The problem is that according to my wife, a podiatric (foot) surgeon, the recovery period following a phalangectomy (ampution of a toe (or finger)) is almost nil. The big toe, let alone a vestigial "pinky toe", is not crucial for balance or stability.
While this may be true, one would think that the actual act of having an operation would cause that foot to be a bit tender/sore for a while, which would cause someone to walk awkwardly. After such a surgery, I would be very surprised that she could walk "normally" without a bit of gimpiness just from pain of having the operation. Of course, if you believe those who say that she was a drug addict, then it could be that she just never felt the pain anyway.
Yes, of course it was! It surprises me that so few people seem to realize this.
But you can't use the fact that it might make sense to use it this way as an argument for the FACT that that was it's intended purpose. That's like saying that super glue, because it is effective at bonding things together, was created to repair china. While it may be true that it is good for that, it is wrong (originally created to help close wounds in triage on the battle field). So just because your explanation fits, doesn't make it the correct explanation. (god I hope none of you guys are detectives).
Of course the library could have bugs. We're assuming here that it doesn't. The C stardard library could have bugs, too. What's your point?
My point is that it DOES exhibit these problems, you can't assume that it doesn't because the nature of the beast is that it CAN'T. Example:
class foo {
public:
void bar();
char *pch;
};
void fn() {
foo *f;
f->bar();
}
So you created a pointer to foo, but never allocated it. You then call a method of foo, if bar tried to access pch, that would be an error. It can't check to see if pch is null, since it might not be (since *f could be pointing anywhere, but the method call WILL work). Your only recourse is to track that your object was truely initialized in the constructor, but NOBODY does that. How does YOUR string class handle that situation? Maybe you're lucky and all your methods are virtual, making the above scenerio more likely to crash, unless of course *f happens to be left pointing at a previous foo (which can be the case if the method is being called say in a loop). Btw, I know that in this trivial example that the compiler will warn you about using f before it's initialized, but in a more complex case where you can have pointers being freed, esp in multithreaded code, things like this crop up all the time and are not easy to catch.
Anyway, my point was never that C was perfect (I don't know how you assumed that since I never made any statement about the superiority of C). It's that while many of these types of exploits are created by "lazy" programmers, that many still are created simply because A) the realities are that the amount of effort required to make our code TRUELY free of these types of vulnerabilities is not practical or B) we make assumptions about the correctness of others code, which are the wrong assumptions to make.
No security flaws here. Also, note that the memory check is unnecessary since C++ and Java throw exceptions when they run out of memory
Wrong, at least for C++. If you look at most implementations of String, you'll see that they either internally use strcpy or use memcpy with the length being stored in the String structure. I've seen MANY bugs where the String itself is corrupt (usually because it was freed/never allocated) so when the assignment occurs, bam, it blows up (if you're lucky, if you're not, then it doesn't blow up, not alerting you to the problem until it shows up on bugtraq). So don't be fooled into thinking that just because YOU didn't have to write the code, that deep down inside, SOMEONE did, and that their code is perfect.
Isn't this the job of the teacher? Isn't this database applying a technological solution to a social problem?
A database is a tool, just like a teachers attendance book. It quantifies the attendance, the teacher doesn't have to think "gee Tommy hasn't been in class much." They can think that, then look it up to quantify and verify there perception. It can also be used by administrators to make sure that the teacher isn't dropping the ball in these cases.
What's interesting is that most people's problems isn't with the technology (even though that's what they are saying), their biggest problem is HOW the data is used. Look at what you say a little later:
Data can be weird. Johnny could've had good reasons for changes in behavior.
This statement is actually irrelevant in the context of mine. That Johnny has a "good reason" doesn't change the fact that there are certain standards for attendance or attendance trends that can point to there being an issue. Whether or not this "issue" is a "good" reason or "bad" is to then be determined. Doesn't obviate the need to detect these trends and follow up. Of course we all hope that this followup is done intelligently and not stupidly used. But that followup has nothing to do with the technology itself.
We need more & better teachers -- make the classes nice & small, lead by competent, caring individuals who will notice behavioral changes and act accordingly. Don't waste money on a data collection system.
Agreed, but in the real world, you have to address issues when you are not at that ideal point. So while you always strive to do those things, you have to deal at a practical level with the fact that you CAN'T be at that ideal in all cases.
From the people that I've met in this situation, they either don't understand the benefits of a quality education, or they just don't care about how important it is. There are still others that both know and care, but may have a lot of other problems in life to deal with.
You're missing the point. There are using this data to identify those that fall into the groups you mentioned. Since if your in those groups, you are more likely to exhibit those behaviours that they're looking for. Once you've identified them, you can:
The first two groups can only be helped by convincing them how an education can help them later on in life. But the latter group is the one that this system might help if a person can be identified and they can get help with whatever other problems might be holding them back in school.
Though, I do have to wonder about the darker side of such tracking. Already, we have students removed from regular classes for so little an offense as acting different, for writing "dark" poetry, for daring to speak against the system even on private websites. I see this finding more use in eliminating MORE people from the regular education system than it will in keeping potential dropouts in school.
Your point is valid, but there is that fine line you have to walk right? Fact is that school shootings is an issue. Maybe not pervasive, but it has become an issue. So how do you deal with it. You can't make people promise to get a note from their gun dealer if they're planning on coming in and shooting up the school. So you either say "we'll just have to suffer with it when and if it occurs" or you try to be proactive. If you choose the latter, then ther obviously is no 100% guaranteed "test" you can apply, so you have to start walking the fine line between privacy and protection. If you have empirical evidence that certain behavioural traits are exhibited by those who would perpetrate such crimes, what is the best way to deal with those that "fit the profile"? Tough questions. Would you be upset if you found out that your boss found a hand drawn comic book in your coworkers office that depicted him killing all his coworkers, but then doing nothing about it (i.e. not telling anyone). How about if you're best friend was chatting to your other friends about his fantasy of raping your daughter. After all, it's just talk right? These are more extreme examples, but I hope you get the point.
I don't think that telling students that you're watching their every single move is the way to build their trust. Teen angst can easily tranform the noblest intention into an invasion of privacy.
Ain't that the truth. Just look at some of the posts here. Ahh, idealism + ignorance.
Somebody sure is watching and tracking individual students, but they're definitely not interested in the student's success -- collecting all this data together and using it to generate mass "trends" will likely end up in having various kids who are doing well being sat down and had a talking-to by the school's guidance counsellors about not dropping out, merely because they don't fit the trend. Same thing happened with kids who may fit the "school shooter" profile.
Nice FUD here. But assuming you're looking at say attendance and grades (or test scores), how can this information be improperly used? If Johnny has had 100% attendance, and suddenly it drops to 50%, why wouldn't you want to call Johnny in and ask him if everything is ok? Or if Sue's test scores drop suddenly, why wouldn't you want to talk to her to ask her if anything is wrong. Your "shooter" profile is completely off target here (forgive the pun). These are very tangible and reasonable criteria they're using to make these determinations. Now if they said that they were going to track how much a student ate, or if their clothes suddenly fit into some "radical" category, then I might have agreed with you. By your argument, we should'nt test and grade, because after all, these mechanisms "profile" students.
Re:Knuth is only one foundation that won't be lost
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 1
WOW, it's amazing how similar our beginings are. I too self talk with the VIC20 basic and moved on to 6502 assembler. Then the c64, though we dovetail there. I went on to the PC, BUT, also using Turbo Pascal (with screen updates written in x86 assembler) and then C. However, I haven't moved much as I'm still doing C++ stuff though. I've never really moved away from more backend applications (i.e. servers).
But like I was saying originally, it's all about ones ability to look at a problem, decompose it, and then come up with reasonable solutions regardless of language that makes someone a good programmer.
So fine, the BIA is allowed to sue the DOI. But who the hell is the DOI, who funds them. Well you and I. If the IT manager of the DOI is an idiot who couldn't care less about Native Americans and their "bureau", the absolute worse thing that can happen is that that person will lose their job (and good luck with that if this person happens to be female or a minority). So what is happening here. WE get to pay for someone dropping the ball. WE get to pay the court costs for BOTH agencies. WE get to pay whatever damages are awarded. In this case lawsuits are worthless (actually worse than worthless as they have negative worth). No messages are sent and in the end the taxpayers lose, and the clients of the BIA lose.
Just how big is the market for this book?
on
Solaris 9 For Dummies
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
It's hard to imagine that there are that many people that are going to need a book like this. Perhaps a Windoze IT person whose shop is getting some Solaris box's? Sounds like anyone who is coming from a Unix IT background already would find this book useless, and the number of "average" joes who know very little about *nix but are getting Solaris boxen has to be pretty small. Definitely a niche product. I guess this is just an outcome of the fact that the "For Dummies" publisher is trying to cover every topic known to man.
Re:Knuth is only one foundation that won't be lost
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No one ought to knock VB because it really is the best tool for what it does, but it also lowers the barrier to entry for would-be programmers. This can only lead to worse programs.
This is coming from someone who started in assembler and has been programming for over 20years now (primarily various assembly, C, C++), but I completely disagree with that statement. It's all in the context. Applications are about solving problems and if VB is the best tool for a particular problem, then it and the programmer who uses it don't necessarily lead to "worse programs". What leads to bad programs are things like bad programmers (regardless of background), poorly/undefined requirements, lack of resources, etc. I've met the gamut of programmers high level/low level and the common thread is the individuals ability to understand a problem and use the tools at their disposal to solve it. Obviously if you're looking for someone to code a compiler for you, you are going to avoid the VB guy who thinks C is no different than assembler. By the same token, I've seen apps written by assembler/C guys that were basically useless because, while the code may be good, the app itself didn't solve the problem (or did it in a very poor way).
In this day and age, the apps are way too large and there are too many specialties/languages/environments to simply discount anyone because they never happened to program in C/assembler.
You can use a proxy server to access IRC, so that you look like you're coming from somewhere else
But all you've done is added an extra layer of indirection, as now they have to hunt down the proxy service and examine their logs. The underlying key to all this is logging. If you're using an usenet server that does not log requests, then your pretty much safe (unless they happen to be monitoring as the actions occur of course). If you use a proxy to help guard against real time monitoring, make darn sure that your proxy also isn't logging.
The security of newsgroups depends entirely on whose news server you're using. If the nntp server you're accessing records your ip along with your requests, then you can be tracked in the same way as they're using for p2p. Ditto IRC, though usually with IRC, someone will setup a temp ftp site and tell interested parties what the ip address and username/password is to access the site.
It's not about whether or not there's a lock to pick, nor how strong it is; it's about the fact that there's about 30 million locks which have to be picked at any one time.
The RIAA doesn't want to prosecute everyone who shares files, they want more people to stop sharing files. The idea is that if for everyone they do go after 10 (or whatever) other people will stop.
the race has 3 runners, and Microsoft is in second. They are beating the cube by a huge amount in North America and Europe. Its not even close.
Ahh, yes, one can always count on/. to bring out the low brows. Anyway, the example was not meant to relate directly to the situation, since I already did that in the previous sentence. Instead it was designed to point out the absurdity of claiming that xbox was an "unqualified success". Oh and the GC is beating xbox in Asia (Japan) by a large margin, and in overall sales, the xbox, while ahead, is not _that_ far ahead. Certainly compared to how far they are BEHIND Sony.
Last I checked, it was still outselling Nintendo's GameCube.
Barely beating out the third place player in a market with only three players is not what most people would call an unqualified success. That's like someone crowing about coming in second, but the race only had two runners.
The good news Microsoft pointed to in its earnings call was that the Xbox had a high attach rate -- 5.4 games/other items sold to every Xbox sold in the U.S.. That's where the money is, not in the hardware.
Do keep in mind that the attach rate doesn't factor out titles that are bundled with systems as many retailers were basically forced to do this to push more systems out the door. These bundled titles don't make nearly as much money as those sold standalone. So person A buys a three game bundle with their xbox and then buys the two games they REALLY wanted. Notice that there are relatively few PS2 bundles (outside of a single game).
I don't know if people remember, but before Access was a database, it used to be Microsofts answer to Crosstalk/Smarterm and the ilk (dialup communications). They scuttled the project and later resurected the name for the database.
The nerve of Microsoft to want people to not think about their failures and only focus on success'. After all, so many other companies have been perfect in all their products. And who wants innovation anyway (yeah, I know, M$ doesn't really "innovate" anyway). Better to stay tried and true and realize that it's better to limp along with mediocrity than to go out on a limb and fail.
Actually, I think the topic is intersting, as in genuinly interesting to see the things that they've tried and failed at. Those things they tried and failed and tried and failed and eventually succeeded (with Windows being the most obvious example). And obviously some attempts were quite humerous, but to turn this into a "gee see how much M$ really sucks" is just lame and shows how much some/.'ers need to go out and get a life and gain some perspective.
The question, though, is what rights does the corporation have in this regard?
That's the whole point. IBM OWNS it's secrets, they are free to do whatever they choose (assuming it doesn't run afoul of any contracts). IBM merely has a license to use the music. The key point is that the company IBM is a legal entity, just like you or I, so fair use would not extend to shareholders since shareholders and IBM are considered different parties. I think what he really wants is to have is a massive partnership, since the "company" is not treated as a seperate entity, instead each member actually does constitute a percentage of the company. Now that would be interesting, since in the simple example, if a two person partnership purchased a cd, the partners would each own half. I think this is what he was shooting for. Of course the problem here is that unlike the corp, each partner can be legally responsible if ANY other partner does something illegal.
How can this even come close to working? If the corp purchases the cd, the corp, which is considered an entity in and of itself, is bound by the copyright. The shareholders of that corp have absolutely no rights to the cd's at all (except maybe at liquidation time). Just like having shares in IBM doesn't mean I can take advantage of ANY of their assets. This idea, while an interesting fancy, is just that.
Any time there is a system, someone will be able to break or hack it. Especially a closed system that isn't open to scrutiny.
That's a load of whoie. The fact that the source was opened or closed doesn't mean squat in this case. The problem is that the "customer" knew about these security issues long ago, but yet they allowed their vendor to continue with those massive defects and then they deployed these systems with these massive defects. It is not at all uncommon for software like this to require the vendor to supply their source to the customer, for any number of reasons, one being security audits. The fact that the voting agencies involved allowed to crap to continue is the true problem here. After all, we're not talking about some software project that takes hundreds of engineers and millions of dollars to produce. There is no excuse for this level of incompetence, closed or open source.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that according to my wife, a podiatric (foot) surgeon, the recovery period following a phalangectomy (ampution of a toe (or finger)) is almost nil. The big toe, let alone a vestigial "pinky toe", is not crucial for balance or stability.
While this may be true, one would think that the actual act of having an operation would cause that foot to be a bit tender/sore for a while, which would cause someone to walk awkwardly. After such a surgery, I would be very surprised that she could walk "normally" without a bit of gimpiness just from pain of having the operation. Of course, if you believe those who say that she was a drug addict, then it could be that she just never felt the pain anyway.
Yes, of course it was! It surprises me that so few people seem to realize this.
But you can't use the fact that it might make sense to use it this way as an argument for the FACT that that was it's intended purpose. That's like saying that super glue, because it is effective at bonding things together, was created to repair china. While it may be true that it is good for that, it is wrong (originally created to help close wounds in triage on the battle field). So just because your explanation fits, doesn't make it the correct explanation. (god I hope none of you guys are detectives).
Of course the library could have bugs. We're assuming here that it doesn't. The C stardard library could have bugs, too. What's your point?
My point is that it DOES exhibit these problems, you can't assume that it doesn't because the nature of the beast is that it CAN'T. Example:
class foo {
public:
void bar();
char *pch;
};
void fn() {
foo *f;
f->bar();
}
So you created a pointer to foo, but never allocated it. You then call a method of foo, if bar tried to access pch, that would be an error. It can't check to see if pch is null, since it might not be (since *f could be pointing anywhere, but the method call WILL work). Your only recourse is to track that your object was truely initialized in the constructor, but NOBODY does that. How does YOUR string class handle that situation? Maybe you're lucky and all your methods are virtual, making the above scenerio more likely to crash, unless of course *f happens to be left pointing at a previous foo (which can be the case if the method is being called say in a loop). Btw, I know that in this trivial example that the compiler will warn you about using f before it's initialized, but in a more complex case where you can have pointers being freed, esp in multithreaded code, things like this crop up all the time and are not easy to catch.
Anyway, my point was never that C was perfect (I don't know how you assumed that since I never made any statement about the superiority of C). It's that while many of these types of exploits are created by "lazy" programmers, that many still are created simply because A) the realities are that the amount of effort required to make our code TRUELY free of these types of vulnerabilities is not practical or B) we make assumptions about the correctness of others code, which are the wrong assumptions to make.
No security flaws here. Also, note that the memory check is unnecessary since C++ and Java throw exceptions when they run out of memory
Wrong, at least for C++. If you look at most implementations of String, you'll see that they either internally use strcpy or use memcpy with the length being stored in the String structure. I've seen MANY bugs where the String itself is corrupt (usually because it was freed/never allocated) so when the assignment occurs, bam, it blows up (if you're lucky, if you're not, then it doesn't blow up, not alerting you to the problem until it shows up on bugtraq). So don't be fooled into thinking that just because YOU didn't have to write the code, that deep down inside, SOMEONE did, and that their code is perfect.
Isn't this the job of the teacher? Isn't this database applying a technological solution to a social problem?
A database is a tool, just like a teachers attendance book. It quantifies the attendance, the teacher doesn't have to think "gee Tommy hasn't been in class much." They can think that, then look it up to quantify and verify there perception. It can also be used by administrators to make sure that the teacher isn't dropping the ball in these cases.
What's interesting is that most people's problems isn't with the technology (even though that's what they are saying), their biggest problem is HOW the data is used. Look at what you say a little later:
Data can be weird. Johnny could've had good reasons for changes in behavior.
This statement is actually irrelevant in the context of mine. That Johnny has a "good reason" doesn't change the fact that there are certain standards for attendance or attendance trends that can point to there being an issue. Whether or not this "issue" is a "good" reason or "bad" is to then be determined. Doesn't obviate the need to detect these trends and follow up. Of course we all hope that this followup is done intelligently and not stupidly used. But that followup has nothing to do with the technology itself.
We need more & better teachers -- make the classes nice & small, lead by competent, caring individuals who will notice behavioral changes and act accordingly. Don't waste money on a data collection system.
Agreed, but in the real world, you have to address issues when you are not at that ideal point. So while you always strive to do those things, you have to deal at a practical level with the fact that you CAN'T be at that ideal in all cases.
From the people that I've met in this situation, they either don't understand the benefits of a quality education, or they just don't care about how important it is. There are still others that both know and care, but may have a lot of other problems in life to deal with.
You're missing the point. There are using this data to identify those that fall into the groups you mentioned. Since if your in those groups, you are more likely to exhibit those behaviours that they're looking for. Once you've identified them, you can:
The first two groups can only be helped by convincing them how an education can help them later on in life. But the latter group is the one that this system might help if a person can be identified and they can get help with whatever other problems might be holding them back in school.
Though, I do have to wonder about the darker side of such tracking. Already, we have students removed from regular classes for so little an offense as acting different, for writing "dark" poetry, for daring to speak against the system even on private websites. I see this finding more use in eliminating MORE people from the regular education system than it will in keeping potential dropouts in school.
Your point is valid, but there is that fine line you have to walk right? Fact is that school shootings is an issue. Maybe not pervasive, but it has become an issue. So how do you deal with it. You can't make people promise to get a note from their gun dealer if they're planning on coming in and shooting up the school. So you either say "we'll just have to suffer with it when and if it occurs" or you try to be proactive. If you choose the latter, then ther obviously is no 100% guaranteed "test" you can apply, so you have to start walking the fine line between privacy and protection. If you have empirical evidence that certain behavioural traits are exhibited by those who would perpetrate such crimes, what is the best way to deal with those that "fit the profile"? Tough questions. Would you be upset if you found out that your boss found a hand drawn comic book in your coworkers office that depicted him killing all his coworkers, but then doing nothing about it (i.e. not telling anyone). How about if you're best friend was chatting to your other friends about his fantasy of raping your daughter. After all, it's just talk right? These are more extreme examples, but I hope you get the point.
I don't think that telling students that you're watching their every single move is the way to build their trust. Teen angst can easily tranform the noblest intention into an invasion of privacy.
Ain't that the truth. Just look at some of the posts here. Ahh, idealism + ignorance.
Somebody sure is watching and tracking individual students, but they're definitely not interested in the student's success -- collecting all this data together and using it to generate mass "trends" will likely end up in having various kids who are doing well being sat down and had a talking-to by the school's guidance counsellors about not dropping out, merely because they don't fit the trend. Same thing happened with kids who may fit the "school shooter" profile.
Nice FUD here. But assuming you're looking at say attendance and grades (or test scores), how can this information be improperly used? If Johnny has had 100% attendance, and suddenly it drops to 50%, why wouldn't you want to call Johnny in and ask him if everything is ok? Or if Sue's test scores drop suddenly, why wouldn't you want to talk to her to ask her if anything is wrong. Your "shooter" profile is completely off target here (forgive the pun). These are very tangible and reasonable criteria they're using to make these determinations. Now if they said that they were going to track how much a student ate, or if their clothes suddenly fit into some "radical" category, then I might have agreed with you. By your argument, we should'nt test and grade, because after all, these mechanisms "profile" students.
WOW, it's amazing how similar our beginings are. I too self talk with the VIC20 basic and moved on to 6502 assembler. Then the c64, though we dovetail there. I went on to the PC, BUT, also using Turbo Pascal (with screen updates written in x86 assembler) and then C. However, I haven't moved much as I'm still doing C++ stuff though. I've never really moved away from more backend applications (i.e. servers).
But like I was saying originally, it's all about ones ability to look at a problem, decompose it, and then come up with reasonable solutions regardless of language that makes someone a good programmer.
So fine, the BIA is allowed to sue the DOI. But who the hell is the DOI, who funds them. Well you and I. If the IT manager of the DOI is an idiot who couldn't care less about Native Americans and their "bureau", the absolute worse thing that can happen is that that person will lose their job (and good luck with that if this person happens to be female or a minority). So what is happening here. WE get to pay for someone dropping the ball. WE get to pay the court costs for BOTH agencies. WE get to pay whatever damages are awarded. In this case lawsuits are worthless (actually worse than worthless as they have negative worth). No messages are sent and in the end the taxpayers lose, and the clients of the BIA lose.
It's hard to imagine that there are that many people that are going to need a book like this. Perhaps a Windoze IT person whose shop is getting some Solaris box's? Sounds like anyone who is coming from a Unix IT background already would find this book useless, and the number of "average" joes who know very little about *nix but are getting Solaris boxen has to be pretty small. Definitely a niche product. I guess this is just an outcome of the fact that the "For Dummies" publisher is trying to cover every topic known to man.
No one ought to knock VB because it really is the best tool for what it does, but it also lowers the barrier to entry for would-be programmers. This can only lead to worse programs.
This is coming from someone who started in assembler and has been programming for over 20years now (primarily various assembly, C, C++), but I completely disagree with that statement. It's all in the context. Applications are about solving problems and if VB is the best tool for a particular problem, then it and the programmer who uses it don't necessarily lead to "worse programs". What leads to bad programs are things like bad programmers (regardless of background), poorly/undefined requirements, lack of resources, etc. I've met the gamut of programmers high level/low level and the common thread is the individuals ability to understand a problem and use the tools at their disposal to solve it. Obviously if you're looking for someone to code a compiler for you, you are going to avoid the VB guy who thinks C is no different than assembler. By the same token, I've seen apps written by assembler/C guys that were basically useless because, while the code may be good, the app itself didn't solve the problem (or did it in a very poor way).
In this day and age, the apps are way too large and there are too many specialties/languages/environments to simply discount anyone because they never happened to program in C/assembler.
You can use a proxy server to access IRC, so that you look like you're coming from somewhere else
But all you've done is added an extra layer of indirection, as now they have to hunt down the proxy service and examine their logs. The underlying key to all this is logging. If you're using an usenet server that does not log requests, then your pretty much safe (unless they happen to be monitoring as the actions occur of course). If you use a proxy to help guard against real time monitoring, make darn sure that your proxy also isn't logging.
What about newsgroups?
The security of newsgroups depends entirely on whose news server you're using. If the nntp server you're accessing records your ip along with your requests, then you can be tracked in the same way as they're using for p2p. Ditto IRC, though usually with IRC, someone will setup a temp ftp site and tell interested parties what the ip address and username/password is to access the site.
It's not about whether or not there's a lock to pick, nor how strong it is; it's about the fact that there's about 30 million locks which have to be picked at any one time.
The RIAA doesn't want to prosecute everyone who shares files, they want more people to stop sharing files. The idea is that if for everyone they do go after 10 (or whatever) other people will stop.
the race has 3 runners, and Microsoft is in second. They are beating the cube by a huge amount in North America and Europe. Its not even close.
/. to bring out the low brows. Anyway, the example was not meant to relate directly to the situation, since I already did that in the previous sentence. Instead it was designed to point out the absurdity of claiming that xbox was an "unqualified success". Oh and the GC is beating xbox in Asia (Japan) by a large margin, and in overall sales, the xbox, while ahead, is not _that_ far ahead. Certainly compared to how far they are BEHIND Sony.
Ahh, yes, one can always count on
Last I checked, it was still outselling Nintendo's GameCube.
Barely beating out the third place player in a market with only three players is not what most people would call an unqualified success. That's like someone crowing about coming in second, but the race only had two runners.
The good news Microsoft pointed to in its earnings call was that the Xbox had a high attach rate -- 5.4 games/other items sold to every Xbox sold in the U.S.. That's where the money is, not in the hardware.
Do keep in mind that the attach rate doesn't factor out titles that are bundled with systems as many retailers were basically forced to do this to push more systems out the door. These bundled titles don't make nearly as much money as those sold standalone. So person A buys a three game bundle with their xbox and then buys the two games they REALLY wanted. Notice that there are relatively few PS2 bundles (outside of a single game).
I don't know if people remember, but before Access was a database, it used to be Microsofts answer to Crosstalk/Smarterm and the ilk (dialup communications). They scuttled the project and later resurected the name for the database.
The nerve of Microsoft to want people to not think about their failures and only focus on success'. After all, so many other companies have been perfect in all their products. And who wants innovation anyway (yeah, I know, M$ doesn't really "innovate" anyway). Better to stay tried and true and realize that it's better to limp along with mediocrity than to go out on a limb and fail.
/.'ers need to go out and get a life and gain some perspective.
Actually, I think the topic is intersting, as in genuinly interesting to see the things that they've tried and failed at. Those things they tried and failed and tried and failed and eventually succeeded (with Windows being the most obvious example). And obviously some attempts were quite humerous, but to turn this into a "gee see how much M$ really sucks" is just lame and shows how much some
GEOS: The first windowed OS
I guess if you don't include the Mac, Lisa, and Alto?
The question, though, is what rights does the corporation have in this regard?
That's the whole point. IBM OWNS it's secrets, they are free to do whatever they choose (assuming it doesn't run afoul of any contracts). IBM merely has a license to use the music. The key point is that the company IBM is a legal entity, just like you or I, so fair use would not extend to shareholders since shareholders and IBM are considered different parties. I think what he really wants is to have is a massive partnership, since the "company" is not treated as a seperate entity, instead each member actually does constitute a percentage of the company. Now that would be interesting, since in the simple example, if a two person partnership purchased a cd, the partners would each own half. I think this is what he was shooting for. Of course the problem here is that unlike the corp, each partner can be legally responsible if ANY other partner does something illegal.
How can this even come close to working? If the corp purchases the cd, the corp, which is considered an entity in and of itself, is bound by the copyright. The shareholders of that corp have absolutely no rights to the cd's at all (except maybe at liquidation time). Just like having shares in IBM doesn't mean I can take advantage of ANY of their assets. This idea, while an interesting fancy, is just that.
Any time there is a system, someone will be able to break or hack it. Especially a closed system that isn't open to scrutiny.
That's a load of whoie. The fact that the source was opened or closed doesn't mean squat in this case. The problem is that the "customer" knew about these security issues long ago, but yet they allowed their vendor to continue with those massive defects and then they deployed these systems with these massive defects. It is not at all uncommon for software like this to require the vendor to supply their source to the customer, for any number of reasons, one being security audits. The fact that the voting agencies involved allowed to crap to continue is the true problem here. After all, we're not talking about some software project that takes hundreds of engineers and millions of dollars to produce. There is no excuse for this level of incompetence, closed or open source.