Quick and glitch free hardware and software installation.
How about MS doing that for their own OS before they try doing it for Linux?
STILL won't get apps written for by the REAL software makers
I take it IBM, Oracle, BMC, Rational, Novell, SAP, Borland, BEA, Novell, Veritas, and PeopleSoft aren't real software companies in your books. You obviously don't work in IT so why am I even bothering.
What!!!! And miss out on such classics as Poison, Cinderella, Motley Crue, and the rest of the "hair" bands? Never!!!
Seriously, the mid to late 80s were the birth of the industrial era. Yeah there was a lot of crap Rick Astley, Bananarama, and Paul Young to name a few and these should be forcibly destroyed. However, there was also some really innovative stuff that started from the likes of Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy, and Ministry to name a few. There were even a few solid non-industrial rock bands like Voivod and The Cult that sprung up. I think the 80s set the tone for the 90s and 00s far more than the 70s set the tone for the 80s!
Sure thing, take a look right here. Take special note of the 8 XML namespaces in the parent tag. Now go take a look at those individual namespaces and you'll see what he means. Just so you know, you can't because they're only available in the Word Content Developer's kit. No problem, download the kit get the XSD's and you're done right? Wrong, MS explicit forbids ANY redistribution of the XSDs. So, in effect, you wind up with an XML that can ONLY be read in Word. Useful ain't it?
You've got to be stretching a bit here. What's to prevent somebody from toying with GPL'd code at home and then "taint" the MS product when they come back to work? If they forced you to sign a reverse-NDA to never look at other code, even off the job, then that would be another story. I'd bet they're still keeping close tabs internally on Linux, KDE, Gnome, and OS X since that basically sums up their competitive landscape on the desktop.
There's a HUGE difference between getting the SOFTWARE and getting a LICENSE. SuSE gives you the software too, but no license. Ditto for Mandrake. You still need to shell out $300 for a license. This is the sole reason why I refuse to purchase a VMWare license and stick with my $90 Win4Lin. If VMWare offered their product for $100-$125, then they'd get me as a customer.
Why is it that when a (smaller) corporation decides to stand up for their customers' rights against a (larger) corporation, it's always spun as being unlawful?
SBC is a HUGE corporation, 27th largest company in the US with over $43B in sales. Mind you this doesn't necessarily mean much since Verizon (#10) at $67B in sales still wound up caving in to the RIAA.
Really? Then the folks at Codeweavers must have sold ZERO licenses of CrossOver Office. No wait, looks like some people don't run in your social circles.
You're only partially right. I think Compaq's reverse engineering of the IBM PC-BIOS had a lot more to do with bringing competition into the PC hardware market. If Compaq hadn't invented the very concept of the PC clone we'd still be paying $4,000 for IBM PCs. Remember, it's hardware prices that have fallen, not software. MS's almost $100 take on that $400 PC makes it the single most expensive component.
Crap... you mean I'm going to have to register a domain name for my house now... damn damn damn!!! Better hurry before all the good ones are cyber-squatted!!!
You brought up a really good point though, I don't know if I'd want my fridge accessible over the internet. Are we going to see a KenmoreUpdate (tm) to download security patches, and more importantly, will I be able to turn off auto-updates???
Probably because switches are cheaper than routers. Also for external host A to talk to fridge B on your home network, you'd need to assign a dedicated port to B from your router and A would need to know that port. Short answer, because it's less complicated and less expensive. Don't take this to mean that I think my toaster and blender need an IP addresses but a stove with a built in network enabled PS2 would make waiting for water to boil a hell of a lot more entertaining!
If you're looking for ease of use, then don't use a product like RedHat or SuSE, they're not aimed at users looking for a GUI-ified desktop. Use a tightly integrated end user oriented product like Lycoris or Xandros. You really need to use the right distro for a) your Linux "skill" level and b) your goal in using Linux in the first place. If you're looking for an environment where you can leverage your Windows experience, Lycoris and Xandros are for you. If and when you want to more fully customize or even modify your environment, use a more advanced distro like RedHat or SuSE. BTW, if any l33t jackasses criticize you for not using RedHat, SuSE, Debian, etc... instead of the more GUI-centric distros, just tell 'em to shut the hell up.
Well, it was longer than a one sentence conversation. The support issue was their sticking point. Once I made it clear that I wouldn't file tickets with them on Linux specific problems, IT got out of the loop and it was between my manager and I from then on. Point is it can be done, but it depends primarily on what you do with the machine.
Most of you guys are missing the point. I'm not insinuating that health care becomes magically free if it's provided by the government. What I'm saying is if the burden shifts from employers to tax payers, then there's one less incentive for employees to high tail it to India. Anything to reduce the cost of doing business while maintaining existing jobs. If the market dictates that employers provide healthcare, then those employers would benefit from moving to a market where employer provided healthcare is a non-issue and therefore an avoided cost. Don't get me wrong, I don't relish the thought of increased taxes but it would be hard to argue that employers having to foot the tab for healthcare is good for job creation.
It really depends on what you're doing with your machines at work. I gave Win2K the boot in 2001 in favor of Linux. The 1 missing link I needed (a Nortel VPN client for Linux) was finally brought to Linux by Netlock and that was the end of that. IT gave me some push back but all it took was a "Don't worry, I won't call you guys with any Linux specific issues". The first bit required some adjustment since some tools I used had to be "replaced" but all in all, I'm more productive now and that's the way it should be. Now if equivalents for the tools you use aren't available, you've still got a barrier to switching.
My question is regarding the current trend of the USPTO issuing overly broad technology patents. Eventually this has to result in a technological gridlock where nothing can be done without infringing on an existing patent. Open source software is especially vulnerable to this since the community model is not designed to address patent threats. My question is what can we do to stay clear of the patent fray and do you think that there will eventually be an undoing of the current patent mess?
CAN-2003-0461:/proc/tty/driver/serial reveals the exact character counts for serial links. This could be used by a local attacker to infer password lengths and inter-keystroke timings during password entry.
CAN-2003-0462: Paul Starzetz discovered a file read race condition existing in the execve() system call, which could cause a local crash.
CAN-2003-0464: A recent change in the RPC code set the reuse flag on newly-created sockets. Olaf Kirch noticed that his could allow normal
users to bind to UDP ports used for services such as nfsd.
CAN-2003-0476: The execve system call in Linux 2.4.x records the file descriptor of the executable process in the file table of the calling process, allowing local users to gain read access to restricted file descriptors.
CAN-2003-0501: The/proc filesystem in Linux allows local users to obtain sensitive information by opening various entries in/proc/self before
executing a setuid program. This causes the program to fail to change the ownership and permissions of already opened entries.
CAN-2003-0550: The STP protocol is known to have no security, which could allow attackers to alter the bridge topology. STP is now turned off by
default.
CAN-2003-0551: STP input processing was lax in its length checking, which could lead to a denial of service.
CAN-2003-0552: Jerry Kreuscher discovered that the Forwarding table could be spoofed by sending forged packets with bogus source addresses the same as the local host.
So, were's this "HUGE remote exploit" of which you speak???
They do NOT make $5K a year, that's $2.40/hr. The average IT wage in India is something in the order of $20K. You'd have a hard time getting by on that anywhere in the US, but in Canada you could get by on the equivalent $28K Cdn (major urban centers excluded) since they have universal healthcare. Which brings up my real intent in this post, would universal healthcare here in the US be a potential job saver since employers would no longer be compelled to foot the cost of health insurance?
Yes it would. Make sure you have a solid paper trail and can backup your claims. If you can't demonstrate material harm, there's not much you can do. That's the problem with SCO's claims right now, they're all talk, no show. I could easily say SCO stole my IP for whizzlebangs, of course it's a lie, but there's nothing SCO could do about it unless it caused some material harm to them and they could prove it. The better alternative would be for SCO to take somebody to court over their IP claims, it's not likely to happen though since upon losing they'd be forced to shut up and the money tap would freeze up like a hose in winter.
I beg to differ. It's lazy f---s who don't know how to code properly that shouldn't try to code in C. Don't blame the language, C was never intended to be a 4G language. Range checking is easy, and if someone is too friggen lazy to do it, they deserve to be whipped. Hell, just use the 'n' function variants and C does most of it for you. As for punishment, I think they should be FORCED to program in COBOL, and on punch cards to make it really hurt.
Patents are not necessarily evil. Patents are intended to let the invested recoup development costs, not create companies who's sole purpose in life is to generate litigation. It should be harder than hell to get a patent, not the nonsense PBJ sandwich patents that the USPTO appears to be handing out now. We really need patent reform in this country before all innovation is stifled out of existence.
That company is own by Sony and Philips, it's not public. Also, the article insinuates they're looking for payments in the billions, not just millions. If this patent gets upheld, it's going to cost a lot, and not just a one time charge by the gist of it. The good part is that this may cause the patent nonsense glass to finally overflow.
This suit deals with DRM, which I don't like in the first place, but it's backed by Sony and Philips. Sony isn't particularly fond of MS to start off. I think MS should settle this one out of court for say, $42B?
I agree with you to an extent. I think the jobs of the future in IT are in systems architecture and systems integration. These are more consulting type gigs than hands on coding, although customizations could keep a few coding jobs around. There is a future in the very high end of IT but I would be surprised to see the low and mid range jobs of the 90s come back.
There's a major difference between a pension and a 401k. A pension guarantees you an income. With a 401k, it only takes an Enron to wipe out half your retirement money. Also, you're assuming your company gives you complete free range in how you invest your 401k but I assure you that's not usually the case. If your company gives you 100% free range with your 401k, count yourself lucky because you're in the minority.
Yep, waddaya know... sneeeeeeeeaky! Here's a great quote I found that's in true MS form:
"One thing I do not like with WMA7 is its direction towards secure audio paths. Say my new player wants to play a WMA7 file that is encoded as a 'secure audio path' file, then my program will not have access to the decoded sound data. Only the sound card driver that receives the decoded data will because sound data passes through my player encrypted. So what will this mean? It means that things like Graphic Equalizers and DSP plugins will not work. Yet the most annoying part is that Microsoft's own Media player will always have access to the data stream. If you want a EQ, you have no option but to go for MS's program. Sounds like an unfair advantage to me."
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, the one case where I'm glad drivers exist for Windows but not for Linux!!!
Quick and glitch free hardware and software installation.
How about MS doing that for their own OS before they try doing it for Linux?
STILL won't get apps written for by the REAL software makers
I take it IBM, Oracle, BMC, Rational, Novell, SAP, Borland, BEA, Novell, Veritas, and PeopleSoft aren't real software companies in your books. You obviously don't work in IT so why am I even bothering.
What!!!! And miss out on such classics as Poison, Cinderella, Motley Crue, and the rest of the "hair" bands? Never!!!
Seriously, the mid to late 80s were the birth of the industrial era. Yeah there was a lot of crap Rick Astley, Bananarama, and Paul Young to name a few and these should be forcibly destroyed. However, there was also some really innovative stuff that started from the likes of Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy, and Ministry to name a few. There were even a few solid non-industrial rock bands like Voivod and The Cult that sprung up. I think the 80s set the tone for the 90s and 00s far more than the 70s set the tone for the 80s!
Sure thing, take a look right here. Take special note of the 8 XML namespaces in the parent tag. Now go take a look at those individual namespaces and you'll see what he means. Just so you know, you can't because they're only available in the Word Content Developer's kit. No problem, download the kit get the XSD's and you're done right? Wrong, MS explicit forbids ANY redistribution of the XSDs. So, in effect, you wind up with an XML that can ONLY be read in Word. Useful ain't it?
You've got to be stretching a bit here. What's to prevent somebody from toying with GPL'd code at home and then "taint" the MS product when they come back to work? If they forced you to sign a reverse-NDA to never look at other code, even off the job, then that would be another story. I'd bet they're still keeping close tabs internally on Linux, KDE, Gnome, and OS X since that basically sums up their competitive landscape on the desktop.
There's a HUGE difference between getting the SOFTWARE and getting a LICENSE. SuSE gives you the software too, but no license. Ditto for Mandrake. You still need to shell out $300 for a license. This is the sole reason why I refuse to purchase a VMWare license and stick with my $90 Win4Lin. If VMWare offered their product for $100-$125, then they'd get me as a customer.
Why is it that when a (smaller) corporation decides to stand up for their customers' rights against a (larger) corporation, it's always spun as being unlawful?
SBC is a HUGE corporation, 27th largest company in the US with over $43B in sales. Mind you this doesn't necessarily mean much since Verizon (#10) at $67B in sales still wound up caving in to the RIAA.
Really? Then the folks at Codeweavers must have sold ZERO licenses of CrossOver Office. No wait, looks like some people don't run in your social circles.
You're only partially right. I think Compaq's reverse engineering of the IBM PC-BIOS had a lot more to do with bringing competition into the PC hardware market. If Compaq hadn't invented the very concept of the PC clone we'd still be paying $4,000 for IBM PCs. Remember, it's hardware prices that have fallen, not software. MS's almost $100 take on that $400 PC makes it the single most expensive component.
Crap ... you mean I'm going to have to register a domain name for my house now ... damn damn damn!!! Better hurry before all the good ones are cyber-squatted!!!
You brought up a really good point though, I don't know if I'd want my fridge accessible over the internet. Are we going to see a KenmoreUpdate (tm) to download security patches, and more importantly, will I be able to turn off auto-updates???
Probably because switches are cheaper than routers. Also for external host A to talk to fridge B on your home network, you'd need to assign a dedicated port to B from your router and A would need to know that port. Short answer, because it's less complicated and less expensive. Don't take this to mean that I think my toaster and blender need an IP addresses but a stove with a built in network enabled PS2 would make waiting for water to boil a hell of a lot more entertaining!
If you're looking for ease of use, then don't use a product like RedHat or SuSE, they're not aimed at users looking for a GUI-ified desktop. Use a tightly integrated end user oriented product like Lycoris or Xandros. You really need to use the right distro for a) your Linux "skill" level and b) your goal in using Linux in the first place. If you're looking for an environment where you can leverage your Windows experience, Lycoris and Xandros are for you. If and when you want to more fully customize or even modify your environment, use a more advanced distro like RedHat or SuSE. BTW, if any l33t jackasses criticize you for not using RedHat, SuSE, Debian, etc ... instead of the more GUI-centric distros, just tell 'em to shut the hell up.
Well, it was longer than a one sentence conversation. The support issue was their sticking point. Once I made it clear that I wouldn't file tickets with them on Linux specific problems, IT got out of the loop and it was between my manager and I from then on. Point is it can be done, but it depends primarily on what you do with the machine.
Most of you guys are missing the point. I'm not insinuating that health care becomes magically free if it's provided by the government. What I'm saying is if the burden shifts from employers to tax payers, then there's one less incentive for employees to high tail it to India. Anything to reduce the cost of doing business while maintaining existing jobs. If the market dictates that employers provide healthcare, then those employers would benefit from moving to a market where employer provided healthcare is a non-issue and therefore an avoided cost. Don't get me wrong, I don't relish the thought of increased taxes but it would be hard to argue that employers having to foot the tab for healthcare is good for job creation.
It really depends on what you're doing with your machines at work. I gave Win2K the boot in 2001 in favor of Linux. The 1 missing link I needed (a Nortel VPN client for Linux) was finally brought to Linux by Netlock and that was the end of that. IT gave me some push back but all it took was a "Don't worry, I won't call you guys with any Linux specific issues". The first bit required some adjustment since some tools I used had to be "replaced" but all in all, I'm more productive now and that's the way it should be. Now if equivalents for the tools you use aren't available, you've still got a barrier to switching.
My question is regarding the current trend of the USPTO issuing overly broad technology patents. Eventually this has to result in a technological gridlock where nothing can be done without infringing on an existing patent. Open source software is especially vulnerable to this since the community model is not designed to address patent threats. My question is what can we do to stay clear of the patent fray and do you think that there will eventually be an undoing of the current patent mess?
Here's the list:
/proc/tty/driver/serial reveals the exact character counts for serial links. This could be used by a local attacker to infer password lengths and inter-keystroke timings during password entry.
/proc filesystem in Linux allows local users to obtain sensitive information by opening various entries in /proc/self before
executing a setuid program. This causes the program to fail to change the ownership and permissions of already opened entries.
CAN-2003-0461:
CAN-2003-0462: Paul Starzetz discovered a file read race condition existing in the execve() system call, which could cause a local crash.
CAN-2003-0464: A recent change in the RPC code set the reuse flag on newly-created sockets. Olaf Kirch noticed that his could allow normal users to bind to UDP ports used for services such as nfsd.
CAN-2003-0476: The execve system call in Linux 2.4.x records the file descriptor of the executable process in the file table of the calling process, allowing local users to gain read access to restricted file descriptors.
CAN-2003-0501: The
CAN-2003-0550: The STP protocol is known to have no security, which could allow attackers to alter the bridge topology. STP is now turned off by default.
CAN-2003-0551: STP input processing was lax in its length checking, which could lead to a denial of service.
CAN-2003-0552: Jerry Kreuscher discovered that the Forwarding table could be spoofed by sending forged packets with bogus source addresses the same as the local host.
So, were's this "HUGE remote exploit" of which you speak???
They do NOT make $5K a year, that's $2.40/hr. The average IT wage in India is something in the order of $20K. You'd have a hard time getting by on that anywhere in the US, but in Canada you could get by on the equivalent $28K Cdn (major urban centers excluded) since they have universal healthcare. Which brings up my real intent in this post, would universal healthcare here in the US be a potential job saver since employers would no longer be compelled to foot the cost of health insurance?
Yes it would. Make sure you have a solid paper trail and can backup your claims. If you can't demonstrate material harm, there's not much you can do. That's the problem with SCO's claims right now, they're all talk, no show. I could easily say SCO stole my IP for whizzlebangs, of course it's a lie, but there's nothing SCO could do about it unless it caused some material harm to them and they could prove it. The better alternative would be for SCO to take somebody to court over their IP claims, it's not likely to happen though since upon losing they'd be forced to shut up and the money tap would freeze up like a hose in winter.
I beg to differ. It's lazy f---s who don't know how to code properly that shouldn't try to code in C. Don't blame the language, C was never intended to be a 4G language. Range checking is easy, and if someone is too friggen lazy to do it, they deserve to be whipped. Hell, just use the 'n' function variants and C does most of it for you. As for punishment, I think they should be FORCED to program in COBOL, and on punch cards to make it really hurt.
Patents are not necessarily evil. Patents are intended to let the invested recoup development costs, not create companies who's sole purpose in life is to generate litigation. It should be harder than hell to get a patent, not the nonsense PBJ sandwich patents that the USPTO appears to be handing out now. We really need patent reform in this country before all innovation is stifled out of existence.
That company is own by Sony and Philips, it's not public. Also, the article insinuates they're looking for payments in the billions, not just millions. If this patent gets upheld, it's going to cost a lot, and not just a one time charge by the gist of it. The good part is that this may cause the patent nonsense glass to finally overflow.
This suit deals with DRM, which I don't like in the first place, but it's backed by Sony and Philips. Sony isn't particularly fond of MS to start off. I think MS should settle this one out of court for say, $42B?
I agree with you to an extent. I think the jobs of the future in IT are in systems architecture and systems integration. These are more consulting type gigs than hands on coding, although customizations could keep a few coding jobs around. There is a future in the very high end of IT but I would be surprised to see the low and mid range jobs of the 90s come back.
There's a major difference between a pension and a 401k. A pension guarantees you an income. With a 401k, it only takes an Enron to wipe out half your retirement money. Also, you're assuming your company gives you complete free range in how you invest your 401k but I assure you that's not usually the case. If your company gives you 100% free range with your 401k, count yourself lucky because you're in the minority.
Yep, waddaya know ... sneeeeeeeeaky! Here's a great quote I found that's in true MS form:
"One thing I do not like with WMA7 is its direction towards secure audio paths. Say my new player wants to play a WMA7 file that is encoded as a 'secure audio path' file, then my program will not have access to the decoded sound data. Only the sound card driver that receives the decoded data will because sound data passes through my player encrypted. So what will this mean? It means that things like Graphic Equalizers and DSP plugins will not work. Yet the most annoying part is that Microsoft's own Media player will always have access to the data stream. If you want a EQ, you have no option but to go for MS's program. Sounds like an unfair advantage to me."