Just because some beaurocrat didn't reverse an earlier decisions does not mean they made the right one,
all it menas is they're unwilling to admit they made the wrong one.
OK.. I'm pro-LINUX, wish them all the best and think they'll be happy with LINUX, I'm just waiting for a better
indicator than that to 'prove' that LINUX is the right choice (and so will a lot of other cynics out there).
By your reasoning Microsoft must be the better choice because, for the moment, more people are sticking with it
rather than go to LINUX.
I have entered the atmosphere, surrounded by ionized gas which shields radio waves, and everything is OK. Hello, is this thing on????
I have started bouncing. Good thing my radio is strong enough to not need a directional antenna, 'cos I'm obviously not about to deploy one while I'm bouncing
I have stopped bouncing. Now all I have to do is deflate the airbags and hope they don't foul the various mechanisms (remember sojourner almost got stuck that way?) needed to deploy the antenna to send radio signals.
You're assuming strength = O(2**n) (strength of cypher varies with 2 to the power of the number of bits in the key).
I don't believe asymetric cyphers behave this way, and I though I read once that some cyphers are O(4*n) (i.e. adding one bit makes it 4 times harder to crack (larger keyspace AND more complex problem) rather than twice as hard to crack (i.e. O(2**n)).
It's generally accepted that ANY cryptography will eventually be broken, it's just amatter of putting that point far enough in th efuture so you don't care anymore (any PC today can easily brute-force ENIGMA and determine where the German submarine wolfpacks are, but it's a little late to do anyone any good:-)
Educate the users????
Are you insane?
If you do that, they might start to ask questions about
"whose rights is DRM protecting anyway" or
"who is being asked to trust whom" in "trusted computing", or even
How much foes this "free" internet connection actually cost?
Big companies have a LOT to gain from an ignorant consumer base. Competing on the quality of your marketing department is MUCH easier than competing on the quality of your PRODUCT.
</rant>
Found a neat way around the problem though, I use a text mailer (pine or mutt).
99.9% of emails come through just fine, the other.1% I'm probably better of not reading anyway:-)
oh, and add a link to http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachment s.html to your.sig
1 Unleash vigilante justice on spammers One activist has proposed filters that launch distributed denial-of-service attacks back at spammers. Great. Just make sure we have the right IP addresses first.
What does nailing their tounges to fast-growing trees have to to with IP addresses?
7 Demand truth in advertising for software updatesC'mon, AOL 9.0 is really AOL 8.0 with the version number increased 1.0.
How about "Demand truth in advertising." ? I've been drinking <beverage> for years and I'm yet to be attacked to bikini-clad supermodels!
8 Declare spammers are terroristsAnd put Ashcroft, Ridge, and Rumsfeld on their tails.
That's not fair! If the US govt is going to go after them as terrorists, they should at least train them first like they do to all the other terrirists out there.
14 Dump the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
If you're going to do that then it's only fair to re-inburse all the people who bought it. I'll chip in!!
Your stupid DRM laws won't apply to us, the rest of the World
I wish it were so, but America's stupid just-about-everything-else (including the "war on freedom^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hterror) does seem to apply
to Australia (i.e. me) for some reason.
firstly, your 'company phone' might be for out-of-hours access (sys-admin anyone?), so even though you carry it, it's no-ones busines wherer you are.
Secondly, if you __REALLY__ believe that crusty old line about "only those who have something to hide should be worried " then either
copy all your bank-statements, credit card invoices and results of medicals on your personal homepage or stop making fun
of my AFDB.
Even simpler.
Mbr>
Your phone monitors the closest few base stations. It keeps a __VERY__ accurate time-check with then to enable the TDMA (time-division-multiple-access) to work.
Ever leave your phone next to the car radio when you're driving? ever notice how on exactly the same spot (usually a traffic light) the phone blurts out some crud for the radio to pick up?
Why be so insaneley precise? BILLING INFORMATION!!! adjacent zones may be billed differently, so they have to keep track of you, else they might loose some money (i.e. they could be billing you for one zone when you can prove you were in another one and demand a refund).
ALL things are possible. The ones that pay enough are implemented.
The title you chose for suggest that lack of Support is what kills Open Source.
Then the comment goes on to explain how lack of a scapegoat is what's killing it.
Seems that a revamp of the old saying about IBM: "no one ever got fired for buying <insert monopoly of the day>".
After all, if <insert monopoly of the day> is wrong then the majority must be wrong, and that leads to all sorts of inconvenient questions about the emporers (lack of) attire.
What makes you thing you'll have a choice by 2005 about upgrading Windows?
Between licensing, EOL-ing, DRM-disabled hardware, selectivley providing security patches and buying laws that will
brand you a terrorist if you don't upgrade I suspect more people
be using longhorn than you think.
For one.... every new computer purchased. Think about it, not that they're no longer supproting 2 streams of OS
(9x and NT) how much easier is it going to be
to pull the plug on XP (or whatever) when the time comes to 'encourage' people to upgrade?
Want that new 3D graphics card? Sorry, the only digitally signed DHS-approved certified terrorist-free MPAA-approved drivers available are for longhorn!
True, but I'm not sure Microsoft would bother doing this.
Option 1: break out the old NT4 source, mangle it, build, test, release
Result: Happy NT4-based customers who have one fewer reason to ditch NT4.
Option 2: Dear %user%, thank you for your letter about %subject%. It seems you are not running the latest Windows.
Please upgrade and all will be well.
Result: Another hamster on the upgrade-treadmill powering Microsoft along.
If you were Microsoft, which of these would be more apealing to you?
How long before SOAP-tunneled VPN's will be activated by default on Windows if these ports are closed?
The only reason these prots are a problem is because the user-friendly vs secure tradeoff always comes down to
"let's make it really user firendly and blame the users and evil hackers if that makes it insecure".
</rant>
I agree with much of what you're saying. Let me give you a laymans view though:
My sister has been running Win95 on her old box for years. I recently told her that this was EOL-ed and that,
in order to be protected from future worms/viruses, she would have to upgrade. To what?
LINUX? Not really an option (much as I love LINUX) until she can click on a.ppt or.doc
(yes, I've told her not to, but what can you do when all her friends send her jokes like that?)
or open any braindead web-page that insists on IE with Flash etc. etc. (don't get me started on THOSE!!)
Win-XP? Fine, That'll be $$$$ for the OS, more $$$ for new Hardware.
Why should she spend $$$$ on a new computer so she can send <10 emails per week?
I guss it's like driving around in an old, unsafe car that blows smoke at everyone else. It's rude, but not worth the cost
of upgrading to a new car (at least not to the driver, at most they see the smoke in the rearview mirror and
don't choke on it themselves).
Lives aren't at stake, or at least not as directly as the are in Cars, so there's not justification for tons of regulation
in the interest of safetey. Consumers aren't educated enough to demand security, having been force-fed blinkenlights for years and
starting to think they actually want/need them.
Force Software vendors to suport all products indefinetley? Unreasonable I think:
Ford don't make break-pads for the Model-T anymore, why should DR be exhumed and forced to support DR-DOS?
My personal favourite solution is to force software vendors to either support their products or make the source available so that someone else can.
(yeah, I can really see THAT happening;-)
Again, what is needed is more education of computer users in general
Yeah, like that's going to happen
An educated consumer might ask awkward questions like "what does trusted really mean in trusted computing" or "Why do my
rights need to be digitally managed??
User education is NOT in the interests of the producers, and when one monopolistic producer controls the market (and a large chunk of the
press that's should be doing the educating) then guess what happens?
Slashdot Mirror
yeah... like those laws have really had any effect.......
Brian Heredin (sp?) got his pointles laws, the govt got to sell telstra and everyone (except the citizens, but they don't count) is happy..
live goes on.....
Just because some beaurocrat didn't reverse an earlier decisions does not mean they made the right one,
all it menas is they're unwilling to admit they made the wrong one.
OK.. I'm pro-LINUX, wish them all the best and think they'll be happy with LINUX, I'm just waiting for a better
indicator than that to 'prove' that LINUX is the right choice (and so will a lot of other cynics out there).
By your reasoning Microsoft must be the better choice because, for the moment, more people are sticking with it rather than go to LINUX.
I have entered the atmosphere, surrounded by ionized gas which shields radio waves, and everything is OK. Hello, is this thing on????
I have started bouncing. Good thing my radio is strong enough to not need a directional antenna, 'cos I'm obviously not about to deploy one while I'm bouncing
I have stopped bouncing. Now all I have to do is deflate the airbags and hope they don't foul the various mechanisms (remember sojourner almost got stuck that way?) needed to deploy the antenna to send radio signals.
...about one bit per 18 months...
:-)
You're assuming strength = O(2**n) (strength of cypher varies with 2 to the power of the number of bits in the key).
I don't believe asymetric cyphers behave this way, and I though I read once that some cyphers are O(4*n) (i.e. adding one bit makes it 4 times harder to crack (larger keyspace AND more complex problem) rather than twice as hard to crack (i.e. O(2**n)).
It's generally accepted that ANY cryptography will eventually be broken, it's just amatter of putting that point far enough in th efuture so you don't care anymore (any PC today can easily brute-force ENIGMA and determine where the German submarine wolfpacks are, but it's a little late to do anyone any good
Disclaimer: I am not a cryptographer!
Educate the users????
Are you insane?
If you do that, they might start to ask questions about
"whose rights is DRM protecting anyway" or
"who is being asked to trust whom" in "trusted computing", or even
How much foes this "free" internet connection actually cost?
Big companies have a LOT to gain from an ignorant consumer base. Competing on the quality of your marketing department is MUCH easier than competing on the quality of your PRODUCT.
</rant>
ditto.
.1% I'm probably better of not reading anyway :-)
.sig
Found a neat way around the problem though, I use a text mailer (pine or mutt).
99.9% of emails come through just fine, the other
oh, and add a link to http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachment s.html to your
1 Unleash vigilante justice on spammers One activist has proposed filters that launch distributed denial-of-service attacks back at spammers. Great. Just make sure we have the right IP addresses first.
What does nailing their tounges to fast-growing trees have to to with IP addresses?
7 Demand truth in advertising for software updates C'mon, AOL 9.0 is really AOL 8.0 with the version number increased 1.0.
How about "Demand truth in advertising." ? I've been drinking <beverage> for years and I'm yet to be attacked to bikini-clad supermodels!
8 Declare spammers are terrorists And put Ashcroft, Ridge, and Rumsfeld on their tails.
That's not fair! If the US govt is going to go after them as terrorists, they should at least train them first like they do to all the other terrirists out there.
14 Dump the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
If you're going to do that then it's only fair to re-inburse all the people who bought it. I'll chip in!!
Actually, I think he's complaining that the cost of a good law (DMCA anyone?) is too high.
Why should some companies be able to buy these things but not him?
Your stupid DRM laws won't apply to us, the rest of the World
I wish it were so, but America's stupid just-about-everything-else (including the "war on freedom^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hterror) does seem to apply to Australia (i.e. me) for some reason.
NO NO NO NO NO!!!
The string eventually cuts off the circulation in your legs.
Much better to sew the pants-legs into the back of the coat, or use velcro so you can mix and match.
trust me, I know 'cos I , erm..., saw it on TV!!
Mother-in-law......
gift that advocates evil piracy.........
I'd be watching out for the BSA/RIAA/MPAA SWAT team if I were you
firstly, your 'company phone' might be for out-of-hours access (sys-admin anyone?), so even though you carry it, it's no-ones busines wherer you are.
Secondly, if you __REALLY__ believe that crusty old line about "only those who have something to hide should be worried " then either copy all your bank-statements, credit card invoices and results of medicals on your personal homepage or stop making fun of my AFDB.
Even simpler.
Mbr> Your phone monitors the closest few base stations. It keeps a __VERY__ accurate time-check with then to enable the TDMA (time-division-multiple-access) to work.
Ever leave your phone next to the car radio when you're driving? ever notice how on exactly the same spot (usually a traffic light) the phone blurts out some crud for the radio to pick up?
Why be so insaneley precise? BILLING INFORMATION!!! adjacent zones may be billed differently, so they have to keep track of you, else they might loose some money (i.e. they could be billing you for one zone when you can prove you were in another one and demand a refund).
ALL things are possible. The ones that pay enough are implemented.
Very good observation, though it misses one crucial fact:
When your location restrictions break down, YOU suffer because people know where you are. Nobody (except you) cares.
When the "dial 911" restriction breaks, is (ghasp) COSTS THE TELCO MONEY!!!
Which one do you think they're going to get working first?
The title you chose for suggest that lack of Support is what kills Open Source.
Then the comment goes on to explain how lack of a scapegoat is what's killing it.
Seems that a revamp of the old saying about IBM: "no one ever got fired for buying <insert monopoly of the day>". After all, if <insert monopoly of the day> is wrong then the majority must be wrong, and that leads to all sorts of inconvenient questions about the emporers (lack of) attire.
And the default XP screen is really infantile - inspired by Teletubbies. You can see Po and La-la on really hi-rez screens.
You may have hit on something there.... What we need is a re-compile of clippy: M$ NooNoo to clean up the mess!
it could avoid civilians while predetonating munitions miles away
Those lucky civilians, not being killed by the evil death-ray. Pity about the shrapnel from the munitions, though.......
so much way cooler than the old plain-blue screen of death.
(secures AFDB firmly on head)
What makes you thing you'll have a choice by 2005 about upgrading Windows?
Between licensing, EOL-ing, DRM-disabled hardware, selectivley providing security patches and buying laws that will brand you a terrorist if you don't upgrade I suspect more people be using longhorn than you think.
For one.... every new computer purchased. Think about it, not that they're no longer supproting 2 streams of OS (9x and NT) how much easier is it going to be to pull the plug on XP (or whatever) when the time comes to 'encourage' people to upgrade?
Want that new 3D graphics card? Sorry, the only digitally signed DHS-approved certified terrorist-free MPAA-approved drivers available are for longhorn!
Here's hoping I'm wrong.........
True, but I'm not sure Microsoft would bother doing this.
Option 1: break out the old NT4 source, mangle it, build, test, release
Result: Happy NT4-based customers who have one fewer reason to ditch NT4.
Option 2: Dear %user%, thank you for your letter about %subject%. It seems you are not running the latest Windows. Please upgrade and all will be well.
Result: Another hamster on the upgrade-treadmill powering Microsoft along.
If you were Microsoft, which of these would be more apealing to you?
How long before SOAP-tunneled VPN's will be activated by default on Windows if these ports are closed?
The only reason these prots are a problem is because the user-friendly vs secure tradeoff always comes down to
"let's make it really user firendly and blame the users and evil hackers if that makes it insecure". </rant>
... and grep
;-)
I agree with much of what you're saying. Let me give you a laymans view though:
.ppt or .doc
(yes, I've told her not to, but what can you do when all her friends send her jokes like that?)
or open any braindead web-page that insists on IE with Flash etc. etc. (don't get me started on THOSE!!)
;-)
My sister has been running Win95 on her old box for years. I recently told her that this was EOL-ed and that, in order to be protected from future worms/viruses, she would have to upgrade. To what?
LINUX? Not really an option (much as I love LINUX) until she can click on a
Win-XP? Fine, That'll be $$$$ for the OS, more $$$ for new Hardware.
Why should she spend $$$$ on a new computer so she can send <10 emails per week?
I guss it's like driving around in an old, unsafe car that blows smoke at everyone else. It's rude, but not worth the cost of upgrading to a new car (at least not to the driver, at most they see the smoke in the rearview mirror and don't choke on it themselves).
Lives aren't at stake, or at least not as directly as the are in Cars, so there's not justification for tons of regulation in the interest of safetey. Consumers aren't educated enough to demand security, having been force-fed blinkenlights for years and starting to think they actually want/need them.
Force Software vendors to suport all products indefinetley? Unreasonable I think: Ford don't make break-pads for the Model-T anymore, why should DR be exhumed and forced to support DR-DOS?
My personal favourite solution is to force software vendors to either support their products or make the source available so that someone else can. (yeah, I can really see THAT happening
Yeah, like that's going to happen
An educated consumer might ask awkward questions like "what does trusted really mean in trusted computing" or "Why do my rights need to be digitally managed??
User education is NOT in the interests of the producers, and when one monopolistic producer controls the market (and a large chunk of the press that's should be doing the educating) then guess what happens?
Well, I guess you're at the right place if you believe in fairy tales ;-)
....
The little NT server that thought it could
Snow white and the 7 EULAs
Goldy-locks and the 3 IT salesmen
3 blind MCSEs