Microsoft may have a difficult time with this lawsuit, because the drug dealer analogy came from Bill Gates:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
If Bill Gates compares his company to drug dealers, why can't a Brazilian official do so, too?
This is another marketing scheme by Microsoft employees to get Microsoft in the news and on Slashdot.
I certainly would never have known that a government official in Brazil compared Microsoft marketing people to "drug-dealers", if it weren't repeated in the quiet privacy of a Slashdot story.
Without a lawsuit, most Brazilians would never have heard what the official said. Now millions of Brazilians will know. What will be their reaction? Consider this. Less than two months after the September 11, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center, at the costume parties celebrating the Brazilian equivalent of Halloween, many Brazilians came as Osama bin Laden. Brazilians and people from other countries think that the U.S. government is arrogant and out of control. Since 3 movies and 35 books published in the U.S. say this too, it can be said that the feeling is strong. Microsoft's legal action will be seen as more arrogance from the United States, probably.
My guess is that it is likely that this new move by Microsoft will only help sell Bill Gates Halloween masks. It certainly won't help sell Microsoft products.
RAID cards with CPUs could, theoretically, recover
on
SATA vs ATA?
·
· Score: 1
This is speculation, but it seems to have some validity. In the case of a RAID adapter that has an on-board CPU, the card might be able to recover from a power failure. The capacitors on the RAID adapter should hold enough energy for a few milliseconds of operation. During that time the adapter could write to non-volatile memory on the adapter enough information to know what data is lost and how it can be recovered.
Again, this is speculation, but RAID adapter cards that do not have on-board CPUs depend on the main CPU to assure data integrity. If they don't get attention from the main CPU when they need it, the data is corrupt.
It seems to me that power failures are somewhat rare. The real failure rate of RAID adapter cards with no on-board CPUs could be much higher if there are instances where the OS does not service the RAID adapter card in a timely fashion.
Bad experience with Promise. XP problem with RAID.
on
SATA vs ATA?
·
· Score: 1
We've had trouble getting tech support for Promise equipment recently.
This is uncertain, but it seems that there is some bug in Windows XP which causes
RAID cards that don't have their own CPUs to malfunction. According to a HighPoint technical support rep, the RAID adapter card does not get enough CPU time, and writing to the drives times out, breaking the RAID array. This fits with our experience.
Two drive RAID 1 mirroring is good. We've had a lot of trouble recently getting tech support from Promise Technology, so we have switched to HighPoint RocketRAID 133 adapter cards.
These RAID cards use the main CPU, they don't have on-board microprocessors. This causes some problems in Windows XP when you have a script that runs at startup. Some commands in the script will sometimes cause the mirror to break, apparently. Apparently Microsoft has not integrated some of the CLI commands into Windows XP yet. This was such a big problem that I wrote a paper on it for Microsoft technical support: Windows XP problems: Port Re-direction.
If you are willing to spend a little more, a lot of people suggest 3Ware products: 7006-2 adapter cards, for example. We have no experience with them. They have a drawback, compared to HighPoint cards: They won't boot with just one drive, according to 3Ware technical support. After the drives are used in a mirror, they will not boot from the IDE adapter on the motherboard. This could be a big drawback if your 3Ware card is not working for some reason. Possibly 3Ware cards available in the future will not be incompatible, leaving you no way to get your data from the drives. If the card fails, you will at least have to buy another one to be able to see your data.
The advantage with 3Ware cards is that there is a CPU on the adapter, leaving no way for MS bugs to cause the mirror to break. That system is also faster, of course.
Slashdot has run a number of articles from people who wrestle with the data reliability problem.
Acronis makes backup software that has been generally good for us. It is possible to do a full hard disk backup of a Windows XP hard drive while Windows XP is running. (This uses XP's Shadow Copy mode.
Slashdot also published a story I wrote about drive imaging software: Experiences w/ Drive Imaging Software?. Best sentence: "Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP have crippled file systems. The file system cannot copy some of the files that are necessary to the operating system. If you don't have experience with Microsoft operating systems, you may find this amazing..."
Windows XP keeps most of its settings in files collectively called the registry. So, no backup is complete unless you back up everything on the boot drive. MS tech support has told me many times that there is no way to do this with Microsoft tools. The recommend a "third party" method. We've tried the third party methods, and had a lot of grief with everthing except Acronis. Symantec has given us poor and unfriendly technical support, in my opinion. Symantec bought its competitor PowerQuest; I view that as a bad sign.
It is really, really miserable for me that Microsoft treats me, and every customer, as a criminal by building in copy protection that mixes all the programs and settings together; the copy protection causes me a lot of grief, and significantly damages the entire design of the OS. Linux is a very strong competitor in that area. Everyone is a friend of Linux, users are not criminals, and the OS design is not degra
The problem of not importing data happens when there are more than one user, and you happen to pick the wrong one.
In my case, inexplicably, I had two profiles: 1) Default User, and 2) Default. I picked the wrong one. After that, uninstalling FireFox and beginning again does not present the user with the same choices, so it becomes necessary to know where the files are located.
I've wasted several hours of my life looking for files when Mozilla or Mozilla FireFox have changed the folders where files are stored. (This has happened in the past, too.)
How not to waste the user's time: When changing directory structure, put a message on the web site with installation instructions so that anyone having problems can know what changes have been made in the folder and file structure. We also need to know what files to copy, and how to merge them.
Making changes without informing users is a Microsoft gig, and not one to imitate. (But Microsoft makes hidden, unwanted changes to network security, and that's a LOT worse.)
Maybe the bus drivers all have cell phones, already. They could program a
speed dial button for a voicemail answering system. When they arrive at a
stop, or a landmark, they could press a speed dial button and say, Bus 6
arriving at stop 17, [town name], [time].
If bus drivers don't have cell phones that work in the area, they would have to call from pay phones along the route. This would be convenient if they were stopped for a few minutes. It is possible
to buy inexpensive devices which play back a series of tones, so that the drivers would
not have to enter the digits by hand.
Bus riders would call the voicemail number, and hear the recorded messages.
The speed dial buttons would not only call the voicemail number, but also pick
a voicemail box, and erase the previous message. So, bus riders would choose
the voicemail box corresponding to their area.
The disadvantage of this is that some people might have to pay a toll charge
to call the voicemail system. The advantage is that the service might be close
to self-financing.
Some answering service systems have almost unlimited mailboxes, so other
messages of interest to the community could be programmed, also. For example,
a sign at the town hall could say, "If you want to know the location and date
of the next [town name] town meeting, choose voicemail box 230." Or, a sign
could say "Anyone wanting to know how Mrs. O'Leary of [town name] is doing in
the hospital, call voicemail box 1472, and enter access code 241."
People say good things about the free Asterisk telephone system software. Here's a
quote from the web site: "Asterisk provides Voicemail services with
Directory..." You would need only an old computer, since Linux and voice don't
require much CPU speed.
One computer could handle a very wide area, and many bus routes, I think,
because each message is very short.
Messages could be more detailed than just time and place. The bus driver could
say, "Stopping for unscheduled maintenance at [town name]. Running late about
one hour."
With considerable programming, people could leave their number to be called
when a bus arrives at a particular town just previous to theirs.
It didn't delete anything, probably. For Windows XP:
The data is still in the old installation folder. You need to copy the History.dat file, the Bookmarks.html file, and the formhistory.dat file to the new folder. After searching, I found that the old files were in:
Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Phoenix\
They must be copied to:
C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile s\default.uh4 >
The problem is that the FireFox people don't provide any installation instructions, and the installation sometimes fails to copy those files, and once installed, you cannot do the installation again.
As I said before: Clearly the FireFox team has some former Microsoft employees, because the team sometimes promotes frustration. Crazily, there is no way to import FireFox data, only a way to import IE and Netscape data.
On the other hand, Mozilla FireFox is certainly the best browser, if the best isn't Mozilla itself.
The old installation folders are needed to copy the History.dat file, the Bookmarks.html file, and the formhistory.dat file. After searching, I found that the old files were in:
Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Phoenix\
They must be copied to:
C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile
s\default.uh4 >
The problem is that the FireFox people don't provide any installation instructions, and the installation sometimes fails to copy those files, and once installed, you cannot do the installation again.
Possibly the FireFox team has some old Microsoft employees, because they sometimes promote frustration. Crazily, there is no way to import FireFox data, only a way to import IE and Netscape data.
On the other hand, Mozilla FireFox is certainly the best browser, if the best isn't Mozilla itself.
As usual, there are no installation tips, so everyone in the world wastes time if their history and bookmarks don't import correctly, as happened to me.
You are saying what I was saying. The government is starving the PTO of money.
How was what I said in the grandparent post a troll or flamebait? It is documented very well by links to articles at a university and at the Washington Post.
Was that a case of "I don't want to believe, so I will mod down?"
The EFF apparently does not realize that the crazy patents are caused by deliberate corruption. Not allowing enough money for an agency to do its
job is a deliberate strategy of those who want corruption in the U.S.
government. When corrupters don't want government oversight, they just reduce
the operating funds. Those who want corruption don't mind if they destroy a
thousand things to get one thing they want.
Those who want corruption will introduce bills that, if passed, would give the
EFF what it wants, with the secret understanding that the bills won't get
passed.
For a disussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping
the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.
They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes),
too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that
there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says
The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies that
have agreed to reduce the role of those agencies. When they have destroyed the agencies, they will go back to running their businesses, and the corruption will give them more profit.
For some people, lying is an art form. It's not just Microsoft; trying to get others to believe faulty views of reality is widespread in our society. For example, Enron, Tyco, and WordCom. Here's more, from the White House:
Clear Skies Initiative: A program to gut the Clean Air Act and substitute weaker anti-pollution regulations.
Economic Stimulus: Massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich that failed, in theory and practice, to stimulate.
Energy Security: The barely lessened dependence on Mideast oil to be achieved by drilling in U.S. national parks and wilderness preserves.
Free Speech: 1) The... right of pharmaceutical and other
companies to make exaggerated or false advertising claims for their
products, or 2) the right to raise and spend as much campaign money as
you want, in any way you want.
Healthy Forests Initiative: A policy of blaming forest fires
on "tree-hugging" environmentalists and letting logging companies cut
down the forests to save them.
The tour bus never left Redmond because it couldn't find it's drivers.
Today I experienced at least 10 occasions during re-installing Windows XP that XP could not find its drivers, even though they were in
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers
exactly where they should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft may have a difficult time with this lawsuit, because the drug dealer analogy came from Bill Gates:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
If Bill Gates compares his company to drug dealers, why can't a Brazilian official do so, too?
This is another marketing scheme by Microsoft employees to get Microsoft in the news and on Slashdot.
I certainly would never have known that a government official in Brazil compared Microsoft marketing people to "drug-dealers", if it weren't repeated in the quiet privacy of a Slashdot story.
Without a lawsuit, most Brazilians would never have heard what the official said. Now millions of Brazilians will know. What will be their reaction? Consider this. Less than two months after the September 11, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center, at the costume parties celebrating the Brazilian equivalent of Halloween, many Brazilians came as Osama bin Laden. Brazilians and people from other countries think that the U.S. government is arrogant and out of control. Since 3 movies and 35 books published in the U.S. say this too, it can be said that the feeling is strong. Microsoft's legal action will be seen as more arrogance from the United States, probably.
My guess is that it is likely that this new move by Microsoft will only help sell Bill Gates Halloween masks. It certainly won't help sell Microsoft products.
This is speculation, but it seems to have some validity. In the case of a RAID adapter that has an on-board CPU, the card might be able to recover from a power failure. The capacitors on the RAID adapter should hold enough energy for a few milliseconds of operation. During that time the adapter could write to non-volatile memory on the adapter enough information to know what data is lost and how it can be recovered.
Again, this is speculation, but RAID adapter cards that do not have on-board CPUs depend on the main CPU to assure data integrity. If they don't get attention from the main CPU when they need it, the data is corrupt.
It seems to me that power failures are somewhat rare. The real failure rate of RAID adapter cards with no on-board CPUs could be much higher if there are instances where the OS does not service the RAID adapter card in a timely fashion.
We've had trouble getting tech support for Promise equipment recently.
This is uncertain, but it seems that there is some bug in Windows XP which causes RAID cards that don't have their own CPUs to malfunction. According to a HighPoint technical support rep, the RAID adapter card does not get enough CPU time, and writing to the drives times out, breaking the RAID array. This fits with our experience.
Metapad is the best, fastest loading small editor I've found.
Here's a broad overview of all U.S. goverment corruption, from 3 movies (soon to be 4) and 35 books: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government. It definitely looks like you are right, things are not going well.
Two drive RAID 1 mirroring is good. We've had a lot of trouble recently getting tech support from Promise Technology, so we have switched to HighPoint RocketRAID 133 adapter cards.
These RAID cards use the main CPU, they don't have on-board microprocessors. This causes some problems in Windows XP when you have a script that runs at startup. Some commands in the script will sometimes cause the mirror to break, apparently. Apparently Microsoft has not integrated some of the CLI commands into Windows XP yet. This was such a big problem that I wrote a paper on it for Microsoft technical support: Windows XP problems: Port Re-direction.
If you are willing to spend a little more, a lot of people suggest 3Ware products: 7006-2 adapter cards, for example. We have no experience with them. They have a drawback, compared to HighPoint cards: They won't boot with just one drive, according to 3Ware technical support. After the drives are used in a mirror, they will not boot from the IDE adapter on the motherboard. This could be a big drawback if your 3Ware card is not working for some reason. Possibly 3Ware cards available in the future will not be incompatible, leaving you no way to get your data from the drives. If the card fails, you will at least have to buy another one to be able to see your data.
The advantage with 3Ware cards is that there is a CPU on the adapter, leaving no way for MS bugs to cause the mirror to break. That system is also faster, of course.
I wrote a Slashdot article about RAID 1: Mirroring Controllers - What have been Your Experiences?. Note that the Slashdot software has a bug that will not let you see all the comments in nested mode. That bug is years old.
Slashdot has run a number of articles from people who wrestle with the data reliability problem.
Acronis makes backup software that has been generally good for us. It is possible to do a full hard disk backup of a Windows XP hard drive while Windows XP is running. (This uses XP's Shadow Copy mode.
Slashdot also published a story I wrote about drive imaging software: Experiences w/ Drive Imaging Software?. Best sentence: "Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP have crippled file systems. The file system cannot copy some of the files that are necessary to the operating system. If you don't have experience with Microsoft operating systems, you may find this amazing..."
Windows XP keeps most of its settings in files collectively called the registry. So, no backup is complete unless you back up everything on the boot drive. MS tech support has told me many times that there is no way to do this with Microsoft tools. The recommend a "third party" method. We've tried the third party methods, and had a lot of grief with everthing except Acronis. Symantec has given us poor and unfriendly technical support, in my opinion. Symantec bought its competitor PowerQuest; I view that as a bad sign.
It is really, really miserable for me that Microsoft treats me, and every customer, as a criminal by building in copy protection that mixes all the programs and settings together; the copy protection causes me a lot of grief, and significantly damages the entire design of the OS. Linux is a very strong competitor in that area. Everyone is a friend of Linux, users are not criminals, and the OS design is not degra
I'd like that, too.
The problem of not importing data happens when there are more than one user, and you happen to pick the wrong one.
In my case, inexplicably, I had two profiles: 1) Default User, and 2) Default. I picked the wrong one. After that, uninstalling FireFox and beginning again does not present the user with the same choices, so it becomes necessary to know where the files are located.
I've wasted several hours of my life looking for files when Mozilla or Mozilla FireFox have changed the folders where files are stored. (This has happened in the past, too.)
How not to waste the user's time: When changing directory structure, put a message on the web site with installation instructions so that anyone having problems can know what changes have been made in the folder and file structure. We also need to know what files to copy, and how to merge them.
Making changes without informing users is a Microsoft gig, and not one to imitate. (But Microsoft makes hidden, unwanted changes to network security, and that's a LOT worse.)
A suggestion:
Maybe the bus drivers all have cell phones, already. They could program a speed dial button for a voicemail answering system. When they arrive at a stop, or a landmark, they could press a speed dial button and say, Bus 6 arriving at stop 17, [town name], [time].
If bus drivers don't have cell phones that work in the area, they would have to call from pay phones along the route. This would be convenient if they were stopped for a few minutes. It is possible to buy inexpensive devices which play back a series of tones, so that the drivers would not have to enter the digits by hand.
Bus riders would call the voicemail number, and hear the recorded messages. The speed dial buttons would not only call the voicemail number, but also pick a voicemail box, and erase the previous message. So, bus riders would choose the voicemail box corresponding to their area.
The disadvantage of this is that some people might have to pay a toll charge to call the voicemail system. The advantage is that the service might be close to self-financing.
Some answering service systems have almost unlimited mailboxes, so other messages of interest to the community could be programmed, also. For example, a sign at the town hall could say, "If you want to know the location and date of the next [town name] town meeting, choose voicemail box 230." Or, a sign could say "Anyone wanting to know how Mrs. O'Leary of [town name] is doing in the hospital, call voicemail box 1472, and enter access code 241."
People say good things about the free Asterisk telephone system software. Here's a quote from the web site: "Asterisk provides Voicemail services with Directory..." You would need only an old computer, since Linux and voice don't require much CPU speed.
One computer could handle a very wide area, and many bus routes, I think, because each message is very short.
Messages could be more detailed than just time and place. The bus driver could say, "Stopping for unscheduled maintenance at [town name]. Running late about one hour."
With considerable programming, people could leave their number to be called when a bus arrives at a particular town just previous to theirs.
I have only a prefs.js, no user.js.
Thoughts?
It didn't delete anything, probably. For Windows XP:
The data is still in the old installation folder. You need to copy the History.dat file, the Bookmarks.html file, and the formhistory.dat file to the new folder. After searching, I found that the old files were in:
Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Phoenix\
They must be copied to:
C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile s\default.uh4 >
The problem is that the FireFox people don't provide any installation instructions, and the installation sometimes fails to copy those files, and once installed, you cannot do the installation again.
As I said before: Clearly the FireFox team has some former Microsoft employees, because the team sometimes promotes frustration. Crazily, there is no way to import FireFox data, only a way to import IE and Netscape data.
On the other hand, Mozilla FireFox is certainly the best browser, if the best isn't Mozilla itself.
Domain forwarding problems: Try History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.
Mailinator is: http://www.mailinator.net/mailinator/Welcome.do
The old installation folders are needed to copy the History.dat file, the Bookmarks.html file, and the formhistory.dat file. After searching, I found that the old files were in:
Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Phoenix\
They must be copied to:
C:\Documents and Settings\MyLoginName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile s\default.uh4 >
The problem is that the FireFox people don't provide any installation instructions, and the installation sometimes fails to copy those files, and once installed, you cannot do the installation again.
Possibly the FireFox team has some old Microsoft employees, because they sometimes promote frustration. Crazily, there is no way to import FireFox data, only a way to import IE and Netscape data.
On the other hand, Mozilla FireFox is certainly the best browser, if the best isn't Mozilla itself.
As usual, there are no installation tips, so everyone in the world wastes time if their history and bookmarks don't import correctly, as happened to me.
0.9 has NOT been released. Only the release candidate is available, which I've been using for the last two days, and seems okay.
I changed the beginning of the article considerably because of what you said. Thanks.
Did you check Google News? There are many publications reporting the same thing. For example, the article Senator Objects To Secrecy Of Voter List tell part of the story.
Is your post a case of "I don't like the news, therefore I will make a vague attack on the source?"
Okay, trying again. The other link is slashdotted?
There's so much material about conflict of interest in the Bush administration that it's difficult to make even a summary: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Three movies and 34 recently published books should be news.
There's so much material about conflict of interest in the Bush administration that it's difficult to make even a summary: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Three movies and 34 recently published books should be news.
You are saying what I was saying. The government is starving the PTO of money.
How was what I said in the grandparent post a troll or flamebait? It is documented very well by links to articles at a university and at the Washington Post.
Was that a case of "I don't want to believe, so I will mod down?"
The EFF apparently does not realize that the crazy patents are caused by deliberate corruption. Not allowing enough money for an agency to do its job is a deliberate strategy of those who want corruption in the U.S. government. When corrupters don't want government oversight, they just reduce the operating funds. Those who want corruption don't mind if they destroy a thousand things to get one thing they want.
Those who want corruption will introduce bills that, if passed, would give the EFF what it wants, with the secret understanding that the bills won't get passed.
For a disussion of starving the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regulates the stock exchange), see this article: Keeping the SEC on a Starvation Diet. The corrupters don't want their stock manipulations discovered. They want more of this: Enron fraud, this: WorldCom fraud and this: Tyco fraud.
They are corrupting the IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service, collects taxes), too. The corrupters definitely do NOT want their tax returns to be audited, so they arrange that there is not enough money for audits: Bush Request for IRS Not Enough, Report Says
The Bush administration has been appointing heads of government agencies that have agreed to reduce the role of those agencies. When they have destroyed the agencies, they will go back to running their businesses, and the corruption will give them more profit.
This is all part of extremely widespread corruption in the U.S. government. Even the 3 movies and 34 books linked in this article are not enough to tell the story: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
For some people, lying is an art form. It's not just Microsoft; trying to get others to believe faulty views of reality is widespread in our society. For example, Enron, Tyco, and WordCom. Here's more, from the White House:
Got Lies? There's more documented here: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government
The tour bus never left Redmond because it couldn't find it's drivers.
Today I experienced at least 10 occasions during re-installing Windows XP that XP could not find its drivers, even though they were in
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers
exactly where they should be.