Its nice to see that the information from Spanhaus is now being used to prosecute the spammers.
Heck, the first time I saw their site I was amazed at how long and how much work they must have put into it. Now its can all be readily be used as evidence against the spamhauses!
This might even fix the achilles heel of identification (licenses, passports, etc) which is that it is too easy to forge or bribe your way to a fake one. If the big ol' biometric databases notes that Mr. Hakim Faisal is registering for a second passport as Mr. Jorge Fuentes, then that should throw up a flag.
Unless the people making the programs accessing the information do not check for duplicates. And of course, there will have to be circumstances where it purposely ignores such things, because undercover law enforcement officials will need to have fake identities.
Parent is 100% correct. What is boosting sales is allowing people to listen to various forms of music. Heck, hearing a song on the radio does the same thing.
ACCESS to that music is boosting sales, not piracy of said music. So this is another study of why the RIAA (and its sister organizations) need to push the industry up off its ass to make a legitimate means of digital music access, rather than sticking their head in the sand and hoping the mean computers will just go away.
I heard that MS Word makes people stupid too, because if you want to write something, you have to type it yourself!
You also have to spell correctly if you cant use the spell checker, you need to make coherent sentences, and actually possess some sort of writing skill to make people understand what you are saying!
This is exactly the reason why companies NEVER, EVER admit any wrong-doing. Once you say "ok, I see your point, and will correct the problem", you open yourself up to all kinds of liability.
Now, because Rockstar did something nice for them, they are getting shafted. They would have been better off telling them to go fly a kite (or at least lighten up).
There is no problem with that, except that they are a monopoly
As far as they provide a service nobody else does, that is correct. However, there is absolutely nothing preventing somebody from building a competing network. If it were lucrative, somebody would have done it.
But it seems they are a monopoly in the same way the only gas station in a small town is.
Personally, I am of the opinion that you dont want a business being run where there is no real accountability, as is the case with government run services. Here is what will happen- Utopia will drive Qwest out of the area, leaving a government-run monopoly. Eventaully, the service will degrade, and will need service and support. The difference between a company, monopoly or not, is that the market is still playing a part- if the company is incredibly mismanaged, it goes out of business due to lack of funds. But if a government institution is incredibly mismanaged, they just raise taxes or slash budgets for other (probably more useful) projects.
I have done work for the local government, and the waste is horrible. Not only that, but the services are being provided by people who wouldnt be able to cut it in the private sector. The worst charlatans and theives always flock to the public sector with their hands out.
So in other words, the taxpayers should have a redundant, government run version of an already existing service, which is run by an evil company who has coordination and resources?
Sounds highly stupid to me. I thought having the government compete with the private sector was socialism, not capitalism. Also, having worked for the government, I can say they are definitely NOT who you want to call when you have a problem.
Finally, since at least half the people in this country are huge goofballs who bought into the bullshit spiel of "small government, lower taxes", it seems like they are always the first people in line to approve huge, unnecessary spending measures.
It is interesting to note that Dell does not recommend any freeware or shareware product because 'we cannot test these open source utilities reliably.' Which is simply silly, of course."
Regardless of the symantic complain about opensource, Dell is right. They cant provide support for every goofy application users may install. So they did the intelligent thing: they picked one software package, and will provide support for it.
This is exactly why I hate slashdotters- you complain, the complaint gets addressed, and you complain some more. Why cant somebody just say "OK, thats cool, they are going to help people get rid of spyware now"?
As far as administrative support, I welcome getting rid of Win98- I would say they should take WinME out too, but I have actually hardly seen it being used.
The OS's are fundamentally different between Win9x and WinNT, the registries are different, commands you need to use, file locations, etc. With logon scripts, you need to constantly use determinants (on just about everything) to check the OS and use the appropriate commands/file locations. You are essentially writing two subroutines for every task.
Also, Win9x sucks as far as stability; Win2k is incredible, even compared to WinNT which had prior to Win2k been my favored OS.
I know companies want to save money on the license, but they arent taking intangibles into account, like the fact that the user will have to deal with lockups, or that the support is going to have to support an outdated desktop OS, or even the issue I mentioned with the scripting issues.
Also, from a networking standpoint, just doing away with NetBIOS will have tons of benefits, but you cant do that unless you get rid of WINS and use DDNS. I had tons of problems doing that at my last job, becuase people who dont understand technical issues were just afraid let anything change, while ignoring the fact that maintaining an old architecture was the cause of at least 70% of the networking issues. New ways of doing things happen for a reason!
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, the first time I saw their site I was amazed at how long and how much work they must have put into it. Now its can all be readily be used as evidence against the spamhauses!
Ya. My life sucks.
We can debate that point about Apple-created software in general, but I have found QuickTime to be especially lethal.
Also, dont cast a spell at the beholder, as its eye will reflect the spell back at you. Very nasty stuff, especially if you are using a Fireball.
Lightweights. I play longer than that, and for free.
Wait patiently. Someone will be visiting you shortly.
Unless the people making the programs accessing the information do not check for duplicates. And of course, there will have to be circumstances where it purposely ignores such things, because undercover law enforcement officials will need to have fake identities.
ACCESS to that music is boosting sales, not piracy of said music. So this is another study of why the RIAA (and its sister organizations) need to push the industry up off its ass to make a legitimate means of digital music access, rather than sticking their head in the sand and hoping the mean computers will just go away.
They both forgot to mention this page...
You also have to spell correctly if you cant use the spell checker, you need to make coherent sentences, and actually possess some sort of writing skill to make people understand what you are saying!
Oh, the humanity!
What a well thought out idea!
Then geeks around the world could actually rejoin the rest of humanity, and not have to walk around like Batman with his utility belt!
Now, because Rockstar did something nice for them, they are getting shafted. They would have been better off telling them to go fly a kite (or at least lighten up).
Needless to say, I was highly surprised, since the only things ever said about it are negative.
As far as they provide a service nobody else does, that is correct. However, there is absolutely nothing preventing somebody from building a competing network. If it were lucrative, somebody would have done it.
But it seems they are a monopoly in the same way the only gas station in a small town is.
Personally, I am of the opinion that you dont want a business being run where there is no real accountability, as is the case with government run services. Here is what will happen- Utopia will drive Qwest out of the area, leaving a government-run monopoly. Eventaully, the service will degrade, and will need service and support. The difference between a company, monopoly or not, is that the market is still playing a part- if the company is incredibly mismanaged, it goes out of business due to lack of funds. But if a government institution is incredibly mismanaged, they just raise taxes or slash budgets for other (probably more useful) projects.
I have done work for the local government, and the waste is horrible. Not only that, but the services are being provided by people who wouldnt be able to cut it in the private sector. The worst charlatans and theives always flock to the public sector with their hands out.
Sounds highly stupid to me. I thought having the government compete with the private sector was socialism, not capitalism. Also, having worked for the government, I can say they are definitely NOT who you want to call when you have a problem.
Finally, since at least half the people in this country are huge goofballs who bought into the bullshit spiel of "small government, lower taxes", it seems like they are always the first people in line to approve huge, unnecessary spending measures.
Regardless of the symantic complain about opensource, Dell is right. They cant provide support for every goofy application users may install. So they did the intelligent thing: they picked one software package, and will provide support for it.
This is exactly why I hate slashdotters- you complain, the complaint gets addressed, and you complain some more. Why cant somebody just say "OK, thats cool, they are going to help people get rid of spyware now"?
The OS's are fundamentally different between Win9x and WinNT, the registries are different, commands you need to use, file locations, etc. With logon scripts, you need to constantly use determinants (on just about everything) to check the OS and use the appropriate commands/file locations. You are essentially writing two subroutines for every task.
Also, Win9x sucks as far as stability; Win2k is incredible, even compared to WinNT which had prior to Win2k been my favored OS.
I know companies want to save money on the license, but they arent taking intangibles into account, like the fact that the user will have to deal with lockups, or that the support is going to have to support an outdated desktop OS, or even the issue I mentioned with the scripting issues.
Also, from a networking standpoint, just doing away with NetBIOS will have tons of benefits, but you cant do that unless you get rid of WINS and use DDNS. I had tons of problems doing that at my last job, becuase people who dont understand technical issues were just afraid let anything change, while ignoring the fact that maintaining an old architecture was the cause of at least 70% of the networking issues. New ways of doing things happen for a reason!