So- is it safe to use the voice-over-air interface I've been using for some time now? It uses a frequency range that the FCC hasn't licensed (yet). I'm also starting to wonder if the USPS is going to run into trouble for using packages- _awfully_ close to packets...
I think think your term/concept "long term hub" is the issue at hand. At any one time there's a whole bunch of "hubs" jockeying to be "the one." As the web evolves I think it's always going to be easier for somebody to jump to the front of the line and leverage cool stuff that older sites (that've already achieved wide spread adoption) will take longer to integrate. The leap frogging phenomena exists in many forms across technology. So the valuation of these critters is a dicey prospect: one component of the value is the "membership mass" but the other is how new the technology is. Given that there can be only a limited number of "hubs" at the top of the food chain and those are the ones with significant value due to membership AND that at any moment, a new player can jump to the top with a new technology- the est. values are bound to be a complete roller coaster. I certainly would be skeptical of throwing cash at one- but perhaps the smarties over in Redmond have crunched the numbers and figured there's a window of opportunity for an ROI; that they can monetize the membership prior to somebody knocking facebook out of their near-the-top slot.
MANY people do have problems with Windows security. Here's a summary of my personal experience.
Work: I've been responsible for a small (75 users) heterogeneous (Win & Posix) server & desktop infrastructure for 10 years. I observe all the best practices regarding securing boxes (firewalls, o/s specific tightening, anti malware & anti virus, etc). In this time frame I've had two incidents of Posix boxes getting hit and ten instances on Windows boxes (viruses). In the case of the Posix boxes the incident was automatically detected an resolved promptly without any impact. In the case of the Windows boxes the incident frequently went undetected for some time and in most cases until there was an impact and corresponding soft cost to recover from the incident.
Personal: As many other IT professionals and enthusiasts do, I end up supporting boxes of friends and family. My incident rate for Windows vs. Posix outside of work (being less controlled than my work environment) is MUCH worse for Windows. The last couple of years I've been porting the willing to Ubuntu so that we can go a few years between "house calls" vs. the sometimes more than once a year visit I have to pay them if they run Windows.
Is that where they've set their bar? "Let's not be the laughing stock?" I can relate to that actually. Given how complex software & it's design process has become it certainly is a realistic goal to get software out the door that just "doesn't suck." However, I'd prefer if my server OS vendor aimed a little higher.
I've generally found "Wrong and stupid" goes hand in hand with blogs. The easier it is to be heard, the lower the signal to noise ratio is going to get. It'd be nice if we could just taser them but perhaps unconstitutional.:D
Relevant quote: "Don't taser me! Ow! Ow! Ow!" - opportunistic journalist at Democratic National Convention
IANAP, but I like the approach that I've noticed a lot of schools taking to combat teen age drug use. I drove onto a school's ground's last night and noted the "This is a drug free zone." Some of the schools/sports teams/etc even go as far as to have a written contract that kids sign. Seems trivial and potentially ineffective but I like the appraoach because it does a couple of things:
1. get's the discussion out in the open about the specifics of a mutual agreement (and related explanation about the basis of the agreement) that both parties consent to
2. if/when they violate the agreement, you confront them with a simpler issue;ie. they broke an agreement which to me seems easier to explain as a bad thing than the more complex discussion of "drugs are bad" (or under drinking, porn, etc)
I'm sure we can all define an amusing X for the above. I did not do so at the risk of offending any particular X's out there. Monkeys? There's no actual "Pan troglodytes" reading./ right?
I think you've hit on the most important aspect of this issue. Software advancement suffers when bureaucracy interferes (whether's it's business models or industry politics). To me the value of software developed by a group of people that operate outside of bureaucratic constraints is that it can make the best technical decisions (regardless of profit or politics). I don't think this is conjecture- isn't the superior quality of selected FOSS relative to its commercial counterparts proof?
IANAL, but I'd certainly lay odds that no law is being broken.
That being said, is there an assumption by free content providers that users will view the ads? You betcha, it's probably a fundamental piece of their business model. Should there be a more up front agreement (ie. like privacy statement links typically found in the footer of a site) between the providers of free content and their audience outlining this relationship? Probably.
IMO, consumers should have the right to block ANY pushed content (advertising or otherwise); we're the ones paying for the bandwidth to our browser (and in some rural parts of the country forced ad's can't make some sites unusable due to bandwidth limitations). Do I expect this right to make some online business models no longer practical (including those that provide FREE content on the web)? Yes. But I'd prefer it that way.
Where was Homeland Sec. during all this? Were they too busy policing perilous nail clippers on board commercial flights and potential Toiletry Catastrophes of unprecedented magnitude? I'm not sure if I completely agree with the apparent focus of their resources. Perhaps they should consider adjusting the scope of their monitoring activities.
I bet this project started out as an attempt to build a machine that could run the latest version of a popular mainstream o/s, play media w/ DRM AND access the network at the same time.
That's a HUGE idea. You should put together a script and court Hollywood. You could get The Rock to star- he did good work in Doom. I think to stay true to the period though Adventure The Movie should be in b&w.
Ok, so FOSS lost a high profile case to commercial software & govt's can be persuaded by deep pockets. On the one hand, nothing to see here, move along... On the other hand, it could be taken as an indication of the state of things & an inspiration to advance things further. The fact that this particular case went on so long says a lot about how close FOSS has come to being a viable alternative to commercial solutions (especially when it had to pass before a, theoretically, discriminatory state approval process). So, it's been posited here that FOSS solutions are close to functionally equivalent to their commercial counterparts; I'll refrain from any opinions on that but I think what the MA case might indicate is that it's not enough to be a functional replacement when the entrenched has lots of $ and can persuade the customer. In order to overcome the organizational momentum and deep pockets, it has to be significantly better. Seems like it would just be a matter of time given the trajectory FOSS solutions have taken over the last decade & eventually they'll be enough better that it won't matter what the incentives are to remain status quo.
I think you've struck upon a terrific idea: Celebrity OS Wars. A reality show where two non-technical pop-culture icon's compete to install an OS on bare metal. It's just as good a concept as some of the other hokey stuff tv exec's have signed off the last few years. I'd watch it. Hell, I'd even bet on the outcomes.
Why bother with OSX when there is Linux? At least for server's anyway. The abstraction overhead incurred by OS X's microkernel architecture is a very steep price to pay on servers who's primary role is to provide network services in a multi-user (ie. highly threaded) environment. If you want to do samba, apache or sql stuff- Linux runs much faster. I have several cases where I re-OS'd the machine (from OS X to OpenSuse 10) and saw 3x, 4x and higher performance improvements (exact same enviroment: hardware, shell scripts running against samba, apache or mySQL, etc).
I'd like to know how many users actually buy (ie. made a decision) Windows vice having no choice because it's what came with their computer. As far as I know, it's an incredibly small % relative to the number of Windows machines. It'd be interesting to compare to the number of users that chose Windows vs. chosing alternative O/S's. It would be particularly telling if you could factor into the comparison tech. vs. non-tech. users.
I think the reason why Thunderbird doesn't do as well against Outlook as Firefox does against other browsers because until recently it wasn't a functional replacement. With Tbird extensions providing calendaring options, it'll do better. I understand that there purists out there that would prefer their apps to do one thing and do it well, bu the reality is that many users prefer to have calendaring and messaging in one app.
I think the question this leaves on the table is one of software system architecture. I think the problem of conflicting views of what a given application should be to everyone is rooted in the "application" concept itself. Wirth's Oberon is a good case study in an alternative model that may address this concern. There's lots of analogy's that can be drown to the Posix shell environment and modularity of tight, focused commands that can be combined in powerful ways- leading to a whole greater than the sum.
Slashdot Mirror
So- is it safe to use the voice-over-air interface I've been using for some time now? It uses a frequency range that the FCC hasn't licensed (yet). I'm also starting to wonder if the USPS is going to run into trouble for using packages- _awfully_ close to packets ...
So... Dr. Evil is doing due diligence for MS? Who knew.
I think think your term/concept "long term hub" is the issue at hand. At any one time there's a whole bunch of "hubs" jockeying to be "the one." As the web evolves I think it's always going to be easier for somebody to jump to the front of the line and leverage cool stuff that older sites (that've already achieved wide spread adoption) will take longer to integrate. The leap frogging phenomena exists in many forms across technology. So the valuation of these critters is a dicey prospect: one component of the value is the "membership mass" but the other is how new the technology is. Given that there can be only a limited number of "hubs" at the top of the food chain and those are the ones with significant value due to membership AND that at any moment, a new player can jump to the top with a new technology- the est. values are bound to be a complete roller coaster. I certainly would be skeptical of throwing cash at one- but perhaps the smarties over in Redmond have crunched the numbers and figured there's a window of opportunity for an ROI; that they can monetize the membership prior to somebody knocking facebook out of their near-the-top slot.
Somebody please explain to Mr. Charney that his Jedi mind tricks may work on the general public but we're not falling for that!
Work: I've been responsible for a small (75 users) heterogeneous (Win & Posix) server & desktop infrastructure for 10 years. I observe all the best practices regarding securing boxes (firewalls, o/s specific tightening, anti malware & anti virus, etc). In this time frame I've had two incidents of Posix boxes getting hit and ten instances on Windows boxes (viruses). In the case of the Posix boxes the incident was automatically detected an resolved promptly without any impact. In the case of the Windows boxes the incident frequently went undetected for some time and in most cases until there was an impact and corresponding soft cost to recover from the incident.
Personal: As many other IT professionals and enthusiasts do, I end up supporting boxes of friends and family. My incident rate for Windows vs. Posix outside of work (being less controlled than my work environment) is MUCH worse for Windows. The last couple of years I've been porting the willing to Ubuntu so that we can go a few years between "house calls" vs. the sometimes more than once a year visit I have to pay them if they run Windows.
Is that where they've set their bar? "Let's not be the laughing stock?" I can relate to that actually. Given how complex software & it's design process has become it certainly is a realistic goal to get software out the door that just "doesn't suck." However, I'd prefer if my server OS vendor aimed a little higher.
I've generally found "Wrong and stupid" goes hand in hand with blogs. The easier it is to be heard, the lower the signal to noise ratio is going to get. It'd be nice if we could just taser them but perhaps unconstitutional. :D
Relevant quote: "Don't taser me! Ow! Ow! Ow!" - opportunistic journalist at Democratic National Convention
1. get's the discussion out in the open about the specifics of a mutual agreement (and related explanation about the basis of the agreement) that both parties consent to 2. if/when they violate the agreement, you confront them with a simpler issue;ie. they broke an agreement which to me seems easier to explain as a bad thing than the more complex discussion of "drugs are bad" (or under drinking, porn, etc)
"Standing on the Shoulders of X"
./ right?
I'm sure we can all define an amusing X for the above. I did not do so at the risk of offending any particular X's out there. Monkeys? There's no actual "Pan troglodytes" reading
Come on, how funny would that be? Stallman vs. hmmm, I dunno, Gates? Linus? Take your pick; all humorous.
I think you've hit on the most important aspect of this issue. Software advancement suffers when bureaucracy interferes (whether's it's business models or industry politics). To me the value of software developed by a group of people that operate outside of bureaucratic constraints is that it can make the best technical decisions (regardless of profit or politics). I don't think this is conjecture- isn't the superior quality of selected FOSS relative to its commercial counterparts proof?
IANAL, but I'd certainly lay odds that no law is being broken. That being said, is there an assumption by free content providers that users will view the ads? You betcha, it's probably a fundamental piece of their business model. Should there be a more up front agreement (ie. like privacy statement links typically found in the footer of a site) between the providers of free content and their audience outlining this relationship? Probably. IMO, consumers should have the right to block ANY pushed content (advertising or otherwise); we're the ones paying for the bandwidth to our browser (and in some rural parts of the country forced ad's can't make some sites unusable due to bandwidth limitations). Do I expect this right to make some online business models no longer practical (including those that provide FREE content on the web)? Yes. But I'd prefer it that way.
Anybody else feeling like there's a certain Sci-Fi channel mediocre miniseries in our near future?
Where was Homeland Sec. during all this? Were they too busy policing perilous nail clippers on board commercial flights and potential Toiletry Catastrophes of unprecedented magnitude? I'm not sure if I completely agree with the apparent focus of their resources. Perhaps they should consider adjusting the scope of their monitoring activities.
I bet this project started out as an attempt to build a machine that could run the latest version of a popular mainstream o/s, play media w/ DRM AND access the network at the same time.
What I took away from that was "Windows has to go slow to work." Shocker.
Should we call this Filth Fiber? Or perhaps PooPoo Packets?
That's a HUGE idea. You should put together a script and court Hollywood. You could get The Rock to star- he did good work in Doom. I think to stay true to the period though Adventure The Movie should be in b&w.
Ok, so FOSS lost a high profile case to commercial software & govt's can be persuaded by deep pockets. On the one hand, nothing to see here, move along... On the other hand, it could be taken as an indication of the state of things & an inspiration to advance things further. The fact that this particular case went on so long says a lot about how close FOSS has come to being a viable alternative to commercial solutions (especially when it had to pass before a, theoretically, discriminatory state approval process). So, it's been posited here that FOSS solutions are close to functionally equivalent to their commercial counterparts; I'll refrain from any opinions on that but I think what the MA case might indicate is that it's not enough to be a functional replacement when the entrenched has lots of $ and can persuade the customer. In order to overcome the organizational momentum and deep pockets, it has to be significantly better. Seems like it would just be a matter of time given the trajectory FOSS solutions have taken over the last decade & eventually they'll be enough better that it won't matter what the incentives are to remain status quo.
I think you've struck upon a terrific idea: Celebrity OS Wars. A reality show where two non-technical pop-culture icon's compete to install an OS on bare metal. It's just as good a concept as some of the other hokey stuff tv exec's have signed off the last few years. I'd watch it. Hell, I'd even bet on the outcomes.
Why bother with OSX when there is Linux? At least for server's anyway. The abstraction overhead incurred by OS X's microkernel architecture is a very steep price to pay on servers who's primary role is to provide network services in a multi-user (ie. highly threaded) environment. If you want to do samba, apache or sql stuff- Linux runs much faster. I have several cases where I re-OS'd the machine (from OS X to OpenSuse 10) and saw 3x, 4x and higher performance improvements (exact same enviroment: hardware, shell scripts running against samba, apache or mySQL, etc).
I'd like to know how many users actually buy (ie. made a decision) Windows vice having no choice because it's what came with their computer. As far as I know, it's an incredibly small % relative to the number of Windows machines. It'd be interesting to compare to the number of users that chose Windows vs. chosing alternative O/S's. It would be particularly telling if you could factor into the comparison tech. vs. non-tech. users.
I get frustrated because of the large % of Windows installations that serve as malware platforms.
I think the question this leaves on the table is one of software system architecture. I think the problem of conflicting views of what a given application should be to everyone is rooted in the "application" concept itself. Wirth's Oberon is a good case study in an alternative model that may address this concern. There's lots of analogy's that can be drown to the Posix shell environment and modularity of tight, focused commands that can be combined in powerful ways- leading to a whole greater than the sum.
I think we should all vote MS off of FOSS Island at the end of today's episode.