numbers and gotos was like having a light shine down from heaven.
I will always think fondly of Pascal. To this day, whenever I'm writing in C, when I see an opening brace I think "begin". When I see a close brace I think "end".
Also, this may be a stupid question, but I wonder how one measures the 'randomness' of a generator?
Read James Gleick's Chaos.
There is a method in that book that describes how they extracted attractors from a stream of data. Here's how it works.
A team of researchers had a bathtub with a dripping faucet. They tuned the dripping until the drips fell at random intervals. Nothing rhythmic about it. As the drop broke away from the faucet, it was setting up a vibration in the remaining water that would jiggle until the next drop fell. It was highly nonlinear.
They constructed a phase space where you would look at the time between any two drops. On the other axis was the time between the one previous to that. So on one axis you have the time bewteen drops 1 and 2, and on the other axis between drops 2 and 3.
It turns out that an attractor would emerge. The times did not scatter around the page randomly, they grouped in clusters. There was an underlying order that this method would expose.
So - to answer your question, what you could do would be to take your stream of numbers, and examine them in phase space looking at the differences between each data point. If nothing shows up in a two dimensional plot, go for three. Use n1-n2, n2-n3 and n3-n4 on your axis. Add dimensions if you need to beyond that. See what it takes to make your data cluster, if it ever does. The more complex your data is, the more dimensions it will take to visualize that.
How many programs for Windows have existed almost unchanged for as long as Windows has existed.
The kernel. *rimshot*
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Can they get a killer whale to the moon?
Every indication is the America is still chugging along just fine.
Such as fighting a war on two fronts? That worked well for the Germans. Or how about this?
Nah. Nothing to worry about.
America is still the richest, mightiest, most influential country in the history of the world.
One down, 62399 to go. Keep at it!
Fair use for people is in Googles and MS best interest.
How so? I could maybe see Google but have a hard time thinking of why MS would care about fair use rights. If anything, I would guess they would be doing their best to work against fair use, seeing as how they are currently partnered with the entertainment industry. The entertainment folks see fair use as a lost sale. If they can forbid you from ripping your CD to MP3, that means they can sell you the CD and then turn around and sell you the MP3 file for your portable.
Of course, I still can't figure out why MS cares about the entertainment industry.
Money.
Anyone with pockets the size of the entertainment industry automatically looks like a good customer. MS didn't put all that fancy DRM in there on a whim.
Plus, they're both in a similar racket anyways. Selling you and reselling you the exact same thing over and over again.
It's great, but a long way from anyone defending personal fair use. This is just corporations fighting over who gets to disseminate sports scores. In short, companies fighting over money. Just using fair use as the angle of attack.
Wake me when the megacorporations start fighting for my right to rip my CDs and play them on my MP3 player.
We have a tracking proxy here too. I set up an old P3-550 in my basement. It's running a proxy, and zebedee.
At work, I run the other side of zebedee with a key on a usb drive. Point your browser to localhost:8080 and you're ready to rock! To the admins, they just see a stream of traffic to some webpage at notmy.real.address.com:443.
Another great slack tool is VMware. Make virtual disks with fun stuff on them and take them to work. Or bring in books in pdf format on your usb drive. Music and movies, if you're daring enough. Use VLC Portable for that. Leaves no trace on your PC.
Another good tool is AutoHotKey. Perfect for making custom panic/boss keys.
I guess the whole point of this is that employees, if motivated enough, will be able to slack off at work. No matter what.
Oh wow I never thought of that AC! I was up ALL NIGHT worrying about this fictional other person who makes unfounded guesses better than I can. If only I could find a programmer's magic 8 ball - then I'd have that job security I'm craving.
I like your hammer story. Here's one that I use. I'm not a system admin, I'm a programmer so it doesn't map very well to the problem at hand...but since we're discussing these kinds of things, here goes...
I've had managers who ask me how long something will take. "How long will it take you to finish item Q on this Gantt chart?"
They ask this because they think all work is alike. Programming is task/hours=rate. Like bricklayers. If the wall has 120 bricks in it, and a worker can place a brick a minute, then one guy can build the wall in two hours. Or two workers can build the wall in an hour.
Of course, programming is not like that at all. I tell them it's more like trying to find something you've lost. Their question, in another form is like this. "I've lost my car keys." "Well, how long do you think it'll take you to find them?"
My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?
"Yesterday morning, I received word from Assistant U.S. Attorney William Keane in San Jose, California, that the government's three-year investigation of Philip Zimmermann is over."
Article here. More info here.
If you post a good one, someone from the other side of the argument posts a better one. Especially if there is a house involved.
How 'bout we just discuss the problem itself?
Who cares about what games are being re-re-re-re-rewritten? Where are the pics of the girls in the skimpy anime outfits?