This suit was completely unfounded. While it is encouraging to witness it
getting shot down so quickly, it is still sad to know that so many retarded
patent related lawsuits are getting passed and used in IT in malicious ways
today. Copyright reform is needed, because it is stifiling more then just
business now-a-days (as is evident by examining the recent actions of
SCO).
Imagine if they had won? They would have gotten revenue from a truly
innovative and clever company just because they patented (regardless of
prior art) and sued at the right time. Who knows how far that could
have set Google back. Even if it didn't set Google back, it would still serve as
a confirming set of evidence for companies looking to follow suit.
I just got done doing the boyfriend thing and taking my girl and her little sister to "Finding Nemo". We got back and I fired up the computer, and was browsing Slashdot. She was like "what is that site anyways" (because it is up in a browser almost everytime she goes to use the computer) and I gave the canned response "it's a site where a lot of us computer pro's come to discuss technology and what not. Nothing that you would be interested in". She has found my hidden porn archives twice already, and I could see her growing skepticism.
So I show her the newest story, hoping to clarify things, and click the link.....up comes a woman looking alot like her (my type: tanned, "hand sized", long hair....).....thanks a fucking lot guys. I'm gonna have to spend like $50 in flowers and shit now!
Mozilla has tabbed browsing, more control over what I want to see, deals with cache and history better, and has a better cookie manager (it doesn't force you to confirm whether or not you want to accept each and every cookie when trying to be "secure", instead Moz has a sophisticated system of dealing with cookies without annoying popup boxes asking for approval every time - unless I want it too).
It also isn't tied into many other aspects of my OS - upgrading or changing certain parts of Mozilla never makes me worry about how it might cripple something in my OS (like IE does). Mozilla doesn't have libraries that are integral to other applications. Mozilla doesn't have hidden code and obscure "features" that may or may not send my info to a particular vendor.
Unfortunately Microsoft will change how NTLM authentication works soon because of this, and the Mozilla team will be forced to change Mozilla to meet these changes, and the process will repeat, just like with aspects concerning samba, and then I might change myself to support the ability to convey my thoughts without run-on sentences.
What's that other Internet Explorer thing again?
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC1
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"Mozilla is an open-source Web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability."
He actually explained to us what Mozilla is on Slashdot. Priceless. =)
In any event, I'll do my part in bug testing since I am not smart enough to contribute useful code myself. I love the open source model: even though everyone isn't a computer scientist, we can all still do our part in making a terrific program.
Wow, that's one massively powerful and useful enhancement that I had no idea anyone was working on. This makes Linux, like, 2 times more likely to be used in a datacenter. This is really cool.
Can someone legibly translate what that German article was all about? I ran it through Babelfish, and I swear, it made even less sense in English. I couldn't tell who was suing or imposing fines in what country to who's face in that company or what the hell was it talking about?!?!
When I was a work study I moved a computer lab that I was in charge of over to BSD (exactly 24 workstations). The students didn't seem to mind. The admin didn't mind. The network engineer asked me how I got IE to run in WINE. The LAN manager, however, threw a ton of bullshit my way concerning warranties and support.
Funny thing is, the two and a half weeks that the "all BSD" lab lasted, we had no work orders concerning crashes. I learned BSD only because the LAN manager in question made me learn it to move a email server over to it (Novell GroupWise used to be VERY expensive, and this square-headed manager didn't want to pay a bunch of cash to run one secure and isolated mail server on Novell stuff).
Business is business I guess.
Printer drivers can be very light
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The bulk of a PostScript driver for "business class - I.E. complex" printers usually resides in the PPD (printer description file). It's tough getting the size and complexity of a PPD down, even harder trying to get the manufacturer to make it smaller themselves (or in some cases, like with Canon, even trying to get technical specs from them - though the Code Host deal looks promising). The PCL instruction set can be daunting as well, especially PCL 5e.
However, since this can run Linux, you can use a generic PostScript driver for just about all PS printers, and a light and basic PCL 6 driver for most "black and whites". All a PDA maker has to do is make a generic PostScript driver and and generic PCL set and be done. Making a PPD work for a given printer can be done by the open source community.
So yes, it is amazing that PDA makers aren't providing printer support.
Program base doesn't equal success
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Look at the Handsprings. They ran Palm OS, but for some reason, I have never, ever seen one in use in the public (the local CompUSA's and Best Buys stopped selling a long, long time ago) - despite the fact that they actually had better specs then a Palm and larger screens, for only $10-15 more.
PDAs are main stream; everyone from the CEO to grandma has one. Which means that the average PDA consumer is like every other average consumer of anything else, and name recognition and marketing pizazz still rules the market (in regards to sells).
Like a Clie
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It's keyboard looks like the exact same dimension as a TG50 Sony Clie (which an office-mate owns). Seems to work for him just fine.
Bit pricy still - but competitive for it's market
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Wow, it's new design is a radical departure from the original "beta" models, which looked a hell of a lot like a thicker Zaurus. I like it a lot (the design and the layout).
However, a $449 price tag is rather hard to justify here. I known that it's comparing Apples to Oranges, but, a person can still pick up a used, last generation laptop with vast amounts more computing power for the same price on an auction, or slightly more at a computer show. And yes, I do realize that making these things are not exactly cheap, but $400+ dollars for those specs - from an unproven manufacturer?
I'll stick with my $195 backlit Clie that I got from Circuit City - after my $35 mail in rebate and the $10 mark down from the holiday sale (which can do everything that this can) for now. I'll pick a Yopy up off Ebay in a few months though.
In one of Carl Sagan's books (I forget which one) he talks about these findings - he helped design the test. Although seemingly compelling, even he himself concluded that the results were incorrect (I just can't recall why). I wish I was at home so I could check Cosmos and Billions and Billions, I know that it is one of those books. Anyone have these books handy?
SCO really thinks everyone is that stupid. This chump actually expects us to believe that Microsoft has been working on more UNIX interoperability for a year or more (yea, right), and would have come to SCO to purchase a contract, even though SCO doesn't even really own it afterall. Microsoft would have definately been more careful and made the link to Novell earlier - but that's all fantasy anyways. In addition, they make no mention, ever, of just what exactly Microsoft licensed - only that it was "very well-defined" (the second time I have witnessed a SCO person saying that).
How low is their stock right now? 6.85, opened at 6.93, down 1.15%, something like 26% over the past two days. Hopefully this story will drive that value down even lower. This company needs to be obliberated in a most profane and malicious manner.
I know that science doesn't sound all that exciting, but it can be truly mezmorizing when the right auther is spinning the tale. Here are a few good books that will help elevate the mind by dispelling alot of silly notions.
First is "The Borderlands of Science" by Micheal Shermer, who is the editor of skeptic magazine. That book goes over some of the biggest psuedo-scientific claims in a witty way. Shermer is an excellent writer.
And if you haven't read this yet, "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. That is perhaps the best written critque of superstition ever.
And last "Darwin's Ghost" by Steve Jones. It is a recap and modernization of Darwin and Wallace's work. Very good British writer.
I greatly enjoyed the SCO call session earlier. I only jumped in near the end, so I'm not sure exactly who it was that was representing SCO at the time - but he was one serious spin doctor. He adeptly deflected all blame, made it sound like being in the business of sueing people over IP (which is all SCOSource does) was a noble and legitimate business model, and even made a valiant attempt to prove that SCO, not Novell, actually owns the rights to Sys V. I couldn't believe how casually the callers accepted his rubbish as fact.
I wonder what the spin doctor would have to say to your above post. That's some pretty damning empirical evidence that disconfirms everything he claimed.
This keeps getting better. I can't believe that something concerning intellectual property, UNIX and Linux, and websites full of people that like to debate the effectiveness of Python over Perl, can be this damned entertaining.
Here is the link to the actual Rhapsody site itself.
And yes, it requires a Windows PC and is only available in the United States. It looks they are having a 14 day trial, with the first three months at $4.98, months 4++ being $9.95 each. The free trial covers unlimited "on demand" music and Internet radio. CD burning costs are not covered by the free trial ($0.79 per song on each CD). It also sports a horrid image containing both Avril Lavigne and Fiddy Cent in close proximity to that David Bowie guy, who plain refuses to die and go away.
Anyone remember when Bonzi first came out? I was a tech back then, and almost all of the systems on the campus were crashing and experiencing major slow down for a couple of days. I would run the usual gamut of questions: "Did you install anything new? Are you using AIM or ICQ? How many programs do you have open?". Asking these questions over the phone is futile, but you do it anyways, cause you're a lazy tech and you don't want to leave the air conditioned NOC. So I had to eventually turn off the game of Quake, log out of heat.net, and carry my lazy ass down to all of the offices. It was funny to be half listening to the clerk/professor/secretary/manager telling me about how they "never install anything on their computer" and how they "always run scandisk and the virus scanner on Friday at 4:30pm" and bla bla bla, just as their system grinds to a halt with a big purple ape on the screen jumping out at you, and the jarring blare of a long drawn out "uh ohh!!" that corresponds with the reception of 80 new ICQ messages.
I worked a sub-contracter job with a Dell contractor when I was 19/20 setting up Novell and Linux (very, very rare back then were new Linux installs that were actually purchased from commercial vendors - 4 years ago) rack servers. They had odd little Phoenix BIOS features that allowed a person to reset settings with the touch of a key upon boot up (it did have a "yes or no" prompt, though it didn't always work right). Dell also shipped a piece of software that was like Gateway's "Go Back" too, which erased all changes made to an array since last boot up. Yes, it was an actual Novell module which my contractor refuses to acknowledge ever existed now.
I logged more hours going back to corporate offices and disabling these "features" and assisting their admins mine out old data then I did installing them. I had to stand there and be told how "God damned stupid all of these features are, and how stupid Dell is for using them, and how stupid you are for working with Dell!!!!". This is when I was 19 and had no more business/customer support experience/skills then a guy serving fries at McDonald's. The shit sucked.
Murphy's Law dictates that the benefits of this idiotic and restrictive measure will be over shadowed by it's rare glitch and/or user incompetence which results in the loss of data.
What happens when your battery dies on the SQl server, and the default settings enact this horrid "feature" and your hard drive is slicked? How bad will it suck when it happens to the CEO's assistant's laptop and she comes storming into your pitiful excuse for a NOC right before you were supposed to go on lunch?
My boss asked me to take home some work that was all compiled in various Word, Excel, and whatever that PDF-like Microsoft format is (Visio I think). I lied and said that I only have Linux installed at home and use Star Office (which is 2/3 true). He asked me how I could afford to pay for a Unix workstation and not Windows, which he thought was "free" with each PC. When I showed him Redhat.com and explained what Linux was to him, he was truly puzzled. He had no idea that there were any other operating systems other then Windows, Unix, and Apple/Mac. This is coming from a guy that has been in a management position within a rather large tech company for 6 years.
There really isn't any beneficial changes here. People's gripes were largely with prices and restrictive measures that were associated with the new scheme, not what kind of "assurances" they were recieving ("assurances" that they thought they were already getting for free with older Microsoft products and that they usually get for free with other venodrs' software products: real support, limited training, and manufacturer accountability).
I still don't understand why Microsoft calls their scheme "Software Assurance". This implies that by being forced into expensive licensing schemes you are entitled to an extra degree of software security and performance.
Security and performance should be qualities that sell your product initially, something to be proud of as a manufacturer, not aspects of a product that you get only after paying annual fees.
Large companies end up paying tons in license fees for a plethora of different software products that fit individual needs. They could instead find a few open source products and pay the salaries of a few programmers to customize them to their needs, or outright integrate them. Lotus Notes for mail, Novell for meta, People Soft for CRM, Windows clients, etc. Instead, you could take one strong open source CRM, expand upon it, integrate web based mail (or even make a quick client), and integrate their features to work flawlessly, all running in an open source browser that is running on Linux terminals (which removes the need for de-centralized administration) - instead of forcing the admins to find ways around making all of these closed products work together in hack jobs, with expensive tools like Zen Works deployed just to install and configure software on expensive Windows workstations - or worse. Oh well - I'm being a square headed open source zealot again. I'll go lay down.
What's really ironic is that I'm using WIndows 98 right now, because I screwed my Linux kernel and don't feel like fixing it. My girl just bought me "Enter the Matrix" for the Game Cube man....been busy.....damn agents.
Early grave in the US, not Japan. The Saturn remained popular in Japan for a few years after it's US demise. Poor marketing was only part of the problem. Sega's US team greatly under estimated the growing popularity of RPGs and action titles that were largely "Japanese only", and hence failed to port their best titles early. Along came the Play Station which filled that niche (especially RPGs). Sega America just couldn't compete.
As a side note, The Saturn did 2D graphics extremely well, and 2D games are still big in Japan. This is part of the reason why it remained popular in Japan during the whole "3D revolution".
Cmon, all porn afficiados know that the best part of any porno is the first and last 2:30 (precisely). The former being the entertaining oral sex scene, and the ladder being the build up to climax and the resulting "money shot". In this respect, this watch could be harnessed to store the power of 20-30 decent porn clips, not just one.
When you absolutely, positively have to beat off right now, accept no substitutes.
Slashdot Mirror
=)
PS: sciocchi dell'alberino del pugno
Imagine if they had won? They would have gotten revenue from a truly innovative and clever company just because they patented (regardless of prior art) and sued at the right time. Who knows how far that could have set Google back. Even if it didn't set Google back, it would still serve as a confirming set of evidence for companies looking to follow suit.
PS: fist post fools.
So I show her the newest story, hoping to clarify things, and click the link.....up comes a woman looking alot like her (my type: tanned, "hand sized", long hair....).....thanks a fucking lot guys. I'm gonna have to spend like $50 in flowers and shit now!
It also isn't tied into many other aspects of my OS - upgrading or changing certain parts of Mozilla never makes me worry about how it might cripple something in my OS (like IE does). Mozilla doesn't have libraries that are integral to other applications. Mozilla doesn't have hidden code and obscure "features" that may or may not send my info to a particular vendor.
IE is "better"? Dream on.
Unfortunately Microsoft will change how NTLM authentication works soon because of this, and the Mozilla team will be forced to change Mozilla to meet these changes, and the process will repeat, just like with aspects concerning samba, and then I might change myself to support the ability to convey my thoughts without run-on sentences.
He actually explained to us what Mozilla is on Slashdot. Priceless. =)
In any event, I'll do my part in bug testing since I am not smart enough to contribute useful code myself. I love the open source model: even though everyone isn't a computer scientist, we can all still do our part in making a terrific program.
PS: .
And oh, what's this, another fist post by your's truly that was actually modded up?
Mad fist post fools. =)
PS: fist post fools
Can someone legibly translate what that German article was all about? I ran it through Babelfish, and I swear, it made even less sense in English. I couldn't tell who was suing or imposing fines in what country to who's face in that company or what the hell was it talking about?!?!
Funny thing is, the two and a half weeks that the "all BSD" lab lasted, we had no work orders concerning crashes. I learned BSD only because the LAN manager in question made me learn it to move a email server over to it (Novell GroupWise used to be VERY expensive, and this square-headed manager didn't want to pay a bunch of cash to run one secure and isolated mail server on Novell stuff).
Business is business I guess.
However, since this can run Linux, you can use a generic PostScript driver for just about all PS printers, and a light and basic PCL 6 driver for most "black and whites". All a PDA maker has to do is make a generic PostScript driver and and generic PCL set and be done. Making a PPD work for a given printer can be done by the open source community.
So yes, it is amazing that PDA makers aren't providing printer support.
PDAs are main stream; everyone from the CEO to grandma has one. Which means that the average PDA consumer is like every other average consumer of anything else, and name recognition and marketing pizazz still rules the market (in regards to sells).
It's keyboard looks like the exact same dimension as a TG50 Sony Clie (which an office-mate owns). Seems to work for him just fine.
However, a $449 price tag is rather hard to justify here. I known that it's comparing Apples to Oranges, but, a person can still pick up a used, last generation laptop with vast amounts more computing power for the same price on an auction, or slightly more at a computer show. And yes, I do realize that making these things are not exactly cheap, but $400+ dollars for those specs - from an unproven manufacturer?
I'll stick with my $195 backlit Clie that I got from Circuit City - after my $35 mail in rebate and the $10 mark down from the holiday sale (which can do everything that this can) for now. I'll pick a Yopy up off Ebay in a few months though.
In one of Carl Sagan's books (I forget which one) he talks about these findings - he helped design the test. Although seemingly compelling, even he himself concluded that the results were incorrect (I just can't recall why). I wish I was at home so I could check Cosmos and Billions and Billions, I know that it is one of those books. Anyone have these books handy?
How low is their stock right now? 6.85, opened at 6.93, down 1.15%, something like 26% over the past two days. Hopefully this story will drive that value down even lower. This company needs to be obliberated in a most profane and malicious manner.
First is "The Borderlands of Science" by Micheal Shermer, who is the editor of skeptic magazine. That book goes over some of the biggest psuedo-scientific claims in a witty way. Shermer is an excellent writer.
And if you haven't read this yet, "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. That is perhaps the best written critque of superstition ever.
And last "Darwin's Ghost" by Steve Jones. It is a recap and modernization of Darwin and Wallace's work. Very good British writer.
I wonder what the spin doctor would have to say to your above post. That's some pretty damning empirical evidence that disconfirms everything he claimed.
This keeps getting better. I can't believe that something concerning intellectual property, UNIX and Linux, and websites full of people that like to debate the effectiveness of Python over Perl, can be this damned entertaining.
And yes, it requires a Windows PC and is only available in the United States. It looks they are having a 14 day trial, with the first three months at $4.98, months 4++ being $9.95 each. The free trial covers unlimited "on demand" music and Internet radio. CD burning costs are not covered by the free trial ($0.79 per song on each CD). It also sports a horrid image containing both Avril Lavigne and Fiddy Cent in close proximity to that David Bowie guy, who plain refuses to die and go away.
PS: fist post fools
Anyone remember when Bonzi first came out? I was a tech back then, and almost all of the systems on the campus were crashing and experiencing major slow down for a couple of days. I would run the usual gamut of questions: "Did you install anything new? Are you using AIM or ICQ? How many programs do you have open?". Asking these questions over the phone is futile, but you do it anyways, cause you're a lazy tech and you don't want to leave the air conditioned NOC. So I had to eventually turn off the game of Quake, log out of heat.net, and carry my lazy ass down to all of the offices. It was funny to be half listening to the clerk/professor/secretary/manager telling me about how they "never install anything on their computer" and how they "always run scandisk and the virus scanner on Friday at 4:30pm" and bla bla bla, just as their system grinds to a halt with a big purple ape on the screen jumping out at you, and the jarring blare of a long drawn out "uh ohh!!" that corresponds with the reception of 80 new ICQ messages.
I logged more hours going back to corporate offices and disabling these "features" and assisting their admins mine out old data then I did installing them. I had to stand there and be told how "God damned stupid all of these features are, and how stupid Dell is for using them, and how stupid you are for working with Dell!!!!". This is when I was 19 and had no more business/customer support experience/skills then a guy serving fries at McDonald's. The shit sucked.
Murphy's Law dictates that the benefits of this idiotic and restrictive measure will be over shadowed by it's rare glitch and/or user incompetence which results in the loss of data.
What happens when your battery dies on the SQl server, and the default settings enact this horrid "feature" and your hard drive is slicked? How bad will it suck when it happens to the CEO's assistant's laptop and she comes storming into your pitiful excuse for a NOC right before you were supposed to go on lunch?
My boss asked me to take home some work that was all compiled in various Word, Excel, and whatever that PDF-like Microsoft format is (Visio I think). I lied and said that I only have Linux installed at home and use Star Office (which is 2/3 true). He asked me how I could afford to pay for a Unix workstation and not Windows, which he thought was "free" with each PC. When I showed him Redhat.com and explained what Linux was to him, he was truly puzzled. He had no idea that there were any other operating systems other then Windows, Unix, and Apple/Mac. This is coming from a guy that has been in a management position within a rather large tech company for 6 years.
There really isn't any beneficial changes here. People's gripes were largely with prices and restrictive measures that were associated with the new scheme, not what kind of "assurances" they were recieving ("assurances" that they thought they were already getting for free with older Microsoft products and that they usually get for free with other venodrs' software products: real support, limited training, and manufacturer accountability).
I still don't understand why Microsoft calls their scheme "Software Assurance". This implies that by being forced into expensive licensing schemes you are entitled to an extra degree of software security and performance.
Security and performance should be qualities that sell your product initially, something to be proud of as a manufacturer, not aspects of a product that you get only after paying annual fees.
Large companies end up paying tons in license fees for a plethora of different software products that fit individual needs. They could instead find a few open source products and pay the salaries of a few programmers to customize them to their needs, or outright integrate them. Lotus Notes for mail, Novell for meta, People Soft for CRM, Windows clients, etc. Instead, you could take one strong open source CRM, expand upon it, integrate web based mail (or even make a quick client), and integrate their features to work flawlessly, all running in an open source browser that is running on Linux terminals (which removes the need for de-centralized administration) - instead of forcing the admins to find ways around making all of these closed products work together in hack jobs, with expensive tools like Zen Works deployed just to install and configure software on expensive Windows workstations - or worse. Oh well - I'm being a square headed open source zealot again. I'll go lay down.
What's really ironic is that I'm using WIndows 98 right now, because I screwed my Linux kernel and don't feel like fixing it. My girl just bought me "Enter the Matrix" for the Game Cube man....been busy.....damn agents.
As a side note, The Saturn did 2D graphics extremely well, and 2D games are still big in Japan. This is part of the reason why it remained popular in Japan during the whole "3D revolution".
When you absolutely, positively have to beat off right now, accept no substitutes.