Come on, folks, we have to come together and save Brian Adams' career -- he's losing Canadian money because we're downl...um, uploading his high quality, well-thought-out, lyrically astounding, musically amazing records instead of purchasing them for the more-than-fair price they are being sold for.
Seriously, though, if you want to play this game well, someone should make a truly anonymous P2P network. That's where the arms race is. Until then, we've got to weather these storms and face the consequences for distributing illegally copyrighted material.
Most folks think spam when it comes to large wireless networks. I'm thinking P2P -- it'll be a bit tougher to trace shared music across a public wireless network than it would be on someone's home DSL connection.
Of course this could also be a haven for computers that don't have the latest patches, have print/file sharing enabled, and don't have personal firewalls activated. For those who want to run in this, be careful.
It's very very tempting to have a bunch of friends drive around with portable microwaves and cellphones as a new means of DDoSing the city. Anyone know off-hand where the access points are? I kid, I kid!
It's interesting and convenient, but also gets me a bit paranoid. Those who read the BOFH articles would remember the bit where they used 802.11 to do thinks from changing their calendars on the fly to tracking down where in the building the boss is. Wonder if you can triangulate signal strength, etc. to pinpoint where a particular MAC is at any given time.
SUN -- are you doing Solaris or are you doing Linux? Is the Java Desktop going to migrate from Linux to being Solaris-based? Why not do SUNBSD while you're at it?
At the end of the day, I'm sure I'm asking what most of their investors probably are too -- SUN, where are you going with all of this?
"diplomats, most of whom know little about the technical aspects, are deciding in a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the Internet."
Doesn't this pretty much describe just about every IT department known to man? PHBs and suits making uneducated decisions on how things will run based on buzzwords, corporate kickbacks, and their own job security while those who DO know what they're doing get ignored or brushed aside.
I've got a best-buy related question for you, then. A while back, I was looking for a wireless card to use on my Linux desktop and asked someone at Best Buy -- I was instructed to instead get a LAN Bridge (considerably costing more) for compatibility issues. Says messing around with drivers is a horrible experience.
Then when I was on the market for my laptop, I asked one of them if an HP (P4, etc. )they had would run Linux. The guy said it would be way too slow to be usable, that if I wanted to even DARE run Linux, I should get Alienware. He says they all run Linux servers on their Alienware laptops but it's still too slow. (after I corrected him and said I didn't want to run a server). Said if I don't like XP, I should try XP Pro! "Um, I already don't like the fact that I'm paying for XP...why would I want to shell out more for Pro?" It's not that much, he says and blathered on. Oh, and he mentioned that Bill Gates bought out Linux and that in a year, we wouldn't even be talking about it. That was half a year ago or so.
The question then is: do Best Buy employees get coached into that kind of stuff? As far as Billy buying Linux, I highly doubt that's even possible...but he's got another half a year.;-)
As for me, I got a Dell 5160. Works juuuust fine.:)
Lend me your ears! I have come to bury Windows 98 Not to praise it...hell, who would?
For a lot of people, though, (me included) Win98 is the only Windows-based OS I do own. I bought my PC in that general era -- not even 98SE. If nothing else, I use my copy to restore my machines since I'm not about to fork over more cashage for XP. If this means no more windows update for 98, is MS then pretty much going "screw you. upgrade..." again? This isn't really compliance but a marketing ploy.
As for me, linux distros are highly available...and they're a lot more stable and easier to install than that old Windows 98 with 15 reboots and scattered drivers. It also generally works well with the hardware I bought back then.
On a semi-related note, an ol' boss of mine enlightened me as to the proper use of the "Reset" button on a web form I was creating. That proper use was to get it as far away from the submit button as possible, if not get rid of it.
If nothing else, people have a tendency to get click-happy and accidentally hit reset, therefore aggravating your users. I was younger and naive enough to believe users are more advanced but complied by getting rid of the reset button. I've grown older and more bitter since then.
Someone pass me a lart.
Re:Biggest PC annoyance...
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 1
I've come to the conclusion that most new users get zombified when they sit in front of a computer. This is most evident when they look at a browser on a search engine or any web form for that matter.
I see a lot of "look, a box! I must fill it with information." Then they fail to read what information is required. They type URLS in search boxes, search texts in the address bar (thanks to default searches and autocomplete, people get dumbed down again), and keying in misc. information otherwise.
I've been a part of 2-hour E-mail classes where a vast majority of the time was spent filling in the forms at yahoo because users don't read what is required. "It's not taking it" "well what does it say?" "I don't know" -- at which point I walk over there and read the error message to them and explain that passwords need to be n characters long. Then they go to the USER NAME box and change that! Why? I have no frickin' idea.
Somewhere in the classes that involve Internet use, I strongly emphasize that they READ. Unfortunately, they've found it easier to ask for help rather than figure things out for themselves.
Re:Biggest PC annoyance...
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 5, Funny
More example comments: Caps Lock...hit Caps Lock. It's not on the screen, it's on your keyboard. On top of 7. No, not F5!
You can't do research on antarctica by typing "www.antara.com" on the SEARCH ENGINE BOX. It also helps if you spell it right.
Just because we restrict right-clicking doesn't mean you can't paste. Click on edit, then paste...or hit ctrl+v -- on your keyboard. ON YOUR KEYBOARD. Dude, off the mouse!!!
Ah, users. Truly the biggest PC annoyance (and amusement) ever made.
You may not have a NEED for the actual book but there's always going to be people who prefer a hardcopy of something. There's something about having to wait for something to boot, fire up a reader, then scroll or click through pages that could possibly turn off a few users.
I know it's an overused cliche but I'll use it anyway -- it's a bit cumbersome to sit under a tree for hours reading from a laptop. Books should always be a cool thing.
Wonder if this is yet another argument to open sourcing critical projects so many more people can watch and debug it. I know, I know -- lots of vulns found on OSS lately, but I'd still rather trust systems where I can see the code if I needed to do so.
While I'm at it, how many SCO stocks did it manage to fsck up?
Plain "Security" is a matter of rm -rf/home/rsmith/
When Mr. Smith stops storing sensitive information on his home directory, things get so much easier to secure.
Remember, it's at least a triangle: security, availability, and redundancy. The goal is to strike a balance between the three. If you only want security, smash the machine, the drives, and the backups. Very secure as NOBODY can get to it.
On the other hand, real security has to balance with availability and redundancy.
In the public library I work at, the offloading of books goes to the "Friends of the Library" group which seems to handle a bit of the funding (the parts that don't come from government, that is) They'd have a local monthly book sale for anything they can't/don't keep, then redistribute the funds for the betterment of the library. Modernizing machinery, billboards, supplies for the children's section, etc.
From what I know of the members of the "Friends" where I'm at, they're not very computer savvy, and I'm not sure how they'd handle maintaining stuff with e-bay and amazon. Also, while it seems like a good marketplace, there's the additional burden of storage space. How long do you keep an item for sale before you realize it won't get bought and should be "recycled" instead? On a local sale, it's easier to decide. With a global audience, people tend to wait out a bit longer than they should.
In the long run, though, any good way to raise funds for local libraries is a welcome thought. Oh...and visit your local library.:)
There's no way this isn't going to sound like an absolute fanboy post but oh well -- how cool is this guy? Doesn't seem at all smug, great sense of humor, and not afraid to tell the world he's got a turkey affinity...not to mention some freudian obsession with beavers all of a sudden. He seems more people-esque instead of acting like a mega-deity (which he is), which is awesome.
Man, if I had my choice in operating systems, I'd want this guy coding it! Oh wait, I do...and sure enough, he does./me fades into the background while doing the "We're not worthy!" chant.
Netcraft reports using a Compaq Tru64 OS but does run apache and PHP. So any lawsuits probably won't involve Linux...but Darl may chewbacca-defense his way into claiming that the Catholic Church is infringing on his IP of a one-true-God...which he believes to be himself.
Netcraft link to vatican.va: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/? host=www.vati can.va
It's a fun and interesting project to come up with a blog-like set of scripts. There's a lot out there that do way more than you care for it to do, and there's always the satisfaction of having created one yourself.
A few caveats, I suppose -- make sure you're up on security when it comes to scripting. The last thing you need is for a gift site to be defaced because you messed up on a SQL-injection vuln.
Then there's the "idiot-proofing" portion where you have to come up with a coherent enough UI for the computer-unsavvy folks to work with on the backend. I decided I'd write my own and since it's for myself, I could get away with a not-so-friendly interface as long as the outside world could navigate through what they need to.
I'm all for a DIY project -- you get to have a bit of fun (though some of it is tedious in debugging and fixing aesthetics) but it could present not only a gift for your family but also a bit of a mental gift for yourself having gone through it.
With 210MB HD, 4MB RAM, and a whopping 25MHz chip. It ran DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1
It made computing a VERY VERY personal experience and taught me patience and anger-management...and the first real appropriate usage of colorful 4-letter words.
I will attest to that statement on the old Apple II machines and its BASIC interpreter, though. It did introduce me to programming. My favorite book at the time was something called "Kids and The Apple" which featured lots of BASIC code samples. If it were a list of the top 10 life-changing PCs, the old Apple II would get my vote as #1.
Well, can't use "Pink Tie" if I recall correctly, as that's what cheapbytes used to sell what would have otherwise been a Red Hat distro.
How about calling it "The Distro Formerly Known as Red Hat Linux for Consumers?" -- or "|" for short? Instant recognition from avid *nix users...yet geeky enough to separate the "in-crowd" from the strictly-windows folks.
The ironic thing about this is that Fedora is supposed to be the community edition of Red Hat Linux (so the PR wants us to imagine as opposed to bluntly being beta testers of RHE) -- it really isn't good press to be creating negative buzz in the community.
That said, I'm running a downloaded version of RH9 and wondering how things will go from there.
"It was developed by a company called Beijing E-World Technology Co. Ltd. using video-compression technologies licensed by On2 Technologies, an American company."
At quick glance, the license doesn't seem "open" which means you'll end up with another controlling factor one way or another...and someone will have to come up and battle with a different version of deCSS. If that is the case, it can't be good.
Secondly, DVD has a heck of a market share. I suppose if anything has a population to take a chunk out of market share, it would be China. However, from observation, it would be difficult to budge the hold that DVD currently has.
I'm thinking along the lines of Ogg Vorbis vs. MP3 -- with Ogg being free (though I'm not sure the EVD will be a free format) and MP3 having the market share. Ogg may have crept up in terms of getting hardware/software support, but it's still not dislodging the majority of MP3 users even though it's of a higher technical quality.
I suppose any disruptive technology to run interference on DVD would be a Good Thing(TM)
Re:Sweet! More SCO news!
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 3, Funny
SCO vs. IBM Nintendo game? Of course not! It'll be a fighting game from Namco based on the Soulcalibur engine. All platforms will feature Boies (Finishing Move: Briefcase Bash), McBribe (Finishing Moves: Lying Bastard, Pump-And-Dump), Gates (Moves include: Trustworthy Backstab, The Monopolizer), McNeely (The Rising Sun, Big-Iron Swing), Szulik (Fedora Drop), and all the prominent players in the real game. Of course you'll have distro mascots in there, too, from Suse (Lizard Tongue), Mandrake (Resurrection Club), and even some agent-like dude with a red hat (Enterprise-Only Chop).
Then there are the special characters exclusive to each platform:
PS2: Linus (The Kernel Hack) and Tove (Royal Ass-Kicking) X-Box: Stallman (The Hacker Song) and ESR (Bazaar Twist) Cube: A Gnome (Foot Stomp) and the Ximian Monkey dude (The Evolutioner).
And then maybe on a non-US release version, Alan Cox (DMCA Twister) can show up as an unlockable.
Paying in stock options seems like it would give lawyers more motivation to keep the stock value up. If they were paid in cold-hard-cash, they would have less to lose should (when) the case flops. If nothing else, it looks like the lawyers money.location() == mouth.location();
hmm, wonder if SCO owned THAT code, too. From how they're acting, probably not.
Now as far as admitting they're chasing their own customers away with their actions, are they really going to make this one final stand based on IP rights? Man, what a business model to work with. 8Q However, if it is indeed their last stand, it can only get uglier/funnier from here.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, folks, we have to come together and save Brian Adams' career -- he's losing Canadian money because we're downl...um, uploading his high quality, well-thought-out, lyrically astounding, musically amazing records instead of purchasing them for the more-than-fair price they are being sold for.
Seriously, though, if you want to play this game well, someone should make a truly anonymous P2P network. That's where the arms race is. Until then, we've got to weather these storms and face the consequences for distributing illegally copyrighted material.
Is that in singles, tens, and twenties? Imagine a beowulf cluster of trucks carrying that amount of money!
I guess cash as opposed to...like SCO stock, right? Or maybe two Kirk Gibsons and a PB&J sandwich?
Or maybe a company to be named later?
Most folks think spam when it comes to large wireless networks. I'm thinking P2P -- it'll be a bit tougher to trace shared music across a public wireless network than it would be on someone's home DSL connection.
Of course this could also be a haven for computers that don't have the latest patches, have print/file sharing enabled, and don't have personal firewalls activated. For those who want to run in this, be careful.
"Hello! Hello, McBride!!! Anybody home?"
Well, it's more Biff Tannen, but it's a descendant of Mad Dog.
Other Mad Dog quotes:
"We have ourselves a new court house, high time we had a hanging!"
"What's wrong dude, you yellow?"
And perhaps the most appropriate:
"I hate manure!"
It's very very tempting to have a bunch of friends drive around with portable microwaves and cellphones as a new means of DDoSing the city. Anyone know off-hand where the access points are? I kid, I kid!
It's interesting and convenient, but also gets me a bit paranoid. Those who read the BOFH articles would remember the bit where they used 802.11 to do thinks from changing their calendars on the fly to tracking down where in the building the boss is. Wonder if you can triangulate signal strength, etc. to pinpoint where a particular MAC is at any given time.
SUN -- are you doing Solaris or are you doing Linux? Is the Java Desktop going to migrate from Linux to being Solaris-based? Why not do SUNBSD while you're at it?
At the end of the day, I'm sure I'm asking what most of their investors probably are too -- SUN, where are you going with all of this?
"diplomats, most of whom know little about the technical aspects, are deciding in a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the Internet."
Doesn't this pretty much describe just about every IT department known to man? PHBs and suits making uneducated decisions on how things will run based on buzzwords, corporate kickbacks, and their own job security while those who DO know what they're doing get ignored or brushed aside.
Welcome to IT, dude.
I've got a best-buy related question for you, then. A while back, I was looking for a wireless card to use on my Linux desktop and asked someone at Best Buy -- I was instructed to instead get a LAN Bridge (considerably costing more) for compatibility issues. Says messing around with drivers is a horrible experience.
;-)
:)
Then when I was on the market for my laptop, I asked one of them if an HP (P4, etc. )they had would run Linux. The guy said it would be way too slow to be usable, that if I wanted to even DARE run Linux, I should get Alienware. He says they all run Linux servers on their Alienware laptops but it's still too slow. (after I corrected him and said I didn't want to run a server). Said if I don't like XP, I should try XP Pro! "Um, I already don't like the fact that I'm paying for XP...why would I want to shell out more for Pro?" It's not that much, he says and blathered on. Oh, and he mentioned that Bill Gates bought out Linux and that in a year, we wouldn't even be talking about it. That was half a year ago or so.
The question then is: do Best Buy employees get coached into that kind of stuff? As far as Billy buying Linux, I highly doubt that's even possible...but he's got another half a year.
As for me, I got a Dell 5160. Works juuuust fine.
Lend me your ears!
I have come to bury Windows 98
Not to praise it...hell, who would?
For a lot of people, though, (me included) Win98 is the only Windows-based OS I do own. I bought my PC in that general era -- not even 98SE. If nothing else, I use my copy to restore my machines since I'm not about to fork over more cashage for XP. If this means no more windows update for 98, is MS then pretty much going "screw you. upgrade..." again? This isn't really compliance but a marketing ploy.
As for me, linux distros are highly available...and they're a lot more stable and easier to install than that old Windows 98 with 15 reboots and scattered drivers. It also generally works well with the hardware I bought back then.
On a semi-related note, an ol' boss of mine enlightened me as to the proper use of the "Reset" button on a web form I was creating. That proper use was to get it as far away from the submit button as possible, if not get rid of it.
If nothing else, people have a tendency to get click-happy and accidentally hit reset, therefore aggravating your users. I was younger and naive enough to believe users are more advanced but complied by getting rid of the reset button. I've grown older and more bitter since then.
Someone pass me a lart.
I've come to the conclusion that most new users get zombified when they sit in front of a computer. This is most evident when they look at a browser on a search engine or any web form for that matter.
I see a lot of "look, a box! I must fill it with information." Then they fail to read what information is required. They type URLS in search boxes, search texts in the address bar (thanks to default searches and autocomplete, people get dumbed down again), and keying in misc. information otherwise.
I've been a part of 2-hour E-mail classes where a vast majority of the time was spent filling in the forms at yahoo because users don't read what is required. "It's not taking it" "well what does it say?" "I don't know" -- at which point I walk over there and read the error message to them and explain that passwords need to be n characters long. Then they go to the USER NAME box and change that! Why? I have no frickin' idea.
Somewhere in the classes that involve Internet use, I strongly emphasize that they READ. Unfortunately, they've found it easier to ask for help rather than figure things out for themselves.
More example comments:
Caps Lock...hit Caps Lock. It's not on the screen, it's on your keyboard. On top of 7. No, not F5!
You can't do research on antarctica by typing "www.antara.com" on the SEARCH ENGINE BOX. It also helps if you spell it right.
Just because we restrict right-clicking doesn't mean you can't paste. Click on edit, then paste...or hit ctrl+v -- on your keyboard. ON YOUR KEYBOARD. Dude, off the mouse!!!
Ah, users. Truly the biggest PC annoyance (and amusement) ever made.
You may not have a NEED for the actual book but there's always going to be people who prefer a hardcopy of something. There's something about having to wait for something to boot, fire up a reader, then scroll or click through pages that could possibly turn off a few users.
I know it's an overused cliche but I'll use it anyway -- it's a bit cumbersome to sit under a tree for hours reading from a laptop. Books should always be a cool thing.
Wonder if this is yet another argument to open sourcing critical projects so many more people can watch and debug it. I know, I know -- lots of vulns found on OSS lately, but I'd still rather trust systems where I can see the code if I needed to do so.
While I'm at it, how many SCO stocks did it manage to fsck up?
Plain "Security" is a matter of rm -rf /home/rsmith/
When Mr. Smith stops storing sensitive information on his home directory, things get so much easier to secure.
Remember, it's at least a triangle: security, availability, and redundancy. The goal is to strike a balance between the three. If you only want security, smash the machine, the drives, and the backups. Very secure as NOBODY can get to it.
On the other hand, real security has to balance with availability and redundancy.
In the public library I work at, the offloading of books goes to the "Friends of the Library" group which seems to handle a bit of the funding (the parts that don't come from government, that is) They'd have a local monthly book sale for anything they can't/don't keep, then redistribute the funds for the betterment of the library. Modernizing machinery, billboards, supplies for the children's section, etc.
:)
From what I know of the members of the "Friends" where I'm at, they're not very computer savvy, and I'm not sure how they'd handle maintaining stuff with e-bay and amazon. Also, while it seems like a good marketplace, there's the additional burden of storage space. How long do you keep an item for sale before you realize it won't get bought and should be "recycled" instead? On a local sale, it's easier to decide. With a global audience, people tend to wait out a bit longer than they should.
In the long run, though, any good way to raise funds for local libraries is a welcome thought. Oh...and visit your local library.
There's no way this isn't going to sound like an absolute fanboy post but oh well -- how cool is this guy? Doesn't seem at all smug, great sense of humor, and not afraid to tell the world he's got a turkey affinity...not to mention some freudian obsession with beavers all of a sudden. He seems more people-esque instead of acting like a mega-deity (which he is), which is awesome.
/me fades into the background while doing the "We're not worthy!" chant.
Man, if I had my choice in operating systems, I'd want this guy coding it! Oh wait, I do...and sure enough, he does.
Netcraft reports using a Compaq Tru64 OS but does run apache and PHP. So any lawsuits probably won't involve Linux...but Darl may chewbacca-defense his way into claiming that the Catholic Church is infringing on his IP of a one-true-God...which he believes to be himself.
? host=www.vati can.va
Netcraft link to vatican.va:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/
It's a fun and interesting project to come up with a blog-like set of scripts. There's a lot out there that do way more than you care for it to do, and there's always the satisfaction of having created one yourself.
A few caveats, I suppose -- make sure you're up on security when it comes to scripting. The last thing you need is for a gift site to be defaced because you messed up on a SQL-injection vuln.
Then there's the "idiot-proofing" portion where you have to come up with a coherent enough UI for the computer-unsavvy folks to work with on the backend. I decided I'd write my own and since it's for myself, I could get away with a not-so-friendly interface as long as the outside world could navigate through what they need to.
I'm all for a DIY project -- you get to have a bit of fun (though some of it is tedious in debugging and fixing aesthetics) but it could present not only a gift for your family but also a bit of a mental gift for yourself having gone through it.
With 210MB HD, 4MB RAM, and a whopping 25MHz chip. It ran DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1
It made computing a VERY VERY personal experience and taught me patience and anger-management...and the first real appropriate usage of colorful 4-letter words.
I will attest to that statement on the old Apple II machines and its BASIC interpreter, though. It did introduce me to programming. My favorite book at the time was something called "Kids and The Apple" which featured lots of BASIC code samples. If it were a list of the top 10 life-changing PCs, the old Apple II would get my vote as #1.
Dude, the best thing about analysts is that if you don't like what they're saying, you can always migrate to a different group.
Well, can't use "Pink Tie" if I recall correctly, as that's what cheapbytes used to sell what would have otherwise been a Red Hat distro.
How about calling it "The Distro Formerly Known as Red Hat Linux for Consumers?" -- or "|" for short? Instant recognition from avid *nix users...yet geeky enough to separate the "in-crowd" from the strictly-windows folks.
The ironic thing about this is that Fedora is supposed to be the community edition of Red Hat Linux (so the PR wants us to imagine as opposed to bluntly being beta testers of RHE) -- it really isn't good press to be creating negative buzz in the community.
That said, I'm running a downloaded version of RH9 and wondering how things will go from there.
"It was developed by a company called Beijing E-World Technology Co. Ltd. using video-compression technologies licensed by On2 Technologies, an American company."
At quick glance, the license doesn't seem "open" which means you'll end up with another controlling factor one way or another...and someone will have to come up and battle with a different version of deCSS. If that is the case, it can't be good.
Secondly, DVD has a heck of a market share. I suppose if anything has a population to take a chunk out of market share, it would be China. However, from observation, it would be difficult to budge the hold that DVD currently has.
I'm thinking along the lines of Ogg Vorbis vs. MP3 -- with Ogg being free (though I'm not sure the EVD will be a free format) and MP3 having the market share. Ogg may have crept up in terms of getting hardware/software support, but it's still not dislodging the majority of MP3 users even though it's of a higher technical quality.
I suppose any disruptive technology to run interference on DVD would be a Good Thing(TM)
SCO vs. IBM Nintendo game? Of course not! It'll be a fighting game from Namco based on the Soulcalibur engine. All platforms will feature Boies (Finishing Move: Briefcase Bash), McBribe (Finishing Moves: Lying Bastard, Pump-And-Dump), Gates (Moves include: Trustworthy Backstab, The Monopolizer), McNeely (The Rising Sun, Big-Iron Swing), Szulik (Fedora Drop), and all the prominent players in the real game. Of course you'll have distro mascots in there, too, from Suse (Lizard Tongue), Mandrake (Resurrection Club), and even some agent-like dude with a red hat (Enterprise-Only Chop).
Then there are the special characters exclusive to each platform:
PS2: Linus (The Kernel Hack) and Tove (Royal Ass-Kicking)
X-Box: Stallman (The Hacker Song) and ESR (Bazaar Twist)
Cube: A Gnome (Foot Stomp) and the Ximian Monkey dude (The Evolutioner).
And then maybe on a non-US release version, Alan Cox (DMCA Twister) can show up as an unlockable.
Paying in stock options seems like it would give lawyers more motivation to keep the stock value up. If they were paid in cold-hard-cash, they would have less to lose should (when) the case flops. If nothing else, it looks like the lawyers money.location() == mouth.location();
hmm, wonder if SCO owned THAT code, too. From how they're acting, probably not.
Now as far as admitting they're chasing their own customers away with their actions, are they really going to make this one final stand based on IP rights? Man, what a business model to work with. 8Q However, if it is indeed their last stand, it can only get uglier/funnier from here.