> In mythology, Atlas and the Titans revolted against the Olympians, lost, had his brothers betray him, and was punished to carry the world. Is this some sort of metaphor for the IE development cycle?
Could be worse, what if they'd picked some other literary reference?
> But it's certainly beginning to smell like it is!
Dont' worry, it'll be stone dead in a minute. $ rm -rf/source/vista/ie7/*
But seriously...
User: I wish to make a complaint! Ballmer: (hurriedly) Sorry, we're about to ship Vista. User: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this
web browser, what came bundled not five years ago from this
very operating system. Ballmer: Oh yes, IE, ah, version 6.
What's, ah... W-what's wrong with it? User: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad.
It's dead, that's what's wrong with it. Ballmer: No, no, It's ah... it's undergoing a security upgrade. User: Look, matey, I know a dead browser when I see one, and I'm
looking at one right now. Ballmer: No no, i-it's not dead, it's... getting its user
interface upgraded! User: User interface? Ballmer: Y-yeah, the UI. Upgradin'. Remarkable browser, IE, isn't it, eh?
Beautiful layouts! User: The layout-complete build don't enter into it. It's stone dead! Ballmer: Nononono, no, no! 'E's bein' upgraded! User: All right then, if he's bein' upgraded, I'll run 'im!
(starts typing) IEXPLORE.EXE! C:\MYDOCU~1\HELLO.JPG
Looky looky looky! Happily rendering the Goatse Guy! Hey, IE, I've got lots of lovely RAM for you if you're running, Mr. Internet Explorer!)
(pounds keyboard) Ballmer: There, the page refreshed! User: No, he didn't, that was you clicking reload! Ballmer: I never!! User: Yes, you did! Ballmer: I never, never....
(pounding Ctrl-Alt-Del on the keyboard again) User: HELLO, WORLD! HELLO TASK MANAGER! PLEASE WAKE UP!
Now that's what I call a dead browser. Ballmer: No, no.... No, it's just running a signed ActiveX Control in the background. User: A ACTIVEX CONTROL!?!? Ballmer: Yeah! You invoked an ActiveX control, just as it was wakin' up! Believe me, IE runs those easily, major! User: Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this.
That browser is definitely deceased, and when I booted
its PC up after buyin' it not half an hour ago, you assured
me that the PC's total lack of computational power was due to it
being tired and shagged out after a prolonged virus scan. Ballmer: Well, he's... it's, ah... probably needin' activation
and authorization with Windows Genuine Advantage. User: WINDOWS Genuine ADVANTAGE?!? What kind of talk is that?
Look, why did the OS crash flat on its back the moment I plugged
it into the router? Ballmer: The Norwegian Bluescreen prefers kippin' on its back! Remarkable UI, though, isn't it, guv, eh? Lovely layout-complete
screenshots! User: (coldly) Look, I took the liberty of examining that browser cache when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that the PC had anything to run on its hard drive in the first place was that it
had been bundled in there along with the spyware and the DRM. Ballmer: Well, of course it has DRM there! If I hadn't bundled that browser and nailed everything down with DRM, all the content would have nuzzled up to those wires at the back, bent 'em apart with its little bits, and VOOM! User: "VOOM?" Look matey, this browser wouldn't "voom"
if you put four thousand kilobytes of W3C standards through it!
It's bleedin' demised! Ballmer: It's not! I-It's just authenticating! User: It's not authenticatin,' it's passed on! This browser is no more!
It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a
late software release! It's a stiff! Bereft of RAM, it rests in peace!
If you hadn't nailed it to the system with DRM and your monopoly it'd
be pushing up the daisies! Its spawned processes are of interest only
to historians! It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil!
It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an
INACTIVE X!
Ballmer: Well, I'd better upgrade it, then.
"Doing No Evil - a HOWTO Guide, presented in Socratic Dialogue form, courtesy of Zaphod Beeblebrox"
Google: The gmail documents may remain present in our offline backup system.
IRS: I eventually had to go down to the cellar...
Google: That's the offline backup system's machine room.
IRS:... with a torch.
Google: Ah, the lights had probably gone.
IRS: So had the stairs.
Google: But you found the tape, didn't you?
IRS: Yes. It was backed up on paper tape stored in the bottom of a locked drawer beneath a PC04/PC05 tape reader with a dot-matrix printed sign on the door saying 'ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS.' Ever thought of going into search technology?
Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters,
when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a
phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would
never be applied in that way' - they're *lying*. They intend to
use the law that way as early and as often as possible.
Whenever a DRM scheme is proposed, and a hardware manufacturer, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, uses a phrase along the lines of "make content easier to buy than it is to pirate" -- the manufacturer is *lying*. It intends to abuse the DRM scheme as early and as often as the content industry asks it to.
> Way to quote some random guy and talk about blue badges and go on for four sentences without giving any indication of what the conference is actually about.
We could tell you, but we'd have to throw a chair at you.
(It's really a conspiracy against Red Hat) /ducks chair //adjusts tinfoil hat.
...but only because it's the only way you can legally acquire a lossless, DRM-free set of bits to encode into the MP3, OGG, or AAC for the device of your choosing.
(Note that you can legally acquire a lossless DRM-free set of bits. Whether or not it's legal to rip those DRM-free bits, on account of your computer not automatically running the DRM/Spyware/Rootkit shipped with the CD, or on account of it not being able to run the DRM/Spyware/Rootkit shipped with the CD, has yet to be determined by the courts. But acquiring the DRM-free bits is legal.)
The most interesting case of the upcoming decade will be whether the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules apply to a DRM-laden CD - ripped to MP3 on a machine that didn't support Windows Autoplay, from a drive and/or OS that presents both the.wav "files" and the data track with the autoplaying rootkit as separate sets of files, without any intervention from the user.
> And on the other-hand, how do we know the Chinese government didn't force them to say that?!?!
> *adjusts tinfoil hat*
And on the third hand, how do we know they weren't working for the Chinese government all along, as part of a psyops plan to discredit Chinese bloggers who oppose the government?
*adjusts tinfoil hat with fourth hand and requests immediate beamout; the humans are onto me for some reason!*
> The biggest reason that newspapers have it so tough is that the delivery person keeps throwing my newspaper down the hallway. Not near my door, not even at my door, but down the hallway. On Sunday mornings, I find my paper at the bottom of the stairs after the ads been rifled through. Customer service is what needed to save the newspaper industry! I hate to see MP3 players being toss down the hallway...
There's an joke in here about throwing a hotdog down a hallway.
Never mind a rolled-up newspaper, never mind an iPod shuffle, never even mind the original 3.5"-hard-drive-based Rio Empeg.
Because y'know what, this thread is just fine without hypertext links to digital content.
> Sorry to disagree with a Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award winner, but this approach is doomed to failure. Every prohibition creates another underground. If a moratorium or ban is imposed, then only the people with contempt for the ban will be the ones doing the research...and these are precisely the people who are more apt to unleash something destructive, either accidentally or maliciously.
Agreed. This seems as good a place as ever to link to one of my favorite short stories: Greg Egan's The Moral Virologist
"Dropping paleontology was a great relief; defending Creationism with any conviction required a certain, very special, way of thinking, and he had never been quite sure that he could master it. Biochemistry, on the other hand, he mastered with ease (confirmation, if any was needed, that he'd made the right decision). He topped his classes every year, and went on to do a PhD in Molecular Biology at Harvard, then postdoctoral work at the NIH, and fellowships in Canada and France. He lived for his work, pushing himself mercilessly, but always taking care not to be too conspicuous in his achievements. He published very little, usually as a modest third or fourth co-author, and when at last he flew home from France, nobody in his field knew, or would have much cared, that John Shawcross had returned, ready to begin his real work."
If you were creeped out by the nonfiction rumors of apartheid-era South African genetic research into diseases to be triggered in the presence of melanin, Egan's story will keep you awake at night for weeks.
NPC-Teacher: Your quest is to recover five Vulcan brains and re-implant them in their owners. Return here when your quest is complete for your payment of 100 quatloos.
Eym0rg: "Brain, brain, what is brain?"
CSR-Bones: "I'm a doctor, not a scriptwriter!"
JimmyTheKirk: "eym0rg ur hot! asl? cyb0rz?"
JimmyTheKirk adjusts his pants
CSR-Bones: "And from my observations, it seems they're bisexual, reproducting at will."
NPC-JamesTiberiusKirk: "I know, but really."
CSR-Bones submits his resignation.
CSR-Bones: "It's dead, Jim."
Spells an English word and uses a.us domain name - check.
Says "blog" and "relevancy-based" - check.
Lets you type in a domain name and returns a bunch of other domain names that you already knew about - check.
Requires Javascript to work and can claim it's got something to do with AJAX - BZZT.
Article submitter is linking to his own blog, and is "an investment advisor in a non technology related field" - FLAG ON THE PLAY!
Total AJAX-based Web 2.0 Buzzword Compliance Score: A humdrum 3 out of 4, one flag on the play for potential conflict of interest.
Stand down venture capital torpedoes, adjust funding phase to "standby" until the site requires Javascript and Piquepaille or Beatles-Beatles have blogged about it.
(No hard feelings, Mr. Hawk, but you set yourself up for this:)
> Why should I pay $5 more a month for a service that I already have for free? Why not just go to the Tivo web site on a web-enabled phone and do your remote scheduling there?
Because if you do it that way, Verizon doesn't get $5/month out of you! (Alternate: Because when you signed up for Verizon, they disabled the web-enabled part of your phone when they installed their ugly red user interface and branding onto it, but will re-enable it for $5/month.)
Oh, wait, you're looking at it from the customer's perspective. Never mind.
Is it just me, or is a profanity warning kinda redundant when we're talking about Marines?
Obligatory Marine joke:
News reporter: "Now that you're back from Iraq, what's the first thing you're going to do?"
Marine: "Fuck my wife!"
News reporter: "Well, we can't go to air with that. How 'bout the second thing you're going to do?"
Marine: "Then I'm gonna take off these fucking combat boots!"
> This raises some serious issues, such as to what extent
local and state governments can go in enacting and enforcing
Internet legislation.
Assemblyman Peter J. Biondi: Come off it, Mr. Coward!
You can't stand in front of the tanks in Tienanmen Square indefinitely!
This law for the information superhighway has got to be
built, and it's going to be built!
Anonymous Coward: Why's it got to be built?
Biondi: What do you mean "why"? It's a law! You've
got to pass laws! You were quite entitled to make any
suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.
Anonymous Coward: Appropriate time?! The first I knew
about it was when you pre-filed Assembly Bill No. 1327,
the cops showed up and they said they were ready to come
and take me away!
Biondi: Have you any idea how much damage the government
would suffer if we just let the law roll straight over you?
Anonymous Coward: No, how much?
Biondi: None at all.
Vogon: Apathetic bloody citizenry. I've no sympathy at all.
No, seriously, please. Just move along. For the love of the Force,
our dev team has been raping your childhood memories like a Gungan on crystal meth for over three years now, and the only thing we've done that was even remotely cool was sending 1200 donuts to Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade last week.
And you're still here?
Please. Move. Along.
Cautiously optimistic? Don't make me get Ackbar out here.
> So, now the program that "Doesn't exist" doesn't exist any more.
"I saw a man who wasn't there,
A little man upon a stair,
He wasn't there again today,
Gee, I wish he'd go away."
The XB-70 Valkyrie is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built.
Count me among those who hopes the AvLeak story is true; I can think of no better memorial to her designers and pilots than to have seen their work continued.
Slashdot Mirror
> It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers.
Ah, I see - the years when Luke started out as a whiny, snot-nosed kid to, umm...
Well, I guess there's nothing to see here, I'll move along.
Could be worse, what if they'd picked some other literary reference?
*shrug*
"Who is Bill Gates?"
Dont' worry, it'll be stone dead in a minute. /source/vista/ie7/*
$ rm -rf
But seriously...
User: I wish to make a complaint!
Ballmer: (hurriedly) Sorry, we're about to ship Vista.
User: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this web browser, what came bundled not five years ago from this very operating system.
Ballmer: Oh yes, IE, ah, version 6. What's, ah... W-what's wrong with it?
User: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.
Ballmer: No, no, It's ah... it's undergoing a security upgrade.
User: Look, matey, I know a dead browser when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Ballmer: No no, i-it's not dead, it's... getting its user interface upgraded!
User: User interface?
Ballmer: Y-yeah, the UI. Upgradin'. Remarkable browser, IE, isn't it, eh? Beautiful layouts!
User: The layout-complete build don't enter into it. It's stone dead!
Ballmer: Nononono, no, no! 'E's bein' upgraded!
User: All right then, if he's bein' upgraded, I'll run 'im!
(starts typing)
IEXPLORE.EXE! C:\MYDOCU~1\HELLO.JPG
Looky looky looky! Happily rendering the Goatse Guy! Hey, IE, I've got lots of lovely RAM for you if you're running, Mr. Internet Explorer!)
(pounds keyboard)
Ballmer: There, the page refreshed!
User: No, he didn't, that was you clicking reload!
Ballmer: I never!!
User: Yes, you did!
Ballmer: I never, never....
(pounding Ctrl-Alt-Del on the keyboard again)
User: HELLO, WORLD! HELLO TASK MANAGER! PLEASE WAKE UP!
Now that's what I call a dead browser.
Ballmer: No, no.... No, it's just running a signed ActiveX Control in the background.
User: A ACTIVEX CONTROL!?!?
Ballmer: Yeah! You invoked an ActiveX control, just as it was wakin' up! Believe me, IE runs those easily, major!
User: Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this. That browser is definitely deceased, and when I booted its PC up after buyin' it not half an hour ago, you assured me that the PC's total lack of computational power was due to it being tired and shagged out after a prolonged virus scan.
Ballmer: Well, he's... it's, ah... probably needin' activation and authorization with Windows Genuine Advantage.
User: WINDOWS Genuine ADVANTAGE?!? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did the OS crash flat on its back the moment I plugged it into the router?
Ballmer: The Norwegian Bluescreen prefers kippin' on its back! Remarkable UI, though, isn't it, guv, eh? Lovely layout-complete screenshots!
User: (coldly) Look, I took the liberty of examining that browser cache when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that the PC had anything to run on its hard drive in the first place was that it had been bundled in there along with the spyware and the DRM.
Ballmer: Well, of course it has DRM there! If I hadn't bundled that browser and nailed everything down with DRM, all the content would have nuzzled up to those wires at the back, bent 'em apart with its little bits, and VOOM!
User: "VOOM?" Look matey, this browser wouldn't "voom" if you put four thousand kilobytes of W3C standards through it! It's bleedin' demised!
Ballmer: It's not! I-It's just authenticating!
User: It's not authenticatin,' it's passed on! This browser is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late software release! It's a stiff! Bereft of RAM, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the system with DRM and your monopoly it'd be pushing up the daisies! Its spawned processes are of interest only to historians! It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an INACTIVE X!
Ballmer: Well, I'd better upgrade it, then.
(I'll stop it now. It's silly.)
Google: The gmail documents may remain present in our offline backup system. ... with a torch.
IRS: I eventually had to go down to the cellar...
Google: That's the offline backup system's machine room.
IRS:
Google: Ah, the lights had probably gone.
IRS: So had the stairs.
Google: But you found the tape, didn't you?
IRS: Yes. It was backed up on paper tape stored in the bottom of a locked drawer beneath a PC04/PC05 tape reader with a dot-matrix printed sign on the door saying 'ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS.' Ever thought of going into search technology?
I propose the following DRM and media corollary:
Whenever a DRM scheme is proposed, and a hardware manufacturer, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, uses a phrase along the lines of "make content easier to buy than it is to pirate" -- the manufacturer is *lying*. It intends to abuse the DRM scheme as early and as often as the content industry asks it to.
We could tell you, but we'd have to throw a chair at you.
(It's really a conspiracy against Red Hat)
/ducks chair
//adjusts tinfoil hat.
>
> sounds like capitulation to me.
Actually, that sounds more like precipitation to me. *tadabump*
> And that is to fool you into thinking you live in a democracy.
Hey, go easy on the guy. He still thinks there are two parties.
Well, it's a database-driven app, so it's gonna be something like this:
SELECT * FROM BASE;.
Either that, or we go the retail website route: /htdocs/products/*/base
# chown -R google
Yes, but.
(Note that you can legally acquire a lossless DRM-free set of bits. Whether or not it's legal to rip those DRM-free bits, on account of your computer not automatically running the DRM/Spyware/Rootkit shipped with the CD, or on account of it not being able to run the DRM/Spyware/Rootkit shipped with the CD, has yet to be determined by the courts. But acquiring the DRM-free bits is legal.)
The most interesting case of the upcoming decade will be whether the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules apply to a DRM-laden CD - ripped to MP3 on a machine that didn't support Windows Autoplay, from a drive and/or OS that presents both the .wav "files" and the data track with the autoplaying rootkit as separate sets of files, without any intervention from the user.
Nothing to see here. Please move along.
Yes and no.
> *adjusts tinfoil hat*
And on the third hand, how do we know they weren't working for the Chinese government all along, as part of a psyops plan to discredit Chinese bloggers who oppose the government?
*adjusts tinfoil hat with fourth hand and requests immediate beamout; the humans are onto me for some reason!*
There's an joke in here about throwing a hotdog down a hallway.
Never mind a rolled-up newspaper, never mind an iPod shuffle, never even mind the original 3.5"-hard-drive-based Rio Empeg.
Because y'know what, this thread is just fine without hypertext links to digital content.
Agreed. This seems as good a place as ever to link to one of my favorite short stories: Greg Egan's The Moral Virologist
If you were creeped out by the nonfiction rumors of apartheid-era South African genetic research into diseases to be triggered in the presence of melanin, Egan's story will keep you awake at night for weeks.
NPC-Teacher: Your quest is to recover five Vulcan brains and re-implant them in their owners. Return here when your quest is complete for your payment of 100 quatloos.
Eym0rg: "Brain, brain, what is brain?"
CSR-Bones: "I'm a doctor, not a scriptwriter!"
JimmyTheKirk: "eym0rg ur hot! asl? cyb0rz?"
JimmyTheKirk adjusts his pants
CSR-Bones: "And from my observations, it seems they're bisexual, reproducting at will."
NPC-JamesTiberiusKirk: "I know, but really."
CSR-Bones submits his resignation. CSR-Bones: "It's dead, Jim."
> Are yours except
> Europa
> Attempt no
> Landing there
> Use them together
> Use them in peace
All these world
Are belong to you
Except Enceladus
Move no Zig there
For great justice
And because it will get wet
Total AJAX-based Web 2.0 Buzzword Compliance Score: A humdrum 3 out of 4, one flag on the play for potential conflict of interest.
Stand down venture capital torpedoes, adjust funding phase to "standby" until the site requires Javascript and Piquepaille or Beatles-Beatles have blogged about it.
(No hard feelings, Mr. Hawk, but you set yourself up for this :)
Because if you do it that way, Verizon doesn't get $5/month out of you! (Alternate: Because when you signed up for Verizon, they disabled the web-enabled part of your phone when they installed their ugly red user interface and branding onto it, but will re-enable it for $5/month.)
Oh, wait, you're looking at it from the customer's perspective. Never mind.
Is it just me, or is a profanity warning kinda redundant when we're talking about Marines?
Obligatory Marine joke:
News reporter: "Now that you're back from Iraq, what's the first thing you're going to do?"
Marine: "Fuck my wife!"
News reporter: "Well, we can't go to air with that. How 'bout the second thing you're going to do?" Marine: "Then I'm gonna take off these fucking combat boots!"
>
>And Bin Laden is still free.
He hates us for our freedom. All this means is that he's got less and less reason to hate us every day!
Assemblyman Peter J. Biondi: Come off it, Mr. Coward! You can't stand in front of the tanks in Tienanmen Square indefinitely! This law for the information superhighway has got to be built, and it's going to be built!
Anonymous Coward: Why's it got to be built?
Biondi: What do you mean "why"? It's a law! You've got to pass laws! You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.
Anonymous Coward: Appropriate time?! The first I knew about it was when you pre-filed Assembly Bill No. 1327, the cops showed up and they said they were ready to come and take me away!
Biondi: Have you any idea how much damage the government would suffer if we just let the law roll straight over you?
Anonymous Coward: No, how much?
Biondi: None at all.
Vogon: Apathetic bloody citizenry. I've no sympathy at all.
No, seriously, please. Just move along. For the love of the Force, our dev team has been raping your childhood memories like a Gungan on crystal meth for over three years now, and the only thing we've done that was even remotely cool was sending 1200 donuts to Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade last week.
And you're still here?
Please. Move. Along.
Cautiously optimistic? Don't make me get Ackbar out here.
"I saw a man who wasn't there,
A little man upon a stair,
He wasn't there again today,
Gee, I wish he'd go away."
The XB-70 Valkyrie is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built.
Count me among those who hopes the AvLeak story is true; I can think of no better memorial to her designers and pilots than to have seen their work continued.
If you've got proof it's a dupe, the folks at SETI would like to hear from you.