I vote: not so crazy. I am of the opinion (and have been for a couple of years now) that they have a top-secret lab in an underground bunker where they are secretly working on a Windows desktop environment running on a Linux kernel, as well as Linux versions of Office and all their main applications.
Why?
That's what I'd be doing if I were them. They can afford to hedge their bets on this one if they are really as scared as everyone says they are. One of the serious advantages of FOSS platforms is because the up-front costs are so low, you can start development before you decide if you have a product or not.
Does MacOS X require you to be a superuser to install software? 'Cause otherwise none of those things would work if the user were running in user mode like they should be -- the installer wouldn't have permission. The user's home directory, on the other hand, is always deletinateable.
After all, this isn't Windows, for crying out loud!:)
For Microsoft to get truly serious (and honest) about security, they will have to totally change their design philosophy, a philosophy that was chosen not based on it's technical mereits, but on its ability to stop the DoJ from breaking Windows up into it's seperate components.
Not only that, but they will have to UNdo all the "advances" they've made over the last ten years... eleven... twelve... (The clock's running, guys! Whenever you're ready!)
I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible. When Spielberg released "CE3K - The Collector's Edition" on DVD a few years back, he kept a few scenes from the special edition, but restored the original ending and a number of shortened and eliminated scenes to bring the movie real close to the original theatrical release -- something he swore he'd never do.
What sucks is even though it's *my* childhood, *he* owns it so he can do whatever he wants. I'm pretty sure there's a lesson about consumerism in there somewhere - I'll look for it when I'm done catching up on my "Charles In Charge" and "Three's Company" box sets.;)
This phone was interesting right up until I read this:
Identity(TM), featuring SmartSkins, is the first phone (GSM/GPRS) designed to communicate who you are and what you're all about.
Thank God, now I can stop talking to people and just show 'em my phone.
I suppose it has a ringtone that properly conveys the pre-middle-age angst of wondering if I've chosen the right career, uncertainty in my prospects for retirement (let alone *early* retirement) and that old-timey-style pinin' for the bygone era?
Oh well, even if they didn't, I can't see this approach finding any more than a niche market because for commodity software, the price has to be low enough to outweigh the benefits of ownership.
Nobody is going to pay $150/year to rent MS Office Pro when OpenOffice is free to own. $30/year, maybe, but then MS has to make a decision about whether that price is too low to be worthwhile. Actually, at $30/year *I* have to wonder if it's worth it, but then I can't stand the last few version of office because of all the annoying "non-features" I have to turn off to get actual work done.
...the ability of corporate goons make themselves look like dumbasses by using lawyers inappropriately.
On another note, since turnabout is fair play, wouldn't it be fun for owners/authors the legally copyrighted X-File utility to sue the MPAA for trying to claim ownership of something that isn't theirs and issue a similar DMCA takedown order for all the X-Files-TV-show-related material on their web site?
Nahh, it's friday. Who cares? I just want my TV back for the weekend.
Instant, but not current. From the disclaimer at the bottom of that page:
*MIN#: There may be delays processing network call records. "Minutes Used" may not include airtime used within the last two to five days and does not include recent roaming minutes due to delayed processing. Roaming airtime and roaming long distance minutes used are based on call records received from other carriers and processed by Cingular. A delay of two to ten days at minimum is usual. A delay of up to 60 days or longer is possible. Results for FamilyTalk customers may not involve all minutes for the entire FamilyTalk group. Prepaid customers will not have access to *Services.
Hell, even Verizon would let you dial an automated customer service number four years ago to see how many minutes you've used, but they never included the last week's worth either.
Re:At least now it's out in the open.
on
Ballmer on Linux
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I call bullstuff (on Ballmer).
It's not protection money. They'll just pass the cost on to their customers like every other business. In fact (with a $50 billion cash bank account they are just now starting to dispense to shareholders, etc.) you could argue they already have passed it on to us through inflated prices.
For all that talk Ballmer goes through about there not being any such thing as a free lunch, you'd think he'd at least have read what his ECON101 text book had to say about it.;)
It's amazing. The mobile phone companies can sell you games, ringtones, wallpaper and text messages, but they can't^H^H^H^H^H *WON'T* tell you instantly how many minutes you've used this billing cycle. Hell, my Cingular phone doesn't even work in my living room - I have to go outside where I get at least three bars worth of signal. [inside - SEARCHING..., outside - THREE BARS].
All you sixteen year old spoiled teeny-boppers with the disposable income to afford mobile phones are wrecking my universe by diluting my opinion with the carriers about what is neccessary and valuable in a phone service.
The mobile carriers are all *rapidly* moving up my poop list.
Sincerely,
Mr. Fogey.
P.S. I almost can't *wait* until I'm the weird old guy at the supermarket who wants to talk to everyone about my old collection of Wang Chung and Howard Jones records. Gimme until 2040 and I'm *there*, dude.
96 = 64 + 32 and 12 = 8 + 4, so they kinda make sense, but kinda not. I, too, would love to know what oddball technological issue is forcing them to choose such unexpectedly weird processor arrangements.
You see, folks! Clifford Stoll is right! Computers in the classroom are not only an unnecessary and useless distraction, but now they are probably also a serious legal liability.
Please, for the sake of the children, start by unplugging the computers and networks and teach them how to use books again.
/Seriously considering changing my last name to "Luddite"
(Sigh)... I really apologize for this being so far off topic, but when the press makes painfully obvious grammatical errors like this, it just frosts my twinkie. Please pardon my venting, but I am blistering with splenetic rage over this particularly puerile lexiconic oversight.
Take a look at this excerpt from the article, about halfway down just under the 'related story' link:
Delivering ads on the fly
New York-based Massive, Inc. is taking a different tact with a technology that both serves and measures in-game ad impressions.
I believe the columnist intended to use the word tack, as in "...take a different tack." It's from nautical terminology and refers to a change or difference in direction (like a boat tacking against the wind). Tact is something entirely different.
When did MSNBC start hiring bloggers and IM-kiddies to write background pieces?
Strike 1: You are a professional journalist. You should know how to use words and dictionaries.
Strike 2: You write tech articles, so I expect you to be equipped a little better than average upstairs.
Strike 3: Your editor should know better when you don't.
Yep. In fact, I think MS actually linked www.courtesan.com in the claims section of their application.... ya know, to save everyone the hassle of finding it on their own with Google.
I dunno. I don't think it's *much* more complicated than that, but I don't think that's the whole story, either.
Frankly, the past couple of months have been rather embarrassing in a juvenile kind of way - kinda like the first year of the Clinton administration. Here you have a very successful young company with a LOT of Ph.D.s running things. I just think they figured they were smart enough to get away with changing the rules wherever they wanted without causing any undesired consequences.
I think they went for a complicated IPO that favored smaller investors and kept more of the IPO profits for themselves because they remember the IPOs of 1997-2000. Companies like Yahoo were IPO-ing at, like $20/share and then on opening day the price would skyrocket to like $200/share and Google looks at this and says "All of that extra $180/share went to someone other than us because the system is skewed toward the boneheaded jerkola monkeyboys in the financial industry. WELL SCREW THAT! We're smart enough to not make that mistake."
So, even if the market isn't anywhere near *that* juicy right now, Hey! They're Google! They've got buzz *and* street cred *and* good press, *AND* the're the only major IPO game in town right now! And, with everyone watching, they decide on an auction format that keeps the IPO price much closer to where they think the market will end up trading the shares.
And, as you can guess, giving up that figurative $180/share doesn't sit well with the boneheaded jerkola monkeyboys in the financial industry who are^H^H^H **WERE** in a position to profit. My guess is that they tried (as much as possible) to ear-massage their clients down to devalue the IPO.
Anyway, then you add in the quiet period infractions and the unaccounted-for pre-distributed shares and I just think the Google boys needed an old Wall-Street network financial consultant on the payroll to sit in on their meetings and say "No." a lot, because the whole thing has come across as somewhat amaturish.
No, that's pretty much it. That's where market capitalization comes in - in simple terms it's the total of all the outstanding shares multiplied by the share price. A sort-of "net value" of the company if you wanted to pay cash for all of it.
One $10 share in a company with a market cap of $1,000 is a greater percentage of ownership than one $100 share in a company with a market cap of $1,000,000.
However, that doesn't change the rules of arithematic. The $100 share is still worth - on its own - 10 times the $10 share.
Well, I learned something. Apparently, for some time now, Windows XP has been completely willing to execute executables that do not have an executable file extension. For example, if you rename notepad.exe to notepad.gif, you can "CMD/C NOTEPAD.GIF" and it will pop right open. Not sure yet if explorer will do this the same way: One test I ran (notepad.exe -> notepad.xxx) prompted for a program, while another program (nestor.exe -> nestor.xxx) just ran normally. Maybe it has something to do with the origin of the file, or whether the file extension is registered or not. I noticed that Windows replaced notepad.exe with a new copy a few seconds after I renamed it.
The point?
Those of us using RENATTACH on our mail servers to filter out malware and viruses now have another hole to plug.
So far as I can tell, NON-free OCR isn't doing so hot either -- you pretty much have to proof-read and correct everything you scan anyway, which just makes it impractical for most purposes. If I had to scan a bunch of records, I'd probably outsource it to a pay service that specializes in that sort of thing, which means it would have to be worth the cost of getting it done.
What I want to know is what's Google going to do about this? They have a catalog search in their Google Labs playpen that indexes products and their descriptions to make them searchable....and by searchable, I mean you can search for "bicycle" and it will highlight all of the instances of that word in some 200+ PRINTED catalogs, not similar HTML/XML/PDF electronic documents. So clearly, they know some things about OCR we don't (and probably 2D map indexing, too), but durned if they aren't letting on about it.
In the next few years, I expect to see a fully automated Google OCR product that can not only scan your paper docs, but index them and help you search them too, all while maintaining the electronic copies in their original scanned (think photograph) state, not the some bastardized, mistranslated and screwed up PDF or DOC format.
**THAT'S** what's going to kill Microsoft, and probably why they're so keen to risk overreaching on their IPO.
The Twinsburg Public Library (http://www.twinsburg.lib.oh.us) in Twinsburg, Ohio was running Citrix Metaframe on thin clients for their library terminals as recently as three years ago and they probably still are. They're a part of the Greater Cleveland Public Library Network (Clevenet - www.clevenet.com), which also may or may not be running Citrix.
It might be worth a call to talk to someone who's doing it if you're interested in running Citrix or WinTS.
Slashdot Mirror
I vote: not so crazy. I am of the opinion (and have been for a couple of years now) that they have a top-secret lab in an underground bunker where they are secretly working on a Windows desktop environment running on a Linux kernel, as well as Linux versions of Office and all their main applications.
Why?
That's what I'd be doing if I were them. They can afford to hedge their bets on this one if they are really as scared as everyone says they are. One of the serious advantages of FOSS platforms is because the up-front costs are so low, you can start development before you decide if you have a product or not.
Who'll be buying *Windows* when LongHorn comes out?
Does MacOS X require you to be a superuser to install software? 'Cause otherwise none of those things would work if the user were running in user mode like they should be -- the installer wouldn't have permission. The user's home directory, on the other hand, is always deletinateable.
After all, this isn't Windows, for crying out loud!
For Microsoft to get truly serious (and honest) about security, they will have to totally change their design philosophy, a philosophy that was chosen not based on it's technical mereits, but on its ability to stop the DoJ from breaking Windows up into it's seperate components.
Not only that, but they will have to UNdo all the "advances" they've made over the last ten years... eleven... twelve... (The clock's running, guys! Whenever you're ready!)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible. When Spielberg released "CE3K - The Collector's Edition" on DVD a few years back, he kept a few scenes from the special edition, but restored the original ending and a number of shortened and eliminated scenes to bring the movie real close to the original theatrical release -- something he swore he'd never do.
What sucks is even though it's *my* childhood, *he* owns it so he can do whatever he wants. I'm pretty sure there's a lesson about consumerism in there somewhere - I'll look for it when I'm done catching up on my "Charles In Charge" and "Three's Company" box sets.
For some reason, the headline made me think of MST3K instead of South Park.
Go figure.
This is the song, written for the train chase.
This is the chase, Rocky and Ken!
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Olé!
This phone was interesting right up until I read this:
Identity(TM), featuring SmartSkins, is the first phone (GSM/GPRS) designed to communicate who you are and what you're all about.
Thank God, now I can stop talking to people and just show 'em my phone.
I suppose it has a ringtone that properly conveys the pre-middle-age angst of wondering if I've chosen the right career, uncertainty in my prospects for retirement (let alone *early* retirement) and that old-timey-style pinin' for the bygone era?
No?
Hmmm... maybe it's in one of the screensavers.
I thought the market already rejected this idea!
Oh well, even if they didn't, I can't see this approach finding any more than a niche market because for commodity software, the price has to be low enough to outweigh the benefits of ownership.
Nobody is going to pay $150/year to rent MS Office Pro when OpenOffice is free to own. $30/year, maybe, but then MS has to make a decision about whether that price is too low to be worthwhile. Actually, at $30/year *I* have to wonder if it's worth it, but then I can't stand the last few version of office because of all the annoying "non-features" I have to turn off to get actual work done.
...the ability of corporate goons make themselves look like dumbasses by using lawyers inappropriately.
On another note, since turnabout is fair play, wouldn't it be fun for owners/authors the legally copyrighted X-File utility to sue the MPAA for trying to claim ownership of something that isn't theirs and issue a similar DMCA takedown order for all the X-Files-TV-show-related material on their web site?
Nahh, it's friday. Who cares? I just want my TV back for the weekend.
Instant, but not current. From the disclaimer at the bottom of that page:
*MIN#: There may be delays processing network call records. "Minutes Used" may not include airtime used within the last two to five days and does not include recent roaming minutes due to delayed processing. Roaming airtime and roaming long distance minutes used are based on call records received from other carriers and processed by Cingular. A delay of two to ten days at minimum is usual. A delay of up to 60 days or longer is possible. Results for FamilyTalk customers may not involve all minutes for the entire FamilyTalk group. Prepaid customers will not have access to *Services.
Hell, even Verizon would let you dial an automated customer service number four years ago to see how many minutes you've used, but they never included the last week's worth either.
I call bullstuff (on Ballmer).
It's not protection money. They'll just pass the cost on to their customers like every other business. In fact (with a $50 billion cash bank account they are just now starting to dispense to shareholders, etc.) you could argue they already have passed it on to us through inflated prices.
For all that talk Ballmer goes through about there not being any such thing as a free lunch, you'd think he'd at least have read what his ECON101 text book had to say about it.
It's amazing. The mobile phone companies can sell you games, ringtones, wallpaper and text messages, but they can't^H^H^H^H^H *WON'T* tell you instantly how many minutes you've used this billing cycle. Hell, my Cingular phone doesn't even work in my living room - I have to go outside where I get at least three bars worth of signal. [inside - SEARCHING..., outside - THREE BARS].
All you sixteen year old spoiled teeny-boppers with the disposable income to afford mobile phones are wrecking my universe by diluting my opinion with the carriers about what is neccessary and valuable in a phone service.
The mobile carriers are all *rapidly* moving up my poop list.
Sincerely,
Mr. Fogey.
P.S. I almost can't *wait* until I'm the weird old guy at the supermarket who wants to talk to everyone about my old collection of Wang Chung and Howard Jones records. Gimme until 2040 and I'm *there*, dude.
I have no idea. I haven't really studied RICO, but I get the impression that law can be used to prosecute almost anything under the sun.
+1 Funny, +1 Insightful, +1 Interesting, +1 Underrated, +1 Informative, -1 YouMadeMePeeMyPants. =P
Ok, you seem to know your way around, so can I bug you with some honest questions for which I can never seem to find an answer?
- Are the data transmissions are encrypted in any way?
- How do you select which device you are exchanging data with?
- Can you limit which devices can and cannot communicate with each other to prevent the nosy neighbors from listening in?
- Can you limit which devices can *see* each other to prevent the nosy neighbors from even knowing you have a bluetooth device?
- How do you enter a secret access password into a headset?
Thanks!96 = 64 + 32 and 12 = 8 + 4, so they kinda make sense, but kinda not. I, too, would love to know what oddball technological issue is forcing them to choose such unexpectedly weird processor arrangements.
You see, folks! Clifford Stoll is right! Computers in the classroom are not only an unnecessary and useless distraction, but now they are probably also a serious legal liability.
Please, for the sake of the children, start by unplugging the computers and networks and teach them how to use books again.
(Sigh)... I really apologize for this being so far off topic, but when the press makes painfully obvious grammatical errors like this, it just frosts my twinkie. Please pardon my venting, but I am blistering with splenetic rage over this particularly puerile lexiconic oversight.
Take a look at this excerpt from the article, about halfway down just under the 'related story' link:
I believe the columnist intended to use the word tack, as in "...take a different tack." It's from nautical terminology and refers to a change or difference in direction (like a boat tacking against the wind). Tact is something entirely different.
When did MSNBC start hiring bloggers and IM-kiddies to write background pieces?
Strike 1: You are a professional journalist. You should know how to use words and dictionaries.
Strike 2: You write tech articles, so I expect you to be equipped a little better than average upstairs.
Strike 3: Your editor should know better when you don't.
Here, I found a book you should read.
With the server slowing down under the load, maybe they'll be inspired to adapt the technology to a line of temporary high-intensity CPU heatsinks.
Yep. In fact, I think MS actually linked www.courtesan.com in the claims section of their application.... ya know, to save everyone the hassle of finding it on their own with Google.
I dunno. I don't think it's *much* more complicated than that, but I don't think that's the whole story, either.
Frankly, the past couple of months have been rather embarrassing in a juvenile kind of way - kinda like the first year of the Clinton administration. Here you have a very successful young company with a LOT of Ph.D.s running things. I just think they figured they were smart enough to get away with changing the rules wherever they wanted without causing any undesired consequences.
I think they went for a complicated IPO that favored smaller investors and kept more of the IPO profits for themselves because they remember the IPOs of 1997-2000. Companies like Yahoo were IPO-ing at, like $20/share and then on opening day the price would skyrocket to like $200/share and Google looks at this and says "All of that extra $180/share went to someone other than us because the system is skewed toward the boneheaded jerkola monkeyboys in the financial industry. WELL SCREW THAT! We're smart enough to not make that mistake."
So, even if the market isn't anywhere near *that* juicy right now, Hey! They're Google! They've got buzz *and* street cred *and* good press, *AND* the're the only major IPO game in town right now! And, with everyone watching, they decide on an auction format that keeps the IPO price much closer to where they think the market will end up trading the shares.
And, as you can guess, giving up that figurative $180/share doesn't sit well with the boneheaded jerkola monkeyboys in the financial industry who are^H^H^H **WERE** in a position to profit. My guess is that they tried (as much as possible) to ear-massage their clients down to devalue the IPO.
Anyway, then you add in the quiet period infractions and the unaccounted-for pre-distributed shares and I just think the Google boys needed an old Wall-Street network financial consultant on the payroll to sit in on their meetings and say "No." a lot, because the whole thing has come across as somewhat amaturish.
No, that's pretty much it. That's where market capitalization comes in - in simple terms it's the total of all the outstanding shares multiplied by the share price. A sort-of "net value" of the company if you wanted to pay cash for all of it.
One $10 share in a company with a market cap of $1,000 is a greater percentage of ownership than one $100 share in a company with a market cap of $1,000,000.
However, that doesn't change the rules of arithematic. The $100 share is still worth - on its own - 10 times the $10 share.
Well, I learned something. Apparently, for some time now, Windows XP has been completely willing to execute executables that do not have an executable file extension. For example, if you rename notepad.exe to notepad.gif, you can "CMD
The point?
Those of us using RENATTACH on our mail servers to filter out malware and viruses now have another hole to plug.
Thanks, Microsoft.
Dorks.
So far as I can tell, NON-free OCR isn't doing so hot either -- you pretty much have to proof-read and correct everything you scan anyway, which just makes it impractical for most purposes. If I had to scan a bunch of records, I'd probably outsource it to a pay service that specializes in that sort of thing, which means it would have to be worth the cost of getting it done.
What I want to know is what's Google going to do about this? They have a catalog search in their Google Labs playpen that indexes products and their descriptions to make them searchable.
In the next few years, I expect to see a fully automated Google OCR product that can not only scan your paper docs, but index them and help you search them too, all while maintaining the electronic copies in their original scanned (think photograph) state, not the some bastardized, mistranslated and screwed up PDF or DOC format.
**THAT'S** what's going to kill Microsoft, and probably why they're so keen to risk overreaching on their IPO.
The Twinsburg Public Library (http://www.twinsburg.lib.oh.us) in Twinsburg, Ohio was running Citrix Metaframe on thin clients for their library terminals as recently as three years ago and they probably still are. They're a part of the Greater Cleveland Public Library Network (Clevenet - www.clevenet.com), which also may or may not be running Citrix.
It might be worth a call to talk to someone who's doing it if you're interested in running Citrix or WinTS.