I've heard commercials on TV lately advertising products that you can put between the jack and the phone that actually block telemarketers. Does anyone have any experience with these devices? DO they work? Which is the best one to get?
In driver's ed you don't learn to build a car, you learn to drive it. Likewise, in junior high/high school computer class you learn to operate a computer, not program it.
Oh my God! You mean kids might have to learn something? That is definitely against most of the policies of this modern-day K-12 schools in the US.... You're absolutely right: education should be ``pleasing''. Kids should never be required to learn anything that is difficult. I should never have been required to take French. Pour moi, il n'était jamais agréable.
As far as being ``non-intimidating'', who are you talking about, you or your kids? Last time I checked kids weren't intimidated by information, except where it was socially discouraged not to be.
I'm willing to put hard money that 9 out of 10 times the driver who knows how his car operates is a better car owner than the one who doesn't. The guy who does is more likely to keep his tires properly inflated, warm up his engine before red-lining it, put less wear on the engine/brakes/suspension/etc. I'm willing to go so far as to say that he will probably be a better driver as a result.
Would you let your kid get a license after only an introduction to the subject in driver's ed? I wouldn't. I don't tolerate the, ``I don't want to learn what `oil' is, I just want to know how to drive,'' routine any more for computers than I do for cars.
The person who understands why the computer behaves in a certain fashion is much less likely to be frustrated when it does misbehave, because it's likely he'll know how to fix it. If your kids can program your fucking VCR or make it through Final Fantasy MCMXLV, then they'more than prepared for Linux or OS X.
If it goes through unmodified, the EUCD would make it a criminal offence to break or attempt to break the copy protection or Digital Rights Management systems on digital content such as music, software or eBooks. As it stands, the EUCD may lead to a rerun of Dmitri Sklyarov's prosecution, prevent teachers copying materials for their students or other legitimate uses of copyright material, opponents believe.
...
Since it is illegal to circumvent copyright protection, developers would be forced to sign licenses with the creators of a format in order to develop playback tools. This means that a creator could control the market, Cox warned, creating antitrust concerns.
It never ceases to amaze me how companies who claim to be technology companies, or corporations who adopt technological representations of their media cry when all of a sudden they have to deal with a new set of rules that comes with the new medium. If you're unprepared to deal with the ramifications of the technology, then don't invent/publish/distribute using it. Period. End of story.
If you're concerned about copy protection, invent something that works. If you don't have the resources to do that, then investigate new paradigms of reimbursement. The fact that corporations are lobbying for regulation this strict is a clear admission of failure on their part to be smart enough to add value to a huge demand already presented by end consumers.
Thank God for the almighty dollar!
In the end, I hope OpenSource technologies and licenses will be continue to be developed, published and used by individuals. If it is prohibitive to use a particular proprietary file format, then we as consumers should demand that it shouldn't be used, and alternatives be made available instead.
I agree. Nimda lived up to the hype at my office. That thing took us out for a whole day.
I still get several hundred hits a day from worms on my machine through my AT&T broadband subscription (I can't imagine how many we get at work). I'm running linux with not many daemons or ports exposed so my machine isn't compromised by these particular attacks, but that's still bandwidth that's now unusable by me. So yeah, I'd say I was affected by all these worms, despite not running any MS software.
Designers/manufactures of clothing, like those of consumer electronics have a built-in mechanism to avoid cornering themselves into this kind of thing: marketing for those industries is primarily centered on "the latest and greatest" (either style or technology or both). They won't have to complain they're not getting their cut of old clothes, because today's kids will be whining to their parents in the millions to buy them the best new thing since shoes with LEDs in them.
Readers have attention spans slightly longer than those of gnats, so they're less susceptable to this kind of consumer manipulation. The scary thing will be when the "mo' money" media mastadons catch on and get in bed with the technology companies to develop purchased media formats that deteriorate after a few uses (oh wait, this is already starting to happen...).
It's kind of funny...until now, I used to think that writers were among the few who still appreciated art for art's sake. I thought was the publishers that were the money mongers. I don't think Voltaire had compensation from paperback sales in mind when he created Candide. If you don't like people buying used books, then don't write one.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." --Ayn Rand
I lived in Seattle for about 20 years, and I can tell you that politics in the Pacific Northwest are weird (if by "weird", I mean short-sighted). Olympia has a history of trying to piggyback financially by taxing the **** out of large companies in Washington state. It amazes me that they're continuing this route after bending Boeing so far over that it has started to move its operations to a more tax-friendly environment.
FWIW, using a credit card for most purchases is actually good advice, because it avoids all sorts of frauds and other problems....
That is, of course, unless your credit card company belongs in the same detention hall as PayPal. This is slightly off topic, but consumers should remember not only to do their homework about online payment mechanisms, but their credit cards as well. There are some (IMHO) excellent, consumer-focused companies, and there are some (documented and documented) dishonest companies that suck rocks. If your credit card company tries to push off all of its fraud onto the end consumer, then using it is about as good as using cash.
A quick search online will give you volumes of complaints from customers on various different banks. The trick is to interpret them and pick the least evil.
One thing that consumers can do to protect themselves (beside reading their cardholder's agreement, but I'll assume everybody does that) is to call customer service of your bank before making a risky transaction and ask the representative to spell out your rights. Record the conversation and inform them you are doing so from the outset. That way if they renege, you have something to fight back with.
Another good thing to do is to find and read the Visa or MasterCard regulations (I would post a link, but they seem to be hard to come by) with which issuing banks must comply. Many banks will play upon the ignorance of the consumer and attempt to push responsibility for fraudulent charges onto the cardholder knowing that if they get lucky even 10% of the time, that's a whole lotta $$$ in their pockets.
When did the strong spirit of these beautiful ideas become so meaningless?
The same instant someone came along and said, ``I'll pay fifty dollars for one....''
Some Native American tribal cultures might have asked the same question about land, but the instant any new class of [noun] is used in an exchange with another class of [noun] of proven value, the ownership of items in the newly introduced class is implicit. To paraphrase an earlier post, ``Git off mah propertah!'' Once sounded absurd to somebody, and yet it has come to pass that we no longer have a concept of unowned or unclaimed land. The same is now true of ideas...just look at how we refer to them: intellectual propertah.
Either managers understand what is happening, or they don't. A top manager, who has not programmed and cannot read code, cannot possibly understand the very varied mental challenges of programming. If he doesn't understand, the decisions he makes will sometimes be flawed. The dot-com failures are good examples of this. Billions and billions of dollars were lost.
I agree with your first statement. Your second is suspect. The third is correct, and the fourth is just plain wrong. The dot-com failures were not due to poorly-implemented technology. They were due to ridiculous business models and mismanaged spending. The failure of Pets.com had nothing to due with the robustness of its application. The same with OS/2.
To your claim that, "A top manager, who has not programmed and cannot read code, cannot possibly understand the very varied mental challenges of programming," I disagree. In fact you almost make my point for me by going on to say....
Sometimes changes to software that sound simple are very complex. Sometimes complex requirements are simple to program. Top managers need to know what is a reasonable request and what isn't.
Anyone who doesn't understand this, whether they have programmed or not, is an idiot and certainly does not belong in a position of leadership. Every manager needs to know what a reasonable request is. But this knowledge should come from his/her employees and their recommendations and assessments, not his own derived from reading thousands of lines of his/her employees code (or worse, only bits and pieces). That is, unless of course, you're advocating a very small team of micro-managed code monkeys, but that kind of operation does not scale, and it's not very creative either (so your likely to get shitty code secretaries).
However, claiming a dependency on programming is not, logically speaking, enforcable. There are plenty of proofs by counter-example (in my experience alone). Statistically, you may find that more times than not, managers who have programmed are more likely to appreciate nuances of technology, but there are people who are as perceptive and knowledgable (and experienced) in those areas who have not spent more than a required semester of college programming, or even high school geometry.
You're making a generalization where you have an emotional guess/gut feeling based on your past observations about the coincidence of technical managerial skill to amount of experience "in the field".
To the point of the original post, I commend the poster and think that he has hit the nail on the head with:
I think many of us would rather like one who listened or who would at least take advice from the technical staff to heart. Many times managers will not consult their coders when they make plans, they'll make the plans first and tell their coding staff later, and this causes all kinds of problems.
By recognizing that he is not the most knowledgable about the subject, and empowering his employees with the ability to educate and recommend a course of action, he has demonstrated a critical characteristic of a leader. He should also focus on motivation and fostering creativity. If he keeps the mind frame that the manager is the client of the coder, and vice versa, that will be a necessary step to creating a work place where engineers can be productive and happy. None of that requires understanding the faults of GOTO or understanding Djykstra's algorithms (which I would argue that most people who claim themselves to be "coders" don't anyway).
Personally, I would prefer a technical manager with coding experience. I would also appreciate a sales person with coding experience. That doesn't mean that there are those without it that cannot be effective or valuable.
Does it not sound absurd to say that an programmer must have sales experience to be effective? Sure, it's a plus...the engineer who's spent time dealing directly with customers will be more likely able to meet future needs in a reasonable fashion, but I've never heard of anyone complaining that companies need to hire more programmers with marketing backgrounds....
Damn, I wish I remembered to log in before posting that.... Oh well, I'll just have to try to jack up my karma by posting other people's relevent material.... Oddly enough, the article mentions nothing about needed to understand Java's threading model....
I should add to my previous post that I still hold the highest respect for those people under whom I've worked who were hard core engineers who have successfully demonstrated their ability to lead as well. However, as time goes on, their focus has been on leading, and not on coding, so I still wouldn't necessarily invite them to a code review (don't worry, LB, I'd still invite you:>).
Unfortunately, if it becomes widespread, more jobs may require computer use and more jobs may force commuter time to be worktime.
Yeah, that's exactly what I want. It's not enough already that people try to talk on the phone or read (READ! for ****'s sake!) while in bumper-to-bumper traffic. No, I want them to be playing UR2 over 802.11b with the guy next to them.
Eh, what the hell.... The increase in commuter accidents and deaths will help perk up the economy by increased cash flow into the automotive repair, health care and funeral services industries....
Plot Revealed: XBox is VaporWare! (Re:Hmmm...)
on
X-Box Emulated (Not)
·
· Score: 1
If Microsoft is smart, they'll ignore this. Why? Well, they're losing around $150 USD per console, and they make the money from the games. If you buy your own high end PC, pay full sticker, and then buy their games, you're saving them money, and they're still getting their cut from the development fees for the game.
Wait a minute.... So audio/video/media hw producers do buttloads of research to constantly improve performance/capabilities of their products while reducing costs to the end consumer while software entertainment companies continue to take advantage of those improvements in games that are becoming more and more real all the while every single one of them has to pay Microsoft royalties/licensing fees/kickbacks/bribes/whatever during the process?
It's no wonder...they were forced to develop something on this order of magnitude by their marketing department just to get their forty-umpteenth bazillion byte flash-enhanced website to be browsable over a lowly T1....
It also might be due to the fact that more and more software is being legitimately licensed and bundled with out-of-the-box PC's before they even reach the customer. As with any statistical reference, we have to examine more closely what it actually measures....
> Unfortunately, I'd be willing to bet it infringes on either TiVo's patents or Sonic Blue's. At any rate, I imagine TW'll be taking them up on it quick enough.
One must remember that patent enforcement is left up to the patent holder, and need not be comprehensive. TiVo (the patent holder) is not obligated to go after every entity which could infringe on their patents.
Much to the point of an earlier post, this is to protect TiVo against unscrupulous companies with orders of magnitude more resources. If TiVo is to surive (personally, I hope they do), this is a necessary step. I prefer having two or three choices for my PVRs rather than having UltimateTV shoved down my throat with publicized planned obselesence and no real improvements, innovation or consumer benefits.
The point is that it's an abuse of power which result in the loss of rights by the common person. Whether it is the right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness is irrelevant. This country was founded on a few simple principles which were aimed at preserving individual liberties. What good is living if we're forced into a Brave New World where we'll take what we can get and like it because that's what the entity with all the money (and hence power) says we'll do? Should we adopt the one-out-of-three-ain't-bad approach to choosing our freedoms? Huxley was right. Orwell was right. Their timing and direction that were a little off: they were worried about governments, when they should have been worried about the corporations...governments are really just the puppets of those with wealth.
Believe me, the proposed Microsoft settlement is a far larger step towards this kind of world than most are prepared to believe. Many people (like the author of the post to which I'm replying) will not understand the validity of comparing Microsoft to Tobacco companies because they're simply too comfortable. It is this comfort which allows the false assumption that an individual can judge the relative importance of what we have agreed upon as Inalienable Human Rights.
How many of you (truly) would offer your life for the freedom which allows the expression of discriminatory (e.g., racist) ideals? By the way, responding to this post is prohibited.
To date, there have been a large number of tools dedicated to the creation and deployment of web services, but relatively little thought has been given to relationship management between services (a subset of which is security). Only a handful of companies (e.g., the deftly-named Grand Central and Flamenco) have started to broach this issue.
I think we can expect to see a large amount of activity in the area of what it takes to connect web services in the real world (i.e., with sensitive data, in business-critical operations, etc.) in the near future. One certainly would not one's web services to be abused/cracked as easily as Microsoft's Passport "technology". It will be interesting to see how this new market evolves.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard commercials on TV lately advertising products that you can put between the jack and the phone that actually block telemarketers. Does anyone have any experience with these devices? DO they work? Which is the best one to get?
How about a secretary?
In driver's ed you don't learn to build a car, you learn to drive it. Likewise, in junior high/high school computer class you learn to operate a computer, not program it.
Oh my God! You mean kids might have to learn something? That is definitely against most of the policies of this modern-day K-12 schools in the US.... You're absolutely right: education should be ``pleasing''. Kids should never be required to learn anything that is difficult. I should never have been required to take French. Pour moi, il n'était jamais agréable.
As far as being ``non-intimidating'', who are you talking about, you or your kids? Last time I checked kids weren't intimidated by information, except where it was socially discouraged not to be.
I'm willing to put hard money that 9 out of 10 times the driver who knows how his car operates is a better car owner than the one who doesn't. The guy who does is more likely to keep his tires properly inflated, warm up his engine before red-lining it, put less wear on the engine/brakes/suspension/etc. I'm willing to go so far as to say that he will probably be a better driver as a result.
Would you let your kid get a license after only an introduction to the subject in driver's ed? I wouldn't. I don't tolerate the, ``I don't want to learn what `oil' is, I just want to know how to drive,'' routine any more for computers than I do for cars.
The person who understands why the computer behaves in a certain fashion is much less likely to be frustrated when it does misbehave, because it's likely he'll know how to fix it. If your kids can program your fucking VCR or make it through Final Fantasy MCMXLV, then they'more than prepared for Linux or OS X.
...does that mean that AOL (of AOL Time Warner, remember?) is now trying to infiltrate the PVR market in order to destroy it?
From the article:
If it goes through unmodified, the EUCD would make it a criminal offence to break or attempt to break the copy protection or Digital Rights Management systems on digital content such as music, software or eBooks. As it stands, the EUCD may lead to a rerun of Dmitri Sklyarov's prosecution, prevent teachers copying materials for their students or other legitimate uses of copyright material, opponents believe.
...
Since it is illegal to circumvent copyright protection, developers would be forced to sign licenses with the creators of a format in order to develop playback tools. This means that a creator could control the market, Cox warned, creating antitrust concerns.
It never ceases to amaze me how companies who claim to be technology companies, or corporations who adopt technological representations of their media cry when all of a sudden they have to deal with a new set of rules that comes with the new medium. If you're unprepared to deal with the ramifications of the technology, then don't invent/publish/distribute using it. Period. End of story.
If you're concerned about copy protection, invent something that works. If you don't have the resources to do that, then investigate new paradigms of reimbursement. The fact that corporations are lobbying for regulation this strict is a clear admission of failure on their part to be smart enough to add value to a huge demand already presented by end consumers.
Thank God for the almighty dollar!
In the end, I hope OpenSource technologies and licenses will be continue to be developed, published and used by individuals. If it is prohibitive to use a particular proprietary file format, then we as consumers should demand that it shouldn't be used, and alternatives be made available instead.
I agree. Nimda lived up to the hype at my office. That thing took us out for a whole day.
I still get several hundred hits a day from worms on my machine through my AT&T broadband subscription (I can't imagine how many we get at work). I'm running linux with not many daemons or ports exposed so my machine isn't compromised by these particular attacks, but that's still bandwidth that's now unusable by me. So yeah, I'd say I was affected by all these worms, despite not running any MS software.
I do by using a combination of procmail and mail-bounce. Here's how.
Designers/manufactures of clothing, like those of consumer electronics have a built-in mechanism to avoid cornering themselves into this kind of thing: marketing for those industries is primarily centered on "the latest and greatest" (either style or technology or both). They won't have to complain they're not getting their cut of old clothes, because today's kids will be whining to their parents in the millions to buy them the best new thing since shoes with LEDs in them.
Readers have attention spans slightly longer than those of gnats, so they're less susceptable to this kind of consumer manipulation. The scary thing will be when the "mo' money" media mastadons catch on and get in bed with the technology companies to develop purchased media formats that deteriorate after a few uses (oh wait, this is already starting to happen...).
It's kind of funny...until now, I used to think that writers were among the few who still appreciated art for art's sake. I thought was the publishers that were the money mongers. I don't think Voltaire had compensation from paperback sales in mind when he created Candide. If you don't like people buying used books, then don't write one.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
--Ayn Rand
Dish: Maybe. It's at least the DVB standard.
Off topic, but this doubtful: they'll be one in the same in a few years:
I lived in Seattle for about 20 years, and I can tell you that politics in the Pacific Northwest are weird (if by "weird", I mean short-sighted). Olympia has a history of trying to piggyback financially by taxing the **** out of large companies in Washington state. It amazes me that they're continuing this route after bending Boeing so far over that it has started to move its operations to a more tax-friendly environment.
Damn, we 10MB IRDA/home fiberoptic ubiquity long before we knew it! To bad no one came to market with a receiver....
FWIW, using a credit card for most purchases is actually good advice, because it avoids all sorts of frauds and other problems....
That is, of course, unless your credit card company belongs in the same detention hall as PayPal. This is slightly off topic, but consumers should remember not only to do their homework about online payment mechanisms, but their credit cards as well. There are some (IMHO) excellent, consumer-focused companies, and there are some (documented and documented) dishonest companies that suck rocks. If your credit card company tries to push off all of its fraud onto the end consumer, then using it is about as good as using cash.
A quick search online will give you volumes of complaints from customers on various different banks. The trick is to interpret them and pick the least evil.
One thing that consumers can do to protect themselves (beside reading their cardholder's agreement, but I'll assume everybody does that) is to call customer service of your bank before making a risky transaction and ask the representative to spell out your rights. Record the conversation and inform them you are doing so from the outset. That way if they renege, you have something to fight back with.
Another good thing to do is to find and read the Visa or MasterCard regulations (I would post a link, but they seem to be hard to come by) with which issuing banks must comply. Many banks will play upon the ignorance of the consumer and attempt to push responsibility for fraudulent charges onto the cardholder knowing that if they get lucky even 10% of the time, that's a whole lotta $$$ in their pockets.
Caveat cardholder.
When did the strong spirit of these beautiful ideas become so meaningless?
The same instant someone came along and said, ``I'll pay fifty dollars for one....''
Some Native American tribal cultures might have asked the same question about land, but the instant any new class of [noun] is used in an exchange with another class of [noun] of proven value, the ownership of items in the newly introduced class is implicit. To paraphrase an earlier post, ``Git off mah propertah!'' Once sounded absurd to somebody, and yet it has come to pass that we no longer have a concept of unowned or unclaimed land. The same is now true of ideas...just look at how we refer to them: intellectual propertah.
Either managers understand what is happening, or they don't. A top manager, who has not programmed and cannot read code, cannot possibly understand the very varied mental challenges of programming. If he doesn't understand, the decisions he makes will sometimes be flawed. The dot-com failures are good examples of this. Billions and billions of dollars were lost.
I agree with your first statement. Your second is suspect. The third is correct, and the fourth is just plain wrong. The dot-com failures were not due to poorly-implemented technology. They were due to ridiculous business models and mismanaged spending. The failure of Pets.com had nothing to due with the robustness of its application. The same with OS/2.
To your claim that, "A top manager, who has not programmed and cannot read code, cannot possibly understand the very varied mental challenges of programming," I disagree. In fact you almost make my point for me by going on to say....
Sometimes changes to software that sound simple are very complex. Sometimes complex requirements are simple to program. Top managers need to know what is a reasonable request and what isn't.
Anyone who doesn't understand this, whether they have programmed or not, is an idiot and certainly does not belong in a position of leadership. Every manager needs to know what a reasonable request is. But this knowledge should come from his/her employees and their recommendations and assessments, not his own derived from reading thousands of lines of his/her employees code (or worse, only bits and pieces). That is, unless of course, you're advocating a very small team of micro-managed code monkeys, but that kind of operation does not scale, and it's not very creative either (so your likely to get shitty code secretaries).
However, claiming a dependency on programming is not, logically speaking, enforcable. There are plenty of proofs by counter-example (in my experience alone). Statistically, you may find that more times than not, managers who have programmed are more likely to appreciate nuances of technology, but there are people who are as perceptive and knowledgable (and experienced) in those areas who have not spent more than a required semester of college programming, or even high school geometry.
You're making a generalization where you have an emotional guess/gut feeling based on your past observations about the coincidence of technical managerial skill to amount of experience "in the field".
To the point of the original post, I commend the poster and think that he has hit the nail on the head with:
I think many of us would rather like one who listened or who would at least take advice from the technical staff to heart. Many times managers will not consult their coders when they make plans, they'll make the plans first and tell their coding staff later, and this causes all kinds of problems.
By recognizing that he is not the most knowledgable about the subject, and empowering his employees with the ability to educate and recommend a course of action, he has demonstrated a critical characteristic of a leader. He should also focus on motivation and fostering creativity. If he keeps the mind frame that the manager is the client of the coder, and vice versa, that will be a necessary step to creating a work place where engineers can be productive and happy. None of that requires understanding the faults of GOTO or understanding Djykstra's algorithms (which I would argue that most people who claim themselves to be "coders" don't anyway).
Personally, I would prefer a technical manager with coding experience. I would also appreciate a sales person with coding experience. That doesn't mean that there are those without it that cannot be effective or valuable.
Does it not sound absurd to say that an programmer must have sales experience to be effective? Sure, it's a plus...the engineer who's spent time dealing directly with customers will be more likely able to meet future needs in a reasonable fashion, but I've never heard of anyone complaining that companies need to hire more programmers with marketing backgrounds....
Damn, I wish I remembered to log in before posting that.... Oh well, I'll just have to try to jack up my karma by posting other people's relevent material.... Oddly enough, the article mentions nothing about needed to understand Java's threading model....
I should add to my previous post that I still hold the highest respect for those people under whom I've worked who were hard core engineers who have successfully demonstrated their ability to lead as well. However, as time goes on, their focus has been on leading, and not on coding, so I still wouldn't necessarily invite them to a code review (don't worry, LB, I'd still invite you :>).
browsing naked is a much better option
How did you know that? Can you see me through my monitor?!
Unfortunately, if it becomes widespread, more jobs may require computer use and more jobs may force commuter time to be worktime.
Yeah, that's exactly what I want. It's not enough already that people try to talk on the phone or read ( READ! for ****'s sake!) while in bumper-to-bumper traffic. No, I want them to be playing UR2 over 802.11b with the guy next to them.
Eh, what the hell.... The increase in commuter accidents and deaths will help perk up the economy by increased cash flow into the automotive repair, health care and funeral services industries....
If Microsoft is smart, they'll ignore this. Why? Well, they're losing around $150 USD per console, and they make the money from the games. If you buy your own high end PC, pay full sticker, and then buy their games, you're saving them money, and they're still getting their cut from the development fees for the game.
Wait a minute.... So audio/video/media hw producers do buttloads of research to constantly improve performance/capabilities of their products while reducing costs to the end consumer while software entertainment companies continue to take advantage of those improvements in games that are becoming more and more real all the while every single one of them has to pay Microsoft royalties/licensing fees/kickbacks/bribes/whatever during the process?
How is that different from a pre-Xbox world?
It's no wonder...they were forced to develop something on this order of magnitude by their marketing department just to get their forty-umpteenth bazillion byte flash-enhanced website to be browsable over a lowly T1....
Companies didn't have a chance or choice to adopt it. Scot Hacker wrote an excellent and insightful piece on why....
It also might be due to the fact that more and more software is being legitimately licensed and bundled with out-of-the-box PC's before they even reach the customer. As with any statistical reference, we have to examine more closely what it actually measures....
> Unfortunately, I'd be willing to bet it infringes on either TiVo's patents or Sonic Blue's. At any rate, I imagine TW'll be taking them up on it quick enough.
One must remember that patent enforcement is left up to the patent holder, and need not be comprehensive. TiVo (the patent holder) is not obligated to go after every entity which could infringe on their patents.
Much to the point of an earlier post, this is to protect TiVo against unscrupulous companies with orders of magnitude more resources. If TiVo is to surive (personally, I hope they do), this is a necessary step. I prefer having two or three choices for my PVRs rather than having UltimateTV shoved down my throat with publicized planned obselesence and no real improvements, innovation or consumer benefits.
The point is that it's an abuse of power which result in the loss of rights by the common person. Whether it is the right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness is irrelevant. This country was founded on a few simple principles which were aimed at preserving individual liberties. What good is living if we're forced into a Brave New World where we'll take what we can get and like it because that's what the entity with all the money (and hence power) says we'll do? Should we adopt the one-out-of-three-ain't-bad approach to choosing our freedoms? Huxley was right. Orwell was right. Their timing and direction that were a little off: they were worried about governments, when they should have been worried about the corporations...governments are really just the puppets of those with wealth.
Believe me, the proposed Microsoft settlement is a far larger step towards this kind of world than most are prepared to believe. Many people (like the author of the post to which I'm replying) will not understand the validity of comparing Microsoft to Tobacco companies because they're simply too comfortable. It is this comfort which allows the false assumption that an individual can judge the relative importance of what we have agreed upon as Inalienable Human Rights.
How many of you (truly) would offer your life for the freedom which allows the expression of discriminatory (e.g., racist) ideals? By the way, responding to this post is prohibited.
To date, there have been a large number of tools dedicated to the creation and deployment of web services, but relatively little thought has been given to relationship management between services (a subset of which is security). Only a handful of companies (e.g., the deftly-named Grand Central and Flamenco) have started to broach this issue.
I think we can expect to see a large amount of activity in the area of what it takes to connect web services in the real world (i.e., with sensitive data, in business-critical operations, etc.) in the near future. One certainly would not one's web services to be abused/cracked as easily as Microsoft's Passport "technology". It will be interesting to see how this new market evolves.