Sure, there's a lot more running around and shooting and Will Smith being a badass in the film than there is in the book, but there's some definite common threads, too. I'm beginning to think that people who claim the book and film of I, Robot have nothing in common simply don't have a very strong grasp on what Asimov actually wrote.
I still cringe when I hear a robot being called "boy" in his early stories.
The positonic Stepin Fetchit.
The Foundation Trilogy is an adolescent - intellectual's - fantasy of backstage manipulation and control that plays out on the grandest of scales. "But who guards the guards?"
I was always far distant from Heinlein in many ways. But his "Future History" seemed fully alive and human.
Your response is what is commonly known as 'blaming the victim.' Seriously, you can't imagine any other way for malware to get onto a system except user stupidity?
Why does malware remain resident on a system?
Win32/Alureon was added to MSRT and MSE last October. The Virus Tools scans suggest about 70% of mainstream AV programs should have detected it.
The rootkit hasn't forgotten the old folks still on dial-up:
If a dial-up connection is sometimes used from the computer, reconfigure the dial-up settings in the rasphone.pbk file as necessary, as Win32/Alureon may set the fields "IpDnsAddress" and "IpDns2Address" in the rasphone.pbk file to the attacker's address. The Microsoft scanner code that automatically removes Win32/Alureon backs up the infected dial-up configuration file to: %allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk\rasphone.pbk.bak
The latest addition to the list is Pushbot [Jan 27]
Using backdoor functionality Win32/Pushbot can be ordered to spread via MSN Messenger by a remote attacker. It sends a message to all of the infected user's contacts. Some variants may also spread using other instant messaging programs, such as AIM.
The worm can be ordered to send messages, which can contain URLs pointing to a remotely hosted copy of itself. The message may be provided by the controller via the IRC backdoor. Some variants of Win32/Pushbot may also spread by copying themselves to removable drives (other than A: or B:, such as USB memory keys) Some variants may be ordered to spread by copying themselves to the shared directories of various peer-to-peer file sharing programs, using filenames such as the following: KEY-GEN Adobe PhotoShop CS3.exe.
Some variants instead may attach a zipped copy of themselves to the [IM] message and/or randomly choose messages from a provided list. As an example, some variants use the following messages:
WoW? is that really you... what the hell where you drinking:D LOL, you look so ugly in this picture, no joke... Should I put this on facebook/myspace? Hey m8, who is this on the right, in this picture... Sup, seen the pictures from the other night?
After all, there's no way that their malware tool could have spotted it, or the update could have checksummed the files before patching them.
If they put half as much effort into their anti-malware activities as they do into their DRM regime, the world would be a better place. We'd all have unicorns, and a pot of gold.
Microsoft does detect it - and has since last October.
Detection initially created: Definition: 1.69.77.0 Released: Oct 23, 2009
There are no common symptoms associated with this threat. Alert notifications from installed antivirus software may be the only symptom(s). When the infecting trojan is run, it infects a system driver, usually 'atapi.sys'. It has also been observed to infect 'iastor.sys' but other system drivers may also be targeted. The system driver detected as Virus:Win32/Alureon.A is infected by the addition of code, whose function is to load a part of the Alureon rootkit. The Alureon rootkit is a component that gives Alureon the ability to avoid detection; it is created by the same Alureon trojan that infects the system driver. The rootkit loaded by Virus:Win32/Alureon.A has the ability to avoid behavior blockers, which allows it to perform its malicious routines uninterrupted. It can also hide files and disk sectors.
Manual removal is not recommended for this threat. To detect and remove this threat and other malicious software that may have been installed, run a full-system scan with an up-to-date antivirus product such as Microsoft Security Essentials... . Win32/Alureon may modify DNS settings on the host computer, thus the following steps may be required after the Win32/Alureon removal is complete: If the computer has a network interface that does not receive a configuration using DHCP, reset the DNS configuration if necessary
A MIT student is nearly shot while picking up a friend at the air port because her T-Shirt had a proto board mounted between her boobs. It had blinking lights and wires.... Seriously, I can understand how a regular person might not understand the situation, but don't they actually train security people? And if they are not trained, are we safer?
1 time 3000 people died, compared to the roads which claim 42,116 Americans a year. Heck about 100 people a year die from lightning. So over the last 45 years lighting is more deadly than terrorists
The geek is addicted to false and misleading analogies.
The population of the WTC complex at the noon hour on a weekday was around 100 thousand.
The 42 thousand accidental traffic deaths a year he talks about will never occur in a single incident in downtown Manhattan.
The terrorist can make such things happen.
The single traffic death has limited and definable consequences.
The twin towers were 13 million square feet of office space, a transport hub, a shopping center and a tourist attraction - and most significantly a vital part of Manhattan's financial district.
Highly skilled people, in very specialized trades, not easily replaced, and all in their prime earning years. This not a hit any city could have rebounded from easily, not even a city as rich and powerful as New York.
The attack on the WTC was, of course, co-ordinated with simultaneous attacks on Washington.
If the geek does not like world he is living in now, he might usefully consider what would have followed from the mass murder of the American Congress.
Case in point, Microsoft started losing its juice when it got serious about enterprise
Microsoft has always been serious about the enterprise market.
In July of 76 Microsoft was selling its microcomputer BASIC to corporate clients like General Electric.
In April of 79: Microsoft 8080 BASIC was the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award, "traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers."
The single most important decision Microsoft ever made was to negotiate a non-exclusive license for MS-DOS. That would permanently alter the landscape. Apple is the lone survivor of the era when hardware and software was tightly bundled.
In 1983 Microsoft Multiplan spreadsheet the company's first application product, was ported across many platforms. "While Lotus 1-2-3 surpassed Multiplan in domestic markets, Multiplan was the winner in almost every other country in which it appeared."
In September of 83 Microsoft introduced Word for MS-DOs 1.0. Microsoft Timeline
Re:Just Faster??? I wish I was just Richer!!!
on
OpenOffice 3.2 Released
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I don't think I've used any new features for a word processor since WordPerfect 5.1. That had just about everything I needed. For 99.9999% of the population, OpenOffice is more than enough.
Microsoft doesn't sell a word processor.
It sells integrated - off-the-shelf - solutions for office work that scale to an enterprise of any size.
It sells a global labor force that lives and breathes MS Office.
That is why if you have a corporate e-mail address Enterprise Office for home use can be yours for $10. Microsoft Home Use Program
People don't buy windows because they've assessed multiple competing options (including osx and linux) and found windows to be technically superior or better value for money, they buy it because they don't realise anything else exists...
Should I take you as saying that Apple has been keeping its light hidden a bushel for the past thirty-three years?
Windows 7 is just Microsoft playing catchup with Apple
OSX 10.6 has 2% of the market. Win 7 8%. [and in daily tracking a tad under 10%] Vista and Win 7 combined have 25% of the market. Top Operating System Share Trend
19% of Steam users are running 64 bit Windows 7. "There are more users on Windows 7 64-bit than any other flavor of Windows, except for Windows XP 32-bit."
If software doesn't do what the government needs, they hire local programmers. This means that the money is staying in the local economy, rather than going abroad, and so they get more tax money. Overall, spending $1m on Microsoft software might, for a government, be a worse decision than spending $2m on hippyware.
Microsoft spent about $300 million on its new research campus in China.
100,000 square meters of office space. Employment for 3 to 5 thousand in Beijing's university district.
Would the geek care to guess how much the Windows eco-system is worth to China? In sales of hardware, software, peripherals - and now services?
There is definitely a "certain degree" of lock-in, but it's like being trapped in a prison with a key-making machine and full details on every lock in the place. Sure, it'll take a bit of time and effort, but you can get out pretty simply.
Is it really all that simple?
OpenOffice.org for most of its existence has been - for all practical purposes - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun.
Integrated solutions that go beyond the office suite have proven to be be a formidable challenge for corporations with the size and strength and wealth of IBM.
The summary omitted a few things. For one, the proposed blacklist would target otherwise legal adult sites featuring small-breasted women, with the apparent rationale that anyone who doesn't love giant plastic D-cups must be a pedophile.
Citation needed.
Is it sites that feature "small breasted" women that are being targeted - or sites that pose small breasted women as minors?
Mules, long noted for stubbornness, would seem to have nothing on either the music labels or Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Both sides have dug in deep and are prepared, almost unbelievably, to have a third trial on the question of whether Thomas-Rasset was a dirty P2P pirate... and of what she should pay if she was.
At the second trial, in 2009, Thomas-Rasset was again found liable, but the jury this time fined her $1.92 million. Last week, federal judge Michael Davis decided that this was "monstrous" in its disproportionality and slashed the damages to $54,000. The recording industry could either accept his decision or request a third trial.
The RIAA then sent a letter to Thomas-Rasset's lawyers with an alternate offer. Thomas-Rasset could settle for only $25,000 ("We are willing to negotiate a payment schedule for this sum," said a copy of the letter seen by Ars), and she wouldn't even need to pay the labels--all cash could go to a charity benefiting musicians. The entire settlement would be conditioned on the judge vacating his recent remittitur order.
"We do not believe embarking on a third trial is in anyone's interest," said the letter. "Continuing to use scarce judicial resources as well as spend our respective clients' time and money strikes as unwise and pointless."
It does not strike Thomas-Rasset that way. While the RIAA asked for an answer by Friday, January 29, Thomas-Rasset's lawyers have already responded: no deal.
I checked in with Kiwi Camara, one of Thomas-Rasset's lawyers. who confirmed that the settlement was ruled out. He added that Thomas-Rasset would likewise rule out any settlement asking her to pay damages, and that the Camara & Sibley law firm was ready to represent her pro bono once more.
It's hard to see how this will play out, but a few things are clear: Judge Davis, despite strong criticism of the damage award, had no kind words for Thomas-Rasset. He noted that "ThomasRasset's refusal to accept responsibility for her actions and her decision to concoct a new theory of the infringement casting possible blame on her children and exboyfriend for her actions demonstrate a refusal to accept responsibility and raise the need for strong deterrence." The judge even concluded that she "lied on the witness stand by denying responsibility for her infringing acts and, instead, blamed others, including her children, for her actions."
Given the facts in the case, which after two trials don't appear to be in dispute, it's hard to see how Thomas-Rasset hopes to prevail without paying a dime, but that appears to be the plan.
If she had been willing to pay something, she would have done so long ago, when the RIAA offered her a settlement of a few thousand dollars. Instead, Thomas-Rasset has spent years of her life working with two law firms on two federal trials, and she's willing to risk a third.
The stubbornness isn't just on one side of the aisle, however. The RIAA is completely unwilling to abide Judge Davis' ruling that the jury's damage award was excessive. Accepting the ruling would set an unacceptable precedent for judges to alter jury awards in copyright cases at their whim. It's not the amount, but the principle--something shown by the fact that the trade group is willing to drop roughly a bazillion dollars more on the Denver law firm that has been prosecuting the case in order to do it all again. In addition, conversations with industry lawyers and executives over the years have also revealed a strong sense that Thomas-Rasset needs to take responsibility and pay something; there's a very real sense that, apart from issue of statutory damage law, Thomas-Rasset is thumbing her nose at the industry and hoping to get away with no penalty.
You people should try to make some accessibility example for OSS folks if you want to be taken seriously. What is this carp??
The FOSS folks aren't the target audience. The target audience is the guy who runs Windows. The guy who uses Flash to play the videos on YouTube. The guy who is watching hardware accelerated HD H.264 video in his Flash 10 Beta 2 player.
You shouldn't have to know what you're doing to install an OS.
The user doesn't want to an install an OS.
Instead he'll wait for the attractive OEM system bundle that upgrades hardware and software both. It works as advertised or will be returned for a refund or exchange.
You can offer him incentives to install an upgrade-in-place - within the same OS "family." That much may still be in his comfort zone.
It's a much, much. tougher proposition to persuade him to migrate to the truly alien, alternative OS.
To play off a famous Edsger Dijkstra quote, the question of when AI will surpass human intelligence is just about as interesting as asking when submarines will swim faster than fish...
It matters to the fish who have to share the water with this new beast.
The video begins with left-side user installing Linux and right-side user installing Windows.
The video should begin with the right side user unpacking the boxes FedEx delivered from BestBuy or TigerDirect that afternoon. He clears his desk. He connects the cables and he is online with Win 7 in ten or fifteen minutes.
During this time, the user on the right repeatedly complains that his computer is getting slower and slower. He reluctantly stops every three months and backs up his files, angrily wipes everything from the computer, reformats and reinstalls everything
The user on the right installs the free security bundle offered by his cable ISP. Perhaps this time around he opts for Microsoft Security Essentials. The belt-and-suspenders solutions offered by McAfee Site Advisor. Secunia PSI.
He skipped a generation or two of hardware - and finds the migration of his old favorites to the 64 bit OS a little bit rocky. But he'll manage it, somehow. D2D, Steam and Gog.com will be there to help.
He lost interest in P2P about the time subscription services like Rhapsody began delivering music and video on demand.
His hardware upgrades are almost entirely defined by the OEM bundle - and he hasn't found an excuse to re-format a drive since Win 98.
The video ends with the user on the right giving up and asking the user on the left for his Linux install disk.
The video ends with the user on the right playing Fallout: New Vegas. The user on the right swearing at Pulse Audio.
The caption reads "This is based on a true story" and then "Linux: What do YOU want to do today?"
The Linux Foundation also did this in 2009. Here are last year's winners.
In March 2009 Win 7 had a global market share of 0%.
Linux 1%.
It is reasonably safe to predict that in March 2010, Win 7 will break through 10%. Barring a miracle, Linux will remain at 1%. Top Operating System Share Trends
The W3Schools stats are kinder to Linux - but the trend lines are just as flat.
Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle. Microsoft solid middle class values. This is not the geek's definition of freedom. But it strikes a chord with others.
The geek remembers "1984." But IBM did very well with Charlie Chaplin.
The FOSS application is routinely ported to Windows or begins as a native Windows app. That takes the wind out of your sails when you talk to the user about "freedom."
Can we at least get the Linux Foundation to support Ogg/Theora as a supported format to upload videos in. Ideally they would accept only Ogg and use HTML5 to show the videos instead of Flash..
The browser with Ogg/Theora support has about 22% of the market. Browser market share
What it does not have is YouTube. What it does not it have is the potent backing of 759 corporate licensees - the biggest names in broadcasting and consumer tech. AVC/H.264 Licensees
Anonymous recently turned its attention against the AU government after it said in December that it would block access to sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse.
I can't think of anything more likely to validate the government's actions in the eyes of its socially conservative constituents.
So if you think that they should switch, then just code close to the standards. If they want to use their site, it takes them five minutes to install a recent browser, and they know it for years.
It's a pity "the recent browser" only checks spelling but not grammar.
Moving on...
The pro - by definition - builds websites to serve his client's interests, not his own.
The client decides whether he wants and needs IE 6 support.
The corporate client may be more interested in maintaining his in-house enterprise apps then in "freakin' great" HTML 5, a work in progress since June of 2004:
Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012, and W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later. However, many parts of the specification are stable and may be implemented in products. According to the W3C timetable, it is estimated that HTML5 will reach W3C Recommendation by late 2010. However, the First Public Working Draft estimate was missed with 8 months, and Last Call and Candidate Recommendation were expected to be reached in 2008 but as of late 2009 HTML5 had not reached W3C Last Call. HTML5
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, there's a lot more running around and shooting and Will Smith being a badass in the film than there is in the book, but there's some definite common threads, too. I'm beginning to think that people who claim the book and film of I, Robot have nothing in common simply don't have a very strong grasp on what Asimov actually wrote.
I still cringe when I hear a robot being called "boy" in his early stories.
The positonic Stepin Fetchit.
The Foundation Trilogy is an adolescent - intellectual's - fantasy of backstage manipulation and control that plays out on the grandest of scales. "But who guards the guards?"
I was always far distant from Heinlein in many ways. But his "Future History" seemed fully alive and human.
Your response is what is commonly known as 'blaming the victim.' Seriously, you can't imagine any other way for malware to get onto a system except user stupidity?
Why does malware remain resident on a system?
Win32/Alureon was added to MSRT and MSE last October. The Virus Tools scans suggest about 70% of mainstream AV programs should have detected it.
Yea, I'd suggest that MS add detection and removal for this rootkit to the MSRT.
It's already there.
Malware Families Cleaned by the Malacious Software Removal Tool [June 05 to date], Win32/Alureon [Updated Jan 5]
The rootkit hasn't forgotten the old folks still on dial-up:
If a dial-up connection is sometimes used from the computer, reconfigure the dial-up settings in the rasphone.pbk file as necessary, as Win32/Alureon may set the fields "IpDnsAddress" and "IpDns2Address" in the rasphone.pbk file to the attacker's address. The Microsoft scanner code that automatically removes Win32/Alureon backs up the infected dial-up configuration file to:
%allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk\rasphone.pbk.bak
The latest addition to the list is Pushbot [Jan 27]
Using backdoor functionality Win32/Pushbot can be ordered to spread via MSN Messenger by a remote attacker. It sends a message to all of the infected user's contacts. Some variants may also spread using other instant messaging programs, such as AIM.
The worm can be ordered to send messages, which can contain URLs pointing to a remotely hosted copy of itself. The message may be provided by the controller via the IRC backdoor. Some variants of Win32/Pushbot may also spread by copying themselves to removable drives (other than A: or B:, such as USB memory keys) Some variants may be ordered to spread by copying themselves to the shared directories of various peer-to-peer file sharing programs, using filenames such as the following: KEY-GEN Adobe PhotoShop CS3.exe.
Some variants instead may attach a zipped copy of themselves to the [IM] message and/or randomly choose messages from a provided list. As an example, some variants use the following messages:
WoW? is that really you... what the hell where you drinking
LOL, you look so ugly in this picture, no joke...
Should I put this on facebook/myspace?
Hey m8, who is this on the right, in this picture...
Sup, seen the pictures from the other night?
everyone remembers Microsoft idea of limiting this to three - can Apple pull out with one? I don't think so.
The geek forgets that running three activities under SUGAR was [and remains] the practical limit for the OLPC. Release notes
The mobile device with very limited resources can become unresponsive or will simply crash under stress.
After all, there's no way that their malware tool could have spotted it, or the update could have checksummed the files before patching them.
If they put half as much effort into their anti-malware activities as they do into their DRM regime, the world would be a better place. We'd all have unicorns, and a pot of gold.
Microsoft does detect it - and has since last October.
File atapi.sys received on 2010.02.11 21:58:49 (UTC)
Virus:Win32/Alureon.A
Updated: Dec 07, 2009
Aliases:
Win32/Olmarik!generic (CA) Rootkit.Win32.TDSS.u (Kaspersky)
W32/TDSS.drv.gen4.A (Norman)
Mal/TDSSPack-V (Sophos)
Encyclopedia entry
Updated: Dec 07, 2009 | Published: Dec 02, 2009
Aliases
Win32/Olmarik!generic (CA) Rootkit.Win32.TDSS.u (Kaspersky)
W32/TDSS.drv.gen4.A (Norman)
Mal/TDSSPack-V (Sophos)
Alert Level
Severe
Detection initially created:
Definition: 1.69.77.0
Released: Oct 23, 2009
There are no common symptoms associated with this threat. Alert notifications from installed antivirus software may be the only symptom(s). When the infecting trojan is run, it infects a system driver, usually 'atapi.sys'. It has also been observed to infect 'iastor.sys' but other system drivers may also be targeted. The system driver detected as Virus:Win32/Alureon.A is infected by the addition of code, whose function is to load a part of the Alureon rootkit. The Alureon rootkit is a component that gives Alureon the ability to avoid detection; it is created by the same Alureon trojan that infects the system driver. The rootkit loaded by Virus:Win32/Alureon.A has the ability to avoid behavior blockers, which allows it to perform its malicious routines uninterrupted. It can also hide files and disk sectors.
Manual removal is not recommended for this threat. To detect and remove this threat and other malicious software that may have been installed, run a full-system scan with an up-to-date antivirus product such as Microsoft Security Essentials... . Win32/Alureon may modify DNS settings on the host computer, thus the following steps may be required after the Win32/Alureon removal is complete:
If the computer has a network interface that does not receive a configuration using DHCP, reset the DNS configuration if necessary
A MIT student is nearly shot while picking up a friend at the air port because her T-Shirt had a proto board mounted between her boobs. It had blinking lights and wires.... Seriously, I can understand how a regular person might not understand the situation, but don't they actually train security people? And if they are not trained, are we safer?
You might want to take a closer look at the shirt she was wearing. MIT student arrested for entering Boston airport with "fake bomb' Without examining the board how can you be certain of its function?
1 time 3000 people died, compared to the roads which claim 42,116 Americans a year. Heck about 100 people a year die from lightning. So over the last 45 years lighting is more deadly than terrorists
The geek is addicted to false and misleading analogies.
The population of the WTC complex at the noon hour on a weekday was around 100 thousand.
The 42 thousand accidental traffic deaths a year he talks about will never occur in a single incident in downtown Manhattan.
The terrorist can make such things happen.
The single traffic death has limited and definable consequences.
The twin towers were 13 million square feet of office space, a transport hub, a shopping center and a tourist attraction - and most significantly a vital part of Manhattan's financial district.
Highly skilled people, in very specialized trades, not easily replaced, and all in their prime earning years. This not a hit any city could have rebounded from easily, not even a city as rich and powerful as New York.
The attack on the WTC was, of course, co-ordinated with simultaneous attacks on Washington.
If the geek does not like world he is living in now, he might usefully consider what would have followed from the mass murder of the American Congress.
'I updated 11 Windows XP updates today and restarted my PC like it asked me to
What sort of loon patches multiple machines without first testing the patch?
XP has about 70% or so of the client market. How many millions or tens of millions of patches have been installed successfully?
Case in point, Microsoft started losing its juice when it got serious about enterprise
Microsoft has always been serious about the enterprise market.
In July of 76 Microsoft was selling its microcomputer BASIC to corporate clients like General Electric.
In April of 79: Microsoft 8080 BASIC was the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award, "traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers."
The single most important decision Microsoft ever made was to negotiate a non-exclusive license for MS-DOS. That would permanently alter the landscape. Apple is the lone survivor of the era when hardware and software was tightly bundled.
In 1983 Microsoft Multiplan spreadsheet the company's first application product, was ported across many platforms. "While Lotus 1-2-3 surpassed Multiplan in domestic markets, Multiplan was the winner in almost every other country in which it appeared."
In September of 83 Microsoft introduced Word for MS-DOs 1.0. Microsoft Timeline
I don't think I've used any new features for a word processor since WordPerfect 5.1. That had just about everything I needed. For 99.9999% of the population, OpenOffice is more than enough.
Microsoft doesn't sell a word processor.
It sells integrated - off-the-shelf - solutions for office work that scale to an enterprise of any size.
It sells a global labor force that lives and breathes MS Office.
That is why if you have a corporate e-mail address Enterprise Office for home use can be yours for $10. Microsoft Home Use Program
People don't buy windows because they've assessed multiple competing options (including osx and linux) and found windows to be technically superior or better value for money, they buy it because they don't realise anything else exists...
Should I take you as saying that Apple has been keeping its light hidden a bushel for the past thirty-three years?
Windows 7 is just Microsoft playing catchup with Apple
OSX 10.6 has 2% of the market. Win 7 8%. [and in daily tracking a tad under 10%] Vista and Win 7 combined have 25% of the market. Top Operating System Share Trend
Ars Technica posted this interesting chart of Windows usage on Steam:
19% of Steam users are running 64 bit Windows 7. "There are more users on Windows 7 64-bit than any other flavor of Windows, except for Windows XP 32-bit."
If software doesn't do what the government needs, they hire local programmers. This means that the money is staying in the local economy, rather than going abroad, and so they get more tax money.
Overall, spending $1m on Microsoft software might, for a government, be a worse decision than spending $2m on hippyware.
Microsoft spent about $300 million on its new research campus in China.
100,000 square meters of office space. Employment for 3 to 5 thousand in Beijing's university district.
Would the geek care to guess how much the Windows eco-system is worth to China? In sales of hardware, software, peripherals - and now services?
There is definitely a "certain degree" of lock-in, but it's like being trapped in a prison with a key-making machine and full details on every lock in the place. Sure, it'll take a bit of time and effort, but you can get out pretty simply.
Is it really all that simple?
OpenOffice.org for most of its existence has been - for all practical purposes - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun.
12 million lines of code in 2004. OpenOffice.org statcvs (Lines of code) Forking projects on that scale can break you.
Integrated solutions that go beyond the office suite have proven to be be a formidable challenge for corporations with the size and strength and wealth of IBM.
Is it sites that feature "small breasted" women that are being targeted - or sites that pose small breasted women as minors?
Mules, long noted for stubbornness, would seem to have nothing on either the music labels or Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Both sides have dug in deep and are prepared, almost unbelievably, to have a third trial on the question of whether Thomas-Rasset was a dirty P2P pirate... and of what she should pay if she was.
At the second trial, in 2009, Thomas-Rasset was again found liable, but the jury this time fined her $1.92 million. Last week, federal judge Michael Davis decided that this was "monstrous" in its disproportionality and slashed the damages to $54,000. The recording industry could either accept his decision or request a third trial.
The RIAA then sent a letter to Thomas-Rasset's lawyers with an alternate offer. Thomas-Rasset could settle for only $25,000 ("We are willing to negotiate a payment schedule for this sum," said a copy of the letter seen by Ars), and she wouldn't even need to pay the labels--all cash could go to a charity benefiting musicians. The entire settlement would be conditioned on the judge vacating his recent remittitur order.
"We do not believe embarking on a third trial is in anyone's interest," said the letter. "Continuing to use scarce judicial resources as well as spend our respective clients' time and money strikes as unwise and pointless."
It does not strike Thomas-Rasset that way. While the RIAA asked for an answer by Friday, January 29, Thomas-Rasset's lawyers have already responded: no deal.
I checked in with Kiwi Camara, one of Thomas-Rasset's lawyers. who confirmed that the settlement was ruled out. He added that Thomas-Rasset would likewise rule out any settlement asking her to pay damages, and that the Camara & Sibley law firm was ready to represent her pro bono once more.
It's hard to see how this will play out, but a few things are clear: Judge Davis, despite strong criticism of the damage award, had no kind words for Thomas-Rasset. He noted that "ThomasRasset's refusal to accept responsibility for her actions and her decision to concoct a new theory of the infringement casting possible blame on her children and exboyfriend for her actions demonstrate a refusal to accept responsibility and raise the need for strong deterrence." The judge even concluded that she "lied on the witness stand by denying responsibility for her infringing acts and, instead, blamed others, including her children, for her actions."
Given the facts in the case, which after two trials don't appear to be in dispute, it's hard to see how Thomas-Rasset hopes to prevail without paying a dime, but that appears to be the plan.
If she had been willing to pay something, she would have done so long ago, when the RIAA offered her a settlement of a few thousand dollars. Instead, Thomas-Rasset has spent years of her life working with two law firms on two federal trials, and she's willing to risk a third.
The stubbornness isn't just on one side of the aisle, however. The RIAA is completely unwilling to abide Judge Davis' ruling that the jury's damage award was excessive. Accepting the ruling would set an unacceptable precedent for judges to alter jury awards in copyright cases at their whim. It's not the amount, but the principle--something shown by the fact that the trade group is willing to drop roughly a bazillion dollars more on the Denver law firm that has been prosecuting the case in order to do it all again. In addition, conversations with industry lawyers and executives over the years have also revealed a strong sense that Thomas-Rasset needs to take responsibility and pay something; there's a very real sense that, apart from issue of statutory damage law, Thomas-Rasset is thumbing her nose at the industry and hoping to get away with no penalty.
Thus--a third trial.
Thomas-Rasset vows to pay nothing, so third trial inevitable [Jan 28]
You people should try to make some accessibility example for OSS folks if you want to be taken seriously. What is this carp??
The FOSS folks aren't the target audience. The target audience is the guy who runs Windows. The guy who uses Flash to play the videos on YouTube. The guy who is watching hardware accelerated HD H.264 video in his Flash 10 Beta 2 player.
You shouldn't have to know what you're doing to install an OS.
The user doesn't want to an install an OS.
Instead he'll wait for the attractive OEM system bundle that upgrades hardware and software both. It works as advertised or will be returned for a refund or exchange.
You can offer him incentives to install an upgrade-in-place - within the same OS "family." That much may still be in his comfort zone.
It's a much, much. tougher proposition to persuade him to migrate to the truly alien, alternative OS.
It matters to the fish who have to share the water with this new beast.
The video begins with left-side user installing Linux and right-side user installing Windows.
The video should begin with the right side user unpacking the boxes FedEx delivered from BestBuy or TigerDirect that afternoon. He clears his desk. He connects the cables and he is online with Win 7 in ten or fifteen minutes.
During this time, the user on the right repeatedly complains that his computer is getting slower and slower. He reluctantly stops every three months and backs up his files, angrily wipes everything from the computer, reformats and reinstalls everything
The user on the right installs the free security bundle offered by his cable ISP. Perhaps this time around he opts for Microsoft Security Essentials. The belt-and-suspenders solutions offered by McAfee Site Advisor. Secunia PSI.
He skipped a generation or two of hardware - and finds the migration of his old favorites to the 64 bit OS a little bit rocky. But he'll manage it, somehow. D2D, Steam and Gog.com will be there to help.
He lost interest in P2P about the time subscription services like Rhapsody began delivering music and video on demand.
His hardware upgrades are almost entirely defined by the OEM bundle - and he hasn't found an excuse to re-format a drive since Win 98.
The video ends with the user on the right giving up and asking the user on the left for his Linux install disk.
The video ends with the user on the right playing Fallout: New Vegas. The user on the right swearing at Pulse Audio.
The caption reads "This is based on a true story" and then "Linux: What do YOU want to do today?"
The Linux Foundation also did this in 2009. Here are last year's winners.
In March 2009 Win 7 had a global market share of 0%.
Linux 1%.
It is reasonably safe to predict that in March 2010, Win 7 will break through 10%. Barring a miracle, Linux will remain at 1%. Top Operating System Share Trends
The W3Schools stats are kinder to Linux - but the trend lines are just as flat.
Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle. Microsoft solid middle class values. This is not the geek's definition of freedom. But it strikes a chord with others.
The geek remembers "1984." But IBM did very well with Charlie Chaplin.
The FOSS application is routinely ported to Windows or begins as a native Windows app. That takes the wind out of your sails when you talk to the user about "freedom."
Can we at least get the Linux Foundation to support Ogg/Theora as a supported format to upload videos in. Ideally they would accept only Ogg and use HTML5 to show the videos instead of Flash..
The Flash player delivers H.264 video to 99% of the potential market. Flash Player Version Penetration
Hardware accelerated in Flash 10.
The browser with Ogg/Theora support has about 22% of the market. Browser market share
What it does not have is YouTube. What it does not it have is the potent backing of 759 corporate licensees - the biggest names in broadcasting and consumer tech. AVC/H.264 Licensees
I can't think of anything more likely to validate the government's actions in the eyes of its socially conservative constituents.
Yeah, I tried to convince her to switch to OO, but according to her, it's incompatible with her employer (big publisher) and she must use MS Office.
If she has a corporate e-mail address chances are good her employer participates in Microsoft's Home Use Program.
Microsoft® Office Enterprise 2007 is hers for ten bucks. Microsoft Home Use Program
So if you think that they should switch, then just code close to the standards. If they want to use their site, it takes them five minutes to install a recent browser, and they know it for years.
It's a pity "the recent browser" only checks spelling but not grammar.
Moving on...
The pro - by definition - builds websites to serve his client's interests, not his own.
The client decides whether he wants and needs IE 6 support.
The corporate client may be more interested in maintaining his in-house enterprise apps then in "freakin' great" HTML 5, a work in progress since June of 2004:
Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012, and W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later. However, many parts of the specification are stable and may be implemented in products.
According to the W3C timetable, it is estimated that HTML5 will reach W3C Recommendation by late 2010. However, the First Public Working Draft estimate was missed with 8 months, and Last Call and Candidate Recommendation were expected to be reached in 2008 but as of late 2009 HTML5 had not reached W3C Last Call. HTML5