The other day a friend of mine tried to buy a new computer from Dell. He had their latest brochure. In the brochure there were a number of systems listed with Windows 2000 as the OS... and a number more with Windows XP as the OS. Furthermore, their latest ad campaign also says *if you ask we will be happy to install XP* (or something of that flavor).
I warned him against XP (spyware) -- he is just a normal user and not a programmer. So he asked them if they would please install Windows 2000 or 98. They refused. He said.. "but what about these models in your brochure that say the COME WITH 2000?" -- the Dell person on the other end of the line hemmed and hawed and then finally said "I don't know anything about that".
He placed his order with IBM instead - who was pleased as punch to install Windows 2000 for him.
Again, sounds to me like Dell is in the belly of the beast with MS - and that MS has learned nothing from the court case and is continuing on in their merry old way to force everyone to use XP and Passport and their other evil spyware.
I suspect that the real reason why Microsoft was upset that Sony was allowing people to play games was that the X boxes were probably failing left and right. Plus... they wouldn't want people to play them since they'd probably crash, hang or simply not work (not to mention the comparision of lousy x-box graphics versus PS2 graphics). So the obvious solution is even the playing field by forcing the issue. Why Sony packed up and went home though is beyond me.
Very interesting but Very difficult
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Hawaii Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2, Informative
I live on the Big Island of Hawaii -- on the side of the volcano. This is both very exciting as well as very difficult to pull off.
The Big Island has 5 mountain ranges - two of which go up over 13,000 ft and separate the island in half. Furthermore, major portions of the island have no phone or power service - thus getting the signal to the entire island will be nearly impossible. (Even our cell phones only work in very selected areas of this island -- and when I used my cell phone from the top of Mauna Loa (13,400 ft) it was picked up by a cell tower on the NEXT ISLAND OVER - Maui).
But kudo's to him!! Anyone know how to get ahold of him? (I'll try today to find his contact info) --- I'll be more than happy to put an antenna at my house!
Couple comments about this technology. First, devices that did this are fairly old. I remember about 20 or 30 years ago a wall system was announced (I forget by whom) that would turn your entire wall into a speaker. I also remember that school buses had a similar system for announcing for awhile - where a transducer turned the roof of the bus into a speaker system.
But that aside... this reminds me also of something I saw the Musician Laurie Anderson do... I visited her traveling museum (stocked full of VERY COOL things she had invented). One of her inventions was a large wood dinner table. At the point where each person sat was two small indentations in the table - exactly where you would rest your elbows with your hands on your face (as so many of us do while eating).
The cool thing was she had transducers in the holes... you could hear absolutly nothing until you put your elbows in the holes and leaned your head on your hands... then instantly you heard MUSIC in your ears! This was accomplished by bone induction (e.g., the music traveling through your elbow and into your arm bone and out your hand into your head). The quality was astonishing!
The other neat thing was it was fully stereo (unless you were a one-armed-man) and each person at the table got a totally different soundtrack.
Actually - not true at all. Not only is this VERY doable (and a very nice piece of research I might add) - but if you bothered to look at some of the references he points out - you will realize that our government has been doing way harder things for quite a while.
As the article states - TEMPEST technology has been around for quite awhile. TEMPEST technology is MUCH HARDER than what this research attempted - thus his experiment is much easier (note please that he states that it does not work on ALL equipment - only equipment where the LED's are tied to the traffic in a certain way).
But to put TEMPEST in perspective for you - just to see how easy it is... all you need for simple tempest is a RF receiver and an old black and white TV with the cover ripped off. A few connections and you simply aim the receiver at a wall where you know on the other side is a computer monitor. Next - you play SYNC by hand tweaking the vertical sync of the TV until what is on the computer monitor behind the wall - is now also on your TV. Note that in order for this to work - the TV you are using should be capable (by tweaking) of reaching scan resolutions of the monitor your trying to view.
Similar techniques are also used to reverse CPU running instruction sets by listening to the RF generated by the CPU. Extremely complex algorithms can take the RF and reconvert it back to original instruction set.
This is also similar to what all of us older programmers used to do years ago with AM radios. To tell if our computers crashed, or were looping forever - or were in some other state - we would tune our AM radios until we could hear the individual instructions (old computers were slow enough that their instruction clock speed was in the AM range). You could actually hear loops, xor's etc.. - each would produce a different *tone* that you could learn to recognize after experimenting.
The only difference between TEMPEST and the old AM RADIO trick is that computers are now much much faster - and their clock speeds produce radiation near the microwave range (which is why you can't use AM/FM radios anymore to do the trick).
So yes... it is no surprise to me that the same info can be taken from the status LED's on much of the equipment.
BTW... even though TEMPEST capabilities of our government is considered classified - you can still find quite a bit of info on it - on the net. Mainly because government computer centers are supposed to be TEMPEST certified (e.g., can't be spied upon in this way) -- thus there are a number of companies out there who manufacturer TEMPEST safe rooms and equipment, etc... their info is available on the net.
Actually - removing whois in an attempt to curtail spam is backasswards. ISP's use whois frequently to FIGHT spam and abusers. By traceroute(ing) the sender of the spam, or a network abuser - we can tell the up stream providers, etc. A simple nslookup and then a whois usually gives us the phone number and email address of someone to call to report the abuse. By removing (especially) phone numbers and email addresses from the database it will be much more labor intensive to trace down companies and complain about abuse.
A better change would be to return email back to it's pre-attachment days (which would make using it for spam more unattractive - as well as shrink the size of the documents and make the net more secure in general).
Leave whois alone... or make it such that it won't allow datamineing. But don't remove our ability to locate and communicate with owners of domain names!
Makes me wonder how other countries handle their electronic trash.
Also reminds me of something that happened while I was visiting a client in Tokyo.... while riding the high-speed train to the convention center... he pointed to the land surrounding the convention center and said "this used to be ocean... how do you think we got this land?"... I said "I dunno"... He said "every year japaneese throw out old electronics and buy new electronics. We put electronics in bay and build convention center on top.".
Now... I never knew whether or not he was serious - I suspect he was....but after reading the article - and pondering this... isn't that bad for their environment?
Well... perhaps I missed something in the article... but I'm unclear of two things... (1) how this would effectivly work and (2) how they keep people from cheating.
First... GPS would certainly collect the info as to where the vehicle is... BUT... how are they intending to get the info out of the little black boxes. GPS does not report anything - unless they're sticking wireless in there as well. I would think that aquiring the data is going to be a major problem. What, you have to have your car hooked to a phone line at least once a month?
Second... GPS is subject to error. No problem on rural roads... but what about in cities? It could very well error enough to put you on a different cost road. What about time of war (which as bush reminds us contstantly - we'll be wageing for the next 10 years) - when GPS jitter is increased? Less accuracy. Just the fact that your in a city with tall buildings, versus open country, means your error rate is much greater (wanna laugh? just turn your GPS on and sit still - watch it move all over the place).
What about people who live in the city or park in the city - won't they show excessive use of roads they *park* on?
Finally... this has got to be terribly easy to foil. Simply puting a good metal block around the box would certainly stop it from seeing the sats. I would think that (A) they would simply disconnect the devices and (B) they would block the signals or (C) they would confront the person who was collecting the data with a shotgun.
With the advent of laws which make it illegal to look into what software is doing... and reverse engineer software... it's totally amazing that Microsoft is not sueing the AP service for reporting this information.
These laws basically give full right to companies to embed technology which spies on our habits and daily lives... and if we find out about them... we're the loosers.
Citizens need to do three things to help fight these laws and practices:
Reverse engineer everything - and talk about what you discover - what we don't know CAN hurt us
Refuse to give out personal information... everywhere... even at the store. If your asked for your street address at checkout - tell them "sure... give me $10"... companies have to get the idea that they do not get our personal habits for free, simply because we selected their product over others.
Stop using Microsoft products. Since Microsoft is hell bent on taking over as many industries as possible... and since they show no regard for our privacy... things like CRITICAL UPDATE and XP have got to go away. If you use Microsoft... stop using critical update (since you have little idea exactly what they're updating)... and for heavens sake... don't use PASSPORT or XP - as those are full of spyware capabilities... better yet... use a Mac or SUN or other system where it is at least a bit more open and visible (but don't stop being careful).
We *can* make changes when companies perceive that their products are not popular due to security and privacy concerns.
This type of thing happens in Hawaii all the time... since Hawaii has a highly unique ecosystem (not too many things could make it across 2500 miles of open ocean on their own)... the government tries to protect it - but often ends up causing more problems than they fix.... case in point:
They brought the mongoose over to help control the rat population.... but rats come out at night and mongoose are day creatures - so the rats are doing just fine and the mongoose ate all the native bird species eggs - and now we have few native birds left.
Same as with the gorst and the cactus... those were brought over to feed the cattle... but the cattle didn't like them... so they started taking over the entire island -- so the government brought in insects to kill the gorst and cactus... but what's going to kill the bugs?
The latest is we have coqoi frogs appearing... they have 100+ decibel chirps for a single frog about the size of a dime. Where did they come from? House plants shipped in and sold at Walmart and other nurserys... the solution? Spray the environment with caffine - which kills the frogs immediatly... but what does it do to the rest of the critters it lands on (other than hopping them up)?
This happens over and over again... people *think* they know a solution, but they don't bother testing it and watching it carefully enough to ensure that the solution doesn't in itself become a problem.
The rush of returning memories... the days when SHUFFLE THE DECK meant more than playing a hand of cribbage... when DEBUGGING meant, not only listening to the program run on AM radio - it meant opening the cabinets and physically removing beetles and moths... when even opening the cabinet was dangerous because they weighed over a ton a piece... and if you opened the front door without opening the back door, it would tip over on you.
Yes... we loved our ones and zeros (not to mention BAUDOT too!)... and we loved the front panel lights where we could actually watch binary flowing through the registers... and who could forget the fantastic rocker switches on the front where you could REALLY man-handle your software.
Yes... the good old days where finding a bug in your program meant that the computer operator simply threw a 2 inch thick printout at you with a scrawled note at the top... YOU HAVE A BUG. And who could forget the chad wars while waiting for a program to compile!
But the thing we ESPECIALLY liked is the fact that there was no Microsoft.... computers were pure and we didn't need 2 gigahertz pentiums in order to take 3 minutes to boot a stupid OS.
The good old days... when computers were computers and programmers actually knew how to program!
We routinely *chase down* spam senders and have them booted from their ISP. This, however, is much more difficult when dealing with ISPs that are not in America since not only are more costs usually involved... but also language barriers. We've found that, especially when dealing with asian and russian ISPs - that they often refuse (sure, they're nice on the phone... but nothing happens) to remove the offender - mainly because that's how they make their money.
Unfortunatly, blocking entire ranges of IP addresses is not a possibility for us since we have many international clients. The one time we tried to block a mexican ISP because it was spam-bombing us - we had 3 of our best clients complain that their mexican customers could no longer reach their website -- so blocking is not a possibility.
We have had limited success (more so in the US than elsewhere) in contacting upstream haul providers. It does work however... especially if you can save the proof of the spams to show the routing to the ops.
One thing that would help (though some you won't agree on this)... is to do away with HTML Attached email and go back to the (thankfully) good old days of text-only email. This not only decreases the size of the spam... it makes it less attractive as an advertising mechanism because you can't push photo's, etc... and do tricky 1x1 gifs to trace emails (plus it increases security since text-only emails cant be *executed*).
However... the single largest thing that people here in the states can do is (1) Fix your form remailers so they can't be used by webcam spammers (HI... I'M SUSSY AND I JUST GOT MY WEBCAM... SEE ME AT...)... and fix your sendmail so it doesn't act as relays... most of these foreign spammers do their best hiding by using legit US ISPs as unwanton relays... fixing our own software would reduce the number of places these spammers have to use and hide.
This is certainly a welcome and interesting move.... but I wonder if it will work.
As one person on here pointed out... source is already available to *some* organizations, etc... so what would be the problem. But I can imagine that Microsoft will fight this hands and fists - mainly to protect their WE ARE GOD - BOW DOWN TO US issues. Since Billy Goat can't stand to be forced to do anything (it'd upset his Attention Defficency Syndrom).
But I hope the courts are smart enought to (1) hire SEVERAL experts to COMPILE the damn thing... and make sure it produces a RUNABLE version... and (2) make sure that the runnable version that is produced has the SAME COMPONENTS as what they ship.
My largest fear would be that they would try to put together a version that is different from the others - just as a way to *prove* their point.
Well, if nothing more... we get to see all the paid microsoft anonymous cowards quickly jump onto slashdot to insult us... they must be feeling the pressure:))
What a writeup... unbelievable. Let's see... let me get this straight... the author (and I use the term loosly... monkey might be better) has compared Billy Gates to Babbage... Gutenberg... Henry Ford...
Um... he missed Buddha... Christ... Zoroaster... I'm sure that was just an oversight though... he probably had to limit the bullshit due to editorial space.
It's the second coming for sure!!! Repent now so that you can be saved in the rapture!!! The only thing that's missing is Gates on a cross.
Considering how this article points out that Microsoft buys lobbiests, etc... and that it's no secret that they hire people all over to write glowing comments to local newspapers, etc.... I wonder how many SLASHDOT regulars are actually paid Microsoft liars?
Oh wait.... we can tell just by counting the pro-microsoft comments in this thread!!
I dreamed of a world with software that works well and doesn't drain every available clock cycle. I could not have dreamed of 386's since they didn't exist.
Of *course* I realize that other companies do this as well... and I never stated otherwise. The *disappointing* thing is that Microsoft puts shoveling shit ahead of good software. In other words.... they will FORCE us to use their products... by hook or by crook (and it seems that the CROOKS abound).
Furthermore... your comment "How did MS destory the computer industry? They created it."... you have GOT to be kidding.
You think computers didn't exist before little billy gates started stealing other peoples ideas? Get a life and read some history. While Microsoft did a LOT to help popularize personal computers - and their early software was certainly on-track. They lost focus years and years ago and now simply push pure crap.
Your comment makes me think you are one of the minions paid by Microsoft to say bullshit like this.
This simply continues to reinforce that Microsoft is a Marketing company and a Political interest group.... but NOT a software company.
Instead of creating quality software that people would use because it is the most secure, efficient and capable software... they choose to write utter crap... and they hire marketers to tell us it's gold... hire political lobbiests to force policies and judicial decisions in their favor.
When I started out in computing 26 years ago I never conceived that we would be as backwards as we are today. I never dreamed we would require a 1 gigahertz machine to run a windowing system poorly.... I never thought that instead of booting faster... that machines would boot slower and slower.
Extremely disappointing that a marketing/political interest group has been allowed to pretty much destroy the computer industry.
I guess we can hope and pray that MicroSoft goes the way of Enron... that it's dirty dealings are opened up to the world and that the world responds by simply refusing to have anything to do with the MicroSluts.
Efficiency should be more dependent on a lean mean syntax than the ability to throw black-box optimization at it.
Hetrogenous arrays (ability to store unlike elements)
Understands pointers and arrays of pointers and the abilty to dispatch to functions based on memory pointers
It should NOT have GUI functions, etc... since these are what libraries (and sometimes OS services) are for, but not programming languages itself.
An excellent sense of typedef and redef/conversion.
Does not disallow self-modifying data structures nor self-modifying code (there are situations where both are important)
It should subscribe to KISS - Keep It Simple (Stupid)... no offense... but the simplier the language is, and the closer it is to the power of microcode (without the headache and with portability - of course), the better people can control the language.
Well used... if you want to be able to pick from a good base of programmers, it had better be well understood and well used. Rare languages make for a small pool of programmers to choose from... unless your rolling your own.
Closest thing today is C (though it doesn't do hetrogenous arrays naturally... you can certainly typedef them though)... with Java etc... being a close second (if not for the stability factor - please don't flame... it's getting there)
This is a very important breakthrough, which will not only impact digital-imaging - but also other sciences such as astronomy, biology, etc.
Parallax and other artifacts cause headaches in all forms of digital processing... causing countless software algorithms to be written that bring things back *inline*. This should do away with much of error correction in imaging.
Even in areas where we do noise removal and color balancing by additive techniques (e.g., image white through rgb sensors... negate it and use that as a additive mask to remove dirt, flys, etc... from your lens as well as color correct by printing the output and again subtracting that from the original to find unbalance in guns) - this will greatly improve the errors that abound surrounding such subtractive and additive region processing.
This will also reduce geometric distortion that often affects sensors where the RG and B components are split out and each sent to a different sensor (assuming that their RGB masks in this sensor are layered properly).
I agree... ISP's have nothing to do with hyperlinks - except perhaps on their own homepage. Unless they expect to sue us for being "accomplices".:)
But I guess by going after Prodigy, they are going after their online links? I'd think under that guise, they'd go after AOL first, but I bet Prodigy has way less money than AOL to defend itself (not to mention probable BT ties to Time Warner).
The worse thing would be if not only did the courts rule in BT favor... but also said they were owed money rectroactivly - in which case we'd all have to pay from day one. Egads!
Re:GW didn't do it... You did you liberal trash
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The Laid-off Techie
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· Score: 1
First... I'm not democratic.. nor republican for that mater. So don't ASSUME... it only makes an ASS out of U (not ME).
Second... I perhaps wasn't clear... what I am refering to is his ignorance of domestic crisses for his domination on (non-existant) axis of evil and an obvious attempt to bankrupt the american economy. In other words... it aint going to get better folks.
Instead of saying "get a life moron"... perhaps you might want to check out the news articles (culled from leading rags world-wide) at smirking chimp.
I think your posting under "anonymous Coward" says it all buddy... ya know?
While IR lasers between buildings would probably work well in, say, Las Vegas or LA... it wouldn't work here (Hawaii) because we receive over 150 to 200 inches of rain a year. I can't imagine any IR system, regardless of the number of redundancy you have, working well in such a humid place (even sat. TV fails here during most huge rainstorms). I suspect that this technology would also fail during large snowfalls.
Perhaps if they up the wattage... so that it burns through the rain/snow/birds...
When Handspring announced their new cell/pda marriage I was very excited. I use a motorola cell phone combined with my Handspring Visor to access my remote SUN workstations when I'm out hiking or at the beach. Since the visor actually allows TELNET, etc... it can handle most of the tasks I need to do remotely (e.g., emergencies) nicely, without taking up a huge amount of room.
The only problem I have with my cellphone/visor is that the cell phone, visor and it's cable... are bulky when taken all together.. not exactly what you want on the beach, or during a hike on 2000 ft. cliffs (not to mention that I've already lost the cable twice). I thought the new device would be great... all-in-one, etc.
But I'm less and less impressed. First... they did not include the Handspring port - citing some bull about wanting to have two distinct product lines... this is a major down point for me because if I want to *replace* my visor, I can't without also losing all the modules I purchased. Secondly... other companies beat them to the punch and already offer cell phones married to full functioning PDA's.
Nice to know your homophobic. Grow up a little. ANYONE involved in sex, regardless of it being homosexual or hetrosexual, can get AIDS. The stupdity of you, and your comment, indicate that you don't understand the first thing about love nor sex nor AIDS.
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I warned him against XP (spyware) -- he is just a normal user and not a programmer. So he asked them if they would please install Windows 2000 or 98. They refused. He said.. "but what about these models in your brochure that say the COME WITH 2000?" -- the Dell person on the other end of the line hemmed and hawed and then finally said "I don't know anything about that".
He placed his order with IBM instead - who was pleased as punch to install Windows 2000 for him.
Again, sounds to me like Dell is in the belly of the beast with MS - and that MS has learned nothing from the court case and is continuing on in their merry old way to force everyone to use XP and Passport and their other evil spyware.
I suspect that the real reason why Microsoft was upset that Sony was allowing people to play games was that the X boxes were probably failing left and right. Plus... they wouldn't want people to play them since they'd probably crash, hang or simply not work (not to mention the comparision of lousy x-box graphics versus PS2 graphics). So the obvious solution is even the playing field by forcing the issue. Why Sony packed up and went home though is beyond me.
The Big Island has 5 mountain ranges - two of which go up over 13,000 ft and separate the island in half. Furthermore, major portions of the island have no phone or power service - thus getting the signal to the entire island will be nearly impossible. (Even our cell phones only work in very selected areas of this island -- and when I used my cell phone from the top of Mauna Loa (13,400 ft) it was picked up by a cell tower on the NEXT ISLAND OVER - Maui).
But kudo's to him!! Anyone know how to get ahold of him? (I'll try today to find his contact info) --- I'll be more than happy to put an antenna at my house!
But that aside... this reminds me also of something I saw the Musician Laurie Anderson do... I visited her traveling museum (stocked full of VERY COOL things she had invented). One of her inventions was a large wood dinner table. At the point where each person sat was two small indentations in the table - exactly where you would rest your elbows with your hands on your face (as so many of us do while eating).
The cool thing was she had transducers in the holes... you could hear absolutly nothing until you put your elbows in the holes and leaned your head on your hands... then instantly you heard MUSIC in your ears! This was accomplished by bone induction (e.g., the music traveling through your elbow and into your arm bone and out your hand into your head). The quality was astonishing!
The other neat thing was it was fully stereo (unless you were a one-armed-man) and each person at the table got a totally different soundtrack.
As the article states - TEMPEST technology has been around for quite awhile. TEMPEST technology is MUCH HARDER than what this research attempted - thus his experiment is much easier (note please that he states that it does not work on ALL equipment - only equipment where the LED's are tied to the traffic in a certain way).
But to put TEMPEST in perspective for you - just to see how easy it is... all you need for simple tempest is a RF receiver and an old black and white TV with the cover ripped off. A few connections and you simply aim the receiver at a wall where you know on the other side is a computer monitor. Next - you play SYNC by hand tweaking the vertical sync of the TV until what is on the computer monitor behind the wall - is now also on your TV. Note that in order for this to work - the TV you are using should be capable (by tweaking) of reaching scan resolutions of the monitor your trying to view.
Similar techniques are also used to reverse CPU running instruction sets by listening to the RF generated by the CPU. Extremely complex algorithms can take the RF and reconvert it back to original instruction set.
This is also similar to what all of us older programmers used to do years ago with AM radios. To tell if our computers crashed, or were looping forever - or were in some other state - we would tune our AM radios until we could hear the individual instructions (old computers were slow enough that their instruction clock speed was in the AM range). You could actually hear loops, xor's etc.. - each would produce a different *tone* that you could learn to recognize after experimenting.
The only difference between TEMPEST and the old AM RADIO trick is that computers are now much much faster - and their clock speeds produce radiation near the microwave range (which is why you can't use AM/FM radios anymore to do the trick).
So yes... it is no surprise to me that the same info can be taken from the status LED's on much of the equipment.
BTW... even though TEMPEST capabilities of our government is considered classified - you can still find quite a bit of info on it - on the net. Mainly because government computer centers are supposed to be TEMPEST certified (e.g., can't be spied upon in this way) -- thus there are a number of companies out there who manufacturer TEMPEST safe rooms and equipment, etc... their info is available on the net.
A better change would be to return email back to it's pre-attachment days (which would make using it for spam more unattractive - as well as shrink the size of the documents and make the net more secure in general).
Leave whois alone... or make it such that it won't allow datamineing. But don't remove our ability to locate and communicate with owners of domain names!
Also reminds me of something that happened while I was visiting a client in Tokyo.... while riding the high-speed train to the convention center... he pointed to the land surrounding the convention center and said "this used to be ocean... how do you think we got this land?"... I said "I dunno"... He said "every year japaneese throw out old electronics and buy new electronics. We put electronics in bay and build convention center on top.".
Now... I never knew whether or not he was serious - I suspect he was... .but after reading the article - and pondering this... isn't that bad for their environment?
First... GPS would certainly collect the info as to where the vehicle is... BUT... how are they intending to get the info out of the little black boxes. GPS does not report anything - unless they're sticking wireless in there as well. I would think that aquiring the data is going to be a major problem. What, you have to have your car hooked to a phone line at least once a month?
Second... GPS is subject to error. No problem on rural roads... but what about in cities? It could very well error enough to put you on a different cost road. What about time of war (which as bush reminds us contstantly - we'll be wageing for the next 10 years) - when GPS jitter is increased? Less accuracy. Just the fact that your in a city with tall buildings, versus open country, means your error rate is much greater (wanna laugh? just turn your GPS on and sit still - watch it move all over the place).
What about people who live in the city or park in the city - won't they show excessive use of roads they *park* on?
Finally... this has got to be terribly easy to foil. Simply puting a good metal block around the box would certainly stop it from seeing the sats. I would think that (A) they would simply disconnect the devices and (B) they would block the signals or (C) they would confront the person who was collecting the data with a shotgun.
Good chuckle though.
These laws basically give full right to companies to embed technology which spies on our habits and daily lives... and if we find out about them... we're the loosers.
Citizens need to do three things to help fight these laws and practices:
- Reverse engineer everything - and talk about what you discover - what we don't know CAN hurt us
- Refuse to give out personal information... everywhere... even at the store. If your asked for your street address at checkout - tell them "sure... give me $10"... companies have to get the idea that they do not get our personal habits for free, simply because we selected their product over others.
- Stop using Microsoft products. Since Microsoft is hell bent on taking over as many industries as possible... and since they show no regard for our privacy... things like CRITICAL UPDATE and XP have got to go away. If you use Microsoft... stop using critical update (since you have little idea exactly what they're updating)... and for heavens sake... don't use PASSPORT or XP - as those are full of spyware capabilities... better yet... use a Mac or SUN or other system where it is at least a bit more open and visible (but don't stop being careful).
We *can* make changes when companies perceive that their products are not popular due to security and privacy concerns.They brought the mongoose over to help control the rat population.... but rats come out at night and mongoose are day creatures - so the rats are doing just fine and the mongoose ate all the native bird species eggs - and now we have few native birds left.
Same as with the gorst and the cactus... those were brought over to feed the cattle... but the cattle didn't like them... so they started taking over the entire island -- so the government brought in insects to kill the gorst and cactus... but what's going to kill the bugs?
The latest is we have coqoi frogs appearing... they have 100+ decibel chirps for a single frog about the size of a dime. Where did they come from? House plants shipped in and sold at Walmart and other nurserys... the solution? Spray the environment with caffine - which kills the frogs immediatly... but what does it do to the rest of the critters it lands on (other than hopping them up)?
This happens over and over again... people *think* they know a solution, but they don't bother testing it and watching it carefully enough to ensure that the solution doesn't in itself become a problem.
Yes... we loved our ones and zeros (not to mention BAUDOT too!)... and we loved the front panel lights where we could actually watch binary flowing through the registers... and who could forget the fantastic rocker switches on the front where you could REALLY man-handle your software.
Yes... the good old days where finding a bug in your program meant that the computer operator simply threw a 2 inch thick printout at you with a scrawled note at the top... YOU HAVE A BUG. And who could forget the chad wars while waiting for a program to compile!
But the thing we ESPECIALLY liked is the fact that there was no Microsoft.... computers were pure and we didn't need 2 gigahertz pentiums in order to take 3 minutes to boot a stupid OS.
The good old days... when computers were computers and programmers actually knew how to program!
Unfortunatly, blocking entire ranges of IP addresses is not a possibility for us since we have many international clients. The one time we tried to block a mexican ISP because it was spam-bombing us - we had 3 of our best clients complain that their mexican customers could no longer reach their website -- so blocking is not a possibility.
We have had limited success (more so in the US than elsewhere) in contacting upstream haul providers. It does work however... especially if you can save the proof of the spams to show the routing to the ops.
One thing that would help (though some you won't agree on this)... is to do away with HTML Attached email and go back to the (thankfully) good old days of text-only email. This not only decreases the size of the spam... it makes it less attractive as an advertising mechanism because you can't push photo's, etc... and do tricky 1x1 gifs to trace emails (plus it increases security since text-only emails cant be *executed*).
However... the single largest thing that people here in the states can do is (1) Fix your form remailers so they can't be used by webcam spammers (HI... I'M SUSSY AND I JUST GOT MY WEBCAM... SEE ME AT...)... and fix your sendmail so it doesn't act as relays... most of these foreign spammers do their best hiding by using legit US ISPs as unwanton relays... fixing our own software would reduce the number of places these spammers have to use and hide.
As one person on here pointed out... source is already available to *some* organizations, etc... so what would be the problem. But I can imagine that Microsoft will fight this hands and fists - mainly to protect their WE ARE GOD - BOW DOWN TO US issues. Since Billy Goat can't stand to be forced to do anything (it'd upset his Attention Defficency Syndrom).
But I hope the courts are smart enought to (1) hire SEVERAL experts to COMPILE the damn thing... and make sure it produces a RUNABLE version... and (2) make sure that the runnable version that is produced has the SAME COMPONENTS as what they ship.
My largest fear would be that they would try to put together a version that is different from the others - just as a way to *prove* their point.
Well, if nothing more... we get to see all the paid microsoft anonymous cowards quickly jump onto slashdot to insult us... they must be feeling the pressure :))
Um... he missed Buddha... Christ... Zoroaster... I'm sure that was just an oversight though... he probably had to limit the bullshit due to editorial space.
It's the second coming for sure!!! Repent now so that you can be saved in the rapture!!! The only thing that's missing is Gates on a cross.
Oh wait.... we can tell just by counting the pro-microsoft comments in this thread!!
Easy!
Of *course* I realize that other companies do this as well... and I never stated otherwise. The *disappointing* thing is that Microsoft puts shoveling shit ahead of good software. In other words.... they will FORCE us to use their products... by hook or by crook (and it seems that the CROOKS abound).
Furthermore... your comment "How did MS destory the computer industry? They created it."... you have GOT to be kidding.
You think computers didn't exist before little billy gates started stealing other peoples ideas? Get a life and read some history. While Microsoft did a LOT to help popularize personal computers - and their early software was certainly on-track. They lost focus years and years ago and now simply push pure crap.
Your comment makes me think you are one of the minions paid by Microsoft to say bullshit like this.
Instead of creating quality software that people would use because it is the most secure, efficient and capable software... they choose to write utter crap... and they hire marketers to tell us it's gold... hire political lobbiests to force policies and judicial decisions in their favor.
When I started out in computing 26 years ago I never conceived that we would be as backwards as we are today. I never dreamed we would require a 1 gigahertz machine to run a windowing system poorly.... I never thought that instead of booting faster... that machines would boot slower and slower.
Extremely disappointing that a marketing/political interest group has been allowed to pretty much destroy the computer industry.
I guess we can hope and pray that MicroSoft goes the way of Enron... that it's dirty dealings are opened up to the world and that the world responds by simply refusing to have anything to do with the MicroSluts.
Closest thing today is C (though it doesn't do hetrogenous arrays naturally... you can certainly typedef them though)... with Java etc... being a close second (if not for the stability factor - please don't flame... it's getting there)
Parallax and other artifacts cause headaches in all forms of digital processing... causing countless software algorithms to be written that bring things back *inline*. This should do away with much of error correction in imaging.
Even in areas where we do noise removal and color balancing by additive techniques (e.g., image white through rgb sensors... negate it and use that as a additive mask to remove dirt, flys, etc... from your lens as well as color correct by printing the output and again subtracting that from the original to find unbalance in guns) - this will greatly improve the errors that abound surrounding such subtractive and additive region processing.
This will also reduce geometric distortion that often affects sensors where the RG and B components are split out and each sent to a different sensor (assuming that their RGB masks in this sensor are layered properly).
Very good work.
But I guess by going after Prodigy, they are going after their online links? I'd think under that guise, they'd go after AOL first, but I bet Prodigy has way less money than AOL to defend itself (not to mention probable BT ties to Time Warner).
The worse thing would be if not only did the courts rule in BT favor... but also said they were owed money rectroactivly - in which case we'd all have to pay from day one. Egads!
Second... I perhaps wasn't clear... what I am refering to is his ignorance of domestic crisses for his domination on (non-existant) axis of evil and an obvious attempt to bankrupt the american economy. In other words... it aint going to get better folks.
Instead of saying "get a life moron"... perhaps you might want to check out the news articles (culled from leading rags world-wide) at smirking chimp.
I think your posting under "anonymous Coward" says it all buddy... ya know?
Thank you VERY MUCH George W.... for plundering our national economy.
Perhaps if they up the wattage... so that it burns through the rain/snow/birds...
The only problem I have with my cellphone/visor is that the cell phone, visor and it's cable... are bulky when taken all together.. not exactly what you want on the beach, or during a hike on 2000 ft. cliffs (not to mention that I've already lost the cable twice). I thought the new device would be great... all-in-one, etc.
But I'm less and less impressed. First... they did not include the Handspring port - citing some bull about wanting to have two distinct product lines... this is a major down point for me because if I want to *replace* my visor, I can't without also losing all the modules I purchased. Secondly... other companies beat them to the punch and already offer cell phones married to full functioning PDA's.
So as far as I can tell... too little, too late.
Nice to know your homophobic. Grow up a little. ANYONE involved in sex, regardless of it being homosexual or hetrosexual, can get AIDS. The stupdity of you, and your comment, indicate that you don't understand the first thing about love nor sex nor AIDS.
Let's hope YOU don't get AIDS for Val. day.