You want to bet it won't happen? Here's what I think will happen: we'll see the basic software added "for free" (aka. bundled) and a "subscription" fee for virus updates. They won't give the service away, but I don't see why they wouldn't use the successful bundling technique to steal market share one more time. Time and time again MS has shown that people are too lazy to purchase a competeing product, regardless of it's technical superiority, and have to undergo the hassle of having to install it. It was only a matter of time before MS came after the anti-virus companies lunches and personally I think it serves them right for hitching their wagon to a rabid horse. In fact, I'm surprised they waited so long to move into this market. If I were a McAfee or Symantec stockholder I'd be very concerned.
Having spent some time working on a Linux hardware driver for an undocumented PCI card, I think most people have no clue at the amount of work involved. Deciphering bus calls when there's little to no documentation to hint as to what the calls are for is like building a puzzle without the final image to look at. Getting a piece is easy, but figuring out where it fits relative to other pieces is one mean task. Anybody who has the audacity to just sit back and complain without either filing bugs or submitting patches should just migrate back to Windows, their whining certainly will not be missed. Also, good point about cheap-shit hardware, you're not going to end up with a Ferrari if all you have is parts for a tricycle.
When you purchase a full copy of WinXP ($199 MSRP for the Home edition) you *own* it.
You'd better re-read your EULA, I quote from section 19 of the WinXP EULA, "The Product is licensed, not sold.". That's right, MS grants you a *license* (see section 1 of EULA)to use XP on it's terms. They can terminate your license at their discretion for anything they construe to be a violation of their EULA (see section 6 of EULA).
I was half-joking in my post, but if the RIAA can make congress table a law forbidding non-secured computer peripherals, why not a law forbidding non-secured codecs? I would HOPE it would fail to pass but it's not inconcievable that they would try.
If you want to help, you should submit one of these documents to the openoffice.org issuezilla. They're pretty good at getting to filter related issues if you attach a document for them to test with. You'll want to clean it up as much as possible (ie. shorten it and remove any confidential info) before sending it it.
You mean "crossover office", "crossover plugin" is for web browser viewers. Also, yes, you need licenses for MS-Office / Photoshop and any other non-free software you want to run on crossover office. That said, crossover office 2.0 is a remarkable improvement over the 1.x builds. The 1.x build had issues with OLE and cutting and pasting of OLE objects. I used to recommend using Win4Lin for running MS-Office but with the 2.0 release, the difference in stability when running MS-Office between a native Windows runtime via Win4Lin and the WINE based crossover office is truly non-existent.
If you're serious about looking into OO, take a look at 1.1 Beta 2. They've done significant work on the filters. My parent company uses MS Office extensively (I'm sure most do, they're a monopoly after all) and I *used* to have problems with Excel macros in particular. I've been saving these "problem" ones for testing in OO and they all appear to work in 1.1 B2. I realize it's a beta release but it gives you a good idea of what the next point release will be capable of. MS had better start thinking of repricing their Office suite to $99 soon because the next release of OO looks like it's going to be able to handle their doc formats pretty much perfectly.
Actually, the Windows results in question used a 64 way box, the Linux test used a 32 way box. Linux hit 600K TPM on the 32 processor box, Windows hit 707 TPM on the 64 processor box. Comparing there results is about as useful as comparing a test of Windows on a P6 and Linux on a P2. This is best explained with a parody, "In other news tonight, tests show Windows runs very-fast on a P6 4Ghz but Linux was only pretty-fast on a P2 333Mhz. Therefore, Windows must be more performant than Linux.".
We have to differentiate interaction with others via digital means (in this case, online games) and human interaction.
Interesting point. I think it's still a social activity in the broadest sense of it's definition. The team element in games like RTCW-EM could be considered a form of a social group even though the only words usually exchanged are the canned "Good game" and "Affirmative" quick chats. There's an element of helping and protecting others for a common goal too. I assume that sociologists probably deliniate face-to-face and distance interaction, I found alot of references to the "sociology of cyberspace" but don't have time to boil any of them down. Without a doubt, LAN parties are more fun since you interact in both worlds and can hurl non-canned insults at each other at a whim!
is it really anti-social? is it only for geeks? is it a non-productive use of time?
1) Multiplayer games are social events, single player games are anti-social.
2) In it's heyday it used to be for geeks since we were the only one with the equipment/connectivity to host a networked (LAN/WAN) game but now everybody seems to be doing it.
3) As for being a non-productive use of time, it's about as non-productive as screaming at a wall both relieve stress. Still, a game of RTWC Enemy Territory beats screaming at an inanimate object in my book.
You're talking about apples and oranges here. The RPM database/registry only serves a subset of what the MS registry is used for. The problem with the MS registry is that the configuration information for your apps is at the mercy of the registry. This wasn't the case when INI files were the norm. As for patches, the number of patches is directly proportional to the number of maintainers. Since GNU/Linux has a boatload of maintainers each producing their own patches, you're bound to have a lot of small patches. MS has a single maintainer so you get a few huge patches.
To give some credence to the above, I'm not particularly fond of the RPM database myself. However, it's still the most widely used, although APT (a superior solution I think) is gaining quickly. Also APT boasts a plain text database rather than a binary database like RPM. So with apt, decorrupting is easy accomplished using a text editor.
The difference is that Linus et al. do not CLAIM to be innovative. MS touts themselves as having invented everything from the toaster to the space shuttle. Reading an MS PR release is like listening to an Al Gore speech in my mind. Neither the Linux kernel nor MS are particularly innovative, but at least Linux hackers do not falsely claim to be. MS does take a lot of heat on/. but I would say that MS's arrogance as a whole is on par with the/. camp's arrogance so it's pretty much a wash.
Also, even though you didn't mention it, some repliers did, I don't use Linux because it's free as in $$$. I can afford the $200 XP Pro price tag. I use Linux (1) becuase I am able to see/change the source as I see fit, (2) it's modular structure lets me tailor the kernel for each box/purpose, (3) I like and use the command line extensively (not all of us are point-and-clickers), and (4) because it's not built around the asinine all-your-eggs-in-one-basket registry concept.
One final point on the $$$ argument. I would guess that over half the XP installs out there are pirated copies anyhow. Every time I see a pirated copy of XP it pains me to NOT call the BSA but I refrain. In fact, I'd bet that most MS backers on this board have one or more pieces of pirated MS software in their possession. It's a little hippocritical to stand up for a closed source software company all while stealing (yes, it's theft) at the same time.
Many times I found that weeks of class went by where I dozed in class and left unintelligible scribbles on the page.
Ditto! That's where the transcription piece comes in. Even though I had a PC, an HP-150 with a whopping 10M hard drive (take a look at this thing), I didn't actually enter my notes into it and I didn't mean to insinuate that that's the way to do it. I transcribed from paper-to-paper. There's just something annoying about having to write things in block characters that makes me remember.
Actually, I find CUPS is a terrible printing system compared to LPD. It tries to add a slew of additional features that mainly result in incompatibilities and inconsistent behavior. LDP might be old and simple but it works EVERY time. Not to slam the CUPS developers, I did try to like CUPS for about a 6 month run, but now you'll have to pry LPD from my cold dead hands.
Didn't they have something like that a while ago? I can't remember the name exaclt but something like "Wolfpack"? I looked it up and Google and couldn't find any mention of it post-1997. Did they kill it off?
You got it brother. Pen and paper first, transcribe to computer back at the dorm/home. This way you "double-gel" on the info. I, and probably many others, can type "subconsciously" such that blah, blah goes in the ears and straight to the fingers, bypassing the brain altogether. You can imagine that that's not too conducive to actually learning anything. Also, I find that at exam time, reediting and summarizing notes (think writing personal Cliff notes) beats studying outright. For some reason, the editing task makes the content stickier in memory than plain studying outright.
Even if that's the case, it's not terribly difficult to map documents.all to document or any other naming variation in Moz's DOM implementation (see DefineStaticJSVals() in nsDOMClassInfo.cpp). Any JavaScript based attempt at concretely identifying a browser along these lines could be worked around in minutes. A far more sinister detection method would be if MS were to add a key based "handshake" to their HTTP communication layer. They could wrap this in a security PR "blanket" and invoke the DMCA against reimplementations of it. It could still be done but it could be deemed as a security contravention measure under the DMCA. Have I said the DMCA sucks today yet?
How about because experienced programmers WANT to see the source code of what they're working with. I make full use of source code availability whenever I can because it lets me optimize my code to an extent that I couldn't otherwise. Also, the industry is replete with companies that license their products yet make their full source code available under basic NDAs. Granted, if you aren't a programmer but rather an end user, then it doesn't, and to some extent, shouldn't make any difference to you.
It sounded too surreal to be real but there it was on Page 2, Paragraph 1. That said, I think this may be a sign of the apocalypse, so run and take cover!
Quick follow-up, I did see a version of MSN for OSX on the MS site. Not sure if it includes an updated IE though. I've heard/read that MS is considering integrating IE and the MSN client such that the two are one and the same. Only unconfirmed rumors for now but it will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next 12 months.
IANAL but I imagine stealing a key and then using that key to gain unauthorized access with still be B&E.
Right, however, in order to VIEW an encrypted DVD you MUST bypass the copyright protections. This is true by definition for any player/platform. DeCSS has a legitimate use for this particular purpose. The fact that it CAN be used to decrypt DVDs for the purpose of copying them is another matter altogether. I'm sure 99.9% of the time DeCSS is used it's used for VIEWING and not COPYING.
<rant>
Now that that's said, I think it's pathetic that the MPAA relies on encryption for DVDs. History has shown over and over that ALL encryption that is decryptable is breakable by definition. They should stop this nonsense and start prosecuting when they find copyright theft. Anyhow, most DVD copyright theft is probably a straight rip, encryption included. So in effect, the encryption is utterly useless anyhow.
</rant>
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You want to bet it won't happen? Here's what I think will happen: we'll see the basic software added "for free" (aka. bundled) and a "subscription" fee for virus updates. They won't give the service away, but I don't see why they wouldn't use the successful bundling technique to steal market share one more time. Time and time again MS has shown that people are too lazy to purchase a competeing product, regardless of it's technical superiority, and have to undergo the hassle of having to install it. It was only a matter of time before MS came after the anti-virus companies lunches and personally I think it serves them right for hitching their wagon to a rabid horse. In fact, I'm surprised they waited so long to move into this market. If I were a McAfee or Symantec stockholder I'd be very concerned.
Having spent some time working on a Linux hardware driver for an undocumented PCI card, I think most people have no clue at the amount of work involved. Deciphering bus calls when there's little to no documentation to hint as to what the calls are for is like building a puzzle without the final image to look at. Getting a piece is easy, but figuring out where it fits relative to other pieces is one mean task. Anybody who has the audacity to just sit back and complain without either filing bugs or submitting patches should just migrate back to Windows, their whining certainly will not be missed. Also, good point about cheap-shit hardware, you're not going to end up with a Ferrari if all you have is parts for a tricycle.
When you purchase a full copy of WinXP ($199 MSRP for the Home edition) you *own* it.
You'd better re-read your EULA, I quote from section 19 of the WinXP EULA, "The Product is licensed, not sold.". That's right, MS grants you a *license* (see section 1 of EULA)to use XP on it's terms. They can terminate your license at their discretion for anything they construe to be a violation of their EULA (see section 6 of EULA).
I was half-joking in my post, but if the RIAA can make congress table a law forbidding non-secured computer peripherals, why not a law forbidding non-secured codecs? I would HOPE it would fail to pass but it's not inconcievable that they would try.
If you want to help, you should submit one of these documents to the openoffice.org issuezilla. They're pretty good at getting to filter related issues if you attach a document for them to test with. You'll want to clean it up as much as possible (ie. shorten it and remove any confidential info) before sending it it.
the RIAA will bully their way into making them illegal
... let me suffix that with a "yet".
They haven't done that with MP3
You mean "crossover office", "crossover plugin" is for web browser viewers. Also, yes, you need licenses for MS-Office / Photoshop and any other non-free software you want to run on crossover office. That said, crossover office 2.0 is a remarkable improvement over the 1.x builds. The 1.x build had issues with OLE and cutting and pasting of OLE objects. I used to recommend using Win4Lin for running MS-Office but with the 2.0 release, the difference in stability when running MS-Office between a native Windows runtime via Win4Lin and the WINE based crossover office is truly non-existent.
If you're serious about looking into OO, take a look at 1.1 Beta 2. They've done significant work on the filters. My parent company uses MS Office extensively (I'm sure most do, they're a monopoly after all) and I *used* to have problems with Excel macros in particular. I've been saving these "problem" ones for testing in OO and they all appear to work in 1.1 B2. I realize it's a beta release but it gives you a good idea of what the next point release will be capable of. MS had better start thinking of repricing their Office suite to $99 soon because the next release of OO looks like it's going to be able to handle their doc formats pretty much perfectly.
Actually, the Windows results in question used a 64 way box, the Linux test used a 32 way box. Linux hit 600K TPM on the 32 processor box, Windows hit 707 TPM on the 64 processor box. Comparing there results is about as useful as comparing a test of Windows on a P6 and Linux on a P2. This is best explained with a parody, "In other news tonight, tests show Windows runs very-fast on a P6 4Ghz but Linux was only pretty-fast on a P2 333Mhz. Therefore, Windows must be more performant than Linux.".
We have to differentiate interaction with others via digital means (in this case, online games) and human interaction.
Interesting point. I think it's still a social activity in the broadest sense of it's definition. The team element in games like RTCW-EM could be considered a form of a social group even though the only words usually exchanged are the canned "Good game" and "Affirmative" quick chats. There's an element of helping and protecting others for a common goal too. I assume that sociologists probably deliniate face-to-face and distance interaction, I found alot of references to the "sociology of cyberspace" but don't have time to boil any of them down. Without a doubt, LAN parties are more fun since you interact in both worlds and can hurl non-canned insults at each other at a whim!
is it really anti-social? is it only for geeks? is it a non-productive use of time?
1) Multiplayer games are social events, single player games are anti-social.
2) In it's heyday it used to be for geeks since we were the only one with the equipment/connectivity to host a networked (LAN/WAN) game but now everybody seems to be doing it.
3) As for being a non-productive use of time, it's about as non-productive as screaming at a wall both relieve stress. Still, a game of RTWC Enemy Territory beats screaming at an inanimate object in my book.
My Tivo does this and has for years.
Scratch that last paragraph. The non-Debian APT implmentations all appear to be wrappers for RPM, so RPM's bin DB is still there and used.
You're talking about apples and oranges here. The RPM database/registry only serves a subset of what the MS registry is used for. The problem with the MS registry is that the configuration information for your apps is at the mercy of the registry. This wasn't the case when INI files were the norm. As for patches, the number of patches is directly proportional to the number of maintainers. Since GNU/Linux has a boatload of maintainers each producing their own patches, you're bound to have a lot of small patches. MS has a single maintainer so you get a few huge patches.
To give some credence to the above, I'm not particularly fond of the RPM database myself. However, it's still the most widely used, although APT (a superior solution I think) is gaining quickly. Also APT boasts a plain text database rather than a binary database like RPM. So with apt, decorrupting is easy accomplished using a text editor.
The difference is that Linus et al. do not CLAIM to be innovative. MS touts themselves as having invented everything from the toaster to the space shuttle. Reading an MS PR release is like listening to an Al Gore speech in my mind. Neither the Linux kernel nor MS are particularly innovative, but at least Linux hackers do not falsely claim to be. MS does take a lot of heat on /. but I would say that MS's arrogance as a whole is on par with the /. camp's arrogance so it's pretty much a wash.
Also, even though you didn't mention it, some repliers did, I don't use Linux because it's free as in $$$. I can afford the $200 XP Pro price tag. I use Linux (1) becuase I am able to see/change the source as I see fit, (2) it's modular structure lets me tailor the kernel for each box/purpose, (3) I like and use the command line extensively (not all of us are point-and-clickers), and (4) because it's not built around the asinine all-your-eggs-in-one-basket registry concept.
One final point on the $$$ argument. I would guess that over half the XP installs out there are pirated copies anyhow. Every time I see a pirated copy of XP it pains me to NOT call the BSA but I refrain. In fact, I'd bet that most MS backers on this board have one or more pieces of pirated MS software in their possession. It's a little hippocritical to stand up for a closed source software company all while stealing (yes, it's theft) at the same time.
Many times I found that weeks of class went by where I dozed in class and left unintelligible scribbles on the page.
Ditto! That's where the transcription piece comes in. Even though I had a PC, an HP-150 with a whopping 10M hard drive (take a look at this thing), I didn't actually enter my notes into it and I didn't mean to insinuate that that's the way to do it. I transcribed from paper-to-paper. There's just something annoying about having to write things in block characters that makes me remember.
Actually, I find CUPS is a terrible printing system compared to LPD. It tries to add a slew of additional features that mainly result in incompatibilities and inconsistent behavior. LDP might be old and simple but it works EVERY time. Not to slam the CUPS developers, I did try to like CUPS for about a 6 month run, but now you'll have to pry LPD from my cold dead hands.
Didn't they have something like that a while ago? I can't remember the name exaclt but something like "Wolfpack"? I looked it up and Google and couldn't find any mention of it post-1997. Did they kill it off?
You got it brother. Pen and paper first, transcribe to computer back at the dorm/home. This way you "double-gel" on the info. I, and probably many others, can type "subconsciously" such that blah, blah goes in the ears and straight to the fingers, bypassing the brain altogether. You can imagine that that's not too conducive to actually learning anything. Also, I find that at exam time, reediting and summarizing notes (think writing personal Cliff notes) beats studying outright. For some reason, the editing task makes the content stickier in memory than plain studying outright.
Even if that's the case, it's not terribly difficult to map documents.all to document or any other naming variation in Moz's DOM implementation (see DefineStaticJSVals() in nsDOMClassInfo.cpp). Any JavaScript based attempt at concretely identifying a browser along these lines could be worked around in minutes. A far more sinister detection method would be if MS were to add a key based "handshake" to their HTTP communication layer. They could wrap this in a security PR "blanket" and invoke the DMCA against reimplementations of it. It could still be done but it could be deemed as a security contravention measure under the DMCA. Have I said the DMCA sucks today yet?
How about because experienced programmers WANT to see the source code of what they're working with. I make full use of source code availability whenever I can because it lets me optimize my code to an extent that I couldn't otherwise. Also, the industry is replete with companies that license their products yet make their full source code available under basic NDAs. Granted, if you aren't a programmer but rather an end user, then it doesn't, and to some extent, shouldn't make any difference to you.
It sounded too surreal to be real but there it was on Page 2, Paragraph 1. That said, I think this may be a sign of the apocalypse, so run and take cover!
No browser I am aware of allows changing what JavaScript reports.
Download mozilla sources, look in:
dom/src/base/nsGlobalWindow.cpp
~ line 5830 you'll find:
aAppName.Assign(NS_LITERAL_STRING("Netscape"));
Change it to whatever you want -or- for a less permanent solution, make it read from a file. Recompile.
Quick follow-up, I did see a version of MSN for OSX on the MS site. Not sure if it includes an updated IE though. I've heard/read that MS is considering integrating IE and the MSN client such that the two are one and the same. Only unconfirmed rumors for now but it will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next 12 months.
IANAL but I imagine stealing a key and then using that key to gain unauthorized access with still be B&E.
Right, however, in order to VIEW an encrypted DVD you MUST bypass the copyright protections. This is true by definition for any player/platform. DeCSS has a legitimate use for this particular purpose. The fact that it CAN be used to decrypt DVDs for the purpose of copying them is another matter altogether. I'm sure 99.9% of the time DeCSS is used it's used for VIEWING and not COPYING.
<rant>
Now that that's said, I think it's pathetic that the MPAA relies on encryption for DVDs. History has shown over and over that ALL encryption that is decryptable is breakable by definition. They should stop this nonsense and start prosecuting when they find copyright theft. Anyhow, most DVD copyright theft is probably a straight rip, encryption included. So in effect, the encryption is utterly useless anyhow.
</rant>