I know it is that easy (i only wasn't sure if AOL put the option in some other menu in their netscape) so yes this is solely the tech staffs fault. But as i said, maybe the tech staff didn't want it to work at least half decent.
- Obviously, Gerald Levin didn't want to be GeraldL982341@aol.com, so we tried to graft an aliasing system on top. Sounds from the "misdirected mail" like it either didn't work out or (more likely) was prone to user error.
I don't know how the aliasing worked, but according to a friend of mine who "experienced" that switch some (old) addresses became long garbled strings after the switch. So probab
A friend of mine told me about their woes with the new client. Aparently their tech staff couldn't even set their netscape client up so that it would poll for mail regularly which means important messages get delayed? Seems to indicate that the tech staff wasn't too happy with that switch ordered from the top and now make it look extra bad, so they soon can switch back. One department even dug out their old fax machine to get in touch with customers again.
I don't understand why AOL/TW didn't plan a little ahead, made a case study and allowed for some time to do a smooth migration. This way it had to blow up in their face and make their own service look bad. But maybe this has the positive side effect that AOL works at the quality of their service. The bad thing about this is, that in the process netscape/mozilla also looks bad, when it's really not the software at fault.
company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment
From reading the statement it seems that such a clause needs not necessarily be explicit in your contract but can be implicit by your employee status (professional employee).
But the question is, if such an overbroad term like all work doesn't render the whole clause invalid. All work includes the work you did in your home, maybe repairing or even building it, when you repaired your car, helped a friend install software on his computer, wrote and somehow published an arbritrary text, any kind of art you produced,... basically the output of your whole life as long as you are under that contract, even raising your children.
So if you built your home with your own hands over weekends it'd be your employers, he can charge you for yourself repairing your car and teching your children and your friend for any help you gave him, he has copyright on any texts and art you produced, you basically won't own anything you made with your own hands or in any way worked at. I wonder how such a clause can be valid.
Any Market Microsoft enters isn't "level" anymore, but then the consoles business never was. I think neither Sony nor Microsoft will be awarded the fairness price for this stunt, but noone expected that anyway. It's really not as if Microsoft had never broken a rule, so MS claiming that the competition plays unfair is really pathetic. Also Sony played quite heavily on the metagame, generating quite some publicity. They even managed to get CeBit organisation to rethink the rules, and some articles flying about the net mentioning their product and making MS look bad. Why should they play by Microsofts rules? Anyone who did that in the past lost.
I really don't know if the Xbox is a better product, it definitely has some nice tech built in. But the value of a console is mainly determined by the games available for the thing, and in that department Microsoft draws the short straw, simply because the Xbox doesn't exist that long. OTOH Microsoft is definitely throwing their weight behind it to get some nice games to market. If i were into games i wouldn't buy an Xbox now, but when the "must have" game of my personal preference comes out for it. Especially if i already have a console at home. Apparently you like the Xbox, but that doesn't mean that because of that all Microsoft employees turned into saints, or that Microsoft management has seen the light and now does fair business.
Yep, and Linus probably made a joke about BillGs hair, and that's what all that Linux animosity of MS is about, only noone tells us. When i get new facts i'll update my picture, until then i see no reason to construct some complicated story when a simple one will do.
There's a lot of possibilities why Microsoft did what they did at the CeBit including the very simple one that Microsoft just saw a way to bully the competition and took it. Only Sony wouldn't simply scale back their stand to just some demo-presentation but make a point of packing up and going, effectively letting microsofts move backfire.
In that way Sony got even more publicity for the PS2 than by just having a stand on the CeBit ("hey, our PS2 is so good, even Microsoft fears the competition.") and made Microsoft look bad. I think that works better for advertising the PS2 than letting Microsoft dictate how they should run their show, at least someone from Sony semmed to think so.
And let's not forget, that Sony could only make MS look bad because of Microsoft whining about all that PS2 consoles to the CeBit organisation.
First off, PS2 wasn't kicked out of CeBit. Sony just pulled it out. All MS could do was have CeBit management say that PS2's have to be manned by Sony reps.
Aparently Sony tried (together with the ogranizers of CeBit) to strike a deal at halfway decent conditions, only MS wont budge. Obviously it wasn't possible to man 27 consoles with games and it wouldn't make sense either. What Sony wanted to show was, that you could actually have fun with their product in a great varietey of games. What better way to show that than having gamers happily waste their time with it? Putting some bored reps next to it, leaving the stand empty but for a few PS2, letting noone play on the things and have em all in demo-mode... it all wouldn't have got the message over: "When you play with this thing you have fun, people like to play those games".
- It's not a games trade show. MS has nothing to gain by being the leader of the show. Nobody in the game reporting world is covering CeBit.
Maybe it's not covered in games magazines (probably in Germany it is), but it's a great place to advertise those consoles. Why do you think Sony is going there with the PS2? They tried to split up the CeBit in CeBit Home and CeBit Professional, before it was all one thing, and the "split" is probably the reason for that stupid rule as well. But noone would go to CeBit Home, everyone would still go to the one and only CeBit, ignoring the CeBit Home thing completely, businesstypes and consumers alike, so it's a great place to advertise and everyone knows it.
But the trick of making someone look bad for just working with the facts that are given (by the evil conspirating media where not one of different articles covering the story gives any indication that Sony started this pissing contest) and not conjuring up some "reasons" out of thin air is a nice one, i must remember that.
Sony has been breaking the rule for three consecutive years and noone complained. Also i'm sure that Microsoft knew how Sony would present at the CeBit they could've as well done the very same.
But this way the rule works in Microsofts favour: Sony demonstrated what a console is about: it's about games, many of different games, and that was the advantage of the PS2 which Sony was showing off, and that was what Microsoft wanted stopped. By giving some Xboxes away to other exhibitors Microsoft saw to it that people could play on their console at CeBit as well. but if you carried all those strewn about Xboxes in one place you'd probably notice that there's only about five different games running on them.
You are just speculating that there's more to this story, but maybe it's just some microsoft PR jerk who thought this was a good way to kick the PS2 out of CeBit and run the show alone?
You claim that there is more to it than we know, but give no reasons why that should be so, only a lot of possibilities and "what if"s. Also you completely ignore, that we might possibly have enough facts and it's just another instance of Microsoft bullying the competition.
What if gravitation breaks sometime in the future? Well, there's no indication why it should, and so i'll believe Newton and Einstein for the time being.
"Sony präsentiert sich jetzt in der Opferrolle und stellt uns als die Bösen hin. Aber die Nomenklatur der CeBIT ist eindeutig", konterte Microsoft-Sprecher Frank Mihm.
... and some Microsoft person complained, that Sony is now making Microsoft look bad with this move and claims that it's just the (CeBit) rules. He goes on to say that 27 PS/2 where a little much for just demonstrating the Hardware, and stated that MS would've liked a bigger stand for their Xbox too.
Only it was Microsoft who asked for enforcing the rules after noone cared for three years. It's very obvious, that Microsoft wants to run the consoles-Show alone with their Xbox. Also Microsoft was nice enough to give some Xboxes to others running a stand on CeBit, where people can play. So Microsoft is bending the rules as well.
Also what did they expect? Did they think Sony would quietly pack and put up some advertisement for the Xbox instead? They just showed Microsoft for the spoilsports and underhanded schemers they are, and if that means bad publicity for Microsoft that's well deserved.
Aparently the organizers of CeBit aren't too happy with all this and think about changing the Rules. Microsoft must really have put some heavy pressure behind their move, or the CeBit organizers would just have declared the rule obsolete.
That's easier to find than some might think. For the hexadecimal representation there exists a formula that allows to calculate digits of pi starting at an arbitrary place, maybe there is such a formula for the decimal case too. Anyway given a decent PC you can probably calculate up to 10.000.000 digits in a few days. But why bother, when it's easier to simply download them. Your choosen password should be in here, starting with the 470344th or 470343th digit (depends if you count the 3., but you didn't, line 4704, 5th block from digit 4).
In a place where i worked i tested a really minimal password-cracker program just to find out if it really would find someone. It really only used the commentary field (5th) and username in etc/passwd to extract the users name, and try different versions (upper/lower/alternating case, only 1st in upper case, backwards) of name/surname/username. I found that about 3-5% (don't remember exactly now) really only used a part of their name as password, and that they wouldn't do anything as 'sophisticated' as writing it backwards or alternating upper/lower case either. I never made any use of that fact and didn't even inform anyone (it would probably have costed me my job there for being an evil hacker when all i wanted was playing around with 'crypt' a little). That was some years ago and i really hope that most users there have clued up a little by now. But i think there are still some who simply don't care, and also that there are such people everywhere. Their "argument" is: "well, who'd be interested in my stuff anyway?". What they don't get is, that once someone gets into their account it's far easier to get access to other users data or do something really malicious (or something they consider as a 'prank' like printing thousands of garbeled pages).
One problem is, that there's no security-seminar the people have to take part in. In some places you have to go to a security course to learn what to consider when doing physical work, even when you will never even do any of that, but the IT security policy is just put on some letter you receive your password with which most people don't even read once.
What's the difference between a big corporation putting software on my computer without my knowledge to sniff me out or add unwanted functionality, and a cracker doing the same thing? I don't see it. I really wonder if you couldn't apply some of the recently tightened cybercrime laws to the case, essentially fighting one evil with the other.
A lot of sites that AOL-users visit are either owned by AOL or by one of their business partners. AOL is actively working to get those sites W3C compliant before the switch. Also AOL is switching 30% of userbase over to mozilla. If they manage to get the point through to their customers, that it's not their browser, but the website thet's broken, that means Admins of "IE only" sites will get a lot more complaints and a lot less (like 30%) traffic. That turns the tables, now it's the webmasters of such sites that have a problem, not the occasional geek browsing with mozilla.
Also i find it notable, that you didn't make an attempt at getting your site standards compliant when you fond out it won't render properly with other browsers (at least you don't say so). You prefer to switch back to IE (cluttering your screen with IE-Windows again) and apparently try to convince the rest of the world to do likewise.
Your argumentation ultimately leads to the conclusion, to accept the Microsoft way and forever follow in Microsofts footsteps (either by just using IE, or by following their crappy implementation of html). The longterm perspective of this is to let Microsoft have their way. But that is not a good idea, because AOL realized, that the Microsoft Way may well lead to their own ruin (when MS decides to use their leverage to extend into the provider-business). So AOL better does something about it while they can.
It's easy to envisage AOL doing this until one considers that content on the Web has adapted to a large degree to IE dominance
And with that you're suggesting we should leave it at that and better all go the Microsoft way? AOL is in a position to do this, and now is the best time to do it, because "IE only" websites are few and far between.
What AOL has to consider is its 34million users turning round and saying "the latest version of AOL is broke", if it's not rendering IE specific content correctly.
AOL is already getting it's partners to change their websites such, that they render with mozilla/gecko. Also, why do you think they're announcing this move to another browser in advance? If i were a webmaster of some large site i'd already see to it, that it will look fine for AOL-users when the switch happens (well, i'd have made it work with mozilla anyway, but that's another subject). So even AOLs announcement of the switch will clue some webadmins up, that that "IE only" sign on their site might be a bad idea. Also some of the AOL users might love mozilla just for the fact that you can switch off those pesky automatic popup Windows (if AOL leaves that in), since they make surfing the Web a major pain.
Yes I know Mozillas recent [good] record on standards compliance, but as it stands MS is holding the baton.
And unless someone changes that it will be so forever. MS is "holding the baton" because 99% of websurfers out there use IE. And AOL obviously has the ability to change this. Now you're arguing, that AOL must continue to go with IE because of some sites that are "IE only". But those sites only exist because 99% of the websurfers are using IE, effectively closing the circle. But i think once AOL switched to mozilla those sites will change their policy fast or face some major problems (as in 30% less traffic).
In short, I think this is a bluff on AOLs part, as there's too much commercial risk here, and there's no way AOL is going to take those risks (with a relatively dumb userbase), with the possibility of large user unhappiness.
The alternative is for AOL to make their business dependent on Microsofts IE. Past history has shown, that that it is a bad idea to depend too much on Microsoft Products, because when they want to extend their business into your market it gives them an easy way to kick you out of business and win your customers over.
I think the AOL executives prefer to take a little risk (i don't think it all that big) to just waiting until Microsoft stabs them in the back.
Yeah, and Bill Gates probably didn't say that the internet is just a passing fad either. But only because the Book in which he wrote this has undergone some massive editing, majorly in chapters which have anything to do with communication among computers.
But bill Gates is a great businessman, he'll manage to sell that "new truth" about the 640K Limit too. --
This is again Mundie piping up with that stupid argument, that the GPL is bad because it limits the licensees choices. Now where's my choice when i want to develop using Microsofts sourcecode (if i can get my hands on it, even some governments can't)? Well, i have to accept Microsofts conditions. With the GPL and similar licenses i have to agree to the conditions of the respective authors (which choose the GPL as a license). So where's the difference? I'm sure it's easier to satisfy the GPL than Microsoft anyway. If only someone would ask what Microsofts conditions are for using their sourcecode when Mundie goes on a rampage again, that should shut him up for good.
Meanwhile the TCP/IP stack and now the zlib (and probably some other open source software Microsoft choose to make money off) shows what all that rhetorics of Mundie really is about: They want to take without giving, and they have seen that there's some nice open source software they'd like to get their hands on if only it weren't for that pesky GPL. Apparently that there's some open source software, that's too good to ignore, even for innovative Microsoft. It's really unfair that the GPL is asking Microsoft to share with others if they want to benefit from that software. --
Many have pointed out, that the technique of hiding data in leftover chunks of blocks isn't very useful in most cases. But that's missing the main point of the article i think. The main point of the article is, that there already is lurking a lot of data in those chunks, and that, unlike free blocks, this data is unlikely to be overwritten unless the associated file (which the block is part of) is altered. I think this is far more interesting, maybe in the enron case or the likes, where computers are scanned for just such evidence which might lurk in thousands of places scattered all over the system and survive longer than anticipated. --
Sure it's good to have that option and power, but I like the OS not letting me do something really stupid because I'm tired or distracted.
Don't drink and root... but really: when i use an admin account i pay attention to what i do, i read critical commands before hitting return, and i have 'mv' and the like aliased to 'mv -i' (chicken mode). One can argue that different levels of administrative power make sense, (not on private PCs) but the highest instance should be able to do anything, including breaking the system.
For every "denied" message you get as an admin, chances are you can give yourself access to do this.
While that might be the case i don't consider it the OSes job to pamper the sysadmin. If Windows changes file-attributes on a whim it is actively getting in the way. I prefer to do what i need to do without first overcoming hurdles thrown in my way by a tool that is supposed to help (not hinder) me. Asking for confirmation is ok, but flat out denying access is not helpful.
Note that you can change file attributes in Linux/Unix too, so the admin first has to change em back before anyone (including him) can remove them. But this is not applied automatically. This uppity behaviour of Windows is actually what i hate most about it. It's still me that owns the computer, not the other way round. --
Second what is the deal (and yes, I clearly have the source) with Mozilla's textarea entry widget? This thing is a nightmare to use. Don't even pretend to try to cut-and-paste into this thing if you want to produce readable results.
There were some issues with textwindows adressed for 9.9 (which is due soon), i hope this behaviour was adressed too (sounds likely, since it is apparently a problem of cursor positioning... we'll see). The problem occurs, when you place the mousecursor somewhere where no text is. Since in most cases people try to paste to an empty space this will happen almost always. Instead of inserting the text before the previous linebreak mozilla will place it somewhere in the window. The workaround is, to paste where text is (maybe type a few spaces and paste between them). Hopefully this information is obsolete in a few days. --
IANAL, so i don't know if you have to act against alterslash, but apparently you'll have to deal with 'em (hopefully this doesn't get messy). Nevertheless, i think, the idea of a digest with a few highranked comments (if it can be automated), as well as their comment statistics are an interesting feature, that is probably easier to implement in slashcode than by pulling comment-snippets from a site anyway. Alterslash may be violating copyrights, but still/. could benefit from their ideas. --
How about posting a little FAQ beforehand?
on
Slashdot IRC Forum Today
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· Score: 4, Interesting
How about putting a little FAQ up now, to fend of the most blatant misunderstandings and get the discussion off on a good start? That might to some extent avoid addressing irrelevant issues in the discussion and make it more focused since people come there a little prepared and already have the basics pat. I think there will still be enough left to discuss... ---
This is Microsoft throwing it's weight around to get HW-manufacturers design their systems to microsoft specs instead of the specs the hardware manufacturer would prefer. Why shouldn't a motherboard be able to run without ACPI to avoid exactly the kind of problem FreeBSD has now on that Hardware? The Board-Manufacturer wanted to support that functionality, and it wont hurt WindowsXP a bit, unless the user fiddles with his BIOS settings (and then they should know what they're doing).
The things b.foster posts are even worse: Microsofts software is not up to specifications and so they specifically ask the hardware-folks to hack their product or even make it break standards, so it works with XP. Then another OS comes along, tries to implement specification, and fails because of broken hardware. Microsoft is breaking specifications and make hardware manufacturers break their specs too. The result is a broken and undocumented specification.
I don't care if it's deliberate or not, the result is broken specs and programmers trying to implement according to the book left in the cold. I think it ok to raise some awarenes of yet another aspect how microsoft is hurting competition by muddying specifications. And to claim, that functionality Windows doesn't even use could somehow hurt Windows' stability doesn't make sense at all. ---
While the threat to take Windows away may work as intended, and underline its importance to such a degree that noone dare put too much pressure on Microsoft, politicians might realize, that the fate of Windows, being so important to the US- and World- Economy, can't be trusted to the hands of a single large corporation. That way Microsoft risks to have their business run by politicians through legislation, overviewing comitees and the like. A sure way to ruin a business. ---
It occurs to me, that most activity on/. falls into different categories:
1 simple reading: scan the frontpage for articles of interest and click on those of interest
2 thorough metamoderating: sometimes scan context in metamoderation if the comment can not be evaluated on itself
3 thorough moderating: switch to flat/newest first/threshold 0 to give new comments a chance, reload page (automatically) when moderating
4 writing comments: prewiew your comment at least once, maybe reference older slashdot articles or context of the current article, maybe also write multiple comments per article, especially when discussing.
5 submitting articles: although you only need one or two pages to submit, you will probably be very interested in the subject and comment a lot.
The order is not choosen arbitraryly by me. It is (at least i believe so) ordered according to the number of page accesses needed for these actions per item of interest (article). It is notable that those who contribute the most to/. (proper moderating and commenting) will access more pages than those who simply scan over some articles and grab a few opinions.
As an aside, it's also worth noting that more than half of all comment posters fall into this 3% [that would have to pay more than $5/month]
To my understanding the comments are what makes slashdot interesting, to grab the latest news it is sufficient to go to the frontpage and thus view only one page or stand through just one annoying ad, or just go to other sites. Your system makes those activities most expensive (either in adverts the user is exposed to, or in pages he has to pay) that contribute the most to/. and it's uniqueness. To avoid costs/adverts they will most likely do some of the following (to more or lesser extent):
- do less thorough or no metamoderating - do less thorough or no moderating - write less comments and not preview/edit them properly
This will make slashdot a poorer place, moderation will be worse, there will be less comments and less opinions. This will probably happen to some extent anyway, because of people leaving who neither want to pay, nor view adverts. But to charge those most who contribute for their contributions (in moderation and commenting) makes it even worse. I don't think it's far fetched, that manny moderators and commenters will revert to above methods to avoid costs/adverts, and that this will make slashdot less interesting (and thus also drive people away who were interested in the comments, and a well functioning comment system).
So if you must have adverts/subscriptions maybe you shoud try to avoid that effect (maybe by making those pages, that are needed for metamoderation, and especially commenting/previewing free (of fees and of overlarge adverts), maybe also introduce a special free moderation page (one page of newest/threshold zero/flat for an article)). I don't know how much a percentage those accesses make, and how much difference it would make to exclude them from ads/costs. But i think a well functioning comment/moderation system is vital to/. and hurting it by demotivating people (with ads/costs) to moderate/comment would hurt/. more than neccessary. --
Slashdot Mirror
I know it is that easy (i only wasn't sure if AOL put the option in some other menu in their netscape) so yes this is solely the tech staffs fault. But as i said, maybe the tech staff didn't want it to work at least half decent.
- Obviously, Gerald Levin didn't want to be GeraldL982341@aol.com, so we tried to graft an aliasing system on top. Sounds from the "misdirected mail" like it either didn't work out or (more likely) was prone to user error.
I don't know how the aliasing worked, but according to a friend of mine who "experienced" that switch some (old) addresses became long garbled strings after the switch. So probab
A friend of mine told me about their woes with the new client. Aparently their tech staff couldn't even set their netscape client up so that it would poll for mail regularly which means important messages get delayed? Seems to indicate that the tech staff wasn't too happy with that switch ordered from the top and now make it look extra bad, so they soon can switch back. One department even dug out their old fax machine to get in touch with customers again.
I don't understand why AOL/TW didn't plan a little ahead, made a case study and allowed for some time to do a smooth migration. This way it had to blow up in their face and make their own service look bad. But maybe this has the positive side effect that AOL works at the quality of their service. The bad thing about this is, that in the process netscape/mozilla also looks bad, when it's really not the software at fault.
company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment
... basically the output of your whole life as long as you are under that contract, even raising your children.
From reading the statement it seems that such a clause needs not necessarily be explicit in your contract but can be implicit by your employee status (professional employee).
But the question is, if such an overbroad term like all work doesn't render the whole clause invalid. All work includes the work you did in your home, maybe repairing or even building it, when you repaired your car, helped a friend install software on his computer, wrote and somehow published an arbritrary text, any kind of art you produced,
So if you built your home with your own hands over weekends it'd be your employers, he can charge you for yourself repairing your car and teching your children and your friend for any help you gave him, he has copyright on any texts and art you produced, you basically won't own anything you made with your own hands or in any way worked at. I wonder how such a clause can be valid.
Any Market Microsoft enters isn't "level" anymore, but then the consoles business never was. I think neither Sony nor Microsoft will be awarded the fairness price for this stunt, but noone expected that anyway. It's really not as if Microsoft had never broken a rule, so MS claiming that the competition plays unfair is really pathetic. Also Sony played quite heavily on the metagame, generating quite some publicity. They even managed to get CeBit organisation to rethink the rules, and some articles flying about the net mentioning their product and making MS look bad. Why should they play by Microsofts rules? Anyone who did that in the past lost.
I really don't know if the Xbox is a better product, it definitely has some nice tech built in. But the value of a console is mainly determined by the games available for the thing, and in that department Microsoft draws the short straw, simply because the Xbox doesn't exist that long. OTOH Microsoft is definitely throwing their weight behind it to get some nice games to market. If i were into games i wouldn't buy an Xbox now, but when the "must have" game of my personal preference comes out for it. Especially if i already have a console at home. Apparently you like the Xbox, but that doesn't mean that because of that all Microsoft employees turned into saints, or that Microsoft management has seen the light and now does fair business.
Yep, and Linus probably made a joke about BillGs hair, and that's what all that Linux animosity of MS is about, only noone tells us. When i get new facts i'll update my picture, until then i see no reason to construct some complicated story when a simple one will do.
There's a lot of possibilities why Microsoft did what they did at the CeBit including the very simple one that Microsoft just saw a way to bully the competition and took it. Only Sony wouldn't simply scale back their stand to just some demo-presentation but make a point of packing up and going, effectively letting microsofts move backfire.
In that way Sony got even more publicity for the PS2 than by just having a stand on the CeBit ("hey, our PS2 is so good, even Microsoft fears the competition.") and made Microsoft look bad. I think that works better for advertising the PS2 than letting Microsoft dictate how they should run their show, at least someone from Sony semmed to think so.
And let's not forget, that Sony could only make MS look bad because of Microsoft whining about all that PS2 consoles to the CeBit organisation.
First off, PS2 wasn't kicked out of CeBit. Sony just pulled it out. All MS could do was have CeBit management say that PS2's have to be manned by Sony reps.
... it all wouldn't have got the message over: "When you play with this thing you have fun, people like to play those games".
Aparently Sony tried (together with the ogranizers of CeBit) to strike a deal at halfway decent conditions, only MS wont budge. Obviously it wasn't possible to man 27 consoles with games and it wouldn't make sense either. What Sony wanted to show was, that you could actually have fun with their product in a great varietey of games. What better way to show that than having gamers happily waste their time with it? Putting some bored reps next to it, leaving the stand empty but for a few PS2, letting noone play on the things and have em all in demo-mode
- It's not a games trade show. MS has nothing to gain by being the leader of the show. Nobody in the game reporting world is covering CeBit.
Maybe it's not covered in games magazines (probably in Germany it is), but it's a great place to advertise those consoles. Why do you think Sony is going there with the PS2? They tried to split up the CeBit in CeBit Home and CeBit Professional, before it was all one thing, and the "split" is probably the reason for that stupid rule as well. But noone would go to CeBit Home, everyone would still go to the one and only CeBit, ignoring the CeBit Home thing completely, businesstypes and consumers alike, so it's a great place to advertise and everyone knows it.
But the trick of making someone look bad for just working with the facts that are given (by the evil conspirating media where not one of different articles covering the story gives any indication that Sony started this pissing contest) and not conjuring up some "reasons" out of thin air is a nice one, i must remember that.
Sony has been breaking the rule for three consecutive years and noone complained. Also i'm sure that Microsoft knew how Sony would present at the CeBit they could've as well done the very same.
But this way the rule works in Microsofts favour: Sony demonstrated what a console is about: it's about games, many of different games, and that was the advantage of the PS2 which Sony was showing off, and that was what Microsoft wanted stopped. By giving some Xboxes away to other exhibitors Microsoft saw to it that people could play on their console at CeBit as well. but if you carried all those strewn about Xboxes in one place you'd probably notice that there's only about five different games running on them.
You are just speculating that there's more to this story, but maybe it's just some microsoft PR jerk who thought this was a good way to kick the PS2 out of CeBit and run the show alone?
You claim that there is more to it than we know, but give no reasons why that should be so, only a lot of possibilities and "what if"s. Also you completely ignore, that we might possibly have enough facts and it's just another instance of Microsoft bullying the competition.
What if gravitation breaks sometime in the future? Well, there's no indication why it should, and so i'll believe Newton and Einstein for the time being.
"Sony präsentiert sich jetzt in der Opferrolle und stellt uns als die Bösen hin. Aber die Nomenklatur der CeBIT ist eindeutig", konterte Microsoft-Sprecher Frank Mihm.
... and some Microsoft person complained, that Sony is now making Microsoft look bad with this move and claims that it's just the (CeBit) rules. He goes on to say that 27 PS/2 where a little much for just demonstrating the Hardware, and stated that MS would've liked a bigger stand for their Xbox too.
Only it was Microsoft who asked for enforcing the rules after noone cared for three years. It's very obvious, that Microsoft wants to run the consoles-Show alone with their Xbox. Also Microsoft was nice enough to give some Xboxes to others running a stand on CeBit, where people can play. So Microsoft is bending the rules as well.
Also what did they expect? Did they think Sony would quietly pack and put up some advertisement for the Xbox instead? They just showed Microsoft for the spoilsports and underhanded schemers they are, and if that means bad publicity for Microsoft that's well deserved.
Aparently the organizers of CeBit aren't too happy with all this and think about changing the Rules. Microsoft must really have put some heavy pressure behind their move, or the CeBit organizers would just have declared the rule obsolete.
That's easier to find than some might think. For the hexadecimal representation there exists a formula that allows to calculate digits of pi starting at an arbitrary place, maybe there is such a formula for the decimal case too. Anyway given a decent PC you can probably calculate up to 10.000.000 digits in a few days. But why bother, when it's easier to simply download them. Your choosen password should be in here, starting with the 470344th or 470343th digit (depends if you count the 3., but you didn't, line 4704, 5th block from digit 4).
In a place where i worked i tested a really minimal password-cracker program just to find out if it really would find someone. It really only used the commentary field (5th) and username in etc/passwd to extract the users name, and try different versions (upper/lower/alternating case, only 1st in upper case, backwards) of name/surname/username. I found that about 3-5% (don't remember exactly now) really only used a part of their name as password, and that they wouldn't do anything as 'sophisticated' as writing it backwards or alternating upper/lower case either. I never made any use of that fact and didn't even inform anyone (it would probably have costed me my job there for being an evil hacker when all i wanted was playing around with 'crypt' a little). That was some years ago and i really hope that most users there have clued up a little by now. But i think there are still some who simply don't care, and also that there are such people everywhere. Their "argument" is: "well, who'd be interested in my stuff anyway?". What they don't get is, that once someone gets into their account it's far easier to get access to other users data or do something really malicious (or something they consider as a 'prank' like printing thousands of garbeled pages).
One problem is, that there's no security-seminar the people have to take part in. In some places you have to go to a security course to learn what to consider when doing physical work, even when you will never even do any of that, but the IT security policy is just put on some letter you
receive your password with which most people don't even read once.
What's the difference between a big corporation putting software on my computer without my knowledge to sniff me out or add unwanted functionality, and a cracker doing the same thing? I don't see it. I really wonder if you couldn't apply some of the recently tightened cybercrime laws to the case, essentially fighting one evil with the other.
A lot of sites that AOL-users visit are either owned by AOL or by one of their business partners. AOL is actively working to get those sites W3C compliant before the switch. Also AOL is switching 30% of userbase over to mozilla. If they manage to get the point through to their customers, that it's not their browser, but the website thet's broken, that means Admins of "IE only" sites will get a lot more complaints and a lot less (like 30%) traffic. That turns the tables, now it's the webmasters of such sites that have a problem, not the occasional geek browsing with mozilla.
Also i find it notable, that you didn't make an attempt at getting your site standards compliant when you fond out it won't render properly with other browsers (at least you don't say so). You prefer to switch back to IE (cluttering your screen with IE-Windows again) and apparently try to convince the rest of the world to do likewise.
Your argumentation ultimately leads to the conclusion, to accept the Microsoft way and forever follow in Microsofts footsteps (either by just using IE, or by following their crappy implementation of html). The longterm perspective of this is to let Microsoft have their way. But that is not a good idea, because AOL realized, that the Microsoft Way may well lead to their own ruin (when MS decides to use their leverage to extend into the provider-business). So AOL better does something about it while they can.
It's easy to envisage AOL doing this until one considers that content on the Web has adapted to a large degree to IE dominance
And with that you're suggesting we should leave it at that and better all go the Microsoft way? AOL is in a position to do this, and now is the best time to do it, because "IE only" websites are few and far between.
What AOL has to consider is its 34million users turning round and saying "the latest version of AOL is broke", if it's not rendering IE specific content correctly.
AOL is already getting it's partners to change their websites such, that they render with mozilla/gecko. Also, why do you think they're announcing this move to another browser in advance? If i were a webmaster of some large site i'd already see to it, that it will look fine for AOL-users when the switch happens (well, i'd have made it work with mozilla anyway, but that's another subject). So even AOLs announcement of the switch will clue some webadmins up, that that "IE only" sign on their site might be a bad idea. Also some of the AOL users might love mozilla just for the fact that you can switch off those pesky automatic popup Windows (if AOL leaves that in), since they make surfing the Web a major pain.
Yes I know Mozillas recent [good] record on standards compliance, but as it stands MS is holding the baton.
And unless someone changes that it will be so forever. MS is "holding the baton" because 99% of websurfers out there use IE. And AOL obviously has the ability to change this. Now you're arguing, that AOL must continue to go with IE because of some sites that are "IE only". But those sites only exist because 99% of the websurfers are using IE, effectively closing the circle. But i think once AOL switched to mozilla those sites will change their policy fast or face some major problems (as in 30% less traffic).
In short, I think this is a bluff on AOLs part, as there's too much commercial risk here, and there's no way AOL is going to take those risks (with a relatively dumb userbase), with the possibility of large user unhappiness.
The alternative is for AOL to make their business dependent on Microsofts IE. Past history has shown, that that it is a bad idea to depend too much on Microsoft Products, because when they want to extend their business into your market it gives them an easy way to kick you out of business and win your customers over.
I think the AOL executives prefer to take a little risk (i don't think it all that big) to just waiting until Microsoft stabs them in the back.
Yeah, and Bill Gates probably didn't say that the internet is just a passing fad either. But only because the Book in which he wrote this has undergone some massive editing, majorly in chapters which have anything to do with communication among computers.
But bill Gates is a great businessman, he'll manage to sell that "new truth" about the 640K Limit too.
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This is again Mundie piping up with that stupid argument, that the GPL is bad because it limits the licensees choices. Now where's my choice when i want to develop using Microsofts sourcecode (if i can get my hands on it, even some governments can't)? Well, i have to accept Microsofts conditions. With the GPL and similar licenses i have to agree to the conditions of the respective authors (which choose the GPL as a license). So where's the difference? I'm sure it's easier to satisfy the GPL than Microsoft anyway. If only someone would ask what Microsofts conditions are for using their sourcecode when Mundie goes on a rampage again, that should shut him up for good.
Meanwhile the TCP/IP stack and now the zlib (and probably some other open source software Microsoft choose to make money off) shows what all that rhetorics of Mundie really is about: They want to take without giving, and they have seen that there's some nice open source software they'd like to get their hands on if only it weren't for that pesky GPL. Apparently that there's some open source software, that's too good to ignore, even for innovative Microsoft. It's really unfair that the GPL is asking Microsoft to share with others if they want to benefit from that software.
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Many have pointed out, that the technique of hiding data in leftover chunks of blocks isn't very useful in most cases. But that's missing the main point of the article i think. The main point of the article is, that there already is lurking a lot of data in those chunks, and that, unlike free blocks, this data is unlikely to be overwritten unless the associated file (which the block is part of) is altered. I think this is far more interesting, maybe in the enron case or the likes, where computers are scanned for just such evidence which might lurk in thousands of places scattered all over the system and survive longer than anticipated.
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Sure it's good to have that option and power, but I like the OS not letting me do something really stupid because I'm tired or distracted.
... but really: when i use an admin account i pay attention to what i do, i read critical commands before hitting return, and i have 'mv' and the like aliased to 'mv -i' (chicken mode). One can argue that different levels of administrative power make sense, (not on private PCs) but the highest instance should be able to do anything, including breaking the system.
Don't drink and root
For every "denied" message you get as an admin, chances are you can give yourself access to do this.
While that might be the case i don't consider it the OSes job to pamper the sysadmin. If Windows changes file-attributes on a whim it is actively getting in the way. I prefer to do what i need to do without first overcoming hurdles thrown in my way by a tool that is supposed to help (not hinder) me. Asking for confirmation is ok, but flat out denying access is not helpful.
Note that you can change file attributes in Linux/Unix too, so the admin first has to change em back before anyone (including him) can remove them. But this is not applied automatically. This uppity behaviour of Windows is actually what i hate most about it. It's still me that owns the computer, not the other way round.
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Second what is the deal (and yes, I clearly have the source) with Mozilla's textarea entry widget? This thing is a nightmare to use. Don't even pretend to try to cut-and-paste into this thing if you want to produce readable results.
... we'll see). The problem occurs, when you place the mousecursor somewhere where no text is. Since in most cases people try to paste to an empty space this will happen almost always. Instead of inserting the text before the previous linebreak mozilla will place it somewhere in the window. The workaround is, to paste where text is (maybe type a few spaces and paste between them). Hopefully this information is obsolete in a few days.
There were some issues with textwindows adressed for 9.9 (which is due soon), i hope this behaviour was adressed too (sounds likely, since it is apparently a problem of cursor positioning
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IANAL, so i don't know if you have to act against alterslash, but apparently you'll have to deal with 'em (hopefully this doesn't get messy). Nevertheless, i think, the idea of a digest with a few highranked comments (if it can be automated), as well as their comment statistics are an interesting feature, that is probably easier to implement in slashcode than by pulling comment-snippets from a site anyway. Alterslash may be violating copyrights, but still /. could benefit from their ideas.
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How about putting a little FAQ up now, to fend of the most blatant misunderstandings and get the discussion off on a good start? That might to some extent avoid addressing irrelevant issues in the discussion and make it more focused since people come there a little prepared and already have the basics pat. I think there will still be enough left to discuss ...
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This is Microsoft throwing it's weight around to get HW-manufacturers design their systems to microsoft specs instead of the specs the hardware manufacturer would prefer. Why shouldn't a motherboard be able to run without ACPI to avoid exactly the kind of problem FreeBSD has now on that Hardware? The Board-Manufacturer wanted to support that functionality, and it wont hurt WindowsXP a bit, unless the user fiddles with his BIOS settings (and then they should know what they're doing).
The things b.foster posts are even worse: Microsofts software is not up to specifications and so they specifically ask the hardware-folks to hack their product or even make it break standards, so it works with XP. Then another OS comes along, tries to implement specification, and fails because of broken hardware. Microsoft is breaking specifications and make hardware manufacturers break their specs too. The result is a broken and undocumented specification.
I don't care if it's deliberate or not, the result is broken specs and programmers trying to implement according to the book left in the cold. I think it ok to raise some awarenes of yet another aspect how microsoft is hurting competition by muddying specifications. And to claim, that functionality Windows doesn't even use could somehow hurt Windows' stability doesn't make sense at all.
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While the threat to take Windows away may work as intended, and underline its importance to such a degree that noone dare put too much pressure on Microsoft, politicians might realize, that the fate of Windows, being so important to the US- and World- Economy, can't be trusted to the hands of a single large corporation. That way Microsoft risks to have their business run by politicians through legislation, overviewing comitees and the like. A sure way to ruin a business.
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1 simple reading: scan the frontpage for articles of interest and click on those of interest
2 thorough metamoderating: sometimes scan context in metamoderation if the comment can not be evaluated on itself
3 thorough moderating: switch to flat/newest first/threshold 0 to give new comments a chance, reload page (automatically) when moderating
4 writing comments: prewiew your comment at least once, maybe reference older slashdot articles or context of the current article, maybe also write multiple comments per article, especially when discussing.
5 submitting articles: although you only need one or two pages to submit, you will probably be very interested in the subject and comment a lot.
The order is not choosen arbitraryly by me. It is (at least i believe so) ordered according to the number of page accesses needed for these actions per item of interest (article). It is notable that those who contribute the most to
To my understanding the comments are what makes slashdot interesting, to grab the latest news it is sufficient to go to the frontpage and thus view only one page or stand through just one annoying ad, or just go to other sites. Your system makes those activities most expensive (either in adverts the user is exposed to, or in pages he has to pay) that contribute the most to
- do less thorough or no metamoderating
- do less thorough or no moderating
- write less comments and not preview/edit them properly
This will make slashdot a poorer place, moderation will be worse, there will be less comments and less opinions. This will probably happen to some extent anyway, because of people leaving who neither want to pay, nor view adverts. But to charge those most who contribute for their contributions (in moderation and commenting) makes it even worse. I don't think it's far fetched, that manny moderators and commenters will revert to above methods to avoid costs/adverts, and that this will make slashdot less interesting (and thus also drive people away who were interested in the comments, and a well functioning comment system).
So if you must have adverts/subscriptions maybe you shoud try to avoid that effect (maybe by making those pages, that are needed for metamoderation, and especially commenting/previewing free (of fees and of overlarge adverts), maybe also introduce a special free moderation page (one page of newest/threshold zero/flat for an article)). I don't know how much a percentage those accesses make, and how much difference it would make to exclude them from ads/costs. But i think a well functioning comment/moderation system is vital to
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